RELIGIOUS ENCYCLOPEDIA
Ephraem Epiklesis
desirable, is not always to be chosen, for it may lead to pain greater than itself. It is not the pleasure of the moment, therefore, that we are to follow (the view of the Cyrenaics), but pleasure in a larger sense, including the pleasures of the mind, as well as those of sense. The chief good, then, becomes a happy life as a whole, the substance of which, in the view of Epicurus, is a healthy body and a tranquil mind. He held that some desires are unnatural, others unnecessary. These are to be controlled. He is reported to have said, " If thou wilt make a man happy, add not unto his riches, but take away from his desires."
With Epicurus the cardinal virtue is the insight necessary to regulate the desires and thus secure an ultimate preponderance of pleasure over pain. From this virtue all others follow. On the whole, his teaching is hardly less rigorous than that of the Stoics, who expressly made virtue the end of conduct. A virtuous life, Epicurus holds, is the condition of a happy life; if one is consistently virtuous, his life can be only one of happiness. He taught a prudential justice. The just man spares himself the annoyance to which an unjust man is subjected by his fellows. Fear of the gods and fear of death Epicurus considered superstitions disturbing to a happy life, because, as happy and imperishable creatures, the gods have nothing to do with the affairs of this world. Unlike other philosophers of his time Epicurus believed in the freedom of the will. Epicureanism was long popular in Rome and was one of the four philosophical schools endowed by Marcus Aurelius. Through his De natura rerum Lucretius became the chief literary representative of Epicurean philosophy. The teachings of Epicurus, revived by Pierre Gassendi (q.v.) became extremely popular in the time of the English deists and the French encyclopedists.
Bibliography: P. von Gizycki, Ueber das Leben und M oralphilosophie des Epikurus, Berlin, 1879; E. Pfleiderer, Euddmonismus und Egoismus, Leipsic, 1880; W. Wallace, Epicureanism, London, 1880; W. L. Courtney, Studies in Philosophy, ib. 1882; T. C. Baring, The Scheme of Epicurus, ib. 1884; F. W. Newman, Epicureanism, in Miscellanies, vol. iv., ib. 1891; P. Cassel, Epikuros der Philosoph, Berlin, 1892; E. Zeller, Stoics, Epicureans, and Sceptics, London, 1892; H. O. Newland, Epicureanism, ib. 1900; J. Masson, Lucretius, Epicurean and Poet, ib., 1908; and the general works by A. W. Benn (Greek Philosophers, ib. 1882), B. Erdmann (Hist, of Philosophy, ib. 1893), and W. Windelband (Hist, of Ancient Philosophy, ib. 1900). Additional literature is indicated in J. M. Baldwin, Dictionary of Philosophy and Psychology, iii. 1, pp. 192-194, 351-352, New York, 1905.
EPIKLESIS OR INVOCATION: In the strict sense of the term, the liturgical prayer by which generally in the ancient Church, and to this day in the Eastern, the sacramental elements (water, oil, bread and wine) are consecrated; a prayer in which God is asked to send down the Holy Ghost upon the elements, the assumption being that such a prayer has the mysterious power of bringing the Holy Ghost into such relation with the elements that they become operative for their purpose. Since this purpose is the sanctification of the receivers of the sacrament, a prayer for this also is usually included in the epiklesis. Its position in the liturgy is generally after the thanksgiving and words of institution. As a rule it begins with what
is called the anamnesis or commemoration, followed by the anaphora or oblation, after which comes the epiklesis proper. It has a natural affinity with the prayers of consecration in the so-called Sacramentals (q.v.), but is to be distinguished definitely from them. See Holy Water.
The oldest evidence for the epiklesis in the form
of a prayer of consecration for the baptismal water
is found in Tertullian {Debaptismate, iv.); but there
is no doubt that it was a constant feature of the
baptismal rite in both East and West throughout
the third and fourth centuries. In the West the
next oldest evidence is scarcely Cyp-
In the rian, who speaks only of a " cleansing
Baptismal and sanctifying " of the baptismal
Service, water (Epist., lxx. 1), but rather the Synod of Carthage of 256, with its phrase " The water sanctified by prayer." Ambrose asserts (De spiritu sancto, I. vii. 88) that the descent of the Holy Ghost, effected by the prayer of the priest, hallows the water, and Jerome (Contra Luciferum, vi. and vii.) is unable to conceive any true baptism without such a descent. Augustine bears unmistakable witness to the same usage; yet he, together with Ambrose, was to a great extent responsible for upsetting the universal belief in the efficacy of the epiklesis and replacing it, as the central point in the action of the Eucharist at least, by the words of institution. In his conflict with the Donatists he felt obliged to place the consecrating power less in a prayer of epiklesis, which was clearly in his time not uniform in its wording, than in a fixed, authoritative formula, such as was that of baptism, resting upon the words of institution of the sacrament. This opened the way for a new view of consecration, which in the Eucharist especially came to be of decisive importance.
It was not long before Augustine's teaching bore fruit. It is combined with the older view in the pseudo-Ambrosian treatise De sacramentis (II. v. 14), and probably determined the inclusion of the words of institution in the epiklesis of the sacramentary of Gelasius, a formulary which, with some changes, is still used in the Roman Catholic Church at the benediction of the baptismal water. The corresponding formulary in the Greek Church is a simple epiklesis without the words of institution.
In the case of the Eucharist, plenty of evidences from the fourth and fifth centuries, both Eastern and Western, attribute the consecration of the elements to the epiklesis; but the agreement is not so universal as in the case of baptism, nor is it safe to assume that the epiklesis was in use from the beginning as a prayer of consecration, which it came to be considered in the East. The oldest witness for the Eucharistic epiklesis is Irenseus, who says (IV. xviii. 5) " The bread which receives the invocation of God is no longer common In the bread but the Eucharist"; but that
Eucharist, this phrase can not be pressed is shown by the occurrence in the preceding section of another in which that bread is said to be the body of the Lord " over which thanks have been given," and the context shows that this giving of thanks (eucharistein) is not to be taken as simply a general term for consecration. The epi-
Epiklesis
Epiphanius