XIII. This was proclaimed by the Prophets in such passages as the following:--The Spirit of the Lord is upon me; [4253] and, There shall rest upon Him Seven Spirits; and The Spirit of the Lord descended and led them; [4254] and The spirit of Knowledge filling Bezaleel, [4255] the Master-builder of the Tabernacle; and, The Spirit provoking to anger; [4256] and the Spirit carrying away Elias in a chariot, [4257] and sought in double measure by Elissæus; and David led and strengthened by the Good and Princely Spirit. [4258] And He was promised by the mouth of Joel first, who said, And it shall be in the last days that I will pour out of My Spirit upon all flesh (that is, upon all that believe), and upon your sons and upon your daughters, [4259] and the rest; and then afterwards by Jesus, being glorified by Him, and giving back glory to Him, as He was glorified by and glorified the Father. [4260] And how abundant was this Promise. He shall abide for ever, and shall remain with you, whether now with those who in the sphere of time are worthy, or hereafter with those who are counted worthy of that world, when we have kept Him altogether by our life here, and not rejected Him in so far as we sin.
XIV. This Spirit shares with the Son in working both the Creation and the Resurrection, as you may be shewn by this Scripture; By the Word of the Lord were the heavens made, and all the power of them by the breath of His Mouth; [4261] and this, The Spirit of God that made me, and the Breath of the Almighty that teacheth me; [4262] and again, Thou shalt send forth Thy Spirit and they shall be created, and Thou shalt renew the face of the earth. [4263] And He is the Author of spiritual regeneration. Here is your proof:--None can see or enter into the Kingdom, except he be born again of the Spirit, [4264] and be cleansed from the first birth, which is a mystery of the night, by a remoulding of the day and of the Light, by which every one singly is created anew. This Spirit, for He is most wise and most loving, [4265] if He takes possession of a shepherd makes him a Psalmist, subduing evil spirits by his song, [4266] and proclaims him King; if he possess a goatherd and scraper [4267] of sycamore fruit, [4268] He makes him a Prophet. Call to mind David and Amos. If He possess a goodly youth, He makes him a Judge of Elders, [4269] even beyond his years, as Daniel testifies, who conquered the lions in their den. [4270] If He takes possession of Fishermen, He makes them catch the whole world in the nets of Christ, taking them up in the meshes of the Word. Look at Peter and Andrew and the Sons of Thunder, thundering the things of the Spirit. If of Publicans, He makes gain of them for discipleship, and makes them merchants of souls; witness Matthew, yesterday a Publican, today an Evangelist. If of zealous persecutors, He changes the current of their zeal, and makes them Pauls instead of Sauls, and as full of piety as He found them of wickedness. And He is the Spirit of Meekness, and yet is provoked by those who sin. Let us therefore make proof of Him as gentle, not as wrathful, by confessing His Dignity; and let us not desire to see Him implacably wrathful. He too it is who has made me today a bold herald to you;--if without rest to myself, God be thanked; but if with risk, thanks to Him nevertheless; in the one case, that He may spare those that hate us; in the other, that He may consecrate us, in receiving this reward of our preaching of the Gospel, to be made perfect by blood.
XV. They spoke with strange tongues, and not those of their native land; and the wonder was great, a language spoken by those who had not learnt it. And the sign is to them that believe not, [4271] and not to them that believe, that it may be an accusation of the unbelievers, as it is written, With other tongues and other lips will I speak unto this people, and not even so will they listen to Me [4272] saith the Lord. But they heard. Here stop a little and raise a question, how you are to divide the words. For the expression has an ambiguity, which is to be determined by the punctuation. Did they each hear in their own dialect [4273] so that if I may so say, one sound was uttered, but many were heard; the air being thus beaten and, so to speak, sounds being produced more clear than the original sound; or are we to put the stop after "they Heard," and then to add "them speaking in their own languages" to what follows, so that it would be speaking in languages their own to the hearers, which would be foreign to the speakers? I prefer to put it this latter way; for on the other plan the miracle would be rather of the hearers than of the speakers; whereas in this it would be on the speakers' side; and it was they who were reproached for drunkenness, evidently because they by the Spirit wrought a miracle in the matter of the tongues.
XVI. But as the old Confusion of tongues was laudable, when men who were of one language in wickedness and impiety, even as some now venture to be, were building the Tower; [4274] for by the confusion of their language the unity of their intention was broken up, and their undertaking destroyed; so much more worthy of praise is the present miraculous one. For being poured from One Spirit upon many men, it brings them again into harmony. And there is a diversity of Gifts, which stands in need of yet another Gift to discern which is the best, where all are praiseworthy. And that division also might be called noble of which David says, Drown O Lord and divide their tongues. [4275] Why? Because they loved all words of drowning, the deceitful tongue. [4276] Where he all but expressly arraigns the tongues of the present day [4277] which sever the Godhead. Thus much upon this point.
XVII. Next, since it was to inhabitants of Jerusalem, most devout Jews, Parthians, Medes, and Elamites, Egyptians, and Libyans, Cretans too, and Arabians, and Mesopotamians, and my own Cappadocians, that the tongues spake, and to Jews (if any one prefer so to understand it), out of every nation under heaven thither collected; it is worth while to see who these were and of what captivity. For the captivity in Egypt and Babylon was circumscribed, and moreover had long since been brought to an end by the Return; and that under the Romans, which was exacted for their audacity against our Saviour, was not yet come to pass, though it was in the near future. It remains then to understand it of the captivity under Antiochus, which happened not so very long before this time. But if any does not accept this explanation, as being too elaborate, seeing that this captivity was neither ancient nor widespread over the world, and is looking for a more reliable--perhaps the best way to take it would be as follows. The nation was removed many times, as Esdras related; and some of the Tribes were recovered, and some were left behind; of whom probably (dispersed as they were among the nations) some would have been present and shared the miracle.
XVIII. These questions have been examined before by the studious, and perhaps not without occasion; and whatever else any one may contribute at the present day, he will be joined with us. But now it is our duty to dissolve this Assembly, for enough has been said. But the Festival is never to be put an end to; but kept now indeed with our bodies; but a little later on altogether spiritually there, where we shall see the reasons of these things more purely and clearly, in the Word Himself, and God, and our Lord Jesus Christ, the True Festival and Rejoicing of the Saved--to Whom be the glory and the worship, with the Father and the Holy Ghost, now and for ever. Amen.
[4205] They deify bad passions, and then act as if the gratification of them were an honour to the gods in whom they have personified them.
[4206] The followers of Pythagoras swore by their master, who taught them the mystic properties of the number Four, which he called the Fountain of the Universe, because all things were made of four elements.
[4207] The Simonians and Marcionites were two Gnostic sects, the one deriving its name from Simon Magus, the other from Marcion of Sinope. Simon, of whom we read in the Acts c. viii., is generally regarded by the Fathers as the precursor of the Gnostic Heresies. He maintained a system of Emanations from God, of which he claimed to be himself the chief. In his teaching the first cause of all things was an Ineffable Existence or Non-existence, which he sometimes called Silence and sometimes Fire, from which the Universe was generated by a series of six Emanations called Roots, which he arranged in pairs, male and female; and these six contained among them the whole Essence of his first Principle Silence. These Roots with Simon himself and his consort Helena, make up the Ogdoad referred to in the text. Marcion was a native of Sinope in Pontus, and flourished about the middle of the Second Century. His system of teaching was mainly rationalistic, and did not recognize (Dr. Mansel tells us, "Gnostic Heresies," p. 203) any theory of Emanations as connecting links between God and the world; for from his point of view the Supreme God was not, even indirectly, the Author of the world. It would seem that S. Gregory is confusing Marcion with Valentinus, and Egyptian heresiarch who flourished about the same time. In his theory we first find a system of "Æons," divided into an Ogdoad, a Decad, and a Dodecad. Or he may mean Marcus, a follower of Valentinus, and founder of the subordinate sect of the Marcosians.
[4208] Exod. xii. 15.
[4209] Ib. xxi. 2.
[4210] Eccles. xi. 2. S. Gregory himself (Or. xviii. "in laudem Patris," c. 20) comments upon this passage as enjoining liberal almsgiving. S. Ambrose (in Luc. vi.) has a mystical interpretation somewhat resembling that here referred to: but I cannot find a predecessor of Gregory on the verse. Some later commentators, according to Cornelius and Lapide, take the Seven of the poor in this life, and the Eight of the souls in Purgatory, following a common interpretation of these numbers.
[4211] Isa. xi. 2.
[4212] Ps. xix. 6.
[4213] Job v. 19.
[4214] Matt. xviii. 22.
[4215] Gen. iv. 24.
[4216] It will be worth while, says Nicetas, to add S. John Chrysostom's account of the sevenfold punishment which was inflicted on Cain. The number Seven he says (Hom. in Gen. xix. 5, p. 168 c.) is often used in Holy Scripture in the sense of multitude, as e.g., in such places, as, "The barren hath borne seven," and the like. So here; the greatness of the crime is implied, and that it is not a simple and single crime, but seven sins; and those of such a sort that every one of them must be avenged by a very severe punishment. First, that he envied his brother when he saw that God loved him, a sin which without any other added to it was sufficient to be deadly. The next was that this sin was against a brother. The third that he compassed a deceit. The fourth that he perpetrated a murder. The fifth that it was his brother that he slew. The sixth that he was the first man to commit a murder. The seventh that he lied to God. You have followed these steps with your mind, or do you desire that I should repeat the enumeration in a fuller way, to make you understand how each of these sins would be visited with a very severe penalty, even if it stood alone. Who would judge a man worthy of pardon who envies another simply because he enjoys the favour and love of God? Here then is one very great and inexpiable sin. And this is shewn to be even more atrocious when he who is envied is a brother, and has done him no wrong. Further, he contrived a deceit, bringing his brother out by a trick into the field, without reverence for nature herself. The fourth crime is the murder which he committed. The fifth is that it was his brother whom he put to death; his brother, I say, that came out of the same womb. Sixthly, he was the first inventor of murder. Seventhly, when questioned by God he did not hesitate to lie. And therefore because he dared to lay hands on his brother, he draws upon himself severe punishments. He then proceeds to shew how Lamech's crime was worse than Cain's, and is therefore said to be punished seventy times; that is, in manifold ways. Lamech slew a man and a young man, and this, after the law against murder had been given; that is, after God had punished Cain. Cain's punishment he says was sevenfold, corresponding to his seven sins:--1. Cursed is the ground for thy sake. 2. Thou shalt till the ground; i.e., thou shalt never rest from the toils of husbandry. 3. It shall not yield unto thee its strength; 4. thy labours shall be barren, and 5. "sighing and trembling" shalt thou be. And the sixth is from the lips of Cain himself:--"If Thou castest me out from the earth," i.e., from all earthly conveniences, "from Thy face shall I be hid." And God put a mark upon Cain; this is the seventh punishment--a mark of infamy declaring his guilt and shame to all that should see him. Others according to the same authority (and Bishop Wordsworth adopts the explanation) explains it thus. From Cain to the Deluge are seven generations, and then the world was punished because sin had spread far and wide. But Lamech's sin could not be cured by the Deluge, but only by Him Who taketh away the sin of the world. Then count all the generations from Adam to Christ, and according to the Genealogy in Luke, you will find that our Lord was born in the seventieth generation. This is S. Jerome's explanation.