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IV.—Homiletical.
Twenty-four homilies on miscellaneous subjects,
published under St. Basil’s name, are generally accepted as
genuine. They are conveniently classified as (i) Dogmatic and
Exegetic, (ii) Moral, and (iii) Panegyric. To Class (i) will be
referred
III. In Illud, Attende tibi
ipsi.
VI. In Illud, Destruam horrea,
etc.
IX. In Illud, Quod Deus non est auctor
malorum.
XII. In principium
Proverbiorum.
XV. De Fide.
XVI. In Illud, In principio erat
Verbum.
XXIV. Contra Sabellianos et Arium et
Anomœos.
Class (ii) will include
I. and II. De Jejunio.
IV. De gratiarum actione.
VII. In Divites.
VIII. In famem et
siccitatem.
X. Adversus beatos.
XI. De invidia.
XIII. In Sanctum
Baptismum.
XIV. In Ebriosos.
XX. De humilitate.
XXI. Quod rebus mundanis adhærendum
non sit, et de incendio extra ecclesiam facto.
XXII. Ad adolescentes, de legendis libris
Gentilium.
The Panegyric (iii) are
V. In martyrem Julittam.
XVII. In Barlaam martyrem.
XVIII. In Gordium
martyrem.
XIX. In sanctos quadraginta
martyres.
XXIII. In Mamantem
martyrem.
Homily III. on Deut. xv. 9,574
is one of the
eight translated by Rufinus. Section 2 begins:
“‘Take heed,’ it is written, ‘to
thyself.’ Every living creature possesses within himself,
by the gift of God, the Ordainer of all things, certain resources for
self protection. Investigate nature with attention, and you will
find that the majority of brutes have an instinctive aversion from what
is injurious; while, on the other hand, by a kind of natural
attraction, they are impelled to the enjoyment of what is beneficial to
them. Wherefore also God our Teacher has given us this grand
injunction, in order that what brutes possess by nature may accrue to
us by the aid of reason, and that what is performed by brutes
unwittingly may be done by us through careful attention and constant
exercise of our reasoning faculty. We are to be diligent
guardians of the resources given to us by God, ever shunning sin as
brutes shun poisons, and ever hunting after righteousness, as they seek
for the herbage that is good for food. Take heed to thyself, that
thou mayest be able to discern between the noxious and the
wholesome. This taking heed is to be understood in a twofold
sense. Gaze with the eyes of the body at visible objects.
Contemplate incorporeal objects with the intellectual faculty of the
soul. If we say that obedience to the charge of the text lies in
the action of our eyes, we shall see at once that this is
impossible. How can there be apprehension of the whole self
through the eye? The eye cannot turn its sight upon itself; the
head is beyond it; it is ignorant of the back, the countenance, the
disposition of the intestines. Yet it were impious to argue that
the charge of the Spirit cannot be obeyed. It follows then that
it must be understood of intellectual action. ‘Take heed to
thyself.’ Look at thyself round about from every point of
view. Keep thy
soul’s eye sleepless575
| 575 ἀκοίμητον.
On the later existence of an order of sleepless monks, known as the
Acœmetæ. cf. Theodoret, Ep. cxli. p.
309, in this series, and note. | in ceaseless watch
over thyself. ‘Thou goest in the midst of
snares.’576
Hidden nets are
set for thee in all directions by the enemy. Look well around
thee, that thou mayest be delivered ‘as a gazelle from the net
and a bird from the snare.’577
It is
because of her keen sight that the gazelle cannot be caught in the
net. It is her keen sight that gives her her name.578
| 578 δορκάς, from
δέρκομαι,=seer. So Tabitha
(Syr.)=keen-sighted. | And the bird, if only she take heed,
mounts on her light wing far above the wiles of the hunter.
“Beware lest in self protection thou prove
inferior to brutes, lest haply thou be caught in the gins and be made
the devil’s prey, and be taken alive by him to do with thee as he
will.”
A striking passage from the same Homily is thus rendered
by Rufinus: “Considera ergo primo omnium quod homo es,
id est solum in terres animal ipsis divinis manibus formatum.
Nonne sufficeret hoc solum recte atque integre sapienti ad magnum
summumque solutium, quod ipsius Dei manibus qui omnia reliqua
præcepti solius fecit auctoritate subsistere, homo fictus es et
formatus? Tum deinde quod cum ad imaginem Creatoris et
similitudinem sis, potes sponte etiam ad angelorum dignitatem culmenque
remeare. Animam namque accepisti intellectualem, et rationalem,
per quam Deum possis agnoscere, et naturam rerum conspicabili rationis
intelligentia contemplari: sapientiæ dulcissimis fructibus
perfrui præsto est. Tibi omnium cedit animantium genus,
quæ per connexa montium vel prærupta rupium aut opaca
silvarum feruntur; omne quod vel aquis tegitur, vel præpetibus
pennis in aere suspenditur. Omne, inquam, quod hujus mundi est,
servitis et subjectioni tuæ liberalis munificentia conditoris
indulsit. Nonne tu, sensu tibi rationabili suggerente,
diversitates artium reperisti? Nonne tu urbes condere, omnemque
earum reliquum usum pernecessarium viventibus invenisti? Nonne
tibi per rationem quæ in te est mare pervium fit? Terra,
flumina, fontesque tuis vel usibus vel voluptatibus famulantur.
Nonne aer hic et cœlum ipsum atque omnes stellarum chori vitæ
mortalium ministerio cursus suos atque ordines servant? Quid ergo
deficis animo, et deesse tibi aliquid putas, si non tibi equus
producitur phaleris exornatus et spumanti ore frena mandens
argentea? Sed sol tibi producitur, veloci rapidoque cursu
ardentes tibi faces caloris simul ac luminis portans. Non habes
aureos et argenteos discos: sed habes lunæ discum purissimo
et blandissimo splendore radiantem. Non ascendis currum, nec
rotarum lupsibus veheris, sed habes pedum tuorum vehiculum tecum
natum. Quid ergo beatos censes eos qui aurum quidem possisent,
alienis autem pedibus indigent, ad necessarios commeatus? Non
recubas eburneis thoris, sed adjacent fecundi cespites viridantes et
herbidi thori, florum varietate melius quam fucatis coloribus Tyrii
muricis picti, in quibus dulces et salubres somni nullis curarum
morsibus effugantur. Non te contegunt aurata laquearia; sed
cœlum te contegit ineffabili fulgore stellarum depictum.
Hæc quidem quantum ad communem humanitatis attinet vitam.
Accipe vero majora. Propter te Deus in hominibus, Spiritus sancti
distributio, mortis ablatio, resurrectionis spes. Propter te
divina præcepta hominibus delata, quæ te perfectam doceant
vitam, et iter tuum ad Deum per mandatorum tramitem dirigant.
Tibi panduntur regna cœlorum, tibi coronæ justitiæ
præparantur; si tamen labores et ærumnas pro justitia ferre
non refugis.”579
Homily VI., on Luke xii. 18, is on selfish wealth and
greed.
Beware, says the preacher,580
lest the fate of the fool of the text be
thine. “These things are written that we may shun their
imitation. Imitate the earth, O man. Bear fruit, as she
does, lest thou prove inferior to that which is without life.
She produces her fruits, not that she may enjoy them, but for thy
service. Thou dost gather for thyself whatever fruit of good
works thou hast strewn, because the grace of good works returns to
the giver. Thou hast given to the poor, and the gift becomes
thine own, and comes back with increase. Just as grain that
has fallen on the earth becomes a gain to the sower, so the loaf
thrown to the hungry man renders abundant fruit thereafter. Be
the end of thy husbandry the beginning of the heavenly sowing.
‘Sow,’ it is written, ‘to yourselves in
righteousness.’581
Why then art
thou distressed? Why dost thou harass thyself in thy efforts
to shut up thy riches in clay and bricks? ‘A good name
is rather to be chosen than great riches.’582
If thou admire riches because of the
honour that comes from them, bethink thee how very much more it
tends to thine honour that thou shouldst be called the father
of innumerable
children than that thou shouldst possess innumerable staters in a
purse. Thy wealth thou wilt leave behind thee here, even
though thou like it not. The honour won by thy good deeds thou
shalt convey with thee to the Master. Then all people standing
round about thee in the presence of the universal Judge shall hail
thee as feeder and benefactor, and give thee all the names that tell
of loving kindness. Dost thou not see theatre-goers flinging
away their wealth on boxers and buffoons and beast-fighters, fellows
whom it is disgusting even to see, for the sake of the honour of a
moment, and the cheers and clapping of the crowd? And art thou
a niggard in thy expenses, when thou art destined to attain glory so
great? God will welcome thee, angels will laud thee, mankind
from the very beginning will call thee blessed. For thy
stewardship of these corruptible things thy reward shall be glory
everlasting, a crown of righteousness, the heavenly kingdom.
Thou thinkest nothing of all this. Thy heart is so fixed on
the present that thou despisest what is waited for in hope.
Come then; dispose of thy wealth in various directions.
‘Be generous and liberal in thy expenditure on the poor.
Let it be said of thee, ‘He hath dispersed, he hath given to
the poor; his righteousness endureth for ever.’583
Do not press heavily on necessity
and sell for great prices. Do not wait for a famine before
thou openest thy barns. ‘He that withholdeth corn, the
people shall curse him.’584
Watch
not for a time of want for gold’s sake—for public
scarcity to promote thy private profit. Drive not a
huckster’s bargains out of the troubles of mankind. Make
not God’s wrathful visitation an opportunity for
abundance. Wound not the sores of men smitten by the
scourge. Thou keepest thine eye on thy gold, and wilt not look
at thy brother. Thou knowest the marks on the money, and canst
distinguish good from bad. Thou canst not tell who is thy
brother in the day of distress.”
The conclusion is585
“‘Ah!’—it is said—‘words are all
very fine: gold is finer.’ I make the same impression
as I do when I am preaching to libertines against their
unchastity. Their mistress is blamed, and the mere mention of her
serves but to enkindle their passions. How can I bring before
your eyes the poor man’s sufferings that thou mayest know out of
what creep groanings thou art accumulating thy treasures, and of what
high value will seem to thee in the day of judgment the famous words,
‘Come, ye blessed of my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for
you from the foundation of the world: for I was an hungred and ye
gave me meat: I was thirsty and ye gave me drink:…I was
naked and ye clothed me.’586
What
shuddering, what sweat, what darkness will be shed round thee, as
thou hearest the words of condemnation!—‘Depart from me,
ye cursed, into outer darkness prepared for the devil and his
angels: for I was an hungred and ye gave me no meat: I
was thirsty and ye gave me no drink:…I was naked and ye
clothed me not.’587
I have told
thee what I have thought profitable. To thee now it is clear
and plain what are the good things promised for thee if thou
obey. If thou disobey, for thee the threat is written. I
pray that thou mayest change to a better mind and thus escape its
peril. In this way thy own wealth will be thy
redemption. Thus thou mayest advance to the heavenly blessings
prepared for thee by the grave of Him who hath called us all into
His own kingdom, to Whom be glory and might for ever and ever.
Amen.”
Homily IX. is a demonstration that God is not
the Author of Evil. It has been conjectured that it was
delivered shortly after some such public calamity as the destruction of
Nicæa in 368. St. Basil naturally touches on passages which
have from time to time caused some perplexity on this subject. He
asks588
if God is not
the Author of evil, how is it said “I form the light and
create darkness, I make peace and create evil,”589
and again, “The evil came down
from the Lord unto the gate of Jerusalem,”590
and again, “Shall there be evil in
a city and the Lord hath not done it,”591
and in the great song of Moses,
“See now that I, even I, am he and there is no god with
me: I kill and I make alive, I wound and I
heal”?592
But to any
one who understands the meaning of Scripture no one of these
passages accuses God of being the Cause and Creator of evil.
He who uses the words, “I form the light and create
darkness,” describes Himself not as Creator of any evil, but
as Demiurge of creation. “It is lest thou shouldst
suppose that there is one cause of light and another of darkness
that He described Himself as being Creator and Artificer of parts
of creation which seem to be mutually opposed. It is to
prevent thy seeking one Demiurge of fire, another of water, one of
air and another of earth, these seeming to have a kind of mutual
opposition and contrariety of qualities. By adopting these
views many have
ere now fallen into polytheism, but He makes peace and creates
evil. Unquestionably He makes peace in thee when He brings
peace into thy mind by His good teaching, and calms the rebel
passions of thy soul. And He creates evil, that is to say,
He reduces those evil passions to order, and brings them to a
better state so that they may cease to be evil and may adopt the
nature of good. ‘Create in me a clean heart, O
God.’593
This does
not mean Make now for the first time;594
it means Renew the heart that had
become old from wickedness. The object is that He may
make both one.595
The word
create is used not to imply the bringing out of nothing, but the
bringing into order those which already existed. So it is
said, ‘If any man be in Christ he is a new
creature.’596
Again,
Moses says, ‘Is not He thy Father that hath bought
thee? Hath He not made thee and created thee?’597
Now, the creation put in order
after the making evidently teaches us that the word creation, as
is commonly the case, is used with the idea of improvement.
And so it is thus that He makes peace, out of creating evil; that
is, by transforming and bringing to improvement.
Furthermore, even if you understand peace to be freedom from war,
and evil to mean the troubles which are the lot of those who make
war; marches into far regions, labours, vigils, terrors,
sweatings, wounds, slaughters, taking of towns, slavery, exile,
piteous spectacles of captives; and, in a word, all the evils that
follow upon war, all these things, I say, happen by the just
judgment of God, Who brings vengeance through war on those who
deserve punishment. Should you have wished that Sodom had
not been burnt after her notorious wickedness? Or that
Jerusalem had not been overturned, nor her temple made desolate
after the horrible wickedness of the Jews against the Lord?
How otherwise was it right for these things to come to pass than
by the hands of the Romans to whom our Lord had been delivered by
the enemies of His life, the Jews? Wherefore it does
sometimes come to pass that the calamities of war are righteously
inflicted on those who deserve them—if you like to
understand the words ‘I kill and I make alive’ in
their obvious sense. Fear edifies the simple. ‘I
wound and I heal’ is at once perceived to be salutary.
The blow strikes terror; the cure attracts to love. But it
is permissible to thee to find a higher meaning in the words,
‘I kill’—by sin; ‘I make
alive’—by righteousness. ‘Though our
outward man perish, yet the inward man is renewed day by
day.’598
He does
not kill one and make another alive, but He makes the same man
alive by the very means by which He kills him; He heals him by the
blows which He inflicts upon him. As the proverb has it,
‘Thou shalt beat him with the rod and shalt deliver his soul
from hell.’599
The flesh
is smitten that the soul may be healed; sin is put to death that
righteousness may live. In another passage600
it is argued that death is not an
evil. Deaths come from God. Yet death is not
absolutely an evil, except in the case of the death of the sinner,
in which case departure from this world is a beginning of the
punishments of hell. On the other hand, of the evils of hell
the cause is not God, but ourselves. The origin and root of
sin is what is in our own control and our free
will.”
Homily XII. is “on the beginning of the
proverbs.” “The proverbs of Solomon, the son of
David, king of Israel.”601
“The name proverbs (παροιμίαι)
has been by heathen writers used of common expressions, and of those
which are generally used in the streets. Among them a way is
called οἰμος, whence they define a
παροιμία to
be a common expression, which has become trite through vulgar usage,
and which it is possible to transfer from a limited number of subjects
to many analogous subjects.602
| 602 παροιμία is
defined by Hesychius the Alexandrian grammarian, who was nearly
contemporary with Basil, as a βιωφελὴς
λόγος, παρὰ
τὴν ὁδὸν
λεγόμενος. | With Christians
the παροιμία is
a serviceable utterance, conveyed with a certain amount of obscurity,
containing an obvious meaning of much utility, and at the same time
involving a depth of meaning in its inner sense. Whence the Lord
says: ‘These things have I spoken unto you in proverbs, but
the time cometh when I shall no more speak unto you in proverbs, but I
shall shew you plainly of the Father.’”603
On the “wisdom and instruction” of
verse 2, it is said: Wisdom is the science of things both human
and divine, and of their causes. He, therefore, who is an
effective theologian604
| 604 ἐπιτετευγμένως
θεολογεῖ. | knows wisdom.
The quotation of 1 Cor.
ii. 6, follows.
On general education it is said,605
“The acquisition of sciences is termed education,606
| 606 ἡτῶν
μαθημάτων
ἀνάληψις
ταιδεία
λέγεται. | as it is written of Moses, that he was
learned607
in all the
wisdom of the Egyptians.608
But it is
of no small importance, with a view to man’s sound
condition,609
that he should
not devote
himself to any sciences whatsoever, but should become acquainted
with the education which is most profitable. It has ere now
happened that men who have spent their time in the study of
geometry, the discovery of the Egyptians, or of astrology, the
favourite pursuit of the Chaldæans, or have been addicted to
the loftier natural philosophy610
| 610 μετεωρολογία. The word had already been used by Plato in a certain
contemptuous sense. cf. Pal. 299 B.:
μετεωρόλογον
ἀδολέσχην
τινὰ
σοφιστήν.
But not always, e.g. Crat. 401, B.:
κωδυνεύουσι
γοῦν οἱ
πρῶτοι τὰ
ὀνόματα
τιθέμενοι
οὐ φαῦλοι
εἶναι, ἀλλὰ
μετεωρολόγοι
τινὲς καὶ
ἀδολέσχαι. | which is
concerned with figures and shadows, have looked with contempt on
the education which is based upon the divine oracles.
Numbers of students have been occupied with paltry rhetoric, and
the solution of sophisms, the subject matter of all of which is
the false and unreal. Even poetry is dependent for its
existence on its myths.611
| 611 Gregory of
Nazianzus was publishing verses which formed no unworthy early link
in the Catena Poetarum Christianorum, in our sense of the
word poet. Basil may have in his mind the general idea that
the Poetics of the heathen schools were all concerned with mythical
inventions. | Rhetoric
would not be but for craft in speech. Sophistics must have
their fallacies. Many men for the sake of these pursuits
have disregarded the knowledge of God, and have grown old in the
search for the unreal. It is therefore necessary that we
should have a full knowledge of education, in order to choose the
profitable, and to reject the unintelligent and the
injurious. Words of wisdom will be discerned by the
attentive reader of the Proverbs, who thence patiently extracts
what is for his good.”
The Homily concludes with an exhortation to rule life by
the highest standard.
“Hold fast, then, to the rudder of
life. Guide thine eye, lest haply at any time through thine eyes
there beat upon thee the vehement wave of lust. Guide ear and
tongue, lest the one receive aught harmful, or the other speak
forbidden words. Let not the tempest of passion overwhelm
thee. Let no blows of despondency beat thee down; no weight of
sorrow drown thee in its depths. Our feelings are waves.
Rise above them, and thou wilt be a safe steersman of life. Fail
to avoid each and all of them skilfully and steadily, and, like some
untrimmed boat, with life’s dangers all round about thee, thou
wilt be sunk in the deep sea of sin. Hear then how thou mayest
acquire the steersman’s skill. Men at sea are wont to lift
up their eyes to heaven. It is from heaven that they get guidance
for their cruise; by day from the sun, and by night from the Bear, or
from some of the ever-shining stars. By these they reckon their
right course. Do thou too keep thine eye fixed on heaven, as the
Psalmist did who said, ‘Unto thee lift I up mine eye, O thou that
dwellest in the heavens.’612
Keep
thine eyes on the Sun of righteousness. Directed by the
commandments of the Lord, as by some bright constellations, keep
thine eye ever sleepless. Give not sleep to thine eyes or
slumber to thine eyelids,613
that the guidance
of the commandments may be unceasing. ‘Thy word,’
it is said, ‘is a lamp unto my feet, and a light unto my
paths.’614
Never
slumber at the tiller, so long as thou livest here, amid the
unstable circumstances of this world, and thou shalt receive the
help of the Spirit. He shall conduct thee ever onward.
He shall waft thee securely by gentle winds of peace, till thou come
one day safe and sound to yon calm and waveless haven of the will of
God, to Whom be glory and majesty for ever and ever,
Amen.”
Homilies XV. and XVI. are more distinctly
dogmatic. They do not present the doctrines of which they treat
in any special way. XV., De Fide, is concerned rather with
the frame of mind of the holder and expounder of the Faith than with
any dogmatic formula.
XVI., on John i. 1, begins by asserting that every
utterance of the gospels is grander than the rest of the lessons of the
Spirit, inasmuch as, while in the latter He has spoken to us through
His servants the prophets, in the gospels the Master has conversed with
us face to face. “The most mighty voiced herald of the
actual gospel proclamation, who uttered words loud beyond all hearing
and lofty beyond all understanding, is John, the son of thunder, the
prelude of whose gospel is the text.” After repeating the
words the preacher goes on to say that he has known many who are not
within the limits of the word of truth, many of the heathen, that is,
“who have prided themselves upon the wisdom of this world, who in
their admiration for these words have ventured to insert them among
their own writings. For the devil is a thief, and carries off our
property for the use of his own prophets.”615
| 615 There are
instances of high admiration of the passage: I have not found
one of appropriation. Augustine (De Civ. Dei x. 29),
says: “Quod initium Sancti Evangelii, cui nomen est
secundum Johannem, quidam Platonicus, sicut a sancto sene
Simpliciano, qui postea ecclesiæ Mediolanensi præsedit
episcopus, solebamus audire, aureis litteris conscribendum et per
omnes ecclesias in locis eminentissimis proponendum esse
dicebat.” Eusebius (Præp. Evang. xi. 17
and 18) refers to the Statements of Plotinus and Numerius on
the δεύτερος
αἴτιος, and (19)
mentions Aurelius (on Aurelius vide Mosheim’s note on
Cudworth’s Int. System, vol. i. cap. iv. 17), as
quoting the passage in question. Vide also Theodoret,
Græc. Aff. 33, and Bentley’s Remarks on
Freethinking, § xlvi. |
“If the
wisdom of the flesh has been so smitten with admiration for the force
of the words, what are we to do, who are disciples of the
Spirit?…Hold fast to the text, and you will suffer no harm from
men of evil arts. Suppose your opponent to argue, ‘If He
was begotten, He was not,’ do you retort, ‘In the beginning
He was.’ But, he will go on, ‘Before He was begotten,
in what way was He?’ Do not give up the words ‘He
was.’ Do not abandon the words ‘In the
beginning.’ The highest point of beginning is beyond
comprehension; what is outside beginning is beyond discovery. Do
not let any one deceive you by the fact that the phrase has more than
one meaning. There are in this world many beginnings of many
things, yet there is one beginning which is beyond them all.
‘Beginning of good way,’ says the Proverb. But the
beginning of a way is the first movement whereby we begin the journey
of which the earlier part can be discovered. And, ‘The fear
of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom.’616
To this beginning is prefixed
something else, for elementary instruction is the beginning of the
comprehension of arts. The fear of the Lord is then a primary
element of wisdom, but there is something anterior to this
beginning—the condition of the soul, before it has been taught
wisdom and apprehended the fear of the Lord.…The point is the
beginning of the line, and the line is the beginning of the surface,
and the surface is the beginning of the body, and the parts of
speech are the beginnings of grammatical utterance. But the
beginning in the text is like none of these.…In the
beginning was the Word! Marvellous utterance! How
all the words are found to be combined in mutual equality of
force! ‘Was’ has the same force as ‘In the
beginning.’ Where is the blasphemer? Where is the
tongue that fights against Christ? Where is the tongue that
said, ‘There was when He was not’? Hear the
gospel: ‘In the beginning was. ’ If
He was in the beginning, when was He not? Shall I bewail their
impiety or execrate their want of instruction? But, it is
argued, before He was begotten, He was not. Do you know when
He was begotten, that you may introduce the idea of priority to the
time? For the word ‘before’ is a word of time,
placing one thing before another in antiquity. In what way is
it reasonable that the Creator of time should have a generation
subjected to terms of time? ‘In the beginning
was—’ Never give up the was, and you
never give any room for the vile blasphemy to slip in.
Mariners laugh at the storm, when they are riding upon two
anchors. So will you laugh to scorn this vile agitation which
is being driven on the world by the blasts of wickedness, and tosses
the faith of many to and fro, if only you will keep your soul moored
safely in the security of these words.”
In § 4 on the force of with
God.617
“Note with admiration the exact appropriateness of every
single word. It is not said ‘The Word was in
God.’ It runs ‘was with God.’
This is to set forth the proper character of the hypostasis.
The Evangelist did not say ‘in God,’ to avoid
giving any pretext for the confusion of the hypostasis. That
is the vile blasphemy of men who are endeavouring to confound all
things together, asserting that Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, form
one subject matter, and that different appellations are applied to
one thing. The impiety is vile, and no less to be shunned
than that of those who blasphemously maintain that the Son is in
essence unlike God the Father. The Word was with
God. Immediately after using the term Word to
demonstrate the impassibility of the generation, he forthwith
gives an explanation to do away with the mischief arising in us
from the term Word. As though suddenly rescuing Him from the
blasphemers’ calumny, he asks, what is the Word?
The Word was God. Do not put before me any ingenious
distinctions of phrase; do not with your wily cleverness blaspheme
the teachings of the Spirit. You have the definitive
statement. Submit to the Lord. The Word was
God.”
Homily XXIV., against the Sabellians, Arians, and
Anomœans, repeats points which are brought out again and again in
the De Spiritu Sancto, in the work Against
Eunomius, and in some of the Letters.
Arianism is practical paganism, for to make the
Son a creature, and at the same time to offer Him worship, is to
reintroduce polytheism. Sabellianism is practical
Judaism,—a denial of the Son.618
Bible:John.8.16">John i. 1, xiv. 9, 7, xvi. 28, and viii.
16 are quoted against
both extremes. There may be a note of time in the admitted
impatience of the auditory at hearing of every other subject than
the Holy Spirit. The preacher is constrained to speak upon
this topic, and he speaks with the combined caution and
completeness which characterize the De Spiritu
Sancto. “Your ears,” he says, “are
all eager to hear something concerning the Holy Ghost. My
wish would be, as I have received in all simplicity, as I
have assented with
guileless agreement, so to deliver the doctrine to you my
hearers. I would if I could avoid being constantly
questioned on the same point. I would have my disciples
convinced of one consent. But you stand round me rather as
judges than as learners. Your desire is rather to test and
try me than to acquire anything for yourselves. I must
therefore, as it were, make my defence before the court, again
and again giving answer, and again and again saying what I have
received. And you I exhort not to be specially anxious to
hear from me what is pleasing to yourselves, but rather what is
pleasing to the Lord, what is in harmony with the Scriptures,
what is not in opposition to the Fathers. What, then, I
asserted concerning the Son, that we ought to acknowledge His
proper Person, this I have also to say concerning the Holy
Spirit. The Spirit is not identical with the Father,
because of its being written ‘God is a
Spirit.’619
Nor on
the other hand is there one Person of Son and of Spirit, because
it is said, ‘If any man have not the spirit of Christ he is
none of his.…Christ is in you.’620
From this passage some persons
have been deceived into the opinion that the Spirit and Christ
are identical. But what do we assert? That in this
passage is declared the intimate relation of nature and not a
confusion of persons. For there exists the Father having
His existence perfect and independent, root and fountain of the
Son and of the Holy Ghost. There exists also the Son living
in full Godhead, Word and begotten offspring of the Father,
independent. Full too is the Spirit, not part of another,
but contemplated whole and perfect in Himself. The Son is
inseparably conjoined with the Father and the Spirit with the
Son. For there is nothing to divide nor to cut asunder the
eternal conjunction. No age intervenes, nor yet can our
soul entertain a thought of separation as though the
Only-begotten were not ever with the Father, or the Holy Ghost
not co-existent with the Son. Whenever then we conjoin the
Trinity, be careful not to imagine the Three as parts of one
undivided thing, but receive the idea of the undivided and common
essence of three perfect incorporeal [existences]. Wherever
is the presence of the Holy Spirit, there is the indwelling of
Christ: wherever Christ is, there the Father is
present. ‘Know ye not that your body is the temple of
the Holy Ghost which is in you ?’”621
First of the Homilies on moral topics come I. and
II. on Fasting. The former is of uncontested genuineness.
Erasmus rejected the latter, but it is accepted without hesitation by
Garnier, Maran, and Ceillier, and is said by the last named to be
quoted as Basil’s by John of Damascus and Symeon
Logothetes. From Homily I. two passages are cited by St.
Augustine against the Pelagians.622
| 622 August. in
Julian. i. 18. | The
text is Ps. lxxx.
3.
“Reverence,” says one passage,623
“the hoary head of fasting. It is coæval with
mankind. Fasting was ordained in Paradise. The first
injunction was delivered to Adam, ‘Of the tree of the
knowledge of good and evil thou shalt not eat.’624
‘Thou shalt not eat’ is
a law of fasting and abstinence.” The general argument
is rather against excess than in support of ceremonial
abstinence. In Paradise there was no wine, no butchery of
beasts, no eating of flesh. Wine came in after the
flood. Noah became drunk because wine was new to him. So
fasting is older than drunkenness. Esau was defiled, and made
his brother’s slave, for the sake of a single meal. It
was fasting and prayer which gave Samuel to Hannah. Fasting
brought forth Samson. Fasting begets prophets, strengthens
strong men. Fasting makes lawgivers wise, is the soul’s
safeguard, the body’s trusty comrade, the armour of the
champion, the training of the athlete.
The conclusion is a warning against mere carnal
abstinence.625
“Beware
of limiting the good of fasting to mere abstinence from meats.
Real fasting is alienation from evil. ‘Loose the bands of
wickedness.’626
Forgive your
neighbour the mischief he has done you. Forgive him his
trespasses against you. Do not ‘fast for strife and
debate.’627
You do not
devour flesh, but you devour your brother. You abstain from wine,
but you indulge in outrages. You wait for evening before you take
food, but you spend the day in the law courts. Wo to those who
are ‘drunken, but not with wine.’628
Anger is the intoxication of the
soul, and makes it out of its wits like wine. Drunkenness,
too, is sorrow, and drowns our intelligence. Another
drunkenness is needless fear. In a word, whatever passion
makes the soul beside herself may be called drunkenness.…Dost
thou know Whom thou art ordained to receive as thy guest? He
Who has promised that He and His Father will come and make their
abode with thee.629
Why do you
allow drunkenness to enter in, and shut the door on the Lord?
Why allow the foe to come in and occupy your strongholds?
Drunkenness dare not receive the Lord; it drives away the
Spirit. Smoke drives away
bees, and debauch drives away the gifts of the Spirit.
Wilt thou see the nobility of fasting?
Compare this evening with to-morrow evening: thou wilt see the
town turned from riot and disturbance to profound calm. Would
that to-day might be like to-morrow in solemnity, and the morrow no
less cheerful than to-day. May the Lord Who has brought us to
this period of time grant to us, as to gladiators and wrestlers, that
we may shew firmness and constancy in the beginning of contests, and
may reach that day which is the Queen of Crowns; that we may remember
now the passion of salvation, and in the age to come enjoy the requital
of our deeds in this life, in the just judgment of
Christ.”630
| 630 The sermon seems
to have been preached at the beginning of Lent, when Cæsarea
was still suffering from Carnival indulgences. Homily II. may
be placed at a similar season in another year. |
Homily IV. on the giving of thanks (περὶ
εὐχαριστίας),
is on text 1 Thess. v.
16. Our Lord, it
is remarked, wept over Lazarus, and He called them that mourn
blessed. How631
is this to be
reconciled with the charge “Rejoice alway”?
“Tears and joy have not a common origin. On the one hand,
while the breath is held in round the heart, tears spontaneously gush
forth, as at some blow, when an unforeseen calamity smites upon the
soul. Joy on the other hand is like a leaping up of the soul
rejoicing when things go well. Hence come different appearances
of the body. The sorrowful are pale, livid, chilly. The
habit of the joyous and cheerful is blooming and ruddy; their soul all
but leaps out of their body for gladness. On all this I shall say
that the lamentations and tears of the saints were caused by their love
to God. So, with their eyes ever fixed on the object of their
love, and from hence gathering greater joy for themselves, they devoted
themselves to the interests of their fellow-servants. Weeping
over sinners, they brought them to better ways by their tears.
But just as men standing safe on the seashore, while they feel for
those who are drowning in the deep, do not lose their own safety in
their anxiety for those in peril, so those who groan over the sins of
their neighbours do not destroy their own proper cheerfulness.
Nay, they rather increase it, in that, through their tears over their
brother, they are made worthy of the joy of the Lord. Wherefore,
blessed are they that weep; blessed are they that mourn; for they shall
themselves be comforted; they themselves shall laugh. But by
laughter is meant not the noise that comes out through the cheeks from
the boiling of the blood, but cheerfulness pure and untainted with
despondency. The Apostle allows us to weep with weepers, for this
tear is made, as it were, a seed and loan to be repaid with everlasting
joy. Mount in mind with me, and contemplate the condition of the
angels; see if any other condition becomes them but one of joy and
gladness. It is for that they are counted worthy to stand beside
God, and to enjoy the ineffable beauty and glory of our Creator.
It is in urging us on to that life that the Apostle bids us always
rejoice.”
The Homily contains an eloquent exhortation to Christian
fortitude in calamity, and concludes with the charge to look beyond
present grief to future felicity. “Hast thou
dishonour? Look to the glory which through patience is laid up
for thee in heaven. Hast thou suffered loss? Fix thine eyes
on the heavenly riches, and on the treasure which thou hast put by for
thyself through thy good works. Hast thou suffered exile?
Thy fatherland is the heavenly Jerusalem. Hast thou lost a
child? Thou hast angels, with whom thou shalt dance about the
throne of God, and shalt be glad with everlasting joy. Set
expected joys over against present griefs, and thus thou wilt preserve
for thyself that calm and quiet of the soul whither the injunction of
the Apostle calls us. Let not the brightness of human success
fill thy soul with immoderate joy; let not grief bring low thy
soul’s high and lofty exaltation through sadness and
anguish. Thou must be trained in the lessons of this life before
thou canst live the calm and quiet life to come. Thou wilt
achieve this without difficulty, if thou keep ever with thee the charge
to rejoice alway. Dismiss the worries of the flesh. Gather
together the joys of the soul. Rise above the sensible perception
of present things. Fix thy mind on the hope of things
eternal. Of these the mere thought suffices to fill the soul with
gladness, and to plant in our hearts the happiness of
angels.”
Homily VII., against the rich, follows much the same
line of argument as VI. Two main considerations are urged against
the love of worldly wealth; firstly, the thought of the day of
judgment; secondly, the fleeting and unstable nature of the riches
themselves. The luxury of the fourth century, as represented by
Basil, is much the same as the luxury of the nineteenth.
“I am filled with amazement,” says the
preacher, “at the invention of superfluities.
The vehicles are
countless, some for conveying goods, others for carrying their
owners; all covered with brass and with silver. There are a
vast number of horses, whose pedigrees are kept like men’s,
and their descent from noble sires recorded. Some are for
carrying their haughty owners about the town, some are hunters,
some are hacks. Bits, girths, collars, are all of silver,
all decked with gold. Scarlet cloths make the horses as gay
as bridegrooms. There is a host of mules, distinguished by
their colours, and their muleteers with them, one after another,
some before and some behind. Of other household servants
the number is endless, who satisfy all the requirements of
men’s extravagance; agents, stewards, gardeners, and
craftsmen, skilled in every art that can minister to necessity or
to enjoyment and luxury; cooks, confectioners, butlers, huntsmen,
sculptors, painters, devisers and creators of pleasure of every
kind. Look at the herds of camels, some for carriage, some
for pasture; troops of horses, droves of oxen, flocks of sheep,
herds of swine with their keepers, land to feed all these, and to
increase men’s riches by its produce; baths in town, baths
in the country; houses shining all over with every variety of
marble,—some with stone of Phrygia, others with slabs of
Spartan or Thessalian.632
| 632 A
precious, red-streaked marble was quarried in Phrygia. The
Spartan or Tænarian was the kind known as verde
antico. cf. Bekker, Gallus. p. 16, n.
The taste for the “Phrygian stone” was an old one.
cf. Hor., Carm. III. i. 41. | There
must be some houses warm in winter,633
| 633 The
Cappadocian winters were severe. cf. Ep. cxxi.,
cxcviii., cccxlix. |
and others cool in summer. The pavement is of mosaic, the
ceiling gilded. If any part of the wall escapes the slabs,
it is embellished with painted flowers.…You who dress your
walls, and let your fellow-creatures go bare, what will you
answer to the Judge? You who harness your horses with
splendour, and despise your brother if he is ill-dressed; who let
your wheat rot, and will not feed the hungry; who hide your gold,
and despise the distressed? And, if you have a
wealth-loving wife, the plague is twice as bad. She keeps
your luxury ablaze; she increases your love of pleasure; she
gives the goad to your superfluous appetites; her heart is set on
stones,—pearls, emeralds, and sapphires.634
| 634 ὑακίνθους.
See L. and S., s.v., and King’s Antique Gems,
46. | Gold she works and gold she
weaves,635
| 635 i.e. she
must have ornaments of wrought gold and stuff embroidered with
gold. | and increases
the mischief with never-ending frivolities. And her
interest in all these things is no mere by-play: it is the
care of night and day. Then what innumerable flatterers
wait upon their idle wants! They must have their dyers of
bright colours, their goldsmiths, their perfumes their weavers,
their embroiderers. With all their behests they do not
leave their husbands breathing time. No fortune is vast
enough to satisfy a woman’s wants,—no, not if it were
to flow like a river! They are as eager for foreign
perfumes as for oil from the market. They must have the
treasures of the sea, shells and pinnas,636
| 636 cf.
Hexaemeron, p. 94. |
and more of them than wool from the sheep’s back.
Gold encircling precious stones serves now for an ornament for
their foreheads, now for their necks. There is more gold in
their girdles; more gold fastens hands and feet. These
gold-loving ladies are delighted to be bound by golden
fetters,—only let the chain be gold! When will the
man have time to care for his soul, who has to serve a
woman’s fancies?”
Homily VIII., on the Famine and Drought, belongs
to the disastrous year 368. The circumstances of its delivery
have already been referred to.637
The
text is Amos iii.
8, “The lion
hath roared: who will not fear?” National calamity
is traced to national sin, specially to neglect of the poor.
Children, it appears,638
were allowed a
holiday from school to attend the public services held to deprecate
the divine wrath. Crowds of men, to whose sins the distress
was more due than to the innocent children, wandered cheerfully
about the town instead of coming to church.
Homily X. is against the angry. Section 2 contains
a description of the outward appearance of the angry men.
“About the heart of those who are eager to requite evil for evil,
the blood boils as though it were stirred and sputtering by the force
of fire. On the surface it breaks out and shews the angry man in
other form, familiar and well known to all, as though it were changing
a mask upon the stage. The proper and usual eyes of the angry man
are recognized no more; his gaze is unsteady, and fires up in a
moment. He whets his teeth like boars joining battle. His
countenance is livid and suffused with blood. His body seems to
swell. His veins are ruptured, as his breath struggles under the
storm within. His voice is rough and strained. His
speech—broken and falling from him at random—proceeds
without distinction, without arrangement, and without meaning.
When he is roused by those who are irritating him, like a flame with
plenty of fuel, to an inextinguishable pitch, then, ah! then indeed the
spectacle is indescribable and unendurable. See the hands lifted
against his fellows, and attacking every part of their bodies;
see the feet jumping without
restraint on dangerous parts. See whatever comes to hand turned
into a weapon for his mad frenzy. The record of the progress from
words to wounds recalls familiar lines which probably Basil never
read.639
| 639 Jurgia
proludunt; sed mox et pocula torques
Saucius, et rubra deterges vulnera
mappa.
Juv., Sat. v.
26. | Rage
rouses strife; strife begets abuse; abuse, blows; blows, wounds;
and from wounds often comes death.”
St. Basil, however, does not omit to
notice640
that there is
such a thing as righteous indignation, and that we may “be
angry and sin not.” “God forbid that we should
turn into occasions for sin gifts given to us by the Creator for
our salvation! Anger, stirred at the proper time and in the
proper manner, is an efficient cause of manliness, patience, and
endurance.…Anger is to be used as a weapon. So Moses,
meekest of men, armed the hands of the Levites for the slaughter
of their brethren, to punish idolatry. The wrath of Phinehas
was justifiable. So was the wrath of Samuel against
Agag. Thus, anger very often is made the minister of good
deeds.”
Homily XI., against Envy, adduces the instances of
Saul’s envy of David, and that of the patriarchs against
Joseph. It is pointed out that envy grows out of familiarity and
proximity. “A man is envied of his
neighbour.”641
The Scythian
does not envy the Egyptian. Envy arises among
fellow-countrymen. The remedy for this vice is to recognise the
pettiness of the common objects of human ambition, and to aspire to
eternal joys. If riches are a mere means to
unrighteousness,642
wo be to the rich
man! If they are a ministering to virtue, there is no room for
envy, since the common advantages proceeding from them are open to
all,—unless any one out of superfluity of wickedness envies
himself his own good things!
In Homily XIII., on Holy Baptism, St. Basil
combats an error which had naturally arisen out of the practice of
postponing baptism. The delay was made an occasion of license and
indulgence. St. Augustine643
cites the
homily as St. Chrysostom’s, but the quotation has not weakened
the general acceptance of the composition as Basil’s, and as
one of those referred to by Amphilochius.644
Ceillier mentions its citation by
the emperor Justinian.645
It was
apparently delivered at Easter. Baptism is good at all
times.646
“Art
thou a young man? Secure thy youth by the bridle of
baptism. Has thy prime passed by? Do not be deprived of
thy viaticum. Do not lose thy safeguard. Do not think of
the eleventh hour as of the first. It is fitting that even at
the beginning of life we should have the end in
view.”
“Imitate647
the
eunuch.648
He found
one to teach him. He did not despise instruction. The
rich man made the poor man mount into his chariot. The
illustrious and the great welcomed the undistinguished and the
small. When he had been taught the gospel of the kingdom, he
received the faith in his heart, and did not put off the seal of
the Spirit.”
Homily XIV., against Drunkards, has the special
interest of being originated by a painful incident which it
narrates. The circumstances may well be compared with those of
the scandal caused by the deacon Glycerius.649
| 649 cf.
Letterclxix. and observations in Prolegomena, p.
xxix. |
Easter day, remarks St. Basil, is a day when decent women ought to have
been sitting in their homes, piously reflecting on future
judgment. Instead of this, certain wanton women, forgetful of the
fear of God, flung their coverings from their heads, despising God, and
in contempt of His angels, lost to all shame before the gaze of men,
shaking their hair, trailing their tunics, sporting with their feet,
with immodest glances and unrestrained laughter, went off into a wild
dance. They invited all the riotous youth to follow them, and
kept up their dances in the Basilica of the Martyrs’ before the
walls of Cæsarea, turning hallowed places into the workshop of
their unseemliness. They sang indecent songs, and befouled the
ground with their unhallowed tread. They got a crowd of lads to
stare at them, and left no madness undone. On this St. Basil
builds a stirring temperance sermon. Section 6 contains a vivid
picture of a drinking bout, and Section 7 describes the sequel.
The details are evidently not imaginary.
“Sorrowful sight for Christian eyes! A man
in the prime of life, of powerful frame of high rank in the army, is
carried furtively home, because he cannot stand upright, and travel on
his own feet. A man who ought to be a terror to our enemies is a
laughing stock to the lads in the streets. He is smitten down by
no sword—slain by no foe. A military man, in the bloom of
manhood, the prey of wine, and ready to suffer any fate his foes may
choose! Drunkenness is the ruin of reason, the destruction of
strength; it is untimely old age; it is, for a short time, death.
“What are drunkards but the idols of the
heathen? They have eyes and see not, ears and hear not.650
Their hands are helpless; their feet dead.” The whole
Homily is forcible. It is quoted by Isidore of
Pelusium,651
and St. Ambrose
seems to have been acquainted with it.652
| 652 De Eb. et
Jejunio. c. 18. |
Homily XX., on Humility, urges the folly of Adam,
in sacrificing eternal blessings to his ambition, and the example of
St. Paul in glorying only in the Lord.653
Pharaoh, Goliath, and Abimelech are instanced. St.
Peter is cited for lack of humility in being sure that he of all men
will be true to the death.
“No detail can be neglected654
as too insignificant to help us in ridding
ourselves of pride. The soul grows like its practices, and is
formed and fashioned in accordance with its conduct. Your
appearance, your dress, your gait, your chair, your style of meals,
your bed and bedding, your house and its contents, should be all
arranged with a view to cheapness. Your talk, your songs, your
mode of greeting your neighbour, should look rather to moderation than
to ostentation. Give me, I beg, no elaborate arguments in your
talk, no surpassing sweetness in your singing, no vaunting and
wearisome discussions. In all things try to avoid bigness.
Be kind to your friend, gentle to your servant, patient with the
impudent, amiable to the lowly. Console the afflicted, visit the
distressed, despise none. Be agreeable in address, cheerful in
reply, ready, accessible to all. Never sing your own praises, nor
get other people to sing them. Never allowing any uncivil
communication, conceal as far as possible your own
superiority.”655
| 655 Here
several touches remind us of Theophrastus. cf. Char.
xxiii. and xxiv. |
Homily XXI., on disregard of the things of this
world, was preached out of St. Basil’s diocese, very probably at
Satala in 372.656
| 656 Ceillier, VI.
viii. 2. | The second
part657
is in reference
to a fire which occurred in the near neighbourhood of the church
on the previous evening.
“Once more the fiend has shewn his fury against
us, has armed himself with flame of fire, and has attacked the
precincts of the church. Once more our common mother has won the
day, and turned back his devices on himself. He has done nothing
but advertise his hatred.…How do you not suppose the devil must
be groaning to-day at the failure of his projected attempt? Our
enemy lighted his fire close to the church that he might wreck our
prosperity. The flames raised on every side by his furious blasts
were streaming over all they could reach; they fed on the air round
about; they were being driven to touch the shrine, and to involve us in
the common ruin; but our Saviour turned them back on him who had
kindled them, and ordered his madness to fall on himself. The
congregation who have happily escaped are urged to live worthily of
their preservation, shining like pure gold out of the
furnace.”
Homily XXII., which is of considerable interest,
on the study of pagan literature, is really not a homily at
all.658
| 658 It has
often been separately published. In 1600 it was included by
Martin Haynoccius in an Enchiridion Ethicum, containing also
Plutarch’s two tracts on the education of boys and the study
of the poets, with which it is interesting to compare it.
Grotius published it with Plutarch’s De Legendis Poetis
at Paris in 1623. They were also published together by
Archbishop Potter at Oxford in 1691. | It is a
short treatise addressed to the young on their education. It
would seem to have been written in the Archbishop’s later
years, unless the experience of which he speaks may refer rather
to his earlier experience, alike as a student and a
teacher.
No source of instruction can be overlooked in the
preparation for the great battle of life,659
and
there is a certain advantage to be derived from the right use of
heathen writers. The illustrious Moses is described as training
his intellect in the science of the Egyptians, and so arriving at the
contemplation of Him Who is.660
| 660 τοῦ
ὄντος. The highest heathen
philosophy strove to reach the neuter τὸ ὄν. The revelation of
Jehovah is of the masculine ὁ
ὤν, who communicates with his
creatures, and says ἐγὼ εἰμί. | So in later
days Daniel at Babylon was wise in the Chaldean philosophy, and
ultimately apprehended the divine instruction. But granted that
such heathen learning is not useless, the question remains how you are
to participate in it. To begin with the poets. Their
utterances are of very various kinds, and it will not be well to give
attention to all without exception. When they narrate to you the
deeds and the words of good men, admire and copy them, and strive
diligently to be like them. When they come to bad men, shut your
ears, and avoid imitating them, like Ulysses fleeing from the
sirens’ songs.661
| 661 Hom.,
Od. xii. 158. cf. Letter i. p.
109. | Familiarity
with evil words is a sure road to evil deeds, wherefore every possible
precaution must be taken to prevent our souls from unconsciously
imbibing evil influences through literary gratification, like men who
take poison in honey. We shall not therefore praise the poets
when they revile and mock, or when they describe licentious,
intoxicated characters, when they define happiness as consisting in a
laden table and dissolute ditties. Least of all shall we attend
to the poets when they
are talking about the gods, specially when their talk is of many gods,
and those in mutual disagreement. For among them brother is at
variance with brother, parent against children, and children wage a
truceless war against parents. The gods’ adulteries and
amours and unabashed embraces, and specially those of Zeus, whom they
describe as the chief and highest of them all,—things which could
not be told without a blush of brutes,—all this let us leave to
actors on the stage.662
| 662 This shews
that the shameless and cruel exhibitions of earlier days had not
died out even in the fourth century. cf. Suetonius,
Nero xi., xii., Tertullian, Apol. 15. On the
whole subject, see Bp. Lightfoot’s note on St. Clem. Rom.,
Ep. ad Cor. vi., where Δαναΐδες
καὶ Δίρκαι is
probably a misreading for νεάνιδες
παιδισκαι.
He refers for illustrations to Friedländer, Sittengeschichte
Roms, ii. 234. |
I must make the same remark about historians,
specially when they write merely to please. And we certainly
shall not follow rhetoricians in the art of lying.…I have been
taught by one well able to understand a poet’s mind that with
Homer all his poetry is praise of virtue, and that in him all that is
not mere accessory tends to this end. A marked instance of this
is his description of the prince of the Kephallenians saved naked from
shipwreck. No sooner did he appear than the princess viewed him
with reverence; so far was she from feeling anything like shame at
seeing him naked and alone, since his virtue stood him in the stead of
clothes.663
Afterwards
he was of so much estimation among the rest of the Phæacians
that they abandoned the pleasures amid which they lived, all
looked up to him and imitated him, and not a man of the
Phæacians prayed for anything more eagerly than that he might
be Ulysses,—a mere waif saved from shipwreck. Herein
my friend said that he was the interpreter of the poet’s
mind; that Homer all but said aloud, Virtue, O men, is what you
have to care for. Virtue swims out with the shipwrecked
sailor, and when he is cast naked on the coast, virtue makes him
more noble than the happy Phæacians. And truly this is
so. Other belongings are not more the property of their
possessors than of any one else. They are like dice flung
hither and thither in a game. Virtue is the one possession
which cannot be taken away, and remains with us alike alive and
dead.
It is in this sense that I think Solon said to the
rich,
᾽Αλλ᾽ ἡμεῖς
αὐτοῖς οὐ
διαμειψόμεθα
Τῇς
ἀρετῆς τὸν
πλοῦτον·
ἐπεὶ τὸ μὲν
ἔμπεδον
αἰεί,
Χρήματα δ᾽
ἀνθρώπων
ἄλλοτε ἄλλος
ἔχει 664
| 664 These lines are
attributed to Solon by Plutarch, in the tract πῶς ἄν τις
ὑπ᾽ ἐχθρῶν
ὠφελοῖτο, but
they occur among the elegiac “gnomæ” of
Theognis, lines 316–318. Fronton du Duc in his notes on
the Homilies points out that they are also quoted in
Plutarch’s life of Solon. Basil was well acquainted with
Plutarch. (cf. references in the notes to the
Hexaemeron.) |
Similar to these are the lines of
Theognis,665
| 665 The lines
are:
Ζεὺς γάρ τοι
τὸ τάλαντον
ἐπιρρέπει
ἄλλοτε
ἄλλως
῎Αλλοτε μὲν
πλουτεῖν,
ἄλλοτε δ᾽
οὐδὲν ἔχεω.
Theog. 157. | in which he says that
God (whatever he means by “God”) inclines the scale to men
now one way and now another, and so at one moment they are rich, and at
another penniless. Somewhere too in his writings Prodicus, the
Sophist of Chios, has made similar reflexions on vice and virtue, to
whom attention may well be paid, for he is a man by no means to be
despised. So far as I recollect his sentiments, they are
something to this effect. I do not remember the exact words, but
the sense, in plain prose, was as follows:666
| 666 The story
of The Choice of Hercules used to be called, from Prodicus
(of Ceos, not Chios) Hercules Prodicius. Suidas says
that the title of the work quoted was Ωραι. The allegory is given
at length in Xenophon’s Memorabilia (II. i. 21) in Dion
Chrysostom’s Regnum, and in Cicero (De Officiis
i. 32), who refers to Xenophon. It is imitated in the
Somnium of Lucian. |
Once upon a time, when Hercules was quite young, and of
just about the same age as yourselves, he was debating within himself
which of the two ways he should choose, the one leading through toil to
virtue, the other which is the easiest of all. There approached
him two women. They were Virtue and Vice, and though they said
not a word they straightway shewed by their appearance what was the
difference between them. One was tricked out to present a fair
appearance with every beautifying art. Pleasure and delights were
shed around her and she led close after her innumerable enjoyments like
a swarm of bees. She showed them to Hercules, and, promising him
yet more and more, endeavoured to attract him to her side. The
other, all emaciated and squalid, looked earnestly at the lad, and
spoke in quite another tone. She promised him no ease, no
pleasure, but toils, labours, and perils without number, in every land
and sea. She told him that the reward of all this would be that
he should become a god (so the narrator tells it). This latter
Hercules followed even to the death. Perhaps all those who have
written anything about wisdom, less or more, each according to his
ability, have praised Virtue in their writings.
These must be obeyed,
and the effort made to show forth their teaching in the conduct
of life. For he alone is wise who confirms in act the
philosophy which in the rest goes no farther than words.
They do but flit like shadows.667
| 667 cf.
Hom., Od. x. 494, where it is said of Teiresias:
Τῷ
καὶ τεθνηῶτι
νόον πόρε
Περσεφόνεια,
Οἴ&
251· πεπνῦσθαι·
τοὶ δὲ σκιαὶ
ἀ&
188·σσουσι. |
It is as though some painter had represented a
sitter as a marvel of manly beauty, and then he were to be in reality
what the artist had painted on the panel. But to utter glorious
eulogies on virtue in public, and make long speeches about it, while in
private putting pleasure before continence and giving gain higher
honour than righteousness, is conduct which seems to me illustrated by
actors on the stage: they enter as monarchs and magnates, when
they are neither monarchs nor magnates, and perhaps even are only
slaves. A singer could never tolerate a lyre that did not match
his voice, nor a coryphæus a chorus that did not chant in
tune. Yet every one will be inconsistent with himself, and will
fail to make his conduct agree with his words. The tongue has
sworn, but the heart has never sworn, as Euripedes668
| 668 Eur.
Hippolytus, 612: ἡ γλῶσσ᾽
ὀμώμοχ᾽ ἡ δὲ
φρὴν
ἀνώμοτος, the
famous line which Aristophanes made fun of in
Thesmophoriazusæ, 275. |
has it; and a man will aim at seeming, rather than at being,
good. Nevertheless, if we may believe Plato, the last extreme of
iniquity is for one to seem just without being just.669
| 669 Fronton du
Duc notes that Basil has taken this allusion to Plato from
Plutarch’s tract, How to distinguish between Flatterer and
Friend, p. 50: ὡςγὰρ ὁ
Πλάτων
φησὶν
ἐσχάτης
ἀδικίας
εἶναι
δοκεῖν
δίκαιον μὴ
ὄντα. | This then is the way in which we are to
receive writings which contain suggestions of good deeds. And
since the noble deeds of men of old are preserved for our benefit
either by tradition, or in the works of poets and historians, do not
let us miss the good we may get from them. For instance: a
man in the street once pursued Pericles with abuse, and persisted in it
all day. Pericles took not the slightest notice. Evening
fell, and darkness came on, and even then he could hardly be persuaded
to give over. Pericles lighted him home, for fear this exercise
in philosophy might be lost.670
Again:
once upon a time a fellow who was angry with Euclid of Megara
threatened him with death, and swore at him. Euclid swore back
that he would appease him, and calm him in spite of his
rage.671
| 671 Plut.,
De Ira Cohibenda, where the story is told of a brother.
The aggressor says ἀπολοίμην
εἰ μή σε
τιμῶρησαίμην.
The rejoinder is ἐγὼ δὲ
ἀπολοίμην
εἰ μή σε
πείσαιμι. | A man once
attacked Socrates the son of Sophoniscus and struck him again and
again in the face. Socrates made no resistance, but allowed
the drunken fellow to take his fill of frenzy, so that his face
was all swollen and bloody from the blows. When the assault
was done, Socrates, according to the story, did nothing besides
writing on his forehead, as a sculptor might on a statue,
“This is so and so’s doing.”672
| 672 ἐποίει in Greek will of
course stand for “made it,” like our “hoc
fecit,” or “did it.” Du Duc gives
authority for the use of the Imp. from Politian. |
This was his revenge. Where conduct, as in
this case, is so much on a par with Christian conduct,673
I maintain that it is well worth our while to
copy these great men. The behaviour of Socrates on this occasion
is akin to the precept that we are by no means to take revenge, but to
turn the other cheek to the smiter. So the conduct of Pericles
and Euclid matches the commands to put up with persecutors, and to bear
their wrath with meekness, and to invoke not cursing but blessing on
our enemies. He who has been previously instructed in these
examples will no longer regard the precepts as impracticable. I
should like, too, to instance the conduct of Alexander, when he had
captured the daughters of Darius.674
| 674 cf.
Plutarch, Alex. and Arrian. II. xii. | Their
beauty is described as extraordinary, and Alexander would not so much
as look at them, for he thought it shameful that a conqueror of men
should be vanquished by women. This is of a piece with the
statement that he who looks at a woman impurely, even though he do not
actually commit the act of adultery with her, is not free from guilt,
because he has allowed lust to enter his heart. Then there is the
case of Clinias, the follower of Pythagoras: it is difficult to believe
this is a case of accidental, and not intentional, imitation of our
principles.675
| 675 Clinias was a
contemporary of Plato (Diog. Laert. ix. 40). | What of
him? He might have escaped a fine of three talents by taking an
oath, but he preferred to pay rather than swear, and this when he would
have sworn truly. He appears to me to have heard of the precept
which orders us to swear not at all.676
| 676 St. Basil can
hardly imagine that Clinias lived after Christ; yet Old Testament
prohibitions are against false swearing only. Possibly the
third commandment and such a passage as Lev. xix. 12, may have been in his mind. If
Clinias had lived some half a millennium later there seems no reason
why he should not have saved himself three talents by using the
words of the Apostle in 2
Cor. xi. 31. | To return
to the point with which I began. We must not take everything
indiscriminately, but only what is profitable. It would be
shameful for us in the case
of food to reject the injurious, and at the same time, in the case of
lessons, to take no account of what keeps the soul alive, but, like
mountain streams, to sweep in everything that happens to be in
our way. The sailor does not trust himself to the mercy of the
winds, but steers his boat to the port; the archer aims at his mark;
the smith and the carpenter keep the end of the crafts in view.
What sense is there in our shewing ourselves inferior to these
craftsmen, though we are quite able to understand our own
affairs? In mere handicrafts is there some object and end in
labour, and is there no aim in the life of man, to which any one ought
to look who means to live a life better than the brutes? Were no
intelligence to be sitting at the tiller of our souls, we should be
dashed up and down in the voyage of life like boats that have no
ballast. It is just as with competitions in athletics, or, if you
like, in music. In competitions mere crowns are offered for
prizes, there is always training, and no one in training for wrestling
or the pancration677
| 677 i.e.
wrestling and boxing together. | practices the harp or
flute. Certainly not Polydamas, who before his contests at the
Olympic games used to make chariots at full speed stand still, and so
kept up his strength.678
| 678 Paus. VI.
v. cf. Pers., Sat. i. 4. | Milo, too,
could not be pushed off his greased shield, but, pushed as he was, held
on as tightly as statues fastened by lead.679
In one word, training was the preparation for these feats.
Suppose they had neglected the dust and the gymnasia, and had given
their minds to the strains of Marsyas or Olympus, the
Phrygians,680
| 680 Marsyas,
the unhappy rival of Apollo, was said to be a native of
Celænæ in Phrygia. Olympus was a pupil of Marsyas
(Schol. in Aristoph. Eq. 9). By Plutarch
(Mus. xi.) he is called ἀρχηγὸς τῆς
῾Ελληνικῆς
καὶ καλῆς
μουσικῆς.
cf. Arist., Pol. VIII. v. 16. | they would never have
won crowns or glory, nor escaped ridicule for their bodily
incapacity. On the other hand Timotheus did not neglect harmony
and spend his time in the wrestling schools. Had he done so it
would never have been his lot to surpass all the world in music, and to
have attained such extraordinary skill in his art as to be able to
rouse the soul by his sustained and serious melody, and then again
relieve and sooth it by his softer strains at his good pleasure.
By this skill, when once he sang in Phrygian strains to Alexander, he
is said to have roused the king to arms in the middle of a banquet, and
then by gentler music to have restored him to his boon
companions.681
So great is the
importance, alike in music and in athletics, in view of the object to
be attained, of training.…
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
. .
To us are held out prizes whereof the marvelous
number and splendour are beyond the power of words to tell. Will
it be possible for those who are fast asleep, and live a life of
indulgence, to seize them without an effort?682
| 682 Lit., who
sleep with both ears, to seize with one hand (idiom for sleeping
soundly. cf. Aul. Gell. ii. 23, who quotes
ἐπ᾽
ἄμφοτέραν
καθεύδειν from
Menander). |
If so, sloth would have been of great price, and Sardanapalus would
have been esteemed especially happy, or even Margites, if you like, who
is said by Homer to have neither ploughed nor dug, nor done any useful
work,—if indeed Homer wrote this. Is there not rather truth
in the saying of Pittacus,683
| 683 Of
Mitylene, cf. Arist., Pol. III. xiv. 9, and Diog.
Laert. I. iv., who mentions Simonides’ quotation of the maxim
of the text ῎Ανδρα
ἀγαθὸν
ἀλαθέως
γενέσθαι
χαλεπὸν, τὸ
Πιττάκειον. | who said that
“It is hard to be good ?”…
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
. .
.
.
We must not be the slaves of our bodies, except
where we are compelled. Our best provision must be for the
soul. We ought by means of philosophy to release her from
fellowship with all bodily appetites as we might from a dungeon, and at
the same time make our bodies superior to our appetites. We
should, for instance, supply our bellies with necessaries, not with
dainties like men whose minds are set on cooks and table arrangers, and
who search through every land and sea, like the tributaries of some
stern despot, much to be pitied for their toil. Such men are
really suffering pains as intolerable as the torments of hell, carding
into a fire,684
| 684 εἰς πῦρ
ξαίνοντες,
i.e. labouring in vain. cf. Plat., Legg.
780 c. The ordinary rendering to “flog fire,”
adopted by Erasmus (Adag. Chil. i., Centur. iv.),
seems wrong. cf. Bekker on the phrase in
Plato. | fetching water in a
sieve, pouring into a tub with holes in it, and getting nothing for
their pains. To pay more than necessary attention to our hair and
dress is, as Diogenes phrases it, the part either of the unfortunate or
of the wicked. To be finely dressed, and to have the reputation
of being so, is to my mind quite as disgraceful as to play the harlot
or to plot against a neighbour’s wedlock. What does it
matter to a man with any sense, whether he wears a grand state robe, or
a common cloak, so long as
it serves to keep off heat and cold? In other matters necessity
is to be the rule, and the body is only to be so far regarded as is
good for the soul.”
.
.
. .
.
.
.
.
.
. .
Similar precepts are urged, with further
references and allusions to Pythagoras, the Corybantes, Solon,
Diogenes, Pythius, the rich man who feasted Xerxes on his way to
Greece, Pheidias, Bias, Polycletus, Archilochus, and
Tithonus.685
It is suggestive to compare the wealth of literary
illustration in this little tract with the severe restrictions which
Basil imposes on himself in his homilies for delivery in church, where
nothing but Scripture is allowed to appear. In studying the
sermons, it might be supposed that Basil read nothing but the
Bible. In reading the treatise on heathen authors, but for an
incidental allusion to David and Methuselah, it might be supposed that
he spent all his spare time over his old school and college
authors.
(iii) The Panegyrical Homilies are five in
number.
Homily V. is on Julitta, a lady of Cæsarea martyred
in 306, and commemorated on July 30. (In the Basilian menology,
July 31.) Her property being seized by an iniquitous magistrate,
she was refused permission to proceed with a suit for restitution
unless she abjured Christianity. On her refusal to do this she
was arraigned and burned. She is described as having said that
women no less than men were made after the image of God; that women as
well as men were made by their Creator capable of manly virtue; that it
took bone as well as flesh to make the woman, and that constancy,
fortitude, and endurance are as womanly as they are manly.
The homily, which recommends patience and
cheerfulness in adversity, contains a passage of great beauty upon
prayer. “Ought we to pray without ceasing? Is it
possible to obey such a command? These are questions which I see
you are ready to ask. I will endeavour, to the best of my
ability, to defend the charge. Prayer is a petition for good
addressed by the pious to God. But we do not rigidly confine our
petition to words. Nor yet do we imagine that God requires to be
reminded by speech. He knows our needs even though we ask Him
not. What do I say then? I say that we must not think to
make our prayer complete by syllables. The strength of prayer
lies rather in the purpose of our soul and in deeds of virtue reaching
every part and moment of our life. ‘Whether ye eat,’
it is said, ‘or drink, or whatever ye do, do all to the glory of
God.’686
As thou takest
thy seat at table, pray. As thou liftest the loaf, offer thanks
to the Giver. When thou sustainest thy bodily weakness with wine,
remember Him Who supplies thee with this gift, to make thy heart glad
and to comfort thy infirmity. Has thy need for taking food passed
away? Let not the thought of thy Benefactor pass away too.
As thou art putting on thy tunic, thank the Giver of it. As thou
wrappest thy cloak about thee, feel yet greater love to God, Who alike
in summer and in winter has given us coverings convenient for us, at
once to preserve our life, and to cover what is unseemly. Is the
day done? Give thanks to Him Who has given us the sun for our
daily work, and has provided for us a fire to light up the night, and
to serve the rest of the needs of life. Let night give the other
occasions of prayer. When thou lookest up to heaven and gazest at
the beauty of the stars, pray to the Lord of the visible world; pray to
God the Arch-artificer of the universe, Who in wisdom hath made them
all. When thou seest all nature sunk in sleep, then again worship
Him Who gives us even against our wills release from the continuous
strain of toil, and by a short refreshment restores us once again to
the vigour of our strength. Let not night herself be all, as it
were, the special and peculiar property of sleep. Let not half
thy life be useless through the senselessness of slumber. Divide
the time of night between sleep and prayer. Nay, let thy slumbers
be themselves experiences in piety; for it is only natural that our
sleeping dreams should be for the most part echoes of the anxieties of
the day. As have been our conduct and pursuits, so will
inevitably be our dreams. Thus wilt thought pray without ceasing;
if thought prayest not only in words, but unitest thyself to God
through all the course of life and so thy life be made one ceaseless
and uninterrupted prayer.”
Barlaam, the subject of Homily XVII.,687
| 687 Supposed
by some to be not Basil’s, but Chrysostom’s.
cf. Ceillier, iv. p. 53. | was martyred under Diocletian, either at
Antioch or at Cæsarea. The ingenuity of his tormentors
conceived the idea of compelling him to fling the pinch of incense to
the gods by putting it, while burning, into his hand, and forcing him
to hold it over the altar. The fire fought with the right hand,
and the fire proved the weaker. The fire burned through the hand,
but the hand was firm. The martyr might say, “Thou hast
holden me by my right hand. Thou shalt guide me
with thy counsel, and
afterward receive me to glory.”688
The homily
concludes with an apostrophe to the painters of such scenes.
“Up, I charge you, ye famous painters of the martyrs’
struggles! Adorn by your art the mutilated figure of this officer
of our army! I have made but a sorry picture of the crowned
hero. Use all your skill and all your colours in his
honour.”
This was taken at the second Council of Nicæa
as proof of an actual painting.689
| 689 Labbe vii.
272. cf. Chrys. Hom. lxxiii. |
Homily XVIII. is on the martyr Gordius, who was a
native of Cæsarea, and was degraded from his rank of centurion
when Licinius removed Christians from the army. Gordius retired
into the wilderness, and led the life of an anchorite. One day
there was a great festival at Cæsarea in honour of Mars.
There were to be races in the theatre, and thither the whole population
trooped. Not a Jew, not a heathen, was wanting. No small
company of Christians had joined the crowd, men of careless life,
sitting in the assembly of folly, and not shunning the counsel of the
evil-doers, to see the speed of the horses and the skill of the
charioteers. Masters had given their slaves a holiday. Even
boys ran from their schools to the show. There was a multitude of
common women of the lower ranks. The stadium was packed, and
every one was gazing intently on the races. Then that noble man,
great of heart and great of courage, came down from the uplands into
the theatre. He took no thought of the mob. He did not heed
how many hostile hands he met.…In a moment the whole theatre
turned to stare at the extraordinary sight. The man looked wild
and savage. From his long sojourn in the mountains his head was
squalid, his beard long, his dress filthy. His body was like a
skeleton. He carried a stick and a wallet. Yet there was a
certain grace about him, shining from the unseen all around him.
He was recognised. A great shout arose. Those who shared
his faith clapped for joy, but the enemies of the truth urged the
magistrate to put in force the penalty he had incurred, and condemned
him beforehand to die. Then an universal shouting arose all
round. Nobody looked at the horses—nobody at the
charioteers. The exhibition of the chariots was mere idle
noise. Not an eye but was wholly occupied with looking at
Gordius, not an ear wanted to hear anything but his words. Then a
confused murmur, running like a wind through all the theatre, sounded
above the din of the course. Heralds were told to proclaim
silence. The pipes were hushed, and all the band stopped in a
moment. Gordius was being listened to; Gordius was the centre of
all eyes, and in a moment he was dragged before the magistrate who
presided over the games. With a mild and gentle voice the
magistrate asked him his name, and whence he came. He told his
country, his family, the rank he had held, the reason for his flight,
and his return. “Here I am,” he cried; “ready
to testify by creed to the contempt in which I hold your orders, and my
faith in the God in whom I have trusted. For I have heard that
you are inferior to few in cruelty. This is why I have chosen
this time in order to carry out my wishes.” With these
words he kindled the wrath of the governor like a fire, and roused all
his fury against himself. The order was given, “Call the
lictors; where are the plates of lead? Where are the
scourges? Let him be stretched upon a wheel; let him be wrenched
upon the rack; let the instruments of torture be brought in; make ready
the beasts, the fire, the sword, the cross. What a good thing for
the villain that he can die only once!”690
| 690 ἀλλὰ
γὰρ οἷα
κερδαίνει,
φησὶν, ἅπαξ
μόνον
ἀποθνήσκων. Garnier seems to have completely missed the force of this
exclamation in the explanation in a note, “Judex hoc dicere
volebat, quem fructum referet ex sua pertinacia, si semel mortuus
fuerit; neque enim in hanc vitam rursus redibit, ejus ut gaudiis
perfruatur, neque tamen ulla alia vita est.” | “Nay,” replied
Gordius. “What a bad thing for me that I cannot die for
Christ again and again!”…
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
. .
All the town crowded to the spot where the
martyrdom was to be consummated. Gordius uttered his last
words. Death is the common lot of man. As we must all die,
let us through death win life. Make the necessary
voluntary. Exchange the earthly for the heavenly. He then
crossed himself, he stepped forward for the fatal blow, without
changing colour or losing his cheerful mien. It seemed as though
he were not going to meet an executioner, but to yield himself into the
hands of angels.691
| 691 For the
tortures and modes of execution enumerated, Du Duc compares
Aristoph., Pax. 452, Chrysost., De Luciano Martyre,
and Nicephorus vi. 14. |
Homily XIX. is on the Forty Soldier Martyrs of
Sebaste, who were ordered by the officers of Licinius,
a.d. 320, to offer sacrifice to the
heathen idols, and, at their refusal, were plunged for a whole
night into a frozen pond in the city, in sight of a hot bath on
the brink. One man’s faith and fortitude failed
him. He rushed to the relief of the shore,
plunged into the hot water,
and died on the spot. One of the executioners had stood
warming himself and watching the strange scene. He had
seemed to see angels coming down from heaven and distributing
gifts to all the band but one. When the sacred number of
forty was for the moment broken the officer flung off his
clothes, and sprang into the freezing pond with the cry, “I
am a Christian.” Judas departed. Matthias took
his place.…
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
. .
What trouble wouldst thou not have taken to find
one to pray for thee to the Lord! Here are forty, praying with
one voice. Where two or three are gathered together in the name
of the Lord, there is He in the midst. Who doubts His presence in
the midst of forty? The afflicted flees to the Forty; the joyous
hurries to them; the former, that he may find relief from his troubles;
the latter, that his blessings may be preserved. Here a pious
woman is found beseeching for her children; she begs for the return of
her absent husband, or for his health if he be sick. Let your
supplications be made with the martyrs. Let young men imitate
their fellows. Let fathers pray to be fathers of like sons.
Let mothers learn from a good mother. The mother of one of these
saints saw the rest overcome by the cold, and her son, from his
strength or his constancy, yet alive. The executioners had left
him, on the chance of his having changed his mind. She herself
lifted him in her arms, and placed him on the car in which the rest
were being drawn to the pyre, a veritable martyr’s
mother.692
| 692 The name
of this youngest of the Forty is given as Melito (D.C.B.
s.v.). They are commemorated on March 9 in the Roman Kalendar
of Gregory XIII. and the Menology of Basil; on March 10 in the Roman
Mart. of Bened. XIV.; on the 11th in the old Roman Kal., and on
March 16 in the Armenian. The legend of the discovery of some
of their relics is given in Sozomen ix. 2. Others were
obtained for the church built in their honour at Annesi.
(cf. p. xiv.) Two doctrinal points come out in this
homily, (a) The officer who took the place of Melito is said to have
been baptized, not in water but in his own blood (§ 7).
Here is martyrdom represented as the equivalent of baptism.
(b) The stage arrived at in the progress of Christian sentiment
towards the invocation of departed saints is indicated.
Garnier, the Jesuit, writes in the margin of the passage quoted
above, Invocantur martyres; and Ceillier notes, Il
reconnait que les prieres des martyrs peuvent beaucoup nous aider
auprés de Dieu. But in this particular passage the
idea of “fleeing to the Forty” seems to be not fleeing
to them to ask for their prayers, but fleeing to the shrine to pray
in company with them. It is rather the fellowship than the
intercession of the saints which is sought.
μετὰ
μαρτύρων
γιγνέσθω τὰ
αἰτήματα
ὑμῶν. Let your requests
be made not to but with the martyrs. In the
Homily on St. Mamas, the next in order, the expressions are less
equivocal. At the same time it must be remarked that with
St. Basil the invocation and the intercession are
local. In the De Sp. Scto. (chap. xxiii. p.
34) a significant contrast is drawn between the ubiquity of the
Holy Ghost and the limited and local action of angels. And
if of angels, so of saints. The saints who have departed
this life are thought of as accessible at the shrines where their
relics rest, but, if we apply the analogy of the De Sp.
Scto., not everywhere. It has been said that this is
the period when requests for the prayers of the holy dead begin
to appear, and Archbishop Ussher (Address to a Jesuit,
chap. ix.) cites Gregory of Nazianzus for the earliest instance
within his knowledge of a plain invocation of the departed.
But, as bishop Harold Browne points out, his invocation is rather
rhetorical than supplicatory. Gregory “had even a
pious persuasion that they still continued as much as ever to aid
with their prayers those for whom they had been wont to pray on
earth (Orat. xxiv. p. 425). And he ventures to think
if it be not too bold to say so (εἰ μὴ
τολυηρὸν
τοῦτο
εἰπεῖν), that the
saints, being nearer to God and having put off the fetters of the
flesh, have more avail with Him than when on earth (Orat.
xix. p. 228). In all these he does not appear to have gone
further than some who preceded him, nor is there anything in such
speculations beyond what might be consistent with the most
Protestant abhorrence of saint worship and Mariolatry” (Bp.
Harold Browne in Art. xxii.). Romish authorities in support
of a yet earlier development, point to Irenæus (Adv.
Hær. v. 19), wherein a highly rhetorical passage the
Virgin Mary is said to have become the “advocate” of
the Virgin Eve, and to Origen, who “invoked” his
guardian angel (Hom. i. in Ezek. 7). The later
mediæval invocation Bp. Jeremy Taylor (vol. vi. Eden’s
ed. p. 489) ingeniously shews to be of a piece rather with early
heresy than with early Catholicity: “It pretends to
know their present state, which is hid from our eyes; and it
proceeds upon the very reason upon which the Gnostics and
Valentinians went; that is, that it is fit to have mediators
between God and us; that we may present our prayers to them, and
they to God. To which add that the Church of Rome
presenting candles and other donaries to the Virgin Mary as to
the Queen of heaven, do that which the Collyridians did (Epiphan.
Hær. lxxix. vol. i. p. 1057). The gift is only
differing, as candle and cake, gold and garments, this vow or
that vow.” |
The last of the Panegyrical Homilies (XXIII.) is
on Saint Mamas, commemorated on September 2 by the Greeks, and on
August 17 by the Latins. He is said to have been a shepherd
martyred at Cæsarea in 274 in the persecution of Aurelian.
Sozomen (v. 2) relates that when the young princes Julian and Gallus
were at the castle of Macellum693
they were
engaged in building a church in the martyr’s honour, and that
Julian’s share in the work never prospered.694
| 694 cf.
Greg. Naz., Or. iv. § 25. | The homily narrates no details
concerning the saint, and none seem to be known. It does
contain a more direct mention of a practice of invocation.
There is a charge to all who have enjoyed the martyr in dreams to
remember him; to all who have met with him in the church, and have
found him a helper in their prayers; to all those whom he has aided
in their doings, when called on by name.695
| 695 ὅσοις,
ὀνόματι,
κληθεὶς, ἐπι
τῶν ἔργων
παρέστη. On
the reverence for relics cf. Letters cxcvii., cclii.,
and cclvii. | The conclusion contains a summary of
the Catholic doctrine concerning the Son. “You have been
told before, and now you are being told again, ‘In the
beginning was the Word,’696
to prevent
your supposing that the Son was a being generated after the manner
of men,697
from His having
come forth out of the non-existent. ‘Word’ is said
to you, because of His impassibility. ‘Was’ is
said because of His being beyond time. He says
‘beginning’ to conjoin the Begotten with His
Father. You have seen how the obedient sheep hears a
master’s voice. ‘In the beginning,’ and
‘was,’ and ‘Word.’ Do not go on to
say, ‘How was
He?’ and ‘If He was, He was not begotten;’ and
‘If He was begotten, He was not.’ It is not a
sheep who says these things. The skin is a sheep’s; but
the speaker within is a wolf. Let him be recognised as an
enemy. ‘My sheep hear my voice.’698
You have heard the Son.
Understand His likeness to His Father. I say likeness
because of the weakness of the stronger bodies: In truth, and
I am not afraid of approaching the truth, I am no ready
deceiver: I say identity, always preserving the
distinct existence of Son and Father. In the hypostasis of Son
understand the Father’s Form, that you may hold the exact
doctrine of this Image,—that you may understand consistently
with true religion the words, ‘I am in the Father and the
Father in me.’699
Understand
not confusion of essences, but identity of
characters.”E.C.F. INDEX & SEARCH
|
