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| To the Clergy and People of the City of Constantinople.
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Letter LIX.
To the Clergy and People of the City of
Constantinople.
Leo the bishop to the clergy, dignitaries, and people,
residing at Constantinople.
I. He congratulates them on their
outspoken resistance to error.
Though we are greatly grieved at the things
reported to have been done recently in the council of priests at
Ephesus, because, as is consistently rumoured, and also demonstrated by
results, neither due moderation nor the strictness of the Faith was
there observed, yet we rejoice in your devoted piety and in the
acclamations of the holy people384
| 384 Sanctæ
plebis acclamationibus. It seems that the people had openly
expressed their disapproval of the maltreatment to which Flavian had
been subjected. | , instances of
which have been brought to our notice, we have approved of the right
feeling of you all; because there lives and abides in good sons due
affection for their excellent Father, and because you suffer the
fulness of catholic teaching to be in no part corrupted. For
undoubtedly, as the Holy Spirit has unfolded to you, they are leagued
with the Manichæans’ error, who deny that the only-begotten
Son of God took our nature’s true
Manhood, and maintain that all His bodily actions were the actions of a
false apparition. And lest you should in aught give your assent
to this blasphemy, we have now sent you, beloved, by my son Epiphanius
and Dionysius, notary of the Roman Church, letters of exhortation
wherein we have of our own accord rendered you the assistance which you
sought, that you may not doubt of our bestowing all a father’s
care on you, and labouring in every way, by the help of God’s mercy, to destroy all the stumbling-blocks
which ignorant and foolish men have raised. And let no one
venture to parade his priestly dignity who can be convicted of holding
such detestably blasphemous opinions. For if ignorance seems
hardly tolerable in laymen, how much less excusable or pardonable is it
in those who govern; especially when they dare even to defend their
mendacious and perverse views, and persuade the unsteadfast to agree
with them either by intimidation or by cajoling.
II. They are to be rejected who deny the
truth of Christ’s flesh, a truth repeated by every recipient at
the Holy Eucharist.
Let such men be rejected by the holy members of
Christ’s Body, and let not catholic
liberty suffer the yoke of the unfaithful
to be laid upon it. For they are to be reckoned outside the
Divine grace, and outside the mystery of man’s salvation, who,
denying the nature of our flesh in Christ, gainsay the Gospel and
oppose the Creed. Nor do they perceive that their blindness leads
them into such an abyss that they have no sure footing in the reality
either of the Lord’s Passion or His
Resurrection: because both are discredited in the Saviour, if our
fleshly nature is not believed in Him. In what density of
ignorance, in what utter sloth must they hitherto have lain, not to
have learnt from hearing, nor understood from reading, that which in
God’s Church is so constantly in
men’s mouths, that even the tongues of infants do not keep
silence upon the truth of Christ’s Body and Blood at the rite of
Holy Communion385
| 385 Two things are here
to be noticed: (1) that the allusion appears to be to the formula
of reception then in use at the Eucharist, the priest saying Corpus
Christi, and the recipient answering Amen. Cf. Serm.
xci. 3, sic sacræ mensæ communicare debetis ut nihil
prorsus de veritate corporis Christi et sanguinis ambigatis. Hoc
enim ore sumitar quod fide creditur: et frustra ab illis Amen
respondetur a quibus contra id quod accipitur disputatur; (2)
that infant communion is implied as regular: this we know to have
been the case in much earlier days. Cf. Apost.
Const. viii. 13, Cyprian de Lapsis, ix. and
xxv. &c., also Bingham’s Antiq. xv. chap. iv. §
7. | ? For in
that mystic distribution of spiritual nourishment, that which is given
and taken is of such a kind that receiving the virtue of the celestial
food we pass into the flesh of Him, Who became our flesh386
| 386 Cf. Sermon LXIII.
7, where much the same language is used. | . Hence to confirm you, beloved,
in your laudably faithful resistance to the foes of Truth, I shall
fully and opportunely use the language and sentiments of the Apostle,
and say: “Therefore I also hearing of your faith, which is
in the Lord Jesus, and love towards all
saints, do not cease to give thanks for you, making mention of you in
my prayers that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give you the
spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of Him, the eyes of
your hearts being enlightened that you may know what is the hope of His
calling, and what the riches of the glory of His inheritance among the
saints, and what is the exceeding greatness of His power in us, who
believed according to the working of His mighty power which he has
wrought in Christ, raising Him from the dead, and setting Him at His
right hand in heavenly places above every principality, and power, and
strength, and dominion, and every name which is named not only in this
age, but also in that which is to come: and hath put all things
under His feet, and given Him to be the head over all the Church which
is His body, and the fulness of Him Who filleth all in all387
.”
III. Perfect God
and perfect Man were united in Christ.
In this passage let the adversaries of the Truth
say when or according to what nature did the Almighty Father exalt His
Son above all things, or to what substance did He subject all
things. For the Godhead of the Word is equal in all things, and
consubstantial with the Father, and the power of the Begetter and the
Begotten is one and the same always and eternally. Certainly, the
Creator of all natures, since “through Him all things were made,
and without Him was nothing made388
,”
is above all things which He created, nor were the things which He made
ever not subject to their Creator, Whose eternal property it is, to be
from none other than the Father, and in no way different to the
Father. If greater power, grander dignity, more exalted loftiness
was granted Him, then was He that was so increased less than He that
promoted Him, and possessed not the full riches of His nature from
Whose fulness He received. But one who thinks thus is hurried off
into the society of Arius, whose heresy is much assisted by this
blasphemy which denies the existence of human nature in the Word of
God, so that, in rejecting the combination of
humility with majesty in God, it either
asserts a false phantom-body in Christ, or says that all His bodily
actions and passions belonged to the Godhead rather than to the
flesh. But everything he ventures to uphold is absolutely
foolish: because neither our religious belief nor the scope of
the mystery admits either of the Godhead suffering anything or of the
Truth belying Itself in anything. The impassible Son of
God, therefore, whose perpetually it is with
the Father and with the Holy Spirit to be what He is in the one essence
of the Unchangeable Trinity, when the fullness of time had come which
had been fore-ordained by an eternal purpose, and promised by the
prophetic significance of words and deeds, became man not by conversion
of His substance but by assumption of our nature, and “came to
seek and to save that which was lost389
.” But He came not by local
approach nor by bodily motion, as if to be present where He had been
absent, or to depart where He had come: but He came to be
manifested to onlookers by that which was visible and common to others,
receiving, that is to say, human flesh and soul in the Virgin
mother’s womb, so that, abiding in the form of God, He united to Himself the form of a slave, and
the likeness of sinful flesh,
whereby He did not lessen the Divine by the human, but increased the
human by the Divine.
IV. The Sacrament of Baptism typifies and
realizes this union to each individual believer.
For such was the state of all mortals resulting
from our first ancestors that, after the transmission of original sin
to their descendants, no one would have escaped the punishment of
condemnation, had not the Word become flesh and dwelt in us, that is to
say, in that nature which belonged to our blood and race. And
accordingly, the Apostle says: “As by one man’s sin
(judgment passed) upon all to condemnation, so also by one man’s
righteousness (it) passed upon all to justification of life. For
as by one man’s disobedience many were made sinners, so also by
one man’s obedience shall many be made righteous390
;” and again, “For because by
man (came) death, by man also (came) the resurrection of the
dead. And as in Adam all die, so also in Christ shall all be made
alive391
.” All they to wit who though
they be born in Adam, yet are found reborn in Christ, having a sure
testimony both to their justification by grace, and to Christ’s
sharing in their nature392
| 392 Habentes fidei
testimonium et de justificatione gratiæ et ae communione
naturæ. | ; for he who does
not believe that God’s only-begotten Son
did assume our nature in the womb of the Virgin-daughter of David, is
without share in the Mystery of the Christian religion, and, as he
neither recognizes the Bridegroom nor knows the Bride, can have no
place at the wedding-banquet. For the flesh of Christ is the veil
of the Word, wherewith every one is clothed who confesses Him
unreservedly. But he that is ashamed of it and rejects it as
unworthy, shall have no adornment from Him, and though he present
himself at the Royal feast, and unseasonably join in the sacred
banquet, yet the intruder will not be able to escape the King’s
discernment, but, as the Lord Himself
asserted, will be taken, and with hands and feet bound, be cast into
outer darkness; where will be weeping and gnashing of teeth393
. Hence whosoever confesses not the
human body in Christ, must know that he is unworthy of the mystery of
the Incarnation, and has no share in that sacred union of which the
Apostle speaks, saying, “For we are His members, of His flesh and
of His bones. For this cause a man shall leave father and mother
and shall cleave to his wife, and there shall be two in one
flesh394
.” And explaining what was
meant by this, he added, “This mystery is great, but I speak in
respect of Christ and the Church.” Therefore, from the very
commencement of the human race, Christ is announced to all men as
coming in the flesh. In which, as was said, “there shall be
two in one flesh,” there are undoubtedly two, God and man, Christ and the Church, which issued from the
Bridegroom’s flesh, when it received the mystery of redemption
and regeneration, water and blood flowing from the side of the
Crucified. For the very condition of a new creature which at
baptism puts off not the covering of true flesh but the taint of the
old condemnation, is this, that a man is made the body of Christ,
because Christ also is the body of a man395
| 395 Ipsa est enim
novæ condiiio creaturæ quæ in baptismate non indumento
veræ carnis sed contagio damnatæ vetustatis exuitur ut
efficiatur homo corpus Christi, quia et Christus corpus est
hominis. The most crabbed of the several crabbed passages in
this letter. The mystical transmutation of the believer’s
body into the body of Christ is here referred to the sacrament of
Baptism, while earlier in the letter (chap. ii.) it is described as one
of the effects of Holy Communion. | .
V. The true doctrine of the Incarnation
restated and commended to their keeping.
Wherefore we call Christ not God only, as the Manichæan heretics, nor Man only, as
the Photinian396
| 396 The followers
of Photinus, Bishop of Sirmium (circ. 410 a.d.): for an account of his heretical opinions see
Schaff’s History of the Christian Church, in loc.
Cf. Letter XV. 4. | heretics, nor man
in such a way that anything should be wanting in Him which certainly
belongs to human nature, whether soul or reasonable mind or flesh which
was not derived from woman, but made from the Word turned and changed
into flesh; which three false and empty propositions have been
variously advanced by the three sections of the Apollinarian
heretics397
| 397 Apollinaristarum
tres partes; see Sermon xxviii. chap. 4 (end) with Bright’s
n. 32 on Apollinarianism generally. | . Nor do we
say that the blessed Virgin Mary conceived a Man without Godhead, Who
was created by the Holy Ghost and afterwards assumed by the Word, which
we deservedly and properly condemned Nestorius for preaching: but
we call Christ the Son of God, true
God, born of God the
Father without any beginning in time, and likewise true Man, born of a
human Mother, at the ordained fulness of time, and we say that His
Manhood, whereby the Father is the greater, does not in anything lessen
that nature whereby He is equal with the Father. But these two
natures form one Christ, Who has said most truly both according to His
Godhead: “I and the Father are one398
,” and according to His manhood
“the Father is greater than I399
.” This true and
indestructible
Faith,
dearly-beloved, which alone makes us true Christians, and which, as we
hear with approval, you are defending with loyal zeal and praiseworthy
affection, hold fast and maintain boldly. And since, besides
God’s aid, you must win the favour of
catholic Princes also, humbly and wisely make request that the most
clement Emperor be pleased to grant our petition, wherein we have asked
for a plenary synod to be convened; that by the aid of God’s mercy the sound may be increased in courage,
and the sick, if they consent to be treated, have the remedy
applied. (Dated October 15, in the consulship of the illustrious
Asturius and Protogenes, 449.)E.C.F. INDEX & SEARCH
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