[240] [The ultimate subjugation of Latin theology by Aristotelian philosophy, is a deplorable instance of what is here hinted at, and what Hippolytus has worked out. Compare Col. ii. 8.]
[241] The text is, ouk allen tina (ei dei t' alethes eipein) echon e ten pros tes philosophias epi tade ta dogmata alogon hormen; kai koisin hon oietai alethon (me paradoxon eipein e) ouk allen e ten akriton tuchen. Vossius would read, pros ten philosophian kai epi tade ta dogmata. Migne makes it = nulla ei erat alia sententia (si verum est dicendum) nisi cæcus ille stimulus quo ante philosophiæ studium in ista actus erat placita: neque aliud judicium eorum quæ vera putaret (ne mirum sit dictu) nisi fortunæ temeritas. Bengel would read, pro tes philosophias.
[242] The text is, epei kai aboethetos, heauton charisamenos kai ekdechomenos eike hosper hermaion, tois prokatalabousin auton logois. Bengel proposes endechomenon...hermaion, as = lucrum insperatum.
[243] katharo--herkei. Sirmondus gives, puro campo. Rhodomanus, reading aeri, gives puro aëre. Bengel takes herkos, septum, as derivatively = domus, fundus, regio septis munita.
[244] logos.
[245] The text is, ei tis eie kat' auton tonde tinon philosophon. Bengel suggests katanton.
[246] [Beautiful testimony to the worth and character of Origen! After St. Bernard, who thought he was scriptural, but was blinded by the Decretals (no fault in him), Scripture and testimony (as defined to be the rule of faith by Tertullian and Vincent) ceased to govern in the West; and by syllogisms (see vol. v. p. 100) the Scholastic system was built up. This became the creed of a new church organization created at Trent, all the definitions of which are part of said creed. Thus the "Roman-Catholic Church" (so called when created) is a new creation (of a.d. 1564), in doctrine ever innovating, which has the least claim to antiquity of any Church pretending to Apostolic origin.]
Argument XV.--The Case of Divine Matters. Only God and His Prophets are to Be Heard in These. The Prophets and Their Auditors are Acted on by the Same Afflatus. Origen's Excellence in the Interpretation of Scripture.
With respect to these human teachers, indeed, he counselled us to attach ourselves to none of them, not even though they were attested as most wise by all men, but to devote ourselves to God alone, and to the prophets. And he himself became the interpreter of the prophets [247] to us, and explained whatsoever was dark or enigmatical in them. For there are many things of that kind in the sacred words; and whether it be that God is pleased to hold communication with men in such a way as that the divine word may not enter all naked and uncovered into an unworthy soul, such as many are, or whether it be, that while every divine oracle is in its own nature most clear and perspicuous, it seems obscure and dark to us, who have apostatized from God, and have lost the faculty of hearing through time and age, I cannot tell. But however the case may stand, if it be that there are some words really enigmatical, he explained all such, and set them in the light, as being himself a skilled and most discerning hearer of God; or if it be that none of them are really obscure in their own nature, they were also not unintelligible to him, who alone of all men of the present time with whom I have myself been acquainted, or of whom I have heard by the report of others, has so deeply studied the clear and luminous oracles of God, as to be able at once to receive their meaning into his own mind, and to convey it to others. For that Leader of all men, who inspires [248] God's dear prophets, and suggests all their prophecies and their mystic and heavenly words, has honoured this man as He would a friend, and has constituted him an expositor of these same oracles; and things of which He only gave a hint by others, He made matters of full instruction by this man's instrumentality; and in things which He, who is worthy of all trust, either enjoined in regal fashion, or simply enunciated, He imparted to this man the gift of investigating and unfolding and explaining them: so that, if there chanced to be any one of obtuse and incredulous mind, or one again thirsting for instruction, he might learn from this man, and in some manner be constrained to understand and to decide for belief, and to follow God. These things, moreover, as I judge, he gives forth only and truly by participation in the Divine Spirit: for there is need of the same power for those who prophesy and for those who hear the prophets; and no one can rightly hear a prophet, unless the same Spirit who prophesies bestows on him the capacity of apprehending His words. And this principle is expressed indeed in the Holy Scriptures themselves, when it is said that only He who shutteth openeth, and no other one whatever; [249] and what is shut is opened when the word of inspiration explains mysteries. Now that greatest gift this man has received from God, and that noblest of all endowments he has had bestowed upon him from heaven, that he should be an interpreter of the oracles of God to men, [250] and that he might understand the words of God, even as if God spake them to him, and that he might recount them to men in such wise as that they may hear them with intelligence. [251] Therefore to us there was no forbidden subject of speech; [252] for there was no matter of knowledge hidden or inaccessible to us, but we had it in our power to learn every kind of discourse, both foreign [253] and Greek, both spiritual and political, both divine and human; and we were permitted with all freedom to go round the whole circle of knowledge, and investigate it, and satisfy ourselves with all kinds of doctrines, and enjoy the sweets of intellect. And whether it was some ancient system of truth, or whether it was something one might otherwise name that was before us, we had in him an apparatus and a power at once admirable and full of the most beautiful views. And to speak in brief, he was truly a paradise to us after the similitude of the paradise of God, wherein we were not set indeed to till the soil beneath us, or to make ourselves gross with bodily nurture, [254] but only to increase the acquisitions of mind with all gladness and enjoyment,--planting, so to speak, some fair growths ourselves, or having them planted in us by the Author of all things.
[247] hupopheteuon.
[248] hupechon.
[249] Isa. xxii. 22; Rev. iii. 7. [All these citations of the Scriptures should be noted, but specially those which prove the general reception of the Apocalypse in the East.]
[250] [A noble sentence. Eph iii. 8, 9.]
[251] The text gives hos akousosin with Voss. and Bengel. The Paris editor gives akouousin.
[252] arrheton.
[253] Barbarian.
[254] somatotrophein pachunomenous.
Argument XVI.--Gregory Laments His Departure Under a Threefold Comparison; Likening It to Adam's Departure Out of Paradise. To the Prodigal Son's Abandonment of His Father's House, and to the Deportation of the Jews into Babylon.
Here, truly, is the paradise of comfort; here are true gladness and pleasure, as we have enjoyed them during this period which is now at its end--no short space indeed in itself, and yet all too short if this is really to be its conclusion, when we depart and leave this place behind us. For I know not what has possessed me, or what offence has been committed by me, that I should now be going away--that I should now be put away. I know not what I should say, unless it be that I am like a second Adam and have begun to talk, outside of paradise. How excellent might my life be, were I but a listener to the addresses of my teacher, and silent myself! Would that even now I could have learned to be mute and speechless, rather than to present this new spectacle of making the teacher the hearer! For what concern had I with such a harangue as this? and what obligation was there upon me to make such an address, when it became me not to depart, but to cleave fast to the place? But these things seem like the transgressions that sprung from the pristine deceit, and the penalties of these primeval offences still await me here. Do I not appear to myself to be disobedient [255] in daring thus to overpass the words of God, when I ought to abide in them, and hold by them? And in that I withdraw, I flee from this blessed life, even as the primeval man fled from the face of God, and I return to the soil from which I was taken. Therefore shall I have to eat of the soil all the days of my life there, and I shall have to till the soil--the very soil which produces thorns and thistles for me, that is to say, pains and reproachful anxieties--set loose as I shall be from cares that are good and noble. And what I left behind me before, to that I now return--to the soil, as it were, from which I came, and to my common relationships here below, and to my father's house--leaving the good soil, where of old I knew not that the good fatherland lay; leaving also the relations in whom at a later period I began to recognise the true kinsmen of my soul, and the house, too, of him who is in truth our father, in which the father abides, and is piously honoured and revered by the genuine sons, whose desire it also is to abide therein. But I, destitute alike of all piety and worthiness, am going forth from the number of these, and am turning back to what is behind, and am retracing my steps. It is recorded that a certain son, receiving from his father the portion of goods that fell to him proportionately with the other heir, his brother, departed, by his own determination, into a strange country far distant from his father; and, living there in riot, he scattered his ancestral substance, and utterly wasted it; and at last, under the pressure of want, he hired himself as a swine-herd; and being driven to extremity by hunger, he longed to share the food given to the swine, but could not touch it. Thus did he pay the penalty of his dissolute life, when he had to exchange his father's table, which was a princely one, for something he had not looked forward to--the sustenance of swine and serfs. And we also seem to have some such fortune before us, now that we are departing, and that, too, without the full portion that falls to us. For though we have not received all that we ought, we are nevertheless going away, leaving behind us what is noble and dear with you and beside you, and taking in exchange only what is inferior. For all things melancholy will now meet us in succession,--tumult and confusion instead of peace, and an unregulated life instead of one of tranquillity and harmony, and a hard bondage, and the slavery of market-places, and lawsuits, and crowds, instead of this freedom; and neither pleasure nor any sort of leisure shall remain to us for the pursuit of nobler objects. Neither shall we have to speak of the words of inspiration, but we shall have to speak of the works of men,--a thing which has been deemed simply a bane by the prophet, [256] --and in our case, indeed, those of wicked men. And truly we shall have night in place of day, and darkness in place of the clear light, and grief instead of the festive assembly; and in place of a fatherland, a hostile country will receive us, in which I shall have no liberty to sing my sacred song, [257] for how could I sing it in a land strange to my soul, in which the sojourners have no permission to approach God? but only to weep and mourn, as I call to mind the different state of things here, if indeed even that shall be in my power. We read [258] that enemies once assailed a great and sacred city, in which the worship of God was observed, and dragged away its inhabitants, both singers and prophets, [259] into their own country, which was Babylon. And it is narrated that these captives, when they were detained in the land, refused, even when asked by their conquerors, to sing the divine song, or to play in a profane country, and hung their harps on the willow-trees, and wept by the rivers of Babylon. Like one of these I verily seem to myself to be, as I am cast forth from this city, and from this sacred fatherland of mine, where both by day and by night the holy laws are declared, and hymns and songs and spiritual words are heard; where also there is perpetual sunlight; where by day in waking vision [260] we have access to the mysteries of God, and by night in dreams [261] we are still occupied with what the soul has seen and handled in the day; and where, in short, the inspiration of divine things prevails over all continually. From this city, I say, I am cast forth, and borne captive to a strange land, where I shall have no power to pipe: [262] for, like these men of old, I shall have to hang my instrument on the willows, and the rivers shall be my place of sojourn, and I shall have to work in mud, and shall have no heart to sing hymns, even though I remember them; yea, it may be that, through constant occupation with other subjects, I shall forget even them, like one spoiled of memory itself. And would that, in going away, I only went away against my will, as a captive is wont to do; but I go away also of my own will, and not by constraint of another; and by my own act I am dispossessed of this city, when it is in my option to remain in it. Perchance, too, in leaving this place, I may be going to prosecute no safe journey, as it sometimes fares with one who quits some safe and peaceful city; and it is indeed but too likely that, in journeying, I may fall into the hands of robbers, and be taken prisoner, and be stripped and wounded with many strokes, and be cast forth to lie half-dead somewhere.