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| We have been justly provoked to make this Answer, being stung by Eunomius' accusations of our brother.
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§2. We have been
justly provoked to make this Answer, being stung by Eunomius’
accusations of our brother.
If indeed that godlike and
saintly soul were still in the flesh looking out upon human affairs, if
those lofty tones were still heard with all their peculiar62
| 62 ἀποκληρωθεῖσαν. This is probably the meaning, after the analogy of
ἀποκλήρωσις, in the sense (most frequent in Origen), of
‘favour,’ ‘partiality,’ passing into that of
‘caprice,’ ‘arbitrariness,’ cf. below, cap.
9, τίς ἡ
ἀποκλήρωσις,
κ.τ.λ. ‘How arbitrarily he praises himself.’ | grace and all their resistless utterance, who
could arrive at such a pitch of audacity, as to attempt to speak one
word upon this subject? that divine trumpet-voice would drown any word
that could be uttered. But all of him has now flown back to God; at
first indeed in the slight shadowy phantom of his body, he still rested
on the earth; but now he has quite shed even that unsubstantial form,
and bequeathed it to this world. Meantime the drones are buzzing round
the cells of the Word, and are plundering the honey; so let no one
accuse me of mere audacity for rising up to speak instead of those
silent lips. I have not accepted this laborious task from any
consciousness in myself of powers of argument superior to the others
who might be named; I, if any, have the means of knowing that there are
thousands in the Church who are strong in the gift of philosophic
skill. Nevertheless I affirm that, both by the written and the natural
law, to me more especially belongs this heritage of the departed, and
therefore I myself, in preference to others, appropriate the legacy of
the controversy. I may be counted amongst the least of those who are
enlisted in the Church of God, but still I am not too weak to stand out
as her champion against one who has broken with that Church. The very
smallest member of a vigorous body would, by virtue of the unity of its
life with the whole, be found stronger than one that had been cut away
and was dying, however large the latter and small the
former.E.C.F. INDEX & SEARCH
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