Chapter XII--Of the Need for Some Protest Against the Psychics and Their Self-Indulgence.
For, by this time, in this respect as well as others, "you are reigning in wealth and satiety" [1091] --not making inroads upon such sins as fasts diminish, nor feeling need of such revelations as xerophagies extort, nor apprehending such wars of your own as Stations dispel. Grant that from the time of John the Paraclete had grown mute; we ourselves would have arisen as prophets to ourselves, for this cause chiefly: I say not now to bring down by our prayers God's anger, nor to obtain his protection or grace; but to secure by premunition the moral position of the "latest times;" [1092] enjoining every species of tapeinophronesis, since the prison must be familiarized to us, and hunger and thirst practised, and capacity of enduring as well the absence of food as anxiety about it acquired: in order that the Christian may enter into prison in like condition as if he had (just) come forth of it,--to suffer there not penalty, but discipline, and not the world's tortures, but his own habitual observances; and to go forth out of custody to (the final) conflict with all the more confidence, having nothing of sinful false care of the flesh about him, so that the tortures may not even have material to work on, since he is cuirassed in a mere dry skin, and cased in horn to meet the claws, the succulence of his blood already sent on (heavenward) before him, the baggage as it were of his soul,--the soul herself withal now hastening (after it), having already, by frequent fasting, gained a most intimate knowledge of death!
Plainly, your habit is to furnish cookshops in the prisons to untrustworthy martyrs, for fear they should miss their accustomed usages, grow weary of life, (and) be stumbled at the novel discipline of abstinence; (a discipline) which not even the well-known Pristinus--your martyr, no Christian martyr--had ever come in contact with: he whom--stuffed as he had long been, thanks to the facilities afforded by the "free custody" (now in vogue, and) under an obligation, I suppose, to all the baths (as if they were better than baptism!), and to all the retreats of voluptuousness (as if they were more secret than those of the Church!), and to all the allurements of this life (as if they were of more worth than those of life eternal!), not to be willing to die--on the very last day of trial, at high noon, you premedicated with drugged wine as an antidote, and so completely enervated, that on being tickled--for his intoxication made it feel like tickling--with a few claws, he was unable any more to make answer to the presiding officer interrogating him "whom he confessed to be Lord;" and, being now put on the rack for this silence, when he could utter nothing but hiccoughs and belchings, died in the very act of apostasy! This is why they who preach sobriety are "false prophets;" this why they who practise it are "heretics!" Why then hesitate to believe that the Paraclete, whom you deny in a Montanus, exists in an Apicius?
[1091] 1 Cor. iv. 8.
[1092] See the Vulg. in 1 Tim. iv. 1, 2; 2 Tim. iii. 1; and comp. therewith the Greek in both places.
Chapter XIII.--Of the Inconsistencies of the Psychics.
You lay down a prescription that this faith has its solemnities "appointed" by the Scriptures or the tradition of the ancestors; and that no further addition in the way of observance must be added, on account of the unlawfulness of innovation. Stand on that ground, if you can. For, behold, I impeach you of fasting besides on the Paschal-day, beyond the limits of those days in which "the Bridegroom was taken away;" and interposing the half-fasts of Stations; and you, (I find), sometimes living on bread and water, when it has seemed meet to each (so to do). In short, you answer that "these things are to be done of choice, not of command." You have changed your ground, therefore, by exceeding tradition, in undertaking observances which have not been "appointed." But what kind of deed is it, to permit to your own choice what you grant not to the command of God? Shall human volition have more licence than Divine power? I am mindful that I am free from the world, [1093] not from God. Thus it is my part to perform, without external suggestion thereto, an act of respect to my Lord, it is His to enjoin. I ought not merely to pay a willing obedience to Him, but withal to court Him; for the former I render to His command, the latter to my own choice.
But it is enough for me that it is a customary practice for the bishops withal to issue mandates for fasts to the universal commonalty of the Church; I do not mean for the special purpose of collecting contributions of alms, as your beggarly fashion has it, but sometimes too from some particular cause of ecclesiastical solicitude. And accordingly, if you practise tapeinophronesis at the bidding of a man's edict, and all unitedly, how is it that in our case you set a brand upon the very unity also of our fastings, and xerophagies, and Stations?--unless, perhaps, it is against the decrees of the senate and the mandates of the emperors which are opposed to "meetings" that we are sinning! The Holy Spirit, when He was preaching in whatsoever lands He chose, and through whomsoever He chose, was wont, from foresight of the imminence either of temptations to befall the Church, or of plagues to befall the world, in His character of Paraclete (that is, Advocate for the purpose of winning over the judge by prayers), to issue mandates for observances of this nature; for instance, at the present time, with the view of practising the discipline of sobriety and abstinence: we, who receive Him, must necessarily observe also the appointments which He then made. Look at the Jewish calendar, and you will find it nothing novel that all succeeding posterity guards with hereditary scrupulousness the precepts given to the fathers. Besides, throughout the provinces of Greece there are held in definite localities those councils gathered out of the universal Churches, by whose means not only all the deeper questions are handled for the common benefit, but the actual representation of the whole Christian name is celebrated with great veneration. (And how worthy a thing is this, that, under the auspices of faith, men should congregate from all quarters to Christ! "See, how good and how enjoyable for brethren to dwell in unity!" [1094] This psalm you know not easily how to sing, except when you are supping with a goodly company!) But those conclaves first, by the operations of Stations and fastings, know what it is "to grieve with the grieving," and thus at last "to rejoice in company with the rejoicing." [1095] If we also, in our diverse provinces, (but) present mutually in spirit, [1096] observe those very solemnities, whose then celebration our present discourse has been defending, that is the sacramental law.
[1093] 1 Cor. ix. 19; sæculo.
[1094] Ps. cxxxiii. (in LXX. and Vulg. cxxxii.).
[1095] See Rom. xii. 15.
[1096] Comp. 1 Cor. v. 3; Col. ii. 5.