'to rule the night, and the stars; and he set them in the firmament of heaven to shine upon the earth.' They did not receive it as a reward for good works, that after their creation they should shine in the firmament of heaven and succeed one another for the days and nights; so also the principalities and powers which were created in the regions of the heavens — we do not think that they advanced to these after good works, but were thus created from the beginning.
For neither do we imitate the error of Origen and his disciples, who think that, after the likeness of the demons and the devil — who by their own will obtained such names and offices — the principalities and powers, virtues and thrones and dominions, after their creation, perpetrated some good, so that, when others had slipped to lower things, they might ascend to the heights and be marked with these names, possessing afterward what they had not possessed before. In saying this, they do not understand that they go against the sentence of Paul, who speaks of the principalities and powers and thrones and dominions as created in Christ. But in that he says 'created,' it is doubtful to none that they were thus established from the beginning and did not afterward receive dignities of this kind.
But let it suffice to have touched briefly on these things; let us come to another of his impieties, which he utters as though belching it forth from the deepest darkness, and has left to the world the most wicked memory of his blasphemies. For he says that the Holy Spirit does not work upon those things which are inanimate, nor reach the irrational. In asserting which, he does not reflect that the mystical waters in baptism are consecrated by the coming of the Holy Spirit, and that the bread of the Lord, by which the Savior's body is shown forth and which we break for our sanctification, and the sacred chalice — which are placed on the table of the church and are certainly inanimate — are sanctified through the invocation and coming of the Holy Spirit.
If the strength of the Holy Spirit does not reach to the irrational and to those things which are without soul, why does David sing: 'Whither shall I go from thy Spirit?' In saying which he shows that all things are contained by the Holy Spirit and encompassed by his majesty. If all things in all, then surely both the irrational and the inanimate as well. And elsewhere we read: 'The Spirit of the Lord has filled the world' — which the Scripture would never record, unless the irrational and the inanimate too were filled by his divine power.
But he is not content with this limit of blasphemy; rather, in the manner of the moonstruck, who attest their frenzy by the gnashing of teeth and the ejection of foaming spittle, he belches forth again and says that the Son of God — that is, his reason and word and power — reaches only to those things which are rational. Hearing which, I marvel whence he took it, or how he can be ignorant of having read: 'All things were made by him' — from which it is proved that the strength of the Word of God reaches to all things — perhaps forgetful also of that history, when by the power of Christ Lazarus was raised up, whose body certainly, at the time when it rose from death into life, lacked, like the soul, so also reason.
He was also ignorant of that: that from five loaves five thousand men were fed, besides women and infants, and twelve baskets of fragments remained over — which certainly the power of Christ accomplished. I think he did not recall that miracle either, when, treading with divine foot upon the irrational wave of the sea, he restored calm to those sailing — which the power of Christ and the command of no other performed. How then does he not shudder with his whole mind and body, saying that the strength of the Word of God cannot reach to the irrational creatures?
And he who boasts himself in the knowledge of the Scriptures and thinks he has read as much as no man ever read, let him know it is written that they brought the sick on beds and set them in the crossways and streets, that the shadow of Peter might touch and heal them — which the sacred Acts of the Apostles testify, refuting the folly of Origen, by which the shadow of an apostle is proved to have done that which he testifies the Son and Word of God was not able to do. Deceived by a similar error, and not knowing what he says, he follows the opinion of those who are unwilling that providence should descend to all creatures and to the lower parts of the world, but only to abide in the regions of the heavens — so that, forsooth, the shadow of Peter did that which the strength of the Savior was unable to accomplish.
But let us come also to those matters. For since the Apostle plainly proclaims concerning the firstborn Son of God: 'Let each one perceive this in us which was also in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, thought it not robbery to be equal with God, but emptied himself, taking the form of a servant' — that man dared to say that it was the soul of the Savior which emptied itself and took the form of a servant, so that John is made out to have lied, who says: 'the Word was made flesh,' representing the Savior as like to our condition, as though it were not he himself who emptied himself and took the form of a servant, but his soul; and by his impiety he dissolves the faith which is confirmed by the confession of all.
For if it is the soul of the Savior which was in the form of God and equal to God — according to Origen's madness — and the Son of God is equal to God, and that which is equal to God is proved to be of the same substance, the very order of the argument leads us to believe that soul and God are of one nature. And when he says this, it follows that he also contends that our souls too are of no other nature than God's; and there is no doubt to anyone that our souls and the soul of the Savior are of one substance, so that now Maker and thing made would be of one nature.
And how were all things created in Christ, if the souls of men are of the same substance as the Creator? But it is not so, brethren; nor was it the soul of the Savior, but the Son of God himself who, being in the form of God and equal to God, emptied himself, taking the form of a servant. And Origen, sunk into the mire in the depths of impiety, does not understand that he is a sharer with the pagans, who, venerating idols in place of God, saying they were wise, became fools, and changed the glory of the incorruptible God into the likeness of the image of corruptible man; into which this man too, running into a similar error, has been deceived; for by affirming the soul of the Savior to be in the form and equality of God, as the earlier discourse mentioned, he is equal to heathen impiety.
For as they changed the glory of the incorruptible God into the likeness of the image of corruptible man, saying that those were gods which were not, so this man too changed the glory of the incorruptible God into his form and equality, asserting the soul of the Savior — which was created — and that it emptied itself, and that it was not the Word of God that came to earthly things, as the apostolic authority affirms. Nor is he ashamed, out of his verbosity, forgetful of himself, [to say] that the soul of man was not so called from the beginning of its condition, but from this, that what was previously mind and understanding took on the coldness of negligence and unbelief. Which etymology suits the Greek rather than the Latin tongue.
But if he asserts the soul of the Savior to be equal to God and established in his form, then it too received its name from the coldness of charity and lost the dignity of its former name. For his general argument is that the souls of men were so called from the fact that they lost the warmth of their former fervor. Therefore, if all souls were named on receiving coldness, and he confesses that the Savior had a soul, it follows that he says that this too migrated from mind and understanding to a name of this sort. And although he keeps silent about it in his speech, and his open impiety restrains his madness, nevertheless he is compelled by necessity itself to say it — [that necessity] which links what follows in order to what has been granted before.
For either he must deny that the Savior had a soul, so as to come most openly against the authority of the Gospels, or, if he cannot contradict himself, he too will confess that this soul is named from the coldness of charity, from mind and understanding; for he reckons the souls of all who have departed from God and lost the warmth of divine charity to be named from coldness. Who would not believe him content with this limit of sacrilege? Again he fastens another slander upon the Son of God and speaks with these words: 'Just as the Father and the Son are one, so also the soul which the Son of God assumed and the Son of God himself are one.'
Nor does he understand that the Father and the Son are one because of the communion of substance and the same divinity, but that the Son and his soul are of a nature diverse and greatly distant between themselves. For indeed, if, just as the Father and the Son are one, so too the soul of the Son and the Son himself are one, then the Father and the soul of the Savior will be one, and it too will be able to say: 'He who has seen me has seen the Father.' But it is not so — far be this from the faith of the Church! — for the Son and the Father are one, because there is no diverse nature between them; but the soul and the Son of God differ between themselves both in nature and in substance, in that it too was created by the Son, of our condition and nature.
For if, just as the Father and the Son are one, so the soul of the Son of God and the Son himself are one, then, as we have already said, the soul and the Father will be one, and the soul of the Savior will be believed to be 'the splendor of glory and the figure of his substance.' But to say this is impious and blasphemous. It is therefore of the same impiety to say the Son and his soul are one, as to deny that the Father and the Son are one. Again, forgetful of himself, he speaks things contrary to himself; for he says: 'The soul which was troubled and made sorrowful was not itself the Only-begotten and firstborn of every creature, nor the Word of God, which, surpassing the condition of the soul and being truly the Son of God, spoke in the Gospel: I have power to lay it down, and I have power to take it up.'
Therefore, if the Son of God is better and more powerful than his soul — which is doubtful to no one — how could his soul be in the form of God and equal to God, [that soul] which, when he says it emptied itself and assumed the form of a servant, surpasses all heretics in the magnitude of blasphemy? For if the Word of God is in the form of God and equal to God, but the soul of the Savior is also in the form of God and his equality, how can one thing among equals be greater and another lesser? For those things which are of an inferior nature testify by their own abasement to a more sublime nature and substance.
This blasphemy does not suffice him, but, directing the course of his folly beyond the rivers of Ethiopia, again frenzied he exults, saying that God by his own will founded as many rational creatures as he was able to govern, so that he compares the power of God to the weakness of men and of the other things which were created. For [he says] in the human body its strength sustains and rules as many members as, infused into them, it is able to enliven, and it grants us that measure of temper which by its presence it is able to rule, and it sustains by its power as much as the members of men are able to bear;
but God, greater than the things which he himself has fashioned, since he has furnished them in creation with the measure which the order of things demanded, and beyond which they were unable to sustain more, is able to do more than the things which have been made can contain. Yet that man, that pillar of truth, asserts the strength of God to be limited and less than the arts of men.
For masons and those who are skilled in the science of building houses are able to build greater things than they have made — if indeed the foundations can sustain what is to be built upon them — nor is the making the limit of the arts of thought; and although they may have completed works as great as the necessity of things demanded, and have a measure beyond which, if anything were constructed, it would be proved unseemly and useless, the art itself contains more in the mind than it has demonstrated in the work; nor is a limit imposed on the science by the limit of things, provided, as I said, that whatever the mind has conceived and thought has expanded by the magnitude of works, the things which are subjected can sustain it.
And how is it not impious to impose no limit on human art, and not to make the science of craftsmen equal to their works, yet to say that God has made as many rational creatures as he was able to make? Let the impious man therefore hear and learn: the power of God is not so great [only] as the rational creatures he is said to have made; rather, imposing a measure on his works beyond which they could not be, and enclosing the number of things by the art of his own arrangement, he himself is not held by measure or number. From which it clearly appears that he did not make as much as he was able, but made his power [work] only as much as the necessity of things required. Let us set forth an example, so that what we say may become clearer.
If some wealthy head of a household should wish to invite guests to dinner and to offer such feasts as could fill the greed of the diners, the rich master would not straightway be able to have only as much as they should eat and as had been prepared for them, but he provided for them as much as the dignity of the banquet required; so too Almighty God, surpassing the comparison of the example, did not make as many creatures as he was able, but as many were made by him as ought to be made. Yet that man weaves the seed-bed of his verbosity and repeats it and says: 'God made as much as he was able to comprehend and to have subject to himself and to govern by his providence.' Nor does he hear the prophet saying:
'If all the nations are as a drop from a bucket, and are reckoned as the turning of a balance, and shall be counted as spittle, to whom have you likened God?' And again: 'Who has measured the water with his hand, and heaven with his palm, and all the earth with his fist?' If, for comparison with the strength of God, water is measured with the hand, and heaven with the palm, and all the earth with the fist — but these things are said by metaphor, so that the worthlessness of the things made may be proved from the magnificence of the Maker; for God is not composed of a diversity of members — how is he said to have made as much as he was able to comprehend by his power? Let us tread the path we have begun, and unfold our meaning more fully.
If all the nations are reckoned as drops from a bucket and as the turning of a balance, and shall be reckoned as spittle — by which words the worthlessness and small substance of all creatures is demonstrated, so that the incomparable sublimity of God may appear — then his strength too will be reckoned as a drop from a bucket and as the turning of a balance and the spittle of a man, if, according to Origen, he fashioned only as much as he was able to comprehend by his power; and it is necessary that the strength of God be made equal to the number and measure of the things made, if indeed he could not make greater things than he made.
But I do not think that anyone — I do not say of men, but not even of demons — would dare to invent about him these things which that man both thought and wrote: that God made as much matter as he was able to adorn and to divide into the forms of things. Perceiving which, let him again learn from us: God did not make as much as he was able to make, but made as much as the order of the measure of things demanded, having far greater both art and strength than the number and measure of the things which have been made. And let him know that this is proved by the testimonies of the prophets, of whom one says: 'His power covered the heavens,' and another cries out: 'He made the earth as nothing,' so that they might proclaim the power of God to be greater than the things which have been made. Furthermore, as to what he said:
'He made the earth as nothing' — the Apostle, interpreting concerning all creatures, says: 'who calls those things which are not, as though they were,' so that through these words too we may learn that the strength of God is greater than the things which have been made by him. And he is not ashamed, disputing against the strength of God, to say that God can do only as much as matter supplies him for working; nor does he understand that the nature of the things made is one and that of him who is the maker another, nor that that from which something is made can [do] as much as he who fashions something out of it; for the power and condition of diverse substances is diverse.
Wherefore, if they who prefer Origen's ravings to the authority of the Scriptures wish to celebrate the Lord's Pasch with the Church, let them hear God crying out: 'And did I not show these things to you, that you might walk hereafter?' and the prophet tearfully admonishing: 'O, O, flee from the land of the north, says the Lord, for I will gather you from the four winds of heaven; be saved in Zion, you who dwell with the daughter of Babylon,' that, leaving behind the darkness of error and the coldness of ignorance, joined to the pursuits of the magi, they may turn toward the rising of the Sun of righteousness, and, dwelling in the warmest region of heaven — which is felt in the fervor of the Scriptures — may, spurning Origen's madness, inquire of the shepherds of the Church and say: 'Where is he who is born King of the Jews?'
When they have found him lying in the manger — namely, in the humble eloquence of the Scriptures — they will offer him gold and frankincense and myrrh; that is, faith proved and shining with all the splendor of truth, and the fragrance of a sweetly-smelling manner of life, and continence that dries up the luxury of pleasure and the flowing incentives of the flesh.
For those who, after frequent admonitions, contradict the faith of the Church are held by a double weakness, of wickedness and of ignorance, and, in the manner of serpents wholly turned to earthly things and clinging to the ground, they prefer evils to goods, nor do they know what is the difference between vices and virtues, and they despise the medicines from the holy Scriptures given for their correction and healing, in the manner of pregnant women enduring loathings of the truth, who spit out their accustomed foods and pursue whatever is harmful, nor are they able to lift up the clear light of the soul against the rays of truth: despising ecclesiastical discipline, they wallow like swine in the mire and despise the ointments.
But it is just that at least from the examples which we bring forward they may receive healing. For as bleariness harms the eye and fever ravages the whole body, and rust too little by little consumes bronze and iron, so the pernicious contagion of perverse dogmas violates the beauty of negligent souls and suffuses them with the deformed pallor of lies. I beseech you, brethren, that you pardon my grief as I bring wicked doctrines into the open. For although we have passed through the rivers of Babylon, to persuade the captives dwelling there to make their way to the festivity of Jerusalem, nevertheless by the mercy of God we ourselves did not feel the captivity, spreading the sails of the Scriptures to prosperous winds.
Nor did the swelling whirlpools of heretical doctrine overwhelm us, nor did the tempest of lies terrify us, nor did the torrents of iniquity drag us into the midst of their sea, where, according to the psalmist's song, 'creeping things of which there is no number,' and the dragon, the devil, dwell — a most venomous animal open to the sports of the saints — nor, to conclude the whole in a brief word, could the blasts of winds rising up on every side overturn the ship of the Church and cover the oarage of our labors with a savage whirlwind.
Behold, sailing with the Savior the Lord like his disciples, we have crossed over, and entering the harbor of rest we embrace the most beautiful shore of the divine volumes, plucking the various flowers of knowledge, and, fixing pressed kisses upon the snowy limbs of wisdom, we cling in her embraces, and, if the Lord grant it, living with her and persevering in her love, we sing: 'I became a lover of her beauty.' For as many as more diligently read the holy Scriptures and run through the painted meadows of the heavenly words enjoy this beatitude; but those who, leaving the greenness of the Lord's solemnity, cross over to the deserts, in the manner of cities which are without a wall, endure the hostile assaults of demons.
Wherefore, celebrating the imminent feast, let us understand both ourselves and all things that are ours, and let us embrace with all our zeal knowledge and our rational soul as it were a mother, having the notion of knowledge as the root of speech and of reason, but speech, so to speak, as the vestibule of the work, and further the work as the completed roofs of the edifice of speech and knowledge and the most firm gable of the house set upon it. For speech and reason and knowledge and faith, without work, are empty and unstable. And — that we may seem to take something from that doctrine on account of those who have been instructed in the dialectical arts — just as, if we join a verb to a noun, a perfect sense is produced,
and if there be a verb alone, or a noun without a verb, that which is said is nothing at all — so knowledge without work, and work without faith, are weak and perishable; and on the contrary, knowledge coupled to work is the sign of perfect virtue. For the silent thought of the soul is its hidden speech, which, resounding outwardly through the tongue, brings forth the mind's judgment. And when speech has been consummated by work, an end is imposed on our knowledge and thought. For which reason we shall render an account of thought and speech and work in the judgment, our thoughts accusing one another or else defending them, 'in the day when God shall judge the hidden things of men through Jesus Christ,' as Paul the Apostle writes.
Since this is so, as the Lord's festivity draws near, let us say to those whom Origen's error enfolds and holds captive by its fraud: 'Flee from the midst of Babylon, and let each one save his own soul.' For although, according to the prophetic oracle, Babylon is said to be a golden cup, and by the composition and charm of its words presents the beauty of truth and transfigures itself into an angel of light, nevertheless it must be known that whosoever drink of its wine are moved and fall down and, crushed, are worthy of lamentation. But we, resisting deadly disturbances, let us wall around the soul with the wall of continence and guard its liberty by the daily exercise of virtues.
For as slaves who have been sold are called the servants and floggees of those who gave the price for them, so those who have sold their souls to various desires are named the servants of those to whom they have handed themselves over, and obey them as cruel masters. And when they despise with rigid brow even those who would correct their error, defending their folly with rashness, they do not know that audacity is nothing else, as it seems at least to me, than an opinion without sense and thought, driving far from itself the mind, the governor of the disturbances.
And when [the soul] has been despoiled of such a protection, it is carried headlong into the depths of impiety, and, as if by some most bitter phlegm, it obscures the light of the mind and surrounds its eye, according to the eloquence of the Scriptures, with a palpable night of darkness. Whence, let those who delight in Origen's errors not spurn the proclamations of the Lord's festivity, nor seek ointments, gold, and pearls in the mud, nor tear apart in great cities their mother the Church, who bore and nourished them — they who, once ours, now on account of him and his disciples surpass the hatreds of the pagans against us, and in their delight redouble their curses against us, and besiege the doors of the rich, nor fear to hear with the Jews:
'I have begotten sons and exalted them, but they have spurned me.' They seem to me not to know that every word of truth which has no foundation, even if for an hour it has allured the hearer, so that he thinks that to be true which is not, is little by little dissolved and reduced to nothing; and that the whole opinion, which is brought forth in the manner of a torrent from a most wicked mind, overwhelms its own author, and, losing the letters and syllables of which it had been woven, is left without sense and sound and any image, and, in the manner of a most venomous snake, strikes the one who uttered it, and immediately draws back its head, and, as if in the hole of the mind, wastes away and is consumed. For the end of lies is destruction.
Let those who once boasted that they were lovers of solitude at least build, above the lips of their fury, a little cell for hiding their curses — not from the holy stones of Jerusalem, but from the shapeless rocks of Babylon, which, unhewn and uneven, may prop up the walls of a house about to fall. Although with frenzied ears and by the hatreds of the pagans they commend themselves by disparagement of us, plucking at ecclesiastical discipline and abusing our patience as though it were some tinder of rashness, nevertheless let them at some time be silent and be still and hear the prophet saying:
'Keep your tongue from evil, and let your lips not speak guile,' and let them desire to know those things which are worthy of the solitary life, and let them not grieve God, the prince and master of the Church. But you, brethren, I beseech, that we may pray in common for them, and say with the prophetic voice: 'Who will give water to my head, and to my eyes a fountain of tears? And I will weep day and night for the wounded of the daughter of my people,' imploring the mercy of God, that he may free them from the error by which they are bound, and that they may exchange for love the hatred by which they rage in vain against us. Whence we too, forgetful of injuries, desire to receive them into a most indulgent bosom, and we reckon their healing and their conversion to God as our own healing and glory.
And if they cannot be cured otherwise except by our humility, let us of our own accord give them satisfaction; we have taken nothing from them, we have harmed them in nothing, although they are indignant and rage against the medicines of the Church, by which health is restored to the wounded. We speak what we know, and we preach what we have learned, praying that those who despise the ecclesiastical rules may receive the norm of truth, and that they may not, on account of the confusion of men — through which the erring are with difficulty wont to be corrected — lose the profit of penitence. And now we say, and before we foretold, and the same we frequently urge: we do not wish them to wander, nor to stray through foreign provinces, but to the exiled and the frenzied we cry out with the prophet and say: 'Be saved from the land, and return, and do not stand still;'