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| Chapter XLVI
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Chapter
XLVI.
We are careful not to oppose fair arguments even
if they proceed from those who are not of our faith; we strive not to
be captious, or to seek to overthrow any sound reasonings. But
here we have to reply to those who slander the character of persons
wishing to do their best in the service of God, who accepts the faith
which the meanest place in Him, as well as the more refined and
intelligent piety of the learned; seeing that both alike address to the
Creator of the world their prayers and thanksgivings through the High
Priest who has set before men the nature of pure religion. We
say, then, that those who are stigmatized as “lamed and mutilated
in spirit,” as “living only for the sake of the body which
is dead,” are persons whose endeavour it is to say with
sincerity: “For though we live4789
in
the flesh, we do not war according to the flesh; for the weapons of our
warfare are not fleshly, but mighty through God.” It is for
those who throw out such vile accusations against men who desire to be
God’s servants, to beware lest, by the calumnies which they cast
upon others who strive to live well, they “lame” their own
souls, and “mutilate” the inner man, by severing from it
that justice and moderation of mind which the Creator has planted in
the nature of all His rational creatures. As for those, however,
who, along with other lessons given by the Divine Word, have learned
and practised this, “when reviled to bless, when persecuted to
endure, when defamed to entreat,”4790
they may be said to be walking in spirit in the ways of uprightness, to
be purifying and setting in order the whole soul. They
distinguish—and to them the distinction is not one of words
merely—between “substance,” or that which is, and
that which is “becoming;” between things apprehended by
reason, and things apprehended by sense; and they connect truth with
the one, and avoid the errors arising out of the other; looking, as
they have been taught, not at the things “becoming” or
phenomenal, which are seen, and therefore temporary, but at better
things than these, whether we call them “substance,” or
“spiritual” things, as being apprehended by reason, or
“invisible,” because they lie out of the reach of the
senses. The disciples of Jesus regard these phenomenal things
only that they may use them as steps to ascend to the knowledge of the
things of reason. For “the invisible things of God,”
that is, the objects of the reason, “from the creation of the
world are clearly seen” by the reason, “being understood by
the things that are made.” And when they have risen from
the created things of this world to the invisible things of God, they
do not stay there; but after they have sufficiently exercised their
minds upon these, and have understood their nature, they ascend to
“the eternal power of God,” in a word, to His
divinity. For they know that God, in His love to men, has
“manifested” His truth, and “that which is known of
Him,” not only to those who devote themselves to His service, but
also to some who are far removed from the purity of worship and service
which He requires; and that some of those who by the providence of God
had attained a knowledge of these truths, were yet doing things
unworthy of that knowledge, and “holding the truth in
unrighteousness,” and who are unable to find any excuse before
God after the knowledge of such great truths which He has given
them.E.C.F. INDEX & SEARCH
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