Rhythms on the Faith

Rhythms on the Faith

continued

Rhythm 32.

1 image, which Thou didst borrow and clad on, made Thee R.xxvi. small, how much more would the Body make Thee small §. 6. wherewith Thou didst clothe Thyself in reality, not in likeness? Thou didst make Thyself small when Thou didst R.xxvi. create: for Thou didst come down from Thy Majesty to a §. 5. low estate, since creation was not possible, unless in a state of condescension Thou hadst come to Thy framing of it b. He clothed Himself with littleness 3 ere He was a Creator. 3 R. liii. How could He create, unless He could be little? or how else §. 4. could He do great things? Glory to Thy good-will! The Son immutable as being in the Father. 4. From Thine own Thou hast become little! from Thine R.xix.own too Thou hast become great! Thou becamest small, §. 2. because Thou didst let Thyself down from that Majesty; and Thou wert great, because Thou shewedst Thyself gracious, and didst create the creatures. Thou becamest small outwardly, and Thou becamest great outwardly: it was not in Thyself that Thy Glory waned and increased. Thy R.xxxi. Nature is equable, and high above those changes. My §. 5. littleness hath spoken of Thee, since Thy Majesty hath been willing to fall under words; and to be beneath voices, that R. v. Thou mightest be profitable to the mouth and to the hearing. §. 3. The Father and the Son are One, because Their Nature is p.87,n. One. They wander not out of One another; they are i. p.144, blended with One another; they are distinct from One n. g. fin. another. Glory to Thy blending! p. 235, n. h.

2 Syr. from a word of uncertain origin, probably formed (as a similar word in Hebrew and Chaldee) from the fut. of 'to stand up;' for transpositions similar to the one required here occur in the Syriac proper names, for Jael, Naioth, &c. Etymologically then it would seem to be, 'that which stands firm,' as e. g. in R. i. contr. Scrut. §. 24. it is used for the 'firmament' of Heaven, and vol. i. p. 6, a: in §. 31. of the 'reality' or 'substance,' as opposed to the 'name' of the fruit, as also in vol. i. 6, b. ii. p. 532. and iii. p. 279, b: in vol. iii. p. 249. death is said not to have the 'reality' of speech and silence; ibid. p. 246, a. in our frame is Thy Baptism, and in our 'substance' is Thy living Body. But by far the commonest use of the word in St. E. is for 'self.' E. g. in vol. i. p. 373. Saul having in vain tried to get rid of David by means of the Philistines, 'himself' or 'in his own person' rises against him. P. 389, c. "a spirit 'in itself' wicked and lying and hostile, and hating God." P. 392, e. "to stretch forth his hand against the king 'himself,' the king's person." P. 497, d. 'by the sacrifice of Himself.' See also iii. p. 61, b. 259, d. 269, f. &c. In this sense it seems to answer to one use of hypostasis, in which it was used of essence, considered as subsisting in one person, i. e. of one person, viewed not as person, but as essence. Hence, e. g. when the Son is said to be the express Image of the Father's Essence

3 in the Syriac, Heb. 1. our version has Person, and above, 'a spirit in itself wicked,' would not in a popular way of speaking differ much from 'a spirit essentially wicked.' See farther on R. i. contr. Scrut. §. 31. and on R. xl. §. 1. In the text the adverb employed is equivalent to 'essentially,' if we view the Son's Human Nature, as an accident to His Essence. (Vide Petav. de Inc. vi. 8. §. 4.) What St. E. means to say is, that the Divine Nature remained what it was, as the following passage from vol. ii. p. 516, e. will shew: "It is not possible for the Nature of the [Divine] Majesty to become small or be humbled, except in similitudes." And p. 512, f. "A wonder is the visible sample that meets our eye, even the word [of Christ] that wished to persuade the learned concerning that Majesty, of which fools thought that It was not perfect. For us then it was that It was small when small, and for us that It was great when great; and though it was equable in Itself at all times, all similitudes did It put on in Its mercy, for the Nature of the Divine Essence doth not ever at any time wane or increase...He is One, that waneth not; He is One, that increaseth not: for the whole of Him is in every place. There is no space within Him for us to enter into, neither is there any room without Him to go out into. How should He expand or be greater, or how contract or wane?"

Rhythm 33.

1. JOHN in truth when he saw Thee, shadowed out Thee, S. The truth of John in order that every man should shadow Thee out by that R.lii.§.2. type, in his mind, and not dare to shadow out aught that is p. 50, foreign to Thee. The appearance that the Spirit in John n. r. R. xliv.§.5. sealed upon us, therewith also are our heart and understanding and mind impressed. His Nature is hidden, yet revealed, though it is entirely hidden; for it is revealed that it existeth, but concealed in its mode of existence. Let us R. xlii. leave alone what He hath left, and that which He hath given §. 1. us to hold fast, let us hold fast. 2. If it be too difficult for painters to paint us the wind in R. xlii. colours; whose tongue hath painted the Generation, which §. 1. no mouths have painted with their words? When they paint the body, they paint not the soul; and when they paint the mouth, they paint not the voice, since these fall not at all under the pencil; the Scriptures which paint unto us the Son, paint not unto us, when [He became Son], and though R. l. they preach unto us the Father, yet they preach not unto us how §. 1. above, [He begetteth], since these things fall not under investigation. p. 69, n. t. And if then the devil cannot be shadowed forth with colours, who with his investigations hath shadowed forth the Holy Ghost? The unclean spirit chideth at their interpretations of Him: for as he concealeth himself from the painters, thus an hundredfold more concealed is the Godhead from their minds which do not comprehend the mode of His existence. comp.

2 n. c. p. 170. Spiritual Essences cannot be represented to sense. 3. And as colours paint not the voice, so thoughts suffice not for the Son, that mark at which they aim from a subtle mind. Which of the painters gazed upon that brightness in which Moses was enwrapped: neither the painters of faces nor the painters of drapery sufficed to paint him. For those heavenly tints could not even by the eye be perfectly taken in or by the mind, which was not correlative to either of them. Now if the countenance of an aged man and a mortal, because it was but slightly suffused with the heavenly tint, put the colours to shame, and perplexed the painters, who then shall shadow forth the Nature of that Essence which cannot be seen unto perfection? And whoever is said in Scripture to have seen Him, saw not Him, but a shape in which He wrapped Himself. For lo! the intelligible colours of all minds are not correlative unto the Son, so that we should paint therewith His likeness to the hearers, or know Him as He is. For if that breath which may be held and felt, we yet cannot paint, who shall shadow forth that Generation which is revealed to the Father alone, and withdrawn and hidden from all [others]?

Rhythm 34.

1. BEFORE Adam had sinned, all the creatures were pure; and when he and they were pure, he garnished them with their names. And when the man sinned in his free-will, the Creator rejected them by reason of his sins, though he was more unclean than they, that by them He might teach him, and bring him unto pureness. Blessed be He Who by means of beasts taught him not to make himself like them. For like unto beasts and brutes he made himself, as is written. By them He shadowed forth man's own hideousness, that he might see how foul he had made himself; that when he saw his hideousness, he might be disgusted thereat; and when he saw the great blot upon him, he might feel ashamed; and when he saw whereto he was like, he might weep, and seek the brightness which he had lost. 2. One mirror serveth to minister unto many in a state of concord: but to Adam were many [given], that in them he might see his own manifold stains. He drew our attention to

Rhythm 35.

1. LIKE is nature unto Scripture, and like are those within to those without. In their questionings do their losses come, comp. and by their own arguings their mischiefs. On nature those without looked and stumbled, in Scripture those within have p. 107, read and have been perplexed. Grant me, Lord, that I may suffice to plead with them according to Thy will! One, In the beginning, is like the other, and John also is like Moses: for in the beginning of their books they have reproved the scribes that searched amiss. For one preached God who came to suffering—and Moses also nature which came to travail in pain. That the hearers might not be weakened [in the faith] they wrote their glories in the beginning of their books. Blessed be the Pure One who in pure things opened unto us the mouth of pure fountains! 2. For from the words which are written concerning the humiliation of the Son of the Creator, the searchers thought that He was a creature. They too disturbed the fountain, and when they had disturbed it with their strifes they turned to prying, and drank the waters that their feet had disturbed, and though that doctrine was clear, yet they were drinking dregs from out of its clearness. O Lord, shew mercy upon our wilfulness which first disturbed and then drinks.

Nature and Scripture, save through man's fault, O Fountain of wonder that art clear and disturbed according to the parties using it. For it is pure to the pure who are purified in its pure drink; and to the disturbed it is disturbed, because it is to the disturbed as sweetness also is bitter to the sick. Truth is disturbed among the disputers, as sweetness among those that are sick. Lord, heal our sicknesses that we may hear of Thy Generation healthfully! 3. Those without looked on nature the whole of which was disturbed for Adam's sake; for in it were the sins from free-will, and the fearful stripes from [Divine] justice: they foolishly thought that it was nature that was deformed and confused. And those within slandered our Lord for His Human Nature; they saw His littleness, and were perplexed. The wicked one mocked both sides. Reprove, Lord, that deceiver who mocketh us as he did Samson. Because they have disturbed the stream by searching, they think that it is disturbed and its fountain disturbed the clear fountains enough, ye searchers? Our sin hath disturbed nature, and our searching hath confused the Scripture. And for the fair flock that cometh to drink it is perplexed, since we have given to it perplexed sounds to drink in. It came unto nature, we had corrupted it; and it came unto Scripture, we had confused it. Clear up, O Lord, the water-courses which the searchers have disturbed, who have been disturbers!

5. That searching which confuseth all, that strife which perplexeth all, Ezechiel had beforehand shadowed out when he reproved the shepherds, saying, 'My sheep fed upon pastures which your heels have trodden down, and they have returned and drank waters which your feet disturbed.' Lo the words, and lo the doings of the proud have disturbed the creation! Let us give thanks, that before the searchers [came] the fountains were clear to the Apostles. Clear up, Lord, the streams that the shepherds have disturbed before Thy flock. Avenge my simplicity, O Lord, from the wise that are very foolish; for if they had known Thy greatness they would not have dared to scrutinize Thee. For if they had cleaved to nature, yea, and to Scripture, they from both would have learned the Lord of both. Nature sheweth by open things, and Scripture too by plain things! Blessed He who by one quickeneth bodies, and by the other quickeneth souls. By pure Pastors give me to drink from the pure water-courses of Scripture!

Rhythm 36.

1. THE Son came down to visit the servants, because their infirmities lingered and delayed, and the physicians had been forward to come, yet had been wearied of their labour. They healed but little and left much alone. Blessed be He that sent Thee! Since they were not able to see Him, He took Him clothing from the sheep. The flock approached to Him, and loathed Him not, since the smell of the sheep breathed from His clothes. The wolves that were crafty were afraid of Him, because He had changed [His garment]. They rent His garments and revealed His glory, and though they wished it not, His bright-shining glistened forth from His veil. 2. The chief pastors of that day, who saw that He was put to great shame for His sheep, as if drunken with the savour of strong wine thought that He was the Head of the pastors and shepherds; and the husbandmen that crucified Him felt that He was the Heir and Lord of the Vineyard. The shepherds thought Him a fellow-servant with the sheep, because in His love He became the Paschal Lamb. Let our eyes be opened with fountains of tears, since the Son of the Maker, by Whom we were made, did they that were made slander with their own names,—the reward that they paid Him Who made them great by His own Names.

Difficulties in nature accredit the Son's Generation. 219 with the creatures. There is freedom attached to thy own R. bondship: set not thine own yoke upon that Sovereign Nature xxviii. who freeth all. and b. S. His Lord-ship 4. Wherein thou art burdened, recount to us, for haply thy bruise is like His. Who shall define what number they were, or of what kind they were, which He bare for thee? What hast thou borne for Him? If thou doest not honour to Him, yet do not do dishonour. In what fire hast thou been burned for Him, that the smoke of the furnace of thy obstinacy hath come up even unto Him? R. xviii. §. 2. 5. See! with what zeal the Eternal Being is zealous, saying, One is not divisible into Three. Let alone His Name and shew His Nature; for this very Nature giveth eyes even to the searchers. The nature of stone is divisible, and the other natures are [herein] its fellows: the nature of fire is not divisible. See! the assaying of their natures proves to us as good as eyes. For they are akin in their names, when they are far off in their natures; so then thou canst not shew us a common name in which things divisible and not divisible are alike contained. Lo! every single thing that exists has a single name to it, each single body, each single person, each single one, as also every thing which is the subject of number. But if it be [only] from thy having called it so, that one is indivisible, thou art greatly in error: the nature of water is one, yet it is divisible also; in fruits and seeds it is even changed. It is impossible for us to rise up to Him without experience of His Nature. For the fact that He is one, doth not give us means of comprehending and finding an explanation of His Generation which is with-drawn from all. contr. R. i. §. 10. p. 136, n. e.

6. There are two different assay-furnaces, faith and exp. 122, n. i. The alternatives of faith and experience. perience; for either man believes the truth, or experience is able to teach him how it is. The faith of the children of truth needeth not to be investigating. To us the way of seeking for experience and disputation on every thing comes from the heretic. Take and cast him among the waves that he may cease entirely from his questionings. Demand of him an experience of the Divine Essence, how it exists, and where it exists, and whose it is? and if the Generation is explainable from any thing, or the creatures from what is nothing? Plough once and again the land of thorns, and it will yield thee the word of Truth, though itself ignorant of it.

Rhythm 37.

1. ISAIAH darkly describes him who put the bridle of error Shints upon the jaws of men, the sign of humiliation which made at. Is. 30, men brutish. Blessed be He, whose Truth made error to. cease! When we had made ourselves like the beasts, God came down and made Himself like unto us, that we might be again like Him. Hail to the Blessed One! for from what a R.xlvi. place to how different a one have His mercies called me! But §. 6. man, who being in his honour understood not, was wroth and Ps. 49, rejected Him. Israel waxed fat, and kicked and rebelled 12. Deut. and hid and cast away that mercy. O thought most 32, 15. mournful! 2. From being wise and teachers, Satan made men brutish. S.great. Instead of the yoke that maketh one those that are divided, mournhe with the yoke of strife divided them by disquisitions. In ing. In the thickets he made them run into a maze, among snares, R.xliii. where on one side there were the mountains of guilt, and on the §. 2. other side again questionings and fearful rocks! In a place place R. xx. of ditches, where ten thousand eyes were required, and. 4. 6 comp. of ditches, where ten thousand eyes were required, with much 1 Cor. 13, 2.

Heresy has no faith, but is 2 Chron. 16, 9. he made gods among the unbelievers. To the artificer master. For He is a Wall of Adamant, such as the Prophet saw in the spirit; the dart of words, if one should fling against it, without fastening in it, will turn back and fix itself in those that spoke them. Look at a potter's wheel, and then behold ye the wheel of thoughts; for the motion of the one enhanceth the clay, but that of the other degradeth the Son, though He may not be degraded. Fight not with thy Fashioner who made thee a speaking vessel with discourse of reason. As for the potter, his vessels are silent. As for that Good One, the vessels which He enhanced strive with Him. The least fragment of searching into Him is a hard rock which cannot be made smooth. Two words to thee out of enquiry into Him are heaven and earth. What a space for thee to stray in!

5. Thy bound, Lord, no man hath passed: Thy great height no man hath lowered. The Nature of the Eternal One and the Bosom of the Father are the Walls of the Son which cannot be trodden down. As there is no nature which can enter into and feel the bosom of fire, outside of which every man keepeth; there is no wall to it, neither battlement is there, and yet every man is warned off by it. Who will dare to pry into the Bosom of that most fearful Essence? By the sea the rivers are stopped; and by the investigation of the Generation of the Son all venturesome disputers!

Rhythm 38.

1 and cast it out, Thou hast made it as a confused smoke. Is. 51, 9. Thy measure weighed silence and speaking that we might do so likewise. And does not even nature teach, my brethren, that by one scale without the twin one we can weigh nothing? Let us avail ourselves of silence and of speaking; let our speech be as the day, and as the night again let our silence be; for both the hearing and the tongue require rest: for they may be likened and compared, the doctrines of truth to the broad day, and again silence and stillness are as the night; and as sleep again is rest abounding in sweetness. 4. For the word of Truth be we labourers, and, as upon ground, come and let us toil therein; sow we love and reap we peace. Let a sheaf come up from reconciliation to the Lord of peace. Lo, a breath of the Holy Ghost with its fanning purifieth the corn-heap; the chaff it winnows, the pollard it scatters, the wheat it gathers into the Barn of Life that hath no tares! Blessed be that Good One who gave us speech, and blessed be the Just that added silence! He gave us sides upon which we might search, and keepeth others from us that in them we may be silent, as being Teacher of all. And it is not the whole earth that He has given us to go up and down, but a portion of it only; neither the whole sea to go down to; neither the whole sun for the eye to exercise lordship over.

2 5. And how then is it that the mind wishes to have that Majesty, which cannot be thoroughly comprehended, to exercise a lordship over It, as though it reckoned It to be less than the creatures? And if those things which are given unto us are not given unto us fully, how should we search into the hidden Generation which has a bound about it continually, my brethren, as the Mount Sinai? 6. Adam wished to inherit brightness, and the earth became his inheritance. Uzziah wished to take to himself the priesthood, and a filthy leprosy was caught by him. And who shall venture upon hidden things, the boundaries whereof are stillness and silence, yea, the walls thereof are fire and judgment, and their hedges are wailing, and weeping, and gnashing of teeth? Who shall make a breach in the rampart walls and enter in and take the fearful woes? Whoso maketh a breach in the foundations the hedges and the walls, doth it for gain;

3 Orthodoxy a subject for thanksgiving. we, my brethren, should do it for damage. I will praise Thee, O Lord, who hast held me back from the hidden things, and from those follies which have emptied the trea-

Rhythm 39.

1. IF, my son, the crucifiers and the heathen mocked our Lord, because He was the Son of Man, yet it is true that He is God of glory unsearchable; and instead of disputers who pry into His glorious Generation, Martyrs loved Him, who with the blood of their necks preached the Generation of the Son of God. Discern ye how our strife hath refuted all to a certainty that He exists. Rather, let it not be discussed whether it be possible for Him to generate, since He 8. is Master of all possibilities. For it is not on one side that the Godhead is confounding; it is a difficulty on all sides. Who hath been able to measure the grains of seed, and the drops of water, and the herbs of all tribes, seeing it is all wonder in all these? For if to us Its motion in our own procreation is incomprehensible, who can comprehend the Generation from Its own Bosom?

Rhythm 40.

1. THE sun is our light, and it none is able to know; how much less to know man, and still less God! The light of the sun is not subsequent to it, neither was he at any time without it. The light is the second, and the warmth is the third; they depart not from it, nor are they identical with it. Look at the sun in his height, which is thought to be one; descend, and look, and behold in his light, a second; try, and feel, and search his heat, a third. They are like, and yet not like one to another. The second is blended with him, though well distinguished from him; and the third is mingled with him, distinguished, blended, and mingled. Light and also the sun are individual subsistences; there are in them three kinds mingled in a threefold way, himself, and also the light, and the heat the third, dwelling one in the other, and agreeing without grudging. Mingled, yet not confused; blended, yet not bounden; assembled, yet not compelled; yea free, and yet not divergent. Let then the haughty ones ponder the things which are seen, for lo, one are these three, and the three are one, blended, yet not compounded, distinct, yet not several! There is a marvel in all these things which putteth us to silence. Thus man also is compounded of three, and will rise in the resurrection, when he is perfected

2 The use of the sun as furnishing by its light a type of the Father generating the Son is very frequent indeed in the Fathers. The use made of it here and R. lxxiii. §. 1. is much less frequent: indeed I am not able to furnish any other instance of a passage exactly parallel, as they speak rather of the Holy Spirit as Light of Light, than as heat of light. St. Cyril Thes. p. 337. speaks of the Spirit 'passing naturally from the Father through the Son to those fitted to receive It as heat out of fire would do in a body;' which procession of heat from fire he elsewhere, e. g. 175. uses, as is commonly done, of the Procession of the Son from the Father. It may be added that a simile of a like kind used by Greg. Naz. p. 612, a. is urged by Veccus Or. ii. 13. G. Orth. vol. ii. p. 57. to shew the Procession of the Holy Spirit from the Son. 'Who is there with any parts or sense who would deny that the procession of the light through the ray is its existence through the same? For if the existence of the light from the sun were not through the ray, the light would never have been called the light

3 of the ray, &c.' I mention this because the passage in the text struck me as helping to indicate what St. E. held of the Procession of the Holy Spirit, before I had seen this passage in Veccus. S. [spontane] [sic], 'single natures.' So Alexander, Alex. in Theod. H. E. i. 4 calls the Father and the Son vâs vâ bôserâen dâm qâens, where Lowth quotes St. Clement Al. Strom. vii. §. 5. p. 831: whether St. Cyril also used the word qâens in the sense of Person is too wide a question to enter upon here. St. E. of course uses his word only of the type, and that in a way answering rather to the Greek bôserâen than to the Latin persona.—[scato] here rendered 'himself' is used of the substance of the sun, the light and heat being strictly not substances, perhaps, in St. E.'s view, but rather emanations. Still as the word is contrasted in part with [sic], the passage goes to shew the indefiniteness of the word in St. E.'s time. See n. c. p. 210.

4 See R. xviii. §. 1. "The race of birds is brought up by a threefold advance, &c." and note d. In vol. ii. entirely. The sun which, though one, is an uniform nature with three mingled in him, distinct yet not divided, and one by one the whole of him is perfect, and in one all of them are perfect, and the glory is one, yet is not one. This nature is a marvel; for it generateth solitarily, and gathereth itself up conjointly, and unfoldeth itself threefoldly. 2. If then a man dare to think that fire is not threefold, who will be led into error by him, and cleave to his foolishness, and agree with his perverseness, and reject the threefold which are seen to be equal and yet distinct, and this is one 5 p. 551. there occurs a Rhythm which will throw some light on this passage; the following are parts of it: "Let us reprove Bardesanes, since no man can take away any one of the forms appertaining to man, any more than he can the form of fire, for if he did, he would annihilate it; since it is by three parts that it liveth in perfection, as man is of a threefold composition... Their own simile reproveth them: by it they have given the body the surname of 'egg,' and the soul of 'bird,' and do not examine how bones and flesh come forth from the said egg, which is like the earth in which the body is conceived, and rends at the resurrection its earth and its sepulchre, and flieth at the advent. The comparison for the soul does not stand, for the bird has two generations: the first that of copulation, the second that of incubation. The womb generates by copulation, and the earth without it, after the type of the bird, performs the second generation in the Resurrection. Let us notice to what they compare our Saviour's work: for if He rent the bodies and made the souls to fly, then our Lord has overthrown the type of the unbelievers. But if the tombs were broken open as an egg, and the entombed bodies rose and came to life, then hath our Lord given the cause in our favour...

6 Eggs are reckoned like the dead by these frantic men, and they are quick in their nests to the wings of the bird. Corpses in their tombs are dead to the heretics, but alive in the grave to the Quicken of all: thus not even as powerful as that wing of the feeble bird have they reckoned the overshadowing of the Good One who raiseth all! Three things in the Resurrection are brought to be one whole, the soul, and the mind, and their harp the body. The mind dwelleth in the head, the word thereof in the mouth, and the soul participateth with them both in every 7 thing. Distinct are their names, easy are they in their significations, difficult in their primary essences." another. If then this fire is of a miraculous nature, which produceth, yet lacketh not; which is equable, and doth not chill; and when its heat is distinct from it, yet it is not cut off from it; that passeth through every thing, and grudgeth R. v. not; that flieth into bread, and blends itself with water, and q. 5. p. 105, dwelleth in every thing, while the whole thereof dwelleth in n. i. it; a symbol of the Spirit is in it, yea a type of the Holy Spirit, who is mingled in water that it may become a propitiation, and is blended with bread that it may become a p. 87, n. h. R. x. q. 4.

8 by St. Austin de Trin. iii. 4. 'The element is not consecrated to be so great a Sacrament, save by the Spirit of God working invisibly.' And so in the Missa Leoniana ap. Assem. B. Lit. iv. p. 27. Gothic. iv. p. 39. &c. Yet there can be little doubt that the Western Churches held, that the elements were consecrated by our Lord's words then repeated. See Gotti Theol. Scholastico-Dogm. Tr. vii. qu. 2. q. 2. and Le Quien on Damascene, p. 268, n. 2. Bened. xiv. de Miss. Sacr. ii. 15. Orsi de Liturg. Inv. Sp. Sct. ii. q. 2. Martene de Rit. i. 4. 8. q. 19. Benedict. Antirrheticon, ii. cap. 5. who quotes a passage from Theodulus Ben Althib. which will be of service here: 'The power of the Holy Ghost descendeth at this day upon the Bread offered upon the Altar, and consecrates it and makes it the Body of God the Word. For the power of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost, and their operation is one. (see p. 166, n. c. When the Son blesseth and consecrateth, then the Spirit blesseth and consecrateth; and when the Spirit blesseth and consummates, then the Son blesseth and consummates; when the Father imparteth His Divine power, it do the Son and the Spirit impart in like manner. For albeit the Persons are distinct, yet is the Substance and Nature one. Thus in like way is Their power and operation. Therefore the Bread which we receive is His Body, as He Himself saith;

9 and since He Himself calleth It His own Body, Who will not confess It so to be?' (comp. St. John Maro. cap. xxxiii. Assem. Cod. Lit. v. on which B. remarks, that Theodulus here conceives (1) the words of Christ to be the efficient cause of the Real Presence, and (2) operation of the Holy Spirit to be not distinct from that of Christ. Here also is perhaps the key to St. E.'s meaning: The Son and the Spirit are said to be sent, and not the Father; and this mission is of course 10 not any thing new, but Their Eternal Procession from the Father considered as affecting us. Vide Petav. de Trin. viii. Hence St. E. passes off from the doctrine of the Trinity to that in which the Mission of the Two Persons (as explained in note f.) is continually brought before us, viz. the Eucharist. Sacrifice: and though He seemeth to be entirely in all of them, His fulness is far removed. For it is not possible to shadow forth the mysteries of the Trinity, which cannot be

Rhythm 41.

1. Who hath at any time seen a raven that was not single? or a hornet that ever companied with others? The virgin bee generateth in virginity, and the worm in solitariness gendereth. The cloud also bringeth forth the lightning gloriously, and the spark from the midst of the flint appeareth marvellously. The pool of waters also swarmeth with insects by means of the sun, and convinceth the infidels, because it gendereth in purity like as the waters brought forth creeping things at the beginning in chastity. Who would not wonder at all these, which are hidden, yet not suffocated; even the moles in the dust, and fish in the sea, and the babes in the womb. For by what motion is the iron of its own accord led to the loadstone; and another kind of nature hath been found which is never scorched in the fire, and many are the inventions also of stones, and roots, and medicinable virtues, and who hath been equal to defining and distinguishing their natures?

2. The solitary procreations which exist without intercourse, which have natures too difficult for them that are enquiring, and investigations too subtle for them that pry into them, justify us in not prying into the mode of the Generation of the Lord of all; and in not searching after the place, and in not saying the causes of It, and in not seeking after the time of It. And although there are a smell and a colour and a taste, which are beautiful and subtle, and cannot be touched by the hand, yet by the senses allied to them they may be comprehended; one is smelt, and another is tasted: but what sense is there akin to His Majesty, by which, as being related to Him, we may approach to the investigation of Him? Similar reference to the mysteries of nature is made below, R. lviii. §. 1. R. lxiv. §. 3. contr. Serut. i. §. 10. It is held I believe at this day, that the copulation of one generation of insects produces other generations with the organs of the females in such a state as

to conceive afresh, without further intercourse. See Schubert Geschichte der Natur. iii. p. 64. Thomass. de Incarn. ii. 3. 10. Raynaud. Christus. iii. 2. §. 198. furnish similar instances to those in the text. Any thing that is not allied to us and of our race, who is able to search into? and who is able to scrutinize it? To Him it seemed good, and He revealed what His own Nature is: to Him it seemed good, and He became little, and humbled Himself, that He might shew Himself to us, and blend His without reason, how by our reasons doth he abuse and lead us astray? For as for the Lord of natures, His Nature is hidden from all. Grant to me to form no shape of ThyR.xliv. Nature by the creatures. But if [by any one] it be shaped out §. 5. so, in order to lead the daring astray, the Gospel is thy marvellous mirror, and in it the Threefold are seen without contradiction, since in Them the Apostles went forth and baptized without disputatiousness. O Lord, let not my searching afterp. 166, n. d. Thee make my baptism of none effect; for there is that hathp. 228, made his baptism of none effect by his scrutinizing. And if. c. he be made a disciple afresh and renewed, then it is right for him to be also baptized afresh; but if one be not so baptized, he sheweth, that it is because he found no new thing that he abideth.

Rhythm 42.

1. Who hath been able to comprise as it were in water-pipes and pass over in his thought the billows of hidden things? As searching is to us in our weakness, as it were, bitter, how much more then is the standard of glorious Might bitter? Who that hath his senses not healthful would be able to bear the might of that Power whose Generation is unsearchable? The sight of the Spirit were not suited to our pupils, and strange were the colour thereof for our eyes to gaze upon: and who is there that will by his scrutinizing become correlative to the Hidden One, who is in all respects unknown to all? Who that hath made his mouth correlative to flaming Fire and his taste to that Brilliancy which never was tasted at any time? Let him learn by this fire, the might of which cannot be tasted, though the power of it is tasted by the taste of what is dressed, and in this way it is our profit and altogether our gain. So also is the hidden Essence; mingle and take Its might in the divers kinds of blessings, since the investigating of It in Its own self is too arduous and difficult.

2. The sun passing into a transparent vessel, into water, begetteth in the cold element the hot fire, an offspring that is like itself; marvellously it generateth; an offspring rises up from it without division, so that his light is not quenched, and the water is not divided. The offspring is one of chastity, which glisteneth forth in spotlessness. Gold is uniform, a flower is threefold; stone is uniform, fire is threefold; burning, and heat, and light are blended in it. For it is not by one comparison only that the language of the creation mounteth up; and thus, as They are preached, so receive ye without gainsaying these Threefold Ones. For they stand not by the ordering of our wills; that nature as it exists, existeth threefoldly, neither can it be comprehended, wherefore it is found to be such, as without question it really is. For who would blame him who said that fire exists threefoldly? No man condemns him, since every one allows him. The passage of fire remains a mystery to thee, how it is conceived in the sun and hidden therein, and how again it is concealed in the womb of his brightnesses; and the pang which begot it is inscrutable! This wonderful birth of that miraculous thing silenceth thee and refraineth thy thought, since it surpasseth thy mind!

3. The fruit which thou hast never tasted what sort it is, if thou shouldst feel it with thy hand and smell it and also see it, yet because thou hadst not hitherto tasted it and tried it, thou wouldst rely upon another who had tried it; since then He is too mighty for thee, even that hidden Essence, believe that Fruit whereby His might hath been tasted. Take wheat, and open it, and examine it, and shew us how the blade, the ear, and the root are hidden [there], which are each one of them perfect within it threefoldly, and which is recent, which old, or which afore other: and though they had a beginning, yet this is difficult to comprehend, since their hidden beginning is from themselves unto themselves.

Rhythm 43.

1. By the little egg set the bold disputers at nought, since R.xviii. the form is hidden in a threefold way in the liquid; ask then §. 1. its head and its feet and its wings, how they are three, that they may instruct thee. If then he be stifled in an egg by his scrutinizing thereof, how much more will he be whelmed that dareth to feel into the mighty Sea! Blessed p. 144, be He who with weak things hath astounded our mind! n. g. Lo, the wheat when stript yet hath its garment in it; we buried it unclad therewith; we saw it again glorified! That silent body which hath crept into its dust, it is a wonder that it therein hath gotten itself a covering, and its dishonour cannot be understood, now that it is swallowed up in glory, and the whole of it hath become a bride in bridal ornaments. For as in the stalk the wheat is secreted, thereby it amazeth the investigator and causeth wonder in the beholders, since they know not how to feel after it and investigate it. It is manifest and visible, yet it is not; it puts the searcher to R. xlii. shame, and lo, it crieth aloud in its silence, 'Be ye ashamed §. 2. with things visible, ye rude dealers with hidden things!'

2. Yea, there is a hidden treasure in that visible plant, or stem. three are hidden there, and cannot be searched out there; three that are one, and though one they are three. Who R. xlii. hath penetrated into the midst of a plant and [found] how §. 3. the root, and the fruit, a second, and the leaf, a third, are blended one with another? Therefore, that His true Church R. i. should not be the abode of strifes, and a sect of divided n. b. people, He shadoweth forth and shewed Himself how He S. divisions. is. For He Himself alone sufficeth to teach us concerning R. Himself, seeing that it is open to Himself alone to search xxxix. into the mode of His own Existence, and He hath given §. 1. R. ix. §. 6. foretastes thereof by His words for His true ones. He then who prieth into Him entangleth himself in Him, seeking out so as not to know Him, searching so as not to find Him: for he loseth that which is in Him and findeth that which is not in Him. A man may find Him so as to know Him, provided he seek not in order to know Him as He is.

Is. 65, 1. For if thou hast believed Him, then hast thou comprehended Him. 3. Choose thyself one of two things, of which enquiry shall be made of thee: that if He is true, rely and enquire not; but if He cause thee to go astray, who shall gather thee in? It is fit that thou shouldest rely upon Him in these two things. For Rom. 9, if He hath made thee to err, it were evil for thee to reproach Him with it. How much more should He be believed in that it is the Truth which He hath written and given unto thee! But

Rhythm 44.

1. His Names admonish thee, how and what thou shouldest call Him. One He hath taught thee, that He is; another R.xivi. that He is the Creator: He hath shewed thee that He is §. 2. also good: He hath informed thee that He is just also. §. 3. 4. Father likewise hath He named, and called Himself. The Scriptures are an assay furnace: and the fool why should he babble? Assay in the midst of His furnaces His Names and His distinctions. Praises be to Thee from all, who confess Thee without scrutinizing! 2. For He hath Names perfect and appropriated: also He hath Names borrowed and transient, which He suddenly R. iii. clad on, and suddenly put off, as that 'He repented', and §. 1. contr. Scrut. R. l. §. 17. * See p. 150, n. c. p. 190, n. f. p. 205, n. b. Vol. ii. p. 480, c. "The false teachers have been deceived by the expression 'He repented,' a sound word which is bitter to the infirm, and they distorted it, while it only explained how great Adam was. Lo! God essayed to persuade him that he was not the vessel of an impotent workman, seeing it was no other Workman that restored him. Dumbness belongs to the [other] creatures, but Adam had discourse by his nature. The seas are spread out, and the mountains are fixed, but Adam commands. Perversely then have men understood the word, and yet it has at this day currency, and it is the way with men to find fault [and say] that 'God exalted one whose character He did not discern; and Saul too beareth witness of His having repented also of having made him king and given him authority, and yet he proved perverse: what is not seen in Adam's case, is plain in Saul's.' It was that He might reprove the slanderers, that He by the kingdom ensnared the freewill, which has full power. He nourished and brought up children, and they corrupted themselves and proved perverse. Which is it that the hearers ought to blame?

God that honoured? or those that disgraced man?" Ibid. p. 506, e. "Whose nature would be made greater by that great One, unless He denied Himself by taking what is not in Him. For this He did when He said He ate, and ate not the sacrifice that the fire ate. (Ps. 50, 13. Levit. 9, 24.) He denied Himself by taking the appearance of a man, though He is hidden from all in His Essence: so did He by that repenting which is not in Him, that He might awaken it in our race in which it is. That, however, He might not be as it were divided with Himself as if hating altogether the truth which is with Him; He on the other hand confessed the verity of His Nature, that He might shew of what manner He is. When He stated that He hungered for fat, He on the other hand confessed that He eateth not sacrifices: when He stated that He dwelt in the Sanctuary, He also shewed that the Heavens are filled with Him. He denied His majesty, that He might shew how merciful He was, &c." P. 514, c. "When it was known that His Nature as unchangeable, was far from passions, He feared not to put on repentance; hence He was not ashamed cease to exist, then would the world be nigh to falling to ruin.

3. The Jews change the Names of God, yet they are not able to live upon the multitude of [their] surnames [for Him]. Because they rejected the one Name, they have been rejected in the many. The Names that that people put away and threw aside, in them are the Gentiles baptized. And who is able to untie those Names which have made a trench between us and that people? One cause alone made that people rejected, and he that untie it, buildeth Jerusalem. For it was not because they did not scrutinize, that the Jews were rooted out, but because they did not believe by the Son. Search for a cause which rooted up Jerusalem, and see that it hangeth over them until they cease to strive. much as to the other: he who denies the latter will soon come to deny the former, they being in fact, though not in our conception of them, linked one into the other. In regard to the illustration here used, it may be mentioned that in vol. i. p. 12, c. he says, that "the heaven and the earth and fire and wind and water were created out of nothing as Scripture testifies;" and ibid. n. e. "the remnant of other things were made out of these same things which existed." See also p. 7, c. where he shews how the creation of things not specified in Scripture as created, are implied to be created within the six days. Here he omits earth and heaven, because they make up the world of which the others are the pillars. His caution against denying the obvious sense of Gen. 1. is quite to the purpose to add: "By Heaven and earth He means the very Heaven and the very earth. Let no man then suppose that there are allegories (Syr. Targums) on the work of the six days: neither may one say that the things which took place in the days took place in a moment, nor that the names are empty ones, or that other things are intimated to us by the names. But let us know, that as the Heaven and earth which were created in the beginning are in very deed Heaven and earth, and it is not any thing else that is surnamed to us by the name of Heaven and earth; so the remnant of things made, and of the courses which come after are not empty appellations, since the realities of the natures suit closely to the appellations of the names." p. 6. So in the text he

implies that the Name Father has a reality corresponding to it as much as that of 'just,' 'good,' 'creator,' &c. See R. iii. §. 1. Assem. renders in Filium, which is not exact; St. E. means, that the Jews did not believe through or by the Son in "the Three Names which have made a trench, &c." comp. vol. iii. p. 592, c. St. Gr. Nyss. ii. p. 339. "If it be only that they may lay themselves a sort of foundation and starting-place for their blasphemy, that they allow an existence to the Son and the Spirit, it may be a bold way of putting it perhaps, but, at that rate, more profitable would it be to them to desert to the Jews' worship and forswear the faith than to do an insult to the title of 'Christians,' by their pretended admission. For they by continuing up to the present time in the rejection of the word, only carry their impiety so far as not to admit that Christ has come, but to be hoping that He will come; but for any conception wicked and subversive of the opinion they hold of Him whom they expect, none such can one hear them utter. (Comp. p. 71, n. z.) But these of the new circumcision, or rather, to use the Apostle's word, of the concision, do not deny that He who was expected, has come, but imitate those who in unbelief and insolence dishonoured the presence of the Lord in the flesh. They essayed to cast stones at the Lord; these with blasphemous words throw stones at the word of truth: they alleged the lowness and ingloriousness of the birth after the flesh, not affecting the Birth before all ages; and these in the same way by denying to the Gentiles. The Jews are looking for the dream of p. 74, their own intellect: it is the guess of their own wisdom that n. d. the children of [Gentile] error are worshipping.

6. The wicked one has left the pits; he has cast these into the midst of a wide waste, since he saw that prying had eluded the pitfall. [Free] enquiry in the place of a precipice engulfed the infidel. And if thou art hanging him to bring him up, this is his device that he may hang himself on to thee in his own place. For he hath broken off his own hope, that his constant abode may be there. * 1/2023 2023 2023 2023 2023 2023 2023 2023 2023 2023 2023 2023 2023 2023 2023 2023 2023 2023 2023 2023 2023 2 mius, Apol. §. 2. as well as Arius, in Athan. p. 185. As for the earlier part of the section, its meaning is very obscure: perhaps it may mean, Satan has relinquished his plan of making traps for men's souls below the surface of the earth, (see n. b. p. 221. where however the Syr. word differs) which traps are types of fables of the mind's own creating, he having observed that to an acute and wrangling spirit they were evident enough: he has now given men a wide waste 'a land of thorns' (see p. 220.) to dispute in, which engulphs his victims as successfully as the precipice, while it appears to be open ground.

Rhythm 45.

1. THE eye and the mind teach one another: for any little thing that falleth into the eye worries and disturbs it; and so is thy mind. Scripture and a light, each make thee wise, the light is fair to the eye, and truth to the mind. Choose light for thine eye, the Scriptures for thy mind. How averse the eye is to aught that falleth into it: evil meddlesomeness however is cast into our imagination. A mote is distressing to the eye, how much more is meddlesomeness distressing to the mind, corrupting all things at all times. The finger is no assistance to the eye that it should meddle with it; nor is searching to the mind that it should fix in it. 2. His Fatherhood is easier to us than His Essentiality. It is impossible that another Ever-being should come from space: but it is possible that He should generate one Son, that is like unto Himself. Aught that is from aught is an easy thing, but [to conceive] an Everbeing which was not from aught is difficult, which though it upholdeth all things, yet dwelleth in all things. For if He dwelt in a space He would be small in His greatness, for then there would be a greater than He, since He would be found to dwell in space, and this is subject to a limit. But He that is illimitable, is a space which nothing can comprehend, and as it is not possible that space should be filled with the whole of Him, thus neither is it possible that His fulness should be in the mind.

2 As God transcend space, His Fatherhood is incomprehensible 251 3. And if He were commensurate with that which is space in regard to His knowledge, and yet not commensurate with it in regard to His Essence; then were His knowledge greater than His Essence, and it is found that He is made up out of two things: for lo, it is inconsistent, that He being One should be in them both. This His little-ness contraries His greatness, while He knoweth not if there be in that space entities without limit, and worlds, and creatures. The foolish therefore fall into a maze of blasphemy, and hence it is high time for them to say, that He is One from Himself, and a Father from Himself, and perfect, and entire, and Self-sufficing in all things. 4. For if He dwelleth in space, He would be little in His Majesty; and if He could not beget, then would His Fatherhood be void; and if He could not create, He would be weak in His Essence. Lo, He is wholly perfect in all these things, for He begat without suffering, and created without labour, and dwelt without space, and is rich without treasure! For there is no place that surroundeth and hemmeth Him in, neither is there any scrutiny which searcheth Him out sufficiently. Great is His Essence, as is also His Fatherhood. Space and intellect are cast and condemned, and Creation which is in space, is above man's reason.

3 as there is no space that sufficeth for His Essence. Whose §. 3. is the mind that sufficeth to search into His Fatherhood? 5. Though it be quite true, yet it is hard to search out how He created any thing when there had not been any or mothing, and there would be no demonstration whereby thou del, see mightest search out if it were possible. And since in the dis-Is. 40, course of reason there is no place where thy mind may rest 13. 14. and say, 'lo, thus it was!' believe and repress the haughtiness S. of scrutiny. And inasmuch as thy spirit sufficeth not to gaze |△≡ upon the difficulty of the actual thing, search Him out in another way, that from another side thou mayest rest thyself; R. and reflect that to Him, the Lord of all, all is easy. The pleadxxxix. ing wherewith thou hast silenced investigation into the crea- §. 3. tures, oh, clad it on, and silence therewith the investigation into the Generation!

4 * Space is an element which enters into a vast majority of our conceptions of things; we explain time and its properties by reference to space, as the primary meanings of prepositions, &c. would shew. St. E. then probably means that, as we cannot bring God's Essence under space, it is impossible for our mind to conceive how the whole of that Essence was communicated to the Son. Even Angels we conceive to have relation to space and so comprehend their operations or energies. (See p. 187, n. b.) But such dim and vague apprehension of God's Essence as we have, presupposes Him to transcend space, and so precludes our reasoning about His operations. See however on R. lvii. §. 2.

Rhythm 46.

1. BE restrained ye daring ones, and go not on with meddling any more! The fish leaps along the boundary of its river, R.lxiv. §. 5. and passeth not over it: we have passed with our scrutiny the boundary of Him who is the Giver of our life. The Breath of the Gospel sustaineth us, the waters support the fish, the Scriptures intelligent creatures. Within them is R. xlv. §. 1. p. life, without them is death. He that dareth to go in, my son, 279, n.d. where there is no air, dieth, since there is no breath there to Ideler. quicken him; that we may learn that we are not at liberty to go Meteor. p. 25. into hidden things. That Threefold Breath sustaineth thee, R. v. §. 5. R. lv. §. 2. and if outside it thou shouldst go forth into scrutinizing, the gust from errors will fly to thee, and kill thee.

2. The fool rageth, saying, "Wherefore should God have a Son; for if the True One begat, it was either by His p. 133. own Will or not by His own Will that He begat; and if R. lv. §. 3. R. it was by His Will, then was that which He begot no God; lx. §. 1. but if it was not of His Will, He denied Himself though Scripture employs the words 'Father,' free." Wherefore is thine eye evil, because it was owing to His p. 121, being Good that He begat? thou art envious of that in which n. f. p. He was not envious. Leave all these things, and seek what 231, n.b. His Will is. The Father willeth that thou shouldest believe contr. that the Son is from Him: now if He willed this to be so, the Serut. Truth of Him agreed with His Name; and if He did not i. §. 44. will it, it would have been opposed to His Name: the Name ii. §. 6. R. liv. of Son were then a borrowed one. Faithful is His Name, §. 1. and true is the Name of His Son. Confess and fear not, since Mat. 3, 17; 17, His Voice encourageth thee, His Voice is as it were a pledge

5. that gladdeneth thee touching His Son. Pet. 1, 17. &c. 3. Thamar, inasmuch as her action was hard [to justify], took, in belief, the witnesses for her innocence. She took his pledge, that it might go forth and strive with him; for the silent ones went forth and justified her. Let a man learn then from Judah who was overcome by his own pledges, that if S. with-He blame thee, His writings are within thy reach. For it is in thee. not another man that crieth, that thou shouldest doubt comp. p. [thereof.] Moses and Elias were still and silent, and even he 279, n.d. who baptized Him, as if he knew Him not, gave place to the Father, that He might give a true account of Him. And if He blameth thee, repeat to Him His own words: He clave the Heavens open, and cried and clave strife asunder.

4. And if thou were to refute this, [and say,] that He i. e. not a Name of Nature, but of Grace. See on R. xliv. §. 2. See p. 38, n. b. p. 49, r. 1. St. E. means, 'If you say the Father will blame you for believing without being able to state the doctrine in terms of human science, do you deal with Him as Judah with Thamar, and produce against Him His own pledges to shew that He is the Father.—Without a certain devotional affectionateness such applications of Scripture may appear irreverent: with it such applications are true to facts, to say the least. St. Austin, in Joan. Tr. iv. §. 15. thus states St. John's seemingly contradictory account of himself. 'See, my brethren, John is placed before your eyes, John the Baptist standing at the river; see the Lord is coming still to be baptized, as yet not being so! Hear the voice of John: Comest Thou to me? I have need to be baptized of Thee. See he now knows the Lord by

whom He wishes to be baptized. When baptized the Lord ascends from the water, the heavens are opened, the Spirit descends: now it is that John recognises Him. If it is only now that He recognises Him, why was it that he said before, I have need to be baptized of Thee? but if it is not only now, inasmuch as he had known Him before, why is it that he says, I knew Him not, but He that sent me? &c. &c." In Tr. v. §. 8. §. 11. he makes the main answer to this question to be that St. John knew Him to be Lord, but did not know that the 'power of the Lord's Baptism would not pass from the Lord to any man, but that the ministering of it would.' This brings to the point from which St. E. starts in the next §. viz. the distinction between sonship by grace which the Son could give, and that by Nature which the Son has and none other.

'Son,' 'sons,' with discrimination, and as a guide to us. 255 calleth even the sons of men 'sons,' thou hast refuted that John 1, which refuted this: since he shewed the nature of man to be from the dust, and what the nature of the angels is He hath also shewn. He cried of the Son that He is the Son, and of the Spirit that He is the Holy Ghost. He purifieth and putteth these very things into our hearts. He wittingly called mortals 'sons' (their body convicting them of having a created nature) that we might know that angels are our fellow-servants. Since, however, their nature was high above ours, they were not called at any time 'sons of God', that they might not confuse their name, by reason of their natures. 5. Go and call Adam earthy without questioning, and call Gabriel also spiritual: seal up in silence Those Three. If a man asketh of thee, there is written for thee the nature of inferior beings as warranty for that of higher: but He hath not had it written for thee, that thou art to search into the Three! Refrain thyself, O foolish one, and follow Him wholly,

See on R. xxi. §. 2. and Bas. de Sp. Sanct. xvi. quoted p. 120, n. c. Probably St. E. alludes to such passages as speak of the Angels being made spirits, and all the host of them being made by the Breath or Spirit of God's Mouth. In what follows he means to say, that God purposely bestowed the name of 'sons' on mortal men and not on angels, that we might learn from the fact of such a name being bestowed on corruptible beings such as men, that the name has a derived sense, in which it does, as well as its true one in which it does not suit servile natures. This the bestowal of such a name upon embodied spirits proves more markedly. Angels on the contrary are not called 'sons,' that men might not confuse their name with that of the Son, which they were more likely to do 'by reason of their natures,' i. e. because they were incorporeal beings, as well as He.

The older writers (out of respect to the book of Enoch perhaps) applied the term 'sons of God' in Gen. vi. 2. to Angels. In process of time, Christians were led partly by reflection and partly by the necessity of opposing heresies to drop a notion, which is valuable only as a protest in favour of the duty of believing Scripture statements in simplicity, but was found incompatible with a scientific adjustment of such state- ments with other Scripture statements. No one perhaps was more explicit than St. E. in asserting that the expression must mean the sons of Seth. Thus he takes Gen. iv. 26. to mean the giving of the name of God to Seth's tribes, now separated from those of Cain; he accounts for the dwindled state of Cain's race which made Seth's progeny giants to them by supposing (i. p. 49, d.) that the curse on their ground prevented Cain's race from being else than dwarfed: he urges (ii. p. 456, a.) most ingeniously that if the production of giants requires the intervention of Angels, then the production of dwarfs must be supernatural; and p. 478. that if Angels could make women mothers, then devils could, and so would have imitated the Birth of a Virgin; that if God had intended the race of Angels to be propagated, He would have made them male and female; that, finally, the name of 'sons of God' may be accounted for, (i. p. 145.) by supposing the family of Seth to have dwelt apart (as some say) on Mount Hermon, and devoted themselves to a life of angelical devotion and contemplation.

See n. c. p. 121. St. E.'s words imply, that one may argue from one order of creatures to another in some degree, but about God we must depend wholly on what He reveals. and of all that He speaketh unto thee, look not whether it is R. lii. suiting, since thy appreciation [of it] sufficeth not to give aught §. 3. unto Him. If thou approvest Him, hitherto it is but a little; and when thy faith is very great, worship exceedingly, in that He hath brought the truth of His words down to the ear that is of dust. Oh! wonder, that God should have humbled Himself to the dust, and should have given it the ornament of life, and Vol. ii. enhanced it with freewill, and delivered His Son up for us p. 451. to shew unto us His love! But instead of being astonished n. g. that it was so great, (and if he had wondered and been silent, p. 235. still that had been but little) by the paltriness of their wranglings they have made light of the Glorious One.

6. They are called gods, but He is God entirely: they are called fathers, but He is the True Father: they are surnamed spirits, but there is a living Spirit. They who are called 'sons,' and 'fathers,' have borrowed names, which teach by the grace [given], that He is the One Father in Truth, who hath the Son in Truth h. h The Fathers argued that men were not properly fathers, since they attained the age at which they become so by degrees, and lost the power of being so again, their sons in turn going through the same course. See Athan. O. T. p. 192, p. 201. Below, R. lxii. §. 4. Vol. ii. p. 479, e. 'He lifted man above every thing, seeing He was called and named God.' i. p. 430, a. 'It is plain that Angels and saintly men receive from God sanctification, illumination, and godship.' So Clement Al. Strom. ii. §. 104. speaks of a 'saint as becoming God Holy of holies.' And vi. §. 113. 'The soul having received the Lord's might practises to be a god.' Comp. §. 146. 'He calls them sons and gods.' vii. §. 56. Iren. iv. 38. §. 4. quoting Ps. lxxxi. 6. as does Justin M. c. Tryph. p. 353, b. (we are called and

are true sons of God) Orig. c. Cels. p. 128. p. 375. where he speaks of those honoured by God with the appellation of god, and partaking of His Godship. Athan. c. Ar. i. 39. and the note c. p. 236. O. T. Didym. de Trin. p. 139. ("Though there be but one God and Father, and one true Son, all of us through His goodness and profuseness are called after His Image gods and sons, not that we are so in truth, but according to that Ps. lxxxii. 6. &c.") and p. 331. §. xlii. Basil de S. S. ix. §. 23. 'the summit of things desired is to become god,' and above, p. 120, n. c. c. Eun. iii. 5. G. Nyss. in Or. Dom. Vol. 1. p. 752. b. c. Ambr. de Fid. v. §. 22. Austin in Jo. i. §. 4. in Ps. xlix. §. 2. Cyril c. Nest. p. 41, c. p. 121, b. in Jul. p. 59. Spanh. &c.

Rhythm 47.

1. THE work of artisans, the weaving of clever workmen, the beams and the cunning work, bracelets and necklaces, books and calculations, meters and measures, have men found out by their wisdom, when they measure the earth, and when they weigh the waters—these are things easy to the learned and hard to common men. Yet if the simple are not able to scrutinize the wise, though it is but a little by which they have surpassed them in advantage of learning, how far short does the wisdom of the wise fall of Him, who created all in His Wisdom! and how mad must they be to think that they can scrutinize and search into the Nature of the Creator, and the Generation of the Maker! 2. Let us feel awed to think, how it is by these little and deficient natures, (by which used as types they are not able to attain to the fair Beauty of the Real One, or the Generation of the True One) that He has perplexed the enquirers into all these. For if they were unable to attain to the creatures by scrutiny, how far short would they be of Him that is far beyond all! Our being stopped amid the weak boundaries of visible things, shews that the measures of our thought reach not unto the Son, the Beginning of whom none is able to explore, since His Father is in all things hidden from all. And how much soever a man may reach out his intellect and his mind, He will not have His place explored nor His magnitude comprehended. Be awed then at the creatures and honour the Creator, and do not strive to search into the Nature which is greater than all!

3. For vain-glory is the cause of thy scrutinizing, Thou weak and feeble nature! go forth, go see thy shame in the midst of thy contest which thine enemy reproacheth thee with, and along with him do thou [reproach] thyself also, that thou mayest know that haughtiness is the cause of thy strife. For into these things Prophets pried not, and the just men, the Apostles, did not scrutinize. Was it that they were unlearned men? Moses will put thee to shame, who was learned, and yet cast quite away from him the wisdom of Egypt, and wrote with plainness the Truth in open characters. 4. Daniel too was learned and had been taught wisdom in Babel, such that she was not to be compared even with a gleaming of it: the bands of the wise men, that came in to the trial, in all sciences all of them did he silence. And since he knew that the treasury of revelations was closed, prayer gave him the key of interpretations; He was meditative above all the just, and when he heard that the words were sealed up in secrecy, he sealed his own mouth with silence, and bounded his questioning, and was yet for the sake of his countrymen prevailed upon and asked with discretion; and as he knew that he was a man he asked things pertaining to men, and reverenced the things pertaining to the Divinity.

5. The bold [disputant] forgets his nature, that he is a man, and leaveth the things pertaining to man and scrutinizeth those pertaining to the [Divine] Essence. If then he forget his own nature, whose nature should he search into? for he forgeteth his own measures and turneth wanton. If he had cast up his strong wine and known that he is a mortal, then had he been silent and had kept the measures of mortals. Comp. 6. Look at that Daniel, who, though a Prophet indeed, asked the Angels that he might learn simple things: the foolish seek, each of them, into hidden things and put them i. e. not in hieroglyphics which he mentions vol. ii. p. 145. as used by the heathen for their mysteries. See R. viii. §. 7. and p. 67, n. p. p. 205, n. b. The prophecies of Daniel relate chiefly to the affairs of the world, 'as it is God's world,' rather than to any detailed account of God's attributes and dealings with His Church. As the

"soothsayers and Chaldeans proclaimed that it was by their soothsaying and calculations that they had raised the king of Babylon, Daniel was to come in and wrestle with them by his God, of whom they thought that He would certainly be overcome by the gods of the Babylonians." (on chap. ii.) 6. forth. Moses also a glorious Prophet, asked in fear about His Name, I AM; yet we pry into hidden things in sport. The Apostle was more subtle than these rash [disputers] when he went into the city that was the metropolis of the Greeks, spoke to them of their own that he might shew that he knew it; but when they were overcome, then he cast aside their weapon, and taught them the truth: they rejected the medicine of life, since they had now of a long time been enfeebled with the disease of disputations. 7. Sit thee in the contest that thou mayest see the strifes: for in a clear place before them comes a thing as clear as day, which clear as it is they cannot see, though striving, and struggling, and shouting. If then thou examinest them who have come to a stand-still in things clear, how much more will the foolish men be overwhelmed in the Sea of hidden things. Go again, seek an assembly which is all still and clear, and cast in amongst them searching and strife, and sit thee down and contemplate the composed persons that are turned frantic, the quiet that are disturbed and that disturb. If a single one is prostrated there, then all shout together. Searching it is, the smoke whereof hath blinded many!

* contr. Scrut. i. §. 48. Vol. ii. p. 554, f. "Moses witnesseth to us that he called no other by the Name of 'Essence.' They were called gods, but essentials [or ever-beings] were they not called: that by one Name He might teach us the taste of His grace, and by another Name let us us know the mightiness of His Essence, that we might confess both. To Moses did He reveal His Name, since He called Himself, I AM, which is the Name of His Essence. And never at any time did He surname another by this Name, as by His [other] Names He did many; that by the one Name which He left, He might shew us that He alone is the Essential, and that there is no other." It may be just mentioned in justification of the old translation 'I AM' here preserved, that the force of the Name lies not in the tense employed, but in the fact that Being is all that can be predicated of God. See Maimon. ap. Petav. de Deoi. 6. §. 5. So St. Hilary de Trin. i. §. 5. says of this passage, (Ex. 3, 14.) "I felt mere wonder at so finished a description touching God, which put the incomprehensible knowledge of the Divine Nature into words the best suited for making It understood to man. For that no one thing is more peculiar to God than Being, is understood, because the very fact that He is, belongeth to One neither ceasing at any time, nor begun, &c."

Rhythm 48.

1. GRANT that I may open my senses to Thy Well-beloved, since He alone is able to tell me of Thee: and he that hath not learnt of Him Thy Nature, hath erred greatly in thinking that he had found Thee. In the faithful are shadowed out the Names of the Threefold who have not been searched out at any time, nor comprehended at any time. Give unto us that our congregation may praise Thee without division! Nature & Grace teach the willing, condemn the unwilling. 261 His Law. His Light and His Law are a lamp that, without grudging, with His bright glistenings crieth aloud to them that see it, that by the gleamings of the Law the Truth is to be comprehended. Nature was an instructress to us in every thing, and every man according to his ability learns in proportion his pains; and he that learneth not is reckoned among the unlearned. Compare one with the other, and be persuaded that he who subjects not himself to the Teacher of all, is justly styled 'one who errs through self-will.'

3. It is hard for one to find fault with a poor or an unlearned person, that he knoweth not how to paint, or that he skills not to chase gold; yet one might be able to find fault with him who, it may be, did not learn. In the former case he escapes, and the latter he is condemned. And yet not even on this very score for which he thought to have escaped, could he have escaped, if men had condemned him upon the same. Let go to a full length the fish that he may get himself refreshed; for thee he is struggling, and his labour is against himself; he bringeth the crown to thee by his run though he perceive it not. Despise thou the bold disputer and the erring man, who is overcome by his own weapon; for when he thinks that he shall draw with him, then is he drawn himself at the will of the fisherman. Since he could not explore the sea into which he plunged deep, the air he wished to pierce into, and the height he wished to explore, though not able to live in a place not his own. The fish whose frolicksomeness leads him astray, leaps and goes aloft that it may come up and feel the air; because the breath thereof tosses him away, back into his waters does it send him; because he is a child of the water he thinks that every thing will give him a watery dwelling-place. His stream persuadeth him that he is not of a nature adapted to a dwelling in chambers, and that he is not of a nature at all adapted to our dwelling-place. Thus our priers are not of a nature adapted to, or capable of, attaining to the things above, or searching out the natures thereof.

4. The Gospel in the figure of Gihon breaks forth to give us drink; by Euphrates is typified its fruitfulness, because of the abundance of its doctrine; by Pishon is shadowed forth the type of it and of the pause put to scrutinizing it. Our The rivers of Eden types of Gospel graces. washing, like the Deklath, with its word washeth us, and we come up by it into the lands of Paradise. And let not its fishes pass over the boundaries of life! "Gihon means 'breaking forth'—Euphrates he connects with a word signifying fruitfulness, as Simonis ap. Gesen. in v. has done. See Ecclus. 24, 27—38, which St. E. probably had in his eye. As for Pishon it seems to a Hebrew scholar connected with 'pause' by the mere accident of alliteration, though in Syriac the same root is used in the sense of stopping. In like way he connects Deklath the Syrian name of the Tigris with a Syriac word signifying 'washing,' which is against the well-attested etymology of the name from

the Persian teger an arrow, though possibly it may be a correcter one for the Semitic name Hiddekel. St. E. on the whole may perhaps be said to be very much less open to the charge of nonsensicalness in etymologies, so deservedly brought against the ancients, than his Grecian and Roman cotemporaries: in places he traces accurately and scientifically the ramifications of a word's senses from a common idea, and therefore some weight is to be attached to his opinion in such matters.

Rhythm 49.

1. Oh! how august was Noah, who was above comparison with any of the men of his generation! They that were weighed by righteousness were found wanting in the balances, and one soul alone was of due weight by the force of chastity. S. They were drowned in the Flood who were lacking in weight: and he that was chaste and grave was lifted aloft in the ark. Glory to Him who was well pleased in him! Noah extended His ministry between both sides [of the flood], and marked out two types. He sealed up that which was passed, and began that which was, and between two generations ministered two types, since he interred the former days, and made preparation for the latter: he buried the old generation, and nursed up the youthful one. Praises to Him that elected him! 2. The Ship of the Lord of all fluttered upon the flood. It went out from the east, and reached nearly to the west: it flew to the south, and reached to the north. Its fluttering over the waters was a prophet to the dry land, and preached that its offspring should multiply on all sides, and increase in every quarter. Praises to its Redeemer! It marked out by its course the standard of its Preserver, the Cross of its Shipman, and the Tree of its Sailor, who should come and fashion for Himself a Church in the waters, and by the Name of the Trinity rescue them that dwell in it; and the Spirit instead of the dove was the Minister of her unction, and of the Sacrament of the Redemption by her. Praises to her Redeemer! His mysteries in the law and His types in the ark bear witness to each other: for as the recesses of the ark were emptied, thus also were the types that are in the Scriptures emptied. He who by His coming brought the mysteries of the law to a close, fulfilled in the Churches the types of the ark. Glory be to Thy Coming!

3. My mind is amazed that it hath embarked upon the fearful flood of our Redeemer! Blessed be Noah, since even though the ship was afloat upon the flood, and the ark also, he was himself collected. Be my faith, Lord, a ship for my weakness: for lo! the foolish are sunken in the depths of their prying into Thee. Praises to Him that begot Thee!

Rhythm 50.

1. THE Son who was with His Father before all things surpasseth also all times, for in Him were created times, and He was before numbers, moments, and seasons. His p. 66, mode of existence cannot be searched out, neither the date n.l.p.69, of it be comprehended, neither can enquiry discover why it n. t. p. 126, was. It hath not been measured out how great He is, nor p.305, d. been explored of what quality He is. Praises to Him that R.xxx. §. 2. begot Him! Who is there whose mouth would not hold its peace at the Begotten, whose glory no mouths are able to utter? R.xlvii. Who is there that would not reprove his own self, and bethink §. 2. himself that if the Begotten could be comprehended, they would have made Him that begot small: and if the Fruit p. 179, could be searched out, they would have set bounds to the p. 305, d. Root thereof; for that They are blended One with the Other. p. 25, n. y. Glory be to Thy Father in Thee! p. 210, ref. 4.

2. Who would not be ashamed for concluding within the narrow womb of his own imagination prying without measure, searching out without limit into the Begotten and the Begetter? R.xliv. §. 5. R. liii. §. 5. The searching out of the creatures even is too great for our minds: the searching out of the Creator there is none that can span, for it is too great for any nature. Praises to His Greatness! §. 3. R. 3. Who would not allay his prying into the Begotten, and be astonied at Him that begot Him? That He is Son, is easy for us: how, is hard for us: that we should feel Him so, is easy for us: that we should pry into Him, is difficult for us: R.vii. since from every nature is the prying into His Essence concealed. To the Father and to Him let us offer up glory by means of silence. Praise be to Him that sent Him! blessed be His coming! R. ii. §. 1. iv. §. 6. li. §. 6. Gen. 2, 7.

4. Who would not bless the Good One who gave to dust its soul, that it might feel Him; who gave to the small dust discourse and reasoning; who sent His Son, and clothed it, and brought it up to glory. The wicked one envied at His p. 53. The envy of the devil in leading men to disputation, and his inexplicable subtlety in tempting them. 267 it, and it perceiveth not his intimate access. He is not seen with its eye, neither is he felt with its hand, neither is he tasted by it, that it should know that he is bitter. He is not smelt by it, that it should perceive that he is a stench, since he is wholly bent upon blood. Blessed be He that vol. i. of Satan. "The creatures are not too straight for Him, and when the heart seeketh for him, the heart though little holdeth Him. He taketh Him but a small space out of a man to dwell therein, that he may be a temple of God, so that He may dwell in him, and abide in him. A temple unto Him is the soul made, the heart is made the holy Altar, that He may be glorified on it, and have worship done Him, and that offerings may be offered on it. And the Spirit is made as it were a priest (comp. n. d. p. 146. and n. a. p. 282. that stands thereat, and ministers at it. Let not foul sin come in, and the Spirit go forth from thee, &c. In vol. ii. p. 504, b. he asks in a Rhythm we shall have occasion to quote below, how the devil, who [according to the Manichean theory] was akin to body, came to be more subtle than the mind, and be in one self in dreams, and yet one does not know how? and speaks of it as an inexplicable mystery. (See on R. lvii. §. 4. Ibid. p. 546, a. "If the soul be an inspiration, angels that are spiritual, whence be they? If the angels are out of nothing, then the soul is so likewise.

If, however, all of them are from the Creator, how is it that angels need not a bodily nature in order to see, while the soul cannot see or hear without the senses? If devils again are the offspring of matter, and the body which cometh from it is vile in their sight, how came the Maker to want to dwell in it by His inspiration; (see n. a. p. 263. and how is it that the devil is unable to smite the body and dwell in it? or if the body be alien from his properties, how comes he to be akin to the soul? Oh what falsehoods these unbelievers utter! Here he evidently contrasts God's power of dwelling even in men's bodies with Satan's inability to do so, (i. e. without permission) and implies that into the soul he could not enter. Into this alternative he does not explicitly enter, as his object there is to shew that evil and matter are not identical. Upon this and upon the text the following passage from vol. iii. p. 575, b. will throw light. It treats of a question analogous to the very important question which is said to have been some-

what grotesquely stated by the Schoolmen when they asked, 'How many angels could stand upon a needle's point?' "I have also enquired this: whether paradise is sufficiently large for all the just to dwell therein? I enquired things not in Scripture, and He taught me by things in Scripture. Look, He said, to that man in whom a legion dwelt of all the devils: they were in him, yet not known, since that power is more subtle and fine even than the soul itself. The whole of that power dwelt in one single body. Now an hundred times more subtle is the body of the just after they are risen, and have come to life again! Here he is using the power which a number of devils had to dwell in a body, as an illustration of the way in which, it may be, all the just will dwell in one space.—Not being aware of any passages which really affirm the view the text is calculated, at first sight, to give one, one may presume, from the denial of that view implied in what has been quoted, that St. E. means in the text to insist upon what appears to be (but is not really) the case, as a difficulty inexplicable to man. Somewhat also might be said upon the ground that 'soul' is used so excessively often in Syriac for 'self,' as to create an indefiniteness in the expressions used, which the context will not allow one to attempt to keep up in the English.

The Holy Spirit also is said to dwell in men before Christian times in which only, in a strict sense, He blendeth His substance (so to speak) with men: which might not only account for, but seem to justify, a less exact use of the word in regard to evil spirits. St. Austin (see Pet. de Angelis. i. 7. §. 10. at one time thought that devils could see such thoughts as were thrown, in our minds, into explicit reasoning, though unable to search the heart fully. This would go to shew how strongly he, as well as St. E., felt the closeness of Satan's approach and his seeming ubiquity: to explain which, notwithstanding the many damned he has to consult with, may be an impossibility, though it be a duty to submit to the received doctrine in spite of such difficulties to the reason. The subtlety of Satan inexplicable. frustrateth him! Because the soul perceiveth not the devil, therefore it is that, if he dwelleth in itself, it never toucheth him or creepeth up to him; and if he encampeth against it from without, that his intimate access hath never touched it. And whether he be in its neighbourhood, or again in its substance, the soul doth not perceive. Let us bewail ourselves that we have been bold towards the Son of our Creator. Praises be to Thee from all! There are several passages in St. E. in which he exhibits no common insight into the subtleties of Satan's temptations. The following which will throw light on the text, may be adduced as a specimen: vol. i. p. 412, b. "From this (the history of Amnon and Thamar) thou mayest learn the craftiness of Satan, and the silliness of the soul that is off its guard: for Satan, when he wishes to obliterate its beauty, and is unable to effect any thing by force, struggles with it craftily, and persuades its childish simplicity to actions which are not imagined by it to be blameworthy, as those which very many times are by the subtle movements of the thoughts mischievously set in motion, and which, as if not blameworthy, we are negligent of; or as words which are as it were said in mirthfulness and in love—or as

it happeneth in those things, which we without perceiving it, suffer when devils rise up against us, and throw us into a battle of imaginary obscene passions in visions of the night. Now concerning these and the like to these, when their soul repenteth and reflecteth in sober thought, how wrong they are, and how much they disturb its brightness and blacken it, and how that they are the beginning of transgression, it bewails itself, and from its weakness pours forth tears, and rendeth its garment, that is, the body, with hard labours, and the heart by the passion of repentance. They cover their head too from their passion and their shame, and go, crying as they go from their whole heart and calling aloud to the Lord to do judgment upon their prersecutors."