Tractates 1 part 7/14

Therefore I think it must first of all be proved that our souls are not dissolved with the spoils of their bodies, nor with the decay of this carnal dwelling, by that first death; but according to the quality of their deeds, some are banished to penal places, some are refreshed in placid abodes: so that it may at last be believed that that rises again which is plain to all does not utterly perish. The Gentile race, who do not believe these things, nevertheless rush to the sepulchers with ill-omened libation, and contend that they have sometimes had food sought from them by the dead whom they have recognized in the quiet of the silent night: and thus they bear witness to the reality of the thing which they reject. The philosophers have said various things concerning the soul:

yet that it is immortal, they refute the vanity of Epicurus, Dicaearchus, and Democritus with manifest argumentation. But the poets did better, who place a twofold way among those below: one of the impious, which leads to Tartarus: another of the pious, which leads to Elysium; adding the more forcibly that there not so much the forms as the deeds of the dead are recognized, and that they necessarily receive according to what they bear in their acts of worldly administration—rightly saying: Each of us suffers his own shade (Aeneid VI, 743). III.

But we, brethren, whom not ingenious conjecture but God our Master has instructed, by proving in His own self, for our sake, what He taught, are able not so much to say as to prove by ocular facts that the souls of the dead live. In short, wandering and unclean spirits, by the crafty enticement of blandishments, or by violence, break into the bodily homes of living persons of both human sexes, and seek a lurking-place for themselves in their pernicious chief faculties. But when it has come to the field of the divine combat, and they begin to be struck with the dart of the sacred Name, then, since you know one, you pity another being made to do battle.

The color is discolored from moment to moment, its proper figure is taken from nature, the orbs of the eyes are turned in slanting horrors of madness, the row of the teeth, bristling with foaming masses, gnashes between livid lips, all the limbs everywhere are made to vibrate with a twisted trembling, it groans, it weeps: it dreads the announced day of judgment, and bewails that it is being driven out: it confesses its sex, it confesses the time and place of its assault, and confesses its own name, and its departure: or who it may be, it shows by evident signs, so that for the most part we recognize them to be those whom we remember as having lately, or most of all by some violence, died while abiding in idolatry.

Here now answer me, you who contend that nothing survives a man after death, how through another there spoke that dead man whom you knew? But you say: The demons feign these things. So much the better the proof, that even the deceitful bear witness to the truth. But why should they feign names, whose confession is true in other matters? or by what reason should they rely on this argument, which avails more, for the men whom they desire to be ruined, toward the fear of God, and profits themselves nothing toward their advantage? Indeed they would rightly be thought to do this, if under the pretext of another's name they had been able to keep what they had invaded. But since by divine adjuration on the spiritual rack they both declare unwillingly who they are, and depart against their will;

without doubt they are that which they confess themselves to be to each one. IV. Receive also other examples, and indeed more certain ones. First, in the book of the words of Samuel, that distinguished priest, already discharged by the law of death, exhibits to King Saul, who desired him, without ambiguity not only his own presence, but also responds to the matters consulted (1 Sam. 28), and the dead man chants more freely than he had been wont to chant alive; whence one may well exclaim: That man has rather set forth on a journey than died. In the Gospel also Peter and the sons of Zebedee, when the Lord stood by shining, saw Moses and Elijah (Matt. 17),

whom on account of the then impediment of the flesh they could not have seen, they see by the liberty of the spirit, thence understanding that what is deposited in the treasury of nature rests unharmed, which in this world is for a time perceived to perish. Likewise in hell that most tenacious rich man, whom a vast chaos separates from the poor man's felicity (the same, ch. 16), imploring with his burnings a refreshment, recognizes too late Lazarus the true rich man, and the dead man desires to be touched even by one finger of those hands to which the living man had denied an alms. Now without cause he hates what he had loved before: he proves that to be more blessed which he had hated.

He groans that nothing of his known faculties can remedy the imminent punishment, ready without hesitation to offer all, if it were permitted, for one moment's respite. He desires that at least his surviving brothers be consulted for. He earnestly beseeches father Abraham that some messenger may go, who may make them certain of so great a matter; to whom he answered: They have Moses and the prophets; if they believe not them, neither will they believe him who shall be sent hence (Luke 16:29, 31), evidently showing that the truth is not in carnal eyes, but is established in the faith of believers. V. For the Lord also, confirming these examples, said to one of the thieves believing in Him, who were hanging on the gibbet with Him on the right and left:

Amen, amen, I say to thee, today thou shalt be with Me in paradise (Luke 23:43). Therefore if a dead man perishes forever, then the Lord lied, who promised paradise to him who henceforth would have no future. But the man himself also, whom the Lord had assumed, perishes, if Jesus has not risen. But if He has risen, He gave a model to the human race, since for this purpose God tasted the rights of death on man's behalf, that man through God might receive back the right of immortality which he had lost. Wherefore the most blessed Paul says: But we would not have you ignorant, brethren, concerning them that are asleep, that you be not sorrowful, even as the rest who have no hope:

for if we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so God will bring with Him those who have fallen asleep in Jesus (1 Thess. 4:13, 14). For God also speaks through the prophet Ezekiel, saying: Behold, I will open your graves, and will bring you out of your graves, and will bring you into the land of Israel: I will put My spirit in you, and you shall live (Ezek. 37:12 ff.). VI. Since these things are so, why, O Christian, do you not believe in the resurrection to come? Why do you so obstinately mourn those who migrate from the decay of this world into better things? O wickedness!

Here the mother, her garment rent, her hair torn, her cheeks torn too, her whole breast livid with frequent blows, with heathen vanity raves madly around the corpse of the lost one, nor does she recall the memory of the Maccabean mother, who, girded with the hope of things to come, while Antiochus raged, gladly at one time—I will not say buried, but rather herself happily by her own exhortations slew—seven sons, religiously confident that she had begotten her sons for God, not for the world (2 Macc. 7). Here the wife testifies that she cannot bear the desolation of her lost husband: she complains of her cold side under the bed too widely spread; with envious cries she contrives envy against God;

the very divine solemnities, by which the departed are wont to be commended by the priests of God, she sometimes breaks with profane howlings; and deforming her whole adornment with foul filth, she embraces the corpse over which the wailing has been made; with frequent kisses she warms the cold lips; she washes the whole body with showers of tears, covering it with the loss of her own hair; with pitiable addresses she kindles into more abundant weeping even those whom the cause does not touch, the more ostentatious in grief the richer she is—yet truly after a moment, miserable (and would that but once), through excessive grief about to marry again. Here, here I do not see how anyone could excuse herself; for there is not lacking one who could say: If there is a resurrection, why do you mourn?

if you do it out of love for your husband, why do you marry afterward? It is an execrable thing, brethren, neither to keep charity for one's spouse, nor faith for God. This reproof awaits men also. VII. Therefore the Christian ought not at all to doubt that the dead are roused to their pristine state: and that such persons are brought forth on the lawful day before the sight of God from that secret of nature, such as they had been received according to each one's own quality—the Apostle saying: We must all be made manifest before the tribunal of Christ; that everyone may receive the deserts of his own body according to what he has done, whether good or evil (2 Cor. 5:10). For, brethren, it is easier for that to be re-formed which has been, than for that to be instituted which was not before:

for if what was not, now is, much more can that be which has been; since indeed it is the very practice of that most powerful Artificer, the Creator of all things, to assert the possibility of impossible things, and from that which is not to make that which is, to create nature outside of nature, to have absolutely nothing difficult, and that this alone is wanting to Him—what He does not will to be; for this is the property of God, to work that which cannot be believed. VIII. Therefore not men only, but almost all things live by their own deaths. Whence I will touch on a few out of many, that I may unhesitatingly expedite the proof of all in a few.

The stars fall headlong from heaven, and behind them, with a long trail of whitening flames, are led to their settings as if with a funereal solemnity of torches, by certain obsequies, as it were: which, if you seek them through the regions whence they were unfixed, you may recognize to have risen again in their own seats by the law of renewed light. The sun is daily born, and on the same day on which it is born, it dies; nor yet is it terrified by the lot of the impending end, so as to slacken its courses, to prolong the hours and moments, to linger at least a little longer in the life of its day; but ever faithful, ever undaunted, it hastens to the sepulcher of kindred night, knowing that it has within itself that whereby it lives: in short, its rising is taken away, if its setting be removed from it.

The moon also, which truly depicts in itself all the lineaments of human reason, born of a blood-red tenderness, first appears with doubtful horn as if from the cradle, and by little and little growing, now a girl, now a virgin, advancing according to the increase of her daily age, plucks her worldly tasks through the windings of her wanton course. But when, ripe with the golden fire of the gleaming, shining charioteer, equal in labors to her brother, she has completed her silvery globe in august circles, little by little she declines into old age, until, consumed by extreme senility, reviving by her own death, with the solemn sprouting of monthly fire kindled anew, she takes again from her end a beginning. IX.

In like manner that precious bird, the Phoenix, plainly teaches us the laws of the resurrection, for it takes the nobility of its kind not from parents, nor passes it on to offspring: it is itself both sexes to itself, itself its whole affection, itself its own race, itself its end, itself its beginning. It is not born of intercourse, nor nourished by another's service; it dies neither unwilling nor unaware, but when the ripe hour of its death has come, of its own accord, having summoned the sacred flames, it is most willingly consumed in fire. The pyre is its nest, the embers its nurses, the ash is the seed for the propagating of its body, and death is its birthday.

Then, after a moment, it exults upon its festive tomb—not a shadow but a reality, not an image but the Phoenix, not another and yet, though better, the same as before, indeed itself prior. Blush, O Christian conscience; from things so many and so great learn how you yourself, remaining what you are, are to become better. X. Moreover, the grain of each kind of corn, buried in the earth, perishes, and yet that which is within it revives, nor does it take death to its very marrow, but breathing forth its own seed into a generative sprout, with the surface of the old body destroyed—nay, passed over into the laws of a better nature—the happy head, crowned with green foliage, as though risen from the dead, lifts itself on high into the heights, destined to hold the glory of perpetuity by a teeming harvest:

and Paul thus far confirms this: O foolish one, what you sow is not made alive unless it die (1 Cor. 15:36). And he added, saying: So also is the resurrection of the dead: it is sown unto corruption, it rises in perpetuity; it is sown in lowliness, it rises in glory; it is sown in weakness, it rises in power; it is sown a natural body, it rises a spiritual body (ibid. 42 and following). Enough, as I think, does the truth of the resurrection shine forth to all. XI. But it must of necessity be discussed what distinction there is in it between the unjust and the just, lest the generality of the name draw to itself, in comparison with the wicked, the glory of Christian felicity. There is therefore a twofold manner of rising:

the first is that of the Saints, in which, summoned by the royal token of the first trumpet, they shall receive that kingdom of blessedness with a mighty triumph under the eternal King, Christ; but the second is that which destines the impious, together with sinners and all unbelieving nations, to perpetual punishment, as the Holy Spirit says in the Psalms: Therefore the impious shall not rise in the judgment, nor sinners in the council of the just; for the Lord knows the way of the just, and the way of the impious shall perish (Ps. 1:5,6). XII. It follows that it is fitting for us to know in what state this man of ours, who tends toward heaven, is to reign: lest perchance, by vain hope, he perish together with the flesh, if he be seized by what is transitory and carnal, of which the Apostle says:

Flesh and blood cannot possess the kingdom of God (1 Cor. 15:50). But on the other hand I seem to hear someone exclaiming: If this is the condition of the flesh, what then is it that we believe in the Church—the remission of sins and the resurrection of the flesh? Easily, brethren, this conflict is reconciled, and the quality of our future state is laid open, if the faith be held inviolate. Wherefore I will dispatch the matter in few words. All flesh, so long as it is driven by the shameful enticements of this world and by deadly darkness, is assuredly bestial, and dwells under a wretched, fragile, and detestable law.

But when, by the pure faith of the believer, it has been slain by saving baptism, it rises new from the flood of the Father's sacred fount—now pure, now free, now a stranger to the converse of this world, now superior to death, now aspiring to heavenly things; now, I will not say despising the mockeries of the age, but, that it may be more honored, despising its very self; now seeking the truth, not the image; now desiring spiritual things, not its own, concerning which Paul says: Not all flesh is the same flesh: one is the flesh of man, another of beasts, another the flesh of birds, another of fishes. And there are heavenly bodies, and there are earthly ones (1 Cor. 15:39,40). And so, by the seed of immortality, of which even the most wise Poet foresaw, saying:

Fiery is their vigor, and heavenly the origin of those seeds—that is, by the conception of the Holy Spirit the flesh is made fruitful beforehand by an implanted power, so that when the time of its dissolution and lawful restoration has come, corresponding to its own seed it may by right be able to merit what we believe. Nor is the matter in doubt; for just as that prince of iniquity, by his own seed, through envy, drew down the first-formed beings from angels into men, so the Lord will rouse up again all who believe in Him from the dead, by the seed of the Holy Spirit, glorious into angels (Matt. 22:30). XIII. To this let us bring forward one yet plainer example, though the likely cannot have so great a force as the truth has. The wild olive is by nature barren and bitter;

but when, by the necessary provision of the most skilled husbandman's craftsman hand, it has been pruned, it is made pregnant with the nobility of another's seed, and is nourished by that very thing which it nourishes, until, taken up by the adoptive richness of the guest-graft—nay, made the richness itself—and wholly translated into the honor it has received, adorned by the promotion of new foliage with branches springing up again, it is now no longer a wild olive, but an olive tree; though it both is a wild olive, and yet in a certain manner even itself marvels that it is not a wild olive. Therefore if a man can bring it about that there be a tree which was not, while what it was remains, how much more shall God be able to raise up man, into what he was before he had sinned in paradise?

This principle of seeds the most blessed Paul also subtly disclosed, saying: He that sows according to the flesh shall of his flesh reap corruption; but he that sows in the spirit shall of the spirit reap life eternal (Gal. 6:8). But the Lord, plainly teaching this, thus says to His disciples: The kingdom of heaven is like a man who sowed good seed in his field; but while men slept, his enemy came and oversowed tares among the wheat (Matt. 13:24,25). XIV. But perhaps someone will yet say: If the flesh perishes, how is the one who rises recognized?

The flesh, brethren, is, as it were, a kind of mirror, pregnant with the fullness of the one who gazes into it, which bears not so much its own image as the image of him whose use it serves. Indeed it produces as many countenances as the inner man has made his own motions sad or glad—this principle Paul teaching us: We see now, he says, through a mirror in an enigma, but then it shall be face to face (1 Cor. 13:12). Hence there is no doubt that in our bodies, while they are sown under the law of death, it is not the substance, not the image, but only that which is useless which is shaken off, that which is worn down which is changed, as it is written: For this corruptible must put on incorruption, and this mortal must put on immortality (1 Cor. 15:53):

for otherwise that robe of immortality is not assumed, unless first this carnal spoil, the flattering poison of the soul, by God's sentence be poured back whence it was taken; for God says to Adam: Cursed shall the earth be in all your works; in the groaning of sorrow shall you eat of it all the days of your life; it shall bring forth for you thorns and thistles, and you shall eat the fodder of the field; in the sweat of your brow shall you eat your bread, until you return to the earth (Gen. 3:17 and following). But the Lord also, in the person of the man whom He had assumed, says: My soul is sorrowful even unto death (Matt. 26:38). Which saying is not so much of one fearing as of one exulting and teaching. Assuredly:

for He who raised the dead could fear nothing, He who had power to lay it down and to take it up again (John 10:18); but that He might teach that, while one lives in this world, the just man is ever in tribulation, ever in suffering. But when death, which is thought to be feared, is tasted, then to him the promised felicity of glory enduring forever is displayed in the seats of the blessed, where he shall thenceforth feel no more the hardships of the world—as holy David says: Return, O my soul, into your rest, for the Lord has dealt bountifully with you, for He has delivered my soul from death, my eyes from tears, my feet from falling: I will please the Lord in the land of the living (Ps. 116:7 and following). This felicity awaits us, this gift expects us.

Let us therefore so live that, adorned with good works, we too may merit to please God the Father, with our Lord Christ helping us, who is blessed unto the ages of ages. THE SECOND BOOK OF THE TRACTATES OF SAINT ZENO, BISHOP OF VERONA. THE FIRST TRACTATE. On Genesis.—Against the Arians. I. Men of carnal mind, most beloved brethren, suffer a stumbling-block—not from a zeal to know, but to frustrate the truth—as often as God the Son of God, who is the supreme glory of the Father, is proclaimed by the Catholics to be equal to the Father.

And so it comes about that, despising the foundations of the law, by crafty disputation, leaving aside God who comes forth from God, they hasten to the common names of humanity belonging to Father and Son—names that can be attacked by arguments—and they do not understand that, at the very opening of the sacred song, God, compared to God by His own divinity and name, excludes all the opinions of human sense: since indeed He says, Let us make man to our image and likeness; He does not say, 'Make to your image,' but says, 'Let us make to our image' (Gen. 1:26): lest the Son, who was to put on man, should seem to suffer any injury. Do you not see, most beloved brethren, that here no one expressly commands the other, that in the work no one is idle?

O holy equality, alone most worthy of the undivided Deity! One man is fashioned to the image and likeness of the two, and yet in him it is not found which belongs to whom. If therefore in an external work the sacred parity cannot be distinguished, how can God be inferior to another in Himself? For whatever you take away from one of two who are in all things alike to each other indistinctly, you do not know from which you have taken it. II. But that one, you say, who is commanded, is inferior. What? Yet thereby He is proved not to be inferior: because whence He proceeded, He is the executor of the paternal heart; for it is no less to do great things than to speak them.

Although even what is said by the Father can also be said, because the Word is the Son, and is not without the Son; and what is made by the Son can also be made, but it is not without the paternal good-pleasure, because the Son is not without the Father, as He Himself says: If I do not the works of the Father, believe Me not; but if you will not believe Me, believe the works; and know that the Father is in Me, and I in Him (John 10:37,38). It is established, therefore, that He is equal, since each receives the other together with the Holy Spirit. THE SECOND TRACTATE. On Genesis. Unless a man conquers the enemy by whom he is assailed, he can never use his goods in security:

for there are many who try to assert that there was chaos in the beginning—that is, a formless and undigested heap of latent nature, abiding by itself in itself in a certain mass of its own magnitude; but afterward, they say, God divided this, and out of it both constituted the world and adorned it. Now if, as they will have it, God did not make the matter which He used, but it is eternal as He Himself is, then there are two principles, and indeed contrary ones; and through this it will necessarily have to be inquired by us which of the two is the stronger—that which is sensible, or that which lacks sense.

But who would doubt that the stronger is that which feels, which is wise, which thinks, which moves and is moved, which by wondrous providence brought it about that the very chaos should not be chaos, which separated its members, arranged them by reason, adorned them with colors, determined them by measure, and commanded them to serve more fittingly in their offices? Hence that is no principle which grows old; which is made another's work; which is not placed in its own power; which is taken from its own substance; which is changed; which is moved by another's impulse; which can never at any time feel what it is, what it was, what it shall be. God alone, therefore, is the principle, who out of Himself gave to Himself His own beginning.

Alone before all things and after all things, since in His hand all things are enclosed, He is of Himself what He is. Alone conscious of Himself, how great and of what kind He is. Alone perfect; because nothing can be either added to Him or taken away. Alone almighty, because out of nothing He constituted the universe, rules it by power, guards it by majesty. Alone unchangeable, and ever equal; because in Himself He admits no age. Alone everlasting: because He is the Lord of immortality. This is our God, who arranged Himself into God. This is the Father, who, His own state remaining entire, wholly reflected Himself into the Son, that He might detract nothing from Himself. In fine, the one exults in the other, shining together with the fullness of the Holy Spirit in one original co-eternity.

Just as (if it be worthy to say it) two seas, which recline upon themselves, joined by a strait conveying their alternating tides into one—though they be distinct by their own property, by places and by names—yet of the triple deep there is one power of vapor, one substance, one nature of bounding; nor can the incomprehensible and common greatness of the wave be divided, flowing abundantly each into the other, proper to both, denied to neither: for indeed they would suffer loss of richness and grace, were that taken away whereby, by one and the same tide, the one is adorned from the other. THE THIRD TRACTATE. On Genesis, or on the eternal generation of the Son of God. In the beginning,

most beloved brethren, our Lord is, unhesitatingly, Christ, whom before all ages the Father embraced in the deep, unsuspectable, and to Himself alone known secret of His sacred mind—as Son, not without affection, but without disclosure. Therefore that ineffable and incomprehensible Wisdom propagates wisdom, the omnipotence omnipotence. From God is born God, from the unbegotten the only-begotten, from the only one the only one, from the whole the whole, from the true the true, from the perfect the perfect. Having all that is the Father's, detracting nothing from the Father. He proceeds into birth, who was, before He was born, equal in all things in the Father;

because the Father begot in Him another self out of Himself—namely, out of that unbegettable substance of His, in which, blessedly abiding forever, He brought forth the Son equal to Himself, having all that He has, the Son who is God blessed unto the ages of ages. THE FOURTH TRACTATE. On Genesis, or on the eternal generation of the Son of God. As the sacred Scripture testifies, before all things there abode one and the same God, another to Himself within Himself, alone conscious of His own secret, from whose mouth—that the nature of things, which was not, might be fashioned—came forth the only-begotten Son of His heart.

Thence the noble inhabitant was of necessity made visible, because He Himself was about to make the orb of the earth and to visit the human race, being otherwise equal in all things to the Father: for whatever the Father commanded to be made, the Son, inasmuch as He is the power of God and the wisdom of God, accomplished all those things by His marvelous work as soon as it was spoken. Now the inquisitive try to violate this by vain opinions; now the wretches understand that curiosity makes one guilty, not learned. THE FIFTH TRACTATE. On Faith, or on the eternal generation of the Son of God. I.