Tractates 14–16

On the promise of the coming of the Paraclete. The ineffable providence of the only-begotten Son of God deigns to open little by little to his disciples the truth of saving faith, which human hearts cannot take in all at once. He had already taught much in the words above about the unity of his divinity with the Father, as I explained in the last discourse, showing that there is so little division between the Father and the Son that he said even the word he spoke was not his own unless it were the Father's. For he had said: "And the word that you have heard is not mine, but the Father's who sent me." By this saying it was made clear enough that all who despise the teaching of the only-begotten Son despise the Father; since the word which the Son calls his own he denies to be his unless it is the Father's. For the Son's word is his only if it is the Father's; because "all that the Father has is mine," he says. And in another place he says to the Father: "For all yours are mine, and mine are yours": through the unity, that is, of the divine substance, which does not know how to have anything of its own that is not of its nature. And now, following on, he adds at once that the same unity of the Holy Spirit too must be believed, when he foretells that the fullness of his teaching will be completed through the Paraclete himself, saying: "These things I have spoken to you while remaining with you. But the Paraclete, the Holy Spirit, whom my Father will send in my name, he will teach you all things and will remind you of all that I have said to you."

By this saying he deigned to foretell to the blessed apostles both his own return to heaven after his imminent passion and the coming of the Holy Spirit upon them from heaven, when he says: "These things I have spoken to you while remaining with you. But the Paraclete, the Holy Spirit, whom my Father will send." But neither was the Holy Spirit only in heaven and not on earth; nor was the Son going to ascend to heaven in such a way as to leave the earth; nor does the Father possess only the heavenly throne, to which the Son is said to return and from which the Holy Spirit is said to come. For the most blessed prophet makes a confession of this kind to the Father: "Where shall I go from your Spirit? And where shall I go from your face? If I ascend into heaven, you are there; if I go down into hell, you are present; if I take my wings straight on and dwell at the farthest part of the sea." "If I take my wings," he says, and so on. It is well that he has his wings, by taking which he penetrates wherever he desires. Otherwise, how was the prophet, placed in the body, to ascend into heaven, or go down into hell, or travel beyond the farthest seas? What wings, then, what wings does he have? The mind of the believer takes the wings of faith, so that, raised above earthly things and wholly placed in the spirit, it may be able to comprehend with all the saints what is the length and breadth and height and depth of the knowledge of God. The heretics, not having these wings of faith, dispute about God and roll about among earthly things, and are led down from the height of divine understanding to perishable and fleshly things, weighed down by the weight of earthly thoughts. Nor can they approach the knowledge of that immense divinity, to which only the faithful mind has access, which perceives, believes, confesses and proclaims the unity of the Trinity to be adored; and since it cannot express it worthily, in this above all it glories.

"Where then shall I go," he says, "from your Spirit? And where shall I go from your face? If I ascend into heaven, you are there; if I go down into hell, you are present; if I take my wings straight on and dwell at the farthest part of the sea, even there your hand will hold me, and your right hand will lead me." This confession has marked the undivided nature of the Trinity. "Where shall I go," he says, from the Paraclete himself, of course, whose fullness the apostles received and confessed that God's promise was fulfilled, as Peter's mouth testifies: "This is what was spoken through the prophet Joel: In the last days, says the Lord, I will pour out of my Spirit upon all flesh." "And where shall I go from your face?" From the Son, namely, who is the face of the Father; since the Father is seen in the Son, according to the sentence of the Lord Saviour himself, who answered Philip when he begged, "Lord, show us the Father, and it is enough for us": "Have I been with you so long, and you have not known me? Philip, he who has seen me sees my Father also. How do you say, Show us the Father? Do you not believe that I am in the Father and the Father in me?" And lest the Holy Spirit should be thought divided from the Father, whose Spirit he is, or the Son believed to be separated from him whose face and right hand and wisdom and power he is, he does not say, "If I ascend into heaven, your Spirit is there," or "your face and your Spirit are there," but "you," he says, "are there": with the Son, of course, and with the Holy Spirit; since the one and the same divinity of the Trinity to be adored is always everywhere.

But so that one faith and a distinct confession of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit might be handed down to believers, it is written that the Father sends both the Son and the Holy Spirit; since neither the one who sends nor the one who is sent could be believed to be God if he were in one place and not in another. Let us believe the Son himself, who is the truth, when he says: "I am not alone, for the Father is with me." And again of the Holy Spirit: "If I," he says, "cast out demons by the Spirit of God." And the evangelist Luke: "And Jesus, full of the Holy Spirit, returned from the Jordan." Since, then, the divinity of the Trinity is nowhere absent, it belongs to the dispensation of our salvation that one is proclaimed as sending and another as sent. For otherwise the human mind would not be able to believe that the Father is the Father, the Son the Son, and the Holy Spirit the Holy Spirit, unless it learned the distinction from the naming of the one who sends and the one sent. And again it would not recognize the one divinity of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit unless it read that the one sent is in no way separated from the one who sends. For neither did the Father (as was said above) desert the Son whom he sent, nor is the Holy Spirit, who was to be directed to the apostles, ever shown to have been absent from the Father or the Son; yet in such a way that the Son of God alone was shown. For "the Word was made flesh," as we read, not the Father, not the Spirit. How the Son of God fulfilled this mystery of the incarnation while the unity of the Trinity was preserved, that omnipotence bears witness by which the same Son of God so ascended to heaven with the body of the man he had assumed that he remains with his disciples until the end of the age. "For behold," he says, "I am with you all days, until the consummation of the age." "Until the consummation of the age," he says, "I am with you": not only with the apostles but surely with all believing disciples.

We must believe, then, that God is not otherwise than he has revealed by his own word that he is to be believed. Nor should we discuss his deeds with a rebellious spirit, but marvel at them with faithful zeal, since "the word of the Lord is upright, and all his works are in faith." If all his works are in faith, how much more this most sacred work of his incarnation! Let us cease, then, neglecting faith, to batter the divine mystery with insulting questions. For the scrupulousness of one who hesitates does not find the understanding of God's deeds by superfluous curiosity, but loses faith, which is clearly the guide to salvation and life. That excessive scrupulousness loses faith can easily be understood from one kind of divine working: "God said: Let there be light, and there was light." Although I do not grasp how its Creator made it from nothing, yet unless I believe and confess that it was made, I pronounce God a liar by a sacrilegious hesitation. All his works, then, and especially the divine work of the incarnation of the Son of God (as the holy Scriptures proclaim) the mind of each believer must receive with faithful affection, and confess with the faithful obedience of the mouth what it has believed with a steadfast heart; "for with the heart one believes unto righteousness, and with the mouth confession is made unto salvation."

And when he promises that the fullness of his teaching will be given through the Holy Spirit, he wished him to be believed equal to his own omnipotence. For in the Trinity there is not a Lord and a servant, God and an angel, Creator and creature; but there is another and the same: another in person, the same in nature; and therefore not gods but God, because the unity of the Deity does not admit division. Finally, Christ says there of the Holy Spirit: "Whom the Father will send in my name," that is, in the name of God, so that he is to be confessed as God, like the Son. And therefore the Son of God says of himself: "I have come in the name of my Father"; which the prophet too had foretold of him, and the children in the Gospel confirmed when they cried out in praise: "Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord." Rightly "in the name of the Lord": not in the name of a servant, because he is God; not in his own, because he is the Son; for the name of the Father is in the Son. Of himself, then, I say, the Son says: "I have come in the name of the Father." But of the Holy Spirit he says: "Whom my Father will send in my name." And when he decreed that the work of baptism should be celebrated in the Trinity, he did not say "in the names" but "in the name." For the Father is God, and the Son is God, and the Holy Spirit is God, as I have very often proved to your love by the testimonies of the holy Scriptures; and therefore the name of the Trinity is one, whose power and divinity are one and remain for all ages. Amen.

On the birthday of the Maccabees. If any of you, dearest brothers, perhaps wonders that Jewish men who suffered punishments for a precept of the Law are now honoured by the Christian people among the holy martyrs, he will surely understand, once he has learned the whole cause and reason of our holy religion, that this was established by our forefathers with a sound and supreme judgment. These men were Jews before the coming of the Lord and Saviour, living only under the old Law; and they took the surname of the Maccabees from their family, as today the descendants of the Anicii, or any other names of this kind which lay claim to a stock of nobility descending from a heap of earthly riches; whereas true nobility does not stand on riches but is known in conduct. For how much nobler were these seven boys than King Antiochus! Indeed, how bright in them was the nobility of faith, and how ignoble, and deserving of punishment, the mark of faithlessness in him! They worship God the Father, he the devil; they venerate their ancestral law, he, rebelling against God, declares himself a son of the devil. For he tried to force them, against the precept of the divine Law, to eat pork, no doubt defiled by a profane sacrifice; for "to the defiled and unbelieving nothing is clean." But suppose (as some would have it) that those meats were not sacrificed to the devil, since the history itself that records this did not bring it out more plainly; still it was a most grave and extreme offence to violate a divine precept, whether for flattering rewards or under torturing punishments.

God had commanded the Jews not to eat the pig and other such animals; and this was for a twofold reason, dearest brothers: either so that a luxurious people might not feed the flame of base carnal desires with heating meats (for they are said to give the body excessive heat); or so that they might not live in the manner of pigs. For swine are always unclean, and, coming out of a spring or a river, they roll again in the mud; nor do they ever look at the sky, but with heads always bent to the ground they serve the belly. And therefore the Lord allowed the legion of demons to go into the herd of swine: that is, into the herd of those who are only animals of the belly, who never look at heavenly things, but, always given to uncleanness, are smeared with the mud of vices. Salutarily, then, he commanded abstinence of the palate and continence from unclean actions; for "the Law is holy, and the commandment holy and just and good." The divine commandments are indeed saving; for "the man who does them shall live by them." But suppose there is nothing harmful in pork, and that it does not increase any kindling for bodily enticements; indeed, that today "all things are clean to the clean, sanctified by the word of God and prayer": still the power and authority of God who commanded must be considered, who had ordered this to be observed at that time. For no one either discusses the Lord's command without the punishment of his sacrilege or despises it with impunity. For neither could there be evil in that tree which the good Creator had planted among the other trees of paradise, whose fruit was so beautiful and sweet that it offered desire to the eyes and won the enticement of the palate. For it is written: "And the woman saw the fruit of the tree, that it was pleasing to the sight and sweet for food; and she took and ate, and gave to her husband."

But if perhaps you say that not everything that seems pleasing and sweet is also good, because there are some evil things too which seem pleasing and sweet, I grant it, I agree, I consent. For honey drips, as Scripture says, from the lips of a harlot woman, who for a time makes her throat smooth; but in the end you will find her more bitter than gall and sharper than a two-edged sword. And certainly there is no evil in the appearance or in the sex of a woman; but evil there certainly is in the will of the one who sins and, through intemperance of desire, transgresses the lawful right of marriage. For the nature of wine too is good, yet drunkenness is rightly condemned. Hear now the general sentence of the divine Scripture about all created things: "And God saw all that he had made, and behold, it was very good." Yet since the reason of truth required that the servile human condition, left to the freedom of its own choice, should receive a law from God its master, God chose one tree out of all the trees of paradise, not an evil one, but one in which there seemed to be the knowledge of good and evil; in which he might test the obedience of his servants, so that freedom of choice, if obedient, might possess the reward of immortality, or, if despising, might receive the sentence of the death that had been threatened. Man ate, because he willed to; he did not keep the commandment, because he did not will to; he is punished with death, because he could keep the commandment and did not care to. The tree was good, and the fruit was good; but the transgression of the commandment was evil, and the contempt of God was evil; and so the evil is not in the fruit of the tree but in the will of the transgressing man.

If, then, the fruit of one little tree, rashly tasted by the first-formed against God's command, brought death to the human race, the transgression of the divine commandment could also have prepared destruction for the Maccabees, placed as they then were under the Law; whereas the keeping of his precept has won them honour and glory now, since they kept faith with God in it manfully and steadfastly. For he keeps faith with God who does not violate the rights of his commandment; for they refused to eat what was unlawful not because they felt horror at its appearance, but because they most justly feared to insult God, who forbade it. "He who is faithful in a little," says the Lord, "is faithful also in much." They were faithful in much when, amid punishments, they rejected meats offered to idols; they were faithful in little when, only so as not to eat forbidden meats, they handed over their own flesh to be devoured by punishments. More remarkable is the faith that is not violated even in small things. These most blessed brothers gave a pattern of endurance to the martyrs who would come after the passion of Christ, so that they might understand with what greatness and constancy of soul they must fight for the name of the Redeemer, when they themselves had contended so persistently for his commandment.

Let it not seem absurd to anyone that a little while ago I compared them to the Anicii. For the Anicii are named by us from the Greek word for "unconquered." For the savagery of the most cruel tyrant practised various kinds of punishments on their bodies; and when the cunning persecutor had not been able to overcome the constancy of faith in six brothers by the atrocity of punishment, in the seventh, because he was younger, he turned to the torments of flattery, torturing the boy with rewards of riches and promises of honours; yet he could not turn him aside. For he was the brother of his brothers, and the son of that mother who, while she joyfully watched and encouraged her sons one by one being punished for God's name, endured as many martyrdoms as the children she consecrated: having suffered seven times in her own inward parts, she herself added the eighth to the number, to go to meet the eighth day of Christ's resurrection with her dear children. Hence it is presumed, not without reason, that this most blessed mother prefigured the image of the holy church, which is accustomed to bear spiritual sons to God who think nothing of flesh and blood.

Now if anyone asks me for what remains of the earlier discussion, inquiring why those foods which had been forbidden in the Law for the sake of continence are not still kept away now for the same reason, I shall answer briefly, as I think. I believe that the many observances of the legal precepts were removed from the midst in such a way that the general precepts remained in their former state. We have said that abstinence from pork, or from similar quadrupeds, and from certain birds and fish too, was imposed on the Jewish people for the sake of preserving chastity, although types of reasonable figures are attached to them, which the spiritual teacher must explain one by one in their own places. But since the minds of earthly men seemed to be burdened rather than instructed by the complexity of many commandments, the divine providence, unwearied in this respect too toward the human race, is promised through the prophet Isaiah: "For the Lord will make a shortened word upon the earth." And therefore blessed James with the other apostles established such a decree to be observed in the churches: "That you abstain," he says, "from things sacrificed, and from sexual immorality, and from blood," that is, from what is strangled. They passed over murder, adultery, poisonings, since things which are punished even by the laws of the Gentiles ought not even to be named in the churches; they passed over also all those minutiae of legal observances, and decreed that only these things we have mentioned should be kept, so that we should not be profaned by unclean foods sacrificed to the devil, or be polluted by blood dead within the inward parts of strangled animals, or violate our bodies, which are temples of God, with the uncleanness of sexual immorality. So they permitted all things to be eaten in such a way as to command that sexual immorality be fled.

It must now be a matter of our own moderation to loosen the reins of licence only so far that we are not carried headlong into luxury, but that chastity may be safe; which blessed Paul, knowing that it cannot be guarded without circumcision of the palate, speaks thus: "All things indeed are clean, and nothing is to be rejected that is received with thanksgiving; but it is evil for the man who eats with offence": that is, who suffers offence when he eats. And he added at once a saving counsel: "It is good," he says, "not to eat meat nor to drink wine, nor anything by which your brother is offended, or scandalized, or weakened." Who is that more closely joined brother than our outer man? So that our licence may not bring it a stumbling block, or weakness, or scandal, we must use the freedom of foods, not abuse it, so that we may know that we were born not for the sake of eating but of living well. Therefore let the condition of the flesh obey the command of the soul, lest, by unbridled licence, as Solomon says, the servant reign, and the fool be filled, and the maidservant cast out her mistress; whereas the Law commands: "Cast out the maidservant and her son; for the son of the maidservant shall not be heir with my son Isaac." Let us cast out, then, the maidservant desire and her son sin, so that we may become heirs of God and fellow heirs with Christ, who, carrying the wood of his cross on his own shoulders, fulfilled in the reality of the man he had assumed the image of his passion which he had shown beforehand in holy Isaac under the shadow of the Law, redeeming our life by his precious blood from the exile of eternal death. For he is our redemption, to whom be all honour, power and glory, with the Father and with the Holy Spirit, for all ages. Amen.

[Sermon which the holy bishop gave on the first day of his ordination.] Conscious of my lack of skill, and deterred by shame at my own age, too young for the dignity of the priesthood, I rightly asked the chief priests for leave to be silent. For I fear, first, that the power of the heavenly words may be weakened by the speech of my smallness; and then I blush that I cannot give so great an expectation the hoped-for fruit of teaching. Hence, feeling myself in every way unequal to your desire, I tried with all my strength to decline this burden. But the blessed father Ambrose and the other venerable bishops, bound by the oath by which you rashly bound yourselves, sent me such letters together with your delegation that I could no longer resist without harm to my soul, since even the Eastern bishops would have denied me saving communion unless I promised to return to you. Shut in, then, at such a point, and subdued by the authority of the saints here present, I have taken up this office of the high priesthood, neither worthy by merit, nor fitted by age, nor mature in learning. Consider, then, what I suffer, who, though I do not know how to speak, cannot keep silent. For I am compelled to obey the command of my elders beyond my strength, having neither the power to be silent nor the eloquence to speak out. But perceiving, by the authority of the divine Law, that the precepts of spiritual fathers are saving, I dare to break into words and to bring a slender speech to your ears; which you will perhaps receive patiently for this reason, that it may seem useful to Christ's people to learn, by the example of the preacher, obedience, which is set before the divine sacrifice and preferred to all God's commandments.

For when the people of the Hebrews, after those Egyptian portents, was called to the knowledge of the one God, it first learned obedience, as the leader in keeping the heavenly commandments. For so Scripture testifies: "Hear, Israel, the Lord your God is one Lord." And again: "Hear, Israel, the precepts of life." This "Hear" does not, I think, mean simple hearing, but proclaims the obedience of keeping the Law, as the Lord testifies again, saying: "If you are willing and hear me, you shall eat the good things of the land." But if, according to the sentence of the blessed apostle Paul, not the hearers but the doers of the Law will be justified before God, this hearing which is honoured with the reward of the good things of the land will no longer seem perfunctory; and not of any land, but of that land once promised, flowing with milk and honey. For the land of promise is the flesh of Christ, taken from the mass of the human race formed from the earth, and overflowing with the sweet juices of divine grace; by the purest milk of whose teaching we are fed and nourished; by the sweetness of whose heavenly gifts we are refreshed; by whose richness the hearts of believers grow fat; with whose good things the minds of the obedient and the souls of the faithful are filled, both in this age and in the age to come.

To what, then, does this discussion look? Surely so that your love may clearly understand how great a force compelled my littleness to comply with hard commands and to open my mouth in the presence of such great priests; and above all after that most learned voice of my father Philastrius, of venerable memory, which, flowing out abundantly by the grace of the Holy Spirit, founded this church in the faith of the Trinity to be adored, established it in true hope and perfect love, raised it up to virtues, and left it in peace. Let it suffice to have said this briefly to excuse the boldness that could have been blamed in me. But now the well of the holy readings is deep, and I, not having a bucket for the word, cannot for the present serve living water to you who thirst. I beg our common father Ambrose that, after the little dew of my speech, he himself may water your hearts with the mysteries of the divine writings. For he will speak by the Holy Spirit, of whom he is full, and rivers of living water will flow from his belly; and, as a successor of the apostle Peter, he will be the mouth of all the priests standing round.

For when the Lord Jesus asked the apostles, "But who do you say that I am?", Peter alone answered with the mouth of all believers: "You are the Christ, the Son of the living God." What reward did this confession at once receive? Blessedness, namely, and the most glorious power of the heavenly kingdom. When Peter alone speaks, then, the faith of the other believers is by no means excluded. But a fitting order is kept, when the first place in speaking is rightly given to the prince of the apostles, lest it should seem a kind of uproar rather than an answer if all had then answered together and in rivalry. Someone may say that, like those three faithful boys in the furnace, all the apostles ought in this examination to have professed the same things with one voice. But we must consider that Judas Iscariot could not confess with his mouth what he had not believed in his heart; and neither did the unbeliever deserve blessedness, nor could he be condemned beforehand by the sentence of the just Judge before he committed his dreadful crime. But afterwards, when Judas had already been condemned for the crime he committed, all the apostles, when Christ rose, receive the keys in Peter; or rather, they receive the keys of the heavenly kingdom with Peter from the Lord himself, when he says to them: "Receive the Holy Spirit; whose sins you forgive, they are forgiven." And again: "Go," he says, "teach all nations, and baptize them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit." For the door of the kingdom of heaven is unlocked only by this key of the spiritual sacraments. Let all these apostolic priests now pray to the mercy of God the Father, "who raised up the needy from the earth and lifted the poor from the dunghill, to make him sit with the princes of his people," that he may deign to bestow on me, the least of all, the power of the Holy Spirit too for holding the helm of his church, through his only-begotten Son our Redeemer, with whom he lives and reigns always as God, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, before all ages, and now, and always, and for all ages of ages. Amen.