[2774] Ps. xxxiii. 6.
[2775] Eccles. vii. 24.
[2776] Ib. i. 18.
[2777] Ps. xxvi. 7 (LXX.).
[2778] Ib. xviii. 12; civ. 6.
[2779] 1 Tim. vi. 16.
[2780] Exod. xxxiii. 19.
[2781] S. Matt. xxii. 13.
[2782] Ps. xxii. 11.
[2783] Ib. xix. 10; cxix. 103.
[2784] Prov. ii. 3.
[2785] 2 Cor. xi. 23.
[2786] Ps. cvii. 40.
[2787] Princes, archontas. i.e. The office of the priesthood, which is one of dignity, has been brought into contempt by the unworthiness of those ordained to it, who have, by their want of the virtues requisite for their office, made it an empty name--and, not only so, but have been actively vicious.
[2788] Knowledge, &c. cf. the ironical passage, §§ 49, 50.
[2789] 1 Cor. ii. 10.
[2790] Ib. vi. 1, 7.
[2791] S. Matt. vii. 6.
[2792] Ps. cvi. 39.
[2793] Deut. xxiii. 3.
[2794] Ps. cxviii. 19.
[2795] Ib. x. 7; cxl. 3.
[2796] Gen. i. 2.
[2797] Isai. xxiv. 2; Hos. iv. 9.
[2798] Ps. cxxix. 3 (LXX.).
[2799] 1 Cor. iv. 9.
[2800] Eph. vi. 12.
[2801] S. James ii. 19.
[2802] Isai. lii. 5; Rom. ii. 24.
[2803] Phil. iii. 3.
[2804] Eph. vi. 11.
[2805] Exod. xvii. 11.
[2806] Josh. v. 14.
[2807] 1 Sam. xvi. 16; xvii. 49.
[2808] Ps. xviii. 39.
[2809] Ib. cxliv. 1.
[2810] 1 Sam. vii. 5.
[2811] Joel ii. 17.
[2812] Ezek. xiv. 14, 20.
[2813] Judah, etc., cf. Orat. vi. 7; xxxii. 4.
[2814] Lam. iii. 28.
[2815] Ib. iii. 19.
[2816] Mic. ii. 3.
[2817] Deut. xxxii. 15.
[2818] Jer. iii. 14.
[2819] Hos. x. 1.
[2820] Jer. ii. 21; x. 16.
[2821] Ps. lxv. 10.
[2822] Isai. lxii. 3.
[2823] Ezek. xxviii. 12.
[2824] Ib. xxiii. 42.
[2825] Phil. iii. 21.
[2826] Ps. xl. 2; lxix. 2.
[2827] Rom. vii. 23.
[2828] Exod. xxiv. 1, 2.
[2829] Ib. xix. 16.
[2830] Heb. xii. 18.
[2831] Exod. xxiv. 15, 18.
[2832] 2 Cor. iii. 6, 7.
[2833] Lev. x. 1.
[2834] 1 Sam. ii. 12, 15, 23.
[2835] 2 Sam. vi. 6.
[2836] Lev. xxi. 17.
[2837] Ib. xxii. 19.
[2838] Ib. viii. 31.
[2839] Exod. xxx. 33, 38.
[2840] Lev. xvi. 34; Heb. ix. 7.
[2841] Rom. xii. 1.
[2842] Ps. l. 14.
[2843] The great mysteries, i.e., the Sacrificial Death of Christ upon the Cross.
[2844] Isai. l. 4; vi. 10.
[2845] Prov. xxv. 12.
[2846] Ps. cxix. 131.
[2847] Ib. lxxxi. 10.
[2848] 1 Cor. xiv. 2.
[2849] Prov. xv. 7 (LXX.).
[2850] Ps. lvii. 9.
[2851] Ib. cxxxvii. 6.
[2852] Ib. xviii. 33; xl. 3.
[2853] Ib. lxxiii. 2.
[2854] Rom. vi. 13.
[2855] 2 Cor. v. 4.
[2856] S. Luke xxiv. 32.
[2857] Ps. xii. 7.
[2858] Triple, a quotation from Prov. xxii. 20. The meaning of the Hebrew is doubtful. Clémencet, not noticing this, suggests that the allusion is to the law being twice inscribed on tables of stone, once on the heart by the Spirit.
[2859] Prov. xxii. 20 (LXX.).
[2860] 1 Cor. ii. 16.
[2861] Isai. xlv. 3.
[2862] 1 Cor. ii. 13.
[2863] Ps. xxvii. 4.
[2864] 2 Cor. vi. 16.
[2865] Eph. ii. 22.
[2866] Ib. vii. 6.
[2867] Rom. vi. 6.
[2868] Titles. These are more fully dealt with Orat. xxx. 17-21.
[2869] 1 Cor. ii. 17.
[2870] Ib. iii. 2.
[2871] Numb. i. 3.
[2872] Eph. i. 23.
[2873] S. Luke xiv. 28.
[2874] Gen. xxvii. 21, sq.
[2875] Eccles. iii. 1.
[2876] Ps. cxliii. 5.
[2877] S. Matt. v. 18.
[2878] Jonah i. 3.
[2879] A man. A Greek scholiast says that this was Origen (ob. a.d. 235), who gives this interpretation in his commentary on the prophecy of Jonah. Elias says that he had read it in the commentary of Methodius (fl. a.d. 300), who usually combats Origen's interpretations. We know that Origen did comment on the book of Job, and that Methodius wrote on one at least of the Minor Prophets: but both these works have been lost, so that we cannot absolutely decide the question, though the assurance with which both the notes are written makes us hesitate to consider either of them merely a happy guess. Combefis thinks that S. Greg. alludes to one of his own instructors: the gen. with akouo (cf. Plato, Gorg., 503, c.) favours this view, but the interpretation may well have been derived from one of the earlier writers.
[2880] Jonah i. 3.
[2881] Rom. xi. 33.
[2882] Ps. cxxxix. 8 et seq.
[2883] Shall be worked out. This promise, as Elias tells us, was fulfilled by S. Gregory in his History of Ezekiel the Prophet, a work no longer extant.
[2884] Of the Church. S. Gregory seems to describe a series of three steps, (1) the Church, of which all should be worthy members, (2) the Sanctuary, reserved for the Priests, (3) the Throne of the Bishop. Clémencet refers both 1 and 2 to the ministry. If we suppose S. Gregory's own position to be referred to, the third would be applicable to his office under his father, which is held by Thomassin to have been that of Vicar-General (Disc. Eccles., I., ii., 7 §§ 2, 3). A similar post was offered to him by S. Basil (Orat., xliii., 39).
[2885] 1 Sam. x. 22.
[2886] Ezek. iii. 18.
[2887] 1 Sam. xv. 26; cf. Hos. iv. 6.
[2888] Zech. vii. 11, 13.
[2889] Ps. ci. 1.
[2890] Exod. iv. 10, 13, 27.
[2891] Isai. vi. 8.
[2892] Jer. i. 6.
[2893] Ps. cxix. 24.
[2894] Isai. l. 6.
[2895] Ib. liii. 7.
[2896] 1 Pet. v. 6.
[2897] Isai. xlii. 14.
[2898] Ib. xxvi. 20.
[2899] Ps. cvii. 32.
[2900] 1 Pet. v. 4.
[2901] Of the land, lit., "external," i.e. the Roman laws, which gave absolute power to a father over his children.
[2902] Ecclus. iii. 9.
[2903] Ps. cxxxii. 13, 14.
[2904] Heb. xii. 23.
[2905] Heb. xiii. 20.
[2906] Eph. ii. 14.
[2907] 1 Sam. ii. 8; Ps. cxiii. 7.
[2908] Ps. lxxviii. 70.
[2909] 1 Sam. xvii. 14.
[2910] Ps. lxviii. 11.
[2911] Ps. lxxiii. 23, 24.
[2912] Ezek. xxxiv. 12.
[2913] Jer. iii. 15.
[2914] Zech. xi. 15.
[2915] Ps. lxviii. 35.
[2916] Eph. v. 27.
[2917] Ps. lxxxvii. 7 (LXX.).
[2918] Ps. cx. 3 (LXX.).
[2919] Ps. xxix. 9.
Oration III.
To Those Who Had Invited Him, and Not Come to Receive Him.
(About Easter a.d. 362.)
I. How slow you are, my friends and brethren, to come to listen to my words, though you were so swift in tyrannizing over me, and tearing me from my Citadel Solitude, which I had embraced in preference to everything else, and as coadjutress and mother of the divine ascent, and as deifying man, [2920] I had especially admired, and had set before me as the guide of my whole life. [2921] How is it that, now you have got it, you thus despise what you so greatly desired to obtain, and seem to be better able to desire the absent than to enjoy the present; as though you preferred to possess my teaching rather than to profit by it? Yes, I may even say this to you: "I became a surfeit unto you before you tasted of me, or gave me a trial" [2922] --which is most strange.
II. And neither did you entertain me as a guest, nor, if I may make a remark of a more compassionate kind, did you allow yourselves to be entertained by me, reverencing this command if nothing else; nor did you take me by the hand, as beginning a new task; nor encourage me in my timidity, nor console me for the violence I had suffered; but--I shrink from saying it, though say it I must--you made my festival no festival, and received me with no happy introduction; and you mingled the solemn festival with sorrow, because it lacked that which most of all would have contributed to its happiness, the presence of you my conquerors, for it would not be true to call you people who love me. So easily is anything despised which is easily conquered, and the proud receives attention, while he who is humble before God is slighted.
III. What will ye? Shall I be judged by you, or shall I be your judge? Shall I pass a verdict, or receive one, for I hope to be acquitted if I be judged, and if I give sentence, to give it against you justly? The charge against you is that you do not answer my love with equal measure, nor do you repay my obedience with honour, nor do you pledge the future to me by your present alacrity--though even if you had, I could hardly have believed it. But each of you has something which he prefers to both the old and the new Pastor, neither reverencing the grey hairs of the one, nor calling out the youthful spirit of the other.
IV. There is a Banquet in the Gospels, [2923] and a hospitable Host and friends; and the Banquet is most pleasant, for it is the marriage of His Son. He calleth them, but they come not: He is angry, and--I pass over the interval for fear of bad omen--but, to speak gently, He filleth the Banquet with others. God forbid that this should be your case; but yet you have treated me (how shall I put it gently?) with as much haughtiness or boldness as they who after being called to a feast rise up against it, and insult their host; for you, though you are not of the number of those who are without, or are invited to the marriage, but are yourselves those who invited me, and bound me to the Holy Table, and shewed me the glory of the Bridal Chamber, then deserted me (this is the most splendid thing about you)--one to his field, another to his newly bought yoke of oxen, another to his just-married wife, another to some other trifling matter; you were all scattered and dispersed, caring little for the Bridechamber and the Bridegroom.
V. On this account I was filled with despondency and perplexity--for I will not keep silence about what I have suffered--and I was very near withholding the discourse which I was minded to bestow as a Marriage-gift, the most beautiful and precious of all I had; and I very nearly let it loose upon you, whom, now that the violence had once been done to me, I greatly longed for: for I thought I could get from this a splendid theme, and because my love sharpened my tongue--love which is very hot and ready for accusation when it is stirred to jealousy by grief which it conceives from some unexpected neglect. If any of you has been pierced with love's sting, and has felt himself neglected, he knows the feeling, and will pardon one who so suffers, because he himself has been near the same frenzy.
VI. But it is not permitted to me at the present time to say to you anything upbraiding; and God forbid I ever should. And even now perhaps I have reproached you more than in due measure, the Sacred Flock, the praise-worthy nurselings of Christ, the Divine inheritance; by which, O God, Thou art rich, even wert Thou poor in all other respects. To Thee, I think, are fitting those words, "The lot is fallen unto Thee in a fair ground: yea Thou hast the goodliest heritage." [2925] Nor will I allow that the most populous cities or the broadest flocks have any advantage over us, the little ones of the smallest of all the tribes of Israel, of the least of the thousands of Judah, [2926] of the little Bethlehem among cities, [2927] where Christ was born and is from the beginning well-known and worshipped; amongst those whom the Father is exalted, and the Son is held to be equal to Him, and the Holy Ghost is glorified with Them: we who are of one soul, who mind the same thing, who in nothing injure the Trinity, neither by preferring One Person above another, nor by cutting off any: as those bad umpires and measurers of the Godhead do, who by magnifying One Person more than is fit, diminish and insult the whole.
VII. But do ye also, if you bear me any good will--ye who are my husbandry, my vineyard, my own bowels, or rather His Who is our common Father, for in Christ he hath begotten you through the Gospels [2928] --shew to us also some respect. It is only fair, since we have honoured you above all else: ye are my witnesses, ye, and they who have placed in our hands this--shall I say Authority, or Service? And if to him that loveth most is due, how shall I measure the love, for which I have made you my debtors by my own love? Rather, shew respect for yourselves, and the Image committed to your care, [2929] and Him Who committed it, and the Sufferings of Christ, and your hopes therefrom, holding fast the faith which ye have received, and in which ye were brought up, by which also ye are being saved, and trust to save others (for not many, be well assured, can boast of what you can), and reckoning piety to consist, not in often speaking about God, but in silence for the most part, for the tongue is a dangerous thing to men, if it be not governed by reason. Believe that listening is always less dangerous than talking, just as learning about God is more pleasant than teaching. Leave the more accurate search into these questions to those who are the Stewards of the Word; and for yourselves, worship a little in words, but more by your actions, and rather by keeping the Law than by admiring the Lawgiver; shew your love for Him by fleeing from wickedness, pursuing after virtue, living in the Spirit, walking in the Spirit, drawing your knowledge from Him, building upon the foundation of the faith, not wood or hay or stubble, [2930] weak materials and easily spent when the fire shall try our works or destroy them; but gold, silver, precious stones, which remain and stand.