LIFE AND WORKS OF RUFINUS WITH JEROME’S APOLOGY AGAINST RUFINUS.

Ante-Nicene / Post-Nicene Fathers · 271 sections

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30. Your Apology says that there are three opinions as to the origin of souls: one held by Origen, a second by Tertullian and Lactantius (as to Lactantius what you say is manifestly false), a third by us simple and foolish men, who do not see that, if our opinion is true, God is thereby shewn to be unjust. After this you say that you do not know what is the truth. I say, then, tell me, whether you think that outside of these three opinions any truth can be found so that all these three may be false; or whether you think one of these three is true. If there is some other possibility, why do you confine the liberty of discussion within a closedrawn line? and why do you put forward the views which are false and keep silence about the true? But if one of the three is true and the two others false, why do you include false and true in one assertion of ignorance? Perhaps you pretend not to know which is true in order that it may be safe for you, whenever you may please, to defend the false. This is the smoke, these are the mists, with which you try to keep away the light from men’s eyes. You are the Aristippus3191 of our day: you bring your ship into the port of Rome full of merchandize of all kinds; you set your professorial chair on high, and represent to us Hermagoras3192 and Gorgias3193 of Leontinum: only, you were in such a hurry to set sail that you left one little piece of goods, one little question, forgotten in the East. And you cry out with reiteration that you learned both at Aquileia and at Alexandria that God is the creator of both our bodies and our souls. This then, forsooth, is the pressing question, whether our souls were created by God or by the devil, and not whether the opinion of Origen is true that our souls existed before our bodies and committed some sin because of which they have been tied to these gross bodies; or whether, again, they slept like dormice in a state of torpor and of slumber. Every one is asking this question, but you say nothing about it; nobody asks the other, but to that you direct your answer.
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31. Another part of my ‘smoke’ which you frequently laugh at is my pretence, as you say, to know what I do not know, and the parade I make of great teachers to deceive the common and ignorant people. You, of course, are a man not of smoke but of flame, or rather of lightning; you fulminate when you speak; you cannot contain the flames which have been conceived within your mouth, and like Barchochebas,3194 the leader of the revolt of the Jews, who used to hold in his mouth a lighted straw and blow it out so as to appear to be breathing forth flame: so you also, like a second Salmoneus,3195 brighten the whole path on which you tread, and reproach us as mere men of smoke, to whom perhaps the words might be applied,3196 “Thou touchest the hills and they smoke.” You do not understand the allusion of the Prophet3197 when he speaks of the smoke of the locusts; it is no doubt the beauty of your eyes which makes it impossible for you to bear the pungency of our smoke.
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32. As to your charge of perjury, since you refer me to your book; and since I have made my reply to you and Calpurnius3198 in the previous books, it will be sufficient here to observe that you exact from me in my sleep what you have never yourself fulfilled in your waking hours. It seems that I am guilty of a great crime because I have told girls and virgins of Christ, that they had better not read secular works, and that I once promised when warned in a dream not to read them. But your ship which was announced by revelation to the city of Rome, promises one thing and effects another. It came to do away with the puzzle of the mathematici: what it does is to do away with the faith of Christians. It had made its run with sails full set over the Ionian and Ægean, the Adriatic and Tyrrhenian seas, only to make shipwreck in the Roman port. Are you not ashamed of hunting up nonsense of this kind and putting me to the trouble of bringing up similar things against you? Suppose that some one had seen a dream about you such as might make you vainglorious; it would have been modest as well as wise in you not to seem to know of it, instead of boasting of other people’s dreams as a serious testimony to yourself. What a difference there is between your dream and mine! Mine tells how I was humbled and repressed; yours boasts over and over again how you were praised. You cannot say, It matters nothing to me what another man dreamed, for in those most enlightening books of yours you tell us that this was the motive which led you to make the translation; you could not bear that an eminent man should have dreamed in vain. This is all your endeavour. If you can make me out guilty of perjury, you think you will be deemed no heretic.
section1.book3.chapter33
33. I now come to the most serious charge of all, that in which you accuse me of having been unfaithful after the restoration of our friendship. I confess that, of all the reproaches which you bring against me or threaten me with, there is none which I would so much deprecate as that of fraud, deceit and breach of faith. To sin is human, to lay snares is diabolical. What! Was it for this that I joined hands with you over the slain lamb in the Church of the Resurrection, that I might ‘steal your manuscripts at Rome’? or that I might ‘send out my dogs to gnaw away your papers before they were corrected’? Can any one believe that we made ready the accusers before you had committed the crime? Is it supposed that we knew what plans you were meditating in your heart? or what another man had been dreaming? or how the Greek proverb was having its fulfilment in your case, “the pig teaches Minerva”? If I sent Eusebius to bark against you, who then stirred up the passion of Aterbius and others against you? Is it not the fact that he thought that I also was a heretic because of my friendship with you? And, when I had given him satisfaction as to the heresies of Origen, you shut yourself up at home, and never dared to meet him, for fear you should have to condemn what you wished not to condemn, or by openly resisting him should subject yourself to the reproach of heresy. Do you think that he cannot be called as a witness against you because he is your accuser? Before ever the reverend bishop Epiphanius came to Jerusalem, and gave you the signs of peace by word and kiss, ‘yet having evil thoughts and guile in his heart’; before I translated for him that letter3199 which was such a reproof to you, and in which he wrote you down a heretic though he had before approved you as orthodox; Aterbius was barking against you at Jerusalem, and, if he had not speedily taken himself off, would have felt not your literary cudgel but the stick you flourish in your right hand to drive the dogs away.3200
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34. “But why,” you ask, “did you accept my manuscripts which had been falsified? and why, when I had translated the Περὶ ᾽Αρχῶν did you dare to put your pen to the same work? If I had erred, as any man may, ought you not to summon me to reply by a private letter, and to speak smoothly to me, as I am speaking smoothly in my present letter?” My whole fault is this that, when accusations were brought against me in the guise of disingenuous praise, I tried to purge myself from them, and this without invidiously introducing your name. I wished to refer to many persons a charge which you alone had brought, not so as to retort the charge of heresy upon you, but to repel it from myself. Could I know that you would be angry if I wrote against the heretics? You had said that you had taken away the heretical passages from the works of Origen. I therefore turned my attacks not upon you but upon the heretics, for I did not believe that you were a favourer of heresy. Pardon me, if I did this with too great vehemence. I thought that I should give you pleasure. You say that it was by the dishonest tricks of those who acted for me that your manuscripts were brought out before the public, when they were kept secretly in your chamber, or were in possession only of the man who had desired to have the translation made for him. But how is this reconcilable with your former statement that either no one or very few had them? If they were kept secret in your chamber, how could they be in the possession of the man who had desired to have the translation made for him? If the one man for whom the manuscripts had been written had obtained them in order to conceal them, then they were not kept secret in your chamber, and they were not in the hands of those few who, as you now declare, possessed them. You accuse us of having stolen them away; and then again you reproach us with having bought them for a great sum of money and an immense bribe. In a single matter, and in one little letter, what a tissue of various and discordant falsehoods! You have full liberty for accusation, but I have none for defence. When you bring a charge, you think nothing about friendship. When I begin to reply, then your mind is full of the rights of friendship. Let me ask you: Did you write these manuscripts for concealment or for publication? If for concealment, why were they written? If for publication, why did you conceal them?
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35. But my fault, you will say, was this, that I did not restrain your accusers who were my friends. Why, I had enough to do to answer their accusations against myself; for they charged me with hypocrisy,3201 as I could shew by producing their letters, because I kept silence when I knew you to be a heretic; and because by incautiously maintaining peace with you, I fostered the intestine wars of the Church. You call them my disciples; they suspect me of being your fellow-disciple; and, because I was somewhat sparing in my rejection of your praises, they think me to be initiated, along with you, into the mysteries of heresy. This was the service your Prologue did me; you injured me more by appearing as my friend than you would had you shewn yourself my enemy. They had persuaded themselves once for all (whether rightly or wrongly is their business) that you were a heretic. If I should determine to defend you, I should only succeed in getting myself accused by them along with you. They cast in my teeth your laudation of me, which they suppose to have been written not in craft but sincerity; and they vehemently reproach me with the very things which you always praised in me. What am I to do? To turn my disciples into my accusers for your sake? To receive on my own head the weapons which were hurled against my friend?
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36. In the matter of the books Περὶ ᾽Αρχῶν, I have even a claim upon your gratitude. You say that you cut off anything that was offensive and replaced it by what was better. I have represented things just as they stood in the Greek. By this means both things are made to appear, your faith and the heresy of him whom you translated. The leading Christians of Rome wrote to me: Answer your accuser; if you keep silence, you will be held to have assented to his charges. All of them unanimously demanded that I should bring to light the subtle errors of Origen, and make known the poison of the heretics to the ears of the Romans to put them on their guard. How can this be an injury to you? Have you a monopoly of the translation of these books? Are there no others who take part in this work? When you translated parts of the Septuagint, did you mean to prohibit all others from translating it after your version had been published? Why, I also have translated many books from the Greek. You have full power to make a second translation of them at your pleasure; for both the good and the bad in them must be laid to the charge of their author. And this would hold in your case also, had you not said that you had cut out the heretical parts and translated only what was positively good. This is a difficulty which you have made for yourself, and which cannot be solved, except by confessing that you have erred as all men err, and condemning your former opinion.
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37. But what defence can you make in reference to the Apology which you have written for the works of Origen, or rather in reference to the book of Eusebius, though you have altered much, and translated the work of a heretic under the title of a martyr, yet you have set down still more which is incompatible with the faith of the church. You as well as I turn Latin books into Greek; can you prohibit me from giving the works of a foreigner to my own people? If I had made my answer in the case of some other work of yours in which you had not attacked me, it might have been thought that, in translating what you had already translated, I was acting in hostility to you, and wishing to prove you inaccurate or untrustworthy. But this is a new kind of complaint, when you take it amiss that an answer is made you on a point on which you have accused me. All Rome was said to have been upset by your translation; every one was demanding of me a remedy for this; not that I was of any account, but that those who asked this thought me so. You say that you who had made the translation were my friend. But what would you have had me do? Ought we to obey God or man? To guard our master’s property or to conceal the theft of a fellow-servant? Can I not be at peace with you unless I join with you in committing acts which bring reproach? If you had not mentioned my name, if you had not tricked me out in your flatteries, I might have had some way of escape, and have made many excuses for not translating what had already been translated. But you, my friend, have compelled me to waste a good many days on this work, and to bring out before the public eye what should have been engulfed in Charybdis; yet still, though I had been injured, I observed the laws of friendship, and as far as possible defended myself without accusing you. It is a too suspicious and complaining temper which you shew when you take home to yourself as a reproach what was spoken against the heretics. If it is impossible to be your friend unless I am the friend of heretics, I shall more easily put up with your enmity than with their friendship.
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38. You imagine that I have contrived yet another piece of falsehood, namely, that I have composed a letter to you in my own name, pretending that it was written long ago, in which I make myself appear kindly and courteous; but which you never received. The truth can easily be ascertained. Many persons at Rome have had copies of this letter for the last three years; but they refused to send it to you knowing that you were throwing out insinuations against my reputation, and making up stories of the most shameful kind and unworthy of our Christian profession. I wrote in ignorance of all this, as to a friend; but they would not transmit the letter to an enemy, such as they knew you to be, thus sparing me the effects of my mistakes and you the reproaches of your conscience. You next bring arguments to shew that, if I had written such a letter, I had no right to write another containing many reproaches against you. But here is the error which pervades all that you say, and of which I have a right to complain; whatever I say against the heretics you imagine to be said against you. What! Am I refusing you bread because I give the heretics a stone to crush their brains? But, in order to justify your disbelief in my letter, you are obliged to make out that of pope Anastasius rests upon a similar fraud. On this point I have answered you before. If you really suspect that it is not his writing, you have the means of convicting me of the forgery. But if it is his writing, as his letters of the present year also written against you prove, you will in vain use your false reasonings to prove my letter false, since I can shew from his genuine letter that mine also is genuine.
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39. In order to parry the charge of falsehood, it is your humour to become quite exacting. You are not to be called to produce the six thousand books of Origen, of which you speak; but you expect me to be acquainted with all the records of Pythagoras. What truth is there in all the boastful language, which you blurted out from your inflated cheeks, declaring that you had corrected the Περὶ ᾽Αρχῶν by introducing words which you had read in other books of Origen, and thus had not put in other men’s words but restored his own? Out of all this forest of his works you cannot produce a single bush or sucker. You accuse me of raising up smoke and mist. Here you have smoke and mist indeed. You know that I have dissipated and done away with them; but, though your neck is broken, you do not bow it down, but, with an impudence which exceeds even your ignorance, you say that I am denying what is quite evident, so as to excuse yourself, after promising mountains of gold, for not producing even a leatherlike farthing from your treasury. I acknowledge that your animosity against me rests on good grounds, and that your rage and passion is genuine; for, unless I made persistent demands for what does not exist, you would be thought to have what you have not. You ask me for the books of Pythagoras. But who has informed you that any books of his are extant? It is true that in my letter which you criticize these words occur: “Suppose that I erred in youth, and that, having been trained in profane literature, I at the beginning of my Christian course had no sufficient doctrinal knowledge, and that I attributed to the Apostles things which I had read in Pythagoras or Plato or Empedocles;” but I was speaking not of their books but of their tenets, with which I was able to acquaint myself through Cicero, Brutus, and Seneca. Read the short oration for3202 Vatinius, and others in which mention is made of secret societies. Turn over Cicero’s dialogues. Search through the coast of Italy which used to be called Magna Græcia, and you will find there various doctrines of Pythagoras inscribed on brass on their public monuments. Whose are those Golden Rules? They are Pythagoras’s; and in these all his principles are contained in a summary form. Iamblicus3203 wrote a commentary upon them, following in this, at least partly, Moderatus a man of great eloquence, and Archippus and Lysides who were disciples of Pythagoras. Of these, Archippus and Lysides held schools in Greece, that is, in Thebes; they retained so fully the precepts of their teacher, that they made use of their memory instead of books. One of these precepts is: “We must cast away by any contrivance, and cut out by fire and sword and contrivances of all kinds, disease from the body, ignorance from the soul, luxury from the belly, sedition from the state, discord from the family, excess from all things alike.”3204 There are other precepts of Pythagoras, such as these. “Friends have all things in common.” “A friend is a second self.” “Two moments are specially to be observed, morning and evening: that is, things which we are going to do, and things which we have done.” “Next to God we must worship truth, for this alone makes men akin to God.” There are also enigmas which Aristotle has collated with much diligence in his works: “Never go beyond the Stater,” that is, “Do not transgress the rule of justice;” “Never stir the fire with the sword,” that is, “Do not provoke a man when he is angry and excited with hard words.” “We must not touch the crown,” that is “We must maintain the laws of the state.” “Do not eat out your heart,” that is, “Cast away sorrow from your mind.” “When you have started, do not return,” that is, “After death do not regret this life.” “Do not walk on the public road,” that is, “Do not follow the errors of the multitude.” “Never admit a swallow into the family,” that is, “Do not admit chatterers and talkative persons under the same roof with you.” “Put fresh burdens on the burdened; put none on those who lay them down;” that is, “When men are on the road to virtue, ply them with fresh precepts; when they abandon themselves to idleness, leave them alone.” I said I had read the doctrines of the Pythagoreans. Let me tell you that Pythagoras was the first to discover the immortality of the soul and its transmigration from one body to another. To this view Virgil gives his adherence in the sixth book of the Æneid in these words:3205 These, when the wheel full thousand years has turned, God calls, a long sad line, in Lethe’s stream To drown the past, and long once more to see The skies above, and to the flesh return.
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40. Pythagoras taught, accordingly, that he had himself been originally Euphorbus, and then Callides, thirdly Hermotimus, fourthly Pyrrhus, and lastly Pythagoras; and that those things which had existed, after certain revolutions of time, came into being again; so that nothing in the world should be thought of as new. He said that true philosophy was a meditation on death; that its daily struggle was to draw forth the soul from the prison of the body into liberty: that our learning was recollection, and many other things which Plato works out in his dialogues, especially in the Phædo and Timæus. For Plato, after having formed the Academy and gained innumerable disciples, felt that his philosophy was deficient on many points, and therefore went to Magna Græcia, and there learned the doctrines of Pythagoras from Archytas of Tarentum and Timæus of Locris: and this system he embodied in the elegant form and style which he had learned from Socrates. The whole of this, as we can prove, Origen carried over into his book Περὶ ᾽Αρχῶν, only changing the name. What mistake, then, was I making, when I said that in my youth I had imputed to the Apostles ideas which I had found in Pythagoras, Plato and Empedocles? I did not speak, as you calumniously pretend, of what I had read in the books of Pythagoras, Plato and Empedocles, but of what I had read as having existed in their writings, that is, what other men’s writings shewed me to have existed in them. This mode of speaking is quite common. I might say, for instance “The opinions which I read in Socrates I believed to be true,” meaning what I read as his opinions in Plato and others of the Socratic school, though Socrates himself wrote no books. So I might say, I wished to imitate the deeds which I had read of in Alexander and Scipio,3206 not meaning that they described their own deeds, but that I had read in other men’s works of the deeds which I admired as done by them. Therefore, though I may not be able to inform you of any records of Pythagoras himself as being extant, and proved by the attestation of his son or daughter or others of his disciples, yet you cannot hold me guilty of falsehood, because I said not that I had read his books, but his doctrines. You are quite mistaken if you thought to make this a screen for your falsehood, and to maintain that because I cannot produce any book written by Pythagoras, you have a right to assert that six thousand books of Origen have been lost.
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41. I come now to your Epilogue, (that is to the revilings which you pour upon me,) in which you exhort me to repentance, and threaten me with destruction unless I am converted, that is, unless I keep silence under your accusations. And this scandal, you say, will recoil upon my own head, because it is I who by replying have provoked you to the madness of writing when you are a man of extreme gentleness and of a meekness worthy of Moses. You declare that you are aware of crimes which I confessed to you alone when you were my most intimate friend, and that you will bring these before the public; that I shall be painted in my own colours; and that I ought to remember that I am lying at your feet, otherwise you might cut off my head with the sword of your mouth. And, after many such things, in which you toss yourself about like a madman, you draw yourself up and say that you wish for peace, but still with the intimation that I am to keep quiet for the future, that is that I am not to write against the heretics, nor to answer any accusation made by you; if I do this, I shall be your good brother and colleague, and a most eloquent person, and your friend and companion; and, what is still more, you will pronounce all the translations I have made from Origen to be orthodox. But, if I utter a word or move a step, I shall at once be unsound and a heretic, and unworthy of all connexion with you. This is the way you trumpet forth my praises, this is the way you exhort me to peace. You do not grant me liberty for a groan or a tear in my grief.
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42. It would be possible for me also to paint you in your own colours, and to meet your insanity with a similar rage; to say what I know and add what I do not know; and with a license like yours, or rather fury and madness, to keep up things false and true alike, till I was ashamed to speak and you to hear: and to upbraid you in such a way as would condemn either the accused or the accuser; to force myself on the reader by mere effrontery, make him believe that what I wrote unscrupulously I wrote truly. But far be it from the practice of Christians while offering up their lives to seek the life of others, and to become homicides not with the sword but the will. This may agree with your gentleness and innocence; for you can draw forth from the dung heap within your breast alike the odour of roses and the stench of corpses; and, contrary to the precept of the Prophet, call that bitter which once you had praised as sweet. But it is not necessary for us, in treating of Christian topics, to throw out accusations which ought to be brought before the law courts. You shall hear nothing more from me than the vulgar saying: “When you have said what you like, you shall bear what you do not like.” Or if the coarse proverb seems to you too vulgar, and, being a man of culture, you prefer the words of philosophers or poets, take from me the words of Homer.3207 “What words thou speakest, thou the like shalt hear.” One thing I should like to learn from one of such eminent sanctity and fastidiousness, (whose holiness is such that in the presence of your very handkerchiefs and aprons the devils cry out); whom do you take for your model in your writings? Has any one of the catholic writers, in a controversy of opinions, imputed moral offences to the man with whom he is arguing? Have your masters taught you to do this? Is this the system in which you have been trained, that, when you cannot answer a man, you should take off his head? that when you cannot silence a man’s tongue, you should cut it out? You have nothing much to boast of, for you are doing only what the scorpions and cantharides do. This is what Fulvia3208 did to Cicero and Herodias to John. They could not bear to hear the truth, and therefore they pierced the tongue that spoke truth with the pin that parted their hair. The duty of dogs is to bark in their masters’ service; why may I not bark in the service of Christ? Many have written against Marcion or Valentinus, Arius or Eunomius. By which of them was any accusation brought of immoral conduct? Did they not in each case bring their whole effort to bear upon the refutation of the heresy? It is the machination of the heretics, that is of your masters, when convicted of betrayal of the faith, to betake themselves to evil speaking. So Eustathius3209 the Bishop of Antioch was made into a father unawares. So Athanasius Bishop of Alexandria cut off a third hand of Arsenius; for, when he appeared3210 alive after having been supposed to be dead, he was found to have two. Such things also now are falsely charged against the Bishop of the same church, and the true faith is assailed by gold, which constitutes the power of yourself and your friends. But I need not speak of controversy with heretics, who, though they are really without, yet call themselves Christians. How many of our writers have contended with those most impious men, Celsus and Porphyry! but which of them has left the cause he was engaged in to busy himself with the imputation of crime to his adversary, such as ought to be set down not in church-writings but in the calendar of the judge? For what advantage have you gained if you establish a man’s criminality but fail in your argument? It is quite unnecessary that in bringing an accusation you should risk your own head. If your object is revenge, you can hire an executioner, and satisfy your desire. You pretend to dread a scandal, and yet you are ready to kill a man who was once your brother, whom you now accuse, and whom you always treat as an enemy. Yet I wonder how a man like you, who knows what he is about, should be so blinded by madness as to wish to confer a benefit upon me by drawing forth my soul out of prison,3211 and should not suffer it to remain with you in the darkness of this world.
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43. If you wish me to keep silence, cease from accusing me. Lay down your sword, and I will throw away my shield. To one thing only I cannot consent; that is, to spare the heretics, and not to vindicate my orthodoxy. If that is the cause of discord between us, I can submit to death, but not to silence. It would have been right to go through the whole of the Scriptures for answers to your ravings, and, like David playing on his harp, to take the divine words to calm your raging breast. But I will content myself with a few statements from a single book; I will oppose Wisdom to folly; for I hope if you despise the words of men you will not think lightly of the word of God. Listen, then, to that which Solomon the wise says about you and all who are addicted to evil speaking and contumely: “Foolish men, while they desire injuries, become impious and hate wisdom.3212 Devise not evil against thy friend. Be not angry with a man without a cause. The impious exalt contumely. 3213Remove from thee the evil mouth, keep far from thee the wicked lips, the eyes of him that speaketh evil, the tongue of the unjust, the hands which shed the blood of the just,3214 the heart that deviseth evil thoughts, and the feet which hasten to do evil. He that resteth upon falsehood feedeth the winds, and followeth the flying birds. For he hath left the ways of his own vineyard, and hath made the wheels of his tillage to err. He walketh through the dry and desert places, and with his hands he gathereth barrenness.3215 The mouth of the froward is near to destruction, and 3216he who uttereth evil words is the chief of fools. Every simple man is a soul that is blessed; but a violent man is dishonourable. 3217By the fault of his lips the sinner falleth into a snare. 3218All the ways of a fool are right in his own eyes. 3219The fool showeth his anger on that very day. 3220Lying lips are an abomination to the Lord. 3221He that keepeth his lips guardeth his own soul; but he that is rash with his lips shall be a terror to himself. 3222The evil man in his violence doeth evil things, and the fool spreadeth out his folly. 3223Seek for wisdom among the evil and thou shalt not find it. 3224The rash man shall eat of the fruit of his own ways. 3225The wise man by taking heed avoideth the evil; but the fool is confident, and joins himself to it. 3226A long-suffering man is strong in his wisdom; the man of little mind is very unwise. 3227He who oppresseth the poor reproacheth his Maker. 3228The tongue of the wise knoweth good things, but the mouth of fools speaketh evil. 3229A quarrelsome man preferreth strife, and every one that lifteth up his heart is unclean before God. 3230Though hand join with hand unjustly, they shall not be unpunished. 3231He that loveth life must be sparing to his mouth. 3232Insolence goeth before bruising, and evil thoughts before a fall. 3233He who closeth his eyes speaketh perverse things, and provoketh all evil with his lips. 3234The lips of a fool lead him into evil, and the foolhardy speech calleth down death. The man of evil counsel shall suffer much loss. 3235Better is a poor man who is just than a rich man that speaketh lies. 3236It is a glory to a man to turn away from evil words; but he that is foolish bindeth himself therewith. 3237Love not detraction, lest thou be rooted out. 3238The bread of lying is sweet to a man, but afterwards his mouth shall be filled with gravel. 3239He that gaineth treasures with a lying tongue followeth vanity, and shall come into the snares of death. 3240Say thou nought in the ear of a fool, lest haply the wise mock at thy words. 3241The bludgeon and the sword and the arrow are hurtful things; 3242so is the man who beareth false witness against his friend. 3243As the birds and the sparrows fly away, so the curse shall be vain and shall not overtake him. 3244Answer not an unwise man according to his lack of wisdom, lest thou become like unto him; but answer a fool according to his folly, lest he appear to himself to be wise. 3245He who layeth wait for his friends when he is discovered saith, I did it in sport. 3246A faggot for the coals, and wood for the fire, and a man of evil words for the tumult of strife. 3247If thine enemy ask thee aught, sparingly but with a loud voice, 3248consent thou not to him, for there are seven degrees of wickedness in his heart. 3249The stone is heavy, and the sand hard to be borne; but the anger of a fool is heavier than either; indignation is cruel, anger is sharp, and envy is impatient. 3250The impious man speaketh against the poor; and he that trusteth in the audacity of his heart is most foolish. 3251The unwise man putteth forth all his anger, but the wise dealeth it out in parts. 3252An evil son—his teeth are swords, and his grinders are as harrows, to consume the weak from off the earth, and the poor from among men.” Such are the lessons in which I have been trained and therefore I was unwilling to return bite for bite, and to attack you by way of retaliation; and I thought it better to exorcise the madness of one who was raving, and to pour in the antidote of a single book into his poisoned breast. But I fear I shall have no success, and that I shall be compelled to sing the song of David, and to take his words for my only consolation:3253 “The wicked are estranged from the womb, they go astray even from the belly. They have spoken lies. Their madness is like the madness of the serpent; like the deaf adder which stoppeth her ears, which will not hear the voice of the charmers, and of the magician wisely enchanting. God shall break their teeth in their mouth; the Lord shall break the great teeth of the lions. They shall come to nothing, like water that runneth away. He bendeth his bow until they be brought low. Like wax that melteth, they shall be carried away; the fire hath fallen upon them and they have not seen the sun.” And again:3254 “The righteous shall rejoice when he seeth the vengeance upon the impious; he shall wash his hands in the blood of the sinner. And man shall say, Verily, there is a reward for the righteous; verily, there is a God that judgeth those that are on the earth.”
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44. In the end of your letter you say: “I hope that you love peace.” To this I will answer in a few words: If you desire peace, lay down your arms. I can be at peace with one who shews kindness; I do not fear one who threatens me. Let us be at one in faith, and peace will follow immediately.
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This exposition of the Creed was made at the request of Laurentius, a Bishop whose see is unknown, but is conjectured by Fontanini, in his life of Rufinus, to have been Concordia, Rufinus’ birthplace. Its exact date cannot be fixed; but from the fact that he says nothing of his difficulty in writing Latin after being so long in the East, as he does in several of his books, and from the comparative ease of the style, it is most probable that it was written in the later years of his sojourn at Aquileia, that is, about 307–309. Its value is considerable (1) as bearing witness to the state of the Creed in local churches at the beginning of the 5th century, especially their variations. (In the church of Aquileia, in Jesu Christo. Patrem invisibilem et impassibilem. Resurrectio hujus carnis); (2) as showing the adaptation of Eastern ideas to the formation of Western theology; (3) as giving the Canon of the books of Scripture, and the Apocrypha of both the Old and New dispensations. The exposition is clear and reasonable; and, with the exception of a very few passages, such as the argument from the Phoenix for the Virgin Birth of our Lord, is still of use to us. We prefix the words of the creed on which Rufinus makes his commentary. It seems desirable to give the original Latin, as well as the English version of the Creed of Aquileia. The words or letters which are peculiar to this creed are put in italics. 1. Credo in Deo Patre omnipotenti invisibili et impassibili 2. Et in Jesu Christo, unico Filio ejus, Domino nostro; 3. Qui natus est de Spiritu Sancto ex Maria Virgine; 4. Crucifixus sub Pontio Pilato, et sepultus; 5. Descendit ad inferna; tertia die resurrexit a mortuis; 6. Ascendit in coelos; sedet ad dexteram Patris; 7. Inde venturus est judicare vivos et mortuos; 8. Et in Spiritu Sancto; 9. Sanctam Ecclesiam; 10. Remissionem peccatorum; 1. I believe in God the Father Almighty, invisible and impassible. 2. And in Jesus Christ, His only Son, our Lord; 3. Who was born from the Holy Ghost, of the Virgin Mary; 4. Was crucified under Pontius Pilate, and buried; 5. He descended to hell; on the third day he rose again from the dead. 6. He ascended to the heavens; he sitteth at the right hand of the Father; 7. Thence he is to come to judge the quick and the dead. 8. And in the Holy Ghost; 9. The Holy Church. 10. The remission of sins. 11. Hujus carnis resurrectionem. 11. The resurrection of this flesh.
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My mind has as little inclination for writing as sufficiency, most faithful Bishop(Papa) Laurentius,3255 for I well know that it is a matter of no little peril to submit a slender ability to general criticism. But, since in your letter you rashly (forgive my saying so) require me, by Christ’s sacraments, which I hold in the greatest reverence, to compose something for you concerning the Faith, in accordance with the traditional and natural meaning of the Creed, although in so doing you impose a burthen upon me beyond my strength to bear (for I do not forget the opinion of the wise, which so justly says, that “to speak of God even what is true is perilous”); still, if you will aid with your prayers the necessity which your requisition has laid upon me, I will try to say something, moved rather by a reverential regard for your injunction than by presumptuous confidence in my ability. What I write, however, will hardly seem worthy of the consideration of persons of mature understanding, but suited rather to the capacity of children and young beginners in Christ. I find, indeed, that some eminent writers have published treatises on these matters piously and briefly written. Moreover, I know that the heretic Photinus has written on the same; but with the object, not of explaining the meaning of the text to his readers, but of wresting things simply and truthfully said in support of his own dogma, while yet the Holy Spirit has taken care that in these words nothing should be set down which is ambiguous or obscure, or inconsistent with other truths: for therein is that prophecy verified, “Finishing and cutting short the word in equity: because a short word will the Lord make upon the earth.”3256 It shall be our endeavour, then, first to restore and emphasize the words of the Apostles in their native simplicity; and, secondly, to supply such things as seem to have been omitted by former expositors. But that the scope of this “short word,” as we have called it, may be made more plain, we will enquire from the beginning how it came to be given to the Churches.
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2. Our forefathers have handed down to us the tradition, that, after the Lord’s ascension, when, through the coming of the Holy Ghost, tongues of flame had settled upon each of the Apostles, that they might speak diverse languages, so that no race however foreign, no tongue however barbarous, might be inaccessible to them and beyond their reach, they were commanded by the Lord to go severally to the several nations to preach the word of God. Being on the eve therefore of departing from one another, they first mutually agreed upon a standard of their future preaching, lest haply, when separated, they might in any instance vary in the statements which they should make to those whom they should invite to believe in Christ. Being all therefore met together, and being filled with the Holy Ghost, they composed, as we have said, this brief formulary of their future preaching, each contributing his several sentence to one common summary: and they ordained that the rule thus framed should be given to those who believe. To this formulary, for many and most sufficient reasons, they gave the name or Symbol. For Symbol (κύμβολον) in Greek answers to both “Indicium” (a sign or token) and “Collatio” (a joint contribution made by several) in Latin. For this the Apostles did in these words, each contributing his several sentence. It is called “Indicium” or “Signum,” a sign or token, because, at that time, as the Apostle Paul says, and as is related in the Acts of the Apostles, many of the vagabond Jews, pretending to be apostles of Christ, went about preaching for gain’s sake or their belly’s sake, naming the name of Christ indeed, but not delivering their message according to the exact traditional lines. The Apostles therefore prescribed this formulary as a sign or token by which he who preached Christ truly, according to Apostolic rule, might be recognised. Finally, they say that in civil wars, since the armour of both sides is alike, and the language the same, and the custom and mode of warfare the same, each general, to guard against treachery, is wont to deliver to his soldiers a distinct symbol or watchword—in Latin “signum” or “indicium”—so that if one is met with, of whom it is doubtful to which side he belongs, being asked the symbol (watchword), he discloses whether he is friend or foe. And for this reason, the tradition continues, the Creed is not written on paper or parchment, but is retained in the hearts of the faithful, that it may be certain that no one has learnt it by reading, as is sometimes the case with unbelievers, but by tradition from the Apostles. The Apostles therefore, as we have said, being about to separate in order to preach the Gospel, settled upon this sign or token of their agreement in the faith; and, unlike the sons of Noah, who, when they were about to separate from one another, builded a tower of baked bricks and pitch, whose top might reach to heaven, they raised a monument of faith, which might withstand the enemy, composed of living stones and pearls of the Lord, such that neither winds might overthrow it, nor floods undermine it, nor the force of storms and tempests shake it. Right justly, then, were the former, when, on the eve of separation, they builded a tower of pride, condemned to the confusion of tongues, so that no one might understand his neighbour’s speech; while the latter, who were building a tower of faith, were endowed with the knowledge and understanding of all languages; so that the one might prove a sign and token of sin, the other of faith. But it is time now that we should say something about these same pearls, among which is placed first the fountain and source of all, when it is said,—
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3. I Believe in God the Father Almighty. But before I begin to discuss the meaning of the words, I think it well to mention that in different Churches some additions are found in this article. This is not the case, however, in the Church of the city of Rome; the reason being, as I suppose, that, on the one hand, no heresy has had its origin there, and, on the other, that the ancient custom is there kept up, that those who are going to be baptized should rehearse the Creed publicly, that is, in the audience of the people; the consequence of which is that the ears of those who are already believers will not admit the addition of a single word. But in other places, as I understand, additions appear to have been made, on account of certain heretics, by means of which it was hoped that novelty in doctrine would be excluded. We, however, follow that order which we received when we were baptized in the Church of Aquileia. I Believe, therefore, is placed in the forefront, as the Apostle Paul, writing to the Hebrews, says, “He that cometh to God must first of all believe that He is, and that He is a rewarder of those who believe on Him.”3257 The Prophet also says, “Except ye believe,3258 ye shall not understand.” That the way to understand, therefore, may be open to you, you do rightly first of all, in professing that you believe; for no one embarks upon the sea, and trusts himself to the deep and liquid element, unless he first believes it possible that he will have a safe voyage; neither does the husbandman commit his seed to the furrows and scatter his grain on the earth, but in the belief that the showers will come, together with the sun’s warmth, through whose fostering influence, aided by favouring winds, the earth will produce and multiply and ripen its fruits. In fine, nothing in life can be transacted if there be not first a readiness to believe. What wonder then, if, coming to God, we first of all profess that we believe, seeing that, without this, not even common life can be lived. We have premised these remarks at the outset, since the Pagans are wont to object to us that our religion, because it lacks reasons, rests solely on belief. We have shewn, therefore, that nothing can possibly be done or remain stable unless belief precede. Finally, marriages are contracted in the belief that children will be born; and children are committed to the care of masters in the belief that the teaching of the masters will be transferred to the pupils; and one man assumes the ensigns of empire, believing that peoples and cities and a well-equipped army also will obey him. But if no one enters upon any one of these several undertakings except in the belief that the results spoken of will follow, must not belief be much more requisite if one would come to the knowledge of God? But let us see what this “short word” of the Creed sets forth.
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4. “I Believe in God the Father Almighty.” The Eastern Churches almost universally deliver the article thus, “I believe in One God the Father Almighty;” and again in the next article, where we say, “And in Christ Jesus, His only Son, our Lord,” they deliver it., “And in One (Lord) our Lord Jesus Christ, His only Son;” confessing, that is, “one God,” and “one Lord,” in accordance with the authority of the Apostle Paul. But we shall return to this by-and-by. For the present, let us turn our attention to the words, “In God the Father Almighty.” “God,” so far as the human mind can form an idea, is the name of that nature or substance which is above all things. “Father” is a word expressive of a secret and ineffable mystery. When you hear the word “God,” you must understand thereby a substance without beginning, without end, simple, uncompounded, invisible, incorporeal, ineffable, inappreciable, which has in it nothing which has been either added or created. For He is without cause who is absolutely the cause of all things. When you hear the word “Father,” you must understand by this the Father of a Son, which Son is the image of the aforesaid substance. For as no one is called “Lord” unless he have a possession or a servant whose lord he is, and as no one is called “master” unless he have a disciple, so no one can possibly be called “father” unless he have a son. This very name of “Father,” therefore, shews plainly that, together with the Father there subsists a Son also. But I would not have you discuss how God the Father begat the Son, nor intrude too curiously into the profound mystery, lest haply, by prying too eagerly into the brightness of light inaccessible, you should lose the faint glimpse which, by the gift of God, has been vouchsafed to mortals. Or, if you suppose that this is a subject to be investigated with all possible scrutiny, first propose to yourself questions which concern ourselves, and then, if you are able to deal satisfactorily with them, speed on from earthly things to heavenly, from visible to invisible. Determine first, if you can, how the mind, which is within you, generates a word, and what is the spirit of the memory which is in it; and how these, though diverse in reality and in operation, are yet one in substance or nature; and though they proceed from the mind, yet are never separated from it. And if these, though they are in us and in the substance of our own soul, yet seem to be hidden from us in proportion as they are invisible to our bodily sight, let us take for our enquiry things which are more open to view. How does a spring generate a river from itself? By what spirit is it borne into a rapidly flowing stream? How happens it that, while the river and the spring are one and inseparable, yet neither can the river be understood to be, or can be called, the spring, nor the spring the river, and yet he who has seen the river has seen the spring also? Exercise yourself first in explaining these, and explain, if you are able, things which you have under your hands; and then you may come to loftier matters. Do not think, however, that I would have you ascend all at once from the earth above the heavens: I would first, with your leave, draw your attention to this firmament which our eyes behold, and ask you to explain, if you can, the nature of this visible luminary,—how that celestial fire generates from itself the brightness of light, how it also produces heat; and though these are three in reality, how they are yet one in substance. And if you are capable of investigating each of these, even then you must acknowledge that the mystery of the Divine generation is by so much the more diverse and the more transcendent as the Creator is more powerful than the creatures, as the artificer is more excellent than his work, as He who ever is more noble than that which had its beginning out of nothing. That God then is the Father of His only Son our Lord is to be believed, not discussed; for it is not lawful for a servant to dispute about the nativity of his lord. The Father hath borne witness from heaven, saying,3259 “This is My beloved Son, in Whom I am well pleased: hear Him.” The Father saith that He is His Son and bids us hear Him. The Son saith, “He who seeth Me seeth the Father also,”3260 and “I and the Father are one,”3261 and “I came forth from God and am come into the world.”3262 Where is the man who can thrust himself as a disputant between these words of Father and Son, who can divide the Godhead, separate its volition, break asunder the substance, cut the spirit in parts, and deny that what the Truth speaks is true? God then is a true Father as the Father of the Truth, not begetting extrinsically, but generating the Son from that which Himself is; that is, as the All-wise He generates Wisdom, as the Just Justice, as the Everlasting the Everlasting, as the Immortal Immortality, as the Invisible the Invisible; because He is Light, He generates Brightness, because He is Mind, He generates the Word.
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5. Now whereas we said that the Eastern Churches, in their delivery of the Creed, say, “In one God3263 the Father Almighty,” and “in one Lord,” the “one” is not to be understood numerically but absolutely. For example, if one should say, “one man” or “one horse,” here “one” is used numerically. For there may be a second man and a third, or a second horse and a third. But where a second or a third cannot be added, if we say “one” we mean one not numerically but absolutely. For example, if we say, “one Sun,” here the meaning is that a second or a third cannot be added, for there is but one Sun. Much more then is God, when He is said to be “one,” called “one,” not numerically but absolutely, that is, He is therefore said to be one because there is no other. In like manner, also, it is to be understood of the Lord, that He is one Lord, Jesus Christ, by or through Whom God the Father possesses dominion over all, whence also, in the next clause, God is called “Almighty.” God is called Almighty because He possesses rule and dominion over all things.3264 But the Father possesses all things by His Son, as the Apostle says, “By Him were created all things, visible and invisible, whether they be thrones, or dominions, or principalities, or powers.”3265 And again, writing to the Hebrews, he says, “By Him also He made the worlds,” and “He appointed Him heir of all things.”3266 By “appointed” we are to understand “generated.” Now if the Father made the worlds by Him, and all things were created by Him, and He is heir of all things, then by Him He possesses rule also over all things. Because, as light is born of light, and truth of truth, so Almighty is born of Almighty. As it is written of the Seraphim in the Revelation of John, “And they have no rest day and night, crying Holy, Holy, Holy, Lord God of Sabaoth, which was and which is and which is to come, the Almighty.”3267 He then who “is to come” is called “Almighty.” And what other is there who “is to come” but Christ, the Son of God? To the foregoing is added “Invisible and Impassible.” I should mention that these two words are not in the Creed of the Roman Church. They were added in our Church, as is well known, on account of the Sabellian heresy, called by us “the Patripassian,” that, namely, which says that the Father Himself was born of the Virgin and became visible, or affirms that He suffered in the flesh. To exclude such impiety, therefore, concerning the Father, our forefathers seem to have added these words, calling the Father “invisible and impassible.” For it is evident that the Son, not the Father, became incarnate and was born in the flesh, and that from that nativity in the flesh the Son became “visible and passible.” Yet so far as regards that immortal substance of the Godhead, which He possesses, and which is one and the same with that of the Father, we must believe that neither the Father, nor the Son, nor the Holy Ghost is “visible or passible.” But the Son, in that He condescended to assume flesh, was both seen and also suffered in the flesh. Which also the Prophet foretold when he said, “This is our God: no other shall be accounted of in comparison of Him. He hath found out all the way of knowledge, and hath given it unto Jacob His servant and to Israel His beloved. Afterward He shewed Himself upon the earth, and conversed with men.”3268
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6. Next there follows, “And in Christ Jesus, His Only Son, Our Lord.” “Jesus” is a Hebrew word meaning “Saviour.” “Christ” is so called from “Chrism,” i.e. unction. For we read in the Books of Moses, that Auses, the son of Nave,3269 when he was chosen to lead the people, had his name changed from “Auses” to “Jesus,” to shew that this was a name proper for princes and generals, for those, namely, who should “save” the people who followed them. Therefore, both were called “Jesus,” both the one who conducted the people, who had been brought forth out of the land of Egypt, and freed from the wanderings of the wilderness, into the land of promise, and the other, who conducted the people, who had been brought forth from the darkness of ignorance, and recalled from the errors of the world, into the kingdom of heaven. “Christ” is a name proper either to High Priests or Kings. For formerly both high priests and kings were consecrated with the ointment of chrism: but these, as mortal and corruptible, with material and corruptible ointment. Jesus is made Christ, being anointed with the Holy Spirit, as the Scripture saith of Him “Whom the Father hath anointed with the Holy Spirit sent down from heaven.”3270 And Isaiah had prefigured the same, saying in the person of the Son, “The Spirit of the Lord is upon Me, because He hath anointed Me, He hath sent Me to preach good tidings to the poor.”3271 Having shewn them what “Jesus” is, Who saves His people, and what “Christ” is, Who is made a High Priest for ever, let us now see in what follows, of Whom these things are said, “His only Son, our Lord.” Here we are taught that this Jesus, of whom we have spoken, and this Christ, the meaning of whose name we have expounded, is “the only Son of God” and “our Lord.” Lest, perchance, you should think that these human names have an earthly significance, therefore it is added that He is “the only Son of God, our Lord.” For He is born One of One, because there is one brightness of light, and there is one word of the understanding. Neither does an incorporeal generation degenerate into the plural number, or suffer division, where He Who is born is in no wise separated from Him Who begets. He is “only” (unique), as thought is to the mind, as wisdom is to the wise, as a word is to the understanding, as valour is to the brave. For as the Father is said by the Apostle to be “alone wise,”3272 so likewise the Son alone is called wisdom. He is then the “only Son.” And, although in glory, everlastingness, virtue, dominion, power, He is what the Father is, yet all these He hath not unoriginately as the Father, but from the Father, as the Son, without beginning and equal; and although He is the Head of all things, yet the Father is the Head of Him. For so it is written, “The Head of Christ is God.”3273
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7. When you hear the word “Son,” you must not think of a nativity after the flesh; but remember that it is spoken of an incorporeal substance, and a simple and uncompounded nature. For if, as we said above, whether when the understanding generates a word, or the mind sense, or light brings forth brightness from itself, nothing of this sort is sought for, or any manner of weakness and imperfection imagined in this kind of generation, how much purer and more sacred ought to be our conception of the Creator of all these! But perhaps you say, “The generation of which you speak is an unsubstantial generation. For light does not produce substantial brightness, nor the understanding generate a substantial word, but the Son of God, it is affirmed, was generated substantially.” To this we reply, first, When in other things examples or illustrations are used, the resemblance cannot hold in every particular, but only in some one point for which the illustration is employed. For instance, When it is said in the Gospel, “The kingdom of heaven is like leaven, which a woman hid in three measures of meal,”3274 are we to imagine that the kingdom of heaven is in all respects like leaven, so that like leaven it is palpable and perishable so as to become sour and unfit for use? Obviously the illustration was employed simply for this object—to shew how, through the preaching of God’s word which seems so small a thing, men’s minds could be imbued with the leaven of faith. So likewise, when it is said, “The kingdom of heaven is like unto a net cast into the sea, which draws in fishes of every kind,”3275 are we to suppose that the substance of the kingdom of heaven is likened in all respects to the nature of twine of which a net is made, and to the knots with which the meshes are tied? No; the sole object of the comparison is to shew that, as a net brings fishes to the shore from the depths of the sea, so by the preaching of the kingdom of heaven men’s souls are liberated from the depth of the error of this world. From whence it is evident that examples or illustrations do not answer in every particular to the things which they are brought to exemplify or illustrate. Otherwise, if they were the same in all respects, they would no longer be called examples or illustrations, but rather would be the things themselves.
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8. Then further it is to be observed that no creature can be such as its Creator. And therefore, as the divine substance or essence admits of no comparison, so neither does the Divinity. Moreover, every creature is of nothing. If therefore a spark which is so unsubstantial but yet is fire, begets of itself a creature which is of nothing, and maintains in it the essential nature of that from which it springs, (i.e. the fire of the parent spark), why could not the substance of that eternal Light which ever has been because it has in itself nothing which is not substantial, produce from itself substantial brightness? Rightly, therefore, is the Son called “only,” “unique.” For He who hath been so born is “only” and “unique.” That which is unique can admit of no comparison. Nor can He who made all things be like in substance to the things which He has made. This then is Christ Jesus, the only Son of God, who is also our Lord. “Only” may be referred both to Son and to Lord. For Jesus Christ is “only” both as truly Son and as one Lord. For all other sons, though they are called sons, are so called by the grace of adoption, not by verity of nature; and if there be others who are called lords, they are called so from an authority bestowed not inherent. But Christ alone is the only Son and the only Lord, as the Apostle saith, “One Lord Jesus Christ, by Whom are all things.”3276 Therefore, after the Creed has in due order set forth the ineffable mystery of the nativity of the Son from the Father, it now descends to the dispensation which He vouchsafed to enter upon for man’s salvation. And of Him whom just now it called the “only Son of God” and “our Lord,” it now says.
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9. “Who Was Born by (de) The Holy Ghost of the Virgin Mary.” This nativity among men is in the way of dispensation,3277 whereas the former nativity is of the divine substance; the one results from his condescension, the other from his essential nature. He is born by the Holy Ghost of the Virgin. Here a chaste ear and a pure mind is required. For you must understand that now a temple hath been built within the secret recesses of a Virgin’s womb for Him of Whom erewhile you learnt that He was born ineffably of the Father. And just as in the sanctification of the Holy Ghost no thought of imperfection is to be admitted, so in the Virgin-birth no defilement is to be imagined. For this birth was a new birth given to this world, and rightly new. For He Who is the only Son in heaven is by consequence the only Son on earth, and was uniquely born, born as no other ever was or can be. The words of the Prophets concerning Him, “A Virgin shall conceive and bring forth a Son,”3278 are known to all, and are cited in the Gospels again and again. The Prophet Ezekiel too had predicted the miraculous manner of that birth, calling Mary figuratively “the Gate of the Lord,” the gate, namely, through which the Lord entered the world. For he saith, “The gate which looks towards the East shall be closed, and shall not be opened, and no one shall pass through it, because the Lord God of Israel shall pass through it, and it shall be closed.”3279 What could be said with such evident reference to the inviolate preservation of the Virgin’s condition? That Gate of Virginity was closed; through it the Lord God of Israel entered; through it He came forth from the Virgin’s womb into this world; and the Virginstate being preserved inviolate, the gate of the Virgin remained closed for ever. Therefore the Holy Ghost is spoken of as the Creator of the Lord’s flesh and of His temple.
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10. Starting from this point you may understand the majesty of the Holy Ghost also. For the Gospel witnesses of Him that when the angel said to the Virgin, “Thou shalt bring forth a Son and shalt call His name Jesus, for He shall save His people from their sins,”3280 she replied, “How shall this be, seeing I know not a man?” on which the angel said to her, “The Holy Ghost shall come upon thee, and the power of the Highest shall overshadow thee. Wherefore that holy Thing which shall be born of Thee shall be called the Son of God.”3281 See here the Trinity mutually cooperating with each other. The Holy Ghost is spoken of as coming upon the Virgin, and the Power of the Highest as overshadowing her. What is the Power of the Highest but Christ Himself, Who is the Power of God and the Wisdom of God? Whose is this Power? The Power of the Highest. There is here then the Highest, there is also the Power of the Highest, there is also the Holy Ghost. This is the Trinity, everywhere latent, and everywhere apparent, distinct in names and persons, but inseparable in the substance of the Godhead. And although the Son alone is born of the Virgin, yet there is present also the Highest, there is present also the Holy Ghost, that both the conception and the bringing forth of the Virgin may be sanctified.
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11. These things, since they are asserted upon the warrant of the Prophetical Scriptures, may possibly silence the Jews, infidel and incredulous though they be. But the Pagans are wont to ridicule us when they hear us speak of a Virgin-birth. We must, therefore, say a few words in reply to their cavils. Every birth, I suppose, depends upon three conditions. There must be a woman of mature age, she must have intercourse with a man, her womb must not be barren. Of these three conditions, in the birth of which we are speaking, one was wanting, the man. And this, forasmuch as He of Whose birth we speak was not an earthly but a heavenly man, was supplied by the Heavenly Spirit, the virginity of the mother being preserved inviolate. And yet why should it be thought marvellous for a virgin to conceive, when it is well known that the Eastern bird, which they call the Phoenix, is in such wise born, or born again, without the intervention of a mate, that it remains continually one, and continually by being born or born again succeeds itself?3282 That bees know no wedlock, and no bringing forth of young, is notorious. There are also other things which are found to be subject to some such law of birth. Shall it be thought incredible, then, that was done by divine power, for the renewal and restoration of the whole world, of which instances are observed in the nativity of animals? And yet it is strange that the Gentiles should think this impossible, who believe their own Minerva to have been born from the brain of Jupiter. What is more difficult to believe, or what more contrary to nature? Here, there is a woman, the order of nature is kept, there is conception, and in due time birth; there, there is no female, but a man alone, and—birth! Why does he who believes the one marvel at the other? Again, they say that Father Bacchus was born from Jupiter’s thigh. Here is another portent, yet it is believed. Venus also, whom they call Aphrodite, was born, they believe, of the foam of the sea, as her compounded name shews. They affirm that Castor and Pollux were born of an egg, the Myrmidons of ants. There are a thousand other things which, though contrary to nature, find credit with them, such as the stones thrown by Deucalion and Pyrrha, and the crop of men sprung from thence. And when they believe such myths and so many of them, does one thing seem impossible to them, that a woman of mature age, not defiled by man but impregnated by the Holy Ghost, should conceive a divine progeny? who, forsooth, if they are hard of belief, ought in no wise to have given credence to those prodigies, being, as they are, so many and so degrading; but if they do believe them, they ought much more readily to receive these beliefs of ours, so honourable and so holy, than theirs so discreditable and so vile.
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12. But they say, perhaps, If it was possible to God that a virgin should conceive, it was possible also that she should bring forth, but they think it unmeet that a being of so great majesty should enter the world in such wise, that even though there had been no defilement from intercourse with man, there should yet be the unseemliness attendant upon the act of delivery. To which let us reply briefly, meeting them on their own level. If a person should see a little child in the act of being suffocated in a quagmire, and himself, a great man and powerful, should go into the mire, just at its verge, so to say, to rescue the dying child; would you blame this man as defiled for having stepped into a little mire, or would you praise him as merciful, for having preserved the life of one that was perishing? But the case supposed is that of an ordinary man. Let us return to the nature of Him Who was born. How much, think you, is the nature of the Sun inferior to him? How much beyond doubt, the Creature to the Creator? Consider now if a ray of the sun alights upon a quagmire, does it receive any pollution from it? or is the sun the worse for shedding his light upon foul objects? Fire, too, how far inferior is its nature to the things of which we are speaking? Yet no substance, whether foul or vile, is believed to pollute fire if applied to it. When the case is plainly thus with regard to material things, do you suppose that aught of pollution and defilement can befall that supereminent and incorporeal nature, which is above all fire and all light? Then, lastly, note this also: we say that man was created by God out of the clay of the earth. But if God is thought to be defiled in seeking to recover His own work, much more must He be thought so in making that work originally. And it is idle to ask why He passed through what is repugnant to our sense of modesty, when you cannot tell why He made what is so repugnant. And therefore it is not nature but general estimation that has made us think these things to be such. Otherwise, all things that are in the body, being formed from one and the same clay, are distinguished from one another only in their uses and natural offices.
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13. But there is another consideration which we must not leave out in the solution of this question, namely, that the substance of God, which is wholly incorporeal, cannot be introduced into bodies or be received by them in the first instance, unless there be some spiritual substance as a medium, which is capable of receiving the divine Spirit. For instance, if we say that light is able to irradiate all the members of the body, yet by none of them can it be received except by the eye. For it is the eye alone which is receptive of light. So the Son of God is born of a virgin, not associated with the flesh alone in the first instance, but begotten with a soul as a medium between the flesh and God. With the soul, then, serving as a medium, and receiving the Word of God in the secret citadel of the rational spirit, God was born of the Virgin without any such disparagement as you imagine. And therefore nothing is to be esteemed base or unseemly wherein was the sanctification of the Spirit, and where the soul which was capable of God became also a partaker of flesh. Account nothing impossible where the power of the Most High was present. Have no thought of human weakness where there was the plenitude of Divinity.
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14. He Was Crucified Under Pontius Pilate and Was Buried: He Descended into Hell. The Apostle Paul teaches us that we ought to have “the eyes of our understanding enlightened” 3283 “that we may understand what is the height and breadth and depth.”3284 “The height and breadth and depth” is a description of the Cross, of which that part which is fixed in the earth he calls the depth, the height that which is erected upon the earth and reaches upward, the breadth that which is spread out to the right hand and to the left. Since, therefore, there are so many kinds of death by which it is given to men to depart this life, why does the Apostle wish us to have our understanding enlightened so as to know the reason why, of all of them, the Cross was chosen in preference for the death of the Saviour. We must know, then, that that Cross was a triumph. It was a signal trophy. A triumph is a token of victory over an enemy. Since then Christ, when He came, brought three kingdoms at once into subjection under His sway (for this He signifies when he says, “That in the name of Jesus every knee should bow, of things in heaven, and things on earth, and things under the earth”),3285 and conquered all of these by His death, a death was sought answerable to the mystery, so that being lifted up in the air, and subduing the powers of the air, He might make a display of His victory over these supernatural and celestial powers. Moreover the holy Prophet says that “all the day long He stretched out His hands”3286 to the people on the earth, that He might both make protestation to unbelievers and invite believers: finally, by that part which is sunk under the earth, He signified His bringing into subjection to Himself the kingdoms of the nether world.
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15. Moreover,—to touch briefly some of the more recondite topics,—when God made the world in the beginning, He set over it and appointed certain powers of celestial virtues by whom the race of mortal men might be governed and directed. That this was so done Moses signifies in the Song in Deuteronomy, “When the Most High divided the nations, He appointed the bounds of the nations according to the number of the angels of God.”3287 But some of these, as he who is called the Prince of this world, did not exercise the power which God had committed to them according to the laws by which they had received it, nor did they teach mankind to obey God’s commandments, but taught them rather to follow their own perverse guidance. Thus we were brought under the bonds of sin, because, as the Prophet saith, “We were sold under our sins.”3288 For every man, when he yields to lust, is receiving the purchase-money of his soul. Under that bond then every man was held by those most wicked rulers, which same bond Christ, when He came, tore down and stripped them of this their power. This Paul signifies under a great mystery, when he says of Him, “He destroyed the hand-writing which was against us, nailing it to His cross, and led away principalities and powers, triumphing over them in Himself.”3289 Those rulers, then, whom God had set over mankind, having become contumacious and tyrannical, took in hand to assail the men who had been committed to their charge and to rout them utterly in the conflicts of sin, as the Prophet Ezekiel mystically intimates when he says, “In that day angels3290 shall come forth hastening to exterminate Ethiopia, and there shall be perturbation among them in the day of Egypt; for behold He comes.”3291 Having stript them then of their almighty power, Christ is said to have triumphed, and to have delivered to men the power which was taken from them, as also Himself saith to His disciples in the Gospel, “Behold I have given you power to tread upon serpents and scorpions, and upon all the might of the enemy.”3292 The Cross of Christ, then, brought those who had wrongfully abused the authority which they had received into subjection to those who had before been in subjection to them. But us, that is, mankind, it teaches first of all to resist sin even unto death, and willingly to die for the sake of religion. Next, this same Cross sets before us an example of obedience, in like manner as it hath punished the contumacy of those who were once our rulers. Hear, therefore, how the Apostle would teach us obedience by the Cross of Christ: “Let this mind be in you, which was in Christ Jesus, Who, being in the form of God, thought it not robbery to be equal with God, but made Himself of no reputation, taking upon Him the form of a servant, being made in the likeness of men; and, being found in fashion as a man, He became obedient unto death, even the death of the Cross.”3293 As, then, a consummate master teaches both by example and precept, so Christ taught the obedience, which good men are to render even at the cost of death, by Himself first dying in rendering it.
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16. But perhaps some one is alarmed at hearing us discourse of the death of Him of Whom, a short while since, we said that He is everlasting with God the Father, and that He was begotten of the Father’s substance, and is one with God the Father, in dominion, majesty, and eternity. But be not alarmed, O faithful hearer. Presently thou wilt see Him of Whose death thou hearest once more immortal; for the death to which He submits is about to spoil death. For the object of that mystery of the Incarnation which we expounded just now was that the divine virtue of the Son of God, as though it were a hook concealed beneath the form and fashion of human flesh (He being, as the Apostle Paul says, “found in fashion as a man”),3294 might lure on the Prince of this world to a conflict, to whom offering His flesh as a bait, His divinity underneath might catch him and hold him fast with its hook, through the shedding of His immaculate blood. For He alone Who knows no stain of sin hath destroyed the sins of all, of those, at least, who have marked the door-posts of their faith with His blood. As, therefore, if a fish seizes a baited hook, it not only does not take the bait off the hook, but is drawn out of the water to be itself food for others, so He Who had the power of death seized the body of Jesus in death, not being aware of the hook of Divinity inclosed within it, but having swallowed it he was caught forthwith, and the bars of hell being burst asunder, he was drawn forth as it were from the abyss to become food for others. Which result the Prophet Ezekiel long ago foretold under this same figure, saying, “I will draw thee out with My hook, and stretch thee out upon the earth: the plains shall be filled with thee, and I will set all the fowls of the air over thee, and I will satiate all the beasts of the earth with thee.”3295 The Prophet David also says, “Thou hast broken the heads of the great dragon, Thou hast given him to be meat to the people of Ethiopia.”3296 And Job in like manner witnesses of the same mystery, for he says in the person of the Lord speaking to him, “Wilt thou draw forth the dragon with a hook, and wilt thou put thy bit in his nostrils?” 3297
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17. It is with no loss or disparagement therefore of His Divine nature that Christ suffers in the flesh, but His Divine nature through the flesh descended into death, that by the infirmity of the flesh He might effect salvation; not that He might be detained by death according to the law of mortality, but that He might by Himself in his resurrection open the gates of death. It is as if a king were to proceed to a prison, and to go in and open the doors, undo the fetters, break in pieces the chains, the bars, and the bolts, and bring forth and set at liberty the prisoners, and restore those who are sitting in darkness and in the shadow of death to light and life. The king, therefore, is said indeed to have been in prison, but not under the same condition as the prisoners who were detained there. They were in prison to be punished, He to free them from punishment.
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18. They who have handed down the Creed to us have with much forethought specified the time when these things were done—“under Pontius Pilate,”—lest in any respect the tradition should falter, as though vague and uncertain. But it should be known that the clause, “He descended into Hell,” is not added in the Creed of the Roman Church, neither is it in that of the Oriental Churches. It seems to be implied, however, when it is said that “He was buried.” But in the love and zeal for the Divine Scriptures which possess you, you say to me, I doubt not, “These things ought to be proved by more evident testimonies from the Divine Scriptures. For the more important the things are which are to be believed, so much the more do they need apt and undoubted witness.” True. But we, as speaking to those who know the law, have left unnoticed, for the sake of brevity, a whole forest of testimonies. But if this also be required, let us cite a few out of many, knowing, as we do, that to those who are acquainted with the Scriptures, a very ample sea of testimonies lies open.
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19. First of all, then, we must know that the doctrine of the Cross is not regarded by all in the same light. It is one thing to the Gentiles, to the Jews another, to Christians another; as also the Apostle says, “We preach Christ crucified,—to the Jews a stumbling-block, to the Gentiles foolishness, but to those who are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ, the power of God and the wisdom of God;”3298 and, in the same place, “For the preaching of the Cross is to those who perish foolishness, but to those who are saved,” that is, to us, it is “the Power of God.”3299 The Jews, to whom it had been delivered out of the Law, that Christ should abide for ever, were offended by His Cross, because they were unwilling to believe His resurrection. To the Gentiles it seemed foolishness that God should have submitted to death, because they were ignorant of the mystery of the Incarnation. But Christians, who had ac- cepted His birth and passion in the flesh and His resurrection from the dead, of course believed that it was the power of God which had overcome death. First, therefore, hear how this very thing is prophetically declared by Isaiah, that the Jews, to whom the Prophets had foretold these things, would not believe, but that they who had never heard them from the Prophets, would believe them. “To whom He was not spoken of they shall see, and they that have not heard shall understand.”3300 Moreover, this same Isaiah foretells that, while those who were engaged in the study of the Law from childhood to old age believed not, to the Gentiles every mystery should be transferred. His words are: “And the Lord of Hosts shall make a feast on this mountain unto all nations: they shall drink joy, they shall drink wine, they shall be anointed with ointment on this mountain. Deliver all these things to the nations.”3301 This was the counsel of the Almighty respecting all the nations. But they who boast themselves of their knowledge of the Law will, perhaps, say to us, “You blaspheme in saying that the Lord was subjected to the corruption of death and to the suffering of the Cross.” Read, therefore, what you find written in the Lamentations of Jeremiah: “The Spirit of our countenance, Christ the Lord, was taken in our3302 corruptions, of whom we said, we shall live under His shadow among the nations.”3303 Thou hearest how the Prophet says that Christ the Lord was taken, and for us, that is, for our sins, delivered to corruption. Under whose shadow, since the people of the Jews have continued in unbelief, he says the Gentiles lie, because we live not in Israel, but among the Gentiles.
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20. But, if it does not weary you, let the point out as briefly as possible, specific references to prophecy in the Gospels, that those who are being instructed in the first elements of the faith may have these testimonies written on their hearts, lest any doubt concerning the things which they believe should at any time take them by surprise. We are told in the Gospel that Judas, one of Christ’s friends and associates at table, betrayed Him. Let the show you how this is foretold in the Psalms: “He who hath eaten My bread hath lifted up his heel against Me:”3304 and in another place; “My friends and My neighbours drew near and set themselves against Me:”3305 and again; “His words were made softer than oil and yet be they very darts.”3306 What then is meant by his words were made soft? “Judas came to Jesus and said unto Him, Hail, Master, and kissed Him.”3307 Thus through the soft blandishment of a kiss he implanted the execrable dart of betrayal. On which the Lord said to him, “Judas, betrayest thou the Son of Man with a kiss?”3308 You observe that He was appraised by the traitor’s covetousness at thirty pieces of silver. Of this also the Prophet speaks, “And I said unto them, If ye think good, give me my price, or if not, forbear;” and presently, “I received from them,” he says, “thirty pieces of silver, and I cast them into the house of the Lord, into the foundry.”3309 Is not this what is written in the Gospels, that Judas, “repenting of what he had done, brought back the money, and threw it down in the temple and departed?”3310 Well did He call it His price, as though blaming and upbraiding. For He had done so many good works among them, He had given sight to the blind, feet to the lame, the power of walking to the palsied, life also to the dead; for all these good works they paid Him death as His price, appraised at thirty pieces of silver. It is related also in the Gospels that He was bound. This also the word of prophecy had foretold by Isaiah, saying, “Woe unto their soul, who have devised a most evil device against themselves, saying, Let us bind the just One, seeing that He is unprofitable to us.”3311
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21. But, says some one, “Are these things to be understood of the Lord? Could the Lord be held prisoner by men and dragged to judgment?” Of this also the same Prophet shall convince you. For he says, “The Lord Himself shall come into judgment with the elders and princes of the people.”3312 The Lord is judged then according to the Prophet’s testimony, and not only judged, but scourged, and smitten on the face with the palms (of men’s hands), and spitted on, and suffers every insult and indignity for our sake. And because all who should hear these things preached by the Apostles would be perfectly amazed, therefore also the Prophet speaking in their person exclaims, “Lord, who hath believed our report?”3313 For it is incredible that God, the Son of God, should be spoken of and preached as having suffered these things. For this reason they are foretold by the Prophets, lest any doubt should spring up in those who are about to believe. Christ the Lord Himself therefore in His own person, says, “I gave My back to the scourges, and My cheeks to the palms,3314 I turned not away My face from shame and spitting.”3315 This also is written among His other sufferings, that they bound Him, and led Him away to Pilate. This also the Prophet foretold, saying, “And they bound him and conducted Him as a pledge of friendship (xenium) to King Jarim.” 3316 But some one objects, “But Pilate was not a king.” Hear then what the Gospel relates next, “Pilate hearing that He was from Galilee, sent Him to Herod, who was king in Israel at that time.”3317 And rightly does the Prophet add the name “Jarim,” which means “a wildvine, for Herod was not of the house of Israel, nor of that Israelitish vine which the Lord had brought out of Egypt, and “planted in a very fruitful hill,”3318 but was a wild vine, i.e. of an alien stock. Rightly, therefore, was he called “a wild-vine,” because he in nowise sprung from the shoots of the vine of Israel. And whereas the Prophet used the phrase “xenium,” “A pledge of friendship,” this also corresponds, “For Herod and Pilate,” as the Gospel witnesses, “from being enemies were made friends,”3319 and, as though in token of their reconciliation, each sent Jesus bound to the other. What matter, so long as Jesus, as Saviour, reconciles those who were at variance, and restores peace, and also brings back concord! Wherefore of this also it is written in Job, “May the Lord reconcile the hearts of the princes of the earth.”3320
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22. It is related that when Pilate would fain have released Him all the people cried out, “Crucify Him, Crucify Him!”3321 This also the Prophet Jeremiah foretells, saying, in the person of the Lord Himself, “My inheritance is become to Me as a lion in the forest. He hath uttered his voice against Me, wherefore I have hated it. And therefore (saith He) I have forsaken and left My house.”3322 And again in another place, “Against whom have ye opened your mouth, and against whom have ye let loose your tongues?”3323 When He stood before His judge, it is written that “He held His peace.”3324 Many Scriptures testify of this. In the Psalms it is written, “I became as a man that heareth not, and in whose mouth are no reproofs.” 3325 And again, “I was as a deaf man, and heard not, and as one that is dumb and openeth not his mouth.” And again another Prophet saith, “As a lamb before her shearer, so He opened not His mouth. In His humiliation His judgment was taken away.”3326 It is written that there was put on Him a crown of thorns. Of this hear in the Canticles the voice of God the Father marvelling at the iniquity of Jerusalem in the insult done to His Son: “Go forth and see, ye daughters of Jerusalem, the crown wherewith His mother hath crowned Him.”3327 Moreover, of the thorns another Prophet makes mention: “I looked that she should bring forth grapes, and she brought forth thorns, and instead of righteousness a cry.”3328 But that thou mayest know the secrets of the mystery, it behoved Him, Who came to take away the sins of the world, to free the earth also from the curse, which it had received through the sin of the first man, when the Lord said “Cursed be the earth in thy labours: thorns: and thistles shall it bring forth to thee.”3329 For this cause, therefore, is Jesus crowned with thorns, that first sentence of condemnation might be remitted. He is led to the cross, and the life of the whole word is suspended on the wood of which it is made. I would point out how this also is confirmed by testimony from the Prophets. You find Jeremiah speaking of it thus, “Come and let us cast wood into His bread, and crush Him out of the land of the living.”3330 And again, Moses, mourning over them, says, “Thy life shall be suspended before thine eyes, and thou shalt fear day and night, and shalt not believe thy life.”3331 But we must pass on, for already we are exceeding our proposed measure of brevity, and are lengthening out our “short word” by a long dissertation. Yet we will add a few words more, lest we should seem altogether to have passed over what we undertook.
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23. It is written that when the side of Jesus was pierced “He shed thereout blood and water.”3332 This has a mystical meaning. For Himself had said, “Out of His belly shall flow rivers of living water.”3333 But He shed forth blood also, of which the Jews sought that it might be upon themselves and upon their children. He shed forth water, therefore, which might wash believers; He shed forth blood also which might condemn unbelievers. Yet it might be understood also as prefiguring the twofold grace of baptism, one that which is given by the baptism of water, the other that which is sought through martyrdom in the outpouring of blood, for both are called baptism. But if you ask further why our Lord is said to have poured forth blood and water from His side rather than from any other member, I imagine that by the rib in the side the woman is signified. Since the fountain of sin and death proceeded from the first woman, who was the rib of the first Adam, the fountain of redemption and life is drawn from the rib of the second Adam.
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24. It is written that in our Lord’s passion there was darkness over the earth from the sixth hour until the ninth. To this also you will find the Prophet witnessing, “Thy Sun shall go down at mid-day.”3334 And again, the Prophet Zechariah, “In that day there shall be no more light. There shall be cold and frost in one day, and that day known to the Lord; and it shall be neither day nor night, but at evening time there shall be light.”3335 What plainer language could the Prophet have used for his words to seem not so much a prophecy of the future as a narrative of the past? He foretold both the cold and the frost. For Peter was warming himself at the fire because it was cold: and he was suffering cold not only in respect of the time (the early hour), but also of his faith. There is added,3336 “and that day shall be known to the Lord; and it shall be neither day nor night.” What is “neither day nor night?” Did he not plainly speak of the darkness interposed in the day, and then the light afterwards restored? That was not day, for it did not begin with sun-rise, neither was it complete night, for it did not, when the day was ended, receive its due space from the beginning or prolong it to the end; but the light which had been driven away by the crime of wicked men is restored at evening time. For after the ninth hour, the darkness is driven away, and the sun is restored to the world. Again, another Prophet witnesses of the same, “The light shall be darkened upon the earth in the day-time.”3337
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25. The Gospel further relates that the soldiers parted the garments of Jesus among themselves, and cast lots upon His vesture. The Holy Spirit provided that this also should be witnessed beforehand by the Prophets, for David says, “They parted my garments among them, and upon my vesture they did cast lots.”3338 Nor were the Prophets silent even as to the robe, the scarlet robe, which the soldiers are said to have put upon Him in mockery. Listen to Isaiah, “Who is this that cometh from Edom, red in his garments from Bozrah? Wherefore are thy garments red, and thy raiment as though thou hadst trodden in the winepress?” To which Himself replies, “I have trodden the wine-press alone, O daughter of Sion.”3339 For He alone it is Who hath not sinned, and hath taken away the sins of the world. For if by one man death could enter into the world, how much more by one man, Who was God also, could life be restored!
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26. It is related also that vinegar was given Him to drink, or wine mingled with myrrh which is bitterer than gall. Hear what the Prophet has foretold of this: “They gave Me gall to eat, and when I was thirsty they gave Me vinegar to drink.”3340 Agreeably with which Moses, even in his day, said to the people, “Their vine is of the vineyards of Sodom, and their branch of Gomorrah; their grape is a grape of gall, and their cluster a cluster of bitterness.” 3341 And again, the Prophet upbraiding them says, “Oh foolish people and unwise, have ye thus requited the Lord?”3342 Moreover, in the Canticles the same things are foretold, where even the garden in which the Lord was crucified is indicated: “I have come into my garden, my sister, my spouse, and have gathered in my myrrh.”3343 Here the Prophet has plainly set forth the wine mingled with myrrh which the Lord has given Him to drink.
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27. Next it is written that “He gave up the ghost.”3344 This also had been foretold, by the Prophet, who says, addressing the Father in the Person of the Son, “Into Thy hands I commend My Spirit.”3345 He is related also to have been buried, and a great stone laid at the door of the sepulchre. Hear what the word of prophecy foretold by Jeremiah concerning this also, “They have cut off my life in the pit, and have laid a stone upon Me.”3346 These words of the Prophet point most plainly to His burial. Here are yet others, “The righteous hath been taken away from beholding iniquity, and his place is in peace.”3347 And in another place, “I will give the malignant for his burial;”3348 and yet once more, “He hath lain down and slept as a lion, and as a lion’s whelp; who shall rouse Him up?”3349
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28. That He descended into hell is also evidently foretold in the Psalms, where it is said, “Thou hast brought Me also into the dust of the death.”3350 And again, “What profit is there in my blood, when I shall have descended into corruption?”3351 And again, “I descended into the deep mire, where there is no bottom.”3352 Moreover, John says, “Art Thou He that shall come (into hell, without doubt), or do we look for another?”3353 Whence also Peter says that “Christ being put to death in the flesh, but quickened in the Spirit which dwells in Him, descended to the spirits who were shut up in prison, who in the days of Noah believed not, to preach unto them;”3354 where also what He did in hell is declared. Moreover, the Lord says by the Prophet, as though speaking of the future, “Thou wilt not leave my soul in hell, neither wilt Thou suffer Thy Holy One to see corruption.”3355 Which again, in prophetic language he speaks of as actually fulfilled, “O Lord, Thou hast brought my soul out of hell: Thou hast saved me from them that go down into the pit.”3356 There follows next,—
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29. The Third Day He Rose Again from the Dead. The glory of Christ’s resurrection threw a lustre upon everything which before had the appearance of weakness and frailty. If a while since it seemed to you impossible that an immortal Being could die, you see now that He who has overcome death and is risen again cannot be mortal. But understand herein the goodness of the Creator, that so far as you by sinning have cast yourself down, so far has He descended in following you. And do not impute lack of power to God, the Creator of all things, by imagining his work to have ended in the fall into an abyss which He in His redemptive purpose was unable to reach. We speak of infernal and supernal, because we are bounded by the definite circumference of the body, and are confined within the limits of the region prescribed to us. But to God, Who is present everywhere and absent nowhere, what is infernal and what supernal? Notwithstanding, through the assumption of a body there is room for these also. The flesh which had been deposited in the sepulchre, is raised, that that might be fulfilled which was spoken by the Prophet, “Thou wilt not suffer Thy Holy One to see corruption.”3357 He returned, therefore, a victor from the dead, leading with Him the spoils of hell. For He led forth those who were held in captivity by death, as He Himself had foretold, when He said, “When I shall be lifted up from the earth I shall draw all unto Me.”3358 To this the Gospel bears witness, when it says, “The graves were opened, and many bodies of saints which slept arose, and appeared unto many, and entered into the holy City,”3359 that city, doubtless, of which the Apostle says, “Jerusalem which is above is free, which is the Mother of us all.”3360 As also he says again to the Hebrews, “It became Him, for Whom are all things, and by Whom are all things, Who had brought many sons into glory, to make the Author of their salvation perfect through suffering.”3361 Sitting, therefore, on the right hand of God in the highest heavens, He placed there that human flesh, made perfect through sufferings, which had fallen to death by the lapse of the first man, but was now restored by the virtue of the resurrection. Whence also the Apostle says, “Who hath raised us up together and made us sit together in the heavenly places.”3362 For He was the potter, Who, as the Prophet Jeremiah teaches, “took up again with His hands, and formed anew, as it seemed good to Him, the vessel which had fallen from His hands and was broken in pieces.”3363 And it seemed good to Him that the mortal and corruptible body which He had assumed, this body raised from the rocky sepulchre and rendered im- mortal and incorruptible, He should now place not on the earth but in heaven, and at His Father’s right hand. The Scriptures of the Old Testament are full of these mysteries. No Prophet, no Lawgiver, no Psalmist is silent, but almost every one of the sacred pages speaks of them. It seems superfluous, therefore, to linger in collecting testimonies; yet we will cite some few, remitting those who desire to drink more largely to the well-springs of the divine volumes themselves.
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30. It is said then in the Psalms, “I laid me down and slept, and rose up again, because the Lord sustained me.”3364 Again, in another place, “Because of the wretchedness of the needy and the groaning of the poor, now will I arise, saith the Lord.”3365 And elsewhere, as we have said above, “O Lord, thou hast brought my soul out of hell; Thou hast saved me from them that go down into the pit.”3366 And in another place, “Because Thou hast turned and quickened me, and brought me out of the deep of the earth again.”3367 In the 87th Psalm He is most evidently spoken of: “He became as a man without help, free among the dead.”3368 It is not said “a man,” but “as a man.” For in that He descended into hell, He was “as a man:” but He was “free among the dead,” because He could not be detained by death. And therefore in the one nature the power of human weakness, in the other the power of divine majesty is exhibited. The Prophet Hosea also speaks most manifestly of the third day in this wise, “After two days He will heal us; but on the third day we shall rise and shall live in His presence.”3369 This he says in the person of those who, rising with Him on the third day, are recalled from death to life. And they are the same persons who say, “On the third day we shall rise again, and shall live in His presence.” But Isaiah says plainly, “Who brought forth from the earth the great Shepherd of the sheep.”3370 Then, that the women were to see His resurrection, while the Scribes and Pharisees and the people disbelieved, this also Isaiah foretold in these words, “Ye women, who come from beholding, come: for it is a people that hath no understanding.”3371 But as to the women who are related to have gone to the sepulchre after the resurrection, and to have sought Him without finding, as Mary Magdalene, who is related to have come to the sepulchre before it was light, and not finding Him, to have said, weeping, to the angels who were there, “They have taken away the Lord, and I know not where they have laid Him”3372—even this is foretold in the Canticles: “On my bed I sought Him Whom my soul loveth; I sought Him in the night, and found Him not.”3373 Of those also who found Him, and held Him by the feet, it is foretold, in the same book, “I will hold Him Whom my soul loveth, and will not let Him go.”3374 Take these passages, a few of many; for being intent on brevity we cannot heap together more.
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31. He Ascended into Heaven, and Sitteth on the Right Hand of the Father: from Thence He Shall Come to Judge the Quick and the Dead. These clauses follow with suitable brevity at the end of this part of the Creed which treats of the Son. What is said is plain, but the question is how and in what sense it is to be understood. For to “ascend,” and to “sit,” and to “come,” unless you understand the words in accordance with the dignity of the divine nature, appear to point to something of human weakness. For having consummated what was to be done on earth, and having recalled souls from the captivity of hell, He is spoken of as ascending up to heaven, as the Prophet had foretold, “Ascending up on high He led captivity captive, and gave gifts unto men,”3375 those gifts, namely, which Peter, in the Acts of the Apostles, spoke of concerning the Holy Ghost, “Being therefore by the right hand of God exalted, He hath shed forth this gift which ye do see and hear.”3376 He gave the gift of the Holy Ghost to men, because the captives, whom the devil had before carried into hell through sin, Christ by His resurrection from death recalled to heaven. He ascended therefore into heaven, not where God the Word had not been before, for He was always in heaven, and abode in the Father, but where the Word made flesh had not been seated before. Lastly, since this entrance within the gates of heaven seemed new to its ministers and princes, they say to one another, on seeing the nature of flesh penetrating into the secret recesses of heaven, as David full of the Holy Ghost, declares, “Lift up your gates, ye princes, and be ye lift up ye everlasting gates, and the King of glory shall enter in. Who is the King of glory? The Lord strong and mighty, the Lord mighty in battle.”3377 Which words are spoken not with reference to the power of the divine nature, but with reference to the novelty of flesh ascending to the right hand of God. The same David says elsewhere, “God hath ascended jubilantly, and the Lord with the sound of the trumpet.”3378 For conquerors are wont to return from battle with the sound of the trumpet. Of Him also it is said, “Who buildeth up His ascent in heaven.”3379 And again, “Who hath ascended above the cherubims, flying upon the wings of the winds.”3380
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32. To sit at the right hand of the Father is a mystery belonging to the Incarnation. For it does not befit that incorporeal nature without the assumption of flesh; neither is the excellency of a heavenly seat sought for the divine nature, but for the human. Whence it is said of Him, “Thy seat, O God, is prepared from thence forward; Thou art from everlasting.” 3381 The seat, then, whereon the Lord Jesus was to sit, was prepared from everlasting, “in whose name every knee should bow, of things in heaven and things on earth, and things under the earth; and every tongue shall confess to Him that Jesus is Lord in the glory of God the Father;”3382 of Whom also David thus speaks, “The Lord said unto my Lord, Sit Thou on my right hand until I make Thine enemies Thy footstool.”3383 Referring to which words the Lord in the Gospel said to the Pharisees, “If therefore David in spirit calleth Him Lord, how is He his Son?”3384 By which He shewed that according to the Spirit He was the Lord, according to the flesh He was the Son, of David. Whence also the Lord Himself says in another place, “Verily I say unto you, henceforth ye shall see the Son of Man sitting at the right hand of the power of God.”3385 And the Apostle Peter says of Christ, “Who is on the right hand of God, seated in the heavens.”3386 And Paul also, writing to the Ephesians, “According to the working of the might of His power, which He wrought in Christ, when He raised Him from the dead, and seated Him on His right hand.”3387
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33. That He shall come to judge the quick and the dead we are taught by many testimonies of the divine Scriptures. But before we cite what the Prophets say on this point, we think it necessary to remind you that this doctrine of the faith would have us daily solicitous concerning the coming of the Judge, that we may so frame our conduct as having to give account to the Judge who is at hand. For this is what the Prophet said of the man who is blessed, that, “He ordereth his words in judgment.”3388 When, however, He is said to judge the quick and the dead, this does not mean that some will come to judgment who are still living, others who are already dead; but that He will judge both souls and bodies, where, by souls are meant “the quick,” and the bodies “the dead;” as also the Lord Himself saith in the Gospel, “Fear not them who are able to kill the body, but are not able to hurt the soul; but rather fear Him who is able to destroy both soul and body in Gehenna.”3389
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34. Now let us shew briefly, if you will, that these things were foretold by the Prophets. You will yourself, since you are so minded, gather together more from the ample range of the Scriptures. The Prophet Malachi says, “Behold the Lord Almighty shall come, and who shall abide the day of His coming, or who shall abide the sight of Him? For He doth come as the fire of a furnace and as fuller’s soap: and He shall sit, refining and purifying as it were gold and silver.”3390 But that thou mayest know more certainly Who this Lord is of Whom these things are said, hear what the Prophet Daniel also foretells: “I saw,” saith he, “in the vision of the night, and, behold, One like the Son of Man coming with the clouds of heaven, and He came nigh to the Ancient of days, and was brought near before Him; and there was given to Him dominion, and honour, and a kingdom. And all peoples, tribes, and languages shall serve Him. And His dominion is an eternal dominion which shall not pass away, and His kingdom shall not be destroyed.”3391 By these words we are taught not only of His coming and judgment, but of His dominion and kingdom, that His dominion is eternal, and His kingdom indestructible, without end; as it is said in the Creed,3392 “and of His kingdom there shall be no end.” So that one who says that Christ’s kingdom shall one day have an end is very far from the faith. Yet it behoves us to know that the enemy is wont to counterfeit this salutary advent of Christ with cunning fraud in order to deceive the faithful, and in the place of the Son of Man, Who is looked for as coming in the majesty of His Father, to prepare the Son of Perdition with prodigies and lying signs, that instead of Christ he may introduce Antichrist into the world; of whom the Lord Himself warned the Jews beforehand in the Gospels, “Because I am come in My Father’s Name, and ye received Me not, another will come in his own name, and him ye will receive.”3393 And again, “When ye shall see the abomination of desolation, spoken of by Daniel the Prophet, standing in the holy place, let him that readeth understand.”3394 Daniel, therefore, in his visions speaks very fully and amply of the coming of that delusion: but it is not worth while to cite instances, for we have enlarged enough already; we therefore refer any one who may wish to know more concerning these matters to the visions themselves. The Apostle also himself says, “Let no than deceive you by any means, for that day shall not come except there come a falling away first, and that man of sin be revealed, the Son of Perdition, who opposeth and exalteth himself above everything that is called God, or that is worshipped, so that he sitteth in the temple of God, shewing himself as though himself were God.”3395 And soon afterwards, “Then shall that wicked one be revealed, whom the Lord Jesus shall slay with the breath of His mouth, and shall destroy with the brightness of His coming: whose coming is after the working of Satan with all power and signs and lying wonders.”3396 And again, shortly afterwards, “And therefore the Lord shall send unto them strong delusion, that they may believe a lie, that all may be judged who have not believed the truth.”3397 For this reason, therefore, is this “delusion” foretold unto us by the words of Prophets, Evangelists, and Apostles, lest any one should mistake the coming of Antichrist for the coming of Christ. But as the Lord Himself says, “When they shall say unto you, lo, here is Christ, or lo, He is there, believe it not. For many false Christs and false prophets shall come and shall seduce many.”3398 But let us see how He hath pointed out the judgment of the true Christ: “As the lightning shineth from the east unto the west, so shall the coming of the Son of Man be.”3399 When, therefore, the true Lord Jesus Christ shall come, He will sit and set up his throne of judgment. As also He says in the Gospel, “He shall separate the sheep from the goats,”3400 that is, the righteous from the unrighteous; as the Apostle writes, “We must all stand before the judgment-seat of Christ, that every man may receive the awards due to the body, according as he hath done, whether they be good or evil.”3401 Moreover, the judgment will be not only for deeds, but for thoughts also, as the same Apostle saith, “Their thoughts mutually accusing or else excusing one another, in the day when God shall judge the secrets of men.”3402 But on these points let this suffice. Next follows in the order of the faith,—
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35. And in the Holy Ghost. What has been delivered above somewhat at large concerning Christ relates to the mystery of His Incarnation and of His Passion, and, by thus intervening, as belonging to His Person, has somewhat delayed the mention of the Holy Spirit. Otherwise, if the divine nature alone be taken into account, as in the beginning of the Creed we say “I believe in God the Father Almighty,” and afterwards, “In Jesus Christ His only Son our Lord,” so in like manner we add, “And in the Holy Ghost.” But all of these particulars which are spoken of above concerning Christ relate, as we have said, to the dispensation of the flesh (to His Incarnation). By the mention of the Holy Spirit, the mystery of the Trinity is completed. For as one Father is mentioned, and there is no other Father, and one only-begotten Son is mentioned, and there is no other only-begotten Son, so also there is one Holy Ghost, and there cannot be another Holy Ghost. In order, therefore, that the Persons may be distinguished, the terms expressing relationship (the properties) are varied, whereby the first is understood to be the Father, of Whom are all things, Who Himself also hath no Father, the second the Son, as born of the Father, and the third the Holy Ghost, as proceeding from both,3403 and sanctifying all things. But that in the Trinity one and the same Godhead may be set forth, since, prefixing the preposition “in” we say that we believe “in God the Father,” so also we say, “in Christ His Son,” so also “in the Holy Ghost.” But our meaning will be made more plain in what follows. For the Creed proceeds,—
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36. “The Holy Church; The Forgiveness of Sin, the Resurrection of This Flesh.” It is not said, “In the holy Church,” nor “In the forgiveness of sins,” nor “In the resurrection of the flesh.” For if the preposition “in” had been added, it would have had the same force as in the preceding articles. But now in those clauses in which the faith concerning the Godhead is declared, we say “In God the Father,” and “In Jesus Christ His Son,” and “In the Holy Ghost,” but in the rest, where we speak not of the Godhead but of creatures and mysteries, the preposition “in ” is not added. We do not say “We believe in the holy Church,” but “We believe the holy Church,” not as God, but as the Church gathered together to God: and we believe that there is “forgiveness of sins;” we do not say “We believe in the forgiveness of sins;” and we believe that there will be a “Resurrection of the flesh;” we do not say “We believe in the resurrection of the flesh.” By this monosyllabic preposition, therefore, the Creator is distinguished from the creatures, and things divine are separated from things human. This then is the Holy Ghost, who in the Old Testament inspired the Law and the Prophets, in the New the Gospels and the Epistles. Whence also the Apostle says, “All Scripture given by inspiration of God is profitable for instruction.”3404 And therefore it seems proper in this place to enumerate, as we have learnt from the tradition of the Fathers, the books of the New and of the Old Testament, which, according to the tradition of our forefathers, are believed to have been inspired by the Holy Ghost, and have been handed down to the Churches of Christ.
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37. Of the Old Testament, therefore, first of all there have been handed down five books of Moses, Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy; Then Jesus Nave, (Joshua the son of Nun), The Book of Judges together with Ruth; then four books of Kings (Reigns), which the Hebrews reckon two; the Book of Omissions, which is entitled the Book of Days (Chronicles), and two books of Ezra (Ezra and Nehemiah), which the Hebrews reckon one, and Esther; of the Prophets, Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, and Daniel; moreover of the twelve (minor) Prophets, one book; Job also and the Psalms of David, each one book. Solomon gave three books to the Churches, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, Canticles. These comprise the books of the Old Testament. Of the New there are four Gospels, Matthew, Mark, Luke, John; the Acts of the Apostles, written by Luke; fourteen Epistles of the Apostle Paul, two of the Apostle Peter, one of James, brother of the Lord and Apostle, one of Jude, three of John, the Revelation of John. These are the books which the Fathers have comprised within the Canon, and from which they would have us deduce the proofs of our faith.
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38. But it should be known that there are also other books which our fathers call not “Canonical” but “Ecclesiastical:” that is to say, Wisdom, called the Wisdom of Solomon, and another Wisdom, called the Wisdom of the Son of Syrach, which last-mentioned the Latins called by the general title Ecclesiasticus, designating not the author of the book, but the character of the writing. To the same class belong the Book of Tobit, and the Book of Judith, and the Books of the Maccabees. In the New Testament the little book which is called the Book of the Pastor of Hermas, [and that] which is called The Two Ways,3405 or the Judgment of Peter; all of which they would have read in the Churches, but not appealed to for the confirmation of doctrine. The other writings they have named “Apocrypha.” These they would not have read in the Churches. These are the traditions which the Fathers have handed down to us, which, as I said, I have thought it opportune to set forth in this place, for the instruction of those who are being taught the first elements of the Church and of the Faith, that they may know from what fountains of the Word of God their draughts must be taken.
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39. We come next in the order of belief to the Holy Church. We have mentioned above why the Creed does not say here, as in the preceding article, “In the Holy Church.” They, therefore, who were taught above to believe in one God, under the mystery of the Trinity, must believe this also, that there is one holy Church in which there is one faith and one baptism, in which is believed one God the Father, and one Lord Jesus Christ, His Son, and one Holy Ghost. This is that holy Church which is without spot or wrinkle. For many others have gathered together Churches, as Marcion, and Valentinus, and Ebion, and Manichæus, and Arius, and all the other heretics. But those Churches are not without spot or wrinkle of unfaithfulness. And therefore the Prophet said of them, “I hate the Church of the malignants, and I will not sit with the ungodly.”3406 But of this Church which keeps the faith of Christ entire, hear what the Holy Spirit says in the Canticles, “My dove is one; the perfect one of her mother is one.”3407 He then who receives this faith in the Church let him not turn aside in the Council of vanity, and let him not enter in with those who practise iniquity. For Marcion’s assembly is a Council of vanity in that he denies that the Father of Christ is God, the Creator, who by His Son made the world. Ebion’s is a Council of vanity since he teaches that, while we believe in Christ, we are withal to observe the circumcision of the flesh, the keeping of the Sabbath, the accustomed sacrifices, and all the other ordinances according to the letter of the Law. Manichæus’ is a Council of vanity in regard of his teaching; first in that he calls himself the Paraclete, then that he says that the world was made by an evil God, denies God the Creator, rejects the Old Testament, asserts two natures, one good the other evil, mutually opposing one another, affirms that men’s souls are co-eternal with God, that, according to the Pythagoreans, they return through divers circles of nativity into cattle and animals and beasts, denies the resurrection of our flesh, maintains that the passion and nativity of the Lord were not in the verity of flesh, but only in appearance. It was the Council of vanity when Paul of Samosata and his successor Photinus afterwards taught, that Christ was not born of the Father before the world, but had His beginning from Mary, and believed not that being God He was born man, but that of man He was made God. It was the Council of vanity when Arius and Eunomius taught as their determinate opinion that the Son of God was not born of the very substance of the Father, but was created out of nothing, and that the Son of God had a beginning, and is inferior to the Father: moreover they affirm that the Holy Ghost is not only inferior to the Son, but is also a ministering Spirit.3408 Theirs also is a Council of vanity who confess indeed that the Son is of the sub- stance of the Father, but distinguish and separate the Holy Spirit, while yet the Saviour shews in the Gospel that the power and Godhead of the Trinity are one and the same, saying, “Baptize all nations in the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost,”3409 and it is plainly impious for man to put asunder what God hath joined together. That also is the Council of vanity which a pertinacious and wicked contention formerly gathered together, affirming that Christ assumed human flesh indeed, but not a rational soul withal, since Christ conferred one and the same salvation on the flesh, and the animal soul, and the reason and mind of man. That also is the Council of vanity which Donatus drew together throughout Africa, by charging the Church with traditorship (delivering up the sacred books), and with which Novatus disturbed men’s minds by denying the grant of repentance to the lapsed, and condemning second marriages, though contracted possibly of necessity. All of these then avoid as congregations of malignants. Those also, if such there be, who are said to assert that the Son of God does not see or know the Father, as Himself is known and seen by the Father; or that the kingdom of Christ will have an end; or that the flesh will not be raised in the complete restoration of its substance; these also who deny that there will be a just judgment of God in respect of all, and affirm that the devil will be absolved from the punishment of damnation due to him. To all these, I say, let the believer turn a deaf ear. But hold fast by the holy Church, which confesses God the Father Almighty, and His only Son, Jesus Christ our Lord, and the Holy Ghost, of one concordant and harmonious substance, believes that the Son of God was born of the Virgin, suffered for man’s salvation, rose again from the dead in the same flesh in which he was born; and, lastly, hopes that He will come the Judge of all, through Whom also both the Forgiveness of Sins and the Resurrection of the Flesh are preached.
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40. As to the Forgiveness of Sins, it ought to be enough simple to believe. For who would ask the cause or the reason when a Prince grants indulgence? When the liberality of an earthly sovereign is no fit subject for discussion, shall man’s temerity discuss God’s largess? For the Pagans are wont to ridicule us, saying that we deceive ourselves, fancying that crimes committed in deed can be purged by words. And they say, “Can he who has committed murder be no murderer, and he who has committed adultery be accounted no adulterer? How then shall one guilty of crimes of this sort all of a sudden be made holy?” But to this, as I said, we answer better by faith than by reason. For he is King of all who hath promised it: He is Lord of heaven and earth who assures us of it. Would you have me refuse to believe that He who made me a man of the dust of the earth can of a guilty person make me innocent? And that He who when I was blind made me see, or when I was deaf made me hear, or lame walk, can recover for me my lost innocence? And to come to the witness of Nature—to kill a man is not always criminal, but to kill of malice, not by law, is criminal. It is not the deed then, in such matters, that condemns me, because sometimes it is rightly done, but the evil intention of the mind. If then my mind which had been rendered criminal, and in which the sin originated, is corrected, why should I seem to you incapable of being made innocent, who before was criminal? For if it is plain, as I have shewn, that crime consists not in the deed but in the will, as an evil will, prompted by an evil demon, has made me obnoxious to sin and death, so the will prompted by the good God, being changed to good, hath restored me to innocence and life. It is the same also in all other crimes. In this way there is found to be no opposition between our faith and natural reason, while forgiveness of sins is imputed not to deeds, which when once done cannot be changed, but to the mind, which it is certain can be converted from bad to good.
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41. This last article, which affirms the Resurrection of the Flesh, concludes the sum of all perfection with succinct brevity. Although on this point also the faith of the Church is impugned, not only by Gentiles, but by heretics likewise. For Valentinus altogether denies the resurrection of the flesh, so do the Manicheans, as we shewed above. But they refuse to listen to the Prophet Isaiah when he says, “The dead shall rise, and they who are in the graves shall be raised,”3410 or to most wise Daniel, when he declares, “Then they who are in the dust of the earth shall arise, these to eternal life, but those to shame and confusion.”3411 Yet even in the Gospels, which they appear to receive, they ought to learn from our Lord and Saviour, Who says, when instructing the Sadducees, “As touching the resurrection of the dead: have ye not read how He saith to Moses in the Bush, I am the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, the God of Jacob? Now God is not the God of the dead but of the living.”3412 Where in what goes before He declares what and how great is the glory of the resurrection, saying, “But in the resurrection of the dead they will neither marry or be given in marriage, but will be as the angels of God.”3413 But the virtue of the resurrection confers on men an angelical state, so that they who have risen from the earth shall not live again on the earth with the brute animals but with angels in heaven—yet those only whose purer life has fitted them for this—those, namely, who even now preserving the flesh of their soul in chastity, have brought it into subjection to the Holy Spirit, and thus with every stain of sins done away and changed into spiritual glory by the virtue of sanctification, have been counted worthy to have it admitted into the society of angels.
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42. But unbelievers cry, “How can the flesh, which has been putrified and dissolved, or changed into dust, sometimes also swallowed up by the sea, and dispersed by the waves, be gathered up again, and again made one, and a man’s body formed anew out of it?” To whom our first answer is in Paul’s words: “Thou fool, that which thou sowest is not quickened, except it die. And that which thou sowest, thou sowest not the body, which shall be, but bare grain of wheat or of some other seed: but God giveth it a body as seemeth good to Him.”3414 Did you not believe that that which you see taking place every year in the seeds which you cast into the ground will come to pass in your flesh which by the law of God is sown in the earth? Why, pray, have you so mean an opinion of God’s power that you do not believe it possible for the scattered dust of which each man’s flesh was composed to be re-collected and restored to its own original fabric? Do you refuse to admit the fact when you see mortal ingenuity search for veins of metal deeply buried in the ground, and the experienced eye discover gold where the inexperienced thinks there is nothing but earth? Why should we refuse to grant these things to Him who made man, when he whom He made can do so much? And when mortal ingenuity discovers that gold has its own proper vein, and silver another, and that a far different vein of copper, and diverse and distinct veins of iron and lead lie concealed beneath what has the appearance of earth, shall divine power be thought unable to discover and distinguish the component particles belonging to each man’s flesh, even though they seem to be dispersed?
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43. But let us endeavour to assist those souls which fail in their faith through reasons drawn from nature. If one should mix different sorts of seeds together and sow them indiscriminately in the earth, will not the grain of each several kind, wherever it may have been thrown, shoot forth at the proper time in accordance with its own specific nature so as to reproduce the condition of its own form and its own body. Thus then the substance of each individual flesh, though its particles have been variously and diversely scattered, has within it an immortal principle, since it is the flesh of an immortal soul, and at the time which God in His good pleasure shall appoint, there will be collected from the earth and drawn to it, its own component particles, which will be restored to that form which death had formerly dissolved. And thus it will come to pass that to each soul will be restored, not a confused or foreign body but its own which it had when alive, in order that the flesh together with its own soul may for the conflicts of the present life either be crowned if undefiled, or punished if defiled. And accordingly our Church,3415 in teaching the faith instead of “the Resurrection of the flesh,” as the Creed is delivered in other Churches, guardedly adds the pronoun “this”—“the resurrection of this flesh.” “Of this,” that is, no doubt, of the person who rehearses the Creed, making the sign of the cross upon his forehead, while he says the word, that each believer may know that his flesh, if he have kept it clean from sin, will be a vessel of honour, useful to the Lord, prepared for every good work; but, if defiled by sins, that it will be a vessel of wrath destined to destruction. But now, concerning the glory of the resurrection and the greatness of the promise by which God has bound Himself, if any one desires to be more fully informed, he will find notices in almost all the divine volumes, out of which, simply by way of bringing them to remembrance, we will mention a few passages in the present place, and then make an end of the work which you have enjoined. The Apostle Paul makes use of such arguments as the following in asserting that mortal flesh will rise again. “But if there be no resurrection of the dead, then is not Christ risen. And if Christ be not risen, our preaching is vain and your faith is vain.”3416 And presently afterwards, “But now is Christ risen from the dead, the first-fruits of them that sleep. For since by man came death, by man came also the resurrection of the dead. For as in Adam all die, even so in Christ shall all be made alive. But every man in his own order. Christ the first-fruits, afterwards they that are Christ’s at His coming, then cometh the end.”3417 And afterways he adds, “Behold I shew you a mystery: We shall all rise indeed, but we shall not3418 all be changed;” or as other copies read, “We shall all sleep, indeed but we shall not all be changed; in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trump; for the trumpet shall sound, and the dead shall rise incorruptible, and we shall be changed.”3419 However, whichever be the true text, writing to the Thessalonians, he says, “I would not have you ignorant, brethren, concerning those who are asleep, that ye sorrow not, as the others who have no hope. For if we believe that Jesus died and rose again, so those also who sleep through Jesus shall God bring with Him. For this we say unto you by the word of the Lord, that we who are alive and remain at the coming of the Lord shall not prevent them that sleep. For the Lord Himself shall descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel, with the trump of God, and the dead who are in Christ shall rise first: then we who are alive and remain shall be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet Christ in the air, and so shall we ever be with the Lord.”3420
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44. But that you may not suppose this to be a novel doctrine peculiar to Paul, I will adduce also what the Prophet Ezekiel foretold by the Holy Ghost. “Behold,” saith he, “I will open your graves and bring you forth out of your graves.”3421 Let me recall, further, how Job, who abounds in mystical language, plainly predicts the resurrection of the dead. “There is hope for a tree; for if it be cut down it will sprout again, and its shoot shall never fail. But if its root have waxed old in the earth, and the stock thereof be dead in the dust, yet through the scent of water it will flourish again, and put forth shoots as a young plant. But man, if he be dead, is he departed and gone? And mortal man, if he have fallen, shall he be no more?”3422 Dost thou not see, that in these words he is appealing to men’s sense of shame, as it were, and saying, “Is mankind so foolish, that when they see the stock of a tree which has been cut down shooting forth again from the ground, and dead wood again restored to life, they imagine their own case to have no likeness to that of wood or trees?” But to convince you that Job’s words are to be read as a question, when he says, “But mortal man when he hath fallen shall he not rise again?” take this proof from what follows; for he adds immediately, “But if a man be dead, shall he live?”3423 And presently afterwards he says, “I will wait till I be made again;”3424 and afterwards he repeats the same: “Who shall raise again upon the earth my skin, which is now draining this cup of suffering?”3425
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45. Thus much in proof of the profession which we make in the Creed when we say “The resurrection of this flesh.” As to the addition “this” see how consonant it is with all that we have cited from the divine books. What else does Job signify in the place which we explained above, “He will raise again my skin, which is now draining this cup of suffering,” that is, which is undergoing these torments? Does he not plainly say that there will be a resurrection of this flesh, this, I mean, which is now undergoing the extremity of trials and tribulations? Moreover, when the Apostle says, “This corruptible must put on incorruption, and this mortal must put on immortality,”3426 are not his words those of one who in a manner touches his body and places his finger upon it? This body then, which is now corruptible, will by the grace of the resurrection be incorruptible, and this which is now mortal will be clothed with virtues of immortality, that, as “Christ rising from the dead dieth no more, death hath no more dominion over Him,”3427 so those who shall rise in Christ shall never again feel corruption or death, not because the nature of flesh will have been cast off, but because its condition and quality will have been changed. There will be a body, therefore, which will rise from the dead incorruptible and immortal, not only of the righteous, but also of sinners; of the righteous that they may be able ever to abide with Christ, of sinners that they may undergo without end the punishment due to them.
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46. That the righteous shall ever abide with Christ our Lord we have proved above, where we have shewn that the Apostle says, “Then we which are alive and remain shall be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet Christ in the air, and so shall we ever be with the Lord.”3428 And do not marvel that the flesh of the saints is to be changed into such a glorious condition at the resurrection as to be caught up to meet God, suspended in the clouds and borne in the air, since the same Apostle, setting forth the great things which God bestows on them that love Him, says, “Who shall change our vile body that it may be made like unto His glorious body.”3429 It is nowise absurd then, if the bodies of the saints are said to be raised up into the air, seeing that they are said to be renewed after the image of Christ’s body, which is seated at God’s right hand. But this also the holy Apostle adds, speaking either of himself or of others of his own place or merit, “He will raise us up together with Christ and make us sit together in the heavenly places.”3430 Whence, since God’s saints have these promises and an infinite number like them respecting the resurrection of the righteous, it will now not be difficult to believe those also which the Prophets have foretold, namely, that “the righteous shall shine as the sun and as the brightness of the firmament in the kingdom of God.”3431 For who will think it difficult that they should have the brightness of the sun, and be adorned with the splendour of the stars and of this firmament, for whom the life and conversation of God’s angels are being prepared in heaven, or who are represented as being hereafter to be conformed to the glory of Christ’s body? In reference to which glory, promised by the Saviour’s mouth, the holy Apostle says, “It is sown as an animal body; it will rise a spiritual body.”3432 For if it is true, as it certainly is true, that God will vouchsafe to associate every one of the righteous and of the saints in companionship with the angels, it is certain that He will change their bodies also into the glory of a spiritual body.
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47. Nor let this promise seem to you contrary to the natural structure of the body. For if we believe, according to what is written, that God took clay of the earth and made man, and that the origin of our body was this, that, by the will of God, earth was changed into flesh, why does it seem absurd to you or contrary to reason if, on the same principles on which earth is said to be advanced to all animal body, an animal body in turn should be believed to be advanced to a spiritual body? These things and many like these you will find in the divine Scriptures concerning the resurrection of the righteous. There will be given to sinners also, as we said above, a condition of incorruption and immortality at the resurrection, that, as God assigns this state to the righteous for perpetuity of glory, so He may assign the same to sinners for prolongation of confusion and punishment. For this also the Prophet’s words, which we referred to above, state clearly: “Many shall rise from the dust of the earth, some to life eternal, and others to confusion and eternal shame.”3433
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48. If then we have understood in what august significance God Almighty is called Father, and in what mysterious sense our Lord Jesus Christ is held to be His only Son, and with what entire perfection of meaning His Spirit is called the Holy Spirit, and how the Holy Trinity is one in substance but has distinctions of relation and of Persons, what also is the birth from a Virgin, what the nativity of the Word in the flesh, what the mystery of the Cross, what the purpose of our Lord’s descent into hell, what the glory of the Resurrection, and the delivery of souls from their captivity in the infernal regions, what also His ascension into heaven, and the expected advent of the Judge; moreover how the holy Church ought to be acknowledged as opposed to the congregations of vanity, what is the number of the sacred Volume, what conventicles of heretics ought to be avoided, and how in the forgiveness of sins there is no opposition whatever between the divine freedom and natural reason, and how not only the sacred oracles but also the example of Lord and Saviour Himself, and the conclusions of natural reason, confirm the truth of the resurrection of our flesh;—if, I say, we have intelligently followed these in succession in accordance with the rule of the tradition hereinbefore expounded, we pray that the Lord will grant to us, and to all who hear these words, that having kept the faith which we have received, having finished our course, we may await the crown of righteousness laid up for us, and be found among those who shall rise again to eternal life, and be delivered from confusion and eternal shame, through Christ our Lord, through Whom to God the Father Almighty with the Holy Ghost is glory and dominion for ever and ever. Amen.
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Addressed to Bishop Gaudentius. (For the occasion and date3434 of this work see the Prolegomena, p. 412.) You possess so much vigour of character, my dear Gaudentius, you who are so signal an ornament of our teachers, or as I would rather say, you have the grace of the Spirit in so large a measure, that even what you say in the way of daily conversation, or of addresses that you preach in church,3435 ought to be consigned in writing and handed down for the instruction of posterity. But I am far less quick, my native talent being but slender, and old age is already making me sluggish and slow; and this work is nothing but the payment of a debt due to the command laid upon me by the virgin Sylvia whose memory I revere. She it was who demanded of me, as you have now done by the right of heirship, to translate Clement into our language. The debt is paid at last, though after many delays. It is a part of the booty, and in my opinion no small one, which I have carried off from the libraries of the Greeks, and which I am collecting for the use and advantage of our countrymen. I have no food of my own to bring them, and I must import their nourishment from abroad. However, foreign goods are apt to appear sweeter; and sometimes they are really more useful. Moreover, almost anything which brings healing to our bodies or is a defence against disease or an antidote to poison comes from abroad. Judæa sends us the distillation of the balsam tree, Crete the leaf of the dictamnus, Arabia her aromatic flowers, and India the crop of the spikenard. These goods come to us, no doubt, in a less perfect condition than those which our own fields produce, but they preserve intact their pleasant scent and their healing power. Therefore, my friend who are as my own soul, I present to you Clement returning to Rome. I present him dressed in a Latin garb. Do not think it strange if the aspect which his eloquence presents is less bright than it might be. It makes no difference if only the meaning is felt to be the same. These are foreign wares, then, which I am importing at a great expense of labour; and I have still to see whether our countrymen will regard with gratitude one who is bringing them the spoils (spolia) of his warfare, and who is unlocking with the key of our language a treasure house hitherto concealed, though he does it with the utmost good will. I only trust that God may look favourably on your good wishes, so that my present may not be met in any quarter by evil eyes and envious looks; and that we may not witness that extremely monstrous phenomenon, expressions of illwill on the part of those on whom the gift is conferred, while those from whom it is taken part with it ungrudgingly. It is but right that you, who have read this work in the Greek should point out to others the design of my translation—unless indeed, you feel that in some respects I have not observed the right method of rendering the original. You are, I believe well aware that there are two Greek editions of this work of Clement, his Recognitions; that there are two sets of books, which in some few cases differ from each other though the bulk of the narrative is the same. For instance, the last part of the work, that which gives an account of the transformation of Simon Magus, exists in one of these, while in the other it is entirely absent. On the other hand there are some things, such as the dissertation on the unbegotten and the begotten God, and a few others, which, though they are found in both editions, are, to say the least of them, beyond my understanding; and these I have preferred to leave others to deal with rather than to present them in an inadequate manner. As to the rest, I have taken pains not to swerve, even in the slightest degree from either the sense or the diction; and this, though it makes the expression less ornate, renders it more faithful. There is a letter in which this same Clement writing to James the Lord’s brother, gives an account of the death of Peter, and says that he has left him as his successor, as ruler and teacher of the church; and further incorporates a whole scheme of ecclesiastical government. This I have not prefixed to the work, both because it is later in point of time, and because it has been previously translated and published by me. Nevertheless, there is a point which would perhaps seem inconsistent with facts were I to place the translation of it in this work, but which I do not consider to involve an impossibility. It is this. Linus and Cletus were Bishops of the city of Rome before Clement. How then, some men ask, can Clement in his letter to James say that Peter passed over to him his position as a church-teacher.3436 The explanation of this point, as I understand, is as follows. Linus and Cletus were, no doubt, Bishops in the city of Rome before Clement, but this was in Peter’s life-time; that is, they took charge of the episcopal work, while he discharged the duties of the apostolate. He is known to have done the same thing at Cæsarea; for there, though he was himself on the spot, yet he had at his side Zacchæus whom he had ordained as Bishop. Thus we may see how both things may be true; namely how they stand as predecessors of Clement in the list of Bishops, and yet how Clement after the death of Peter became his successor in the teacher’s chair. But it is time that we should pay attention to the beginning of Clement’s own narrative, which he addresses to James the Lord’s brother.
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Composed at Aquileia about the year 307 a.d. (For the questions relating to Xystus see the Prolegomena, p. 412.) Rufinus to Apronianus, his own friend. I know that, just as the sheep come gladly when their own shepherd calls them, so in matters of religion men attend most gladly to the admonitions of a teacher who speaks their own language: and therefore, my very dear Apronianus, when that pious lady who is my daughter but now your sister in Christ, had laid her commands on me to compose for her a treatise of such a nature that its understanding should not require any great effort, I translated into Latin in a very open and plain style the work of Xystus, who is said to be the same man who at Rome is called Sixtus, and who gained the glory of being both bishop and martyr. I think that, when she reads this, she will find it expressed with such brevity that a vast meaning is unfolded in each several line, with such power that a sentence only a line long would suffice for a whole life’s training, and yet with such simplicity that one who looked over the shoulder of a girl as she read it might question whether I were not quite weak in intellect. And the whole work is so concise that it would be possible for her never to let go of it. The entire book would hardly be bigger than the finger ring of one of our ancestors. And indeed it seems but right that one who has learnt through the word of God to count as dross the ornaments of the world should now receive at my hands by way of ornament a necklace of the word and of wisdom. For the present let this little book serve for a ring and be kept constantly in the hands: but it will not be long before it will penetrate into the treasure house and be wholly laid up in the heart, and bring forth from its innermost chamber the germs of instruction and of a participation in all good works. I have added further a few choice sayings addressed by a pious father to his son, but all so succinct that the whole of this little work may rightly be called in Greek the Enchiridion3437 or in Latin the Annulus.3438
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Addressed to Chromatius, Bishop of Aquileia, a.d. 401. (For the occasion of writing, and the date, see Prolegomena, p. 412.) It is the custom, they say, of skilful physicians, when they perceive that some epidemic disease is near at hand in one of our cities, to provide some kind of medicine, whether solid or liquid, which men may use as a preventative to defend themselves from the destruction which is hanging over them. You have imitated this method of the doctors, my venerable Father, Chromatius, at the moment when the gates of Italy were broken through by Alaric the commander of the Goths, and thus a disease and plague poured in upon us, which made havoc of the fields and cattle and men throughout the land. You then sought a remedy against the cruelty and destruction, so that the minds of men which were languishing might be drawn away from the contagion of the prevailing malady, and might preserve their balance through an interest in better pursuits. This you have done by enjoining on me the task of translating into Latin the ecclesiastical history which was written in the Greek language by that most learned man, Eusebius of Cæsarea. You thought that the mind of those who heard it read to them might be so held fast by it that, in its eager desire for the knowledge of past events, it might to some extent become oblivious of their actual sufferings. I tried to excuse myself from the task, as being, through my weakness unequal to it, and as having in the lapse of years lost the use of the Latin tongue. But I reflected that your commands were not to be divaricated from your position in the Apostolic order. For, at the time when the multitude in the desert were hungering, and the Lord said to his Apostles, “Give ye them to eat,” Philip who was one of them instead of bringing out the loaves which were hid in the wallet of the Apostles, said that there was a little lad there who had five loaves and two fishes. He knew that the exhibition of the divine virtue would be none the less brilliant if the ministry of some of the little ones were used in its fulfilment. He modestly excused his action by adding, “What are these among so many?” So that the divine power might be more conspicuous through the difficult and desperate circumstances in which it acted. I felt that, since you were a scion of the Apostolic order, you had possibly acted in remembrance of Philip’s example, and that, when you saw that the time was come for the multitudes to be fed, you had engaged the services of a little lad who might be able to contribute, twice told, the five loaves3439 which he had received, but who further, to fulfil the Gospel type, might add two small fishes3440 which he had captured by his own efforts. I have therefore made the attempt to execute what you had ordered, having the assurance that the deficiency of my inexperience would be excused on account of the authority of him who gave the command. I must point out the course I have taken in reference to the tenth book of this work. As it stands in the Greek, it has little to do with the process of events. All but a small part of it is taken up with discussions tending to the praise of particular Bishops, and adds nothing to our knowledge of facts. I have therefore left out all this superfluous matter; and, whatever in it belonged to genuine history I have added to the ninth book, with which I have made his history close. The tenth and eleventh books I have myself compiled, partly from the traditions of the former generation, partly from facts within my own memory; and these I have added to the previous books, like the two fishes to the loaves. If you bestow your approval and benediction upon them, I shall have a sure confidence that they will suffice for the multitude. The work as now completed contains the events from the Ascension of the Saviour to the present time; my own two books those from the days of Constantine when the persecution came to an end on to the death of the Emperor Theodosius. The following note occurs at the end of the ninth book of Rufinus’ Latin Version of Eusebius. Thus far Eusebius has given us the record of the history. As to the subsequent events, as they have followed on up to the present time, as I have found them recorded in the writings of the last generation, or so far as they are covered by my own knowledge, I will add them, obeying, as best I may, in this point also the commands of our father in God.3441
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Addressed to Apronianus,3442 either at Rome or at Aquileia, between a.d. 398 and a.d. 407. The whole exposition of the thirty-sixth, thirty-seventh and thirty-eighth Psalms is ethical in its character, being designed to enforce more correct methods of life; and teaches at one time the way of conversion and repentance, at another that of purification and of progress. I have therefore thought it well to translate it into Latin for you, my dearest son Apronianus, having first arranged it in nine of the short sermons which are called in Greek Homilies, and incorporated it into one whole; and thus this discourse which in all its parts aims at the correction and the advancement of the moral life, is collected into a single volume. My translation will at all events be of use so far as to put the reader without effort in possession of the meaning of the author, which is here fully laid open, and to bring home to him the simplicity of life which he enjoins with clearness of thought and in simple words; and thus the voice of prophecy may reach not men alone but also god-fearing women, and lend subtlety to the minds of the simple. Yet I fear that pious lady, who is my daughter but your sister in Christ, may think that she owes me no thanks for my work if it brings her nothing but puzzling thoughts and thorny questions: for the human body could hardly hold together if divine providence had formed it of bones and muscles alone without blending with them the ease and grace of the softer tissues.
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Addressed to Heraclius at Aquileia about a.d. 407. My intention was to press the shore of the quiet land in the little bark in which I was sailing, and to draw out a few little fishes from the pools of Greece: but you have compelled me, brother Heraclius, to give my sails to the wind and go forth into the deep sea; you persuade me to leave the work which lay before me in the translation of the homilies written by the Man of Adamant3443 in his old age, and to open to you the fifteen volumes in which he discussed the Epistle of Paul to the Romans. In these books, while he aims at representing the Apostle’s thoughts, he is carried away into a sea of such depth that one who follows him into it may well be afraid of being drowned in the greatness of his thoughts as in the vastness of the waves. Then also you do not consider this, that my breath is but scanty for filling a grand trumpet of eloquence like his. And beyond all these difficulties is this, that the books themselves have been interpolated. In almost all the libraries (I grant that no one can tell how it happened) some of the volumes are absent from the body of the work; and to supply these, and to restore the continuity of the work in the Latin version is beyond my talent, but would be, as you must know when you make your demand, a special gift of God. You add, however, so that nothing may be wanting to the labour I am undertaking, that I had better abbreviate this whole body of fifteen volumes, which in the Greek reaches to the length of forty thousand lines or more, and bring it within moderate compass. Your injunctions are hard indeed, and might be thought to be imposed by one who did not care to consider what the burden of such a work must be. I will, however, attempt it, hoping that through your prayers, and the favour of the Lord, what seems impossible to man may become possible. But we will now, if you please, listen to the Preface which Origen himself prefixes to the work on which he was entering.
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Addressed to Heraclius at Aquileia, probably about 407. A satisfactory conclusion has now, I trust, been reached of the Commentary on the Epistle to the Romans, the writing of which has been a work of very great labour and time. I confess, my most loving brother Heraclius, that in the attempt to respond to your request I have almost forgotten the precept; “Do not lift a burden above your strength.” Even in the other translations of Origen’s works into Latin, which were made because you earnestly requested it, or rather exacted it as a journeyman’s task, the labour was very great; for I made it my object to supplement what Origen spoke extempore in the lecture room of the church; for his aim there was the application of the subject for the sake of edification rather than the exposition of the text. This I have done in the case of the Homilies, and the short lectures on Genesis and Exodus, and especially in those on the book of Leviticus, where he spoke in a hortatory manner, whereas my translation takes the form of an exposition. This duty of supplying what was wanted I took up because I thought that the practice of agitating questions and then leaving them unsolved, which he frequently adopts in his homiletic mode of speaking, might prove distasteful to the Latin reader. The works upon Jesus Nave3444 and the book of Judges and the thirty-sixth, thirty-seventh and thirty-eighth Psalms, I translated simply as I found them, with no great labour. While then in the other cases which I have mentioned above, I employed much labour in supplying what Origen had omitted, in this work on the Epistle to the Romans the labour that fell on me for the causes described in the Preface was immense and full of complexity. But there will have been nothing but pleasure in these labours, provided only that my experience in other cases, of ill-disposed minds requiting my toils and vigils with contumely, be not repeated and that I do not gain for my studies the reward of detraction and for my labour a conspiracy to ruin me. For in dealing with these men I have to undergo a new form of accusation. They say to me; When you write these things, in which are found many pieces the composition of which is due to yourself, you should place your own name in the title, and let it run thus: ‘The books of Rufinus’ commentary on (for instance) the Epistle to the Romans;’ for so, they say, in the case of profane writers, the name in the title is not that of the Greek author who is translated but of the Latin author who translates him. But all this complaisance, by which the works are ascribed to me, is caused not by love to me but by hatred to the author. I am much more observant of my conscience than of my reputation; it may be apparent that I have added some things to supply what was wanting; and that I have abbreviated what was too lengthy; but to steal the title from the man who laid the foundations on which the building has been reared is what I cannot think right. It must be, I grant, in the discretion of the reader, when he has examined the work, to ascribe the work to any one he thinks right; but my intention has been not to seek the applause of students but the good of those who wish to be edified. I shall turn next to the work which was long ago imposed upon me but now is demanded with still greater vehemence by the Bishop Gaudentius, namely to turn into Latin the books called the Recognition of Clement the Bishop of Rome, the successor and companion of the Apostles. In this work I well know that, to judge by the ordinary rule, I shall have labour upon labour. In this case I will do what my friends desire, I will put my own name in the title of the work, though I shall have that of the author also. It shall be called Rufinus’s Clement. If the Lord enable me to fulfil this task, I shall afterwards return to that which you desire, and say something, God willing, on the books of Numbers or of Deuteronomy (for this alone is wanting to my whole work on the Heptateuch): or else I shall write what I can, the Lord being my guide, on the remaining epistles of the Apostle Paul.
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Addressed to Ursacius.3445 Written in 410.3446 My dear brother, I might rightly address you in the words of the blessed master, “You do well, dearest Donatus, in reminding me of this;” for I well remember my promise that I would collect all that Adamantius wrote in his old age on the Law of Moses, and translate it into Latin for the use of our people. But, as he says, the season was not seasonable for the fulfilment of my promise, but was full of storm and confusion. How can the pen move freely when a man is in fear of the missiles of the enemy, when he has before his eyes the devastation of cities and country, when he has to fly from dangers of the sea, and there is no safety even in exile? As you yourself saw, the Barbarian was within sight of us; he had set fire to the city of Rhegium, and our only protection against him was the very narrow sea which separates the soil of Italy from Sicily. In such a position, what leisure could there be for writing, and especially for translating, a work in which one’s duty is not to develop one’s own opinions but to express those of another? However, when there was a quiet night, and our minds were relieved from the fear of an attack by the enemy, and we got at least some little leisure for thought, I set to work, as a solace from our troubles, and to relieve the burden of our pilgrimage, to gather into one and arrange all that Origen had written on the book of Numbers, whether in the way of homilies or in writings such as are called Excerpts,3447 and to translate them into the Roman tongue. You urged me to do this, Ursacius, and aided me with all your might, indeed, so eager were you, that you thought the youth who acted as secretary too slow in the execution of his office. I wish, however, to point out to you, my brother, that the object of this method of studying scripture is not to deal with each clause separately, as you find done in commentaries, but to open up a path for the understanding, so that the reader may not be made negligent, but as it is written3448 may “stir up his own spirit” and draw out the meaning, and, when he has heard the good word, may add to it by his own wisdom. In this way I have tried to give all the expositions which you desired; and now of all the writings that I have found upon the Law the short comments upon Deuteronomy alone are wanting; these, if God so will, and if he restores my eye-sight, I hope to add to the body of the work. Indeed, my very loving son Pinianus, whose truly Christian company I have joined in their flight because of my delight in their chaste conversation, requires yet other tasks from me. But do you and he join your prayers that the Lord may be present with us, and may give peace in our time, and shew mercy to those who are in trouble, and make our work fruitful for the edification of the reader.

Edited by Philip Schaff, D.D., 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).