講道與書信 第 43 章

Chapter I. — The sermon, dearly beloved, that was promised concerning the glorious passion of our Lord Jesus Christ, I understand must be so rendered to your expectation that the office of discoursing may both serve the paschal feast and meet the assaults of impious error. For those who deny that the Son of God took upon Him the true nature of our flesh are enemies of the Christian faith, and they too shamelessly assail the gospel preaching, so that according to them the cross of Christ was either the pretence of a phantasm or the punishment of the Godhead. This is far to be driven from the hearts of the devout, since catholic integrity can have neither the stain of faithlessness nor the wrinkle of falsehood;

which confesses the one Christ, as God, so also as man, so that it declares Him to have been neither a false man nor a God capable of suffering. Therefore, although from that beginning in which the Word was made flesh in the Virgin's womb (John 1:14) no division ever existed between the divine and the human substance, and throughout all the bodily increases the actions of the whole span of time were of one person, yet those very things which were done inseparably we do not confound by any commingling; but we perceive from the quality of the works what belongs to each nature. For neither do the divine things prejudice the human, nor the human the divine, since both so concur into one selfsame that neither is the property consumed nor the person doubled. Chapter II.

— Having therefore passed over the things that preceded the Lord's passion, let us treat of what instruction the paschal mystery holds. For when the cruelty of the Jews was blazing up to accomplish its crime, since God was in Christ reconciling the world to Himself (2 Corinthians 5:19), no violence could have been brought against the temple of His body unless He Himself permitted it. Indeed that terrible cohort of soldiers, and the multitude sent by the chief priests and Pharisees with swords and clubs, was so smitten by the single voice of the Lord that, when the crowds had said they were seeking Jesus the Nazarene, and He Himself had answered, 'I am He' (John 18:5), none of them stood his ground, but all together, their limbs failing them, were driven backward and fell dashed to the ground.

In this indeed was the token of the divine power, which laid low the endeavours of the impious not by opposing arms, nor by the might of any creature as help, but by the sole power of His word. But because for the saving of the human race the plan of another work was fitting, and the blood of Christ could not become the price of believers if the Redeemer had not suffered Himself to be seized, He admitted impious hands upon Himself, and the power of the Godhead was restrained, that men might come to the glory of the passion. Of which surely the appearance would have been empty, and the image of endurance profitable to none, unless the true Divinity had clothed itself with the true feelings of human flesh:

so that the one Son of God and of man, in one respect incapable of being violated, in another capable of suffering, might renew our mortal nature through His own immortal one. And therefore He was not without sadness, therefore not without dread, so that to overcome disturbances of this kind He might strengthen us not only by the mystery of His assumption of our nature, but also by the example of His fortitude. For His exhortation to patience would seem unjust, if He had no fellowship in our infirmity. Chapter III. — But the true sufferings of the Lord the prophet Isaiah foretells in His own voice, saying: 'I gave my back to the scourges, and my cheeks to the palms; but my face I turned not away from the confusion of spittle' (Isaiah 50:6). Therefore that the Word suffered in the flesh was not the penalty of the Word, but of the flesh;

whose injuries and torments overflowed even to the impassible, so that they are rightly said to have been inflicted upon Him which were committed against His body, as the Apostle says: 'For had they known it, they would never have crucified the Lord of majesty' (1 Corinthians 2:8). For the Jews, blinded by their own malice, knew not into what crime they had burst forth. Whence the merciful Lord Jesus, who wished by His death to save even His own slayers, prayed on the cross for the ignorance of those who raged against Him, saying, 'Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do' (Luke 23:34). For neither by the understanding of heart, nor by the hearing of ear, nor by the gaze of eyes did they perceive Him whom they had assailed with false testimonies, whom they had compelled to be fixed to the gibbet, while in the body of man they do not recognize the substance of the Godhead.

They saw Him lowly, and did not adore the author of all things; they did not understand the power of the one who was to judge, despising the meekness of the one who was judged: so that one and the same impiety joined together both the persecutors of the true God and the deniers of the true man; while both the Jews reckon that in Christ there is only the form of a servant, and the heretics assert that it was false. Chapter IV. — Let these phantom-Christians therefore say what substance of the Saviour was fastened to the wood, what lay in the tomb, and, the stone of the monument being rolled away, what flesh rose on the third day, or what body Jesus brought into the sight of the disciples, entering to them through closed doors (John 20:19),

when, to drive away the doubt of those who beheld, He required His eyes to be looked upon and the yet-open wounds of the nails to be handled with fingers, and the freshly-pierced wound of His side (Luke 24:39). And if such heretical hardness does not abandon its darkness even in so great a light of truth, let them show whence they promise themselves the hope of eternal life, whence they believe themselves to be sharers of Christ's resurrection. For they cannot say with the Apostle, 'Christ is risen from the dead, the firstfruits of them that sleep' (1 Corinthians 15:20), because they are not the firstfruits of men, if they are not of the stock of human nature. For He who first of men rose again is a portion of that fulness which He preceded:

and it is piously believed that what is begun in the Head is also to be completed in the members: 'For as in Adam all die, so also in Christ shall all be made alive' (1 Corinthians 15:22). Chapter V. — Embracing therefore, dearly beloved, the sole pledge of Christian hope, let us not be torn away from the frame of Christ's body: in whom, as the Apostle says, dwelleth all the fulness of the Godhead bodily; and ye are filled in Him (Colossians 2:9-10). For since the substance of God is incorporeal, how does He dwell bodily in Christ, except because the flesh of our race became the flesh of the Godhead; and in Him we are filled with God, in whom we were crucified, in whom buried, in whom also we were raised up: that we may be able to say with the Apostle:

'Our conversation is in heaven: whence also we look for the Saviour, our Lord Jesus Christ, who shall reform the body of our lowliness, made conformable to the body of His glory' (Philippians 3:20-21), who lives and reigns with the Father and with the Holy Spirit unto the ages of ages. Amen.