講道與書信 第 82 章 第 2/4 段

only let no one be ordained over those who are unwilling and do not ask for him; lest the city despise or hate a bishop it did not desire, and become less religious than is fitting, because it was not permitted to have the one it wished. CHAPTER VI. On referring to the bishop of Thessalonica within his vicariate concerning a bishop to be consecrated. — Now concerning the person of the bishop to be consecrated, and concerning the consent of the clergy and people, let the metropolitan bishop refer to your Fraternity; and let him make known to you what has been well approved in the province, so that your authority may also confirm the ordination to be duly celebrated. This, with right arrangements, ought to bring no delay or difficulty, lest the flocks of the Lord should long lack the care of pastors.

But when the metropolitan has died, and another is to be substituted in his place, the provincial bishops must assemble at the metropolitan city, so that, when the will of all the clergy and all the citizens has been examined, the best may be chosen from among the presbyters of that same Church, or from among the deacons; concerning whose name the provincial priests are to refer to your notice, about to fulfil the wishes of those requesting, when they have learned that what pleased them has pleased you also. For just as we wish that just elections be wearied by no delays, so we permit nothing to be undertaken without your knowledge. CHAPTER VII. On provincial councils to be frequented. — Concerning episcopal councils we decree nothing other than what the holy Fathers wholesomely ordained:

namely, that two assemblies be held each year, in which judgement may be given on all the complaints which are wont to arise between the various orders of the Church. And if perchance among those who preside a case arises concerning graver sins (which God forbid), which cannot be determined by provincial examination, the metropolitan will take care to instruct your Fraternity concerning the nature of the whole matter, so that if the affair is not laid to rest by your judgement with the parties present before you, whatever it may be, it may be transferred to our cognizance. CHAPTER

VIII. On the translations of bishops to be curbed. — If any bishop, despising the lowliness of his own city, aspires to the administration of a more celebrated place, and by whatever reasoning transfers himself to a larger flock, he shall indeed be driven from the see that is not his own, but he shall also lose his own: so that he may preside neither over those which he coveted through avarice, nor over those which he spurned through pride. Let each therefore be content with his own bounds, and not desire to be increased beyond the measure of his right. CHAPTER IX. On fugitive clerics. — Let no one receive, let no one solicit another's cleric against the will of his bishop, unless perhaps by an agreement of charity it has been settled between the one giving and the one receiving.

For he is guilty of grave injury who dares either to entice away or to retain from a brother's Church that which is more useful or more precious. Therefore if the matter is transacted within the province, the metropolitan shall compel the fugitive cleric to return to his own Church. But if he has withdrawn further off, he shall be recalled by the authority of your command; so that no occasion may be left either for cupidity or for ambition. CHAPTER X. On the summoning of bishops by the metropolitan. — In summoning bishops to you, we wish you to be most moderate, lest under the appearance of greater diligence you should seem to glory in injuries done to the brethren.

Whence, if some greater cause should arise on account of which it is reasonable and necessary to call a fraternal assembly, let it suffice that two bishops from each province, whom the metropolitans have judged fit to be sent, come to your Fraternity; in such a way that those who have assembled be detained no longer than fifteen days beyond the appointed time. CHAPTER XI. That when the other bishops dissent from the bishop of Thessalonica, Rome is to be consulted. — But if, in that which you have judged should be dealt with and defined together with the brethren, their opinion should differ from your will, let all things be referred to us under the attestation of the proceedings, so that, ambiguities being removed, what is pleasing to God may be decreed.

For to this end we direct our whole affection and care, that what pertains to the unity of concord and what pertains to the keeping of discipline may be violated by no dissension, neglected by no slothfulness. And therefore, most beloved brother, both you and those our brethren who are offended by your excesses — though the occasion of complaints be not the same for all — I exhort and admonish, that the things which have been piously ordained and wholesomely arranged be disturbed by no contention. Let no one seek what is his own, but what is another's (Phil. 2:4, 21), as the Apostle says; Let every one of you please his neighbour for his good, unto edification (Rom. 15:2).

For neither will the framework of our unity be able to be firm, unless the bond of charity binds us together into inseparable solidity: for just as in one body we have many members, but all the members have not the same function, so we, being many, are one body in Christ, and each one members of another (Rom. 12:5; 1 Cor. 12:12). The connexion of the whole body makes one soundness, one beauty; and this connexion indeed requires the unanimity of the whole body, but especially demands the concord of the priests. Although their dignity is common, yet their rank is not general: since even among the most blessed Apostles, in a likeness of honour there was a certain distinction of power;

and though the election of all was equal, yet to one it was given that he should be pre-eminent over the rest. From which form there has arisen also a distinction of bishops, and by a great ordinance it was provided that not all should claim all things for themselves; but that there should be in the several provinces individual bishops whose sentence should be held first among the brethren; and again that certain ones, established in the greater cities, should undertake a fuller solicitude, through whom the care of the universal Church should flow together unto the one See of Peter, and nothing anywhere should dissent from its head. He therefore who knows himself to be set over certain persons, let him not take it ill that someone is set above himself; but let him himself also render the obedience which he exacts:

and just as he does not wish to bear the burden of a heavy load, so let him not dare to impose an unbearable weight upon another (Matt. 23:4). For they are disciples of a humble and meek Master, who says: Learn of me, for I am meek and lowly in heart; and you shall find rest for your souls. For my yoke is sweet, and my burden light (Matt. 11:29–30). Which we shall then experience, unless that also comes into observance which the same Lord says: He that is greatest among you shall be your minister. And whosoever shall exalt himself shall be humbled; and he that shall humble himself shall be exalted (Matt. 23:11; Luke 14:11). SYNOPSIS (From the Spanish collection). — I.

Against the Priscillianists, who distinguish the Holy Trinity not by persons but only by names. — II. Against the notion that they believe the Son of God to have been later than the Father. — III. Against their saying that Christ is therefore called only-begotten because he alone was born of a virgin. — IV. On the Lord's Nativity, that on it the Priscillianists observe fasts. — V. Against their saying that the soul of man is of divine substance. — VI. Against their saying that the devil is of himself, or of chaos, and has a nature of his own. — VII. Against their asserting that marriages and the procreation of children are a sin. — VIII.

Against their saying that human bodies are figments of the devil, and are formed in the womb by demons. — IX. Against their saying that the children of the promise are conceived of the Holy Spirit. — X. Against their believing that souls sin in the heavenly places, and according to the quality of the sin receive in this world a lot either good or evil. — XI. Against their saying that the souls of men are bound to the stars of fate. — XII. Against their describing the parts of the soul under certain powers, and the members of the body under others. — XIII. Against their assigning the names of the patriarchs to the several members of the body. — XIV. Against their distinguishing throughout the whole body the twelve signs which the astrologers observe. — XV.

On the apocryphal writings of these same Priscillianists. — XVI. On the book of Dictinius. LEO the bishop to TURRIBIUS the bishop, greeting. How praiseworthily you are moved for the truth of the catholic faith, and how solicitously you devote to the Lord's flock the devotion of your pastoral office, is shown by the writings of your Fraternity handed to us through your deacon, by which you took care to intimate to our notice what a disease of errors, from the remnants of the ancient pestilence, has flared up in your regions. For the tenor of your letter, the sense of your memorandum, and the text of your booklet declare that the most fetid bilge-water of the Priscillianists has grown warm again among you.

For there is nothing of filth in the perceptions of any impious men whatsoever, which has not flowed together into this dogma: since out of all the mire of earthly opinions they have mingled for themselves a manifold dregs, so that they alone might drink whole whatever others had tasted in part. In short, if all the heresies which arose before the time of Priscillian are more diligently reviewed, scarcely any error will be found from which this impiety has not drawn contagion: which, not content to receive the falsehoods of those who deviated from the Gospel under the name of Christ, plunged itself even into the darkness of paganism, so that through the profane secrets of the magic arts and the vain lies of the astrologers, they might place the faith of religion and the reason of morals under the power of demons and in the influence of the stars.

But if this were both permitted to be believed and to be taught, neither would reward be owed to virtues, nor punishment to vices, and all the decrees not only of human laws but even of divine ordinances would be dissolved: because there could be no judgement either concerning good or concerning evil deeds, if fatal necessity impels the motion of the mind in either direction, and whatever is done by men is not of men but of the stars. To this madness belongs that monstrous distribution of the whole human body through the twelve signs of heaven, so that diverse powers preside over diverse parts; and the creature which God made to his own image is under as great a bondage to the stars as it is under a connexion of members.

Deservedly did our Fathers, under whose times this abominable heresy broke out, urgently act throughout the whole world that the impious frenzy might be driven from the universal Church: when even the princes of the world so detested this sacrilegious madness, that they laid its author low, with most of his disciples, by the sword of the public law. For they saw all care of honesty being taken away, every bond of marriages being dissolved, and at once both divine and human right being subverted, if it had ever been permitted for men of this kind to live with such a profession.

This strictness long profited the leniency of the Church, which, although content with priestly judgement, shrinks from bloody vengeances, is nevertheless aided by the severe constitutions of Christian princes, since those who fear corporal punishment sometimes have recourse to the spiritual remedy. But from the time when a hostile irruption occupied many provinces, and the storms of wars cut off the execution of the laws; from the time when among the priests of God travel became difficult and assemblies rare, secret perfidy found licence on account of the public disturbance, and to the subversion of many minds it was incited by those very evils by which it ought to have been corrected.

But how great, indeed, or how large a part of the peoples there is free from the contagion of this plague, where, as your Charity indicates, by this deadly disease even the hearts of certain priests have been corrupted; and by those through whom falsehood ought to be suppressed and truth defended, by those very ones the Gospel of Christ is subjected to the doctrine of Priscillian, so that, by the impiety of holy words being depraved into profane senses,

under the names of prophets and apostles there is preached not what the Holy Spirit taught, but what the minister of the devil has inserted. Since therefore your Charity has, with as much diligence as it could, comprised in sixteen chapters the opinions long ago condemned, we too briefly review them all, lest anything of these blasphemies should seem either tolerable or doubtful. CHAPTER I. How impiously the Priscillianists think concerning the Trinity of persons in God. — In the first chapter, therefore, it is demonstrated how impiously they think concerning the divine Trinity, who assert that of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit there is one and the same person, as though the same God were named now Father, now Son, now Holy Spirit;

and that he is not another who begot, another who was begotten, another who proceeded from both; but that a singular unity is to be received in three names indeed, yet not in three persons. This kind of blasphemy they took from the opinion of Sabellius, whose disciples are also deservedly named Patripassians: because if he himself is the Son who is the Father, the cross of the Son is the passion of the Father, and whatever the Son endured in the form of a servant by obeying the Father, the Father himself took wholly upon himself. Which is beyond ambiguity contrary to the catholic faith, which so confesses the Trinity of the Godhead that it believes the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit to be undivided without confusion, everlasting without time, equal without difference:

because the Unity in the Trinity is filled not by the same person, but by the same essence. CHAPTER II. On the virtues which they feign to proceed from God. — In the second chapter is shown the inept and vain fabrication concerning the processions of certain virtues from God, which he began to have and which he himself preceded in his own essence. In which they also favour the error of the Arians, who say that the Father is prior to the Son, because he was at some time without the Son, and then began to be Father when he begot the Son. But just as the catholic Church detests those, so also these, who think that something of that which is of his own essence was ever lacking to God, as it were. To call him mutable, as also improving, is a wickedness.

For as much as that is changed which is diminished, so much is that also changed which is increased. CHAPTER III. Why the Son is called only-begotten by them. — Now the discourse of the third chapter marks out that these same impious men assert that the Son of God is therefore called only-begotten because he alone was born of a virgin. Which indeed they would not dare to say, unless they had imbibed the poison of Paul of Samosata and of Photinus, who said that our Lord Jesus Christ did not exist before he was born of the virgin Mary. But if these wish something else to be understood from their meaning, and grant to Christ no beginning from a mother, they must needs assert that there is not one Son of God, but others also begotten of the most high Father, of whom this one alone was born of a woman, and for this reason is called Only-begotten:

because no other of the sons of God undertook this condition of being born. Whithersoever, therefore, they betake themselves, they rush into the precipice of great impiety, whether they wish Christ the Lord to have a beginning from his mother, or deny him to be the only-begotten of God the Father — since both he who was God the Word was born of a mother, and no one was begotten of the Father except the Word. CHAPTER IV. That they fast on the Lord's Nativity and on the Lord's Day. — Now in the fourth chapter it is contained that the Nativity of Christ, which the catholic Church venerates according to the assumption of true man — because the Word was made flesh and dwelt among us (John

1:14) — these men do not truly honour, but feign to honour, fasting on that same day, just as also on the Lord's Day, which is the day of Christ's resurrection. This they do precisely because they do not believe that Christ the Lord was born in the true nature of man, but through a certain illusion they wish things which were not real to appear to have been displayed; following the dogmas of Cerdo and Marcion, and in all things consonant with their kinsmen the Manichaeans. Who, as they were detected and convicted in our examination, exact the Lord's Day, which the resurrection of our Saviour consecrated to us, in the mourning of a fast; devoting this abstinence, as has been betrayed, only to the reverence of the sun:

so that in all things they may be discordant from the unity of our faith, and the day which is held by us in gladness may be spent by them in affliction. Whence it is fitting that the enemies of the cross and resurrection of Christ should receive such a sentence as the doctrine they have chosen. CHAPTER V. That they assert the soul of man to be of divine substance. — In the fifth chapter it is reported that they assert the soul of man to be of divine substance, and that the nature of our condition does not differ from the nature of its Creator. Which impiety, flowing from the opinion of certain philosophers and of the Manichaeans, the catholic faith condemns: knowing that there is no creature so sublime and so pre-eminent, to which God himself should be nature.

For that which is of Him, that is, that which He Himself is, is nothing other than the Son and the Holy Spirit. But apart from this one, consubstantial, eternal, and unchangeable Godhead of the supreme Trinity, there is nothing among all creatures that was not, at its beginning, created out of nothing. Yet whatever stands eminent among created things is not God, nor, if anything is great and marvelous, is it that which He is who alone does great wonders (Ps. 35:4 [Vulgate 71:18]). No man is truth, no man is wisdom, no man is justice; but many are partakers of truth, and of wisdom and justice. God alone stands in need of no participation, and whatever is worthily, in whatever measure, conceived concerning Him is not quality but essence.

For to the unchangeable nothing is added, nothing is lost; because to be, which is eternal, is ever proper to Him. Whence, abiding in Himself, He makes all things new, and has received nothing which He Himself did not give. Exceedingly proud, therefore, and exceedingly blind are those who, while they say that the human soul is of the divine substance, do not understand that they are saying nothing else than that God is mutable, and that He Himself suffers whatever can be inflicted upon His nature. CHAP. VI. That they say the devil was never good, nor a work of God, but emerged from chaos and darkness. — The sixth annotation indicates that they say the devil was never good, nor is his nature the workmanship of God, but that he emerged out of chaos and darkness:

namely, because he has no author of himself, but is himself the beginning and substance of all evil — whereas the true faith, which is catholic, confesses that the substance of all creatures, whether spiritual or corporeal, is good, and that of evil there is no nature; because God, who is the founder of the universe, made nothing that was not good. Whence the devil too would be good, if he had remained in that state in which he was made. But because he made evil use of his natural excellence, and stood not in the truth (John 8:44), he did not pass over into a contrary substance, but fell away from the supreme Good, to which he ought to have clung;

just as those very men who assert such things rush forth from truths into falsehoods, and accuse a nature in that in which they of their own accord transgress, and are condemned for their own voluntary perversity. This indeed becomes an evil in themselves, and that evil is not a substance, but the penalty of a substance. CHAP. VII. They condemn marriage and the use of matrimony. — In the seventh place there follows that they condemn marriage, and shudder at the procreation of children; wherein, as in almost all things, they agree with the profanity of the Manichaeans: therefore, as their own manners prove, they detest the conjugal bond; because there is no license for turpitude where the modesty both of matrimony and of offspring is preserved. CHAP. VIII.

— They say that human bodies are formed by the devil, and deny their resurrection. — The eighth of their tenets is that the fashioning of human bodies is a fabrication of the devil, and that the seeds of conception are shaped in the wombs of women by the working of demons; on which account the resurrection of the flesh is not to be believed, because the composition of the body is not befitting the dignity of the soul. Which falsehood is without doubt the work of the devil, and such prodigies of opinions are the fabrications of demons — who do not form men in the bellies of women, but forge such errors in the hearts of heretics. This most unclean venom, proceeding especially from the fountain of Manichaean impiety, the catholic faith long ago detected and condemned. CHAP. IX.

They say that the children of promise are conceived through the Holy Spirit. — The ninth annotation makes manifest that they say the children of promise, though born of women, are yet conceived of the Holy Spirit; lest that offspring which is born of the seed of the flesh should be seen to pertain to the creation of God. This is repugnant and contrary to the catholic faith, which confesses that every man, in the substance of body and soul, is formed and animated by the Creator of the universe within his mother's womb — the contagion, indeed, of sin and mortality abiding, which passes down into the offspring from the first parent;

but with the sacrament of regeneration coming to aid, whereby the children of promise are reborn through the Holy Spirit — not in the womb of the flesh, but in the power of baptism. Whence David also, who was assuredly a child of promise, says to God: Thy hands have made me and fashioned me (Ps. 119:73; cf. Job 10:8). And to Jeremiah the Lord says: Before I formed thee in the womb I knew thee; and in the belly of thy mother I sanctified thee (Jer. 1:5). CHAP. X. They affirm that souls, having sinned in heaven, were thrust down into bodies as a penalty for sin.

— In the tenth chapter they are reported to assert that the souls which are inserted into human bodies were once without body, and sinned in the heavenly habitation, and on this account, having fallen from the heights to the depths, met with rulers of diverse quality, and were, through aerial and starry powers — some harsher, some milder — enclosed in bodies of differing lot and unlike condition: so that whatever befalls variously and unequally in this life might seem to happen from preceding causes. This fable of impiety they wove together out of the errors of many;

but the catholic faith cuts them all off from the body of its unity, constantly and truthfully proclaiming that the souls of men, before they were breathed into their own bodies, did not exist, nor are they embodied by any other than God the Maker, who is both their creator and the creator of bodies; and that, because through the transgression of the first man the whole progeny of the human race was corrupted, no one can be freed from the condition of the old man except through the sacrament of the baptism of Christ — in which, among the reborn, there is no distinction, the Apostle saying: For as many of you as have been baptized into Christ have put on Christ. There is neither Jew nor Greek; there is neither bond nor free; there is neither male nor female: for you are all one in Christ Jesus (Gal.

3:27, 28). What then do the courses of the stars accomplish here, what the fictions of the fates, what the shifting state of worldly things and their restless diversity? Behold, the grace of God makes so many unequal ones equal, who amid whatever labors of this life, if they remain faithful, cannot be wretched — saying, in every trial, that apostolic word: Who shall separate us from the charity of Christ? Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or the sword? As it is written: For thy sake we are put to death all the day long; we are accounted as sheep for the slaughter. But in all these things we overcome, through Him who loved us (Rom. 8:35, 36).

And therefore the Church, which is the body of Christ, fears nothing from the inequalities of the world, because it covets nothing of temporal goods; nor does it fear to be weighed down by the vain din of the fates, seeing that it knows itself to be increased by the patient endurance of tribulations. CHAP. XI. They impose a fatal necessity upon men. — The eleventh of their blasphemies is that by which they suppose both the souls and the bodies of men to be bound to the fateful stars; through which madness it is necessary that they, entangled in all the errors of the pagans, should strive both to worship the stars they think favorable to them, and to appease those they think adverse. But for those who follow such things there is no place in the catholic Church: since he who has given himself over to such persuasions has wholly departed from the body of Christ. CHAP. XII.

They subject souls to certain powers, and the members of bodies to others. — The twelfth among these tenets is this, that they assign the parts of the soul under some powers, and the members of the body under others; and they establish the qualities of the inner presiding spirits under the names of the patriarchs, over against which they set diverse starry signs, to whose power they subject the bodies. And in all these things they entangle themselves in an inextricable error, not heeding the Apostle who says: Beware lest any man deceive you through philosophy and vain deceit, according to the tradition of men, according to the elements of the world, and not according to Christ:

because in Him dwelleth all the fulness of the Godhead bodily, and you are filled in Him, who is the head of all principality and power (Col. 2:8-10). And again: Let no man seduce you, willing to do it in humility and the religion of angels, walking in the things which he hath not seen, in vain puffed up by the sense of his flesh, and not holding the Head, from whom the whole body, by joints and bands supplied and knit together, groweth unto the increase of God (Ibid. 18, 19). What need is there, then, to admit into the heart what the Law has not taught, what prophecy has not foretold, what the truth of the Gospel has not preached, what apostolic doctrine has not handed down? But these things are suited to the minds of those of whom the Apostle says:

For there shall be a time when they will not endure sound doctrine, but according to their own desires they will heap to themselves teachers, having itching ears; and will indeed turn away their hearing from the truth, but will be turned unto fables (2 Tim. 4:3, 4). Let those, therefore, have nothing in common with us who dare to teach or to believe such things, and who by any means whatever strive to establish that the substance of the flesh is alien to the hope of resurrection, and thus dissolve the whole sacrament of the Incarnation of Christ: because it would have been unworthy for the whole man to be assumed, if it were unworthy for the whole man to be set free. CHAP. XIII.