A Roman Council Celebrated Under Stephen.

From the Synodal Roll.

A divine and sacred provincial synod, gathered together at Rome by Stephen, the blessed martyr and father1 which excommunicated those who in an African synod had, without reason, conceded that they who came to the Catholic Church from any heresy should be re-baptized. (Reference is made to this council in Epistles of Cyprian,  No. lxxiii., and at large in Epistles lxix. to lxxiv., pp. 375-396, supra.)

Carthaginian Councils.

The Third Carthaginian Council Under Cyprian, on the Baptism of Infants; Held Anno Domini 253.

This document is translated at p. 353, Ep. lviii.

The Fourth Carthaginian Council Under Cyprian; Held Anno Domini 254. About Basilides and Martial, Bishops of Spain, Who Had Received Certificates.

This document is translated at p. 369, Ep. lxvii.

The Fifth Carthaginian Council Under Cyprian, the First About Baptism; Held Anno Domini 255, the Third Year of St. Stephen’s Episcopate.

This will be found translated at p. 375, Ep. lxix.

The Sixth Carthaginian Council Under Cyprian, the Second About Baptism, from a Province of Africa and Numidia; Held Anno Domini 256, in the Third Year of Stephen’s Episcopate.

This will be found translated at p. 378, Ep. lxxi.

The Seventh Carthaginian Council Under Cyprian, the Third About Baptism, from Three Provinces of Africa; Held Anno Domini 256, in the Third Year of Stephen’s Episcopate.

This will be found translated and given in full on p. 565 of the present volume. 

FOOTNOTES

1 “Papa” [as applied to all bishops. See p. 154, supra.]

A Treatise Against the Heretic Novatian by an Anonymous Bishop.

Introductory Notice1

The writer of the following treatise was undoubtedly a contemporary of Cyprian, and wrote in the early part of the reign of Valerian (254-256), during an interval of peace to the Church. This much may be collected from the fact that he names one, and only one, persecution after that of Decius – namely, that of Gallus and Volusianus – and speaks of those who had lapsed under the former, as having been stedfast and victorious in the latter. (ch. (or sec.) 6, p. 659, infra.) He is generally believed to have been an Africa, and Tillemont is only withheld from attributing the work to Cyprian himself by what he judges to be a difference of style. But although from the exordium it may be concluded that the writer was a bishop, yet, from his manifest uncertainty as to the fitting way to treat those who had lapsed, it is evident that Cyprian cannot have been the author; for that prelate, when the persecution of Gallus and Volusianus was just threatening, had already decided upon receiving to communion the penitents who had yielded to temptation under Decius. (Epistles, liii. p. 336, supra.)

Ceillier2 says that this treatise was written about the year 255, while Novatian was still alive, (ch. (or sec.) 1, p. 657, infra.) and when the schism of Felicissimus was all but extinct.

Erasmus first published it among the known works of Cyprian in the year 1520.

FOOTNOTES

1 [By Dr. Wallis, editor of vol. xiii., Edinb. series.]

2 Hist. Gén. des Auteurs, tom. iii. ch. i. art. 4, sec. 2, note 4.

Note.

The American editor subjoins as follows: Cyprian, and Cornelius afterward, had decided, with their councils, that the lapsed should be classed, and dealt with accordingly, as (1) Libellatici, those who had compounded with the heathen, and bought off from offering sacrifice; and (2) Sacrificati, those who had actually offered sacrifice to idols. Different degrees of discipline were awarded, but all were admitted to pardon finally. 

That the Hope of Pardon Should Not Be Denied to the Lapsed.

1. While I was meditating and impatiently tossing in my mind what I ought to do concerning those pitiable brethren who, wounded, not of their own will, but by the onset of a raging devil, have lived until now, that is, through a long course of time, in the endurance of their punishment; lo, there appeared opposed to me another enemy, and the adversary of his own paternal affection – the heretic Novatian – who not only, as it is signified in the Gospel, passed by the prostrate wounded man, as did the priest or the Levite, but by an ingenious and novel cruelty rather would slay the wounded man, by taking away the hope of salvation, by denying the mercy of his Father, by rejecting the repentance of his brother. Marvellous, how bitter, how harsh how perverse are many things! But one more easily perceives the straw in another’s eye than the beam in one’s own. Let not the abrupt madness of that perfidious heretic move or disturb us however, beloved brethren, who, although he is placed in such great guilt of dissension and schism, and is separated from the Church, with sacrilegious temerity does not shrink from hurling back his charges upon us: for although he is now by himself made unclean, defiled with the filth of sacrilege, he contends that we are so. And although it is written that the dogs should remain without, and the apostle has taught that these same dogs must be shunned, as we read, for he says, “Beware of dogs, beware of evil workers,” (Phi_3:2) he does not cease stirring up his frenzy with barkings, after the manner of wolves seeking the gloomy darkness, where with his brutal cruelty he may easily rend in his dark caves the sheep snatched away from the Shepherd. Certainly he declares that he and his friends whom he collects are gold. Nor do we doubt but that deserters of the Church who have become apostates could now easily be converted into gold, but it must be that gold in which the first sins of the people of Israel were designated. But the gold and silver vessels which were wrested from the Egyptians continue in the Lord’s power, that is, in Christ’s Church; in which house if thou hadst continued, Novatian, thou hadst perchance been also a precious vessel; but now thou neither perceivest nor complainest that thou art changed into chaff and straw.

2. Why, therefore, shouldst thou be lifted up with vain things? Thou wilt gain loss rather than profit. Why, from the very fact that thou art become poorer, believest thou thyself rich? Hear in the Apocalypse the Lord’s voice rebuking thee with righteous reproaches: “Thou sayest,” says He, “I am rich, and increased with goods, and have need of nothing; and knowest not that thou art wretched, and miserable, and blind, and poor, and naked.” (Rev_3:17) Let him think for certain that he possesses these riches of poverty, whoever he may be, that, forsaking the Church of Christ, with his darkened reason does not shrink from being turned to those rash leaders of schisms and authors of dissension, whom John calls antichrists, whom the Evangelist likens to chaff, whom the Lord Christ characterizes as thieves and robbers, as He Himself declares in the Gospel, saying that “he who entereth not by the door into the sheep-fold, but goeth down by some other way, the same is a thief and a robber.” (Joh_10:1) Moreover, in the same He also says, “All who have come are thieves and robbers.” (Joh_10:8) Who are such but the deserters of the faith, and the transgressors of God’s Church, who strive against God’s ordinance; whom the Holy Spirit rightly rebukes by the prophet, saying, “Ye have taken counsel, but not by me; and have made a confederacy, but not by my Spirit, to add sin to sin.” (Isa_30:1) What now can those most perverse friends of Novatian, even now the most unhappy1 few, reply to these things, who have broken forth to such a folly of madness as to have no reverence either for God or man? Among them, shamelessly, and without any law of ordination, the episcopate is sought after; but among us in its own Sees, and in those of the throne delivered to it by God, it is renounced. [Ep. xl. p. 319, supra: et alibi.] There the Truth says, “They reject me, that they may sacrifice to me; nor do they offer the holy oblations of the children of Israel, nor do they approach to offer the holy of holies, but they shall receive their ignominy in the error wherein they have erred.” (Eze_44:10-13) Let it be enough in a few words to have proved what they are. Hear, therefore, O Novatians, among whom the heavenly Scriptures are read rather than understood; well, if they are not interpolated. [see p. 602, note 19, supra.] For your ears are closed, and your hearts darkened, seeing that ye admit no light from spiritual and saving warnings; as Isaiah gays, “The servants of God are blinded.” (Isa_42:19) And deservedly blinded, because the desire of schismatics is not in the law; which law points out to us the one and only Church in that ark to wit, which was fashioned, by the providence of God, under Noah before the deluge, in which – to answer you quickly, O Novatian – we find that there were shut up not only clean animals, but also unclean; which ark was saved alone, with those who were in it, whereas the other things which were not found therein perished in the deluge. From that ark there were loosed two birds, a raven and a dove; and this raven truly bore the figure or type of impure men, and men who would be in perpetual darkness through the world’s broad road, and of apostates who should arise, feeding on unclean things, and not turning themselves eventually to the Church; and as we read, we find that it was sent forth, and returned no more. Whoever should be found to resemble this bird, then, that is, the impure spirit, will no more be able to return to the Church, seeing that the Lord will forbid them, even if they should wish it, as He commanded Moses, saying, “Everything leprous2 and impure, cast abroad outside the camp.” (Num_5:2) But the dove sent forth that returned, is signified by the man who does not delay, because be would have no rest for his feet. And Noah received it into the ark; and when it was sent forth again on the seventh day, received it, bearing in its mouth an olive leaf.

3. And I, beloved brethren, – as I not heedlessly meditate these things, and not in harmony with human wisdom, but as it is permitted to our minds by the condescension of the heavenly Lord, needfully and pertinently to conceive, – say that that dove signifies to us of itself a double type. Formerly, that is, from the beginning of the divine administration, it suggests its own figure, the first indeed and chief – that is, the figure of the Spirit. And by its mouth the sacrament of baptism which is provided for the salvation of the human race, and that by the heavenly plan it is celebrated in the Church only.3 Moreover, three times sent forth from the ark, flying about through the air over the water, it already signified the sacraments of our Church. Whence also the Lord Christ charges upon Peter, and moreover also upon the rest of His disciples, “Go ye and preach the Gospel to the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost.” (Mat_28:19) [for the next sentence see Act_2:33] That is, that that same Trinity which operated figuratively in Noah’s days through the dove, now operates in the Church spiritually through the disciples.

4. Let us now take the second character also of the dove sent forth from the ark, that is to say, in the time of the deluge, when all the abysses broke forth; when the cataracts of heaven were opened upon the earth, on account of the wickedness of men which they daily practised before the Lord; as said Moses, “And the Lord God saw that the wickednesses of men were overflowing upon the earth, and that all of them were remembering for evil from the beginning of their days; and He said, I will destroy man whom I have made from off the face of the earth, from man even unto cattle, and from the creeping thing even unto the fowls of the air.” (Gen_6:5-7) Therefore in the time of the flood the dove is sent forth from the ark, when the waters were violently rushing with all their force upon the earth.

5. That ark bore the figure of the Church, as we have said above, which was stricken hither and thither to such a degree by the tumultuous waters. Therefore that deluge which happened under Noah showed forth the figure of the persecution which now lately was poured forth over the whole world. Moreover, by the waters, the cataracts broken forth meeting together on all sides, and growing, were signified the peoples which grew up for the desolation of the Church; as the Apocalypse teaches, saying, “The waters which thou sawest are peoples, and nations, and kingdoms.” (Rev_17:15) Moreover, the dove which could not find rest for its feet, bore the likeness of the lapsed, who fell forgetful of the divine announcements, either ignorant in simplicity, or feigning in audacity. Of whom the Lord had intimated the future destruction in the Gospel in these words, saying, “He who heareth my words and doeth them not, I will liken him to a foolish man, who built his house upon the sand: the tempests came and beat upon that house, and it fell; and great was its destruction.” (Mat_7:26, Mat_7:27) And lest we should seem to have made the comparison inconsiderately of that dove bearing the image of the lapsed, the prophet rebukes the city as a dove, that is, the character of the lapsed, saying, “The dove hearkens not to the voice; that is, the illustrious and redeemed city receives not teaching, and trusted not in the Lord.” (Zep_3:1, Zep_3:2, Zep_3:3, LXX)

6. Moreover, that that dove could not find rest for her feet, as we have said above, this signified the footsteps of those who deny; that is, those, wounded by the poison of the shining serpent, who sacrifice, turned towards their fall; which could not any further step upon the asp and the basilisk, and tread upon the dragon and the lion. For this power the Lord gave to His disciples, as He says in the Gospel:” Lo, I give unto you power to tread on all the power of the enemy, and upon serpents and scorpions; and they shall not harm you.” (Luk_10:19) When, therefore, these so many and such malignant spirits are attacking and bestirring themselves for the destruction of the lapsed, a way of salvation is provided for the wounded, that with whatever strength they have they may drag themselves with their whole body, and betake themselves to their camp, wherein being received, they may heal their wounds with spiritual medicaments. Thus the dove received, after the intervention of a few days, is again sent forth from the ark; and returning, not only shows its firm footsteps, but moreover the signs of its peace and victory, in those olive leaves which it bore in its mouth. Therefore that twofold sending forth shows to us a twofold trial of persecution: the first, in which they who have lapsed have fallen conquered; the second, in which they who have fallen have come out conquerors. For to none of us is it doubtful or uncertain, beloved brethren, that they who in the first struggle – that is, in the Decian persecution – were wounded; afterwards, that is in the second encounter, persevered so bravely, that, despising the edicts of the princes of the world,4 they maintained that unconquered; in that they did not fear, after the example of the good Shepherd, to give up their life, and to shed their blood, and not to shrink from any barbarity of the raging tyrant.

7. Behold how glorious, how dear to the Lord, are the people whom these schismatics do not shrink from calling “wood, hay, stubble;” (1Co_3:12) the equals of whom, that is, those who are even still placed in the same guilt of their lapse, they presume must not be admitted to repentance. This they judge from that utterance of the Lord, where He says, “Whosoever shall deny me before men, him will I deny before my Father which is in heaven.” (Mat_10:33) Oh grief! why do they strive against the Lord’s precepts, that this offspring of Novatian, following the example of his father the devil, should now endeavour to put in force those things which Christ will do in the time of His judgment? that is, when Scripture says, “Vengeance is mine; and I will repay, saith the Lord.” (Heb_10:30)

8. We will answer them as to that utterance of the Lord, which they ill understand, and ill explain to themselves. For that He says, “Whosoever shall deny me before men, him will I also deny before my Father which is in heaven,” its meaning is assuredly with respect to future time – to the time at which the Lord shall begin to judge the secrets of men – to the time at which we must all stand before the judgment-seat of Christ – to the time at which many shall begin to say, “Lord, Lord, have we not prophesied in Thy name, and in Thy name cast out devils, and in Thy name done many wonderful works?” (Mat_7:22, Mat_7:23) And yet they shall hear the voice of the Lord saying, “Depart from me, all ye that have worked iniquity: I know you not.” (Mat_7:22, Mat_7:23) Then shall it be fulfilled that He says, “I also will deny them.” But whom will the Lord Christ chiefly deny, if not all of you heretics, and schismatics, and strangers to His name? For ye who were some time Christians, but now are Novatians, no longer Christians, have changed your first faith by a subsequent perfidy in the calling of your name. I should wish you to reply to your own proposition. Read and teach: whom of those who had failed or denied Him, while He was still with them, did our Lord deny? Yet also to the others of the disciples who had remained with Him He saith, “Will ye also go away?” (Joh_6:67) Even Peter, whom He had previously foretold as about to deny Him, when he had denied Him, He did not deny, but sustained; and He Himself soothed him when subsequently bitterly bewailing his denial.

9. What sort of folly is thine, Novatian, only to read what tends to the destruction of salvation, and to pass by what tends to mercy, when Scripture cries, and says, “Repent, ye who err: be converted in heart;” (Eze_18:30) and when the same prophet also exhorts, and says, “Be converted unto me with all your heart, in fasting, and weeping, and mourning; and rend your hearts, and not your garments; be ye converted to the Lord your God: for He is merciful, and one who pities with great compassion?” (Joe_2:12, Joe_2:13)

10. Thus we have heard that the Lord is of great compassion. Let us hear what the Holy Spirit testifies by David: “If his children forsake my law, and walk not in my commandments; if they should profane my righteousness, and should not keep my precepts; I will visit their crimes with a rod, and their sins with stripes. But my mercy will I not utterly disperse from them.” (Psa_89:30 et seq.) Words like to these we read that the Lord said also by Ezekiel: “Son of man, the house of Israel has dwelt on its own land, and they have defiled it by their crimes: their uncleanness has become like that of a menstruous woman before my face. I have poured out my anger upon them, and I have scattered them among the nations; and I have judged them according to their sins, because they have defiled my holy name; and because it was said of them, This is the people of the Lord, I have spared them, because of my holy name, which the house of Israel despised among the nations.” (Eze_36:17-23) And in conjunction with this he says, “Therefore say to the people of Israel, Thus saith the Lord, I spare you not, O house of Israel; but I will spare you on account of my holy name, which ye have defiled among they nations: and ye shall know that I am the Lord, when I shall be sanctified in you.” Also the Lord to the same: “Son of man, say unto the people of Israel, Wherefore have ye spoken, saying, We are pining away in our sins, and how shall we be able to be saved? Say unto them, I live, saith the Lord: for I do not desire the death of the sinner; but I desire that the sinner should turn from his evil way, and live: therefore return ye from your evil way: why do ye give yourselves over to death, O house of Israel?” (Eze_33:10, Eze_33:11) So, too, by Isaiah the prophet: “I will not be angry with you for ever, nor will I abstain from defending you always.” (Isa_57:16) And because Jeremiah the prophet, in the person of the sinful people, prays to the Lord, saying, “Amend us, O Lord, but in judgment, and not in anger, lest Thou make us few;” (Jer_10:24) Isaiah also added, and said, “For his sin I have slightly afflicted him; and I have stricken him, and have turned away my face from him: and he was afflicted, and went away sadly in his ways.” (Isa_57:17) And because he labours, he added and said, “I have seen his ways, and I have healed him; and I have given him a true exhortation, peace upon peace;” (Isa_57:19) that to those who repent, and pray, and labour, restoration is possible, because they would miserably perish, and because they would decline from Christ.

11. Moreover, this is proved in the Gospel, where is described that woman who was a sinner, who came to the house of a certain Pharisee whither the Lord had been bidden with His disciples, and she brought a vessel of ointment, and stood at the Lord’s feet, and washed His feet with her tears, and wiped them with her hair, and pressed kisses upon them; so that that Pharisee was provoked, and said, “If this man were a prophet, he would know who and what sort of a woman this is who touches him; for she is a sinner.” (Luk_7:39 et seq.) Whence immediately the Lord, the remitter of sins and the receiver of the penitent, says, “Simon, I have somewhat to say unto thee. And he answered, saying, Master, say on. And the Lord, There was a certain creditor which had two debtors; one who had5 five hundred pence, and the other fifty. When they had nothing to pay, he forgave both. And He asked, Which of these loved most? And Simon answered, Assuredly he to whom he forgave most. And He added, saying, Seest thou that woman? I entered into thy house, thou gavest me no kiss; but she hath not ceased to kiss my feet; thou washedst not my feet, but she has washed them with her tears, and wiped them with her hair; thou didst not anoint my feet with oil, but she hath anointed them. Wherefore I say unto thee, Simon, that her sins are forgiven her.” Behold, the Lord grants the debt with His liberal kindness to both debtors; behold Him who pardons sins; behold the woman who was a sinner, penitent, weeping, praying, and receiving remission of her sins!

12. And now blush if thou canst, Novatian; cease to deceive the unwary with thy impious arguments; cease to frighten them with the subtlety of one particular. We read, and adore, and do not pass over the heavenly judgment of the Lord, where he says that He will deny him who denies Him. But does this mean the penitent? And why should I be taking pains so long to prove individual cases of mercies? since the mercy of God is not indeed denied to the Ninevites, although strangers, and placed apart from the law of the Lord, when they beseech it on account of the overthrow announced to their city. Nor to Pharaoh himself, resisting with sacrilegious boldness, when formerly he was stricken with plagues from heaven, and, turning to Moses and to his brother, said, “Pray to the Lord for me, for I have sinned.” (Exo_9:28) At once the anger of God was suspended from him. And yet thou, O Novatian, judgest and declarest that the lapsed have no hope of peace and mercy, nor inclinest thine ear to the rebuke of the apostle, when he says,” Who art thou, who judgest another man’s servant? To his own master he standeth or falleth. Yea, he shall stand. God is mighty to establish him.” (Rom_14:4) Whence pertinently and needfully the Holy Spirit, in the person of those same lapsed people, rebukes you when He says, “Rejoice not over me, O mine enemy: because if I have fallen, I shall also rise again; and if I shall walk in darkness, the Lord is my light. I will bear the indignation of the Lord, because I have sinned against Him, until He justify my cause, and execute judgment and justice, and bring me forth to the light. I shall behold His righteousness; and she that is mine enemy shall see me, and shall cover herself with confusion.” (Mic_7:8-10)

13. I beseech thee, hast thou not read, “Boast not, and speak not loftily, and let not arrogancy proceed out of your mouth: for the Lord lifteth the poor from the earth; He raiseth up the beggar from the dunghill, and maketh him to sit with the mighty ones of the people?” (1Sa_2:3-8) Hast thou not read, that “the Lord resisteth the proud, and giveth grace to the humble?” (Jam_4:6) Hast thou not read, “Whoso exalteth himself shall be humbled?” (Mat_23:12) Hast thou not read, that “God destroys the remembrance of the proud, and does not forsake the memory of the lowly?” Hast thou not read, that “with what judgment a man shall judge he must be judged?” (Mat_7:2) Hast thou not read, that “he who hateth his brother is in darkness, and walketh in darkness, and knoweth not whither he goeth, because the darkness hath blinded his eyes?” (1Jo_2:11) Whence, then, this Novatian has become both so wicked and so lost, so mad with rage of discord, I cannot discover, since he always in one household – that is, the Church of Christ – would have bewailed the sins of his neighbours as his own;6 would have borne the burthens of his brethren, as the apostle exhorts would have strengthened the faltering in the faith with heavenly counsel. But now, from the time when he began to practise that heresy of Cain which only delights in slaying, he does not even of late spare himself. But if he had read that “the righteousness of the righteous shall not deliver him in the day on which he shall have erred, and the wickedness of the wicked shall not harm him from the day in which he shall have been converted,” (Eze_33:12) he would long ago have repented in ashes, who is always opposed to penitents; who labours more readily in the destruction of those things which are built and standing, than in the building up of those which are prostrate; who has once more made heathens of many most wretched brethren of ours, terrified by his false oppositions, by saying that the repentance of the lapsed is vain, and cannot avail them for salvation, although the Scripture cries aloud and says, “Remember whence thou hast fallen, and repent, or else I will come to thee except thou repent.” (Rev_2:5) And indeed, writing to the seven churches, rebuking each one of them with its own crimes and sins, it said, Repent. To whom but to them, doubtless, whom He had redeemed at the great price of His blood?

14. O impious and wicked as thou art, thou heretic Novatian! who after so many and great crimes which in past times thou hadst known to be voluntarily committed in the Church, and before thou thyself wast an apostate in the family of God, hadst certainly taught that these might be abolished from memory if well-doing followed; according to the faith of the Scripture which says, “But if the wicked will turn from all his sins which he hath committed, and will do righteousness, he shall live in eternal life, and shall not die in his wickedness.” (Eze_18:21) For the sins which he has committed shall be abolished from memory by the good deeds which succeed. Thou reconsiderest now, whether the wounds of the lapsed who have fallen, stripped bare by the devil, ought to be cured; dashed down, as they are, by the “violence of the flood which the serpent sent forth from his mouth after the woman.” (Rev_12:15) But “What shall I say?” says the apostle. “Do I praise you? In this I praise you not; that ye come together not for the better, but for the worse.” (1Co_11:17) For where there are “rivalries and dissensions among you, are ye not carnal, and walk according to man?” (1Co_3:3) Nor indeed ought we to wonder why this Novatian should dare now to practise such wicked, such severe things against the person of the lapsed, since we have previous examples of this kind of prevarication. Saul, that once good (1Sa_9:2) man, besides other things, is subsequently overthrown by envy, and strives to do everything that is harsh and hostile against David. That Judas, who was chosen among the apostles, who was always of one mind and faithful in the house of God, himself subsequently betrayed God.7

And indeed the Lord had foretold that many should come as ravening wolves in the skins of sheep. Who are those ravening wolves but such as conspire with treacherous intent to waste the flock of Christ? As we read it written in Zechariah: “Lo, I raise up a shepherd in the land, who shall not visit that which is turned away, and will eat the flesh of the chosen, and tear their claws in pieces.” (Zec_11:16) Similarly also in Ezekiel he rebukes shepherds of this kind, to wit, robbers and butchers (I will speak as he had thought8), saying, “O shepherds, wherefore do ye drink the milk, and eat up the curdled milk, and have brought that which is strong to nothing, and have not visited the weak, have not healed the halting, and have not recalled the wandering, and have permitted my people to wander among thorns and briers? For these things, says the Lord, lo, I will come against the shepherds, and I will require my sheep of their hands; and I will drive them away, that they may not feed my sheep; and my sheep shall no more be for them to devour, and I will seek them out as a shepherd his flock in the day in which there shall be darkness and cloud. Thus I will seek out my sheep, and I will seek them out in every place wherever they are scattered; and I will seek out what had perished, and I will recall what had wandered, and what had halted I will heal, and what is weak I will watch over; and I will feed my sheep with judgment.” (Eze_34:1-31)

15. Who is it that says these things? Certainly He who, having left the ninety and nine sheep, went to seek that one which had wandered from His flock; as David says, “I have gone astray like a sheep which was lost,” (Psa_119:176) which being found Christ brings back, bearing on His shoulder the tender sinful one; and He, rejoicing and exulting, having called His friends and domestics, says, “Rejoice with me; for my sheep which was lost is found. I say,” says He, “unto you, that there will be such joy in heaven over one sinner that repenteth.” (Luk_15:6-10) And in continuation, He says: “Or what woman, having ten denarii, if she should lose one of the denarii, does not light a lamp, and all the day long clean out her house, seeking till she finds it? And when she has found it, she calls together her friends and neighbours, saying, Rejoice with me; for I have found the denarius that I had lost. I say unto you, that such joy shall be in the sight of the angels of God over one sinner that repenteth.” (Luk_15:6-10) But, on the other hand, they who do not repent of their wickedness, let them know from the answer of the Lord Himself what remaineth for them; for we read in the Gospel, that “certain men came from the Galileans to the Lord, telling Him of those whose blood Pilate mingled with their sacrifices; to whom the Lord answered, saying, Think ye that those Galileans had been sinners above other Galileans, because they suffered such things? No; for I say unto you, unless ye repent, ye shall all likewise perish. Or those eighteen upon whom the tower in Siloam fell, think ye that they were debtors to death above all men who dwell in Jerusalem? No; I say unto you,” said He, “that unless ye repent, ye shall all likewise perish.” (Luk_13:1-5)

16. Let us then arouse ourselves as much as we can, beloved brethren; and breaking away from the slumber of indolence and security, let us be watchful for the observance of the Lord’s precepts. Let us with all our hearts seek for what we have lost, that we may be able to find; because “to him that seeketh,” says the Scripture, “it shall be given, and to him that knocketh it shall be opened.” (Luk_11:10) Let us cleanse our house with spiritual cleanliness, that every secret and hidden place of our breast, truly enlightened by the light of the Gospel, may say, “Against Thee only have I sinned, and done this great evil in Thy sight.” (Psa_51:4) Because the death of sinners is evil, and in hell there is no repentance. Let us have in contemplation especially the day of judgment and retribution, and what must be believed by all of us, and firmly maintained, that “there is no acceptance of persons with God;” (Rom_2:11) since He commanded in Deuteronomy, that the person must not be accepted in judgment: “Thou shalt not accept,” says He, “the person, neither shalt thou judge according to the least nor according to the greatest.” (Deu_1:17) Like words to these He also said by Ezekiel: “All souls,” said He, “are mine; as the soul of the father, so is the soul of the son: the soul that hath sinned, it shall die.” (Eze_18:4) It is then He who must be revered by us; He must be held fast; He must be propitiated by our full and worthy confession, “who has the power of sending soul and body to the Gehenna of fire,” (Mat_10:28) – as it is written, “Behold, He cometh with many thousands of His messengers, to execute judgment upon all, and to destroy all the wicked, and to condemn all flesh, for all the deeds of the wicked which they have wickedly done, and for all the impious words which sinners have spoken about God.” (Jud_1:14, Jud_1:15)

17. Like things to these also says Daniel: “I beheld a throne placed, and the Ancient of days sat upon it, and His clothing was as it were snow, and the hairs of His head as it were white wool: His throne was a flame of fire, its wheels were burning fire. A river of fire came forth before Him: thousand thousands ministered to Him, and thousand thousands stood before Him: He sat to judgment, and the books were opened.” (Dan_7:9, Dan_7:10) And John still more plainly declares, both about the day of judgment and the consummation of the world, saying, “And when,” said he, “He had opened the sixth seal, lo, there was a great earthquake; and the sun became black as sackcloth of hair, and the whole moon became as of blood; and the stars fell to the earth, even as a fig-tree, shaken by a mighty wind, casteth her unripe figs. And the heaven departed as a book when it is rolled up, and every mountain and island were moved from their places. And the kings of the earth, and all the great men, and the tribunes, and the rich men, and the strong men, and every slave, and every free man, hid themselves in the caves and in the caverns of the mountains; saying to the mountains and to the rocks, Fall upon us, and hide us from the sight of the Father that sitteth upon the throne, and from the wrath of the Lamb: because the day of destruction cometh; and who shall be able to stand?” (Rev_6:12-17) Also in the same Apocalypse John says that this too was revealed to him. “I saw,” says he, “a great throne, and one in white who sat upon it, from whose face the heaven and the earth fled away; and their place was not found. And I saw the dead, great and small, standing before the sight of the Lord’s throne: and the books were opened; and another book was opened, which is (the book) of life: and every one was judged according to those things that were written in the book, according to their own works.” (Rev_20:11-13) Moreover, too, the apostle, giving good advice, thus exhorts us, saying, “Let no one deceive you with vain words: for because of these things the wrath of God cometh upon the children of disobedience. Be not partakers with them.” (Eph_5:6, Eph_5:7)

18. Let us, then, with the whole strength of our faith, give praise to God; let us give our full confession, since the powers of heaven rejoice over our repentance, all the angels rejoice, and Christ also rejoices, who once again with full and merciful moderation exhorts us, laden with sins, overwhelmed with crimes, to cease from wickedness, saying, “Turn ye, and return from your impieties, and your iniquities shall not be to you for a punishment. Cast away from you all your impieties which ye have committed against me; and make to yourselves a new heart and a new spirit. And why do ye deliver yourselves over to death, O house of Israel? For I do not desire the death of the sinner.” (Eze_18:30-32) “I am He, I am He who blots out thy crimes, and I will not remember them. But do thou have in mind, and let us judge; tell thou thy wickednesses first, that thou mayest be justified.” (Isa_43:25, Isa_43:26) While the way of mercy, brethren, is open,9 let us entreat God with full atonements; let us humble ourselves, that we may be exalted; let us acquiesce in the divine exhortation, whereby we may escape the day of the Lord and His anger. For thus He says: “Look, my son, upon the nations of men, and know who hath hoped in the Lord, and has been confounded; or has remained in His commandments, and has been forsaken; or has called upon Him, and He has despised him. For the Lord is loving and merciful, and forgiving in time of tribulation their sins to all those that seek after Him in truth.” (Sirach 2:10, 11) Therefore He says, “First tell thou thy sins, that thou mayest be justified.” Let there be first in your hand that prayer full of confession.10

FOOTNOTES

1 Infelicissimi. This is supposed to be a play upon the name of Felicissimus, referred to in Cyprian’s letter, [xlviii. p. 325, supra].

2 Varium.

3 This passage is altogether corrupt and unintelligible; some force is necessary even to give it an appearance of meaning.

4 Scil. Gallus and Volusianus (Pamel.).

5 “Habebat,” but probably “debebat” – owed.

6 This refers to Novatian’s letter in the name of the Roman people. [See p. 308. Compare p. 320,  note 209.]

7 [A misconception of Judas, who seems to have been hypocritical from the first. Joh_6:64.]

8 This parentheses is unintelligible. [i.e., not shepherds, but “butchers,” in the prophet’s thought, who speaks as follows, etc.]

9 [A virtual refutation of the dogma of purgatory, and all the trading in masses which it involves. The pious Hirsher, in his Kirchlichen Zustände der Gegenwart (Tübingen, 1849; a translation of which, by the American editor of this series, was published, Oxford, 1852), bewails the corrupting influences of this system, though he died in the Papal communion.]

10 [The Lord’s prayer; Mar_11:25, Elucidation III., p. 559, supra.]

Introductory Notice1

The following treatise on Re-baptism has been attributed by some authorities to the pen of one Ursinus,2 a monk, who is said to have written in the fourth century. But internal evidence seems to point to a bishop as having been the writer; (sec. x.) and it seems very probable that it was written while the baptismal controversy was still agitating the Church, from the manner in which he refers to it. Moreover, the bitter attack contained in the first chapter was probably levelled against Cyprian, as the leader of the party in favour of the re-baptism of heretics. And this would hardly have been the case, at least the attack would not have been characterized by the same rancour, if Cyprian had already suffered martyrdom, and the controversy had lost its acrimony and intensity.

Rigaltius, who first edited the treatise, among his notes to the works of Cyprian, judged that it was written about the time of that Father. And Fell, Cave, Tillemont, and Galland, are of the same opinion. The two latter, indeed, conjecture that it was actually intended against Cyprian.

The difficulty arising to the translator from a loose and rambling style, and very involved argument, has been enhanced by a text singularly uncertain; but he ventures to think that there are points in the treatment of the subject which will not be without interest to the theological student of the present day, although its immediate purpose has passed away. 

FOOTNOTES

1 [By Dr. Wallis, editor of vol. xiii., Edinb. series.]

2 Gennadius, de Script. Eccles., cap. xxvii.

A Treatise on Re-Baptism by an Anonymous Writer.

Argument. – That They Who Have once Been Washed in the Name of the Lord Jesus Christ, Ought Not to Be Re-Baptized.

1. I observe that it has been asked among the brethren what course ought specially to be adopted towards the persons of those who, although baptized in heresy, have yet been baptized in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ,1 and subsequently departing from their heresy, and fleeing as supplicants to the Church of God, should repent with their whole hearts, and only now perceiving the condemnation of their error, implore from the Church the help of salvation. The point is whether, according to the most ancient custom and ecclesiastical tradition, it would suffice, after that baptism which they have received outside the Church indeed, but still in the name of Jesus Christ our Lord, that only hands should be laid upon them by the bishop for their reception of the Holy Spirit, and this imposition of hands would afford them the renewed and perfected seal of faith; or whether, indeed, a repetition of baptism would be necessary for them, as if they should receive nothing if they had not obtained baptism afresh, just as if they were never baptized in the name of Jesus Christ. And therefore some things were talked about as having been written and replied on this new question, wherein both sides endeavoured with the greatest eagerness to demolish what had been written by their antagonists. In which kind of debate, as it appears to me, no controversy or discussion could have arisen at all if each one of us had been content with the venerable authority of all the churches,2 and with becoming humility had desired to innovate nothing, as observing no kind of room for contradiction. For everything which is both doubtful and ambiguous, and is established in opinions differing among those of prudent and faithful men, if it is judged to be against the ancient and memorable and most solemn observance of all those holy and faithful men who have deserved well, ought assuredly to be condemned; since in a matter once arranged and ordained, whatever that is which is brought forward against the quiet and peace of the Church, will result in nothing but discords, and strifes, and schisms. And in this no other fruit can be found but this alone; that one man, whoever he is, should be vain-gloriously declared among certain fickle men to be of great prudence and constancy: and, being gifted with the arrogance of heretics, whose only consolation in destruction is the not appearing to sin alone, should be renowned among those that are most similar and agreeable to himself, as having corrected the errors and vices of all the churches. For this is the desire and purpose of all heretics, to frame as many calumnies of this kind as possible against our most holy mother the Church, and to deem it a great glory to have discovered anything that can be imputed to her as a crime, or even as a folly. And since it becomes no faithful man of sound mind to dare to hold such a view, especially no one who is ordained in any clerical office at all, and much more in the episcopal order, it is like a prodigy for bishops themselves to devise such scandals, and not to fear to unfold too irreverently against the precept of the law and of all the Scriptures, with their own disgrace and risk, the disgrace of their mother the Church – if they think that there is any disgrace in this matter; although the Church has no disgrace in this instance, save in the error of such men as these themselves. Therefore it is the more grievous sin in men of this kind, if that which is blamed by them in the most ancient observance, as if it were not rightly done, is manifestly and forcibly shown as well to have been rightly observed by those who were before us, as to be rightly observed also by us; so that even if we should engage in the controversy with equal arguments on both sides, yet, since that which was innovated could not be established without dissension among the brethren and mischief to the Church, assuredly it ought not, – right or wrong, as they say, that is, contrary to what is good and proper – rashly to be flung like a stain upon our mother the Church; and the ignominy of this audacity and impiety ought with reason to be attached to those who should attempt this. But since it is not in our power, according to the apostle’s precept, “to speak the same thing, that there be not schisms among us;” (1Co_1:10) yet, as far as we can, we strive to demonstrate the true condition of this argument, and to persuade turbulent men, even now, to mind their own business, as we shall even attain a great deal if they will at length acquiesce in this sound advice.3 And therefore we shall, as is needful, collect into one mass whatever passages of the Holy Scriptures are pertinent to this subject. And we shall manifestly harmonize, as far as possible, those which seem to be differing or of various meaning; and we shall to the extent of our poor ability examine both the utility and advantage of each method, that we may recommend to all the brethren, that the most wholesome form and peaceful custom be adopted in the Church.

2. To such, then, as approach to a discussion of saving and modern, that is, of spiritual and evangelical baptism, there occurs first of all the announcement universally well known, made and begun by John the Baptist, who, somewhat departing from the law, that is, from the most ancient baptism of Moses, and preparing the way of the new and true grace, both preoccupied the ears of the Jews gradually by the baptism of water and of repentance which for the time he practised, and took possession of them with the announcement of a spiritual baptism that was to come, exhorting them, and saying, “He that cometh after me is mightier than I, whose shoe’s latchet I am not worthy to unloose: He shall baptize you with the Holy Ghost, and with fire;” (Mat_3:11) and for this reason we also ought to make a beginning of this discourse from this point. For in the Acts of the Apostles, the Lord after His resurrection, confirming this same word of John, “commanded them that they should not depart from Jerusalem, but wait for that promise of the Father which, saith He, ye have heard from me; for John truly baptized with water, but ye shall be baptized with the Holy Ghost not many days hence.” (Act_1:4, Act_1:5) And Peter also related these same words of the Lord, when he gave an account of himself to the apostles, saying: “And as I began to speak, the Holy Ghost fell upon them as on us at the beginning; and I remembered the word of the Lord, how that He said, John indeed baptized with water, but ye shall be baptized with the Holy Ghost. If, therefore, He gave them a like gift as to us, who believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, who was I, that I could withstand the Lord?” (Act_11:15-17) And again: “Men and brethren, ye know how from ancient days God made choice among us, that the Gentiles by my mouth should hear the word of the Gospel, and believe. And God, who knoweth the hearts, bare them witness, giving them the Holy Spirit, even as He did unto us.” (Act_15:7, Act_15:8) And on this account we ought to consider what is the force and power of this saying. For the Lord says to them who would have to be subsequently baptized because they should believe, that they must be baptized not in like manner as by Him in water, unto repentance, but in the Holy Ghost. And of this announcement, as assuredly none of us can doubt it, it is plain on what principle men were baptized in the Holy Spirit. For it was peculiarly in the Holy Spirit Himself alone that they who believed were baptized. For John distinguished, and said that he indeed baptized in water, but that one should come who would baptize in the Holy Ghost, by the grace and power of God; and they are so by the Spirit’s bestowal and operation of hidden results. Moreover, they are so no less in the baptism of the Spirit and of water. They are so, besides, also in the baptism of every one in his own proper blood4 Even as the Holy Scriptures declare to us, from which we shall adduce evident proofs throughout each individual instance of those things which we shall narrate.

3. And to these things thou perchance, who art bringing in some novelty, mayest immediately and impatiently reply, as thou art wont, that the Lord said in the Gospel: “Except a man be born again of water and of the Spirit, he cannot enter into the kingdom of heaven.” (Joh_3:3, Joh_3:5) Whence it manifestly appears that that baptism alone is profitable wherein also the Holy Spirit can dwell; for that upon the Lord Himself, when He was baptized, the Holy Spirit descended, and that His deed and word are quite in harmony, and that such a mystery can consist with no other principle. To which reply none of us is found either so senseless or so stubborn as to dare, contrary to right or contrary to truth, to object, for instance, so to the doing of things in their integrity, and by all means in the Church, and the observation of them according to the order of discipline perpetually by us. But if, in the same New Testament, those things which in that matter we come upon as associated, be sometimes found in some sort divided, and separated, and arranged, and ordered just as if they were by themselves; let us see whether these solitary instances by themselves may not sometimes be such as are not imperfect, but, as it were, entire and complete. For when by imposition of the bishop’s hands the Holy Spirit is given to every one that believes, as in the case of the Samaritans, after Philip’s baptism, the apostles did to them by laying on of hands; in this manner also they conferred on them the Holy Spirit. And that this might be the case, they themselves prayed for them, for as yet the Holy Spirit had not descended upon any of them, but they had only been baptized in the name of the Lord Jesus. Moreover, our Lord after His resurrection, when He had breathed upon His apostles, and had said to them, “Receive ye the Holy Ghost,” (Joh_20:22) thus and thus only bestowed upon them the Spirit.

4. And this being found to be so, what thinkest thou, my brother? If a man be not baptized by a bishop, so as even at once to have the imposition of hands, and should yet die before having received the Holy Spirit, should you judge him to have received salvation or not? Because, indeed, both the apostles themselves and the disciples, who also baptized others, and were themselves baptized by the Lord, did not at once receive the Holy Spirit, for He had not as yet been given, because that Jesus had not as yet been glorified. And after His resurrection no small interval of time elapsed before that took place, – even as also the Samaritans, when they were baptized by Philip, did not receive the gift until the apostles invited from Jerusalem to Samaria went down to them to lay hands upon them, and conferred on them the Holy Spirit by the imposition of hands. Because in that interval of time any one of them who had not attained the Holy Spirit, might have been cut off by death, and die defrauded of the grace of the Holy Spirit. And it cannot be doubted also, that in the present day this sort of thing is usual, and happens frequently, that many after baptism depart from this life without imposition of the bishop’s hands, and yet are esteemed perfected believers. Just as the Ethiopian eunuch, when he was returning from Jerusalem and reading the prophet Isaiah, and was in doubt, having at the Spirit’s suggestion heard the truth from Philip the deacon, believed and was baptized; and when he had gone up out of the water, the Spirit of the Lord took away Philip, and the eunuch saw him no more. For he went on his way rejoicing, although, as thou observest, hands were not laid on him by the bishop, that he might receive the Holy Spirit. But if thou admittest this, and believest it to be saving, and dost not gainsay the opinion of all the faithful, thou must needs confess this, that even as this principle proceeds to be more largely discussed, that other also can be more broadly established; that is, that by the imposition of hands alone of the bishop – because baptism in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ has gone before it – may the Holy Spirit also be given to another man who repents and believes. Because the Holy Scripture has affirmed that they who should believe in Christ, must needs be baptized in the Spirit; so that these also may not seem to have anything less than those who are perfectly Christians; lest it should be needful to ask what sort of a thing was that baptism which they have attained in the name of Jesus Christ. Unless, perchance, in that former discussion also, about those who should only have been baptized in the name of Jesus Christ, thou shouldst decide that they can be saved even without the Holy Spirit, or that the Holy Spirit is not accustomed to be bestowed in this manner only, but by the imposition of the bishop’s hands; or even shouldst say that it is not the bishop alone who can bestow the Holy Spirit.

5. And if this be so, and the occurrence of any of these things cannot deprive a man who believes, of salvation, thou thyself also affirmest that the fact of the mystery of the faith being divided in a manner, and its not being, as thou contendest, consummated, where necessity intervenes, cannot take away salvation from a believing and penitent man. Or if thou sayest that a man of this kind cannot be saved, we deprive all bishops of salvation, whom thou thus engagest, under risks as assured as possible, to be bound themselves to afford help to all those who live under their care, and are in weak health, in their districts, scattered up and down, because other men of less degree among the clerics who venture cannot confer the same benefit; so that the blood of those who shall appear to have departed from this life without the benefit would have, of necessity, to be required at the hands of the bishops. And further, as you are not ignorant, the Holy Spirit is found to have been given to men who believe, by the Lord without baptism of water, as is contained in the Acts of the Apostles after this manner: “While Peter was still speaking these words, the Holy Ghost fell upon all them who heard the word. And they who were of the circumcision which believed were astonished, as many as came with Peter, because that on the Gentiles also was poured out the gift of the Holy Spirit. For they heard them speak with their tongues, and they magnified God. Then answered Peter, Can any man forbid water, that these should not be baptized, who have received the Holy Ghost as well as we? And he commanded them to be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ.” (Act_10:44-48) Even as Peter also subsequently most abundantly taught us about the same Gentiles, saying: “And He put no difference between us and them, their hearts being purified by faith.” (Act_15:9) And there will be no doubt that men may be baptized with the Holy Ghost without water, – as thou observest that these were baptized before they were baptized with water; that the announcements of both John and of our Lord Himself were satisfied, – forasmuch as they received the grace of the promise both without the imposition of the apostle’s hands and without the laver, which they attained afterwards. And their hearts being purified, God bestowed upon them at the same time, in virtue of their faith, remission of sins; so that the subsequent baptism conferred upon them this benefit alone, that they received also the invocation of the name of Jesus Christ, that nothing might appear to be wanting to the integrity of their service and faith.5

6. And this also, – looking at it from the opposite side of this discussion, – those disciples of our Lord themselves attained, upon whom, being previously baptized, the Holy Spirit at length came down on the day of Pentecost, descending from heaven indeed by the will of God, not of His own accord, but effused for this very office, and moreover upon each one of them. Although these were already righteous, and, as we have said, had been baptized by the Lord’s baptism even as the apostles themselves, who nevertheless are found on the night on which He was apprehended to have all deserted Him. And even Peter himself, who boasted that he would persevere in his faith, and most obstinately resisted the prediction of the Lord Himself, yet at last denied Him, that by this means it might be shown to us, that whatever sins they bad contracted in the meantime and in any manner, these same sins, by the faith in them subsequently attested as sincere, were without doubt put away by the baptism of the Holy Spirit. Nor, as I think, was it for any other reason that the apostles had charged those whom they addressed in the Holy Spirit, that they should be baptized in the name of Christ Jesus, except that the power of the name of Jesus invoked upon any man by baptism might afford to him who should be baptized no slight advantage for the attainment of salvation, as Peter relates in the Acts of the Apostles, saying: “For there is none other name under heaven given among men whereby we must be saved.” (Act_4:12) As also the Apostle Paul unfolds, showing that God hath exalted our Lord Jesus, and “given Him a name, that it may be above every name, that in the name of Jesus all should bow the knee, of things heavenly and earthly, and under the earth, and every tongue should confess that Jesus is Lord in the glory of God the Father.” And he on whom, when he should be baptized, invocation should be made in the name of Jesus, although he might obtain baptism under some error, still would not be hindered from knowing the truth at some time or another, and correcting his error, and coming to the Church and to the bishop, and sincerely confessing our Jesus before men; so that then, when hands were laid upon him by the bishop, he might also receive the Holy Spirit, and he would not lose that former invocation of the name of Jesus. Which none of us may disallow, although this invocation, if it be standing bare and by itself, could not suffice for affording salvation, lest on this principle we should believe that even Gentiles and heretics, who abuse the name of Jesus, could attain unto salvation without the true and entire thing. Yet it is extremely useful to believe that this invocation of the name of Jesus, together with the correction of error and the acknowledgment of the belief of the truth, and with the putting away of all stain of past conversation, if rightly performed with the mystery of God among men of this kind, obtains a place which it would not have had, and finally, in the true faith and for the maintenance of the integrity of the sign, is no hindrance, when its supplement which had been wanting is added; and that it is consistent with good reason, with the authority of so many years, and so many churches and apostles and bishops; even as it is the very greatest disadvantage and damage to our most holy mother Church, now for the first time suddenly and without reason to rebel against former decisions after so long a series of so many ages. For not for any other reason Peter – who had already been baptized and had been asked what he thought of the Lord by the Lord Himself, and the truth of the revelation of the Father in heaven being bestowed on him bad confessed that Christ was not only our Lord, but was the Son of the living God – was shown subsequently to have withstood the same Christ when He made announcement of His passion, and therefore was set forth as being called Satan. For no other reason except because it would come to pass that some, although varying in their own judgment, and somewhat halting in faith and doctrine, although they were baptized in the name of Jesus, yet, if they had been able to rescind their error in some interval of time, were not on that account cut off from salvation; but at any time that they had come to the right mind, obtained by repentance a sound hope of salvation, especially when they received the Holy Spirit, to be baptized by Whom is the duty of every man, they would have intended some such thing. Even as we do not apprehend that Peter in the Gospel suffered this alone, but all the disciples, to whom, though already baptized, the Lord afterwards says, that “all ye shall be offended in me,” (Mar_14:27) all of whom, as we observe, having amended their faith, were baptized after the Lord’s resurrection with the Holy Spirit. So that not without reason we also in the present day may believe that men, amended from their former error, may be baptized in the Holy Spirit, who, although they were baptized with water in the name of the Lord, might have had a faith somewhat imperfect. Because it is of great importance whether a man is not baptized at all in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, or indeed whether in some respect he halts when he is baptized with the baptism of water, which is of less account provided that afterwards a sincere faith in the truth is evident in the baptism of the Spirit, which undoubtedly is of greater account.

7. Neither must you esteem what our Lord said as being contrary to this treatment: “Go ye, teach the nations; baptize them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost.” (Mat_28:19) Because, although this is true and right, and to be observed by all means in the Church, and moreover has been used to be observed, yet it behoves us to consider that invocation of the name of Jesus ought not to be thought futile by us on account of the veneration and power of that very name, in which name all kinds of power are accustomed to be exercised, and occasionally some even by men outside the Church. But to what effect are those words of Christ, who said that He would deny, and not know, those who should say to Him in the day of judgment,” Lord, Lord, have we not prophesied in Thy name, and in Thy name cast out demons, and in Thy name done many wonderful works,” when He answered them, even with emphasis,6 “I never knew you; depart from me, ye who work iniquity,” (Mar_14:27) unless that it should be shown to us, that even by those who work iniquity might these good works also be done, by the superfluous7 energy of the name of Christ? Therefore ought this invocation of the name of Jesus to be received as a certain beginning of the mystery of the Lord common to us and to all others, which may afterwards be filled up with the remaining things. Otherwise such an invocation would not avail if it should remain alone, because after the death of a man in this position there cannot be added to him anything at all, nor supplemented, nor can, in anything, avail him in the day of judgment, when they shall begin to be reproached by our Lord with those things which we have above mentioned, none of whom notwithstanding in this present time may by any man be so hardly and cruelly prohibited from aiding themselves in those ways which we have above shown.

8. But these things thou wilt, as thou art wont, contradict, by objecting to us, that when they baptized, the disciples were baptized perfectly, and rightly, and not as these heretics; and this thou must needs assume from their condition, and His who baptized them. And therefore we reply to this proposition of thine, not as accusers of the Lord’s disciples, but as we are constrained, because it is necessary that we should investigate by reasons where and when, and in what measure, salvation has been bestowed on each of us. For that our Lord was born, and that He was the Christ, appeared by many reasons to be believed, not unjustly, by His disciples, because He had been born of the tribe of Judah, of the family of David, and in the city of Bethlehem; and because He had been announced to the shepherds by the angels at the same moment that there was born to them a Saviour; because His star being seen in the east, He had been most anxiously sought for and adored by the Magi, and honoured with illustrious presents and distinguished offerings; because while still a youth, sitting in the temple with the doctors of the law, He wisely, and with the admiration of all, had disputed; because when He was baptized He had been glorified, as had happened to none others, by the descent of the Holy Spirit from the opened heavens, and by its abode upon Him; and moreover by the testimony of His Father, and also of John the Baptist; because, beyond the inferior capacity of man, He understood the hearts and thoughts of all men; because He cured and healed weaknesses, and vices, and diseases, with very great power; because He bestowed remissions of sins, with manifest attestation; because He expelled demons at His bidding; because He purified lepers with a word; because, by converting water into wine, He enlarged the nuptial festivity with marvellous joyfulness; because He restored or granted sight to the blind; because He maintained the doctrine of the Father with all confidence; because in a desert place He satisfied five thousand men with five loaves; because the remains and the fragments filled more than twelve baskets; because He everywhere raised up the dead, according to His mercy; because He commanded the winds and the sea to be still; because He walked with His feet upon the sea; because He absolutely performed all miracles. 

9. By which things, and by many deeds of this kind tending to His glory, it appeared to follow as a consequence, that in whatever manner the Jews think about Christ, and although they do not believe concerning Jesus Christ our Lord, that even they themselves thought that such and so great a one would without any death endure to eternity, and would possess the kingdom of Israel, and of the whole world for ever; and that it should not be destroyed. Whence, moreover, the Jews dared to seize Him by force, and anoint Him for the kingdom, which indeed He was compelled to evade; and therefore His disciples thought that in no other way would He bestow upon them eternal life, except He Himself had first continued this temporal life into that eternal one in His own experience. In fine, when they were passing through Galilee, Jesus said to them, “The Son of man is to be delivered into the hands of men, and they will kill Him; and after three days He shall rise again.” (Mar_9:30) and they were greatly grieved, because, as we have said, they had formed a very different notion previously in their minds and hearts. And again, this also was the speech of the Jews, in contradiction against Him, when He taught them of Himself, and announced future things to them, and they said, “We have heard out of the law that Christ abideth for ever: and how sayest thou that the Son of man must be lifted up?” (Joh_12:34) And so there was this same presumption concerning Christ in the mind of the disciples, even as Peter himself, the leader and chief of the apostles, broke forth into that expression of his own incredulity. For when he, together with the others, had been asked by the Lord what he thought about Him, that is, whom he thought Him to be, and had first of all confessed the truth, saying that He was the Christ the Son of the living God, and therefore was judged blessed by Him because he had arrived at this truth, not after the flesh, but by the revelation of the heavenly Father; yet this same Peter, when Jesus began to show His disciples that He must go to Jerusalem, and suffer many things from the elders, and priests, and scribes, and be killed, and after the third day rise again from the dead; nevertheless that true confessor of Christ, after a few days, taking Him aside, began to rebuke Him, saying, “Be propitious to Thyself: this shall not be;” (Mat_16:22) so that on that account he deserved to hear from the Lord, “Get thee behind me, Satan;8 thou art an offence unto me, because he savoured not the things which are of God, but those things which are of men.” Which rebuke against Peter became more and more apparent when the Lord was apprehended, and, frightened by the damsel, he said, “I know not what thou sayest, neither know I thee;” (Mat_26:70) and again when, using an oath, he said this same thing; and for the third time, cursing and swearing, he affirmed that he knew not the man, and not once, but frequently, denied Him.9 And this disposition, because it was to continue to him even to the Lord’s passion, was long before made manifest by the Lord, that we also might not be ignorant of it. Again, after the Lord’s resurrection, one of His disciples, Cleopas, when he was, according to the error of all his fellow-disciples, sorrowfully telling what had happened to the Lord Himself, as if to some unknown person, spoke thus, saying of Jesus the Nazarene, “who was a prophet mighty in deed and in word before God and all the people; how the chief priests and our rulers delivered Him to be condemned to death, and fastened Him to the cross. But we trusted that it had been He which should have redeemed Israel.” (Luk_24:20, Luk_24:21) And in addition to these things, all the disciples also judged the declaration of the women who had seen the Lord after the resurrection to be idle tales; and some of themselves, when they had seen Him, believed not, but doubted; and they who were not then present believed not at all until they had been subsequently by the Lord Himself in all ways rebuked and reproached; because His death had so offended them that they thought that He had not risen again, who they had believed ought not to have died, because contrary to their belief He had died once. And thus, as far as concerns the disciples themselves, they are found to have had a faith neither sound nor perfect in such matters as we have referred to; and what is much more serious, they moreover baptized others, as it is written in the Gospel according to John.

10. Besides, what wilt thou say of those who are in many cases baptized by bishops of very bad character, who yet at length, when God so wills it, convicted of their crimes, are even deprived of their office itself, or absolutely of communion? Or what wilt thou decide of those who may have been baptized by bishops, whose opinions are unsound, or who are very ignorant – when they may not have spoken clearly and honestly, or even have spoken otherwise than is fit in the tradition of the sacrament, or at least may have asked anything, or asking, have heard from those who answered what ought by no means to be so asked or answered? And still this does not greatly injure that true faith of ours, although, moreover, these more simple men may deliver the mystery of the faith without the elegance and order that thou wouldst use. And thou wilt assuredly say, with that marvellous carefulness of thine, that these too should be baptized again, since this is especially the thing which is wanting to them, or hinders their being able to receive, uncorrupted, that divine and inviolable mystery of the faith. And yet, O excellent man, let us attribute and allow to the heavenly agencies their power, and let us concede to the condescension of the divine majesty its appropriate operations; and understanding how great is the advantage therein, let us gladly acquiesce in it. And thus, as our salvation is founded in the baptism of the Spirit, which for the most part is associated with the baptism of water, if indeed baptism shall be given by us, let it be conferred in its integrity and with solemnity, and with all those means which are written; and let it be administered without any disconnection of anything. Or if, by the necessity of the case, it should be administered by an inferior cleric, let us wait for the result, that it may either be supplied by us,10 or reserved to be supplied by the Lord. If, however, it should have been administered by strangers, let this matter be amended as it can and as it allows. Because outside the Church there is no Holy Spirit, sound faith moreover cannot exist, not alone among heretics, but even among those who are established in schism. And for that reason, they who repent and are amended by the doctrine of the truth, and by their own faith, which subsequently has been improved by the purification of their heart, ought to be aided only by spiritual baptism, that is, by the imposition of the bishop’s hands, and by the ministration of the Holy Spirit. Moreover, the perfect seal of faith has been rightly accustomed to be given in this manner and on this principle in the Church. So that the invocation of the name of Jesus, which cannot be done away, may not seem to be held in disesteem by us; which assuredly is not fitting; although such an invocation, if none of those things of which we have spoken should follow it, may fail and be deprived of the effect of salvation. For when the apostle said that there was “one baptism,” (Eph_4:5) it must needs have been by the continued effect of the invocation of the name of Jesus, because, once invoked, it cannot be taken away by any man, even although we might venture, against the decision of the apostles, to repeat it by giving too much, yea, by the desire of superadding baptism. If he who returns to the Church be unwilling again to be baptized, the result will be that we may defraud him of the baptism of the Spirit, whom we think we must not defraud of the baptism of water.

11. And what wilt thou determine against the person of him who hears the word,11 and haply taken up in the name of Christ, has at once confessed, and has been punished before it has been granted him to be baptized with water? Wilt thou declare him to have perished because he has not been baptized with water? Or, indeed, wilt thou think that there may be something from without that helps him to salvation, although he is not baptized with water? Thy thinking him to have perished will be opposed by the sentence of the Lord, who says, “Whosoever shall confess me before men, him will I also confess before my Father which is in heaven;” (Mat_10:32) because it is no matter whether he who confesses for the Lord is a hearer of the word or a believer, so long as he confesses that same Christ whom he ought to confess; because the Lord, by confessing him, in turn Himself graces His confessor before his Father with the glory of his martyrdom, as He promised. But this assuredly ought not to be taken too liberally, as if it could be stretched to such a point as that any heretic can confess the name of Christ who notwithstanding denies Christ Himself; that he believes on another Christ, when Christ avows that it cannot avail him at all; forasmuch as the Lord said that He12 must needs be brought to confession by us before men, which cannot be done without Him, and without veneration of His name. And therefore both13 ought to stand by the confessor, sound, and sincere, and uncontaminated, and inviolated, without any choice being made of the confessor himself, whether he is righteous or a sinner, and a perfect Christian or an imperfect one, who has not feared to confess the Lord at his own greatest peril. And this is not contrary to the former discussion, because there is left therein time for the correction of many things which are bad, and because certain things are conceded to the very name only of our Lord; while martyrdom cannot be consummated except in the Lord and by the Lord Himself, and therefore nobody can confess Christ without His name, nor can the name of Christ avail any one for confession without Christ Himself.

12. Wherefore the whole of this discussion must be considered, that it may be made clearer. For the invocation of the name of Jesus can only be an advantage if it shall be subsequently properly supplemented, because both prophets and apostles have so declared. For James says in the Acts of the Apostles: “Men and brethren, hearken: Simon hath declared how God at the first visited the Gentiles, to take out of them a people for His name. And to this agree the words of the prophets; as it is written, After this I will return, and will build again the tabernacle of David, which has fallen down; and I will build again the ruins thereof, and I will raise it up anew; that the residue of men may seek the Lord, and all the Gentiles, upon whom my name is called upon them, saith the Lord, who doeth these things.” (Act_15:13-17) Therefore also the residue of men, that is, some of the Jews and all the Gentiles upon whom the name of the Lord is called, may and of necessity must seek the Lord, because that very invocation of the name affords them the opportunity, or even imposes on them the necessity, of seeking the Lord. And with these they prescribe the Holy Scriptures – whether all or only some of them – to discuss still more boldly concerning the truth than with the Gentiles upon whom the name of the Lord Jesus, the Son of the living God, has not been invoked, as it likewise has not upon the Jews who only receive the Old Testament Scriptures. And thus men of both of these kinds, that is, Jews and Gentiles, fully believing as they ought, are in like manner baptized. But heretics who are already baptized in water in the name of Jesus Christ must only be baptized with the Holy Spirit; and in Jesus, which is “the only name given under heaven whereby we must be saved,” death is reasonably despised, although, if they continue as they are, they cannot be saved, because they have not sought the Lord after the invocation of His name upon them, – even as those who, on account of false Christs, perchance have refused to believe, of whom the Lord says, “Take heed that no man lead you into error. For many shall come in my name, saying, I am Christ, and shall lead many into error.” (Mat_24:4, etc.) And again He says: “Then if any man shall say unto you, Lo here is Christ, or lo there; believe it not. For there shall arise false Christs, and false prophets, and shall show great signs and wonders; so that, if it were possible, even the very elect shall be deceived.” (Mat_24:23, Mat_24:24) And these miracles, without doubt, they shall then do under the name of Christ; in which name some even now appear to do certain miracles, and to prophesy falsely. But it is certain that those, because they are themselves not of Christ, therefore do not belong to Christ, in like manner as if one should depart from Christ, abiding only in His name, he would not be much advantaged; nay, rather, he is even burdened by that name, although he may have been previously very faithful, or very righteous, or honoured with some clerical office, or endowed with the dignity of confession. For all those, by denying the true Christ, and by introducing or following another – although there is no other at all – leave themselves no hope or salvation; not otherwise than they who have denied Christ before men, who must needs be denied by Christ; no consideration for them being made from their previous conversation, or feeling, or dignity, equally as they themselves have dared to do away with Christ, that is, their own salvation, they are condemned by the short sentence of this kind, because it was manifestly said by the Lord, “Whosoever shall deny me before men, I also will deny him before my Father which is in heaven.” As this word “whosoever,” also in the sentence of confession, most fully shows us that no condition of the confessor himself can stand in the way, although he may have been before a denier, or a heretic, or a hearer, or one who is beginning to hear, who has not yet been baptized or converted from heresy to the truth of the faith, or one who has departed from the Church and has afterwards returned, and then when he returned, before the bishop’s hands could be laid upon him, being apprehended, should be compelled to confess Christ before men; even as to one who again denies Christ, no special ancient dignity can be effectual to him for salvation.

13. For any one of us will hold it necessary, that whatever is the last thing to be found in a man in this respect, is that whereby he must be judged, all those things which he has previously done being wiped away and obliterated.14 And therefore, although in martyrdom there is so great a change of things in a moment of time, that in a very rapid case all things may be changed; let nobody flatter himself who has lost the occasion of a glorious salvation, if by chance he has excluded himself therefrom by his own fault; even as that wife of Lot, [vol. 1. p. 505, note 106, this series] who in a similar manner in time of trouble only, contrary to the angel’s command, looked behind her, and she became a pillar of salt. On which principle also, that heretic who, by confessing Christ’s name, is put to death, can subsequently correct nothing, if he should have thought anything erroneously of God or of Christ, although by believing on another God or on another Christ he has deceived himself: he is not a confessor of Christ, but in the name only of Christ; since also the apostle goes on to say, “And if I shall give up my body so that I may be burnt up with fire, but have not love, I profit nothing.” (1Co_13:3) Because by this deed he profits nothing who has not the love of that God and Christ who is announced by the law and the prophets and in the Gospel in this manner: “Thou shalt love the Lord thy God, with all thy heart, and with all thy mind, and with all thy thought; and thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself. For on these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets ;” (Mat_22:37) – even as John the evangelist said, “And every one that loveth is born of God, and knoweth God; for God is love;” (1Jo_4:7, 1Jo_4:8) even as God also says, “For God so loved the world, that He gave His only-begotten Son, that every one that believeth on Him should not perish, but have everlasting life,” (Joh_3:16) – as it manifestly appears that he who has not in him this love, of loving us and of being loved by us, profits nothing by an empty confession and passion, except that thereby it appears and is plain that he is a heretic who believes on another God, or receives another Christ than Him whom the Scriptures of the Old and New Testament manifestly declare, which announce without any obscurity the Father omnipotent, Creator of all things, and His Son. For it shall happen to them as to one who expects salvation from another God. Then, finally, contrary to their notion, they are condemned to eternal punishment by Christ, the Son of God the Father omnipotent, the Creator whom they have blasphemed, when God shall begin to judge the hidden things of men according to the Gospel by Christ Jesus, because they did not believe in Him, although they were washed in His name.

14. And even to this point the whole of that heretical baptism may be amended, after the intervention of some space of time, if a man should survive and amend his faith, as our God, in the Gospel according to Luke, spoke to His disciples, saying, “But I have another baptism to be baptized with.” (Luk_12:50) Also according to Mark He said, with the same purpose, to the sons of Zebedee: “Are ye able to drink of the cup which I drink of, or to be baptized with the baptism wherewith I am baptized?” (Mar_10:38) Because He knew that those men had to be baptized not only with water, but also in their own blood; so that, as well baptized in this baptism only, they might attain the sound faith and the simple love of the laver, and, baptized in both ways, they might in like manner to the same extent attain the baptism of salvation and glory. For what was said by the Lord, “I have another baptism to be baptized with,” signifies in this place not a second baptism, as if there were two baptisms, but demonstrates that there is moreover a baptism of another kind given to us, concurring to the same salvation. And it was fitting that both these kinds should first of all be initiated and sanctified by our Lord Himself, so that either one of the two or both kinds might afford to us this one twofold saving and glorifying baptism; and certain ways of the one baptism might so be laid open to us, that at times some one of them might be wanting without mischief, even as in the case of martyrs that hear the word, the baptism of water is wanting without evil; and yet we are certain that these, if they had any indulgence, would also be used to be baptized with water. And also to those who are made lawful believers, the baptism of their own blood is wanting without mischief, because, being baptized in the name of Christ, they have been redeemed with the most precious blood of the Lord; since both of these rivers of the baptism of the Lord proceed out of one and the same fountain, that every one who thirsts may come and drink, as says the Scripture, “From his belly flowed rivers of living water;” (Joh_7:38) which rivers were manifested first of all in the Lord’s passion, when from His side, pierced by the soldier’s spear, flowed blood and water, so that the one side of the same person emitted two rivers of a different kind, that whosoever should believe and drink of both rivers might be filled with the Holy Spirit. For, speaking of these rivers, the Lord set this forth, signifying the Holy Spirit whom they should receive who should believe on Him: “But the Spirit was not yet given, because Jesus was not yet glorified.” (Joh_7:39) And when He thus said how baptism might be produced, which the apostle declares to be one, it is assuredly manifest on that principle that there are different kinds of one and the same baptism that flow from one wound into water and blood; since there are there two baptisms of water of which we have spoken, that is, of one and the same kind,15 although the baptism of each kind ought to be one, as we have more fully spoken.

15. And since we seem to have divided all spiritual baptism in a threefold manner, let us come also to the proof of the statement proposed, that we may not appear to have done this of our own judgment, and with rashness. For John says of our Lord in his epistle, teaching us: “This is He who came by water and blood, Jesus Christ; not by water only, but by water and blood: and it is the Spirit that beareth witness, because the Spirit is truth. For three bear witness, the Spirit, and the water, and the blood: and these three are one;” (1Jo_5:6) – that we may gather from these words both that water is wont to confer the Spirit, and that men’s own blood is wont to confer the Spirit, and that the Spirit Himself also is wont to confer the Spirit. For since water is poured forth even as blood, the Spirit also was poured out by the Lord upon all who believed. Assuredly both in water, and none the less in their own blood, and then especially in the Holy Spirit, men may be baptized. For Peter says: “But this is that which was spoken by the prophet; It shall come to pass in the last days, saith the Lord, I will pour out my Spirit upon all flesh: and their sons and their daughters shall prophesy, and their young men shall see visions, and their old men shall dream dreams: and upon my servants, and upon my handmaidens, will I pour out of my Spirit;” (Act_2:17-18) – which Spirit we discover to have been communicated in the Old Testament, not indeed everywhere nor at large, but with other gifts; or, moreover, to have sprung of His own will into certain men, or to have invested them, or to have been upon them, even as we observe that it was said by the Lord to Moses, about the seventy elders, “And I will take of the Spirit which is upon thee, and will put it upon them.” (Num_11:17) For which reason also, according to His promise, God put upon them from another of the Spirit which had been upon Moses, and they prophesied in the camp. And Moses, as a spiritual man, rejoiced that this had so happened, although he was unwillingly persuaded by Jesus the son of Nave to oppose this thing, and was not thereby induced. Further, also in the book of Judges, and in the books of Kings too, we observe that upon several, there either was the Spirit of the Lord, or that He came unto them, as upon Gothoniel, Gideon, Jephthah, Samson, Saul, David, and many others. Which comes to this result, that the Lord has taught us most plainly by them the liberty and power of the Holy Spirit, approaching of His own will, saying, “The Spirit breathes where He will; and thou hearest His voice, and knowest not whence He cometh or whither He goeth.” (Joh_3:5)16 So that the same Spirit is, moreover, sometimes found to be upon those who are unworthy of Him; not certainly in vain or without reason, but for the sake of some needful operation; as He was upon Saul, upon whom came the Spirit of God, and he prophesied. However, in later days, after the Spirit of the Lord departed from him, and after a malign spirit from the Lord vexed him, because then he had come, after the messengers whom he had previously sent before with care, with intent to kill David; and they therefore fell into the chorus of the prophets, and they prophesied, so that they neither were able nor willing to do what they had been bidden. And we believe that the Spirit which was upon them all effected this with an admirable wisdom, by the will of God. Which Spirit also filled John the Baptist even from his mother’s womb; and it fell upon those who were with Cornelius the centurion before they were baptized with water. Thus, cleaving to the baptism of men, the Holy Spirit either goes before or follows it; or failing the baptism of water, it falls upon those who believe. We are counselled that either we ought duly to maintain the integrity of baptism, or if by chance baptism is given by any one in the name of Jesus Christ, we ought to supplement it, guarding the most holy invocation of the name of Jesus Christ, as we have most abundantly set forth; guarding, moreover, the custom and authority which so much claim our veneration for so long a time and for such great men.

16. But since the first part of this argument seems to be unfolded, we ought to touch on its subsequent part, on account of the heretics; because it is very necessary not to pass over that discussion which once falls into our hands, lest perchance some heretic should dare, of his subtlety, to assail those of our brethren who are more simple. For because John said that we must be baptized in the Holy Ghost and in fire, from the fact that he went on to say and fire, some desperate men have dared to such an extent to carry their depravity, and therefore very crafty men seek how they can thus corrupt and violate, and even neutralize the baptism of holiness. Who derive the origin of their notion from Simon Magus, practising it with manifold perversity through various errors; to whom Simon Peter, in the Acts of the Apostles, said, “Thy money perish with thee, because thou hast thought that the grace of God could be possessed by money; thou hast neither part nor lot in this work; for thy heart is not right with God.” (Act_8:20, Act_8:21) And such men as these do all these things in the desire to deceive those who are more simple or more inquisitive. And some of them try to argue that they only administer a sound and perfect, not as we, a mutilated and curtailed baptism, which they are in such wise said to designate, that immediately they have descended into the water, fire at once appears upon the water. Which if it can be effected by any trick, as several tricks of this kind are affirmed to be – of Anaxilaus – whether it is anything natural, by means of which this may happen, or whether they think that they behold this, or whether the work and magical poison of some malignant being can force fire from the water; still they declare such a deceit and artifice to be a perfect baptism, which if faithful men have been forced to receive, there will assuredly be no doubt but that they have lost that which they had. Just as, if a soldier after taking an oath should desert his camp, and in the very different camp of the enemy should wish to take an oath of a far other kind, it is plain that in this way he is discharged from his old oath.

17. Moreover, if a man of this sort should again return to thee, thou wilt assuredly hesitate whether he may have baptism or no; and yet it will behove thee, in whatever way thou canst, to aid even this man if he repent. For of this adulterous, yea, murderous baptism, if there is any other author, it is then certainly a book devised by these same heretics on behalf of this same error, which is inscribed The Preaching of Paul;17 in which book, contrary to all Scriptures, thou wilt find both Christ confessing His own sin – although He alone did no sin at all – and almost compelled by His mother Mary unwillingly to receive John’s baptism. Also, that when He was baptized, fire was seen to be upon the water, which is written in neither of the Gospels. And that after such long time, Peter and Paul, after the collation of the Gospel in Jerusalem, and the mutual consideration and altercation and arrangement of things to be done finally, were known to one another, as if then for the first time; and certain other things devised of this kind disgracefully and absurdly ; – all which things thou wilt find gathered together into that book. But they who are not ignorant of the nature of the Holy Spirit, understand that what is said of fire is said of the Spirit Himself. For in the Acts of the Apostles, according to that same promise of our Lord, on the very day of Pentecost, when the Holy Spirit had descended upon the disciples, that they might be baptized in Him, there were seen sitting upon each one tongues as if of fire, that it might be manifest that they were baptized with the Holy Ghost and with fire – that is, with that Spirit which was, whether fire, or as fire, such as was the fire which burned in the bush, and did not consume the bush; and such as is that fire which is the Spirit of the Angel, as saith the Scripture, “Who maketh His angels spirits, and His ministers a burning fire;” (Psa_104:4) whom if thou shouldst resemble, or be a companion or sharer with, thou shalt be able to dread no fire, not even that which, going before the Lord in the day of judgment, shall burn up the whole world, save those who are baptized in the Holy Spirit and in fire.

18. And the Spirit, indeed, continues to this day invisible to men, as the Lord says, “The Spirit breathes where He will; and thou knowest not whence He cometh, or whither He goeth.” (Joh_3:18) But in the beginning of the mystery of the faith and of spiritual baptism, the same Spirit was manifestly seen to have sat upon the disciples as it had been fire. Moreover, the heavens being opened, to have descended upon the Lord like a dove; because many things, yea, almost all things which were to be, are manifest – which, however, were only invisible nevertheless, – now also are shown to the eyes and to the incredulity of men, either partially, or at times, or in figure, for the strengthening and confirming of our faith. But neither should I omit that which the Gospel well announces. For our Lord says to the paralytic man, “Be of good cheer, my son, thy sins are forgiven thee,” (Mat_9:2) that He might show that hearts were purified by faith for the forgiveness of sins that should follow. And this remission of sins that woman also which was a sinner in the city obtained, to whom the Lord said, “Thy sins are forgiven thee.” (Luk_7:48) And when they who were reclining around began to say among themselves, “Who is this that forgiveth sins?” (Luk_7:50) – because concerning the paralytic the scribes and Pharisees had murmured crossly – the Lord says to the woman, “Thy faith hath made thee whole; go in peace.” (Luk_7:50) From all which things it is shown that hearts are purified by faith, but that souls are washed by the Spirit; further, also, that bodies are washed by water, and moreover that by blood we may more readily attain at once to the rewards of salvation.

19. I think that we have fully followed out the announcement of John the Baptist, whence we began our discourse, when he said to the Jews, “I indeed baptize you with water unto repentance; but He who cometh after me is greater than I, whose shoe’s latchet I am not worthy to unloose: He shall baptize you with the Holy Ghost, and with fire.” (Luk_3:16) Moreover, I think also that we have not unsuitably set in order the teaching of the Apostle John, who says that “three bear witness, the Spirit, and the water, and the blood; and these three are one.” (1Jo_5:8)18 And, unless I am mistaken, we have also explained what our Lord says: “John indeed baptized with water, but ye shall be baptized with the Holy Ghost.” (Act_1:5) Moreover, I think that we have given no weak reason as the cause of the custom. Let us have a care, although we do that in a subsequent place, that none may think that we are stirring up the present debate on a single article; although this custom even alone ought, among men who have the fear of God, and are lowly, to maintian a chief place.

Note by the Edinburgh Translator.

Letters of Cyprian to Quintus, to Jubaianus, to Pompey, on “the baptism of heretics;” and to Magnus on “baptizing the Novatians, and those who obtain grace on a sick-bed,” may be found translated in Ep. lxx. (p. 377, supra), Ep. lxxii. (p. 379, supra), Ep. lxxiii. (p. 386, supra), and Ep. lxxv. (p. 397, supra), respectively; and the Letter of Firmilian to Cyprian against the Letter of Stephen, at p. 390, supra, Ep. lxxiv. All these letters are repeated, in extenso, in the Monumenta Veterum.

Eusebius says, by way of introduction to the fragment of a letter written to Stephen by Dionysius of Alexandria, as follows: “Dionysius indited to Stephen the first of those letters which were written on the subject of baptism, when no small controversy had arisen whether they who are converted from any kind of heresy ought to be purged by baptism (because an ancient custom had prevailed, that in receiving such there should only be hands laid upon them, with prayers). Cyprian, who then ruled the Church of Carthage, was the first who judged that they must not be admitted to communion unless they were first purified from error by baptism. But Stephen, thinking that nothing should be innovated contrary to the tradition which had already obtained in that matter from the beginning, was indignant at this. And as Dionysius had already written many letters to him on this argument, he intimates to him finally, that all the churches everywhere, now that the fury of persecution was abated, detesting the turbulent novelty of Novatian,19 had established peace with one another.”20

FOOTNOTES

1 [“In the name,” etc., implies as Jesus Christ commanded, St. Mat_28:19.]

2 [This was assumed by the Westerns to be the general rule, whereas it was only local. See p. 408,  note 510, supra.]

3 [The bitterness with which Vincent follows up the assumption that there was a general custom of all the churches, shows how sadly this controversy became envenomed in the West. Cap. vi. is a blemish on his Commonitory.]

4 There is something needed to make the connection of this passage complete.

5 [It was a notable compliance with the example of Christ, Mat_3:15. “They had received,” etc., yet that was no reason why the ordinances of Christ should be slighted.]

6 “Jurejurando.”

7 [Query, superabounding?]

8 [Isa_14:12. The sin of Lucifer had, very possibly, been this of rebelling against the Incarceration and the introduction thereby of an order of beings higher than himself. Hence our Lord recognised in Peter’s words the voice of the old adversary, and called him “Satan.” A premonition of his lapse.]

9 [It has been profoundly felt, that, as the Church of Rome in her early rectitude (Rom_1:8) reflected Peter’s confession, so in her lapse (Rom_11:20, Rom_11:21) she reflects this terrible rebuke. If she was once identified with Peter’s Rock, so now, alas! with Peter’s Satan.]

10 Scil. the bishop. [The plural of “solidarity.” See p. 128,  note 25, supra, and Elucidation XI. p. 159.]

11 By him who hears the word is meant a catechumen (Rigaltius). [Bunsen, vol. ii. p. 317. He quotes the Apostolical Constitutions (Alexandria), “Let the catechumens be three years hearing the word,” etc.]

12 The original interpolates “non.”

13 [Scil. baptisms (?) i.e., of water and of blood.]

14 [Eze_33:12. On the principle that what is deepest in man’s heart proves, finally, the character; Phi_2:12. A very solemn consideration in human accountability. (1Pe_1:17), but not to be disjoined from 2Co_6:10.]

15 Unius atque ejusdem species.

16 [Greek, πνευμα. Syriac as here rendered.]

17 Rigaltius says that Jerome mentions this document, and regards it as apocryphal. And Eusebius refers to the Περίοδοι Πέτρου, which, according to the common reading of Peter for Paul in the text, may point to the same document. [vol. 2. 341, note 181; and vol 4. p. 246.]

18 [It is noteworthy that he quotes the Latin formula, and not that (εἰς τὸ ἕν εἰσιν) of the Greek. Now, the Latin, repeating (in 1Jo_5:8) the formula (hi tres unum sunt) which belongs to the dubious protasis, is so far evidence that such a verse existed in the old Greek. It is important that the Latin is not conformed to the received formula of the apodosis, “the three agree in one.”]

19 Eusebius calls him Novatus.

20 See H. E., book viii. chaps ii., iii., and iv.; and vol. 6., this series.

THe Early Church Fathers:

Ante-Nicene Fathers

Volume 6

Fathers of the Third Century:

Gregory Thaumaturgus, Dionysius the Great, Julius Africanus, Anatolius and Minor Writers, Methodius, Arnobius

Contents

Introductory Notice

Translators

I. Gregory Thaumaturgus

A Declaration of Faith

A Metaphrase on the Book of Ecclesiastes

Canonical Epistle

The Oration and Panegyric Addressed to Origen

A Sectional Confession of Faith

On the Trinity

Twelve Topics on the Faith

On the Subject of the Soul

Four Homilies

On All the Saints

On the Gospel According to Matthew

II. Dionysius the Great

Extant Fragments

Exegetical Fragments

III. Julius Africanus

Extant Works

IV. Anatolius and Minor Writers

Anatolius of Alexandria

Alexander of Cappadocia

Theognostus of Alexandria

Pierius of Alexandria

Theonas of Alexandria

Phileas

Pamphilus

Malchion

V. Archelaus

The Acts of the Disputation with the Heresiarch Manes

VI. Alexander of Lycopolis

Of the Manichaeans

VII. Peter of Alexandria

The Genuine Acts of Peter

The Canonical Epistle

Fragments

VIII. Alexander of Alexandria

Epistles on the Arian Heresy and the Deposition of Arius

IX. Methodius

The Banquet of the Ten Virgins

Concerning Free-Will

From the Discourse on the Resurrection

Fragments

Oration Concerning Simeon and Anna

Oration on the Palms

Three Fragments from the Homily on the Cross and Passion of Christ

Some other Fragments

X. Arnobius

The Seven Books of Arnobius Against the Heathen

Rev. S. D. F. Salmond, M.A.

Gregory Thaumaturgus

Dionysius

Anatolius and Minor Writers

Archelaus

Rev. James B. H. Hawkins, M.A., Oxon.

Alexander of Lycopolis

Peter of Alexandria

Alexander of Alexandria

Rev. William R. Clark, M.A., Vicar of St. Mary Magdalen, Taunton

Methodius

Archdeacon Hamilton Bryce, LL.D., D.C.L., and Hugh Campbell, M.A.

Arnobius

In this volume a mass of fragmentary material1 has been reduced to method, and so harmonized as to present an integral result. The student has before him, therefore, (1) a view of the Christian Church emerging from the ten persecutions; (2) a survey of its condition on the eve of that great event, the (nominal) conversion of the empire; (3) an introduction to the era of Athanasius; and (4) a history of events that led to the calling of the first Catholic council at Nicaea.

The moral grandeur and predominance of the See of Alexandria are also here conspicuously illustrated. The mastery which its great school continued to exercise over Christian thought, its hegemony in the formation of Christian literature, its guardian influence in the development of doctrinal technology, and not less the Divine Providence that created it and built it up for the noble ends which it subserved in a Clement, an Origen, and an Athanasius, will all present themselves forcibly to every reflecting reader of this book. Thus Methodius has no other distinction than that which he derives from his wholesome corrections of Origen, and yet the influence of Origen upon his own mind is betrayed even in his antagonisms. He objects to the excessive allegorizing of that great doctor, yet he himself allegorizes too much in the same spirit. Finally we come to Arnobius, who carries on the line of Latin Christianity in Northern Africa; but even here we find that Clement, not Tertullian, is his model. He gives us, in a Latin dress, not a little directly borrowed from the great Alexandrian.

This volume further demonstrates — what I have so often touched upon — the historic fact that primitive Christianity was Greek in form and character, Greek from first to last, Greek in all its forms of dogma, worship, and polity. One idea only did it borrow from the West, and that not from the ecclesiastical, but the civil, Occident. It conformed itself to that imperial plan of exarchates, metropoles, and dioceses. Into this civil scheme it shaped itself, not by design, but by force of circumstances, just as the Anglo-American communion feel in with the national polity, and too shape in dioceses each originally conterminous with a State. Because it was the capital of the empire, therefore Rome was reckoned the first, but not the chief, of Sees, as the Council of Nicaea declared; and because Byzantium had become “New Rome,” therefore it is made second on the list, but equal in dignity. Rome was the sole Apostolic See of the West, and, as such, reflected the honours of St. Paul, its founder, and of St. Peter, who also glorified it by martyrdom; but not a word of this is recognised at Nicaea as investing it with even a moral primacy. That was informally the endowment of Alexandria; unasserted because unquestioned, and unchallenged because as yet unholy ambition had not infected the Apostolic churches.

It is time, then, to disabuse the West of its narrow ideas concerning ecclesiastical history. Dean Stanley rebuked this spirit in his Lectures on the Eastern Church.2 He complained that “Eastern Christendom is comparatively an untrodden field;” he quoted the German proverb,3 “Behind the mountains there is yet a population;” he called on us to enlarge our petty Occidental horizon; and he added words of reproach which invite us to reform the entire scheme of our ecclesiastical history by presenting the Eastern Apostolic churches as the main stem of Christendom, of which the church of Rome itself was for three hundred years a mere colony, unfelt in theology except by contributions to the Greek literature of Christians, and wholly unconscious of those pretensions with which, in a spirit akin to that of the romances about Arthur and the Round Table, the fabulous Decretals afterwards invested a succession of primitive bishops in Rome, wholly innocent of anything of the kind.

“The Greek Church,” says Dean Stanley, “reminds us of the time when the tongue, not of Rome, but of Greece, was the sacred language of Christendom. It was a striking remark of the Emperor Napoleon, that the introduction of Christianity itself was, in a certain sense, the triumph of Greece over Rome; the last and most signal instance of the maxim of Horace, Graecia capta ferum victorem cepit. The early Roman church was but a colony of Greek Christians or Grecized Jews. The earliest Fathers of the Western Church wrote in Greek. The early popes were not Italians, but Greeks. The name of pope is not Latin, but Greek, the common and now despised name of every pastor in the Eastern Church…. She is the mother, and Rome the daughter. It is her privilege to claim a direct continuity of speech with the earliest times; to boast of reading the whole code of Scripture, Old as well as New, in the language in which it was read and spoken by the Apostles. The humblest peasant who reads his Septuagint or Greek Testament in his own mother-tongue on the hills of Boeotia may proudly feel that he has access to the original oracles of divine truth which pope and cardinal reach by a barbarous and imperfect translation; that he has a key of knowledge which in the West is only to be found in the hands of the learned classes.”

Before entering on the study of this volume, the student will do well to read the interesting work which I have quoted;4 but the following extract merits a place just here, and I cannot deprive even the casual reader of the benefit of such a preface from the non-ecclesiastical and purely literary pen of the Dean. He says:5 “The See of Alexandria was then the most important in the world.6… The Alexandrian church was the only great seat of Christian learning. Its episcopate was the Evangelical See, as founded by the chair of St. Mark…. Its occupant, as we have seen, was the only potentate of the time who bore the name of pope.7 After the Council of Nicaea he became the judge of the world, from his decisions respecting the celebration of Easter; and the obedience paid to his judgment in all matters of learning, secular and sacred, almost equalled that paid in later days to the ecclesiastical authority of popes of the West. ‘The head of the Alexandrian church,’ says Gregory Nazianzen, ‘it the head of the world.’”

In the light of these all-important historic truths, these volumes of the Ante-Nicene Fathers have been elucidated by their American editor.8 He begs to remind his countrymen that ecclesiastical history is yet to be written on these irrefragable positions, and the future student of history will be delivered from the most puzzling entanglement when once these idols of the market are removed from books designed for his instruction. Let American scholarship give us, at last, a Church history written not from a merely Western point of view, nor clogged with traditional phraseology perseveringly adhered to on the very pages which supply its refutation. It is the scandal of literature that the frauds of the pseudo-Decretals should be perpetuated by modern lists of “popes” beginning with St. Peter, in the very books which elaborately expose the empiricism of such a scheme, and quote the reluctant words by which this gigantic imposition has been consigned to infamy in the confessions of Jesuits and Ultramontanes themselves.

FOOTNOTES

1 See the Edinburgh series.

2 See p. 3, ed. of 1861.

3 “Hinter dem Berge sind auch Leute.”

4 Late editions are cheap in the market. It is filled with the author’s idiosyncrasies, but it is brilliant and suggestive.

5 Lect. vii. p. 268. On the verse of Horace (Ep., i., book ii. 155), see Dacier’s note, vol. ix. 389.

6 He adds: “Alexandria, till the rise of Constantinople, was the most powerful city in the East. The prestige of its founder still clung to it.”

7 That is, of “the pope,” as Wellington was called “the duke.” But Cyprian was called papa, even by the Roman clergy.

8 He owes his own introduction to a just view of these facts to a friend of his boyhood and youth, the late Rev. Dr. Hill of the American Mission in Athens. He was penetrated with love for Greek Christians.

[A.D. 205-240-265.] Alexandria continues to be the head of Christian learning.1 It is delightful to trace the hand of God from generation to generation, as from father to son, interposing for the perpetuity of the faith. We have already observed the continuity of the great Alexandrian school: how it arose, and how Pantaenus begat Clement, and Clement begat Origen. So Origen begat Gregory, and so the Lord has provided for the spiritual generation of the Church’s teachers, age after age, from the beginning. Truly the Lord gave to Origen a holy seed, better than natural sons and daughters; as if, for his comfort, Isaiah had written, (Isa_56:3) forbidding him to say, “I am a dry tree.”

Our Gregory has given us not a little of his personal adventures in his panegyric upon his master, and for his further history the reader need only be referred to what follows. But I am anxious to supply the dates, which are too loosely left to conjecture. As he was ordained a bishop “very young,” according to Eusebius, I suppose he must have been far enough under fifty, the age prescribed by the “Apostolic Canons” (so called), though probably not younger than thirty, the earliest canonical limit for the ordination of a presbyter. If we decide upon five and thirty, as a mean reckoning, we may with some confidence set his birth at A.D. 205, dating back from his episcopate, which began A.D. 240. He was a native of Neo-Caesarea, the chief city of Pontus, – a fact that should modify what we have learned about Pontus from Tertullian.2 He was born of heathen parentage, and lived like other Gentile boys until his fourteenth year (circa A.D. 218), with the disadvantage of being more than ordinarily imbued by a mistaken father in the polytheism of Greece. At this period his father died; but his mother, carrying out the wishes of her husband, seems to have been not less zealous in furthering his education according to her pagan ideas. He was, evidently, the inheritor of moderate wealth; and, with his brother Athenodorus, he was placed under an accomplished teacher of grammar and rhetoric, from whom also he acquired a considerable knowledge of the Latin tongue. He was persuaded by the same master to use the accomplishment in acquiring some knowledge of the Roman laws. This is a very important point in his biography, and it brings us to an epoch in Christian history too little noted by any writer. I shall return to it very soon. We find him next going to Alexandria to study the New Platonism. He speaks of himself as already prepossessed with Christian ideas, which came to him even in his boyhood, about the time when his father died. But it was not at Alexandria that he began his acquaintance with Christian learning. Next he seems to have travelled into Greece, and to have studied at Athens. But the great interest of his autobiography begins with the providential incidents, devoutly narrated by himself, which engaged him in a journey to Berytus just as Origen reached Caesarea, A.D. 233, making it for a time his home and the seat of his school. His own good angel, as Gregory supposes, led him away from Berytus, where he purposed to prosecute his legal studies, and brought him to the feet of Origen, his Gamaliel; and “from the very first day of his receiving us,” he says, “the true Sun began to rise upon me.” This he accounts the beginning of his true life; and, if we are right as to our dates, he was now about twenty-seven years of age.

If he tarried even a little while in Berytus, as seems probable, his knowledge of law was, doubtless, somewhat advanced. It was the seat of that school in which Roman law began its existence in the forms long afterward digested into the Pandects of Justinian. That emperor speaks of Berytus as “the mother and nurse” of the civil law. Caius, whose Institutes were discovered in 1820 by the sagacity of Niebuhr, seems to have been a Syrian. So were Papinian and Ulpian: and, heathen as they were, they lived under the illumination reflected from Antioch; and, not less than the Antonines, they were examples of a philosophic regeneration which never could have existed until the Christian era had begun its triumphs. Of this sort of pagan philosophy Julian became afterwards the grand embodiment; and in Julian’s grudging confessions of what he had learned from Christianity we have a key to the secret convictions of others, such as I have named; characters in whom, as in Plutarch and in many retrograde unbelievers of our day, we detect the operation of influences they are unwilling to acknowledge; of which, possibly, they are blindly unconscious themselves. Roman law, I maintain, therefore, indirectly owes its origin, as it is directly indebted for its completion in the Pandects, to the new powers and processes of thought which came from “the Light of the World.” It was light from Galilee and Golgotha, answering Pilate’s question in the inward convictions of many a heathen sage.

It is most interesting, therefore, to find in our Gregory one who had come into contact with Berytus at this period. He describes it as already dignified by this school of law, and therefore Latinized in some degree by its influence. Most suggestive is what he says of this school: “I refer to those admirable laws of our sages, by which the affairs of all the subjects of the Roman Empire are now directed, and which are neither digested nor learnt without difficulty. They are wise and strict (if not pious) in themselves, they are manifold and admirable, and, in a word, most thoroughly Grecian, although expressed and delivered to us in the Roman tongue, which is a wonderful and magnificent sort of language, and one very aptly conformable to imperial authority, but still difficult to me.” Nor is this the only noteworthy tribute of our author to Roman law while yet that sublime system was it its cradle. The rhetorician who introduced him to it and to the Latin tongue was its enthusiastic eulogist; and Gregory says he learned the laws “in a thorough way, by his help…. And he said one thing to me which has proved to me the truest of all his sayings; to wit, that my education in the laws would be my greatest viaticum, – my ἐφόδιον (for thus he phrased it);” i.e., for the journey of life. This man, one can hardly doubt, was a disciple of Caius (or Gaius); and there is little question that the digested system which Gregory eulogizes was “the Institutes” of that great father of the civil law, now recovered from a palimpsest, and made known to our own age, with no less benefit to jurisprudence than the discovery of the Philosophumena has conferred on theology.

Thus Gregory’s Panegyric throws light on the origin of Roman law. He claims it for “our sages,” meaning men of the East, whose vernacular was the Greek tongue. Caius was probably, like the Gaius of Scripture, an Oriental who had borrowed a Latin name, as did the Apostle of the Gentiles and many others. If he was a native of Berytus, as seems probably, that accounts for the rise of the school of laws at a place comparatively inconsiderable. Hadrian, in his journey to Palestine, would naturally discover and patronize such a jurist; and that accounts for the appearance of Caius at Rome in his day. Papinian and Ulpian, both Orientals, were his pupils in all probability; and these were the “sages” with whose works the youthful Gregory became acquainted, and by which his mind was prepared for the great influence he exerted in the East where his name is a power to this day.

His credit with our times is rather impaired than heightened by the epithet Thaumaturgus, which clings to his name as a convenient specification, to distinguish him from the other3 Gregories whose period was so nearly his own. But why make it his opprobrium? He is not responsible for the romances that sprung up after his death; which he never heard of or imagined. Like the great Friar Bacon, who was considered a magician, or Faust, whose invention nearly cost him his life, the reputation of Gregory made him the subject of legendary lore long after her was gone. It is not impossible that God wrought marvels by his hand, but a single instance would give rise to many fables; and this very surname is of itself a monument of the fact that miracles were now of rare occurrence, and that one possessing the gift was a wonder to his contemporaries.

To like popular love of the marvellous I attribute the stupid story of a mock consecration by Phaedimus. If a slight irregularity in Origen’s ordination gave him such lifelong troubles, what would not have been the tumult such a sacrilege as this would have occasioned? Nothing is more probable than that Phaedimus related such things as having occurred in a vision;4 and this might have weighed with a mind like Gregory’s to overcome his scruples, and to justify his acceptance of such a position at an early age.

We are already acquainted with the eloquent letter of Origen that decided him to choose the sacred calling after he left the school at Caesarea. The Panegyric, which was his valedictory, doubtless called forth that letter. Origen had seen in him the makings of a κῆρυξ, and coveted such another Timothy for the Master’s work. But the Panegyric itself abounds with faults, and greatly resembles similar college performances of our day. The custom of schools alone can excuse the repression of such enthusiastic praise in the presence of its subject; but Origen doubtless bore it as philosophically as others have done since, and its evident sincerity and heartfelt gratitude redeem it from the charge of fulsome adulation.

For the residue of the story I may refer my readers to the statements of the translator, as follows: – 

Translator’s Notice.

We are in possession of a considerable body of testimonies from ancient literature bearing on the life and work of Gregory. From these, though they are largely mixed up with the marvellous, we gain a tolerably clear and satisfactory view of the main facts in his history, and the most patent features of his character.5 From various witnesses we learn that he was also known by the name Theodorus, which may have been his original designation; that he was a native of Neo-Caesareia, a considerable place of trade, and one of the most important towns of Pontus; that he belonged to a family of some wealth and standing; that he was born of heathen parents; that at the age of fourteen he lost his father; that he had a brother named Athenodorus; and that along with him he travelled about from city to city in the prosecution of studies that were to fit him for the profession of law, to which he had been destined. Among the various seats of learning which he thus visited we find Alexandria, Athens, Berytus, and the Palestinian Caesareia mentioned. At this last place – to which, as he tells us, he was led by a happy accident in the providence of God – he was brought into connection to Origen. Under this great teacher he received lessons in logic, geometry, physics, ethics, philosophy, and ancient literature, and in due time also in biblical science and the verities of the Christian faith. Thus, having become Origen’s pupil, he became also by the hand of God his convert. After a residence of some five years with the great Alexandrian, he returned to his native city. Soon, however, a letter followed him to Neo-Caesareia, in which Origen urged him to dedicate himself to the ministry of the Church of Christ, and pressed strongly upon him his obligation to consecrate his gifts to the service of God, and in especial to devote his acquirements in heathen science and learning to the elucidation of the Scriptures. On receipt of this letter, so full of wise and faithful counsel and strong exhortation, from the teacher whom he venerated and loved above all others, he withdrew into the wilderness, seeking the opportunity for solemn thought and private prayer over its contents. At this time the bishop of Amasea, a city which held apparently a first place in the province, was one named Phaedimus, who, discerning the promise of great things in the convert, sought to make him bishop of Neo-Caesareia. For a considerable period, however, Gregory, who shrank from the responsibility of the episcopal office, kept himself beyond the bishop’s reach, until Phaedimus, unsuccessful in his search, had recourse to the strategem of ordaining him in his absence, and declaring him, with all the solemnities of the usual ceremonial, bishop of his native city.6 On receiving the report of this extraordinary step, Gregory yielded, and, coming forth from the place of his concealment, was consecrated to the bishopric with all the customary formalities;7 and so well did he discharge the duties of his office, that while there were said to be only seventeen Christians in the whole city when he first entered it as bishop, there were said to be only seventeen pagans in it at the time of his death. The date of his studies under Origen is fixed at about 234 A.D., and that of his ordination as bishop at about 240. About the year 250 his church was involved in the sufferings of the Decian persecution, on which occasion he fled into the wilderness, with the hope of preserving his life for his people, whom he also counselled to follow in that matter his example. His flock had much to endure, again, through the incursion of the northern barbarians about 260. He took part in the council that met at Antioch in 265 for the purpose of trying Paul of Samosata; and soon after that he died, perhaps about 270, if we can adopt the conjectural reading with gives the name Aurelian instead of Julian in the account left us by Suidas.

The surname Thaumaturgus, or Wonder-worker, at once admonishes us of the marvellous that so largely connected itself with the historical in the ancient records of this man’s life.8 He was believed to have been gifted with a power of working miracles, which he was constantly exercising. But into these it is profitless to enter. When all the marvellous is dissociated from the historical in the records of this bishop’s career, we have still the figure of a great, good, and gifted man, deeply versed in the heathen lore and science of his time, yet more deeply imbued with the genuine spirit of another wisdom, which, under God, he learned from the illustrious thinker of Alexandria, honouring with all love, gratitude, and veneration that teacher to whom he was indebted for his knowledge of the Gospel, and exercising an earnest, enlightened, and faithful ministry of many years in an office which he had not sought, but for which he had been sought. Such is, in brief, the picture that rises up before us from a perusal of his own writings, as well as from the comparison of ancient accounts of the man and his vocation. Of his well-accredited works we have the following: A Declaration of Faith, being a creed on the doctrine of the Trinity; a Metaphrase of the Book of Ecclesiastes; a Panegyric to Origen, being an oration delivered on leaving the school of Origen, expressing eloquently, and with great tenderness of feeling, as well as polish of style, the sense of his obligations to that master; and a Canonical Epistle, in which he gives a variety of directions with respect to the penances and discipline to be exacted by the Church from Christians who had fallen back into heathenism in times of suffering, and wished to be restored. Other works have been attributed to him, which are doubtful or spurious. His writings have been often edited, – by Gerard Voss in 1604, by the Paris editors in 1662, by Gallandi in 1788, and others, who need not be enumerated here.

FOOTNOTES

1 Vol. 2, pp. 165, 342.

2 Vol. 3, p. 271.

3 See Dean Stanley’s Eastern Church and Neale’s Introduction.

4 Recall Cyprian’s narratives, vol. 5., and this volume infra, Life of Dionysius of Alexandria.

5 Thus we have accounts of him, more or less complete, in Eusebius (Historia Eccles., vi., 30, vii. 14), Basil (De Spiritu Sancto, xxix. 74; Epist. 28, Num_1:1-54 and Num_2:1-34; 207, Num_4:1-49; 210, Num_3:1-51, Num_5:1-31, – Works, vol. iii. pp. 62, 107, 303, 311, etc., edit. Paris. BB. 1730) Jerome (De viris illustr., ch. 65; in the Comment. in Ecclesiasten, Rev_4:1-11; and Epist. 70, Num_4:1-49 – Works, vol. i. pp. 424 and 427. edit. Veron.), Rufinus (Hist. Eccles., iv. 27), Sozomen (Hist. Eccles., vii. 27), Evagrius Scholasticus (Hist. Eccles., iii. 31), Suidas in his Lexicon, and other of less moment.

6 [See p. 5, supra. Cave pronounces it “without precedent,” but otherwise seems to credit the story.]

7 [So Gregory Nyssen says. It would have been impossible, otherwise, for him to rule the his flock.]

8 He could move the largest stones by a word; he could heal the sick; the demons were subject to him, and were exorcised by his fiat; he could give bound to overflowing rivers; he could dry up mighty lakes; he could cast his cloak over a man, and cause his death: once, spending a night in a heathen temple, he banished its divinities by his simple presence, and by merely placing on the altar a piece of paper bearing the words, Gregory to Satan – enter, he could bring the presiding demons back to their shrine. One strange story told of him by Gregory of Nyssa is to the effect that, as Gregory was meditating on the great matter of the right way to worship the true God, suddenly two glorious personages made themselves manifest in his room, in the one of whom he recognised the Apostle John, in the other the Virgin. They had come, as the story goes, to solve the difficulties which were making him hesitate in accepting the bishopric. At Mary’s request, the evangelist gave him then all the instruction in doctrine which he was seeking for; and the sum of these supernatural communications being written down by him after the vision vanished, formed the creed which is still preserved among his writings. Such were the wonders believed to signalize the life of Gregory.

A Declaration of Faith.1

There is one God, the Father of the living Word, who is His subsistent Wisdom and Power and Eternal Image:2 perfect Begetter of the perfect Begotten, Father of the only-begotten Son. There is one Lord, Only of the Only,3 God of God, Image and Likeness of Deity, Efficient Word,4 Wisdom comprehensive5 of the constitution of all things, and Power formative6 of the whole creation, true Son of true Father, Invisible of Invisible, and Incorruptible of Incorruptible, and Immortal of Immortal and Eternal of Eternal.7 And there is One Holy Spirit, having His subsistence8 from God, and being made manifest9 by the Son, to wit to men:10 Image11 of the Son, Perfect Image of the Perfect;12 Life, the Cause of the living; Holy Fount; Sanctity, the Supplier, or Leader,13 of Sanctification; in whom is manifested God the Father, who is above all and in all, and God the Son, who is through all. There is a perfect Trinity, in glory and eternity and sovereignty, neither divided nor estranged.14 Wherefore there is nothing either created or in servitude15 in the Trinity;16 nor anything superinduced,17 as if at some former period it was non-existent, and at some later period it was introduced. And thus neither was the Son ever wanting to the Father, nor the Spirit to the Son;18 but without variation and without change, the same Trinity abideth ever.19

Elucidation.

The story of the “Revelation” is of little consequence, though, if this were Gregory’s genuine work, it would be easy to account for it as originating in a beautiful dream. But it is very doubtful whether it be a genuine work; and, to my mind, it is most fairly treated by Lardner, to whose elaborate chapter concerning Gregory every scholar must refer.20 Dr. Burton, in his edition of Bishop Bull’s works,21 almost overrules that learned prelate’s inclination to think it genuine, in the following words: “Hanc formulam minime esse Gregorii authenticam … multis haud spernendis argumentis demonstrat Lardner.” Lardner thinks it a fabrication of the fourth century.

Cave’s learned judgment is more favourable; and he gives the text22 from Gregory of Nyssa, which he translates as follows: “There is one God, the Father of the living Word and of the subsisting Wisdom and Power, and of Him who is His Eternal Image, the perfect begetter of Him that is perfect, the Father of the only-begotten Son. There is one Lord, the only Son of the only Father, God of God, the character and image of the Godhead, the powerful Word, the comprehensive Wisdom, by which all things were made, and the Power that gave being to the whole creation, the true Son of the true Father, the Invisible of the Invisible, the Incorruptible of the Incorruptible, the Immortal of the Immortal, and the Eternal of Him that is Eternal. There is one Holy Ghost, having its subsistence of God, which appeared through the Son to mankind, the perfect Image of the perfect Son, the Life-giving Life, the holy Fountain, the Sanctity, and the Author of sanctification, by whom God the Father is made manifest, who is over all, and in all; and God the Son, who is through all. A perfect Trinity, which neither in glory, eternity, or dominion is divided, or departed from itself.”

FOOTNOTES

1 The title as it stands has this addition: “which he had by revelation from the blessed John the evangelist, by the mediation of the Virgin Mary, Parent of God.” Gallandi, Veterum Patrum Biblioth., Venice, 1766, p.385. [Elucidations, p. 8, infra]

2 χαρακτῆρος ἀΐδίου.

3 μόνος ἐκ μόνου.

4 λόγος ἐνεργός.

5 περιεκτική.

6 ποιητική.

7 ἀΐδιος ἀΐδίου.

8 υπαρξιν.

9 πεφηνός.

10 The words δηλαδὴ τοῖς ἀνθρώποις are suspected by suspected by some to be a gloss that has found its way into the text.

11 εἰκών.

12 So John of Damascus uses the phrase, εἰκὼν τοῦ Πατρὸς ὁ Υἱὸς, καὶ τοῦ Υἱοῦ, τὸ Πνεῦμα, the Son is the Image of the Father, and the Spirit is that of the Son, lib. 1, De fide orthod., Joh_13:1-38, vol. I. p. 151. See also Athanasius, Epist. I ad Serap.; Basil, lib v. contra Eunom.; Cyril, Dial., 7, etc.

13 χορηγός.

14 ἀπαλλοτριουμένη. See also Gregory Nazianz., Orat., 37, p. 609.

15 δοῦλον.

16 Gregory Nazianz., Orat., 40, p. 668, with reference apparently to our author, says: Οὐδὲν τῆς Τριάδος δοῦλον, οὐδὲ κτιστον, οὐδε ἐπεισακτον, ἤκουσα τῶν σοφῶν τινος λέγοντος – In the Trinity there is nothing either in servitude or created, or superinduced, as I heard one of the learned say.

17 ἐπείσακτον.

18 In one codex we find the following addition here: οὔτε αὔξεται μονὰς εἰς δυάδα, οὐδὲ δυὰς εἰς τριάδα – Neither again does the unity grown into duality, nor the duality into trinity; or = Neither does the condition of the one grown into the condition of the two, nor that of the two into the condition of the three.

19 [See valuable note and Greek text in Dr. Schaff’s History, vol. ii. p. 799.]

20 Credibility, vol. ii. p. 635.

21 Vol. v. p. 423.

22 Cave, Lives of the Fathers, vol. i. p. 402, ed. Oxford, 1840.

A Metaphrase of the Book of Ecclesiastes.1

Chap. I.2

These words speaketh Solomon, the son of David the king and prophet, to the whole Church of God, a prince most honoured, and a prophet most wise above all men. How vain and fruitless are the affairs of men, and all pursuits that occupy man! For there is not one who can tell of any profit attaching to those things which men who creep on earth strive by body and soul to attain to, in servitude all the while to what is transient, and undesirous of considering aught heavenly with the noble eye of the soul. And the life of men weareth away, as day by day, and in the periods of hours and years, and the determinate courses of the sun, some are ever coming, and others passing away. And the matter is like the transit of torrents as they fall into the measureless deep of the sea with a mighty noise. And all things that have been constituted by God for the sake of men abide the same: as, for instance, I that man is born of earth, and departs to earth again; that the earth itself continues stable; that the sun accomplishes its circuit about it perfectly, and rolls round to the same mark again; and that the winds3 in like manner, and the mighty rivers which flow into the sea, and the breezes that beat upon it, all act without forcing it to pass beyond its limits, and without themselves also violating their appointed laws. And these things, indeed, as bearing upon the good of this life of ours, are established thus fittingly. But those things which are of men’s devising, whether words or deeds, have no measure. And there is a plenteous multitude of words, but there is no profit from random and foolish talking. But the race of men is naturally insatiate in its thirst both for speaking and for hearing what is spoken; and it is man’s habit, too, to desire to look with idle eyes on all that happens. What can occur afterwards, or what can be wrought by men which has not been done already? What new thing is there worthy of mention, of which there has never yet been experience? For I think there is nothing which one may call new, or which, on considering it, one shall discover to be strange or unknown to those of old. But as former things are buried in oblivion, so also things that are now subsistent will in the course of time vanish utterly from the knowledge of those who shall come after us. And I speak not these things unadvisedly, as acting now the preacher.4 But all these things were carefully pondered by me when entrusted with the kingdom of the Hebrews in Jerusalem. And I examined diligently, and considered discreetly, the nature of all that is on earth, and I perceived it to be most various;5 and I saw that to man it is given to labour upon earth, ever carried about by all different occasions of toil, and with no result of his work. And all things here below are full of the spirit of strangeness and abomination, so that it is not possible for one to retrieve them now; nay, rather it is not possible for one at all to conceive what utter vanity6 has taken possession of all human affairs. For once on a time I communed with myself, and thought that then I was wiser in this than all that were before me, and I was expert in understanding parables and the natures of things. But I learned that I gave myself to such pursuits to no purpose, and that if wisdom follows knowledge, so troubles attend on wisdom.

Chap. II.

Judging, therefore, that it stood thus with this matter, I decided to turn to another mariner of life, and to give myself to pleasure, and to take experience of various delights. And now I learned that all such things are vain; and I put a check on laughter, when it ran on carelessly; and restrained pleasure, according to the rule of moderation, and was bitterly wroth against it. And when I perceived that the soul is able to arrest the body in its disposition to intoxication and wine-bibbing, and that temperance makes lust its subject, I sought earnestly to observe what object of true worth and of real excellence is set before men, which they shall attain to in this present life. For I passed through all those other objects which are deemed worthiest, such as the erecting of lofty houses and the planting of vines, and in addition, the laying out of pleasure-grounds, and the acquisition and culture of all manner of fruit-bearing trees; and among them also large reservoirs for the reception of water were constructed, and distributed so as to secure the plentiful irrigation of the trees. And I surrounded myself also with many domestics, both man-servants and maid-servants; and some of them I procured from abroad, and others I possessed and employed as born in my own house. And herds of four-footed creatures, as well of cattle as of sheep, more numerous than any of those of old acquired, were made my property. And treasures of gold and silver flowed in upon me; and I made the kings of all nations my dependants and tributaries. And very many choirs of male and female singers were trained to yield me pleasure by the practice of all-harmonious song. And I had banquetings; and for the service of this part of my pleasure, I got me select cup-bearers of both sexes beyond my reckoning, – so far did I surpass in these things those who reigned before me in Jerusalem. And thus it happened that the interests of wisdom declined with me, while the claims of evil appetency increased. For when I yielded myself to every allurement of the eyes, and to the violent passions of the heart, that make their attack from all quarters, and surrendered myself to the hopes held out by pleasures, I also made my will the bond-slave of all miserable delights. For thus my judgment was brought to such a wretched pass, that I thought these things good, and that it was proper for me to engage in them. At length, awaking and recovering my sight, I perceived that the things I had in hand were altogether sinful and very evil, and the deeds of a spirit not good. For now none of all the objects of men’s choice seems to me worthy of approval, or greatly to be desired by a just mind. Wherefore, having pondered at once the advantages of wisdom and the ills of folly, I should with reason admire that man greatly, who, being borne on in a thoughtless course, and afterwards arresting himself, should return to right and duty. For wisdom and folly, are widely separated, and they are as different from each other as day is from night. He, therefore, who makes choice of virtue, is like one who sees all things plainly, and looks upward, and who holdeth his ways in the time of clearest light. But he, on the other hand, who has involved himself in wickedness, is like a man who wanders helplessly about in a moonless night, as one who is blind, and deprived of the sight of things by his darkness.7 And when I considered the end of each of these modes of life, I found there was no profit in the latter;8 and by setting myself to be the companion of the foolish, I saw that I should receive the wages of folly. For what advantage is there in those thoughts, or what profit is there in the multitude of words, where the streams of foolish speaking are flowing, as it were, from the fountain of folly? Moreover, there is nothing common to the wise man and to the fool, neither as regards the memory of men, nor as regards the recompense of God. And as to all the affairs of men, when they are yet apparently but beginning to be, the end at once surprises them. Yet the wise man is never partaker of the same end with the foolish. Then also did I hate all my life, that had been consumed in vanities, and which I had spent with a mind engrossed in earthly anxieties. For, to speak in brief, all my affairs have been wrought by me with labour and pain, as the efforts of thoughtless impulse; and some other person, it may be a wise man or a fool, will succeed to them, I mean, the chill fruits of my toils. But when I cut myself off from these things, and cast them away, then did that real good which is set before man show itself to me, – namely, the knowledge of wisdom and the possession of manly virtue.9 And if a man neglects these things, and is inflamed with the passion for other things, such a man makes choice of evil instead of good, and goes after what is bad instead of what is excellent, and after trouble instead of peace; for he is distracted by every manner of disturbance, and is burdened with continual anxieties night and day, with oppressive labours of body as well as with ceaseless cares of mind, – his heart moving in constant agitation, by reason of the strange and senseless affairs that occupy him. For the perfect good does not consist in eating and drinking, although it is true that it is from God that their sustenance cometh to men; for none of those things which are given for our maintenance subsist without His providence. But the good man who gets wisdom from God, gets also heavenly enjoyment; while, on the other hand, the evil man. smitten with ills divinely inflicted, and afflicted with the disease of lust, toils to amass much, and is quick to put him to shame who is honoured by God in presence of the Lord of all, proffering useless gifts, and making things deceitful and vain the pursuits of his own miserable soul.

Chap. III.

For this present time is filled with all things that are most contrary10 to each other – births and deaths, the growth of plants and their uprooting, cures and killings, the building up and the pulling down of houses, weeping and laughing, mourning and dancing. At this moment a man gathers of earth’s products, and at another casts them away; and at one time he ardently desireth the beauty of woman, and at another he hateth it. Now he seeketh something, and again he loseth it; and now he keepeth, and again he casteth away; at one time he slayeth, and at another he is slain; he speaketh, and again he is silent; he loveth, and again he hateth. For the affairs of men are at one time in a condition of war, and at another in a condition of peace; while their fortunes are so inconstant, that from bearing the semblance of good, they change quickly into acknowledged ills. Let us have done, therefore, with vain labours. For all these things, as appears to me, are set to madden men, as it were, with their poisoned stings. And the ungodly observer of the times and seasons is agape for this world,11 exerting himself above measure to destroy the image12 of God, as one who has chosen to contend against it13 from the beginning onward to the end.14 I am persuaded, therefore, that the greatest good for man is cheerfulness and well-doing, and that this shortlived enjoyment, which alone is possible to us, comes from God only, if righteousness direct our doings. But as to those everlasting and incorruptible things which God hath firmly established, it is not possible either to take aught from them or to add aught to them. And to men in general, those things, in sooth, are fearful and wonderful;15 and those things indeed which have been, abide so; and those which are to be, have already been, as regards His foreknowledge. Moreover, the man who is injured has God as his helper. I saw in the lower parts the pit of punishment which receives the impious, but a different place allotted for the pious. And I thought with myself, that with God all things are judged and determined to be equal; that the righteous and the unrighteous, and objects with reason and without reason, are alike in His judgment. For that their time is measured out equally to all, and death impends over them, and in this the races of beasts and men are alike in the judgment of God, and differ from each other only in the matter of articulate speech; and all things else happen alike to them, and death receives all equally, not more so in the case of the other kinds of creatures than in that of men. For they have all the same breath of life, and men have nothing more; but all are, in one word, vain, deriving their present condition16 from the same earth, and destined to perish, and return to the same earth again. For it is uncertain regarding the souls of men, whether they shall fly upwards; and regarding the others which the unreasoning creatures possess, whether they shall fall downward. And it seemed to me, that there is no other good save pleasure, and the enjoyment of things present. For I did not think it possible for a man, when once he has tasted death, to return again to the enjoyment of these things.17

Chap. IV.

And leaving all these reflections, I considered and turned in aversion from all the forms of oppression18 which are done among men; whence some receiving injury weep and lament, who are struck down by violence in utter default of those who protect them, or who should by all means comfort them in their trouble.19 And the men who make might their right20 are exalted to an eminence, from which, however, they shall also fall. Yea, of the unrighteous and audacious, those who are dead fare better than those who are still alive. And better than both these is he who, being destined to be like them, has not yet come into being, since he has not yet touched the wickedness which prevails among men. And it became clear to me also how great is the envy which follows a man from his neighbours, like the sting of a wicked spirit; and I saw that he who receives it, and takes it as it were into his breast, has nothing else but to eat his own heart, and tear it, and consume both soul and body, finding inconsolable vexation in the good fortune of others.21 And a wise man would choose to have one of his hands full, if it were with ease and quietness, rather than both of them with travail and with the villany of a treacherous spirit. Moreover, there is yet another thing which I know to happen contrary to what is fitting, by reason of the evil will of man. He who is left entirely alone, having neither brother nor son, but prospered with large possessions, lives on in the spirit of insatiable avarice, and refuses to give himself in any way whatever to goodness. Gladly, therefore, would I ask such an one for what reason he labours thus, fleeing with headlong speed22 from the doing of anything good, and distracted by the many various passions for making gain23 Far better than such are those who have taken up an order of life in common,24 from which they may reap the best blessings. For when two men devote themselves in the right spirit to the same objects, though some mischance befalls the one, he has still at least no slight alleviation in having his companion by him. And the greatest of all calamities to a man in evil fortune is the want of a friend to help and cheer him.25 And those who live together both double the good fortune that befalls them, and lessen the pressure of the storm of disagreeable events; so that in the day they are distinguished for their frank confidence in each other, and in the night they appear notable for their cheerfulness.26 But he who leads a solitary life passes a species of existence full of terror to himself; not perceiving that if one should fall upon men welded closely together, he adopts a rash and perilous course, and that it is not easy to snap the threefold cord.27 Moreover, I put a poor youth, if he be wise, before an aged prince devoid of wisdom, to whose thoughts it has never occured that it is possible that a man may be raised from the prison to the throne, and that the very man who has exercised his power unrighteously shall at a later period be righteously cast out. For it may happen that those who are subject to a youth, who is at the same time sensible, shall be free from trouble, – those, I mean, who are his elders.28 Moreover, they who are born later cannot praise another, of whom they have had no experience,29 and are led by an unreasoning judgment, and by the impulse of a contrary spirit. But in exercising the preacher’s office, keep thou this before thine eyes, that thine own life be rightly directed, and that thou prayest in behalf of the foolish, that they may get understanding, and know how to shun the doings of the wicked.

Chap. V.

Moreover, it is a good thing to use the tongue sparingly, and to keep a calm and rightly balanced30 heart in the exercise of speech.31 For it is not right to give utterance in words to things that are foolish and absurd, or to all that occur to the mind; but we ought to know and reflect, that though we are far separated from heaven, we speak in the hearing of God, and that it is good for us to speak without offence. For as dreams and visions of many kinds attend manifold cares of mind, so also silly talking is conjoined with folly. Moreover, see to it, that a promise made with a vow be made good in fact. This, too, is proper to fools, that they are unreliable. But be thou true to thy word, knowing that it is ranch better for thee not to vow or promise to do anything, than to vow and then fail of performance. And thou oughtest by all means to avoid the flood of base words, seeing that God will hear them. For the man who makes such things his study gets no more benefit by them than to see his doings brought to nought by God. For as the multitude of dreams is vain, so also the multitude of words. But the fear of God is man’s salvation, though it is rarely found. Wherefore thou oughtest not to wonder though thou seest the poor oppressed, and the judges misinterpreting the law. But thou oughtest to avoid the appearance of surpassing those who are in power. For even should this prove to be the case, yet, from the terrible ills that shall befall thee, wickedness of itself will not deliver thee. But even as property acquired by violence is a most hurtful as well as impious possession, so the man who lusteth after money never finds satisfaction for his passion, nor good-will from his neighbours, even though he may have amassed the greatest possible wealth. For this also is vanity. But goodness greatly rejoiceth those who hold by it, and makes them strong,32 imparting to them the capacity of seeing through33 all things. And it is a great matter also not to be engrossed by such anxieties: for the poor man, even should he be a slave, and unable to fill his belly plentifully, enjoys at least the kind refreshment of sleep; but the lust of riches is attended by sleepless nights and anxieties of mind. And what could there be then more absurd, than with much anxiety and trouble to amass wealth, and keep it with jealous care, if all the while one is but maintaining the occasion of countless evils to himself? And this wealth, besides, must needs perish some time or other, and be lost, whether he who has acquired it has children or not; (Job_20:20) and the man himself, however unwillingly, is doomed to die, and return to earth in the selfsame condition in which it was his lot once to come into being. (Job_1:21; 1Ti_6:7) And the fact that he is destined thus to leave earth with empty hands, will make the evil all the sorer to him, as he fails to consider that an end is appointed for his life similar to its beginning, and that he toils to no profit, and labours rather for the wind, as it were, than for the advancement of his own real interest, wasting his whole life in most unholy lusts and irrational passions, and withal in troubles and pains. And, to speak shortly, his days are darkness to such a man, and his life is sorrow. Yet this is in itself good, and by no means to be despised. For it is the gift of God, that a man should be able to reap with gladness of mind the fruits of his labours, receiving thus possessions bestowed by God, and not acquired by force.34 For neither is such a than afflicted with troubles, nor is he for the most part the slave of evil thoughts; but he measures out his life by good deeds, being of good heart35 in all things, and rejoicing in the gift of God.

Chap. VI.

Moreover, I shall exhibit in discourse the ill-fortune that most of all prevails among men. While God may supply a man with all that is according to his mind, and deprive him of no object which may in any manner appeal to his desires, whether it be wealth, or honour, or any other of those things for which men distract themselves; yet the man, while thus prospered in all things, as though the only ill inflicted on him from heaven were just the inability to enjoy them, may but husband them for his fellow, and fall without profit either to himself or to his neighbours. This I reckon to be a strong proof and clear sign of surpassing evil. The man who has borne without blame the name of father of very many children, and spent a long life, and has not had his soul filled with good for so long time, and has had no experience of death meanwhile,36 – this man I should not envy either his numerous offspring or his length of days; nay, I should say that the untimely birth that falls from a woman’s womb is better than he. For as that came in with vanity, so it also departeth secretly in oblivion, without having tasted the ills of life or looked on the sun. And this is a lighter evil than for the wicked man not to know what is good, even though he measure his life by thousands of years.37 And the end of both is death. The fool is proved above all things by his finding no satisfaction in any lust. But the discreet man is not held captive by these passions. Yet, for the most part, righteousness of life leads a man to poverty. And the sight of curious eyes deranges38 many, inflaming their mind, and drawing them on to vain pursuits by the empty desire of show.39 Moreover, the things which are now are known already; and it be comes apparent that than is unable to contend with those that are above him. And, verily, inanities have their course among men, which only increase the folly of those who occupy themselves with them.

Chap. VII.

For though a man should be by no means greatly advantaged by knowing all in this life that is destined to befall him according to his mind (let us suppose such a case), nevertheless with the officious activity of men he devises means for prying into and gaining an apparent acquaintance with the things that are to happen after a person’s death. Moreover, a good name is more pleasant to the mind (Pro_22:1) than oil to the body; and the end of life is better than the birth, and to mourn is more desirable than to revel, and to be with the sorrowing is better than to be with the drunken. For this is the fact, that he who comes to the end of life has no further care about alight around him. And discreet anger is to be preferred to laughter; for by the severe disposition of countenance the soul is kept upright40 The souls of the wise, indeed, are sad and downcast, but those of fools are elated, and given loose to merriment. And yet it is far more desirable to receive blame from one wise man, than to become a hearer of a whole chorus of worthless and miserable men in their songs. For the laughter of fools is like the crackling of many thorns burning in a fierce fire. This, too, is misery, yea the greatest of evils, namely oppression;41 for it intrigues against the souls of the wise, and attempts to ruin the noble way of life42 which the good pursue. Moreover, it is right to commend not the man who begins, but the man who finishes a speech;43 and what s moderate ought to approve itself to the mind, and not what is swollen and inflated. Again, one ought certainly to keep wrath in check, and not suffer himself to be carried rashly into anger, the slaves of which are fools. More over, they are in error who assert that a better manner of life was given to those before us, and they fail to see that wisdom is widely different from mere abundance of possessions, and that it is as much more lustrous44 than these, as silver shines more brightly than its shadow. For the life of man hath its excellence45 not in the acquisition of perishable riches, but in wisdom. And who shall be able, tell me, to declare the providence of God, which is so great and so beneficent? or who shall be able to recall the things which seem to have been passed by of God? And in the former days of my vanity I considered all things, and saw a righteous man continuing in his righteousness, and ceasing not from it until death, but even suffering injury by reason thereof, and a wicked man perishing with his wickedness. Moreover, it is proper that the righteous man should not seem to be so overmuch, nor exceedingly and above measure wise, that he may not, as in making some slip, seem to sin many times over. And be not thou audacious and precipitate, lest an untimely death surprise thee. It is the greatest of all good to take hold of God, and by abiding in Him to sin in nothing. For to touch things undefiled with an impure hand is abomination. But he who in the fear of God submits himself,46 escapes all that is contrary. Wisdom availeth more in the way of help than a band of the most powerful men in a city, and it often also pardons righteously those who fail in duty. For there is not one that stumbleth not. (1Ki_8:46; 2Ch_6:36; Pro_20:9; 1Jo_1:8) Also it becomes thee in no way to attend upon the words of the impious, that thou mayest not become an ear-witness47 of words spoken against thyself, such as the foolish talk of a wicked servant, and being thus stung in heart, have recourse afterwards thyself to cursing in turn in many actions. And all these things have I known, having received wisdom from God, which afterwards I lost, and was no longer able to be the same.48 For wisdom fled from me to an infinite distance, and into a measureless deep, so that I could no longer get hold of it. Wherefore afterwards I abstained altogether from seeking it; and I no longer thought of considering the follies and the vain counsels of the impious, and their weary, distracted life. And being thus disposed, I was borne on to the things themselves; and being seized with a fatal passion, I knew woman – that she is like a snare or some such other object.49 For her heart ensnares those who pass her; and if she but join hand to hand, she holds one as securely as though she dragged him on bound with chains.50 And from her you can secure your deliverance only by finding a propitious and watchful superintendent in God;51 for he who is enslaved by sin cannot (otherwise) escape its grasp. Moreover, among all women I sought for the chastity52 proper to them, and I found it in none. And verily a person may find one man chaste among a thousand, but a woman never.53 And this above all things I observed, that men being made by God simple54 in mind, contract55 for themselves manifold reasonings and infinite questionings, and while professing to seek wisdom, waste their life in vain words.

Chap. VIII.

Moreover, wisdom, when it is found in a man, shows itself also in its possessor’s face, and makes his countenance to shine; as, on the other hand, effrontery convicts the man in whom it has taken up its abode, so soon as he is seen, as one worthy of hatred. And it is on every account right to give careful heed to the words of the king, and by all manner of means to avoid an oath, especially one taken in the name of God. It may be fit at the same time to notice an evil word, but then it is necessary to guard against any blasphemy against God. For it will not be possible to find fault with Him when He inflicts any penalty, nor to gainsay the decrees of the Only Lord and King. But it will be better and more profitable for a man to abide by the holy commandments, and to keep himself apart from the words of the wicked. For the wise man knows and discerneth beforehand the judgment, which shall come at the right time, and sees that it shall be just. For all things in the life of men await the retribution from above; but the wicked man does not seem to know verily56 that as there is a mighty providence over him, nothing in the future shall be hid. He knoweth not indeed the things which shall be; for no man shall be able to announce any one of them to him duly: for no one shall be found so strong as to be able to prevent the angel who spoils him of his life;57 neither shall any means be devised for cancelling in any way the appointed time of death. But even as the man who is captured in the midst of the battle can only see flight cut off on every side, so all the impiety of man perisheth utterly together. And I am astonished, as often as I contemplate what and how great things men have studied to do for the hurt of their neighbours. But this I know, that the impious are snatched prematurely from this life, and put out of the way because they have given themselves to vanity. For whereas the providential judgment58 of God does not overtake all speedily, by reason of His great long-suffering, and the wicked is not punished immediately on the commission of his offences, – for this reason he thinks that he may sin the more, as though he were to get off with impunity, not understanding that the transgressor shall not escape the knowledge of God even after a long interval. This, moreover, is the chief good, to reverence God; for if once the impious man fall away from Him, he shall not be suffered long to misuse his own folly. But a most vicious and false opinion often prevails among men concerning both the righteous and the unrighteous. For they form a judgment contrary to truth regarding each of them; and the man who is really righteous does not get the credit of being so, while, on the other hand, the impious man is deemed prudent and upright. And this I judge to be among the most grievous of errors. Once, indeed, I thought that the chief good consisted in eating and drinking, and that he was most highly favoured of God who should enjoy these things to the utmost in his life; and I fancied that this kind of enjoyment was the only comfort in life. And, accordingly, I gave heed to nothing but to this conceit, so that neither by night nor by day did I withdraw myself from all those things which have ever been discovered to minister luxurious delights to men. And this much I learned thereby, that the man who mingles in these things shall by no means be able, however sorely he may labour with them, to find the real good.

Chap. IX.

Now I thought at that time that all men were judged worthy of the same things. And if any wise man practised righteousness, and withdrew himself from unrighteousness, and as being sagacious avoided hatred with all (which, indeed, is a thing well pleasing to God), this man seemed to me to labour in vain. For there seemed to be one end for the righteous and for the impious, for the good and for the evil, for the pure and for the impure, for him that worshipped59 God, and for him that worshipped not. For as the unrighteous man and the good, the man who sweareth a false oath, and the man who avoids swearing altogether, were suspected by me to be driving toward the same end, a certain sinister opinion stole secretly into my mind, that all men come to their end in a similar way. But now I know that these are the reflections of fools, and errors and deceits. And they assert largely, that he who is dead has perished utterly, and that the living is to be preferred to the dead, even though he may lie in darkness, and pass his life-journey after the fashion of a dog, which is better at least than a dead lion. For the living know this at any rate, that they are to die; but the dead know not anything, and there is no reward proposed to them after they have completed their necessary course. Also hatred and love with the dead have their end; for their envy has perished, and their life also is extinguished. And he has a portion in nothing who has once gone hence. Error harping still on such a string, gives also such counsel as this: What meanest thou, O man, that thou dost not enjoy thyself delicately, and gorge thyself with all manner of pleasant food, and fill thyself to the full with wine? Dost thou not perceive that these things are given us from God for our unrestrained enjoyment? Put on newly washed attire, and anoint thy head with myrrh, and see this woman and that, and pass thy vain life vainly.60 For nothing else remaineth for thee but this, neither here nor after death. But avail thou thyself of all that chanceth; for neither shall any one take account of thee for these things, nor are the things that are done by men known at all outside the circle of men. And Hades, whatever that may he, whereunto we are said to depart, has neither wisdom nor understanding. These are the things which men of vanity speak. But I know assuredly, that neither shall they who seem the swiftest accomplish that great race; nor shall those who are esteemed mighty and terrible in the judgment of men, overcome in that terrible battle. Neither, again, is prudence proved by abundance of bread, nor is understanding wont to consort with riches. Nor do I congratulate those who think that all shall find the same things befall them. But certainly those who indulge such thoughts seem to me to be asleep, and to fail to consider that, caught suddenly like fishes and birds, they will be consumed with woes, and meet speedily their proper retribution. Also I estimate wisdom at so high a price, that I should deem a small and poorly-peopled city, even though besieged also by a mighty king with his forces, to be indeed great and powerful, if it had but one wise man, however poor, among its citizens. For such a man would be able to deliver his city both from enemies and from entrenchments. And other men, it may be, do not recognise that wise man, poor as he is; but for my part I greatly prefer the power that resides in wisdom, to this might of the mere multitude of the people. Here, however, wisdom, as it dwells with poverty, is held in dishonour. But hereafter it shall be heard speaking with more authoritative voice than princes and despots who seek after things evil. For wisdom is also stronger than iron; while the folly of one individual works danger for many, even though he be an object of contempt to many.61

Chap. X.

Moreover, flies falling into myrrh, and suffocated therein, make both the appearance of that pleasant ointment and the anointing therewith an unseemly thing;62 and to be mindful of wisdom and of folly together is in no way proper. The wise man, indeed, is his own leader to right actions; but the fool inclines to erring courses, and will never make his folly available as a guide to what is noble. Yea, his thoughts also are vain and full of folly. But if ever a hostile spirit fall upon thee, my friend, withstand it courageously, knowing that God is able to propitiate63 even a mighty multitude of offences. These also are the deeds of the prince and father of all wickedness: that the fool is set on high, while the man richly gifted with wisdom is humbled; and that the slaves of sin are seen riding on horseback, while men dedicated to God walk on foot in dishonour, the wicked exulting the while. But if any one devises another’s hurt, he forgets that he is preparing a snare for himself first and alone. And he who wrecks another’s safety, shall fall by the bite of a serpent. But he who removeth stones, indeed shall undergo no light labour;64 and be who cleaveth wood shall bear danger with him in his own weapon. And if it chance that the axe spring out of the handle,65 he who engages in such work shall be put to trouble, gathering for no good66 and having to put to more of his iniquitous and shortlived strength.67 The bite of a serpent, again, is stealthy; and the charmers will not soothe the pain, for they are vain. But the good man doeth good works for himself and for his neighbours alike; while the fool shall sink into destruction through his folly. And when he has once opened his mouth, he begins foolishly and soon comes to an end, exhibiting his senselessness in all. Moreover, it is impossible for man to know anything, or to learn from man either what has been from the beginning, or what shall be in the future. For who shall be the declarer thereof? Besides, the man who knows not to go to the good city, sustains evil in the eyes and in the whole countenance. And I prophesy woes to that city the king of which is a youth, and its rulers gluttons. But I call the good land blessed, the king of which is the son of the free: there those who are entrusted with the power of ruling shall reap what is good in due season. But the sluggard and the idler become scoffers, and make the house decay; and misusing all things for the purposes of their own gluttony, like the ready slaves of money,68 for a small price they are content to do all that is base and abject. It is also right to obey kings and rulers or potentates, and not to be bitter against them, nor to utter any offensive word against them. For there is ever the risk that what has been spoken in secret may somehow become public. For swift and winged messengers convey all things to Him who alone is King both rich and mighty, discharging therein a service which is at once spiritual and reasonable.

Chap. XI.

Moreover, it is a righteous thing to give (to the needy) of thy bread, and of those things which are necessary for the support of man’s life. For though thou seemest forthwith to waste it upon some persons, as if thou didst cast thy bread upon the water, yet in the progress of time thy kindness shall be seen to be not unprofitable for thee. Also give liberally, and give a portion of thy means to many; for thou knowest not what the coming day doeth. The clouds, again, do not keep back their plenteous rains, but discharge their showers upon the earth. Nor does a tree stand for ever; but even though men may spare it, it shall be overturned by the wind at any rate. But many desire also to know beforehand what is to come from the heavens; and there have been those who, scrutinizing the clouds and waiting for the wind, have had nought to do with reaping and winnowing, putting their trust in vanity, and being all incapable of knowing aught of what may come from God in the future; just as men cannot tell what the woman with child shall bring forth. But sow thou in season, and thus reap thy fruits whenever the time for that comes on. For it is not manifest what shall be better than those among all natural things.69 Would, indeed, that all things turned out well! Truly, when a man considers with himself that the sun is good, and that this life is sweet, and that it is a pleasant thing to have many years wherein one can delight himself continually, and that death is a terror and an endless evil, and a thing that brings us to nought, he thinks that he ought to enjoy himself in all the present and apparent pleasures of life. And he gives this counsel also to the young, that they should use to the uttermost70 the season of their youth, by giving up their minds to all manner of pleasure, and indulge their passions, and do all that seemeth good in their own eyes, and look upon that which delighteth, and avert themselves from that which is not so. But to such a man I shall say this much: Senseless art thou, my friend, in that thou dost not look for the judgment that shall come from God upon all these things. And profligacy and licentiousness are evil, and the filthy wantonness of our bodies carries death in it. For folly attends on youth, and folly leads to destruction.

Chap. XII.

Moreover, it is right that thou shouldest fear God while thou art yet young, before thou givest thyself over to evil things, and before the great and terrible day of God cometh, when the sun shall no longer shine, neither the moon, nor the rest of the stars, but when in that storm and commotion of all things, the powers above shall be moved, that is, the angels who guard the world; so that the mighty men shall fail, and the women shall cease their labours, and shall flee into the dark places of their dwellings, and shall have all the doors shut. And a woman shall be restrained from grinding by fear, and shall speak with the weakest voice, like the tiniest bird; and all the impure women shall sink into the earth; and cities and their blood-stained governments shall wait for the vengeance that comes from above, while the most bitter and bloody of all times hangs over them like a blossoming almond, and continuous punishments impend like a multitude of flying locusts, and the transgressors are cast out of the way like a black and despicable caper-plant. And the good man shall depart with rejoicing to his own everlasting habitation; but the vile shall fill all their places with wailing, and neither silver laid up in store, nor proved gold, shall be of use any more. For a mighty stroke71 shall fall upon all things, even to the pitcher that standeth by the well, and the wheel of the vessel which may chance to have been left in the hollow, when the course of time comes to its end72 and the ablution-bearing period of a life that is like water has passed away.73 And for men who lie on earth there is but one salvation, that their souls acknowledge and wing their way to Him by whom they have been made. I say, then, again what I have said already, that man’s estate is altogether vain, and that nothing can exceed the utter vanity which attaches to the objects of man’s inventions. And superfluous is my labour in preaching discreetly, inasmuch as I am attempting to instruct a people here, so indisposed to receive either teaching or healing. And truly the noble man is needed for the understanding of the words of wisdom. Moreover, I, though already aged, and having passed a long life, laboured to find out those things which are well-pleasing to God, by means of the mysteries of the truth. And I know that the mind is no less quickened and stimulated by the precepts of the wise, than the body is wont to be when the goad is applied, or a nail is fastened in it.74 And some will render again those wise lessons which they have received from one good pastor and teacher, as if all with one mouth and in mutual concord set forth in larger detail the truths committed to them. But in many words there is no profit. Neither do I counsel thee, my friend, to write down vain things about what is fitting,75 from which there in nothing to be gained but weary labour. But, in fine, I shall require to use some such conclusion as this: O men, behold, I charge you now expressly and shortly, that ye fear God, who is at once the Lord and the Overseer76 of all, and that ye keep also His commandments; and that ye believe that all shall be judged severally in the future, and that every man shall receive the just recompense for his deeds, whether they be good or whether they be evil.77 

FOOTNOTES

1 Gallandi, Biblioth. Vet. Patr., iii. 387.

2 [The wise benevolence of our author is more apparent than his critical skill. No book more likely to puzzle a pagan inquirer than this: so the metaphrase gives it meaning and consistency; but, over and over again, not Solomon’s meaning, I am persuaded.]

3 τὰ πνεύματα, for which some propose ῥεύματα, streams, as the ἄνεμοι are mentioned in their own place immediately.

4 νῦν ἐκκλησιάζων.

5 ποικιλωτάτην.

6 ἀτοπία.

7 The text is, τυφλός τε ὤν τὴν πρόσοψιν καὶ ὑπὸ τοῦ σκότους τῶν πραγμάτων ἀφηρημένος, for which it is proposed to read, τυφλός τε ὤν καὶ τὴν πρόσοψιν ὑπὸ τοῦ σκότους, etc.

8 Or, as the Latin version puts it: And, in fine, when I considered the difference between these modes of life, I found nothing but that, by setting myself, etc.

9 ἀνδρείας.

10 The text reads ἐναντιωτήτων, for which Codex Anglicus has ὲναντιωτάτων.

11 Or, age.

12 πλάσμα.

13 Or, Him.

14 The Greek text is, καιροσκόπος δή τις πονηρὸς τὸν αἰῶνα τοῦτον περικεχηνεν, ἀφανίσαι ὑπερδιατελινόμενος τὸ τοῦ Θεοῦ πλάσμα, ἐξ ἀπχῆς αὐτῷ μεχρι τέλους πολεμεῖν ἡρημένος. It is well to notice how widely this differs from our version of Ecc_3:11: “He hath made everything beautiful in his time,” etc.

15 The text is, ᾦ τινι οὖν, αλλ ̓ ἔστιν, ἐκεΐνα φοβερά τε ὁμοῦ καὶ θαυμαστά.

16 σύστασιν.

17 [The key to the interpretation of this book, as to much of the book of Job, is found in the brief expostulation of Jeremiah (Jer_12:1), where he confesses his inability to comprehend the world and God’s ways therein, yet utters a profession of unshaken confidence in His goodness. Here Solomon, in monologue, gives vent to similar misgivings; overruling all in the wonderful ode with which the book concludes. I say Solomon, not unadvisedly.]

18 τυκοφαντιων.

19 The text is, βίᾳ καταβεβλημένοι τῶν ἐπαμυνόντων ἢ ολως παραπμυθησομένων αὐτοὺς πάσης πανταχόθεν κατεχούσης ἀπορίας. The sense is not clear. It may be: who are struck down in spite of those who protect them, and who should by all means comfort them when all manner of trouble presses them on all sides.

20 χειροδικαι.

21 Following the reading of Cod. Medic., which puts τιθέμενος for τιθέμενον. [See Cyprian, vol. 5. p. 493, note 229, this series.]

22 προτροπάδην.

23 χρηματίσασθαι.

24 κοινωνίαν αμα βίου ἐστείλαντο.

25 άνακτησομένου.

26 The text is, καὶ νύκτωρ σεμνότητι σεμνύνεσθαι, for which certain codices read σεμνότητι φαιδρύνεσθαι, and others φαιδρότητι σεμνυνεσθαι.

27 Jerome cites the passage in his Commentary on Ecclesiastes [iv.12].

28 Τοὺς οσοι προγενέστεροι. The sense is incomplete, and some words seem missing in the text. Jerome, in rendering this passage in his Commentary on Ecclesiastes, turns it thus: ita autem ut sub sene rege versati sint; either having lighted on a better manuscript, or adding something of his own authority to make out the meaning.

29 δία τὸ ἑτέρου ἀπειράτως ἔχειν.

30 εὐσταθούση.

31 ἐν τῇ περὶ λόγους σπουδῇ.

32 ἀνδρείους.

33 καθορᾶν.

34 ἁρπακτικά in the text, for which the Cod. Medic. has ἁρπακτά.

35 ἐνθυμαούμενος.

36 θάνατον πεῖραν οὐ λαβών, for which we must read probably θανάτου, etc.

37 The text gives, ἤπερ τῷ πονηρῷ … ἀναμετρησαμένῳ ἀγαθοτητα μὴ ἐπιγνῳ, for which we may read either ἤπερ τῷ πονηρῷ … ἀναμετρησάμενος, or better, … ἀναμετρησαμένῳ … ἐπιγνῶναι.

38 ἐξίστησι.

39 τοῦ ὀφθῆναι.

40 κατορθοῦται.

41 Calumny, συκοφαντία.

42 ἔνστασιν.

43 λόγων δέ, etc. But Cod. Medic. reads λόγον δέ, etc., = it is right to commend a speech not in its beginning, but in its end.

44 φανερωτέρα, for which φανοτέρα is proposed.

45 περιγιγνεται.

46 ὑπείκων.

47 αὐτήκοος.

48 ομοιος.

49 The text is evidently corrupt: for τὴν γυναῖκα, γῆν τινά, etc., Cotelerius proposes, τὴν γυναῖκα, σαγήνην τινά, etc., and Bengel, πάγην τινά, etc.

50 κατέχει ἢ εἰ. This use of ἢ εἰ is characteristic of Gregory Thaumaturgus. We find it again in his Panegyr. ad Orig., Ecc_6:1-12, ἢ εἰ και παρὰ πάντας, etc. It may be added, therefore, to the proofs in support of a common authorship for these two writings.

51 ἐπόπτην.

52 σωφροσύνην.

53 [Our English version gives no such idea, nor does that of the LXX. The σωφροσύνη of our author is discretion, or perhaps entire balance of mind. Wordsworth gives us the thought better in his verse: “A perfect woman, nobly planned.” It was not in Judaism to give woman her place: the Magnificat of the Virgin celebrated the restoration of her sex.]

54 Upright, ἁπλοῖ.

55 ἐπισπῶνται.

56 λίαν.

57 ψυχήν.

58 πρόνοια.

59 ιλασκομενου.

60 The text gives, κἀκείνην δὲ ματαίως, etc.

61 κἂν πολλοῖς καταφρόνητος ᾖ; so the Cod. Bodleian. and the Cod. Medic. read. But others read πολύ = an object of great contempt. For καταφρόνητος the Cod. Medic. reads εὐκαταφρόνητος.

62 The text gives χρίσιν, for which Cod. Medic. reads χρῆσιν, use.

63 ἱλάσασθαι.

64 Reading ἀλλὰ μήν for ἀλλὰ μή.

65 στελεοῦ, for which others read στελέχους.

66 οὐκ ἐπ ̓ ἀγαθῷ συγκομίζων.

67 ἐπαύξων αὐτὸς τὴν ἑαυτοῦ ἄδικον καὶ ὠκύμορον δύναμιν.

68 ἀπγυρίῳ ἀγώγιμοι.

69 ὁποῖα αὐτῶν ἔσται ἀμείνω τῶν φυέντων, perhaps = which of those natural productions shall be the better.

70 καταχρῆσθαι.

71 καθέξει πληγή. Oecolampadius renders it, magnus enim fons, evidently reading πηγή.

72 The text is, ἐν τῷ κοιλώματι πανσαμένης χρόνον τε περιδρομῆς, for which we may read, ἐν τῷ κοιλώματι, παυσαμενῆς χρόνων τε περιδρομῆς. Others apparently propose for παυσαμενῆς, δεξαμενῆς = at the hollow of the cistern.

73 The text is, καὶ τῆς δι ̓ υδατος ζωῆς παροδεύσαντος τοῦ λουτροφόρου αἰῶνος. Billius understands the age to be called λουτροφόρου, because, as long as we are in life, it is possible to obtain remission for any sin, or as referring to the rite of baptism.

74 ηλῳ ἐμπερονηθέντα. The Septuagint reads λόγοι σοφῶν ὡς τὰ βούκεντρα καὶ ὡς ἧλοι πεφυτευμένοι, like nails planted, etc. Others read πεπυρωμένοι, igniti. The Vulg. has, quasi clavi in altum defixi.

75 περὶ τὸ προσῆκον, for which some read, παρὰ τὸ προσῆκον, beyond or contrary to what is fitting.

76 ἐπόπτης.

77 [The incomparable beauty of our English version of this twelfth chapter of Koheleth is heightened not a little by comparison with this turgid metaphrase. It fails, in almost every instance, to extract the kernel of the successive στίχοι of this superlatively poetic and didactic threnode. It must have been a youthful work.]

Canonical Epistle.1

Canon I.

The meats are no burden to us, most holy father, ([Elucidation III. p. 20.]) if the captives ate things which their conquerors set before them, especially since there is one report from all, viz., that the barbarians who have made inroads into our parts have not sacrificed to idols. For the apostle says, “Meats for the belly, and the belly for meats: but God shall destroy both it and them.” (1Co_6:13) But the Saviour also, who cleanseth all meats, says, “Not that which goeth into a man defileth the man, but that which cometh out.” (Mat_15:11) And this meets the case of the captive women defiled by the barbarians, who outraged their bodies. But if the previous life of any such person convicted him of going, as it is written, after the eyes of fornicators, the habit of fornication evidently becomes an object of suspicion also in the time of captivity. And one ought not readily to have communion with such women in prayers. If any one, however, has lived in the utmost chastity, and has shown in time past a manner of life pure and free from all suspicion, and now falls into wantonness through force of necessity, we have an example for our guidance, – namely, the instance of the damsel in Deuteronomy, whom a man finds in the field, and forces her and lies with her. “Unto the damsel,” he says, “ye shall do nothing; there is in the damsel no sin worthy of death: for as when a man riseth against his neighbour, and slayeth him, even so is this matter: the damsel cried, and there was none to help her.” (Deu_22:26, Deu_22:27)

Canon II.

Covetousness is a great evil; and it is not possible in a single letter to set forth those scriptures in which not robbery alone is declared to be a thing horrible and to be abhorred, but in general the grasping mind, and the disposition to meddle with what belongs to others, in order to satisfy the sordid love of gain. And all persons of that spirit are excommunicated from the Church of God. But that at the time of the irruption, in the midst of such woful sorrows and bitter lamentations, some should have been audacious enough to consider the crisis which brought destruction to all the very period for their own private aggrandizement, that is a thing which can be averred only of men who are impious and hated of God, and of unsurpassable iniquity. Wherefore it seemed good to excommunicate such persons, lest the wrath (of God) should come upon the whole people, and upon those first of all who are set over them in office, and yet fail to make inquiry. For I am afraid, as the Scripture says, lest the impious work the destruction of the righteous along with his own. (Gen_18:23, Gen_18:25) “For fornication,” it says, (Eph_5:5-13) “and covetousness are things on account of which the wrath of God cometh upon the children of disobedience. Be not ye therefore partakers with them. For ye were sometimes darkness, but now are ye light in the Lord: walk as children of light (for the fruit of the light2 is in all goodness, and righteousness, and truth), proving what is acceptable unto the Lord. And have no fellowship with the unfruitful works of darkness, but rather reprove them; for it is a shame even to speak of those things which are done of them in secret. But all things that are reproved are made manifest by the light.” In this wise speaks the apostle. But if certain parties who pay the proper penalty for that former covetousness of theirs, which exhibited itself in the time of peace, now turn aside again to the indulgence of covetousness in the very time of trouble (i.e., in the troubles of the inroads by the barbarians), and make gain out of the blood and ruin of men who have been utterly despoiled, or taken captive, (or) put to death, what else ought to be expected, than that those who struggle so hotly for covetousness should heap up wrath both for themselves and for the Whole people? 

Canon III.

Behold, did not Achar (Jos_7:1-26) the son of Zata transgress in the accursed thing, and trouble then lighted on all the congregation of Israel? And this one man was alone in his sin; but he was not alone in the death that came by his sin. And by us, too, everything of a gainful kind at this time, which is ours not in our own rightful possession, but as property strictly belonging to others, ought to be reckoned a thing devoted. For that Achar indeed took of the spoil; and those men of the present time take also of the spoil. But he took what belonged to enemies; while these now take what belongs to brethren, and aggrandize themselves with fatal gains.

Canon IV.

Let no one deceive himself, nor put forward the pretext of having found such property. For it is not lawful, even for a man who has found anything, to aggrandize himself by it. For Deuteronomy says: “Thou shalt not see thy brother’s ox or his sheep go astray in the way, and pay no heed to them; but thou shalt in any wise bring them again unto thy brother. And if thy brother come not nigh thee, or if thou know him not, then thou shalt bring them together, and they shall be with thee until thy brother seek after them, and thou shalt restore them to him again. And in like manner shalt thou do with his ass, and so shalt thou do with his raiment, and so shalt thou do with all lost things of thy brother’s, which he hath lost, and thou mayest find.” (Deu_22:1-3) Thus much in Deuteronomy. And in the book of Exodus it is said, with reference not only to the case of finding what is a friend’s, but also of finding what is an enemy’s: “Thou shalt surely bring them back to the house of their master again.” (Exo_23:4) And if it is not lawful to aggrandize oneself at the expense of another, whether he be brother or enemy, even in the time of peace, when he is living at his ease and delicately, and without concern as to his property, how much more must it be the case when one is met by adversity, and is fleeing from his enemies, and has had to abandon his possessions by force of circumstances!

Canon V.

But others deceive themselves by fancying that they can retain the property of others which they may have found as an equivalent for their own property which they have lost. In this way verily, just as the Boradi and Goths brought the havoc of war on them, they make themselves Boradi and Goths to others. Accordingly we have sent to you our brother and comrade in old age, Euphrosynus, with this view, that he may deal with you in accordance with our model here, and teach you against whom you ought to admit accusations,3 and whom you ought to exclude from your prayers.

Canon VI.4

Moreover, it has been reported to us that a thing has happened in your country which is surely incredible, and which, if done at all, is altogether the work of unbelievers, and impious men, and men who know not the very name of the Lord; to wit, that some have gone to such a pitch of cruelty and inhumanity, as to be detaining by force certain captives who have made their escape. Dispatch ye commissioners into the country, lest the thunderbolts of heaven fall all too surely upon those who perpetrate such deeds.

Canon VII.5

Now, as regards those who have been enrolled among the barbarians, and have accompanied them in their irruption in a state of captivity, and who, forgetting that they were from Pontus, and Christians, have become such thorough barbarians, as even to put those of their own race to death by the gibbet6 or strangulation, and to show their roads or houses to the barbarians, who else would have been ignorant of them, it is necessary for you to debar such persons even from being auditors in the public congregations,7 until some common decision about them is come to by the saints assembled in council, and by the Holy Spirit antecedently to them.

Canon VIII.8

Now those who have been so audacious as to invade the houses of others, if they have once been put on their trial and convicted, ought not to be deemed fit even to be hearers in the public congregation. But if they have declared themselves and made restitution, they should be placed in the rank of the repentant.9

Canon IX.10

Now, those who have found in the open field or in their own houses anything left behind them by the barbarians, if they have once been put on their trial and convicted, ought to fall under the same class of the repentant. But if they have declared themselves and made restitution, they ought to be deemed fit for the privilege of prayer.11

Canon X.

And they who keep the commandment ought to keep it without any sordid covetousness, demanding neither recompense,12 nor reward,13 nor fee,14 nor anything else that bears the name of acknowledgment.

Canon XI.15

Weeping16 takes place without the gate of the oratory; and the offender standing there ought to implore the faithful as they enter to offer up prayer on his behalf. Waiting on the word,17 again, takes place within the gate in the porch,18 where the offender ought to stand until the catechumens depart, and thereafter he should go forth. For let him hear the Scriptures and doctrine, it is said, and then be put forth, and reckoned unfit for the privilege of prayer. Submission,19 again, is that one stand within the gate of the temple, and go forth along with the catechumens. Restoration20 is that one be associated with the faithful, and go not forth with the catechumens; and last of all comes the participation in the holy ordinances.21

Elucidations.

I

(The title)

This is a genuine epistle, all but the eleventh canon. It is addressed to an anonymous bishop; one of his suffragans, some think. I suppose, rather, he consults, as Cyprian did, the bishop of the nearest Apostolic See, and awaits his concurrence. It refers to the ravages of the Goths in the days of Gallienus (A.D. 259-267), and proves the care of the Church to maintain discipline, even in times most unfavourable to order and piety. The last canon is an explanatory addition made to elucidate the four degrees or classes of penitents. It is a very interesting document in this respect, and sheds light on the famous canonical epistles of St. Basil.

II.

(Basil the Great, note.)

The “Canonical Epistles” of St. Basil are not private letters, but canons of the churches with which he was nearest related. When there was no art of printing, the chief bishops were obliged to communicate with suffragans, and with their brethren in the Apostolic See nearest to them. See them expounded at large in Dupin, Ecclesiastical Writers of the Fourth Century, Works, vol. i., London, 1693 (translated), p. 139, etc.

III.

(Most holy father)

This expression leads me to think that this epistle is addressed to the Bishop of Antioch or of some other Apostolic See. It must not be taken as a prescribed formula, however, as when we say “Most Reverend” in our days; e.g., addressing the Archbishop of Canterbury. Rather, it is an expression of personal reverence. As yet, titular distinctions, such as these, were not known. In the West existing usages seem to have been introduced with the Carlovingian system of dignities, expounded by Gibbon. 

FOOTNOTES

1 Of the holy Gregory, archbishop of Neo-Caesareia, surnamed Thaumaturgus, concerning those who, in the inroad of the barbarians, ate things sacrificed to idols, or offended in certain other matters. Gallandi iii. p. 400 [Written A.D. 258 or 262.] There are scholia in Latin by Theodorus Balsamon and Joannes Zonaras on these canons. The note of the former on the last canon may be cited: – The present saint has defined shortly five several positions for the penitent; but he has not indicated either the times appointed for their exercise, or the sins for which discipline is determined. Basil the Great, again, has handed down to us an accurate account of these things in his canonical epistles. [Elucidation II.] Yet he, too, has referred to episcopal decision the matter of recovery through penalties [i.e., to the decision of his comprovincial bishops, as in Cyprian’s example.] See vol. 5. p. 415, Elucidation XIII.; also Elucidation I. p. 20, infra.

2 τοῦ φωτός for the received πνεύματος.

3 ὧν δεῖ τὰς κατηγορίας προσίεσθαι.

4 Concerning those who forcibly detain captives escaped from the barbarians.

5 Concerning those who have been enrolled among the barbarians, and who have dared to do certain monstrous things against those of the same race with themselves.

6 ξυλῳ.

7 ακροάσεως.

8 Concerning those who have been so audacious as to invade the houses of others in the inroad of the barbarians.

9 τῶν ὑποστρεφόντων.

10 Concerning those who have found in the open field or in private houses property left behind them by the barbarians.

11 [Partially elucidated below in (the spurious) Canon XI. See Marshall’s Penitential Discipline of the Primitive Church.]

12 μηνυτρα, the price of information.

13 σῶστρα, the reward for bringing back a runaway slave.

14 εὔρετρα, the reward of discovery.

15 [This canon is rejected as spurious. Lardner, Credib., ii. p. 633.]

16 πρόσκλαυσις, discipline.

17 ἀκρόασις.

18 ἐν τῷ νάρθηκι.

19 ὑπόπτωσις.

20 συστασις.

21 ἁγιασμάτων.

The Oration and Panegyric Addressed to Origen.1

Argument I. – For Eight Years Gregory Has Given up the Practice of Oratory, Being Busied with the Study Chiefly of Roman Law and the Latin Language.

An excellent2 thing has silence proved itself in many another person on many an occasion, and at present it befits myself, too, most especially, who with or without purpose may keep the door of my lips, and feel constrained to be silent. For I am unpractised and unskilled3 in those beautiful and elegant addresses which are spoken or composed in a regular and unbroken4 train, in select and well-chosen phrases and words; and it may be that I am less apt by nature to cultivate successfully this graceful and truly Grecian art. Besides, it is now eight years since I chanced myself to utter or compose any speech, whether long or short; neither in that period have I heard any other compose or utter anything in private, or deliver in public any laudatory or controversial orations, with the exception of those admirable men who have embraced the noble study of philosophy, and who care less for beauty of language and elegance of expression. For, attaching only a secondary importance to the words, they aim, with all exactness, at investigating and making known the things themselves, precisely as they are severally constituted. Not indeed, in my opinion, that they: do not desire, but rather that they do greatly desire, to clothe the noble and accurate results of their thinking in noble and comely5 language. Yet it may be that they are not able so lightly to put forth this sacred and godlike power (faculty) in the exercise of its own proper conceptions, and at the same time to practise a mode of discourse eloquent in its terms, and thus to comprehend in one and the same mind – and that, too, this little mind of man – two accomplishments, which are the gifts of two distinct persons, and which are, in truth, most contrary to each other. For silence is indeed the friend and helpmeet of thought and invention. But if one aims at readiness of speech and beauty of discourse, he will get at them by no other discipline than the study of words, and their constant practice. Moreover, another branch of learning occupies my mind completely, and the mouth binds the tongue if I should desire to make any speech, however brief, with the voice of the Greeks; I refer to those admirable laws of our sages6 by which the affairs of all the subjects of the Roman Empire are now directed, and which are neither composed7 nor learnt without difficulty. And these are wise and exact8 in themselves, and manifold and admirable, and, in a word, most thoroughly Grecian; and they are expressed and committed to us in the Roman tongue, which is a wonderful and magnificent sort of language, and one very aptly conformable to royal authority,9 but still difficult to me. Nor could it be otherwise with me, even though I might say that it was my desire that it should be.10 And as our words are nothing else than a kind of imagery of the dispositions of our mind, we should allow those who have the gift of speech, like some good artists alike skilled to the utmost in their art and liberally furnished in the matter of colours, to possess the liberty of painting their word-pictures, not simply of a uniform complexion, but also of various descriptions and of richest beauty in the abundant mixture of flowers, without let or hindrance. 

Argument II. – He Essays to Speak of the Well-Nigh Divine Endowments of Origen in His Presence, into Whose Hands He Avows Himself to Have Been Led in a Way Beyond All His Expectation.

But we, like any of the poor, unfurnished with these varied specifics11 – whether as never having been possessed of them, or, it may be, as having lost them – are under the necessity of using, as it were, only charcoal and tiles, that is to say, those rude and common words and phrases; and by means of these, to the best of our ability, we represent the native dispositions of our mind, expressing them in such language as is at our service, and endeavouring to exhibit the impressions of the figures12 of our mind, if not clearly or ornately, yet at least with the faithfulness of a charcoal picture, welcoming gladly any graceful and eloquent expression which may present itself from any quarter, although we make little of such.13 But, furthermore,14 there is a third circumstance which hinders and dissuades me from this attempt, and which holds me back much more even than the others, and recommends me to keep silence by all means, – I allude to the subject itself, which made me indeed ambitious to speak of it, but which now makes me draw balk and delay. For it is my purpose to speak of one who has indeed the semblance and repute of being a man, but who seems, to those who are able to contemplate the greatness of his intellectual calibre,15 to be endowed with powers nobler and well-nigh divine.16 And it is not his birth or bodily training that I am about to praise, and that makes me now delay and procrastinate with an excess of caution. Nor, again, is it his strength or beauty; for these form the eulogies of youths, of which it matters little whether the utterance be worthy or not.17 For, to make an oration on matters of a temporary and fugitive nature, which perish in many various ways and quickly, and to discourse of these with all the grandeur and dignity of great affairs, and with such timorous delays, would seem a vain and futile procedure.18 And certainly, if it had been proposed to me to speak of any of those things which are useless and unsubstantial, and such as I should never voluntarily have thought of speaking of, – if, I say, it had been proposed to me to speak of anything of that character, my speech would have had none of this caution or fear, lest in any statement I might seem to come beneath the merit of the subject. But now, my subject dealing with that which is most godlike in the man, and that in him which has most affinity with God, that which is indeed confined within the limits of this visible and mortal form, but which strains nevertheless most ardently after the likeness of God; and my object being to make mention of this, and to put my hand to weightier matters, and therein also to express my thanksgivings to the Godhead, in that it has been granted to me to meet with such a man beyond the expectation of men, – the expectation, verily, not only of others, but also of my own heart, for I neither set such a privilege before me at any time, nor hoped for it; it being, I say, my object, insignificant and altogether without understanding as I am, to put my hand to such subjects, it is not without reason19 that I shrink from the task, and hesitate, and desire to keep silence. And, in truth, to keep silence seems to the to be also the safe course, lest, with the show of an expression of thanksgiving, I may chance, in my rashness, to discourse of noble and sacred subjects in terms ignoble and paltry and utterly trite, and thus not only miss attaining the truth, but even, so far as it depends on me, do it some injury with those who may believe that it stands in such a category, when a discourse which is weak is composed thereon, and is rather calculated to excite ridicule than to prove itself commensurate in its vigour with the dignity of its themes. But all that pertains to thee is beyond the touch of injury and ridicule, O dear soul; or, much rather let me say, that the divine herein remains ever as it is, unmoved and harmed in nothing by our paltry and unworthy words. Yet I know not how we shall escape the imputation of boldness and rashness in thus attempting in our folly, and with little either of intelligence or of preparation, to handle matters which are weighty, and probably beyond our capacity. And if, indeed, elsewhere and with others, we had aspired to make such youthful endeavours in matters like these, we would surely have been bold and daring; nevertheless in such a case our rashness might not have been ascribed to shamelessness, in so far as we should not have been making the bold effort with thee. But now we shall be filling out the whole measure of senselessness, or rather indeed we have already filled it out, in venturing with unwashed feet (as the saying goes) to introduce ourselves to ears into which the Divine Word Himself – not indeed with covered feet, as is the case with the general mass of men, and, as it were, under the thick coverings of enigmatical and obscure20 sayings, but with unsandalled feet (if one may so speak) – has made His way clearly and perspicuously, and in which He now sojourns; while we, who have but refuse and mud to offer in these human words of ours, have been bold enough to pour them into ears which are practised in hearing only words that are divine and pure. It might indeed suffice us, therefore, to have transgressed thus far; and now, at least, it might be but right to restrain ourselves, and to advance no further, with our discourse. And verily I would stop here most gladly. Nevertheless, as I have once made the rash venture, it may be allowed me first of all to explain the reason under the force of which I have been led into this arduous enterprise, if indeed any pardon can be extended to me for my forwardness in this matter.

Argument III. – He Is Stimulated to Speak of Him by the Longing of a Grateful Mind. To the Utmost of His Ability He Thinks He Ought to Thank Him. From God Are the Beginnings of All Blessings; and to Him Adequate Thanks Cannot Be Returned.

Ingratitude appears to me to be a dire evil; a dire evil indeed, yea, the direst of evils. For when one has received some benefit, his failing to attempt to make any return by at least the oral expression of thanks, where aught else is beyond his power, marks him out either as an utterly irrational person, or as one devoid of the sense of obligations conferred, or as a man without any memory. And, again, though21 one is possessed naturally and at once by the sense and the knowledge of benefits received, yet, unless he also carries the memory of these obligations to future days, and offers some evidence of gratitude to the author of the boons, such a person is a dull, and ungrateful, and impious fellow; and he commits an offence which can be excused neither in the case of the great nor in that of the small: – if we suppose the case of a great, and high-minded man not bearing constantly on his lips his great benefits with all gratitude and honour, or that of a small and contemptible man not praising and lauding with all his might one who has been his benefactor, not simply in great services, but also in smaller. Upon the great, therefore, and those who excel in powers of mind, it is incumbent, as out of their greater abundance and larger wealth, to render greater and worthier praise, according to their capacity, to their benefactors. But the humble also, and those in narrow circumstances, it beseems neither to neglect those who do them service, nor to take their services carelessly, nor to flag in heart as if they could offer nothing worthy or perfect; but as poor indeed, and yet as of good feeling, and as measuring not the capacity of him whom they honour, but only their own, they ought to pay him honour according to the present measure of their power, – a tribute which will probably be grateful and pleasant to him who is honoured, and in no less consideration with him than it would have been had it been some great and splendid offering, if it is only presented with decided earnestness, and with a sincere mind. Thus is it laid down in the sacred writings, (Luk_21:2) that a certain poor and lowly woman, who was with the rich and powerful that were contributing largely and richly out of their wealth, alone and by herself cast in a small, yea, the very smallest offering, which was, however, all the while her whole substance, and received the testimony of having presented the largest oblation. For, as I judge, the sacred word has not set up the large outward quantity of the substance given, but rather the mind and disposition of the giver, as the standard by which the worth and the magnificence of the offering are to be measured. Wherefore it is not meet even for us by any means to shrink from this duty, through the fear that our thanksgivings be not adequate to our obligations; but, on the contrary, we ought to venture and attempt everything, so as to offer thanksgivings, if not adequate, at least such as we have it in our power to exhibit, as in due return. And would that our discourse, even though it comes short of the perfect measure, might at least reach the mark in some degree, and be saved from all appearance of ingratitude! For a persistent silence, maintained under the plausible cover of an inability to say anything worthy of the subject, is a vain and evil thing; but it is the mark of a good disposition always to make the attempt at a suitable return, even although the power of the person who offers the grateful acknowledgment be inferior to the desert of the subject. For my part, even although I am unable to speak as the matter merits, I shall not keep silence; but when I have done all that I possibly can, then I may congratulate myself. Be this, then, the method of my eucharistic discourse. To God, indeed, the God of the universe, I shall not think of speaking in such terms: yet is it from Him that all the beginnings of our blessings come; and with Him consequently is it that the beginning of our thanksgivings, or praises, or laudations, ought to be made. But, in truth, not even though I were to devote myself wholly to that duty, and that, too, not as I now am – to wit, profane and impure, and mixed up with and stained by every unhallowed22 and polluting evil – but sincere and as pure as pure may be, and most genuine, and most unsophisticated, and uncontaminated by anything vile; – not even, I say, though I were thus to devote myself wholly, and with all the purity of the newly born, to this task, should I produce of myself any suitable gift in the way of honour and acknowledgment to the Ruler and Originator of all things, whom neither men separately and individually, nor yet all men in concert, acting with one spirit and one concordant impulse, as though all that is pure were made to meet in one, and all that is diverse from that were turned also to that service, could ever celebrate in a manner worthy of Him. For, in whatsoever measure any man is able to form right and adequate conceptions of His works, and (if such a thing were possible) to speak worthily regarding Him, then, so far as that very capacity is concerned, – a capacity with which he has not been gifted by any other one, but which he has received from Him alone, he cannot possibly find any greater matter of thanksgiving than what is implied in its possession.

Argument IV. – The Son Alone Knows How to Praise the Father Worthily. In Christ and by Christ Our Thanksgiving Sought to Be Rendered to the Father. Gregory also Gives Thanks to His Guardian Angel, Because He Was Conducted by Him to Origen.

But let us commit the praises and hymns in honour of the King and Superintendent of all things, the perennial Fount of all blessings, to the hand of Him who, in this matter as in all others, is the Healer of our infirmity, and who[ alone is able to supply that which is lacking; to the Champion and Saviour of our souls, His first-born Word, the Maker and Ruler of all things, with whom also alone it is possible, both for Himself and for all, whether privately and individually, or publicly and collectively, to send up to the Father uninterrupted and ceaseless thanksgivings. For as He is Himself the Truth, and the Wisdom, and the Power of the Father of the universe, and He is besides in Him, and is truly and entirely made one with Him, it cannot be that, either through forgetfulness or unwisdom, or any manner of infirmity, such as marks one dissociated from Him, He shall either fail in the power to praise Him, or, while having the power, shall willingly neglect (a supposition which it is not lawful, surely, to indulge) to praise the Father. For He alone is able most perfectly to fulfil the whole meed of honour which is proper to Him, inasmuch as the Father of all things has made Him one with Himself, and through Him all but completes the circle of His own being objectively,23 and honours Him with a power in all respects equal to His own, even as also He is honoured; which position He first and alone of all creatures that exist has had assigned Him, this Only-begotten of the Father, who is in Him, and who is God the Word; while all others of us are able to express our thanksgiving and our piety only if, in return for all the blessings which proceed to us from the Father, we bring our offerings in simple dependence on Him alone, and thus present the meet oblation of thanksgiving to Him who is the Author of all things, acknowledging also that the only way of piety is in this manner to offer our memorials through Him. Wherefore, in acknowledgment of that ceaseless providence which watches over all of us, alike in the greatest and in the smallest concerns, and which has been sustained even thus far, let this Word24 be accepted as the worthy and perpetual expression for all thanksgivings and praises, – I mean the altogether perfect and living and verily animate Word of the First Mind Himself. But let this word of ours be taken primarily as an eucharistic address in honour of this sacred personage, who stands alone among all men;25 and if I may seek to discourse26 of aught beyond this, and, in particular, of any of those beings who are not seen, but yet are more godlike, and who have a special care for men, it shall be addressed to that being who, by some momentous decision, had me allotted to him from my boyhood to rule, and rear, and train, – I mean that holy angel of God who fed me from my youth,27 as says the saint dear to God, meaning thereby his own peculiar one. Though he, indeed, as being himself illustrious, did in these terms designate some angel exalted enough to befit his own dignity (and whether it was some other one, or whether it was perchance the Angel of the Mighty Counsel Himself, the Common Saviour of all, that he received as his own peculiar guardian through his perfection, I do not clearly know), – he, I say, did recognise and praise some superior angel as his own, whosoever that was. But we, in addition to the homage we offer to the Common Ruler of all men, acknowledge and praise that being, whosoever he is, who has been the wonderful guide of our childhood, who in all other matters has been in time past my beneficent tutor and guardian. For this office of tutor and guardian is one which evidently can suit28 neither me nor any of my friends and kindred; for we are all blind, and see nothing of what is before us, so as to be able to judge of what is right and fitting; but it can suit only him who sees beforehand all that is for the good of our soul: that angel, I say, who still at this present time sustains, and instructs, and conducts me; and who, in addition to all these other benefits, has brought me into connection with this man, which, in truth, is the most important of all the services done me. And this, too, he has effected for me, although between myself and that man of whom I discourse there was no kinship of race or blood, nor any other tie, nor any relationship in neighbourhood or country whatsoever; things which are made the ground of friendship and union among the majority of men. But to speak in brief, in the exercise of a truly divine and wise forethought he brought us together, who were unknown to each other, and strangers, and foreigners, separated as thoroughly from each other as intervening nations, and mountains, and rivers can divide man from man, and thus he made good this meeting which has been full of profit to me, having, as I judge, provided beforehand this blessing for me from above from my very birth and earliest upbringing. And in what manner this has been realized it would take long to recount fully, not merely if I were to enter minutely into the whole subject, and were to attempt to omit nothing, but even if, passing many things by, I should purpose simply to mention in a summary way a few of the most important points.

Argument V. – Here Gregory Interweaves the Narrative of His Former Life. His Birth of Heathen Parents Is Stated. In the Fourteenth Year of His Age He Loses His Father. He Is Dedicated to the Study of Eloquence and Law. By a Wonderful Leading of Providence, He Is Brought to Origen.

For my earliest upbringing from the time of my birth onwards was under the hand of my parents; and the manner of life in my father’s house was one of error,29 and of a kind from which no one, I imagine, expected that we should be delivered; nor had I myself the hope, boy as I was, and without understanding, and trader a superstitious father.30 Then followed the loss of my father, and my orphanhood, which31 perchance was also the beginning of the knowledge of the truth to me. For then it was that I was brought over first to the word of salvation and truth, in what manner I cannot tell, by constraint rather than by voluntary choice. For what power of decision had I then, who was but fourteen years of age? Yet from this very time this sacred Word began somehow to visit me, just at the period when the reason common to all men attained its full function in me; yea, then for the first time did it visit me. And though I thought but little of this in that olden time, yet now at least, as I ponder it, I consider that no small token of the holy and marvellous providence exercised over me is discernible in this concurrence, which was I so distinctly marked in the matter of my years, and which provided that all those deeds of error which preceded that age might be ascribed to youth and want of understanding, and that the Holy Word might not be imparted vainly to a soul yet ungifted with the full power of reason; and which secured at the same time that when the soul now became endowed with that power, though not gifted with the divine and pure reason,32 it might not be devoid at least of that fear which is accordant with this reason, but that the human and the divine reason33 might begin to act in me at once and together, – the one giving help with a power to me at least inexplicable,34 though proper to itself, and the other receiving help. And when I reflect on this, I am filled at once with gladness and with terror, while I rejoice indeed in the leading of providence, and yet am also awed by the fear lest, after being privileged with such blessings, I should still in any way fail of the end. But indeed I know not how my discourse has dwelt so long on this matter, desirous as I am to give an account of the wonderful arrangement (of God’s providence) in the course that brought the to this man, and anxious as nevertheless I formerly was to pass with few words to the matters which follow in their order, not certainly imagining that I could render to him who thus dealt with me that tribute of praise, or gratitude, or piety which is due to him (for, were we to designate our discourse in such terms, while yet we said nothing worthy of the theme, we might seem chargeable with arrogance), but simply with the view of offering what may be called a plain narrative or confession, or whatever other humble title may be given it. It seemed good to the only one of my parents who survived to care for me – my mother, namely – that, being already under instruction in those other branches in which boys not ignobly born and nurtured are usually trained, I should attend also a teacher of public speaking, in the hope that I too should become a public speaker. And accordingly I did attend such a teacher; and those who could judge in that department then declared that I should in a short period be a public speaker. I for my own part know not how to pronounce on that, neither should I desire to do so; for there was no apparent ground for that gift then, nor was there as yet any foundation for those forces35 which were capable of bringing me to it. But that divine conductor and true curator, ever so watchful, when my friends were not thinking of such a step, and when I was not myself desirous of it, came and suggested (an extension of my studies) to one of my teachers under whose charge I had been put, with a view to instruction in the Roman tongue, not in the expectation that I was to reach the completest mastery of that tongue, but only that I might not be absolutely ignorant of it; and this person happened also to be not altogether unversed in laws. Putting the idea, therefore, into this teacher’s mind,36 he set me to learn in a thorough way the laws of the Romans by his help. And that man took up this charge zealously with me; and I, on my side, gave myself to it – more, however, to gratify the man, than as being myself an admirer of the study. And when he got me as his pupil, he began to teach me with all enthusiasm. And he said one thing, which has proved to me the truest of all his sayings, to wit, that my education in the laws would be my greatest viaticum37 – for thus he phrased it – whether I aspired to be one of the public speakers who contend in the courts of justice, or preferred to belong to a different order. Thus did he express himself, intending his word to bear simply on things human; but to me it seems that he was moved to that utterance by a diviner impulse than he himself supposed. For when, willingly or unwillingly, I was becoming well instructed in these laws, at once bonds, as it were, were cast upon my movements, and cause and occasion for my journeying to these parts arose from the city Berytus, which is a city not far distant38 from this territory, somewhat Latinized,39 and credited with being a school for these legal studies. And this revered man coming from Egypt, from the city of Alexandria, where previously he happened to have his home, was moved by other circumstances to change his residence to this place, as if with the express object of meeting us. And for my part, I cannot explain the reasons of these incidents, and I shall willingly pass them by. This however is certain, that as yet no necessary occasion for my coming to this place and meeting with this man was afforded by my purpose to learn our laws, since I had it in my power also to repair to the city of Rome itself.40 How, then, was this effected? The then governor of Palestine suddenly took possession of a friend of mine, namely my sister’s husband, and separated him from his wife, and carried him off here against his will, in order to secure his help, and have him associated with him in the labours of the government of the country; for he was a person skilled in law, and perhaps is still so employed. After he had gone with him, however, he had the good fortune in no long time to have his wife sent for, and to receive her again, from whom, against his will, and to his grievance, he had been separated. And thus he chanced also to draw us along with her to that same place. For when we were minded to travel, I know not where, but certainly to any other place rather than this, a soldier suddenly came upon the scene, bearing a letter of instructions for us to escort and protect our sister in her restoration to her husband, and to offer ourselves also as companion to her on the journey; in which we had the opportunity of doing a favour to our relative, and most of all to our sister (so that she might not have to address herself to the journey either in any unbecoming manner, or with any great fear or hesitation), while at the same tithe our other friends and connections thought well of it, and made it out to promise no slight advantage, as we could thus visit the city of Berytus, and carry out there with all diligence41 our studies in the laws. Thus all things moved me thither, – my sense of duty42 to my sister, my own studies, and over and above these, the soldier (for it is right also to mention this), who had with him a larger supply of public vehicles than the case demanded, and more cheques43 than could be required for our sister alone. These were the apparent reasons for our journey; but the secret and yet truer reasons were these, – our opportunity of fellowship with this man our instruction through that man’s means44 the truth45 concerning the Word, and the profit of our soul for its salvation. These were the real causes that brought us here, blind and ignorant, as we were, as to the way of securing our salvation. Wherefore it was not that soldier, but a certain divine companion and beneficent conductor and guardian, ever leading us in safety through the whole of this present life, as through a long journey, that carried us past other places, and Berytus in especial, which city at that time we seemed most bent on reaching, and brought us hither and settled us here, disposing and directing all things, until by any means he might bind us in a connection with this man who was to be the author of the greater part of our blessings. And he who came in such wise, that divine angel, gave over this charge46 to him, and did, if I may so speak, perchance take his rest here, not indeed under the pressure of labour or exhaustion of any kind (for the generation of those divine ministers knows no weariness), but as having committed us to the hand of a man who would fully discharge the whole work of care and guardianship within his power.

Argument VI. – The Arts by Which Origen Studies to Keep Gregory and His Brother Athenodorus with Him, Although It Was Almost Against Their Will; and the Love by Which Both Are Taken Captive. Of Philosophy, the Foundation of Piety, with the View of Giving Himself Therefore Wholly to That Study, Gregory Is Willing to Give up Fatherland, Parents, the Pursuit of Law, and Every Other Discipline. Of the Soul as the Free Principle. The Nobler Part Does Not Desire to Be United with the Inferior, but the Inferior with the Nobler.

And from the very first day of his receiving us (which day was, in truth, the first day to me, and the most precious of all days, if I may so speak, since then for the first time the true Sun began to rise upon me), while we, like some wild creatures of the fields, or like fish, or some sort of birds that had fallen into the toils or nets, and were endeavouring to slip out again and escape, were bent on leaving him, and making off for Berytus47 or our native country, he studied by all means to associate us closely with him, contriving all kinds of arguments, and putting every rope in motion (as the proverb goes), and bringing all his powers to bear on that object. With that intent he lauded the lovers of philosophy with large laudations and many noble utterances, declaring that those only live a life truly worthy of reasonable creatures who aim all living an upright life and who seek to know first of all themselves, what manner of persons they are, and then the things that are truly good, which man ought to strive after, and then the things that are really evil, from which man ought to flee. And then he reprehended ignorance and all the ignorant: and there are many such, who, like brute cattle,48 are blind in mind, and have no understanding even of what they are, and are as far astray as though they were wholly void of reason, and neither know themselves what is good and what is evil, nor care at all to learn it from others, but toil feverishly in quest of wealth, and glory, and such honours as belong to the crowd, and bodily comforts, and go distraught about things like these, as if they were the real good. And as though such objects were worth much, yea, worth all else, they prize the things themselves, and the arts by which they can acquire them, and the different lines of life which give scope for their attainment, – the military profession, to wit, and the juridical, and the study of the laws. And with earnest and sagacious words he told us that these are the objects that enervate us, when we despise that reason which ought to be the true master within us.49 I cannot recount at present all the addresses of this kind which he delivered to us, with the view of persuading us to take up the pursuit of philosophy. Nor was it only for a single day that he thus dealt with us, but for many days and, in fact, as often as we were in the habit of going to him at the outset; and we were pierced by his argumentation as with an arrow from the very first occasion of our hearing him50 (for he was possessed of a rare combination of a certain sweet grace and persuasiveness, along with a strange power of constraint), though we still wavered and debated the matter undecidedly with ourselves, holding so far by the pursuit of philosophy, without however being brought thoroughly over to it, while somehow or other we found ourselves quite unable to withdraw from it conclusively, and thus were always drawn towards him by the power of his reasonings, as by the force of some superior necessity. For he asserted further that there could be no genuine piety towards the Lord of all in the man who despised this gift of philosophy, – a gift which man alone of all the creatures of the earth has been deemed honourable and worthy enough to possess, and one which every man whatsoever, be he wise or be he ignorant, reasonably embraces, who has not utterly lost the power of thought by some mad distraction of mind. He asserted, then, as I have said, that it was not possible (to speak correctly) for any one to be truly pious who did not philosophize. And thus he continued to do with us, until, by pouring in upon us many such argumentations, one after the other, he at last carried us fairly off somehow or other by a kind of divine power, like people with his reasonings, and established us (in the practice of philosophy), and set us down without the power of movement, as it were, beside himself by his arts. Moreover, the stimulus of friendship was also brought to bear upon us, – a stimulus, indeed, not easily withstood, but keen and most effective, – the argument of a kind and affectionate disposition, which showed itself benignantly in his words when he spoke to us and associated with us. For he did not aim merely at getting round us by any kind of reasoning; but his desire was, with a benignant, and affectionate, and most benevolent mind, to save us, and make us partakers in the blessings that flow from philosophy, and most especially also in those other gifts which the Deity has bestowed on him above most men, or, as we may perhaps say, above all men of our own time. I mean the power that teaches us piety, the word of salvation, that comes to many, and subdues to itself all whom it visits: for there is nothing that shall resist it, inasmuch as it is and shall be itself the king of all; although as yet it is hidden, and is not recognised, whether with ease or with difficulty, by the common crowd, in such wise that, when interrogated respecting it, they should be able to speak intelligently about it. And thus, like some spark lighting upon our inmost soul, love was kindled and burst into flame within us, – a love at once to the Holy Word, the most lovely object of all, who attracts all irresistibly toward Himself by His unutterable beauty, and to this man, His friend and advocate. And being most mightily smitten by this love, I was persuaded to give up all those objects or pursuits which seem to us befitting, and among others even my boasted jurisprudence, – yea, my very fatherland and friends, both those who were present with me then, and those from whom I had parted. And in my estimation there arose but one object dear and worth desire, – to wit, philosophy, and that master of philosophy, this inspired man. “And the soul of Jonathan was knit with David.” (1Sa_18:1) This word, indeed, I did not read till afterwards in the sacred Scriptures ; but I felt it before that time, not less clearly than it is written: for, in truth, it reached me then by the clearest of all revelations. For it was not simply Jonathan that was knit with David; but those things were knit together which are the ruling powers in man – their souls, – those objects which, even though all the things which are apparent and ostensible in man are severed, cannot by any skill be forced to a severance when they themselves are unwilling. For the soul is free, and cannot be coerced by any means, not even though one should confine it and keep guard over it in some secret prison-house. For wherever the intelligence is, there it is also of its own nature and by the first reason. And if it seems to you to be in a kind of prison-house, it is represented as there to you by a sort of second reason. But for all that, it is by no means precluded from subsisting anywhere according to its own determination; nay, rather it is both able to be, and is reasonably believed to be, there alone and altogether, wheresoever and in connection with what things soever those actions which are proper only to it are in operation. Wherefore, what I experienced has been most clearly declared in this very short statement, that “the soul of Jonathan was knit with the soul of David;” objects which, as I said, cannot by any means be forced to a separation against their will, and which of their own inclination certainly will not readily choose it. Nor is it, in my opinion, in the inferior subject, who is changeful and very prone to vary in purpose, and in whom singly there has been no capacity of union at first, that the power of loosing the sacred bonds of this affection rests, but rather in the nobler one, who is constant and not readily shaken, and through whom it has been possible to the these bonds and to fasten this sacred knot. Therefore it is not the soul of David that was knit by the divine word with the soul of Jonathan; but, on the contrary, the soul of the latter, who was the inferior, is said to be thus affected and knit with the soul of David. For the nobler object would not choose to be knit with one inferior, inasmuch as it is sufficient for itself; but the inferior object, as standing in need of the help which the nobler can give, ought properly to be knit with the nobler, and fitted dependently to it: so that this latter, retaining still its sufficiency in itself, might sustain no loss by its connection with the inferior; and that that which is of itself without order51 being now united and fitted harmoniously with the nobler, might, without any detriment done, be perfectly subdued to the nobler by the constraints of such bonds. Wherefore, to apply the bonds is the part of the superior, and not of the inferior; but to be knit to the other is the part of the inferior, and this too in such a manner that it shall possess no power of loosing itself from these bonds. And by a similar constraint, then, did this David of ours once gird us to himself; and he holds us now, and has held us ever since that time, so that, even though we desired it, we could not loose ourselves from his bonds. And hence it follows that, even though we were to depart, he would not release this soul of mine, which, as the Holy Scripture puts it, he holds knit so closely with himself. 

Argument VII. – The Wonderful Skill with Which Origen Prepares Gregory and Athenodorus for Philosophy. The Intellect of Each Is Exercised First in Logic, and the Mere Attention to Words Is Contemned.

But after he had thus carried us captive at the very outset, and had shut us in, as it were, on all sides, and when what was best52 had been accomplished by him, and when it seemed good to us to remain with him for a time, then he took us in hand, as a skilled husbandman may take in hand some field unwrought, and altogether unfertile, and sour, and burnt up, and hard as a rock, and rough, or, it may be, one not utterly barren or unproductive, but rather, perchance, by nature very productive, though then waste and neglected, and stiff and untractable with thorns and wild shrubs; or as a gardener may take in hand some plant which is wild indeed, and which yields no cultivated fruits, though it may not be absolutely worthless, and on finding it thus, may, by his skill in gardening, bring some cultivated shoot and graft it in, by making a fissure in the middle, and then bringing the two together, and binding the one to the other, until the sap in each shall flow in one stream,53 and they shall both grow with the same nurture: for one may often see a tree of a mixed and worthless54 species thus rendered productive in spite of its past barrenness, and made to rear the fruits of the good olive on wild roots; or one may see a wild plant saved from being altogether profitless by the skill of a careful gardener; or, once more, one may see a plant which otherwise is one both of culture and of fruitfulness, but which, through the want of skilled attendance, has been left unpruned and unwatered and waste, and which is thus choked by the mass of superfluous shoots suffered to grow out of it at random,55 yet brought to discharge its proper function in germination,56 and made to bear the fruit whose production was formerly hindered by the superfluous growth.57 In suchwise, then, and with such a disposition did he receive us at first; and surveying us, as it were, with a husbandman’s skill, and gauging us thoroughly, and not confining his notice to those things only which are patent to the eye of all, and which are looked upon in open light, but penetrating into us more deeply, and probing what is most inward in us, he put us to the question, and made propositions to us, and listened to us in our replies; and whenever he thereby detected anything in us not wholly fruitless and profitless and waste, he set about clearing the soil, and turning it up and irrigating it, and putting all things in movement, and brought his whole skill and care to bear on us, and wrought upon our mind. And thorns and thistles,58 and every kind of wild herb or plant which our mind (so unregulated and precipitate in its own action) yielded and produced in its uncultured luxuriance and native wildness, he cut out and thoroughly removed by the processes of refutation and prohibition; sometimes assailing us in the genuine Socratic fashion, and again upsetting us by his argumentation whenever he saw us getting restive under him, like so many unbroken steeds, and springing out of the course and galloping madly about at random, until with a strange kind of persuasiveness and constraint he reduced us to a state of quietude under him by his discourse, which acted like a bridle in our mouth. And that was at first an unpleasant position for us, and one not without pain, as he dealt with persons who were unused to it, and still all untrained to submit to reason, when he plied us with his argumentations; and yet he purged us by them. And when he had made us adaptable, and had prepared us successfully for the reception of the words of truth, then, further, as though we were now a soil well wrought and soft, and ready to impart growth to the seeds cast into it, he dealt liberally with us, and sowed the good seed in season, and attended to all the other cares of the good husbandry, each in its own proper season. And whenever he perceived any element of infirmity or baseness in our mind (whether it was of that character by nature, or had become thus gross through the excessive nurture of the body), he pricked it with his discourses, and reduced it by those delicate words and turns of reasoning which, although at first the very simplest, are gradually evolved one after the other, and skilfully wrought out, until they advance to a sort of complexity which can scarce be mastered or unfolded, and which cause us to start up, as it were, out of sleep, and teach us the art of holding always by what is immediately before one, without ever making any slip by reason either of length or of subtlety. And if there was in us anything of an injudicious and precipitate tendency, whether in the way of assenting to all that came across us, of whatever character the objects might be, and even though they proved false, or in the way of often withstanding other things, even though they were spoken truthfully, – that, too, he brought under discipline in us by those delicate reasonings already mentioned, and by others of like kind (for this branch of philosophy is of varied form), and accustomed us not to throw in our testimony at one time, and again to refuse it, just at random, and as chance impelled, but to give it only after careful examination not only into things manifest, but also into those that are secret.59 For many things which are in high repute of themselves, and honourable in appearance, have found entrance through fair words into our ears, as though they were true, while yet they were hollow and false, and have borne off and taken possession of the suffrage of truth at our hand, and then, no long time afterwards, they have been discovered to be corrupt and unworthy of credit, and deceitful borrowers of the garb of truth; and have thus too easily exposed us as men who are ridiculously deluded, and who bear their witness inconsiderately to things which ought by no means to have won it. And, on the contrary, other things which are really honourable and the reverse of impositions, but which have not been expressed in plausible statements, and thus have the appearance of being paradoxical and most incredible, and which have been rejected as false on their own showing, and held up undeservedly to ridicule, have afterwards, on careful investigation and examination, been discovered to be the truest of all things, and wholly incontestable, though for a time spurned and reckoned false. Not simply, then, by dealing with things patent and prominent, which are sometimes delusive and sophistical, but also by teaching us to search into things within us, and to put them all individually to the test, lest any of them should give back a hollow sound, and by instructing us to make sure of these inward things first of all, he trained us to give our assent to outward things only then and thus, and to express our opinion on all these severally. In this way, that capacity of our mind which deals critically with words and reasonings, was educated in a rational manner; not according to the judgments of illustrious rhetoricians – whatever Greek or foreign honour appertains to that title60 – for theirs is a discipline of little value and no necessity: but in accordance with that which is most needful for all, whether Greek or outlandish, whether wise or illiterate, and, in fine, not to make a long statement by going over every profession and pursuit separately, in accordance with that which is most indispensable for all men, whatever manner of life they have chosen, if it is indeed the care and interest of all who have to converse on any subject whatever with each other, to be protected against deception.

Argument VIII. – Then in Due Succession He Instructs Them in Physics, Geometry, and Astronomy.

Nor did he confine his efforts merely to that form of the mind which it is the lot of the dialectics to regulate;61 but he also took in hand that humble capacity of mind, (which shows itself) in our amazement at the magnitude, and the wondrousness, and the magnificent and absolutely wise construction of the world, and in our marvelling in a reasonless way, and in our being overpowered with fear, and in our knowing not, like the irrational creatures, what conclusion to come to. That, too, he aroused and corrected by other studies in natural science, illustrating and distinguishing the various divisions of created objects, and with admirable clearness reducing them to their pristine elements, taking them all up perspicuously in his discourse, and going over the nature of the whole, and of each several section, and discussing the multiform revolution and mutation of things in the world, until he carried us frilly along with him under his clear teaching; and by those reasonings which he had partly learned from others, and partly found out for himself, he filled our minds with a rational instead of an irrational wonder at the sacred economy of the universe, and irreproveable constitution of all things. This is that sublime and heavenly study which is taught by natural philosophy – a science most attractive to all. And what need is there now to speak of the sacred mathematics, viz., geometry, so precious to all and above all controversy, and astronomy, whose course is on high? These different studies he imprinted on our understandings, training us in them, or calling them into our mind, or doing with us something else which I know not how to designate rightly. And the one he presented lucidly as the immutable groundwork and secure foundation of all, namely geometry; and by the other, namely astronomy, he lifted us up to the things that are highest above us, while he made heaven passable to us by the help of each of these sciences, as though they were ladders reaching the skies.

FOOTNOTES

1 Delivered by Gregory Thaumaturgus in the Palestinian Caesareia, when about to leave for his own country, after many years’ instruction under that teacher. [Circa A.D. 238.] Gallandi, Opera, p. 413.

2 καλόν, for which Hoeschelius has ἀγαθόν.

3 ἄπειρος, for which Hoeschelius has ἀνάσκητος.

4 ἀκωλύτῳ, for which Bengel suggests ἀκολούθῳ.

5 εὐειδεῖ, for which Ger. Vossius gives ἀψευδεῖ.

6 [See my introductory note, supra. He refers to Caius, Papinian, Ulpian; all, probably, of Syrian origin, and using the Greek as their vernacular.]

7 συγκείμενοι, which is rendered by some conduntur, by others confectae sunt, and by other still componantur, harmonized, – the reference then being to the difficulty experienced in learning the laws, in the way of harmonizing those which apparently oppose each other.

8 ἀκριβεῖς, for which Ger. Vossius gives εὐσεβεις, pious.

9 [A noteworthy estimate of Latin by a Greek.]

10 εἰ καὶ βουλητόν, etc., for which Hoeschelius gives οὔτε βουλητόν, etc. The Latin version gives, non enim aliter sentire aut posse aut velle me unquam dixerim.

11 φαρμάκων.

12 χαρακτῆρας τῶν ψυχῆς τύπων.

13 ἀσπασάμενοι ἡδεως, ἐπεὶ καὶ περιφρονήσαντες. The passage is considered by some to be mutilated.

14 The text is, ἀλλὰ γὰρ ἐκ τπίτων αὖθις ἄλλως κωλύει, etc. For ἄλλως Hoeschelius gives ἄλλα δή. Bengel follows him, and renders it sed rursum, tertio loco, aliud est quod prohibet. Delarue proposes ἀλλὰ γὰρ ἓν τρίτον αὖθις ἄλλως κωλύει.

15 τὸ δε πολὺ τῆς εξεως.

16 This is the rendering according to the Latin version. The text is, ἀπεσκευασμένου ήδη μείζοϚι παρασκευῇ μεταναστάσεθς τῆς πρὸς το θεῖον. Vossius reads, μετ ̓ ἀναστάσεως.

17 ὧν ηττων φροντὶς κατ ̓ ἀξιαν τε καὶ μὴ, λεγομένων.

18 The text is, μὴ καὶ ψυχρὸν ἢ πέρπερον ᾖ, where, according to Bengel, μή has the force of ut non dicam.

19 But the text reads, ουκ εὐλόγως.

20 ἀσαφῶν. But Ger. Voss has ἀσφαλῶν, safe.

21 Reading ὃτῳ, with Hoeschelius, Bengel, and the Paris editor, while Voss. reads οτι.

22 παναγεῖ, which in the lexicons is given as bearing only the good sense, all-hallowed, but which here evidently is taken in the opposite.

23 ἐκπεριών in the text, for which Bengel gives ἐκπεριΐών, a word used frequently by this author. In Dorner it is explained as = going out of Himself in order to embrace and encompass Himself. See the Doctrine of the Person of Christ, A. II. p. 173 (Clark).

3 λόγος.

4 [The unformed theological mind of a youth is here betrayed.]

5 The text gives μεληγορειν, for which others read μεγαληγορεῖν.

27 Gen_48:15. [Jacob refers to the Jehovah-Angel.]

28 The text gives ἐμοὶ, etc., … συμφερον ειναι καταφαίνεται. Bengel’s idea of the sense is followed in the translation.

29 τὰ πάτρια ἔθη τὰ πεπλανημένα.

30 [The force of the original is not opprobrious.]

31 Reading ἣ δη. Others give ἢ δή; others, ἤδη; and the conjecture ἢ ήβη, “or my youth,” is also made.

32 λόγου.

33 Word.

34 The text, however, gives ἀλέκτρῳ.

35 αἰτιῶν, causes.

36 Reading τούτῳ ἐτὶ νοῦν βαλών.

37 ἐφόδιον.

38 The text is ἀποχέουσα. Hoeschelius gives ἀπέχουσα.

39 Ῥωμαΐκωτέρα πῶς.

40 The text is, οὐδὲν ουτως ἀναγκαῖον ἦν οσον ἐπὶ τοῖς νόμοις ἡμῶν, δυνατὸν ὂν καὶ ἐπὶ τὴν Ῥωμαίων ἀποδημῆσαι πόλιν. Bengel takes οσον as παρέλκον. Migne renders, nullam ei fuisse necessitatem huc veniendi, discendi leges causa, siquidem Romam posset proficisci. Sirmondus makes it, nulla causa adeo necessaria erat qua possem per leges nostras ad Romanorum civitatem proficisci.

41 The text gives ἐκπονήσαντες. Casaubon reads ἐκποιήσντες.

42 εὔλογον.

43 σύμβολα.

44 δί αὐτοῦ. Bengel understands this to refer to the soldier.

45 The text is, την ἀληθῆ δι ̓ αὐτοῦ πρεὶ τα τοῦ λόγου μαθήματα. Bengel takes this as an ellipsis, like τὴν ἑαυτοῦ, τὴν ἐμὴν μίαν, and similar phrases, γνώμην or ὁδόν, or some such word, being supplied. Casaubon conjectures καὶ ἀληθῆ, for which Bengel would prefer τα ἀληθῆ.

46 οἰκονομίαν.

47 [I think Lardner’s inclination to credit Gregory with some claim to be an alumnus of Berytus, is very fairly sustained.]

48 θρεμμάτων.

49 The text here is, ταῦθ ̓ απερ ἡμᾶς ἀνέσειε, μάλιστα λέγων και μάλα τεχνικῶς, τοῦ κυριωτάτου, φησὶ, τῶν ἐν ἡμῖν λόγου, ἀμελήσαντας.

50 The text gives ἐκ πρώτης ἡλικίας, which Bengel takes to be an error for the absolute ἐκ πρώτης, to which ἡμέρας would be supplied. Casaubon and Rhodomanus read ὁμιλίας for ἡλικίας.

51 ἄτακτον.

52 το πλεῖον.

53 The text gives συμβλύσαντα ὡς, for which Casaubon proposes συμφυσαντα εἰς εν, or ὡς εν. Bengel suggests συμβρύσαντα ὡς εν.

54 νόθον.

55 The text gives ἐκεῖ, for which Hoeschelius and Bengel read είκῆ.

56 τελειοῦσθαι δὲ τῇ βλάστῃ.

57 ὑπ ̓ ἀλλήλων.

58 τριβόλους.

59 The words ἀλλὰ κεκρυμμένα are omitted by Hoeschelius and Bengel.

60 ἐι τι Ἑλληνικὸν ἢ βάρβαρόν ἐστι τῇ φωνῇ.

61 The text is, καὶ μὴ τοῦθ ̓ οπερ εἶδος διαλεκτικὴ κατορθοῦν μόνη εἴληχε.