For because, revolting through the iniquity of impiety and falling away in discord from the one supreme and true God, we had flowed away and vanished into the many, cut asunder through many things and cleaving to many things, it was fitting—by the nod and command of the merciful God—that these very many should cry out together the One who was to come, and that the One should come proclaimed by the many, and that the many should testify that the One had come, and that we, unburdened by the many, should come to the One; and that we, dead in soul through many sins and destined to die in the flesh on account of sin, should love the One who died in the flesh for us without sin; and, believing in Him raised again and rising together with Him in spirit through faith, we should be justified in the one Just One, being made one; and that we should not despair of rising again even in this very flesh, since we behold that many members have gone before us—one Head—in whom now cleansed through faith, and then restored through vision, and reconciled to God through the Mediator, we may cleave to the One, enjoy the One, and remain one.
Thus the Son of God Himself, the Word of God, and He Himself likewise the Mediator of God and men, the Son of Man, equal to the Father through the unity of divinity and a partaker of ours through the assumption of humanity, interceding with the Father for us through that which He was as man, yet not being silent about the fact that as God He was one with the Father, among other things speaks thus: 'But I pray not for these only,' He says, 'but also for those who through their word shall believe in Me, that they all may be one, as You, Father, are in Me and I in You, that they too may be one in us, that the world may believe that You have sent Me. And the glory which You gave Me I have given them, that they may be one, as We also are one.' He did not say:
'I and they one,' although, in that He is the head of the Church and His body is the Church, He could say 'I and they'—not 'one thing' but 'one person,' because head and body are one Christ. But showing His divinity consubstantial with the Father (on account of which He also says in another place: 'I and the Father are one'), He wills that His own be one in their own kind, that is, in the consubstantial equality of the same nature—but one in Himself, because in themselves they could not be, dissociated from one another through diverse wills and desires and the uncleanness of sins;
whence they are cleansed through the Mediator, that they may be one in Him, not only through the same nature by which all from mortal men are made equal to the angels, but also through one most concordant will conspiring together into the same blessedness, fused in a certain manner into one spirit by the fire of charity. For to this avails what He says: 'That they may be one, as We also are one'—that just as the Father and the Son are one not only in the equality of substance but also in will, so also these, between whom and God the Son is Mediator, may be one not only through the fact that they are of the same nature, but also through the same fellowship of love. Then that He Himself is the Mediator through whom we are reconciled to God, He thus indicates:
'I,' He says, 'in them and You in Me, that they may be made perfect in one.' This is the true peace and our firm connection with our Creator, cleansed and reconciled through the Mediator of life, just as, defiled and estranged, we had departed from Him through the mediator of death. For as the proud devil led proud man to death, so the humble Christ led back obedient man to life; because as that one, lifted up, fell and cast down him who consented, so this One, humbled, rose and raised up him who believed.
For because the devil had not reached whither he had led man—since he bore in his spirit the death of impiety, but had not undergone the death of the flesh, for he had not taken on a garment of flesh—he seemed to man a great prince among the legions of demons, through whom he exercises a kingdom of deceptions. Thus, puffing up man through the swelling of pride—man being more eager for power than for justice—or entangling him through false philosophy, or ensnaring him through sacrilegious rites (in which, casting down souls the more curious and prouder, deceived and mocked by magical deceptions), he holds him subject, promising even the purification of the soul through those which they call teletae, transfiguring himself into an angel of light through his manifold machination in signs and lying wonders.
For it is easy for the most wicked spirits, through their aerial bodies, to do many things at which souls weighed down by earthly bodies—even those of better disposition—may marvel. For if the very earthly bodies, modified by certain arts and exercises, exhibit in theatrical spectacles such marvels to men that those who have never seen such things scarcely believe them when narrated, what great thing is it for the devil and his angels, out of the corporeal elements through their aerial bodies, to do things at which the flesh may marvel, or even, by hidden inspirations, to contrive phantasms of images for the mocking of human senses, by which he may deceive men waking or sleeping, or agitate the frenzied?
But just as it can happen that a man better in life and morals may watch most wicked men either walking on a rope or performing many incredible things by manifold movements of their bodies, and yet in no way desire to do such things, nor on that account think them to be preferred to himself, so the faithful and pious soul, not only if it sees, but even if through the frailty of the flesh it shudders at the miracles of demons, will not on that account either grieve that it cannot do such things, or judge them to be better for this reason—especially since it is in the fellowship of the saints, who, through the power of God to whom all things are subject, and with no deception at all, have done far greater things, whether men or good angels.
By no means, therefore, are souls purified and reconciled to God through sacrilegious likenesses and impious curiosities and magical consecrations, because the false mediator does not carry them across to higher things, but rather, besieging them, blocks the way—through affections which he inspires the more malignant the prouder they are, of his own society—affections which cannot nourish the wings of the virtues for flying up, but rather heap up the weights of vices for sinking down, the more grievously as the soul, destined to fall, seems to itself borne up the more loftily.
Accordingly, just as the Magi did when divinely admonished—whom a star led to adore the humility of the Lord—so we too ought to return to our fatherland not by the way we came, but by another way which the humble King taught, and which the proud king, adversary to the humble King, cannot besiege. For to us also, that we might adore the humble Christ, the heavens have declared the glory of God, since 'their sound has gone out into all the earth, and their words unto the ends of the world.' The way for us was unto death through sin in Adam: for 'through one man sin entered into the world, and through sin death, and so it passed unto all men, in whom all have sinned.' The mediator of this way was the devil, the persuader of sin and the caster-down into death;
for he too, to work our double death, brought his single death. For dead in spirit through impiety, he certainly did not die in the flesh; but he both persuaded us to impiety and, on account of this, brought it about that we should deserve to come to the death of the flesh. The one, therefore, we sought by wicked persuasion; the other followed us by just condemnation. For this reason indeed it is written: 'God did not make death,' because He Himself was not the cause of death; but nevertheless through His requital most just death was inflicted upon the sinner—just as a judge inflicts punishment upon the guilty, yet the cause of the punishment is not the justice of the judge but the desert of the crime.
Whither therefore the mediator of death sent us across but himself did not come, that is, to the death of the flesh, there the Lord our God implanted for us the medicine of amendment, which that one did not deserve, by a hidden and exceedingly secret ordinance of the divine and lofty justice. So that, just as through one man came death, so through one man might come the resurrection of the dead—because men were more avoiding the death of the flesh, which they could not avoid, than the death of the spirit, that is, more the punishment than the desert of the punishment (for not to sin is either not cared for, or too little cared for;
but not to die, although it is not obtained, is vehemently striven after), the Mediator of life, showing how death is not to be feared, which through the human condition can now no longer be escaped, but rather impiety, which through faith can be guarded against, met us at the end whither we came, but not by the way we came. For we came to death through sin, He through justice; and therefore, since our death is the punishment of sin, His death was made a sacrifice for sin.
Wherefore, since the spirit is set above the body, and the death of the spirit is to be forsaken by God, while the death of the body is to be forsaken by the spirit, and since this is the punishment in the death of the body—that because the spirit willingly forsook God, it should unwillingly forsake the body, so that, whereas the spirit forsook God because it willed, it should forsake the body even if it were unwilling, and should not forsake it when it willed, unless it inflicted upon itself some violence by which the body itself might be destroyed—the spirit of the Mediator demonstrated how no punishment of sin, even to the death of the flesh, had come upon Him, because He did not forsake it unwillingly, but because He willed, when He willed, how He willed. For, mingled to unity with the Word of God, He hence says: 'I have power to lay down My soul, and I have power to take it again.'
'No one takes it from Me, but I lay it down of Myself, and I take it again.' And at this above all they marveled, as the Gospel says, who were present when, after that cry in which He uttered the figure of our sin, He immediately yielded up His spirit. For those hung upon the wood were tormented with a long death. Whence the legs of the robbers were broken, that they might now die and be taken down from the wood before the sabbath. But He, because He was found already dead, was a matter of wonder. This too we read that Pilate marveled at, when the Lord's body was requested of him for burial.
This deceiver, then, who was mediator to man unto death, and falsely sets himself against life under the name of purification through sacrilegious rites and sacrifices, by which the proud are seduced—because he could have neither participation in our death nor resurrection of his own—was indeed able to bring his single death to bear upon our double death; but a single resurrection, in which there would be both the sacrament of our renewal and an example of that awakening which is to come at the end, he was by no means able to bring.
He therefore who, living in spirit, raised up His own dead flesh—the true Mediator of life—cast out that dead spirit and mediator of death from the spirits of those who believe in Him, that he might not reign within, but assail from without and yet not overcome. To whom He also offered Himself to be tempted, that for the overcoming of his temptations too He might be Mediator, not only through help but also through example.
But that one, at first, when—striving to creep in through all the entrances to the inner parts—he was expelled, after the baptism, in the desert, every alluring temptation being completed (because, dead in spirit, he in no way invaded the living spirit), greedy for human death turned himself to accomplishing the death that he could, and was permitted access to that which the living Mediator had taken from us as mortal. And where he was able to do something, there on every side he was utterly vanquished; and whence he received outwardly the power of slaying the Lord's flesh, thence inwardly the power by which he held us was slain. For it came about that the bonds of many sins in many deaths were loosed through the one death of the One, which no sin had preceded.
Which death the Lord for this reason paid on our behalf, though undue, that the death due might not harm us. For He was despoiled of the flesh by no right of any power, but He Himself despoiled Himself. For He who could have not died had He not willed it, beyond doubt died because He willed; and therefore He made an example of the principalities and powers, confidently triumphing over them in Himself. For by His death—one most true sacrifice offered for us—whatever of guilt there was, whereby the principalities and powers by right held us fast to pay the penalties, He purged, abolished, extinguished; and by His resurrection He called us, predestined to new life; the called He justified; the justified He glorified.
Thus the devil lost, in the very death of the flesh, man whom he possessed as it were by full right, through consent seduced; and himself, fenced round by no corruption of flesh and blood, was lording it—the prouder as though the richer and stronger—over one exceedingly needy and infirm through this frailty of the mortal body, as over one ragged and wretched. For whither he did not follow the falling sinner whom he had impelled, thither, pursuing, he compelled the descending Redeemer. Thus, in the fellowship of death, the Son of God deigned to become our friend, whither, by not attaining, the enemy thought himself better and greater than we. For our Redeemer says: 'Greater love has no one than to lay down his life for his friends.'
For which reason the devil believed himself superior even to the Lord Himself, insofar as the Lord yielded to him in His sufferings; for it was understood of Him too what is read in the Psalms: 'You made Him a little lower than the angels'—so that, by the wicked one acting against us as though by an equal right, He Himself, slain though innocent, might overcome him by a most equitable right, and thus lead captive the captivity made on account of sin, and free us from the captivity justly imposed on account of sin, blotting out by His own just blood unjustly shed the bond of death, and redeeming sinners to be justified.
Hence too the devil still deludes his own, against whom, as though to be purified but rather to be entangled and submerged, the false mediator sets himself through his own rites; for he most easily persuades the proud to deride and despise the death of Christ, from which the more estranged he himself is, the holier and more divine he is believed by them to be. Yet very few of these have remained with him, since the nations acknowledge and with pious humility drink their own price, and by trust in Him forsake their enemy and run together to their Redeemer.
For the devil does not know how, while he both lies in wait and rages, the most exalted wisdom of God uses him for the salvation of His faithful ones—reaching mightily from the higher end, which is the beginning of the spiritual creature, even to the lower end, which is the death of the body, and disposing all things sweetly. For it reaches everywhere on account of its purity, and nothing defiled runs into it. But for the devil, a stranger to the death of the flesh (whence he goes about exceedingly proud), a death of another kind is prepared in the eternal fire of Tartarus, where not only with earthly but even with aerial bodies spirits may be tormented.
But proud men, to whom Christ became worthless because He died—where He bought us at so great a price—and who requite this death upon Him, will be cast down, together with men, into that wretched condition of a nature dragged from the first sin, and into it along with him. Whom they preferred to Christ for this reason: that He cast them down into that state into which, by His distant nature, He Himself did not fall, and into which, for their sakes, through His immense mercy He descended; and yet they do not doubt to believe themselves better than the demons, and do not cease to hound and detest them with all curses—those whom they certainly know to be strangers to the suffering of this death, on account of which they despise Christ.
Nor do they wish to consider how it could come to pass that the Word of God, abiding in itself and in no part mutable through itself, could nevertheless, through the assumption of a lower nature, suffer something lower, which the unclean demon cannot suffer because he has no earthly body. Thus, though they themselves are better than the demons, yet because they bear flesh they can die in the same way as the demons, because they do not bear it, certainly cannot. And though they presume much about the deaths of their sacrifices—which they do not perceive that they offer to deceitful and proud spirits, or, if they do perceive it, they think that the friendship of the treacherous and envious avails them something, whose whole business of intention is nothing but the hindrance of our return.
They do not understand that not even those most proud spirits could rejoice in the honors of sacrifices, unless true sacrifice were due to the one true God, for whom they wish to be worshiped. Nor can it be rightly offered except through a holy and just priest, nor unless that be received which is offered, and be offered for those for whom it is offered, and be without fault, so that it may be offered for the cleansing of the faulty. This surely all desire who wish sacrifice to be offered to God for themselves. Who then is so just and holy a priest as the only Son of God, who had no need to purge His own sins by sacrifice—neither original ones nor those which are added from human life? And what could so fittingly be taken from men to be offered for them as human flesh?
And what so fitting for this immolation as mortal flesh? And what so clean, for the cleansing of the faults of mortals, as flesh born in the womb and from a virginal womb without any contagion of carnal concupiscence? And what could be so gratefully offered and received as the flesh of our sacrifice, made the body of our Priest? So that, since four things are considered in every sacrifice—to whom it is offered, by whom it is offered, what is offered, and for whom it is offered—the same one and true Mediator, reconciling us to God through the sacrifice of peace, might remain one with Him to whom He offered, might make those for whom He offered one in Himself, and might Himself be one and the same who offered and what He offered.
But there are certain ones who think that they can be purified by their own power for contemplating God and cleaving to God, whom this very pride most of all defiles. For there is no vice against which the divine law more resists, and over which that most proud spirit—mediator toward the depths, barrier toward the heights—receives a greater right of domination, unless he is secretly lying in wait and is avoided by another way, or unless, through the people that faints, which is interpreted 'Amalek,' openly raging and, by resisting, denying passage to the land of promise, he is overcome through the cross of the Lord, which was prefigured by the outstretched hands of Moses.
For on this ground these men promise themselves purification by their own power, because some of them have been able to send the gaze of the mind beyond every creature and to touch, in however small a part, the light of unchangeable truth; and they mock the fact that many Christians, living meanwhile by faith alone, have not yet been able to do so. But what does it profit a proud man, who blushes on that very account, to climb the mast and descry from afar his homeland across the sea? And what harm does it do to the humble man not to see it from so great a distance, when he is coming to that homeland upon the very wood by which the other disdains to be carried?
These men also reproach us for believing in the resurrection of the flesh, and would rather have us believe them even about such matters—as though, forsooth, because they have been able through the things that are made to understand the exalted and unchangeable substance, they are therefore to be consulted concerning the transformation of changeable things or the connected order of the ages.
For is it the case that, because they argue most truly and persuade by the most certain proofs that all temporal things come to be according to eternal reasons, they have therefore been able to discern in those very reasons—or to gather from them—how many kinds of animals there are, what the seeds of each are at their beginnings, what measure governs their growth, what numbers rule their conception, birth, ages, and decline, what impulses move them in seeking the things that accord with their nature and in fleeing their opposites? Have they not sought all these things not through that unchangeable Wisdom, but through the record of places and times, and believed things tested and written down by others?
So much the less is it to be wondered at that they have in no way been able to trace out the sequence of the more extended ages, and a certain goal of this course by which, as by a river, the human race runs on, and from thence the turning of each to the end that is due to it. For these things not even the historians could write, being far in the future and tested and told by no one. Nor did these philosophers, though better than the rest, contemplate such things by their understanding in those highest and eternal reasons; otherwise they would not have inquired after the past things of the same kind, which the historians were able to investigate, but would rather also have foreknown the future. Those among them who could do this were called seers, and by our people prophets—although the name of prophet too is not wholly foreign to their writings.
But it makes a great difference whether future things are conjectured from experience of the past—as physicians, foreseeing much, have also committed to writing the things they had themselves noted from experience, or as farmers and even sailors foretell many things; for such predictions, if they arise from long intervals of time, are thought to be divinations—or whether things already about to come have gone before and, seen coming from afar, are announced according to the keen perception of those who see them (which, when the powers of the air do it, is believed to be divination, just as if someone from a mountaintop were to see another coming from afar and announce it beforehand to those dwelling nearby on the plain);
or whether they are foreannounced by the holy angels, to whom God shows these things through His Word and Wisdom, where both future and past things stand—being foretold either to certain men, or, having been heard from those men, again transmitted to other men; or whether the minds of certain men themselves are so far lifted up by the Holy Spirit that not through angels but by their own selves they behold, in the very supreme citadel of things, the imminent causes of things to come. For the powers of the air also hear these things, whether angels or men announce them; and they hear only as much as He judges to be needful under whom all things are subject. Many things too are foretold by a certain instinct and impulse, the spirit of those who know it not, just as Caiaphas knew not what he said, but, being high priest, he prophesied.
Therefore concerning the successions of the ages and the resurrection of the dead we ought not to consult even those philosophers who understood, as far as they could, the eternity of the Creator in whom we live and move and have our being; for, though knowing God through the things that are made, they did not glorify Him as God nor give thanks, but, saying that they were wise, became fools.
And since they were not fit to fix the gaze of the mind so steadfastly upon the eternity of the spiritual and unchangeable nature that in the very Wisdom of the Creator and Governor of the universe they might see the rolls of the ages, which are there already and are always, but here were to be in the future so as not to be, and that there they might see the changes for the better not only of the souls but also of the bodies of men, unto perfection of their own kind;
since therefore they were in no way fit to see these things there, they were not even deemed worthy that these things should be announced to them through the holy angels, whether outwardly through the senses of the body or by inner revelations expressed in the spirit—as they were shown to our fathers, endowed with true piety, who, foretelling these things and creating faith either by present signs or by things near at hand coming to pass just as they had foretold, deserved to possess an authority that would be believed concerning things far in the future, even to the end of the age.
But the proud and deceitful powers of the air, even if they are found to have said through their seers certain things about the fellowship and city of the saints and about the true Mediator, things heard from the holy prophets or angels, did this in order that through these borrowed truths they might, if they could, draw even the faithful of God over to their own falsehoods. God, however, wrought through those who knew it not, so that the truth might resound from every side, to the help of the faithful and to the testimony against the impious. Since therefore we were not fit to lay hold of eternal things, and the filth of sins weighed us down—contracted by love of temporal things and, as it were, naturally ingrown from the stock of our mortality—we needed to be purified.
But we could be purified, so as to be attuned to eternal things, only through temporal things, by such as we were already held bound in attunement to. For health is very far from sickness, yet the intervening cure, unless it be suited to the sickness, does not lead through to health. Useless temporal things deceive the sick; useful temporal things take up those who are to be healed and carry them over, when healed, to eternal things. Now the rational mind, just as when purified it owes contemplation to eternal things, so, being purified, owes faith to temporal things. One even of those who were once held to be wise men among the Greeks said: 'As eternity is to that which has arisen, so is truth to faith.' And it is assuredly a true saying. For what we call temporal, he called that which has arisen.
Of which kind are we too, not only according to the body but also according to the changeableness of the soul; for that is not properly called eternal which is in some part changed. Insofar therefore as we are changeable, so far are we distant from eternity. But eternal life is promised us through the truth, from whose clear vision our faith is in turn as far distant as mortality is from eternity. Now therefore we apply faith to things done in time for our sake, and through it we are cleansed, so that when we come to sight, just as truth succeeds faith, so eternity may succeed mortality.
Wherefore, since our faith shall become truth when we come to that which is promised us who believe—and eternal life is promised us, and the Truth has spoken (not the truth that shall come to be, as our faith is a thing to come, but the truth that always is, because there is eternity)—the Truth therefore said: 'And this is eternal life, that they may know Thee the one true God, and Jesus Christ whom Thou hast sent.' When our faith, by seeing, shall become truth, then eternity shall hold fast our mortality, transformed.
And until this comes to pass, and in order that it may come to pass—because we apply the faith of belief to things that have arisen, just as in eternal things we hope for the truth of contemplation, lest the faith of mortal life should be discordant with the truth of eternal life—the Truth Himself, coeternal with the Father, has arisen from the earth, when the Son of God so came as to become the Son of Man, and Himself took up in Himself our faith, whereby He might lead us through to His own truth; He who so took upon Himself our mortality that He did not lose His own eternity. For as eternity is to that which has arisen, so is truth to faith. Thus therefore it behooved us to be purified, that He might become for us one who arose, yet who remained eternal, lest there be one for us in faith and another in truth;