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| He falsely imagines that the same energies produce the same works, and that variation in the works indicates variation in the energies.
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§27. He falsely imagines that the same energies produce
the same works, and that variation in the works indicates variation in
the energies.
Of the same strain is that which
he adds in the next paragraph; “the same energies producing
sameness of works, and different works indicating difference in the
energies as well.” Finely and irresistibly does this noble
thinker plead for his doctrine. “The same energies produce
sameness of works.” Let us test this by facts. The energy of fire
is always one and the same; it consists in heating: but what sort of
agreement do its results show? Bronze melts in it; mud hardens; wax
vanishes: while all other animals are destroyed by it, the salamander
is preserved alive155
; tow burns, asbestos
is washed by the flames as if by water; so much for his ‘sameness
of works from one and the same energy.’ How too about the sun? Is
not his power of warming always the same; and yet while he causes one
plant to grow, he withers another, varying the results of his operation
in accordance with the latent force of each. ‘That on the
rock’ withers; ‘that in deep earth’ yields an
hundredfold. Investigate Nature’s work, and you will learn, in
the case of those bodies which she produces artistically, the amount of
accuracy there is in his statement that ‘sameness of energy
effects sameness of result.’ One single operation is the cause of
conception, but the composition of that which is effected internally
therein is so varied that it would be difficult for any one even to
count all the various qualities of the body. Again, imbibing the milk
is one single operation on the part of the infant, but the results of
its being nourished so are too complex to be all detailed. While this
food passes from the channel of the mouth into the secretory ducts156
| 156 ἀποκριτικοὺς, activè, so, the Medical writers. The Latin is
‘in meatus destinato descendit’
takes it passivè (ἀποκριτίκους). | , the transforming power of Nature forwards it
into the several parts proportionately to their wants; for by digestion
she divides its sum total into the small change of multitudinous
differences, and into supplies congenial to the subject matter with
which she deals; so that the same milk goes to feed arteries, veins,
brain and its membranes, marrow, bones, nerves157
| 157 νεῦρα. So since
Galen’s time: not ‘tendon.’ | ,
sinews, tendons, flesh, surface, cartilages, fat, hair, nails,
perspiration, vapours, phlegm, bile, and besides these, all useless
superfluities deriving from the same source. You could not name either
an organ, whether of motion or sensation, or anything else making up
the body’s bulk, which was not formed (in spite of startling
differences) from this one and selfsame operation of feeding. If one
were to compare the mechanic arts too it will be seen what is the
scientific value of his statement; for there we see in them all the
same operation, I mean the movement of the hands; but what have the
results in common? What has building a shrine to do with a coat, though
manual labour is employed on both? The house-breaker and the
well-digger both move their hands: the mining of the earth, the murder
of a man are results of the motion of the hands. The soldier slays the
foe, and the husbandman wields the fork which breaks the clod, with his
hands. How, then, can this doctrinaire lay it down that the ‘same
energies produce sameness of work?’ But even if we were to grant
that this view of his had any truth in it, the essential union of the
Son with the Father, and of the Holy Spirit with the Son, is
yet again more fully proved. For if there existed any variation in
their energies, so that the Son worked His will in a different manner
to the Father, then (on the above supposition) it would be fair to
conjecture, from this variation, a variation also in the beings which
were the result of these varying energies. But if it is true that the
manner of the Father’s working is likewise the manner always of
the Son’s, both from our Lord’s own words and from what we
should have expected a priori—(for the one is not unbodied
while the other is embodied, the one is not from this material, the
other from that, the one does not work his will in this time and place,
the other in that time and place, nor is there difference of organs in
them producing difference of result, but the sole movement of their
wish and of their will is sufficient, seconded in the founding of the
universe by the power that can create anything)—if, I say, it is
true that in all respects the Father from Whom are all things, and the
Son by Whom are all things in the actual form of their operation work
alike, then how can this man hope to prove the essential difference
between the Son and the Holy Ghost by any difference and separation
between the working of the Son and the Father? The very opposite, as we
have just seen, is proved to be the case158
| 158 Punctuating παρασκευάζεται,
ἐπείδὴ,
κ.τ.λ. instead of a full stop,
as Oehler. | ;
seeing that there is no manner of difference contemplated between the
working of the Father and that of the Son; and so that there is no gulf
whatever between the being of the Son and the being of the Spirit, is
shewn by the identity of the power which gives them their subsistence;
and our pamphleteer himself confirms this; for these are his words
verbatim: “the same energies producing sameness of
works.” If sameness of works is really produced by likeness of
energies, and if (as they say) the Son is the work of the Father and
the Spirit the work of the Son, the likeness in manner159
| 159 Gregory
replaces ‘sameness’ (in the case of the energies in
Eunomius argument) by ‘likeness’ since the Father and the
Son could not be said to be the same, and their energies,
therefore, are not identical but similar. | of the Father’s and the Son’s
energies will demonstrate the sameness of these beings who each result
from them.
But he adds, “variation in
the works indicates variation in the energies.” How, again, is
this dictum of his corroborated by facts? Look, if you please, at plain
instances. Is not the ‘energy’ of command, in Him who
embodied the world and all things therein by His sole will, a single
energy? “He spake and they were made. He commanded and they were
created.” Was not the thing commanded in every case alike given
existence: did not His single will suffice to give subsistence to the
nonexistent? How, then, when such vast differences are seen coming from
that one energy of command, can this man shut his eyes to realities,
and declare that the difference of works indicates difference of
energies? If our dogmatist insists on this, that difference of works
implies difference of energies, then we should have expected the very
contrary to that which is the case; viz., that everything in the world
should be of one type. Can it be that he does see here a universal
likeness, and detects unlikeness only between the Father and the
Son?
Let him, then, observe, if he
never did before, the dissimilarity amongst the elements of the world,
and how each thing that goes to make up the framework of the whole
hangs on to its natural opposite. Some objects are light and buoyant,
others heavy and gravitating; some are always still, others always
moving; and amongst these last some move unchangingly on one plan160
, as the heaven, for instance, and the
planets, whose courses all revolve the opposite way to the universe,
others are transfused in all directions and rush at random, as air and
sea for instance, and every substance which is naturally penetrating161
. What need to mention the contrasts seen
between heat and cold, moist and dry, high and low position? As for the
numerous dissimilarities amongst animals and plants, on the score of
figure and size, and all the variations of their products and their
qualities, the human mind would fail to follow them.E.C.F. INDEX & SEARCH
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