Euboulios. Stay now; for I think that from hence we shall the better go on to the discovery of what things are truly the best; and, tell me, do you call anyone a good pilot?
Gregorion. I certainly do.
Euboulios. Whether is it he that saves his vessel in great and perplexing storms, or is it he who does so in a breathless calm?
Gregorion. He that does so in a great and perplexing storm.
Euboulios. Shall we not then say that the soul, which is deluged with the surging waves of the passions, and yet does not, on that account, weary or grow faint, but direct her vessel--that is, the flesh--nobly into the port of chastity, is better and more estimable than he that navigates in calm weather?
Gregorion. We will say so.
Euboulios. For to be prepared against the entrance of the gales of the Evil Spirit, and not to be cast away or overcome, but to refer all to Christ, and strongly to contend against pleasures, brings greater praise than he wins who lives a virgin life calmly and with ease.
Gregorion. It appears so.
Euboulios. And what saith the Lord? Does He not seem to show that he who retains continence, though concupiscent, excels him who, having no concupiscence, leads a virgin life?
Gregorion. Where does He say so?
Euboulios. Where, comparing a wise man to a house well founded, He declares him immoveable because he cannot be overthrown by rains, and floods, and winds; likening, as it would seem, these storms to lusts, but the immoveable and unshaken firmness of the soul in chastity to the rock.
Gregorion. You appear to speak what is true.
Euboulios. And what say you of the physician? Do you not call him the best who has been proved in great diseases, and has healed many patients?
Gregorion. I do.
Euboulios. But the one who has never at any time practised, nor ever had the sick in his hands, is he not still in all respects the inferior?
Gregorion. Yes.
Euboulios. Then we may certainly say that a soul which is contained by a concupiscent body, and which appeases with the medicaments of temperance the disorders arising from the heat of lusts, carries off the palm for healing, over one to whose lot it has fallen to govern aright a body which is free from lust. [2818]
Gregorion. It must be allowed.
Euboulios. And how is it in wrestling? Whether is the better wrestler he who has many and strong antagonists, and continually is contending without being worsted, or he who has no opponents?
Gregorion. Manifestly he who wrestles.
Euboulios. And, in wrestling, is not the athlete who contends the more experienced?
Gregorion. It must be granted.
Euboulios. Therefore it is clear that he whose soul contends against the impulses of lust, and is not borne down by it, but draws back and sets himself in array against it, appears stronger than he who does not lust. [2819]
Gregorion. True.
Euboulios. What then? Does it not appear to you, Gregorion, that there is more courage in being valiant against the assaults of base desires?
Gregorion. Yes, indeed.
Euboulios. Is not this courage the strength of virtue?
Gregorion. Plainly so.
Euboulios. Therefore, if endurance be the strength of virtue, is not the soul, which is troubled by lusts, and yet perseveres against them, stronger than that which is not so troubled?
Gregorion. Yes.
Euboulios. And if stronger, then better?
Gregorion. Truly.
Euboulios. Therefore the soul which is concupiscent, and exercises self-control, as appears from what has been said, is better than that which is not concupiscent, and exercises self-control. [2820]
Gregorion. You speak truly, and I shall desire still more fully to discourse with you concerning these things. If, therefore, it pleases you, tomorrow I will come again to hear respecting them. Now, however, as you see, it is time to betake ourselves to the care of the outward man.
[2815] In Jahn, Telmesiake.--Tr. [Comp. p. 356, n. 2, infra.]
[2816] [Contrast the shameful close of Plato's Symposium.]
[2817] Matt. v. 8.
[2818] [Recur to what is said of Origen and his epoch on p. 224, vol. iv. of this series.]
[2819] [Recur to what is said of Origen and his epoch on p. 224, vol. iv. of this series.]
[2820] [Here is our author's conclusive condemnation of Origen, whose great mistake, I have supposed, gave occasion to this extraordinary work. Possibly the epoch of Anthony had revived such discussions when this was written.]
Elucidations.
------------------------
I.
(We here behold only shadows, etc., p. 335.)
Schleiermacher, [2821] in commenting on Plato's Symposium, remarks: "Even natural birth (i.e., in Plato's system) was nothing but a reproduction of the same eternal form and idea....The whole discussion displays the gradation, not only from that pleasure which arises from the contemplation of personal beauty through that which every larger object, whether single or manifold, may occasion, to that immediate pleasure of which the source is in the Eternal Beauty," etc. Our author ennobles such theorizing by mounting up to the great I Am.
II.
(Christ Himself is the one who is born, p. 337.)
Wordsworth, and many others of the learned, sustain our author's comment on this passage. [2822] So Aquinas, ad loc., Bede, and many others. Methodius is incorrectly represented as rejecting [2823] the idea that "the woman" is the Blessed Virgin Mary, for no such idea existed for him to reject. He rejects the idea that the man-child is Christ; but that idea was connected with the supposition that the woman was the Church of the Hebrews bringing forth the Messiah. Gregory the Great regards the woman as the Christian Church. So Hippolytus: [2824] "By the woman...is meant most manifestly the Church, endued with the Father's Word, whose brightness is above the sun," etc. Bossuet says candidly, [2825] "C'est l'Église, tout éclatante de la lumière de J. C.," etc.
Now, note the progress of corruption, one fable engendering another. The text of Gen. iii. 15, contrary to the Hebrew, the Seventy, the Syriac, and the Vulgate itself, in the best mss., is made to read, "She shall bruise thy head," etc. The "woman," therefore, becomes the Mother of our Lord, and the "great red dragon" (of verse 3), from which the woman "fled into the wilderness," is next represented as under her feet (where the moon appears in the sacred narrative); and then the Immaculate Conception of her Holy Seed is transferred back to the mother of Mary, who is indecently discussed, and affirmed to have been blest with an "Immaculate Conception" when, in the ordinary process of nature, she was made the mother of the Virgin. So, then, the bull Ineffabilis--comes forth, eighteen hundred years after the event, [2826] with the announcement that what thousands of saints and many bishops of Rome have denounced as a fable must be received by all Christians on peril of eternal damnation. [2827] The worst of it all is the fact, that, as the mystery of the Incarnation of the Son of God has heretofore been the only "Immaculate Conception" known to the faith of Christendom, thousands now imagine that this is what was only so lately set forth, and what we must therefore renounce as false.
[2821] Introduction to the Dialogues, etc., Dobson's translation, Cambridge, 1836.
[2822] See his work On the Apocalypse, Lecture IX. p. 198, ed. Philadelphia, 1852.
[2823] Speaker's Com., ad loc.
[2824] Vol. v. p. 217, this series.
[2825] Works, vol. i. p. 447, ed. Paris, 1845.
[2826] Dec. 8, 1854.
[2827] See The Eirenicon of Dr. Pusey, ed. New York, 1866.
Concerning Free-Will. [2828]
------------------------
Orthodoxus. The old man of Ithaca, according to the legend of the Greeks, when he wished to hear the song of the Sirens, on account of the charm of their voluptuous voice, sailed to Sicily in bonds, and stopped up the ears of his companions; not that he grudged them the hearing, or desired to load himself with bonds, but because the consequence of those singers' music to those who heard it was death. For such, in the opinion of the Greeks, are the charms of the Sirens. Now I am not within hearing of any such song as this; nor have I any desire to hear the Sirens who chant men's dirges, and whose silence is more profitable to men than their voice; but I pray to enjoy the pleasure of a divine voice, which, though it be often beard, I long to hear again; not that I am overcome with the charm of a voluptuous voice, but I am being taught divine mysteries, and expect as the result, not death but eternal salvation. For the singers are not the deadly Sirens of the Greeks, but a divine choir of prophets, with whom there is no need to stop the ears of one's companions, nor to load one's-self with bonds, in fear of the penalty of hearing. For, in the one case, the hearer, with the entrance of the voice, ceases to live; in the other, the more he hears, the better life will he enjoy, being led onwards by a divine Spirit. Let every one come, then, and hear the divine song without any fear. There are not with us the Sirens from the shore of Sicily, nor the bonds of Ulysses, nor the wax poured melting into men's ears; but a loosening of all bonds, and liberty to listen to every one that approaches. For it is worthy of us to hear such a song as this; and to hear such singers as these, seems to me to be a thing to be prayed for. But if one wishes to hear the choir of the apostles as well, he will find the same harmony of song. For the others sang beforehand the divine plan in a mystical manner; but these sing an interpretation of what has been mystically announced by the former. Oh, concordant harmony, composed by the Divine Spirit! Oh, the comeliness of those who sing of the mysteries of God! Oh, that I also may join in these songs in my prayer. Let us then also sing the like song, and raise the hymn to the Holy Father, glorifying in the Spirit Jesus, who is in His bosom. [2829]
Shun not, man, a spiritual hymn, nor be ill-disposed to listen to it. Death belongs not to it; a story of salvation is our song. Already I seem to taste better enjoyments, as I discourse on such subjects as these; and especially when there is before me such a flowering meadow, that is to say, our assembly of those who unite in singing and hearing the divine mysteries. Wherefore I dare to ask you to listen to me with ears free from all envy, without imitating the jealousy of Cain, [2830] or persecuting your brother, like Esau, [2831] or approving the brethren of Joseph, [2832] because they hated their brother on account of his words; but differing far from all these, insomuch that each of you is used to speak the mind of his neighbour. And, on this account, there is no evil jealousy among you, as ye have undertaken to supply your brother's deficiencies. O noble audience, and venerable company, and spiritual food! That I may ever have a right to share in such pleasures, be this my prayer!
Valentinian. As I was walking yesterday evening, my friend, along the shore of the sea, and was gazing on it somewhat intently, I saw an extraordinary instance of divine power, and a work of art produced by wise science, if at least such a thing may be called a work of art. For as that verse of Homer [2833] says,--
"As when two adverse winds blowing from Thrace,
Boreas and Zephyrus, the fishy deep
Vex sudden, all around, the sable flood
High curled, flings forth the salt weed on the shore;"--
So it seemed to me to have happened yesterday. For I saw waves very like mountain-tops, and, so to speak, reaching up to heaven itself. Whence I expected nothing else but that the whole land would be deluged, and I began to form in my mind a place of escape, and a Noah's ark. But it was not as I thought; for, just as the sea rose to a crest, it broke up again into itself, without overstepping its own limits, having, so to speak, a feeling of awe for a divine decree. [2834] And as oftentimes a servant, compelled by his master to do something against his will, obeys the command through fear, while he dares not say a word of what he suffers in his unwillingness to do it, but, full of rage, mutters to himself,--somewhat so it appeared to me that the sea, as if enraged and confining its awe within itself, kept itself under, as not willing to let its Master perceive its anger.
On these occurrences I began to gaze in silence, and wished to measure in my mind the heaven and its sphere. I began to inquire whence it rises and where it sets; also what sort of motion it had--whether a progressive one, that is to say, one from place to place, or a revolving one; and, besides, how its movement is continued. And, of a truth, it seemed worth while to inquire also about the sun,--what is the manner of his being set in the heaven; also what is the orbit he traverses; also whither it is that, after a short time, he retires; and why it is that even he does not go out of his proper course: but he, too, as one may say, is observing a commandment of a higher power, and appears with us just when he is allowed to do so, and departs as if he were called away.