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| Chapter XX.—The True Gnostic Exercises Patience and Self-Restraint.
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Chapter XX.—The True Gnostic Exercises Patience and Self-Restraint.
Endurance also itself forces its way to the
divine likeness, reaping as its fruit impassibility through patience,
if what is related of Ananias be kept in mind; who belonged to a number,
of whom Daniel the prophet, filled with divine faith, was one. Daniel
dwelt at Babylon, as Lot at Sodom, and Abraham, who a little after
became the friend of God, in the land of Chaldea. The king of the
Babylonians let Daniel down into a pit full of wild beasts; the King
of all, the faithful Lord, took him up unharmed. Such patience will
the Gnostic, as a Gnostic, possess. He will bless when under trial,
like the noble Job; like Jonas, when swallowed up by the whale, he will
pray, and faith will restore him to prophesy to the Ninevites; and
though shut up with lions, he will tame the wild beasts; though cast
into the fire, he will be besprinkled with dew, but not consumed. He
will give his testimony by night; he will testify by day; by word,
by life, by conduct, he will testify. Dwelling with the Lord2385
| 2385 Substituting ὤν for
ἐν
τῷ Κυρίῳ
after σύνοικος. |
he will continue his familiar friend, sharing the same hearth
according to the Spirit; pure in the flesh, pure in heart, sanctified in
word. “The world,” it is said, “is crucified to him, and
he to the world.”2386
He, bearing about the cross of the Saviour,
will follow the Lord’s footsteps, as God, having become holy
of holies.
The divine law, then, while keeping in mind
all virtue, trains man especially to self-restraint, laying this as
the foundation of the virtues; and disciplines us beforehand to the
attainment of self-restraint by forbidding us to partake of such things
as are by nature fat, as the breed of swine, which is full-fleshed. For
such a use is assigned to epicures. It is accordingly said that one of
the philosophers, giving the etymology of ὗς (sow), said that it was θύς,
as being fit only for slaughter (θύσιν) and killing;
for life was given to this animal for no other purpose than that it might
swell in flesh. Similarly, repressing our desires, it forbade partaking
of fishes which have neither fins nor scales; for these surpass other
fishes in fleshiness and fatness. From this it was, in my opinion,
that the mysteries not only prohibited touching certain animals, but
also withdrew certain parts of those slain in sacrifice, for reasons
which are known to the initiated. If, then, we are to exercise control
over the belly, and what is below the belly, it is clear that we have
of old heard from the Lord that we are to check lust by the law.
And this will be completely effected, if we unfeignedly
condemn what is the fuel of lust: I mean pleasure. Now they say that
the idea of it is a gentle and bland excitement, accompanied with some
sensation. Enthralled by this, Menelaus, they say, after the capture of
Troy, having rushed to put Helen to death, as having been the cause of
such calamities, was nevertheless not able to effect it, being subdued
by her beauty, which made him think of pleasure. Whence the tragedians,
jeering, exclaimed insultingly against him:—
“But thou, when on her breast thou lookedst, thy sword
Didst cast away, and with a kiss the traitress,
Ever-beauteous wretch,2387
| 2387 κύνα, Eurip., Andromache, 629. | thou didst embrace.”
And again:—
“Was the sword then by beauty blunted?”
And I agree with
Antisthenes when he says, “Could I catch Aphrodite, I
would shoot her; for she has destroyed many of our beautiful
and good women.” And he says that “Love2388
is a vice of nature, and the wretches who fall under its power call
the disease a deity.” For in these words it is shown that stupid
people are overcome from ignorance of pleasure, to which we ought to
give no admittance, even though it be called a god, that is, though
it be given by God for the necessity of procreation. And Xenophon,
expressly calling pleasure a vice, says: “Wretch, what good
dost thou know, or what honourable aim hast thou? which does not even
wait for the appetite for sweet things, eating before being hungry,
drinking before being thirsty; and that thou mayest eat pleasantly,
seeking out fine cooks; and that thou mayest drink pleasantly,
procuring costly wines; and in summer runnest about seeking snow;
and that thou mayest sleep pleasantly, not only providest soft beds,
but also supports2389
| 2389
Or, “carpets.” Xenoph., Memorabilia, II. i. 30;
The Words of Virtue to Vice. | to the couches.” Whence,
as Aristo said, “against the whole tetrachord of pleasure, pain,
fear, and lust, there is need of much exercise and struggle.”
“For it is these, it is these that go through our bowels,
And throw into disorder men’s hearts.”
“For the minds of those even who are deemed grave, pleasure
makes waxen,” according to Plato; since “each pleasure and
pain nails to the body the soul” of the man, that does not sever
and crucify himself from the passions. “He that loses his
life,” says the Lord, “shall save it;” either giving
it up by exposing it to danger for the Lord’s sake, as He did for
us, or loosing it from fellowship with its habitual life. For if you
would loose, and withdraw, and separate (for this is what the cross
means) your soul from the delight and pleasure that is in this life,
you will possess it, found and resting in the looked-for hope. And this
would be the exercise of death, if we would be content with those
desires which are measured according to nature alone, which do not pass
the limit of those which are in accordance with nature—by going
to excess, or going against nature—in which the possibility of
sinning arises. “We must therefore put on the panoply of God,
that we may be able to stand against the wiles of the devil; since the
weapons of our warfare are not carnal, but mighty through God to the
pulling down of strongholds, casting down reasonings, and every lofty
thing which exalteth itself against the knowledge of God, and bringing
every thought into captivity unto the obedience of Christ,”2390
says the divine apostle. There is need of a man who shall use in a
praiseworthy and discriminating manner the things from which passions
take their rise, as riches and poverty, honour and dishonour, health
and sickness, life and death, toil and pleasure. For, in order that
we may treat things, that are different, indifferently, there is need
of a great difference in us, as having been previously afflicted with
much feebleness, and in the distortion of a bad training and nurture
ignorantly indulged ourselves. The simple word, then, of our philosophy
declares the passions to be impressions on the soul that is soft and
yielding, and, as it were, the signatures of the spiritual powers
with whom we have to struggle. For it is the business, in my opinion,
of the malificent powers to endeavour to produce somewhat of their own
constitution in everything, so as to overcome and make their own those
who have renounced them. And it follows, as might be expected, that
some are worsted; but in the case of those who engage in the contest
with more athletic energy, the powers mentioned above, after carrying
on the conflict in all forms, and advancing even as far as the crown
wading in gore, decline the battle, and admire the victors.
For of objects that are moved, some are moved
by impulse and appearance, as animals; and some by transposition, as
inanimate objects. And of things without life, plants, they say, are
moved by transposition in order to growth, if we will concede to them
that plants are without life. To stones, then, belongs a permanent state.
Plants have a nature; and the irrational animals possess impulse and
perception, and likewise the two characteristics already specified.2391
But the reasoning faculty, being peculiar to the human
soul, ought not to be impelled similarly with the irrational animals, but
ought to discriminate appearances, and not to be carried away by them. The
powers, then, of which we have spoken hold out beautiful sights, and
honours, and adulteries, and pleasures, and such like alluring phantasies
before facile spirits;2392
| 2392
[See Epiphan., Opp., ii. 391, ed. Oehler.] | as those
who drive away cattle hold out branches to them. Then, having beguiled
those incapable of distinguishing the true from the false pleasure, and
the fading and meretricious from the holy beauty, they lead them into
slavery. And each deceit, by pressing constantly on the spirit, impresses
its image on it; and the soul unwittingly carries about the image of
the passion, which takes its rise from the bait and our consent.
The adherents of Basilides are in the habit of
calling the passions appendages: saying that these are
in essence certain spirits attached to the rational soul, through some
original perturbation and confusion; and that, again, other bastard and
heterogeneous natures of spirits grow on to them, like that of the wolf,
the ape, the lion, the goat, whose properties showing themselves around
the soul, they say, assimilate the lusts of the soul to the likeness of
the animals. For they imitate the actions of those whose properties they
bear. And not only are they associated with the impulses and perceptions
of the irrational animals, but they affect2393
the motions and the beauties of plants, on account of
their bearing also the properties of plants attached to them. They have
also the properties of a particular state, as the hardness of steel. But
against this dogma we shall argue subsequently, when we treat of the
soul. At present this only needs to be pointed out, that man, according to
Basilides, preserves the appearance of a wooden horse, according to the
poetic myth, embracing as he does in one body a host of such different
spirits. Accordingly, Basilides’ son himself, Isidorus, in his
book, About the Soul attached to us, while agreeing in the dogma,
as if condemning himself, writes in these words: “For if I persuade
any one that the soul is undivided, and that the passions of the wicked
are occasioned by the violence of the appendages, the worthless among
men will have no slight pretence for saying, ‘I was compelled, I
was carried away, I did it against my will, I acted unwillingly;’
though he himself led the desire of evil things, and did not fight against
the assaults of the appendages. But we must, by acquiring superiority
in the rational part, show ourselves masters of the inferior creation
in us.” For he too lays down the hypothesis of two souls in us,
like the Pythagoreans, at whom we shall glance afterwards.
Valentinus too, in a letter to certain people, writes in
these very words respecting the appendages: “There is one good,
by whose presence2394
| 2394 παρουσιᾳ
substituted by Grabe for παῤῥησίᾳ. | is the manifestation, which is by the Son, and
by Him alone can the heart become pure, by the expulsion of every evil
spirit from the heart: for the multitude of spirits dwelling in it do
not suffer it to be pure; but each of them performs his own deeds,
insulting it oft with unseemly lusts. And the heart seems to be treated
somewhat like a caravanserai. For the latter has holes and ruts made in
it, and is often filled with dung; men living filthily in it, and
taking no care for the place as belonging to others. So fares it with
the heart as long as there is no thought taken for it, being unclean,
and the abode of many demons. But when the only good Father visits it,
it is sanctified, and gleams with light. And he who possesses such a
heart is so blessed, that “he shall see God.”2395
| 2395 Matt. v. 8. [On the
Beatitudes, see book iv. cap. 6, infra.] |
What, then, let them tell us, is the cause of such a
soul not being cared for from the beginning? Either that it is not worthy
(and somehow a care for it comes to it as from repentance), or it is
a saved nature, as he would have it; and this, of necessity, from the
beginning, being cared for by reason of its affinity, afforded no entrance
to the impure spirits, unless by being forced and found feeble. For were
he to grant that on repentance it preferred what was better, he will say
this unwillingly, being what the truth we hold teaches; namely, that
salvation is from a change due to obedience, but not from nature. For
as the exhalations which arise from the earth, and from marshes, gather
into mists and cloudy masses; so the vapours of fleshly lusts bring on the
soul an evil condition, scattering about the idols of pleasure before the
soul. Accordingly they spread darkness over the light of intelligence, the
spirit attracting the exhalations that arise from lust, and thickening the
masses of the passions by persistency in pleasures. Gold is not taken from
the earth in the lump, but is purified by smelting; then, when made pure,
it is called gold, the earth being purified. For “Ask, and it shall
be given you,”2396
it is said to those who are able of themselves
to choose what is best. And how we say that the powers of the devil, and
the unclean spirits, sow into the sinner’s soul, requires no more
words from me, on adducing as a witness the apostolic Barnabas (and he
was one of the seventy,2397
| 2397
[See note, book ii. cap. 7, p. 352, supra.] | and
a fellow-worker of Paul), who speaks in these words: “Before
we believed in God, the dwelling-place of our heart was unstable,
truly a temple built with hands. For it was full of idolatry, and was
a house of demons, through doing what was opposed to God.”2398
| 2398 Barnabas, Epist., cap.
xvi. vol. i. p. 147. |
He says, then, that sinners exercise activities
appropriate to demons; but he does not say that the spirits themselves
dwell in the soul of the unbeliever. Wherefore he also adds, “See
that the temple of the Lord be gloriously built. Learn, having received
remission of sins; and having set our hope on the Name, let us become
new, created again from the beginning.” For what he says is not
that demons are driven out of us, but that the sins which like them we
commit before believing are remitted. Rightly thus he puts in
opposition what follows: “Wherefore God truly dwells in our home.
He dwells in us. How? The word of His faith, the calling of His
promise, the wisdom of His statutes, the
commandments of His communication, [dwell in us].”
“I know that I have come upon a heresy; and its
chief was wont to say that he fought with pleasure by pleasure, this
worthy Gnostic advancing on pleasure in feigned combat, for he said he
was a Gnostic; since he said it was no great thing for a man that had
not tried pleasure to abstain from it, but for one who had mixed in it
not to be overcome [was something]; and that therefore by means of it he
trained himself in it. The wretched man knew not that he was deceiving
himself by the artfulness of voluptuousness. To this opinion, then,
manifestly Aristippus the Cyrenian adhered—that of the sophist
who boasted of the truth. Accordingly, when reproached for continually
cohabiting with the Corinthian courtezan, he said, “I possess Lais,
and am not possessed by her.”
Such also are those (who say that they follow Nicolaus,
quoting an adage of the man, which they pervert,2399
| 2399 [Clement does not credit the
apostasy of the deacon Nicolas (Acts vi. 5), though others of the
Fathers surrender him to the Nicolaitans. See book iii. cap. iv.
infra.] | “that the
flesh must be abused.” But the worthy man showed that it was
necessary to check pleasures and lusts, and by such training to waste
away the impulses and propensities of the flesh. But they, abandoning
themselves to pleasure like goats, as if insulting the body, lead a
life of self-indulgence; not knowing that the body is wasted, being by
nature subject to dissolution; while their soul is buried in the mire
of vice; following as they do the teaching of pleasure itself, not of
the apostolic man. For in what do they differ from Sardanapalus, whose
life is shown in the epigram:—
“I have what I ate—what I enjoyed wantonly;
And the pleasures I felt in love. But those
Many objects of happiness are left,
For I too am dust, who ruled great Ninus.”
For the feeling of pleasure is
not at all a necessity, but the accompaniment of certain natural
needs—hunger, thirst, cold, marriage. If, then, it were possible
to drink without it, or take food, or beget children, no other need of
it could be shown. For pleasure is neither a function, nor a state, nor
any part of us; but has been introduced into life as an auxiliary, as they
say salt was to season food. But when it casts off restraint and rules the
house, it generates first concupiscence, which is an irrational propension
and impulse towards that which gratifies it; and it induced Epicurus to
lay down pleasure as the aim of the philosopher. Accordingly he deifies a
sound condition of body, and the certain hope respecting it. For what else
is luxury than the voluptuous gluttony and the superfluous abundance of
those who are abandoned to self-indulgence? Diogenes writes significantly
in a tragedy:—
“Who to the pleasures of effeminate
And filthy luxury attached in heart,
Wish not to undergo the slightest toil.”
And what follows, expressed indeed in foul language, but in a manner
worthy of the voluptuaries.
Wherefore the divine law appears to me necessarily
to menace with fear, that, by caution and attention, the philosopher
may acquire and retain absence of anxiety, continuing without fall and
without sin in all things. For peace and freedom are not otherwise won,
than by ceaseless and unyielding struggles with our lusts. For these
stout and Olympic antagonists are keener than wasps, so to speak; and
Pleasure especially, not by day only, but by night, is in dreams with
witchcraft ensnaringly plotting and biting. How, then, can the Greeks
any more be right in running down the law, when they themselves teach
that Pleasure is the slave of fear? Socrates accordingly bids
“people guard against enticements to eat when they are not
hungry, and to drink when not thirsty, and the glances and kisses of
the fair, as fitted to inject a deadlier poison than that of scorpions
and spiders.” And Antisthenes chose rather “to be
demented than delighted.” And the Theban Crates
says:—
“Master these, exulting in the disposition of the soul,
Vanquished neither by gold nor by languishing love,
Nor are they any longer attendants to the wanton.”
And at length infers:—
“Those, unenslaved and unbended by servile Pleasure,
Love the immortal kingdom and freedom.”
He writes expressly, in other words, “that the stop2400
| 2400 κατάπαυσμα
(in Theodoret), for which the text reads κατάπλασμα. | to the
unbridled propensity to amorousness is hunger or a halter.”
And the comic poets attest, while they depreciate the
teaching of Zeno the Stoic, to be to the following effect:—
“For he philosophizes a vain philosophy:
He teaches to want food, and gets pupils
One loaf, and for seasoning a dry fig, and to drink water.”
All these, then, are not ashamed clearly to confess the advantage
which accrues from caution. And the wisdom which is true and not
contrary to reason, trusting not in mere words and oracular utterances,
but in invulnerable armour of defence and energetic mysteries, and
devoting itself to divine commands, and exercise, and practice,
receives a divine power according to its inspiration from the Word.
Already, then, the ægis of the poetic Jove is described
as
“Dreadful, crowned all around by Terror,
And on it Strife and Prowess, and chilling Rout;
On it, too, the Gorgon’s head, dread monster,
Terrible, dire, the sign of Ægis-bearing Jove.”2401
But to those, who are able rightly to
understand salvation, I know not what will appear dearer than the gravity
of the Law, and Reverence, which is its daughter. For when one is said
to pitch too high, as also the Lord says, with reference to certain;
so that some of those whose desires are towards Him may not sing out of
pitch and tune, I do not understand it as pitching too high in reality,
but only as spoken with reference to such as will not take up the divine
yoke. For to those, who are unstrung and feeble, what is medium seems too
high; and to those, who are unrighteous, what befalls them seems severe
justice. For those, who, on account of the favour they entertain for sins,
are prone to pardon, suppose truth to be harshness, and severity to be
savageness, and him who does not sin with them, and is not dragged with
them, to be pitiless. Tragedy writes therefore well of Pluto:—
“And to what sort of a deity
wilt thou come,2402
| 2402 After
this comes ὼς
ἔρωτα, which yields no meaning, and
has been variously amended, but not satisfactorily. Most likely some
words have dropped out of the text. [The note in ed. Migne,
nevertheless, is worth consultation.] | dost thou ask,
Who knows neither clemency nor favour,
But loves bare justice alone.”
For although you are not yet able
to do the things enjoined by the Law, yet, considering that the noblest
examples are set before us in it, we are able to nourish and increase the
love of liberty; and so we shall profit more eagerly as far as we can,
inviting some things, imitating some things, and fearing others. For
thus the righteous of the olden time, who lived according to the law,
“were not from a storied oak, or from a rock;” because they
wish to philosophize truly, took and devoted themselves entirely to
God, and were classified under faith. Zeno said well of the Indians,
that he would rather have seen one Indian roasted, than have learned
the whole of the arguments about bearing pain. But we have exhibited
before our eyes every day abundant sources of martyrs that are burnt,
impaled, beheaded. All these the fear inspired by the law,—leading
as a pædagogue to Christ, trained so as to manifest their piety by their
blood. “God stood in the congregation of the gods; He judgeth in the
midst of the gods.”2403
Who are they? Those that are superior to
Pleasure, who rise above the passions, who know what they do—the
Gnostics, who are greater than the world. “I said, Ye are Gods;
and all sons of the Highest.”2404
To whom speaks the
Lord? To those who reject as far as possible all that is of man. And
the apostle says, “For ye are not any longer in the flesh, but
in the Spirit.”2405
And again he says, “Though in the flesh,
we do not war after the flesh.”2406
“For flesh and blood
cannot inherit the kingdom of God, neither doth corruption inherit
incorruption.”2407
“Lo, ye shall die like men,”
the Spirit has said, confuting us.
We must then exercise ourselves in taking
care about those things which fall under the power of the passions,
fleeing like those who are truly philosophers such articles of food as
excite lust, and dissolute licentiousness in chambering and luxury;
and the sensations that tend to luxury, which are a solid reward to
others, must no longer be so to us. For God’s greatest gift is
self-restraint. For He Himself has said, “I will neyer leave thee,
nor forsake thee,”2408
as having judged thee worthy according to
the true election. Thus, then, while we attempt piously to advance, we
shall have put on us the mild yoke of the Lord from faith to faith, one
charioteer driving each of us onward to salvation, that the meet fruit
of beatitude may be won. “Exercise is” according
to Hippocrates of Cos, “not only the health of the body, but
of the soul—fearlessness of labours—a ravenous appetite
for food.”E.C.F. INDEX & SEARCH
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