You, since you are ministers, shamelessly claim for yourselves the whole lordship of the banquet, although the most blessed Paul confesses himself and the rest to be servants with humility; lest anyone should think that his hope is to be placed in the apostles or bishops alone, he says thus: 'For what is Paul, or what is Apollos? Surely ministers of Him in whom you have believed.' Therefore in all who serve there is not lordship, but ministry. You see therefore now, brother Parmenian, that of the three components mentioned above, the first, the three-fold one, is unmoved, unconquered, and unchangeable; but the person of the worker is temporary. It now remains to say something about the merit of the believer, whose is the faith which the Son of God set before both His own holiness and majesty.
For you cannot be holier than Christ is; to whom, when that woman came whose daughter was dead and asked that she be raised, He promised nothing of His own power, but inquired after another's faith, so that, if the woman believed, the daughter would rise for the mother's belief; if she did not believe, the power of the Son of God would lie idle and cease. The woman is questioned; she answered that she believed it could be done — what she was asking. She is bidden to go; the woman returns to her house, finds the girl alive whom she had left dead. She does not rush into kisses, does not hasten into embraces, but returns to give thanks to the Savior; and that He might show that the Son of God had been at leisure, and that faith alone had worked: 'Go,' He says, 'woman, in peace; your faith has saved you.'
Where is that which you say: 'It belongs to the giver, not to the receiver'? What think you also of the centurion's faith? Whose servant, when he was grievously ill, sought the Savior to drive off death from him. Already Christ was coming to the dying boy; but the centurion held Him back in such a way that, confessing the unworthiness of his roof, he said that the Son of God ought not to enter entire, but should send His power, by which the boy, with death put to flight, might have been able to revive. Not the bravery of the centurion, not his wisdom was praised, but his faith: and the boy was healed in that very hour. Surely 'it belongs to the giver, not to the receiver.' There are many of this kind in the Gospel concerning perfect faith, but let even three testimonies of faith be completed.
What think you also of that woman who, from the secret matter peculiar to women, when she had labored for twelve years and had spent all her substance on physicians, when she saw such great mighty works being celebrated by the Son of God, went forward into the crowd; she sees the physician, she sees also the people. Pain compelled her to seek the medicine; shame hindered her, lest she disclose her case before men. Silent faith found a counsel. 'I will put forth,' she says, 'my hand and touch the hem of this garment, and I shall be healed.' With no one seeing, she put forth her hand among the crowds, touched, and was healed; nor did she dare to disclose what she had not dared to ask. But lest the fruit of faith should seem to lie hidden among those ignorant of it, the Savior says thus: 'Who touched me?'
His disciples marveled, saying: 'The crowds press upon you; and you say: Who touched me?' And Christ: 'Who, I say, touched me? I perceived power going out from me.' So the woman confessed that she had touched and was healed. Long before, a mother had asked for her daughter, a centurion had requested for his servant; in this place neither did the woman ask, nor did Christ promise, but faith, as much as it presumed, exacted: surely 'it belongs to the giver, not to the receiver.' Now as for what, in order to amplify your treatises, brother Parmenian, you wished to describe at length — Naaman the Syrian, as a kind of unripe mass of most hardened breaking sores — what does this pertain to the present case?
You would say this well, and could rightly use a long discourse, if you found some catechumen of most scabrous character, who bore a most hardened mind, who would refuse to receive the most gentle grace of the saving water. Well would you show by your words the renewal of the man; well would you demonstrate that the inveterate natural hardness can be changed into infant flesh and softened. But in this affair, which is being treated between the parties at the present time, why was such a passage commemorated by you? In which it is not read that anyone washed that aforementioned leprous Syrian, or that at Elisha's command he washed, so that he might deservedly be washed better a second time. And even if this were done, it would not occur to us as something you might rightly imitate.
For it is not read that he first washed in the rivers of Syria, or was washed by anyone and profited nothing. For even if this were read, it would pertain not to the praise of Elisha, who did not wash but gave counsel, but to the glory of the Jordan, that to that man in that river the primal grace came forth — in which afterward, under John, through confession unto the penitence of the peoples, sins were to die. Finally, what sort is that part of your treatise about the heavenly nuptials, where, cutting off the hope of things to come, you placed the whole in the present time, saying that one is cast out from your society who has deceived your doorkeepers and ministers, so that he is thrust out with insult from the communion of the faithful.
If it is so, then there is nothing for faith to hope, nothing for the resurrection to represent, nothing further to be expected in the heavens, nothing that that King [heavenly] and God the father of the household may acknowledge in His own banquet, since He rejoices in the presence of many and is saddened by the absence of some. And He says that many are called, but few chosen; there will be nothing at which He is angry with the one not having the wedding garment, since the Son of God Himself, Christ, is both the bridegroom and the garment and the tunic floating in the water, which clothes many and awaits the infinite, and does not fail in clothing. But lest anyone should say that I have rashly called the Son of God a garment, let him read the Apostle saying: 'As many of you as were baptized in the name of Christ have put on Christ.'
O tunic ever one and unchangeable, which fittingly clothes all ages and forms, and is neither wrinkled on infants, nor stretched on the young, nor altered on women! Surely that day will come when the heavenly nuptials begin to be celebrated; there those who have kept the single baptism will recline in security. For whoever among you has consented to be rebaptized, to such a man the resurrection is not denied, because he believed in the resurrection of the flesh; he will indeed rise, but naked. But because he permitted himself to be stripped by you of the wedding garment, he will hear this voice of the father of the household: 'Friend' — that is to say: I recognize you — 'once you had renounced the devil and had been turned to me, and I had given you the wedding garment;
why then have you come thus, not having what I gave you?' This is to say: why do you not have what I gave you? For no one can be angry with one not having a thing which was not given. You had received the wedding garment among these others, and you alone do not have it? Why have you come naked and mournful? Who stripped you of your spoils? What fraudulent jaws did you approach? What robbers did you fall in with? As many as shall come thus will have no place in that banquet. And, that I may even at last make a summary, I believe that even this suffices; though we should by no means state so many proofs: a thousand were baptized in word only, while you were absent: of these, a hundred have died by their own lot. Restrain your hands a little while from this crime.
Let your holiness, as you say, first raise up the buried, amend the dead, if it can, and so return to the living. If you cannot raise the dead, why do you attempt to lay hands on the living, except that there be fulfilled what God spoke about you through the prophet Ezekiel, saying: 'that they might kill the souls which ought not to die.' As it seems to me, it has been clearly demonstrated what wickedly you have done in the divine sacraments. Now those things are to be shown which you can by no means deny that you have done cruelly and foolishly.
For what is so sacrilegious as to break, scrape, and remove the altars of God, upon which you yourselves also once made your offerings — altars on which both the vows of the people and the members of Christ have been borne, on which Almighty God has been invoked, to which, when summoned, the Holy Spirit has descended, and from which many have received both the pledge of eternal salvation and the safeguard of faith and the hope of resurrection? Altars, I say, upon which the Saviour commanded that the gifts of brotherhood be laid only if they had first been established in peace. 'Lay down,' He says, 'your gift before the altar, and go first, be reconciled with your brother, that the priest may be able to make the offering for you.' For what is the altar but the seat of both the body and the blood of Christ? All these things your madness has either scraped or broken or removed.
This unexpiable crime, therefore, if it proceeded from any reasoning, ought to have been done in one manner only. But as I judge, in one place an abundance of wood prompted you to order them broken; in another place a scarcity of wood bade you to scrape the altars; while in yet another place a measure of shame persuaded you merely to remove them. Yet everywhere it is a crime, since you laid sacrilegious and impious hands upon so great a thing. Why should I speak of the hired multitude of the lost, and of the wine given as the wage of wickedness? — wine that, to be drunk by sacrilegious draughts from unclean mouths, was warmed over the fragments of the altars. If by the verdict of spite we seemed sordid to you, what had God done to you, who was wont to be invoked there?
What had Christ done to offend you, whose body and blood dwelt there at appointed moments? Wherein did you offend even your own selves, that you should break those altars on which, before us, through long stretches of time, you made offerings — holily, as you suppose? While you impiously assail our hands there, where the body of Christ dwelt, you have struck your own as well. In this manner you have imitated the Jews: they laid hands on Christ upon the cross; by you He was struck upon the altar. If you wished to persecute the Catholics there, you might at least have spared your own ancient offerings there. There you are now found proud, where but lately you offered in humility; there you gladly sin, where you were wont to pray for the sins of many.
By doing this you have gladly entered into the number of sacrilegious priests, made partners in the crimes of the profane, concerning whom the prophet Elijah lodges his complaint before the Lord; for he spoke in these words, by which you too, among others, have deserved to be accused by him: 'Lord,' he said, 'they have broken down Thy altars.' When he says 'Thy', he shows that it is the affair of God, wherever anything has been offered to God by anyone. It might have sufficed for your madness that you tore apart the members of the Church, that by your seductions you divided the peoples of God, long set in unity. Amid all these things, you might at least have spared the altars. Why have you broken the vows and desires of men together with the altars themselves? For from there the prayer of the people was wont to ascend to the ears of God.
Why have you cut off the path of prayers? And lest supplication might, in its accustomed manner, have its ascent to God, did you labour, as it were, to draw away the ladder with an impious hand? And yet, although the conspiracy of you all is one and the same, in this very point you have transgressed differently, though by a like error. If it sufficed to remove, it was not lawful to break; if it was fitting to break, then to have scraped was a sin; for if it was not lawful — as among you it was decided — then he who broke seems rightly to have broken. He is now guilty who, by scraping, preserved the greater part. What is this new and foolish wisdom, to seek novelty in the inward parts of antiquity, and, having as it were removed a certain skin of the body, to seek in the hidden body, as it were, another skin!
A gift which pertains to itself and is wholly in itself, which is one — from it, when something has been taken away, it can be diminished, but it cannot be transformed. You have indeed scraped away what seemed good to you; but that which you hated is still there. What then? And if you have so conspired that whatever has been touched by us in the name of God, in the very ministry, should appear unclean? What believer does not know that in the performing of the mysteries the very wood is covered with a linen cloth? Amid the very sacraments the veil could be touched, not the wood; or if the veils can be penetrated by touch, then the wood too is penetrated; if the wood can be penetrated, then the earth too is penetrated; if by you the wood is scraped, then let the earth also, which lies beneath, be dug out — make a deep pit, while at your own discretion you seek purity.
But take heed lest you come down to hell and there find Korah, Dathan, and Abiram, those schismatics, your very masters. It is therefore established that you both broke and scraped the altars. What is the reason that in this matter your fury, as it were, seemed presently to grow faint? For we see that afterwards you changed your counsel, and that the altars were now no longer broken nor scraped by you, but only removed. If this sufficed, then by this very thing you yourselves declare that those former deeds of yours ought by no means to have been done.
This monstrous crime, moreover, was doubled by you, when you broke even the chalices, the bearers of Christ's blood, whose forms you recalled into lumps of metal, procuring a price by your wicked traffickings — for which merchandise you would not even choose buyers — sacrilegious in selling thoughtlessly, greedy in selling at all. You even suffered your hands to be scorched, with which, before us, you handled those same chalices. Yet you ordered that thing to be sold indiscriminately; perhaps sordid women bought it for their own uses, pagans bought it to make vessels in which to burn incense to their idols. O wicked crime, O unheard-of outrage — to take away from God what you furnish to idols, to withdraw from Christ what may profit sacrilege!
But I see that on this point you wish, by falsely fabricating odium against us, to take refuge in the prophet Haggai, where it is written: 'Whatsoever the polluted shall have touched is polluted.' When spite intervenes, it is easy for the angry to hurl an insult; but always, when a charge is pressed, manifest proof is necessary. For which of us entered the temples? Who saw sacrilegious rites? Men can be polluted by smoke, by reeking fumes, by sacrileges, by sacrifices, by blood; but in this case, who entered a temple? Who burned offerings to idols? Who was defiled by unclean fumes? Who looked on the shedding of the blood of an unclean beast or of a man? Whom do you prove to have lent counsel to any crime?
In the partnership of some crime, convict even one bishop, if you can. You suspect I know not what primate, who at the same time was said to have walked about. Suspicion is no valid charge. Who accused him? Who convicted him? Where did he either blush or stand confounded? Keep your suspicions to yourselves. Therefore, as we have said above, in this cause whatever could have been done harshly, when the matter is traced back to its origin, we have shown to pertain to your own leaders; whence then is it that you call the Catholics, as it were, polluted?
Is it because we have followed the will and command of God in loving peace, in being in communion with the whole earth, joined to those of the East, where, according to His humanity, Christ was born, where His holy footprints were imprinted, where His adorable feet walked, where by the very Son of God so many and so great miracles were wrought, where so many apostles accompanied Him, where is the sevenfold Church — from which you not only do not grieve to have been cut off, but in a manner even congratulate yourselves? Because we have loved the unity pleasing to God, you call us polluted; because we have given our assent to the Corinthians, Galatians, and Thessalonians and join in communion with them, you call us polluted;
because we do not read stolen readings together with you, you call us polluted — or else deny, if you can, that you read others' readings. Why do you dare to read the epistles written to the Corinthians, you who would not be in communion with the Corinthians? Why do you recite the writings to the Galatians, to the Thessalonians, in whose communion you are not? Since it is established that all these things are so, understand that you have been cut off from the holy Church, and that we are not polluted. Where then is that which you suppose the prophet Haggai can come to your aid? Therefore the altars and vessels above mentioned were long ago in your hands as well as in ours: if you defame our hands, why do you there condemn your own as well? But you say it is written: 'Whatsoever the polluted has touched is polluted.'
Grant that someone is polluted, so that things touched by him may seem polluted. Be it so: if there is touch alone and the invocation of the name of God does not intervene, then the things which the polluted person has touched can be defiled, if God is left out of account. For if there is the invocation of the name of God, that very invocation sanctifies even what seemed to be polluted. In short, when two hundred and fifty censers, which were carried in the hands of sacrilegious men and sinners, when the earth swallowed up those same sinners, the censers, struck from their hands, remained. And while Aaron the holy priest was in doubt what he should do with these, he heard the voice of God saying:
'Take, Aaron, these vessels, and make of them plates, and place them at the corners of the ark of the Lord's covenant; for, although those who bore them sinned, yet those vessels are holy, because My name was invoked over them,' says God. And surely it is more to carry than to touch. Therefore it now plainly appears that something can be sanctified by the invocation of the name of God, even if a sinner invokes God; for touch cannot have so great a power as the invocation of the divine name has. For you too, who presume upon your own holiness, tell us whether touch sanctifies or invocation. Surely invocation, not touch; or if you presume upon touch alone, then touch a tablet, a stone, a garment:
let us see whether they can be holy, if God is left out of account. Now how foolish, how vain is that which you wished to refer to your own will and, as it were, to your own dignity — that the virgins of God should learn to do penance, that those who had long since made their profession should afterwards, at your command, change the tokens of their will upon their heads, that they should cast off some veils and receive others. First tell us where any command was given to you about veils. For virginity is a matter of the will, not of necessity.
In short, that innkeeper, the apostle Paul, to whom the people, pierced through with the wounds of sins, was entrusted, had received two denarii to spend — namely, the two Testaments. These he expended by his teaching as it were as outlay; he taught how married Christians ought to live. When he was asked what he prescribed concerning virgins, he answered that concerning virgins nothing had been commanded. He confessed that he had spent the two Testaments, that is, the two denarii: his outlay was, as it were, exhausted; but because He who had entrusted the wounded man had promised that He would repay whatever more he might spend upon his care, after the two denarii had been laid out, Paul expends, not commands, but counsel toward virginity;
and it is neither an impediment to those who are willing, nor does it impel or compel the unwilling: 'He who gives his virgin in marriage does well, and he who gives her not does better.' These are the words of counsel, and no commands are joined to them, neither of what wool the veil should be made, nor with what purple it should be dyed. For virginity cannot be aided by this cloth; the heats of the soul, which sometimes age kindles, are not thereby restrained; the mind, which is now and then weighed down by the burdens of desires, is not thereby lifted up. For if it were so, not one but many veils would be placed upon a virgin's head, so that, as often as the desires of the flesh should goad the soul, a number of veils might do battle against the assault of the mind. The thing was devised as a token for the head, not as a remedy for chastity.
In short, such a cloth can grow old and be eaten away and perish; and yet virginity, if it be unharmed, can be secure without a veil. This kind of marrying is spiritual. By their own will and profession they had already come into the marriage of the Bridegroom; and that they might show they had renounced worldly marriages and were joined to the spiritual Bridegroom, they had loosed their hair: they had already celebrated the heavenly nuptials. What reason is there that you compelled them again to loose their hair? Why, I say, that a second profession was exacted from them through you? Who is the other spiritual Bridegroom, to whom they should marry again? When did He die, to whom they had been wedded, that they should marry again?
You have once more bared heads already veiled, from which you stripped the tokens of profession — tokens which seem to have been devised against ravishers or suitors. In the veil there is a token of the will, not an aid to chastity: that the thing already vowed to God, neither he who sought her in marriage might persist in seeking, nor a ravisher might dare to violate. It is therefore a sign, not a sacrament. You found, then, virgins of this kind, who had already wedded spiritually, and you compelled them to a second marriage, and commanded them to loose their hair again. This not even women endure who marry carnally. If it happens to any of them to change husbands after the bereavement of widowhood, that temporal festivity is not repeated, it is not raised aloft, no thronging of the people is procured.
You therefore stripped away not the ornaments of the head, but, as we said above, the tokens of a better will. The hair already consecrated to God you scattered with unclean ashes, and you even commanded it to be drenched with salt water. And would that you had at least quickly restored what you took away! You drew out the delays, so that some, drawn back into their former state, remained longer thus, with the signs withdrawn by which they had long since fortified themselves against suitors and ravishers. And when these saw that the prescription long since set up against them had been removed by you, from suitors they became ravishers: nor did each of them seem to himself to have sinned, in seizing such a one as he had seen when he was asking to take her as wife.
In this kind of thing, how great losses you have wrought for God, how great gains you have procured for the devil! You impiously melted down the chalices, cruelly broke and thoughtlessly scraped the altars; you compelled wretched girls, not without disgrace, to receive a second veil, when about the first nothing can be recited in any reading. And this also I cannot pass over, which is neither pleasing to God, nor can be excused by your own followers, nor be defended by any man. By secular judgments and public laws you thought fit that the instruments of the divine law should be extorted from very many by the execution of officials, wishing to possess alone what peace had held in common. I, a Christian, am not afraid to say what the heathen execution, at your request, could not be ignorant of:
you extorted the veils and the instruments of the Lord which had long since been possessed in common; you extorted the cloths together with the codices: by the verdict of your pride you judged both to be polluted. Unless I am mistaken, you hastened to purify all these — you doubtless washed the cloths; declare what you did with the codices. In all things the verdict of your providence ought to be equal: either wash both, or let both go. But if you do otherwise, you have corrupted your own diligence; you wash the cloth, you do not wash the codex: if in one part it is good, in the other it is bad. You cannot deny that you offend in the one, if in the other you earn merit; and if you rejoice that in the one you seem religious, you ought also to lament,
because in the other part you stand as sacrilegious. Now, of what sort is this — that in many places you even wished to wash the walls, and commanded enclosed spaces to be sprinkled with salt water? O water, which wert created sweet by God, over which, before the very birth of the world, the Holy Spirit was borne! O water, which, to make the world pure, didst wash the earth! O water, which under Moses, that thou mightest lose thy natural bitterness, being sweetened by the wood, didst satisfy the breasts of so many peoples with most pleasant draughts! It remained for thee, after thy promotion, to be not lightly degraded. In the presence of Moses thy bitterness dies, and today by schismatics thy sweetness is harassed along with the throng of Catholics. We suffer war as equals, we await God the avenger as equals.
Tell me, brother Parmenian, what had the place done to you, what had the very walls done, that they should suffer these things from you? Was it because God was there entreated? Was it because Christ was there praised? Was it because the Holy Spirit was there invoked? Was it because, in your absence, the prophets and the holy Gospels were there recited? Was it because there the minds of brethren long at strife had been reconciled? Was it because the unity pleasing to God had found there a house to dwell in? Declare what you could there wash. If we have trodden the footprints of the Catholics both in the village and in the street, why do you not amend all things? For the same baths have washed both us and you alike, for the sake of refreshing the body, and before you many of our people often bathed there.
If you think all things must be purified after us, then wash even the water, if you can; or if our footprints, as we said above, seem to you to be polluted, the earth would suffice; why did you wish to wash the walls also, on which human footprints cannot be set? The walls we could not tread, but only behold. If you judge that even what the gaze touches must be washed, why have you left the rest unwashed? We see the roof, we see also the sky; these cannot be washed by you. By washing those things you have earned God's favour; by not washing these, you seem to have incurred an inexpiable sin.
Since therefore in one place you wish to seem diligent, and in another are found negligent — if indeed your folly is to be called diligence and, to call it by its true name, your vanity: unless perhaps because by doing this you cast the untaught peoples into terror, so that, because a column is washed, their bodies too should be washed. If in these matters a hidden design lies concealed, you have subtly deceived the wretched; if such a thing was done without design, your dullness is manifest. That you did these things foolishly, both they who were led astray by you acknowledge, and you yourselves will not be able to deny. Why should I also tell of that impiety proceeding from your conspiracy — that to this end you wished to invade the basilicas, that you might claim the cemeteries for yourselves alone, not permitting Catholic bodies to be buried?