Exhortation 1 part 5/7

"The Lord shall shake the inhabited cities, and the whole inhabited world he shall grasp with his hand as a nest." Why should I declare to you the mysteries of wisdom and sayings from a Hebrew child made wise? "The Lord created me the beginning of his ways for his works," and "the Lord gives wisdom, and from his face come knowledge and understanding."

"How long, O sluggard, will you lie down? When will you be roused from sleep? But if you are not slothful, your harvest shall come to you like a fountain"—the Father's Word, the good lamp, the Lord bringing light, faith to all, and salvation.

"For the Lord who made the earth by his strength," as Jeremiah says, "set upright the inhabited world by his wisdom." For when we had fallen away to the idols, wisdom—which is his Word—sets us upright toward the truth.

And this is the first resurrection from the transgression;

whence, turning men away from all idolatry, the divinely-inspired Moses most excellently cried aloud:

"The Lord your God, the Lord is one, and the Lord your God you shall worship, and him alone you shall serve;"

now, then, understand, O men, according to that blessed psalmist David;

"Lay hold of instruction, lest at any time the Lord be angry, and you perish from the righteous way, when his wrath is quickly kindled."

"Blessed are all who put their trust in him." And now the Lord, taking great pity on us, gives forth the saving strain, like a marching rhythm:

"Sons of men, how long will you be heavy of heart? Why do you love vanity and seek after a lie?" What, then, is the vanity, and what is the lie? The holy Apostle of the Lord, bringing his charge against the Greeks, will expound it to you:

"because, although they knew God, they did not glorify him as God or give thanks, but became vain in their reasonings, and exchanged the glory of God for the likeness of an image of corruptible man, and served the creation rather than the Creator." And indeed this very God it is who in the beginning made the heaven and the earth;

but you do not perceive God, yet you worship the heaven—how then are you not impious? Hear again the prophet saying: "The sun shall fail and the heaven shall be darkened, but the Almighty shall shine forever, and the powers of the heavens shall be shaken, and the heavens shall be rolled up like a scroll, being stretched out and drawn together (for these are the prophetic utterances), and the earth shall flee from before the face of the Lord." And I could bring forward to you countless scriptures, of which not one jot shall pass away without being fulfilled;

for the mouth of the Lord, the Holy Spirit, has spoken these things. "Therefore no longer," he says, "my son, despise the chastening of the Lord, nor faint when reproved by him." O the surpassing love for mankind!

Not as a teacher admonishes disciples, nor as a lord his servants, nor as God admonishes men, but as a gentle father he admonishes his sons.

Then Moses confesses that he was afraid and trembling when he heard concerning the Word; but you, when you hearken to the divine Word, do you not fear? Are you not in agony? Do you not at once both reverence it and hasten to learn thoroughly—that is, hasten toward salvation—fearing the wrath, loving the grace, zealous for the hope, that you may escape the judgment? "Come, come, O my young company;"

for how is the stranger permitted to enter in? But when, I think, he has been enrolled and made a citizen and has received back the Father, then he shall be among the things of the Father, then he shall be counted worthy to inherit, then he shall share in the kingdom of the Father along with the genuine and beloved Son.

For this is the firstborn Church, composed of many good children;

these are the firstborn, enrolled in the heavens and keeping festival together with so many myriads of angels;

and we, the nurslings of God, are the firstborn children, the genuine friends of the Firstborn, the first of all other men to have perceived God, the first to have been drawn away from sins, the first to have been separated from the devil.

But now some are more godless in proportion as God is more loving to mankind;

for he wills that we, from being slaves, should become sons, but they have disdained even to become sons.

O the great folly!

He promises freedom, but you run away into slavery.

He bestows salvation as a gift, but you sink down toward a man.

He freely grants eternal life, but you await punishment, and you take notice beforehand of the fire which the Lord has prepared for the devil and his angels. Wherefore the blessed Apostle says: "I testify in the Lord that you no longer walk as the nations also walk, in the vanity of their mind, being darkened in their understanding, alienated from the life of God, because of the ignorance that is in them, because of the hardness of their heart;"

"who, having become past feeling, have given themselves over to lewdness, to work all uncleanness with greediness." When such a witness convicts the folly of men and calls upon God, what else remains for the unbelieving but judgment and condemnation? And the Lord does not weary of exhorting, terrifying, urging, rousing, admonishing;

indeed he awakens those who have gone astray, and rouses them up out of their darkness;

"Awake," he says, "you who sleep, and rise from the dead, and Christ the Lord shall shine upon you"—the Sun of the resurrection, begotten before the morning star, who has bestowed life by his own rays.

Let no one, then, despise the Word, lest unawares he despise himself.

"Today, if you hear his voice, harden not your hearts, as in the provocation, in the day of the temptation in the wilderness, where your fathers tempted me in their trial." And if you wish to learn what the trial is, the Holy Spirit will expound it to you:

"and I saw my works," he says, "for forty years;

wherefore I was grieved with this generation, and said:

but they did not know my ways, so I swore in my wrath:

they shall not enter into my rest." See the threat;

why, then, do we still change the grace into wrath, and do not, with open ears, receive the Word, and lodge God in holy souls? For great is the grace of his promise, "if today we hear his voice;"

and the "today" is enlarged each day, for as long as it is named "today."

And until the consummation both the "today" and the learning abide;

and then the true "Today," the unfailing day of God, is stretched out coextensive with the ages.

Let us, then, ever hearken to the voice of the divine Word;

it is the image of the ages, and the day is the symbol of the light, and the Word is light to men, through whom we are illuminated unto God.

Fittingly, then, to those who have believed and obey, grace shall abound exceedingly; but to those who have disobeyed and gone astray in heart, who have not known the ways of the Lord—which John charged us to make straight and to prepare—against these, then, God was grieved, and he threatens;

for they are said not to enter into the rest because of unbelief, until, having followed after the successor of Moses, they learn at last by deed that they cannot otherwise be saved than by believing as Jesus did.

But the Lord, being a lover of mankind, calls all men to the knowledge of the truth—he who sends forth the Paraclete.

What, then, is the knowledge? Godliness;

and godliness, according to Paul, is profitable for all things, having promise of the life that now is and of that which is to come. At what price, confess it, O men—if everlasting salvation were for sale—would you buy it? Not even if one should measure out the whole Pactolus, that fabled stream of gold, would he reckon a price worthy of salvation.

It is permitted to you, if you will, to purchase the precious salvation with your own treasure, with love and faith, which is a fitting price of life.

This price God gladly receives.

"For we have hoped in the living God, who is the Savior of all men, especially of those who believe." But the rest, clinging to the world like sea-weeds to the rocks of the sea, make light of immortality—like the old man of Ithaca, longing not for the truth and the fatherland in heaven, and besides for the truly existing light, but for the smoke.

But godliness, making man like God as far as is possible, enrolls God as the suitable teacher—the only one able worthily to liken man to God.

This teaching the Apostle, knowing it to be truly divine, says: "But you, O Timothy, from a babe have known the sacred letters, which are able to make you wise unto salvation through faith in Christ." For truly sacred are the letters that make holy and make divine; and out of these letters and syllables, the sacred writings—the compositions—the same Apostle accordingly calls God-inspired, being profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness, that the man of God may be complete, furnished for every good work. No one would be so struck by the exhortations of the other saints as by those of the Lord himself, the lover of mankind;

for he has no other work but this alone—that man be saved.

He cries out, then, pressing on toward salvation: "The kingdom of heaven itself has drawn near;" he turns men around as they draw near through fear.

In this way the Apostle of the Lord too, exhorting the Macedonians, becomes an interpreter of the divine voice, saying "The Lord is at hand," and "take heed lest we be found empty." But you are so utterly without fear—or rather, unbelieving—neither obeying the Lord himself nor Paul, and that though he beseeches you on behalf of Christ.

"Taste and see that the Lord is good." Faith will bring you in, experience will teach you, the scripture will lead you as a tutor, saying: "Come, O children, hearken to me; I will teach you the fear of the Lord." Then, as to those who have already believed, it briefly adds: "Who is the man that desires life, loving to see good days?" We are they, we shall say, the worshippers of the Good, the zealots of good things.

Hear, then, you who are far off; hear, you who are near;

the Word has not been hidden from any;

it is a common light, it shines upon all men;

no one is a Cimmerian in respect of the Word;

let us hasten toward salvation, toward the new birth;

let us, the many, hasten to be gathered into one love, according to the union of the monadic Being.

Being made to do good in due proportion, let us pursue unity, seeking after the good Monad.

And the union out of the many, having received a divine harmony out of the diversity of voices and the dispersion, becomes one symphony, following one leader and teacher, the Word, resting upon the truth itself, saying "Abba, Father."

This true voice God welcomes, receiving it as the firstfruit from his own children.

"But it is not reasonable," you say, "to overturn a custom handed down to us from our fathers."

And why, then, do we not use the first food, the milk, to which surely the nurses accustomed us from birth? Why do we increase or diminish the paternal estate, and not keep it equal, as we received it? Why do we no longer bring up wind upon our fathers' bosoms, or do the other things which, as infants nursed by mothers, we did to our shame—do we still perform them, but rather have corrected our very selves, even though we did not happen upon good tutors? Then on roads the deviations, although hurtful and perilous, are nonetheless somehow sweet to fall in with; but in life shall we not abandon the custom that is wicked and passion-ridden and godless—even if our fathers be angry—and turn aside to the truth and seek after the truly existing Father, thrusting away custom as a deadly poison? For this very thing is the noblest of the things undertaken: to point out to you how, from madness and from this thrice-wretched custom, godliness came to be hated;

for so great a good—than which nothing greater has ever yet been bestowed by God upon the human race—would never have been hated or forbidden, had you not been swept along by custom, and then, stopping up your ears against us, like stiff-necked horses balking, champing the bit, you flee from the words, longing to shake off us, the charioteers of your life, and being borne by your folly toward the precipices of destruction, you suppose the holy Word of God to be accursed.

There follows you, therefore, according to Sophocles, the wages of your choice: "a mind gone to ruin, useless ears, empty cares"; and you do not know that this above all is true: that the good and the godly shall obtain a good recompense, having honored the Good; but those who are, on the contrary, wicked shall obtain the corresponding punishment; and over the ruler of wickedness chastisement is suspended.

At any rate the prophet Zechariah threatens him: "May he who has chosen Jerusalem rebuke you;

is not this a brand plucked out of the fire?" What desire for voluntary death, then, still lies in men? Why have they fled for refuge to this death-bringing brand, with which they shall be burned up, when it is possible to live nobly according to God, not according to custom? For God grants life, but wicked custom, after the departure hence, brings upon them, along with punishment, a vain repentance; "and suffering, even the fool learns" how superstition destroys and godliness saves.

Let one of you look at those who serve among the idols: their hair filthy, dishonored by squalid and tattered clothing, utterly untried by baths, savage with the points of their long nails, many of them too deprived of their genitals—showing by their very deeds that the sacred precincts of the idols are certain tombs or prisons;

these seem to me to be mourning, not worshipping, the gods—having suffered things worthy of pity rather than of godliness.

And seeing these things, are you still blind, and will you not look up to the Master of all and the Lord of the universe? Will you not flee for refuge—escaping from the prisons here—to the mercy that is from the heavens? For God, out of his great love for mankind, clings to man, just as the mother bird flies to her chick when it falls out of the nest;

and if some creeping beast should gape upon the chick, "the mother flutters round about, lamenting for her dear young;"

but God the Father both seeks his creature and heals the transgression and pursues the beast and takes up the chick again, urging it to fly up to the nest.

Then dogs, even though they have strayed, tracking by scent, have hunted out their master, and horses, having shaken off their rider, have obeyed their master at a single whistle;

But I wish to ask you whether it does not seem to you absurd that you men, having come into being as the creatures of God and having received your soul from him and being wholly God's, should be slaves to another master, and moreover serve the tyrant instead of the king, the wicked one instead of the Good.

For who, in the name of truth, being of sound mind, forsakes the Good and consorts with vice? Who is there who, fleeing from God, lives together with demons? Who, being able to be a son of God, delights to be a slave? Or who, being able to be a citizen of heaven, pursues the nether gloom, when it is possible to till paradise and walk about heaven and partake of the life-giving and undefiled fountain, treading in the track of that luminous cloud, walking the air like Elijah, beholding the saving rain? But others, like worms, wallowing about marshes and mires—the streams of pleasure—feed upon useless and senseless luxuries, certain swinish men.

"For swine," he says, "delight in mire more than in pure water, and rave over offal," according to Democritus.

Let us not, then—no, let us not—be reduced to slavery, nor become swinish; but, as genuine children of the light, let us look up and gaze upon the light, lest the Lord convict us as spurious, as the sun does the eagles.

Let us, then, repent and pass over from ignorance to knowledge, from folly to good sense, from incontinence to self-control, from injustice to righteousness, from godlessness to God.

Noble is the venture of deserting to God's side.

And there are many other good things which the lovers of righteousness may enjoy—we who pursue eternal salvation—and indeed those things which God himself hints at, speaking through Isaiah: "There is an inheritance for those who serve the Lord;"

and good indeed and lovely is the inheritance—not gold, not silver, not raiment, the things of earth, where the moth and the thief lurk, the eyes being diseased over earth-bound wealth; but that treasure of salvation, toward which we must press on, becoming lovers of the Word, and from here our seemly works take wing along with us and fly together upon the wing of truth.

This inheritance the eternal covenant of God puts into our hands, supplying the eternal gift;

and this tenderly-loving Father of ours, the true Father, does not cease exhorting, admonishing, instructing, loving;

for neither does he cease to save, and he counsels the best things:

"Become righteous," says the Lord;

"you who thirst, go to the water, and as many of you as have no money, walk and buy and drink without money." To the laver, to salvation, to enlightenment he calls, all but crying aloud and saying:

"Earth I give you, and sea, O child, and heaven, and all the living things in them I grant you;

only, O child, thirst for the Father, and God shall be shown to you without price;

the truth is not made a matter of trade; he gives you both the winged creatures and the swimming creatures and the things upon the earth;

these your Father has created for your thankful enjoyment."

With money will the spurious one purchase—he is a child of perdition, who has chosen to serve mammon; but to you he entrusts your own possessions—to the genuine one, I mean, to him who loves the Father, for whose sake he still works—to whom alone he also promises, saying:

"and the land shall not be sold for a perpetual possession; for it is not made over to corruption;"

"for all the land is mine," and it is also yours, if you receive back God.

Whence the scripture fittingly brings good tidings to those who have believed:

"but the saints of the Lord shall inherit the glory of God and his power." What glory, O blessed one, tell me;

"which eye has not seen, nor ear heard, nor has it come up upon the heart of man;"

"and they shall rejoice over the kingdom of their Lord unto the ages, Amen." You have, O men, the divine promise of grace; you have heard also the other threat of punishment, by which the Lord saves, training man through fear and through grace.

Why do we not welcome the gift? Why do we not choose the better things—God instead of the wicked one, and prefer wisdom to idolatry, and exchange life for death? "Behold, I have set before your face," he says, "death and life." The Lord puts you to the test, to choose life; he counsels you as a father to obey God.

"For if you hearken to me," he says, "and are willing, you shall eat the good things of the land"—the grace of obedience;

"but if you do not hearken to me, nor are willing, the sword and fire shall devour you"—the judgment of disobedience.

"For the mouth of the Lord has spoken these things;"

the law of truth is the word of the Lord.

Do you wish me to become a good counselor to you? Then do you, at least, hearken;

and I, if it be possible, will demonstrate it.

You ought, O men, when reflecting concerning the Good itself, to bring forward an innate faith, a trustworthy witness from your very selves, from within, manifestly choosing the best, and not to inquire whether the Good must be pursued, but to labor at it.

For indeed, if one ought to get drunk, let us say, one ought to deliberate first;

but you get drunk before you have considered;

and if one ought to commit outrage, you do not make a careful inquiry, but commit the outrage as fast as you can.

Only as to whether one ought to worship God do you make inquiry; and whether one ought to follow after this wise God and Christ—this indeed you deem worthy of counsel and consideration, not having understood even what is fitting for God, whatever it is.

Believe us, at least, as you would in your drunkenness, that you may become sober;

believe us, at least, as in your outrage, that you may live.

But if you also wish to be persuaded, having beheld the manifest faith of things ineffable, come, I will set before you, out of abundance, the persuasion concerning the Word.

But you—for the ancestral customs no longer occupy you, who have been pre-instructed away from the truth—you may now at length hear what comes after this, how it stands;

and let no shame at this name forestall you—the shame which greatly harms men, turning them aside from salvation.

Having stripped off, then, let us contend genuinely and openly in the stadium of truth, with the holy Word presiding as umpire, and the Master of all presiding as the giver of the contest.

For no small prize is set before us—immortality.

Be no longer concerned, then, not even a little, what certain market-rabble may call you—godless leaders of the dance of superstition, who through folly and madness are thrust toward the very pit, makers of idols and worshippers of stones;

for these men have dared to deify human beings, recording as a god the thirteenth, Alexander the Macedonian, whom Babylon convicted as a corpse.

I admire, therefore, the sophist of Chios, Theocritus by name;

after Alexander's death, Theocritus, mocking the empty opinions men held about the gods, said to his fellow-citizens: "Men, take courage, so long as you see the gods dying before men." And whoever worships and consorts with the visible gods, this confused rabble of these generated beings, is far more wretched than those very demons.

For God is in no way whatever unjust, like the demons, but is as just as can be, and there is nothing more like him than whoever among us becomes most just. "Go ye now upon the road, all you workman folk, who propitiate Athena Ergane, the grim-eyed daughter of Zeus, with standing winnowing-fans"—foolish craftsmen and worshippers of stones.

Let your Phidias come, and your Polyclitus, and Praxiteles again, and Apelles, and all who pursue the menial arts, earthy men, being laborers of the earth;

for then, a certain prophecy says, the affairs of this world shall come to misfortune, when men shall put their trust in statues.

Let them come, then, once more—for I will not cease from good things—the petty craftsmen;

none of these has anywhere created an image that breathes, nor indeed has molded soft flesh out of earth.

Who has promised immortality? Only the Creator of all, the Father of consummate craftsmanship, fashioned us, man, such a living image;

but your Olympian Zeus, an image of an image, sounding far out of tune with the truth, is the dumb work of Attic hands.

For the image of God is His Word (and the divine Word, the light that is the archetype of light, is the genuine Son of the Mind); and the image of the Word is the true man, that is, the mind in man, who for this reason is said to have been made 'in the image and likeness of God,' being likened in the understanding of his heart to the divine Word, and thereby rational.

But of visible, earth-born man, the earthly image is the statues fashioned in human likeness, manifestly a transient copy far removed from the truth.

Therefore life seemed to me to have become nothing but full of madness, since it busies itself with such great zeal about mere matter.

Custom, worn smooth by empty opinion, has corrupted you—having given you a taste of bondage and of irrational meddling.

The cause of these lawless customs and deceitful pretenses is ignorance, which, once established, devised many shapes of demons—deadly stings and detestable idols—for the human race, and stamped upon those who follow it the stain of a long-drawn-out death.

Take then the water of reason; wash, you who are defiled; sprinkle yourselves with the true drops, cleansing yourselves from custom.

It is necessary to be pure in order to ascend into the heavens.

You are a man—that is the most common thing of all; seek the One who fashioned you.

You are a son—that is the most particular thing; come to know the Father.

But you still cling to your sins, melting away in pleasures? To whom will the Lord say, 'Yours is the kingdom of heaven'? It is yours, if you will it—you who have set your purpose toward God.

It is yours, if only you are willing to believe and to follow the brevity of the proclamation; obeying which the Ninevites, by genuine repentance, exchanged the expected destruction for the good gift of salvation.

'How then shall I ascend into the heavens?' you ask. The Lord is the way—narrow indeed, yet from the heavens; narrow indeed, yet leading up into the heavens;

narrow and despised on earth, but broad and adored in the heavens.

Now he who has never heard the Word has ignorance as an excuse for his error; but he who has let it fall into his ears, yet has refused to heed it in his soul, draws disobedience upon himself by his own judgment; and the more intelligent he seems to be, the more his understanding works to his harm, since he has used his wisdom as an accuser, not having chosen the best.

For man is by nature so constituted as to have an affinity with God.

Just as we do not force the horse to plow nor the bull to hunt, but lead each of the animals to that for which it is by nature fitted, so assuredly we call man—who was made for the contemplation of heaven, a truly heavenly plant—to the knowledge of God; having grasped what is proper and distinctive and peculiar to him beyond the other animals, we counsel him to provide himself with godliness, a self-sufficient provision for the ages.

'Till the soil,' we say, 'if you are a farmer—but know God as you farm; sail the sea, you who love seafaring—but call upon the heavenly Pilot;

knowledge has overtaken you while you served as a soldier;

listen to the Commander who points out what is just.

Therefore, as those weighed down by stupor and drunkenness, sober up and, having looked about a little, consider what the stones you worship wish for you, and what you so vainly squander upon mere matter;

you consume your wealth and your life upon ignorance, even as you spend your living for death, finding this alone to be the end of your vain hope—being unable even to pity yourselves, nor yet fit to be persuaded by those who pity you in your error; enslaved to evil custom, clinging to it of your own accord until your very last breath, you are carried down to destruction.

Wipe away the hindrances to salvation—both vainglory and wealth and fear—and exclaim that well-known line of the poet:

'Whither shall I bear all these great riches? And whither do I myself go wandering?' Will you not, then, cast away these empty fancies and bid farewell to custom itself, saying to vainglory:

'Farewell, you false dreams; you were nothing after all!' For what do you suppose, O men, the Tychon-Hermes to be, and the Hermes of Andocides, and the Uninitiated one? Is it not plain to everyone that they are stones, just like the Hermes itself?

Now, just as the halo is not a god, and the rainbow is not a god, but mere affections of air and clouds; and just as a day is not a god, nor indeed a year nor the time made up of these; so neither is the sun nor the moon a god, by which each of the things just mentioned is marked off.

Who, then, in his right mind would take Requital, and Punishment, and Justice, and Nemesis to be gods? For neither are the Furies gods, nor the Fates, nor Destiny, since neither Polity nor Repute nor Wealth are gods—the last of which even painters portray as blind;

but if you deify Modesty and Love and Aphrodite, then let Shame and Impulse and Beauty and Intercourse follow them as well.

Surely, then, Sleep and Death would no longer be reasonably reckoned among you as twin gods, these being affections that naturally befall living creatures;