論靈魂的本質 第 1 章

You ask of me, most reverend of priests, how the Arians are to be answered, who with blasphemous mouth attempt to assert: 'It cannot be,' they say, 'but that the begotten be younger than the unbegotten.' In accordance with which, as though commanded to break my whole silence, I shall presume to do so not so much for the instruction of the matter as for the confession of the faith, observing this first of all: that I do not enwrap matters obscure in themselves with the labour of polished speech, but bring forth certain indications of a poor understanding, which may seem to serve not so much for adornment as for comprehension. I answer, therefore, as disciples are wont to answer their masters when they question. And so I speak at the bidding of your blessedness, that you may sift out my inexperience; I bear witness that you may teach.

For in the presence of one most learned, if I keep silence, I can scarcely know what I do not know. About the unbegotten, when we are to speak, we ought to know that the substances of things are one thing, and the names of things another; just as, for example, when you say 'gold' and 'silver,' you have not at once brought forth the metal itself, but the words for the metal. For gold is one thing in the property of its kind, another in the appellation of speech; it is one thing when we name it, another when we hold it. 'Begotten' and 'unbegotten' is a signification of the deity, not the deity itself; it is an appellation of the nature, not the nature. The naming of unbegotten and begotten avails for this: that you may understand who subsists from whom, and may recognize not the Father to be from the Son, but the Son to be from the Father.

Principle from Principle is both one and lacks a beginning; just as if you should say 'God from God,' yet not two gods, but one is spoken of. The begotten, therefore, the unbegotten, and that which proceeds from both, designate persons, not natures. For the majesty—which to the Father is undistinguished from the Son and the Holy Spirit—can be distinguished by names, but cannot be ordered by degrees. At this point you must, with foreknowledge, apply the intention of the mind. You say perhaps: 'Because He is from Him, He is later than Him.' Come, let us nourish our understanding for these things with certain comparisons. Let us see whether any thing arises from another, which nevertheless is not later in age than that from which it arises.

For example, this very name 'son' is believed to be derived from the name 'father,' nor yet is it found to be later, because unless the one were born, the other would not be called 'father.' Behold a name which is absolutely coeval with that from which it is; and since the son is from the father, the son makes the name for the father: the person of the one being born acquires for the begetter the appellation of fatherhood. Since this is from that, neither is this proved later nor the other more ancient; and since the son is named 'arm' from the powers of his works, behold the arm proceeds from the body, and yet the age of the arm does not precede that of the body. The word is brought forth from the voice, and yet, since it is born from the mouth, it is not proved to be later than the voice. The undivided fellowship of fire and heat:

but although heat is undoubtedly understood to be from fire, yet fire is by no means discerned to be prior to its own heat. Behold a thing which seems to arise from another, and yet is conjoined to that from which it arises without any interval of time. But when we come to God, the begotten is this: as just and justice, wise and wisdom, merciful and mercy. Absolutely we understand, according to the Apostle, that from God who is just and wise arise justice and wisdom; and just as the just one never was without justice, the wise one never without wisdom, so the Son is from the Father, but the Father could never be without the Son.

Without doubt the Arians do not dare to deny our Saviour, but while they call Him lesser, they cannot assert Him to be God. For God by nature subsists in the dignity of fullness, and their impiety testifies by its first confession that it worships one God. But because they make Him younger, through Him who is thought to be elder they make two, and cut through the solidity of unity. For the very name 'lesser' shows another who is greater than He. Who is more ancient than He, who Himself pronounces of Himself: 'I am Alpha and Omega, the first and the last,' who, when asked by the Jews who He was, answered thus: 'the Beginning, who also speak to you,' who confirms with truthful voice through the prophet: 'Before me there was no God, and after me there shall be none'?

If the Father says this, He confirms that no inferior began after Him; if the Son, He pronounces that none at all existed before Him. Concerning this the prophetic word plainly intimates: 'This is our God, and no other shall be reckoned beside Him,' and after this: 'He was seen among men and conversed with men.' According to these things, therefore, between the begotten and the unbegotten there is no order, because He is one; nor does time intervene, because He is first; nor is He to be placed after, because He is alone; nor is He to be called lesser, because He is full. Therefore He is said to be perfect and of a simple nature, inestimable and impassible, even though we truthfully and savingly confess that He suffered for us according to the flesh.

After these things, in the next place, you ask of me how, concerning the substance of God, it has been written in a certain letter: 'He felt nothing with the feeling of one suffering, but felt with the affection of one suffering-together (compassionate).' First, this—which not even the philosophers failed to grasp—is most ready to know: that in man the diverse affections, that is, justice, mercy, holiness, benevolence, piety, are things that come to him, and therefore are called affections. But God is not affected by these in a passible manner, since they are discerned to be in Him continually and naturally. Therefore what in man is affection and grace, in God is virtue and nature. For as to what was said, 'He felt nothing with the feeling of one suffering, but felt with the affection of one suffering-together,' why should anyone not presume to say it in that sense which the prophetic word also recalls:

'O Lord, rebuke me not in Thy anger, neither chasten me in Thy wrath,' and: 'The Lord hath sworn, and He will not repent,' and again: 'The Lord was angry with His people and abhorred His inheritance,' and likewise He is described as by a diverse affection to have loved Jacob and to have held Esau in hatred. He is said to be saddened over our sins and to rejoice in His works, and, as one subject to affections, He says of Himself: 'It repenteth me that I made man,' and from the highest seat of heaven He proclaims: 'Saul, Saul, why persecutest thou me?' Now also He seems to show the affection of one suffering-together, when He says: 'I hungered and ye gave me to eat, I thirsted and ye gave me to drink,' and the rest of this kind, which occur abundantly to the memory.

In what way, therefore—just as if some priest, endowed with a manifold knowledge of tongues and set in the midst of diverse peoples, about to instruct the Hebrew with Hebrew speech, the Greek with Greek, the Roman with Roman, should fashion his words according to the understanding of each, and adapt the address of his own mouth to the sense of each individual, and dispense the discordant voices of one heart and breast into various hearings—so also God, about to speak with man, deigns to assume the tongue of man, and, about to take on even a human form, attests the affections of our dispositions through the sounds of our understandings. For when, describing the offices of the five human senses, He thus says: 'The eyes of the Lord are upon the just, and His ears unto their prayers,' and again:

'the mouth of the Lord hath spoken,' likewise: 'and He smelled a savour of sweetness,' and: 'my hand hath made all these things. Heaven is my throne, but the earth is the footstool of my feet'—He instils into our hearts the efficacies of things under the signification of members; whence, on account of His ineffable condescension toward the human race—which does not disdain to name and to call them servants, friends, and sons—as man in turn He converses with the same with human mouth and manner. For the rest, God's anger is justice, God's wrath is the vigour of severity, for God to have sworn is to have determined, for God to have repented is yet a sentence often changed; and when He says that He is injured by some one persecuting Him, He shows the crime of the one injuring.

The ministry of all discourse is utterly cut off from us, and every means by which God is either understood or proclaimed, if these exchanges of human speech are withdrawn. Why, therefore, may it not be said among these things: 'but He felt with the affection of one suffering-together'? If, then, a simple and open answer has satisfied the master who was sifting the matter, let us pass on to the third question, in which you bid me answer what among human things are to be deemed corporeal, and what incorporeal.

To these things I shall bring forth some matters not according to the presumption of my own perception, but according to the opinion of the holy elders, especially since these things cannot injure the mind, and can nourish it unto faith, and—up to the point at which the Son may appear equal to the Father—can avail to arm and to govern against the depravities of the Arians. Therefore, since the conference is about a loftier discourse, the perception and the mind must be prepared for a subtler understanding. Some most learned of the fathers assert that certain things are invisible, and others incorporeal. Whatever has been created, they define to be seen as matter, and to be comprehensible and corporeal to its Maker. For they assert that even the nature of souls and of angels is corporeal, on this account: that in their beginning they are circumscribed and bounded by space. For just as in a certain treatise of

Jerome we read: 'They think,' he says, 'that the globes of the stars are embodied spirits,' and likewise: 'If angels,' he says, 'and even heavenly bodies are said to be unclean in comparison with God, what dost thou think man is to be reckoned?' But among these things you, for this reason, deny the soul to be corporeal: because, according to the opinion of some, it is neither local, nor does it subsist by quality or quantity—which it is manifest ought to be believed of the majesty of God alone. For we read in a certain most approved treatise of the fathers:

'To enter into and to fill all things,' he says, 'is possible to the Trinity alone, which is so made the penetrator of all intellectual nature, that it can not only embrace and encompass it, but also glide into it and, as it were incorporeal, be poured into a body.' For although we may pronounce that some natures are spiritual—as are the angels, the archangels, and the other powers, our very soul too, or at least this subtle air—nevertheless they are by no means to be deemed incorporeal. For they have, according to themselves, a body in which they subsist, although much and incomparably thinner than our bodies are, according to the sentence of the Apostle who says: 'both celestial bodies and terrestrial bodies.'

By which it is manifestly gathered that nothing is incorporeal save God alone, and therefore that He alone can be penetrable to all spiritual and intellectual substances. Since these things are so, you object to me that the soul is not corporeal for this reason: because, as has been said, it is neither local, nor does it subsist by quality or quantity. Of what peril it is so to believe will be shown in what follows: but now, at this stage of our treatise, when the discussion has been had, it will hang in the balance thus—that if it is neither local nor subject to quantity, we shall without doubt concede it to be incorporeal; but if we shall have demonstrated it to be determined by quantity or enclosed by place, you yourself will accordingly no longer doubt that it is also contained by a body.

In what way is that not local, which, inserted into the members and bound into the inward parts, is held enclosed by motions alone, by the wandering condition of its substance? But if you think the soul ought to be asserted not to be local because it wanders abroad through the senses by diverse things and is dispersed by its thoughts, first it must be understood that the soul's state is one thing, and another is that affection of thought which is born from the soul. Wherefore this rather must be reckoned: that if it ever imagines anything to itself, it is rather occupied with its own motions within itself, and if there is something else which it seems to behold, it is rather described to it in the mirror of recollection. For when it thinks of an absent loved one, has it then satisfied its longing as if by beholding him himself?

or when, for example, it depicts the likeness of Peter or Paul within the secret places of the mind, has it at once penetrated the innermost seats of paradise, where we know them to be? Or when, from a reading, it sets before itself the flames of that rich man in the heart, has it now descended to the places of his torments and to the depths of hell inaccessible to the living? All these things, beyond doubt, either it fashions with itself within the secret places of the breast through various similitudes, or certainly, if outside the seat of the soul the unstable thought, agitated with slippery motion, runs to and fro—this very thing it does locally; and whether it thinks of a city or of whatsoever region, it is fixed there only, with the perception dwelling there, whither it is snatched away by the mind's intention. It can imagine some things to itself; it cannot embrace all things at once.

When, therefore, the soul has thought of Alexandria or Jerusalem, if it has truly been present there in its whole self, as you suppose, let it report to us the situations of the places, the faces of the men, the movements and acts of the peoples. But this very thing, that now between us we mingle the mutual exchanges of speech by the action of the spirit—I perceive that I am speaking with you, yet in my own consciousness; but that I have come to you, I do not perceive. For if the soul is truly believed to be carried with its senses, it is presented by its own thoughts to those very things which it recollects. Behold, through these moments of present time I think of you, and with recollecting mind I see you, but I am wholly ignorant of what you are doing, and whether you are at rest or are free for reading or for prayer.

But this happens for this reason: because I come to you by the affection of the heart, not by the very truth of my substance. For neither in its motions—which we perceive to be now best, now worst—does the nature of our soul consist. For if it is to be believed to consist through its thoughts, why, when these sometimes vanish away and perish, does it itself endure in its own vigour and alacrity? How many, therefore, are the most frequent thoughts and cares in us that even savingly die away and work rather for the freedom of the inner life! If the soul consisted in these very things, without doubt, when they perish, it could not survive.

Whence reason rather speaks this to our consciences: that each soul either brings to birth manifold thoughts conceived within itself from the causes of things, or disperses its own senses, as it were certain offices or ministries, to be occupied with diverse necessities, while it itself rests in the chamber of its own body, destined once to go forth from it. Wherefore, that it is itself local—so that we may once more produce a sufficient example—was not the soul of Lazarus within the body while life remained, but, with life withdrawing, did it not go into exile from the dwelling of the body, and, again poured back within the lifeless body, did it not return, called back, to that whence it had been absent?

Then you see it as it were both driven from the dwelling of its lodging and again restored within the lodging whence it had been absent—and do you contend that it is not local? But why do I say these things about corruptible man, when He whose flesh saw no corruption possessed indeed an immaculate soul, yet a local one, which assuredly He had within Himself when He was affixed to the gibbet, and beyond doubt sent forth from Himself when He lay in the sepulchre? In what way is that not local, which the flesh contains, life conjoins, death separates? But if, as you say, the nature of souls does not admit of local necessity, then there are not lacking even those of the region of paradise—those souls which are shut up in the prison of hell?

Tell me, I pray, if they are not bound to place, how does that vast chaos divide sinners from the assemblies and fellowships of the just by a grim gulf between, so that they can neither pass from here to there nor cross from there to here? Already this is most evident: that things contained within spaces are bounded by quantity. If you have acknowledged the soul to be local, grant that it is corporeal. Tell me, did the very soul of our glorious Redeemer leave the world, when He rose up to heaven?

As for me, I would not even doubt that the angels are local, since it is certain that they are now held in the heavens, now borne through the empty spaces of the air, now sent down to earthly things—those whom the divine word describes as ascending and descending in the patriarch's vision; who, indeed, if they were not local but were everywhere, could not be present and depart by ascent and descent. The most blessed Gabriel himself, who testifies that he stands before God, when he announced to Mary that the Lord of heaven was to be infused into her womb, and when at the bidding of the Lord's ordinance he stood before the eyes of the Mother, was without doubt absent from heaven, did not occupy all of Mary, did not fill the empty and diffused expanses of the vast air, but occupied only that place in which he was.

Since these things are so, whatever occupies a place is a body; and I know not in what way one would not be held by the law of place who is sent from place to place, and like a body is carried by motion and approach, descends by mass, runs about by mobility, goes, returns, absents itself, ascends. Or that one too, I believe, is local, who from the moment he was cast out of heaven is no longer in heaven; nor did he reveal himself alone to be local, who, hurled down from on high, drew away with himself a third part of the stars. Tell me, if he has no body, in that fall what was it that came down? Why do you deny him a corporeal nature, whose ruin you dare not deny? And if, as you say, he has no body, he will not burn:

But where, except in a body, will he feel that fire which is prepared for the devil and his angels? Now I think it superfluous to say that he has drawn a certain thickness from his dwelling in this air, from the condensation of the elements. Tell me, if he had no body, where in the air was the condensation, where could this very thickness—I know not what it is—gather itself together, if he carried nothing corporeal down with himself from that heavenly citadel? He will carry, as I see, an alien body to his torments. Recognize therefore, even from your own assertion, that it is a body. A body is that which is stained, which is defiled, which is altered by any addition coming upon it.

This one, therefore, once the firstborn of the angels, has now been made the prince of darkness, and as it were corporeal—beautiful before, now degenerate; once conspicuous with heavenly splendor, now defiled with the foul horror of infernal sin. A body, I say, is that which has place, is driven by action, is bounded by quantity, is changed by quality, is wasted by pain. Since these things are so, see into what deep crime those plunge themselves who call the soul incorporeal.

Now first, since God the author of the universe is said to have made all things in number and weight, the soul is therefore believed to have been taken out of the matter of the whole creation, which is neither corporeal nor local; and if it is not contained by place, then it is diffused everywhere, and is said to enter into all things, to fill them, and to be everywhere present—as if the creature were made the partner of its Creator, and frailty joined to its Author so as to be reckoned no longer a thing of God but a part of God. See whither the deep slip of error leads its champions. Indeed, to us those things which are above us are invisible:

But to Him all things, just as they are comprehensible, so also are corporeal—to Him who made all things out of nothing, which, as He established them in work, so also He incorporated in matter; and to all things, among which the soul too is counted, just as He distributed weight, number, and measure, so also He set their quantity. Among these matters, if perchance, as has been said, someone should think it must be asserted that, on account of the subtlety of the angelic nature, a certain contagion of this air, gathered by admixture, is found liable to the flames—then in the air alone (as he says, if it is something airy that will burn), not in that one, but outside him, the punishment will rage. But beyond doubt it is nothing other than the substance of a body, where the force of pain will be able to hold sway.

See whither an imprudent and unskilled persuasion tends: he who, when he speaks of the incorporeal, also confesses it to be incomprehensible, and thus ascribes to the created work what belongs to the Creator alone, and shares with created things the privileges of majesty, and extends the power not owed to a creature even to the injury of its Maker. If we inquire well to what outcome of things you would refer the soul, this belief above all things rolled the devil down from that station of the blessed seat, and on this account destroyed the dignity of an angel, while he presumes to possess the nature of God. One God therefore is incorporeal, because He is both incomprehensible and diffused everywhere:

For He took the beginning of His material from the matter of no corporeal creation; and therefore the Son is coeternal with the Father, because, founded by no work and bounded by no beginnings, above all things which He has wrought comprehensible and corporeal within the body of the world for His own Potter, He is diffused in incorporeal majesty—begotten of the Unbegotten, that is, of the Father, yet ever with the Father, He rules over those things which He raised up out of nothing, in the undivided fellowship of the Holy Spirit. PREFACE. To His prefect, the patrician Sollius Sidonius, most learned and excellent man, Claudianus. You commanded the publication of the little books which I composed concerning the state of the soul—you, a cautious arbiter of keeping silent and a weigher of speaking.

It was right that I should yield to the skill, or trust to the friendship, of one most learned and most loving. But as you yourself know excellently well, many very great men gave me this same task, and you yourself along with me—a task which I would not rashly have undertaken, had I not judged that to scorn it was more dangerous than to perform it laborious; although, according to my measure of strength, it was also my part to assert the truth, even unbidden, in so far as the ability is at hand. I have therefore written these few things as it were certain seeds of reasonings, from which any studious person, if he takes them up not idly, will, as I judge, be able to derive much; which, though flowing out through narrow little channels, will nevertheless, by a longer course, overflow into great rivers.

But I, both cheated of time and preoccupied in mind, was content—so far as concerns the eminence of the business—to mark out, briefly and as it were with the finger, what was to be avoided, or to point out what was to be followed. Indeed, as to that little work brought forth without an author and everywhere proclaimed, whether, drawn out in its whole battle-line into the field and grappling with us hand to hand, it has conquered or yielded—do you, most powerful of the eloquent, deliver the verdict. But that whoever is about to read may grasp from the preface the sequence of our style: the first book, at its very outset, briefly establishes that the impassible Godhead is subject to no affection whatever. After that it alternates in varied wrestling with the adversary concerning the state of the soul.

From this point likewise, in order to instruct the reader in those things which are more obscure, it has, modestly and moderately and as sparingly as it could, given a foretaste of something drawn from geometry and arithmetic, and also from dialectic and certain rules of the philosophers, in so far as it served the purpose—having repeatedly engaged with the opposing party; and so, with some of our own additions, without any interpolation of others' matter, the book has reached its end.

The second book, after the introduction, discourses not idly—and, as I declare, not unfruitfully—concerning measure, number, and weight; where, if an attentive examiner is at hand, under the support of piety, through the grades of differing creatures, he will arrive even at some firmness, if not now of contemplating, at least of more robustly believing, the Trinity that creates all things. After this the whole book, right up to its goal, makes use of witnesses. The third book argues a little at its outset, then pursues the wounded who stray from the opposing line; finally, indeed, it neither spurns peace nor fears the conflict of an unknown adversary. Behold, you have read, most learned of men, what you will read again and again:

Only do you see to it that you remember it ought not to be brought forth without care for yourself—that which you command to be published. Nor would I be doubtful about the weight of the business, but about the lightness of the treatment. Therefore assert and defend your counsel; since, if anything in these things turns out amiss, I shall be put at risk for the composition, but you for the publication. Farewell and flourish in good strength, restorer of ancient eloquence. I. ON THE OPINIONS OF THE UNSKILLED AND THEIR STUBBORNNESS IN DEFENDING PRIDE. Great in the human race, Sollius Sidonius, most loving brother, is the vice of many—an arrogant lack of skill, and a stubborn pertinacity in defending opinions wrongly presumed.

For most mortals are either deluded in the gaze of the mind by images of corporeal things drawn in through the senses of the body, as it were by certain shadows of things; or, still clinging to the tender persuasions of their bygone infancy, they grow childish in old age. If they have any flow of speaking, neglecting the causes of things, they spurn the soul of reason and love the bodies of words; and although the truth is reached by a twofold way—either that we submit by credulity to a prejudged authority, or that we tend by reasoning toward knowledge—saying that nothing is of chief account which either authority commands or reason persuades, scorning the fewness of the learned, they make sport of the unskilled, who are the greatest crowd. But they themselves are also deceived by those whom they deceive, by a reciprocal illusion.

For they are praised, and falsely praised, and believe it—whereby the soundness of the mind is most endangered. There is added to this also the bent of an ever-souring envy, the crime and punishment of a grudging soul. For if anything true be brought forth for the public benefit by those whom they assail with unjust hatred, they at once set up the contrary, even if they think the same; and thus, with unspent and confirmed hatred toward those whom they have resolved to hate, they in no way fear to have made shipwreck of the truth. They hate therefore their neighbor, they hate also God. And in these two, the fullness of all the precepts and of the whole law being scorned, it is no wonder if they have no right thought either of God or of man, who put both far from themselves by intervening hatred.

But by this fault of theirs, blameworthy though it be, I am moved more slightly, because, even though they forge the darts of malevolence against others, they themselves, rather pierced by their own blows, receive the wounds which they attempt to inflict; for the authors of hatreds are first punished by the goads of those same hatreds. That is by far the greatest and far more dangerous crime—that they foolishly conceive opinions hostile to catholic soundness, vainly bring them forth, proudly assert them, write them down with rashness, defend them with intent; and because they have slipped humanly through imprudence, they choose to defend the fault of their audacity by their stubborn obstinacy, lest they seem to have been able to sin.

For thus they assert their opinions openly, while none the less secretly muttering, with coaxing flatteries they diligently entreat those ignorant of the matters to acquiesce especially in their opinion and assent to themselves: that what they themselves teach is full of truth, is salvation-bearing—this they confirm even by swearing oaths. If you ask for authority, they suggest that the secrets of causes of this kind can in no way be approached except by the most subtle reason, that investigator of things. If you demand the same on the crucial point, they add that it is rather to authority that one ought to yield; and that they have at the very outset declared that they will not enter the sea of disputation on account of certain hidden reefs of arguments.

Thus they elude reason by authority, and authority by the objection of reason, and use each of these for this end—that they may use neither. But if disputation, drawn a little tighter, should hem them in, they say that there are certain of the saints to whom it is most easy to resolve questions of this kind; that they themselves rather depend on another's authority; that they will above all follow what someone else has sanctioned. Who would bear this, or judge it possible to be borne in any manner—that any man should both deny knowledge and claim learning, should assert his own thoughts if a debater is absent, but cover them if he is present? But, you say, whither does the discourse proceed? I, in truth, a good way off.

I have prefaced as much as I wished, since present matters grieve and weary me; for lately I chanced upon certain men who were reading over and over, with great eagerness, a certain little pamphlet; and because it is the custom of the mortal race, enticed by the discovery of a new work, they had bent their diligent mind to grasping it. This same thing, as if necessary for me to know, they of their own accord pressed upon me to inspect, and I plainly did not refuse. II. WHERE HE RECALLS THAT HE CAME UPON A BOOK WITHOUT AN AUTHOR. The first face of the little work, scarcely straying about the doors of a most sublime question concerning the begotten and unbegotten God, presented a not very catholic opinion, though with a far unequal disputation; so that with me the gravity of the case counterbalanced the gentleness of reasoning.

When, as my reading advanced, I came to the rest of the lection, I observed the author of that little work striving the more intensely by certain circumlocutions, that the Godhead might be believed to be passible. I inquire about the name: it is betrayed neither by answer nor by writing. I began, I confess, to hold the style of such a page exceedingly suspect; and as we are wont in those places which either yield, sinking under the constant undermining of moisture, or are slippery on a gentle slope, or hang over a hollow, or are rough with stakes—with suspended footstep to attempt the unknown path rather than to run—until I enter, as it stands there, the third part of the question.

From this point the opinion appeared no longer to be explored but to be hissed off the stage, and by no means of weighed discourse; it sought diligently enough to bring about, if by any means it could, that the soul should seem to be a body. By no force of argument, therefore, by no commanding law, by no persuading reason, in this vain undertaking is the third discourse, as it were, brought to an end. And first it is in my heart to ask what reason there was that one about to enter upon such great causes and to speak of things so sublime should have shunned to be known. If you dispute with a good conscience, why do you hide your name? If you fear to be recognized, why do you publish the work—not to say, why do you write these things? Or do you perchance follow the examples of the elders on this matter?

But I see that the prophets, the evangelists, the apostles, and afterward very many treatise-writers of authentic works, have inscribed their own names before their proper volumes; and that others have even begun the openings of their works with their own names, as is that: 'Peter, an apostle of Christ,' and 'Paul,' and likewise other and yet other founders and instructors of the Church: namely, they knew that the vain or harmful things of the apocrypha were to be guarded against beforehand. But not even thus could the inventions of deceitful, rash men be avoided. Hence it is that the soundness of our catholic faith does not receive very many writings inscribed with the names of Paul and of many saints, because it weighs the merit of a work not by the allurement of a name, but the author conceals himself from it by the truth of the style.

But indeed that very thing—that this page is published while its author is concealed—gives an evident sign, namely that the very work was condemned by him by whom it was composed. For no one is eager to be concealed, except one who dreads to be recognized. I, however, cannot sufficiently marvel why in the same man there was not a zeal for avoiding harm, in whom there could be a sign of suppressing his name. III. THAT THE IMPASSIBLE GODHEAD IS SUBJECT TO NO AFFECTION WHATEVER. But returning to our purpose, let us look at the very words of the aforesaid work: namely, to that man to whom he addresses such things, whom—just as himself—he was zealous to keep hidden, as he says:

'You ask of me how, concerning the substance of God, it was said in a certain letter'—and here he chose to indicate neither what letter, nor whose, nor to whom, nor concerning whom it was. And he continues concerning God: 'He felt nothing with the feeling of one suffering, but felt with the affection of one suffering-together.' He adds that not even the philosophers were ignorant of this: 'because,' he says, 'in man the diverse affections, that is, justice, mercy, holiness, are accidental things, and are therefore called affections. But God is not affected by these passibly.' O 'not passibly'! O 'affected'! How is He affected, if He does not suffer? Why is your memory so swift to the forgetting even of those very things which you have brought forth? You said that justice and mercy, because in man they are accidents, are affections.

Therefore, if in man, because they are accidents, they are affections, then in God, because they are not accidents, they are not affections. He did not therefore feel with the affection of one suffering-together, in which, because there was no accident, there could be no affection. But you add: 'Therefore what in man is affection and grace, in God is virtue and nature.' But that which is virtue in God—when it has been given to man, is it not virtue? For God is beyond doubt a virtue, who, if He is immutable, then even when He has given Himself to man, the virtue is in man. Therefore what is virtue in God is virtue also in man, differing only in this: that there it is substantially, here by access. Whence the Lord to the apostles: 'Sit,' He says, 'in the city, until you be clothed with virtue from on high'; and the prophet:

'I will love Thee, O Lord, my virtue.' But you say that God is in Himself a virtue, and in man is not. Yet the reason of such an opinion is clearer than light: it follows, namely, that the one whom you say to be affected, you assert to be changed. And first the property of this name must especially be examined by me. 'Affection' is indeed so called from this—that something should affect; but whatever is affected, suffers. To suffer, however, belongs only to a passible and created substance, which, since for it to exist it was called out of nothing by the supreme Essence, which is God, is midway between that out of which it was made and that by which it was made: thus the substance can be affected either to its profit, or, as in lower things, to its defect. For I speak of the human soul.

Therefore neither can nothingness be affected in any way, because it has no substance; nor God, because He neither feels any loss nor receives any increase. But middle things are affected, as was said above, either by gain or by loss. For indeed, whatever is affected suffers, and whatever suffers is not God—no man of sound mind will deny it; because the two reciprocate mutually, so that nothing can be mutable unless passible, nor passible unless mutable.

But as for the fact that, on the testimony of the philosophers, he says that mercy and justice and good things of this sort are affections of a passible creature, and these same things to be in God essentially, not by access—he does not attend in mind that he brings forth things adverse to himself, because an affection is an accession; but nothing accrues to God: therefore He is not subject to affection. For whatever is affected is liable, equally to contraries and to congruities, and is subjected to a twofold passion. Wherefore, if the supreme Godhead felt with the affection of one suffering-together, He is also subject to the goad of an evil passion. 'He felt,' you say: assuredly, to feel is the accident of one who before did not feel.

But to eternity, because it knew the passion of Christ everlastingly—inasmuch as it itself disposed it—nothing new which it might know, not to say which it might feel, accrued at the time of the passion. But why should I now discourse about affection and prove by argument that it is impassible, when this very man with whom we contend has, without doubt, confessed that God suffered-together with the crucified man? What, I pray, is this: 'He felt nothing with the feeling of one suffering, but felt with the affection of one suffering-together'? What is 'He felt,' or what 'He did not feel'? Or in what way did He suffer, if He did not feel? If anyone should say: 'That man walks, and that man walks-with him,' or 'That man speaks, and that man speaks-with him,' does it not signify that the one speaking-with also speaks, and the one walking-with also walks? Or if anyone should say:

'That man is dead, and that man has died-with him,' does it not confirm that both have died? For he who dies-with another assuredly dies. Therefore he too who suffers-with another assuredly suffers. The Godhead therefore has suffered, if it suffered-together; therefore perhaps it has even died; or, if even this is impious to think: then God did not suffer—therefore neither was He affected. Where now is the affection of one suffering-together? Afterward he subjoins what, by the prophetic spirit, all the saints of old, in order to terrify and restrain those who are wise carnally and in human fashion, prophesied figuratively, saying it is written: 'O Lord, rebuke me not in Thy wrath,' and: 'The Lord hath sworn, and He will not repent.'

From this point upward, through the philosophers, he does not impute accidents to God; and here, through the prophets, he even imposes the necessities of vices, because the things which are to be received figuratively, unless they are skillfully inspected within, lead not to the life-giving spirit, but one remains in the killing letter. Namely, so that we might believe the essence of the most exalted Godhead, which cannot be defiled, to be passible, if we ponder the oracles of the prophets, animated by allegorical mysteries, only in the body of the letter. For when by the prophetic oracles He is recorded either to be angry or to repent, the effects of these passions, forsooth, are to be considered, not the affections.

Further, that recent writer who declares that his little meditations ought to be weighed according to the example of prophetic speech, professes himself not a treatise-writer but a seer—although it was the Virgin's childbearing that sealed the mouths of the seers, that He might unseal the prophecies. It is therefore otherwise than reason demands, to weave oratorical periods in the mystical style of the prophets; whence it comes about that he who promises he will expound the things of others cannot himself be expounded. Therefore either use not the words of the seers, or prophesy. Assuredly it in no way befits either a prophecy to suit the present time, or prophetic speech to suit a treatise-writer.

Wherefore whatever you have borrowed from prophetic speech in defense of yourself is adverse to you rather than helpful, because either the defense you sought confesses your weakness, or the unfitting patronage does not purge your error. The inviolable Godhead, therefore, is by no means rightly said to be affected, because the effect is from the maker, the affection in the work. For when God temporally punishes anyone, by His eternal counsel it is assuredly the one who is punished that suffers. God too would suffer something, if He either temporally took notice of anyone's sins, or were moved by anger to the same to exercise justice.

For all that is temporal, movable and mutable, the immutable and abiding everlastingness includes, affecting some things salutarily, suffering some things to be affected judicially, itself quite alien from all affection or motion of time and of place, endowed with that motion alone which is called stable; from which, and through which, and in which is everything that is moved by time alone and by it alone, and everything that is moved by it both through time and place, and not by time alone. But of this elsewhere. Now, however, letting go of these things—which are indeed of such merit or force that it is just for them to be disproved, but not necessary to be attacked—let us come to those testimonies which he has borrowed from the apostle in patronage of himself. For he says, why can it not be said:

'He felt with the affection of one suffering-together,' when the apostle thought it should be said: 'They would never have crucified the Lord of glory'—since, just as light can feel no blow of a wound, so too the Author of light felt no penalty of suffering? It can therefore be said: 'But He felt with the affection of one suffering-together.' It can indeed, because all things are lawful, but it ought not, because not all things edify. Yet in this kind of your comparisons and pronouncements I can scarcely keep from laughing. A little before, you had asserted that God ceases to be a virtue and is therefore changed; now likewise, with your opinion flagging, you declaim that, just as light can feel no blow of a wound, so too the Author of light felt no penalty of suffering. Therefore light alone feels a blow.

Does earth, or water, or air feel the blow of any wound? Or is light perchance animated? Or can any inanimate body feel? Or is there any body which, even if it does not feel a wound, cannot be wounded? Light therefore can be wounded, even if it cannot feel, because just as night is broken by the inrush of light, so light is wounded by darkness. Whence in his most delightful Asclepiadeans the most famous poet played, saying: 'And the rival light drives out the absent day, which, conquered, night flees with torn mantle.' What do you mean—that just as light does not feel a blow, so the Godhead did not feel a wound in the passion? If it is so, then it could be wounded, even if it could not feel; and one thing was of insensibility, another of corruptibility.

For it did not, on account of incorruptibility, fail to grieve, if it could be wounded, because light is alike both insensible and woundable. See whether perchance this be that which you think is to be approved by us—the deep slip of error. You say that corporeal light is common to man and beast alike, to such a degree that God does not feel a wound inflicted; and you do not liken any beautiful body, however beautiful, to the supreme Incorporeal, but make it equal to Him; and in an opinion so blameworthy you claim for yourself not only the privilege of innocence but of praise, and you pronounce that we shall be outside the faith because we say the likeness of God—that His likeness may be such as He is—to be incorporeal. But of this hereafter; for the present let us discourse concerning affection.

If then Christ was so crucified that the inviolable incorruptibility of the supreme Godhead is believed to have been crucified for the whole world, tell me, I pray—unless it be injurious—whom is it lawful to believe to have been exalted by the supreme God, that is, by the very Trinity, after the lowliness of death; to whom the name which is above every name is said to have been conferred? To Him assuredly, I judge, who, being made obedient even unto death, on account of the obedience of His ineffable humility, was ineffably raised up into the glory of God the Father. Dare, if you will, not to confess Him to be the same Lord of glory whom you confess to be the Son of man. But you, by that saying:

'They would never have crucified the Lord of glory,' use it as you wish, so that it may without doubt be believed that the Godhead itself can be affected, if it could be crucified. Therefore by an open declaration you have made your opinion manifest. For when you suppose that you have said God to be affected without reproach, on the ground that the apostle calls the Lord of glory crucified—and the truth persuades that the Lord of glory is to be understood as crucified in such a way that the Godhead be not believed to be crucified—you, however, arguing obstinately that the Godhead is affected, in your zeal for defending your error do not observe that you are saying that that penal thing, which the wickedness of the persecutors wrought upon the man Christ, was inflicted upon the inviolable Godhead itself.

But if this is so, then God could suffer for men even without a man having been assumed, since if He is passible in man, He could be passible even apart from man. But perhaps you will contend that He was changed by contact with the human substance, and that for this reason He became passible after assuming man. Then God is not incorruptible, since whatever can be made worse can assuredly also be corrupted; but the divinity cannot be corrupted nor changed, and therefore cannot suffer. Now it further remains that, since Christ is true man and true God, one Person out of a twofold substance, both God-man and man-God, He, the same Lord of glory, both was not crucified with respect to His inviolable divinity, and yet was crucified in His manhood by reason of the unity of the Person.

And so in a wondrous and inconceivable manner God [as man] suffered, and yet the divinity did not suffer. See now therefore that you have claimed the testimony of the Apostle for this point alone, not so that your opinion might draw strength from it, but so that the perversity of your distorted opinion might not lie hidden. You, forsooth, as though Truth itself were guaranteeing it to you through the Apostle, say that the divinity is affected; but the Apostle compels us to understand that the Lord of glory was crucified in that part of Himself in which He could be crucified.

To you therefore, to you alone, is this opinion left: that the inviolable and inestimable divinity was scourged with whips, pierced through with nails, run through with a lance, afflicted with pains, and consumed by death—because you refuse to believe that in one and the same Christ one thing was subject to death and another to suffering. But under the pressure of truth you change your words, saying that the things by which a created substance is affected are in God substantially, not accessibly. Go on speaking thus, lest presumptuous ignorance scatter a lie into the sincerity of truth. To err, indeed, is human; to repent of one's fault is human. No one sins more dangerously than he who defends his sins.

For the essence of the supreme divinity is impassible and subject to no affection, as you yourself declare, and in this you do not refuse to agree with the philosophers. Therefore drive this civil war from your soul. Let it be certain to you that truth can no more be mingled with the false than essence with nothingness. Yet you say that He is affected whom you deny to suffer. For if He is not free from affection, then the profession of His impassibility regarding the same is false—the one thing immoderately contradicts the other: he who says, He felt by the affection of compassion, does not say that in the passion He felt nothing. Furthermore you say that God is not affected passibly; therefore He is affected non-passibly. Which is just as if someone were to say: that man stands while running, that one sleeps while waking—which the discrepancy of contraries by no means permits.

What then is the use of your adding 'passibly,' when it can be said most truly and most fully that God is not affected? This double-tongued utterance of yours is not free from the blemish of suspicion. You do not say that God suffers, yet you say He is affected. Affection and passion signify one and the same thing: either remove both, or preserve both in the one or the other. Therefore it must not be said, 'God is not affected passibly,' but, 'God is not affected.' If He is not affected, He did not feel by the affection of compassion. If He felt by the affection of compassion, then consequently He is affected. I say: the divine substance is affected by nothing; you say: God is not affected. Let us be reconciled. Let him be utterly cast out from our midst who bespatters you—perhaps ignorant, but certainly careless—with infamy in a matter that is plainly evident.

But you add further, and declare that the Apostle said of Christ, now placed in heaven: We have such a high priest who can suffer together with our infirmities; and, as though there were here nothing to be examined and discussed, you boast that you have satisfied your purpose, about to pass on to the third question.

Therefore, that I may give my answer as briefly as possible: that High Priest, I believe, is He who principally offers the sacrifices of mankind before the divinity of the supreme Trinity, expiates sins, and commends our vows. He therefore is the true Priest; for if the Son of God, according to that whereby He is equal to the Father, does not so much pour out prayers as hear those who pray, then He is rather to be understood here as man, whom the Apostle, calling Him High Priest and declaring that He suffers together with our infirmities, likewise speaks of in the same way: Christ Jesus, who died, yea rather, who is also risen again, who is at the right hand of God, who also makes intercession for us. That High Priest therefore suffers together with us, who also intercedes for us. But He indeed—

He who assents to the one interceding—the Trinity itself would surely have no one whom it would need to intercede with itself, if it could in any way suffer or be affected. Do you not now understand that a testimony for the truth is rather being taken up as a patronage for falsehood? For since, if anything of this sort, as we said above, is found in the divine volumes, it is to be referred to the unity of the Person—because, just as soul and body of diverse substance are one man, so God and man of diverse substance are one Christ. And through this, since He is one out of diverse substance, He in a certain manner asks of Himself, and in a certain manner hears Himself on our behalf. Innumerable are the things that might most readily be said upon this, but since those things need not be laboriously developed which collapse of their own accord—

for the present let what has been said about these things suffice. IV. HENCEFORTH HE DISPUTES CONCERNING THE STATE OF THE SOUL. The state of the human soul, that is, of the divine image, is now called into question. This indeed is that third question, in which this dear friend of mine, having entered upon the task of distinguishing the natures, declares that the spirit of life is a body—asserting that on this point he is bringing forward the determinations of the previously-cited authority of the Fathers; whom, however, he records not so much to have defined anything known to them by mental apprehension, as to have held certain things as mere opinions.

And because he himself, in what he says, yielded not so much to proven reason or to inviolable authority as rather to human opinion, he strives with strenuous effort that—divine authority being spurned and clear reason likewise set aside—we should, with closed eyes as they say, assent to his own assertions. Whoever think of God truly and piously consequently understand that nothing which ought to have been created was left uncreated by Him. For the cause of creating things is the goodness of the Creator, who, being able to create all things whatsoever He wills, would have exercised no goodness if He had created nothing, and likewise would have used a half-full benignity if He had founded something only half-complete.

But it seems strange that something should be lacking to the complement of things if the little flower of the rose did not exist, and yet that nothing would be lacking if the incorporeal substance had not been created. Lest therefore not merely some small thing, but rather the most important thing, should be lacking to the fullness of creation, the incorporeal substance too ought to have been created. But perhaps it may be referred to the injury of the Creator, if He be said to have founded something incorporeal and like to Himself, since nothing like God is found among bodies. Yet the human soul is called by God Himself the likeness of God; and in a body there can be no divine likeness. Therefore that which is like to God will be incorporeal; but the human mind has been made unto the likeness of God; therefore the human mind is incorporeal.

THAT THE INCORPOREAL IS PREFERRED IN DIGNITY TO THE CORPOREAL, AND THE NON-LOCAL TO THE LOCAL. Now everything incorporeal is preferred in the dignity of nature to the corporeal, and the non-local to the local, and the indivisible to the divisible, and the living to the non-living. For if the most omnipotent and likewise most benign Creator did not create a substance more excellent than every body and like to Himself—a substance which it has already been established ought to have been created—then either He was unwilling or certainly He was unable. If He was unwilling and unable, He lacked omnipotence. If He was able and unwilling—which is even wicked to think—He was envious. But omnipotence cannot be unable, nor can goodness be envious. Therefore He both was able and willed to create the incorporeal; therefore He also created it.

Unless perhaps you say that what He was able to will ought not to have been done—He who could not will anything except what He ought to do. Why now would you contend that what you do not doubt ought to have been created was not created? That it certainly ought to have been created: since the incorporeal Creator is the greatest good, and the created incorporeal is a great good, and the created body—which is nothing except as created—is some good, so by the supreme God, who is the greatest good, just as some good, namely body, was created, so likewise the great good, namely the incorporeal, ought to have been created; for it would not befit the omnipotent Good, who made all things very good, to make the perfection of the fullness of things mutilated even in the least matters—not to speak of failing to create the most important.

But perhaps it will be asserted either that an incorporeal creature is not a good, or that a good ought not to have been created, or that what ought to have been done could not be done. But the incorporeal Creator is the supreme good, the incorporeal creature a great good: therefore a great good ought to come into being from the supreme good, and the Omnipotent was able to make what the Good ought to will. Therefore He created the incorporeal substance—He who could not but make what ought to come into being—unless perchance it be said that something ought to have come into being which He did not make; the consequence then will be that He made something which He ought not to have made. But you will say to me: if some incorporeal thing has been created, then it equals the Creator. We are inquiring about true man, that is, about the soul of man. This is not equal to God, but like Him:

like, namely, in so far as the incorporeal is like the incorporeal; inferior, in so far as the created is to the creator; like, in so far as intellectual light is to intelligible light; and unlike, in so far as the mutable creature is to the immutable creator. For truth is one thing, and the image of truth another. But just as there can be no image of a corporeal thing except a body, so in no way is the image of the incorporeal found in a body. For there where Moses speaks of the creation of man, he says thus: And God said, Let us make man unto our image and likeness. And He made man unto His image and likeness. Unto the image of God He created him, male and female. This is of divine—

authority's oracle, which can neither be evaded by eloquence, nor deceived by argument, nor overcome by force, nor corrupted by art. If the human soul is the image of God, then plainly it is the image of the incorporeal; if it is the image of the incorporeal, then it is itself certainly incorporeal. But if it is not incorporeal, then it is by no means the image of the incorporeal. But it is the image of the incorporeal; therefore it is incorporeal: for since it is created, it is not God; since it is the image of God, it is not a body. VI. THAT WHILE EVERY INCORPOREAL THING IS INVISIBLE, NOT EVERY CORPOREAL THING IS VISIBLE. But you allege that you have been taught by certain persons—whose very names, however, you withhold from our knowledge—that some things are said to be incorporeal, others invisible. Treaters of awesome expertise, forsooth, who have penetrated unto this secret:

if some things are incorporeal and others invisible, then the incorporeal things are not invisible. The incorporeal therefore must be set below every corporeal thing—because Truth says through the Apostle: The things which are seen are temporal, but the things which are not seen are eternal. But you so distinguish the creating and the created substance that some things are incorporeal, others invisible. Therefore every corporeal thing is invisible, and every incorporeal thing visible. Here I myself dare to inquire: is God invisible or visible? If you deny Him to be corporeal, you do not refuse Him to be visible. If you say He is invisible, you confess Him to be corporeal.

According to this opinion therefore—which be far from you and from us—the eternal, invisible, incorporeal God either will not be incorporeal, or will be visible and will not be eternal. Yet this teacher, ignorant of patent matters, wished to think something but was unable to express it; and I judge that he meant to say that there are certain corporeal things which cannot be seen—since it is proper to everything incorporeal not to be seen—and that through this some corporeal things can be invisible, but the incorporeal cannot be otherwise than invisible. For while everything incorporeal is invisible, not everything invisible is incorporeal.

For the voice is not seen, yet it is a body; although, on account of the eminence of sight, we say that even the things which pertain to the other senses are 'seen'—as we often say: See what it sounds like, although sound pertains to hearing, not to sight; and yet we do not say thus: Hear what shines, because sight, more eminent than the other senses, abusively claims for itself what belongs to the inferior ones, while it does not mingle its own power with their powers. Wherefore all things which can be perceived by any sense of the body are both visible, if we refer all things to sight, and not all things are visible, if to each sense we render what is proper to it. Hence indeed all the principal bodies, which are called elements, are without doubt visible: we find by experience that they are perceived.

From the measured assembly of these in due proportion, by their dimensions compacted by ratio, and quickened by the soul, a living body is produced—although there are many things which are not animate and yet cannot be denied to live. But we are speaking of those things which not only live but also perceive, such as animate beings devoid of reason. Concerning these, deferring the discussion a little, we speak of ourselves. Therefore, since we consist of soul and body, and just as the body cannot be the mind, so the mind cannot be the body, the mind which perceives in the body, even though it perceives through the visible, perceives invisibly. For sight is one thing, the eye another; the ears one thing, hearing another; the nostrils one thing, smell another; the mouth one thing, taste another. Nor are hand and touch the same.

Therefore by touch we distinguish hot things and cold, but the very sense of touching we do not touch. For neither cold nor heat is there in it. And by taste we perceive sweet and bitter, but we cannot taste taste itself. For there is nothing either bitter or sweet in it. With the nostrils we receive odors, yet we do not grasp smell by smell, because smell smells nothing; and with the ears we draw in voices, but since hearing makes no sound, we do not hear hearing itself. With the eyes we behold colored shapes, and we discern them with the eyes because they are colored and formed; but sight, because it is neither colored nor formed, we do not see:

for we should see continually if sight shone, and should always hear if hearing sounded, and should perpetually smell if smell gave off fragrance, and should taste unwearyingly if taste had savor, and should touch eternally if touch touched itself. And, to be silent about the rest, if taste could be tasted, no one could be fasting; nor would there be need of external things to be applied, upon which the sense might exert itself, if it perceived itself. Therefore the member through which we perceive is one thing, and the sense by which we perceive another; for between the invisible incorporeal and the visible body there is that invisible corporeal, which in us is sight, hearing, smell, taste, and touch:

these, since they are only in an animate body, by the commerce of the two diverse things are at once both corporeal and invisible—drawing from the visible body that they may be corporeal, and from the incorporeal mind that they may be invisible. Therefore, contrary to your opinion, that will not be invisible which will not be incorporeal—as though it were proper to the incorporeal to be visible and to the corporeal to be invisible—since indeed nothing of the body would be invisible, unless the invisibility of the incorporeal made that thing invisible; because in the same man, as we said above, the soul is at once the incorporeal invisible, and the invisible corporeal is that which the soul invisibly operates upon the visible body. VII. THAT THE FIVEFOLD SENSES OF THE BODY CONSIST OF THE FOUR ELEMENTS.

Now indeed whatever we touch by the senses of the body pertains so particularly to each of them, according to the things proper to each, that they do not admit others into the communion of what is their own. There is therefore among all corporeal things, without doubt, the light of the sun, as the more excellent. This pertains to that supreme element in the whole corporeal realm, which is called fire. Hence it is that even in the human body sight has received the chief place before all the senses. For from the inner heat of the heart and liver certain little fires, unwearyingly sparkling, fly up into the chamber of the head as into the heaven of our body. From these, rays poured forth through the midst of the eyes and mingled with the outer light, of the bodies upon which they have fallen—