Do you, a co-heir of Christ, expect an inheritance of the world? Interpret the word "monk," that is, your name: what are you doing in a crowd, you who are alone? And this I forewarn you not as a skilled sailor with unbroken ship or cargo warning those ignorant of the waves, but rather as one lately cast up on the shore by shipwreck, announcing with fearful voice to those about to sail. In that surge the Charybdis of luxury swallows up salvation; there with maiden face the smiling lust of Scylla flatters, to work the shipwreck of chastity; here is the barbarous shore, here the pirate devil with his companions carries chains for those to be captured. Believe not, be not secure.
Though the outspread sea smile after the manner of a still pool, though the surface of the lying element be scarcely ruffled by the breeze upon its back, this great plain has its mountains; within, danger is enclosed; within is the enemy. Loose the cables, hoist the sails; let the cross be fixed as a yard-arm upon the mastheads: this calm is a tempest. "What then? Are all who dwell in a city not Christians?" Your case is not the same as that of the rest. Hearken to the Lord saying: If thou wilt be perfect, go, sell all that thou hast and give to the poor, and come, follow me. But you have promised that you are perfect. For when, having abandoned the army, you made yourself a eunuch for the kingdom of heaven, what else did you follow than the perfect life?
But the perfect servant of Christ has nothing besides Christ; or, if he has anything besides Christ, he is not perfect. And if he is not perfect, when he has promised God that he would be perfect, he has lied beforehand. But the mouth that lies slays the soul. Therefore, to conclude, if you are perfect, why do you desire your father's goods? If you are not perfect, you have deceived the Lord. The Gospel thunders with divine voices: Ye cannot serve two masters; and does anyone dare to make Christ a liar by serving both mammon and the Lord? He cries aloud often: If any man will come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. And shall I, laden with gold, suppose that I follow Christ?
He who says that he abides in Christ ought, even as he walked, himself also so to walk. But if you have nothing — as I know you will answer — why, being so well prepared for war, do you not serve as a soldier? Unless perhaps you think to do this in your own homeland, though the Lord did not work his signs in his own country. And why is that? Take the reason with authority: No prophet has honor in his own country. "I do not seek honor," you will say; "my conscience suffices me." Neither did the Lord seek it, seeing that, lest he should be made king by the crowds, he fled. But where there is no honor, there is contempt; where contempt, there frequent injury; where injury, there also indignation; where indignation, there no rest; where there is no rest, there the mind is often drawn away from its purpose;
but where through disquiet something is taken away from one's pursuit, less is made because of what is removed; and where there is less, it cannot be called perfect. From this reckoning arises that conclusion: that a monk cannot be perfect in his own homeland. But to be unwilling to be perfect is to sin. But, driven from this step, you will appeal to the clergy: "Would I dare to say anything about these men, who certainly reside in their own cities?" Far be it from me to speak anything sinister about those who, succeeding to the apostolic rank, confect the body of Christ with sacred mouth, through whom we also are Christians, who, holding the keys of the kingdom of heaven, in a manner judge before the day of judgment, who preserve the bride of the Lord in sober chastity.
But, as I have laid down before, the cause of the monk is one thing, that of the clergy another. The clergy feed the sheep; I am fed. They live from the altar; to me, as to an unfruitful tree, the axe is laid to the roots, if I bring no gift to the altar. Nor can I plead poverty, since in the Gospel I see the old woman casting in the two coins which were all that remained to her. It is not lawful for me to sit before a presbyter; to him it is lawful, if I sin, to deliver me to Satan for the destruction of the flesh, that the spirit may be saved. And indeed under the old law, whosoever did not obey the priests was either put outside the camp and stoned by the people, or, with his neck laid beneath the sword, expiated his contempt with his blood.
But now the disobedient man is cut down by the spiritual sword, or, cast out of the church, is torn to pieces by the raging mouth of demons. But if the pious blandishments of the brethren also solicit you to the same order, I will rejoice at your ascent, I will fear at your fall. He that desireth the episcopate desireth a good work. We know this; but join what follows: But it behooveth such a one to be blameless, the husband of one wife, sober, chaste, prudent, of good behavior, hospitable, apt to teach, not given to wine, no striker, but modest. And, the rest concerning him being expounded, he applied no less diligence to the third grade, saying:
Deacons likewise chaste, not double-tongued, not given to much wine, not greedy of filthy lucre, holding the mystery of faith in a pure conscience. And let these also first be proved, and so let them minister, having no crime. Woe to that man who, not having a wedding garment, enters in to the supper! Nothing remains but that he straightway hear: Friend, how camest thou in hither? And when he is speechless, let it be said to the servants: Take him by the feet and hands and cast him into the outer darkness; there shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth. Woe to him who, binding the talent he received in a napkin, while the others make gains, has reserved only that which he had received! Forthwith he shall be struck by the cry of the indignant lord:
Wicked servant, why didst thou not give my money to the exchange, that I at my coming might have exacted it with interest? That is to say: "You should have deposited at the altar that which you could not carry. For while you, a slothful trader, hold the denarius, you have occupied the place of another who could have doubled the money." Wherefore, just as he that ministers well acquires for himself a good grade, so he that comes unworthily to the Lord's cup shall be guilty of the body and blood of the Lord. Not all bishops are bishops. You look at Peter, but consider Judas too. You admire Stephen, but look also at Nicolaus, whom the Lord hates in his Apocalypse; who devised things so shameful and wicked that the heresy of the Ophites is born from that root. Let each one prove himself, and so let him approach.
Ecclesiastical dignity does not make a man a Christian. Cornelius the centurion, while still a heathen, is flooded with the gift of the Holy Spirit; the boy Daniel judges the elders; Amos, stripping the mulberries of the brambles, is suddenly a prophet; David the shepherd is chosen as king; Jesus loves most the least of the disciples. Recline lower, brother, that when a lesser comes you may be bidden to go up higher. Upon whom does the Lord rest, save upon the humble and quiet and him that trembles at his words? To whom more is entrusted, from him more is required. The mighty shall be mightily tormented.
Nor let anyone applaud himself merely for the chastity of a clean body, since for every idle word which men shall have spoken they must render an account for it in the day of judgment, since even a reproach against a brother is the guilt of murder. It is not easy to stand in Paul's place, to hold the rank of those already reigning with Christ, lest perchance an angel come who shall rend the veil of your temple, who shall move your candlestick from its place. About to build a tower, reckon up the cost of the coming work. Salt that has lost its savor is good for nothing but to be cast out and trodden underfoot by swine. If a monk fall, the priest will pray for him; but for the priest's fall, who shall pray?
But since my discourse has sailed forth from the rocky places, and among the hollow reefs the fragile skiff has advanced into the deep amid foaming waves, the sails must be spread to the winds, and, the reefs of questions having been forded, after the manner of rejoicing sailors the chantey of the epilogue must be sung. O desert, blooming with the flowers of Christ! O solitude, in which are born those stones from which, in the Apocalypse, the city of the great King is built! O wilderness rejoicing in familiarity with God! What are you doing in the world, brother, you who are greater than the world? How long do the shadows of roofs press upon you? How long does the smoky prison of these cities shut you in? Believe me, I know not what greater light I behold. It is a delight, the burden of the flesh cast off, to fly to the pure radiance of the ether. Do you fear poverty?
But Christ calls the poor blessed. Are you frightened by labor? But no athlete is crowned without sweat. Do you think of food? But faith feels not hunger. Do you dread to bruise upon the bare ground limbs wasted by fastings? But the Lord lies with you. Does the unkempt shagginess of a squalid head make you shudder? But your head is Christ. Does the boundless vastness of the desert hold you? But do you walk through paradise in your mind. As often as you have ascended thither in thought, so often you will not be in the desert. Is your skin drawn rough for want of baths? But he who has once been washed in Christ has no need to wash again. And, to be brief, that you may hear the Apostle answering to everything:
The sufferings of this present age are not worthy to be compared with the coming glory which shall be revealed in you. You are delicate, dearest, if you wish both to rejoice here with the world and afterward to reign with Christ. It will come, that day will come, when this corruptible and mortal shall put on incorruption and immortality. Blessed is the servant whom the Lord shall find watching. Then at the sound of the trumpet the earth with its peoples shall quake, you shall rejoice. When the Lord is about to give sentence, the world shall bellow mournfully; tribe shall smite breasts against tribe; the once most powerful kings shall throb with naked flank; Jupiter with his offspring shall then be shown truly on fire; foolish Plato shall be brought forth with his disciples; Aristotle's arguments shall avail nothing.
Then you, a rustic and a poor man, shall exult, shall laugh and say: "Behold my crucified God, behold the judge who, wrapped in swaddling clothes, wailed in a manger. This is that son of a laborer and a working woman; this is he who, carried in his mother's bosom, God fled as a man into Egypt; this is he clothed in scarlet, this crowned with thorns, this the magician having a demon and a Samaritan. Behold the hands, O Jew, which thou didst pierce; behold the side, O Roman, which thou didst wound. See the body, whether it be the same which ye said the disciples had secretly carried off by night." That I might say these things to you, brother; that it might befall me to have part in these things, is the present labor hard? XV. To Damasus.
Since the East, dashed against itself by the ancient fury of its peoples, is tearing bit by bit into fragments the Lord's undivided and seamless tunic woven from the top, and the foxes are laying waste the vineyard of Christ, so that amid the broken cisterns which hold no water it is difficult to discern where the sealed fountain and that enclosed garden may be, therefore I have thought I should consult the chair of Peter and the faith praised by the apostolic mouth, now asking food for my soul from that source whence of old I received the garments of Christ. Nor indeed could so great a waste of the liquid element and the intervening breadth of lands keep me back from the search for the precious pearl. Wheresoever the body shall be, thither shall the eagles also be gathered together.
The patrimony having been squandered by the evil offspring, among you alone the inheritance of the fathers is preserved uncorrupted. There in the fertile turf the earth returns with a hundredfold fruit the purity of the Lord's seed; here the grains, buried in the furrows, degenerate into darnel and wild oats. Now in the West the Sun of righteousness rises; but in the East that Lucifer who had fallen has set his throne above the stars. You are the light of the world, you the salt of the earth, you the vessels of gold and silver; here are the earthen or wooden vessels that await the rod of iron and the eternal fire. Although therefore the greatness of your dignity terrifies me, yet your kindness invites me. From the priest I demand the victim's salvation, from the shepherd the protection of the sheep. Let envy withdraw, let the ambition of Roman eminence recede:
I speak with the successor of the fisherman and the disciple of the cross. I, following none first but Christ, am joined in communion with your Blessedness, that is, with the chair of Peter. Upon that rock I know the Church to be built. Whosoever shall eat the lamb outside this house is profane. If any shall not have been in Noah's ark, he shall perish while the flood reigns. And because for my misdeeds I have migrated to that solitude which borders Syria with the adjoining edge of barbarism, and cannot always, with so many spaces lying between, seek the holy one of the Lord from your holiness, therefore here I follow your colleagues, the Egyptian confessors, and beneath the cargo-ships I, a little skiff, lie hidden. I know not Vitalis, I reject Meletius, I am ignorant of Paulinus.
Whosoever gathers not with you scatters; that is, he who is not of Christ is of Antichrist. Now therefore — alas for the grief! — after the Nicene faith, after the decree of Alexandria issued jointly with the West, a novel name, that of three hypostases, is demanded of me, a Roman, by the offspring of the Arians, the Campenses. Who, I pray, of the apostles handed down these things? What new teacher of the nations, Paul, taught these things? We ask what they suppose can be understood by three hypostases: "Three subsisting persons," they say. We answer that we too so believe: the sense does not suffice, they insist upon the very word, because I know not what poison lurks in the syllables. We cry out:
"If anyone does not confess three hypostases as three things subsisting in themselves, that is, as three subsisting persons, let him be anathema" — and, because we do not utter their terms, we are judged heretics. But if anyone, understanding hypostasis as ousia, does not say one hypostasis in three persons, he is a stranger to Christ, and under this confession we are branded together with you with the cautery of the union. Decide, I beseech you: if it please you, I will not fear to say three hypostases; if you command, let a new faith be composed after that of Nicaea, and let us, the orthodox, confess in like terms with the Arians. The whole school of secular letters knows hypostasis to be nothing else than ousia. And will anyone, I ask, with sacrilegious mouth proclaim three substances?
There is one sole nature of God, which truly is — for as to that which subsists, it does not have its being from elsewhere, but it is its own — while the rest, which have been created, even though they seem to be, are not, because at some time they were not, and that which was not can again cease to be. God alone, who is eternal, that is, who has no beginning, truly holds the name of essence. Therefore also he speaks to Moses out of the bush: I am who am; and again: He who is hath sent me. There were surely at that time angels, heaven, earth, and seas: and how does God claim as proper to himself the common name of essence? But because that alone is the uncreated nature, and in three persons one Godhead subsists, which truly is, there is one nature:
whoever says there are three, that is, three hypostases, attempts under the name of piety to assert three natures. And if it be so, why are we severed from Arius by walls, being joined with him in perfidy? Let Ursinus be united with your Blessedness, let Auxentius be associated with Ambrose. Far be this from the Roman faith: let not the religious hearts of the peoples drink in so great a sacrilege. Let it suffice us to say one substance, three subsisting persons, perfect, equal, coeternal; let the three hypostases be passed over in silence, if it please you, and let one be held. It is not of good omen when the words disagree in the same sense. Let the belief I have recalled suffice us; or, if you think it right, write that we ought to say three hypostases with their interpretations.
We do not deny it; but, believe me, poison lurks beneath the honey. The angel of Satan has transfigured himself into an angel of light. They interpret 'hypostasis' rightly, yet when I say that I hold the very thing which they themselves expound, I am judged a heretic. Why do they cling so anxiously to a single word? Why do they hide beneath ambiguous language? If they believe as they interpret, I do not condemn what they hold; if I believe as they pretend they feel, let them permit me to speak their meaning in my own words. Wherefore I beseech your Beatitude, by Him who was crucified, the salvation of the world, by the consubstantial Trinity, that authority be given me by your letters either to be silent about the hypostases or to speak of them.
And lest perhaps the obscurity of the place in which I dwell should mislead the carriers of my letters, deign to send your writings to the presbyter Evagrius, whom you know very well. At the same time, signify also with whom at Antioch I ought to hold communion; for the Campenses, since they are joined with the Tarsian heretics, seek nothing else than that, propped up by the authority of your communion, they may proclaim three hypostases in the old sense. XVI. TO DAMASUS. The importunate woman in the Gospel at last deserved to be heard; and though the door was shut and the servants within, though it was the middle of the night, one friend received loaves from another. God Himself, who can be overcome by no forces set against Him, is conquered by the prayers of the publican; the city of Nineveh, which had perished through sin, stood firm through its weeping.
To what end is all this recalled in so long a preamble? Namely, that you, being great, may look upon one who is small; that you, a rich shepherd, may not despise the sickly sheep. Christ bore the thief from the cross into paradise, and lest anyone should ever think conversion too late, He made the punishment of murder into martyrdom. Christ, I say, joyfully embraces the returning prodigal son, and leaving the ninety-nine sound sheep, He carries on the shoulders of the good Shepherd the one little ewe that had remained. Paul from a persecutor becomes a preacher; he is blinded in his bodily eyes that he may see the more with his mind, and he who led the bound servants of Christ to the council of the Jews afterward glories in the chains of Christ.
I therefore, as I have already written before, having received the garment of Christ in the city of Rome, am now held on the barbarous frontier of Syria. And lest you think this sentence upon me came from another, I myself determined what I deserved. But, as the pagan poet says, 'He who runs across the sea changes his sky, not his soul'; so the relentless enemy has followed at my back, that I now endure greater wars in the wilderness. For on this side the Arian madness rages, propped up by the powers of the world; on that side the Church, torn into three parts, hastens to snatch me to itself. The old authority of the monks dwelling round about rises against me. Meanwhile I keep crying out: 'Whoever is joined to the chair of Peter is mine.' Meletius, Vitalis, and Paulinus all say they cleave to you:
I could believe it, if only one man asserted it; but as it is, either the two are lying, or all are. Therefore I beseech your Beatitude, by the cross of the Lord, by the necessary glory of our faith, His Passion: as you follow the apostles in honor, may you follow them also in merit; as you are to sit on your throne with the Twelve who shall judge; as another shall gird you in old age together with Peter; as you shall obtain the citizenship of heaven together with Paul — so signify to me by your letter with whom in Syria I ought to hold communion. Do not despise the soul for which Christ died. XVII. TO THE PRESBYTER MARCUS AT CHALCIS. I had indeed resolved to use the voice of the psalmist who says: 'When the sinner stood against me, I was dumb and was humbled and kept silence from good things'; and again:
'But I, like a deaf man, did not hear, and like a dumb man I did not open my mouth; and I became like a man who does not hear.' But since love overcomes all things and resolve conquers the affections, I do not so much repay those who do me injury as answer you who ask. For among Christians, as a certain one says, it is not he who suffers, but he who inflicts, the insult, that is wretched. And first indeed, before I speak with you about my faith, which you know very well, I am compelled to cry out against the barbarism of this place in a well-known verse: 'What race of men is this? What fatherland so barbarous permits this custom? We are barred from the hospitality of the shore, they stir up wars and forbid us to set foot upon the first land,' and so forth.
These things we have taken from the pagan poet for this reason: that he who does not keep the peace of Christ may learn peace at least from a heathen. I am called a heretic for preaching a consubstantial Trinity; I am accused of Sabellian impiety for proclaiming with untiring voice three subsisting persons, true, entire, and perfect. If it is by the Arians, deservedly; if by the orthodox, then those who so impugn this faith have ceased to be orthodox — or, if it please them, let them condemn me as a heretic along with the West, a heretic along with Egypt, that is, along with Damasus and Peter. Why do they charge one man alone, apart from his associates? If a stream flows scanty, it is not the fault of the channel, but of the spring. It is a shame to say it:
From the caverns of our cells we condemn the world, if, while rolled in sackcloth and ashes, we pass sentence upon bishops. What business has a kingly spirit beneath the tunic of a penitent? Chains, filth, and long hair are not the marks of a diadem, but of mourning. Let them permit me, I beg, to say nothing. Why do they tear at him who does not deserve their envy? I am a heretic: what is that to you? Be at peace, it has already been said. Clearly you fear lest, being a most eloquent man in the Syriac or Greek tongue, I should go round the churches, seduce the peoples, and contrive a schism. I have snatched nothing from anyone, I receive nothing in idleness. Daily by my own hand and my own sweat I seek my food, knowing it is written by the Apostle: 'He who does not work, neither let him eat.'
With what groaning, with what grief I have written these things, venerable and holy father, Jesus is my witness. 'I have kept silence; shall I be silent forever?' says the Lord. Not one corner of the desert is granted me. Daily my faith is demanded of me, as though I had been reborn without faith. I confess as they wish: it does not please them. I subscribe: they do not believe. One thing only pleases them, that I should depart hence. Now, now I yield. They have torn from me a part of my own soul, my dearest brothers. Behold, they long to depart — nay, they do depart — saying it is better to dwell among wild beasts than with such Christians; and I myself, did not the weakness of my body and the harshness of winter hold me back, would flee even now.
Nevertheless, until springtime comes, I beseech you that the hospitality of the desert be granted me for a few months; or, if even this seems too slow, I depart. 'The earth is the Lord's and the fullness thereof.' Let them ascend to heaven alone; let Christ have died for them alone; let them have, possess, and glory. But 'as for me, God forbid that I should glory, save in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom the world is crucified to me, and I to the world.' As to the faith, concerning which you have deigned to write, I have given the written confession of faith to holy Cyril. Whoever does not so believe is estranged from Christ. For the rest, I have as witnesses of my faith your ears and those of the blessed brother Zenobius, whom together with you all of us who are here most heartily greet. XVIII A. TO DAMASUS. Uzziah:
'I saw the Lord sitting upon a throne high and lifted up, and the house was full of His glory. And the seraphim stood round about Him: six wings to the one and six wings to the other; and with two they veiled His face, and with two they veiled His feet, and with two they flew. And they cried one to another and said: Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of Sabaoth; the whole earth is full of His glory. And the lintel was lifted up at the voice with which they cried, and the house was filled with smoke. And I said: O wretched me, for I am pierced with compunction, because, being a man and having unclean lips, I dwell also in the midst of a people having unclean lips, and I have seen with my eyes the King, the Lord of Sabaoth.'
'And one of the seraphim was sent to me, and in his hand he had a live coal, which he had taken with tongs from the altar. And he touched my mouth and said: Behold, this has touched thy lips, and it will take away thine iniquities and will cleanse thy sins round about. And I heard the voice of the Lord saying: Whom shall I send, and who will go to this people? And I said: Behold, here am I, send me. And He said: Go and say to this people: With the ear you shall hear and shall not understand, and beholding you shall look and shall not see.' 'And it came to pass in the year in which King Uzziah died: I saw the Lord sitting upon a throne high and lifted up.' Before we speak of the vision, it seems necessary to treat of who Uzziah was, how many years he reigned, and who among the other nations were his contemporaries.
And as to his person, as we read in the books of Kings and Chronicles, he was a righteous man and did what was right in the sight of the Lord, building the temple, constructing an aqueduct, offering vessels, and by this merit overcoming his adversaries; and what is the greatest sign of piety, he had many prophets under his rule. This man, so long as the priest Zechariah, surnamed 'the Understanding,' lived, was pleasing to God and entered His shrine with all reverence. But after Zechariah died, wishing to offer the sacrificial gifts by himself, he usurped the priestly order not so much piously as boldly; and when the Levites and the other priests cried out against him:
'Are you not Uzziah the king and not a priest?' — he refused to listen, and at once was struck with leprosy on his forehead, according to the prophet's voice which says: 'Fill their faces with shame, O Lord' — that part of the body which the priest covered with a plate of gold, which in Ezekiel the Lord commands to be marked with the impress of the letter Tau, of which David exults, saying: 'The light of Thy countenance is sealed upon us, O Lord,' upon which the insolent Philistine, struck by a sling-stone, perished. Now Uzziah reigned fifty-two years, at which time among the Latins Amulius, and among the Athenians Agamestor the eleventh, held rule.
After whose death the prophet Isaiah saw this vision which we now strive to expound — that is, in the year in which Romulus, the founder of the Roman empire, was born, as will be able to be made clear to those who wish to read the Book of Times, which we have translated from the Greek tongue into the Latin language. 'And it came to pass in the year in which King Uzziah died: I saw the Lord sitting upon a throne high and lifted up.' The literal history being set forth, the spiritual understanding follows, for the sake of which the history itself has been repeated. While the leprous king lived, and, so far as in him lay, was destroying the priesthood, Isaiah could not see the vision.
As long as he held the kingdom in Judea, the prophet did not lift up his eyes to heaven; the heavenly things were not unlocked to him, the Lord of Sabaoth did not appear, nor in the mystery of faith was the thrice-holy Name heard. But when he died, all the things which the following discourse will show were disclosed with open light. Something of the same sort is also written in Exodus: while Pharaoh lived, the people of Israel did not sigh to the Lord because of their toil of mud and brick and straw; while he reigned, no one sought the God of the fathers, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. But when he died, the children of Israel sighed, as the Scripture says: