Gennadius, discoursing on the writings of St. Maximus, writes that he composed two treatises on the life of St. Eusebius of Vercelli. Now we have observed elsewhere that homilies and sermons were once wont to be called treatises. But perhaps there will be someone who doubts whether those two treatises which Gennadius mentions are these very two homilies of ours, or two out of the five sermons which Muratori published in the fourth volume of the Anecdota. Yet if we consider the documents, those which bear the name of Maximus ascribed to these two homilies are far more excellent both in number and in antiquity than those which belong to those five Muratorian sermons. Among those documents three Vatican codices are numbered, 1268, 1273, and 1277; three Cassinese also, I, 109, and [ ].
To these are added the St. Gall, the Vercelli 66, the Martinian, the Regensburg of St. Emmeram. With these agree the copies of the Gennadian catalogue and all the editions of the works of Maximus; to which the style, the sublimity of doctrine, and the manner of adducing the testimonies of Scripture are certainly in support—all which everyone plainly perceives to be Maximian. What then? If, while Gennadius testifies that Maximus wrote two treatises on the life of St. Eusebius, then in these two homilies Eusebius is treated of copiously; whereas, on the contrary, in the sermons the discourse is instituted about the Maccabees and about monks rather than about Eusebius, and that ineptly, confusedly, unpolishedly, so as certainly not to be of Maximus;
but seem rather to be patched together and cobbled up out of the little works of some unskilled and rude writer? But of these things much more in the preface to the appendix of sermons. The title of this homily, which we now give, differs in the codices. In the St. Gall, the Vatican 1273, the Regensburg, the Reichenau, the Martinian, it is set forth in this way: 'On the birthday of St. Eusebius of Vercelli.' Two Vatican codices, 1766 and 1277, and two Cassinese likewise, have thus: 'On the birthday of confessors'—assuredly otherwise than the matter demands. The Vercelli, finally: 'On the solemnity of blessed Eusebius of Vercelli, sermon of St. Maximus the bishop.' We have followed that which the codices indicated in the first place exhibit.
Honouring the memories of the holy Fathers with religious assemblies, dearest brethren, we marvel both at their own merits and at the divine gifts within them: who are for this reason venerable to us, because, despising the light of the present life and holding in contempt the torment of their own bodies, they conquered the raging world for the love of God; as this most blessed Father of ours, when, rising up with a more fervent spirit for the assertion of the indisputable Godhead, he struggled against the Arian impieties, and pacified the Churches of God—troubled by the storms and whirlwinds of the heretics who assailed them—with the tranquillity of a serene faith, and sought for himself eternal rewards by manifold suffering, following without doubt the unshaken footsteps of Him to whom the Lord says:
'Thou art Peter, and upon this rock I will build My Church: and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it' (Matt. 16). Truly and deservedly is he to be honoured by all posterity who, following the solidity of the firmest rock, confounded the enemies of Christ by the authority of the heavenly Spirit and triumphed by the fortitude of untiring patience. Nor did the gate of hell, as has been said, prevail against him, who opened for himself the entrance of the eternal gate, having confessed the King of glory; or how should that vital gate not lie open to him who, taught by the fullness of the evangelical reading, asserted in the Father and in His Son the inscrutable mystery of a single majesty.
teaching and showing what was, in one and the same Son of God, both the reason of the assumed flesh and the privilege of the natural Godhead? He knew assuredly that the Saviour had said: 'I and the Father are one: and he who sees Me sees the Father also' (John 12 and 14). This confession rendered him both honourable on earth and glorious in heaven. But I deem it now necessary that, on the occasion of this blessed Father of ours—whom the faith of the catholic Churches, unswervingly kept by him, advanced to so great a glory—we too, by the gracious bestowal of the Lord, may be imbued with the saving testimonies of the Lord's teaching. The Lord says, therefore: 'I and the Father are one.' He who says 'we are' is not solitary:
he who says 'we are one' certainly cannot be divided from Him with whom he is one. Why do you now attempt, O heretic, to construct a diversity in the Father and His Son, when the Son, teaching us the truth of His own substance, has said: 'I and the Father are one'? He who says both 'one' and 'we are' neither divides himself by separation nor confounds himself by union. He who is one with the Father differs from the Father neither in perpetuity nor is discordant in power; and though He is one with the Father, yet He is asserted to be born of the Father, lest—as the impious Arius blasphemes—the Son be believed to be either some creature or unequal to the Father. You hear, then, O man, God born of God; but you have this in such depth that you should believe it by faith; you have not that which you should discuss by arguments.
You hear that the Son was born of the Father; but lest you should imagine any sex within the Godhead, that very Son is called both the Word and the Light. He is called too the Power of God and the Wisdom of God, so that you may understand that the Father did not beget in a bodily way, as it were through the members of generation, but that Power came forth from Power through the ineffable mystery of His majesty, and Light streamed forth from Light. Again, lest you should think that the Word itself is not the substance of the truth but merely the uttered speech of a speaking God, He is called the Son, that in Him you may learn there is both a harmony with Him who is the Father, and an affection.
Again, because He is called Light, lest perchance you should suppose Him to shine with a borrowed radiance, as a ray of the sun or the brightness of a lamp, the blessed Evangelist John—to whom it was granted both to behold and to reveal the hidden things of God—says concerning Him: «There was the true Light» (John 1). He says «the true Light,» that you may know Him to be no mere brightness of some created and failing light, but that, being Light, He is truth from the true Light. And He is so truly Light that not only does He not need to be illumined, but He has the power of illumining; for He illumines, as we read, «every man coming into this world» (ibid.). Christ therefore says, as has been noted: «He who sees Me, sees also the Father» (John 14). «He who sees Me,» He says, «sees also the Father.»
How are they not both two and one, since the one is seen in the other, and to have seen the one is the knowledge of both? And in very truth, brethren, just as to see the Son is to see the Father, so, when the Father is understood, the Son also is understood; for he who believes and confesses the Father to be eternal must of necessity believe the Son to be coeternal. But let us now see what this vision of the Son is, whereby the Father also is asserted to be seen at the same time. He without doubt sees the Father in the Son who believes that the Son, according to the unthinkable nature of the Godhead, was ineffably born of the Father, and that He who was born can be no other than He who begot. He sees the Father in Christ who has believed the works of Christ to be not of some alien capacity, but of the Father's power.
He sees the Father in the Son who beholds Him, under the fellowship of the paternal name, turning water into wine—not by the skill of some ingenious art, but by the mere power of His command—changing the natures of created things, and by the abundance of His blessing multiplying the eaten bread to satisfy the hungry with fruitful mouthfuls; for by multiplying food in the mouths of those who ate, and by re-forming loaves from crumbs, He made it well-nigh no marvel that manna once flowed from heaven. Who would not observe in Christ the work of paternal equality, when he beholds Him with the authority of a master terrifying demons, putting sickness to flight, and giving eyes to a man that had not yet been formed in the man?
A sick woman, touching the fringes of His garment by a hidden approach, snatched away her healing as though by stealth; yet He, as the true God, from whom no secret of human hearts could lie hid, both at once disclosed the cure that had gone forth from Him, and to the surrounding crowds proclaimed the merit of the believing woman. He sees the paternal majesty in the Son who beholds Christ raising the dead—whether from their beds or from their tombs—not by the favour of one who entreats, but by the command of one who orders, and with the assent of the paternal will. If it is the work of divine operation to have created man and given him life, how is it not a work of the divine to have restored health to one deceased? «He who sees Me,» He says, «sees also the Father» (John 14).
How, brethren, could there be in the Father and in His Son one undivided vision, unless there were in Him one undivided substance? Christ therefore is by nature God, by nature also man, in both true, in both perfect; for He both truly took manhood from His mother, and has the Godhead naturally from the Father. He who thus sees the Son sees also the Father; for since we confess Christ to be the same God and Lord, we necessarily assign His sufferings to the man and His wonders to God, so that the Only-begotten of God may be understood to be neither unequal to the paternal majesty nor unlike the maternal flesh. By this same faith, dearly beloved, the Arian perfidy was refuted by our fathers;
for that Arius, contradicting the Gospel of the blessed John, while he denies that the Word of God was God and was with God, being blinded by the darkness of his own unbelief, could see neither the Father nor the Son; and while he contends that the Maker of all things is a creature, and strives to ascribe temporal things to the God who is beyond time, confounded by the frenzy of his own presumption, he lost the saving mystery of both natures in Christ. But that venerable father, who had read that the Lord said: «I am in the Father, and the Father is in Me» (ibid.),
knowing that in this doctrine there is a distinction of persons, not a difference of nature, held fast and taught the inseparable unity of the Father and of His Son, who are not one person but one being; asserting alike in Christ the Lord both passible flesh and impassible Godhead.