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TERTULLIAN. PART FOURTH.

Ante-Nicene / Post-Nicene Fathers · 153 sections

1. section7.chapter1

   [Translated by the Rev. S. Thelwall.] Modesty, the flower of manners, the honour of our bodies, the grace of the sexes, the integrity of the blood, the guarantee of our race, the basis of sanctity, the pre-indication of every good disposition; rare though it is, and not easily perfected, and scarce ever retained in perpetuity, will yet up to a certain point linger in the world, if nature shall have laid the preliminary groundwork of it, discipline persuaded to it, censorial rigour curbed its excesses— on the hypothesis, that is, that every mental good quality is the result either of birth, or else of training, or else of external compulsion. But as the conquering power of things evil is on the increase—which is the characteristic of the last times702—things good are now not allowed either to be born, so corrupted are the seminal principles; or to be trained, so deserted are studies; nor to be enforced, so disarmed are the laws. In fact, (the modesty) of which we are now beginning (to treat) is by this time grown so obsolete, that it is not the abjuration but the moderation of the appetites which modesty is believed to be; and he is held to be chaste enough who has not been too chaste. But let the world’s703 modesty see to itself, together with the world704 itself: together with its inherent nature, if it was wont to originate in birth; its study, if in training; its servitude, if in compulsion: except that it had been even more unhappy if it had remained only to prove fruitless, in that it had not been in God’s household that its activities had been exercised. I should prefer no good to a vain good: what profits it that that should exist whose existence profits not? It is our own good things whose position is now sinking; it is the system of Christian modesty which is being shaken to its foundation—(Christian modesty), which derives its all from heaven; its nature, “through the laver of regeneration;”705 its discipline, through the instrumentality of preaching; its censorial rigour, through the judgments which each Testament exhibits; and is subject to a more constant external compulsion, arising from the apprehension or the desire of the eternal fire or kingdom.706 In opposition to this (modesty), could I not have acted the dissembler? I hear that there has even been an edict set forth, and a peremptory one too. The Pontifex Maximus707—that is, the bishop of bishops708—issues an edict: “I remit, to such as have discharged (the requirements of) repentance, the sins both of adultery and of fornication.” O edict, on which cannot be inscribed, “Good deed!” And where shall this liberality be posted up? On the very spot, I suppose, on the very gates of the sensual appetites, beneath the very titles of the sensual appetites. There is the place for promulgating such repentance, where the delinquency itself shall haunt. There is the place to read the pardon, where entrance shall be made under the hope thereof. But it is in the church that this (edict) is read, and in the church that it is pronounced; and (the church) is a virgin! Far, far from Christ’s betrothed be such a proclamation! She, the true, the modest, the saintly, shall be free from stain even of her ears. She has none to whom to make such a promise; and if she have had, she does not make it; since even the earthly temple of God can sooner have been called by the Lord a “den of robbers,”709 than of adulterers and fornicators. This too, therefore, shall be a count in my indictment against the Psychics; against the fellowship of sentiment also which I myself formerly maintained with them; in order that they may the more cast this in my teeth for a mark of fickleness. Repudiation of fellowship is never a pre-indication of sin. As if it were not easier to err with the majority, when it is in the company of the few that truth is loved! But, however, a profitable fickleness shall no more be a disgrace to me, than I should wish a hurtful one to be an ornament. I blush not at an error which I have ceased to hold, because I am delighted at having ceased to hold it, because I recognise myself to be better and more modest. No one blushes at his own improvement. Even in Christ, knowledge had its stages of growth;710 through which stages the apostle, too, passed. “When I was a child,” he says, “as a child I spake, as a child I understood; but when I became a man, those (things) which had been the child’s I abandoned:”711 so truly did he turn away from his early opinions: nor did he sin by becoming an emulator not of ancestral but of Christian traditions,712 wishing even the precision of them who advised the retention of circumcision.713 And would that the same fate might befall those, too, who obtruncate the pure and true integrity of the flesh; amputating not the extremest superficies, but the inmost image of modesty itself, while they promise pardon to adulterers and fornicators, in the teeth of the primary discipline of the Christian Name; a discipline to which heathendom itself bears such emphatic witness, that it strives to punish that discipline in the persons of our females rather by defilements of the flesh than tortures; wishing to wrest from them that which they hold dearer than life! But now this glory is being extinguished, and that by means of those who ought with all the more constancy to refuse concession of any pardon to defilements of this kind, that they make the fear of succumbing to adultery and fornication their reason for marrying as often as they please—since “better it is to marry than to burn.”714 No doubt it is for continence sake that incontinence is necessary—the “burning” will be extinguished by “fires!” Why, then, do they withal grant indulgence, under the name of repentance, to crimes for which they furnish remedies by their law of multinuptialism? For remedies will be idle while crimes are indulged, and crimes will remain if remedies are idle. And so, either way, they trifle with solicitude and negligence; by taking emptiest precaution against (crimes) to which they grant quarter, and granting absurdest quarter to (crimes) against which they take precaution: whereas either precaution is not to be taken where quarter is given, or quarter not given where precaution is taken; for they take precaution, as if they were unwilling that something should be committed; but grant indulgence, as if they were willing it should be committed: whereas, if they be unwilling it should be committed, they ought not to grant indulgence; if they be willing to grant indulgence, they ought not to take precaution. For, again, adultery and fornication will not be ranked at the same time among the moderate and among the greatest sins, so that each course may be equally open with regard to them—the solicitude which takes precaution, and the security which grants indulgence. But since they are such as to hold the culminating place among crimes, there is no room at once for their indulgence as if they were moderate, and for their precaution as if they were greatest. But by us precaution is thus also taken against the greatest, or, (if you will), highest (crimes, viz.,) in that it is not permitted, after believing, to know even a second marriage, differentiated though it be, to be sure, from the work of adultery and fornication by the nuptial and dotal tablets: and accordingly, with the utmost strictness, we excommunicate digamists, as bringing infamy upon the Paraclete by the irregularity of their discipline. The self-same liminal limit we fix for adulterers also and fornicators; dooming them to pour forth tears barren of peace, and to regain from the Church no ampler return than the publication of their disgrace. I. (The Shepherd of Hermas, p. 85.) Here, and in chap. xx. below, Tertullian’s rabid utterances against the Shepherd may be balanced by what he had said, less unreasonably, in his better mood.999 Now he refers to the Shepherd’s (ii. 1)1000 view of pardon, even to adulterers. But surely it might be objected even more plausibly against “the Shepherd,” whom he prefers, in common with all Christians, as see John viii. 1–11, which I take to be canonical Scripture. A curious question is suggested by what he says of the figure of the Good Shepherd portrayed on the chalice: Is this irony, as if the figure so familiar from illustrations of the catacombs must be meant for the Shepherd of Hermas? Regarding all pictures as idolatrous, he may intend to intimate that adultery (=idolatry) was thus symbolized. II. (Clasping the knees of all, p. 86.) Here is a portrait of the early penitential discipline sufficiently terrible, and it conforms to the apostolic pictures of the same. “Tell it unto the Church,” says our Lord (Matt. xviii. 17). In 1 Cor. v. 4 the apostle (“present in spirit”) gives judgment, but the whole Church is “gathered together.” In James v. 16 the “confession to one another” seems to refer to this public discipline, as also the prayer for healing enjoined on one another. St. Chrysostom, however, reflecting the discipline of his day, in which great changes were made, says, on Matt. xviii. 17, unless it be a gloss, “Dic Ecclesiæ id est Præsidibus =προεδρευούσιν.” (Tom. vii. p. 536, ed. Migne.) III. (Remedial discipline, p. 87.) Powerfully as Tertullian states his view of this apostolic “delivering unto Satan” as for final perdition, it is not to be gainsaid that (1 Cor. v. 5) the object was salvation and hope, “that the spirit may be saved in the day of the Lord Jesus.” Thus, the power of Satan to inflict bodily suffering (Job ii. 6), when divinely permitted, is recognised under the Gospel (Luke xiii. 16; 2 Cor. xii. 7). The remedial mercy of trials and sufferings may be inferred when providentially occurring. IV. (Personally upon Peter, p. 99.) See what has been said before. But note our author (now writing against the Church, and as a Montanist) has no idea that the personal prerogative of St. Peter had descended to any bishop. More when we come to Cyprian, and see vol. iii. p. 630, this series.

2. section7.chapter1.chapter2

   “But,” say they, “God is ‘good,’ and ‘most good,’715 and ‘pitiful-hearted,’ and ‘a pitier,’ and ‘abundant in pitiful-heartedness,’716 which He holds ‘dearer than all sacrifice,’717 ‘not thinking the sinner’s death of so much worth as his repentance’,718 ‘a Saviour of all men, most of all of believers.’719 And so it will be becoming for ‘the sons of God’720 too to be ‘pitiful-hearted’721 and ‘peacemakers;’722 ‘giving in their turn just as Christ withal hath given to us;’723 ‘not judging, that we be not judged.’724 For ‘to his own lord a man standeth or falleth; who art thou, to judge another’s servant?’725 ‘Remit, and remission shall be made to thee.’”726 Such and so great futilities of theirs wherewith they flatter God and pander to themselves, effeminating rather than invigorating discipline, with how cogent and contrary (arguments) are we for our part able to rebut,—(arguments) which set before us warningly the “severity”727 of God, and provoke our own constancy? Because, albeit God is by nature good, still He is “just”728 too. For, from the nature of the case, just as He knows how to “heal,” so does He withal know how to “smite;”729 “making peace,” but withal “creating evils;”730 preferring repentance, but withal commanding Jeremiah not to pray for the aversion of ills on behalf of the sinful People,—“since, if they shall have fasted,” saith He, “I will not listen to their entreaty.”731 And again: “And pray not thou unto (me) on behalf of the People, and request not on their behalf in prayer and supplication, since I will not listen to (them) in the time wherein they shall have invoked me, in the time of their affliction.”732 And further, above, the same preferrer of mercy above sacrifice (says): “And pray not thou unto (me) on behalf of this People, and request not that they may obtain mercy, and approach not on their behalf unto me, since I will not listen to (them)”733—of course when they sue for mercy, when out of repentance they weep and fast, and when they offer their self-affliction to God. For God is “jealous,”734 and is One who is not contemptuously derided735—derided, namely, by such as flatter His goodness—and who, albeit “patient,”736 yet threatens, through Isaiah, an end of (His) patience. “I have held my peace; shall I withal always hold my peace and endure? I have been quiet as (a woman) in birth-throes; I will arise, and will make (them) to grow arid.”737 For “a fire shall proceed before His face, and shall utterly burn His enemies;”738 striking down not the body only, but the souls too, into hell.739 Besides, the Lord Himself demonstrates the manner in which He threatens such as judge: “For with what judgment ye judge, judgment shall be given on you.”740 Thus He has not prohibited judging, but taught (how to do it). Whence the apostle withal judges, and that in a case of fornication,741 that “such a man must be surrendered to Satan for the destruction of the flesh;”742 chiding them likewise because “brethren” were not “judged at the bar of the saints:”743 for he goes on and says, “To what (purpose is it) for me to judge those who are without?” “But you remit, in order that remission may be granted you by God.” The sins which are (thus) cleansed are such as a man may have committed against his brother, not against God. We profess, in short, in our prayer, that we will grant remission to our debtors; 744 but it is not becoming to distend further, on the ground of the authority of such Scriptures, the cable of contention with alternate pull into diverse directions; so that one (Scripture) may seem to draw tight, another to relax, the reins of discipline—in uncertainty, as it were,—and the latter to debase the remedial aid of repentance through lenity, the former to refuse it through austerity. Further: the authority of Scripture will stand within its own limits, without reciprocal opposition. The remedial aid of repentance is determined by its own conditions, without unlimited concession; and the causes of it themselves are anteriorly distinguished without confusion in the proposition. We agree that the causes of repentance are sins. These we divide into two issues: some will be remissible, some irremissible: in accordance wherewith it will be doubtful to no one that some deserve chastisement, some condemnation. Every sin is dischargeable either by pardon or else by penalty: by pardon as the result of chastisement, by penalty as the result of condemnation. Touching this difference, we have not only already premised certain antithetical passages of the Scriptures, on one hand retaining, on the other remitting, sins;745 but John, too, will teach us: “If any knoweth his brother to be sinning a sin not unto death, he shall request, and life shall be given to him;” because he is not “sinning unto death,” this will be remissible. “(There) is a sin unto death; not for this do I say that any is to request”746—this will be irremissible. So, where there is the efficacious power of “making request,” there likewise is that of remission: where there is no (efficacious power) of “making request,” there equally is none of remission either. According to this difference of sins, the condition of repentance also is discriminated. There will be a condition which may possibly obtain pardon,—in the case, namely, of a remissible sin: there will be a condition which can by no means obtain it,—in the case, namely, of an irremissible sin. And it remains to examine specially, with regard to the position of adultery and fornication, to which class of sins they ought to be assigned.

3. section7.chapter1.chapter3

   But before doing this, I will make short work with an answer which meets us from the opposite side, in reference to that species of repentance which we are just defining as being without pardon. “Why, if,” say they, “there is a repentance which lacks pardon, it immediately follows that such repentance must withal be wholly unpractised by you. For nothing is to be done in vain. Now repentance will be practised in vain, if it is without pardon. But all repentance is to be practised. Therefore let (us allow that) all obtains pardon, that it may not be practised in vain; because it will not be to be practised, if it be practised in vain. Now, in vain it is practised, if it shall lack pardon.” Justly, then, do they allege (this argument) against us; since they have usurpingly kept in their own power the fruit of this as of other repentance—that is, pardon; for, so far as they are concerned, at whose hands (repentance) obtains man’s peace, (it is in vain). As regards us, however, who remember that the Lord alone concedes (the pardon of) sins, (and of course of mortal ones,) it will not be practised in vain. For (the repentance) being referred back to the Lord, and thenceforward lying prostrate before Him, will by this very fact the rather avail to win pardon, that it gains it by entreaty from God alone, that it believes not that man’s peace is adequate to its guilt, that as far as regards the Church it prefers the blush of shame to the privilege of communion. For before her doors it stands, and by the example of its own stigma admonishes all others, and calls at the same time to its own aid the brethren’s tears, and returns with an even richer merchandise—their compassion, namely—than their communion. And if it reaps not the harvest of peace here, yet it sows the seed of it with the Lord; nor does it lose, but prepares, its fruit. It will not fail of emolument if it do not fail in duty. Thus, neither is such repentance vain, nor such discipline harsh. Both honour God. The former, by laying no flattering unction to itself, will more readily win success; the latter, by assuming nothing to itself, will more fully aid.

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   Having defined the distinction (between the kinds) of repentance, we are by this time, then, able to return to the assessment of the sins—whether they be such as can obtain pardon at the hand of men. In the first place, (as for the fact) that we call adultery likewise fornication, usage requires (us so to do). “Faith,” withal, has a familiar acquaintance with sundry appellations. So, in every one of our little works, we carefully guard usage. Besides, if I shall say “adulterium,” and if “stuprum,” the indictment of contamination of the flesh will be one and the same. For it makes no difference whether a man assault another’s bride or widow, provided it be not his own “female;” just as there is no difference made by places—whether it be in chambers or in towers that modesty is massacred. Every homicide, even outside a wood, is banditry. So, too, whoever enjoys any other than nuptial intercourse, in whatever place, and in the person of whatever woman, makes himself guilty of adultery and fornication. Accordingly, among us, secret connections as well—connections, that is, not first professed in presence of the Church—run risk of being judged akin to adultery and fornication; nor must we let them, if thereafter woven together by the covering of marriage, elude the charge. But all the other frenzies of passions—impious both toward the bodies and toward the sexes—beyond the laws of nature, we banish not only from the threshold, but from all shelter of the Church, because they are not sins, but monstrosities.

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   Of how deep guilt, then, adultery—which is likewise a matter of fornication, in accordance with its criminal function—is to be accounted, the Law of God first comes to hand to show us; if it is true, (as it is), that after interdicting the superstitious service of alien gods, and the making of idols themselves, after commending (to religious observance) the veneration of the Sabbath, after commanding a religious regard toward parents second (only to that) toward God, (that Law) laid, as the next substratum in strengthening and fortifying such counts, no other precept than “Thou shalt not commit adultery.” For after spiritual chastity and sanctity followed corporeal integrity. And this (the Law) accordingly fortified, by immediately prohibiting its foe, adultery. Understand, consequently, what kind of sin (that must be), the repression of which (the Law) ordained next to (that of) idolatry. Nothing that is a second is remote from the first; nothing is so close to the first as the second. That which results from the first is (in a sense) another first. And so adultery is bordering on idolatry. For idolatry withal, often cast as a reproach upon the People under the name of adultery and fornication, will be alike conjoined therewith in fate as in following—will be alike co-heir therewith in condemnation as in co-ordination. Yet further: premising “Thou shalt not commit adultery,” (the Law) adjoins, “Thou shalt not kill.” It honoured adultery, of course, to which it gives the precedence over murder, in the very fore-front of the most holy law, among the primary counts of the celestial edict, marking it with the inscription of the very principal sins. From its place you may discern the measure, from its rank the station, from its neighbourhood the merit, of each thing. Even evil has a dignity, consisting in being stationed at the summit, or else in the centre, of the superlatively bad. I behold a certain pomp and circumstance of adultery: on the one side, Idolatry goes before and leads the way; on the other, Murder follows in company. Worthily, without doubt, has she taken her seat between the two most conspicuous eminences of misdeeds, and has completely filled the vacant space, as it were, in their midst, with an equal majesty of crime. Enclosed by such flanks, encircled and supported by such ribs, who shall dislocate her from the corporate mass of coherencies, from the bond of neighbour crimes, from the embrace of kindred wickednesses, so as to set apart her alone for the enjoyment of repentance? Will not on one side Idolatry, on the other Murder, detain her, and (if they have any voice) reclaim: “This is our wedge, this our compacting power? By (the standard of) Idolatry we are measured; by her disjunctive intervention we are conjoined; to her, outjutting from our midst, we are united; the Divine Scripture has made us concorporate; the very letters are our glue; herself can no longer exist without us. ‘Many and many a time do I, Idolatry, subminister occasion to Adultery; witness my groves and my mounts, and the living waters, and the very temples in cities, what mighty agents we are for overthrowing modesty.’ ‘I also, Murder, sometimes exert myself on behalf of Adultery. To omit tragedies, witness nowadays the poisoners, witness the magicians, how many seductions I avenge, how many rivalries I revenge; how many guards, how many informers, how many accomplices, I make away with. Witness the midwives likewise, how many adulterous conceptions are slaughtered.’ Even among Christians there is no adultery without us. Wherever the business of the unclean spirit is, there are idolatries; wherever a man, by being polluted, is slain, there too is murder. Therefore the remedial aids of repentance will not be suitable to them, or else they will likewise be to us. We either detain Adultery, or else follow her.” These words the sins themselves do speak. If the sins are deficient in speech, hard by (the door of the church) stands an idolater, hard by stands a murderer; in their midst stands, too, an adulterer. Alike, as the duty of repentance bids, they sit in sackcloth and bristle in ashes; with the self-same weeping they groan; with the selfsame prayers they make their circuits; with the self-same knees they supplicate; the self-same mother they invoke. What doest thou, gentlest and humanest Discipline? Either to all these will it be thy duty so to be, for “blessed are the peacemakers;”747 or else, if not to all, it will be thy duty to range thyself on our side. Dost thou once for all condemn the idolater and the murderer, but take the adulterer out from their midst?—(the adulterer), the successor of the idolater, the predecessor of the murderer, the colleague of each? It is “an accepting of person:”748 the more pitiable repentances thou hast left (unpitied) behind!

6. section7.chapter1.chapter6

   Plainly, if you show by what patronages of heavenly precedents and precepts it is that you open to adultery alone—and therein to fornication also—the gate of repentance, at this very line our hostile encounter will forthwith cross swords. Yet I must necessarily prescribe you a law, not to stretch out your hand after the old things,749 not to look backwards:750 for “the old things are passed away,”751 according to Isaiah; and “a renewing hath been renewed,” 752 according to Jeremiah; and “forgetful of former things, we are reaching forward,” 753 according to the apostle; and “the law and the prophets (were) until John,”754 according to the Lord. For even if we are just now beginning with the Law in demonstrating (the nature of) adultery, it is justly with that phase of the law which Christ has “not dissolved, but fulfilled.”755 For it is the “burdens” of the law which were “until John,” not the remedial virtues. It is the “yokes” of “works” that have been rejected, not those of disciplines.756 “Liberty in Christ”757 has done no injury to innocence. The law of piety, sanctity, humanity, truth, chastity, justice, mercy, benevolence, modesty, remains in its entirety; in which law “blessed (is) the man who shall meditate by day and by night.”758 About that (law) the same David (says) again: “The law of the Lord (is) unblameable,759 converting souls; the statutes of the Lord (are) direct, delighting hearts; the precept of the Lord far-shining, enlightening eyes.” Thus, too, the apostle: “And so the law indeed is holy, and the precept holy and most good”760—“Thou shalt not commit adultery,” of course. But he had withal said above: “Are we, then, making void the law through faith? Far be it; but we are establishing the law”761—forsooth in those (points) which, being even now interdicted by the New Testament, are prohibited by an even more emphatic precept: instead of, “Thou shalt not commit adultery,” “Whoever shall have seen with a view to concupiscence, hath already committed adultery in his own heart;”762 and instead of, “Thou shalt not kill,” “Whoever shall have said to his brother, Racha, shall be in danger of hell.”763 Ask (yourself) whether the law of not committing adultery be still in force, to which has been added that of not indulging concupiscence. Besides, if any precedents (taken from the Old Dispensation) shall favour you in (the secrecy of) your bosom, they shall not be set in opposition to this discipline which we are maintaining. For it is in vain that an additional law has been reared, condemning the origin even of sins—that is, concupiscences and wills—no less than the actual deeds; if the fact that pardon was of old in some cases conceded to adultery is to be a reason why it shall be conceded at the present day. “What will be the reward attaching to the restrictions imposed upon the more fully developed discipline of the present day, except that the elder (discipline) may be made the agent for granting indulgence to your prostitution?” In that case, you will grant pardon to the idolater too, and to every apostate, because we find the People itself, so often guilty of these crimes, as often reinstated in their former privileges. You will maintain communion, too, with the murderer: because Ahab, by deprecation, washed away (the guilt of) Naboth’s blood;764 and David, by confession, purged Uriah’s slaughter, together with its cause—adultery.765 That done, you will condone incests, too, for Lot’s sake;766 and fornications combined with incest, for Judah’s sake;767 and base marriages with prostitutes, for Hosea’s sake;768 and not only the frequent repetition of marriage, but its simultaneous plurality, for our fathers’ sakes: for, of course, it is meet that there should also be a perfect equality of grace in regard of all deeds to which indulgence was in days bygone granted, if on the ground of some pristine precedent pardon is claimed for adultery. We, too, indeed have precedents in the self-same antiquity on the side of our opinion,—(precedents) of judgment not merely not waived, but even summarily executed upon fornication. And of course it is a sufficient one, that so vast a number—(the number) of 24,000—of the People, when they committed fornication with the daughters of Madian, fell in one plague.769 But, with an eye to the glory of Christ, I prefer to derive (my) discipline from Christ. Grant that the pristine days may have had—if the Psychics please—even a right of (indulging) every immodesty; grant that, before Christ, the flesh may have disported itself, nay, may have perished before its Lord went to seek and bring it back: not yet was it worthy of the gift of salvation; not yet apt for the office of sanctity. It was still, up to that time, accounted as being in Adam, with its own vicious nature, easily indulging concupiscence after whatever it had seen to be “attractive to the sight,”770 and looking back at the lower things, and checking its itching with fig-leaves.771 Universally inherent was the virus of lust—the dregs which are formed out of milk contain it—(dregs) fitted (for so doing), in that even the waters themselves had not yet been bathed. But when the Word of God descended into flesh,—(flesh) not unsealed even by marriage,—and “the Word was made flesh,”772—(flesh) never to be unsealed by marriage,—which was to find its way to the tree not of incontinence, but of endurance; which was to taste from that tree not anything sweet, but something bitter; which was to pertain not to the infernal regions, but to heaven; which was to be precinct not with the leaves of lasciviousness, but the flowers of holiness;773 which was to impart to the waters its own purities—thenceforth, whatever flesh (is) “in Christ”774 has lost its pristine soils, is now a thing different, emerges in a new state, no longer (generated) of the slime of natural seed, nor of the grime of concupiscence, but of “pure water” and a “clean Spirit.” And, accordingly, why excuse it on the ground of pristine precedent? It did not bear the names of “body of Christ,”775 of “members of Christ,”776 of “temple of God,”777 at the time when it used to obtain pardon for adultery. And thus if, from the moment when it changed its condition, and “having been baptized into Christ put on Christ,”778 and was “redeemed with a great price”—“the blood,” to wit, “of the Lord and Lamb”779—you take hold of any one precedent (be it precept, or law, or sentence,) of indulgence granted, or to be granted, to adultery and fornication,—you have likewise at our hands a definition of the time from which the age of the question dates.

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   You shall have leave to begin with the parables, where you have the lost ewe re-sought by the Lord, and carried back on His shoulders.780 Let the very paintings upon your cups come forward to show whether even in them the figurative meaning of that sheep will shine through (the outward semblance, to teach) whether a Christian or heathen sinner be the object it aims at in the matter of restoration. For we put in a demurrer arising out of the teaching of nature, out of the law of ear and tongue, out of the soundness of the mental faculty, to the effect that such answers are always given as are called forth (by the question,— answers), that is, to the (questions) which call them forth. That which was calling forth (an answer in the present case) was, I take it, the fact that the Pharisees were muttering in indignation at the Lord’s admitting to His society heathen publicans and sinners, and communicating with them in food. When, in reply to this, the Lord had figured the restoration of the lost ewe, to whom else is it credible that he configured it but to the lost heathen, about whom the question was then in hand,—not about a Christian, who up to that time had no existence? Else, what kind of (hypothesis) is it that the Lord, like a quibbler in answering, omitting the present subject-matter which it was His duty to refute, should spend His labour about one yet future? “But a ‘sheep’ properly means a Christian,781 and the Lord’s ‘flock’ is the people of the Church,782 and the ‘good shepherd’ is Christ;783 and hence in the ‘sheep’ we must understand a Christian who has erred from the Church’s ‘flock.’” In that case, you make the Lord to have given no answer to the Pharisees’ muttering, but to your presumption. And yet you will be bound so to defend that presumption, as to deny that the (points) which you think applicable to Christians are referable to a heathen. Tell me, is not all mankind one flock of God? Is not the same God both Lord and Shepherd of the universal nations?784 Who more “perishes” from God than the heathen, so long as he “errs?” Who is more “re-sought” by God than the heathen, when he is recalled by Christ? In fact, it is among heathens that this order finds antecedent place; if, that is, Christians are not otherwise made out of heathens than by being first “lost,” and “re-sought” by God, and “carried back” by Christ. So likewise ought this order to be kept, that we may interpret any such (figure) with reference to those in whom it finds prior place. But you, I take it, would wish this: that He should represent the ewe as lost not from a flock, but from an ark or a chest! In like manner, albeit He calls the remaining number of the heathens “righteous,” it does not follow that He shows them to be Christians; dealing as He is with Jews, and at that very moment refuting them, because they were indignant at the hope of the heathens. But in order to express, in opposition to the Pharisees’ envy, His own grace and goodwill even in regard of one heathen, He preferred the salvation of one sinner by repentance to theirs by righteousness; or else, pray, were the Jews not “righteous,” and such as “had no need of repentance,” having, as they had, as pilotages of discipline and instruments of fear, “the Law and the Prophets?” He set them therefore in the parable—and if not such as they were, yet such as they ought to have been—that they might blush the more when they heard that repentance was necessary to others, and not to themselves. Similarly, the parable of the drachma,785 as being called forth out of the same subjectmatter, we equally interpret with reference to a heathen; albeit it had been “lost” in a house, as it were in the church; albeit “found” by aid of a “lamp,” as it were by aid of God’s word.786 Nay, but this whole world is the one house of all; in which world it is more the heathen, who is found in darkness, whom the grace of God enlightens, than the Christian, who is already in God’s light.787 Finally, it is one “straying” which is ascribed to the ewe and the drachma: (and this is an evidence in my favour); for if the parables had been composed with a view to a Christian sinner, after the loss of his faith, a second loss and restoration of them would have been noted. I will now withdraw for a short time from this position; in order that I may, even by withdrawing, the more recommend it, when I shall have succeeded even thus also in confuting the presumption of the opposite side. I admit that the sinner portrayed in each parable is one who is already a Christian; yet not that on this account must he be affirmed to be such an one as can be restored, through repentance, from the crime of adultery and fornication. For although he be said to “have perished,” there will be the kind of perdition to treat of; inasmuch as the “ewe” “perished” not by dying, but by straying; and the “drachma” not by being destroyed, but by being hidden. In this sense, a thing which is safe may be said to “have perished.” Therefore the believer, too, “perishes,” by lapsing out of (the right path) into a public exhibition of charioteering frenzy, or gladiatorial gore, or scenic foulness, or athletic vanity; or else if he has lent the aid of any special “arts of curiosity” to sports, to the convivialities of heathen solemnity, to official exigence, to the ministry of another’s idolatry; if he has impaled himself upon some word of ambiguous denial, or else of blasphemy. For some such cause he has been driven outside the flock; or even himself, perhaps, by anger, by pride, by jealousy, (or)—as, in fact, often happens—by disdaining to submit to chastisement, has broken away (from it). He ought to be re-sought and recalled. That which can be recovered does not “perish,” unless it persist in remaining outside. You will well interpret the parable by recalling the sinner while he is still living. But, for the adulterer and fornicator, who is there who has not pronounced him to be dead immediately upon commission of the crime? With what face will you restore to the flock one who is dead, on the authority of that parable which recalls a sheep not dead? Finally, if you are mindful of the prophets, when they are chiding the shepherds, there is a word—I think it is Ezekiel’s: “Shepherds, behold, ye devour the milk, and clothe you with the fleeces: what is strong ye have slain; what is weak ye have not tended; what is shattered ye have not bound; what has been driven out ye have not brought back; what has perished ye have not re-sought.”788 Pray, does he withal upbraid them at all concerning that which is dead, that they have taken no care to restore that too to the flock? Plainly, he makes it an additional reproach that they have caused the sheep to perish, and to be eaten up by the beasts of the field; nor can they either “perish mortally,” or be “eaten up,” if they are left remaining. “Is it not possible—(granting) that ewes which have been mortally lost, and eaten up, are recovered—that (in accordance also with the example of the drachma (lost and found again) even within the house of God, the Church) there may be some sins of a moderate character, proportionable to the small size and the weight of a drachma, which, lurking in the same Church, and by and by in the same discovered, forthwith are brought to an end in the same with the joy of amendment?” But of adultery and fornication it is not a drachma, but a talent, (which is the measure); and for searching them out there is need not of the javelin-light of a lamp, but of the spear-like ray of the entire sun. No sooner has (such a) man made his appearance than he is expelled from the Church; nor does he remain there; nor does he cause joy to the Church which discovers him, but grief; nor does he invite the congratulation of her neighbours, but the fellowship in sadness of the surrounding fraternities. By comparison, even in this way, of this our interpretation with theirs, the arguments of both the ewe and the drachma will all the more refer to the heathen, that they cannot possibly apply to the Christian guilty of the sin for the sake of which they are wrested into a forced application to the Christian on the opposite side.

8. section7.chapter1.chapter8

   But, however, the majority of interpreters of the parables are deceived by the self-same result as is of very frequent occurrence in the case of embroidering garments with purple. When you think that you have judiciously harmonized the proportions of the hues, and believe yourself to have succeeded in skilfully giving vividness to their mutual combination; presently, when each body (of colour) and (the various) lights are fully developed, the convicted diversity will expose all the error. In the self-same darkness, accordingly, with regard to the parable of the two sons also, they are led by some figures (occurring in it), which harmonize in hue with the present (state of things), to wander out of the path of the true light of that comparison which the subject-matter of the parable presents. For they set down, as represented in the two sons, two peoples—the elder the Jewish, the younger the Christian: for they cannot in the sequel arrange for the Christian sinner, in the person of the younger son, to obtain pardon, unless in the person of the elder they first portray the Jewish. Now, if I shall succeed in showing that the Jewish fails to suit the comparison of the elder son, the consequence of course will be, that the Christian will not be admissible (as represented) by the joint figure of the younger son. For although the Jew withal be called “a son,” and an “elder one,” inasmuch as he had priority in adoption;789 although, too, he envy the Christian the reconciliation of God the Father,—a point which the opposite side most eagerly catches at,—still it will be no speech of a Jew to the Father: “Behold, in how many years do I serve Thee, and Thy precept have I never transgressed.” For when has the Jew not been a transgressor of the law; hearing with the ear, and not hearing;790 holding in hatred him who reproveth in the gates,791 and in scorn holy speech?792 So, too, it will be no speech of the Father to the Jew: “Thou art always with Me, and all Mine are thine.” For the Jews are pronounced “apostate sons, begotten indeed and raised on high, but who have not understood the Lord, and who have quite forsaken the Lord, and have provoked unto anger the Holy One of Israel.”793 That all things, plainly, were conceded to the Jew, we shall admit; but he has likewise had every more savoury morsel torn from his throat,794 not to say the very land of paternal promise. And accordingly the Jew at the present day, no less than the younger son, having squandered God’s substance, is a beggar in alien territory, serving even until now its princes, that is, the princes of this world.795 Seek, therefore, the Christians some other as their brother; for the Jew the parable does not admit. Much more aptly would they have matched the Christian with the elder, and the Jew with the younger son, “according to the analogy of faith,”796 if the order of each people as intimated from Rebecca’s womb797 permitted the inversion: only that (in that case) the concluding paragraph would oppose them; for it will be fitting for the Christian to rejoice, and not to grieve, at the restoration of Israel, if it be true, (as it is), that the whole of our hope is intimately united with the remaining expectation of Israel.798 Thus, even if some (features in the parable) are favourable, yet by others of a contrary significance the thorough carrying out of this comparison is destroyed; although (albeit all points be capable of corresponding with mirrorlike accuracy) there be one cardinal danger in interpretations—the danger lest the felicity of our comparisons be tempered with a different aim from that which the subject-matter of each particular parable has bidden us (temper it). For we remember (to have seen) actors withal, while accommodating allegorical gestures to their ditties, giving expression to such as are far different from the immediate plot, and scene, and character, and yet with the utmost congruity. But away with extraordinary ingenuity, for it has nothing to do with our subject. Thus heretics, too, apply the self-same parables where they list, and exclude them (in other cases)—not where they ought—with the utmost aptitude. Why the utmost aptitude? Because from the very beginning they have moulded together the very subject-matters of their doctrines in accordance with the opportune incidences of the parables. Loosed as they are from the constraints of the rule of truth, they have had leisure, of course, to search into and put together those things of which the parables seem (to be symbolical).

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   We, however, who do not make the parables the sources whence we devise our subjectmatters, but the subject-matters the sources whence we interpret the parables, do not labour hard, either, to twist all things (into shape) in the exposition, while we take care to avoid all contradictions. Why “an hundred sheep?” and why, to be sure, “ten drachmas?” And what is that “besom?” Necessary it was that He who was desiring to express the extreme pleasure which the salvation of one sinner gives to God, should name some special quantity of a numerical whole from which to describe that “one” had perished. Necessary it was that the style of one engaged in searching for a “drachma” in a “house,” should be aptly fitted with the helpful accompaniment of a “besom” as well as of a “lamp.” For curious niceties of this kind not only render some things suspected, but, by the subtlety of forced explanations, generally lead away from the truth. There are, moreover, some points which are just simply introduced with a view to the structure and disposition and texture of the parable, in order that they may be worked up throughout to the end for which the typical example is being provided. Now, of course the (parable of) the two sons will point to the same end as (those of) the drachma and the ewe: for it has the self-same cause (to call it forth) as those to which it coheres, and the selfsame “muttering,” of course, of the Pharisees at the intercourse between the Lord and heathens. Or else, if any doubts that in the land of Judea, subjugated as it had been long since by the hand of Pompey and of Lucullus, the publicans were heathens, let him read Deuteronomy: “There shall be no tribute-weigher of the sons of Israel.”799 Nor would the name of publicans have been so execrable in the eyes of the Lord, unless as being a “strange”800 name,—a (name) of such as put up the pathways of the very sky, and earth, and sea, for sale. Moreover, when (the writer) adjoins “sinners” to “publicans,”801 it does not follow that he shows them to have been Jews, albeit some may possibly have been so; but by placing on a par the one genus of heathens—some sinners by office, that is, publicans; some by nature, that is, not publicans—he has drawn a distinction between them. Besides, the Lord would not have been censured for partaking of food with Jews, but with heathens, from whose board the Jewish discipline excludes (its disciples).802 Now we must proceed, in the case of the prodigal son, to consider first that which is more useful; for no adjustment of examples, albeit in the most nicely-poised balance, shall be admitted if it shall prove to be most hurtful to salvation. But the whole system of salvation, as it is comprised in the maintenance of discipline, we see is being subverted by that interpretation which is affected by the opposite side. For if it is a Christian who, after wandering far from his Father, squanders, by living heathenishly, the “substance” received from God his Father,—(the substance), of course, of baptism—(the substance), of course, of the Holy Spirit, and (in consequence) of eternal hope; if, stripped of his mental “goods,” he has even handed his service over to the prince of the world803—who else but the devil?—and by him being appointed over the business of “feeding swine”—of tending unclean spirits, to wit—has recovered his senses so as to return to his Father,—the result will be, that, not adulterers and fornicators, but idolaters, and blasphemers, and renegades, and every class of apostates, will by this parable make satisfaction to the Father; and in this way (it may) rather (be said that) the whole “substance” of the sacrament is most truly wasted away. For who will fear to squander what he has the power of afterwards recovering? Who will be careful to preserve to perpetuity what he will be able to lose not to perpetuity? Security in sin is likewise an appetite for it. Therefore the apostate withal will recover his former “garment,” the robe of the Holy Spirit; and a renewal of the “ring,” the sign and seal of baptism; and Christ will again be “slaughtered;”804 and he will recline on that couch from which such as are unworthily clad are wont to be lifted by the torturers, and cast away into darkness,805—much more such as have been stripped. It is therefore a further step if it is not expedient, (any more than reasonable), that the story of the prodigal son should apply to a Christian. Wherefore, if the image of a “son” is not entirely suitable to a Jew either, our interpretation shall be simply governed with an eye to the object the Lord had in view. The Lord had come, of course, to save that which “had perished;”806 “a Physician” necessary to “the sick” “more than to the whole.”807 This fact He was in the habit both of typifying in parables and preaching in direct statements. Who among men “perishes,” who falls from health, but he who knows not the Lord? Who is “safe and sound,” but he who knows the Lord? These two classes—“brothers” by birth—this parable also will signify. See whether the heathen have in God the Father the “substance” of origin, and wisdom, and natural power of Godward recognition; by means of which power the apostle withal notes that “in the wisdom of God, the world through wisdom knew not God,”808—(wisdom) which, of course, it had received originally from God. This (“substance”), accordingly, he “squandered;” having been cast by his moral habits far from the Lord, amid the errors and allurements and appetites of the world,809 where, compelled by hunger after truth,810 he handed himself over to the prince of this age. He set him over “swine,” to feed that flock familiar to demons,811 where he would not be master of a supply of vital food, and at the same time would see others (engaged) in a divine work, having abundance of heavenly bread. He remembers his Father, God; he returns to Him when he has been satisfied; he receives again the pristine “garment,”—the condition, to wit, which Adam by transgression had lost. The “ring” also he is then wont to receive for the first time, wherewith, after being interrogated,812 he publicly seals the agreement of faith, and thus thenceforward feeds upon the “fatness” of the Lord’s body,—the Eucharist, to wit. This will be the prodigal son, who never in days bygone was thrifty; who was from the first prodigal, because not from the first a Christian. Him withal, returning from the world to the Father’s embraces, the Pharisees mourned over, in the persons of the “publicans and sinners.” And accordingly to this point alone the elder brother’s envy is adapted: not because the Jews were innocent, and obedient to God, but because they envied the nation salvation; being plainly they who ought to have been “ever with” the Father. And of course it is immediately over the first calling of the Christian that the Jew groans, not over his second restoration: for the former reflects its rays even upon the heathen; but the latter, which takes place in the churches, is not known even to the Jews. I think that I have advanced interpretations more consonant with the subject-matter of the parables, and the congruity of things, and the preservation of disciplines. But if the view with which the opposite party is eager to mould the ewe, and the drachma, and the voluptuousness of the son to the shape of the Christian sinner, is that they may endow adultery and fornication with (the gift of) repentance; it will be fitting either that all other crimes equally capital should be conceded remissible, or else that their peers, adultery and fornication, should be retained inconcessible. But it is more (to the point) that it is not lawful to draw conclusions about anything else than the subject which was immediately in hand. In short, if it were lawful to transfer the parables to other ends (than they were originally intended for), it would be rather to martyrdom that we would direct the hope drawn from those now in question; for that is the only thing which, after all his substance has been squandered, will be able to restore the son; and will joyfully proclaim that the drachma has been found, albeit among all (rubbish) on a dungheap; and will carry back into the flock on the shoulders of the Lord Himself the ewe, fugitive though she have been over all that is rough and rugged. But we prefer, if it must be so, to be less wise in the Scriptures, than to be wise against them. We are as much bound to keep the sense of the Lord as His precept. Transgression in interpretation is not lighter than in conversation.

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    When, therefore, the yoke which forbade the discussion of these parables with a view to the heathens has been shaken off, and the necessity once for all discerned or admitted of not interpreting otherwise than is (suitable to) the subject-matter of the proposition; they contend in the next place, that the official proclamation of repentance is not even applicable to heathens, since their sins are not amenable to it, imputable as they are to ignorance, which nature alone renders culpable before God. Hence the remedies are unintelligible to such to whom the perils themselves are unintelligible: whereas the principle of repentance finds there its corresponding place where sin is committed with conscience and will, where both the fault and the favour are intelligible; that he who mourns, he who prostrates himself, is he who knows both what he has lost and what he will recover if he makes to God the offering of his repentance—to God who, of course, offers that repentance rather to sons than to strangers. Was that, then, the reason why Jonah thought not repentance necessary to the heathen Ninevites, when he tergiversated in the duty of preaching? or did he rather, foreseeing the mercy of God poured forth even upon strangers, fear that that mercy would, as it were, destroy (the credit of) his proclamation? and accordingly, for the sake of a profane city, not yet possessed of a knowledge of God, still sinning in ignorance, did the prophet well-nigh perish?813 except that he suffered a typical example of the Lord’s passion, which was to redeem heathens as well (as others) on their repentance. It is enough for me that even John, when “strewing the Lord’s ways,”814 was the herald of repentance no less to such as were on military service and to publicans, than to the sons of Abraham.815 The Lord Himself presumed repentance on the part of the Sidonians and Tyrians if they had seen the evidences of His “miracles.”816 Nay, but I will even contend that repentance is more competent to natural sinners than to voluntary. For he will merit its fruit who has not yet used more than he who has already withal abused it; and remedies will be more effective on their first application than when outworn. No doubt the Lord is “kind” to “the unthankful,”817 rather than to the ignorant! and “merciful” to the “reprobates” sooner than to such as have yet had no probation! so that insults offered to His clemency do not rather incur His anger than His caresses! and He does not more willingly impart to strangers that (clemency) which, in the case of His own sons, He has lost, seeing that He has thus adopted the Gentiles while the Jews make sport of His patience! But what the Psychics mean is this—that God, the Judge of righteousness, prefers the repentance to the death of that sinner who has preferred death to repentance! If this is so, it is by sinning that we merit favour. Come, you rope-walker upon modesty, and chastity, and every kind of sexual sanctity, who, by the instrumentality of a discipline of this nature remote from the path of truth, mount with uncertain footstep upon a most slender thread, balancing flesh with spirit, moderating your animal principle by faith, tempering your eye by fear; why are you thus wholly engaged in a single step? Go on, if you succeed in finding power and will, while you are so secure, and as it were upon solid ground. For if any wavering of the flesh, any distraction of the mind, any wandering of the eye, shall chance to shake you down from your equipoise, “God is good.” To His own (children), not to heathens, He opens His bosom: a second repentance will await you; you will again, from being an adulterer, be a Christian! These (pleas) you (will urge) to me, most benignant interpreter of God. But I would yield my ground to you, if the scripture of “the Shepherd,”818 which is the only one which favours adulterers, had deserved to find a place in the Divine canon; if it had not been habitually judged by every council of Churches (even of your own) among apocryphal and false (writings); itself adulterous, and hence a patroness of its comrades; from which in other respects, too, you derive initiation; to which, perchance, that “Shepherd,” will play the patron whom you depict upon your (sacramental) chalice, (depict, I say, as) himself withal a prostitutor of the Christian sacrament, (and hence) worthily both the idol of drunkenness, and the brize of adultery by which the chalice will quickly be followed, (a chalice) from which you sip nothing more readily than (the flavour of) the “ewe” of (your) second repentance! I, however, imbibe the Scriptures of that Shepherd who cannot be broken. Him John forthwith offers me, together with the laver and duty of repentance; (and offers Him as) saying, “Bear worthy fruits of repentance: and say not, We have Abraham (as our) father”— for fear, to wit, lest they should again take flattering unctions for delinquency from the grace shown to the fathers—“for God is able from these stones to raise sons to Abraham.” Thus it follows that we too (must judge) such as “sin no more” (as) “bearing worthy fruits of repentance.” For what more ripens as the fruit of repentance than the achievement of emendation? But even if pardon is rather the” fruit of repentance,” even pardon cannot coexist without the cessation from sin. So is the cessation from sin the root of pardon, that pardon may be the fruit of repentance.

11. section7.chapter1.chapter11

    From the side of its pertinence to the Gospel, the question of the parables indeed has by this time been disposed of. If, however, the Lord, by His deeds withal, issued any such proclamation in favour of sinners; as when He permitted contact even with his own body to the “woman, a sinner,”—washing, as she did, His feet with tears, and wiping them with her hair, and inaugurating His sepulture with ointment; as when to the Samaritaness—not an adulteress by her now sixth marriage, but a prostitute—He showed (what He did show readily to any one) who He was;819—no benefit is hence conferred upon our adversaries, even if it had been to such as were already Christians that He (in these several cases) granted pardon. For we now affirm: This is lawful to the Lord alone: may the power of His indulgence be operative at the present day!820 At those times, however, in which He lived on earth we lay this down definitively, that it is no prejudgment against us if pardon used to be conferred on sinners—even Jewish ones. For Christian discipline dates from the renewing of the Testament,821 and (as we have premised) from the redemption of flesh—that is, the Lord’s passion. None was perfect before the discovery of the order of faith; none a Christian before the resumption of Christ to heaven; none holy before the manifestation of the Holy Spirit from heaven, the Determiner of discipline itself.

12. section7.chapter1.chapter12

    Accordingly, these who have received “another Paraclete” in and through the apostles,—(a Paraclete) whom, not recognising Him even in His special prophets, they no longer possess in the apostles either;—come, now, let them, even from the apostolic instrument, teach us the possibility that the stains of a flesh which after baptism has been repolluted, can by repentance be washed away. Do we not, in the apostles also, recognise the form of the Old Law with regard to the demonstration of adultery, how great (a crime) it is; lest perchance it be esteemed more trivial in the new stage of disciplines than in the old? When first the Gospel thundered and shook the old system to its base, when dispute was being held on the question of retaining or not the Law; this is the first rule which the apostles, on the authority of the Holy Spirit, send out to those who were already beginning to be gathered to their side out of the nations: “It has seemed (good),” say they, “to the Holy Spirit and to us to cast upon you no ampler weight than (that) of those (things) from which it is necessary that abstinence be observed; from sacrifices, and from fornications, and from blood:822 by abstaining from which ye act rightly, the Holy Spirit carrying you.” Sufficient it is, that in this place withal there has been preserved to adultery and fornication the post of their own honour between idolatry and murder: for the interdict upon “blood” we shall understand to be (an interdict) much more upon human blood. Well, then, in what light do the apostles will those crimes to appear which alone they select, in the way of careful guarding against, from the pristine Law? which alone they prescribe as necessarily to be abstained from? Not that they permit others; but that these alone they put in the foremost rank, of course as not remissible; (they,) who, for the heathens’ sake, made the other burdens of the law remissible. Why, then, do they release our neck from so heavy a yoke, except to place forever upon those (necks) these compendia of discipline? Why do they indulgently relax so many bonds, except that they may wholly bind us in perpetuity to such as are more necessary? They loosed us from the more numerous, that we might be bound up to abstinence from the more noxious. The matter has been settled by compensation: we have gained much, in order that we may render somewhat. But the compensation is not revocable; if, that is, it will be revoked by iteration—(iteration) of adultery, of course, and blood and idolatry: for it will follow that the (burden of) the whole law will be incurred, if the condition of pardon shall be violated. But it is not lightly that the Holy Spirit has come to an agreement with us—coming to this agreement even without our asking; whence He is the more to be honoured. His engagement none but an ungrateful man will dissolve. In that event, He will neither accept back what He has discarded, nor discard what He has retained. Of the latest Testament the condition is ever immutable; and, of course the public recitation of that de- cree,823 and the counsel embodied therein, will cease (only) with the world.824 He has definitely enough refused pardon to those crimes the careful avoidance whereof He selectively enjoined; He has claimed whatever He has not inferentially conceded. Hence it is that there is no restoration of peace granted by the Churches to “idolatry” or to “blood.” From which final decision of theirs that the apostles should have departed, is (I think) not lawful to believe; or else, if some find it possible to believe so, they will be bound to prove it.

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    We know plainly at this point, too, the suspicions which they raise. For, in fact, they suspect the Apostle Paul of having, in the second (Epistle) to the Corinthians, granted pardon to the self-same fornicator whom in the first he has publicly sentenced to be “surrendered to Satan, for the destruction of the flesh,”825—impious heir as he was to his father’s wedlock; as if he subsequently erased his own words, writing: “But if any hath wholly saddened, he hath not wholly saddened me, but in part, lest I burden you all. Sufficient is such a chiding which is given by many; so that, on the contrary, ye should prefer to forgive and console, lest, perhaps, by more abundant sadness, such an one be devoured. For which reason, I pray you, confirm toward him affection. For to this end withal have I written, that I may learn a proof of you, that in all (things) ye are obedient to me. But if ye shall have forgiven any, so (do) I; for I, too, if I have forgiven ought, have forgiven in the person of Christ, lest we be overreached by Satan, since we are not ignorant of his injections.”826 What (reference) is understood here to the fornicator? what to the contaminator of his father’s bed?827 what to the Christian who had overstepped the shamelessness of heathens?—since, of course, he would have absolved by a special pardon one whom he had condemned by a special anger. He is more obscure in his pity than in his indignation. He is more open in his austerity than in his lenity. And yet, (generally), anger is more readily indirect than indulgence. Things of a sadder are more wont to hesitate than things of a more joyous cast. Of course the question in hand concerned some moderate indulgence; which (moderation in the indulgence) was now, if ever, to be divined, when it is usual for all the greatest indulgences not to be granted without public proclamation, so far (are they from being granted) without particularization. Why, do you yourself, when introducing into the church, for the purpose of melting the brotherhood by his prayers, the repentant adulterer, lead into the midst and prostrate him, all in haircloth and ashes, a compound of disgrace and horror, before the widows, before the elders, suing for the tears of all, licking the footprints of all, clasping the knees of all? And do you, good shepherd and blessed father that you are, to bring about the (desired) end of the man, grace your harangue with all the allurements of mercy in your power, and under the parable of the “ewe” go in quest of your goats?828 do you, for fear lest your “ewe” again take a leap out from the flock—as if that were no more lawful for the future which was not even once lawful—fill all the rest likewise full of apprehension at the very moment of granting indulgence? And would the apostle so carelessly have granted indulgence to the atrocious licentiousness of fornication burdened with incest, as not at least to have exacted from the criminal even this legally established garb of repentance which you ought to have learned from him? as to have uttered no commination on the past? no allocution touching the future? Nay, more; he goes further, and beseeches that they “would confirm toward him affection,” as if he were making satisfaction to him, not as if he were granting an indulgence! And yet I hear (him speak of) “affection,” not “communion;” as (he writes) withal to the Thessalonians: “But if any obey not our word through the epistle, him mark; and associate not with him, that he may feel awed; not regarding (him) as an enemy, but rebuking as a brother.”829 Accordingly, he could have said that to a fornicator, too, “affection” only was conceded, not “communion” as well; to an incestuous man, however, not even “affection;” whom he would, to be sure, have bidden to be banished from their midst830—much more, of course, from their mind. “But he was apprehensive lest they should be ‘overreached by Satan’ with regard to the loss of that person whom himself had cast forth to Satan; or else lest, ‘by abundance of mourning, he should be devoured’ whom he had sentenced to ‘destruction of the flesh.’” Here they go so far as to interpret “destruction of the flesh” of the office of repentance; in that by fasts, and squalor, and every species of neglect and studious ill-treatment devoted to the extermination of the flesh, it seems to make satisfaction to God; so that they argue that that fornicator—that incestuous person rather—having been delivered by the apostle to Satan, not with a view to “perdition,” but with a view to “emendation,” on the hypothesis that subsequently he would, on account of the “destruction” (that is, the general affliction) “of the flesh,” attain pardon, therefore did actually attain it. Plainly, the selfsame apostle delivered to Satan Hymenæus and Alexander, “that they might be emended into not blaspheming,”831 as he writes to his Timotheus. “But withal himself says that ‘a stake832 was given him, an angel of Satan,’ by which he was to be buffeted, lest he should exalt himself.” If they touch upon this (instance) withal, in order to lead us to understand that such as were “delivered to Satan” by him (were so delivered) with a view to emendation, not to perdition; what similarity is there between blasphemy and incest, and a soul entirely free from these,—nay, rather elated from no other source than the highest sanctity and all innocence; which (elation of soul) was being restrained in the apostle by “buffets,” if you will, by means (as they say) of pain in the ear or head? Incest, however, and blasphemy, deserved to have delivered the entire persons of men to Satan himself for a possession, not to “an angel” of his. And (there is yet another point): for about this it makes a difference, nay, rather withal in regard to this it is of the utmost consequence, that we find those men delivered by the apostle to Satan, but to the apostle himself an angel of Satan given. Lastly, when Paul is praying the Lord for its removal, what does he hear? “Hold my grace sufficient; for virtue is perfected in infirmity.”833 This they who are surrendered to Satan cannot hear. Moreover, if the crime of Hymenæus and Alexander—blasphemy, to wit—is irremissible in this and in the future age,834 of course the apostle would not, in opposition to the determinate decision of the Lord, have given to Satan, under a hope of pardon, men already sunken from the faith into blasphemy; whence, too, he pronounced them “shipwrecked with regard to faith,”835 having no longer the solace of the ship, the Church. For to those who, after believing, have struck upon (the rock of) blasphemy, pardon is denied; on the other hand, heathens and heretics are daily emerging out of blasphemy. But even if he did say, “I delivered them to Satan, that they might receive the discipline of not blaspheming,” he said it of the rest, who, by their deliverance to Satan—that is, their projection outside the Church—had to be trained in the knowledge that there must be no blaspheming. So, therefore, the incestuous fornicator, too, he delivered, not with a view to emendation, but with a view to perdition, to Satan, to whom he had already, by sinning above an heathen, gone over; that they might learn there must be no fornicating. Finally, he says, “for the destruction of the flesh,” not its “torture”—condemning the actual substance through which he had fallen out (of the faith), which substance had already perished immediately on the loss of baptism—“in order that the spirit,” he says, “may be saved in the day of the Lord.” And (here, again, is a difficulty): for let this point be inquired into, whether the man’s own spirit will be saved. In that case, a spirit polluted with so great a wickedness will be saved; the object of the perdition of the flesh being, that the spirit may be saved in penalty. In that case, the interpretation which is contrary to ours will recognise a penalty without the flesh, if we lose the resurrection of the flesh. It remains, therefore, that his meaning was, that that spirit which is accounted to exist in the Church must be presented “saved,” that is, untainted by the contagion of impurities in the day of the Lord, by the ejection of the incestuous fornicator; if, that is, he subjoins: “Know ye not, that a little leaven spoileth the savour of the whole lump?”836 And yet incestuous fornication was not a little, but a large, leaven.

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    And—these intervening points having accordingly been got rid of—I return to the second of Corinthians; in order to prove that this saying also of the apostle, “Sufficient to such a man be this rebuke which (is administered) by many,” is not suitable to the person of the fornicator. For if he had sentenced him “to be surrendered to Satan for the destruction of the flesh,” of course he had condemned rather than rebuked him. Some other, then, it was to whom he willed the “rebuke” to be sufficient; if, that is, the fornicator had incurred not “rebuke” from his sentence, but “condemnation.” For I offer you withal, for your investigation, this very question: Whether there were in the first Epistle others, too, who “wholly saddened” the apostle by “acting disorderly,”837 and “were wholly saddened” by him, through incurring (his) “rebuke,” according to the sense of the second Epistle; of whom some particular one may in that (second Epistle) have received pardon. Direct we, moreover, our attention to the entire first Epistle, written (that I may so say) as a whole, not with ink, but with gall; swelling, indignant, disdainful, comminatory, invidious, and shaped through (a series of) individual charges, with an eye to certain individuals who were, as it were, the proprietors of those charges? For so had schisms, and emulations, and discussions, and presumptions, and elations, and contentions required, that they should be laden with invidiousness, and rebuffed with curt reproof, and filed down by haughtiness, and deterred by austerity. And what kind of invidiousness is the pungency of humility? “To God I give thanks that I have baptized none of you, except Crispus and Gaius, lest any say that I have baptized in mine own name.”838 “For neither did I judge to know anything among you but Jesus Christ, and Him crucified.”839 And, “(I think) God hath selected us the apostles (as) hindmost, like men appointed to fight with wild beasts; since we have been made a spectacle to this world, both to angels and to men:” And, “We have been made the offscourings of this world, the refuse of all:” And, “Am I not free? am I not an apostle? have I not seen Christ Jesus our Lord?”840 With what kind of superciliousness, on the contrary, was he compelled to declare, “But to me it is of small moment that I be interrogated by you, or by a human court-day; for neither am I conscious to myself (of any guilt);” and, “My glory none shall make empty.”841 “Know ye not that we are to judge angels?”842 Again, of how open censure (does) the free expression (find utterance), how manifest the edge of the spiritual sword, (in words like these): “Ye are already enriched! ye are already satiated! ye are already reigning!”843 and, “If any thinks himself to know, he knoweth not yet how it behoves him to know!”844 Is he not even then “smiting some one’s face,”845 in saying, “For who maketh thee to differ? What, moreover, hast thou which thou hast not received? Why gloriest thou as if thou have not received?”846 Is he not withal “smiting them upon the mouth,”847 (in saying): “But some, in (their) conscience, even until now eat (it) as if (it were) an idol-sacrifice. But, so sinning, by shocking the weak consciences of the brethren thoroughly, they will sin against Christ.”848 By this time, indeed, (he mentions individuals) by name: “Or have we not a power of eating, and of drinking, and of leading about women, just as the other apostles withal, and the brethren of the Lord, and Cephas?” and, “If others attain to (a share) in power over you, (may) not we rather?” In like manner he pricks them, too, with an individualizing pen: “Wherefore, let him who thinketh himself to be standing, see lest he fall;” and, “If any seemeth to be contentious, we have not such a custom, nor (has) the Church of the Lord.” With such a final clause (as the following), wound up with a malediction, “If any loveth not the Lord Jesus, be he anathema maranatha,” he is, of course, striking some particular individual through. But I will rather take my stand at that point where the apostle is more fervent, where the fornicator himself has troubled others also. “As if I be not about to come unto you, some are inflated. But I will come with more speed, if the Lord shall have permitted, and will learn not the speech of those who are inflated, but the power. For the kingdom of God is not in speech, but in power. And what will ye? shall I come unto you in a rod, or in a spirit of lenity?” For what was to succeed? “There is heard among you generally fornication, and such fornication as (is) not (heard) even among the Gentiles, that one should have his own father’s wife. And are ye inflated, and have ye not rather mourned, that he who hath committed such a deed may be taken away from the midst of you?” For whom were they to “mourn?” Of course, for one dead. To whom were they to mourn? Of course, to the Lord, in order that in some way or other he may be “taken away from the midst of them;” not, of course in order that he may be put outside the Church. For a thing would not have been requested of God which came within the official province of the president (of the Church); but (what would be requested of Him was), that through death—not only this death common to all, but one specially appropriate to that very flesh which was already a corpse, a tomb leprous with irremediable uncleanness—he might more fully (than by simple excommunication) incur the penalty of being “taken away” from the Church. And accordingly, in so far as it was meantime possible for him to be “taken away,” he “adjudged such an one to be surrendered to Satan for the destruction of the flesh.” For it followed that flesh which was being cast forth to the devil should be accursed, in order that it might be discarded from the sacrament of blessing, never to return into the camp of the Church. And thus we see in this place the apostle’s severity divided, against one who was “inflated,” and one who was “incestuous:” (we see the apostle) armed against the one with “a rod,” against the other with a sentence,—a “rod,” which he was threatening; a sentence, which he was executing: the former (we see) still brandishing, the latter instantaneously hurtling; (the one) wherewith he was rebuking, and (the other) wherewith he was condemning. And certain it is, that forthwith thereafter the rebuked one indeed trembled beneath the menace of the uplifted rod, but the condemned perished under the instant infliction of the penalty. Immediately the former retreated fearing the blow, the latter paying the penalty. When a letter of the self-same apostle is sent a second time to the Corinthians, pardon is granted plainly; but it is uncertain to whom, because neither person nor cause is advertised. I will compare the cases with the senses. If the “incestuous” man is set before us, on the same platform will be the “inflated” man too. Surely the analogy of the case is sufficiently maintained, when the “inflated” is rebuked, but the “incestuous” is condemned. To the “inflated” pardon is granted, but after rebuke; to the “incestuous” no pardon seems to have been granted, as under condemnation. If it was to him for whom it was feared that he might be “devoured by mourning” that pardon was being granted, the “rebuked” one was still in danger of being devoured, losing heart on account of the commination, and mourning on account of the rebuke. The “condemned” one, however, was permanently accounted as already devoured, alike by his fault and by his sentence; (accounted, that is, as one) who had not to “mourn,” but to suffer that which, before suffering it, he might have mourned. If the reason why pardon was being granted was “lest we should be defrauded by Satan,” the loss against which precaution was being taken had to do with that which had not yet perished. No precaution is taken in the use of a thing finally despatched, but in the case of a thing still safe. But the condemned one—condemned, too, to the possession of Satan—had already perished from the Church at the moment when he had committed such a deed, not to say withal at the moment of being forsworn by the Church itself. How should (the Church) fear to suffer a fraudulent loss of him whom she had already lost on his ereption, and whom, after condemnation, she could not have held? Lastly, to what will it be becoming for a judge to grant indulgence? to that which by a formal pronouncement he has decisively settled, or to that which by an interlocutory sentence he has left in suspense? And, of course, (I am speaking of) that judge who is not wont “to rebuild those things which he has destroyed, lest he be held a transgressor.”849 Come, now, if he had not “wholly saddened” so many persons in the first Epistle; if he had “rebuked” none, had “terrified”850 none; if he had “smitten” the incestuous man alone; if, for his cause, he had sent none into panic, had struck (no) “inflated” one with consternation,— would it not be better for you to suspect, and more believing for you to argue, that rather some one far different had been in the same predicament at that time among the Corinthians; so that, rebuked, and terrified, and already wounded with mourning, he therefore—the moderate nature of his fault permitting it—subsequently received pardon, than that you should interpret that (pardon as granted) to an incestuous fornicator? For this you had been bound to read, even if not in an Epistle, yet impressed upon the very character of the apostle, by (his) modesty more clearly than by the instrumentality of a pen: not to steep, to wit, Paul, the “apostle of Christ,”851 the “teacher of the nations in faith and verity,”852 the “vessel of election,”853 the founder of Churches, the censor of discipline, (in the guilt of) levity so great as that he should either have condemned rashly one whom he was presently to absolve, or else rashly absolved one whom he had not rashly condemned, albeit on the ground of that fornication which is the result of simple immodesty, not to say on the ground of incestuous nuptials and impious voluptuousness and parricidal lust,—(lust) which he had refused to compare even with (the lusts of) the nations, for fear it should be set down to the account of custom; (lust) on which he would sit in judgment though absent, for fear the culprit should “gain the time;”854 (lust) which he had condemned after calling to his aid even “the Lord’s power,” for fear the sentence should seem human. Therefore he has trifled both with his own “spirit,”855 and with “the angel of the Church,”856 and with “the power of the Lord,” if he rescinded what by their counsel he had formally pronounced.

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    If you hammer out the sequel of that Epistle to illustrate the meaning of the apostle, neither will that sequel be found to square with the obliteration of incest; lest even here the apostle be put to the blush by the incongruity of his later meanings. For what kind (of hypothesis) is it, that the very moment after making a largess of restoration to the privileges of ecclesiastical peace to an incestuous fornicator, he should forthwith have proceeded to accumulate exhortations about turning away from impurities, about pruning away of blemishes, about exhortations to deeds of sanctity, as if he had decreed nothing of a contrary nature just before? Compare, in short, (and see) whether it be his province to say, “Wherefore, having this ministration, in accordance with (the fact) that we have obtained mercy, we faint not; but renounce the secret things of disgrace,”857 who has just released from condemnation one manifestly convicted of, not “disgrace” merely, but crime too: whether it be province, again, to excuse a conspicuous immodesty, who, among the counts of his own labours, after “straits and pressures,” after “fasts and vigils,” has named “chastity” also:858 whether it be, once more, his province to receive back into communion whatsoever reprobates, who writes, “For what society (is there) between righteousness and iniquity? what communion, moreover, between light and darkness? what consonance between Christ and Belial? or what part for a believer with an unbeliever? or what agreement between the temple of God and idols?” Will he not deserve to hear constantly (the reply); “And in what manner do you make a separation between things which, in the former part of your Epistle, by restitution of the incestuous one, you have joined? For by his restoration to concorporate unity with the Church, righteousness is made to have fellowship with iniquity, darkness has communion with light, Belial is consonant with Christ, and believer shares the sacraments with unbeliever. And idols may see to themselves: the very vitiator of the temple of God is converted into a temple of God: for here, too, he says, ‘For ye are a temple of the living God. For He saith, That I will dwell in you, and will walk in (you), and will be their God, and they shall be to Me a people. Wherefore depart from the midst of them, be separate, and touch not the unclean.’859 This (thread of discourse) also you spin out, O apostle, when at the very moment you yourself are offering your hand to so huge a whirlpool of impurities; nay, you superadd yet further, ‘Having therefore this promise, beloved, cleanse we ourselves out from every defilement of flesh and spirit, perfecting chastity in God’s fear.’”860 I pray you, had he who fixes such (exhortations) in our minds been recalling some notorious fornicator into the Church? or is his reason for writing it, to prevent himself from appearing to you in the present day to have so recalled him? These (words of his) will be in duty bound alike to serve as a prescriptive rule for the foregone, and a prejudgment for the following, (parts of the Epistle). For in saying, toward the end of the Epistle, “Lest, when I shall have come, God humble me, and I bewail many of those who have formerly sinned, and have not repented of the impurity which they have committed, the fornication, and the vileness,” 861 he did not, of course, determine that they were to be received back (by him into the Church) if they should have entered (the path of) repentance, whom he was to find in the Church, but that they were to be bewailed, and indubitably ejected, that they might lose (the benefit of) repentance. And, besides, it is not congruous that he, who had above asserted that there was no communion between light and darkness, righteousness and iniquity, should in this place have been indicating somewhat touching communion. But all such are ignorant of the apostle as understand anything in a sense contrary to the nature and design of the man himself, contrary to the norm and rule of his doctrines; so as to presume that he, a teacher of every sanctity, even by his own example, an execrator and expiator of every impurity, and universally consistent with himself in these points, restored ecclesiastical privileges to an incestuous person sooner than to some more mild offender.

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    Necessary it is, therefore, that the (character of the) apostle should be continuously pointed out to them; whom I will maintain to be such in the second of Corinthians withal, as I know (him to be) in all his letters. (He it is) who even in the first (Epistle) was the first of all (the apostles) to dedicate the temple of God: “Know ye not that ye are the temple of God, and that in you the Lord dwells?”862—who likewise, for the consecrating and purifying (of) that temple, wrote the law pertaining to the temple-keepers: “If any shall have marred the temple of God, him shall God mar; for the temple of God is holy, which (temple) are ye.”863 Come, now; who in the world has (ever) redintegrated one who has been “marred” by God (that is, delivered to Satan with a view to destruction of the flesh), after subjoining for that reason, “Let none seduce himself;”864 that is, let none presume that one “marred” by God can possibly be redintegrated anew? Just as, again, among all other crimes—nay, even before all others—when affirming that “adulterers, and fornicators, and effeminates, and co-habitors with males, will not attain the kingdom of God,” he premised, “Do not err”865—to wit, if you think they will attain it. But to them from whom “the kingdom” is taken away, of course the life which exists in the kingdom is not permitted either. Moreover, by superadding, “But such indeed ye have been; but ye have received ablution, but ye have been sanctified, in the Name of the Lord Jesus Christ, and in the Spirit of our God;”866 in as far as he puts on the paid side of the account such sins before baptism, in so far after baptism he determines them irremissible, if it is true, (as it is), that they are not allowed to “receive ablution” anew. Recognise, too, in what follows, Paul (in the character of) an immoveable column of discipline and its rules: “Meats for the belly, and the belly for meats: God maketh a full end both of the one and of the others; but the body (is) not for fornication, but for God:”867 for “Let Us make man,” said God, “(conformable) to Our image and likeness.” “And God made man; (conformable) to the image and likeness of God made He him.”868 “The Lord for the body:” yes; for “the Word was made flesh.”869 “Moreover, God both raised up the Lord, and will raise up us through His own power;”870 on account, to wit, of the union of our body with Him. And accordingly, “Know ye not your bodies (to be) members of Christ?” because Christ, too, is God’s temple. “Overturn this temple, and I will in three days’ space resuscitate it.”871 “Taking away the members of Christ, shall I make (them) members of an harlot? Know ye not, that whoever is agglutinated to an harlot is made one body? (for the two shall be (made) into one flesh): but whoever is agglutinated to the Lord is one spirit? Flee fornication.”872 If revocable by pardon, in what sense am I to flee it, to turn adulterer anew? I shall gain nothing if I do flee it: I shall be “one body,” to which by communion I shall be agglutinated. “Every sin which a human being may have committed is extraneous to the body; but whoever fornicateth, sinneth against his own body.”873 And, for fear you should fly to that statement for a licence to fornication, on the ground that you will be sinning against a thing which is yours, not the Lord’s, he takes you away from yourself, and awards you, according to his previous disposition, to Christ: “And ye are not your own;” immediately opposing (thereto), “for bought ye are with a price”—the blood, to wit, of the Lord:874 “glorify and extol the Lord in your body.”875 See whether he who gives this injunction be likely to have pardoned one who has disgraced the Lord, and who has cast Him down from (the empire of) his body, and this indeed through incest. If you wish to imbibe to the utmost all knowledge of the apostle, in order to understand with what an axe of censorship he lops, and eradicates, and extirpates, every forest of lusts, for fear of permitting aught to regain strength and sprout again; behold him desiring souls to keep a fast from the legitimate fruit of nature—the apple, I mean, of marriage: “But with regard to what ye wrote, good it is for a man to have no contact with a woman; but, on account of fornication, let each one have his own wife: let husband to wife, and wife to husband, render what is due.”876 Who but must know that it was against his will that he relaxed the bond of this “good,” in order to prevent fornication? But if he either has granted, or does grant, indulgence to fornication, of course he has frustrated the design of his own remedy. and will be bound forthwith to put the curb upon the nuptials of continence, if the fornication for the sake of which those nuptials are permitted shall cease to be feared. For (a fornication) which has indulgence granted it will not be feared. And yet he professes that he has granted the use of marriage “by way of indulgence, not of command.”877 For he “wills” all to be on a level with himself. But when things lawful are (only) granted by way of indulgence, who hope for things unlawful? “To the unmarried” also, “and widows,” he says, “It is good, by his example, to persevere” (in their present state); “but if they were too weak, to marry; because it is preferable to marry than to bum.”878 With what fires, I pray you, is it preferable to “burn”—(the fires) of concupiscence, or (the fires) of penalty? Nay, but if fornication is pardonable, it will not be an object of concupiscence. But it is more (the manner) of an apostle to take forethought for the fires of penalty. Wherefore, if it is penalty which “burns,” it follows that fornication, which penalty awaits, is not pardonable. Meantime withal, while prohibiting divorce, he uses the Lord’s precept against adultery as an instrument for providing, in place of divorce, either perseverance in widowhood, or else a reconciliation of peace: inasmuch as “whoever shall have dismissed a wife (for any cause) except the cause of adultery, maketh her commit adultery; and he who marrieth one dismissed by a husband committeth adultery.”879 What powerful remedies does the Holy Spirit furnish, to prevent, to wit, the commission anew of that which He wills not should anew be pardoned! Now, if in all cases he says it is best for a man thus to be; “Thou art joined to a wife, seek not loosing” (that you may give no occasion to adultery); “thou art loosed from a wife, seek not a wife,” that you may reserve an opportunity for yourself: “but withal, if thou shalt have married a wife, and if a virgin shall have married, she sinneth not; pressure, however, of the flesh such shall have,”—even here he is granting a permission by way of “sparing them.”880 On the other hand, he lays it down that “the time is wound up,” in order that even “they who have wives may be as if they had them not.” “For the fashion of this world is passing away,”—(this world) no longer, to wit, requiring (the command), “Grow and multiply.” Thus he wills us to pass our life “without anxiety,” because “the unmarried care about the Lord, how they may please God; the married, however, muse about the world,881 how they may please their spouse.”882 Thus he pronounces that the “preserver of a virgin” doeth “better” than her “giver in marriage.”883 Thus, too, he discriminatingly judges her to be more blessed, who, after losing her husband subsequently to her entrance into the faith, lovingly embraces the opportunity of widowhood.884 Thus he commends as Divine all these counsels of continence: “I think,”885 he says, “I too have the Spirit of God.”886 Who is this your most audacious asserter of all immodesty, plainly a “most faithful” advocate of the adulterous, and fornicators, and incestuous, in whose honour he has undertaken this cause against the Holy Spirit, so that he recites a false testimony from (the writings of) His apostle? No such indulgence granted Paul, who endeavours to obliterate “necessity of the flesh” wholly from (the list of) even honourable pretexts (for marriage unions). He does grant “indulgence,” I allow;—not to adulteries, but to nuptials. He does “spare,” I allow;— marriages, not harlotries. He tries to avoid giving pardon even to nature, for fear he may flatter guilt. He is studious to put restraints upon the union which is heir to blessing, for fear that which is heir to curse be excused. This (one possibility) was left him—to purge the flesh from (natural) dregs, for (cleanse it) from (foul) stains he cannot. But this is the usual way with perverse and ignorant heretics; yes, and by this time even with Psychics universally: to arm themselves with the opportune support of some one ambiguous passage, in opposition to the disciplined host of sentences of the entire document.

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    Challenge me to front the apostolic line of battle; look at his Epistles: they all keep guard in defence of modesty, of chastity, of sanctity; they all aim their missiles against the interests of luxury, and lasciviousness, and lust. What, in short, does he write to the Thessalonians withal? “For our consolation887 (originated) not of seduction, nor of impurity:” and, “This is the will of God, your sanctification, that ye abstain from fornication; that each one know how to possess his vessel in sanctification and honour, not in the lust of concupiscence, as (do) the nations which are ignorant of God.”888 What do the Galatians read? “Manifest are the works of the flesh.” What are these? Among the first he has set “fornication, impurity, lasciviousness:” “(concerning) which I foretell you, as I have foretold, that whoever do such acts are not to attain by inheritance the kingdom of God.”889 The Romans, moreover,—what learning is more impressed upon them than that there must be no dereliction of the Lord after believing? “What, then, say we? Do we persevere in sin, in order that grace may super- abound? Far be it. We, who are dead to sin, how shall we live in it still? Are ye ignorant that we who have been baptized in Christ have been baptized into His death? Buried with Him, then, we have been, through the baptism into the death, in order that, as Christ hath risen again from the dead, so we too may walk in newness of life. For if we have been buried together in the likeness of His death, why, we shall be (in that) of (His) resurrection too; knowing this, that our old man hath been crucified together with Him. But if we died with Christ, we believe that we shall live, too, with Him; knowing that Christ, having been raised from the dead, no more dieth, (that) death no more hath domination over Him. For in that He died to sin, He died once for all; but in that He liveth, to God He liveth. Thus, too, repute ye yourselves dead indeed to sin, but living to God through Christ Jesus.”890 Therefore, Christ being once for all dead, none who, subsequently to Christ, has died, can live again to sin, and especially to so heinous a sin. Else, if fornication and adultery may by possibility be anew admissible, Christ withal will be able anew to die. Moreover, the apostle is urgent in prohibiting “sin from reigning in our mortal body,”891 whose “infirmity of the flesh” he knew. “For as ye have tendered your members to servile impurity and iniquity, so too now tender them servants to righteousness unto holiness.” For even if he has affirmed that “good dwelleth not in his flesh,”892 yet (he means) according to “the law of the letter,”893 in which he “was:” but according to “the law of the Spirit,”894 to which he annexes us, he frees us from the “infirmity of the flesh.” “For the law,” he says, “of the Spirit of life hath manumitted thee from the law of sin and of death.”895 For albeit he may appear to be partly disputing from the standpoint of Judaism, yet it is to us that he is directing the integrity and plenitude of the rules of discipline,—(us), for whose sake soever, labouring (as we were) in the law, “God hath sent, through flesh, His own Son, in similitude of flesh of sin; and, because of sin, hath condemned sin in the flesh; in order that the righteousness of the law,” he says, “might be fulfilled in us, who walk not according to flesh, but according to (the) Spirit. For they who walk according to flesh are sensible as to those things which are the flesh’s, and they who (walk) according to (the) Spirit those which (are) the Spirit’s.”896 Moreover, he has affirmed the “sense of the flesh” to be “death;”897 hence too, “enmity,” and enmity toward God;898 and that “they who are in the flesh,” that is, in the sense of the flesh, “cannot please God:”899 and, “If ye live according to flesh,” he says, “it will come to pass that ye die.”900 But what do we understand “the sense of the flesh” and “the life of the flesh” (to mean), except whatever “it shames (one) to pronounce?”901 for the other (works) of the flesh even an apostle would have named.902 Similarly, too, (when writing) to the Ephesians, while recalling past (deeds), he warns (them) concerning the future: “In which we too had our conversation, doing the concupiscences and pleasures of the flesh.”903 Branding, in fine, such as had denied themselves—Christians, to wit—on the score of having “delivered themselves up to the working of every impurity,”904 “But ye,” he says, “not so have learnt Christ.” And again he says thus: “Let him who was wont to steal, steal no more.”905 But, similarly, let him who was wont to commit adultery hitherto, not commit adultery; and he who was wont to fornicate hitherto, not fornicate: for he would have added these (admonitions) too, had he been in the habit of extending pardon to such, or at all willed it to be extended—(he) who, not willing pollution to be contracted even by a word, says, “Let no base speech proceed out of your mouth.”906 Again: “But let fornication and every impurity not be even named among you, as becometh saints,”907—so far is it from being excused,—“knowing this, that every fornicator or impure (person) hath not God’s kingdom. Let none seduce you with empty words: on this account cometh the wrath of God upon the sons of unbelief.”908 Who “seduces with empty words” but he who states in a public harangue that adultery is remissible? not seeing into the fact that its very foundations have been dug out by the apostle, when he puts restraints upon drunkennesses and revellings, as withal here: “And be not inebriated with wine, in which is voluptuousness.”909 He demonstrates, too, to the Colossians what “members” they are to “mortify” upon earth: “fornication, impurity, lust, evil concupiscence,” and “base talk.”910 Yield up, by this time, to so many and such sentences, the one (passage) to which you cling. Paucity is cast into the shade by multitude, doubt by certainty, obscurity by plainness. Even if, for certain, the apostle had granted pardon of fornication to that Corinthian, it would be another instance of his once for all contravening his own practice to meet the requirement of the time. He circumcised Timotheus alone, and yet did away with circumcision.911

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    “But these (passages),” says (our opponent), “will pertain to the interdiction of all immodesty, and the enforcing of all modesty, yet without prejudice to the place of pardon; which (pardon) is not forthwith quite denied when sins are condemned, since the time of the pardon is concurrent with the condemnation which it excludes.” This piece of shrewdness on the part of the Psychics was (naturally) sequent; and accordingly we have reserved for this place the cautions which, even in the times of antiquity, were openly taken with a view to the refusing of ecclesiastical communion to cases of this kind. For even in the Proverbs, which we call Paroemiæ, Solomon specially (treats) of the adulterer (as being) nowhere admissible to expiation. “But the adulterer,” he says, “through indigence of senses acquireth perdition to his own soul; sustaineth dolors and disgraces. His ignominy, moreover, shall not be wiped away for the age. For indignation, full of jealousy, will not spare the man in the day of judgment.”912 If you think this said about a heathen, at all events about believers you have already heard (it said) through Isaiah: “Go out from the midst of them, and be separate, and touch not the impure.”913 You have at the very outset of the Psalms, “Blessed the man who hath not gone astray in the counsel of the impious, nor stood in the way of sinners, and sat in the state-chair of pestilence;”914 whose voice,915 withal, (is heard) subsequently: “I have not sat with the conclave of vanity; and with them who act iniquitously will I not enter”—this (has to do with “the church” of such as act ill—“and with the impious will I not sit;”916 and, “I will wash with the innocent mine hands, and Thine altar will I surround, Lord”917—as being “a host in himself”—inasmuch as indeed “With an holy (man), holy Thou wilt be; and with an innocent man, innocent Thou wilt be; and with an elect, elect Thou wilt be; and with a perverse, perverse Thou wilt be.”918 And elsewhere: “But to the sinner saith the Lord, Why expoundest thou my righteous acts, and takest up my testament through thy mouth? If thou sawest a thief, thou rannest with him; and with adulterers thy portion thou madest.”919 Deriving his instructions, therefore, from hence, the apostle too says: “I wrote to you in the Epistle, not to be mingled up with fornicators: not, of course, with the fornicators of this world”—and so forth—“else it behoved you to go out from the world. But now I write to you, if any is named a brother among you, (being) a fornicator, or an idolater” (for what so intimately joined?), “or a defrauder” (for what so near akin?), and so on, “with such to take no food even,”920 not to say the Eucharist: because, to wit, withal “a little leaven spoileth the flavour of the whole lump.”921 Again to Timotheus: “Lay hands on no one hastily, nor communicate with others’ sins.”922 Again to the Ephesians: “Be not, then, partners with them: for ye were at one time darkness.”923 And yet more earnestly: “Communicate not with the unfruitful works of darkness; nay rather withal convict them. For (the things) which are done by them in secrecy it is disgraceful even to utter.”924 What more disgraceful than immodesties? If, moreover, even from a “brother” who “walketh idly”925 he warns the Thessalonians to withdraw themselves, how much more withal from a fornicator! For these are the deliberate judgments of Christ, “loving the Church,” who “hath delivered Himself up for her, that He may sanctify her (purifying her utterly by the laver of water) in the word, that He may present the Church to Himself glorious, not having stain or wrinkle”—of course after the laver—“but (that) she may be holy and without reproach;”926 thereafter, to wit, being “without wrinkle” as a virgin, “without stain” (of fornication) as a spouse, “without disgrace” (of vileness), as having been “utterly purified.” What if, even here, you should conceive to reply that communion is indeed denied to sinners, very especially such as had been “polluted by the flesh,”927 but (only) for the present; to be restored, to wit, as the result of penitential suing: in accordance with that clemency of God which prefers a sinner’s repentance to his death?928—for this fundamental ground of your opinion must be universally attacked. We say, accordingly, that if it had been competent to the Divine clemency to have guaranteed the demonstration of itself even to the post-baptismally lapsed, the apostle would have said thus: “Communicate not with the works of darkness, unless they shall have repented;” and, “With such take not food even, unless after they shall have wiped, with rolling at their feet, the shoes of the brethren;” and, “Him who shall have marred the temple of God, shall God mar, unless he shall have shaken off from his head in the church the ashes of all hearths.” For it had been his duty, in the case of those things which he had condemned, to have equally determined the extent to which he had (and that conditionally) condemned them—whether he had condemned them with a temporary and conditional, and not a perpetual, severity. However, since in all Epistles he both prohibits such a character, (so sinning) after believing, from being admitted (to the society of believers); and, if admitted, detrudes him from communion, without hope of any condition or time; he sides more with our opinion, pointing out that the repentance which the Lord prefers is that which before believing, before baptism, is esteemed better than the death of the sinner,—(the sinner, I say,) once for all to be washed through the grace of Christ, who once for all has suffered death for our sins. For this (rule), even in his own person, the apostle has laid down. For, when affirming that Christ came for this end, that He might save sinners,929 of whom himself had been the “first,” what does he add? “And I obtained mercy, because I did (so) ignorantly in unbelief.”930 Thus that clemency of God, preferring the repentance of a sinner to his death, looks at such as are ignorant still, and still unbelieving, for the sake of whose liberation Christ came; not (at such) as already know God, and have learnt the sacrament of the faith. But if the clemency of God is applicable to such as are ignorant still, and unbelieving, of course it follows that repentance invites clemency to itself; without prejudice to that species of repentance after believing, which either, for lighter sins, will be able to obtain pardon from the bishop, or else, for greater and irremissible ones, from God only.931

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    But how far (are we to treat) of Paul; since even John appears to give some secret countenance to the opposite side? as if in the Apocalypse he has manifestly assigned to fornication the auxiliary aid of repentance, where, to the angel of the Thyatirenes, the Spirit sends a message that He “hath against him that he kept (in communion) the woman Jezebel, who calleth herself a prophet, and teacheth,932 and seduceth my servants unto fornicating and eating of idol sacrifice. And I gave her bounteously a space of time, that she might enter upon repentance; nor is she willing to enter upon it on the count of fornication. Behold, I will give her into a bed, and her adulterers with herself into greatest pressure, unless they shall have repented of her works.”933 I am content with the fact that, between apostles, there is a common agreement in rules of faith and of discipline. For, “Whether (it be) I,” says (Paul), “or they, thus we preach.”934 Accordingly, it is material to the interest of the whole sacrament to believe nothing conceded by John, which has been flatly refused by Paul. This harmony of the Holy Spirit whoever observes, shall by Him be conducted into His meanings. For (the angel of the Thyatirene Church) was secretly introducing into the Church, and urging justly to repentance, an heretical woman, who had taken upon herself to teach what she had learnt from the Nicolaitans. For who has a doubt that an heretic, deceived by (a spurious baptismal) rite, upon discovering his mischance, and expiating it by repentance, both attains pardon and is restored to the bosom of the Church? Whence even among us, as being on a par with an heathen, nay even more than heathen, an heretic likewise, (such an one) is purged through the baptism of truth from each character,935 and admitted (to the Church). Or else, if you are certain that that woman had, after a living faith, subsequently expired, and turned heretic, in order that you may claim pardon as the result of repentance, not as it were for an heretical, but as it were for a believing, sinner: let her, I grant, repent; but with the view of ceasing from adultery, not however in the prospect of restoration (to Church-fellowship) as well. For this will be a repentance which we, too, acknowledge to be due much more (than you do); but which we reserve, for pardon, to God.936 In short, this Apocalypse, in its later passages, has assigned “the infamous and fornicators,” as well as “the cowardly, and unbelieving, and murderers, and sorcerers, and idolaters,” who have been guilty of any such crime while professing the faith, to “the lake of fire,”937 without any conditional condemnation. For it will not appear to savour of (a bearing upon) heathens, since it has (just) pronounced with regard to believers, “They who shall have conquered shall have this inheritance; and I will be to them a God, and they to me for sons;” and so has subjoined: “But to the cowardly, and unbelieving, and infamous, and fornicators, and murderers, and sorcerers, and idolaters, (shall be) a share in the lake of fire and sulphur, which (lake) is the second death.” Thus, too, again: “Blessed they who act according to the precepts, that they may have power over the tree of life and over the gates, for entering into the holy city. Dogs, sorcerers, fornicators, murderers, out!”938—of course, such as do not act according to the precepts; for to be sent out is the portion of those who have been within. Moreover, “What have I to do to judge them who are without?”939 had preceded (the sentences now in question). From the Epistle also of John they forthwith cull (a proof). It is said: “The blood of His Son purifieth us utterly from every sin.”940 Always then, and in every form, we will sin, if always and from every sin He utterly purifies us; or else, if not always, not again after believing; and if not from sin, not again from fornication. But what is the point whence (John) has started? He had predicated “God” to be “Light,” and that “darkness is not in Him,” and that “we lie if we say that we have communion with Him, and walk in darkness.”941 “If, however,” he says, “we walk in the light, we shall have communion with Him, and the blood of Jesus Christ our Lord purifieth us utterly from every sin.”942 Walking, then, in the light, do we sin? and, sinning in the light, shall we be utterly purified? By no means. For he who sins is not in the light, but in darkness. Whence, too, he points out the mode in which we shall be utterly purified from sin—(by) “walking in the light,” in which sin cannot be committed. Accordingly, the sense in which he says we “are utterly purified” is, not in so far as we sin, but in so far as we do not sin. For, “walking in the light,” but not having communion with darkness, we shall act as they that are “utterly purified;” sin not being quite laid down, but not being wittingly committed. For this is the virtue of the Lord’s blood, that such as it has already purified from sin, and thenceforward has set “in the light,” it renders thenceforward pure, if they shall continue to persevere walking in the light. “But he subjoins,” you say, “If we say that we have not sin, we are seducing ourselves, and the truth is not in us. If we confess our sins, faithful and just is He to remit them to us, and utterly purify us from every unrighteousness.”943 Does he say “from impurity?” (No): or else, if that is so, then (He “utterly purifies” us) from “idolatry” too. But there is a difference in the sense. For see yet again: “If we say,” he says, “that we have not sinned, we make Him a liar, and His word is not in us.”944 All the more fully: “Little children, these things have I written to you, lest ye sin; and if ye shall have sinned, an Advocate we have with God the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous; and, He is the propitiation for our sins.”945 “According to these words,” you say, “it will be admitted both that we sin, and that we have pardon.” What, then, will become (of your theory), when, proceeding (with the Epistle), I find something different? For he affirms that we do not sin at all; and to this end he treats at large, that he may make no such concession; setting forth that sins have been once for all deleted by Christ, not subsequently to obtain pardon; in which statement the sense requires us (to apply the statement) to an admonition to chastity. “Every one,” he says, “who hath this hope, maketh himself chaste, because He too is chaste. Every one who doeth sin, doeth withal iniquity;946 and sin is iniquity.947 And ye know that He hath been manifested to take away sins”—henceforth, of course, to be no more incurred, if it is true, (as it is,) that he subjoins, “Every one who abideth in Him sinneth not; every one who sinneth neither hath seen nor knoweth Him. Little children, let none seduce you. Every one who doeth righteousness is righteous, as He withal is righteous. He who doeth sin is of the devil, inasmuch as the devil sinneth from the beginning. For unto this end was manifested the Son of God, to undo the works of the devil:” for He has “undone” them withal, by setting man free through baptism, the “handwriting of death” having been “made a gift of” to him:948 and accordingly, “he who is being born of God doeth not sin, because the seed of God abideth in him; and he cannot sin, because he hath been born of God. Herein are manifest the sons of God and the sons of the devil.”949 Wherein? except it be (thus): the former by not sinning, from the time that they were born from God; the latter by sinning, because they are from the devil, just as if they never were born from God? But if he says, “He who is not righteous is not of God,”950 how shall he who is not modest again become (a son) of God, who has already ceased to be so? “It is therefore nearly equivalent to saying that John has forgotten himself; asserting, in the former part of his Epistle, that we are not without sin, but now prescribing that we do not sin at all: and in the one case flattering us somewhat with hope of pardon, but in the other asserting with all stringency, that whoever may have sinned are no sons of God.” But away with (the thought): for not even we ourselves forget the distinction between sins, which was the starting-point of our digression. And (a right distinction it was); for John has here sanctioned it; in that there are some sins of daily committal, to which we all are liable: for who will be free from the accident of either being angry unjustly, and retaining his anger beyond sunset;951 or else even using manual violence or else carelessly speaking evil; or else rashly swearing; or else forfeiting his plighted word or else lying, from bashfulness or “necessity?” In businesses, in official duties, in trade, in food, in sight, in hearing, by how great temptations are we plied! So that, if there were no pardon for such sins as these, salvation would be unattainable to any. Of these, then, there will be pardon, through the successful Suppliant of the Father, Christ. But there are, too, the contraries of these; as the graver and destructive ones, such as are incapable of pardon—murder, idolatry, fraud, apostasy, blasphemy; (and), of course, too, adultery and fornication; and if there be any other “violation of the temple of God.” For these Christ will no more be the successful Pleader: these will not at all be incurred by one who has been born of God, who will cease to be the son of God if he do incur them. Thus John’s rule of diversity will be established; arranging as he does a distinction of sins, while he now admits and now denies that the sons of God sin. For (in making these assertions) he was looking forward to the final clause of his letter, and for that (final clause) he was laying his preliminary bases; intending to say, in the end, more manifestly: “If any knoweth his brother to be sinning a sin not unto death, he shall make request, and the Lord shall give life to him who sinneth not unto death. For there is a sin unto death: not concerning that do I say that one should make request.”952 He, too, (as I have been), was mindful that Jeremiah had been prohibited by God to deprecate (Him) on behalf of a people which was committing mortal sins. “Every unrighteousness is sin; and there is a sin unto death.953 But we know that every one who hath been born of God sinneth not”954—to wit, the sin which is unto death. Thus there is no course left for you, but either to deny that adultery and fornication are mortal sins; or else to confess them irremissible, for which it is not permitted even to make successful intercession.

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    The discipline, therefore, of the apostles properly (so called), indeed, instructs and determinately directs, as a principal point, the overseer of all sanctity as regards the temple of God to the universal eradication of every sacrilegious outrage upon modesty, without any mention of restoration. I wish, however, redundantly to superadd the testimony likewise of one particular comrade of the apostles,—(a testimony) aptly suited for confirming, by most proximate right, the discipline of his masters. For there is extant withal an Epistle to the Hebrews under the name of Barnabas—a man sufficiently accredited by God, as being one whom Paul has stationed next to himself in the uninterrupted observance of abstinence: “Or else, I alone and Barnabas, have not we the power of working?”955 And, of course, the Epistle of Barnabas is more generally received among the Churches than that apocryphal “Shepherd” of adulterers. Warning, accordingly, the disciples to omit all first principles, and strive rather after perfection, and not lay again the foundations of repentance from the works of the dead, he says: “For impossible it is that they who have once been illuminated, and have tasted the heavenly gift, and have participated in the Holy Spirit, and have tasted the word of God and found it sweet, when they shall—their age already setting—have fallen away, should be again recalled unto repentance, crucifying again for themselves the Son of God, and dishonouring Him.”956 “For the earth which hath drunk the rain often descending upon it, and hath borne grass apt for them on whose account it is tilled withal, attaineth God’s blessing; but if it bring forth thorns, it is reprobate, and nighest to cursing, whose end is (doomed) unto utter burning.”957 He who learnt this from apostles, and taught it with apostles, never knew of any “second repentance” promised by apostles to the adulterer and fornicator. For excellently was he wont to interpret the law, and keep its figures even in (the dispensation of) the Truth itself. It was with a reference, in short, to this species of discipline that the caution was taken in the case of the leper: “But if the speckled appearance shall have become efflorescent over the skin, and shall have covered the whole skin from the head even unto the feet through all the visible surface, then the priest, when he shall have seen, shall utterly cleanse him: since he hath wholly turned into white he is clean. But on the day that there shall have been seen in such an one quick colour, he is defiled.”958 (The Law) would have the man who is wholly turned from the pristine habit of the flesh to the whiteness of faith—which (faith) is esteemed a defect and blemish in (the eyes of) the world959—and is wholly made new, to be understood to be “clean;” as being no longer “speckled,” no longer dappled with the pristine and the new (intermixt). If, however, after the reversal (of the sentence of uncleanness), ought of the old nature shall have revived with its tendencies, that which was beginning to be thought utterly dead to sin in his flesh must again be judged unclean, and must no more be expiated by the priest. Thus adultery, sprouting again from the pristine stock, and wholly blemishing the unity of the new colour from which it had been excluded, is a defect that admits of no cleansing. Again, in the case of a house: if any spots and cavities in the party-walls had been reported to the priest, before he entered to inspect that house he bids all (its contents) be taken away from it; thus the belongings of the house would not be unclean. Then the priest, if, upon entering, he had found greenish or reddish cavities, and their appearance to the sight deeper down within the body of the party-wall, was to go out to the gate, and separate the house for a period within seven days. Then, upon returning on the seventh day, if he should have perceived the taint to have become diffused in the party-walls, he was to order those stones in which the taint of the leprosy had been to be extracted and cast away outside the city into an unclean place; and other stones, polished and sound, to be taken and replaced in the stead of the first, and the house to be plastered with other mortar.960 For, in coming to the High Priest of the Father— Christ—all impediments must first be taken away, in the space of a week, that the house which remains, the flesh and the soul, may be clean; and when the Word of God has entered it, and has found “stains of red and green,” forthwith must the deadly and sanguinary passions “be extracted” and “cast away” out of doors—for the Apocalypse withal has set “death” upon a “green horse,” but a “warrior” upon a “red”961—and in their stead must be under-strewn stones polished and apt for conjunction, and firm,—such as are made (by God) into (sons) of Abraham,962—that thus the man may be fit for God. But if, after the recovery and reformation, the priest again perceived in the same house ought of the pristine disorders and blemishes, he pronounced it unclean, and bade the timbers, and the stones, and all the structure of it, to be pulled down, and cast away into an unclean place.963 This will be the man—flesh and soul—who, subsequently to reformation, after baptism and the entrance of the priests, again resumes the scabs and stains of the flesh, and “is case away outside the city into an unclean place,”—“surrendered,” to wit, “to Satan for the destruction of the flesh,”—and is no more rebuilt in the Church after his ruin. So, too, with regard to lying with a female slave, who had been betrothed to an husband, but not yet redeemed, not yet set free: “provision,” says (the Law), shall be made for her, and she shall not die, because she was not yet manumitted for him for whom she was being kept.964 For flesh not yet manumitted to Christ, for whom it was being kept,965 used to be contaminated with impunity: so now, after manumission, it no more receives pardon.

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    If the apostles understood these (figurative meanings of the Law) better, of course they were more careful (with regard to them than even apostolic men). But I will descend even to this point of contest now, making a separation between the doctrine of apostles and their power. Discipline governs a man, power sets a seal upon him; apart from the fact that power is the Spirit, but the Spirit is God. What, moreover, used (the Spirit) to teach? That there must be no communicating with the works of darkness.966 Observe what He bids. Who, moreover, was able to forgive sins? This is His alone prerogative: for “who remitteth sins but God alone?”967 and, of course, (who but He can remit) mortal sins, such as have been committed against Himself,968 and against His temple? For, as far as you are concerned, such as are chargeable with offence against you personally, you are commanded, in the person of Peter, to forgive even seventy times sevenfold.969 And so, if it were agreed that even the blessed apostles had granted any such indulgence (to any crime) the pardon of which (comes) from God, not from man, it would be competent (for them) to have done so, not in the exercise of discipline, but of power. For they both raised the dead,970 which God alone (can do), and restored the debilitated to their integrity,971 which none but Christ (can do); nay, they inflicted plagues too, which Christ would not do. For it did not beseem Him to be severe who had come to suffer. Smitten were both Ananias972 and Elymas973—Ananias with death, Elymas with blindness—in order that by this very fact it might be proved that Christ had had the power of doing even such (miracles). So, too, had the prophets (of old) granted to the repentant the pardon of murder, and therewith of adultery, inasmuch as they gave, at the same time, manifest proofs of severity.974 Exhibit therefore even now to me,975 apostolic sir, prophetic evidences, that I may recognise your divine virtue, and vindicate to yourself the power of remitting such sins! If, however, you have had the functions of discipline alone allotted you, and (the duty) of presiding not im- perially, but ministerially;976 who or how great are you, that you should grant indulgence, who, by exhibiting neither the prophetic nor the apostolic character, lack that virtue whose property it is to indulge? “But,” you say, “the Church has the power of forgiving sins.” This I acknowledge and adjudge more (than you; I) who have the Paraclete Himself in the persons of the new prophets, saying, “The Church has the power to forgive sins; but I will not do it, lest they commit others withal.” “What if a pseudo-prophetic spirit has made that declaration?” Nay, but it would have been more the part of a subverter on the one hand to commend himself on the score of clemency, and on the other to influence all others to sin. Or if, again, (the pseudo-prophetic spirit) has been eager to affect this (sentiment) in accordance with “the Spirit of truth,”977 it follows that “the Spirit of truth” has indeed the power of indulgently granting pardon to fornicators, but wills not to do it if it involve evil to the majority. I now inquire into your opinion, (to see) from what source you usurp this right to “the Church.” If, because the Lord has said to Peter, “Upon this rock will I build My Church,”978 “to thee have I given the keys of the heavenly kingdom;”979 or, “Whatsoever thou shalt have bound or loosed in earth, shall be bound or loosed in the heavens,”980 you therefore presume that the power of binding and loosing has derived to you, that is, to every Church akin to Peter, what sort of man are you, subverting and wholly changing the manifest intention of the Lord, conferring (as that intention did) this (gift) personally upon Peter? “On thee,” He says, “will I build My Church;” and, “I will give to thee the keys,” not to the Church; and, “Whatsoever thou shalt have loosed or bound,” not what they shall have loosed or bound. For so withal the result teaches. In (Peter) himself the Church was reared; that is, through (Peter) himself; (Peter) himself essayed the key; you see what (key): “Men of Israel, let what I say sink into your ears: Jesus the Nazarene, a man destined by God for you,” and so forth.981 (Peter) himself, therefore, was the first to unbar, in Christ’s baptism, the entrance to the heavenly kingdom, in which (kingdom) are “loosed” the sins that were beforetime “bound;” and those which have not been “loosed” are “bound,” in accordance with true salvation; and Ananias he “bound” with the bond of death, and the weak in his feet he “absolved” from his defect of health. Moreover, in that dispute about the observance or nonobservance of the Law, Peter was the first of all to be endued with the Spirit, and, after making preface touching the calling of the nations, to say, “And now why are ye tempting the Lord, concerning the imposition upon the brethren of a yoke which neither we nor our fathers were able to support? But however, through the grace of Jesus we believe that we shall be saved in the same way as they.”982 This sentence both “loosed” those parts of the law which were abandoned, and “bound” those which were reserved. Hence the power of loosing and of binding committed to Peter had nothing to do with the capital sins of believers; and if the Lord had given him a precept that he must grant pardon to a brother sinning against him even “seventy times sevenfold,” of course He would have commanded him to “bind”—that is, to “retain”983—nothing subsequently, unless perchance such (sins) as one may have committed against the Lord, not against a brother. For the forgiveness of (sins) committed in the case of a man is a prejudgment against the remission of sins against God. What, now, (has this to do) with the Church, and your (church), indeed, Psychic? For, in accordance with the person of Peter, it is to spiritual men that this power will correspondently appertain, either to an apostle or else to a prophet. For the very Church itself is, properly and principally, the Spirit Himself, in whom is the Trinity of the One Divinity—Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.984 (The Spirit) combines that Church which the Lord has made to consist in “three.” And thus, from that time forward,985 every number (of persons) who may have combined together into this faith is accounted “a Church,” from the Author and Consecrator (of the Church). And accordingly “the Church,” it is true, will forgive sins: but (it will be) the Church of the Spirit, by means of a spiritual man; not the Church which consists of a number of bishops. For the right and arbitrament is the Lord’s, not the servant’s; God’s Himself, not the priest’s.

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    But you go so far as to lavish this “power” upon martyrs withal! No sooner has any one, acting on a preconceived arrangement, put on the bonds—(bonds), moreover, which, in the nominal custody now in vogue,986 are soft ones—than adulterers beset him, fornicators gain access to him; instantly prayers echo around him; instantly pools of tears (from the eyes) of all the polluted surround him; nor are there any who are more diligent in purchasing entrance into the prison than they who have lost (the fellowship of) the Church! Men and women are violated in the darkness with which the habitual indulgence of lusts has plainly familiarized them; and they seek peace at the hands of those who are risking their own! Others betake them to the mines, and return, in the character of communicants, from thence, where by this time another “martyrdom” is necessary for sins committed after “martyrdom.” “Well, who on earth and in the flesh is faultless?” What “martyr” (continues to be) an inhabitant of the world987 supplicating? pence in hand? subject to physician and usurer? Suppose, now, (your “martyr”) beneath the glaive, with head already steadily poised; suppose him on the cross, with body already outstretched; suppose him at the stake, with the lion already let loose; suppose him on the axle, with the fire already heaped; in the very certainty, I say, and possession of martyrdom: who permits man to condone (offences) which are to be reserved for God, by whom those (offences) have been condemned without discharge, which not even apostles (so far as I know)—martyrs withal themselves—have judged condonable? In short, Paul had already “fought with beasts at Ephesus,” when he decreed “destruction” to the incestuous person.988 Let it suffice to the martyr to have purged his own sins: it is the part of ingratitude or of pride to lavish upon others also what one has obtained at a high price.989 Who has redeemed another’s death by his own, but the Son of God alone? For even in His very passion He set the robber free.990 For to this end had He come, that, being Himself pure from sin,991 and in all respects holy,992 He might undergo death on behalf of sinners.993 Similarly, you who emulate Him in condoning sins, if you yourself have done no sin, plainly suffer in my stead. If, however, you are a sinner, how will the oil of your puny torch be able to suffice for you and for me?994 I have, even now, a test whereby to prove (the presence of) Christ (in you). If Christ is in the martyr for this reason, that the martyr may absolve adulterers and fornicators, let Him tell publicly the secrets of the heart, that He may thus concede (pardon to) sins; and He is Christ. For thus it was that the Lord Jesus Christ showed His power: “Why think ye evil in your hearts? For which is easier, to say to the paralytic, Thy sins are remitted thee; or, Rise and walk? Therefore, that ye may know the Son of man to have the power upon earth of remitting sins, I say to thee, paralytic, Rise, and walk.”995 If the Lord set so much store by the proof of His power as to reveal thoughts, and so impart health by His command, lest He should not be believed to have the power of remitting sins; it is not lawful for me to believe the same power (to reside) in any one, whoever he be, without the same proofs. In the act, however, of urgently entreating from a martyr pardon for adulterers and fornicators, you yourself confess that crimes of that nature are not to be washed away except by the martyrdom of the criminal himself, while you presume (they can be washed away) by another’s. If this is so, then martyrdom will be another baptism. For “I have withal,” saith He, “another baptism.”996 Whence, too, it was that there flowed out of the wound in the Lord’s side water and blood, the materials of either baptism.997 I ought, then, by the first baptism too to (have the right of) setting another free if I can by the second: and we must necessarily force upon the mind (of our opponents this conclusion): Whatever authority, whatever reason, restores ecclesiastical peace to the adulterer and fornicator, the same will be bound to come to the aid of the murderer and idolater in their repentance,—at all events, of the apostate, and of course of him whom, in the battle of his confession, after hard struggling with torments, savagery has overthrown. Besides, it were unworthy of God and of His mercy, who prefers the repentance of a sinner to his death, that they should have easier return into (the bosom of) the Church who have fallen in heat of passion, than they who have fallen in hand-to-hand combat.998 Indignation urges us to speak. Contaminated bodies you will recall rather than gory ones! Which repentance is more pitiable—that which prostrates tickled flesh, or lacerated? Which pardon is, in all causes, more justly concessible—that which a voluntary, or that which an involuntary, sinner implores? No one is compelled with his will to apostatize; no one against his will commits fornication. Lust is exposed to no violence, except itself: it knows no coercion whatever. Apostasy, on the contrary, what ingenuities of butchery and tribes of penal inflictions enforce! Which has more truly apostatized—he who has lost Christ amid agonies, or (he who has done so) amid delights? he who when losing Him grieved, or he who when losing Him sported? And yet those scars graven on the Christian combatant—scars, of course, enviable in the eyes of Christ, because they yearned after Conquest, and thus also glorious, because failing to conquer they yielded; (scars) after which even the devil himself yet sighs; (scars) with an infelicity of their own, but a chaste one, with a repentance that mourns, but blushes not, to the Lord for pardon—will anew be remitted to such, because their apostasy was expiable! In their case alone is the “flesh weak.” Nay, no flesh so strong as that which crushes out the Spirit!

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    In Opposition to the Psychics. [Translated by the Rev. S. Thelwall.] I. (Greater licence, p. 104.) In this treatise, which is designed to justify the extremes of Montanistic fasts, Tertullian’s genius often surprises us by his ingenuity. This is one of the instances where the forensic orator comes out, trying to outflank and turn the position of an antagonist who has gained an advantage. The fallacy is obvious. Kaye cites, in comparison, a passage1125 from “The Apparel of Women,” and another1126 from “The Exhortation to Chastity.” He remarks, “Were we required to produce an instance [i.e. to prove the tendency of mankind to run into extremes], we should without hesitation refer the reader to this treatise.” Fasting was ordained of Christ Himself as a means to an end. It is here reduced from its instrumental character, and made an excuse for dividing the household of faith, and for cruel accusations against brethren. In our age of an entire relaxation of discipline, the enthusiast may nevertheless awaken us, perhaps, to honest self-examination as to our manner of life, in view of the example of Christ and His apostles, and their holy precepts. II. (Provinces of Greece, p. 111.) We have here an interesting hint as to the ἀρχαῖα ἔθη to which the Council of Nice1127 refers in one of her most important canons. Provinces, synods, and the charges or pastoral letters of the bishops are referred to as established institutions. And note the emphasis given to “Greece” as the mother of churches, and of laws and customs. He looks Eastward, and not by any means to the West, for high examples of the Catholic usages by which he was endeavouring to justify his own. III. (An over-fed Christian, p. 114.) “Are we not carnal” (psychics) in our days? May not the very excesses of Tertullian sting and reproach us with the charge of excessive indulgence (Matt. ix. 15)? The “over-fed Christians” whom he here reproaches are proved by this very treatise to have observed a system of fasting which is little practised anywhere in our times—for a mere change to luxurious fish-diet is the very mockery of fasting. We learn that the customary fasts of these psychics were as follows: (1) the annual Paschal fast,1128 from Friday till Easter-Day; (2) Wednesdays and Fridays (stationary days1129) every week; and (3) the “dry-food days,”1130—abstinence from “pleasant bread” (Dan. x. 2),—though some Catholics objected to these voluntary abstinences. IV. (Practise emaciation, p. 114.) Think of our Master’s fast among the wild beasts! Let us condescend to go back to Clement, to Origen, and to Tertullian to learn the practical laws of the Gospel against avarice, luxury, and “the deceitfulness of sin.” I am emboldened to say this by some remarkable words which I find, to my surprise, thrown out in a scientific work1131 proceeding from Harvard University. It is with exceeding gratitude that I quote as follows: “It is well to go away at times, that we may see another aspect of human life which still survives in the East, and to feel that influence which led even the Christ into the wilderness to prepare for the struggle with the animal nature of man.1132 We need something of the experience of the Anchorites of Egypt, to impress us with the great truth that the distinction between the spiritual and the material remains broad and clear, even if with the scalpel of our modern philosophy we cannot completely dissect the two; and this experience will give us courage to cherish our aspirations, keep bright our hopes, and hold fast our Christian faith until the consummation comes.”

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    I should wonder at the Psychics, if they were enthralled to voluptuousness alone, which leads them to repeated marriages, if they were not likewise bursting with gluttony, which leads them to hate fasts. Lust without voracity would certainly be considered a monstrous phenomenon; since these two are so united and concrete, that, had there been any possibility of disjoining them, the pudenda would not have been affixed to the belly itself rather than elsewhere. Look at the body: the region (of these members) is one and the same. In short, the order of the vices is proportionate to the arrangement of the members. First, the belly; and then immediately the materials of all other species of lasciviousness are laid subordinately to daintiness: through love of eating, love of impurity finds passage. I recognise, therefore, animal1002 faith by its care of the flesh (of which it wholly consists)—as prone to manifold feeding as to manifold marrying—so that it deservedly accuses the spiritual discipline, which according to its ability opposes it, in this species of continence as well; imposing, as it does, reins upon the appetite, through taking, sometimes no meals, or late meals, or dry meals, just as upon lust, through allowing but one marriage. It is really irksome to engage with such: one is really ashamed to wrangle about subjects the very defence of which is offensive to modesty. For how am I to protect chastity and sobriety without taxing their adversaries? What those adversaries are I will once for all mention: they are the exterior and interior botuli of the Psychics. It is these which raise controversy with the Paraclete; it is on this account that the New Prophecies are rejected: not that Montanus and Priscilla and Maximilla preach another God, nor that they disjoin Jesus Christ (from God), nor that they overturn any particular rule of faith or hope, but that they plainly teach more frequent fasting than marrying. Concerning the limit of marrying, we have already published a defence of monogamy.1003 Now our battle is the battle of the secondary (or rather the primary) continence, in regard of the chastisement of diet. They charge us with keeping fasts of our own; with prolonging our Stations generally into the evening; with observing xerophagies likewise, keeping our food unmoistened by any flesh, and by any juiciness, and by any kind of specially succulent fruit; and with not eating or drinking anything with a winey flavour; also with abstinence from the bath, congruent with our dry diet. They are therefore constantly reproaching us with novelty; concerning the unlawfulness of which they lay down a prescriptive rule, that either it must be adjudged heresy, if (the point in dispute) is a human presumption; or else pronounced pseudoprophecy, if it is a spiritual declaration; provided that, either way, we who reclaim hear (sentence of) anathema.

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    For, so far as pertains to fasts, they oppose to us the definite days appointed by God: as when, in Leviticus, the Lord enjoins upon Moses the tenth day of the seventh month (as) a day of atonement, saying, “Holy shall be to you the day, and ye shall vex your souls; and every soul which shall not have been vexed in that day shall be exterminated from his people.”1004 At all events, in the Gospel they think that those days were definitely appointed for fasts in which “the Bridegroom was taken away;”1005 and that these are now the only legitimate days for Christian fasts, the legal and prophetical antiquities having been abolished: for wherever it suits their wishes, they recognise what is the meaning of “the Law and the prophets until John.”1006 Accordingly, (they think) that, with regard to the future, fasting was to be indifferently observed, by the New Discipline, of choice, not of command, according to the times and needs of each individual: that this, withal, had been the observance of the apostles, imposing (as they did) no other yoke of definite fasts to be observed by all generally, nor similarly of Stations either, which (they think) have withal days of their own (the fourth and sixth days of the week), but yet take a wide range according to individual judgment, neither subject to the law of a given precept, nor (to be protracted) beyond the last hour of the day, since even prayers the ninth hour generally concludes, after Peter’s example, which is recorded in the Acts. Xerophagies, however, (they consider) the novel name of a studied duty, and very much akin to heathenish superstition, like the abstemious rigours which purify an Apis, an Isis, and a Magna Mater, by a restriction laid upon certain kinds of food; whereas faith, free in Christ,1007 owes no abstinence from particular meats to the Jewish Law even, admitted as it has been by the apostle once for all to the whole range of the meatmarket1008—( the apostle, I say), that detester of such as, in like manner as they prohibit marrying, so bid us abstain from meats created by God.1009 And accordingly (they think) us to have been even then prenoted as “in the latest times departing from the faith, giving heed to spirits which seduce the world, having a conscience inburnt with doctrines of liars.” 1010 (Inburnt?) With what fires, prithee? The fires, I ween, which lead us to repeated contracting of nuptials and daily cooking of dinners! Thus, too, they affirm that we share with the Galatians the piercing rebuke (of the apostle), as “observers of days, and of months, and of years.”1011 Meantime they huff in our teeth the fact that Isaiah withal has authoritatively declared, “Not such a fast hath the Lord elected,” that is, not abstinence from food, but the works of righteousness, which he there appends:1012 and that the Lord Himself in the Gospel has given a compendious answer to every kind of scrupulousness in regard to food; “that not by such things as are introduced into the mouth is a man defiled, but by such as are produced out of the mouth;”1013 while Himself withal was wont to eat and drink till He made Himself noted thus; “Behold, a gormandizer and a drinker:”1014 (finally), that so, too, does the apostle teach that “food commendeth us not to God; since we neither abound if we eat, nor lack if we eat not.”1015 By the instrumentalities of these and similar passages, they subtlely tend at last to such a point, that every one who is somewhat prone to appetite finds it possible to regard as superfluous, and not so very necessary, the duties of abstinence from, or diminution or delay of, food, since “God,” forsooth, “prefers the works of justice and of innocence.” And we know the quality of the hortatory addresses of carnal conveniences, how easy it is to say, “I must believe with my whole heart;1016 I must love God, and my neighbour as myself:1017 for ‘on these two precepts the whole Law hangeth, and the prophets,’ not on the emptiness of my lungs and intestines.”

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    Accordingly we are bound to affirm, before proceeding further, this (principle), which is in danger of being secretly subverted; (namely), of what value in the sight of God this “emptiness” you speak of is: and, first of all, whence has proceeded the rationale itself of earning the favour of God in this way. For the necessity of the observance will then be acknowledged, when the authority of a rationale, to be dated back from the very beginning, shall have shone out to view. Adam had received from God the law of not tasting “of the tree of recognition of good and evil,” with the doom of death to ensue upon tasting.1018 However, even (Adam) himself at that time, reverting to the condition of a Psychic after the spiritual ecstasy in which he had prophetically interpreted that “great sacrament”1019 with reference to Christ and the Church, and no longer being “capable of the things which were the Spirit’s,”1020 yielded more readily to his belly than to God, heeded the meat rather than the mandate, and sold salvation for his gullet! He ate, in short, and perished; saved (as he would) else (have been), if he had preferred to fast from one little tree: so that, even from this early date, animal faith may recognise its own seed, deducing from thence onward its appetite for carnalities and rejection of spiritualities. I hold, therefore, that from the very beginning the murderous gullet was to be punished with the torments and penalties of hunger. Even if God had enjoined no preceptive fasts, still, by pointing out the source whence Adam was slain, He who had demonstrated the offence had left to my intelligence the remedies for the offence. Unbidden, I would, in such ways and at such times as I might have been able, have habitually accounted food as poison, and taken the antidote, hunger; through which to purge the primordial cause of death—a cause transmitted to me also, concurrently with my very generation; certain that God willed that whereof He nilled the contrary, and confident enough that the care of continence will be pleasing to Him by whom I should have understood that the crime of incontinence had been condemned. Further: since He Himself both commands fasting, and calls “a soul1021 wholly shattered”—properly, of course, by straits of diet—“a sacrifice;” who will any longer doubt that of all dietary macerations the rationale has been this, that by a renewed interdiction of food and observation of precept the primordial sin might now be expiated, in order that man may make God satisfaction through the self-same causative material through which he had offended, that is, through interdiction of food; and thus, in emulous wise, hunger might rekindle, just as satiety had extinguished, salvation, contemning for the sake of one unlawful more lawful (gratifications)?

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    This rationale was constantly kept in the eye of the providence of God—modulating all things, as He does, to suit the exigencies of the times—lest any from the opposite side, with the view of demolishing our proposition, should say: “Why, in that case, did not God forthwith institute some definite restriction upon food? nay, rather, why did He withal enlarge His permission? For, at the beginning indeed, it had only been the food of herbs and trees which He had assigned to man: ‘Behold, I have given you all grass fit for sowing, seeding seed, which is upon the earth; and every tree which hath in itself the fruit of seed fit for sowing shall be to you for food.’1022 Afterwards, however, after enumerating to Noah the subjection (to him) of ‘all beasts of the earth, and fowls of the heaven, and things moving on earth, and the fish of the sea, and every creeping thing,’ He says, ‘They shall be to you for food: just like grassy vegetables have I given (them) you universally: but flesh in the blood of its own soul shall ye not eat.’1023 For even by this very fact, that He exempts from eating that flesh only the ‘soul’ of which is not out-shed through ‘blood,’ it is manifest that He has conceded the use of all other flesh.” To this we reply, that it was not suitable for man to be burdened with any further special law of abstinence, who so recently showed himself unable to tolerate so light an interdiction—of one single fruit, to wit; that, accordingly, having had the rein relaxed, he was to be strengthened by his very liberty; that equally after the deluge, in the reformation of the human race, (as before it), one law—of abstaining from blood—was sufficient, the use of all things else being allowed. For the Lord had already shown His judgment through the deluge; had, moreover, likewise issued a comminatory warning through the “requisition of blood from the hand of a brother, and from the hand of every beast.”1024 And thus, preministering the justice of judgment, He issued the materials of liberty; preparing through allowance an undergrowth of discipline; permitting all things, with a view to take some away; meaning to “exact more” if He had “committed more;”1025 to command abstinence since He had foresent indulgence: in order that (as we have said) the primordial sin might be the more expiated by the operation of a greater abstinence in the (midst of the) opportunity of a greater licence.

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    At length, when a familiar people began to be chosen by God to Himself, and the restoration of man was able to be essayed, then all the laws and disciplines were imposed, even such as curtailed food; certain things being prohibited as unclean, in order that man, by observing a perpetual abstinence in certain particulars, might at last the more easily tolerate absolute fasts. For the first People had withal reproduced the first man’s crime, being found more prone to their belly than to God, when, plucked out from the harshness of Egyptian servitude “by the mighty hand and sublime arm”1026 of God, they were seen to be its lord, destined to the “land flowing with milk and honey;”1027 but forthwith, stumbled at the surrounding spectacle of an incopious desert sighing after the lost enjoyments of Egyptian satiety, they murmured against Moses and Aaron: “Would that we had been smitten to the heart by the Lord, and perished in the land of Egypt, when we were wont to sit over our jars of flesh and eat bread unto the full! How leddest thou us out into these deserts, to kill this assembly by famine?”1028 From the self-same belly preference were they destined (at last) to deplore1029 (the fate of) the self-same leaden of their own and eye-witnesses of (the power of) God, whom, by their regretful hankering after flesh, and their recollection of their Egyptian plenties, they were ever exacerbating: “Who shall feed us with flesh? here have come into our mind the fish which in Egypt we were wont to eat freely, and the cucumbers, and the melons, and the leeks, and the onions, and the garlic. But now our soul is arid: nought save manna do our eyes see!”1030 Thus used they, too, (like the Psychics), to find the angelic bread1031 of xerophagy displeasing: they preferred the fragrance of garlic and onion to that of heaven. And therefore from men so ungrateful all that was more pleasing and appetizing was withdrawn, for the sake at once of punishing gluttony and exercising continence, that the former might be condemned, the latter practically learned.

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    Now, if there has been temerity in our retracing to primordial experiences the reasons for God’s having laid, and our duty (for the sake of God) to lay, restrictions upon food, let us consult common conscience. Nature herself will plainly tell with what qualities she is ever wont to find us endowed when she sets us, before taking food and drink, with our saliva still in a virgin state, to the transaction of matters, by the sense especially whereby things divine are handled; whether (it be not) with a mind much more vigorous, with a heart much more alive, than when that whole habitation of our interior man, stuffed with meats, inundated with wines, fermenting for the purpose of excremental secretion, is already being turned into a premeditatory of privies, (a premeditatory) where, plainly, nothing is so proximately supersequent as the savouring of lasciviousness. “The people did eat and drink, and they arose to play.”1032 Understand the modest language of Holy Scripture: “play,” unless it had been immodest, it would not have reprehended. On the other hand, how many are there who are mindful of religion, when the seats of the memory are occupied, the limbs of wisdom impeded? No one will suitably, fitly, usefully, remember God at that time when it is customary for a man to forget his own self. All discipline food either slays or else wounds. I am a liar, if the Lord Himself, when upbraiding Israel with forgetfulness, does not impute the cause to “fulness:” “(My) beloved is waxen thick, and fat, and distent, and hath quite forsaken God, who made him, and hath gone away from the Lord his Saviour.”1033 In short, in the self-same Deuteronomy, when bidding precaution to be taken against the self-same cause, He says: “Lest, when thou shalt have eaten, and drunken, and built excellent houses, thy sheep and oxen being multiplied, and (thy) silver and gold, thy heart be elated, and thou be forgetful of the Lord thy God.”1034 To the corrupting power of riches He made the enormity of edacity antecedent, for which riches themselves are the procuring agents.1035 Through them, to wit, had “the heart of the People been made thick, lest they should see with the eyes, and hear with the ears, and understand with a heart”1036 obstructed by the “fats” of which He had expressly forbidden the eating,1037 teaching man not to be studious of the stomach.1038 On the other hand, he whose “heart” was habitually found “lifted up”1039 rather than fattened up, who in forty days and as many nights maintained a fast above the power of human nature, while spiritual faith subministered strength (to his body),1040 both saw with his eyes God’s glory, and heard with his ears God’s voice, and understood with his heart God’s law: while He taught him even then (by experience) that man liveth not upon bread alone, but upon every word of God; in that the People, though fatter than he, could not constantly contemplate even Moses himself, fed as he had been upon God, nor his leanness, sated as it had been with His glory!1041 Deservedly, therefore, even while in the flesh, did the Lord show Himself to him, the colleague of His own fasts, no less than to Elijah.1042 For Elijah withal had, by this fact primarily, that he had imprecated a famine,1043 already sufficiently devoted himself to fasts: “The Lord liveth,” he said, “before whom I am standing in His sight, if there shall be dew in these years, and rain-shower.”1044 Subsequently, fleeing from threatening Jezebel, after one single (meal of) food and drink, which he had found on being awakened by an angel, he too himself, in a space of forty days and nights, his belly empty, his mouth dry, arrived at Mount Horeb; where, when he had made a cave his inn, with how familiar a meeting with God was he received!1045 “What (doest) thou, Elijah, here?”1046 Much more friendly was this voice than, “Adam, where art thou?”1047 For the latter voice was uttering a threat to a fed man, the former soothing a fasting one. Such is the prerogative of circumscribed food, that it makes God tent-fellow1048 with man—peer, in truth, with peer! For if the eternal God will not hunger, as He testifies through Isaiah,1049 this will be the time for man to be made equal with God, when he lives without food.

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    And thus we have already proceeded to examples, in order that, by its profitable efficacy, we may unfold the powers of this duty which reconciles God, even when angered, to man. Israel, before their gathering together by Samuel on occasion of the drawing of water at Mizpeh, had sinned; but so immediately do they wash away the sin by a fast, that the peril of battle is dispersed by them simultaneously (with the water on the ground). At the very moment when Samuel was offering the holocaust (in no way do we learn that the clemency of God was more procured than by the abstinence of the people), and the aliens were advancing to battle, then and there “the Lord thundered with a mighty voice upon the aliens, and they were thrown into confusion, and fell in a mass in the sight of Israel; and the men of Israel went forth out of Mizpeh, and pursued the aliens, and smote them unto Bethor,”—the unfed (chasing) the fed, the unarmed the armed. Such will be the strength of them who “fast to God.”1050 For such, Heaven fights. You have (before you) a condition upon which (divine) defence will be granted, necessary even to spiritual wars. Similarly, when the king of the Assyrians, Sennacherib, after already taking several cities, was volleying blasphemies and menaces against Israel through Rabshakeh, nothing else (but fasting) diverted him from his purpose, and sent him into the Ethiopias. After that, what else swept away by the hand of the angel an hundred eighty and four thousand from his army than Hezekiah the king’s humiliation? if it is true, (as it is), that on hearing the announcement of the harshness of the foe, he rent his garment, put on sackcloth, and bade the elders of the priests, similarly habited, approach God through Isaiah—fasting being, of course, the escorting attendant of their prayers.1051 For peril has no time for food, nor sackcloth any care for satiety’s refinements. Hunger is ever the attendant of mourning, just as gladness is an accessory of fulness. Through this attendant of mourning, and (this) hunger, even that sinful state, Nineveh, is freed from the predicted ruin. For repentance for sins had sufficiently commended the fast, keeping it up in a space of three days, starving out even the cattle with which God was not angry.1052 Sodom also, and Gomorrah, would have escaped if they had fasted.1053 This remedy even Ahab acknowledges. When, after his transgression and idolatry, and the slaughter of Naboth, slain by Jezebel on account of his vineyard, Elijah had upbraided him, “How hast thou killed, and possessed the inheritance? In the place where dogs had licked up the blood of Naboth, thine also shall they lick up,”—he “abandoned himself, and put sackcloth upon his flesh, and fasted, and slept in sackcloth. And then (came) the word of the Lord unto Elijah, Thou hast seen how Ahab hath shrunk in awe from my face: for that he hath shrunk in awe I will not bring the hurt upon (him) in his own days; but in the days of his son I will bring it upon (him)”—(his son), who was not to fast.1054 Thus a God-ward fast is a work of reverential awe: and by its means also Hannah the wife of Elkanah making suit, barren as she had been beforetime, easily obtained from God the filling of her belly, empty of food, with a son, ay, and a prophet.1055 Nor is it merely change of nature, or aversion of perils, or obliteration of sins, but likewise the recognition of mysteries, which fasts will merit from God. Look at Daniel’s example. About the dream of the King of Babylon all the sophists are troubled: they affirm that, without external aid, it cannot be discovered by human skill. Daniel alone, trusting to God, and knowing what would tend to the deserving of God’s favour, requires a space of three days, fasts with his fraternity, and—his prayers thus commended—is instructed throughout as to the order and signification of the dream; quarter is granted to the tyrant’s sophists; God is glorified; Daniel is honoured; destined as he was to receive, even subsequently also, no less a favour of God in the first year, of King Darius, when, after careful and repeated meditation upon the times predicted by Jeremiah, he set his face to God in fasts, and sackcloth, and ashes. For the angel, withal, sent to him, immediately professed this to be the cause of the Divine approbation: “I am come,” he said, “to demonstrate to thee, since thou art pitiable”1056—by fasting, to wit. If to God he was “pitiable,” to the lions in the den he was formidable, where, six days fasting, he had breakfast provided him by an angel.1057

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    We produce, too, our remaining (evidences). For we now hasten to modern proofs. On the threshold of the Gospel,1058 Anna the prophetess, daughter of Phanuel, “who both recognised the infant Lord, and preached many things about Him to such as were expecting the redemption of Israel,” after the pre-eminent distinction of long-continued and singlehusbanded widowhood, is additionally graced with the testimony of “fastings” also; pointing out, as she does, what the duties are which should characterize attendants of the Church, and (pointing out, too, the fact) that Christ is understood by none more than by the once married and often fasting. By and by the Lord Himself consecrated His own baptism (and, in His own, that of all) by fasts;1059 having (the power) to make “loaves out of stones,”1060 say, to make Jordan flow with wine perchance, if He had been such a “glutton and toper.”1061 Nay, rather, by the virtue of contemning food He was initiating “the new man” into “a severe handling” of “the old,”1062 that He might show that (new man) to the devil, again seeking to tempt him by means of food, (to be) too strong for the whole power of hunger. Thereafter He prescribed to fasts a law—that they are to be performed “without sadness:” 1063 for why should what is salutary be sad? He taught likewise that fasts are to be the weapons for battling with the more direful demons:1064 for what wonder if the same operation is the instrument of the iniquitous spirit’s egress as of the Holy Spirit’s ingress? Finally, granting that upon the centurion Cornelius, even before baptism, the honourable gift of the Holy Spirit, together with the gift of prophecy besides, had hastened to descend, we see that his fasts had been heard,1065 I think, moreover, that the apostle too, in the Second of Corinthians, among his labours, and perils, and hardships, after “hunger and thirst,” enumerates “fasts” also “very many.”1066

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    This principal species in the category of dietary restriction may already afford a prejudgment concerning the inferior operations of abstinence also, as being themselves too, in proportion to their measure, useful or necessary. For the exception of certain kinds from use of food is a partial fast. Let us therefore look into the question of the novelty or vanity of xerophagies, to see whether in them too we do not find an operation alike of most ancient as of most efficacious religion. I return to Daniel and his brethren, preferring as they did a diet of vegetables and the beverage of water to the royal dishes and decanters, and being found as they were therefore “more handsome” (lest any be apprehensive on the score of his paltry body, to boot!), besides being spiritually cultured into the bargain.1067 For God gave to the young men knowledge and understanding in every kind of literature, and to Daniel in every word, and in dreams, and in every kind of wisdom; which (wisdom) was to make him wise in this very thing also,—namely, by what means the recognition of mysteries was to be obtained from God. Finally, in the third year of Cyrus king of the Persians, when he had fallen into careful and repeated meditation on a vision, he provided another form of humiliation. “In those days,” he says, “I Daniel was mourning during three weeks: pleasant bread I ate not; flesh and wine entered not into my mouth; with oil I was not anointed; until three weeks were consummated:” which being elapsed, an angel was sent out (from God), addressing him on this wise: “Daniel, thou art a man pitiable; fear not: since, from the first day on which thou gavest thy soul to recogitation and to humiliation before God, thy word hath been heard, and I am entered at thy word.”1068 Thus the “pitiable” spectacle and the humiliation of xerophagies expel fear, and attract the ears of God, and make men masters of secrets. I return likewise to Elijah. When the ravens had been wont to satisfy him with “bread and flesh,”1069 why was it that afterwards, at Beersheba of Judea, that certain angel, after rousing him from sleep, offered him, beyond doubt, bread alone, and water?1070 Had ravens been wanting, to feed him more liberally? or had it been difficult to the “angel” to carry away from some pan of the banquet-room of the king some attendant with his amply-furnished waiter, and transfer him to Elijah, just as the breakfast of the reapers was carried into the den of lions and presented to Daniel in his hunger? But it behoved that an example should be set, teaching us that, at a time of pressure and persecution and whatsoever difficulty, we must live on xerophagies. With such food did David express his own exomologesis; “eating ashes indeed as it were bread,” that is, bread dry and foul like ashes: “mingling, moreover, his drink with weeping”—of course, instead of wine.1071 For abstinence from wine withal has honourable badges of its own: (an abstinence) which had dedicated Samuel, and consecrated Aaron, to God. For of Samuel his mother said: “And wine and that which is intoxicating shall he not drink:”1072 for such was her condition withal when praying to God.1073 And the Lord said to Aaron: “Wine and spirituous liquor shall ye not drink, thou and thy son after thee, whenever ye shall enter the tabernacle, or ascend unto the sacrificial altar; and ye shall not die.”1074 So true is it, that such as shall have ministered in the Church, being not sober, shall “die.” Thus, too, in recent times He upbraids Israel: “And ye used to give my sanctified ones wine to drink.” And, moreover, this limitation upon drink is the portion of xerophagy. Anyhow, wherever abstinence from wine is either exacted by God or vowed by man, there let there be understood likewise a restriction of food fore-furnishing a formal type to drink. For the quality of the drink is correspondent to that of the eating. It is not probable that a man should sacrifice to God half his appetite; temperate in waters, and intemperate in meats. Whether, moreover, the apostle had any acquaintance with xerophagies—(the apostle) who had repeatedly practised greater rigours, “hunger, and thirst, and fasts many,” who had forbidden “drunkennesses and revellings”1075—we have a sufficient evidence even from the case of his disciple Timotheus; whom when he admonishes, “for the sake of his stomach and constant weaknesses,” to use “a little wine,”1076 from which he was abstaining not from rule, but from devotion—else the custom would rather have been beneficial to his stomach—by this very fact he has advised abstinence from wine as “worthy of God,” which, on a ground of necessity, he has dissuaded.

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    In like manner they censure on the count of novelty our Stations as being enjoined; some, moreover, (censure them) too as being prolonged habitually too late, saying that this duty also ought to be observed of free choice, and not continued beyond the ninth hour,—(deriving their rule), of course, from their own practice. Well: as to that which pertains to the question of injunction, I will once for all give a reply to suit all causes. Now, (turning) to the point which is proper to this particular cause—concerning the limit of time, I mean—I must first demand from themselves whence they derive this prescriptive law for concluding Stations at the ninth hour. If it is from the fact that we read that Peter and he who was with him entered the temple “at the ninth (hour), the hour of prayer,” who will prove to me that they had that day been performing a Station, so as to interpret the ninth hour as the hour for the conclusion and discharge of the Station? Nay, but you would more easily find that Peter at the sixth hour had, for the sake of taking food, gone up first on the roof to pray;1077 so that the sixth hour of the day may the rather be made the limit to this duty, which (in Peter’s case) was apparently to finish that duty, after prayer. Further: since in the self-same commentary of Luke the third hour is demonstrated as an hour of prayer, about which hour it was that they who had received the initiatory gift of the Holy Spirit were held for drunkards;1078 and the sixth, at which Peter went up on the roof; and the ninth, at which they entered the temple: why should we not understand that, with absolutely perfect indifference, we must pray1079 always, and everywhere, and at every time; yet still that these three hours, as being more marked in things human—(hours) which divide the day, which distinguish businesses, which re-echo in the public ear—have likewise ever been of special solemnity in divine prayers? A persuasion which is sanctioned also by the corroborative fact of Daniel praying thrice in the day;1080 of course, through exception of certain stated hours, no other, moreover, than the more marked and subsequently apostolic (hours)—the third, the sixth, the ninth. And hence, accordingly, I shall affirm that Peter too had been led rather by ancient usage to the observance of the ninth hour, praying at the third specific interval, (the interval) of final prayer. These (arguments), moreover, (we have advanced) for their sakes who think that they are acting in conformity with Peter’s model, (a model) of which they are ignorant: not as if we slighted the ninth hour, (an hour) which, on the fourth and sixth days of the week, we most highly honour; but because, of those things which are observed on the ground of tradition, we are bound to adduce so much the more worthy reason, that they lack the authority of Scripture, until by some signal celestial gift they be either confirmed or else corrected. “And if,” says (the apostle), “there are matters which ye are ignorant about, the Lord will reveal to you.”1081 Accordingly, setting out of the question the confirmer of all such things, the Paraclete, the guide of universal truth,1082 inquire whether there be not a worthier reason adduced among us for the observing of the ninth hour; so that this reason (of ours) must be attributed even to Peter if he observed a Station at the time in question. For (the practice) comes from the death of the Lord; which death albeit it behoves to be commemorated always, without difference of hours; yet are we at that time more impressively commended to its commemoration, according to the actual (meaning of the) name of Station. For even soldiers, though never unmindful of their military oath, yet pay a greater deference to Stations. And so the “pressure” must be maintained up to that hour in which the orb—involved from the sixth hour in a general darkness—performed for its dead Lord a sorrowful act of duty; so that we too may then return to enjoyment when the universe regained its sunshine.1083 If this savours more of the spirit of Christian religion, while it celebrates more the glory of Christ, I am equally able, from the self-same order of events, to fix the condition of late protraction of the Station; (namely), that we are to fast till a late hour, awaiting the time of the Lord’s sepulture, when Joseph took down and entombed the body which he had requested. Thence (it follows) that it is even irreligious for the flesh of the servants to take refreshment before their Lord did. But let it suffice to have thus far joined issue on the argumentative challenge; rebutting, as I have done, conjectures by conjectures, and yet (as I think) by conjectures more worthy of a believer. Let us see whether any such (principle) drawn from the ancient times takes us under its patronage. In Exodus, was not that position of Moses, battling against Amalek by prayers, maintained as it was perseveringly even till “sunset,” a “late Station?”1084 Think we that Joshua the son of Nun, when warring down the Amorites, had breakfasted on that day on which he ordered the very elements to keep a Station?1085 The sun “stood” in Gibeon, and the moon in Ajalon; the sun and the moon “stood in station until the People was avenged of his enemies, and the sun stood in the mid heaven.” When, moreover, (the sun) did draw toward his setting and the end of the one day, there was no such day beforetime and in the latest time (of course, (no day) so long), “that God,” says (the writer), “should hear a man”—(a man,) to be sure, the sun’s peer, so long persistent in his duty—a Station longer even than late. At all events, Saul himself, when engaged in battle, manifestly enjoined this duty: “Cursed (be) the man who shall have eaten bread until evening, until I avenge me on mine enemy;” and his whole people tasted not (food), and (yet) the whole earth was breakfasting! So solemn a sanction, moreover, did God confer on the edict which enjoined that Station, that Jonathan the son of Saul, although it had been in ignorance of the fast having been appointed till a late hour that he had allowed himself a taste of honey, was both presently convicted, by lot, of sin, and with difficulty exempted from punishment through the prayer of the People:1086 for he had been convicted of gluttony, although of a simple kind. But withal Daniel, in the first year of King Darius, when, fasting in sackcloth and ashes, he was doing exomologesis to God, said: “And while I was still speaking in prayer, behold, the man whom I had seen in dreams at the beginning, swiftly flying, approached me, as it were, at the hour of the evening sacrifice.”1087 This will be a “late” Station which, fasting until the evening, sacrifices a fatter (victim of) prayer to God!1088

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    But all these (instances) I believe to be unknown to those who are in a state of agitation at our proceedings; or else known by the reading alone, not by careful study as well; in accordance with the greater bulk of “the unskilled”1089 among the overboastful multitude, to wit, of the Psychics. This is why we have steered our course straight through the different individual species of fastings, of xerophagies, of stations: in order that, while we recount, according to the materials which we find in either Testament, the advantages which the dutiful observances of abstinence from, or curtailment or deferment of, food confer, we may refute those who invalidate these things as empty observances; and again, while we similarly point out in what rank of religious duty they have always had place, may confute those who accuse them as novelties: for neither is that novel which has always been, nor that empty which is useful. The question, however, still lies before us, that some of these observances, having been commanded by God to man, have constituted this practice legally binding; some, offered by man to God, have discharged some votive obligation. Still, even a vow, when it has been accepted by God, constitutes a law for the time to come, owing to the authority of the Acceptor; for he who has given his approbation to a deed, when done, has given a mandate for its doing thenceforward. And so from this consideration, again, the wrangling of the opposite party is silenced, while they say: “It is either a pseudo-prophecy, if it is a spiritual voice which institutes these your solemnities; or else a heresy, if it is a human presumption which devises them.” For, while censuring that form in which the ancient economies ran their course, and at the same time drawing out of that form arguments to hurl back (upon us) which the very adversaries of the ancient economies will in their turn be able to retort, they will be bound either to reject those arguments, or else to undertake these proven duties (which they impugn): necessarily so; chiefly because these very duties (which they impugn), from whatsoever institutor they are, be he a spiritual man or merely an ordinary believer, direct their course to the honour of the same God as the ancient economies. For, indubitably, both heresy and pseudo-prophecy will, in the eyes of us who are all priests of one only God the Creator and of His Christ, be judged by diversity of divinity: and so far forth I defend this side indifferently, offering my opponents to join issue on whatever ground they choose. “It is the spirit of the devil,” you say, O Psychic. And how is it that he enjoins duties which belong to our God, and enjoins them to be offered to none other than our God? Either contend that the devil works with our God, or else let the Paraclete be held to be Satan. But you affirm it is “a human Antichrist:” for by this name heretics are called in John.1090 And how is it that, whoever he is, he has in (the name of) our Christ directed these duties toward our Lord; whereas withal antichrists have (ever) gone forth (professedly teaching) towards God, (but) in opposition to our Christ? On which side, then, do you think the Spirit is confirmed as existing among us; when He commands, or when He approves, what our God has always both commanded and approved? But you again set up boundary-posts to God, as with regard to grace, so with regard to discipline; as with regard to gifts, so, too, with regard to solemnities: so that our observances are supposed to have ceased in like manner as His benefits; and you thus deny that He still continues to impose duties, because, in this case again, “the Law and the prophets (were) until John.” It remains for you to banish Him wholly, being, as He is, so far as lies in you, so otiose.

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    For, by this time, in this respect as well as others, “you are reigning in wealth and satiety” 1091—not making inroads upon such sins as fasts diminish, nor feeling need of such revelations as xerophagies extort, nor apprehending such wars of your own as Stations dispel. Grant that from the time of John the Paraclete had grown mute; we ourselves would have arisen as prophets to ourselves, for this cause chiefly: I say not now to bring down by our prayers God’s anger, nor to obtain his protection or grace; but to secure by premunition the moral position of the “latest times;”1092 enjoining every species of ταπεινοφρόνησις, since the prison must be familiarized to us, and hunger and thirst practised, and capacity of enduring as well the absence of food as anxiety about it acquired: in order that the Christian may enter into prison in like condition as if he had (just) come forth of it,—to suffer there not penalty, but discipline, and not the world’s tortures, but his own habitual observances; and to go forth out of custody to (the final) conflict with all the more confidence, having nothing of sinful false care of the flesh about him, so that the tortures may not even have material to work on, since he is cuirassed in a mere dry skin, and cased in horn to meet the claws, the succulence of his blood already sent on (heavenward) before him, the baggage as it were of his soul,—the soul herself withal now hastening (after it), having already, by frequent fasting, gained a most intimate knowledge of death! Plainly, your habit is to furnish cookshops in the prisons to untrustworthy martyrs, for fear they should miss their accustomed usages, grow weary of life, (and) be stumbled at the novel discipline of abstinence; (a discipline) which not even the well-known Pristinus—your martyr, no Christian martyr—had ever come in contact with: he whom—stuffed as he had long been, thanks to the facilities afforded by the “free custody” (now in vogue, and) under an obligation, I suppose, to all the baths (as if they were better than baptism!), and to all the retreats of voluptuousness (as if they were more secret than those of the Church!), and to all the allurements of this life (as if they were of more worth than those of life eternal!), not to be willing to die—on the very last day of trial, at high noon, you premedicated with drugged wine as an antidote, and so completely enervated, that on being tickled—for his intoxication made it feel like tickling—with a few claws, he was unable any more to make answer to the presiding officer interrogating him “whom he confessed to be Lord;” and, being now put on the rack for this silence, when he could utter nothing but hiccoughs and belchings, died in the very act of apostasy! This is why they who preach sobriety are “false prophets;” this why they who practise it are “heretics!” Why then hesitate to believe that the Paraclete, whom you deny in a Montanus, exists in an Apicius?

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    You lay down a prescription that this faith has its solemnities “appointed” by the Scriptures or the tradition of the ancestors; and that no further addition in the way of observance must be added, on account of the unlawfulness of innovation. Stand on that ground, if you can. For, behold, I impeach you of fasting besides on the Paschal-day, beyond the limits of those days in which “the Bridegroom was taken away;” and interposing the half-fasts of Stations; and you, (I find), sometimes living on bread and water, when it has seemed meet to each (so to do). In short, you answer that “these things are to be done of choice, not of command.” You have changed your ground, therefore, by exceeding tradition, in undertaking observances which have not been “appointed.” But what kind of deed is it, to permit to your own choice what you grant not to the command of God? Shall human volition have more licence than Divine power? I am mindful that I am free from the world,1093 not from God. Thus it is my part to perform, without external suggestion thereto, an act of respect to my Lord, it is His to enjoin. I ought not merely to pay a willing obedience to Him, but withal to court Him; for the former I render to His command, the latter to my own choice. But it is enough for me that it is a customary practice for the bishops withal to issue mandates for fasts to the universal commonalty of the Church; I do not mean for the special purpose of collecting contributions of alms, as your beggarly fashion has it, but sometimes too from some particular cause of ecclesiastical solicitude. And accordingly, if you practise ταπεινοφρόνησις at the bidding of a man’s edict, and all unitedly, how is it that in our case you set a brand upon the very unity also of our fastings, and xerophagies, and Stations?—unless, perhaps, it is against the decrees of the senate and the mandates of the emperors which are opposed to “meetings” that we are sinning! The Holy Spirit, when He was preaching in whatsoever lands He chose, and through whomsoever He chose, was wont, from foresight of the imminence either of temptations to befall the Church, or of plagues to befall the world, in His character of Paraclete (that is, Advocate for the purpose of winning over the judge by prayers), to issue mandates for observances of this nature; for instance, at the present time, with the view of practising the discipline of sobriety and abstinence: we, who receive Him, must necessarily observe also the appointments which He then made. Look at the Jewish calendar, and you will find it nothing novel that all succeeding posterity guards with hereditary scrupulousness the precepts given to the fathers. Besides, throughout the provinces of Greece there are held in definite localities those councils gathered out of the universal Churches, by whose means not only all the deeper questions are handled for the common benefit, but the actual representation of the whole Christian name is celebrated with great veneration. (And how worthy a thing is this, that, under the auspices of faith, men should congregate from all quarters to Christ! “See, how good and how enjoyable for brethren to dwell in unity!”1094 This psalm you know not easily how to sing, except when you are supping with a goodly company!) But those conclaves first, by the operations of Stations and fastings, know what it is “to grieve with the grieving,” and thus at last “to rejoice in company with the rejoicing.”1095 If we also, in our diverse provinces, (but) present mutually in spirit,1096 observe those very solemnities, whose then celebration our present discourse has been defending, that is the sacramental law.

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    Being, therefore, observers of “seasons” for these things, and of “days, and months, and years,”1097 we Galaticize. Plainly we do, if we are observers of Jewish ceremonies, of legal solemnities: for those the apostle unteaches, suppressing the continuance of the Old Testament which has been buried in Christ, and establishing that of the New. But if there is a new creation in Christ,1098 our solemnities too will be bound to be new: else, if the apostle has erased all devotion absolutely “of seasons, and days, and months, and years,” why do we celebrate the passover by an annual rotation in the first month? Why in the fifty ensuing days do we spend our time in all exultation? Why do we devote to Stations the fourth and sixth days of the week, and to fasts the “preparation-day?”1099 Anyhow, you sometimes continue your Station even over the Sabbath,—a day never to be kept as a fast except at the passover season, according to a reason elsewhere given. With us, at all events, every day likewise is celebrated by an ordinary consecration. And it will not, then, be, in the eyes of the apostle, the differentiating principle—distinguishing (as he is doing) “things new and old”1100—which will be ridiculous; but (in this case too) it will be your own unfairness, while you taunt us with the form of antiquity all the while you are laying against us the charge of novelty.

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    The apostle reprobates likewise such as “bid to abstain from meats; but he does so from the foresight of the Holy Spirit, precondemning already the heretics who would enjoin perpetual abstinence to the extent of destroying and despising the works of the Creator; such as I may find in the person of a Marcion, a Tatian, or a Jupiter, the Pythagorean heretic of to-day; not in the person of the Paraclete. For how limited is the extent of our “interdiction of meats!” Two weeks of xerophagies in the year (and not the whole of these,—the Sabbaths, to wit, and the Lord’s days, being excepted) we offer to God; abstaining from things which we do not reject, but defer. But further: when writing to the Romans, the apostle now gives you a home-thrust, detractors as you are of this observance: “Do not for the sake of food,” he says, “undo1101 the work of God.” What “work?” That about which he says,1102 “It is good not to eat flesh, and not to drink wine:” “for he who in these points doeth service, is pleasing and propitiable to our God.” “One believeth that all things may be eaten; but another, being weak, feedeth on vegetables. Let not him who eateth lightly esteem him who eateth not. Who art thou, who judgest another’s servant?” “Both he who eateth, and he who eateth not, giveth God thanks.” But, since he forbids human choice to be made matter of controversy, how much more Divine! Thus he knew how to chide certain restricters and interdicters of food, such as abstained from it of contempt, not of duty; but to approve such as did so to the honour, not the insult, of the Creator. And if he has “delivered you the keys of the meat-market,” permitting the eating of “all things” with a view to establishing the exception of “things offered to idols;” still he has not included the kingdom of God in the meat-market: “For,” he says, “the kingdom of God is neither meat nor drink;”1103 and, “Food commendeth us not to God”—not that you may think this said about dry diet, but rather about rich and carefully prepared, if, when he subjoins, “Neither, if we shall have eaten, shall we abound; nor, if we shall not have eaten, shall we be deficient,” the ring of his words suits, (as it does), you rather (than us), who think that you do “abound” if you eat, and are “deficient if you eat not; and for this reason disparage these observances. How unworthy, also, is the way in which you interpret to the favour of your own lust the fact that the Lord “ate and drank” promiscuously! But I think that He must have likewise “fasted” inasmuch as He has pronounced, not “the full,” but “the hungry and thirsty, blessed:”1104 (He) who was wont to profess “food” to be, not that which His disciples had supposed, but “the thorough doing of the Father’s work;”1105 teaching “to labour for the meat which is permanent unto life eternal;”1106 in our ordinary prayer likewise commanding us to request “bread,”1107 not the wealth of Attalus1108 therewithal. Thus, too, Isaiah has not denied that God “hath chosen” a “fast;” but has particularized in detail the kind of fast which He has not chosen: “for in the days,” he says, “of your fasts your own wills are found (indulged), and all who are subject to you ye stealthily sting; or else ye fast with a view to abuse and strifes, and ye smite with the fists. Not such a fast have I elected;”1109 but such an one as He has subjoined, and by subjoining has not abolished, but confirmed.

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    For even if He does prefer “the works of righteousness,” still not without a sacrifice, which is a soul afflicted with fasts.1110 He, at all events, is the God to whom neither a People incontinent of appetite, nor a priest, nor a prophet, was pleasing. To this day the “monuments of concupiscence” remain, where the People, greedy of “flesh,” till, by devouring without digesting the quails, they brought on cholera, were buried. Eli breaks his neck before the temple doors,1111 his sons fall in battle, his daughter-in-law expires in child-birth:1112 for such was the blow which had been deserved at the hand of God by the shameless house, the defrauder of the fleshly sacrifices.1113 Sameas, a “man of God,” after prophesying the issue of the idolatry introduced by King Jeroboam—after the drying up and immediate restoration of that king’s hand—after the rending in twain of the sacrificial altar,—being on account of these signs invited (home) by the king by way of recompense, plainly declined (for he had been prohibited by God) to touch food at all in that place; but having presently afterwards rashly taken food from another old man, who lyingly professed himself a prophet, he was deprived, in accordance with the word of God then and there uttered over the table, of burial in his fathers’ sepulchres. For he was prostrated by the rushing of a lion upon him in the way, and was buried among strangers; and thus paid the penalty of his breach of fast.1114 These will be warnings both to people and to bishops, even spiritual ones, in case they may ever have been guilty of incontinence of appetite. Nay, even in Hades the admonition has not ceased to speak; where we find in the person of the rich feaster, convivialities tortured; in that of the pauper, fasts refreshed; having—(as convivialities and fasts alike had)—as preceptors “Moses and the prophets.”1115 For Joel withal exclaimed: “Sanctify a fast, and a religious service;”1116 foreseeing even then that other apostles and prophets would sanction fasts, and would preach observances of special service to God. Whence it is that even they who court their idols by dressing them, and by adorning them in their sanctuary, and by saluting them at each particular hour, are said to do them service. But, more than that, the heathens recognise every form of ταπεινοφρόνησις. When the heaven is rigid and the year arid, barefooted processions are enjoined by public proclamation; the magistrates lay aside their purple, reverse the fasces, utter prayer, offer a victim. There are, moreover, some colonies where, besides (these extraordinary solemnities, the inhabitants), by an annual rite, clad in sackcloth and besprent with ashes, present a suppliant importunity to their idols, (while) baths and shops are kept shut till the ninth hour. They have one single fire in public— on the altars; no water even in their platters. There is, I believe, a Ninevitan suspension of business! A Jewish fast, at all events, is universally celebrated; while, neglecting the temples, throughout all the shore, in every open place, they continue long to send prayer up to heaven. And, albeit by the dress and ornamentation of mourning they disgrace the duty, still they do affect a faith in abstinence, and sigh for the arrival of the long-lingering evening star to sanction (their feeding). But it is enough for me that you, by heaping blasphemies upon our xerophagies, put them on a level with the chastity of an Isis and a Cybele. I admit the comparison in the way of evidence. Hence (our xerophagy) will be proved divine, which the devil, the emulator of things divine, imitates. It is out of truth that falsehood is built; out of religion that superstition is compacted. Hence you are more irreligious, in proportion as a heathen is more conformable. He, in short, sacrifices his appetite to an idolgod; you to (the true) God will not. For to you your belly is god, and your lungs a temple, and your paunch a sacrificial altar, and your cook the priest, and your fragrant smell the Holy Spirit, and your condiments spiritual gifts, and your belching prophecy.

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    “Old” you are, if we will say the truth, you who are so indulgent to appetite, and justly do you vaunt your “priority:” always do I recognise the savour of Esau, the hunter of wild beasts: so unlimitedly studious are you of catching fieldfares, so do you come from “the field” of your most lax discipline, so faint are you in spirit.1117 If I offer you a paltry lentile dyed red with must well boiled down, forthwith you will sell all your “primacies:” with you “love” shows its fervour in sauce-pans, “faith” its warmth in kitchens, “hope” its anchorage in waiters; but of greater account is “love,” because that is the means whereby your young men sleep with their sisters! Appendages, as we all know, of appetite are lasciviousness and voluptuousness. Which alliance the apostle withal was aware of; and hence, after premising, “Not in drunkenness and revels,” he adjoined, “nor in couches and lusts.”1118 To the indictment of your appetite pertains (the charge) that “double honour” is with you assigned to your presiding (elders) by double shares (of meat and drink); whereas the apostle has given them “double honour” as being both brethren and officers.1119 Who, among you, is superior in holiness, except him who is more frequent in banqueting, more sumptuous in catering, more learned in cups? Men of soul and flesh alone as you are, justly do you reject things spiritual. If the prophets were pleasing to such, my (prophets) they were not. Why, then, do not you constantly preach, “Let us eat and drink, for to-morrow we shall die?”1120 just as we do not hesitate manfully to command, “Let us fast, brethren and sisters, lest to-morrow perchance we die.” Openly let us vindicate our disciplines. Sure we are that “they who are in the flesh cannot please God;”1121 not, of course, those who are in the substance of the flesh, but in the care, the affection, the work, the will, of it. Emaciation displeases not us; for it is not by weight that God bestows flesh, any more than He does “the Spirit by measure.”1122 More easily, it may be, through the “strait gate”1123 of salvation will slenderer flesh enter; more speedily will lighter flesh rise; longer in the sepulchre will drier flesh retain its firmness. Let Olympic cestus-players and boxers cram themselves to satiety. To them bodily ambition is suitable to whom bodily strength is necessary; and yet they also strengthen themselves by xerophagies. But ours are other thews and other sinews, just as our contests withal are other; we whose “wrestling is not against flesh and blood, but against the world’s1124 power, against the spiritualities of malice.” Against these it is not by robustness of flesh and blood, but of faith and spirit, that it behoves us to make our antagonistic stand. On the other hand, an over-fed Christian will be more necessary to bears and lions, perchance, than to God; only that, even to encounter beasts, it will be his duty to practise emaciation.

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    [Translated by the Rev. S. Thelwall.] 1. My brother Fabius, you very lately asked, because some news or other were communicated, whether or not we ought to flee in persecution. For my part, having on the spot made some observations in the negative suited to the place and time, I also, owing to the rudeness of some persons, took away with me the subject but half treated, meaning to set it forth now more fully by my pen; for your inquiry had interested me in it, and the state of the times had already on its own account pressed it upon me. As persecutions in increasing number threaten us, so the more are we called on to give earnest thought to the question of how faith ought to receive them, and the duty of carefully considering it concerns you no less, who no doubt, by not accepting the Comforter, the guide to all truth, have, as was natural, opposed us hitherto in regard to other questions also. We have therefore applied a methodical treatment, too, to your inquiry, as we see that we must first come to a decision as to how the matter stands in regard to persecution itself, whether it comes on us from God or from the devil, that with the less difficulty we may get on firm ground as to our duty to meet it; for of everything one’s knowledge is clearer when it is known from whom it has its origin. It is enough indeed to lay it down, (in bar of all besides,) that nothing happens without the will of God. But lest we be diverted from the point before us, we shall not by this deliverance at once give occasion to the other discussions if one make answer—Therefore evil and sin are both from God; the devil henceforth, and even we ourselves, are entirely free. The question in hand is persecution. With respect to this, let me in the meantime say, that nothing happens without God’s will; on the ground that persecution is especially worthy of God, and, so to speak, requisite, for the approving, to wit, or if you will, the rejection of His professing servants. For what is the issue of persecution, what other result comes of it, but the approving and rejecting of faith, in regard to which the Lord will certainly sift His people? Persecution, by means of which one is declared either approved or rejected, is just the judgment of the Lord. But the judging properly belongs to God alone. This is that fan which even now cleanses the Lord’s threshing-floor—the Church, I mean—winnowing the mixed heap of believers, and separating the grain1134 of the martyrs from the chaff of the deniers; and this is also the ladder1135 of which Jacob dreams, on which are seen, some mounting up to higher places, and others going down to lower. So, too, persecution may be viewed as a contest. By whom is the conflict proclaimed, but by Him by whom the crown and the rewards are offered? You find in the Revelation its edict, setting forth the rewards by which He incites to victory—those, above all, whose is the distinction of conquering in persecution, in very deed contending in their victorious struggle not against flesh and blood, but against spirits of wickedness. So, too, you will see that the adjudging of the contest belongs to the same glorious One, as umpire, who calls us to the prize. The one great thing in persecution is the promotion of the glory of God, as He tries and casts away, lays on and takes off. But what concerns the glory of God will surely come to pass by His will. And when is trust in God more strong, than when there is a greater fear of Him, and when persecution breaks out? The Church is awe-struck. Then is faith both more zealous in preparation, and better disciplined in fasts, and meetings, and prayers, and lowliness, in brotherly- kindness and love, in holiness and temperance. There is no room, in fact, for ought but fear and hope. So even by this very thing we have it clearly proved that persecution, improving as it does the servants of God, cannot be imputed to the devil. 2. If, because injustice is not from God, but from the devil, and persecution consists of injustice (for what more unjust than that the bishops of the true God, that all the followers of the truth, should be dealt with after the manner of the vilest criminals?), persecution therefore seems to proceed from the devil, by whom the injustice which constitutes persecution is perpetrated, we ought to know, as you have neither persecution without the injustice of the devil, nor the trial of faith without persecution, that the injustice necessary for the trial of faith does not give a warrant for persecution, but supplies an agency; that in reality, in reference to the trial of faith, which is the reason of persecution, the will of God goes first, but that as the instrument of persecution, which is the way of trial, the injustice of the devil follows. For in other respects, too, injustice in proportion to the enmity it displays against righteousness affords occasion for attestations of that to which it is opposed as an enemy, that so righteousness may be perfected in injustice, as strength is perfected in weakness.1136 For the weak things of the world have been chosen by God to confound the strong, and the foolish things of the world to confound its wisdom.1137 Thus even injustice is employed, that righteousness may be approved in putting unrighteousness to shame. Therefore, since the service is not of free-will, but of subjection (for persecution is the appointment of the Lord for the trial of faith, but its ministry is the injustice of the devil, supplied that persecution may be got up), we believe that persecution comes to pass, no question, by the devil’s agency, but not by the devil’s origination. Satan will not be at liberty to do anything against the servants of the living God unless the Lord grant leave, either that He may overthrow Satan himself by the faith of the elect which proves victorious in the trial, or in the face of the world show that apostatizers to the devil’s cause have been in reality His servants. You have the case of Job, whom the devil, unless he had received authority from God, could not have visited with trial, not even, in fact, in his property, unless the Lord had said, “Behold, all that he has I put at your disposal; but do not stretch out your hand against himself.”1138 In short, he would not even have stretched it out, unless afterwards, at his request, the Lord had granted him this permission also, saying, “Behold, I deliver him to you; only preserve his life.” So he asked in the case of the apostles likewise an opportunity to tempt them, having it only by special allowance, since the Lord in the Gospel says to Peter, “Behold, Satan asked that he might sift you as grain; but I have prayed for you that your faith fail not;”1139 that is, that the devil should not have power granted him sufficient to endanger his faith. Whence it is manifest that both things belong to God, the shaking of faith as well as the shielding of it, when both are sought from Him—the shaking by the devil, the shielding by the Son. And certainly, when the Son of God has faith’s protection absolutely committed to Him, beseeching it of the Father, from whom He receives all power in heaven and on earth, how entirely out of the question is it that the devil should have the assailing of it in his own power! But in the prayer prescribed to us, when we say to our Father, “Lead us not into temptation”1140 (now what greater temptation is there than persecution?), we acknowledge that that comes to pass by His will whom we beseech to exempt us from it. For this is what follows, “But deliver us from the wicked one,” that is, do not lead us into temptation by giving us up to the wicked one, for then are we delivered from the power of the devil, when we are not handed over to him to be tempted. Nor would the devil’s legion have had power over the herd of swine1141 unless they had got it from God; so far are they from having power over the sheep of God. I may say that the bristles of the swine, too, were then counted by God, not to speak of the hairs of holy men. The devil, it must be owned, seems indeed to have power—in this case really his own—over those who do not belong to God, the nations being once for all counted by God as a drop of the bucket, and as the dust of the threshing-floor, and as the spittle of the mouth, and so thrown open to the devil as, in a sense, a free possession. But against those who belong to the household of God he may not do ought as by any right of his own, because the cases marked out in Scripture show when—that is, for what reasons—he may touch them. For either, with a view to their being approved, the power of trial is granted to him, challenged or challenging, as in the instances already referred to, or, to secure an opposite result, the sinner is handed over to him, as though he were an executioner to whom belonged the inflicting of punishment, as in the case of Saul. “And the Spirit of the Lord,” says Scripture, “departed from Saul, and an evil spirit from the Lord troubled and stifled him;”1142 or the design is to humble, as the apostle tells us, that there was given him a stake, the messenger of Satan, to buffet him;1143 and even this sort of thing is not permitted in the case of holy men, unless it be that at the same time strength of endurance may be perfected in weakness. For the apostle likewise delivered Phygellus and Hermogenes over to Satan that by chastening they might be taught not to blaspheme.1144 You see, then, that the devil receives more suitably power even from the servants of God; so far is he from having it by any right of his own. 3. Seeing therefore, too, these cases occur in persecutions more than at other times, as there is then among us more of proving or rejecting, more of abusing or punishing, it must be that their general occurrence is permitted or commanded by Him at whose will they happen even partially; by Him, I mean, who says, “I am He who make peace and create evil,”1145—that is, war, for that is the antithesis of peace. But what other war has our peace than persecution? If in its issues persecution emphatically brings either life or death, either wounds or healing, you have the author, too, of this. “I will smite and heal, I will make alive and put to death.”1146 “I will burn them,” He says, “as gold is burned; and I will try them,” He says, “as silver is tried,”1147 for when the flame of persecution is consuming us, then the stedfastness of our faith is proved. These will be the fiery darts of the devil, by which faith gets a ministry of burning and kindling; yet by the will of God. As to this I know not who can doubt, unless it be persons with frivolous and frigid faith, which seizes upon those who with trembling assemble together in the church. For you say, seeing we assemble without order, and assemble at the same time, and flock in large numbers to the church, the heathen are led to make inquiry about us, and we are alarmed lest we awaken their anxieties. Do ye not know that God is Lord of all? And if it is God’s will, then you shall suffer persecution; but if it is not, the heathen will be still. Believe it most surely, if indeed you believe in that God without whose will not even the sparrow, a penny can buy, falls to the ground.1148 But we, I think, are better than many sparrows. 4. Well, then, if it is evident from whom persecution proceeds, we are able at once to satisfy your doubts, and to decide from these introductory remarks alone, that men should not flee in it. For if persecution proceeds from God, in no way will it be our duty to flee from what has God as its author; a twofold reason opposing; for what proceeds from God ought not on the one hand to be avoided, and it cannot be evaded on the other. It ought not to be avoided, because it is good; for everything must be good on which God has cast His eye. And with this idea has perhaps this statement been made in Genesis, “And God saw because it is good;” not that He would have been ignorant of its goodness unless He had seen it, but to indicate by this expression that it was good because it was viewed by God. There are many events indeed happening by the will of God, and happening to somebody’s harm. Yet for all that, a thing is therefore good because it is of God, as divine, as reasonable; for what is divine, and not reasonable and good? What is good, yet not divine? But if to the universal apprehension of mankind this seems to be the case, in judging, man’s faculty of apprehension does not predetermine the nature of things, but the nature of things his power of apprehension. For every several nature is a certain definite reality, and it lays it on the perceptive power to perceive it just as it exists. Now, if that which comes from God is good indeed in its natural state (for there is nothing from God which is not good, because it is divine, and reasonable), but seems evil only to the human faculty, all will be right in regard to the former; with the latter the fault will lie. In its real nature a very good thing is chastity, and so is truth, and righteousness; and yet they are distasteful to many. Is perhaps the real nature on this account sacrificed to the sense of perception? Thus persecution in its own nature too is good, because it is a divine and reasonable appointment; but those to whom it comes as a punishment do not feel it to be pleasant. You see that as proceeding from Him, even that evil has a reasonable ground, when one in persecution is cast out of a state of salvation, just as you see that you have a reasonable ground for the good also, when one by persecution has his salvation made more secure. Unless, as it depends on the Lord, one either perishes irrationally, or is irrationally saved, he will not be able to speak of persecution as an evil, which, while it is under the direction of reason, is, even in respect of its evil, good. So, if persecution is in every way a good, because it has a natural basis, we on valid grounds lay it down, that what is good ought not to be shunned by us, because it is a sin to refuse what is good; besides that, what has been looked upon by God can no longer indeed be avoided, proceeding as it does from God, from whose will escape will not be possible. Therefore those who think that they should flee, either reproach God with doing what is evil, if they flee from persecution as an evil (for no one avoids what is good); or they count themselves stronger than God: so they think, who imagine it possible to escape when it is God’s pleasure that such events should occur. 5. But, says some one, I flee, the thing it belongs to me to do, that I may not perish, if I deny; it is for Him on His part, if He chooses, to bring me, when I flee, back before the tribunal. First answer me this: Are you sure you will deny if you do not flee, or are you not sure? For if you are sure, you have denied already, because by presupposing that you will deny, you have given yourself up to that about which you have made such a presupposition; and now it is vain for you to think of flight, that you may avoid denying, when in intention you have denied already. But if you are doubtful on that point, why do you not, in the incertitude of your fear wavering between the two different issues, presume that you are able rather to act a confessor’s part, and so add to your safety, that you may not flee, just as you presuppose denial to send you off a fugitive? The matter stands thus—we have either both things in our own power, or they wholly lie with God. If it is ours to confess or to deny, why do we not anticipate the nobler thing, that is, that we shall confess? If you are not willing to confess, you are not willing to suffer; and to be unwilling to confess is to deny. But if the matter is wholly in God’s hand, why do we not leave it to His will, recognising His might and power in that, just as He can bring us back to trial when we flee, so is He able to screen us when we do not flee; yes, and even living in the very heart of the people? Strange conduct, is it not, to honour God in the matter of flight from persecution, because He can bring you back from your flight to stand before the judgment-seat; but in regard of witnessbearing, to do Him high dishonour by despairing of power at His hands to shield you from danger? Why do you not rather on this, the side of constancy and trust in God, say, I do my part; I depart not; God, if He choose, will Himself be my protector? It beseems us better to retain our position in submission to the will of God, than to flee at our own will. Rutilius, a saintly martyr, after having ofttimes fled from persecution from place to place, nay, having bought security from danger, as he thought, by money, was, notwithstanding the complete security he had, as he thought, provided for himself, at last unexpectedly seized, and being brought before the magistrate, was put to the torture and cruelly mangled,—a punishment, I believe, for his fleeing,—and thereafter he was consigned to the flames, and thus paid to the mercy of God the suffering which he had shunned. What else did the Lord mean to show us by this example, but that we ought not to flee from persecution because it avails us nothing if God disapproves? 6. Nay, says some one, he fulfilled the command, when he fled from city to city. For so a certain individual, but a fugitive likewise, has chosen to maintain, and others have done the same who are unwilling to understand the meaning of that declaration of the Lord, that they may use it as a cloak for their cowardice, although it has had its persons as well as its times and reasons to which it specially applies. “When they begin,” He says, “to persecute you, flee from city to city.”1149 We maintain that this belongs specially to the persons of the apostles, and to their times and circumstances, as the following sentences will show, which are suitable only to the apostles: “Do not go into the way of the Gentiles, and into a city of the Samaritans do not enter: but go rather to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.”1150 But to us the way of the Gentiles is also open, as in it we in fact were found, and to the very last we walk; and no city has been excepted. So we preach throughout all the world; nay, no special care even for Israel has been laid upon us, save as also we are bound to preach to all nations. Yes, and if we are apprehended, we shall not be brought into Jewish councils, nor scourged in Jewish synagogues, but we shall certainly be cited before Roman magistrates and judgment-seats.1151 So, then, the circumstances of the apostles even required the injunction to flee, their mission being to preach first to the lost sheep of the house of Israel. That, therefore, this preaching might be fully accomplished in the case of those among whom this behoved first of all to be carried out—that the sons might receive bread before the dogs, for that reason He commanded them to flee then for a time—not with the object of eluding danger, under the plea strictly speaking which persecution urges (rather He was in the habit of proclaiming that they would suffer persecutions, and of teaching that these must be endured); but in order to further the proclamation of the Gospel message, lest by their being at once put down, the diffusion of the Gospel too might be prevented. Neither were they to flee to any city as if by stealth, but as if everywhere about to proclaim their message; and for this, everywhere about to undergo persecutions, until they should fulfil their teaching. Accordingly the Saviour says, “Ye will not go over all the cities of Israel.”1152 So the command to flee was restricted to the limits of Judea. But no command that shows Judea to be specially the sphere for preaching applies to us, now that the Holy Spirit has been poured out upon all flesh. Therefore Paul and the apostles themselves, mindful of the precept of the Lord, bear this solemn testimony before Israel, which they had now filled with their doctrine—saying, “It was necessary that the word of God should have been first delivered to you; but seeing ye have rejected it, and have not thought yourselves worthy of eternal life, lo, we turn to the Gentiles.”1153 And from that time they turned their steps away, as those who went before them had laid it down, and departed into the way of the Gentiles, and entered into the cities of the Samaritans; so that, in very deed, their sound went forth into all the earth, and their words to the end of the world.1154 If, therefore, the prohibition against setting foot in the way of the Gentiles, and entering into the cities of the Samaritans, has come to an end, why should not the command to flee, which was issued at the same time, have come also to an end? Accordingly, from the time when, Israel having had its full measure, the apostles went over to the Gentiles, they neither fled from city to city, nor hesitated to suffer. Nay, Paul too, who had submitted to deliverance from persecution by being let down from the wall, as to do so was at this time a matter of command, refused in like manner now at the close of his ministry, and after the injunction had come to an end, to give in to the anxieties of the disciples, eagerly entreating him that he would not risk himself at Jerusalem, because of the sufferings in store for him which Agabus had foretold; but doing the very opposite, it is thus he speaks, “What do ye, weeping and disquieting my heart? For I could wish not only to suffer bonds, but also to die at Jerusalem, for the name of my Lord Jesus Christ.”1155 And so they all said, “Let the will of the Lord be done.” What was the will of the Lord? Certainly no longer to flee from persecution. Otherwise they who had wished him rather to avoid persecution, might also have adduced that prior will of the Lord, in which He had commanded flight. Therefore, seeing even in the days of the apostles themselves, the command to flee was temporary, as were those also relating to the other things at the same time enjoined, that [command] cannot continue with us which ceased with our teachers, even although it had not been issued specially for them; or if the Lord wished it to continue, the apostles did wrong who were not careful to keep fleeing to the last. 7. Let us now see whether also the rest of our Lord’s ordinances accord with a lasting command of flight. In the first place, indeed, if persecution is from God, what are we to think of our being ordered to take ourselves out of its way, by the very party who brings it on us? For if He wanted it to be evaded, He had better not have sent it, that there might not be the appearance of His will being thwarted by another will. For He wished us either to suffer persecution or to flee from it. If to flee, how to suffer? If to suffer, how to flee? In fact, what utter inconsistency in the decrees of One who commands to flee, and yet urges to suffer, which is the very opposite! “Him who will confess Me, I also will confess before My Father.”1156 How will he confess, fleeing? How flee, confessing? “Of him who shall be ashamed of Me, will I also be ashamed before My Father.” 1157 If I avoid suffering, I am ashamed to confess. “Happy they who suffer persecution for My name’s sake.”1158 Unhappy, therefore, they who, by running away, will not suffer according to the divine command. “He who shall endure to the end shall be saved.”1159 How then, when you bid me flee, do you wish me to endure to the end? If views so opposed to each other do not comport with the divine dignity, they clearly prove that the command to flee had, at the time it was given, a reason of its own, which we have pointed out. But it is said, the Lord, providing for the weakness of some of His people, nevertheless, in His kindness, suggested also the haven of flight to them. For He was not able even without flight—a protection so base, and unworthy, and servile—to preserve in persecution such as He knew to be weak! Whereas in fact He does not cherish, but ever rejects the weak, teaching first, not that we are to fly from our persecutors, but rather that we are not to fear them. “Fear not them who are able to kill the body, but are unable to do ought against the soul; but fear Him who can destroy both body and soul in hell.”1160 And then what does He allot to the fearful? “He who will value his life more than Me, is not worthy of Me; and he who takes not up his cross and follows Me, cannot be My disciple.”1161 Last of all, in the Revelation, He does not propose flight to the “fearful,”1162 but a miserable portion among the rest of the outcast, in the lake of brimstone and fire, which is the second death. 8. He sometimes also fled from violence Himself, but for the same reason as had led Him to command the apostles to do so: that is, He wanted to fulfil His ministry of teaching; and when it was finished, I do not say He stood firm, but He had no desire even to get from His Father the aid of hosts of angels: finding fault, too, with Peter’s sword. He likewise acknowledged, it is true, that His “soul was troubled, even unto death,”1163 and the flesh weak; with the design, (however,) first of all, that by having, as His own, trouble of soul and weakness of the flesh, He might show you that both the substances in Him were truly human; lest, as certain persons have now brought it in, you might be led to think either the flesh or the soul of Christ different from ours; and then, that, by an exhibition of their states, you might be convinced that they have no power at all of themselves without the spirit. And for this reason He puts first “the willing spirit,”1164 that, looking to the natures respectively of both the substances, you may see that you have in you the spirit’s strength as well as the flesh’s weakness; and even from this may learn what to do, and by what means to do it, and what to bring under what,—the weak, namely, under the strong, that you may not, as is now your fashion, make excuses on the ground of the weakness of the flesh, forsooth, but put out of sight the strength of the spirit. He also asked of His Father, that if it might be, the cup of suffering should pass from Him.1165 So ask you the like favour; but as He did, holding your position,—merely offering supplication, and adding, too, the other words: “but not what I will, but what Thou wilt.” But when you run away, how will you make this request? taking, in that case, into your own hands the removal of the cup from you, and instead of doing what your Father wishes, doing what you wish yourself. 9. The teaching of the apostles was surely in everything according to the mind of God: they forgot and omitted nothing of the Gospel. Where, then, do you show that they renewed the command to flee from city to city? In fact, it was utterly impossible that they should have laid down anything so utterly opposed to their own examples as a command to flee, while it was just from bonds, or the islands in which, for confessing, not fleeing from the Christian name, they were confined, they wrote their letters to the Churches. Paul1166 bids us support the weak, but most certainly it is not when they flee. For how can the absent be supported by you? By bearing with them? Well, he says that people must be supported, if anywhere they have committed a fault through the weakness of their faith, just as (he enjoins) that we should comfort the faint-hearted; he does not say, however, that they should be sent into exile. But when he urges us not to give place to evil,1167 he does not offer the suggestion that we should take to our heels, he only teaches that passion should be kept under restraint; and if he says that the time must be redeemed, because the days are evil,1168 he wishes us to gain a lengthening of life, not by flight, but by wisdom. Besides, he who bids us shine as sons of light,1169 does not bid us hide away out of sight as sons of darkness. He commands us to stand stedfast,1170 certainly not to act an opposite part by fleeing; and to be girt, not to play the fugitive or oppose the Gospel. He points out weapons, too, which persons who intend to run away would not require. And among these he notes the shield1171 too, that ye may be able to quench the darts of the devil, when doubtless ye resist him, and sustain his assaults in their utmost force. Accordingly John also teaches that we must lay down our lives for the brethren;1172 much more, then, we must do it for the Lord. This cannot be fulfilled by those who flee. Finally, mindful of his own Revelation, in which he had heard the doom of the fearful, (and so) speaking from personal knowledge, he warns us that fear must be put away. “There is no fear,” says he, “in love; but perfect love casteth out fear; because fear has torment”—the fire of the lake, no doubt. “He that feareth is not perfect in love”1173—to wit, the love of God. And yet who will flee from persecution, but he who fears? Who will fear, but he who has not loved? Yes; and if you ask counsel of the Spirit, what does He approve more than that utterance of the Spirit? For, indeed, it incites all almost to go and offer themselves in martyrdom, not to flee from it; so that we also make mention of it. If you are exposed to public infamy, says he, it is for your good; for he who is not exposed to dishonour among men is sure to be so before the Lord. Do not be ashamed; righteousness brings you forth into the public gaze. Why should you be ashamed of gaining glory? The opportunity is given you when you are before the eyes of men. So also elsewhere: seek not to die on bridal beds, nor in miscarriages, nor in soft fevers, but to die the martyr’s death, that He may be glorified who has suffered for you. 10. But some, paying no attention to the exhortations of God, are readier to apply to themselves that Greek versicle of worldly wisdom, “He who fled will fight again;” perhaps also in the battle to flee again. And when will he who, as a fugitive, is a defeated man, be conqueror? A worthy soldier he furnishes to his commander Christ, who, so amply armed by the apostle, as soon as he hears persecution’s trumpet, runs off from the day of persecution. I also will produce in answer a quotation taken from the world: “Is it a thing so very sad to die?”1174 He must die, in whatever way of it, either as conquered or as conqueror. But although he has succumbed in denying, he has yet faced and battled with the torture. I had rather be one to be pitied than to be blushed for. More glorious is the soldier pierced with a javelin in battle, than he who has a safe skin as a fugitive. Do you fear man, O Christian?—you who ought to be feared by the angels, since you are to judge angels; who ought to be feared by evil spirits, since you have received power also over evil spirits; who ought to be feared by the whole world, since by you, too, the world is judged. You are Christclothed, you who flee before the devil, since into Christ you have been baptized. Christ, who is in you, is treated as of small account when you give yourself back to the devil, by becoming a fugitive before him. But, seeing it is from the Lord you flee, you taunt all runaways with the futility of their purpose. A certain bold prophet also had fled from the Lord, he had crossed over from Joppa in the direction of Tarsus, as if he could as easily transport himself away from God; but I find him, I do not say in the sea and on the land, but, in fact, in the belly even of a beast, in which he was confined for the space of three days, unable either to find death or even thus escape from God. How much better the conduct of the man who, though he fears the enemy of God, does not flee from, but rather despises him, relying on the protection of the Lord; or, if you will, having an awe of God all the greater, the more that he has stood in His presence, says, “It is the Lord, He is mighty. All things belong to Him; wherever I am, I am in His hand: let Him do as He wills, I go not away; and if it be His pleasure that I die, let Him destroy me Himself, while I save myself for Him. I had rather bring odium upon Him by dying by His will, than by escaping through my own anger.” 11. Thus ought every servant of God to feel and act, even one in an inferior place, that he may come to have a more important one, if he has made some upward step by his endurance of persecution. But when persons in authority themselves—I mean the very deacons, and presbyters, and bishops—take to flight, how will a layman be able to see with what view it was said, Flee from city to city? Thus, too, with the leaders turning their backs, who of the common rank will hope to persuade men to stand firm in the battle? Most assuredly a good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep, according to the word of Moses, when the Lord Christ had not as yet been revealed, but was already shadowed forth in himself: “If you destroy this people,” he says, “destroy me also along with it.”1175 But Christ, confirming these foreshadowings Himself, adds: “The bad shepherd is he who, on seeing the wolf, flees, and leaves the sheep to be torn in pieces.”1176 Why, a shepherd like this will be turned off from the farm; the wages to have been given him at the time of his discharge will be kept from him as compensation; nay, even from his former savings a restoration of the master’s loss will be required; for “to him who hath shall be given, but from him who hath not shall be taken away even that which he seemeth to have.”1177 Thus Zechariah threatens: “Arise, O sword, against the shepherds, and pluck ye out the sheep; and I will turn my hand against the shepherds.”1178 And against them both Ezekiel and Jeremiah declaim with kindred threatenings, for their not only wickedly eating of the Sheep,—they feeding themselves rather than those committed to their charge,—but also scattering the flock, and giving it over, shepherdless, a prey to all the beasts of the field. And this never happens more than when in persecution the Church is abandoned by the clergy. If any one recognises the Spirit also, he will hear him branding the runaways. But if it does not become the keepers of the flock to flee when the wolves invade it—nay, if that is absolutely unlawful (for He who has declared a shepherd of this sort a bad one has certainly condemned him; and whatever is condemned has, without doubt, become unlawful)—on this ground it will not be the duty of those who have been set over the Church to flee in the time of persecution. But otherwise, if the flock should flee, the overseer of the flock would have no call to hold his ground, as his doing so in that case would be, without good reason, to give to the flock protection, which it would not require in consequence of its liberty, forsooth, to flee. 12. So far, my brother, as the question proposed by you is concerned, you have our opinion in answer and encouragement. But he who inquires whether persecution ought to be shunned by us must now be prepared to consider the following question also: Whether, if we should not flee from it, we should at least buy ourselves off from it. Going further than you expected, therefore, I will also on this point give you my advice, distinctly affirming that persecution, from which it is evident we must not flee, must in like manner not even be bought off. The difference lies in the payment; but as flight is a buying off without money, so buying off is money-flight. Assuredly you have here too the counselling of fear. Because you fear, you buy yourself off; and so you flee. As regards your feet, you have stood; in respect of the money you have paid, you have run away. Why, in this very standing of yours there was a fleeing from persecution, in the release from persecution which you bought; but that you should ransom with money a man whom Christ has ransomed with His blood, how unworthy is it of God and His ways of acting, who spared not His own Son for you, that He might be made a curse for us, because cursed is he that hangeth on a tree,1179—Him who was led as a sheep to be a sacrifice, and just as a lamb before its shearer, so opened He not His mouth;1180 but gave His back to the scourges, nay, His cheeks to the hands of the smiter, and turned not away His face from spitting, and, being numbered with the transgressors, was delivered up to death, nay, the death of the cross. All this took place that He might redeem us from our sins. The sun ceded to us the day of our redemption; hell re-transferred the right it had in us, and our covenant is in heaven; the everlasting gates were lifted up, that the King of Glory, the Lord of might, might enter in,1181 after having redeemed man from earth, nay, from hell, that he might attain to heaven. What, now, are we to think of the man who strives against that glorious One, nay, slights and defiles His goods, obtained at so great a ransom—no less, in truth, than His most precious blood? It appears, then, that it is better to flee than to fall in value, if a man will not lay out for himself as much as he cost Christ. And the Lord indeed ransomed him from the angelic powers which rule the world—from the spirits of wickedness, from the darkness of this life, from eternal judgment, from everlasting death. But you bargain for him with an informer, or a soldier or some paltry thief of a ruler—under, as they say, the folds of the tunic—as if he were stolen goods whom Christ purchased in the face of the whole world, yes, and set at liberty. Will you value, then, this free man at any price, and possess him at any price, but the one, as we have said, it cost the Lord,—namely, His own blood? (And if not,) why then do you purchase Christ in the man in whom He dwells, as though He were some human property? No otherwise did Simon even try to do, when he offered the apostles money for the Spirit of Christ. Therefore this man also, who in buying himself has bought the Spirit of Christ, will hear that word, “Your money perish with you, since you have thought that the grace of God is to be had at a price!”1182 Yet who will despise him for being (what he is), a denier? For what says that extorter? Give me money: assuredly that he may not deliver him up, since he tries to sell you nothing else than that which he is going to give you for money. When you put that into his hands, it is certainly your wish not to be delivered up. But not delivered up, had you to be held up to public ridicule? While, then, in being unwilling to be delivered up, you are not willing to be thus exposed; by this unwillingness of yours you have denied that you are what you have been unwilling to have it made public that you are. Nay, you say, While I am unwilling to be held up to the public as being what I am, I have acknowledged that I am what I am unwilling to be so held up as being, that is, a Christian. Can Christ, therefore, claim that you, as a witness for Him, have stedfastly shown Him forth? He who buys himself off does nothing in that way. Before one it might, I doubt not, be said, You have confessed Him; so also, on the account of your unwillingness to confess Him before many you have denied Him. A man’s very safety will pronounce that he has fallen while getting out of persecution’s way. He has fallen, therefore, whose desire has been to escape. The refusal of martyrdom is denial. A Christian is preserved by his wealth, and for this end has his treasures, that he may not suffer, while he will be rich toward God. But it is the case that Christ was rich in blood for him. Blessed therefore are the poor, because, He says, the kingdom of heaven is theirs who have the soul only treasured up.1183 If we cannot serve God and mammon, can we be redeemed both by God and by mammon? For who will serve mammon more than the man whom mammon has ransomed? Finally, of what example do you avail yourself to warrant your averting by money the giving of you up? When did the apostles, dealing with the matter, in any time of persecution trouble, extricate themselves by money? And money they certainly had from the prices of lands which were laid down at their feet,1184 there being, without a doubt, many of the rich among those who believed— men, and also women, who were wont, too, to minister to their comfort. When did Onesimus, or Aquila, or Stephen,1185 give them aid of this kind when they were persecuted? Paul indeed, when Felix the governor hoped that he should receive money for him from the disciples,1186 about which matter he also dealt with the apostle in private, certainly neither paid it himself, nor did the disciples for him. Those disciples, at any rate, who wept because he was equally persistent in his determination to go to Jerusalem, and neglectful of all means to secure himself from the persecutions which had been foretold as about to occur there, at last say, “Let the will of the Lord be done.” What was that will? No doubt that he should suffer for the name of the Lord, not that he should be bought off. For as Christ laid down His life for us, so, too, we should do for Him; and not only for the Lord Himself, nay, but likewise for our brethren on His account. This, too, is the teaching of John when he declares, not that we should pay for our brethren, but rather that we should die for them. It makes no difference whether the thing not to be done by you is to buy off a Christian, or to buy one. And so the will of God accords with this. Look at the condition—certainly of God’s ordaining, in whose hand the king’s heart is—of kingdoms and empires. For increasing the treasury there are daily provided so many appliances—registerings of property, taxes in kind benevolences, taxes in money; but never up to this time has ought of the kind been provided by bringing Christians under some purchase-money for the person and the sect, although enormous gains could be reaped from numbers too great for any to be ignorant of them. Bought with blood, paid for with blood, we owe no money for our head, because Christ is our Head. It is not fit that Christ should cost us money. How could martyrdoms, too, take place to the glory of the Lord, if by tribute we should pay for the liberty of our sect? And so he who stipulates to have it at a price, opposes the divine appointment. Since, therefore, Cæsar has imposed nothing on us after this fashion of a tributary sect—in fact, such an imposition never can be made,—with Antichrist now close at hand, and gaping for the blood, not for the money of Christians—how can it be pointed out to me that there is the command, “Render to Cæsar the things which are Cæsar’s?”1187 A soldier, be he an informer or an enemy, extorts money from me by threats, exacting nothing on Cæsar’s behalf; nay, doing the very opposite, when for a bribe he lets me go—Christian as I am, and by the laws of man a criminal. Of another sort is the denarius which I owe to Cæsar, a thing belonging to him, about which the question then was started, it being a tribute coin due indeed by those subject to tribute, not by children. Or how shall I render to God the things which are God’s,—certainly, therefore, His own likeness and money inscribed with His name, that is, a Christian man? But what do I owe God, as I do Cæsar the denarius, but the blood which His own Son shed for me? Now if I owe God, indeed, a human being and my own blood; but I am now in this juncture, that a demand is made upon me for the payment of that debt, I am undoubtedly guilty of cheating God if I do my best to withhold payment. I have well kept the commandment, if, rendering to Cæsar the things which are Cæsar’s, I refuse to God the things which are God’s! 13. But also to every one who asks me I will give on the plea of charity, not under any intimidation. Who asks?1188 He says. But he who uses intimidation does not ask. One who threatens if he does not receive, does not crave, but compels. It is not alms he looks for, who comes not to be pitied, but to be feared. I will give, therefore, because I pity, not because I fear, when the recipient honours God and returns me his blessing; not when rather he both believes that he has conferred a favour on me, and, beholding his plunder, says, “Guilt money.” Shall I be angry even with an enemy? But enmities have also other grounds. Yet withal he did not say a betrayer, or persecutor, or one seeking to terrify you by his threats. For how much more shall I heap coals upon the head of a man of this sort, if I do not redeem myself by money? “In like manner,” says Jesus, “to him who has taken away your coat, grant even your cloak also.” But that refers to him who has sought to take away my property, not my faith. The cloak, too, I will grant, if I am not threatened with betrayal. If he threatens, I will demand even my coat back again. Even now, the declarations of the Lord have reasons and laws of their own. They are not of unlimited or universal application. And so He commands us to give to every one who asks, yet He Himself does not give to those who ask a sign. Otherwise, if you think that we should give indiscriminately to all who ask, that seems to me to mean that you would give, I say not wine to him who has a fever, but even poison or a sword to him who longs for death. But how we are to understand, “Make to yourselves friends of mammon,”1189 let the previous parable teach you. The saying was addressed to the Jewish people; inasmuch as, having managed ill the business of the Lord which had been entrusted to them, they ought to have provided for themselves out of the men of mammon, which we then were, friends rather than enemies, and to have delivered us from the dues of sins which kept us from God, if they bestowed the blessing upon us, for the reason given by the Lord, that when grace began to depart from them, they, betaking themselves to our faith, might be admitted into everlasting habitations. Hold now any other explanation of this parable and saying you like, if only you clearly see that there is no likelihood of our opposers, should we make them friends with mammon, then receiving us into everlasting abodes. But of what will not cowardice convince men? As if Scripture both allowed them to flee, and commanded them to buy off! Finally, it is not enough if one or another is so rescued. Whole Churches have imposed tribute en masse on themselves. I know not whether it is matter for grief or shame when among hucksters, and pickpockets, and bath-thieves, and gamesters, and pimps, Christians too are included as taxpayers in the lists of free soldiers and spies. Did the apostles, with so much foresight, make the office of overseer of this type, that the occupants might be able to enjoy their rule free from anxiety, under colour of providing (a like freedom for their flocks)? For such a peace, forsooth, Christ, returning to His Father, commanded to be bought from the soldiers by gifts like those you have in the Saturnalia! 14. But how shall we assemble together? say you; how shall we observe the ordinances of the Lord? To be sure, just as the apostles also did, who were protected by faith, not by money; which faith, if it can remove a mountain, can much more remove a soldier. Be your safeguard wisdom, not a bribe. For you will not have at once complete security from the people also, should you buy off the interference of the soldiers. Therefore all you need for your protection is to have both faith and wisdom: if you do not make use of these, you may lose even the deliverance which you have purchased for yourself; while, if you do employ them, you can have no need of any ransoming. Lastly, if you cannot assemble by day, you have the night, the light of Christ luminous against its darkness. You cannot run about among them one after another. Be content with a church of threes. It is better that you sometimes should not see your crowds, than subject yourselves (to a tribute bondage). Keep pure for Christ His betrothed virgin; let no one make gain of her. These things, my brother, seem to you perhaps harsh and not to be endured; but recall that God has said, “He who receives it, let him receive it,”1190 that is, let him who does not receive it go his way. He who fears to suffer, cannot belong to Him who suffered. But the man who does not fear to suffer, he will be perfect in love—in the love, it is meant, of God; “for perfect love casteth out fear.”1191 “And therefore many are called, but few chosen.”1192 It is not asked who is ready to follow the broad way, but who the narrow. And therefore the Comforter is requisite, who guides into all truth, and animates to all endurance. And they who have received Him will neither stoop to flee from persecution nor to buy it off, for they have the Lord Himself, One who will stand by us to aid us in suffering, as well as to be our mouth when we are put to the question.

42. section10

    [Translated by the Rev. S. Thelwall.]

43. section10.chapter1

    After the living, aye—enduring death Of Sodom and Gomorrah; after fires Penal, attested by time-frosted plains Of ashes; after fruitless apple-growths, 5 Born but to feed the eye; after the death Of sea and brine, both in like fate involved; While whatsoe’er is human still retains In change corporeal its penal badge:1199 A city—Nineveh—by stepping o’er 10 The path of justice and of equity, On her own head had well-nigh shaken down More fires of rain supernal. For what dread1200 Dwells in a mind subverted? Commonly Tokens of penal visitations prove 15 All vain where error holds possession. Still, Kindly and patient of our waywardness, And slow to punish, the Almighty Lord Will launch no shaft of wrath, unless He first Admonish and knock oft at hardened hearts, 20 Rousing with mind august presaging seers. For to the merits of the Ninevites The Lord had bidden Jonah to foretell Destruction; but he, conscious that He spare; The subject, and remits to suppliants 25 The dues of penalty, and is to good Ever inclinable, was loth to face That errand; lest he sing his seerly strain In vain, and peaceful issue of his threats Ensue. His counsel presently is flight: 30 (If, howsoe’er, there is at all the power God to avoid, and shun the Lord’s right hand ’Neath whom the whole orb trembles and is held In check: but is there reason in the act Which in1201 his saintly heart the prophet dares?) 35 On the beach-lip, over against the shores Of the Cilicians, is a city poised,1202 Far-famed for trusty port—Joppa her name. Thence therefore Jonah speeding in a barque Seeks Tarsus,1203 through the signal providence 40 Of the same God;1204 nor marvel is’t, I ween, If, fleeing from the Lord upon the lands, He found Him in the waves. For suddenly A little cloud had stained the lower air With fleecy wrack sulphureous, itself1205 45 By the wind’s seed excited: by degrees, Bearing a brood globose, it with the sun Cohered, and with a train caliginous Shut in the cheated day. The main becomes The mirror of the sky; the waves are dyed so 50 With black encirclement; the upper air Down rushes into darkness, and the sea Uprises; nought of middle space is left; While the clouds touch the waves, and the waves all Are mingled by the bluster of the winds 55 In whirling eddy. ’Gainst the renegade, ’Gainst Jonah, diverse frenzy joined to rave, While one sole barque did all the struggle breed ’Twixt sky and surge. From this side and from that Pounded she reels; ’neath each wave-breaking blow 60 The forest of her tackling trembles all; As, underneath, her spinal length of keel, Staggered by shock on shock, all palpitates; And, from on high, her labouring mass of yard Creaks shuddering; and the tree-like mast itself 65 Bends to the gale, misdoubting to be riven. Meantime the rising1206 clamour of the crew Tries every chance for barque’s and dear life’s sake: To pass from hand to hand1207 the tardy coils To tighten the girth’s noose: straitly to bind 70 The tiller’s struggles; or, with breast opposed, T’ impel reluctant curves. Part, turn by turn, With foremost haste outbale the reeking well Of inward sea. The wares and cargo all They then cast headlong, and with losses seek 75 Their perils to subdue. At every crash Of the wild deep rise piteous cries; and out They stretch their hands to majesties of gods, Which gods are none; whom might of sea and sky Fears not, nor yet the less from off their poops 80 With angry eddy sweeping sinks them down. Unconscious of all this, the guilty one ’Neath the poop’s hollow arch was making sleep Re-echo stertorous with nostril wide Inflated: whom, so soon as he who guides 85 The functions of the wave-dividing prow Saw him sleep-bound in placid peace, and proud In his repose, he, standing o’er him, shook, And said, “Why sing’st, with vocal nostril, dreams, In such a crisis? In so wild a whirl, 90 Why keep’st thou only harbour? Lo! the wave Whelms us, and our one hope is in the gods. Thou also, whosoever is thy god, Make vows, and, pouring prayers on bended knee, Win o’er thy country’s Sovran!” Then they vote 95 To learn by lot who is the culprit, who The cause of storm; nor does the lot belie Jonah: whom then they ask, and ask again, “Who? whence? who in the world? from what abode, What people, hail’st thou?” He avows himself 100 A servant, and an over-timid one, Of God, who raised aloft the sky, who based The earth, who corporally fused the whole: A renegade from Him he owns himself, And tells the reason. Rigid turned they all 105 With dread. “What grudge, then, ow’st thou us? What now Will follow? By what deed shall we appease The main?” For more and far more swelling grew The savage surges. Then the seer begins Words prompted by the Spirit of the Lord:1208 110 “Lo! I your tempest am; I am the sum Of the world’s1209 madness: ’tis in me,” he says, “That the sea rises, and the upper air Down rushes; land in me is far, death near, And hope in God is none! Come, headlong hurl 115 Your cause of bane: lighten your ship, and cast This single mighty burden to the main, A willing prey!” But they—all vainly!—strive Homeward to turn their course; for helm refused To suffer turning, and the yard’s stiff poise 120 Willed not to change. At last unto the Lord They cry: “For one soul’s sake give us not o’er Unto death’s maw, nor let us be besprent With righteous blood, if thus Thine own right hand Leadeth.” And from the eddy’s depth a whale 125 Outrising on the spot, scaly with shells,1210 Unravelling his body’s train, ’gan urge More near the waves, shocking the gleaming brine, Seizing—at God’s command—the prey; which, rolled From the poop’s summit prone, with slimy jaws 130 He sucked; and into his long belly sped The living feast; and swallowed, with the man, The rage of sky and main. The billowy waste Grows level, and the ether’s gloom dissolves; The waves on this side, and the blasts on that, 135 Are to their friendly mood restored; and, where The placid keel marks out a path secure, White traces in the emerald furrow bloom. The sailor then does to the reverend Lord Of death make grateful offering of his fear;1211 140 Then enters friendly ports. Jonah the seer The while is voyaging, in other craft Embarked, and cleaving ’neath the lowest waves A wave: his sails the intestines of the fish, Inspired with breath ferine; himself, shut in; 145 By waters, yet untouched; in the sea’s heart And yet beyond its reach; ’mid wrecks of fleets Half-eaten, and men’s carcasses dissolved In putrid disintegrity: in life Learning the process of his death; but still— 150 To be a sign hereafter of the Lord1212— A witness was he (in his very self),1213 Not of destruction, but of death’s repulse.

44. section10.chapter2

    (Author Uncertain.) Already had Almighty God wiped off By vengeful flood (with waters all conjoined Which heaven discharged on earth and the sea’s plain1214 Outspued) the times of the primeval age: 5 Had pledged Himself, while nether air should bring The winters in their course, ne’er to decree, By liquid ruin, retribution’s due; And had assigned, to curb the rains, the bow Of many hues, sealing the clouds with band 10 Of purple and of green, Iris its name, The rain-clouds’ proper baldric.1215 But alike With mankind’s second race impiety Revives, and a new age of ill once more Shoots forth; allotted now no more to showers 15 For ruin, but to fires: thus did the land Of Sodom earn to be by glowing dews Upburnt, and typically thus portend The future end.1216 There wild voluptuousness (Modesty’s foe) stood in the room of law; 20 Which prescient guest would shun, and sooner choose At Scythian or Busirian altar’s foot ’Mid sacred rites to die, and, slaughtered, pour His blood to Bebryx, or to satiate Libyan palæstras, or assume new forms; 25 By virtue of Circæan cups, than lose His outraged sex in Sodom. At heaven’s gate There knocked for vengeance marriages commit With equal incest common ’mong a race By nature rebels ’gainst themselves;1217 and hurts 30 Done to man’s name and person equally. But God, forewatching all things, at fix’d time Doth judge the unjust; with patience tarrying The hour when crime’s ripe age—not any force Of wrath impetuous—shall have circumscribed 35 The space for waiting.1218 Now at length the day Of vengeance was at hand. Sent from the host Angelical, two, youths in form, who both Were ministering spirits,1219 carrying The Lord’s divine commissions, come beneath 40 The walls of Sodom. There was dwelling Lot A transplantation from a pious stock; Wise, and a practicer of righteousness, He was the only one to think on God: As oft a fruitful tree is wont to lurk, 45 Guest-like, in forests wild. He, sitting then Before the gate (for the celestials scarce Had reached the ramparts), though he knew not them Divine,1220 accosts them unsolicited, Invites, and with ancestral honour greets; 50 And offers them, preparing to abide Abroad, a hospice. By repeated prayers He wins them; and then ranges studiously The sacred pledges1221 on his board,1222 and quits1223 His friends with courteous offices. The night 55 Had brought repose: alternate1224 dawn had chased The night, and Sodom with her shameful law Makes uproar at the doors. Lot, suppliant wise, Withstands: “Young men, let not your new fed lust Enkindle you to violate this youth!1225 60 Whither is passion’s seed inviting you? To what vain end your lust? For such an end No creatures wed: not such as haunt the fens; Not stall-fed cattle; not the gaping brood Subaqueous; nor they which, modulant 65 On pinions, hang suspended near the clouds; Nor they which with forth-stretched body creep Over earth’s face. To conjugal delight Each kind its kind doth owe: but female still To all is wife; nor is there one that has 70 A mother save a female one. Yet now, If youthful vigour holds it right1226 to waste The flower of modesty, I have within Two daughters of a nuptial age, in whom Virginity is swelling in its bloom, 75 Already ripe for harvest—a desire Worthy of men—which let your pleasure reap! Myself their sire, I yield them; and will pay For my guests’ sake, the forfeit of my grief!” Answered the mob insane: “And who art thou? 80 And what? and whence? to lord it over us, And to expound us laws? Shall foreigner Rule Sodom, and hurl threats? Now, then, thyself For daughters and for guests shalt sate our greed! One shall suffice for all!” So said, so done: 85 The frantic mob delays not. As, whene’er A turbid torrent rolls with wintry tide, And rushes at one speed through countless streams Of rivers, if, just where it forks, some tree Meets the swift waves (not long to stand, save while 90 By her root’s force she shall avail to oppose Her tufty obstacles), when gradually Her hold upon the undermined soil Is failing, with her bared stem she hangs, And, with uncertain heavings to and fro, 95 Defers her certain fall; not otherwise Lot in the mid-whirl of the dizzy mob Kept nodding, now almost o’ercome. But power Divine brings succour: the angelic youths, Snatching him from the threshold, to his roof 100 Restore him; but upon the spot they mulct Of sight the mob insane in open day,— Fit augury of coming penalties! Then they unlock the just decrees of God: That penalty condign from heaven will fall 105 On Sodom; that himself had merited Safety upon the count of righteousness. “Gird thee, then, up to hasten hence thy flight, And with thee to lead out what family Thou hast: already we are bringing on 110 Destruction o’er the city.” Lot with speed Speaks to his sons-in-law; but their hard heart Scorned to believe the warning, and at fear Laughed. At what time the light attempts to climb The darkness, and heaven’s face wears double hue 115 From night and day, the youthful visitants Were instant to outlead from Sodoma The race Chaldæan,1227 and the righteous house Consign to safety: “Ho! come, Lot! arise, And take thy yokefellow and daughters twain, 120 And hence, beyond the boundaries be gone, Preventing1228 Sodom’s penalties!” And eke With friendly hands they lead them trembling forth, And then their final mandates give: “Save, Lot, Thy life, lest thou perchance should will to turn 125 Thy retroverted gaze behind, or stay The step once taken: to the mountain speed!” Lot feared to creep the heights with tardy step, Lest the celestial wrath-fires should o’ertake And whelm him: therefore he essays to crave 130 Some other ports; a city small, to wit, Which opposite he had espied. “Hereto,” He said, “I speed my flight: scarce with its walls ’Tis visible; nor is it far, nor great.” They, favouring his prayer, safety assured 135 To him and to the city; whence the spot Is known in speech barbaric by the name Segor.1229 Lot enters Segor while the sun Is rising,1230 the last sun, which glowing bears To Sodom conflagration; for his rays 140 He had armed all with fire: beneath him spreads An emulous gloom, which seeks to intercept The light; and clouds combine to interweave Their smoky globes with the confused sky: Down pours a novel shower: the ether seethes 145 With sulphur mixt with blazing flames:1231 the air Crackles with liquid heats exust. From hence The fable has an echo of the truth Amid its false, that the sun’s progeny Would drive his father’s team; but nought availed 150 The giddy boy to curb the haughty steeds Of fire: so blazed our orb: then lightning reft The lawless charioteer, and bitter plaint Transformed his sisters. Let Eridanus See to it, if one poplar on his banks 155 Whitens, or any bird dons plumage there Whose note old age makes mellow!1232 Here they mourn O’er miracles of metamorphosis Of other sort. For, partner of Lot’s flight, His wife (ah me, for woman! even then1233 160 Intolerant of law!) alone turned back At the unearthly murmurs of the sky) Her daring eyes, but bootlessly: not doomed To utter what she saw! and then and there Changed into brittle salt, herself her tomb 165 She stood, herself an image of herself, Keeping an incorporeal form: and still In her unsheltered station ’neath the heaven Dures she, by rains unmelted, by decay And winds unwasted; nay, if some strange hand 170 Deface her form, forthwith from her own store Her wounds she doth repair. Still is she said To live, and, ’mid her corporal change, discharge With wonted blood her sex’s monthly dues. Gone are the men of Sodom; gone the glare 175 Of their unhallowed ramparts; all the house Inhospitable, with its lords, is gone: The champaign is one pyre; here embers rough And black, here ash-heaps with hoar mould, mark out The conflagration’s course: evanished 180 Is all that old fertility1234 which Lot, Seeing outspread before him,… No ploughman spends his fruitless toil on glebes Pitchy with soot: or if some acres there, But half consumed, still strive to emulate 185 Autumn’s glad wealth, pears, peaches, and all fruits Promise themselves full easely1235 to the eye In fairest bloom, until the plucker’s hand Is on them: then forthwith the seeming fruit Crumbles to dust ’neath the bewraying touch, 190 And turns to embers vain. Thus, therefore (sky And earth entombed alike), not e’en the sea Lives there: the quiet of that quiet sea Is death!1236—a sea which no wave animates Through its anhealant volumes; which beneath 195 Its native Auster sighs not anywhere; Which cannot from its depths one scaly race, Or with smooth skin or cork-like fence encased, Produce, or curled shell in single valve Or double fold enclosed. Bitumen there 200 (The sooty reek of sea exust) alone, With its own crop, a spurious harvest yields; Which ’neath the stagnant surface vivid heat From seething mass of sulphur and of brine Maturing tempers, making earth cohere 205 Into a pitch marine.1237 At season due The heated water’s fatty ooze is borne Up to the surface; and with foamy flakes Over the level top a tawny skin Is woven. They whose function is to catch 210 That ware put to, tilting their smooth skin down With balance of their sides, to teach the film, Once o’er the gunnel, to float in: for, lo! Raising itself spontaneous, it will swim Up to the edge of the unmoving craft; 215 And will, when pressed,1238 for guerdon large, ensure Immunity from the defiling touch Of weft which female monthly efflux clothes. Behold another portent notable, Fruit of that sea’s disaster: all things cast 220 Therein do swim: gone is its native power For sinking bodies: if, in fine, you launch A torch’s lightsome1239 hull (where spirit serves For fire) therein, the apex of the flame Will act as sail; put out the flame, and ’neath 225 The waters will the light’s wrecks ruin go! Such Sodom’s and Gomorrah’s penalties, For ages sealed as signs before the eyes Of unjust nations, whose obdurate hearts God’s fear have quite forsaken,1240 will them teach 230 To reverence heaven-sanctioned rights,1241 and lift Their gaze unto one only Lord of all.

45. section10.chapter3

    (Author Uncertain.) In the beginning did the Lord create The heaven and earth:1242 for formless was the land,1243 And hidden by the wave, and God immense1244 O’er the vast watery plains was hovering, 5 While chaos and black darkness shrouded all: Which darkness, when God bade be from the pole1245 Disjoined, He speaks, “Let there be light;” and all In the clear world1246 was bright. Then, when the Lord The first day’s work had finished, He formed 10 Heaven’s axis white with nascent clouds: the deep Immense receives its wandering1247 shores, and draws The rivers manifold with mighty trains. The third dun light unveiled earth’s1248 face, and soon (Its name assigned1249) the dry land’s story ’gins: 15 Together on the windy champaigns rise The flowery seeds, and simultaneously Fruit-bearing boughs put forth procurvant arms. The fourth day, with1250 the sun’s lamp generates The moon, and moulds the stars with tremulous light 20 Radiant: these elements it1251 gave as signs To th’ underlying world,1252 to teach the times Which, through their rise and setting, were to change. Then, on the fifth, the liquid1253 streams receive Their fish, and birds poise in the lower air 25 Their pinions many-hued. The sixth, again, Supples the ice-cold snakes into their coils, And over the whole fields diffuses herds Of quadrupeds; and mandate gave that all Should grow with multiplying seed, and roam 30 And feed in earth’s immensity. All these When power divine by mere command arranged, Observing that things mundane still would lack A ruler, thus It1254 speaks: “With utmost care, Assimilated to our own aspect,1255 35 Make We a man to reign in the whole orb.” And him, although He with a single word1256 Could have compounded, yet Himself did deign To shape him with His sacred own right hand, Inspiring his dull breast from breast divine. 40 Whom when He saw formed in a likeness such As is His own, He measures how he broods Alone on gnawing cares. Straight way his eyes With sleep irriguous He doth perfuse; That from his left rib woman softlier 45 May formed be, and that by mixture twin His substance may add firmness to her limbs. To her the name of “Life”—which is called “Eve”1257— Is given: wherefore sons, as custom is, Their parents leave, and, with a settled home, 50 Cleave to their wives. The seventh came, when God At His works’ end did rest, decreeing it Sacred unto the coming ages’ joys. Straightway—the crowds of living things deployed Before him—Adam’s cunning skill (the gift 55 Of the good Lord) gives severally to all The name which still is permanent. Himself, And, joined with him, his Eve, God deigns address “Grow, for the times to come, with manifold Increase, that with your seed the pole and earth1258 60 Be filled; and, as Mine heirs, the varied fruits Pluck ye, which groves and champaigns render you, From their rich turf.” Thus after He discoursed, In gladsome court1259 a paradise is strewn, And looks towards the rays of th’ early sun.1260 65 These joys among, a tree with deadly fruits, Breeding, conjoined, the taste of life and death, Arises. In the midst of the demesne1261 Flows with pure tide a stream, which irrigates Fair offsprings from its liquid waves, and cuts 70 Quadrified paths from out its bubbling fount Here wealthy Phison, with auriferous waves, Swells, and with hoarse tide wears1262 conspicuous gems, This prasinus,1263 that glowing carbuncle,1264 By name; and raves, transparent in its shoals, 75 The margin of the land of Havilath. Next Gihon, gliding by the Æthiops, Enriches them. The Tigris is the third, Adjoined to fair Euphrates, furrowing Disjunctively with rapid flood the land 80 Of Asshur. Adam, with his faithful wife, Placed here as guard and workman, is informed By such the Thunderer’s1265 speech: “Tremble ye not To pluck together the permitted fruits Which, with its leafy bough, the unshorn grove 85 Hath furnished; anxious only lest perchance Ye cull the hurtful apple,1266 which is green With a twin juice for functions several.” And, no less blind meantime than Night herself, Deep night ’gan hold them, nor had e’en a robe 90 Covered their new-formed limbs. Amid these haunts, And on mild berries reared, a foamy snake, Surpassing living things in sense astute, Was creeping silently with chilly coils. He, brooding over envious lies instinct 95 With gnawing sense, tempts the soft heart beneath The woman’s breast: “Tell me, why shouldst thou dread The apple’s1267 happy seeds? Why, hath not All known fruits hallowed?1268 Whence if thou be prompt To cull the honeyed fruits, the golden world1269 100 Will on its starry pole return.”1270 But she Refuses, and the boughs forbidden fears To touch. But yet her breast ’gins be o’er come With sense infirm. Straightway, as she at length With snowy tooth the dainty morsels bit, 105 Stained with no cloud the sky serene up-lit! Then taste, instilling lure in honeyed jaws, To her yet uninitiated lord Constrained her to present the gift; which he No sooner took, then—night effaced!:—their eyes 110 Shone out serene in the resplendent world.1271 When, then, they each their body bare espied, And when their shameful parts they see, with leaves Of fig they shadow them. By chance, beneath The sun’s now setting light, they recognise 115 The sound of the Lord’s voice, and, trembling, haste To bypaths. Then the Lord of heaven accosts The mournful Adam: “Say, where now thou art.” Who suppliant thus answers: “Thine address, O Lord, O Mighty One, I tremble at, 120 Beneath my fearful heart; and, being bare, I faint with chilly dread.” Then said the Lord: “Who hath the hurtful fruits, then, given you?” “This woman, while she tells me how her eyes With brilliant day promptly perfused were, 125 And on her dawned the liquid sky serene, And heaven’s sun and stars, o’ergave them me!” Forthwith God’s anger frights perturbed Eve, While the Most High inquires the authorship Of the forbidden act. Hereon she opes 130 Her tale: “The speaking serpent’s suasive words I harboured, while the guile and bland request Misled me: for, with venoms viperous His words inweaving, stories told he me Of those delights which should all fruits excel.” 135 Straightway the Omnipotent the dragon’s deeds Condemns, and bids him be to all a sight Unsightly, monstrous; bids him presently With grovelling beast to crawl; and then to bite And chew the soil; while war should to all time 140 ’Twixt human senses and his tottering self Be waged, that he might creep, crestfallen, prone, Behind the legs of men,1272—that while he glides Close on their heels they may down-trample him. The woman, sadly caught by guileful words, 145 Is bidden yield her fruit with struggle hard, And bear her husband’s yoke with patient zeal.1273 “But thou, to whom the sentence1274 of the wife (Who, vanquished, to the dragon pitiless Yielded) seemed true, shalt through long times deplore 150 Thy labour sad; for thou shalt see, instead Of wheaten harvest’s seed, the thistle rise, And the thorn plenteously with pointed spines: So that, with weary heart and mournful breast, Full many sighs shall furnish anxious food;1275 155 Till, in the setting hour of coming death, To level earth, whence thou thy body draw’st, Thou be restored.” This done, the Lord bestows Upon the trembling pair a tedious life; And from the sacred gardens far removes 160 Them downcast, and locates them opposite, And from the threshold bars them by mid fire, Wherein from out the swift heat is evolved A cherubim,1276 while fierce the hot point glows, And rolls enfolding flames. And lest their limbs 165 With sluggish cold should be benumbed, the Lord Hides flayed from cattle’s flesh together sews, With vestures warm their bare limbs covering. When, therefore, Adam—now believing—felt (By wedlock taught) his manhood, he confers 170 On his loved wife the mother’s name; and, made Successively by scions twain a sire, Gives names to stocks1277 diverse: Caïn the first Hath for his name, to whom is Abel joined. The latter’s care tended the harmless sheep; 175 The other turned the earth with curved plough. These, when in course of time1278 they brought their gifts To Him who thunders, offered—as their sense Prompted them—fruits unlike. The elder one Offered the first-fruits1279 of the fertile glebes: 180 The other pays his vows with gentle lamb, Bearing in hand the entrails pure, and fat Snow-white; and to the Lord, who pious vows Beholds, is instantly acceptable. Wherefore with anger cold did Cain glow;1280 185 With whom God deigns to talk, and thus begins: “Tell Me, if thou live rightly, and discern Things hurtful, couldst thou not then pass thine age Pure from contracted guilt? Cease to essay With gnawing sense thy brother’s ruin, who, 190 Subject to thee as lord, his neck shall yield.” Not e’en thus softened, he unto the fields Conducts his brother; whom when overta’en In lonely mead he saw, with his twin palms Bruising his pious throat, he crushed life out. 195 Which deed the Lord espying from high heaven, Straitly demands “where Abel is on earth? ” He says “he will not as his brother’s guard Be set.” Then God outspeaks to him again: “Doth not the sound of his blood’s voice, sent up 200 To Me, ascend unto heaven’s lofty pole? Learn, therefore, for so great a crime what doom Shall wait thee. Earth, which with thy kinsman’s blood Hath reeked but now, shall to thy hateful hand Refuse to render back the cursed seeds 205 Entrusted her; nor shall, if set with herbs, Produce her fruit: that, torpid, thou shalt dash Thy limbs against each other with much fear.”……

46. section10.chapter4

    (Author Uncertain.)1281 Who will for me in fitting strain adapt Field-haunting muses? and with flowers will grace The spring-tide’s rosy gales? And who will give The summer harvest’s heavy stalks mature? 5 And to the autumn’s vines their swollen grapes? Or who in winter’s honour will commend The olives, ever-peaceful? and will ope Waters renewed, even at their fountainheads? And cut from waving grass the leafy flowers? 10 Forthwith the breezes of celestial light I will attune. Now be it granted me To meet the lightsome1282 muses! to disclose The secret rivers on the fluvial top Of Helicon,1283 and gladsome woods that grow 15 ’Neath other star.1284 And simultaneously I will attune in song the eternal flames; Whence the sea fluctuates with wave immense: What power1285 moves the solid lands to quake; And whence the golden light first shot its rays 20 On the new world; or who from gladsome clay Could man have moulded; whence in empty world1286 Our race could have upgrown; and what the greed Of living which each people so inspires; What things for ill created are; or what 25 Death’s propagation; whence have rosy wreaths A Strain of the Judgment of the Lord. Sweet smell and ruddy hue; what makes the vine Ferment in gladsome grapes away; and makes Full granaries by fruit of slender stalks distended be; or makes the tree grow ripe 30 ’Mid ice, with olives black; who gives to seeds Their increments of vigour various; And with her young’s soft shadowings protects The mother. Good it is all things to know Which wondrous are in nature, that it may 35 Be granted us to recognise through all The true Lord, who light, seas, sky, earth prepared, And decked with varied star the new-made world;1287 And first bade beasts and birds to issue forth; And gave the ocean’s waters to be stocked 40 With fish; and gathered in a mass the sands, With living creatures fertilized. Such strains With stately1288 muses will I spin, and waves Healthful will from their fountainheads disclose: And may this strain of mine the gladsome shower 45 Catch, which from placid clouds doth come, and flows Deeply and all unsought into men’s souls, And guide it into our new-fumed lands In copious rills.1289 Now come: if any one Still ignorant of God, and knowing naught 50 Of life to come,1290 would fain attain to touch The care-effacing living nymph, and through The swift waves’ virtue his lost life repair, And ’scape the penalties of flame eterne,1291 And rather win the guerdons of the life 55 To come, let such remember God is One, Alone the object of our prayers; who ’neath His threshold hath the whole world poised; Himself Eternally abiding, and to be Alway for aye; holding the ages1292 all; 60 Alone, before all ages;1293 unbegotten, Limitless God; who holds alone His seat Supernal; supereminent alone Above high heavens; omnipotent alone; Whom all things do obey; who for Himself 65 Formed, when it pleased Him, man for aye; and gave Him to be pastor of beasts tame, and lord Of wild; who by a word1294 could stretch forth heaven; And with a word could solid earth suspend; And quicklier than word1295 had the seas wave 70 Disjoined;1296 and man’s dear form with His own hands Did love to mould; and furthermore did will His own fair likeness1297 to exist in him; And by His Spirit on his countenance The breath1298 of life did breathe. Unmindful he 75 Of God, such guilt rashly t’ incur! Beyond The warning’s range he was not ought to touch.1299 One fruit illicit, whence he was to know Forthwith how to discriminate alike Evil and equity, God him forbade 80 To touch. What functions of the world1300 did God Permit to man, and sealed the sweet sweet pledge Of His own love! and jurisdiction gave O’er birds, and granted him both deep and soil To tame, and mandates useful did impart 85 Of dear salvation! ’Neath his sway He gave The lands, the souls of flying things, the race Feathered, and every race, or tame or wild, Of beasts, and the sea’s race, and monsterforms Shapeless of swimming things. But since so soon 90 The primal man by primal crime transgressed The law, and left the mandates of the Lord (Led by a wife who counselled all the ills), By death he ’gan to perish. Woman ’twas Who sin’s first ill committed, and (the law 95 Transgressed) deceived her husband. Eve, induced By guile, the thresholds oped to death, and proved To her own self, with her whole race as well, A procreatrix of funereal woes. Hence unanticipated wickedness, 100 Hence death, like seed, for aye, is scattered. Then More frequent grew atrocious deed; and toil More savage set the corrupt orb astir: (This lure the crafty serpent spread, inspired By envy’s self:) then peoples more invent 105 Practices of ill deeds; and by ill deeds Gave birth to seeds of wickedness. And so The only Lord, whose is the power supreme. Who o’er the heights the summits holds of heaven Supreme, and in exalted regions dwells 110 In lofty light for ages, mindful too Of present time, and of futurity Prescient beforehand, keeps the progeny Of ill-desert, and all the souls which move By reason’s force much-erring man—nor less 115 Their tardy bodies governs He—against The age decreed, so soon as, stretched in death, Men lay aside their ponderous limbs, and light A Strain of the Judgment of the Lord. As air, shall go, their earthly bonds undone, And take in diverse parts their proper spheres 120 (But some He bids be forthwith by glad gales Recalled to life, and be in secret kept To wait the decreed law’s awards, until Their bodies with resuscitated limbs Revive.1301) Then shall men ’gin to weigh the awards 125 Of their first life, and on their crime and faults To think, and keep them for their penalties Which will be far from death; and mindful grow Of pious duties, by God’s judgments taught; To wait expectant for their penalty 130 And their descendants’, fruit of their own crime; Or else to live wholly the life of sheep,1302 Without a name; and in God’s ear, now deaf, Pour unavailing weeping. Shall not God Almighty, ’neath whose law are all things ruled, 135 Be able after death life to restore? Or is there ought which the creation’s Lord Unable seems to do? If, darkness chased, He could outstretch the light, and could compound All the world’s mass by a word suddenly, 140 And raise by potent voice all things from nought, Why out of somewhat1303 could He not compound The well-known shape which erst had been, which He Had moulded formerly; and bid the form Arise assimilated to Himself 145 Again? Since God’s are all things, earth the more Gives Him all back; for she will, when He bids, Unweave whate’er she woven had before. If one, perhaps, laid on sepulchral pyre, The flame consumed; or one in its blind waves 150 The ocean have dismembered; if of one The entrails have, in hunger, satisfied The fishes; or on any’s limbs wild beasts Have fastened cruel death; or any’s blood, His body reft by birds, unhid have lain: 155 Yet shall they not wrest from the mighty Lord His latest dues. Need is that men appear Quickened from death ’fore God, and at His bar Stand in their shapes resumed. Thus arid seeds Are drops into the vacant lands, and deep 160 In the fixt furrows die and rot: and hence Is not their surface1304 animated soon With stalks repaired? and do they1305 not grow strong And yellow with the living grains? and, rich With various usury,1306 new harvests rise 165 In mass? The stars all set, and, born again, Renew their sheen; and day dies with its light Lost in dense night; and now night wanes herself As light unveils creation presently; And now another and another day 170 Rises from its own stars; and the sun sets, Bright as it is with splendour—bearing light; Light perishes when by the coming eve The world1307 is shaded; and the phoenix lives By her own soot1308 renewed, and presently 175 Rises, again a bird, O wondrous sight! After her burnings! The bare tree in time Shoots with her leaves; and once more are her boughs Curved by the germen of the fruits. While then The world1309 throughout is trembling at God’s voice, 180 And deeply moved are the high air’s powers,1310 Then comes a crash unwonted, then ensue Heaven’s mightiest murmurs, on the approach of God, The whole world’s1311 Judge! His countless ministers Forthwith conjoin their rushing march, and God 185 With majesty supernal fence around. Angelic bands will from the heaven descend To earth; all, God’s host, whose is faculty Divine; in form and visage spirits all Of virtue: in them fiery vigour is; 190 Rutilant are their bodies; heaven’s might Divine about them flashes; the whole orb Hence murmurs; and earth, trembling to her depths (Or whatsoe’er her bulk is1312), echoes back The roar, parturient of men, whom she, 195 Being bidden, will with grief upyield.1313 All stand In wonderment. At last disturbed are The clouds, and the stars move and quake from height Of sudden power.1314 When thus God comes, with voice Of potent sound, at once throughout all realms 200 The sepulchres are burst, and every ground A Strain of the Judgment of the Lord. Outpours bones from wide chasms, and opening sand Outbelches living peoples; to the hair1315 The members cleave; the bones inwoven are With marrow; the entwined sinews rule 205 The breathing bodies; and the veins ’gin throb With simultaneously infused blood: And, from their caves dismissed, to open day Souls are restored, and seek to find again Each its own organs, as at their own place 210 They rise. O wondrous faith! Hence every age Shoots forth; forth shoots from ancient dust the host Of dead. Regaining light, there rise again Mothers, and sires, and high-souled youths, and boys, And maids unwedded; and deceased old men 215 Stand by with living souls; and with the cries Of babes the groaning orb resounds.1316 Then tribes Various from their lowest seats will come: Bands of the Easterns; those which earth’s extreme Sees; those which dwell in the downsloping clime 220 Of the mid-world, and hold the frosty star’s Riphæan citadels. Every colonist Of every land stands frighted here: the boor; The son of Atreus1317 with his diadem Of royalty put off; the rich man mixt 225 Coequally in line with pauper peers. Deep tremor everywhere: then groans the orb With prayers; and peoples stretching forth their hands Grow stupid with the din! The Lord Himself Seated, is bright with light sublime; and fire 230 Potent in all the Virtues1318 flashing shines. And on His high-raised throne the Heavenly One Coruscates from His seat; with martyrs hemmed (A dazzling troop of men), and by His seers Elect accompanied (whose bodies bright 235 Effulgent are with snowy stoles), He towers Above them. And now priests in lustrous robes Attend, who wear upon their marked1319 front Wreaths golden-red; and all submissive kneel And reverently adore. The cry of all 240 Is one: “O Holy, Holy Holy, God!” To these1320 the Lord will mandate give, to range The people in twin lines; and orders them To set apart by number the depraved; While such as have His biddings followed 245 With placid words He calls, and bids them, clad With vigour—death quite conquered—ever dwell Amid light’s inextinguishable airs, Stroll through the ancients’ ever blooming realm, Through promised wealth, through ever sunny swards, 250 And in bright body spend perpetual life. A place there is, beloved of the Lord, In Eastern coasts, where light is bright and clear, And healthier blows the breeze; day is eterne, Time changeless: ’tis a region set apart 255 By God, most rich in plains, and passing blest, In the meridian1321 of His cloudless seat. There gladsome the air, and is in light Ever to be; soft is the wind, and breathes Life-giving blasts; earth, fruitful with a soil 260 Luxuriant, bears all things; in the meads Flowers shed their fragrance; and upon the plains The purple—not in envy—mingles all With golden-ruddy light. One gladsome flower, With its own lustre clad, another clothes; 265 And here with many a seed the dewy fields Are dappled, and the snowy tilths are crisped With rosy flowers. No region happier Is known in other spots; none which in look Is fairer, or in honour more excels. 270 Never in flowery gardens are there born Such lilies, nor do such upon our plains Outbloom; nor does the rose so blush, what time, New-born, ’tis opened by the breeze; nor is The purple with such hue by Tyrian dye 275 Imbued. With coloured pebbles beauteous gleams The gem: here shines the prasinus;1322 there glows The carbuncle; and giant-emerald Is green with grassy light. Here too are born The cinnamons, with odoriferous twigs; 280 And with dense leaf gladsome amomum joins Its fragrance. Here, a native, lies the gold Of radiant sheen; and lofty groves reach heaven In blooming time, and germens fruitfullest Burden the living boughs. No glades like these 285 Hath Ind herself forth-stretcht; no tops so dense Rears on her mount the pine; nor with a shade So lofty-leaved is her cypress crisped; Nor better in its season blooms her bough In spring-tide. Here black firs on lofty peak 290 Bloom; and the only woods that know no hail Are green eternally: no foliage falls; At no time fails the flower. There, too, there blooms A flower as red as Tarsine purple is: A rose, I ween, it is (red hue it has, 295 An odour keen); such aspect on its leaves It wears, such odour breathes. A tree it1323 stands, With a new flower, fairest in fruits; a crop Life-giving, dense, its happy strength does yield. Rich honies with green cane their fragrance join, 300 And milk flows potable in runners full; And with whate’er that sacred earth is green, It all breathes life; and there Crete’s healing gift1324 Is sweetly redolent. There, with smooth tide, Flows in the placid plains a fount: four floods 305 Thence water parted lands.1325 The garden robed With flowers, I wot, keeps ever spring; no cold Of wintry star varies the breeze; and earth, After her birth-throes, with a kindlier blast Repairs. Night there is none; the stars maintain 310 Their darkness; angers, envies, and dire greed Are absent; and out-shut is fear, and cares Driven from the threshold. Here the Evil One Is homeless; he is into worthy courts Out-gone, nor is’t e’er granted him to touch 315 The glades forbidden. But here ancient faith Rests in elect abode; and life here treads, Joying in an eternal covenant; And health1326 without a care is gladsome here In placid tilths, ever to live and be 320 Ever in light. Here whosoe’er hath lived Pious, and cultivant of equity And goodness; who hath feared the thundering God With mind sincere; with sacred duteousness Tended his parents; and his other life1327 325 Spent ever crimeless; or who hath consoled With faithful help a friend in indigence; Succoured the over-toiling needy one, As orphans’ patron, and the poor man’s aid; Rescued the innocent, and succoured them 330 When press with accusation; hath to guests His ample table’s pledges given; hath done All things divinely; pious offices Enjoined; done hurt to none; ne’er coveted Another’s: such as these, exulting all 335 In divine praises, and themselves at once Exhorting, raise their voices to the stars; Thanksgivings to the Lord in joyous wise They psalming celebrate; and they shall go Their harmless way with comrade messengers. 340 When ended hath the Lord these happy gifts, And likewise sent away to realms eterne The just, then comes a pitiable crowd Wailing its crimes; with parching tears it pours All groans effusely, and attests1328 in acts 345 With frequent ululations. At the sight Of flames, their merit’s due, and stagnant pools Of fire, wrath’s weapons, they ’gin tremble all.1329 Them an angelic host, upsnatching them, Forbids to pray, forbids to pour their cries 350 (Too late!) with clamour loud: pardon withheld, Into the lowest bottom they are hurled! O miserable men! how oft to you Hath Majesty divine made itself known! The sounds of heaven ye have heard; have seen 355 Its lightnings; have experienced its rains Assiduous; its ires of winds and hail! How often nights and days serene do make Your seasons—God’s gifts—fruitful with fair yields! Roses were vernal; the grain’s summer-tide 360 Failed not; the autumn variously poured Its mellow fruits; the rugged winter brake The olives, icy though they were: ’twas God Who granted all, nor did His goodness fail. At God earth trembled; on His voice the deep 365 Hung, and the rivers trembling fled and left Sands dry; and every creature everywhere Confesses God! Ye (miserable men!) Have heaven’s Lord and earth’s denied; and oft (Horrible!) have God’s heralds put to flight;1330 370 And rather slain the just with slaughter fell; And, after crime, fraud ever hath in you Inhered. Ye then shall reap the natural fruit Of your iniquitous sowing. That God is Ye know; yet are ye wont to laugh at Him. 375 Into deep darkness ye shall go of fire And brimstone; doomed to suffer glowing ires In torments just.1331 God bids your bones descend To1332 penalty eternal; go beneath The ardour of an endless raging hell;1333 380 Be urged, a seething mass, through rotant pools Of flame; and into threatening flame He bids The elements convert; and all heaven’s fire Descend in clouds. Then greedy Tartarus With rapid fire enclosed is; and flame 385 Is fluctuant within with tempest waves; And the whole earth her whirling embers blends! There is a flamy furrow; teeth acute Are turned to plough it, and for all the years1334 The fiery torrent will be armed: with force 390 Tartarean will the conflagrations gnash Their teeth upon the world.1335 There are they scorched In seething tide with course precipitate; Hence flee; thence back are borne in sharp career; The savage flame’s ire meets them fugitive! 395 And now at length they own the penalty Their own, the natural issue of their crime. And now the reeling earth, by not a swain Possest, is by the sea’s profundity Prest, at her farthest limit, where the sun 400 (His ray out-measured) divides the orb, And where, when traversed is the world,1336 the stars Are hidden. Ether thickens. O’er the light Spreads sable darkness; and the latest flames Stagnate in secret rills. A place there is 405 Whose nature is with sealed penalties Fiery, and a dreadful marsh white-hot With heats infernal, where, in furnaces Horrific, penal deed roars loud, and seethes, And, rushing into torments, is up-caught 410 By the flame’s vortex wide; by savage wave And surge the turbid sand all mingled is With miry bottom. Hither will be sent, Groaning, the captive crowd of evil ones, And wickedness (the sinful body’s train) 415 To burn! Great is the beating there of breasts, By bellowing of grief accompanied; Wild is the hissing of the flames, and thence The ululation of the sufferers! And flames, and limbs sonorous,1337 will outrise 420 Afar: more fierce will the fire burn; and up To th’ upper air the groaning will be borne. Then human progeny its bygone deeds Of ill will weigh; and will begin to stretch Heavenward its palms; and then will wish to know 425 The Lord, whom erst it would not know, what time To know Him had proved useful to them. There, His life’s excesses, handiworks unjust, And crimes of savage mind, each will confess, And at the knowledge of the impious deeds 430 Of his own life will shudder. And now first, Whoe’er erewhile cherished ill thoughts of God; Had worshipped stones unsteady, lyingly Pretending to divinity; hath e’er Made sacred to gore-stained images 435 Altars; hath voiceless pictured figures feared; Hath slender shades of false divinity Revered; whome’er ill error onward hath Seduced; whoe’er was an adulterer, Or with the sword had slain his sons; whoe’er 440 Had stalked in robbery; whoe’er by fraud His clients had deferred; whoe’er with mind Unfriendly had behaved himself, or stained His palms with blood of men, or poison mixt Wherein death lurked, or robed with wicked guise 445 His breast, or at his neighbour’s ill, or gain Iniquitous, was wont to joy; whoe’er Committed whatsoever wickedness Of evil deeds: him mighty heat shall rack, And bitter fire; and these all shall endure, 450 In passing painful death, their punishment. Thus shall the vast crowd lie of mourning men! This oft as holy prophets sang of old, And (by God’s inspiration warned) oft told The future, none (’tis pity!) none (alas!) 455 Did lend his ears. But God Almighty willed His guerdons to be known, and His law’s threats ’Mid multitudes of such like signs promulged. He ’stablished them1338 by sending prophets more, These likewise uttering words divine; and some, 460 Roused from their sleep, He bids go from their tombs Forth with Himself, when He, His own tomb burst, Had risen. Many ’wildered were, indeed, To see the tombs agape, and in clear light Corpses long dead appear; and, wondering 465 At their discourses pious, dulcet words! Starward they stretch their palms at the mere sound,1339 And offer God and so—victorious Christ Their gratulating homage. Certain ’tis That these no more re-sought their silent graves, 470 Nor were retained within earth’s bowels shut;1340 But the remaining host reposes now In lowliest beds, until—time’s circuit run— That great day do arrive. Now all of you Own the true Lord, who alone makes this soul 475 Of ours to see His light1341 and can the same (To Tartarus sent) subject to penalties; And to whom all the power of life and death Is open. Learn that God can do whate’er He list; for ’tis enough for Him to will, 480 And by mere speaking He achieves the deed; And Him nought plainly, by withstanding, checks. He is my God alone, to whom I trust With deepest senses. But, since death concludes Every career, let whoe’er is to-day 485 Bethink him over all things in his mind. And thus, while life remains, while ’tis allowed To see the light and change your life, before The limit of allotted age o’ertake You unawares, and that last day, which1342 is 490 By death’s law fixt, your senseless eyes do glaze, Seek what remains worth seeking: watchful be For dear salvation; and run down with ease And certainty the good course. Wipe away By pious sacred rites your past misdeeds 495 Which expiation need; and shun the storms, The too uncertain tempests, of the world.1343 Then turn to right paths, and keep sanctities. Hence from your gladsome minds depraved crime Quite banish; and let long-inveterate fault 500 Be washed forth from your breast; and do away Wicked ill-stains contracted; and appease Dread God by prayers eternal; and let all Most evil mortal things to living good Give way: and now at once a new life keep 505 Without a crime; and let your minds begin To use themselves to good things and to true: And render ready voices to God’s praise. Thus shall your piety find better things All growing to a flame; thus shall ye, too, 510 Receive the gifts of the celestial life;1344 And, to long age, shall ever live with God, Seeing the starry kingdom’s golden joys.

47. section11

    (Author Uncertain.) I. (Appendix, p. 127.) About these versifications, which are “poems” only as mules are horses, it is enough to say of them, with Dupin, “They are no more Tertullian’s than they are Virgil’s or Homer’s. The poem called Genesis seems to be that which Gennadius attributes to Salvian, Bishop of Marseilles. That concerning the Judgment of God was, perhaps, composed by Verecundus, an African bishop. In the books Against Marcion there are some opinions different from those of Tertullian. There is likewise a poem To a Senator in Pamelius’ edition, one of Sodom, and in the Bibliotheca Patrum one of Jonas and Nineve; the first of which is ancient, and the other two seem to be by the same author.” It is worth while to observe that this rhymester makes two bishops out of one.1701 Cletus and Anacletus he supposes different persons, which brings Clement into the fourth place in the see of Rome. Our author elsewhere makes St. Clement the immediate successor of the apostles.1702 II. (Or is there ought, etc., l. 136, p. 137.) In taking leave of Tertullian, it may be well to say a word of his famous saying, Certum est quia impossibile est. It occurs in the tract De Carne Christi,1703 and is one of those startling epigrammatic dicta of our author which is no more to be pressed in argument than any other bon-mot of a wit or a poet. It is evidently designed as a rhetorical climax, to enforce the same idea which we find in the hymn of Aquinas:— “Et si sensus deficit, Adfirmandum cor sincerum Sola fides sufficit.” As Jeremy Taylor1704 argues, the condition is, that holy Scripture affirms it. If that be the case, then “all things are possible with God:” I believe; but I do not argue, for it is im- possible with men. This is the plain sense of the great Carthaginian doctor’s pithy rhetoric. But Dr. Bunsen sets it on all-fours, and treats it as if it were soberly designed to defy reason,— that reason to which Tertullian constantly makes his appeal against Marcion, and in many of his sayings1705 hardly less witty. Speaking of Hippolytus, that writer remarks,1706 “He might have said on some points, Credibile licet ineptum: he would never have exclaimed with Tertullian, ‘Credibile quia ineptum.’” Why attempt to prove the absurdity of such a reflection? As well attempt to defend St. John’s hyperbole1707 against a mind incapable of comprehending a figure of speech.

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    After the Evil One’s impiety Profound, and his life-grudging mind, entrapped Seducèd men with empty hope, it laid Them bare, by impious suasion to false trust 5 In him,—not with impunity, indeed; For he forthwith, as guilty of the deed, And author rash of such a wickedness, Received deserved maledictions. Thus, Thereafter, maddened, he, most desperate foe, 10 Did more assail and instigate men’s minds In darkness sunk. He taught them to forget The Lord, and leave sure hope, and idols vain Follow, and shape themselves a crowd of gods, Lots, auguries, false names of stars, the show 15 Of being able to o’errule the births Of embryos by inspecting entrails, and Expecting things to come, by hardihood Of dreadful magic’s renegadoes led, Wondering at a mass of feigned lore; 20 And he impelled them headlong to spurn life, Sunk in a criminal insanity; To joy in blood; to threaten murders fell; To love the wound, then, in their neighbour’s flesh; Or, burning, and by pleasure’s heat entrapped, 25 To transgress nature’s covenants, and stain Pure bodies, manly sex, with an embrace Unnameable, and uses feminine Mingled in common contact lawlessly; Urging embraces chaste, and dedicate 30 To generative duties, to be held For intercourse obscene for passion’s sake. Such in time past his deeds, assaulting men, Through the soul’s lurking-places, with a flow Of scorpion-venom,—not that men would blame 35 Him, for they followed of their own accord: His suasion was in guile; in freedom man Performed it. Whileas the perfidious one Continuously through the centuries1345 Is breathing such ill fumes, and into hearts 40 Seduced injecting his own counselling And hoping in his folly (alas!) to find Forgiveness of his wickedness, unware What sentence on his deed is waiting him; With words of wisdom’s weaving,1346 and a voice 45 Presaging from God’s Spirit, speak a host Of prophets. Publicly he1347 does not dare Nakedly to speak evil of the Lord, Hoping by secret ingenuity He possibly may lurk unseen. At length 50 The soul’s Light1348 as the thrall of flesh is held; The hope of the despairing, mightier Than foe, enters the lists; the Fashioner, The Renovator, of the body He; True Glory of the Father; Son of God; 55 Author unique; a Judge and Lord He came, The orb’s renowned King; to the opprest Prompt to give pardon, and to loose the bound; Whose friendly aid and penal suffering Blend God and renewed man in one. With child 60 Is holy virgin: life’s new gate opes; words Of prophets find their proof, fulfilled by facts; Priests1349 leave their temples, and—a star their guide— Wonder the Lord so mean a birth should choose. Waters—sight memorable!—turn to wine; 65 Eyes are restored to blind; fiends trembling cry, Outdriven by His bidding, and own Christ! All limbs, already rotting, by a word Are healed; now walks the lame; the deaf forthwith Hears hope; the maimed extends his hand; the dumb 70 Speaks mighty words: sea at His bidding calms, Winds drop; and all things recognise the Lord: Confounded is the foe, and yields, though fierce, Now triumphed over, to unequal1350 arms! When all his enterprises now revoked 75 He1351 sees; the flesh, once into ruin sunk, Now rising; man—death vanquisht quite—to heavens Soaring; the peoples sealed with holy pledge Outpoured;1352 the work and envied deeds of might Marvellous;1353 and hears, too, of penalties 80 Extreme, and of perpetual dark, prepared For himself by the Lord by God’s decree Irrevocable; naked and unarmed, Damned, vanquisht, doomed to perish in a death Perennial, guilty now, and sure that he 85 No pardon has, a last impiety Forthwith he dares,—to scatter everywhere A word for ears to shudder at, nor meet For voice to speak. Accosting men cast off From God’s community,1354 men wandering 90 Without the light, found mindless, following Things earthly, them he teaches to become Depraved teachers of depravity. By1355 them he preaches that there are two Sires, And realms divided: ill’s cause is the Lord1356 95 Who built the orb, fashioned breath-quickened flesh, And gave the law, and by the seers’ voice spake. Him he affirms not good, but owns Him just; Hard, cruel, taking pleasure fell in war; In judgment dreadful, pliant to no prayers. 100 His suasion tells of other one, to none E’er known, who nowhere is, a deity False, nameless, constituting nought, and who Hath spoken precepts none. Him he calls good; Who judges none, but spares all equally, 105 And grudges life to none. No judgment waits The guilty; so he says, bearing about A gory poison with sweet honey mixt For wretched men. That flesh can rise—to which Himself was cause of ruin, which he spoiled 110 Iniquitously with contempt (whence,1357 cursed, He hath grief without end), its ever-foe,— He doth deny; because with various wound Life to expel and the salvation whence He fell he strives: and therefore says that Christ 115 Came suddenly to earth,1358 but was not made, By any compact, partner of the flesh; But Spirit-form, and body feigned beneath A shape imaginary, seeks to mock Men with a semblance that what is not is. 120 Does this, then, become God, to sport with men By darkness led? to act an impious lie? Or falsely call Himself a man? He walks, Is carried, clothed, takes due rest, handled is, Suffers, is hung and buried: man’s are all 125 Deeds which, in holy body conversant, But sent by God the Father, who hath all Created, He did perfect properly, Reclaiming not another’s but His own; Discernible to peoples who of old 130 Were hoping for Him by His very work, And through the prophets’ voice to the round world1359 Best known: and now they seek an unknown Lord, Wandering in death’s threshold manifest, And leave behind the known. False is their faith, 135 False is their God, deceptive their reward, False is their resurrection, death’s defeat False, vain their martyrdoms, and e’en Christ’s name An empty sound: whom, teaching that He came Like magic mist, they (quite demented) own 140 To be the actor of a lie, and make His passion bootless, and the populace1360 (A feigned one!) without crime! Is God thus true? Are such the honours rendered to the Lord? Ah! wretched men! gratuitously lost 145 In death ungrateful! Who, by blind guide led, Have headlong rushed into the ditch!1361 and as In dreams the fancied rich man in his store Of treasure doth exult, and with his hands Grasps it, the sport of empty hope, so ye, so 150 Deceived, are hoping for a shadow vain Of guerdon! Ah! ye silent laughingstocks, Or doomed prey, of the dragon, do ye hope, Stern men, for death in room of gentle peace?1362 Dare ye blame God, who hath works 155 So great? in whose earth, ’mid profuse displays Of His exceeding parent-care, His gifts (Unmindful of Himself!) ye largely praise, Rushing to ruin! do ye reprobate— Approving of the works—the Maker’s self, 160 The world’s1363 Artificer, whose work withal Ye are yourselves? Who gave those little selves Great honours; sowed your crops; made all the brutes1364 Your subjects; makes the seasons of the year Fruitful with stated months; grants sweetnesses, 165 Drinks various, rich odours, jocund flowers, And the groves’ grateful bowers; to growing herbs Grants wondrous juices; founts and streams dispreads With sweet waves, and illumes with stars the sky And the whole orb: the infinite sole Lord, 170 Both Just and Good; known by His work; to none By aspect known; whom nations, flourishing In wealth, but foolish, wrapped in error’s shroud, (Albeit ’tis beneath an alien name They praise Him, yet) their Maker knowing! dread 175 To blame: nor e’en one1365—save you, hell’s new gate!— Thankless, ye choose to speak ill of your Lord! These cruel deadly gifts the Renegade Terrible has bestowed, through Marcion—thanks To Cerdo’s mastership—on you; nor comes 180 The thought into your mind that, from Christ’s name Seduced, Marcion’s name has carried you To lowest depths.1366 Say of His many acts What one displeases you? or what hath God Done which is not to be extolled with praise? 185 Is it that He permits you, all too long, (Unworthy of His patience large,) to see Sweet light? you, who read truths,1367 and, docking them, Teach these your falsehoods, and approve as past Things which are yet to be?1368 What hinders, else, 190 That we believe your God incredible?1369 Nor marvel is’t if, practiced as he1370 is, He captived you unarmed, persuading you There are two Fathers (being damned by One), And all, whom he had erst seduced, are gods; 195 And after that dispread a pest, which ran With multiplying wound, and cureless crime, To many. Men unworthy to be named, Full of all magic’s madness, he induced To call themselves “Virtue Supreme;” and feign 200 (With harlot comrade) fresh impiety; To roam, to fly.1371 He is the insane god Of Valentine, and to his Æonage Assigned heavens thirty, and Profundity Their sire.1372 He taught two baptisms, and led 205 The body through the flame. That there are gods So many as the year hath days, he bade A Basilides to believe, and worlds As many. Marcus, shrewdly arguing Through numbers, taught to violate chaste form 210 ’Mid magic’s arts; taught, too, that the Lord’s cup Is an oblation, and by prayers is turned To blood. His1373 suasion prompted Hebion To teach that Christ was born from human seed; He taught, too, circumcision, and that room 215 Is still left for the Law, and, though Law’s founts Are lost,1374 its elements must be resumed. Unwilling am I to protract in words His last atrocity, or to tell all The causes, or the names at length. Enough 220 It is to note his many cruelties Briefly, and the unmentionable men, The dragon’s organs fell, through whom he now, Speaking so much profaneness, ever toils To blame the Maker of the world.1375 But come; 225 Recall your foot from savage Bandit’s cave, While space is granted, and to wretched men God, patient in perennial parent-love, Condones all deeds through error done! Believe Truly in the true Sire, who built the orb; 230 Who, on behalf of men incapable To bear the law, sunk in sin’s whirlpool, sent The true Lord to repair the ruin wrought, And bring them the salvation promised Of old through seers. He who the mandates gave 235 Remits sins too. Somewhat, deservedly, Doth He exact, because He formerly Entrusted somewhat; or else bounteously, As Lord, condones as it were debts to slaves: Finally, peoples shut up ’neath the curse, 240 And meriting the penalty, Himself Deleting the indictment, bids be washed!

49. section11.book1.chapter2

    The whole man, then, believes; the whole is washed; Abstains from sin, or truly suffers wounds For Christ’s name’s sake: he rises a true1376 man, 245 Death, truly vanquish, shall be mute. But not Part of the man,—his soul,—her own part1377 left Behind, will win the palm which, labouring And wrestling in the course, combinedly And simultaneously with flesh, she earns. 250 Great crime it were for two in chains to bear A weight, of whom the one were affluent The other needy, and the wretched one Be spurned, and guerdons to the happy one Rendered. Not so the Just—fair Renderer 255 Of wages—deals, both good and just, whom we Believe Almighty: to the thankless kind Full is His will of pity. Nay, whate’er He who hath greater mortal need1378 doth need1379 That, by advancement, to his comrade he 260 May equalled be, that will the affluent Bestow the rather unsolicited: So are we bidden to believe, and not Be willing to cast blame unlawfully On the Lord in our teaching, as if He 265 Were one to raise the soul, as having met With ruin, and to set her free from death So that the granted faculty of life Upon the ground of sole desert (because She bravely acted), should abide with her;1380 270 While she who ever shared the common lot Of toil, the flesh, should to the earth be left, The prey of a perennial death. Has, then, The soul pleased God by acts of fortitude? By no means could she Him have pleased alone 275 Without the flesh. Hath she borne penal bonds?1381 The flesh sustained upon her limbs the bonds. Contemned she death? But she hath left the flesh Behind in death. Groaned she in pain? The flesh is slain and vanquisht by the wound. Repose 280 Seeks she? The flesh, spilt by the sword in dust, Is left behind to fishes, birds, decay, And ashes; torn she is, unhappy one! And broken; scattered, she melts away. Hath she not earned to rise? for what could she 285 Have e’er committed, lifeless and alone? What so life-grudging1382 cause impedes, or else Forbids, the flesh to take God’s gifts, and live Ever, conjoined with her comrade soul, And see what she hath been, when formerly 290 Converted into dust?1383 After, renewed, Bear she to God deserved meeds of praise, Not ignorant of herself, frail, mortal, sick.1384 Contend ye as to what the living might1385 Of the great God can do; who, good alike 295 And potent, grudges life to none? Was this Death’s captive?1386 shall this perish vanquished Which the Lord hath with wondrous wisdom made, And art? This by His virtue wonderful Himself upraises; this our Leader’s self 300 Recalls, and this with His own glory clothes God’s art and wisdom, then, our body shaped What can by these be made, how faileth it To be by virtue reproduced?1387 No cause Can holy parent-love withstand; (lest else 305 Ill’s cause1388 should mightier prove than Power Supreme;) That man even now saved by God’s gift, may learn1389 (Mortal before, now robed in light immense Inviolable, wholly quickened,1390 soul And body) God, in virtue infinite, 310 In parent-love perennial, through His King Christ, through whom opened is light’s way; and now, Standing in new light, filled now with each gift,1391 Glad with fair fruits of living Paradise, May praise and laud Him to eternity,1392 315 Rich in the wealth of the celestial hall.

50. section11.book2

    After the faith was broken by the dint Of the foe’s breathing renegades,1394 and sworn With wiles the hidden pest1395 emerged; with lies Self-prompted, scornful of the Deity 5 That underlies the sense, he did his plagues Concoct: skilled in guile’s path, he mixed his own Words impious with the sayings of the saints. And on the good seed sowed his wretched tares, Thence willing that foul ruin’s every cause 10 Should grow combined; to wit, that with more speed His own iniquitous deeds he may assign To God clandestinely, and may impale On penalties such as his suasion led; False with true veiling, turning rough with smooth, 15 And, (masking his spear’s point with rosy wreaths,) Slaying the unwary unforeseen with death Supreme. His supreme wickedness is this: That men, to such a depth of madness sunk! Off-broken boughs!1396 should into parts divide 20 The endlessly-dread Deity; Christ’s deeds Sublime should follow with false praise, and blame The former acts,1397 God’s countless miracles, Ne’er seen before, nor heard, nor in a heart Conceived;1398 and should so rashly frame in words 25 The impermissible impiety Of wishing by “wide dissimilitude Of sense” to prove that the two Testaments Sound adverse each to other, and the Lord’s Oppose the prophets’ words; of drawing down 30 All the Law’s cause to infamy; and eke Of reprobating holy fathers’ life Of old, whom into friendship, and to share His gifts, God chose. Without beginning, one Is, for its lesser part, accepted.1399 Though 35 Of one are four, of four one,1400 yet to them One part is pleasing, three they (in a word) Reprobate: and they seize, in many ways, On Paul as their own author; yet was he Urged by a frenzied impulse of his own 40 To his last words:1401 all whatsoe’er he spake Of the old covenant1402 seems hard to them Because, deservedly, “made gross in heart.”1403 Weight apostolic, grace of beaming word, Dazzles their mind, nor can they possibly 45 Discern the Spirit’s drift. Dull as they are, Seek they congenial animals! But ye Who have not yet, (false deity your guide, Reprobate in your very mind,1404) to death’s Inmost caves penetrated, learn there flows 50 A stream perennial from its fount, which feeds A tree, (twice sixfold are the fruits, its grace!) And into earth and to the orb’s four winds Goes out: into so many parts doth flow The fount’s one hue and savour.1405 Thus, withal, 55 From apostolic word descends the Church, Out of Christ’s womb, with glory of His Sire All filled, to wash off filth, and vivify Dead fates.1406 The Gospel, four in number, one In its diffusion ’mid the Gentiles, this, 60 By faith elect accepted, Paul hands down (Excellent doctor!) pure, without a crime; And from it he forbade Galatian saints To turn aside withal; whom “brethren false,” (Urging them on to circumcise themselves, 65 And follow “elements,” leaving behind Their novel “freedom,”) to “a shadow old Of things to be” were teaching to be slaves. These were the causes which Paul had to write To the Galatians: not that they took out 70 One small part of the Gospel, and held that For the whole bulk, leaving the greater part Behind. And hence ’tis no words of a book, But Christ Himself, Christ sent into the orb, Who is the gospel, if ye will discern; 75 Who from the Father came, sole Carrier Of tidings good; whose glory vast completes The early testimonies; by His work Showing how great the orb’s Creator is: Whose deeds, conjoined at the same time with words, 80 Those faithful ones, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, Recorded unalloyed (not speaking words External), sanctioned by God’s Spirit, ’neath So great a Master’s eye! This paschal Lamb Is hung, a victim, on the tree: Him Paul, 85 Writing decrees to Corinth, with his torch,1407 Hands down as slain, the future life and God Promised to the fathers, whom before He had attracted. See what virtue, see What power, the paschal image1408 has; ye thus 90 Will able be to see what power there is In the true Passover. Lest well-earned love Should tempt the faithful sire and seer,1409 to whom His pledge and heir1410 was dear, whom God by chance1411 Had given him, to offer him to God 95 (A mighty execution!), there is shown To him a lamb entangled by the head In thorns; a holy victim—holy blood For blood—to God. From whose piacular death, That to the wasted race1412 it might be sign 100 And pledge of safety, signed are with blood Their posts and thresholds many:1413—aid immense! The flesh (a witness credible) is given For food. The Jordan crossed, the land possessed, Joshua by law kept Passover with joy, 105 And immolates a lamb; and the great kings And holy prophets that were after him, Not ignorant of the good promises Of sure salvation; full of godly fear The great Law to transgress, (that mass of types 110 In image of the Supreme Virtue once To come,) did celebrate in order due The mirrorly-inspected passover.1414 In short, if thou recur with rapid mind To times primordial, thou wilt find results 115 Too fatal following impious words. That man Easily credulous, alas! and stripped Of life’s own covering, might covered be With skins, a lamb is hung: the wound slays sins, Or death by blood effaces or enshrouds 120 Or cherishes the naked with its fleece. Is sheep’s blood of more worth than human blood, That, offered up for sins, it should quench wrath? Or is a lamb (as if he were more dear!) Of more worth than much people’s? aid immense! 125 As safeguard of so great salvation, could A lamb, if offered, have been price enough For the redeemed? Nay: but Almighty God, The heaven’s and earth’s Creator, infinite,1415 Living, and perfect, and perennially 130 Dwelling in light, is not appeased by these, Nor joys in cattle’s blood. Slain be all flocks; Be every herd upburned into smoke; That expiatively ’t may pardon win Of but one sin: in vain at so vile price; 135 Will the stained figure of the Lord—foul flesh— Prepare, if wise, such honours:1416 but the hope And faith to mortals promised of old— Great Reason’s counterpart1417—hath wrought to bring These boons premeditated and prepared 140 Erst by the Father’s passing parent-love; That Christ should come to earth, and be a man! Whom when John saw, baptism’s first opener, John, Comrade of seers, apostle great, and sent As sure forerunner, witness faithful; John, 145 August in life, and marked with praise sublime,1418 He shows, to such as sought of olden time God’s very Paschal Lamb, that He is come At last, the expiation of misdeed, To undo many’s sins by His own blood, 150 In place of reprobates the Proven One, In place of vile the dear; in body, man; And, in life, God: that He, as the slain Lamb, Might us accept,1419 and for us might outpour Himself Thus hath it pleased the Lord to spoil 155 Proud death: thus wretched man will able be To hope salvation. This slain paschal Lamb Paul preaches: nor does a phantasmal shape Of the sublime Lord (one consimilar To Isaac’s silly sheep1420) the passion bear, 160 Wherefore He is called Lamb: but ’tis because, As wool, He these renewed bodies clothes, Giving to many covering, yet Himself Never deficient. Thus does the Lord shroud In His Sire’s virtue, those whom, disarrayed 165 Of their own light, He by His death redeemed, Virtue which ever is in Him. So, then, The Shepherd who hath lost the sheep Himself Re-seeks it. He, prepared to tread the strength Of the vine, and its thorns, or to o’ercome 170 The wolf’s rage, and regain the cattle lost, And brave to snatch them out, the Lion He In sheepskin-guise, unasked presents Himself To the contemned1421 teeth, baffling by His garb The robber’s bloody jaws. Thus everywhere 175 Christ seeks force-captured Adam; treads the path Himself where death wrought ruin; permeates All the old heroes’ monuments;1422 inspects Each one; the One of whom all types were full; Begins e’en from the womb to expel the death 180 Conceived simultaneously with seed Of flesh within the bosom; purging all Life’s stages with a silent wisdom; debts Assuming;1423 ready to cleanse all, and give Their Maker back the many whom the one1424 185 Had scattered. And, because one direful man Down-sunk in pit iniquitous did fall, By dragon-subdued virgin’s1425 suasion led; Because he pleased her wittingly;1426 because He left his heavenly covering1427 behind: 190 Because the “tree” their nakedness did prove; Because dark death coerced them: in like wise Out of the self-same mass1428 re-made returns Renewed now,—the flower of flesh, and host Of peace,—a flesh from espoused virgin born, 195 Not of man’s seed; conjoined to its own Artificer; without the debt of death. These mandates of the Father through bright stars An angel carries down, that angel-fame The tidings may accredit; telling how 200 “A virgin’s debts a virgin, flesh’s flesh, Should pay.” Thus introduced, the Giant-Babe, The Elder-Boy, the Stripling-Man, pursues Death’s trail. Thereafter, when completed was The ripe age of man’s strength, when man is wont 205 To see the lives that were his fellows drop By slow degrees away, and to be changed In mien to wrinkles foul and limbs inert, While blood forsakes his veins, his course he stayed, And suffered not his fleshly garb to age. 210 Upon what day or in what place did fall Most famous Adam, or outstretched his hand Rashly to touch the tree, on that same day, Returning as the years revolve, within The stadium of the “tree” the brave Athlete, 215 ’Countering, outstretched His hands, and, penalty For praise pursuing,1429 quite did vanquish death, Because He left death of His own accord Behind, disrobing Him of fleshly slough, And of death’s dues; and to the “tree” affixed 220 The serpent’s spoil—“the world’s1430 prince” vanquisht quite! Grand trophy of the renegades: for sign Whereof had Moses hung the snake, that all, Who had by many serpents stricken been, Might gaze upon the dragon’s self, and see 225 Him vanquisht and transfixt. When, afterwards, He reached the infernal region’s secret waves, And, as a victor, by the light which aye Attended Him, revealed His captive thrall, And by His virtue thoroughly fulfilled 230 The Father’s bidding, He Himself re-took The body which, spontaneous, He had left: This was the cause of death: this same was made Salvation’s path: a messenger of guile The former was; the latter messenger 235 Of peace: a spouse her man1431 did slay; a spouse Did bear a lion:1432 hurtful to her man1433 A virgin1434 proved; a man1435 from virgin born Proved victor: for a type whereof, while sleep His1436 body wrapped, out of his side is ta’en 240 A woman,1437 who is her lord’s1438 rib; whom, he, Awaking, called “flesh from his flesh, and bones From his own bones;” with a presaging mind Speaking. Faith wondrous! Paul deservedly, (Most certain author!) teaches Christ to be 245 “The Second Adam from the heavens.”1439 Truth, Using her own examples, doth refulge; Nor covets out of alien source to show Her paces keen:1440 this is a pauper’s work, Needy of virtue of his own! Great Paul 250 These mysteries—taught to him—did teach; to wit, Discerning that in Christ thy glory is, O Church! from His side, hanging on high “tree,” His lifeless body’s “blood and humour” flowed. The blood the woman1441 was; the waters were 255 The new gifts of the font:1442 this is the Church, True mother of a living people; flesh New from Christ’s flesh, and from His bones a bone. A spot there is called Golgotha,—of old The fathers’ earlier tongue thus called its name,— 260 “The skull-pan of a head:” here is earth’s midst; Here victory’s sign; here, have our elders taught, There was a great head1443 found; here the first man, We have been taught, was buried; here the Christ Suffers; with sacred blood the earth1444 grows moist. 265 That the old Adam’s dust may able be, Commingled with Christ’s blood, to be upraised By dripping water’s virtue. The “one ewe” That is, which, during Sabbath-hours, alive The Shepherd did resolve that He would draw 270 Out of th’ infernal pit. This was the cause Why, on the Sabbaths, He was wont to cure The prematurely dead limbs of all flesh; Or perfected for sight the eyes of him Blind from his birth—eyes which He had not erst 275 Given; or, in presence of the multitude, Called, during Sabbath-hours, one wholly dead To life, e’en from the sepulchre.1445 Himself The new man’s Maker, the Repairer good Of th’ old, supplying what did lack, or else 280 Restoring what was lost. About to do— When dawns “the holy day”—these works, for such As hope in Him, in plenitude, (to keep His plighted word,) He taught men thus His power To do them. What? If flesh dies, and no hope 285 Is given of salvation, say, what grounds Christ had to feign Himself a man, and head Men, or have care for flesh? If He recalls1446 Some few, why shall He not withal recall All? Can corruption’s power liquefy 290 The body and undo it, and shall not The virtue of the Lord be powerful The undone to recall? They, who believe Their bodies are not loosed from death, do not Believe the Lord, who wills to raise His own 295 Works sunken; or else say they that the Good Wills not, and that the Potent hath not power,— Ignorant from how great a crime they suck Their milk, in daring to set things infirm Above the Strong.1447 In the grain lurks the tree; 300 And if this1448 rot not, buried in the earth, It yields not tree-graced fruits.1449 Soon bound will be The liquid waters: ’neath the whistling cold They will become, and ever will be stones, Unless a mighty power, by leading on 305 Soft-breathing warmth, undo them. The great bunch Lurks in the tendril’s slender body: if Thou seek it, it is not; when God doth will, ’Tis seen to be. On trees their leaves, on thorns The rose, the seeds on plains, are dead and fail, 310 And rise again, new living. For man’s use These things doth God before his eyes recall And form anew—man’s, for whose sake at first1450 The wealthy One made all things bounteously. All naked fall; with its own body each 315 He clothes. Why man alone, on whom He showered Such honours, should He not recall in all His first perfection1451 to Himself? man, whom He set o’er all? Flesh, then, and blood are said To be not worthy of God’s realm, as if 320 Paul spake of flesh materially. He Indeed taught mighty truths; but hearts inane Think he used carnal speech: for pristine deeds He meant beneath the name of “flesh and blood;” Remembering, heavenly home—slave that he is, 325 His heavenly Master’s words; who gave the name Of His own honour to men born from Him Through water, and from His own Spirit poured A pledge;1452 that, by whose virtue men had been Redeemed, His name of honour they withal 330 Might, when renewed, receive. Because, then, He Refused, on the old score, the heavenly realm To peoples not yet from His fount re-born, Still with their ancient sordid raiment clad— These are “the dues of death”—saying that that 335 Which human is must needs be born again,— “What hath been born of flesh is flesh; and what From Spirit, life;”1453 and that the body, washed, Changing with glory its old root’s new seeds,1454 Is no more called “from flesh:” Paul follows this; 340 Thus did he speak of “flesh.” In fine, he said1455 This frail garb with a robe must be o’erclad, This mortal form be wholly covered; Not that another body must be given, But that the former one, dismantled,1456 must 345 Be with God’s kingdom wholly on all sides Surrounded: “In the moment of a glance,” He says, “it shall be changed:” as, on the blade, Dispreads the red corn’s1457 face, and changes ’neath The sun’s glare its own hue; so the same flesh, 350 From “the effulgent glory”1458 borrowing, Shall ever joy, and joying,1459 shall lack death; Exclaiming that “the body’s cruel foe Is vanquisht quite; death, by the victory Of the brave Christ, is swallowed;”1460 praises high 355 Bearing to God, unto the highest stars.

51. section11.book3

    Now hath the mother, formerly surnamed Barren, giv’n birth:1461 now a new people, born From the free woman,1462 joys: (the slave expelled, Deservedly, with her proud progeny; 5 Who also leaves ungratefully behind The waters of the living fount,1463 and drinks— Errant on heated plains—’neath glowing star:1464) Now can the Gentiles as their parent claim Abraham; who, the Lord’s voice following, 10 Like him, have all things left,1465 life’s pilgrimage To enter. “Be glad, barren one;” conceive The promised people; “break thou out, and cry,” Who with no progeny wert blest; of whom Spake, through the seers, the Spirit of old time: 15 She hath borne, out of many nations, one; With whose beginning are her pious limbs Ever in labour. Hers “just Abel”1466 was, A pastor and a cattle—master he; Whom violence of brother’s right hand slew 20 Of old. Her Enoch, signal ornament, Limb from her body sprung, by counsel strove To recall peoples gone astray from God And following misdeed, (while raves on earth The horde of robber-renegades,1467) to flee 25 The giants’sacrilegious cruel race; Faithful in all himself. With groaning deep1468 Did he please God, and by deserved toil Translated1469 is reserved as a pledge, With honour high. Perfect in praise, and found 30 Faultless, and just—God witnessing1470 the fact— In an adulterous people, Noah (he Who in twice fifty years1471 the ark did weave) By deeds and voice the coming ruin told. Favour he won, snatched out of so great waves 35 Of death, and, with his progeny, preserved. Then, in the generation1472 following, Is Abraham, whose sons ye do deny Yourselves to be; who first—race, country, sire, All left behind—at suasion of God’s voice 40 Withdrew to realms extern: such honours he At God’s sublime hand worthily deserved As to be father to believing tribes And peoples. Jacob with the patriarchs (Himself their patriarch) through all his own 45 Life’s space the gladdest times of Christ foresang By words, act, virtue, toil. Him follows—free From foul youth’s stain—Joseph, by slander feigned, Doomed to hard penalty and gaol: his groans Glory succeeds, and the realm’s second crown, so 50 And in dearth’s time large power of furnishing Bread: so appropriate a type of Christ, So lightsome type of Light, is manifest To all whose mind hath eyes, that they may see In a face-mirror1473 their sure hope. Himself 55 The patriarch Judah, see; the origin Of royal line,1474 whence leaders rose, nor kings Failed ever from his seed, until the Power To come, by Gentiles looked for, promised long, Came. Moses, leader of the People, (he 60 Who, spurning briefly—blooming riches, left The royal thresholds,) rather chose to bear His people’s toils, afflicted, with bowed neck, By no threats daunted, than to gain himself Enjoyments, and of many penalties 65 Remission: admirable for such faith And love, he, with God’s virtue armed, achieved Great exploits: smote the nation through with plagues; And left their land behind, and their hard king Confounds, and leads the People back; trod waves; 70 Sunk the foes down in waters; through a “tree”1475 Made ever-bitter waters sweet; spake much (Manifestly to the People) with the Christ,1476 From whose face light and brilliance in his own Reflected shone; dashed on the ground the law 75 Accepted through some few,1477—implicit type, And sure, of his own toils!—smote through the rock; And, being bidden, shed forth streams; and stretched His hands that, by a sign,1478 he vanquish might The foe; of Christ all severally, all1479 80 Combined through Christ, do speak. Great and approved, He1480 rests with praise and peace. But Joshua, The son of Nun, erst called Oshea—this man The Holy Spirit to Himself did join As partner in His name:1481 hence did he cleave 85 The flood; constrained the People to pass o’er; Freely distributed the land—the prize Promised the fathers!—stayed both sun and moon While vanquishing the foe; races extern And giants’ progeny outdrave; razed groves; 90 Altars and temples levelled; and with mind Loyal1482 performed all due solemnities: Type of Christ’s name; his virtue’s image. What Touching the People’s Judges shall I say Singly? whose virtues,1483 if unitedly 95 Recorded, fill whole volumes numerous With space of words. But yet the order due Of filling out the body of my words, Demands that, out of many, I should tell The life of few. Of whom when Gideon, guide 100 Of martial band, keen to attack the foe, (Not keen to gain for his own family, By virtue,1484 tutelary dignity,1485) And needing to be strengthened1486 in the faith Excited in his mind, seeks for a sign 105 Whereby he either could not, or could, wage Victorious war; to wit, that with the dew A fleece, exposèd for the night, should be Moistened, and all the ground lie dry around (By this to show that, with the world,1487 should dry1488 110 The enemies’ palm); and then again, the fleece Alone remaining dry, the earth by night Should with the self-same1489 moisture be bedewed: For by this sign he prostrated the heaps Of bandits; with Christ’s People ’countering them 115 Without much soldiery, with cavalry1490 Three hundred—the Greek letter Tau, in truth, That number is1491—with torches armed, and horns Of blowers with the mouth: then1492 was the fleece, The people of Christ’s sheep, from holy seed 120 Born (for the earth means nations various, And scattered through the orb), which fleece the word Nourishes; night death’s image; Tau the sign Of the dear cross; the horn the heraldings Of life; the torches shining in their stand1493 125 The glowing Spirit: and this testing, too, Forsooth, an image of Christ’s virtue was:1494 To teach that death’s fierce battles should not be By trump angelic vanquished before Th’ indocile People be deservedly 130 By their own fault left desolate behind, And Gentiles, flourishing in faith, received In praise. Yea, Deborah, a woman far Above all fame, appears; who, having braced Herself for warlike toil, for country’s sake, 135 Beneath the palm-tree sang how victory Had crowned her People; thanks to whom it was That the foes, vanquisht, turned at once their backs, And Sisera their leader fled; whose flight No man, nor any band, arrested: him, 140 Suddenly renegade, a woman’s hand— Jael’s1495—with wooden weapon vanquished quite, For token of Christ’s victory. With firm faith Jephthah appears, who a deep-wounding vow Dared make—to promise God a grand reward 145 Of war: him1496 then, because he senselessly Had promised what the Lord not wills, first meets The pledge1497 dear to his heart; who suddenly Fell by a lot unhoped by any. He, To keep his promise, broke the sacred laws 150 Of parenthood: the shade of mighty fear Did in his violent mind cover his vow Of sin: as solace of his widowed life For1498 wickedness, renown, and, for crime, praise, He won. Nor Samson’s strength, all corporal might 155 Passing, must we forget; the Spirit’s gift Was this; the power was granted to his head.1499 Alone he for his People, daggerless, Armless, an ass-jaw grasping, prostrated A thousand corpses; and no bonds could keep 160 The hero bound: but after his shorn pride Forsook him thralled, he fell, and, by his death,— Though vanquisht,—bought his foes back ’neath his power. Marvellous Samuel, who first received The precept to anoint kings, to give chrism 165 And show men-Christs,1500 so acted laudably In life’s space as, e’en after his repose, To keep prophetic rights.1501 Psalmographist David, great king and prophet, with a voice Submiss was wont Christ’s future suffering 170 To sing: which prophecy spontaneously His thankless lawless People did perform: Whom1502 God had promised that in time to come, Fruit of his womb,1503 a holy progeny, He would on his sublime throne set: the Lord’s 175 Fixt faith did all that He had promised. Corrector of an inert People rose Emulous1504 Hezekiah; who restored Iniquitous forgetful men the Law:1505 All these God’s mandates of old time he first 180 Bade men observe, who ended war by prayers,1506 Not by steel’s point: he, dying, had a grant Of years and times of life made to his tears: Deservedly such honour his career Obtained. With zeal immense, Josiah, prince 185 Himself withal, in like wise acted: none So much, before or after!—Idols he Dethroned; destroyed unhallowed temples; burned With fire priests on their altars; all the bones Of prophets false updug; the altars burned, 190 The carcases to be consumed did serve For fuel! To the praise of signal faith, Noble Elijah, (memorable fact!) Was rapt;1507 who hath not tasted yet death’s dues; Since to the orb he is to come again. 195 His faith unbroken, then, chastening with stripes People and frenzied king, (who did desert The Lord’s best service), and with bitter flames The foes, shut up the stars; kept in the clouds The rain; showed all collectively that God 200 Is; made their error patent;—for a flame, Coming with force from heaven at his prayers, Ate up the victim’s parts, dripping with flood, Upon the altar:1508—often as he willed, So often from on high rushed fire;1509 the stream 205 Dividing, he made pathless passable;1510 And, in a chariot raised aloft, was borne To paradise’s hall. Disciple his Elisha was, succeeding to his lot:1511 Who begged to take to him Elijah’s lot1512 210 In double measure; so, with forceful stripe, The People to chastise:1513 such and so great A love for the Lord’s cause he breathed. He smote Through Jordan; made his feet a way, and crossed Again; raised with a twig the axe down—sunk 215 Beneath the stream; changed into vital meat The deathful food; detained a second time, Double in length,1514 the rains; cleansed leprosies;1515 Entangled foes in darkness; and when one Offcast and dead, by bandits’slaughter slain 220 His limbs, after his death, already hid In sepulchre, did touch, he—light recalled— Revived. Isaiah, wealthy seer, to whom The fount was oped,—so manifest his faith! Poured from his mouth God’s word forth. Promised was 225 The Father’s will, bounteous through Christ; through him It testified before the way of life, And was approved:1516 but him, though stainless found, And undeserving, the mad People cut With wooden saw in twain, and took away 230 With cruel death. The holy Jeremy Followed; whom the Eternal’s Virtue bade Be prophet to the Gentiles, and him told The future: who, because he brooded o’er His People’s deeds illaudable, and said 235 (Speaking with voice presaging) that, unless They had repented of betaking them To deeds iniquitous against their slaves,1517 They should be captived, bore hard bonds, shut up In squalid gaol; and, in the miry pit, 240 Hunger exhausted his decaying limbs. But, after he did prove what they to hear Had been unwilling, and the foes did lead The People bound in their triumphal trains, Hardly at length his wrinkled right hand lost 245 Its chains: it is agreed that by no death Nor slaughter was the hero ta’en away. Faithful Ezekiel, to whom granted was Rich grace of speech, saw sinners’ secrets; wailed His own afflictions; prayed for pardon; saw 250 The vengeance of the saints, which is to be By slaughter; and, in Spirit wrapt, the place Of the saints’ realm, its steps and accesses, And the salvation of the flesh, he saw. Hosea, Amos, Micah, Joel, too, 255 With Obadiah, Jonah, Nahum, come; Habakkuk, Zephaniah, Haggai, And Zechariah who did violence Suffer, and Malachi—angel himself! Are here: these are the Lord’s seers; and their choir, 260 As still they sing, is heard; and equally Their proper wreath of praise they all have earned. How great was Daniel! What a man! What power! Who by their own mouth did false witnesses Bewray, and saved a soul on a false charge 265 Condemned;1518 and, before that, by mouth resolved The king’s so secret dreams; foresaw how Christ Dissolves the limbs of kingdoms; was accused For his Lord’s was made the lions’ prey; And, openly preserved1519 before all eyes, 270 Rested in peace. His Three Companions, scarce With due praise to be sung, did piously Contemn the king’s iniquitous decree, Out of so great a number: to the flames Their bodies given were; but they preferred, 275 For the Great Name, to yield to penalties Themselves, than to an image stretch their palms On bended knees. Now their o’erbrilliant faith, Now hope outshining all things, the wild fires Hath quencht, and vanquisht the iniquitous! 280 Ezra the seer, doctor of Law, and priest Himself (who, after full times, back did lead The captive People), with the Spirit filled Of memory, restored by word of mouth All the seers’ volumes, by the fires and mould1520 285 Consumèd. Great above all born from seed Is John whose praises hardly shall we skill To tell: the washer1521 of the flesh: the Lord’s Open forerunner; washer,1522 too, of Christ, Himself first born again from Him: the first 290 Of the new convenant, last of the old, Was he; and for the True Way’s sake he died, The first slain victim. See God-Christ! behold Alike, His Twelve-Fold Warrior-Youth!1523 in all One faith, one dove, one power; the flower of men; 295 Lightening the world1524 with light; comrades of Christ And apostolic men; who, speaking truth, Heard with their ears Salvation,1525 with their eyes Saw It, and handled with their hand the late From death recovered body,1526 and partook 300 As fellow-guests of food therewith, as they Themselves bear witness. Him did Paul as well (Forechosen apostle, and in due time sent), When rapt into the heavens,1527 behold: and sent By Him, he, with his comrade Barnabas, 305 And with the earlier associates Joined in one league together, everywhere Among the Gentiles hands the doctrine down That Christ is Head, whose members are the Church, He the salvation of the body, He 310 The members’ life perennial; He, made flesh, He, ta’en away for all, Himself first rose Again, salvation’s only hope; and gave The norm to His disciples: they at once All variously suffered, for His Name, 315 Unworthy penalties. Such members bears With beauteous body the free mother, since She never her Lord’s precepts left behind, And in His home hath grown old, to her Lord Ever most choice, having for His Name’s sake 320 Penalties suffered. For since, barren once, Not yet secure of her futurity, She hath outgiven a people born of seed Celestial, and1528 been spurned, and borne the spleen1529 Of her own handmaid; now ’tis time to see 325 This former-barren mother have a son The heir of her own liberty; not like The handmaid’s heir, yoked in estate to her, Although she bare him from celestial seed Conceived. Far be it that ye should with words 330 Unlawful, with rash voice, collectively Without distinction, give men exemplary (Heaven’s glowing constellations, to the mass Of men conjoined by seed alone or blood), The rugged bondman’s1530 name; or that one think 335 That he may speak in servile style about A People who the mandates followèd Of the Lord’s Law. No: but we mean the troop Of sinners, empty, mindless, who have placed God’s promises in a mistrustful heart; 340 Men vanquisht by the miserable sweet Of present life: that troop would have been bound Capital slavery to undergo, By their own fault, if sin’s cause shall impose Law’s yoke upon the mass. For to serve God, 345 And be whole-heartedly intent thereon, Untainted faith, and freedom, is thereto Prepared spontaneous. The just fathers, then, And holy stainless prophets, many, sang The future advent of the Lord; and they 350 Faithfully testify what Heaven bids To men profane: with them the giants,1531 men With Christ’s own glory satiated, made The consorts of His virtue, filling up The hallowed words, have stablished our faith; 355 By facts predictions proving. Of these men Disciples who succeeded them throughout The orb, men wholly filled with virtue’s breath, And our own masters, have assigned to us Honours conjoined with works. Of whom the first 360 Whom Peter bade to take his place and sit Upon this chair in mightiest Rome where he Himself had sat,1532 was Linus, great, elect, And by the mass approved. And after him Cletus himself the fold’s flock undertook; 365 As his successor Anacletus was By lot located: Clement follows him; Well known was he to apostolic men:1533 Next Evaristus ruled without a crime The law.1534 To Sixtus Sextus Alexander 370 Commends the fold: who, after he had filled His lustral times up, to Telesphorus Hands it in order: excellent was he, And martyr faithful. After him succeeds A comrade in the law,1535 and master sure: 375 When lo! the comrade of your wickedness, Its author and forerunner—Cerdo hight— Arrived at Rome, smarting with recent wounds: Detected, for that he was scattering Voices and words of venom stealthily: 380 For which cause, driven from the band, he bore This sacrilegious brood, the dragon’s breath Engendering it. Blooming in piety United stood the Church of Rome, compact By Peter: whose successor, too, himself, 385 And now in the ninth place, Hyginus was, The burden undertaking of his chair. After him followed Pius—Hermas his Own brother1536 was; angelic “Pastor” he, Because he spake the words delivered him:1537 390 And Anicetus1538 the allotted post In pious order undertook. ’Neath whom Marcion here coming, the new Pontic pest, (The secret daring deed in his own heart Not yet disclosed,) went, speaking commonly, 395 In all directions, in his perfidy, With lurking art. But after he began His deadly arrows to produce, cast off Deservedly (as author of a crime So savage), reprobated by the saints, 400 He burst, a wondrous monster! on our view.

52. section11.book4

    What the Inviolable Power bids The youthful people,1540 which, rich, free, and heir, Possesses an eternal hope of praise (By right assigned) is this: that with great zeal 5 Burning, armed with the love of peace—yet not As teachers (Christ alone doth all things teach1541), But as Christ’s household—servants—o’er the earth They should conduct a massive war;1542 should raze The wicked’s lofty towers, savage walls, 10 And threats which ’gainst the holy people’s bands Rise, and dissolve such empty sounds in air. Wherefore we, justly speaking emulous words,1543 Out of his1544 own words even strive to express The meaning of salvation’s records,1545 which 15 Large grace hath poured profusely; and to ope To the saints’ eyes the Bandit’s1546 covert plague: Lest any untrained, daring, ignorant, Fall therein unawares, and (being caught) Forfeit celestial gifts. God, then, is One 20 To mortals all and everywhere; a Realm Eternal, Origin of light profound; Life’s Fount; a Draught fraught1547 with all wisdom. He Produced the orb whose bosom all things girds; Him not a region, not a place, includes as 25 In circuit: matter none perennial is,1548 So as to be self-made, or to have been Ever, created by no Maker: heaven’s, Earth’s, sea’s, and the abyss’s1549 Settler1550 is The Spirit; air’s Divider, Builder, Author, 30 Sole God perpetual, Power immense, is He.1551 Him had the Law the People1552 shown to be One God,1553 whose mighty voice to Moses spake Upon the mount. Him this His Virtue, too, His Wisdom, Glory, Word, and Son, this Light 35 Begotten from the Light immense,1554 proclaims Through the seers’ voices, to be One: and Paul,1555 Taking the theme in order up, thus too Himself delivers; “Father there is One1556 Through whom were all things made: Christ One, through whom 40 God all things made;”1557 to whom he plainly owns That every knee doth bow itself;1558 of whom Is every fatherhood1559 in heaven and earth Called: who is zealous with the highest love Of parent-care His people-ward; and wills 45 All flesh to live in holy wise, and wills His people to appear before Him pure Without a crime. With such zeal, by a law1560 Guards He our safety; warns us loyal be; Chastens; is instant. So, too, has the same 50 Apostle (when Galatian brethren Chiding)—Paul—written that such zeal hath he.1561 The fathers’sins God freely rendered, then, Slaying in whelming deluge utterly Parents alike with progeny, and e’en 55 Grandchildren in “fourth generation”1562 now Descended from the parent-stock, when He Has then for nearly these nine hundred years Assisted them. Hard does the judgment seem? The sentence savage? And in Sodom, too, 60 That the still guiltless little one unarmed And tender should lose life: for what had e’er The infant sinned? What cruel thou mayst think, Is parent-care’s true duty. Lest misdeed Should further grow, crime’s authors He did quench, 65 And sinful parents’ brood. But, with his sires, The harmless infant pays not penalties Perpetual, ignorant and not advanced In crime: but lest he partner should become Of adult age’s guilt, death immature 70 Undid spontaneous future ills. Why, then, Bids God libation to be poured to Him With blood of sheep? and takes so stringent means By Law, that, in the People, none transgress Erringly, threatening them with instant death 75 By stoning? and why reprobates, again, These gifts of theirs, and says they are to Him Unwelcome, while He chides a People prest With swarm of sin?1563 Does He, the truthful, bid, And He, the just, at the same time repel? 80 The causes if thou seekst, cease to be moved Erringly: for faith’s cause is weightier Than fancied reason.1564 Through a mirror1565—shade Of fulgent light!—behold what the calf’s blood, The heifer’s ashes, and each goat, do mean: 85 The one dismissed goes off, the other falls A victim at the temple. With calf’s blood With water mixt the seer1566 (thus from on high Bidden) besprinkled People, vessels all, Priests, and the written volumes of the Law. 90 See here not their true hope, nor yet a mere Semblance devoid of virtue:1567 but behold In the calf’s type Christ destined bodily To suffer; who upon His shoulders bare The plough-beam’s hard yokes,1568 and with fortitude 95 Brake His own heart with the steel share, and poured Into the furrows water of His own Life’s blood. For these “temple-vessels” do Denote our bodies: God’s true temple1569 He, Not dedicated erst; for to Himself 100 He by His blood associated men, And willed them be His body’s priests, Himself The Supreme Father’s perfect Priest by right. Hearing, sight, step inert, He cleansed; and, for a “book,”1570 Sprinkled, by speaking1571 words of presage, those 105 His witnesses: demonstrating the Law Bound by His holy blood. This cause withal Our victim through “the heifer” manifests From whose blood taking for the People’s sake Piacular drops, them the first Levite1572 bare 110 Within the veil; and, by God’s bidding, burned Her corse without the camp’s gates; with whose ash He cleansed lapsed bodies. Thus our Lord (who us By His own death redeemed), without the camp1573 Willingly suffering the violence 115 Of an iniquitous People, did fulfil The Law, by facts predictions proving;1574 who A people of contamination full Doth truly cleanse, conceding all things, as The body’s Author rich; within heaven’s veil 120 Gone with the blood which—One for many’s deaths— He hath outpoured. A holy victim, then, Is meet for a great priest; which worthily He, being perfect, may be proved to have, And offer. He a body hath: this is 125 For mortals a live victim; worthy this Of great price did He offer, One for all. The1575 semblance of the “goats” teaches that they Are men exiled out of the “peoples twain”1576 As barren;1577 fruitless both; (of whom the Lord 130 Spake also, in the Gospel, telling how The kids are severed from the sheep, and stand On the left hand1578): that some indeed there are Who for the Lord’s Name’s sake have suffered: thus That fruit has veiled their former barrenness: 135 And such, the prophet teaches, on the ground Of that their final merit worthy are Of the Lord’s altar: others, cast away (As was th’ iniquitous rich man, we read, By Lazarus1579), are such as have remained 140 Exiled, persistent in their stubbornness. Now a veil, hanging in the midst, did both Dissever,1580 and had into portions twain Divided the one shrine.1581 The inner parts Were called “Holies of holies.” Stationed there 145 An altar shone, noble with gold; and there, At the same time, the testaments and ark Of the Law’s tablets; covered wholly o’er With lambs’skins1582 dyed with heaven’s hue; within Gold-clad;1583 and all between of wood. Here are so 150 The tablets of the Law; here is the urn Replete with manna; here is Aaron’s rod Which puts forth germens of the cross1584—unlike The cross itself, yet born of storax-tree1585—And over it—in uniformity 155 Fourfold—the cherubim their pinions spread, And the inviolable sanctities1586 Covered obediently.1587 Without the veil Part of the shrine stood open: facing it, Heavy with broad brass, did an altar stand; 160 And with two triple sets (on each side one) Of branches woven with the central stem, A lampstand, and as many1588 lamps: The golden substance wholly filled with light The temple.1589 Thus the temple’s outer face, 165 Common and open, does the ritual Denote, then, of a people lingering Beneath the Law; amid whose1590 gloom there shone The Holy Spirit’s sevenfold unity Ever, the People sheltering.1591 And thus 170 The Lampstand True and living Lamps do shine Persistently throughout the Law and Seers On men subdued in heart. And for a type Of earth,1592 the altar—so tradition says— Was made. Here constantly, in open space, 175 Before all eyes were visible of old The People’s “works,”1593 which ever—“not without Blood”1594—it did offer, shedding out the gore Of lawless life.1595 There, too, the Lord—Himself Made victim on behalf of all—denotes 180 The whole earth1596—altar in specific sense. Hence likewise that new covenant author, whom No language can describe, Disciple John, Testifies that beneath such altar he Saw souls which had for Christ’s name suffered, 185 Praying the vengeance of the mighty God Upon their slaughter.1597 There,1598 meantime, is rest. In some unknown part there exists a spot Open, enjoying its own light; ’tis called “Abraham’s bosom;” high above the glooms,1599 190 And far removed from fire, yet ’neath the earth.1600 The brazen altar this is called, whereon (We have recorded) was a dusky veil.1601 This veil divides both parts, and leaves the one Open, from the eternal one distinct 195 In worship and time’s usage. To itself Tis not unfriendly, though of fainter love, By time and space divided, and yet linked By reason. ’Tis one house, though by a veil Parted it seems: and thus (when the veil burst, 200 On the Lord’s passion) heavenly regions oped And holy vaults,1602 and what was double erst Became one house perennial. Order due Traditionally has interpreted The inner temple of the people called 205 After Christ’s Name, with worship heavenly, God’s actual mandates following; (no “shade” Is herein bound, but persons real;1603) complete By the arrival of the “perfect things.”1604 The ark beneath a type points out to us 210 Christ’s venerable body, joined, through “wood,”1605 With sacred Spirit: the aërial1606 skins Are flesh not born of seed, outstretcht on “wood;”1607 At the same time, with golden semblance fused,1608 Within, the glowing Spirit joined is 215 Thereto; that, with peace1609 granted, flesh might bloom With Spirit mixt. Of the Lord’s flesh, again, The urn, golden and full, a type doth bear. Itself denotes that the new covenant’s Lord Is manna; in that He, true heavenly Bread, 220 Is, and hath by the Father been transfused1610 Into that bread which He hath to His saints Assigned for a pledge: this Bread will He Give perfectly to them who (of good works The lovers ever) have the bonds of peace 225 Kept. And the double tablets of the law Written all over, these, at the same time, Signify that that Law was ever hid In Christ, who mandate old and new fulfilled, Ark of the Supreme Father as He is, 230 Through whom He, being rich, hath all things given. The storax-rod, too, nut’s fruit bare itself; (The virgin’s semblance this, who bare in blood A body:) on the “wood”1611 conjoined ’twill lull Death’s bitter, which within sweet fruit doth lurk, 235 By virtue of the Holy Spirit’s grace: Just as Isaiah did predict “a rod” From Jesse’s seed1612—Mary—from which a flower Issues into the orb. The altar bright with gold Denotes the heaven on high, whither ascend 240 Prayers holy, sent up without crime: the Lord This “altar” spake of, where if one doth gifts Offer, he must first reconciliate Peace with his brother:1613 thus at length his prayers Can flame unto the stars. Christ, Victor sole 245 And foremost.1614 Priest, thus offered incense born Not of a tree, but prayers.1615 Being, with twice two countenances, one, And are the one word through fourfold order led;1617 The hoped comforts of life’s mandate new, 250 Which in their plenitude Christ bare Himself Unto us from the Father. But the wings In number four times six,1618 the heraldings Of the old world denote, witnessing things Which, we are taught, were after done. On these1619 255 The heavenly words fly through the orb: with these Christ’s blood is likewise held context, so told Obscurely by the seers’ presaging mouth. The number of the wings doth set a seal Upon the ancient volumes; teaching us 260 Those twenty-four have certainly enough Which sang the Lord’s ways and the times of peace: These all, we see, with the new covenant Cohere. Thus also John; the Spirit thus To him reveals that in that number stand 265 The enthroned elders white1620 and crowned, who (as With girding-rope) all things surround, before The Lord’s throne, and upon the glassy sea Subigneous: and four living creatures, winged And full of eyes within and outwardly, 270 Do signify that hidden things are oped, And all things shut are at the same time seen, In the word’s eye. The glassy flame-mixt sea Means that the laver’s gifts, with Spirit fused Therein, upon believers are conferred. 275 Who could e’en tell what the Lord’s parent-care Before His judgment-seat, before His bar, Prepared hath? that such as willing be His forum and His judgment for themselves To antedate, should ’scape! that who thus hastes 280 Might find abundant opportunity! Thus therefore Law and wondrous prophets sang; Thus all parts of the covenant old and new, Those sacred rights and pregnant utterances Of words, conjoined, do flourish. Thus withal, 285 Apostles’ voices witness everywhere; Nor aught of old, in fine, but to the new Is joined. Thus err they, and thus facts retort Their sayings, who to false ways have declined; And from the Lord and God, eternal King, 290 Who such an orb produced, detract, and seek Some other deity ’neath feigned name, Bereft of minds, which (frenzied) they have lost; Willing to affirm that Christ a stranger is To the Law; nor is the world’s1621 Lord; nor doth will 295 Salvation of the flesh; nor was Himself The body’s Maker, by the Father’s power.1622 Them must we flee, stopping (unasked) our ears; Lest with their speech they stain innoxious hearts. Let therefore us, whom so great grace1623 of God 300 Hath penetrated, and the true celestial words Of the great Master-Teacher in good ways Have trained, and given us right monuments;1624 Pay honour ever to the Lord, and sing Endlessly, joying in pure faith, and sure 305 Salvation. Born of the true God, with bread Perennial are we nourished, and hope With our whole heart after eternal life.

53. section11.book5

    The first Book did the enemy’s words recall In order, which the senseless renegade Composed and put forth lawlessly; hence, too, Touched briefly flesh’s hope, Christ’s victory, 5 And false ways’ speciousness. The next doth teach The Law’s conjoined mysteries, and what In the new covenant the one God hath Delivered. The third shows the race, create From freeborn mother, to be ministers 10 Sacred to seers and patriarchs;1626 whom Thou, O Christ, in number twice six out of all,1627 Chosest; and, with their names, the lustral1628 times Of our own elders noted, (times preserved On record,) showing in whose days appeared 15 The author1629 of this wickedness, unknown, Lawless, and roaming, cast forth1630 with his brood. The fourth, too, the piacular rites recalls Of the old Law themselves, and shows them types In which the Victim True appeared, by saints 20 Expected long since, with the holy Seed. This fifth doth many twists and knots untie, Rolls wholly into sight what ills soe’er Were lurking; drawing arguments, but not Without attesting prophet. And although 25 With strong arms fortified we vanquish foes, Yet hath the serpent mingled so at once All things polluted, impious, unallowed, Commaculate,—the blind’s path without light! A voice contaminant!—that, all the while 30 We are contending the world’s Maker is Himself sole God, who also spake by voice Of seers, and proving that there is none else Unknown; and, while pursuing Him with praise, Who is by various endearment1631 known, 35 Are blaming—among other fallacies— The Unknown’s tardy times: our subject’s fault Will scarce keep pure our tongue. Yet, for all that, Guile’s many hidden venoms us enforce (Although with double risk1632) to ope our words. 40 Who, then, the God whom ye say is the true, Unknown to peoples, alien, in a word, To all the world?1633 Him whom none knew before? Came he from high? If ’tis his own1634 he seeks, Why seek so late? If not his own, why rob 45 Bandit-like? and why ply with words unknown So oft throughout Law’s rein a People still Lingering ’neath the Law? If, too, he comes To pity and to succour all combined, And to re-elevate men vanquisht quite 50 By death’s funereal weight, and to release Spirit from flesh’s bond obscene, whereby The inner man (iniquitously dwarfed) Is held in check; why, then, so late appear His ever-kindness, duteous vigilance? 55 How comes it that he ne’er at all before Offered himself to any, but let slip Poor souls in numbers?1635 and then with his mouth Seeks to regain another’s subjects: ne’er Expected; not known; sent into the orb. 60 Seeking the “ewe” he had not lost before, The Shepherd ought1636 to have disrobed himself Of flesh, as if his victor-self withal Had ever been a spirit, and as such1637 Willed to rescue all expelled souls, 65 Without a body, everywhere, and leave The spoiled flesh to earth; wholly to fill The world1638 on one day equally with corpses To leave the orb void; and to raise the souls To heaven. Then would human progeny 70 At once have ceased to be born; nor had Thereafter any scion of your1639 kith Been born, or spread a new pest1640 o’er the orb. Or (since at that time1641 none of all these things Is shown to have been done) he should have set 75 A bound to future race; with solid heart Nuptial embraces would he, in that case Have sated quite;1642 made men grow torpid, reft Of fruitful seed; made irksome intercourse With female sex; and closed up inwardly 80 The flesh’s organs genital: our mind Had had no will, no potent faculty Our body: after this the “inner man” Could withal, joined with blood,1643 have been infused And cleaved to flesh, and would have ever been 85 Perishing. Ever perishes the “ewe:” And is there then no power of saving her? Since man is ever being born beneath Death’s doom, what is the Shepherd’s work, if thus The “ewe” is stated1644 to be found? Unsought 90 In that case, but not rescued, she is proved. But now choice is allowed of entering Wedlock, as hath been ever; and that choice Sure progeny hath yoked: nations are born And folk scarce numerable, at whose birth 95 Their souls by living bodies are received; Nor was it meet that Paul (though, for the time, He did exhort some few, discerning well The many pressures of a straitened time) To counsel men in like case to abide 100 As he himself:1645 for elsewhere he has bidden The tender ages marry, nor defraud Each other, but their compact’s dues discharge. But say, whose suasion hath, with fraud astute, Made you “abide,” and in divided love 105 Of offspring live secure, and commit crime Adulterous, and lose your life? and, though ’Tis perishing, belie (by verbal name) That fact. For which cause all the so sweet sounds Of his voice pours he forth, that “you must do, 110 Undaunted, whatsoever pleases you;” Outwardly chaste, stealthily stained with crime! Of honourable wedlock, by this plea,1646 He hath deprived you. But why more? ’Tis well (Forsooth) to be disjoined! for the world, too, 115 Expedient ’tis! lest any of your seed Be born! Then will death’s organs1647 cease at length! The while you hope salvation to retain, Your “total man” quite loses part of man, With mind profane: but neither is man said 120 To be sole spirit, nor the flesh is called “The old man;” nor unfriendly are the flesh And spirit, the true man combined in one, The inner, and he whom you call “old foe;”1648 Nor are they seen to have each his own set 125 Of senses. One is ruled; the other rules, Groans, joys, grieves, loves; himself1649 to his own flesh Most dear, too; through which1650 his humanity Is visible, with which commixt he is Held ever: to its wounds he care applies; 130 And pours forth tears; and nutriments of food Takes, through its limbs, often and eagerly: This hopes he to have ever with himself Immortal; o’er its fracture doth he groan; And grieves to quit it limb by limb: fixt time 135 Death lords it o’er the unhappy flesh; that so From light dust it may be renewed, and death Unfriendly fail at length, when flesh, released, Rises again. This will that victory be Supreme and long expected, wrought by Him, 140 The aye-to-be-revered, who did become True man; and by His Father’s virtue won: Who man’s redeemed limbs unto the heavens Hath raised,1651 and richly opened access up Thither in hope, first to His nation; then 145 To those among all tongues in whom His work Is ever doing: Minister imbued With His Sire’s parent-care, seen by the eye Of the Illimitable, He performed, By suffering, His missions.1652 What say now 150 The impious voices? what th’ abandoned crew? If He Himself, God the Creator’s self, Gave not the Law,1653 He who from Egypt’s vale1654 Paved in the waves a path, and freely gave The seats which He had said of old, why comes 155 He in that very People and that land Aforesaid? and why rather sought He not Some other1655 peoples or some rival1656 realms? Why, further, did He teach that, through the seers, (With Name foretold in full, yet not His own,) 160 He had been often sung of? Whence, again, Could He have issued baptism’s kindly gifts, Promised by some one else, as His own works? These gifts men who God’s mandates had transgressed, And hence were found polluted, longed for, 165 And begged a pardoning rescue from fierce death. Expected long, they1657 came: but that to those Who recognised them when erst heard, and now Have recognised them, when in due time found, Christ’s true hand is to give them, this, with voice 170 Paternal, the Creator-Sire Himself Warns ever from eternity, and claims; And thus the work of virtue which He framed, And still frames, arms, and fosters, and doth now Victorious look down on and reclothe 175 With His own light, should with perennial praise Abide.1658 What1659 hath the Living Power To make men recognise what God can give And man can suffer, and thus live?1660 But since Neither predictions earlier nor facts 180 The latest can suede senseless frantic1661 men That God became a man, and (after He Had suffered and been buried) rose; that they May credit those so many witnesses Harmonious,1662 who of old did cry aloud 185 With heavenly word, let them both1663 learn to trust At least terrestrial reason. When the Lord Christ came to be, as flesh, born into the orb In time of king Augustus’ reign at Rome, First, by decree, the nations numbered are 190 By census everywhere: this measure, then, This same king chanced to pass, because the Will Supreme, in whose high reigning hand doth lie The king’s heart, had impelled him:1664 he was first To do it, and the enrolment was reduced 195 To orderly arrangement. Joseph then Likewise, with his but just delivered wife Mary,1665 with her celestial Son alike, Themselves withal are numbered. Let, then, such As trust to instruments of human skill, 200 Who may (approving of applying them As attestators of the holy word) Inquire into this census, if it be But found so as we say, then afterwards Repent they and seek pardon while time still 205 Is had1666 The Jews, who own1667 to having wrought A grave crime, while in our disparagement They glow, and do resist us, neither call Christ’s family unknown, nor can1668 affirm They hanged a man, who spake truth, on a tree:1669 210 Ignorant that the Lord’s flesh which they bound1670 Was not seed-gendered. But, while partially They keep a reticence, so partially They triumph; for they strive to represent God to the peoples commonly as man. 215 Behold the error which o’ercomes you both!1671 This error will our cause assist, the while, We prove to you those things which certain are. They do deny Him God; you falsely call Him man, a body bodiless! and ah! 220 A various insanity of mind Sinks you; which him who hath presumed to hint You both do, sinking, sprinkle:1672 for His deeds Will then approve Him man alike and God Commingled, and the world1673 will furnish signs 225 No few. While then the Son Himself of God Is seeking to regain the flesh’s limbs,1674 Already robed as King, He doth sustain Blows from rude palms; with spitting covered is His face; a thorn-inwoven crown His head 230 Pierces all round; and to the tree1675 Himself Is fixed; wine drugged with myrrh,1676 is drunk, and gall1677 Is mixt with vinegar; parted His robe,1678 And in it1679 lots are cast; what for himself Each one hath seized he keeps; in murky gloom, 235 As God from fleshly body silently Outbreathes His soul, in darkness trembling day Took refuge with the sun; twice dawned one day; Its centre black night covered: from their base Mounts move in circle, wholly moved was earth, 240 Saints’ sepulchres stood ope, and all things joined In fear to see His passion whom they knew! His lifeless side a soldier with bare spear Pierces, and forth flows blood, nor water less Thence followed. These facts they1680 agree to hide, 245 And are unwilling the misdeed to own, Willing to blink the crime. Can spirit, then, Without a body wear a robe? or is’t Susceptible of penalty? the wound Of violence does it bear? or die? or rise? 250 Is blood thence poured? from what flesh. since ye say He had none? or else, rather, feigned He? if ’Tis safe for you to say so; though you do (Headlong) so say, by passing over more In silence. Is not, then, faith manifest? 255 And are not all things fixed? The day before He then1681 should suffer, keeping Passover, And handing down a memorable rite1682 To His disciples, taking bread alike And the vine’s juice, “My body, and My blood 260 Which is poured1683 for you, this is,” did He say; And bade it ever afterward be done. Of what created elements were made, Think ye, the bread and wine which were (He said) His body with its blood? and what must be 265 Confessed? Proved He not Himself the world’s1684 Maker, through deeds? and that He bore at once A body formed from flesh and blood? This God This true Man, too, the Father’s Virtue ’neath An Image,1685 with the Father ever was, 270 United both in glory and in age;1686 Because alone He ministers the words Of the All-Holder; whom He1687 upon earth Accepts;1688 through whom He all things did create: God’s Son, God’s dearest Minister, is He! 275 Hence hath He generation, hence Name too, Hence, finally, a kingdom; Lord from Lord; Stream from perennial Fount! He, He it was Who to the holy fathers (whosoe’er Among them doth profess to have “seen God”1689)— 280 God is our witness—since the origin Of this our world,1690 appearing, opened up The Father’s words of promise and of charge From heaven high: He led the People out; Smote through th’iniquitous nation; was Himself 285 The column both of light and of cloud’s shade; And dried the sea; and bids the People go Right through the waves, the foe therein involved And covered with the flood and surge: a way Through deserts made He for the followers 290 Of His high biddings; sent down bread in showers1691 From heaven for the People; brake the rock; Bedewed with wave the thirsty;1692 and from God The mandate of the Law to Moses spake With thunder, trumpet-sound, and flamey column 295 Terrible to the sight, while men’s hearts shook. After twice twenty years, with months complete, Jordan was parted; a way oped; the wave Stood in a mass; and the tribes shared the land, Their fathers’ promised boons! The Father’s word, 300 Speaking Himself by prophets’ mouth, that He1693 Would come to earth and be a man, He did Predict; Christ manifestly to the earth Foretelling. Then, expected for our aid, Life’s only Hope, the Cleanser of our flesh,1694 305 Death’s Router, from th’ Almighty Sire’s empire At length He came, and with our human limbs He clothed Him. Adam—virgin—dragon—tree,1695 The cause of ruin, and the way whereby Rash death us all had vanquisht! by the same 310 Our Shepherd treading, seeking to regain His sheep—with angel—virgin—His own flesh— And the “tree’s” remedy;1696 whence vanquisht man And doomed to perish was aye wont to go To meet his vanquisht peers; hence, interposed, 315 One in all captives’ room, He did sustain In body the unfriendly penalty With patience; by His own death spoiling death; Becomes salvation’s cause; and, having paid Throughly our debts by throughly suffering 320 On earth, in holy body, everything, Seeks the infern! here souls, bound for their crime, Which shut up all together by Law’s weight, Without a guard,1697 were asking for the boons Promised of old, hoped for, and tardy, He 325 To the saints’rest admitted, and, with light, Brought back. For on the third day mounting up,1698 A victor, with His body by His Sire’s Virtue immense, (salvation’s pathway made,) And bearing God and man is form create, 330 He clomb the heavens, leading back with Him Captivity’s first-fruits (a welcome gift And a dear figure1699 to the Lord), and took His seat beside light’s Father, and resumed The virtue and the glory of which, while 335 He was engaged in vanquishing the foe He had been stripped;1700 conjoined with Spirit; bound With flesh, on our part. Him, Lord, Christ, King, God, Judgment and kingdom given to His hand, The father is to send unto the orb. (N.B.—It has been impossible to note the changes which I have had to make in the text of the Latin. In some cases they will suggest themselves to any scholar who may compare the translation with the original; and in others I must be content to await a more fitting opportunity, if such ever arise, for discussing them.)

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Translated/edited by Alexander Roberts, D.D. and James Donaldson, LL.D. TEI XML digitization by the University of Leipzig (Gregory Crane, Matt Munson, Digital Divide Data), via github.com/gregorycrane/nicenefathers @ 4eb88bc1d116edee81b83eb71bfeda46ef973b47. Originally published by Christian Classics Ethereal Library. Licence: CC BY-SA 4.0 (Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International).