Against Eunomius 1 part 3/56

concerning which I too for my part agree that he stands in need of a great apology—not like the one now composed, which again requires another apology to advocate for it, but of some noble and sensible one able to persuade its hearers that he was not in his right mind when he composed these things—he who set up for himself a tribunal of men neither present nor perhaps even yet born, and made his defence to those who did not exist, and begged those who had not yet come to be, that they would not by numbers distinguish falsehood from truth, attaching the better to the larger portion.

he supposes the erring fantasy of his own soul...

Let him write, if he pleases, yet another apology for his second apology as well;

for the present one is not a correction of what was done amiss, but rather a bolstering of the charges.

For who does not know that every lawful apology looks to the removal of the charge that has been brought? For instance, one who is accused of theft or murder or some other transgression either wholly denies the deed, or transfers the responsibility for the evil to another, or, if he can do none of these, will beg for pardon and pity from the lords of the verdict.

But here the discourse has neither a denial of the charges brought, nor a transference to others, nor does it take refuge in pity, nor does it promise good conduct for the future; rather, the very charge that is accused is strengthened through a more painstaking construction.

For that which is brought forward is, as this very man says, an indictment of impiety, laying against him a charge that is not indefinite, but bringing forth the very species of the impiety;

but the apology establishes the necessity of being impious, not removing the charge, but confirming the accusation.

For while the doctrines of true religion were still obscure, it was perhaps less perilous to venture upon novelty;

but when the teaching of right doctrine is firmly present in all the souls of the pious, does the one who shouts out things contrary to what is commonly acknowledged by all make a defence for the charges against him, or does he rather draw down upon himself the anger of his hearers and stand forth as a more bitter accuser of himself than anyone else? For my part I affirm this.

So that, if indeed there exist, according to the writer's own argument, either hearers of what has been defended or accusers of the things he has ventured against true religion, let him himself say either how the accusers will relent, or what verdict the judges will pronounce concerning him, when the transgression is being prepared in advance through the apology.

But I do not know how these things fell in beside the sequence of the argument, owing to the apology not having been well brought forward.

For it is not now proposed to examine how he ought to have made his defence, but whether he made a defence at all.

But let us return to the point proposed, namely, that this man who so detests falsehood is plainly convicted by his own words;

he says that he was condemned and fell in with lawless judges, and that, being dragged over land and sea, he suffered hardship from the sun's scorching heat and from the dust;

then again, veiling his falsehood, he 'drives out one nail with another,' as the proverb says, mending this falsehood with another falsehood.

For while all are jointly aware that he uttered not a single word in the courtroom, he says that he declined the tribunal of his enemies and was convicted while keeping silence.

How could anyone be more convicted of standing opposed both to the truth and to himself? When he is charged concerning the title of his discourse, he attributes the necessity of the apology to the trial;

when he is convicted of having said nothing before the judges, he denies the trial and deems the judges unworthy.

Behold this vehement champion of the truth, how stoutly he ranges himself against the truth!

Then, being such a man, he dares to name the great Basil wicked, malicious, and a liar, and in addition to these, insolent, unlearned, an interloper, uninitiated in things divine; and he adds to the catalogue of his abuse also derangement and madness and countless such things, scattering them promiscuously throughout the whole discourse, as though he supposed his own bitterness sufficient to counterbalance the testimonies of all men—men who marvel at the very name of the great one as at one of the ancient saints—and he imagines that by reviling alone he can injure one who is invulnerable to reproach.

The sun is not so lowly that one hurling stones or anything else against it could reach as high as it;

for the things thrown turn back again against the one who cast them, while the target remains higher than the throw.

the maiming of his organs of sight will be exposed;

and even if he most earnestly wishes to persuade those who will hear and those who will read—after the likeness of that apology—not to assent to all men's opinions concerning the sun, nor to make the experience of the many more authoritative than his own supposition, but to attach the better to the larger portion, he will babble in vain against those who see, and will set himself up against the common opinions to no further profit.

If, then, anyone is a friend to Eunomius, let him persuade the man to put a bridle upon his mouth, and neither to run wild through the disorder of his speech, nor to kick against the goads, nor to speak boldly against a name held in honor; but rather, even merely by taking the great Basil into remembrance, to fill his soul with reverence and awe.

For what more will he gain from this immoderate display, when the one man is held by all to be such as his life, his teaching, and the common testimony of the whole world concerning him proclaim him to be, while the other, in attempting to malign him, only reveals his own character—since, as the Gospel says somewhere, being evil he cannot speak good things, but speaks out of the abundance of the heart and brings forth out of the evil treasure? For that the words of his abuse are empty, laying no hold upon the truth of the facts, the refutation is drawn from his very own writings.

He supposed a certain place in which he says the contest over doctrines took place, but one nameless and marked by no recognizable sign, so that of necessity the hearer must grope after obscure and misleading conjectures.

In this place, he says, there was gathered an assembly of picked men from every quarter, and he waxes youthfully vigorous in his account, bringing before our eyes, so he claims, the whole arrangement of the affair.

Then he speaks of certain teachers—these too he does not mention by name—saying that the contest over the ultimate questions was set before them, and that our own instructor and father, when present, spoke up in reply; but when the decision of the judgment awarded the victory to his opponents, he says that the man fled the scene, abandoning his post, and hurried off after some smoke of his homeland; and he is long-winded in traducing the man, in the picture he paints of his cowardice.

All this anyone who wishes may learn from what is there written.

For I have no leisure to pour out over my own discourses all the vomit of that man's bile; but the purpose for which I made mention of what he said—to that I will now turn.

What was that nameless place in which the discourse concerning doctrines is examined? What was the occasion that summoned the best men to the contest? Who were the men who through land and sea pressed themselves onward to share in the labors? What world does he mean, poised in suspense over the outcome, awaiting the verdict of the vote? Or who was it that arranged the contests? Or let these things be dismissed—as it is the custom of boys in the schools by such inventions to contrive for their discourse a certain bulk and grandeur—and let him say only this: who was that invincible antagonist with whom he says our teacher was afraid to grapple?

For if this too is a fabrication, let it again prevail and carry off the greater share of vanity, while we will hold our peace.

For in shadow-boxing over nothing useful, the true victory lies in willingly yielding up such a victory as this.

But if he is speaking of what happened at Constantinople, and refers to that council, and inflames his discourse with the tragedies enacted there, and names himself the great and invincible athlete, then we would accept the charges: that, being present at the time of the contests, we did not grapple with the contestants.

But he could not say this, or else he manifestly contradicts himself.

For he confessed that by his silence he accepted the verdict brought against him by the judges.

Is he condemned for it? But if he did well in honoring quietness before the judges, what is this arbitrary partiality, that he should be praised for his silence, while for us our quietness should be a ground of slander? What could anyone devise more unjust than this absurdity, if, of the two who composed their discourse after the contests, he says of himself that he made his defense at the proper time—he who was so far behind the occasion—yet reproaches the one who replied to his discourse as having come too late for the moment of the contests? Or was it perhaps necessary to slander in advance, by way of rebuttal, a discourse that was still to be spoken?

For this, it seems, is all that is wanting to the charge.

Why on earth, then, since he foreknew what he was going to write, did he not refute it at the time of that judgment? For that it was not in the judgment that he made this defense is evident from his own admissions.

For I will once more call to mind his very words.

"For we," he says, "confess that we were caught keeping silence," and he adds the reason.

"Since wicked men," he says, "had obtained the office of judging—or rather, as he himself says, had intruded into the place of the judges."

And that again he testifies to the fittingness of the occasion for his defense is clear from other things he said.

"But that," he says, "not of my own contriving, but being compelled by the mediators, I was led forward to make my defense at the fitting time and in the fitting manner—this has become clear both from the facts themselves and from this man's words."

What, then, will he say—he who everywhere so easily twists his argument this way and that? "Ought not Basil to have kept silence at the contests?" Why then was Eunomius voiceless at those same contests? "But the defense after the contests was seasonable for him."

How then was the contest with what had been said unseasonable for the other? But, as it seems, the holy man's word is truer than all: that under the pretext of a defense he constructed a scheme of his own doctrines to suit his purpose; and the true zealot after the manner of Phinehas, who with the sword of the word destroys everyone who plays the harlot away from the Lord, brought to bear a blade that heals the soul but slays impiety—I mean the refutation of his blasphemy.

But if this man is refractory and does not accept the healing—he who has deadened his own soul through apostasy—the blame lies with the one who chose the evil.

This too the profane wisdom outside says.

Such, then, is Eunomius, both against the truth and against us.

As for us, it was open to us, according to the more ancient law that permits those who have been wronged to defend themselves in like measure against the aggressors, to fling back at him his reproaches without stint, and with great ease to lavish abuse liberally and eagerly upon the one who had grieved us.

For if that man found so abundant a supply of insult and abuse against one who had given no entrance to reproach, how many such words might likely be found against those who make a comedy of his own venerable life? But since from the beginning we were taught by the disciple of truth to be schooled in the Gospel, we neither strike back an eye for an eye, nor exchange a tooth for a tooth, knowing that evil deeds are by nature dissolved by their opposites, and that nothing of what is spoken or done ill would advance to what is irremediable, if something of the better sort, falling in between, should cut off the continuity of the sequence of evils.

Therefore the succession of reviling and insulting is also stayed in its onward rush by longsuffering.

So that if anyone were to requite insult with insult and abuse with abuse, he would altogether multiply the mischief, feeding it by things of the same kind.

But if anyone should say that I decline reviling through inexperience in requiting like with like, let him consider for himself how great is the facility toward the worse, sliding of its own accord, without any effort, into sin.

For the becoming of evil rests solely in the choosing, and often the mere will has sufficed for the perfecting of vice.

But far greater is the facility in offenses of the tongue.

For it needs time and circumstances and outward cooperation in order to come about; but the growth of speech has the power of transgressing at its own discretion.

And the proof of what I say is the very discourse of Eunomius that is in our hands, which anyone who considers it not carelessly will find to be a downhill slope into the sin of words—a thing which is of all things easiest to imitate, even if one is altogether unpracticed in the experience of blaspheming.

For what need is there to labor at coining insults, when one may use against the insulter the very words he has spoken? For in this part of his discourse he has rhapsodized everything false and blasphemous, fabricated to fit the examples he there gives, and there is nothing of the absurd that has not been set down in writing.

"He is formidable," he says, "contentious, an enemy of truth, a sophist, a deceiver, one who sets himself against the opinions and traditions of the many, not ashamed of the refutation that comes from the facts, guarding himself against neither fear from the laws nor censure from men, unable to distinguish truth from mere cleverness."

To these he adds also shamelessness and readiness to revile.

Then he says he is unmusical and full of conflicting notions, and that he fits together his discourse out of things that do not harmonize, at war with his own utterances and giving voice to contradictions.

And wishing to say many evil things about him, then, being unable to sate the bitterness of his soul in the novelty of his insults, since he has nothing more to say, he returns again and again to the same things, and having said a thing once he cycles back to it a second time, and a third time the same things, and a fourth, and beyond that—bending back with his discourse, as it were, over the same course, through the same insults and the trifling nonsense of his abuse, ranging up and down through the same things.

So that one no longer takes offense at the shamelessness of his insults, since in the surfeit of what he says his anger spends itself out.

For one would sooner feel loathing than come to anger.

So slavish are his jibes, and void of grace, and picked up from the crossroads, no different at all from those of some old woman tippling and muttering under her teeth.

What then? Must we go through each point and laboriously make defense concerning all that has been said by way of insult, that he was not such a man as these things are fabricated against him to make him out? But in that case we too would seem to be joining in the insult of one who shone forth for his generation in the place of a luminary, if we were content to prove, by our discourses, merely that he was not a malefactor and a condemned man.

But I remember that divine utterance, how prophetically concerning him it spoke the words from the prophecy, where it likens him to those shameless women who cast their own reproaches upon the chaste.

For what enemy of truth do his words proclaim? Whom do they proclaim as setting himself against the opinions of the many? Who is it that asks of those who fall in with his treatise not to look to the multitude of those who bear witness, nor to regard antiquity, nor to incline their judgments toward the trustworthiness of what has been held to be the better view? Is it, then, of the same man both to write these things and to bring forward those, and by his own innovations to seek that his hearers should follow him, while again disparaging others as opposing the common suppositions? And as for his not being ashamed of the refutation that comes from the facts, and of human censure, and all such things which he goes over to the same effect—I leave it to the judgment of the hearers to consider of which man it is true to speak thus: whether of him who by the most exact self-restraint legislated temperance and orderliness and all purity of soul and body, alike for himself and for those who came near him; or of him who bids us not to trouble nature as it advances toward its pleasure through the appetites of the body, nor to resist the pleasures, nor to be scrupulous about such earnestness of life—for (he says) there is no harm to the soul that comes about through such things, but heretical faith alone suffices for man unto perfection.

—one who denies such things.

But his genuine disciples will not allow the denial to go forward, or else his greatest theorem will fall, and the whole contrivance of those who chiefly sit at attendance upon that dogma for this very reason will be dissolved.

As for one who is shameless and does not guard against human censure—shall we look at the things lived out in his youth, or at those after these? But through both you would find the charge of shamelessness returning upon himself.

For neither his youth nor his life after these bears the same witness on both counts.

Let the pamphleteer call to his own remembrance both the things done in his homeland during the season of his youth, and the things lived out by him at Constantinople; and let him hear from those who know what sort of things they are privy to concerning the man he slanders.

And again he is named rash, and insolent, and a liar on both counts, by one who with longsuffering in gentleness instructs those who set themselves in opposition.

For thus in his treatise does he give himself luxurious airs in the words about him—he who lets slip no excess of bitterness in matters where he has the strength to bring anything forward.

From what source, then, and from what facts does he convict him of insolence and rashness? "Because," he says, "though I was a Cappadocian, he called me a Galatian."

Then, if of one whose dwelling was on the border of the two provinces, in some nameless outermost corner of Corniaspine, he called him a Galatian instead of an Oltiserean (if indeed he did at all add this and make a point of it—

for I did not find this appended in our copies, but let it be granted nonetheless that it was said)—is he for this called rash and insolent and a liar and all the most dreadful names? And the clever fellow does not perceive that an accusation over trifles on the part of the slanderer sets forth a great commendation of the accused man's uprightness? For one moved to accusation would not, sparing the greater matters, have busied his malice about the lesser.

Over these matters, moreover, he is much exalted, magnifying the offense and solemnly philosophizing about lying, judging it equal in absurdity whether the matter concerns greater or lesser things.

For he knows, after the manner of his fathers in the heresy—I mean the scribes and Pharisees—to strain out the gnat with all precision, but unsparingly to swallow down the crooked camel laden with the weight of wickedness.

To whom it were perhaps not out of place to say: Spare us such legislation in our polity—the bidding to reckon it as nothing to distinguish, by the smallness or greatness of matters, the charge of falsehood.

For Paul does not sin in the same way when he lies and is purified after the Jewish manner for a season, for the benefit of those who were being profitably deceived, as does Judas when at the moment of betrayal he assumes the guise of a friend and one who greets kindly.

Joseph too lied, in kindness making sport of his brothers, and that while swearing by the health of Pharaoh.

But his brothers also lied against him, plotting first death and afterward slavery for him out of envy; and many such things one might mention.

Sarah lies, blushing at her laughter.

The serpent too lies, introducing the notion that man, through disobedience, would pass over into a divine nature.

According to the underlying cases there is a difference, and it is beyond telling how great, whether you test the matter by the ancient narratives or by present-day life.

Let us, then, also accept that, according to the common verdict concerning men which the Holy Spirit pronounced through the prophet—that "Every man is a liar"—the man of God too was borne along into a falsehood, when by ignorance or oversight of the region's proper name he applied to it, as it happened, a name belonging to some neighboring territory.

But Eunomius too lied—and what is the lie? A misrepresentation of the very truth.

He says that He who ever is once was not; he contrives that the true Son should have His appellation falsely named; he defines the Creator of all Himself to be a creature and a thing made; he addresses as a slave the One who is Lord of all; and Him who by nature has the ruling, he ranks together with the nature that serves.

Is the difference of the lie, then, a small one—and so great, that anyone should think it counts for nothing whether one is deemed to have lied in this way or in that? But moreover, while reproaching others for sophistical argument, behold what care he takes over the demonstration of the truth!

Our teacher said, in his discourse against him, that at the time of the overthrow of affairs this man carried off Cyzicus as the prize of his impiety.

What, then, does this refuter of sophists do? He at once fastens upon the word 'prize,' and asserts that we concede that he has both made his defence and won the victory through that defence, and that from the victory he has carried off the prize by his contests; and he constructs a syllogism, bringing his argument to its conclusion, as he supposes, by premises that admit of no contradiction.

But let his very words, as he has written them, be quoted verbatim.

'For if,' he says, 'the prize is the token and consummation of victory, and if victory points to a trial at law, and if the trial at law of necessity brings along with it an accusation, then he who awards the prize must also affirm that a defence was necessary.'

What, then, do we say? We do not deny that he has contended, and that most vehemently and vigorously, in this wicked contest of impiety, and that he has by no small measure surpassed and outstripped his fellows in his sweat-drenched labours against the truth—yet not that he has won the victor's crown over adversaries, but rather that, in comparison with those who ran together with him through impiety into error, he takes precedence over all in the abundance of falsehood, and that thus, in return for his excess in evil, he has received Cyzicus as his prize, as one who holds the advantage over all who wrestled in the dust against the truth in like manner; and that, for his victory in blasphemy, he has been proclaimed with brilliant and conspicuous heralding, in that Cyzicus has been singled out for him as the wage of his absurdity by those who thus preside over the games.

And that these things have been conceded by us according to the sense stated, our own words show—namely that we say Cyzicus became his as the prize of impiety, not as the successful achievement of a defence.

What, then, have our statements in common with this childish tangle of sophistries, that on their account a trial at law and a defence should be established as accruing to him? For such a thing is like the case of one who at a banquet has poured down more unmixed wine than the rest, and on this account has been deemed worthy of some reward by his fellow-drinkers, and then makes his victory at the banquet a proof that he has also won his cause in the courts and prevailed in litigation.

For it will be open to that man too to imitate the contrivance of this syllogism:

'If the prize is the token and consummation of victory, and if victory points to a trial at law, and if the trial at law of necessity brings along with it an accusation, then I have won my cause—since I was crowned as I drank in the contest of heavy drinking.'

But someone will surely say to one who thus preens himself, that the contests in a court of law are of one kind, and the manner of the athletic bout at banquets is quite another;

and that he who has won by the drinking-cup gains nothing more from such a victory over his adversaries in the courts, even though he be resplendent with garlands of flowers.

So then, neither does he who has been ranked ahead of his fellows in the argument of impiety thereby furnish the testimony that he has won in the tribunal by the prize of impiety.

Is it our testimony that he holds pre-eminence in impiety? For if, having made his defence before the judges and prevailed over his adversaries, he had thus received the honour of Cyzicus, he would have had grounds to bring forward our words against ourselves;

but if throughout his discourse he continually testifies that, fleeing the ill-will of those who held the deciding vote, he silently accepts the punishment inflicted upon him, having refused to conduct his contests among enemies—then why does he deceive himself and misuse the word 'prize' as testimony that he made a defence, this admirable man failing to perceive the true import of the word 'prize': namely, that Cyzicus was quaffed off to him as a kind of reward and prize of valour for his supremacy in impiety?

But since he accepts the prize as it pleases him, namely as a gift of victory, let him also accept what is joined to that argument—that through his victory he gained the advantage in impiety.

For since he uses our own words against us, it is only just that he use either both or neither.

But in what concerns us he is of this sort;

and as for the rest, of the things spoken by way of insult, will he be shown to speak any truth? In these he sets forth against him that he is cowardly and faint-hearted, that he shrinks from the harsher of labours, and all such things, laboriously working up the passions of cowardice: a little house in which to hide, a door securely fastened, panic-stricken terror at the fear of those who enter, and voice and glance and the tokens upon the face and all such things by which the affliction of cowardice is betokened.

But even if he were convicted of no other falsehood, this alone would suffice to expose his character.

For who does not know that great champion, in the time of the emperor Valens's hostility against the Churches of the Lord—how he rose above the vast weight of those affairs by the greatness of his purpose, and stood higher than the things that terrified, lifted up in spirit above every consternation devised against him? Who among the people of the East, who among those dwelling at the farthest limits of our inhabited world, was ignorant of his battle for the truth against the powers that ruled? Who was not astounded when he looked upon his adversary? For he was no ordinary man, nor had he acquired the power of conquering by counterfeit little sophistries—where both to prevail is inglorious and to be defeated brings no harm—but he had beneath him at that time the whole flourishing empire of the Romans;

and priding himself upon so vast a sovereignty, he had been forestalled by the slander against our doctrine, since Eudoxius of Germanicia had by deceit drawn him over to his own side;

and he had all who were in office, and all the flatterers about him, and all who wielded power in affairs, as fellow-combatants in his own onset—some willingly inclined toward him because of the like-mindedness of their views, but the many readily gratifying his pleasure out of fear of his dominion, and displaying their zeal toward him through their harshness against those who held fast to the sound faith.

when banishments and confiscations and exiles, threats and penalties, dangers, imprisonments, dungeons, scourgings—and what indeed of the most dreadful things was not put into effect—against those who did not consent to the emperor's onset;

when it was more perilous for the pious to be caught in the house of God than to be convicted of the most wicked of crimes.