6. About the words of Simeon to Mary, there is no obscurity or variety of interpretation. "And Simeon blessed them, and said unto Mary His mother, Behold, this Child is set for the fall and rising again of many in Israel; and for a sign which shall be spoken against; (yea, a sword shall pierce through thine own soul also,) that the thoughts of many hears may he revealed." Here I am astonished that, after passing by the previous words as requiring no explanation, you should enquire about the expression, "Yea, a sword shall pierce through thy own soul also." To me the question, how the same child can be for the fall and rising again, and what is the sign that shall be spoken against, does not seem less perplexing than the question how a sword shall pierce through Mary's heart.
7. My view is, that the Lord is for falling and rising again, not because some fall and others rise again, but because in us the worst falls and the better is set up. The advent of the Lord is destructive of our bodily affections and it rouses the proper qualities of the soul. As when Paul says, "When I am weak, then I am strong," the same man is weak and is strong, but he is weak in the flesh and strong in the spirit. Thus the Lord does not give to some occasions of falling and to others occasions of rising. Those who fall, fall from the station in which they once were, but it is plain that the faithless man never stands, but is always dragged along the ground with the serpent whom he follows. He has then nowhere to fall from, because he has already been cast down by his unbelief. Wherefore the first boon is, that he who stands in his sin should fall and die, and then should live in righteousness and rise, both of which graces our faith in Christ confers on us. Let the worse fall that the better may have opportunity to rise. If fornication fall not, chastity does not rise. Unless our unreason be crushed our reason will not come to perfection. In this sense he is for the fall and rising again of many.
8. For a sign that shall be spoken against. By a sign, we properly, understand in Scripture a cross. Moses, it is said, set the serpent "upon a pole." That is upon a cross. Or else a sign is indicative of something strange and obscure seen by the simple but understood by the intelligent. There is no cessation of controversy about the Incarnation of the Lord; some asserting that he assumed a body, and others that his sojourn was bodiless; some that he had a passible body, and others that he fulfilled the bodily oeconomy by a kind of appearance. Some say that his body was earthly, some that it was heavenly; some that He pre-existed before the ages; some that He took His beginning from Mary. It is on this account that He is a sign that shall be spoken against.
9. By a sword is meant the word which tries and judges our thoughts, which pierces even to the dividing asunder of soul and spirit and of the joints and marrow, and is a discerner of our thoughts. Now every soul in the hour of the Passion was subjected, as it were, to a kind of searching. According to the word of the Lord it is said, " All ye shall be offended because of me." Simeon therefore prophesies about Mary herself, that when standing by the cross, and beholding what is being done, and hearing the voices, after the witness of Gabriel, after her secret knowledge of the divine conception, after the great exhibition of miracles, she shall feel about her soul a mighty tempest. The Lord was bound to taste of death for every man — to become a propitiation for the world and to justify all men by His own blood. Even thou thyself, who hast been taught from on high the things concerning the Lord, shalt be reached by some doubt. This is the sword. "That the thoughts of many hearts may be revealed." He indicates that after the offense at the Cross of Christ a certain swift healing shall come from the Lord to the disciples and to Mary herself, confirming their heart in faith in Him. In the same way we saw Peter, after he had been offended, holding more firmly to his faith in Christ. What was human in him was proved unsound, that the power of the Lord might be shewn.
LETTER CCLXI To the Sozopolitans.
I H AVE received the letter which you, right honorable brethren, have sent me concerning the circumstances in which you are placed. I thank the Lord that you have let me share in the anxiety you feel as to your attention to things needful and deserving of serious heed. But I was distressed to hear that over anti above the disturbance brought on the Churches by the Arians, and the confusion caused by them in the definition of the faith, there has appeared among you yet another innovation, throwing the brotherhood into great dejection, because, as you have informed me, certain persons are uttering, in the hearing of the faithful, novel and unfamiliar doctrines which they allege to be deduced from the teaching of Scripture. You write that there are men among you who are trying to destroy the saving incarnation of our Lord Jesus Christ, and, so far as they can, are ovesympathizethe grace of the great mystery unrevealed from everlasting, but manifested in His own times, when the Lord, when He had gone through all things pertaining to the cure of the human race, bestowed on all of us the been of His own sojourn among us. For He helped His own creation, first through the patriarchs, whose lives were set forth as examples anti rules to all willing to follow the footsteps of the saints, and with zeal like theirs to reach the perfection of good works. Next for succor He gave the Law, ordaining it by angels in the hand of Moses; then the prophets, foretelling the salvation to come; judges, kings, and righteous men, doing great works, with a mighty a hand. After all these in the last days He was Himself manifested ill the flesh, "made of a woman, made under the law, to redeem them that were under the law, that we might receive the adoption of sons."
2. If, then, the sojourn of the Lord in flesh has never taken place, the Redeemer paid not the fine to death on our behalf, nor through Himself destroyed death's reign. For if what was reigned over by death was not that which was assumed by the Lord death would not have ceased working his own ends, nor would the sufferings of the God-bearing flesh have been rustle our gain; He would not have killed sin in the flesh: we who had died in Adam should not have been made alive in Christ; the fallen to pieces would not have been framed again; the shattered would not have been set up again; that which by the serpent's trick had been estranged from God would never have been made once more His own. All these boons are undone by those that assert that it was with a heavenly body that the Lord came among us. And if the God-bearing flesh was not ordained to be assumed of the lump of Adam, what need was there of the Holy Virgin?
But who has the hardihood now once again to renew by the help of sophistical arguments and, of course, by scriptural evidence, that old dogma of Valentinus, now long ago silenced? For this impious doctrine of the seeming is no novelty. It was started long ago by the feeble-minded Valentinus, who, after tearing off a few of the Apostle's statements, constructed for himself this impious fabrication, asserting that the Lord assumed the "form of a servant," and not the servant himself, and that He was made in the " likeness," but that actual manhood was not assumed by Him. Similar sentiments are expressed by these men who can only be pitied for bringing new troubles upon you.
3. As to the statement that human feelings are transmitted to the actual Godhead, it is one made by men who preserve no order in their thoughts, and are ignorant that there is a distinction between the feelings of flesh, of flesh endowed with soul, and of soul using a body. It is the property of flesh to undergo division, diminution, dissolution; of flesh endowed with soul to feel weariness, pain, hunger, thirst, and to be overcome by sleep; of soul using body to feel grief, heaviness, anxiety, and such like. Of these some are natural and necessary to every living creature; others come of evil will, and are superinduced because of life's lacking proper discipline and training for virtue. Hence it is evident that oar Lord assumed the natural affections to establish His real incarnation, and not by way of semblance of incantation, and that all the affections derived from evil that besmirch the purity of our life. He rejected as unworthy of His unsullied Godhead. It is on this account that He is said to have been "made in the likeness of flesh of sin; " not, as these men hold, in likeness of flesh, but of flesh of sin. It follows that He took our flesh with its natural afflictions, but " did no sin." Just as the death which is in the flesh, transmitted to us through Adam, was swallowed up by the Godhead, so was the sin taken away by the righteousness which is in Christ Jesus, so that in the resurrection we receive back the flesh neither liable to death nor subject to sin.
These, brethren, are the mysteries of the Church; these are the traditions of the Fathers. Every man who fears the Lord, and is awaiting God's judgment, I charge not to be carried away by various doctrines. If any one teaches a different doctrine, and refuses to accede to the sound words of the faith, rejecting the oracles of the Spirit, and making his own teaching of more authority than the lessons of the Gospels, of such an one beware. May the Lord grant that one day we may meet, so that all that my argument has let slip I may supply when we stand face to face! I have written little when there was much to say, for I did not like to go beyond my letter's bounds. At the same time I do not doubt that to all that fear the Lord a brief reminder is enough.
LETTER CCLXII To the Monk Urbicius.
1. You have done well to write to me. You. have shewn how great is the fruit of charity. Continue so to do. Do not think that, when you write to me, you need offer excuses. I recognize my own position, and I know that by nature every man is of equal honor with the rest. Whatever excellence there is in me is not of family, nor of superfluous wealth, nor of physical condition; it comes only of superiority in the fear of God. What, then, hinders you from fearing the Lord yet more, and so, in this respect, being greater than I am? Write often to me, and acquaint me with the condition of the brotherhood with you. Tell me what members of the Church in your parts are sound, that I may know to whom I ought to write, and in whom I may confide. I am told that there are some who are endeavoring to deprave the right doctrine of tire Lord's incarnation by perverse opinions, and I therefore call upon them through you to hold off from those unreasonable views, which some are reported to me to hold. I mean that God Himself was turned into flesh; that He did not assume, through the Holy Mary, the nature of Adam, but, in His own proper Godhead, was changed into a material nature.
2. This absurd position can be easily confuted. The blasphemy is its own conviction, and I therefore think that, for one who fears the Lord, the mere reminder is enough. If He was turned, then He was changed. But far be it from me to say or think such a thing, when God has declared, "I am the Lord, I change not." Moreover, how could the benefit of the incarnation be conveyed to as, unless our body, joined to the Godhead, was made superior to the dominion of death? If He was changed. He no longer constituted a proper body, such as subsisted after the combination with it of the divine body. But how, if all the nature of the Only-begotten was changed, could the incomprehensible Godhead be circumscribed within the limit of the mass of a little body? I am sure that no one who is in his senses, and has the fear of God, is suffering from this unsoundness. But the report has reached me that some of your company are afflicted with this mental infirmity, and I have therefore thought it necessary, not to send you a mere formal greeting, but to include in my letter something which may even build up the souls of them that fear the Lord. I therefore urge that these errors receive ecclesiastical correction, and that you abstain from communion with the heretics. I know that we are deprived of our liberty in Christ by indifference on these points.
LETTER CCLXIH To the Westerns.
1. M ay the Lord God, in Whom we have put our trust, give to each of you grace sufficient to enable you to realize your hope, in proportion to the joy wherewith you have filled my heart, both by the letter which you have sent me by the hands of the well-beloved fellow-presbyters, and by the sympathy which you have felt for me in my distress, like men who have put on bowels of mercy,' as you have been described to me by the presbyters afore-mentioned. Although my wounds remain the same, nevertheless it does bring alleviation to me that I should have leeches at hand, able, should they find an opportunity, to apply rapid remedies to my hurts. Wherefore in return I salute you by oar beloved friends, and exhort you, if the Lord puts it into your power to come to me, not to hesitate to visit me. For part of the greatest commandment is the visitation of the sick. But if the good God and wise Dispenser of our lives reserves this boon for another season, at all events write to me whatever it is proper for you to write for the consolation of the oppressed and the lifting up of those that are crushed down. Already the Church has suffered many severe blows, and great has been my affliction at them. Nowhere is there expectation of succor unless the Lord sends us a remedy by you who are his true servants.
2. The bold and shameless heresy of the Arians, after being publicly cut off from the body of the Church, still abides in its own error, anti does not do us much harm because its impiety is notorious to all. Nevertheless men clad in sheep's clothing, and presenting a mild and amiable appearance, but within unsparingly ravaging Christ' s flocks, find it easy to do hurt to the simpler ones, because they came out from us. It is these who are grievous and hard to guard against. It is these that we implore your diligence to denounce publicly to all the Churches of the East; to the end that they may either turn to the right way and join with us in genuine alliance, or, if they abide in their perversity, may keep their mischief to themselves alone, and be unable to communicate their own plague to their neighbors by unguarded communion. I am constrained to mention them by name, in order that you may yourselves recognize those who are stirring up disturbance here, and may make them known to our Churches. My own words are suspected by most men, as though I had an ill will towards them on account of some private quarrel. You, however, have all the more credit with the people, in proportion to the distance that separates your home from theirs, besides the fact that you are gifted with God's grace to help those who are distressed. If more of you concur in uttering the same opinions, it is clear that the number of those who have expressed them will make it impossible to oppose their acceptance.
3. One of those who have caused me great sorrow is Eustathius of Sebasteia in Lesser Armenia; formerly a disciple of Arius, and a follower of him at the tithe when he flourished in Alexandria, and concocted his infamous blasphemies against the Only-begotten, he was numbered among his most faithful disciples. On his return to his own country he submitted a confession of the sound faith to Hermogenes, the very blessed Bishop of Caesarea, who was on the point of condemning him for false doctrine.
Under these circumstances he was ordained by Hermogenes, and, on the death of that bishop, hastened to Eusebius of Constantinople, who himself yielded to none in the energy of his support of the impious doctrine of Arius. From Constantinople he was expelled for some reason or another, returned to his own country and a second time made his defense, attempting to conceal his impious sentiments and cloaking them under a certain verbal orthodoxy. He no sooner obtained the rank of bishop than he straightway appeared writing an anathema on the Homoousion in the Arians' synod at Ancyra. From thence he went to Seleucia and took part in the notorious measures of his fellow heretics. At Constantinople he assented a second time to the propositions of the heretics. On being ejected from his episcopate, on the ground of his former deposition at Melitine, he hit upon a journey to you as a means of restitution for himself. What propositions were made to him by the blessed bishop Liberius, and to what he agreed, I am ignorant. I only know that he brought a letter restoring him, which he shewed to the synod at Tyana, and was restored to his see. He is now defaming the very creed for which he was received; he is consorting with those who are anathematizing the Homoousion, and is prime leader of the heresy of the pneumatomachi. As it is from the west that he derives his power to injure the Churches, and uses the authority given him by you to the overthrow of the many, it is necessary that his correction should come from the same quarter, and that a letter be sent to the Churches stating on what terms he was received, and in what manner he has changed his conduct and nullifies the favor given him by the Father's at that time.
4. Next comes Apollinarius, who is no less a cause of sorrow to the Churches. With his facility of writing, and a tongue ready to argue on any subject, he has filled the world with his works, in disregard of the advice of him who said, "Beware of making many books." In their multitude there are certainly many errors. How is it possible to avoid sin in a multitude of words? And the theological works of Apollinarius are founded on Scriptural proof, but are based on a human origin. He has written about the resurrection, from a mythical, or rather Jewish, point of view; urging that we shall return again to the worship of the Law, be circumcised, keep the Sabbath, abstain from meats, offer sacrifices to God, worship in the Temple at Jerusalem, and be altogether turned from Christians into Jews. What could be more ridiculous? Or, rather, what could be more contrary to the doctrines of the Gospel? Then, further, he has made such confusion among the brethren about the incarnation, that few of his readers preserve the old mark of true religion; but the more part, in their eagerness for novelty, have been diverted into investigations and quarrelsome discussions of his unprofitable treatises.
5. As to whether there is anything objectionable about the conversation of Paulinus, you can say yourselves. What distresses me is that he should shew an inclination for the doctrine of Marcellus, and unreservedly admit his followers to communion. You know, most honorable brethren, that the reversal of all our hope is involved in the doctrine of Marcellus, for it does not confess the Son in His proper hypostasis, but represents Him as having been sent forth, and as having again returned to Him from Whom He came; neither does it admit that the Paraclete has His own subsistence.
It follows that no one could be wrong in declaring this heresy to be all at variance with Christianity, and in styling it a corrupt Judaism. Of these things I implore you to take due heed. This will be the case if you will consent to write to all the Churches of the East that those who have perverted these doctrines are in communion with you, if they amend; but that if they contentiously determine to abide by their innovations, you are separated from them. I am myself well aware, that it had been fitting for me to treat of these matters, sitting in synod with you in common deliberation. But this the time does not allow. Delay is dangerous, for the mischief they have caused has taken root. I have therefore been constrained to dispatch these brethren, that you may learn from them all that has been omitted in my letter, and that they may rouse you to afford the succor which we pray for to the Churches of the East.
LETTER CCLXIV To Barses, bishop ofEdessa, in exile.
To Barses the bishop, truly God-beloved and worthy of all reverence and honor, Basil sends greeting in the Lord. As my dear brother Domninus is setting out to you, I gladly seize the opportunity of writing, and I greet you by him, praying the holy God that we may be so long preserved in this life as to be permitted to see you, and to enjoy the good gifts which you possess. Only pray, I beseech you, that the Lord may not deliver us for aye to the enemies of the Cross of Christ, but that He will keep His Churches, until the time of that peace which the just Judge Himself knows when He will bestow. For He will bestow it. He will not always abandon us. As He limited seventy years for the period of captivity for the Israelites in punishment for their sins, so peradventure the Mighty One, after giving us up for some appointed time, will recall us once again, and will restore us to the peace of the beginning — unless indeed the apostasy is now nigh at hand, and the events that have lately happened are the beginnings of the approach of Antichrist. If this be so, pray that the good Lord will either take away our afflictions, or preserve us through our afflictions unvanquished. Through you I greet all those who have been thought worthy to be associated with you. All who are with me salute your reverence. May you, by the grace of the Holy One, be preserved to the Church of God in good health, trusting in the Lord, and praying for me.
LETTER CCLXV To Eulogius, Alexander, and Harpocration, bishops of Egypt, in exile.
1. In all things we find that the providence exercised by our good God over His Churches is mighty, and that thus the very things which seem to be gloomy, and do not turn out as we should like, are ordained for the advantage of most, in the hidden wisdom of God, and in the unsearchable judgments of His righteousness. Now the Lord has removed you from the regions of Egypt, and has brought you and established you in the midst of Palestine, after the manner of Israel of old, whom He carried away by captivity into the land of the Assyrians, and there extinguished idolatry through the sojourn of His saints. Now too we find the same thing, when we observe that the Lord is making known your struggle for the sake of true religion, opening to you through your exile the arena of your blessed contests, and to all who see before them your noble constancy, giving the boon of your good example to lead them to salvation. By God's grace, I have heard of the correctness of your faith, and of your zeal for the brethren and that it is in no careless or perfunctory spirit that you provide what is profitable and necessary for salvation, and that you support all that conduces to the edification of the Churches. I have therefore thought it right that I should be brought into communion with your goodness, and be united to your reverences by letter. For these reasons I have sent my very dear brother the deacon Elpidius, who not only conveys my letter, but is moreover fully qualified to announce to you whatever may have been omitted in my letter.
2. 1 have been specially moved to desire union with you by the report of the zeal of your reverences in the cause of orthodoxy. The constancy of your hearts has been stirred neither by multiplicity of books nor by variety of ingenious arguments. You have on the contrary, recognized those who endeavored to introduce innovations in opposition to the apostolic doctrines, and you have refused to keep silence concerning the mischief which they are causing. I have in truth found great distress among all who cleave to the peace of the Lord at the divers innovations of Apollinarius of Laodicea. He has all the more distressed me from the fact that he seemed at the beginning on our side. A sufferer can in a certain sense endure what comes to him from an open enemy, even though it be exceedingly painful, as it is written, "For it was not an enemy that reproached me; then I could bare borne it." But it is intolerable, and beyond the power of comfort, to be wronged by a close and sympathetic friend. Now that very man whom I have expected to have at my right hand in defense of the truth, I have found in many ways hindering those who are being saved, by seducing their minds and drawing them away from direct doctrine. What rash and hasty deed has he not done? What ill considered and dangerous argument has he not risked? Is not all the Church divided against herself, specially since the day when men have been sent by him to the Churches governed by orthodox bishops, to rend them asunder and to set up some peculiar and illegal service? Is not ridicule brought upon the great mystery of true religion when bishops go about without people and clergy, having nothing but the mere name and title, and effecting nothing for the advancement of the Gospel of peace and salvation? Are not his discourses about God full of impious doctrines, the old impiety of the insane Sabellius being now renewed by him in his writings? For if the works which are current among the Sebastenes are not the forgery of foes, and are really his composition, he has reached a height of impiety which cannot be surpassed, in saying that Father, Son, and Spirit are the same, and other dark pieces of irreverence which I have declined even to hear, praying that I may have nothing to do with those who have uttered them. Does he not confuse the doctrine of the incarnation? Has not the oeconomy of salvation been made doubtful to the many on account of his dark and cloudy speculations about it? To collect them all, and refute them, requires long time and much discussion. But where have the promises of the Gospel been blunted and destroyed as by his figments? So meanly and poorly has he dared to explain the blessed hope laid up for all who live according to the Gospel of Christ, as to reduce it to mere old wives' fables and doctrines of Jews. He proclaims the renewal of the Temple, the observance of the worship of the Law, a typical high priest over again after the real High Priest, and a sacrifice for sins after the Lamb of God Who taketh away the sin of the world. He preaches partial baptisms after the one baptism, and the ashes of a heifer sprinkling the Church which, through its faith in Christ, has not spot or wrinkle, or any such thing; cleansing of leprosy after the painless state of the resurrection; an offering of jealousy when they neither marry nor are given in marriage; shew-bread after the Bread from heaven; burning lamps after the true Light. In a word, if the law of the Commandments has been done away with by dogmas, it is plain that under these circumstances the dogmas of Christ will be nullified by the injunctions of the law. At these things shame and disgrace have covered my face, and heavy grief hath filled my heart. Wherefore, I beseech you, as skillful physicians, and instructed how to discipline antagonists with gentleness, to try and bring him back to the right order of the Church, and to persuade him to despise the wordiness of his own works; for he has proved the truth of the proverb "in the multitude of words there wanteth not sin" Put boldly before him the doctrines of orthodoxy, in order that his amendment may be published abroad, and his repentance made known to his brethren.