講道與書信 第 159 章

CHAP. I. — Having received the letter of your love, which our sons the presbyter Andrew and the deacon Peter brought to me, I rejoiced indeed that it had been permitted you to return to the seat of your episcopate; but as all the causes flowed together into my remembrance which had made you labor through certain excesses, I grieved that in your adversity you had become material against yourself, and had lost the constancy of resisting the heretics: because they reckon that it is not free to you to dare to refute those whom you have professed to have pleased you in their error. For what was the condemnation of Flavian of blessed memory, and the reception of the most impious Eutyches, but a denial of our Lord Jesus Christ according to the flesh?

which He Himself in His great mercy caused to be undone, when He so destroyed that detestable judgment of the Ephesine synod by the authority of the holy Council of Chalcedon, that He kept none of the perverted from the remedy of correction. Wherefore, since in the time of indulgence you have chosen repentance rather than obstinacy, I rejoice that you have sought the heavenly medicine, so that at last you may be a defender of the faith assailed by the heretics. For although it is lawful for no priest to be ignorant of what he preaches, yet more inexcusable than all the unskilled is any Christian dwelling at Jerusalem, who for the recognizing of the power of the Gospel is instructed not only by the utterances of the pages, but by the testimonies of the very places.

And what elsewhere it is not permitted not to believe, there cannot but be seen. What labor is there for the understanding where sight is the teacher? And why should things read or heard be doubtful, where all the sacraments of human salvation offer themselves both to sight and to touch? As though the Lord were still using His bodily voice to each one who hesitates, and saying: Why are you troubled, and why do thoughts arise in your hearts? See My hands and My feet, that it is I Myself. Handle and see, for a spirit hath not bones and flesh, as you see Me to have (Luke 24:38, 39). CHAP. II.

— Use therefore, most beloved brother, the invincible documents of the catholic faith, and defend the preaching of the evangelists by the testimony of the holy places in which you dwell. With you is Bethlehem, in which the salvation-bearing childbirth of the Davidic Virgin shone forth, whom, wrapped in swaddling-clothes amid the narrows of the inn, the manger received. With you is the Savior's infancy, declared by angels, adored by the Magi, and sought by Herod through the deaths of many infants. With you is the place where His boyhood grew up, where His adolescence ripened, and where through bodily increases the nature of the true man advanced into a perfect man, not without the food of hunger, not without the sleep of rest, not without the weeping of compassion, nor without the dread of fear:

for one and the same is He who both in the form of God wrought great miracles of power, and in the form of a servant underwent the savagery of the Passion. This the very cross tells you unceasingly; this the stone of the sepulchre cries out, in which the Lord by human condition lay, and from which by divine power He rose. And when you approach the Mount of Olives, the place of the Ascension, to venerate it, does not that angelic voice resound in your hearing, by which to those astonished at the Lord's elevation it is said: Ye men of Galilee, why stand ye gazing up into heaven? This Jesus, who is taken up from you into heaven, shall so come as ye have seen Him going into heaven (Acts 1:11). CHAP. III. — The true cross therefore confirms the true generation of Christ:

since He is fed in our flesh who is crucified in our flesh: which, with no sin intervening, unless it had been of our race, could not have been mortal. But that He might repair the life of all, He took upon Himself the cause of all, and by paying for all He emptied the force of the old bond, which alone among all He did not owe (Col. 2:14): so that, as through the guilt of one all had been made sinners, so through the innocence of one all should become innocent (Rom. 5:18), justice flowing forth upon men there where human nature was assumed. For by no reasoning is He outside the truth of our body, of whom the evangelist, beginning his preaching, says: The book of the generation of Jesus Christ, the son of David, the son of Abraham (Matt.

1:1): with the concordant teaching of the blessed Apostle Paul, when he says: Whose are the fathers, and of whom is Christ according to the flesh, who is over all, God blessed forever (Rom. 9:5). And likewise to Timothy: Remember, he says, that Jesus Christ rose from the dead, of the seed of David (2 Tim. 2:8). CHAP. IV. — But by how great authorities both of the New and of the Old Testament this truth is declared, you plainly recognize on account of the antiquity of your priesthood, since the faith of the Fathers and my writings sent to Flavian of holy memory, which you yourself have mentioned, with the added confirmation of the universal synod, suffice.

Wherefore your love must take heed that no one murmur against the ineffable sacrament of our redemption and of our hope. But if there are any who still are darkened by ignorance, or who dissent through perversity, let them be instructed by the authorities of those whose doctrine in the Church of God was apostolic and renowned, so that they may recognize that concerning the incarnation of the Word of God we believe this which they believed, nor let them set themselves by their obduracy outside the body of Christ, in which we have died together and been raised together: because neither the piety of faith nor the reason of the sacrament admits that either the Godhead was passible in its own essence, or that the truth lied in the assumption of our nature.

Given on the day before the Nones of September, in the consulship of the most illustrious men Aetius and Studius. I write back that I have received the letter of your love through our son Gerentius, and that it was most pleasing to me, because you have not omitted the opportunity of familiar address, which on every occasion it befits to be frequented between us: so that concerning those things which pertain to our care for the state of the Church, we may have nothing unknown, nothing uncertain. But for those set in this solicitude there are never lacking divine supports, which permit the dissimulations of hypocrites to avail nothing, and confound their hidden wickedness by manifest destruction.

For although long ago all the contrivances of the heretics have been shattered, and the right hand of truth has taken away all their forces, yet now, as you have written, with Dioscorus perishing, they have fallen into deeper things, and with the instigator of perfidy removed, certain unstable and foolish souls have that which they may dread, but do not have that which they may follow. Wherefore, with the mercy of God helping, the correction of the erring is more easily to be hoped for, and the preaching of the Gospel will be more effective, the defender of falsehood being extinguished: with the piety of the most Christian prince cooperating toward this remedy, whose devotion always sets forth holy vigils for all the advancements of the catholic faith.

And therefore I exhort and admonish your Fraternity to make wise use of the royal favor and charity, and not to delay to offer opportune representations concerning all things which you shall have believed to be profitable: because by many experiences we have proved the faith of the most glorious Augustus to be such, that he then most of all reckons that he consults for his own kingdom, when he has especially striven to labor for the integrity of the Church. If indeed you shall have learned anything concerning the advancements of the Alexandrian people, let us know: so that, as we rejoice over the peace of the Eastern peoples, so we may rejoice also over the advancements of this people. Given on the eighth day before the Ides of December, in the consulship of the most illustrious men Aetius and Studius.