Against The Arians, and Concerning Himself.

Delivered at Constantinople about the middle of the year 380.

I.  Where are they who reproach us with our poverty, and boast themselves of their own riches; who define the Church by numbers,³⁷⁵³

3753 Shewing the absurdity of defining the Church by counting heads.

3754 This refers to the distinction drawn by the Arians in degree as to the Godhead, asserting the Spirit to be great, the Son greater, and the Father greatest (cf. Or. xlii., 16).

3755 The beginning of the Oration was apparently disturbed by hostile demonstrations on the part of Arian hearers.

II.  Would you like me to utter to you the words of God to Israel, stiff-necked and hardened?  “O my people what have I done unto thee, or wherein have I injured thee, or wherein have I wearied thee?”³⁷⁵⁶

3756 Mic. vi. 3.

3757 Valens.

3758 Theodosius and Gratian.

III.  What tumultuous mob have I led against you?  What soldiers have I armed?  What general boiling with rage, and more savage than his employers, and not even a Christian, but one who offers his impiety against us as his private worship to his own gods?³⁷⁵⁹

3759 Dr. Ullmann makes this passage refer to outrages perpetrated in Constantinople itself on Gregory, by his Arian opponents.  On one occasion, he says, in the night time the meetingplace of the Orthodox was assailed; a mob of Arians, and in particular women of the lowest stamp, set on by monks, armed themselves with sticks and stones, and forced an entrance into the peaceful place of holy worship.  The champion of orthodoxy well nigh became a martyr to his convictions; the Altar was profaned, the consecrated wine was mixed with blood; the house of prayer was made a scene of outrage and unbridled licentiousness.  The Benedictine Editors, however, whom Benoit follows, think the reference is to the disturbances in Alexandria when the Arian Lucius was forcibly intruded into the Chair of Athanasius by the Prefect Palladius.  A full account of the atrocities by which his installation was marked is to be found in a letter of Peter, the expelled or orthodox Patriarch, preserved in Theodoret (H. E. IV. 22).  This Lucius was living in Constantinople and abetting the Arian party there at the time when Gregory pronounced this Oration.

3760 2 Kings xxv. 11.

3761 Dan. v. 3.

3762 Hos. viii. 11 (LXX.).

IV.  What wild beasts have we let loose upon the bodies of Saints,—like some who have prostituted human nature,—on one single accusation, that of not consenting to their impiety; or defiled ourselves by communion with them, which we avoid like the poison of a snake, not because it injures the body, but because it blackens the depths of the soul?  Against whom have we made it a matter of criminal accusation that they buried the dead, whom the very beasts reverenced?  And what a charge, worthy of another theatre and of other beasts!  What Bishop’s aged flesh have we carded with hooks in the presence of their disciples, impotent to help them save by tears, hung up with Christ, conquering by suffering, and sprinkling the people with their precious blood, and at last carried away to death, to be both crucified and buried and glorified with Christ; with Christ Who conquered the world by such victims and sacrifices?  What priests have those contrary elements fire and water divided, raising a strange beacon over the sea, and set on fire together with the ship in which they put to sea?³⁷⁶³

3763 Socrates (H. E. IV. 16) gives an account of the murder of eighty Priests by order of Valens.  The Prefect of Nicomedia, being afraid to execute the Emperor’s commands by a public action, put these men on board a ship, as if to send them into exile, but gave orders to the crew to set the vessel on fire on the high seas, and leave the prisoners to their fate. Billius, however, thinks that the reference is to the martyrdom of a single Priest, whose death in this way is described by S. Gregory in his panegyric on Maximus (Or. xxv. 10, p. 461, 462).

V.  And to speak of older things, for they too belong to the same fraternity; whose hands living or dead have I cut off—to bring a lying accusation against Saints,³⁷⁶⁴

3764 S. Athanasius was accused by the Arians of having murdered a Meletian Bishop named Arsenius, and cut off his hand to use for magical purposes; and at a Synod held at Tyre in 334 they produced the alleged hand in a box.  Athanasius, however, was able to produce Arsenius alive and unmutilated; but even so his accusers were not satisfied.

3765 Heb. xi. 38.

3766 The reference is perhaps to Eusebius of Samosata, who was killed by a tile thrown at him by an Arian woman.  In dying he bound his friends by an oath not to allow the murderess to be punished.

3767 Jer. v. 7.

VI.  Now since your antecedents are such, I should be glad if you too will tell me of my crimes, that I may either amend my life or be put to shame.  My greatest wish is that I may be found free from wrong altogether; but if this may not be, at least to be converted from my crime; for this is the second best portion of the prudent.  For if like the just man I do not become my own accuser in the first instance,³⁷⁶⁸

3768 Prov. xviii. 17.

3769 Valens had constructed an Aqueduct, partly subterranean, partly raised on arches, for the supply of water to the Capital.

3770 A magnificent column on which stood an equestrian statue of Constantine the Great.

VII.  Why do you not also mention the convenience of the site, and what I may call the contest between land and sea as to which owns the City, and which adorns our Royal City with all their good things?  This then is our crime, that while you are great and splendid, we are small and come from a small place?  Many others do you this wrong, indeed all those whom you excel; and must we die because we have not reared a city, nor built walls around it, nor can boast of our racecourse, or our stadia, and pack of hounds, and all the follies that are connected with these things; nor have to boast of the beauty and splendour of our baths, and the costliness of their marbles and pictures and golden embroideries of all sorts of species, almost rivalling nature?  Nor have we yet rounded off the sea for ourselves, or mingled the seasons, as of course you, the new Creators, have done, that we may live in what is at once the pleasantest and the safest way.  Add if you like other charges, you who say, The silver is mine and the gold is mine,³⁷⁷¹

3771 Hagg. ii. 8.

VIII.  Do you also find fault with the raggedness of my dress, and the want of elegance in the disposition of my face? for these are the points upon which I see that some persons who are very insignificant pride themselves.  Will you leave my head alone, and not jeer at it, as the children did at Elissæus?  What followed I will not mention.  And will you leave out of your allegations my want of education, and what seems to you the roughness and rusticity of my elocution?  And where will you put the fact that I am not full of small talk, nor a jester popular with company, nor great hunter of the marketplace, nor given to chatter and gossip with any chance people upon all sorts of subjects, so as to make even conversation grievous; nor a frequenter of Zeuxippus, that new Jerusalem;³⁷⁷²

3772 It is not certain what is the allusion here.  Some think a great Circus or Hippodrome for chariot races; others say an institution in which were heretical schools; others again, the great baths of Zeuxippus.

IX.  But I am so old fashioned and such a philosopher as to believe that one heaven is common to all; and that so is the revolution of the sun and the moon, and the order and arrangement of the stars; and that all have in Common an equal share and profit in day and night, and also change of seasons, rains, fruits, and quickening power of the air; and that the flowing rivers are a common and abundant wealth to all; and that one and the same is the Earth, the mother and the tomb, from which we were taken, and to which we shall return, none having a greater share than another.  And further, above this, we have in common reason, the Law, the Prophets, the very Sufferings of Christ, by which we were all without exception created anew, who partake of the same Adam, and were led astray by the serpent and slain by sin, and are saved by the heavenly Adam and brought back by the tree of shame to the tree of life from whence we had fallen.

X.  I was deceived too by the Ramah of Samuel, that little fatherland of the great man; which was no dishonour to the Prophet, for it drew its honour not so much from itself as from him; nor was he hindered on its account from being given to God before his birth, or from uttering oracles, and foreseeing the future; nor only so, but also anointing Kings and Priests, and judging the men of illustrious cities.  I heard also of Saul, how while seeking his father’s asses he found a kingdom.  And even David himself was taken from the sheepfolds to be the shepherd of Israel.  What of Amos?  Was he not, while a goatherd and scraper of sycamore fruit entrusted with the gifts of prophecy?  How is it that I have passed over Joseph, who was both a slave and the giver of corn to Egypt, and the father of many myriads who were promised before to Abraham?  Aye and I was deceived by the Carmel of Elias, who received the car of fire; and by the sheepskin of Elissæus that had more power than a silken web or than gold forced into garments.  I was deceived by the desert of John, which held the greatest among them that are born of women, with that clothing, that food, that girdle, which we know.  And I ventured even beyond these, and found God Himself the Patron of my rusticity.  I will range myself with Bethlehem, and will share the ignominy of the Manger; for since you refuse on this account honour to God, it is no wonder that on the same account you despise His herald also.  And I will bring up to you the Fishermen, and the poor to whom the Gospel is preached, as preferred before many rich.  Will you ever leave off priding yourselves upon your cities?  Will you ever revere that wilderness which you abominate and despise?  I do not yet say that gold has its birthplace in sand; nor that translucent stones are the product and gifts of rocks; for if to these I should oppose all that is dishonourable in cities perhaps it would be to no good end that I should use my freedom of speech.

XI.  But perhaps some one who is very circumscribed and carnally minded will say, “But our herald is a stranger and a foreigner.”  What of the Apostles?  Were not they strangers to the many nations and cities among whom they were divided, that the Gospel might have free course everywhere, that nothing might miss the illumination of the Threefold Light, or be unenlightened by the Truth; but that the night of ignorance might be dissolved for those who sat in darkness and the shadow of death?  You have heard the words of Paul, “that we might go the Gentiles, and they to the Circumcision.”³⁷⁷³

3773 Galat. ii. 9.

XII.  My friend, every one that is of high mind has one Country, the Heavenly Jerusalem, in which we store up our Citizenship.  All have one family—if you look at what is here below the dust—or if you look higher, that Inbreathing of which we are partakers, and which we were bidden to keep, and with which I must stand before my Judge to give an account of my heavenly nobility, and of the Divine Image.  Everyone then is noble who has guarded this through virtue and consent to his Archetype.  On the other hand, everyone is ignoble who has mingled with evil, and put upon himself another form, that of the serpent.  And these earthly countries and families are the playthings of this our temporary life and scene.  For our country is whatever each may have first occupied, either as tyrant, or in misfortune; and in this we are all alike strangers and pilgrims, however much we may play with names.  And the family is accounted noble which is either rich from old days, or is recently raised; and of ignoble birth that which is of poor parents, either owing to misfortune or to want of ambition.  For how can a nobility be given from above which is at one time beginning and at another coming to an end; and which is not given to some, but is bestowed on others by letters patent?  Such is my mind on this matter.  Therefore I leave it to you to pride yourself on tombs or in myths, and I endeavour as far as I can, to purify myself from deceits, that I may keep if possible my nobility, or else may recover it.

XIII.  It is thus then and for these reasons that I, who am small and of a country without repute, have come upon you, and that not of my own accord, nor self-sent, like many of those who now seize upon the chief places; but because I was invited, and compelled, and have followed the scruples of my conscience and the Call of the Spirit.  If it be otherwise, may I continue to fight here to no purpose, and deliver no one from his error, but may they obtain their desire who seek the barrenness of my soul, if I lie.  But since I am come, and perchance with no contemptible power (if I may boast myself a little of my folly), which of those who are insatiable have I copied, what have I emulated of opportunism, although I have such examples, even apart from which it is hard and rare not to be bad?  Concerning what churches or property have I disputed with you; though you have more than enough of both, and the others too little?  What imperial edict have we rejected and emulated?  What rulers have we fawned upon against you?  Whose boldness have we denounced?  And what has been done on the other side against me?  “Lord, lay not this sin to their charge,” even then I said, for I remembered in season the words of Stephen,³⁷⁷⁴

3774 Acts vii. 59.

3775 1 Cor. iv. 12.

XIV.  And if I am doing wrong in this, that when tyrannized over I endure it, forgive me this wrong; I have borne to be tyrannized over by others too; and I am thankful that my moderation has brought upon me the charge of folly.  For I reckon thus, using considerations altogether higher than any of yours; what a mere fraction are these trials of the spittings and blows which Christ, for Whom and by Whose aid we encounter these dangers, endured.  I do not count them, taken altogether, worth the one crown of thorns which robbed our conqueror of his crown, for whose sake also I learn that I am crowned for the hardness of life.  I do not reckon them worth the one reed by which the rotten empire was destroyed; of the gall alone, the vinegar alone, by which we were cured of the bitter taste; of the gentleness alone which He shewed in His Passion.  Was He betrayed with a kiss?  He reproves with a kiss, but smites not.  Is he suddenly arrested?  He reproaches indeed, but follows; and if through zeal thou cuttest off the ear of Malchus with the sword, He will be angry, and will restore it.  And if one flee in a linen sheet,³⁷⁷⁶

3776 Mark xiv. 51.

XV.  Moreover this also I reckoned and still reckon with myself; and do you see if it is not quite correct.  I have often discussed it with you before.  These men have the houses, but we the Dweller in the house; they the Temples, we the God; and besides it is ours to be living temples of the Living God, lively sacrifices, reasonable burnt-offerings, perfect sacrifices, yea, gods through the adoration of the Trinity.  They have the people, we the Angels; they rash boldness, we faith; they threatenings, we prayer; they smiting, we endurance; they gold and silver, we the pure word.  “Thou hast built for thyself a wide house and large chambers (recognize the words of Scripture), a house celled and pierced with windows.”³⁷⁷⁷

3777 Jer. xxii. 14.

XVI.  These I call by name (for they are not nameless like the stars which are numbered and have names),³⁷⁷⁸

3778 Ps. cxlvii. 4.

3779 Valentinus, a celebrated Gnostic leader of the Second Century, was one of the first Gnostics who taught in Rome.  He was probably of Ægypto-Jewish descent, and was educated at Alexandria.  He died in Cyprus about 160.  His system is a very curious one, giving the reins to the wildest vagaries of the imagination.  The original eternal Being, or Absolute Existence, he called Bythos or Depth; and to this he assigned as a wife Sige or Silence.  From this union there sprang thirty Æons or Emanations, who unfolded the Attributes of the Deity and created the world.

3780 Marcion was a contemporary of Valentinus.  He was a native of Sinope in Pontus, of which city his father was Bishop.  He supposed Three Principles, the Good God, Who was first revealed by Christ; the Just Creator, Who is the “hot tempered and imperfect” God of the Jews; and the intrinsically evil Hyle or Matter, which is ruled by the Devil.  He also distinguished two Messiahs; one a mere warrior prince sent by the Jewish God to restore Israel; the other sent by the Good God for the delivery of the whole human race.

3781 Montanus, a Phrygian enthusiast of the middle of the Second Century, imagined himself the inspired Organ of the Paraclete.  Connected with him were two Prophetesses, Priscilla and Maximilla, who left their husbands to follow him.  His heresy, or rather his schism, spread to Rome and Northern Africa, and threw the whole Church into confusion.  He was very early anathematized by Bishops and Synods of Asia, but he carried the great African, Tertullian, away by his frenzy.

3782 Manes or Mani, a Persia philosopher, astronomer, and painter of the Third Century, who introduced into Christianity some elements drawn from the religion of Zoroaster, especially its πρῶτον ψεὺδος.  Dualism, the co-eternity of two contradictory principles, Light and Darkness, Spirit and Matter, Good and Evil.  This heresy flourished till the Sixth Century, S. Augustine himself having been for nine years led away by it.  It is believed not to be wholly extinct even now in some parts of Eastern Christendom.

3783 Novatus was a Carthaginian Priest, who at first rebelled against his Bishop, S. Cyprian, on account of his severity in the treatment of persons who had lapsed in the Decian persecution.  At Rome, however, this same Novatus, either out of simple antagonism to constituted authority, or because he had really changed his views, adopted the extremest rigorism, and became one of the most violent partisans of the Priest Novatian, whom his followers contrived to get consecrated as a rival Bishop of Rome, in opposition to Cornelius, the reigning Pope.  They set up a new “church,” and arrogated to themselves an exclusive claim to the title of Cathari, the Pure.

3784 Sabellius, a native of the Libyan Pentapolis, rejected the Catholic Faith of the Trinity of Persons in God, and would only allow a Trinity of manifestations.

3785 It is hardly necessary here to dwell on the Arian tenets; cf. Prolegomena to the Theological Oration.

3786 Photinus was a n by birth, and flourished in the fourth century, a little earlier than S. Gregory.  He seems to have taught that our Lord Jesus Christ was a mere man, and had no existence previous to His Birth of the Virgin Mary.  He made Jesus rise on the basis of His human nature, by a course of moral improvement, to the divine dignity, so that the Divine in Him is a thing of growth:  cf. Schaff, H. E. Nicene Period, vol. ii. p. 653.

XVII.  These words let everyone who threatens me to-day concede to me; the rest let whoever will claim.  The Father will not endure to be deprived of the Son, nor the Son of the Holy Ghost.  Yet that must happen if They are confined to time, and are created Beings…for that which is created is not God.  Neither will I bear to be deprived of my consecration; One Lord, One Faith, One Baptism.  If this be cancelled, from whom shall I get a second?  What say you, you who destroy Baptism or repeat it?  Can a man be spiritual without the Spirit?  Has he a share in the Spirit who does not honour the Spirit?  Can he honour Him who is baptized into a creature and a fellow-servant?  It is not so; it is not so; for all your talk.  I will not play Thee false, O Unoriginate Father, or Thee O Only-begotten Word, or Thee O Holy Ghost.  I know Whom I have confessed, and whom I have renounced, and to Whom I have joined myself.  I will not allow myself, after having been taught the words of the faithful, to learn also those of the unfaithful; to confess the truth, and then range myself with falsehood; to come down for consecration and to go back even less hallowed; having been baptised that I might live, to be killed by the water, like infants who die in the very birthpangs, and receive death simultaneously with birth.  Why make me at once blessed and wretched, newly enlightened and unenlightened, Divine and godless, that I may make shipwreck even of the hope of regeneration?  A few words will suffice.  Remember your confession.  Into what were you baptised?  The Father?  Good but Jewish still.  The Son?…good…but not yet perfect.  The Holy Ghost?…Very good…this is perfect.  Now was it into these simply, or some common name of Them?  The latter.  And what was the common Name?  Why, God.  In this common Name believe, and ride on prosperously and reign,³⁷⁸⁷

3787 Ps. xlv. 4.

E.C.F. INDEX & SEARCH