On Prayer

On Prayer

continued

XII. THE LORD'S PRAYER: THE PREFACE IN MATTHEW

1 What I have said, according to my capacity to receive the grace which has been given by God through His Christ, and as I trust in the Holy Spirit also—whether it be so you will judge when you read it—may suffice by way of examination of the general subject of prayer. I shall now proceed to the next task, to consider how full of meaning is the prayer outlined by the Lord. It is first of all to be observed that to most people Matthew and Luke might seem to have recorded the same prayer sketched as a pattern for right prayer. Matthew's words run thus: Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name. Your kingdom come. Your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread. And forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors. And do not bring us to the time of trial, but rescue us from the evil one.

2 But Luke's run as follows: Father, hallowed be your name. Your kingdom come. Give us each day our daily bread. And forgive us our sins, for we ourselves forgive everyone indebted to us. And do not bring us to the time of trial. To those who suppose it to be the same prayer we may reply that the utterances, though they certainly resemble one another, also appear to differ, as I shall set forth in investigating them. In the second place it is not possible that the same prayer should be said on the mountain where "When Jesus saw the crowds, he went up the mountain; and after he sat down, his disciples came to him. Then he began to speak, and taught them, saying"—for it is in the course of the recital of the Beatitudes and the subsequent injunctions that it is found recorded in Matthew. It also have been said, "He was praying in a certain place, and after he had finished, one of his disciples said to him, "Lord, teach us to pray, as John taught his disciples."

3 It is surely impossible that the same words should be described as having been spoken in the course of continuous utterance without any question to precede them and as being announced in response to a disciple's request. One might, however, say the prayers are equivalent and were spoken as one. On the one occasion in continuous discourse, on the other in response to the request of a different disciple who in all likelihood was not present when He spoke the form in Matthew or had not mastered what had earlier been spoken. But perhaps it is better that the prayers be regarded as different, with certain portions in common. In Mark, though I have searched there also in case the record of an equivalent should escape me, I have not found so much as a vestige of a prayer contained. I have already said that before praying one must first be composed and disposed in a particular manner. Let us therefore glance at the words preceding the prayer contained in Matthew, which were uttered by our Savior. They are as follows: And whenever you pray, do not be like the hypocrites; for they love to stand and pray in the synagogues and at the street corners, so that they may be seen by others.

4 Truly I tell you, they have received their reward. But whenever you pray, go into your room and shut the door and pray to your Father who is in secret; and your Father who sees in secret will reward you. When you are praying, do not heap up empty phrases as the Gentiles do; for they think that they will be heard because of their many words. Do not be like them, for your Father knows what you need before you ask him. Pray then in this way: Our Savior often appears as inveighing against the love of glory as a deadly passion, just as He has done in this place where He dissuades us from the practice of actors at the season of prayer, for it is a practice of actors rather to plume themselves in piety before men rather than to have communion with God. Remembering then the words, "How can you believe when you accept glory from one another and do not seek the glory that comes from the one who alone is God?" we ought to despise all glory with men even though it be thought honorably gained and to seek the strict and true glory which is from Him alone who glorifies the deserving in a manner becoming to Himself and exceeding the desert of the person glorified. The very act which would in itself be thought honorable and is thought praiseworthy is polluted when we do it to be glorified by men or to appear to men, and on that account it is attended by no recompense from God. Unerring as the whole of Jesus' language is, it becomes even more so when it is spoken with His accustomed oath.

5 Of those who for human glory seem to do good to their neighbor, or pray in synagogues and at broadway corners, he says. "Truly I tell you, they have received their reward." For as the rich man according to Luke had good things in his human life, being no longer capable of obtaining them after the present life because he had had them, so he that has his reward, as having sown not "unto the spirit" but "unto the flesh" shall "reap corruption" but shall not "reap eternal life" in his giving or in his prayers. It is sowing unto the flesh when one does alms, with trumpeting before him, in synagogues and thoroughfares to be glorified by men, or likes to pray standing in synagogues and at broadway corners to appear to men and thought a pious and a holy person among the onlookers. Indeed every wayfarer along the broad and spacious way leading to destruction without rightness or straightness but crooked and cornered throughout, (for the straight line is broken in it to the utmost), is standing no less than he who prays at broadway corners, not in one but through his love of pleasure in a number of streets in which beings who as men are perishing because they have fallen away from their divinity, are to be found glorifying and pronouncing blessed those whom they have thought to act piously.

6 There are always many who are rather pleasure-loving than God-loving in their seeming prayer who debauch prayer amid banqueting and carousing, standing in truth at the broadway corners and praying. For everyone who has made pleasure his rule of life has in his passion for the spacious fallen out of the narrow straitened way of Jesus Christ that is without a single bend and has no corner at all. There is a certain difference between Church and Synagogue. The church in the strict sense is without "a spot or wrinkle or anything of the kind," is holy and blameless. Into it enters neither child of harlot, nor eunuch or emasenlate, nor yet Egyptian or Edomite unless sons born to them in the third generation enables them with difficulty to join the church, nor Moabite and Ammonite, unless the tenth generation is complete and the aeon passed. The Synagogue on the other hand may be built by a centurion, as was the case in times preceding the sojourn of Jesus when as yet witness had not yet been borne that the man possessed faith such as the Son of God did not find even in Israel. Now he who likes to pray in synagogues is not far from broadway corners. But it is not so with the saint, for he loves, not likes to pray, in churches, not broadway corners, in the straightness of the narrow straitened way, not to appear to men, but to present himself before the Lord God, a male in the sense that he observes the acceptable year of the Lord and keeps the commandment which says, "Thrice in the year shall every male present himself before the Lord God."

7 We are to attend to the word "appear" carefully, since no appearance is a good inasmuch as it only seems to exist and not in truth, and misleads the senses and expresses nothing exactly and truly. As actors of plays in theatres are not what they profess nor are really what the mask they wear makes them look like, so too all who appear to assume the outward sensible form of goodness and are not righteous but actors of righteousness, acting moreover in a theatre of their own—namely synagogues and broadway corners. But he that is no actor but has cast off all that is alien to him and sets himself to please in that theatre which is inconceivably greater than any which has been mentioned, enters into his own storeroom to the riches therein treasured up, and shuts up after him his treasury of wisdom and knowledge. Never turning his glance outwards or doting on things outside, having shut up every door of the senses that he may not be drawn away by sensations or have their sensible presentation stealing into his mind, prays to the Father who does not shun or desert a place so secret but dwells in it, the Only Begotten also being present with Him. For He says "I and the Father will come unto him and make abode with him." And plainly, if we do pray thus, we shall be interceding not only with a God but also with a Father who is righteous, who does not desert us as His children but is present in our secret place and watches it and increases the contents of the storeroom if we shut up its door.

8 When we pray let us not babble but use godly speech. We babble when, without scrutiny of ourselves or of the devotional words we are sending up, we speak of the corrupt in deed or word or thought, things which are mean and reprehensible and alien to the incorruptibleness of the Lord. He, then, that babbles in prayer is in a synagogic disposition worse than any yet described and in a harder way than those who are at broadway corners, preserving not as much as a vestige even of acting in goodness. For according to the passage in the Gospel only heathen babble, being quite insensible of great or heavenly petitions and therefore sending up every prayer for the material and the external. To a babbling heathen, then, is he like who asks for things below from the Lord who dwells in heaven and above the heights of the heavens.

9 He who is wordy also seems to be a babbler and he who babbles to be wordy. There is no unity in matter and in bodily substances, but every such supposed unity is split up and divided and disintegrated into many units to the loss of its union. Good is one; many are the base. Truth is one; many are the false. True righteousness is one; many are the states that act it as a part. God's wisdom is one; many are the wisdoms of this age and of the rulers of this age which come to nought. The word of God is one, but many are the words alien to God. Therefore no one shall escape Sin as the result of wordiness, and no one who thinks to be heard as the result of wordiness can be heard. For this reason we ought not to make our prayers like heathen babbling or wordiness or other practice after the likeness of the serpent, for the God of saints, being a Father, knows of what things His children have need, since such things are worthy of Fatherly knowledge.

10 He who knows not God knows not the things of God also—knows not the things of which he has need, for the things of which he thinks he has need are mistaken. But he who has contemplated the better and diviner things of which he is in need shall obtain the objects of his contemplation which are known by God and which have been known by the Father even before asking. After these remarks upon the preface to the prayer in the Gospel according to Matthew, let us now proceed to consider what the prayer sets forth.

XIII. THE LORD'S PRAYER—OUR FATHER IN HEAVEN

1 Our Father in Heaven. It deserves a somewhat careful observation of the so-called Old Testament to discover whether it is possible to find anywhere in it a prayer of one who addresses God as Father. For though I have made examination to the best of my ability, I have up to the present failed to find one. I do not say that God is not spoken of as Father or that accounted believers in God are not called sons of God, but that I have not yet found in prayer that confidence in calling God Father which the Savior has proclaimed. That God is spoken of as Father and those who have waited on God's word as sons, may be seen in many places, as in Deuteronomy, "You have forsaken God your parent and forgotten God your nourisher," and again, "Is He not your Father himself that got you and made you and created you?" and again, "Sons who have not faith in them." And in Isaiah, "I have nourished and brought up children, and they have rebelled against me"; and in Malachi, "A son honors his father, and a servant his master: if then I be a father, where is my honor? and if I be a master, where is my fear?" So then, even though God is termed Father and their Sons who have been begotten by reason of their faith in Him, yet sure and unchangeable sonship is not to be seen in the ancient people.

2 The very passages I have cited since the subjection of those so-called sons, since according to the apostle "the heir, as long as he is a child, differs nothing from a servant, though he be lord of all; But is under tutors and governors until the time appointed of the father." But the fullness of time is in the sojourn of our Lord Jesus Christ, when they who desire receive adoption as sons, as Paul teaches in the words, "For you did not receive a spirit of slavery unto fear, but you received a spirit of adoption as sons, wherein we cry 'Abba Father'"; and as it is in the Gospel according to John, "To as many as received Him He gave authority to become children of God if believers on His name"; and it is by reason of this Spirit of adoption as sons, we learn in the Catholic Epistle of John regarding the begotten of God, that "Everyone that is begotten of God does no sin because His seed abides in him, and he cannot sin because he is begotten of God."

3 And yet if we think of the meaning of the words which are written in Luke, "When you pray say: Father . . . ," we shall hesitate to address this expression to Him unless we have become genuine sons in case, in addition to our other sins, we should also become liable to a charge of impiety. My meaning is as follows. In the first Epistle to Corinthians Paul says, "No one can say 'Jesus is Lord' save in a holy spirit, and no one that speaks in God's spirit says 'cursed be Jesus' calling the same thing a holy spirit and God's spirit." What is meant by speaking in a holy spirit of Jesus as Lord is not quite clear, as countless actors and numbers of heterodox people, and at times even demons conquered by the power in the name, utter the expression. No one therefore will venture to declare that anyone of these calls Jesus 'Lord' in a holy spirit. For the same reason, indeed, they could not be shown to call Jesus Lord at all, since they alone call Jesus Lord who express it from inward disposition in service to the word of God and in proclaiming no other Lord than Him in all their conduct. And if it be such who say Jesus is Lord, it may be that everyone who sins, in that he curses the divine Word through his transgression, has through his actions called out, "Cursed be Jesus."

4 And accordingly, as the one type of man says "Jesus is Lord," and the man of opposite disposition "Cursed be Jesus," "so everyone that hath been begotten of God and does not sin" because he is partaker of God's seed which turns him from all sin, says through his conduct "Our Father in Heaven," the spirit himself witnessing with their spirit that they are children of God and heirs to Him and joint heirs with Christ, since as suffering with Him they reasonably hope with Him also to be glorified. But in order that theirs may be no one-sided utterance of the words "Our Father," in addition to their actions they have a heart—a fountain and source of good actions—believing unto righteousness, in harmony with which their mouth makes acknowledgment unto salvation. So then their every act and word and thought, formed by the only begotten word in accord with Him, imitates the image of the invisible God and has come to be "in accordance with the image of the Creator" who makes "the sun to rise upon evil men and good and rains upon righteous and unrighteous," that there may be in them the image of the heavenly One who is himself also an image of God. Saints, therefore, as an image of an Image himself, a son, receive the impress of Sonship, becoming conformed not only to the glorified body of Christ but also to Him who is in that body, and they become conformed to Him who is in a glorified body through being transformed by the renewing of their mind.

5 And if such men through out the whole of life voice the words "Our Father in the Heavens," plainly he that does sin, as John says in the Catholic Epistle, "is of the devil because the devil sins from the beginning" and just as God's seed abiding in the begotten of God produces inability to sin in him who is formed in accordance with the only begotten Word, so the devil's seed is in everyone that does sin, to the extent in which it is present within the soul—not suffering its possessor to have power to prosper. But since "for this end was the Son of God manifested that He might undo the actions of the devil," it is possible, through the undoing of the actions of the devil by the sojourn of the Word of God within our Soul, for the evil seed implanted in us to be utterly removed and for us to become children of God.

6 Let us, therefore, not think that it is words we are taught to say in any appointed season of prayer. On the contrary, if we understand our former consideration of prayer without ceasing, let our whole life of prayer without ceasing speak the words "Our Father in the Heavens," having its commonwealth in no wise on earth but in every way in heaven, which is God's throne because of the foundation of the kingdom of God in all who wear the image of the Heavenly One and therefore become heavenly. When the Father of saints is said to be in the heavens, we are not to suppose that He is circumscribed by material form and dwells in heaven. Since, in that case, as contained God will be formed to be less than the heavens because they contain Him, whereas the ineffable might of His godhead demands our belief that all things are contained and held together by Him. And, in general, passages which taken literally are thought by the simpler order of minds to assert that God is in space are to be otherwise taken in a sense more becoming to great spiritual concepts of God.

7 Such are those passages in the Gospel according to John: Before the feast of the Passover, Jesus, knowing that His hour had come that He should pass from this world to the Father, as He had loved His own who were in the world, loved them to the end; and shortly after: knowing that the Father had given all into His hands, and that He had come forth from God and was returning to God; and later: you heard that I said to you: I return and come unto you. If you loved me you would have rejoiced that I go to the Father; and again later; Now I return to Him that sent me and none of you asks me: Where do you return? If these things are to be taken spacially, so also plainly is: Jesus answered and said to them, "If any one love me he will keep my word and my Father will love him and we shall come unto him and make abode with him." But surely the words do not imply a spacial transition of the Father and the Son to the lover of the word of Jesus and are therefore not to be taken spacially.

8 On the contrary, the Word of God, in condescension for us and, in regard to His proper desert, in humiliation while among men, is said to pass from this world unto the Father so that we also may behold Him perfectly there in reversion to His proper fullness from the emptiness among us whereby He emptied himself—where we also, enjoying His guidance, shall be filled and freed from all emptiness. To such an end the Word of God well may leave the world and depart to Him that sent Him, and go to the Father! And as for that passage near the end of the Gospel according to John, "Cling not to me, for I am not yet gone up unto my Father," let us seek to conceive it in the more mystical sense: Let ours be the more reverent conception of the ascension of the Son to the Father with sanctified insight, an ascension rather of soul than of body. I think it right to have linked these considerations to the clause Our Father in the Heavens for the sake of doing away with a low conception of God held by those who think that He is in heaven spacially, and of preventing anyone from saying God is in material space since it follows that He also is physical, which leads to opinions most impious\—to belief that He is divisible and material and corruptible. For every material thing is divisible and corruptible.

9 Or else let them tell us, not on the strength of vague sensation but with a claim to clear understanding, how it can be of any other than a material nature. Since, then, in writings before Christ's bodily sojourn there are also many statements which seem to say that God is in physical space, it appears to me to be not out of place to cite a few of them also for the sake of doing away with any doubt in those who, because they know no better, confine God, who is over all, within small and scanty space on their own scale. First, in Genesis it says Adam and Eve heard the sound of the lord God walking at evening in the garden, and both Adam and his wife hid themselves from the Lord God amid the wood of the Garden. I shall put the question to those who not only refuse to enter into the treasures of the passage but do not so much as knock at all at its door, whether they are able to imagine the Lord God, who fills the heaven and the earth, who as they themselves suppose in the more physical sense uses heaven as throne and the earth as a footstool for His feet, as contained by so scanty a space in comparison with the whole heaven and the earth that a garden which they suppose to be material is not filled by God but so far exceeds Him in greatness as to hold Him even when walking while a sound from the tread of His feet is heard? Absurder still on their interpretation is the hiding of Adam and Eve, in fear of God by reason of their transgression, from before God amid the wood of the Garden.

10 For it is not even said that they merely desired to hide but that they actually hid themselves. And how is it in their view that God inquires of Adam saying: Where are you? I have discussed these matters at greater length in my examination of the contents of Genesis, yet here, too—in order not to pass by so grave a subject in complete silence—it will suffice if I recall what is said by God in Deuteronomy: I will dwell in them and walk in them. For as is His walk in saints such is His walk in the Garden also, since everyone that sins hides from God and shuns His oversight and renounces his confidence with Him. So it was that Cain also went out from before God and dwelt in the land of Nod over against Eden. In the same way, therefore, as He dwells in saints. So also does He dwell in heaven (that is, in every saint who wears the image of the Heavenly One, or Christ, in whom all who are being saved are luminaries and stars of heaven, or else because saints are in heaven) according to the saying: Unto you who dwells in heaven have I lifted up my eyes. And yet the passage in Ecclesiastes: Be not in haste to utter speech before God, because God is in heaven above, and you on Earth below, means to show the interval which separates those who are in the body of humiliation from Him who is with the angels and holy powers who are being exalted by the help of the Word also and with Christ himself. For it is not unreasonable that He should be strictly at the Father's throne, allegorically called heaven, while His church, termed Earth, is a footstool at His feet.

11 I have cited a few Old Testament utterances, thought to represent God in space, for the sake of urging the reader by every means within the power given me to accept the divine scripture in the higher and more spiritual sense whenever it seems to teach that God is in space. And it was fitting that these considerations should be linked to the clause Our Father in the Heavens inasmuch as it distinguishes the essence of God from all created beings. For it is upon such as do not share in that essence that a certain glory of God and a power from Him, an outflow of the deity, comes.

XIV. HALLOWED BE THY NAME

1 Hallowed be Thy name. Although this may represent either that the object of prayer has not yet come to pass, or after its attainment, that it is not permanent in which case the request is for its retention; the language in this instance makes it plain that it is with the implication that the name of the Father has not yet been hallowed, that we are bidden—according to Matthew and Luke, that is—to say "Hallowed be Thy Name." Then how, one might say, should a man request the hallowing of God's name as though not hallowed? Let us understand what the Father's name, and what the hallowing of it, means. A name is a summary designation descriptive of the peculiar character of the thing named. Thus the Apostle Paul has a certain peculiar character, partly of soul which is accordingly of a certain kind, partly of intellect which is accordingly contemplative of certain things, and partly of body which is accordingly of a certain kind. It is the peculiar in these characteristics, the unique combination—for there is not another being identical with Paul—that is indicated by means of the appellation Paul. In the case of men, however, whose peculiar characteristics are changed, their names also by a sound usage are changed according to scripture.

2 When the character of Abram was transformed, he was called Abraham; when that of Simon he was named Peter, and when that of Saul the persecutor of Jesus, he was designated Paul. But in the case of God, inasmuch as He is himself ever unchangeable and unalterable, the proper name which even He may be said to bear is ever one, that mentioned in Exodus, "He that is," or the like. Since therefore, though we all have some notion of God, conceiving of Him in various ways, but not all of what He is, for few and, be it said, fewer than few are they who comprehend His compete holiness—we are with good reason taught to attain to a holy conception of Him in order that we may see His holiness as creator, provider, judge, elector, abandoner, acceptor, rejector, rewarder and punisher of each according to his desert. For it is in such and similar terms that God's peculiar character may be said to be sketched which I take to be the meaning of the expression, God's name according to the scriptures in Exodus: Thou shall not take the name of the Lord your God in vain; in Deuteronomy: Be my utterance awaited as rain: as dew let my words descend, as showers upon herbage and as moisture upon grass: for I have called on the Lord's name; and in Psalms: They shall remember your name in every generation.

3 It is he who associates the thought of God with wrong things that takes the name of the Lord God in vain, and he who is able to utter rain that cooperates with his hearers in the fruit bearing of their souls, and who addresses words of exhortation that are like dew, and who in the edifying torrent of his words turns upon his listeners showers most helpful or moisture most efficacious is able to do so because he has perceived his need of God as the accomplisher and calls in the real supplier of those things; and everyone who penetrates the very things of God recalls to mind rather than learns the mysteries of piety even when he seems to be told them by another or thinks that he discovers them. And as the suppliant ought at this point to reflect that his asking is for the hallowing of God's name, so in Psalms it is said Let us Exalt His name together, the patriarch enjoining attainment to the true and exalted knowledge of God's peculiar nature with all harmony, in the same mind, and in the same will.

4 It is exalting the name of God together when, after one has participated in an outflow of deity in having been sustained by God and having overcome his enemies so that they are unable to rejoice over his fall, he exalts the power of God in which he has participated, as is shown in the twenty-ninth psalm by the words: I will exalt you, O Lord, for you have sustained me and not made my enemies to rejoice over me. A man exalts God when he has consecrated to Him a house within himself, since the superscription of the Psalm also runs thus: A Psalm of singing for the consecration of the House of David. It is further to be observed regarding the clause Hallowed be your Name and its successors in imperative form, that the translators also continually made use of imperatives instead of ablatives, as in the Psalms: Speechless let the guileful lips be, that speak lawlessness against the righteous instead of 'may they be' and Let the creditor search out all his possessions: Let him possess no helper, concerning Judas in the one hundred and eighth; for the whole Psalm is a petition concerning Judas that certain things may befall him.

5 But Tatian, failing to perceive that let there be does not always signify the ablative but is occasionally also imperative, has most impiously supposed that God said Let there be light in prayer rather than in command that the light should be; since, as he puts it in his godless thought, God was in darkness. In reply to him it may be asked, how is he going to take the other sayings? Let the Earth grow grass, and Let the water below heaven be gathered together, and Let the waters bring forth creeping things with living souls, and Let the earth bring forth a living soul. Is it for the sake of standing upon firm ground that He prays that the water below heaven be gathered together into one meeting place, or for the sake of partaking of the things that grow from the earth that He prays Let the Earth grow . . . ?

6 What manner of need, to match His need of light; has He of creatures of water, air, and land that He should pray for them also? If even on Tatian's view it is absurd to think of Him as praying for these things which occur in imperative expressions, may the same not be said of Let be there light—that it is an imperative and not an ablative expression? I thought that, in view of the fact that prayer is expressed in imperative forms, some reference was necessary to his perversion for the sake of those—I myself have met with cases who have been misled into accepting his impious teaching.

XV. THY KINGDOM COME

1 Thy Kingdom Come. According to the word of our Lord and Savior, the Kingdom of God does not come observably, nor shall men say 'Lo it is here', or 'Lo is it there', but the Kingdom of God is within us; for the utterance is exceedingly near in our mouth and in our heart. It is therefore plain that he who prays for the coming of the kingdom of God prays with good reason for rising and fruit bearing and perfecting of God's kingdom within him. For every saint is ruled over by God and obeys the Spiritual laws of God, and conducts himself like a well-ordered city; and the Father is present with him, and Christ rules together with the Father in the perfected Soul, according to the saying that I mentioned shortly before: We will come unto him and make abode with him. By God's kingdom I understand the blessed condition of the mind and the settled order of wise reflection; by Christ's kingdom the issue of words of salvation to their hearers and the practice of acts of righteousness and the other excellences; for the son of God is word and righteousness.

2 But every sinner is tyrannized by the ruler of this world, since every sinner is in conformity with the present evil world, and does not yield himself to Him who gave Himself for us sinners that He might release us from the present evil world and release us according to the will of God our Father, as it is expressed in the Epistle to Galatians. And he who, by reason of deliberate sin is tyrannized by the ruler of this world, is also ruled over by sin: wherefore we are bidden by Paul to be no longer subject to sin that would rule over us, and we are enjoined in these words, Let sin therefore not rule in our mortal body that we should obey its lusts. But in reference to both clauses Hallowed Be Thy Name and Thy Kingdom Come, it may be urged that, if the suppliant prays them with a view to being heard and ever is heard, plainly his will be an instance, answering to what has just been said, of the name of God being hallowed and of the rise of the Kingdom of God, in which event how shall he any longer with propriety pray for things already present as though they not present, saying Hallowed be Thy Name: Thy Kingdom Come:?—And in that case it will sometimes be proper not to say Hallowed Be Thy Name: Thy Kingdom Come.

3 To this it may be replied that just as he who prays to obtain a word of knowledge and a word of wisdom will with propriety pray for them continually with the prospect of continually receiving fuller contemplations of wisdom and knowledge through being heard, although his knowledge of such things as he may be able in the present to receive is partial, whereas the perfect that annuls the partial shall then be manifested when the mind confronts its objects face to face without sensation—so perfection in our individual hallowing of the name of God and in the rise of His kingdom within us is not possible unless there also come perfection of knowledge and wisdom and it may be the other excellences. We are wayfaring toward perfection if we forget the things behind, pressing on toward those before us. The kingdom of God within us will therefore be consummated in us as we advance without ceasing, when, the saying in the Apostle is fulfilled, that Christ, His enemies all made subject to Him, shall deliver the kingdom to God the Father that God may be All in All. For this reason let us pray without ceasing with a disposition made divine by the Word, and say to our Father in heaven: Hallowed Be Thy Name: Thy Kingdom Come. Of the kingdom of God it is further to be said by way of distinction that as righteousness has no partnership with lawlessness and light no community with darkness and Christ no argument with Belial, so a kingdom of sin is incompatible with the Kingdom of God.

4 If, accordingly we would be ruled over by God, by no means let sin rule in our mortal body nor let us obey its commands when it calls our soul forth to the works of the flesh that are alien to God, but let us mortify our members that are on earth and bear the fruits of the Spirit that the Lord may walk in us as in a spiritual garden, ruling alone over us with His Christ seated within us on the right of the Spiritual power that we pray to receive, sitting until all His enemies within us become a footstool for His feet and every rule and authority and power be undone from us. These things may come to pass in the case of each of us, and death the last energy be undone, so that Christ may say within us also O death, where is your sting? O grave! Where is your victory? Even now, therefore, let our corruptible put on the holiness and incorruptibleness that consists in chastity and purity, and our mortal, death undone, wrap itself in the paternal immortality, so that, being ruled over by God, we may even now live amid the blessings of regeneration and resurrection.

XVI. THY WILL BE DONE ON EARTH ALSO AS IN HEAVEN

1 Thy Will be done on Earth also as in Heaven. After the clause Thy Kingdom come Luke has passed over these words in silence and placed the clause Give us daily our Needful Bread. Let us therefore examine next in succession the words I have placed first as set down in Matthew alone. As suppliants who are still on earth, believing that the will of God is done in heaven among all the household of the heavens, let us pray that the will of God may be done by us also who are on earth in like manner with them, as will come to pass when we do nothing contrary to His will. And when the will of God as it is in heaven has been accomplished by us also who are on earth, we shall inherit a kingdom of heaven as having, alike with them, worn the image of the Heavenly One, while those who come after us on earth are praying to become in turn like us who have come to be in heaven.

2 So far as Matthew alone is concerned the words on Earth also as in Heaven can be taken in common, so that what we are enjoined to say in prayer would run thus: Hallowed be Thy Name on Earth also as in Heaven: Thy Kingdom come on Earth also as in Heaven: Thy Will be done on Earth also as in Heaven. For alike the name of God has been hallowed among those who are in heaven, and the kingdom of God is risen in them, and the will of God has been done in their midst—things indeed which are all unrealized by us but which can be acquired by us through rendering ourselves worthy to obtain God's hearing in reference to them all. The words Thy Will be done on Earth also as in Heaven may raise the question how has the will of God been done in Heaven where the spiritual forces of evil are, by reason of which the sword of God shall drink deep even in heaven? If we pray thus that the will of God be done on Earth just as it is being done in heaven may we not thoughtlessly be praying that the very opposite may abide on earth where such things already come from heaven since much that is bad on earth is due to the overcoming spiritual forces of evil which are in the heavenly places?

3 Anyone who allegorizes heaven and asserts that it is Christ, and Earth the church—what throne so worthy of the Father as Christ? What footstool of the feet of God as the Church?—will easily solve the question by replying that everyone in the church ought to pray to receive the paternal will in such wise as Christ has done, who came to do the will of His Father and accomplished if completely. For it is possible by being joined to Him to become one spirit with Him and therefore receptive of the will to the end that, as it has been accomplished in heaven, so it may be accomplished on earth also; for he that is joined to the Lord, according to Paul, is one spirit. And I believe that one who carefully considers it will find this an interpretation not to be despised. But someone may dispute it by citing what is said to the eleven disciples by the Lord after the resurrection at the close of the this gospel: There hath been given to me all authority on earth also as in heaven. That is, having authority over the things that are in heaven, He says that He has also received it over those on earth:

4 Whereas those that are in heaven have already been illumined by the Word, it is at the consummation of the world that those on earth are also, in imitation of those over which the Savior received authority, brought to a successful issue by reason of the authority given to the Son of God: accordingly His will is to receive those who are disciples under Him as in a sense cooperants through their prayers to the Father in order that, in like manner with the things in heaven that are subject to Truth and Word, He may lead the things on Earth, restored by reason of the authority which He has received on earth also as in heaven, to an end fraught with bliss for the objects of His authority. On the other hand one who would take heaven to be the Savior and Earth the church, asserting that it is the firstborn of all creation, on whom the Father reposes as on a throne, that is heaven, would find that it is the man whom He put on after having been fitted for such power because He had humbled himself and having been obedient till death, who says after the resurrection There hath been given to me all authority on Earth also as in heaven—the man in the Savior having received His authority over the things in heaven, as the proper possessions of the Only-begotten, in order to be in communion with Him, mingling in His divinity and becoming one with Him.

5 But if this second thought does not yet solve the difficulty as to how the will of God can be in heaven when the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places wrestle against those who are on earth, it will be possible to solve the question from this consideration—It is not by virtue of place but of principle that one who is still on earth but has a commonwealth in heaven and lays up treasure in heaven and has his heart in heaven and wears the image of the Heavenly One, is no longer of the earth nor of the world below but of heaven and of the heavenly world that is better than this. So, too, the spiritual forces of evil which still dwell in the heavenly places but have their commonwealth on earth and plot against men the means whereby they wrestle against mankind, and lay up treasure on Earth, and wear an image of the Earthly One who the beginning of the Lord's fashioning made to be mocked by the angels, are not heavenly nor by reason of their vicious disposition do they dwell in the heavens. Accordingly when it is said: Thy will be done on Earth also as in Heaven, we are not to reckon those beings as in heaven at all, because through pride they have fallen along with Him who fell from heaven like a thunderbolt.

6 And it may well be that our Savior, in saying that we ought to pray that the Father's will may be done on Earth also as in heaven, does not by any means order prayer for things spacially on earth that they may be made like things spacially in heaven, but His will in enjoining prayer is that all things on earth, that is things inferior and conformed to the earthly, be made like the better which have their commonwealth in heaven, which have all become heaven. For he that sins, wherever he may be, is earth, and will turn into the like somehow, unless he repents, whereas he that does the will of God and does not disobey the spiritual laws of salvation is heaven. Whether therefore we are still earth because of sin, let us pray that the will of God may extend restoringly to us also as it has already reached those who have become or are heaven before us: or if we are already accounted not earth but heaven by God, let our request be that, in like manner with heaven, on earth also, in inferior things I mean, the will of God may be fulfilled unto what I may term earth's heaven-making, so that there shall be no longer earth but all things become heaven.

7 For if, on this interpretation, the will of God be done on earth also as in heaven, earth will not remain earth, just as to make my meaning clearer with another illustration—if the will of God be done in the case of the wanton as it has been with the temperate, the wanton will be temperate, or if it should be in the case of the unrighteous as it has been with the righteous, the unrighteous will be righteous. If, therefore, the will of God be done on earth also as it has been in heaven, we shall all be heaven; for though flesh that helps not; and blood that is akin to it, are unable to inherit God's kingdom, they may be said to inherit it if they be changed from flesh and earth and clay and blood to the heavenly essence.

XVII. GIVE US TODAY OUR NEEDFUL BREAD

1 Give us today our Needful Bread, or as Luke has it, Give us daily our Needful Bread. Seeing that some suppose that it is meant that we should pray for material bread, their erroneous opinion deserves to be done away with and the truth about the needful bread set forth, in the following manner. We may put the question to them—how can it be that He, who says that heavenly and great things ought to be asked for as if, on their view, He has forgotten His teaching now enjoins the offering of intercession to the Father for an earthly and little thing, since neither is the bread which is assimilated into our flesh a heavenly thing nor is it asking a great thing to request it? For my part I shall follow the Teacher's own teaching as to the bread and cite the passages in detail. To men who have come to Capernaum to seek Him He says, in the Gospel according to John, Verily, verily, I tell you you seek me not because you saw signs but because you ate of the loaves of bread and were filled . . . for he that has eaten and been filled with the loaves of bread which have been blessed by Jesus seeks the more to grasp the Son of God more closely and hastens toward Him.

2 Wherefore He will enjoin: Work not for the food that perishes but for the food that abides unto life eternal which the Son of Man shall give you. And when, upon that, they who had heard inquired and said: What are we to do that we may work the works of God? Jesus answered and said to them: This is the work of God that you believe on him whom He has sent. As it is written in Psalms, God sent His Word and healed them, that is the diseased, and believers in that Word work the works of God which are food that abides unto life eternal. And my Father, He says, gives you the true bread from heaven, for the bread of God is that which comes down from heaven and gives life to the world. It is true bread that nourishes the true man who is made in God's image, and he that has been nourished by it also becomes in the Creator's likeness. What is more nourishing to the soul than Word, or what more precious to the mind of him that is capable of receiving it than the Wisdom of God?

3 What is more congenial to the rational nature than Truth? Should it be urged in objection to this view that He would not in that case teach men to ask for needful bread as if something other than Himself, it is to be noted that He also discourses in the Gospel according to John sometimes as if it were other than Himself but at other times as if He is Himself the Bread. The former in the sense of the words: Moses hath given you the bread from heaven yet not the true bread, but my Father gives you the true bread from heaven. In the latter sense, to those who had said to Him Ever give us this bread, He says: I am the bread of life: he that comes unto me shall not hunger, and he that believes on me shall not thirst; and shortly after: I am the living bread that is come down from heaven: if anyone eat of this bread he shall live unto eternity: yea and the bread which I shall give is my flesh which I shall give for the sake of the life of the world.

4 Now since all manner of nourishment is spoken of as bread according to Scripture as is clear from the fact that it is recorded of Moses that he ate not bread and drank not water forty days, and since the nourishing Word is manifold and various, not all being capable of nourishment by the solidity and strength of the divine teachings, He is therefore pleased to offer strenuous nourishment befitting men more perfect, where He says: The bread which I shall give is my flesh which I shall give for the sake of the life of the world: and shortly after: Except you eat the flesh of the son of Man and drinks His blood, you have not life in yourselves. He that eats my flesh and drinks my blood hath life eternal, and I will raise him up in the last day. for my flesh is true food and my blood is true drink. He that eats my flesh and drinks my blood abides in me and I in him.As the living Father sent me and I live because of the Father, so also he that eats me—he too shall live because of me. This is the true food, Christ's flesh, which being Word has become flesh, as it is said And the Word became flesh. When we eat and drink the Word He tabernacles in us.

5 When He is assimilated the words are fulfilled: We beheld His glory. This is the bread that is come down from heaven. Not as the fathers ate and died, he that eats this bread shall live unto eternity. Discoursing to infant Corinthians who walk in the way of man Paul says: I gave you milk to drink, not meat, for you were not yet able. Nay even now you are not yet able, for you are still of the flesh; and in the Epistle to Hebrews: And you are become in need of milk, not of solid nourishment. For any one who partakes of milk is devoid of moral reason, for he is infant. But solid nourishment is for mature men who by force of use have their senses trained to discriminate good and evil. In my opinion the words: One man hath faith to eat anything, but he that is weak eats vegetables are also in his intention meant to refer not to material forms of nourishment but to the words of God that nourish the soul: Of these the man most faithful and mature is able to partake of any, he being denoted in the words One man hath faith to eat anything, whereas the weaker and more immature is content with simpler teachings that do not quite produce full strength in him, reference being intended to him in the words But he that is weak eats vegetables.

6 There is also in Solomon a saying in the Proverbs which I think teaches that the man who by reason of simplicity is incapable of the stronger and greater sentiments is better, short of false thought, than the man who, though more ready and keener and of greater insight into things, fails to penetrate the principle of peace and harmony in all. Solomon's passage runs as follows: Better is hospitality of vegetables served with friendship and grace than a fatted calf with enmity. Many a time do we accept untutored simpler entertainment, accompanied by good conscience, as guests at the table of those who are unable to furnish us with more, with greater satisfaction than any elevation of words upreared against the knowledge of God and proclaiming with ample plausibility a sentiment alien to the Father of our Lord Jesus who has given the law and the prophets. In order, therefore, that we may neither fall sick of soul for lack of nourishment nor die to God because of famine of the Lord's word, let us in obedience to the teaching of our Savior, with righter faith and life, ask the Father for the living bread which is the same as the needful bread.

7 Let us now consider what the word epiousion, needful, means. First of all it should be known that the word epiousion is not found in any Greek writer whether in philosophy or in common usage, but seems to have been formed by the evangelists. At least Matthew and Luke, in having given it to the world, concur in using it in identical form. The same thing has been done by translators from Hebrew in other instances also; for what Greek ever used the expression enotizou or akoutisthete instead of eistaota dexai or akousai poice se. Exactly like the expression epiousion, needful, is one found in Moses' writings, spoken by God: Ye shall be my periousios—peculiar people. Either word seems to me to be a compund of ousia—essence—the former signifying the bread that contributes to the essence, the latter denoting the people that has to do with the essence and is associated with it. As for ousia, essence, in the strict sense, by those who assert the priority of the substance of immaterial things, it is ranked with immaterial things which are in possession of permanent being and neither receive addition nor suffer subtraction. For addition and subtraction are characteristic of material things in reference to which growth and decay take place owing to their being in a state of flux, in need of imported support and nourishment.

8 If the import exceeds the waste in a period growth takes place, if it is less, diminuation; and if, as in conceivable, there are things receiving no import at all, they are in what I may term unmitigated diminuation. Those on the other hand who hold the substance of immaterial things to be posterior and that of material things to be prior, define essence in these terms: It is the primary matter of existing things out of which they are or the matter of bodily things out of which they are; or that of terms out of which they are; or the primary unqualified substance or presubstance of existing things; or that which admits of all transformations and modifications though itself as such inherently incapable of modification; or that which undergoes all modification and transformation. On their view essence is inherently unqualified and inarticulate as such. It is even indeterminate in magnitude, but it is involved in all quality as a kind of ready ground for it. By qualities they mean distinctively like the actualities and the activities in which movements and articulations of the essence have come to be, and they say that the essence as such has no part in these inherently though it is always incidentally inseparable from some of them and equally receptive of all the agent's actualizations however it may act and transform. (For it the force associated with the essence, pervading all that would be responsible for all quality and the particular dispositions involving it.)

9 And they say that it is throughout transformable and throughout divisible, and that any essence can coalesce with any other, all being a unity not withstanding. What I have said in this discussion of essence raised by the expressions the needful bread and the peculiar people has been to distinguish the meanings of essence. And since we have already seen that it is spiritual bread for which we ought to ask, we must needs understand the essence to be akin to the bread, so that just as material bread on assimilation into the body of the nourished passes into its essence, so the living bread which is come down from heaven being assimilated into the mind and soul may impart its own power to him who has lent himself to nourishment from it, and so become the needful bread for which we ask. And again, in like manner, as the nourished attains strength varying according to the character of the nourishment whether solid and fit for athletes or of the nature of milk and vegetables, so it follows that when the word of God is given either as milk as befits children, or as vegetables as suits invalids, or as flesh as is proper for combatants, each of the nourished acquires this or that power or nature according to the word to which he has lent himself.

10 Moreover, there is a kind of reputed nourishment which is in reality harmful, a second that is productive of disease, and another that cannot even be assimilated, and all of these may be transferred by analogy to varieties of reputedly nourishing teachings. Needful, therefore, is the bread which corresponds most closely to our rational nature and is akin to our very essence, which invests the soul at once with well being and with strength, and, since the Word of God is immortal, imparts to its eater its own immortality. It is just this needful bread that seems to me to be otherwise termed in Scripture a tree of life, he who stretches forth his hand to which and takes of it shall live unto eternity. And under a third name this tree is termed wisdom of God in Solomon's words: She is a tree of life to all that take hold upon her and to those that lean upon her as upon the Lord she is safe. And since the angels also are nourished by God's wisdom receiving power for the accomplishment of their proper works from their contemplation in truth with wisdom, it is said in Psalms that the angels also are nourished, men of God designated Hebrews holding communion with the angels and, as it were, even becoming messfellows with them.

11 Such is the meaning of the saying:Bread of angels hath man eaten. Far from us be such poverty of mind as to suppose that it is of some material bread, such as is recorded to have come down from heaven upon those who had quitted Egypt, that the angels continually partake and are nourished, as though it was actually in this that the Hebrews had communion with the angels, God's ministering spirits. And while we are considering the needful bread and the tree of life and the wisdom of God and the common nourishment of saintly men and angels, it is not untimely to refer to the three men recorded in Genesis who were entertained by Abraham and partook of three measures of fine flour of wheat kneaded into ember-cakes, and to observe that this may perhaps simply be told in a figurative sense. It would show that saints are able upon occasion to impart spiritual and rational nourishment not only to men but also to divine powers, either for their benefit or for the exhibition of their most nourishing acquisitions, the angels being cheered and nourished in such display and becoming the readier to cooperate in every way and henceforth to conspire in the apprehension of fuller and greater things by the man who has cheered and so to say nourished them with his store of nourishing teachings already acquired.

12 No wonder that a man may nourish angels when even Christ avows himself to stand before the door and knock in order that He may enter into him that opens to Him and sup with him on his fare, thereafter Himself in turn to impart His own to him who first according to his individual power has entertained the Son of God. So then the partaker of the needful bread, having his heart confirmed, becomes a son of God whereas he that has portion in the serpent is none other than a spiritual Ethiopian and himself in turn changes into a snake by reason of the serpent's toils so that, even should he express a desire for baptism, he is reproached by the Word and hears it said: Snakes, offspring of vipers, who hath prompted you to flee from the coming wrath? And David speaks of the serpent body being fed on by Ethiopians: Thou has shattered the heads of the serpents in the water, you hast crushed the serpent's head, you hast given him to be food for the Ethiopian peoples. If it is not absurd to suppose that, since the Son of God and also the Adversary are of essential substances, either of them may become nourishment to this soul or that, why need we hesitate in the case of all powers, better and worse, including human beings, to believe that each one of us may derive nourishment from any of them?

13 As Peter was about to commune with the centurion Cornelius and those who met together with him in Caesarea, and thereafter to impart the words of God to the Gentiles also, he saw, the vessel let down from heaven by four corners, in which were all manner of quadrupeds and reptiles and beasts of the earth, whereupon he was also bidden rise up and stay and eat, and after he had said in deprecation: Thou knowest that nothing common or unclean hath ever entered my mouth, he was commanded to call no man common or unclean because what God had made clean ought not to be made common by Peter; in the words of the passage, what things God hath made clean make not you common. Accordingly the clean and unclean food distinguished according to the law of Moses in terms of various animals bear an analogy to the differing characters of rational beings and teaches that some are nourishing for us but others the reverse until God has cleansed and made all, or those from every race, nourishing. But while that is indeed so and while there is such diversity among foods, the needful bread, for which we ought to pray in order to be counted worthy of it, and, being nourished by the Word that was God with God in the beginning to be made divine God, is one and transcends all the foods mentioned.

14 But it will be said that the word epiousion, needful, is formed from epienai, to go on, so that we are bidden to ask for the bread proper to the coming age, in order that God may take it in advance and bestow it on us now. Thus what was to be given as it were tomorrow would be given us today, today being taken to mean the present age, tomorrow the coming. Since, however, as far as I can judge, the preceding interpretation is better, let us go on to consider the added reference to today in Matthew or the expression daily written in Luke. To call the whole present age today is a usage frequent in the Scriptures, as in the passages: He is father of the Moabites until today, and He is father of the Ammonites until today, and this account has been reported among Jews until today, and in the Psalms, Today if you hear His voice harden not your hearts. In Joshua, this is expressed very clearly: Turn not away from the Lord in the days of today. And if today means the whole present age, yesterday is probably the bygone age. That I have understood to be its meaning in Psalms and in Paul in the Epistle to Hebrews.

15 In Psalms it is thus: A thousand years are in thine eyes as a yesterday that had passed—whatever the much talked of millennium means, it is likened to yesterday as opposed to today; and in the apostle it is written, Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and unto the ages. No wonder that the whole of an age counts with God as the space of a single day with us, aye and less as I think. We may also consider whether the accounts of feasts or assemblies recorded in terms of days or months or seasons or years have symbolical references to ages. For if the law contains a shadow of coming things, its many Sabbaths must be a shadow of many days and its moons come round in the course of intervals of time, completed by some manner of a moon's conjunction with some sun. And if a first month and tenth till fourteenth day and a feast of unleavened bread from fourteenth till twenty-first contain a shadow of coming things, who is wise and to such a degree God's friend as to have vision of the first among many months and its tenth day and so on? What need I say of that feast of seven weeks of days, and of that seventh month whose new moon is a day of trumpets and on whose tenth day falls a day of atonement, which are known to God alone who has enacted them? Who has to such a degree received the mind of Christ as to interpret those seventh years of freedom for Hebrew domestic slaves and of remission of debts and of cessation from tillage of the holy land?

16 And over and above the feast of every seven years there is yet another year, the so-called Jubilee, clearly to imagine whose nature even partially, or the true laws to be fulfilled in it, is for no one save Him who has contemplated the Father's counsel in reference to the order in all the ages according to His unsearchable judgments and His univestigable ways. In trying to reconcile two apostolic passages it has often occurred to me to raise the question how there can be consummation of ages at which Jesus has been manifested once for all unto abolition of sins if there are going to be ages following after this. The Apostles' passages are as follows: In the Epistle to Hebrews, but now at a consummation of the ages He hath been manifested once for all unto abolition of sins through His sacrifice; but in the Epistle to Ephesians, in order that He may show forth, in the years following, the exceeding riches of His Grace in kindness toward us.

17 Well, in conjecture as to matters so great, I believe that, just as the year's consummation is it's last month after which arises another month's beginning, so probably the present age is a consummation of numerous ages completing as it were a year of ages, and after it certain coming ages will arise whose beginning is the coming age, and in those coming ages God shall show forth the riches of His Grace in kindness, when the greatest sinner, who for having spoken ill against the Holy Spirit is held fast by his sin throughout the present age and the coming one from beginning to end, shall after that, I know not how, receive a dispensation. When a man has had vision of these things and has given thought to a week of ages with intent to contemplate a kind of holy sabbath—keeping and a month of ages to see God's holy new moon, and a year of ages to survey the feasts of the year when every male must appear before the Lord God, and the corresponding years of so many ages to discern the seventh holy year, and seven weekly years of ages to sing a hymn to the Enactor of Laws so great, how can he after such consideration cavil over what is the merest fraction of an hour in the day of such an age, instead of doing everything to become, through his preparation here, worthy of obtaining the needful bread and to receive it while it is today and daily, what daily means being already clear from the foregoing explanations.

18 For he who prays today to God, who is from infiniti to infiniti, not only for today but also in a sense for that which is daily shall be enabled to receive from Him who hath power to bestow exceedingly above what we ask or think even things—to use extreme language—which transcend those that eye hath not seen and ear hath not heard and that have not gone up into the heart of man. These considerations seem to me to have been very necessary for the understanding of both the expressions today and daily when we are praying that the needful bread be given us from His Father.

XVIII. AND FORGIVE US OUR DEBTS AS WE ALSO HAVE FORGIVEN OUR DEBTORS

1 And forgive us our Debts as we also have forgiven our Debtors, or as Luke has it, And forgive us our Sins, for we also ourselves forgive everyone in Debt to us. Concerning debts the Apostle also says: Pay your debts to all—to whom you owe tribute, tribute, to whom fear, fear, to whom taxes, taxes, to whom honor, honor: owe no man anything save mutual love. We owe therefore in having certain duties not only in giving but also in kind speech and corresponding actions, and indeed we owe a certain disposition towards one another. Owing these things, we either pay them through discharging the commands of the divine law, or failing to pay them, in contempt of the salutary word, we remain in debt. The like reflection applies to debts toward brothers, to those who in the religious sense have been born again with us in Christ, as well as to those who have a common mother or father with us.

2 We also have a certain debt toward fellow citizens, and another toward all men in common, in particular toward guests and toward men at the age of fatherhood, and another toward such as it is right that we should honor as sons or as brothers. He, therefore, who does not do what is a debt to be discharged to brothers remains a debtor for what he has not done. So, too, should we fail in what falls, at the prompting of the charitable spirit of wisdom, to human beings also at our hands, our indebtedness becomes the greater. Indeed, we also have debt in personal concerns—to use the body in a certain way, so as not to wear out the flesh of the body through love of pleasure, and on the other hand to treat the soul with a certain care, and to take forethought for the keenness of the mind, and for our speech that it be without sting and helpful and not trifling. Whenever we fail to perform what we owe, even to ourselves, the heavier does our debt become.

3 Besides all these, being above all a creation and formation of God, we owe it to preserve a certain disposition towards Him with love that is from a whole heart and from a whole strength and from a whole mind, and if we fail to achieve this we remain God's debtors, sinning against the Lord. And who in that case shall pray for us? For if a man sinning sin against a man, then shall they pray for him: but if he sin against the Lord, who shall pray for him? as Eli says in the first book of Kings. Moreover, we are debtors to Christ who bought us with His own blood, just as every house slave is also debtor to his purchaser for the sum of money given for him. We have also a certain indebtedness to the Holy Spirit: we are paying it when we do not grieve Him in whom we were sealed unto a day of redemption, and when, without grieving Him, we bear the fruits demanded of us, He being present with us and quickening our soul.

4 And even though we do not know precisely which is our individual angel that looks upon the face of the Father in heaven, it is at least manifest to each of us upon reflection that we are debtors to him also for certain things. And inasmuch as we are in a world theater both of angels and of men, one must know that as the performer in a theater owes it to say or do certain things in sight of the spectators, and if he fails to perform this is punished as having insulted the whole theater, so we, too, owe to the whole world, to all the angels and the race of men alike, those things which, if we have the will, we shall learn of wisdom. Apart from those more general debts, there is a certain indebtedness to a widow who is being provided for by the church, a second to a deacon, another to an elder, while that to a bishop is heaviest of all—being demanded by the Savior of the whole church and avenged if not paid. As already said, the Apostle mentions a certain common debt between husband and wife, when he says: Let the husband pay his indebtedness to the wife and wife likewise to the husband, and continues Deprive not one another.

5 But what need is there, when readers of this writing select their own examples from the record, for me to speak of all the things we owe which we either fail to pay and so come to be restrained or else pay and come to be free? Suffice it to say that it is impossible while in this life to be without debt at any hour of night or day. In owing, a man either pays or else withholds the indebtedness. He may either pay or withhold in this life. Some indeed owe no man anything; others pay off most and owe little; others pay little and owe more; and a man may conceivably pay nothing and owe everything. And besides, he who pays all so as to owe nothing may at sometimes effect his object if he prays for forgiveness for previous indebtedness, inasmuch as such forgiveness may reasonably be thought obtainable by one who has for sometime made it his ambition to reach the position of having no obligation unpaid and thus owing nothing. Our very activities in transgression leave their impression within our mind and become the indictment against us on which we shall be brought to trial when, as it were, the books that have been indicted by us all shall be brought forth, in the time when we shall all stand before the judgment seat of Christ that each may receive what he has earned through the body according to his conduct whether good or bad.

6 It is also in reference to such indebtedness that it is said in the Proverbs: Give not yourself in certainty to your shame, for if the man shall not have ability to pay, they shall take your bed that is under you. But if we owe to so many, it is certain that men owe to us also. Some owe to us as to human beings, others as to fellow citizens, others as to fathers, some as to sons, yet others as wives to husbands or as friends to friends. Whenever, accordingly, any of our very numerous debtors have behaved too remiss in the matter of payment of there dues to us, our more charitable course will be to bear them no grudge and to remember our own indebtedness and how often we have failed to discharge them not only towards men but also towards God himself. Remembering what as debtors we have not paid but withheld during the time which it was our duty to have done this or that for our neighbor had run by, we shall be gentler toward those who have fallen in debt to us in turn and have not paid their indebtedness, especially if we do not forget our transgressions against the Divine and the unrighteousness we have spoken against the Height either in ignorance of the truth or else in displeasure at the misfortunes that have befallen us.

7 But if we refuse to become gentler towards those who have fallen in debt to us, our experience will be that of him who did not remit the hundred shillings to his fellow servant and of whom, according to the parable set down in the gospel, though already pardoned, the master exacts in severity what had already been remitted, saying to him: Wicked servant and slothful, was it not right for you to pity your fellow servant as I also pitied you? Cast him into prison until he pay all that is owed. And the Lord continues: So shall the heavenly Father do to you also if you forgive not each his brother from your hearts. It is however on profession of penitence that we are to forgive those who have sinned against us, even though our debtor often does so; for He says: If your brother sin against you seven times a day and seven times turn and say, "I repent," you shall forgive him. It is not we who are harsh towards the impenitent, but they who are wicked to themselves, for he that spurns instruction hates himself. Yet even in such cases we should seek in every way that healing arise within him who is so completely perverted as not even to be conscious of his own ills but to be drunken with a drunkenness more fatal than from wine, from the darkening of evil.

8 When Luke says Forgive us our Sins he means the same as Matthew, since sins are constituted when we owe and do not pay, though he does not appear to lend support to him who would forgive only penitent debtors when he says that it is enacted by the Savior that we ought in prayer to add: for we ourselves also forgive everyone in debt to us. And it would seem that we have all authority to forgive the sins that have been committed against us as is clear from both clauses: as we also have forgiven our debtors; and for we ourselves also forgive everyone in debt to us. But it is when a man is inspired by Jesus as were the apostles, when he can be known from his fruits to have received the Spirit that is Holy and to have become spiritual through being led by the Spirit after the manner of a Son of God unto every reasonable duty, that he forgives whatsoever God has forgiven and holds those sins that are irremediable, and as the prophets served God in speaking not their own message but that of the divine Will, so he too serves the God who alone has authority to forgive.

9 In the Gospel according to John the language referring to the forgiveness exercised by the apostles runs thus: Receive the Holy Spirit: whosoever's sins you forgive, they are forgiven unto them: whosoever's you hold, they are held. Anyone taking these words without discrimination might blame the apostles for not forgiving all men in order that all might be forgiven but holding the sins of some so that they are held with God also on their account. It is helpful to take an example from the Law with a view to understand God's forgiveness of sins through men. Legal priests are prohibited from offering sacrifice for certain sins in order that the persons for whom the sacrifices are made may have their misdeeds forgiven; and though the priest has authority to make offerings for certain involuntary or willful misdeeds, he of course does not presume to offer a sacrifice for sin in cases of adultery or willful murder or any other more serious offence.

10 So, too, the apostles, and those who have become like apostles, being priests according to the Great High Priest and having received knowledge of the service of God, know under the Spirit's teaching for which sins, and when, and how they ought to offer sacrifices, and recognize for which they ought not to do so. Thus Eli the priest, knowing that his sons Hophni and Phineahas are sinners, with a sense of his inability to cooperate with them for forgiveness of sins, confesses his despair of such a result in his words: If a man sins against a man, then shall they pray for him, but if he sin against the Lord, who shall pray for him? I know not how it is, but there are some who have taken upon themselves what is beyond priestly dignity, perhaps through utter lack of accurate priestly knowledge, and are proud of their ability to pardon even acts of idolatry and to forgive acts of adultery and fornication, claiming that even sin unto death is absolved through their prayer for those who have dared to commit such.

11 They do not read the words: There is sin unto death; not for it do I say that a man should ask. Nor should we omit to mention the resolute Job's offering of sacrifice for his sons, with the words: Perhaps my sons have had evil thoughts in their minds toward God. Though the sinful thoughts are doubtful and at worst have not reached the lips, he offers his sacrifice for them.