Bad Advertisement?
Are you a Christian?
Online Store:Visit Our Store
| Exposition of the present state of the Churches.
PREVIOUS SECTION - NEXT SECTION - HELP 
Chapter XXX.
Exposition of the present state of the Churches.
76. To what then
shall I liken our present condition? It may be compared, I think,
to some naval battle which has arisen out of time old quarrels, and is
fought by men who cherish a deadly hate against one another, of long
experience in naval warfare, and eager for the fight. Look, I beg
you, at the picture thus raised before your eyes. See the rival
fleets rushing in dread array to the attack. With a burst of
uncontrollable fury they engage and fight it out. Fancy, if you
like, the ships driven to and fro by a raging tempest, while thick
darkness falls from the clouds and blackens all the scenes so that
watchwords are indistinguishable in the confusion, and all distinction
between friend and foe is lost. To fill up the details of the
imaginary picture, suppose the sea swollen with billows and whirled up
from the deep, while a vehement torrent of rain pours down from the
clouds and the terrible waves rise high. From every quarter of
heaven the winds beat upon one point, where both the fleets are dashed
one against the other. Of the combatants some are turning
traitors; some are deserting in the very thick of the fight; some have
at one and the same moment to urge on their boats, all beaten by the
gale, and to advance against their assailants. Jealousy of
authority and the lust of individual mastery splits the sailors into
parties which deal mutual death to one another. Think, besides
all this, of the confused and unmeaning roar sounding over all the sea,
from howling winds, from crashing vessels, from boiling surf, from the
yells of the combatants as they express their varying emotions in every
kind of noise, so that not a word from admiral or pilot can be
heard. The disorder and confusion is tremendous, for the
extremity of misfortune, when life is despaired of, gives men license
for every kind of wickedness. Suppose, too, that the men are all
smitten with the incurable plague of mad love of glory, so that they do
not cease from their struggle each to get the better of the other,
while their ship is actually settling down into the deep.
77. Turn now I beg you from this figurative
description to the unhappy reality. Did it not at one
time1341
| 1341 i.e.
after the condemnation of Arius at Nicæa. | appear that
the Arian schism, after its separation into a sect opposed to the
Church of God, stood itself alone in hostile array? But when
the attitude of our foes against us was changed from one of long
standing and bitter strife to one of open warfare, then, as is
well known, the war was split up in more ways than I can tell into
many subdivisions, so that all men were stirred to a state of
inveterate hatred alike by common party spirit and individual
suspicion.1342
| 1342 In Ep. ccxlii.
written in 376, St. Basil says: “This is the
thirteenth year since the outbreak of the war of heretics against
us.” 363 is the date of the Acacian Council of
Antioch; 364 of the accession of Valens and Valentian, of the
Semi-Arian Synod of Lampsacus, and of St. Basil’s ordination
to the priesthood and book against Eunomius. On the
propagation by scission and innumerable subdivisions of Arianism
Cannon Bright writes:
The extraordinary versatility, the argumentative
subtlety, and the too frequent profanity of Arianism are matters of
which a few lines can give no idea. But it is necessary, in even
the briefest notice of this long-lived heresy, to remark on the
contrast between its changeable inventiveness and the simple
steadfastness of Catholic doctrine. On the one side, some twenty
different creeds (of which several, however, were rather negatively
than positively heterodox) and three main sects, the Semi-Arians, with
their formula of Homoiousion, i.e. the Son is like in essence to
the Father; the Acacians, vaguely calling Him like (Homoion); the
Aetians, boldly calling Him unlike, as much as to say He is in no sense
Divine. On the other side, the Church with the Nicene Creed,
confessing Him as Homoousion, ‘of one essence with the
Father,’ meaning thereby, as her great champion repeatedly bore
witness, to secure belief in the reality of the Divine Sonship, and
therefore in the real Deity, as distinguished from the titular deity
which was so freely conceded to Him by the Arians.” Cannon
Bright, St. Leo on the Incarnation, p. 140
Socrates (ii. 41), pausing at 360, enumerates, after
Nicæa:
1. 1st of Antioch (omitted the ὁμοούσιον,
a.d. 341).
2. 2d of Antioch (omitted the ὁμοούσιον,
a.d. 341).
3. The Creed brought to Constans in Gaul by
Narcissus and other Arians in 342.
4. The Creed “sent by Eudoxius of
Germanicia into Italy,” i.e. the “Macrostich,”
or “Lengthy Creed,” rejected at Milan in 346.
5. The 1st Creed of Sirmium; i.e. the
Macrostich with 26 additional clauses, 351.
6. The 2d Sirmian Creed. The
“manifesto;” called by Athanasius (De Synod. 28)
“the blasphemy,” 357.
7. The 3d Sirmian, or “dated Creed,”
in the consulship of Flavius Eusebius and Hypatius, May 22d, 359.
8. The Acacian Creed of Seleucia, 359.
9. The Creed of Ariminum adopted at
Constantinople, as revised at Nike. | But what
storm at sea was ever so fierce and wild as this tempest of
the Churches? In it every landmark of the Fathers has been
moved; every foundation, every bulwark of opinion has been
shaken: everything buoyed up on the unsound is dashed about
and shaken down. We attack one another. We are
overthrown by one another. If our enemy is not the first to
strike us, we are wounded by the comrade at our side. If a
foeman is stricken and falls, his fellow soldier tramples him
down. There is at least this bond of union between us that
we hate our common foes, but no sooner have the enemy gone by than
we find enemies in one another. And who could make a
complete list of all the wrecks? Some have gone to the
bottom on the attack of the enemy, some through the unsuspected
treachery of their allies, some from the blundering of their own
officers. We see, as it were, whole churches, crews and all,
dashed and shattered upon the sunken reefs of disingenuous heresy,
while others of the enemies of the Spirit1343
| 1343 On the
authority of the ms. of the tenth century
at Paris, called by the Ben. Editors Regius Secundus,
they read for πνεύματος
πάθους, denying πνευματος
to be consistent with the style and practice of Basil, who they say,
never uses the epithet σωτήοιος of
the Spirit. Mr. C.F.H. Johnston notes that St. Basil
“always attributes the saving efficacy of Baptism to the
presence of the Spirit, and here applies the word to
Him.” In § 35, we have τὸ
σωτήριον
βάπτισυα. | of Salvation have seized the helm and
made shipwreck of the faith.1344
And
then the disturbances wrought by the princes of the world1345
have caused the downfall of the people
with a violence unmatched by that of hurricane or whirlwind.
The luminaries of the world, which God set to give light to the
souls of the people, have been driven from their homes, and a
darkness verily gloomy and disheartening has settled on the
Churches.1346
| 1346 Among
the bishops exiled during the persecution of Valens were Meletius of
Antioch, Eusebius of Samosata, Pelagius of Laodicea, and Barses of
Edessa. cf. Theodoret, Hist. Ecc.
iv. 12 sq. cf. Ep. 195. | The
terror of universal ruin is already imminent, and yet their mutual
rivalry is so unbounded as to blunt all sense of danger.
Individual hatred is of more importance than the general and
common warfare, for men by whom the immediate gratification of
ambition is esteemed more highly than the rewards that await us in
a time to come, prefer the glory of getting the better of their
opponents to securing the common welfare of mankind. So all
men alike, each as best he can, lift the hand of murder against
one another. Harsh rises the cry of the combatants
encountering one another in dispute; already all the Church is
almost full of the inarticulate screams, the unintelligible
noises, rising from the ceaseless agitations that divert the right
rule of the doctrine of true religion, now in the direction of
excess, now in that of defect. On the one hand are they who
confound the Persons and are carried away into Judaism;1347
| 1347 The
identification of an unsound Monarchianism with Judaism is
illustrated in the 1st Apology of Justin Martyr, e.g. in
§ lxxxiii. (Reeves’ Trans.). “The Jews,
therefore, for maintaining that it was the Father of the Universe
who had the conference with Moses, when it was the very Son of God
who had it, and who is styled both Angel and Apostle, are justly
accused by the prophetic spirit and Christ Himself, for knowing
neither the Father nor the Son; for they who affirm the Son to be
the Father are guilty of not knowing the Father, and likewise of
being ignorant that the Father of the Universe has a Son, who, being
the Logos and First-begotten of God, is God.” | on the other hand are they that,
through the opposition of the natures, pass into
heathenism.1348
| 1348 i.e.
the Arians, whose various ramifications all originated in a probably
well-meant attempt to reconcile the principles of Christianity with
what was best in the old philosophy, and a failure to see that the
ditheism of Arianism was of a piece with polytheism. | Between
these opposite parties inspired Scripture is powerless to mediate;
the traditions of the apostles cannot suggest terms of
arbitration. Plain speaking is fatal to friendship, and
disagreement in opinion all the ground that is wanted for a
quarrel. No oaths of confederacy are so efficacious in
keeping men true to sedition as their likeness in error.
Every one is a theologue though he have his soul branded with more
spots than can be counted. The result is that innovators
find a plentiful supply of men ripe for faction, while
self-appointed scions of the house of place-hunters1349
| 1349 The word
σπουδαρχίδης
is a comic patronymic of σπουδάρχης, a place-hunter, occurring in the Acharnians of Aristophanes,
595. | reject the government1350
of the Holy Spirit and divide the chief
dignities of the Churches. The institutions of the Gospel
have now everywhere been thrown into confusion by want of
discipline; there is an indescribable pushing for the chief places
while every self-advertiser tries to force himself into high
office. The result of this lust for ordering is that our
people are in a state of wild confusion for lack of being
ordered;1351
| 1351 ἀναρχία ἀπὸ
φιλαρχίας. | the
exhortations of those in authority are rendered wholly purposeless
and void, because there is not a man but, out of his ignorant
impudence, thinks that it is just as much his duty to give orders
to other people, as it is to obey any one else.
78. So, since no human voice is strong
enough to be heard in such a disturbance, I reckon silence more
profitable than speech, for if there is any truth in the words of the
Preacher, “The words of wise men are heard in
quiet,”1352
in the present
condition of things any discussion of them must be anything but
becoming. I am moreover restrained by the Prophet’s saying,
“Therefore the prudent shall keep silence in that time, for it is
an evil time,”1353
a time when some
trip up their neighbours’ heels, some stamp on a man when he is
down, and others clap their hands with joy, but there is not one to
feel for the fallen and hold out a helping hand, although according to
the ancient law he is not uncondemned, who passes by even his
enemy’s beast of burden fallen under his load.1354
This is not the state of things
now. Why not? The love of many has waxed cold;1355
brotherly concord is destroyed, the very
name of unity is ignored, brotherly admonitions are heard no more,
nowhere is there Christian pity, nowhere falls the tear of
sympathy. Now there is no one to receive “the weak in
faith,”1356
but mutual hatred
has blazed so high among fellow clansmen that they are more delighted
at a neighbour’s fall than at their own success. Just as in
a plague, men of the most regular lives suffer from the same sickness
as the rest, because they catch the disease by communication with the
infected, so nowadays by the evil rivalry which possesses our souls we
are carried away to an emulation in wickedness, and are all of us each
as bad as the others. Hence merciless and sour sit the judges of
the erring; unfeeling and hostile are the critics of the well
disposed. And to such a depth is this evil rooted among us that
we have become more brutish than the brutes; they do at least herd with
their fellows, but our most savage warfare is with our own
people.
79. For all these reasons I ought to have
kept silence, but I was drawn in the other direction by love, which
“seeketh not her own,”1357
and desires to
overcome every difficulty put in her way by time and
circumstance. I was taught too by the children at
Babylon,1358
that, when there is
no one to support the cause of true religion, we ought alone and all
unaided to do our duty. They from out of the midst of the flame
lifted up their voices in hymns and praise to God, reeking not of the
host that set the truth at naught, but sufficient, three only that they
were, with one another. Wherefore we too are undismayed at the
cloud of our enemies, and, resting our hope on the aid of the Spirit,
have, with all boldness, proclaimed the truth. Had I not so done,
it would truly have been terrible that the blasphemers of the Spirit
should so easily be emboldened in their attack upon true religion, and
that we, with so mighty an ally and supporter at our side, should
shrink from the service of that doctrine, which by the tradition of the
Fathers has been preserved by an unbroken sequence of memory to our own
day. A further powerful incentive to my undertaking was the warm
fervour of your “love unfeigned,”1359
| 1359
Rom. xii. 9 and 2 Cor. vi. 6. | and the seriousness and taciturnity of
your disposition; a guarantee that you would not publish what I was
about to say to all the world,—not because it would not be
worth making known, but to avoid casting pearls before
swine.1360
My task is
now done. If you find what I have said satisfactory, let this
make an end to our discussion of these matters. If you think
any point requires further elucidation, pray do not hesitate to
pursue the investigation with all diligence, and to add to your
information by putting any uncontroversial question. Either
through me or through others the Lord will grant full explanation on
matters which have yet to be made clear, according to the knowledge
supplied to the worthy by the Holy Spirit.
Amen.E.C.F. INDEX & SEARCH
|
