Writings of Gregory of Nyssa - Ascetic and Moral.
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Translated, with prolegomena, notes, and indices,
by William Moore, M.A., Rector of Appleton,
Late Fellow of Magdalen College, Oxford;
and Henry Austin Wilson, M.A.,
Fellow and librarian of Magdalen College, Oxford.
Edited by Henry Wace,
Kings College, London, 6th November, 1892.
II.--Ascetic and Moral.
Preface.
A few words are necessary to explain the scope and aim of this
remarkable treatise. It is not the work of one who held a brief for
monasticism. Gregory deals with the celibate life in a different way
from other Catholic writers upon this theme. Athanasius and Basil both
saw in it the means of exhibiting to the world the Christian life
definitely founded on the orthodox faith; and, for each celibate
himself, this visible imitation of Christ would be more concentrated,
when secular distractions and dissipations had been put aside for
ever. Their aims were entirely moral and ecclesiastical. But Gregory
deals with the entire human development in things spiritual. He has
given the history of the struggle for moral and intellectual
perfection, and the conditions of its success. He had his own inner
Christian experience, the result of a recluse youth, on the one hand;
he had the systems of heathen and Christian philosophy on the other.
The ideal life that he has sketched is as lofty in its aspiration as
the latter, and is couched in philosophic rather than in Scriptural
language; but its scientific ground-work is entirely peculiar to
himself. That groundwork is briefly this; spirit must be freed, so as
to be drawn to the Divine Spirit; and to be so freed a "virginity" of
the soul is necessary. He comes in this way to blame marriage, because
in most of the marriages that he has known, this virginity of the soul
is conspicuously absent. But he does not blame the married state in
itself; as he himself distinctly tells us. The virginity he seeks may
exist even there; and it is not by any means the same thing as
celibacy. It is disengagedness of heart; and is, as many passages in
this treatise indicate, identical with philosophy, whose higher
manifestations had long ago been defined as Love, called forth by the
sight of the immaterial Beauty. Where this sight is not interrupted,
or not treated with indifference, there Virginity exists. With Gregory
philosophy had become Life, and it is virginity that keeps it so, and
therein keeps it from being lost. Another word with which Gregory
identified virginity is "incorruptibility," in language sometimes
which recalls the lines--
"What, what is Virtue, but repose of mind?
A pure ethereal calm that knows no storm,
Above the reach of wild ambition's wind,
Above the passions that this world deform,
And torture man, a proud malignant worm."
Yet no one would imagine that here the poet, any more than S. Paul in
Ephes. vi. 24 (see p. 343, note 3), meant celibacy per se. But it may
be asked, how came Gregory to use the word Virginity at all for pure
disengagement of soul? The answer seems to be, that he was very fond
of metaphors and elaborate comparisons, ever since the days that he
was a student of Rhetoric; this treatise itself is full of similes
from nature, and they are not so much poetry or rhetoric, as necessary
means of bringing his meaning vividly before readers. Virginity, then,
is one of these bold and telling figures; and in his hands it is a
very suggestive metaphor; though certainly at times it runs away with
him. The accusation, then, that when he identifies Piety and
Virginity, he makes the former consist in a mere externality, is
unfounded. He uses the one word for the other without apprising us
that it is a metaphor, and he omits to give any dietary rules by which
this virginity is secured. Therefore he appears to mean celibacy. But
on the other hand no arguments can be drawn from this treatise against
the monastic life; only Gregory is busied with other matters. Rather,
if the actual marriages of his time are such as he describes, it is a
silent witness to the reasonableness, if not to the necessity, of such
a life within the church. For this view of virginity as solving the
question of Gregory's supposed marriage, see Prolegomena, p. 3.
.
On Virginity.
Introduction.
The object of this treatise is to create in its readers a passion for
the life according to excellence. There are many distractions [1344] ,
to use the word of the Divine Apostle, incident to the secular life;
and so this treatise would suggest, as a necessary door of entrance to
the holier life, the calling of Virginity; seeing that, while it is
not easy in the entanglements of this secular life to find quiet for
that of Divine contemplation, those on the other hand who have bid
farewell to its troubles can with promptitude, and without
distraction, pursue assiduously their higher studies. Now, whereas all
advice is in itself weak, and mere words of exhortation will not make
the task of recommending what is beneficial easier to any one, unless
he has first given a noble aspect to that which he urges on his
hearer, this discourse will accordingly begin with the praises of
Virginity; the exhortation will come at the end; moreover, as the
beauty in anything gains lustre by the contrast with its opposite, it
is requisite that some mention should be made of the vexations of
everyday life. Then it will be quite in the plan of this work to
introduce a sketch of the contemplative life, and to prove the
impossibility of any one attaining it who feel's the world's
anxieties. In the devotee bodily desire has become weak; and so there
will follow an inquiry as to the true object of desire, for which (and
which only) we have received from our Maker our power of desiring.
When this has received all possible illustration, it will seem to
follow naturally that we should consider some method to attain it; and
the true virginity, which is free from any stain of sin, will be found
to fit such a purpose. So all the intermediate part of the discourse,
while it seems to look elsewhere, will be really tending to the
praises of this virginity. All the particular rules obeyed by the
followers of this high calling will, to avoid prolixity, be omitted
here; the exhortation in the discourse will be introduced only in
general terms, and for cases of wide application; but, in a way,
particulars will be here included, and so nothing important will be
overlooked, while prolixity is avoided. Each of us, too, is inclined
to embrace some course of life with the greater enthusiasm, when he
sees personalities who have already gained distinction in it; we have
therefore made the requisite mention of saints who have gained their
glory in celibacy. But further than this; the examples we have in
biographies cannot stimulate to the attainment of excellence, so much
as a living voice and an example which is still working for good; and
so we have alluded to that most godly bishop [1345] , our father in
God, who himself alone could be the master in such instructions. He
will not indeed be mentioned by name, but by certain indications we
shall say in cipher that he is meant. Thus, too, future readers will
not think our advice unmeaning, when the candidate for this life is
told to school himself by recent masters. But let them first fix their
attention only on this: what such a master ought to be; then let them
choose for their guidance those who have at any time by God's grace
been raised up to be champions of this system of excellence; for
either they will find what they seek, or at all events will be no
longer ignorant what it ought to be.
Footnotes
[1344] perispasmon. The allusion must be to 1 Cor. vii. 35; but the
actual word is not found in the whole of the N.T., though periespato
is used of Martha, S. Luke x. 40.
[1345] Basil; rather than Gregory Thaumaturgus, as some have
conjectured.
Chapter I.
The holy look of virginity is precious indeed in the judgment of all
who make purity the test of beauty; but it belongs to those alone
whose struggles to gain this object of a noble love are favoured and
helped by the grace of God. Its praise is heard at once in the very
name which goes with it; "Uncorrupted [1346] " is the word commonly
said of it, and this shows the kind of purity that is in it; thus we
can measure by its equivalent term the height of this gift, seeing
that amongst the many results of virtuous endeavour this alone has
been honoured with the title of the thing that is uncorrupted. And if
we must extol with laudations this gift from the great God, the words
of His Apostle are sufficient in its praise; they are few, but they
throw into the background all extravagant laudations; he only styles
as "holy and without blemish [1347] " her who has this grace for her
ornament. Now if the achievement of this saintly virtue consists in
making one "without blemish and holy," and these epithets are adopted
in their first and fullest force to glorify the incorruptible Deity,
what greater praise of virginity can there be than thus to be shown in
a manner deifying those who share in her pure mysteries, so that they
become partakers of His glory Who is in actual truth the only Holy and
Blameless One; their purity and their incorruptibility being the means
of bringing them into relationship with Him? Many who write lengthy
laudations in detailed treatises, with the view of adding something to
the wonder of this grace, unconsciously defeat, in my opinion, their
own end; the fulsome manner in which they amplify their subject brings
its credit into suspicion. Nature's greatnesses have their own way of
striking with admiration; they do not need the pleading of words: the
sky, for instance, or the sun, or any other wonder of the universe. In
the business of this lower world words certainly act as a basement,
and the skill of praise does impart a look of magnificence; so much
so, that mankind are apt to suspect as the result of mere art the
wonder produced by panegyric. So the one sufficient way of praising
virginity will be to show that that virtue is above praise, and to
evince our admiration of it by our lives rather than by our words. A
man who takes this theme for ambitious praise has the appearance of
supposing that one drop of his own perspiration will make an
appreciable increase of the boundless ocean, if indeed he believes, as
he does, that any human words can give more dignity to so rare a
grace; he must be ignorant either of his own powers or of that which
he attempts to praise.
Footnotes
[1346] to aphthoron; this is connected just below with the Divine
aphtharsia. In commenting on the meaning of this latter word at the
close of the Epistle to the Ephesians, Bishop Ellicott prefers to take
it with agaponton, "in a manner and an element that knows neither
change, diminution, nor decay" ("in uncorruptness" R.V.): although in
the six other passages where it occurs in S. Paul "it refers directly
or indirectly to a higher sphere than the present." i.e. of
immortality above, and might so, if the construction allowed, be taken
with charis. This illustrates Gregory's use of aphtharsia in its human
relation.
[1347] Eph. v. 27 (of the church).
Chapter II.
Deep indeed will be the thought necessary to understand the surpassing
excellence of this grace. It is comprehended in the idea of the Father
incorrupt; and here at the outset is a paradox, viz. that virginity is
found in Him, Who has a Son and yet without passion has begotten Him.
It is included too in the nature of this Only-begotten God, Who struck
the first note of all this moral innocence; it shines forth equally in
His pure and passionless generation. Again a paradox; that the Son
should be known to us by virginity. It is seen, too, in the inherent
and incorruptible purity of the Holy Spirit; for when you have named
the pure and incorruptible you have named virginity. It accompanies
the whole supramundane existence; because of its passionlessness it is
always present with the powers above; never separated from aught that
is Divine, it never touches the opposite of this. All whose instinct
and will have found their level in virtue are beautified with this
perfect purity of the uncorrupted state; all who are ranked in the
opposite class of character are what they are, and are called so, by
reason of their fall from purity. What force of expression, then, will
be adequate to such a grace? How can there be no cause to fear lest
the greatness of its intrinsic value should be impaired by the efforts
of any one's eloquence? The estimate of it which he will create will
be less than that which his hearers had before. It will be well, then,
to omit all laudation in this case; we cannot lift words to the height
of our theme. On the contrary, it is possible to be ever mindful of
this gift of God; and our lips may always speak of this blessing;
that, though it is the property of spiritual existence and of such
singular excellence, yet by the love of God it has been bestowed on
those who have received their life from the will of the flesh and from
blood; that, when human nature has been based by passionate
inclinations, it stretches out its offer of purity like a hand to
raise it up again and make it look above. This, I think, was the
reason why our Master, Jesus Christ Himself, the Fountain of all
innocence, did not come into the world by wedlock. It was, to divulge
by the manner of His Incarnation this great secret; that purity is the
only complete indication [1348] of the presence of God and of His
coming, and that no one can in reality secure this for himself, unless
he has altogether estranged himself from the passions of the flesh.
What happened in the stainless Mary when the fulness of the Godhead
which was in Christ shone out through her, that happens in every soul
that leads by rule the virgin life. No longer indeed does the Master
come with bodily presence; "we know Christ no longer according to the
flesh [1349] "; but, spiritually, He dwells in us and brings His
Father with Him, as the Gospel somewhere [1350] tells. Seeing, then,
that virginity means so much as this, that while it remains in Heaven
with the Father of spirits, and moves in the dance of the celestial
powers, it nevertheless stretches out hands for man's salvation; that
while it is the channel which draws down the Deity to share man's
estate, it keeps wings for man's desires to rise to heavenly things,
and is a bond of union between the Divine and human, by its mediation
bringing into harmony these existences so widely divided--what words
could be discovered powerful enough to reach this wondrous height? But
still, it is monstrous to seem like creatures without expression and
without feeling; and we must choose (if we are silent) one of two
things; either to appear never to have felt the special beauty of
virginity, or to exhibit ourselves as obstinately blind to all beauty:
we have consented therefore to speak briefly about this virtue,
according to the wish of him who has assigned us this task, and whom
in all things we must obey. But let no one expect from us any display
of style; even if we wished it, perhaps we could not produce it, for
we are quite unversed in that kind of writing. Even if we possessed
such power, we would not prefer the favour of the few to the
edification of the many. A writer of sense should have, I take it, for
his chiefest object not to be admired above all other writers, but to
profit both himself and them, the many.
Footnotes
[1348] deixasthai. Livineius conjectures dexasthai; so also Cod. Reg.
Cf. Sedulius: "Domus pudici pectoris Templum repente fit Dei."
[1349] 2 Cor. v. 16.
[1350] S. John xiv. 23
Chapter III.
Would indeed that some profit might come to myself from this effort! I
should have undertaken this labour with the greater readiness, if I
could have hope of sharing, according to the Scripture, in the fruits
of the plough and the threshing-floor; the toil would then have been a
pleasure. As it is, this my knowledge of the beauty of virginity is in
some sort vain and useless to me, just as the corn is to the muzzled
ox that treads [1351] the floor, or the water that streams from the
precipice to a thirsty man when he cannot reach it. Happy they who
have still the power of choosing the better way, and have not debarred
themselves from it by engagements of the secular life, as we have,
whom a gulf now divides from glorious virginity: no one can climb up
to that who has once planted his foot upon the secular life. We are
but spectators of others' blessings and witnesses to the happiness of
another [1352] class. Even if we strike out some fitting thoughts
about virginity, we shall not be better than the cooks and scullions
who provide sweet luxuries for the tables of the rich, without having
any portion themselves in what they prepare. What a blessing if it had
been otherwise, if we had not to learn the good by after-regrets! Now
they are the enviable ones, they succeed even beyond their prayers and
their desires, who have not put out of their power the enjoyment of
these delights. We are like those who have a wealthy society with
which to compare their own poverty, and so are all the more vexed and
discontented with their present lot. The more exactly we understand
the riches of virginity, the more we must bewail the other life; for
we realize by this contrast with better things, how poor it is. I do
not speak only of the future rewards in store for those who have lived
thus excellently, but those rewards also which they have while alive
here; for if any one would make up his mind to measure exactly the
difference between the two courses, he would find it well-nigh as
great as that between heaven and earth. The truth of this statement
may be known by looking at actual facts.
But in writing this sad tragedy what will be a fit beginning? How
shall we really bring to view the evils common to life? All men know
them by experience, but somehow nature has contrived to blind the
actual sufferers so that they willingly ignore their condition. Shall
we begin with its choicest sweets? Well then, is not the sum total of
all that is hoped for in marriage to get delightful companionship?
Grant this obtained; let us sketch a marriage in every way most happy;
illustrious birth, competent means, suitable ages, the very flower of
the prime of life, deep affection, the very best that each can think
of the other [1353] , that sweet rivalry of each wishing to surpass
the other in loving; in addition, popularity, power, wide reputation,
and everything else. But observe that even beneath this array of
blessings the fire of an inevitable pain is smouldering. I do not
speak of the envy that is always springing up against those of
distinguished rank, and the liability to attack which hangs over those
who seem prosperous, and that natural hatred of superiors shown by
those who do not share equally in the good fortune, which make these
seemingly favoured ones pass an anxious time more full of pain than
pleasure. I omit that from the picture, and will suppose that envy
against them is asleep; although it would not be easy to find a single
life in which both these blessings were joined, i.e. happiness above
the common, and escape from envy. However, let us, if so it is to be,
suppose a married life free from all such trials; and let us see if it
is possible for those who live with such an amount of good fortune to
enjoy it. Why, what kind of vexation is left, you will ask, when even
envy of their happiness does not reach them? I affirm that this very
thing, this sweetness that surrounds their lives, is the spark which
kindles pain. They are human all the time, things weak and perishing;
they have to look upon the tombs of their progenitors; and so pain is
inseparably bound up with their existence, if they have the least
power of reflection. This continued expectancy of death, realized by
no sure tokens, but hanging over them the terrible uncertainty of the
future, disturbs their present joy, clouding it over with the fear of
what is coming. If only, before experience comes, the results of
experience could be learnt, or if, when one has entered on this
course, it were possible by some other means of conjecture to survey
the reality, then what a crowd of deserters would run from marriage
into the virgin life; what care and eagerness never to be entangled in
that retentive snare, where no one knows for certain how the net galls
till they have actually entered it! You would see there, if only you
could do it without danger, many contraries uniting; smiles melting
into tears, pain mingled with pleasure, death always hanging by
expectation over the children that are born, and putting a finger upon
each of the sweetest joys. Whenever the husband looks at the beloved
face, that moment the fear of separation accompanies the look. If he
listens to the sweet voice, the thought comes into his mind that some
day he will not hear it. Whenever he is glad with gazing on her
beauty, then he shudders most with the presentiment of mourning her
loss. When he marks all those charms which to youth are so precious
and which the thoughtless seek for, the bright eyes beneath the lids,
the arching eyebrows, the cheek with its sweet and dimpling smile, the
natural red that blooms upon the lips, the gold-bound hair shining in
many-twisted masses on the head, and all that transient grace, then,
though he may be little given to reflection, he must have this thought
also in his inmost soul that some day all this beauty will melt away
and become as nothing, turned after all this show into noisome and
unsightly bones, which wear no trace, no memorial, no remnant of that
living bloom. Can he live delighted when he thinks of that? Can he
trust in these treasures which he holds as if they would be always
his? Nay, it is plain that he will stagger as if he were mocked by a
dream, and will have his faith in life shaken, and will look upon what
he sees as no longer his. You will understand, if you have a
comprehensive view of things as they are, that nothing in this life
looks that which it is. It shows to us by the illusions of our
imagination one thing, instead of something else. Men gaze
open-mouthed at it, and it mocks them with hopes; for a while it hides
itself beneath this deceitful show; then all of a sudden in the
reverses of life it is revealed as something different from that which
men's hopes, conceived by its fraud in foolish hearts, had pictured.
Will life's sweetness seem worth taking delight in to him who reflects
on this? Will he ever be able really to feel it, so as to have joy in
the goods he holds? Will he not, disturbed by the constant fear of
some reverse, have the use without the enjoyment? I will but mention
the portents, dreams, omens, and such-like things which by a foolish
habit of thought are taken notice of, and always make men fear the
worst. But her time of labour comes upon the young wife; and the
occasion is regarded not as the bringing of a child into the world,
but as the approach of death; in bearing it is expected that she will
die; and, indeed, often this sad presentiment is true, and before they
spread the birthday feast, before they taste any of their expected
joys, they have to change their rejoicing into lamentation. Still in
love's fever, still at the height of their passionate affection, not
yet having grasped life's sweetest gifts, as in the vision of a dream,
they are suddenly torn away from all they possessed. But what comes
next? Domestics, like conquering foes, dismantle the bridal chamber;
they deck it for the funeral, but it is death's [1354] room now; they
make the useless wailings [1355] and beatings of the hands. Then there
is the memory of former days, curses on those who advised the
marriage, recriminations against friends who did not stop it; blame
thrown on parents whether they be alive or dead, bitter outbursts
against human destiny, arraigning of the whole course of nature,
complaints and accusations even against the Divine government; war
within the man himself, and fighting with those who would admonish; no
repugnance to the most shocking words and acts. In some this state of
mind continues, and their reason is more completely swallowed up by
grief; and their tragedy has a sadder ending, the victim not enduring
to survive the calamity.
But rather than this let us suppose a happier case. The danger of
childbirth is past; a child is born to them, the very image of its
parents' beauty. Are the occasions for grief at all lessened thereby?
Rather they are increased; for the parents retain all their former
fears, and feel in addition those on behalf of the child, lest
anything should happen to it in its bringing up; for instance a bad
accident, or by some turn of misfortunes a sickness, a fever [1356] ,
any dangerous disease. Both parents share alike in these; but who
could recount the special anxieties of the wife? We omit the most
obvious, which all can understand, the weariness of pregnancy, the
danger in childbirth, the cares of nursing, the tearing of her heart
in two for her offspring, and, if she is the mother of many, the
dividing of her soul into as many parts as she has children; the
tenderness with which she herself feels all that is happening to them.
That is well understood by every one. But the oracle of God tells us
that she is not her own mistress, but finds her resources only in him
whom wedlock has made her lord; and so, if she be for ever so short a
time left alone, she feels as if she were separated from her head, and
can ill bear it; she even takes this short absence of her husband to
be the prelude to her widowhood; her fear makes her at once give up
all hope; accordingly her eyes, filled with terrified suspense, are
always fixed upon the door; her ears are always busied with what
others are whispering; her heart, stung with her fears, is well-nigh
bursting even before any bad [1357] news has arrived; a noise in the
doorway, whether fancied or real, acts as a messenger of ill, and on a
sudden shakes her very soul; most likely all outside is well, and
there is no cause to fear at all; but her fainting spirit is quicker
than any message, and turns her fancy from good tidings to despair.
Thus even the most favoured live, and they are not altogether to be
envied; their life is not to be compared to the freedom of virginity.
Yet this hasty sketch has omitted many of the more distressing
details. Often this young wife too, just wedded, still brilliant in
bridal grace, still perhaps blushing when her bridegroom enters, and
shyly stealing furtive glances at him, when passion is all the more
intense because modesty prevents it being shown, suddenly has to take
the name of a poor lonely widow and be called all that is pitiable.
Death comes in an instant and changes that bright creature in her
white and rich attire into a black-robed mourner. He takes off the
bridal ornaments and clothes her with the colours of bereavement.
There is darkness in the once cheerful room, and the waiting-women
sing their long dirges. She hates her friends when they try to soften
her grief; she will not take food, she wastes away, and in her soul's
deep dejection has a strong longing only for her death, a longing
which often lasts till it comes. Even supposing that time puts an end
to this sorrow, still another comes, whether she has children or not.
If she has, they are fatherless, and, as objects of pity themselves,
renew the memory of her loss. If she is childless, then the name of
her lost husband is rooted up, and this grief is greater than the
seeming consolation. I will say little of the other special sorrows of
widowhood; for who could enumerate them all exactly? She finds her
enemies in her relatives. Some actually take advantage of her
affliction. Others exult over her loss, and see with malignant joy the
home falling to pieces, the insolence of the servants, and the other
distresses visible in such a case, of which there are plenty. In
consequence of these, many women are compelled to risk once more the
trial of the same things, not being able to endure this bitter
derision. As if they could revenge insults by increasing their own
sufferings! Others, remembering the past, will put up with anything
rather than plunge a second time into the like troubles. If you wish
to learn all the trials of this married life, listen to those women
who actually know it. How they congratulate those who have chosen from
the first the virgin life, and have not had to learn by experience
about the better way, that virginity is fortified against all these
ills, that it has no orphan state, no widowhood to mourn; it is always
in the presence of the undying Bridegroom; it has the offspring of
devotion always to rejoice in; it sees continually a home that is
truly its own, furnished with every treasure because the Master always
dwells there; in this case death does not bring separation, but union
with Him Who is longed for; for when (a soul) departs [1358] , then it
is with Christ, as the Apostle says. But it is time, now that we have
examined on the one side the feelings of those whose lot is happy, to
make a revelation of other lives, where poverty and adversity and all
the other evils which men have to suffer are a fixed condition;
deformities, I mean, and diseases, and all other lifelong afflictions.
He whose life is contained in himself either escapes them altogether
or can bear them easily, possessing a collected mind which is not
distracted from itself; while he who shares himself with wife and
child often has not a moment to bestow even upon regrets for his own
condition, because anxiety for his dear ones fills his heart. But it
is superfluous to dwell upon that which every one knows. If to what
seems prosperity such pain and weariness is bound, what may we not
expect of the opposite condition? Every description which attempts to
represent it to our view will fall short of the reality. Yet perhaps
we may in a very few words declare the depths of its misery. Those
whose lot is contrary to that which passes as prosperous receive their
sorrows as well from causes contrary to that. Prosperous lives are
marred by the expectancy, or the presence, of death; but the misery of
these is that death delays his coming. These lives then are widely
divided by opposite feelings; although equally without hope, they
converge to the same end. So many-sided, then, so strangely different
are the ills with which marriage supplies the world. There is pain
always, whether children are born, or can never be expected, whether
they live, or die. One abounds in them but has not enough means for
their support; another feels the want of an heir to the great fortune
he has toiled for, and regards as a blessing the other's misfortune;
each of them, in fact, wishes for that very thing which he sees the
other regretting. Again, one man loses by death a much-loved [1359]
son; another has a reprobate son alive; both equally to be pitied,
though the one mourns over the death, the other over the life, of his
boy. Neither will I do more than mention how sadly and disastrously
family jealousies and quarrels, arising from real or fancied causes,
end. Who could go completely into all those details? If you would know
what a network of these evils human life is, you need not go back
again to those old stories which have furnished subjects to dramatic
poets. They are regarded as myths on account of their shocking
extravagance; there are in them murders and eating of children,
husband-murders, murders of mothers and brothers, incestuous unions,
and every sort of disturbance of nature; and yet the old chronicler
begins the story which ends in such horrors with marriage. But turning
from all that, gaze only upon the tragedies that are being enacted on
this life's stage; it is marriage that supplies mankind with actors
there. Go to the law-courts and read through the laws there; then you
will know the shameful secrets of marriage. Just as when you hear a
physician explaining various diseases, you understand the misery of
the human frame by learning the number and the kind of sufferings it
is liable to, so when you peruse the laws and read there the strange
variety of crimes in marriage to which their penalties are attached,
you will have a pretty accurate idea of its properties; for the law
does not provide remedies for evils which do not exist, any more than
a physician has a treatment for diseases which are never known.
Footnotes
[1351] epistrephomeno ten halona. This word is used for "walking
over," in Hesiod, Theogon. 753, gaian epistrephetai
[1352] heteron, following Cod. Reg., for hekateron.
[1353] huper tou allou (a late use of allos). This was Livineius'
conjecture for ton allon: the interchange of u and n is a common
mistake.
[1354] There is a play on the words thalamos and thanatos: "the one is
changed into the other."
[1355] eti touton anakleseis: "amongst these", i.e. the domestics.
Livineius reads toutois, and renders "Succedunt inutilis revocatio,
inanis manuum plausus," i.e. as the last funeral act.
[1356] Reading purosin, with Galesinius: the Paris Editt. read perosin
[1357] neoteron, in a bad sense. So Zosimus, lib. i. p. 658, pragmata
;;Romaiois neotera mechanesasthai
[1358] analuse: Philip. i. 23. Tertullian (De Patient. 9) translates,
"Cupis recipi (i.e. to flit, depart) jam et esse cum Domino." Beza,
however, says that the metaphor is taken from unharnessing after a
race. Chrysostom and Jerome seem to take it of loosing off the cable.
[1359] egapemenos pais. Cod. Reg. has ho katathumios, a favorite word
with Gregory. Livineius reads hokathemenos, which he renders "nanus"
(i.e. of low stature), and cites Pollux Onomast. lib. 3, c. 24 (where
apokathemenos = iners); it might also bear the meaning of
"stay-at-home," in contrast to the prodigal in the next sentence.
Chapter IV.
But we need no longer show in this narrow way the drawback of this
life, as if the number of its ills was limited to adulteries,
dissensions, and plots. I think we should take the higher and truer
view, and say at once that none of that evil in life, which is visible
in all its business and in all its pursuits, can have any hold over a
man, if he will not put himself in the fetters of this course. The
truth of what we say will be clear thus. A man who, seeing through the
illusion with the eye of his spirit purged, lifts himself above the
struggling world, and, to use the words of the Apostle, slights it all
as but dung, in a way exiling himself altogether from human life by
his abstinence from marriage,--that man has no fellowship whatever
with the sins of mankind, such as avarice, envy, anger, hatred, and
everything of the kind. He has an exemption from all this, and is in
every way free and at peace; there is nothing in him to provoke his
neighbours' envy, because he clutches none of those objects round
which envy in this life gathers. He has raised his own life above the
world, and prizing virtue as his only precious possession he will pass
his days in painless peace and quiet. For virtue is a possession
which, though all according to their capacity should share it, yet
will be always in abundance for those who thirst after it; unlike the
occupation of the lands on this earth, which men divide into sections,
and the more they add to the one the more they take from the other, so
that the one person's gain is his fellow's loss; whence arise the
fights for the lion's share, from men's hatred of being cheated. But
the larger owner of this possession is never envied; he who snatches
the lion's share does no damage to him who claims equal participation;
as each is capable each has this noble longing satisfied, while the
wealth of virtues in those who are already occupiers [1360] is not
exhausted. The man, then, who, with his eyes only on such a life,
makes virtue, which has no limit that man can devise, his only
treasure, will surely never brook to bend his soul to any of those low
courses which multitudes tread. He will not admire earthly riches, or
human power, or any of those things which folly seeks. If, indeed, his
mind is still pitched so low, he is outside our band of novices, and
our words do not apply to him. But if his thoughts are above, walking
as it were with God, he will be lifted out of the maze of all these
errors; for the predisposing cause of them all, marriage, has not
touched him. Now the wish to be before others is the deadly sin of
pride, and one would not be far wrong in saying that this is the
seed-root of all the thorns of sin; but it is from reasons connected
with marriage that this pride mostly begins. To show what I mean, we
generally find the grasping man throwing the blame on his nearest kin;
the man mad after notoriety and ambition generally makes his family
responsible for this sin: "he must not be thought inferior to his
forefathers; he must be deemed a great man by the generation to come
by leaving his children historic records of himself": so also the
other maladies of the soul, envy, spite, hatred and such-like, are
connected with this cause; they are to be found amongst those who are
eager about the things of this life. He who has fled from it gazes as
from some high watch-tower on the prospect of humanity, and pities
these slaves of vanity for their blindness in setting such a value on
bodily well-being. He sees some distinguished person giving himself
airs because of his public honours, and wealth, and power, and only
laughs at the folly of being so puffed up. He gives to the years of
human life the longest number, according to the Psalmist's
computation, and then compares this atom-interval with the endless
ages, and pities the vain glory of those who excite themselves for
such low and petty and perishable things. What, indeed, amongst the
things here is there enviable in that which so many strive
for,--honour? What is gained by those who win it? The mortal remains
mortal whether he is honoured or not. What good does the possessor of
many acres gain in the end? Except that the foolish man thinks his own
that which never belongs to him, ignorant seemingly in his greed that
"the earth is the Lord's, and the fulness thereof [1361] ," for "God
is king of all the earth [1362] ." It is the passion of having which
gives men a false title of lordship over that which can never belong
to them. "The earth," says the wise Preacher, "abideth for ever [1363]
," ministering to every generation, first one, then another, that is
born upon it; but men, though they are so little even their own
masters, that they are brought into life without knowing it by their
Maker's will, and before they wish are withdrawn from it, nevertheless
in their excessive vanity think that they are her lords; that they,
now born, now dying, rule that which remains continually. One who
reflecting on this holds cheaply all that mankind prizes, whose only
love is the divine life, because "all flesh is grass, and all the
glory of man as the flower of grass [1364] ," can never care for this
grass which "to-day is and to-morrow is not"; studying the divine
ways, he knows not only that human life has no fixity, but that the
entire universe will not keep on its quiet course for ever; he
neglects his existence here as an alien and a passing thing; for the
Saviour said, "Heaven and earth shall pass away [1365] ," the whole of
necessity awaits its refashioning. As long as he is "in this
tabernacle [1366] ," exhibiting mortality, weighed down with this
existence, he laments the lengthening of his sojourn in it; as the
Psalmist-poet says in his heavenly songs. Truly, they live in darkness
who sojourn in these living tabernacles; wherefore that preacher,
groaning at the continuance of this sojourn, says, "Woe is me that my
sojourn is prolonged [1367] ," and he attributes the cause of his
dejection to "darkness"; for we know that darkness is called in the
Hebrew language "kedar." It is indeed a darkness as of the night which
envelops mankind, and prevents them seeing this deceit and knowing
that all which is most prized by the living, and moreover all which is
the reverse, exists only in the conception of the unreflecting, and is
in itself nothing; there is no such reality anywhere as obscurity of
birth, or illustrious birth, or glory, or splendour, or ancient
renown, or present elevation, or power over others, or subjection.
Wealth and comfort, poverty and distress, and all the other
inequalities of life, seem to the ignorant, applying the test of
pleasure, vastly different from each other. But to the higher
understanding they are all alike; one is not of greater value than the
other; because life runs on to the finish with the same speed through
all these opposites, and in the lots of either class there remains the
same power of choice to live well or ill, "through armour on the right
hand and on the left, through evil report and good report [1368] ."
Therefore the clearseeing mind which measures reality will journey on
its path without turning, accomplishing its appointed time from its
birth to its exit; it is neither softened by the pleasures nor beaten
down by the hardships; but, as is the way with travellers, it keeps
advancing always, and takes but little notice of the views presented.
It is the travellers way to press on to their journey's end, no matter
whether they are passing through meadows and cultivated farms, or
through wilder and more rugged spots; a smiling landscape does not
detain them; nor a gloomy one check their speed. So, too, that lofty
mind will press straight on to its self-imposed end, not turning aside
to see anything on the way. It passes through life, but its gaze is
fixed on heaven; it is the good steersman directing the bark to some
landmark there. But the grosser mind looks down; it bends its energies
to bodily pleasures as surely as the sheep stoop to their pasture; it
lives for gorging and still lower pleasures [1369] ; it is alienated
from the life of God [1370] , and a stranger to the promise of the
Covenants; it recognizes no good but the gratification of the body. It
is a mind such as this that "walks in darkness [1371] ," and invents
all the evil in this life of ours; avarice, passions unchecked,
unbounded luxury, lust of power, vain-glory, the whole mob of moral
diseases that invade men's homes. In these vices, one somehow holds
closely to another; where one has entered all the rest seem to follow,
dragging each other in a natural order, just as in a chain, when you
have jerked the first link, the others cannot rest, and even the link
at the other end feels the motion of the first, which passes thence by
virtue of their contiguity through the intervening links; so firmly
are men's vices linked together by their very nature; when one of them
has gained the mastery of a soul, the rest of the train follow. If you
want a graphic picture of this accursed chain, suppose a man who
because of some special pleasure it gives him is a victim to his
thirst for fame; then a desire to increase his fortune follows close
upon this thirst for fame; he becomes grasping; but only because the
first vice leads him on to this. Then this grasping after money and
superiority engenders either anger with his kith and kin, or pride
towards his inferiors, or envy of those above him; then hypocrisy
comes in after this envy; a soured temper after that; a misanthropical
spirit after that; and behind them all a state of condemnation which
ends in the dark fires of hell. You see the chain; how all follows
from one cherished passion. Seeing, then, that this inseparable train
of moral diseases has entered once for all into the world, one single
way of escape is pointed out to us in the exhortations of the inspired
writings; and that is to separate ourselves from the life which
involves this sequence of sufferings. If we haunt Sodom, we cannot
escape the rain of fire; nor if one who has fled out of her looks back
upon her desolation, can he fail to become a pillar of salt rooted to
the spot. We cannot be rid of the Egyptian bondage, unless we leave
Egypt, that is, this life that lies under water [1372] , and pass, not
that Red Sea, but this black and gloomy Sea of life. But suppose we
remain in this evil bondage, and, to use the Master's words, "the
truth shall not have made us free," how can one who seeks a lie and
wanders in the maze of this world ever come to the truth? How can one
who has surrendered his existence to be chained by nature run away
from this captivity? An illustration will make our meaning clearer. A
winter torrent [1373] , which, impetuous in itself, becomes swollen
and carries down beneath its stream trees and boulders and anything
that comes in its way, is death and danger to those alone who live
along its course; for those who have got well out of its way it rages
in vain. Just so, only the man who lives in the turmoil of life has to
feel its force; only he has to receive those sufferings which nature's
stream, descending in a flood of troubles, must, to be true to its
kind, bring to those who journey on its banks. But if a man leaves
this torrent, and these "proud waters [1374] ," he will escape from
being "a prey to the teeth" of this life, as the Psalm goes on to say,
and, as "a bird from the snare," on virtue's wings. This simile, then,
of the torrent holds; human life is a tossing and tumultuous stream
sweeping down to find its natural level; none of the objects sought
for in it last till the seekers are satisfied; all that is carried to
them by this stream comes near, just touches them, and passes on; so
that the present moment in this impetuous flow eludes enjoyment, for
the after-current snatches it from their view. It would be our
interest therefore to keep far away from such a stream, lest, engaged
on temporal things, we should neglect eternity. How can a man keep for
ever anything here, be his love for it never so passionate? Which of
life's most cherished objects endures always? What flower of prime?
What gift of strength and beauty? What wealth, or fame, or power? They
all have their transient bloom, and then melt away into their
opposites. Who can continue in life's prime? Whose strength lasts for
ever? Has not Nature made the bloom of beauty even more short-lived
than the shows of spring? For they blossom in their season, and after
withering for a while again revive; after another shedding they are
again in leaf, and retain their beauty of to-day to a late prime. But
Nature exhibits the human bloom only in the spring of early life; then
she kills it; it is vanished in the frosts of age. All other delights
also deceive the bodily eye for a time, and then pass behind the veil
of oblivion. Nature's inevitable changes are many; they agonize him
whose love is passionate. One way of escape is open: it is, to be
attached to none of these things, and to get as far away as possible
from the society of this emotional and sensual world; or rather, for a
man to go outside the feelings which his own body gives rise to. Then,
as he does not live for the flesh, he will not be subject to the
troubles of the flesh. But this amounts to living for the spirit only,
and imitating all we can the employment of the world of spirits. There
they neither marry, nor are given in marriage. Their work and their
excellence is to contemplate the Father of all purity, and to beautify
the lines of their own character from the Source of all beauty, so far
as imitation of It is possible.
Footnotes
[1360] en tois prolabousin. Galesinius' Latin seems wrong here, "rebus
iis quas supra meminimus," though the words often have that force in
Gregory.
[1361] Ps. xxiv. 1; xlvii. 7.
[1362] Ps. xxiv. 1; xlvii. 7.
[1363] Eccles. i. 4.
[1364] 1 Pet. i. 24.
[1365] S. Matt. xxiv. 35.
[1366] 2 Cor. v. 4.
[1367] Ps. cxx. 5, 6 (LXX.).
[1368] 2 Cor. vi. 7.
[1369] tois meta gastera (not, gasteros), Cod. Reg.; cf. Gregor.
Nazian. orat. xvi. p. 250, doulos gastros, kai ton hupo gastera.
Euseb. lib. 7, c. 20, tais hupo gastera plesmonais
[1370] Eph. ii. 12; iv. 18.
[1371] S. John xii. 35
[1372] hupobruchion; referring to the floods of the Nile.
[1373] Iliad, v. 87.
[1374] Ps. cxxiv. 5, 6, 7: to hudor to anupostaton (LXX.), i.e.
unsupportable.
Chapter V.
Now we declare that Virginity is man's "fellow-worker" and helper in
achieving the aim of this lofty passion. In other sciences men have
devised certain practical methods for cultivating the particular
subject; and so, I take it, virginity is the practical method in the
science of the Divine life, furnishing men with the power of
assimilating themselves with spiritual natures. The constant endeavour
in such a course is to prevent the nobility of the soul from being
lowered by those sensual outbreaks, in which the mind no longer
maintains its heavenly thoughts and upward gaze, but sinks down to the
emotions belonging to the flesh and blood. How can the soul which is
riveted [1375] to the pleasures of the flesh and busied with merely
human longings turn a disengaged eye upon its kindred intellectual
light? This evil, ignorant, and prejudiced bias towards material
things will prevent it. The eyes of swine, turning naturally downward,
have no glimpse of the wonders of the sky; no more can the soul whose
body drags it down look any longer upon the beauty above; it must pore
perforce upon things which though natural are low and animal. To look
with a free devoted gaze upon heavenly delights, the soul will turn
itself from earth; it will not even partake of the recognized
indulgences of the secular life; it will transfer all its powers of
affection from material objects to the intellectual contemplation of
immaterial beauty. Virginity of the body is devised to further such a
disposition of the soul; it aims at creating in it a complete
forgetfulness of natural emotions; it would prevent the necessity of
ever descending to the call of fleshly needs. Once freed from such,
the soul runs no risk of becoming, through a growing habit of
indulging in that which seems to a certain extent conceded by nature's
law, inattentive and ignorant of Divine and undefiled delights. Purity
of the heart, that master of our lives, alone can capture them.
Footnotes
[1375] Cf. De Anim§ et Resurr., p. 225, D. for the metaphor.
Chapter VI.
This, I believe, makes the greatness of the prophet Elias, and of him
who afterwards appeared in the spirit and power of Elias, than whom
"of those that are born of women there was none greater [1376] ." If
their history conveys any other mystic lesson, surely this above all
is taught by their special mode of life, that the man whose thoughts
are fixed upon the invisible is necessarily separated from all the
ordinary events of life; his judgments as to the True Good cannot be
confused and led astray by the deceits arising from the senses. Both,
from their youth upwards, exiled themselves from human society, and in
a way from human nature, in their neglect of the usual kinds of meat
and drink, and their sojourn in the desert. The wants of each were
satisfied by the nourishment that came in their way, so that their
taste might remain simple and unspoilt, as their ears were free from
any distracting noise, and their eyes from any wandering look. Thus
they attained a cloudless calm of soul, and were raised to that height
of Divine favour which Scripture records of each. Elias, for instance,
became the dispenser of God's earthly gifts; he had authority to close
at will the uses of the sky against the sinners and to open them to
the penitent. John is not said indeed to have done any miracle; but
the gift in him was pronounced by Him Who sees the secrets of a man
greater than any prophet's. This was so, we may presume, because both,
from beginning to end, so dedicated their hearts to the Lord that they
were unsullied by any earthly passion; because the love of wife or
child, or any other human call, did not intrude upon them, and they
did not even think their daily sustenance worthy of anxious thought;
because they showed themselves to be above any magnificence [1377] of
dress, and made shift with that which chance offered them, one
clothing himself in goat-skins, the other with camel's hair. It is my
belief that they would not have reached to this loftiness of spirit,
if marriage had softened them. This is not simple history only; it is
"written for our admonition [1378] ," that we might direct our lives
by theirs. What, then, do we learn thereby? This: that the man who
longs for union with God must, like those saints, detach his mind from
all worldly business. It is impossible for the mind which is poured
into many channels to win its way to the knowledge and the love of
God.
Footnotes
[1376] S. Matt. xii. 11.
[1377] semnotetos; not as Galesinius renders, "asperitate quadam
gravi."
[1378] 1 Cor. x. 11.
Chapter VII.
An illustration will make our teaching on this subject clearer.
Imagine a stream flowing from a spring and dividing itself off into a
number of accidental channels. As long as it proceeds so, it will be
useless for any purpose of agriculture, the dissipation of its waters
making each particular current small and feeble, and therefore slow.
But if one were to mass these wandering and widely dispersed rivulets
again into one single channel, he would have a full and collected
stream for the supplies which life demands. Just so the human mind (so
it seems to me), as long as its current spreads itself in all
directions over the pleasures of the sense, has no power that is worth
the naming of making its way towards the Real Good; but once call it
back and collect it upon itself, so that it may begin to move without
scattering and wandering towards the activity which is congenital and
natural to it, it will find no obstacle in mounting to higher things,
and in grasping realities. We often see water contained in a pipe
bursting upwards through this constraining force, which will not let
it leak; and this, in spite of its natural gravitation: in the same
way, the mind of man, enclosed in the compact channel of an habitual
continence, and not having any side issues, will be raised by virtue
of its natural powers of motion to an exalted love. In fact, its Maker
ordained that it should always move, and to stop is impossible to it;
when therefore it is prevented employing this power upon trifles, it
cannot be but that it will speed toward the truth, all improper exits
being closed. In the case of many turnings we see travellers can keep
to the direct route, when they have learnt that the other roads are
wrong, and so avoid them; the more they keep out of these wrong
directions, the more they will preserve the straight course; in like
manner the mind in turning from vanities will recognize the truth. The
great prophets, then, whom we have mentioned seem to teach this
lesson, viz. to entangle ourselves with none of the objects of this
world's effort; marriage is one of these, or rather it is the primal
root of all striving after vanities.
Chapter VIII.
Let no one think however that herein we depreciate marriage as an
institution. We are well aware that it is not a stranger to God's
blessing. But since the common instincts of mankind can plead
sufficiently on its behalf, instincts which prompt by a spontaneous
bias to take the high road of marriage for the procreation of
children, whereas Virginity in a way thwarts this natural impulse, it
is a superfluous task to compose formally an Exhortation to marriage.
We put forward the pleasure of it instead, as a most doughty champion
on its behalf. It may be however, notwithstanding this, that there is
some need of such a treatise, occasioned by those who travesty the
teaching of the Church. Such persons [1379] "have their conscience
seared with a hot iron," as the Apostle expresses it; and very truly
too, considering that, deserting the guidance of the Holy Spirit for
the "doctrines of devils," they have some ulcers and blisters stamped
upon their hearts, abominating God's creatures, and calling them
"foul," "seducing," "mischievous," and so on. "But what have I to do
to judge them that are without [1380] ?" asks the Apostle. Truly those
persons are outside the Court in which the words of our mysteries are
spoken; they are not installed under God's roof, but in the monastery
of the Evil One. They "are taken captive by him at his will [1381] ."
They therefore do not understand that all virtue is found in
moderation, and that any declension to either side [1382] of it
becomes a vice. He, in fact, who grasps the middle point between doing
too little and doing too much has hit the distinction between vice and
virtue. Instances will make this clearer. Cowardice and audacity are
two recognized vices opposed to each other; the one the defect, the
other the excess of confidence; between them lies courage. Again,
piety is neither atheism nor superstition; it is equally impious to
deny a God and to believe in many gods. Is there need of more examples
to bring this principle home? The man who avoids both meanness and
prodigality will by this shunning of extremes form the moral habit of
liberality; for liberality is the thing which is neither inclined to
spend at random vast and useless sums, nor yet to be closely
calculating in necessary expenses. We need not go into details in the
case of all good qualities. Reason, in all of them, has established
virtue to be a middle state between two extremes. Sobriety itself
therefore is a middle state, and manifestly involves the two
declensions on either side towards vice; he, that is, who is wanting
in firmness of soul, and is so easily worsted in the combat with
pleasure as never even to have approached the path of a virtuous and
sober life, slides into shameful indulgence; while he who goes beyond
the safe ground of sobriety and overshoots the moderation of this
virtue, falls as it were from a precipice into the "doctrines of
devils," "having his conscience seared with a hot iron." In declaring
marriage abominable he brands himself with such reproaches; for "if
the tree is corrupt" (as the Gospel says), "the fruit also of the tree
will be like it [1383] "; if a man is the shoot and fruitage of the
tree of marriage, reproaches cast on that turn upon him who casts them
[1384] . These persons, then, are like branded criminals already;
their conscience is covered with the stripes of this unnatural
teaching. But our view of marriage is this; that, while the pursuit of
heavenly things should be a man's first care, yet if he can use the
advantages of marriage with sobriety and moderation, he need not
despise this way of serving the state. An example might be found in
the patriarch Isaac. He married Rebecca when he was past the flower of
his age and his prime was well-nigh spent, so that his marriage was
not the deed of passion, but because of God's blessing that should be
upon his seed. He cohabited with her till the birth of her only
children [1385] , and then, closing the channels of the senses, lived
wholly for the Unseen; for this is what seems to be meant by the
mention in his history of the dimness of the Patriarch's eyes. But let
that be as those think who are skilled in reading these meanings, and
let us proceed with the continuity of our discourse. What then, were
we saying? That in the cases where it is possible at once to be true
to the diviner love, and to embrace wedlock, there is no reason for
setting aside this dispensation of nature and misrepresenting as
abominable that which is honourable. Let us take again our
illustration of the water and the spring. Whenever the husbandman, in
order to irrigate a particular spot, is bringing the stream thither,
but there is need before it gets there of a small outlet, he will
allow only so much to escape into that outlet as is adequate to supply
the demand, and can then easily be blended again with the main stream.
If, as an inexperienced and easy-going steward, he opens too wide a
channel, there will be danger of the whole stream quitting its direct
bed and pouring itself sideways. In the same way, if (as life does
need a mutual succession) a man so treats this need as to give
spiritual things the first thought, and because of the shortness
[1386] of the time indulges but sparingly the sexual passion and keeps
it under restraint, that man would realize the character of the
prudent husband man to which the Apostle exhorts us. About the details
of paying these trifling debts of nature he will not be
over-calculating, but the long hours of his prayers [1387] will secure
the purity which is the key-note of his life. He will always fear lest
by this kind of indulgence he may become nothing but flesh and blood;
for in them God's Spirit does not dwell. He who is of so weak a
character that he cannot make a manful stand against nature's impulse
had better [1388] keep himself very far away from such temptations,
rather than descend into a combat which is above his strength. There
is no small danger for him lest, cajoled in the valuation of pleasure,
he should think that there exists no other good but that which is
enjoyed along with some sensual emotion, and, turning altogether from
the love of immaterial delights, should become entirely of the flesh,
seeking always his pleasure only there, so that his character will be
a Pleasure-lover, not a God-lover. It is not every man's gift, owing
to weakness of nature, to hit the due proportion in these matters;
there is a danger of being carried far beyond it, and "sticking fast
in the deep mire [1389] ," to use the Psalmist's words. It would
therefore be for our interest, as our discourse has been suggesting,
to pass through life without a trial of these temptations, lest under
cover of the excuse of lawful indulgence passion should gain an
entrance into the citadel of the soul.
Footnotes
[1379] 1 Tim. iv. 2.
[1380] 1 Cor. v. 12.
[1381] 2 Tim. ii. 16.
[1382] epi ta parakeimena. Galesinius wrongly renders "in contrarias
partes." Cf. Arist. Eth. ii. 5.
[1383] Cf. S. Matt. vii. 18; from which it will be seen that Gregory
confirms the Vulgate "malum" for sapron, since he quotes it as kakon
here.
[1384] tou propherontos; not "of their Creator," or "of their father"
(Livineius).
[1385] mechri mias odinos. So perhaps Rom. ix. 10: ;;Rebekka ex henos
koiten echousa, i.e. ex uno concubitu. Below, c. 9 (p. 139, c. 11),
Gregory uses the same expression of one birth.
[1386] kairou sustolen
[1387] ten ek sumphonou katharoteta te schole ton proseuchon
aphorizon, "durch häufiges Gebet die innige Reinheit festzustellen
sucht," J. Rupp. The Latin fails to give the full force, "ex
convenientia quadam munditiam animi in orationum studio constituit:"
schole is abundant time from the business of life.
[1388] kreitton, k. t. l., "melius" (Livineius), not "validior."
[1389] ilun, a better reading than hulen. Cf. Ps. lxix. 2, "the mire
of depth" (ilun buthou).
Chapter IX.
Custom is indeed in everything hard to resist. It possesses an
enormous power of attracting and seducing the soul. In the cases where
a man has got into a fixed state of sentiment, a certain imagination
of the good is created in him by this habit; and nothing is so
naturally vile but it may come to be thought both desirable and
laudable, once it has got into the fashion [1390] . Take mankind now
living on the earth. There are many nations, and their ambitions are
not all the same. The standard of beauty and of honour is different in
each, the custom of each regulating their enthusiasm and their aims.
This unlikeness is seen not only amongst nations where the pursuits of
the one are in no repute with the other, but even in the same nation,
and the same city, and the same family; we may see in those aggregates
also much difference existing owing to customary feeling. Thus
brothers born from the same throe are separated widely from each other
in the aims of life. Nor is this to be wondered at, considering that
each single man does not generally keep to the same opinion about the
same thing, but alters it as fashion influences him. Not to go far
from our present subject, we have known those who have shown
themselves to be in love with chastity all through the early years of
puberty; but in taking the pleasures which men think legitimate and
allowable they make them the starting-point of an impure life, and
when once they have admitted these temptations, all the forces of
their feeling are turned in that direction, and, to take again our
illustration of the stream, they let it rush from the diviner channel
into low material channels, and make within themselves a broad path
for passion; so that the stream of their love leaves dry the abandoned
channel of the higher way [1391] and flows abroad in indulgence. It
would be well then, we take it, for the weaker brethren to fly to
virginity as into an impregnable fortress, rather than to descend into
the career of life's consequences and invite temptations to do their
worst upon them, entangling themselves in those things which through
the lusts of the flesh war against the law of our mind; it would be
well for them to consider [1392] that herein they risk not broad
acres, or wealth, or any other of this life's prizes, but the hope
which has been their guide. It is impossible that one who has turned
to the world and feels its anxieties, and engages his heart in the
wish to please men, can fulfil that first and great commandment of the
Master, "Thou shalt love God with all thy heart and with all thy
strength [1393] ." How can he fulfil that, when he divides his heart
between God and the world, and exhausts the love which he owes to Him
alone in human affections? "He that is unmarried careth for the things
of the Lord; but he that is married careth for the things that are of
the world [1394] ." If the combat with pleasure seems wearisome,
nevertheless let all take heart. Habit will not fail to produce, even
in the seemingly most fretful [1395] , a feeling of pleasure through
the very effort of their perseverance; and that pleasure will be of
the noblest and purest kind; which the intelligent may well be
enamoured of, rather than allow themselves, with aims narrowed by the
lowness of their objects, to be estranged from the true greatness
which goes beyond all thought.
Footnotes
[1390] ouden houto te phusei pheukton estin, hos, k. t. l. Both
Livineius and Galesinius have missed the meaning here. Jac. Billius
has rightly interpreted, "Nihil naturâ tam turpe ac fugiendum est,
quin, si," &c.
[1391] epi ta ano, Reg. Cod., better than to
[1392] Reading phrontizontas, with Reg. Cod.
[1393] S. Matt. xxii. 37.
[1394] 1 Cor. vii. 32 (R.V.).
[1395] tois duskolotatois; better than to take this as a neuter.
Chapter X.
What words indeed could possibly express the greatness of that loss in
falling away from the possession of real goodness? What consummate
power of thought would have to be employed! Who could produce even in
outline that which speech cannot tell, nor the mind grasp? On the one
hand, if a man has kept the eye of his heart so clear that he can in a
way behold the promise of our Lord's Beatitudes realized, he will
condemn all human utterance as powerless to represent that which he
has apprehended. On the other hand, if a man from the atmosphere of
material indulgences has the weakness of passion spreading like a film
over the keen vision of his soul, all force of expression will be
wasted upon him; for it is all one whether you understate or whether
you magnify a miracle to those who have no power whatever of
perceiving it [1396] . Just as, in the case of the sunlight, on one
who has never from the day of his birth seen it, all efforts at
translating it into words are quite thrown away; you cannot make the
splendour of the ray shine [1397] through his ears; in like manner, to
see the beauty of the true and intellectual light, each man has need
of eyes of his own; and he who by a gift of Divine inspiration can see
it retains his ecstasy unexpressed in the depths of his consciousness;
while he who sees it not cannot be made to know even the greatness of
his loss. How should he? This good escapes his perception, and it
cannot be represented to him; it is unspeakable, and cannot be
delineated. We have not learnt the peculiar language expressive of
this beauty. An example of what we want to say does not exist in the
world; a comparison for it would at least be very difficult to find.
Who compares the Sun to a little spark? or the vast Deep to a drop?
And that tiny drop and that diminutive spark bear the same relation to
the Deep and to the Sun, as any beautiful object of man's admiration
does to that real beauty on the features of the First Good, of which
we catch the glimpse beyond any other good. What words could be
invented to show the greatness of this loss to him who suffers it?
Well does the great David seem to me to express the impossibility of
doing this. He has been lifted by the power of the Spirit out of
himself, and sees in a blessed state of ecstacy the boundless and
incomprehensible Beauty; he sees it as fully as a mortal can see who
has quitted his fleshly envelopments and entered, by the mere power of
thought, upon the contemplation of the spiritual and intellectual
world, and in his longing to speak a word worthy of the spectacle he
bursts forth with that cry, which all re-echo, "Every man a liar
[1398] !" I take that to mean that any man who entrusts to language
the task of presenting the ineffable Light is really and truly a liar;
not because of any hatred on his part of the truth, but because of the
feebleness of his instrument for expressing the thing thought of
[1399] . The visible beauty to be met with in this life of ours,
showing glimpses of itself, whether in inanimate objects or in animate
organisms in a certain choiceness of colour, can be adequately admired
by our power of aesthetic feeling. It can be illustrated and made
known to others by description; it can be seen drawn in the language
as in a picture. Even a perfect type [1400] of such beauty does not
baffle our conception. But how can language illustrate when it finds
no media for its sketch, no colour, no contour [1401] , no majestic
size, no faultlessness of feature; nor any other commonplace of art?
The Beauty which is invisible and formless, which is destitute of
qualities and far removed from everything which we recognize in bodies
by the eye, can never be made known by the traits which require
nothing but the perceptions of our senses in order to be grasped. Not
that we are to despair of winning this object of our love, though it
does seem too high for our comprehension. The more reason shows the
greatness of this thing which we are seeking, the higher we must lift
our thoughts and excite them with the greatness of that object; and we
must fear to lose our share in that transcendent Good. There is indeed
no small amount of danger lest, as we can base the apprehension of it
on no knowable qualities, we should slip away from it altogether
because of its very height and mystery. We deem it necessary
therefore, owing to this weakness of the thinking faculty, to lead it
towards the Unseen by stages through the cognizances of the senses.
Our conception of the case is as follows.
Footnotes
[1396] anaisthetos echonton; Reg. Cod.
[1397] augazein; intrans. in N.T.
[1398] Ps. cxvi. 11.
[1399] ouchi to misei tes aletheias alla te asthenei& 139; tes
diegeseos, the reading of Codd. Vatican & Reg.
[1400] oude to archetupon, k. t. l.
[1401] These are evidently the elements of beauty as then recognized
by the eye; it is still the Hellenic standard.
Chapter XI.
Now those who take a superficial and unreflecting view of things
observe the outward appearance of anything they meet, e.g. of a man,
and then trouble themselves no more about him. The view they have
taken of the bulk of his body is enough to make them think that they
know all about him. But the penetrating and scientific mind will not
trust to the eyes alone the task of taking the measure of reality; it
will not stop at appearances, nor count that which is not seen amongst
unrealities. It inquires into the qualities of the man's soul. It
takes those of its characteristics which have been developed by his
bodily constitution, both in combination and singly; first singly, by
analysis, and then in that living combination which makes the
personality of the subject. As regards the inquiry into the nature of
beauty, we see, again, that the man of half-grown intelligence, when
he observes an object which is bathed in the glow of a seeming beauty,
thinks that that object is in its essence beautiful, no matter what it
is that so prepossesses him with the pleasure of the eye. He will not
go deeper into the subject. But the other, whose mind's eye is clear,
and who can inspect such appearances, will neglect those elements
which are the material only upon which the Form of Beauty works; to
him they will be but the ladder by which he climbs to the prospect of
that Intellectual Beauty, in accordance with their share in which all
other beauties get their existence and their name. But for the
majority, I take it, who live all their lives with such obtuse
faculties of thinking, it is a difficult thing to perform this feat of
mental analysis and of discriminating the material vehicle from the
immanent beauty, and thereby of grasping the actual nature of the
Beautiful; and if any one wants to know the exact source of all the
false and pernicious conceptions of it, he would find it in nothing
else but this, viz. the absence, in the soul's faculties of feeling,
of that exact training which would enable them to distinguish between
true Beauty and the reverse. Owing to this men give up all search
after the true Beauty. Some slide into mere sensuality. Others incline
in their desires to dead metallic coin. Others limit their imagination
of the beautiful to worldly honours, fame, and power. There is another
class which is enthusiastic about art and science. The most debased
make their gluttony the test of what is good. But he who turns from
all grosser thoughts and all passionate longings after what is
seeming, and explores the nature of the beauty which is simple,
immaterial, formless, would never make a mistake like that when he has
to choose between all the objects of desire; he would never be so
misled by these attractions as not to see the transient character of
their pleasures and not to win his way to an utter contempt for every
one of them. This, then, is the path to lead us to the discovery of
the Beautiful. All other objects that attract men's love, be they
never so fashionable, be they prized never so much and embraced never
so eagerly, must be left below us, as too low, too fleeting, to employ
the powers of loving which we possess; not indeed that those powers
are to be locked up within us unused and motionless; but only that
they must first be cleansed from all lower longings; then we must lift
them to that height to which sense can never reach. Admiration even of
the beauty of the heavens, and of the dazzling sunbeams, and, indeed,
of any fair phenomenon, will then cease. The beauty noticed there will
be but as the hand to lead us to the love of the supernal Beauty whose
glory the heavens and the firmament declare, and whose secret the
whole creation sings. The climbing soul, leaving all that she has
grasped already as too narrow for her needs, will thus grasp the idea
of that magnificence which is exalted far above the heavens. But how
can any one reach to this, whose ambitions creep below? How can any
one fly up into the heavens, who has not the wings of heaven and is
not already buoyant and lofty-minded by reason of a heavenly calling?
Few can be such strangers to evangelic mysteries as not to know that
there is but one vehicle on which man's soul can mount into the
heavens, viz. the self-made likeness in himself to the descending
Dove, whose wings [1402] David the Prophet also longed for. This is
the allegorical name used in Scripture for the power of the Holy
Spirit; whether it be because not a drop of gall [1403] is found in
that bird, or because it cannot bear any noisome smell, as close
observers tell us. He therefore who keeps away from all bitterness and
all the noisome effluvia of the flesh, and raises himself on the
aforesaid wings above all low earthly ambitions, or, more than that,
above the whole universe itself, will be the man to find that which is
alone worth loving, and to become himself as beautiful as the Beauty
which he has touched and entered, and to be made bright and luminous
himself in the communion of the real Light. We are told by those who
have studied the subject, that those gleams which follow each other so
fast through the air at night and which some call shooting stars
[1404] , are nothing but the air itself streaming into the upper
regions of the sky under stress of some particular blasts. They say
that the fiery track is traced along the sky when those blasts ignite
in the ether. In like manner, then, as this air round the earth is
forced upwards by some blast and changes into the pure splendour of
the ether, so the mind of man leaves this murky miry world, and under
the stress of the spirit becomes pure and luminous in contact with the
true and supernal Purity; in such an atmosphere it even itself emits
light, and is so filled with radiance, that it becomes itself a Light,
according to the promise of our Lord that "the righteous should shine
forth as the sun [1405] ." We see this even here, in the case of a
mirror, or a sheet of water, or any smooth surface that can reflect
the light; when they receive the sunbeam they beam themselves; but
they would not do this if any stain marred their pure and shining
surface. We shall become then as the light, in our nearness to
Christ's true light, if we leave this dark atmosphere of the earth and
dwell above; and we shall be light, as our Lord says somewhere to His
disciples [1406] , if the true Light that shineth in the dark comes
down even to us; unless, that is, any foulness of sin spreading over
our hearts should dim the brightness of our light. Perhaps these
examples have led us gradually on to the discovery that we can be
changed into something better than ourselves; and it has been proved
as well that this union of the soul with the incorruptible Deity can
be accomplished in no other way but by herself attaining by her virgin
state to the utmost purity possible,--a state which, being like God,
will enable her to grasp that to which it is like, while she places
herself like a mirror beneath the purity of God, and moulds her own
beauty at the touch and the sight of the Archetype of all beauty. Take
a character strong enough to turn from all that is human, from
persons, from wealth, from the pursuits of Art and Science, even from
whatever in moral practice and in legislation is viewed as right (for
still in all of them error in the apprehension of the Beautiful comes
in, sense being the criterion); such a character will feel as a
passionate lover only towards that Beauty which has no source but
Itself, which is not such at one particular time or relatively only,
which is Beautiful from, and through, and in itself, not such at one
moment and in the next ceasing to be such, above all increase and
addition, incapable of change and alteration. I venture to affirm
that, to one who has cleansed all the powers of his being from every
form of vice, the Beauty which is essential, the source of every
beauty and every good, will become visible. The visual eye, purged
from its blinding humour, can clearly discern objects even on the
distant sky [1407] ; so to the soul by virtue of her innocence there
comes the power of taking in that Light; and the real Virginity, the
real zeal for chastity, ends in no other goal than this, viz. the
power thereby of seeing God. No one in fact is so mentally blind as
not to understand that without telling; viz. that the God of the
Universe is the only absolute, and primal, and unrivalled [1408]
Beauty and Goodness. All, maybe, know that; but there are those who,
as might have been expected, wish besides this to discover, if
possible, a process by which we may be actually guided to it. Well,
the Divine books are full of such instruction for our guidance; and
besides that many of the Saints cast the refulgence of their own
lives, like lamps, upon the path for those who are "walking with God
[1409] ." But each may gather in abundance for himself suggestions
towards this end out of either Covenant in the inspired writings; the
Prophets and the Law are full of them; and also the Gospel and the
Traditions of the Apostles. What we ourselves have conjectured in
following out the thoughts of those inspired utterances is this.
Footnotes
[1402] Ps. lv. 6.
[1403] Cf. Augustine, Tract. 6 in Joann.: "Columba fel non habet.
Simon habebat; ideo separatus est a columbæ visceribus." Aristotle
asserts the contrary; but even Galen denies that it possesses a
bladder (lib. de atr. bil. sub fin.).
[1404] diattontas, corrected by Livineius, the transcriber of the
Vatican ms., for diatattontas. Cf. Arist. Meteor. I. iv: kai homoios
kata platos kai bathos hoi dokountes asteres diattein ginontai: and,
in the same chapter, diatheontes asteres. Cf. Seneca. Nat. Quæst. iii.
14: "Videmus ergo `Stellarum longos a tergo albescere tractus.' Hæc
velut stellæ exsiliunt et transvolant." This and much else, in the
preceding and following notes to this treatise, is taken from those of
Fronto Ducæus, printed in the Paris Edit. The Paris Editors, Fronto
Ducæus and Claude Morell, used Livineius' edition (1574) of this
treatise, which is based on the Vatican Cod. and Bricman's (of
Cologne); and they corrected from the Cod. of F. Morell, Regius
Professor of Theology; and from the Cod. Regius.
[1405] S. Matt. xiii. 43.
[1406] S. John ix. 5; i. 9.
[1407] ta en to ourano telaugos kathoratai. The same word in S. Mark
viii. 25 ("clearly") evidently refers to the second stage of recovered
sight, the power of seeing the perspective. The mss. reading is en to
hagio, for which aeri and heli& 251; have been conjectured; ourano is
due to Galesinius; there is a similar place in Dio Chrys. (de regno et
tyrann.): "impaired sight," he says, "cannot see even what is quite
close, hugies de ousa mechris ouranou te kai asteron exikneitai, i.e.
the distant sky. Just above, apor& 191;upsameno (purged) is a better
reading than apor& 191;ipsameno, and supported by F. Morell's ms.
[1408] monos.
[1409] Gen. v. 24; vi. 9.
Chapter XII.
This reasoning and intelligent creature, man, at once the work and the
likeness of the Divine and Imperishable Mind (for so in the Creation
it is written of him that "God made man in His image [1410] "), this
creature, I say, did not in the course of his first production have
united to the very essence of his nature the liability to passion and
to death. Indeed, the truth about the image could never have been
maintained if the beauty reflected in that image had been in the
slightest degree opposed [1411] to the Archetypal Beauty. Passion was
introduced afterwards, subsequent to man's first organization; and it
was in this way. Being the image and the likeness, as has been said,
of the Power which rules all things, man kept also in the matter of a
Free-Will this likeness to Him whose Will is over all. He was enslaved
to no outward necessity whatever; his feeling towards that which
pleased him depended only on his own private judgment; he was free to
choose whatever he liked; and so he was a free agent, though
circumvented with cunning, when he drew upon himself that disaster
which now overwhelms humanity. He became himself the discoverer of
evil, but he did not therein discover what God had made; for God did
not make death. Man became, in fact, himself the fabricator, to a
certain extent, and the craftsman of evil. All who have the faculty of
sight may enjoy equally the sunlight; and any one can if he likes put
this enjoyment from him by shutting his eyes: in that case it is not
that the sun retires and produces that darkness, but the man himself
puts a barrier between his eye and the sunshine; the faculty of vision
cannot indeed, even in the closing of the eyes, remain inactive [1412]
, and so this operative sight necessarily becomes an operative
darkness [1413] rising up in the man from his own free act in ceasing
to see. Again, a man in building a house for himself may omit to make
in it any way of entrance for the light; he will necessarily be in
darkness, though he cuts himself off from the light voluntarily. So
the first man on the earth, or rather he who generated evil in man,
had for choice the Good and the Beautiful lying all around him in the
very nature of things; yet he wilfully cut out a new way for himself
against this nature, and in the act of turning away from virtue, which
was his own free act, he created the usage of evil. For, be it
observed, there is no such thing in the world as evil irrespective of
a will, and discoverable in a substance apart from that. Every
creature of God is good, and nothing of His "to be rejected"; all that
God made was "very good [1414] ." But the habit of sinning entered as
we have described, and with fatal quickness, into the life of man; and
from that small beginning spread into this infinitude of evil. Then
that godly beauty of the soul which was an imitation of the Archetypal
Beauty, like fine steel blackened [1415] with the vicious rust,
preserved no longer the glory of its familiar essence, but was
disfigured with the ugliness of sin. This thing so great and precious
[1416] , as the Scripture calls him, this being man, has fallen from
his proud birthright. As those who have slipped and fallen heavily
into mud, and have all their features so besmeared with it, that their
nearest friends do not recognize them, so this creature has fallen
into the mire of sin and lost the blessing of being an image of the
imperishable Deity; he has clothed himself instead with a perishable
and foul resemblance to something else; and this Reason counsels him
to put away again by washing it off in the cleansing water of this
calling [1417] . The earthly envelopment once removed, the soul's
beauty will again appear. Now the putting off of a strange accretion
is equivalent to the return to that which is familiar and natural; yet
such a return cannot be but by again becoming that which in the
beginning we were created. In fact this likeness to the divine is not
our work at all; it is not the achievement of any faculty of man; it
is the great gift of God bestowed upon our nature at the very moment
of our birth; human efforts can only go so far as to clear away the
filth of sin, and so cause the buried beauty of the soul to shine
forth again. This truth is, I think, taught in the Gospel, when our
Lord says, to those who can hear what Wisdom speaks beneath a mystery,
that "the Kingdom of God is within you [1418] ." That word [1419]
points out the fact that the Divine good is not something apart from
our nature, and is not removed far away from those who have the will
to seek it; it is in fact within each of us, ignored indeed, and
unnoticed while it is stifled beneath the cares and pleasures of life,
but found again whenever we can turn our power of conscious thinking
towards it. If further confirmation of what we say is required, I
think it will be found in what is suggested by our Lord in the
searching for the Lost Drachma [1420] . The thought, there, is that
the widowed soul reaps no benefit from the other virtues (called
drachmas in the Parable) being all of them found safe, if that one
other is not amongst them. The Parable therefore suggests that a
candle should first be lit, signifying doubtless our reason which
throws light on hidden principles; then that in one's own house, that
is, within oneself, we should search for that lost coin; and by that
coin the Parable doubtless hints at the image of our King, not yet
hopelessly lost, but hidden beneath the dirt; and by this last we must
understand the impurities of the flesh, which, being swept and purged
away by carefulness of life, leave clear to the view the object of our
search. Then it is meant that the soul herself who finds this rejoices
over it, and with her the neighbours, whom she calls in to share with
her in this delight. Verily, all those powers which are the housemates
of the soul, and which the Parable names her neighbours for this
occasion [1421] , when so be that the image of the mighty King is
revealed in all its brightness at last (that image which the Fashioner
of each individual heart of us has stamped upon this our Drachma
[1422] ), will then be converted to that divine delight and festivity,
and will gaze upon the ineffable beauty of the recovered one. "Rejoice
with me," she says, "because I have found the Drachma which I had
lost." The neighbours, that is, the soul's familiar powers, both the
reasoning and the appetitive, the affections of grief and of anger,
and all the rest that are discerned in her, at that joyful feast which
celebrates the finding of the heavenly Drachma are well called her
friends also; and it is meet that they should all rejoice in the Lord
when they all look towards the Beautiful and the Good, and do
everything for the glory of God, no longer instruments of sin [1423] .
If, then, such is the lesson of this Finding of the lost, viz. that we
should restore the divine image from the foulness which the flesh
wraps round it to its primitive state, let us become that which the
First Man was at the moment when he first breathed. And what was that?
Destitute he was then of his covering of dead skins, but he could gaze
without shrinking upon God's countenance. He did not yet judge of what
was lovely by taste or sight; he found in the Lord alone all that was
sweet; and he used the helpmeet given him only for this delight, as
Scripture signifies when it said that "he knew her not [1424] " till
he was driven forth from the garden, and till she, for the sin which
she was decoyed into committing, was sentenced to the pangs of
childbirth. We, then, who in our first ancestor were thus ejected, are
allowed to return to our earliest state of blessedness by the very
same stages by which we lost Paradise. What are they? Pleasure,
craftily offered, began the Fall, and there followed after pleasure
shame, and fear, even to remain longer in the sight of their Creator,
so that they hid themselves in leaves and shade; and after that they
covered themselves with the skins of dead animals; and then were sent
forth into this pestilential and exacting land where, as the
compensation for having to die, marriage was instituted [1425] . Now
if we are destined "to depart hence, and be with Christ [1426] ," we
must begin at the end of the route of departure (which lies nearest to
ourselves); just as those who have travelled far from their friends at
home, when they turn to reach again the place from which they started,
first leave that district which they reached at the end of their
outward journey. Marriage, then, is the last stage of our separation
from the life that was led in Paradise; marriage therefore, as our
discourse has been suggesting, is the first thing to be left; it is
the first station as it were for our departure to Christ. Next, we
must retire from all anxious toil upon the land, such as man was bound
to after his sin. Next we must divest ourselves of those coverings of
our nakedness, the coats of skins, namely the wisdom of the flesh; we
must renounce all shameful things done in secret [1427] , and be
covered no longer with the fig-leaves of this bitter world; then, when
we have torn off the coatings of this life's perishable leaves, we
must stand again in the sight of our Creator; and repelling all the
illusion of taste and sight, take for our guide God's commandment
only, instead of the venom-spitting serpent. That commandment was, to
touch nothing but what was Good, and to leave what was evil untasted;
because impatience to remain any longer in ignorance of evil would be
but the beginning of the long train of actual evil. For this reason it
was forbidden to our first parents to grasp the knowledge of the
opposite to the good, as well as that of the good itself; they were to
keep themselves from "the knowledge of good and evil [1428] ," and to
enjoy the Good in its purity, unmixed with one particle of evil: and
to enjoy that, is in my judgment nothing else than to be ever with
God, and to feel ceaselessly and continually this delight, unalloyed
by aught that could tear us away from it. One might even be bold to
say that this might be found the way by which a man could be again
caught up into Paradise out of this world which lieth in the Evil,
into that Paradise where Paul was when he saw the unspeakable sights
which it is not lawful for a man to talk of [1429] .
Footnotes
[1410] Gen. i. 27.
[1411] hupenantios; i.e. even as a sub-contrary.
[1412] argein.
[1413] skotous energeian
[1414] 1 Tim. iv. 4; Gen. i. 31.
[1415] katemelanthe
[1416] Cf. Prov. xx. 6, mega anthropos; and Ambrose (de obitu
Theodosii), "Magnum et honorabile est homo misericors;" and the same
on Ps. cxix. 73, "Grande homo, et preciosum vir misericors, et vere
magnus est, qui divini operis interpres est, et imitator Dei."
[1417] tes politeias: used in the same sense in "On Pilgrimages."
[1418] S. Luke xvii. 21.
[1419] ho logos, i.e. Scripture. So to logion in Gregory passim, and
Clement. Alex. (Stromata).
[1420] S. Luke xv. 8
[1421] nun.
[1422] enesemenato he ?n te drachme.
[1423] Rom. vi. 13.
[1424] Gen. iv. 1.
[1425] Gen. iii. 16.
[1426] Philip. i. 23.
[1427] 2 Cor. iv. 2.
[1428] Gen. ii. 17.
[1429] 2 Cor. xii. 4.
Chapter XIII.
But seeing that Paradise is the home of living spirits, and will not
admit those who are dead in sin, and that we on the other hand are
fleshly, subject to death, and sold under sin [1430] , how is it
possible that one who is a subject of death's empire should ever dwell
in this land where all is life? What method of release from this
jurisdiction can be devised? Here too the Gospel teaching is
abundantly sufficient. We hear our Lord saying to Nicodemus, "That
which is born of the flesh is flesh; and that which is born of the
Spirit is spirit [1431] ." We know too that the flesh is subject to
death because of sin, but the Spirit of God is both incorruptible, and
life-giving, and deathless. As at our physical birth there comes into
the world with us a potentiality of being again turned to dust,
plainly the Spirit also imparts a life-giving potentiality to the
children begotten by Himself. What lesson, then, results from these
remarks? This: that we should wean ourselves from this life in the
flesh, which has an inevitable follower, death; and that we should
search for a manner of life which does not bring death in its train.
Now the life of Virginity is such a life. We will add a few other
things to show how true this is. Every one knows that the propagation
of mortal frames is the work which the intercourse of the sexes has to
do; whereas for those who are joined to the Spirit, life and
immortality instead of children are produced by this latter
intercourse; and the words of the Apostle beautifully suit their case,
for the joyful mother of such children as these "shall be saved in
child-bearing [1432] ;" as the Psalmist in his divine songs thankfully
cries, "He maketh the barren woman to keep house, and to be a joyful
mother of children [1433] ." Truly a joyful mother is the virgin
mother who by the operation of the Spirit conceives the deathless
children, and who is called by the Prophet barren because of her
modesty only. This life, then, which is stronger than the power of
death, is, to those who think, the preferable one. The physical
bringing of children into the world--I speak without wishing to
offend--is as much a starting-point of death as of life; because from
the moment of birth the process of dying commences. But those who by
virginity have desisted from this process have drawn within themselves
the boundary line of death, and by their own deed have checked his
advance; they have made themselves, in fact, a frontier between life
and death, and a barrier too, which thwarts him. If, then, death
cannot pass beyond virginity, but finds his power checked and
shattered there, it is demonstrated that virginity is a stronger thing
than death; and that body is rightly named undying which does not lend
its service to a dying world, nor brook to become the instrument of a
succession of dying creatures. In such a body the long unbroken career
of decay and death, which has intervened between [1434] the first man
and the lives of virginity which have been led, is interrupted. It
could not be indeed that death should cease working as long as the
human race by marriage was working too; he walked the path of life
with all preceding generations; he started with every new-born child
and accompanied it to the end: but he found in virginity a barrier, to
pass which was an impossible feat. Just as, in the age of Mary the
mother of God, he who had reigned from Adam to her time found, when he
came to her and dashed his forces against the fruit of her virginity
as against a rock, that he was shattered to pieces upon her, so in
every soul which passes through this life in the flesh under the
protection of virginity, the strength of death is in a manner broken
and annulled, for he does not find the places upon which he may fix
his sting. If you do not throw into the fire wood, or straw, or grass,
or something that it can consume, it has not the force to last by
itself; so the power of death cannot go on working, if marriage does
not supply it with material and prepare victims for this executioner.
If you have any doubts left, consider the actual names of those
afflictions which death brings upon mankind, and which were detailed
in the first part of this discourse. Whence do they get their meaning?
"Widowhood," "orphanhood," "loss of children," could they be a subject
for grief, if marriage did not precede? Nay, all the dearly-prized
blisses, and transports, and comforts of marriage end in these agonies
of grief. The hilt of a sword is smooth and handy, and polished and
glittering outside; it seems to grow to the outline of the hand [1435]
; but the other part is steel and the instrument of death, formidable
to look at, more formidable still to come across. Such a thing is
marriage. It offers for the grasp of the senses a smooth surface of
delights, like a hilt of rare polish and beautiful workmanship; but
when a man has taken it up and has got it into his hands, he finds the
pain that has been wedded to it is in his hands as well; and it
becomes to him the worker of mourning and of loss. It is marriage that
has the heartrending spectacles to show of children left desolate in
the tenderness of their years, a mere prey to the powerful, yet
smiling often at their misfortune from ignorance of coming woes. What
is the cause of widowhood but marriage? And retirement from this would
bring with it an immunity from the whole burden of these sad taxes on
our hearts. Can we expect it otherwise? When the verdict that was
pronounced on the delinquents in the beginning is annulled, then too
the mothers' "sorrows [1436] " are no longer "multiplied," nor does
"sorrow" herald the births of men; then all calamity has been removed
from life and "tears wiped from off all faces [1437] ;" conception is
no more an iniquity, nor child-bearing a sin; and births shall be no
more "of bloods," or "of the will of man," or "of the will of the
flesh [1438] ", but of God alone. This is always happening whenever
any one in a lively heart conceives all the integrity of the Spirit,
and brings forth wisdom and righteousness, and sanctification and
redemption too. It is possible for any one to be the mother of such a
son; as our Lord says, "He that doeth my will is my brother, my
sister, and my mother [1439] ." What room is there for death in such
parturitions? Indeed in them death is swallowed up by life. In fact,
the Life of Virginity seems to be an actual representation of the
blessedness in the world to come, showing as it does in itself so many
signs of the presence of those expected blessings which are reserved
for us there. That the truth of this statement may be perceived, we
will verify it thus. It is so, first, because a man who has thus died
once for all to sin lives for the future to God; he brings forth no
more fruit unto death; and having so far as in him lies made an end
[1440] of this life within him according to the flesh, he awaits
thenceforth the expected blessing of the manifestation [1441] of the
great God, refraining from putting any distance between himself and
this coming of God by an intervening posterity: secondly, because he
enjoys even in this present life a certain exquisite glory of all the
blessed results of our resurrection. For our Lord has announced that
the life after our resurrection shall be as that of the angels. Now
the peculiarity of the angelic nature is that they are strangers to
marriage; therefore the blessing of this promise has been already
received by him who has not only mingled his own glory with the halo
of the Saints, but also by the stainlessness of his life has so
imitated the purity of these incorporeal beings. If virginity then can
win us favours such as these, what words are fit to express the
admiration of so great a grace? What other gift of the soul can be
found so great and precious as not to suffer by comparison with this
perfection?
Footnotes
[1430] hupo ten hamartian should perhaps be restored from Rom. vii.
14; though the Paris Edit. has hupo tes hamartias.
[1431] S. John iii. 6
[1432] 1 Tim. ii. 15.
[1433] Ps. cxiii. 9.
[1434] dia mesou ou gegonen. So Codd. Reg. Vat.; but the ou is
manifestly a corruption arising from mesou.
[1435] emphuomene; cf. the Homeric en d'ara hoi phu cheiri, k. t. l
[1436] Gen. iii. 16.
[1437] Is. xxv. 8.
[1438] S. John i. 13
[1439] S. Matt. xii. 50.
[1440] sunteleian. Cf. S. Matt. xiii. 39; and Heb. ix. 15.
[1441] epiphaneian; Tit. ii. 13.
Chapter XIV.
But if we apprehend at last the perfection of this grace, we must
understand as well what necessarily follows from it; namely that it is
not a single achievement, ending in the subjugation of the body, but
that in intention it reaches to and pervades everything that is, or is
considered, a right condition of the soul. That soul indeed which in
virginity cleaves to the true Bridegroom will not remove herself
merely from all bodily defilement; she will make that abstension only
the beginning of her purity, and will carry this security from failure
equally into everything else upon her path. Fearing lest, from a too
partial heart, she should by contact with evil in any one direction
give occasion for the least weakness of unfaithfulness (to suppose
such a case: but I will begin again what I was going to say), that
soul which cleaves to her Master so as to become with Him one spirit,
and by the compact of a wedded life has staked the love of all her
heart and all her strength on Him alone--that soul will no more commit
any other of the offences contrary to salvation, than imperil her
union with Him by cleaving to fornication; she knows that between all
sins there is a single kinship of impurity, and that if she were to
defile herself with but one [1442] , she could no longer retain her
spotlessness. An illustration will show what we mean. Suppose all the
water in a pool remaining smooth and motionless, while no disturbance
of any kind comes to mar the peacefulness of the spot; and then a
stone thrown into the pool; the movement in that one part [1443] will
extend to the whole, and while the stone's weight is carrying it to
the bottom, the waves that are set in motion round it pass in circles
[1444] into others, and so through all the intervening commotion are
pushed on to the very edge of the water, and the whole surface is
ruffled with these circles, feeling the movement of the depths. So is
the broad serenity and calm of the soul troubled by one invading
passion, and affected by the injury of a single part. They tell us
too, those who have investigated the subject, that the virtues are not
disunited from each other, and that to grasp the principle of any one
virtue will be impossible to one who has not seized that which
underlies the rest, and that the man who shows one virtue in his
character will necessarily show them all. Therefore, by contraries,
the depravation of anything in our moral nature will extend to the
whole virtuous life; and in very truth, as the Apostle tells us, the
whole is affected by the parts, and "if one member [1445] suffer, all
the members suffer with it," "if one be honoured, all rejoice."
Footnotes
[1442] The text is here due to the Vatican Codex: kai ei di'henos
tinos moluntheie, k. t. l.
[1443] to merei. This is the reading of Cod. Morell. and of the
fragment used by Livineius; preferable to to meriko salo
sunkumatoumenon, as in Cod. Reg.
[1444] kukloteros, Plutarch, ii. 892, F.
[1445] melos (not as Galesinius, meros), 1 Cor. xii. 26.
Chapter XV.
But the ways in our life which turn aside towards sin are innumerable;
and their number is told by Scripture in divers manners. "Many are
they that trouble me and persecute," and "Many are they that fight
against me from on high [1446] "; and many other texts like that. We
may affirm, indeed, absolutely, that many are they who plot in the
adulterer's fashion to destroy this truly honourable marriage, and to
defile this inviolate bed; and if we must name them one by one, we
charge with this adulterous spirit anger, avarice, envy, revenge,
enmity, malice, hatred, and whatever the Apostle puts in the class of
those things which are contrary to sound doctrine. Now let us suppose
a lady, prepossessing and lovely above her peers, and on that account
wedded to a king, but besieged because of her beauty by profligate
lovers. As long as she remains indignant at these would-be seducers
and complains of them to her lawful husband, she keeps her chastity
and has no one before her eyes but her bridegroom; the profligates
find no vantage ground for their attack upon her. But if she were to
listen to a single one of them, her chastity with regard to the rest
would not exempt her from the retribution; it would be sufficient to
condemn her, that she had allowed that one to defile the marriage bed.
So the soul whose life is in God will find her pleasure [1447] in no
single one of those things which make a beauteous show to deceive her.
If she were, in some fit of weakness, to admit the defilement to her
heart, she would herself have broken the covenant of her spiritual
marriage; and, as the Scripture tells us, "into the malicious soul
Wisdom cannot come [1448] ." It may, in a word, be truly said that the
Good Husband cannot come to dwell with the soul that is irascible, or
malice-bearing, or harbours any other disposition which jars with that
concord. No way has been discovered of harmonizing things whose nature
is antagonistic and which have nothing in common. The Apostle tells us
there is "no communion of light with darkness [1449] ," or of
righteousness with iniquity, or, in a word, of all the qualities which
we perceive and name as the essence of God's nature, with all the
opposite which are perceived in evil. Seeing, then, the impossibility
of any union between mutual repellents, we understand that the vicious
soul is estranged from entertaining the company of the Good. What then
is the practical lesson from this? The chaste and thoughtful virgin
must sever herself from any affection which can in any way impart
contagion to her soul; she must keep herself pure for the Husband who
has married her, "not having spot or blemish or any such thing [1450]
."
Footnotes
[1446] Ps. lvi. 3 (from LXX. according to many mss.: others join apo
upsous hemeras ou phobethesomai, ab altitudine diei non timebo). But
Aquila has hupsiste, agreeing with the Hebrew; so also Jerome.
[1447] oudeni aresthesetai. The Vatican Cod. has erathesetai, which
would require the genitive.
[1448] Wis. i. 4.
[1449] 2 Cor. vi. 14.
[1450] Eph. v. 27.--Origen (c. Cels. vii. 48, 49), comparing Pagan and
Christian virginity, says, "The Athenian hierophant, distrusting his
power of self-control for the period of his regular religious duties,
uses hemlock, and passes as pure. But you may see among the Christians
men who need no hemlock. The Faith drives evil from their minds, and
ever fits them to perform the service of prayer. Belonging to some of
the gods now in vogue there are certainly virgins here and
there--watched or not I care not now to inquire--who seem not to break
down in the course of chastity which the honour of their god requires.
But amongst Christians, for no repute amongst men, for no stipend, for
no mere show, they practise an absolute virginity; and as they `liked
to retain God in their knowledge,' so God has kept them in that liking
mind, and in the performance of fitting works, filling them with
righteousness and goodness. I say this without any depreciation of
what is beautiful in Greek thought, and of what is wholesome in their
teachings. I wish only to show that all they have said, and things
more noble, more divine, have been said by those men of God, the
prophets and apostles."
Chapter XVI.
There is only one right path. It is narrow and contracted. It has no
turnings either on the one side or the other. No matter how we leave
it, there is the same danger of straying hopelessly away. This being
so, the habit which many have got into must be as far as possible
corrected; those, I mean, who while they fight strenuously against the
baser pleasures, yet still go on hunting for pleasure in the shape of
worldly honour and positions which will gratify their love of power.
They act like some domestic who longed for liberty, but instead of
exerting himself to get away from slavery proceeded only to change his
masters, and thought liberty consisted in that change. But all alike
are slaves, even though they should not all go on being ruled by the
same masters, as long as a dominion of any sort, with power to enforce
it, is set over them. There are others again who after a long battle
against all the pleasures [1451] , yield themselves easily on another
field, where feelings of an opposite kind come in; and in the intense
exactitude of their lives fall a ready prey to melancholy and
irritation, and to brooding over injuries, and to everything that is
the direct opposite of pleasurable feelings; from which they are very
reluctant to extricate themselves. This is always happening, whenever
any emotion, instead of virtuous reason, controls the course of a
life. For the commandment of the Lord is exceedingly far-shining, so
as to "enlighten the eyes" even of "the simple [1452] ," declaring
that good cleaveth only unto God. But God is not pain any more than He
is pleasure; He is not cowardice any more than boldness; He is not
fear, nor anger, nor any other emotion which sways the untutored soul,
but, as the Apostle says, He is Very Wisdom and Sanctification, Truth
and Joy and Peace, and everything like that. If He is such, how can
any one be said to cleave to Him, who is mastered by the very
opposite? Is it not want of reason in any one to suppose that when he
has striven successfully to escape the dominion of one particular
passion, he will find virtue in its opposite? For instance, to suppose
that when he has escaped pleasure, he will find virtue in letting pain
have possession of him; or when he has by an effort remained proof
against anger, in crouching with fear. It matters not whether we miss
virtue, or rather God Himself Who is the Sum of virtue, in this way,
or in that. Take the case of great bodily prostration; one would say
that the sadness of this failure was just the same, whether the cause
has been excessive under-feeding, or immoderate eating; both failures
to stop in time end in the same result. He therefore who watches over
the life and the sanity of the soul will confine himself to the
moderation of the truth; he will continue without touching either of
those opposite states which run along-side virtue. This teaching is
not mine; it comes from the Divine lips. It is clearly contained in
that passage where our Lord says to His disciples, that they are as
sheep wandering amongst wolves [1453] , yet are not to be as doves
only, but are to have something of the serpent too in their
disposition; and that means that they should neither carry to excess
the practice of that which seems praiseworthy in simplicity [1454] ,
as such a habit would come very near to downright madness, nor on the
other hand should deem the cleverness which most admire to be a
virtue, while unsoftened by any mixture with its opposite; they were
in fact to form another disposition, by a compound of these two
seeming opposites, cutting off its silliness from the one, its evil
cunning from the other; so that one single beautiful character should
be created from the two, a union of simplicity of purpose with
shrewdness. "Be ye," He says, "wise as serpents, and harmless as
doves."
Footnotes
[1451] tas hedonas i.e.the whole class.
[1452] Ps. xix. 6, 7, 8.
[1453] S. Matt. x. 16
[1454] According to the emendation of Livineius: mete to kata ten
haploteta dokoun epaineton
Chapter XVII.
Let that which was then said by our Lord be the general maxim for
every life; especially let it be the maxim for those who are coming
nearer God through the gateway of virginity, that they should never in
watching for a perfection in one direction present an unguarded side
in another and contrary one; but should in all directions realize the
good, so that they may guarantee in all things their holy life against
failure. A soldier does not arm himself only on some points, leaving
the rest of his body to take its chance unprotected. If he were to
receive his death-wound upon that, what would have been the advantage
of this partial armour? Again, who would call that feature faultless,
which from some accident had lost one of those requisites which go to
make up the sum of beauty? The disfigurement of the mutilated part
mars the grace of the part untouched. The Gospel implies that he who
undertakes the building of a tower, but spends all his labour upon the
foundations without ever reaching the completion, is worthy of
ridicule; and what else do we learn from the Parable of the Tower, but
to strive to come to the finish of every lofty purpose, accomplishing
the work of God in all the multiform structures of His commandments?
One stone, indeed, is no more the whole edifice of the Tower, than one
commandment kept will raise the soul's perfection to the required
height. The foundation must by all means first be laid but over it, as
the Apostle says [1455] , the edifice of gold and precious gems must
be built; for so is the doing of the commandment put by the Prophet
who cries, "I have loved Thy commandment above gold and many a
precious stone [1456] ." Let the virtuous life have for its
substructure the love of virginity; but upon this let every result of
virtue be reared. If virginity is believed to be a vastly precious
thing and to have a divine look (as indeed is the case, as well as men
believe of it), yet, if the whole life does not harmonize with this
perfect note, and it be marred by the succeeding [1457] discord of the
soul, this thing becomes but "the jewel of gold in the swine's snout
[1458] " or "the pearl that is trodden under the swine's feet." But we
have said enough upon this.
Footnotes
[1455] 1 Cor. iii. 12.
[1456] Ps. cxix. 127, LXX. (chrusion kai topazion).
[1457] te loipon
[1458] For the gold, see Prov. xi. 22; for the pearl, S. Matt. vii. 6
Chapter XVIII.
If any one supposes that [1459] this want of mutual harmony between
his life and a single one of its circumstances is quite unimportant,
let him be taught the meaning of our maxim by looking at the
management of a house. The master of a private dwelling will not allow
any untidiness or unseemliness to be seen in the house, such as a
couch upset, or the table littered with rubbish, or vessels of price
thrown away into dirty corners, while those which serve ignobler uses
are thrust forward for entering guests to see. He has everything
arranged neatly and in the proper place, where it stands to most
advantage; and then he can welcome his guests, without any misgivings
that he need be ashamed of opening the interior of his house to
receive them. The same duty, I take it, is incumbent on that master of
our "tabernacle," the mind; it has to arrange everything within us,
and to put each particular faculty of the soul, which the Creator has
fashioned to be our implement or our vessel, to fitting and noble
uses. We will now mention in detail the way in which any one might
manage his life, with its present advantages, to his improvement,
hoping that no one will accuse us of trifling [1460] , or
over-minuteness. We advise, then, that love's passion be placed in the
soul's purest shrine, as a thing chosen to be the first fruits of all
our gifts, and devoted [1461] entirely to God; and when once this has
been done, to keep it untouched and unsullied by any secular
defilement. Then indignation, and anger, and hatred must be as
watch-dogs to be roused only against attacking sins; they must follow
their natural impulse only against the thief and the enemy who is
creeping in to plunder the divine treasure-chamber, and who comes only
for that, that he may steal, and mangle, and destroy. Courage and
confidence are to be weapons in our hands to baffle any sudden
surprise and attack of the wicked who advance. Hope and patience are
to be the staffs to lean upon, whenever we are weary with the trials
of the world. As for sorrow, we must have a stock of it ready to
apply, if need should happen to arise for it, in the hour of
repentance for our sins; believing at the same time that it is never
useful, except to minister to that. Righteousness will be our rule of
straightforwardness, guarding us from stumbling either in word or
deed, and guiding us in the disposal of the faculties of our soul, as
well as in the due consideration for every one we meet. The love of
gain, which is a large, incalculably large, element in every soul,
when once applied to the desire for God, will bless the man who has
it; for he will be violent [1462] where it is right to be violent.
Wisdom and prudence will be our advisers as to our best interests;
they will order our lives so as never to suffer from any thoughtless
folly. But suppose a man does not apply the aforesaid faculties of the
soul to their proper use, but reverses their intended purpose; suppose
he wastes his love upon the basest objects, and stores up his hatred
only for his own kinsmen; suppose he welcomes iniquity, plays the man
only against his parents, is bold only in absurdities, fixes his hopes
on emptiness, chases prudence and wisdom from his company, takes
gluttony and folly for his mistresses, and uses all his other
opportunities in the same fashion, he would indeed be a strange and
unnatural character to a degree beyond any one's power to express. If
we could imagine any one putting his armour on all the wrong way,
reversing the helmet so as to cover his face while the plume nodded
backward, putting his feet into the cuirass, and fitting the greaves
on to his breast, changing to the right side all that ought to go on
the left and vice versa, and how such a hoplite would be likely to
fare in battle, then we should have an idea of the fate in life which
is sure to await him whose confused judgment makes him reverse the
proper uses of his soul's faculties. We must therefore provide this
balance in all feeling; the true sobriety of mind is naturally able to
supply it; and if one had to find an exact definition of this
sobriety, one might declare absolutely, that it amounts to our ordered
control, by dint of wisdom and prudence, over every emotion of the
soul. Moreover, such a condition in the soul will be no longer in need
of any laborious method to attain to the high and heavenly realities;
it will accomplish with the greatest ease that which erewhile seemed
so unattainable; it will grasp the object of its search as a natural
consequence of rejecting the opposite attractions. A man who comes out
of darkness is necessarily in the light; a man who is not dead is
necessarily alive. Indeed, if a man is not to have received his soul
to no purpose [1463] , he will certainly be upon the path of truth;
the prudence and the science employed to guard against error will be
itself a sure guidance along the right road. Slaves who have been
freed and cease to serve their former masters, the very moment they
become their own masters, direct all their thoughts towards themselves
so, I take it, the soul which has been freed from ministering to the
body becomes at once cognizant of its own inherent energy. But this
liberty consists, as we learn from the Apostle [1464] , in not again
being held in the yoke of slavery, and in not being bound again, like
a runaway or a criminal, with the fetters of marriage. But I must
return here to what I said at first; that the perfection of this
liberty does not consist only in that one point of abstaining from
marriage. Let no one suppose that the prize of virginity is so
insignificant and so easily won as that; as if one little observance
of the flesh could settle so vital a matter. But we have seen that
every man who doeth a sin is the servant of sin [1465] ; so that a
declension towards vice in any act, or in any practice whatever, makes
a slave, and still more, a branded slave, of the man, covering him
through sin's lashes with bruises and seared spots. Therefore it
behoves the man who grasps at the transcendent aim of all virginity to
be true to himself in every respect, and to manifest his purity
equally in every relation of his life. If any of the inspired words
are required to aid our pleading, the Truth [1466] Itself will be
sufficient to corroborate the truth when It inculcates this very kind
of teaching in the veiled meaning of a Gospel Parable: the good and
eatable fish are separated by the fishers' skill from the bad and
poisonous fish, so that the enjoyment of the good should not be spoilt
by any of the bad getting into the "vessels" with them. The work of
true sobriety is the same; from all pursuits and habits to choose that
which is pure and improving, rejecting in every case that which does
not seem likely to be useful, and letting it go back into the
universal and secular life, called "the sea [1467] ," in the imagery
of the Parable. The Psalmist [1468] also, when expounding the doctrine
of a full confession [1469] , calls this restless suffering tumultuous
life, "waters coming in even unto the soul," "depths of waters," and a
"hurricane"; in which sea indeed every rebellious thought sinks, as
the Egyptian did, with a stone's weight into the deeps [1470] . But
all in us that is dear to God, and has a piercing insight into the
truth (called "Israel" in the narrative), passes, but that alone, over
that sea as if it were dry land, and is never reached by the
bitterness and the brine of life's billows. Thus, typically, under the
leadership of the Law (for Moses was a type of the Law that was
coming) Israel passes unwetted over that sea, while the Egyptian who
crosses in her track is overwhelmed. Each fares according to the
disposition which he carries with him; one walks lightly enough, the
other is dragged into the deep water. For virtue is a light and
buoyant thing, and all who live in her way "fly like clouds [1471] ,"
as Isaiah says, "and as doves with their young ones"; but sin is a
heavy affair, "sitting," as another of the prophets says, "upon a
talent of lead [1472] ." If, however, this reading of the history
appears to any forced and inapplicable, and the miracle at the Red Sea
does not present itself to him as written for our profit, let him
listen to the Apostle: "Now all these things happened unto them for
types, and they are written for our admonition [1473] ."
Footnotes
[1459] to me sunermosthai tini dia ton katallelon ton bion
[1460] adoleschian tou logou tis kataginoskoi
[1461] hosper ti anathema; so Gregory calls the tongue of S. Meletius
the anathema of Truth.
[1462] Gregory seems to allude to S. Matt. xi. 12.
[1463] epi matai& 251; laboi. Gregory evidently alludes to Ps. xxiv.
4, and agrees with the Vulgate "in vano acceperit."
[1464] Gal. v. 1.
[1465] S. John viii. 34.
[1466] S. John xiv. 6
[1467] S. Matt. xiii. 47, 48.
[1468] Ps. lxix. 1.
[1469] didaskalian exomologeseos huphegoumenos
[1470] Exod. xv. 10.
[1471] Is. lx. 8. The LXX. has peristeran sun neossois.
[1472] Zech. v. 7. "this is a woman that sitteth in the midst of the
ephah:" epi meson tou metrou (LXX.). Origen and Jerome as well as
Gregory make her sit upon the lead itself. Vatablus explains that the
lead was in an amphora.
[1473] 1 Cor. x. 11; Rom. xv. 6.
Chapter XIX.
But besides other things the action of Miriam the prophetess also
gives rise to these surmisings of ours. Directly the sea was crossed
she took in her hand a dry and sounding timbrel and conducted the
women's dance [1474] . By this timbrel the story may mean to imply
virginity, as first perfected by Miriam; whom indeed I would believe
to be a type of Mary the mother of God [1475] . Just as the timbrel
emits a loud sound because it is devoid of all moisture and reduced to
the highest degree of dryness, so has virginity a clear and ringing
report amongst men because it repels from itself the vital sap of
merely physical life. Thus, Miriam's timbrel being a dead thing, and
virginity being a deadening of the bodily passions, it is perhaps not
very far removed from the bounds of probability [1476] that Miriam was
a virgin. However, we can but guess and surmise, we cannot clearly
prove, that this was so, and that Miriam the prophetess led a dance of
virgins, even though many of the learned have affirmed distinctly that
she was unmarried, from the fact that the history makes no mention
either of her marriage or of her being a mother; and surely she would
have been named and known, not as "the sister of Aaron [1477] ," but
from her husband, if she had had one; since the head of the woman is
not the brother but the husband. But if, amongst a people with whom
motherhood was sought after and classed as a blessing and regarded as
a public duty, the grace of virginity, nevertheless, came to be
regarded as a precious thing, how does it behove us to feel towards
it, who do not "judge" of the Divine blessings [1478] "according to
the flesh"? Indeed it has been revealed in the oracles of God, on what
occasion to conceive and to bring forth is a good thing, and what
species of fecundity was desired by God's saints; for both the Prophet
Isaiah