Select Orations (2/40/43) 2-1 part 3/3

that we may hear what the Lord God will speak, and that the morning mercy may become audible to us, and that we may be made to hear joy and gladness sounding in our ears as divine sounds;

that we may not be a sharp sword, nor a whetted razor, nor turn toil and trouble under our tongue, but may speak the wisdom of God in a mystery, the hidden wisdom, holding in reverence the tongues of fire.

Let us heal the sense of smell, that we may not be made effeminate, nor instead of a sweet fragrance be turned to dust;

but rather let us smell, spiritually receiving the ointment that was poured out for us, and being so made and remade out of it, that we ourselves also may give off the odour of a sweet smell.

Let us cleanse our touch, our taste, our throat, not handling things softly and delighting in smoothness, but touching, as is fitting, the Word who was made flesh for us, and in this imitating Thomas;

not tickled by sauces and dainties, kindred to those bitterer titillations, but tasting and knowing that the Lord is good—the better and abiding taste;

not for a little while refreshing that bitter and thankless channel which passes things on and does not retain what is given, but rather gladdening it with words sweeter than honey.

And in addition to what has been said, it is yet good that, having our head cleansed as a head is cleansed, the workshop of the senses, we should hold fast the Head which is Christ, from whom the whole body is fitted and knit together;

and to cast down the sin that exalts itself within us, being overcome by the better.

It is good also that the shoulder be sanctified and cleansed, that it may be able to bear the cross of Christ, which is not easily borne by everyone.

It is good also that the hands and the feet be made perfect;

the former, that holy hands may be lifted up in every place, and may lay hold of the discipline of Christ, lest at any time the Lord be angry, and that the word may be believed through deeds, like the deed given into the hand of this prophet;

the latter, that they be not swift to shed blood, nor running into evil;

but ready for the Gospel, and toward the prize of the upward calling, and to receive Christ who washes and cleanses them.

If there be also a purifying of the belly, which receives and gives out the nourishment from the Word, it is good that this too be not made a god out of luxury and the food that is being done away with;

but rather be cleansed as much as possible, and be made finer, so that it may receive the Word of the Lord in its midst, and may rightly grieve over Israel when he stumbles.

I find also the heart and the inward parts to be counted worthy of honour.

By this, I think, He signifies the faculty of thought, and its motions or reflections.

And what of the loins? What of the kidneys? For let us not pass over this either.

Let the cleansing lay hold of these too;

let our loins be girded about, and held in by self-control, as Israel of old was, according to the law, when partaking of the Passover.

For no one comes out of Egypt purely, nor flees from the destroyer, who has not thus disciplined these things.

transferring these to God, so as to be able to say:

'Lord, all my desire is before You;'

and, 'I have not desired the day of man.'

Thus also for us would that dragon be destroyed which bears the chief of its strength upon the navel and the loins, when his dominion over these parts has been put to death.

Do not marvel that I assign more abundant honour even to our less seemly parts, mortifying these by reason and bringing them to sobriety, and standing against matter.

Let us give all our members to God upon the earth, let us consecrate them all.

Not the lobe of the liver, nor the kidneys with the fat, nor this part of the body, nor that one and the other.

Let us become reasonable whole burnt offerings, perfect sacrifices;

let us not make only the shoulder, nor only the breast, a priestly heave-offering (for that is a small thing);

but giving ourselves wholly, let us wholly receive in return;

since this is to receive purely—to be given to God, and to make the working out of our own salvation a priestly service.

Above all, and before all, keep for me the good deposit, by which I live and have my citizenship, which I would also take as my companion in departure, with which I bear all painful things and spit upon every pleasant thing—the confession of Father, and Son, and Holy Spirit.

This I commit to you today;

with this I will baptize you and bring you up.

This I give you as the partner and protectress of all your life—the one Godhead and power, found singly in the Three and gathering up the Three distinctly;

neither unequal in substances or natures, nor increased or diminished by excesses and defects, in every way equal, in every way the same, as one beauty and greatness of heaven;

the infinite conjunction of Three Infinites, each One regarded by Himself as God—as Father and Son, as Son and Holy Spirit—the individual property of each being preserved.

God are the Three when contemplated together, the former by reason of consubstantiality, the latter by reason of the monarchy.

I cannot think of the One but I am straightway encompassed with the splendour of the Three;

I cannot distinguish the Three but I am carried back to the One.

When I imagine any one of the Three, I think it the whole, and my sight is filled, and the greater part escapes me.

I cannot grasp the greatness of this One, so as to give the greater to the rest.

When I gather the Three together in contemplation, I see one lamp, unable to divide or measure the unified light.

Do you fear begetting, lest God, who is impassible, should suffer something? I fear creaturehood, lest I should lose God through insolence and unjust dissection, either severing the Son from the Father, or the substance of the Spirit from the Son.

For the strange thing is, that with those who wrongly weigh the Godhead, not only is the creature brought in alongside God, but the creature itself is again divided against itself.

For just as the Son is set below the Father by these lowly and grovelling minds, so again the dignity of the Spirit is set below the Son also;

so that both God and the creature are dishonoured by this newfangled theology.

Nothing of the Trinity, O you men, is a slave, nor created, nor adventitious—I have heard one of the wise saying.

'If I yet pleased men, I should not be the servant of Christ,' says the divine Apostle.

If I still worshipped a creature, or were baptized into a creature, I should not be deified, nor receive in exchange my first birth.

What shall I say to those who worship Astarte, or Chemosh the abomination of the Sidonians, or the figure of the star—a god a little above these for the idolaters, yet nothing more than a creature and a thing made—

shall I myself either not worship the Two into whom I have been baptized together, or worship them as fellow-servants? For they are fellow-servants, even if a little more honourable;

since even among fellow-servants there is a certain difference and precedence.

I am willing to call the Father greater, since from Him is the very being equal to the equals, and the being itself.

For this will be granted by all.

And I fear the title of source, lest I make Him the source of lesser beings, and dishonour Him through the very preference;

whose glory is the lowering of those who are from Him.

Moreover, I am wary of your greed, lest, taking the greater, you cut nature in two, using the greater in all respects.

For the greater is not according to nature, but according to cause.

For nothing of those that are consubstantial is greater or less in substance.

I am willing to prefer the Son to the Spirit, as Son;

but the baptism does not allow me to be made perfect through the Spirit.

But are you afraid lest you be reproached with tritheism? Keep you the good thing, the union in the Three;

leave the battle to me.

Let me be the shipwright; you make use of the ship.

And if there is another shipwright, take me as the architect of the house;

you dwell in it in safety, even though you laboured nothing.

You shall sail no less prosperously, or dwell in the house, though I am the one who built these things, even if you have toiled nothing about them.

Do you see how great is the good-feeling? Do you see the kindness of the Spirit? Mine be the war, let the victory be yours.

Let me be struck down, but you be at peace, praying together with Him who fights in front;

give your hand through faith.

I have three stones with which to sling at the foreigner.

I have three breathings, against the son of the Zarephath woman, by which I shall make alive those who are dead.

I have three pourings against the firewood, by which I shall consecrate the sacrifice, raising fire by water—the most paradoxical thing;

and I will cast down the prophets to their shame, using the power of the mystery.

I testify before God and the elect angels: with this faith you shall be baptized.

If you have been enrolled otherwise than as my word requires, come hither, and be enrolled anew.

I am not an unskilled penman in these matters, writing what I have been written, and teaching what I also have learned, and have kept from the beginning unto this grey hair.

Mine is the peril, mine also the reward—I who am the steward of your soul, and who perfect you through baptism.

But if you are so disposed, and have been marked with good letters, keep for me what has been written, remaining unchangeable in changeable times concerning an unchangeable thing.

Imitate Pilate for the better—he who wrote evilly, yet what was well written.

Say to those who would change your mind:

'For indeed I should be ashamed if, while the evil remains unbending, the good should most easily be bent aside;

since we ought to be easily moved toward the better from the worse, but unmoved toward the worse from the better.'

If you are baptized thus, and according to this discipleship: Behold, my lips I will not restrain; behold, I lend my hands to the Spirit.

Let us hasten our salvation, let us rise up to baptism;

the Spirit throbs eagerly, the one who perfects is ready, the gift is prepared.

But if you still limp, and do not accept the perfection of the Godhead, seek your own baptizer, or rather your down-baptizer.

But for me there is no leisure to divide the Godhead, and to make you dead at the time of regeneration;

lest you have neither the grace, nor the hope of the grace, having in a moment made shipwreck of your salvation.

For whatever you take away from the Three of the Godhead, you will have destroyed the whole, and yourself the perfecting.

But as yet there is no impress in your soul, neither of a worse letter nor of a better;

and today you must be written, and be stamped by us unto perfection. Let us enter within the cloud;

give me the tablets of your heart;

I become to you a Moses, though it be bold to say it;

I write with the finger of God a new decalogue;

I write a concise salvation.

But if any heretical and senseless beast is here, let it remain below;

or it will be in danger of being stoned by the word of truth.

I will baptize you, making you a disciple, into the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.

And the one common name of the Three is the Godhead.

You shall know, both by the forms and by the words, that even as you put away all godlessness, so you are ranged together with the whole Godhead.

Believe that the whole universe, both visible and invisible, was brought into being out of nothing by God, and is governed by the providence of its Maker, and shall receive the change unto that which is better.

[Believe that evil did not subsist, nor came into being from God,] but that this is our own work and the evil one's, having entered into us out of carelessness, and not from the Creator.

Believe that the Son of God, the pre-eternal Word, who was begotten of the Father timelessly and bodilessly, this same One in the last days became for your sake also Son of Man, having come forth from the Virgin Mary unspeakably and unstainedly (for nothing is unclean where God is, and through whom is salvation), whole man, the same also God, on behalf of the whole that had suffered, that He might bestow salvation on the whole of you, having loosed the whole condemnation of sin;

impassible in His Godhead, passible in that which He assumed;

becoming so much man for your sake, as you become God for His sake;

this same One was led to death for our iniquities, was crucified and buried, so far as to taste of death, and rose again on the third day, ascended into the heavens, that He might gather you up who were lying below;

and that He shall come again with His glorious advent, judging the living and the dead;

no longer indeed flesh, yet not bodiless either, but with a more God-befitting body, by such modes as He Himself knows, that He may both be seen by those who pierced Him, and remain God beyond corporeal grossness.

And that this is light to those whose mind has been purified—that is, God seen and known according to the proportion of purity—which indeed we also name the kingdom of heaven;

but darkness to those whose ruling faculty is blinded—that is, estrangement from God according to the proportion of their dimness of sight here.

since 'faith without works is dead,' as works apart from faith.

You have those things of the mystery that may be uttered, and are not forbidden to the ears of the many.

But the rest you shall learn within, when the Trinity grants it—the things which you shall also hide with yourself, kept under seal.

Yet this I bring to you as good news.

The standing, in which you shall straightway stand after baptism before the great judgement-seat, is a foreshadowing of the glory yonder.

The psalmody, with which you shall be received, is a prelude to the hymnody yonder.

The lamps, which you shall kindle, are a mystery of the illumination yonder, with which we shall go to meet the Bridegroom—bright and virgin souls, with the bright lamps of faith—neither sleeping through slothfulness, lest the Expected One come unawares and we know it not, nor untrimmed and oilless and lacking in good works, lest we fall out of the bridal chamber.

For I see the misfortune, how pitiable it is.

He will be present, the cry demanding the meeting;

and they will go to meet Him, as many as are wise, with bright light and a more plentiful supply of its nourishment;

but the others will be thrown into confusion, seeking the oil out of season from those who have it.

And He will enter swiftly;

but they will be shut out, having spent the time for entering in making preparation, and they will weep much afterward, learning too late the loss caused by slothfulness, when the bridal chamber is no longer open to them, though they entreat much for that which they have wickedly shut against themselves;

in another manner imitating those who came too late for the marriage which the good father makes for the good bridegroom, on account of the newly-wed wife, or the newly-bought field, or the yoke of oxen which they wickedly acquired, suffering the loss of the greater things for the sake of the lesser.

For no one there of the haughty and slothful, nor of those filthily, and not bridally, arrayed, even if from here he deem himself worthy of the splendour yonder, and unobserved slip himself in, deceived by empty hopes, [shall remain].

What then? When we have come within, then the Bridegroom knows what He will teach, and what He will commune of with the souls that have entered in with Him.

And He will commune, as I think, teaching the more perfect and purer things;

of which may we also partake, both we who teach these things and those who learn them, in Christ Himself our Lord, to whom be the glory and the might unto the ages.