9. But when a dispute arises concerning matters of doctrine, and all take their weapons from the same Scriptures, of what weight will any one's life be able to prove? What then will be the good of his many austerities, when after such painful exercises, any one from the Priest's great unskillfulness in argument fall into heresy, and be cut off from the body of the Church, a misfortune which I have myself seen many suffering. Of what profit then will his patience be to him? None; no more than there will be in a sound faith if the life is corrupt. Wherefore, for this reason more than for all others, it concerns him whose office it is to teach others, to be experienced in disputations of this kind. For though he himself stands safely, and is unhurt by the gainsayers, yet the simple multitude under his direction, when they see their leader defeated, and without any answer for the gainsayers, will be apt to lay the blame of his discomfiture not on his own weakness, but on the doctrines themselves, as though they were faulty; and so by reason of the inexperience of one, great numbers are brought to extreme ruin; for though they do not entirely go over to the adversary, yet they are forced to doubt about matters in which formerly they firmly believed, and those whom they used to approach with unswerving confidence, they are unable to hold to any longer steadfastly, but in consequence of their leader's defeat, so great a storm settles down upon their souls, that the mischief ends in their shipwreck altogether. But how dire is the destruction, and how terrible the fire which such a leader brings upon his own wretched head for every soul which is thus lost, thou wilt not need to learn from me, as thou knowest all this perfectly. Is this then pride, is this vainglory in me, to be unwilling to be the cause of the destruction of so many souls? and of procuring for myself greater punishment in the world to come, than that which now awaits me there? Who would say so? surely no one, unless he should wish to find fault where there is none, and to moralize over other men's calamities.
[125] prolabon gar autos >autou tauten ?pheileto ten ?pologian.
[126] Matt. xxv. 30.
[127] Mark ix. 44.
[128] Matt. xxiv. 51; Luke xii. 46. Dichotometheai. Some take this word to express the severance of the unrighteous from the godly priest, but others seek its meaning rather in the "dividing asunder" of sacrificial victims (Heb. iv. 12), or in the punishment of "sawing asunder" (Dan. iii. 29; Heb. xi. 37): so that its use by SS. Matthew and Luke would point to the distress caused by the severance between conscience and practice, which will be the reflective torment of lost souls.
[129] 1 Sam. ix. 21.
[130] paranomias. If paroinias be read, then "excesses" must be understood:--the word meaning, 1st, excess in drink; and 2d, excess of any kind.
[131] Aaron.
[132] Ex. xxxii. 10, 11.
[133] Ex. iv. 13.
[134] Numb. xi. 15. Ei d'houto su poieis moi ?pokteinonme, LXX.
[135] Numb. xx. 12.
[136] Numb. xii. 3.
[137] Ex. xxxiii. 11.
[138] John xii. 6.
[139] i.e., because he had been chosen an apostle.
[140] John xv. 22-24.
[141] 1 Tim. v. 22.
[142] 'Emporias, restricted here to commerce carried on by sea, as the context shows.
[143] See Luke xiv. 28, 29.
[144] Is. lxvi. 24.
[145] Matt. xxiv. 51. The Revised Version in the margin renders, the lord of that servant shall severely scourge him. See above, p. 61, note.
[146] Col. i. 18, 24.
[147] Eph. v. 27.
[148] Paidotribon, literally, those who teach boys wrestling.
[149] Eph. vi. 16, 17.
[150] 1 Pet. iii. 15. "Haud seio an ita loqui possit primatus Romani defensor." Bengel's Edition of this Treatise, Leipzig, 1834, p. 145, note 17.
[151] Acts vi. 4.
[152] Col. iii. 16.
[153] The followers of Manes, or Manichæus, who was born about 240 A.D. He taught that God was the cause of good, and matter the cause of evil. This theory about matter led him to hold that the body of Jesus was an incorporeal phantom. He eliminated the Old Testament from the Scriptures, and held himself at liberty also to reject such passages in the New Testament as were opposed to his own opinions. See Robertson: Hist. of the Christian Church, vol. i. 139-145.
[154] "hoi ten >imarmn?en eis?gontes," sc. The Stoics. They were still a numerous body, and St. Chrysostom himself wrote six Homilies against them.
[155] Marcion and Valentinus (A.D. 140) were each founders of a form of Gnosticism. Each held that the God of the Old Testament was morally contrary to the God of the New: while the system of Valentinus represented the imaginative and speculative side of Gnosticism, that of Marcion represented its practical side, and was rather religious than theological. The sect of the Valentinians lasted as late as the 5th century; and Marcionism was not extinct till the 6th.
[156] Sc. Jews and Marcionites.
[157] Sabellius was condemned in a Council held in Rome, A.D. 263, for holding that there is but one person in the Godhead, and that the Word and Holy Spirit are only virtues or emanations of the Deity. Arius held that our Lord Jesus Christ existed before His Incarnation, that by Him as by an instrument the Supreme God made the worlds, and that as being the most ancient and the highest of created beings, He is to be worshipped; but that He had a beginning of existence, and so is not God's co-eternally begotten Son, nor of the very substance of the Supreme God. See Liddon, Bampton Lectures, i. p. 25. The heresy of Arius was condemned at the Council of Nicæa, A.D. 325.
[158] Sc. The Arians.
[159] Paul of Samosata was appointed Bishop of Antioch about 260 A.D. The Humanitarian movement culminated in his teaching, which maintained that the Word was only in the Father, as reason is in man; that Jesus was a mere man, and that he is called Son of God as having, in a certain sense, become such through the influence of the Divine Word which dwelt in him, but without any personal union.
[160] i.e., while he maintained the Unity of the Godhead against the Arians there was danger of slipping into the Sabellian error of "confounding the Persons."
[161] i.e., while he divided the Persons against the Sabellians he had to guard against the Arian error of "dividing the substance" also.
[162] Ps. xxxvi. 6.
[163] 2 Cor. xi. 6. See also, 2 Cor. x. 10.
[164] Acts xx. 10.
[165] Acts xiv. 11.
[166] 2 Cor. xii. 2-4.
[167] Rom. ix. 3.
[168] terthreian, from t?rthron, literally, a sail-rope. The man who condescends to catching the ear by mere rhetorical artifice being like the mountebank on the trapeze, fascinating the spectators in a circus by his performances.
[169] 2 Cor. xi. 6.
[170] Acts ix. 22.
[171] See Acts ix. 29.
[172] Acts xvii. 34.
[173] Acts xx. 9.
[174] Acts xvii. 18.
[175] Acts xiv. 11.
[176] 2 Cor. x. 5.
[177] 2 Cor. xi. 2.
[178] 1 Tim. iv. 13.
[179] 1 Tim. iv. 16.
[180] 2 Tim. ii. 24.
[181] 2 Tim. iii. 14, 15.
[182] 2 Tim. iii. 16, 17, or "every Scripture inspired of God is also profitable," etc., so rendered in the Revised Version.
[183] Titus i. 7, 9. Revised Version.
[184] Col. iii. 16.
[185] Col. iv. 6.
[186] 1 Peter iii. 15.
[187] 1 Thess. v. 11.
[188] 1 Tim. v. 17.
[189] Matt. v. 19.
[190] Acts xx. 31.