Bad Advertisement?
Are you a Christian?
Online Store:Visit Our Store
| Chapter IV.—How to Conduct Ourselves at Feasts.
PREVIOUS SECTION - NEXT SECTION - HELP 
Chapter IV.—How to Conduct Ourselves at Feasts.
Let revelry keep away from our rational
entertainments, and foolish vigils, too, that revel in intemperance. For
revelry is an inebriating pipe, the chain1400
| 1400 The reading ἅλυσις is here
adopted. The passage is obscure. | of an amatory bridge, that
is, of sorrow. And let love, and intoxication, and senseless passions,
be removed from our choir. Burlesque singing is the boon companion of
drunkenness. A night spent over drink invites drunkenness, rouses lust,
and is audacious in deeds of shame. For if people occupy their time with
pipes, and psalteries, and choirs, and dances, and Egyptian clapping of
hands, and such disorderly frivolities, they become quite immodest and
intractable, beat on cymbals and drums, and make a noise on instruments
of delusion; for plainly such a banquet, as seems to me, is a theatre of
drunkenness. For the apostle decrees that, “putting off the works
of darkness, we should put on the armour of light, walking honestly as in
the day, not spending our time in rioting and drunkenness, in chambering
and wantonness.”1401
Let the pipe be resigned to the shepherds,
and the flute to the superstitious who are engrossed in idolatry. For,
in truth, such instruments are to be banished from the temperate banquet,
being more suitable to beasts than men, and the more irrational portion
of mankind. For we have heard of stags being charmed by the pipe, and
seduced by music into the toils, when hunted by the huntsmen. And when
mares are being covered, a tune is played on the flute—a nuptial
song, as it were. And every improper sight and sound, to speak in a word,
and every shameful sensation of licentiousnes—which, in truth, is
privation of sensation—must by all means be excluded; and we must
be on our guard against whatever pleasure titillates eye and ear, and
effeminates. For the various spells of the broken strains and plaintive
numbers of the Carian muse corrupt men’s morals, drawing to
perturbation of mind, by the licentious and mischievous art of music.1402
| 1402 [He distinguishes between the lewd
music of Satanic odes (Tatian, cap. xxxiii. p. 79, supra),
and another art of music of which he will soon speak.] |
The Spirit, distinguishing from such revelry the
divine service, sings, “Praise Him with the sound of trumpet;”
for with sound of trumpet He shall raise the dead. “Praise
Him on the psaltery;” for the tongue is the psaltery of the
Lord. “And praise Him on the lyre.”1403
By the lyre is meant the mouth
struck by the Spirit, as it were by a plectrum. “Praise with the
timbrel and the dance,” refers to the Church meditating on the
resurrection of the dead in the resounding skin. “Praise Him on
the chords and organ.” Our body He calls an organ, and its nerves
are the strings, by which it has received harmonious tension, and when
struck by the Spirit, it gives forth human voices. “Praise Him
on the clashing cymbals.” He calls the tongue the cymbal of
the mouth, which resounds with the pulsation of the lips. Therefore
He cried to humanity, “Let every breath praise the Lord,” because He cares for every breathing
thing which He hath made. For man is truly a pacific instrument; while
other instruments, if you investigate, you will find to be warlike,
inflaming to lusts, or kindling up amours, or rousing wrath.
In their wars, therefore, the Etruscans use the
trumpet, the Arcadians the pipe, the Sicilians the
pectides, the Cretans the lyre, the
Lacedæmonians the flute, the Thracians the horn, the Egyptians
the drum, and the Arabians the cymbal. The one instrument of peace,
the Word alone by which we honour God, is what we employ. We no longer
employ the ancient psaltery, and trumpet, and timbrel, and flute, which
those expert in war and contemners of the fear of God were wont to make
use of also in the choruses at their festive assemblies; that by such
strains they might raise their dejected minds. But let our genial feeling
in drinking be twofold, in accordance with the law. For “if thou
shalt love the Lord thy God,” and then “thy neighbour,”
let its first manifestation be towards God in thanksgiving and psalmody,
and the second toward our neighbour in decorous fellowship. For says the
apostle, “Let the Word of the Lord dwell in you richly.”1404
And this
Word suits and conforms Himself to seasons, to persons, to places.
In the present instance He is a guest with us. For
the apostle adds again, “Teaching and admonishing one another
in all wisdom, in psalms, and hymns, and spiritual songs, singing
with grace in your heart to God.” And again, “Whatsoever
ye do in word or deed, do all in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving
thanks to God and His Father.” This is our thankful revelry. And
even if you wish to sing and play to the harp or lyre, there is no
blame.1405
| 1405 [Here instrumental
music is allowed, though he turns everything into a type.] |
Thou shalt imitate the righteous Hebrew king in his thanksgiving
to God. “Rejoice in the Lord, ye righteous; praise is comely
to the upright,”1406
says the prophecy. “Confess to
the Lord on the harp; play to Him on the psaltery of ten strings. Sing
to Him a new song.” And does not the ten-stringed psaltery indicate
the Word Jesus, who is manifested by the element of the decad? And as it
is befitting, before partaking of food, that we should bless the Creator
of all; so also in drinking it is suitable to praise Him on partaking
of His creatures.1407
For the psalm is a melodious and sober blessing. The apostle calls
the psalm “a spiritual song.”1408
Finally, before partaking of sleep, it is a sacred
duty to give thanks to God, having enjoyed His grace and love, and
so go straight to sleep.1409
| 1409
[Besides the hymn on lighting the lamps, he notes completory
prayer at bedtime.] | “And confess to Him in songs of
the lips,” he says, “because in His command all His good
pleasure is done, and there is no deficiency in His salvation.”1410
| 1410 Wisd. Sirach (Ecclus.) xxxix. 15,
16. |
Further, among the ancient Greeks, in their banquets
over the brimming cups, a song was sung called a skolion, after the
manner of the Hebrew psalms, all together raising the pæan with
the voice, and sometimes also taking turns in the song while they
drank healths round; while those that were more musical than the rest
sang to the lyre. But let amatory songs be banished far away, and let
our songs be hymns to God. “Let them praise,” it is said,
“His name in the dance, and let them play to Him on the timbrel
and psaltery.”1411
And what is the choir which plays? The
Spirit will show thee: “Let His praise be in the congregation
(church) of the saints; let them be joyful in their King.”1412
And
again he adds, “The Lord
will take pleasure in His people.”1413
For temperate harmonies1414
| 1414 [Observe the contrast between
the modest harmonies he praises, and the operatic strains he
censures. Yet modern Christians delight in these florid and meretricious
compositions, and they have intruded into the solemnities of worship. In
Europe, dramatic composers of a sensual school have taken possession of
the Latin ceremonial.] | are to be admitted; but we are to banish
as far as possible from our robust mind those liquid harmonies, which,
through pernicious arts in the modulations of tones, train to effeminacy
and scurrility. But grave and modest strains say farewell to the
turbulence of drunkenness.1415
| 1415
[On gluttony and drinking, our author borrows much from Plato. Kaye,
p. 74.] | Chromatic harmonies are therefore to be abandoned to
immodest revels, and to florid and meretricious music.E.C.F. INDEX & SEARCH
|
