講道與書信 第 18 章

Chapter 1. — Always indeed, dearly beloved, in diverse manners and by many measures the divine goodness has provided for the human race, and in all past ages has mercifully imparted very many gifts of its providence; but in these last times it has surpassed all the abundance of its accustomed kindness, when in Christ mercy itself came down to sinners, truth itself to those who erred, life itself to the dead: so that that Word, coeternal and coequal with the Father, might assume into the unity of His Godhead the nature of our lowliness, and God born of God might Himself also be born as man from man. This indeed was promised from the foundation of the world, having always been foretold by many signs of deeds and words;

But how small a portion of mankind could those figures and mysteries have saved by their shadows, had not Christ by His coming fulfilled the long-hidden promises, and had not that which then benefited a few who believed become, when accomplished, a benefit to countless faithful now? Now therefore we are led to faith not by signs nor by images, but confirmed by the gospel history: what we believe was done, we adore; the prophetic testimonies acceding to our instruction, so that we may in no way hold as doubtful what we know to have been foretold by so many oracles. For hence it is that the Lord said to Abraham, 'In your seed shall all nations be blessed' (Gen. 22:18). Hence David sings the promise of God by the prophetic spirit, saying:

'The Lord has sworn truth to David, and He will not make it void: Of the fruit of your womb I will set upon your throne' (Ps. 131:11). Hence the same Lord through Isaiah says, 'Behold, a virgin shall conceive in her womb and bear a son, and His name shall be called Emmanuel, which is interpreted, God with us' (Isa. 7:14). And again, 'There shall come forth a rod out of the root of Jesse, and a flower shall rise up out of its root' (Isa. 11:1). In which rod the blessed Virgin Mary was without doubt foretold, who, sprung from the stock of Jesse and David and made fruitful by the Holy Spirit, brought forth a new flower of human flesh—from a mother's womb indeed, yet by a virgin's childbearing. Chapter 2.

— Let the just therefore exult in the Lord, and let the hearts of believers rise up in praise of God, and let the sons of men confess His wondrous works; for in this work of God especially our lowliness recognizes how greatly its Creator has esteemed it. For though He gave much to human origin in making us to His own image, yet He bestowed far more upon our restoration, when the Lord Himself fitted Himself to the form of a servant. For although, of one and the same loving-kindness, whatever the Creator expends upon the creature, it is nonetheless a lesser marvel that man should advance toward divine things than that God should descend to human. Yet unless the almighty God had deigned to do this, no aspect of righteousness, no form of wisdom could have rescued anyone from the captivity of the devil and from the depth of eternal death.

For the condemnation passing from one into all together with sin would have remained, and nature, wasted by a deadly wound, could have found no remedy, since it was unable by its own strength to change its condition. For the first man received the substance of his flesh from the earth, and was animated by a rational spirit through the inbreathing of the Creator (Gen. 2:7), that living according to the image and likeness of his Author, he might preserve the form of God's goodness and justice in the splendor of imitation as in the brightness of a mirror. This most beautiful dignity of his nature, had he persevered in cultivating it by observance of the given law, his uncorrupted mind would have brought even the very quality of his earthly body to heavenly glory.

But because he rashly and unhappily believed the envious deceiver (Gen. 3:6), and acquiescing in the counsels of pride chose rather to seize the increase of honor laid up for him than to merit it, not only that man, but also all his posterity in him, heard: 'Earth you are, and into earth you shall go' (Gen. 3:19). Such then as is the earthly, such also are the earthly (1 Cor. 15:48); and no one is immortal, because no one is heavenly. Chapter 3. — To loose therefore this bond of sin and death, the almighty Son of God, filling all things, containing all things, equal in all things to the Father, and coeternal in one essence from Him and with Him, took human nature upon Himself, and the Creator and Lord of all things deigned to be one among mortals;

having chosen for Himself a mother whom He had made, who with her virginal integrity preserved would minister only the substance of the body, so that with the contagion of human seed ceasing, both purity and truth might be in the new man. Therefore in Christ, born of the virgin's womb, His nature is not unlike ours because His birth is miraculous. For He who is true God is the same true man; and there is no falsehood in either substance. The Word was made flesh by the taking on of flesh, not by any diminution of the Godhead: which so tempered its power and goodness, that by taking up what was ours it exalted it, and by imparting what was its own it lost nothing. In this nativity of Christ, according to the prophecy of David, 'truth has arisen out of the earth, and justice has looked down from heaven' (Ps.

84:11). In this nativity also the word of Isaiah was fulfilled, who said: 'Let the earth bring forth and let it sprout a Savior, and let justice arise together' (Isa. 45:8). For the earth of human flesh, which in the first transgressor had been cursed, in this childbearing alone of the blessed Virgin brought forth a blessed offspring, and one estranged from the fault of its stock. Whose spiritual origin each one obtains in regeneration; and to every man being reborn the water of baptism is after the manner of a virginal womb, the same Holy Spirit filling the font who also filled the Virgin, so that the sin which the sacred conception there emptied, here the mystical washing takes away. Chapter 4.

— From this mystery, dearly beloved, the mad error of the Manichaeans is estranged, and they have no share in the regeneration of Christ, who deny that He was bodily born of the Virgin Mary: so that, of Him whose true nativity they do not believe, they may not receive His true passion either; and Him whom they do not confess to have been truly buried, they deny to have been truly raised. For having entered upon the precipitous way of an accursed dogma, in which nothing is not dark and nothing is not slippery, they rush into the depths of death through the sheer drops of falsehood;

nor do they find anything solid on which to lean, who, besides all the reproaches of their diabolical invention, on the very chief festival of their observance—as was disclosed by their recent confession—rejoice in the defilement of body as well as of mind, keeping neither the integrity of faith nor of modesty; so that they are found both impious in their dogmas and obscene in their rites. Chapter 5. — Other heresies, dearly beloved, although all deservedly deserve condemnation in their diversity, yet each of them has in some part of itself something that is true.

Arius, defining the Son of God to be less than the Father and a creature, and supposing the Holy Spirit to have been created by Him among all things, destroyed himself with great impiety; yet the everlasting and unchangeable Godhead, which he did not see in the unity of the Trinity, he did not deny in the Father's essence. Macedonius, estranged from the light of truth, did not receive the divinity of the Holy Spirit, but confessed one power in the Father and the Son, and that their nature is the same. Sabellius, confounded by an inexplicable error, holding the unity of substance in the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit to be inseparable, gave to singularity what he ought to have attributed to equality. And since he could not understand the true Trinity, he believed one and the same person under a threefold appellation.

Photinus, deceived by blindness of mind, confessed in Christ a true man of our substance, but did not believe the same to be God begotten of God before all ages. Apollinaris, deprived of the soundness of faith, believed the Son of God to have taken on so truly the nature of human flesh, that he said there was no soul in that flesh, because the Divinity itself had supplied its place. In this way, if all the errors which the catholic faith has anathematized be reviewed, in one and another there is found something that can be separated from what is damnable. But in the most wicked dogma of the Manichaeans there is absolutely nothing that can in any part be judged tolerable. Chapter 6.

— But you, dearly beloved, whom I address by no worthier words than those of the blessed Apostle Peter—'a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people of acquisition' (1 Pet. 2:9)—built upon the inviolable rock Christ, and engrafted into the very Lord our Savior through the true assumption of our flesh, remain steadfast in that faith which you have confessed before many witnesses, and in which, born again through water and the Holy Spirit, you received the chrism of salvation and the seal of eternal life. But if anyone announce to you anything besides that which you have learned, let him be anathema. Do not set impious fables before the most luminous truth;

but whatever contrary to the rule of the catholic and apostolic creed you may happen to read or hear, judge it altogether deadly and diabolical. Let them not seduce you by deceptive arts with feigned and pretended fasts, which avail not for the purification but for the ruin of souls. They assume indeed for themselves an appearance of piety and chastity, but by this guile they conceal the obscenities of their deeds, and from the inner chambers of a profane heart they send forth darts by which the simple are wounded: so that, as the prophet says, 'they may shoot in the dark at the upright of heart' (Ps. 10:3). A great safeguard is faith entire, faith true, in which nothing can be either added to or diminished by anyone: for unless it is one, it is not faith, the Apostle saying:

'One Lord, one faith, one baptism; one God and Father of all, who is above all and through all, and in us all' (Eph. 4:5-6). To this unity, dearly beloved, cling with unshaken minds, and in it pursue all holiness (Heb. 12:14), in it serve the commandments of the Lord, because without faith it is impossible to please God (Heb. 11:6), and without it nothing is holy, nothing is chaste, nothing is living: for the just man lives by faith (Hab. 2:4); which if anyone, by the devil's deceiving, should lose, though living he is dead, because just as justice is obtained through faith, so also eternal life is obtained through true faith, the Lord and Savior saying:

'And this is eternal life, that they may know You the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom You have sent' (John 17:3); may He make you to advance and to persevere unto the end, who lives and reigns with the Father and the Holy Spirit unto the ages of ages. Amen.