Orations (other than the Theological Orations) 33.1–33.17

Where are those who reproach us with our poverty and boast of their wealth? Who define the Church by numbers and spurn the little flock? Who measure the Godhead and weigh out the people? Who honour the sand and insult the luminaries? Who treasure pebbles and despise pearls? For they do not know that sand is not so much more plentiful than stars, nor pebbles than transparent stones, as the latter are purer and more precious than the former. Are you angry again? Arming yourselves again? Insulting again, you new faith? Hold back your threat a little, so that I may speak. We will not insult, but refute; not threaten, but reproach; not strike, but heal. Do you think this too an insult? What arrogance! Here too do you make a slave of one who is your equal? If not, accept my frankness. Even a brother rebukes a brother when he is wronged.

Do you want me to speak to you the words of God to Israel, stiff-necked and hardened? “My people, what have I done to you, or how have I wronged you, or how have I troubled you?” Or rather, my word is to you, the insolent one. It is a bad thing that we watch for opportunities against one another, and, having dissolved our concord through difference of opinion, [have become worse] almost than even the barbarians who are now warring against us, whom the Triad, divided by us, has banded together …

we have become more inhuman and rasher toward one another; except that it is not strangers striking strangers, nor people of foreign speech striking those of another tongue (which would be some small consolation in our misfortune), but we carry off and plunder one another, like members of the same household; or, if you like, we consume and are consumed, members of the same body. And this is not the dreadful thing, great as it is, but that we think the loss a gain. Since this is our state, and we believe according to the times, let us set the times against each other: you your emperor, and I mine; you Ahab, and I Josiah. Tell me of your moderation, and I will tell you of my rashness. Or rather, yours is told by many books and tongues, which future time too will take up, I think, an immortal monument of your deeds; but I will tell my own. [3] What mob did I bring against you, carried away by rashness? What soldiers did I draw up? What general, boiling with anger and bolder than those who gave him his orders, and he not even a Christian, but offering to his own demons his impiety against us as a private act of worship? Whom did I besiege while they were praying and lifting up their hands to God? Whose psalmody did I stop with trumpets? Whose mystic blood did I mix with the blood of murder? Whose wailing did I silence with lamentations, spiritual lament with deadly, and tears of compunction with tears of tragedy? What house of prayer did I make a common grave? What liturgical vessels, untouchable to the many, did I hand over to the hands of the lawless, a Nebuzaradan, the chief cook, or a Belshazzar, who wickedly revelled in the holy things and paid the penalty his madness deserved? “Beloved altars,” as the divine Scripture says, but now outraged: what lewd youth danced upon yours because of us, twisting and bending shamefully? Or rather, through whom did I mock so great and divine a mystery? Venerable throne, seat and resting place of venerable men, which has had a succession of many pious priests who initiated the people from above into divine things: what pagan demagogue mounted you, what wicked tongue denouncing the things of Christians? Modesty and dignity of virgins, which cannot bear the gaze even of chaste men: which of us shamed and outraged you, even to what should not be seen, and set before the eyes of the impious a pitiable spectacle, worthy of the fire of Sodom? I pass over deaths, which are more bearable than shame. … to be defiled by communion, which we flee as poison, not because it harms the body but because it blackens the depths of the soul? For whom has burying the dead become a crime, the dead whom even beasts respected? And how great a crime? One worthy of another theatre and other beasts. Whose aged flesh, the flesh of bishops, did I tear with claws, while their initiates stood by unable to help except by weeping: flesh hung up with Christ, conquering by suffering, sprinkling the people with its precious blood, and at last hastening to death, to be crucified with Christ, buried with him, and glorified with him, with Christ, who conquered the world through such victims and sacrifices? What presbyters did opposite elements, water and fire, divide between them, raising a strange beacon over the sea, burned up in the ship on which they had put out? Who (to cover the greater part of our sufferings) were accused of inhumanity even by those rulers who granted them such favours? For even if the rulers served their desires, they hated the cruelty of their choice; the one belonged to the times, the other to reason; the one to the emperor’s lawlessness, the other to their own awareness of the laws by which they were bound to judge.

Or, to speak of older things (for these too are of the same family), whose hands, of dead or of living saints, did I cut off and falsely allege, to war against the faith by slander? Whose exiles did I count as benefits, not even respecting the sacred communities of holy philosophers, from which I demanded the suppliants who had fled there? On the contrary, I counted them martyrs too, since they ran risks for the good. Against whom, men almost fleshless and bloodless, did I bring harlots, I who am accused of licentiousness in my words? Whom of the pious did I hand over, beyond their homeland, to the hands of savage men, so that, shut up like beasts in lightless houses and separated from one another (this the heaviest part of the tragedy), they might suffer hunger and thirst, their food measured out to them, and that through narrow openings, not even allowed to see those who shared their grief? And who were they? Those of whom the world was not worthy. Is this how you honour faith? Is this how you welcome strangers? You do not know most of these things, and very naturally, because of the multitude of such sights and your delight in doing them; but the one who suffers remembers better. Why should I speak of distant things? Some have been more violent even than the times, like swine pushing against fences. I ask you for yesterday’s victim of yours, the old man, an Abrahamic father, whom, when he was brought back from exile, you welcomed with stones at midday in the middle of the city. But we even begged off the murderers when they were in danger, if it is not tiresome to say so. “For which of these shall I be merciful to you?” God says somewhere in Scripture. Which of these shall I praise? Or rather, with which shall I crown you? … a teeming city, and a surging people, and an assembly of noble men that is praised.

And why do you not also mention the convenience of its site, and land and sea as if competing which of them the city belongs to more, and welcoming the imperial city with their own goods? Is this our wrong, that you are great and very splendid, and we small and coming from small places? Many others wrong you in the same way, or rather all whom you surpass; and must we die because we did not build a city, nor surround ourselves with walls, nor pride ourselves on horse races, stadia, and hunts, and the madness about these, nor on the charm and splendour of baths and costly marbles, and paintings and mosaics, gold-gleaming and many-coloured, almost imitating nature? We have not yet broken back the sea around ourselves, nor blended the seasons (as you have done, you new creator), so that we might live as pleasantly and as safely as possible. Add other charges too, if you like, you who say, “Mine is the silver, and mine is the gold,” the words of God. We neither pride ourselves on wealth (not to set one’s heart on it when it flows in is part of our law), nor count yearly and daily revenues, nor vie with one another in the bulk of our tables and the arts of cookery for the senseless belly. For we praise nothing of what, once past the throat, is all of equal honour, or rather equally without honour and to be cast away; but we live simply and from day to day, differing little from the beasts, whose life is without equipment or contrivance.

Or will you also find fault with the shabbiness of my clothing and the ungainly set of my face? For I see some very lowly people priding themselves on these things. Will you leave my head alone and not mock it, as the children did Elisha? What followed I will pass over in silence. Will you not charge me with lack of education, or say that I seem to you to speak roughly and rustically? And where will you put the fact that I am not glib, nor a jester who pleases company, nor much about the market, nor given to chattering and gossiping with anyone and anyhow, so as to make even talk tiresome; that I do not visit the new Jerusalem, the Zeuxippus, nor go from house to house, flattering and gorging; but stay at home for the most part, downcast and sombre, communing quietly with myself, the genuine examiner of my actions, and perhaps deserving to be locked up for my uselessness? How is it that you pardon us for these things and do not accuse us? How sweet and kind you are! [9] But I am so old-fashioned and philosophic as to suppose that there is one heaven, the same and common to all; common the circuit of sun and moon, common the order and position of the stars, common the equal share and use of day and night, and also the changes of the seasons, the rains, the fruits, and the life-giving power of the air; that the rivers flow as a common and abundant wealth to all alike; and that the earth too is one, mother and tomb, from which we were taken and to which we shall return, none having more than another; and, still before these, that reason is common, and the law, the prophets, and the very sufferings of Christ, by which we were refashioned, not one of us and not another, but all who shared in the same Adam, were deceived by the serpent and put to death by sin, and were saved by the heavenly Adam and brought back to the tree of life, from which we had fallen, by the tree of shame. [10] Samuel’s Ramathaim too deceived me, the small homeland of the great man, which did not dishonour the prophet, but was honoured more through him than through itself; nothing prevented him, coming from it, from being given to God before his birth, from prophesying and seeing what lay ahead, and not only that, but from anointing kings and priests and judging men from splendid cities. And of Saul I heard that, seeking his father’s asses, he found a kingdom. David himself is taken from the flocks of sheep and shepherds Israel. And what of Amos? Was he not, though a goatherd and a scraper of sycamore figs, entrusted with prophecy? And how could I pass over Joseph, … and father of many myriads, which had been foretold to Abraham? And Abraham, to say the greater thing, was he not an emigrant? And Moses, was he not first exposed, and then lawgiver and general of those hastening to the land of promise, whose story is great and wonderful? The Carmel of Elijah too deceived me, which received the chariot of fire, and the sheepskin of Elisha, which had more power than silken threads and gold forced into garments. The desert of John too deceived me, which held the greatest among those born of women, with that food, that girdle, and that clothing. I dared something beyond these too: I found God himself the advocate of my rusticity. I will be ranked with Bethlehem; I will share the dishonour of the manger; since you dishonour God because of it, what wonder if for the same reason you also despise his herald? I will bring before you also the fishermen, and the poor who have the gospel preached to them, preferred before many rich. Will you ever stop priding yourself on your cities? Will you ever respect the desert that you spurn and dishonour? I do not yet speak of gold born in the sands, and transparent stones, products and gifts of the rocks; and if I set against these all that is dishonourable in cities, perhaps I would not use my frankness to good purpose. [11] “But the herald is a stranger to us and from outside,” one of the very narrow and flesh-loving might say. And the apostles, were they not strangers to the many nations and cities among which they were distributed, so that the gospel might run everywhere, that nothing might be without the light of the threefold Light and unilluminated by the truth, and that for those sitting in darkness and the shadow of death the night of ignorance might be dissolved? “That we should go to the Gentiles,” he says, “and they to the circumcision”: you have heard Paul say it. Let Judea be Peter’s; but what had Paul in common with the Gentiles, Luke with Achaia, Andrew with Epirus, John with Ephesus, Thomas with India, Mark with Italy, and, not to speak of each one, all the others with those among whom they sojourned? Either rebuke them too, or pardon me too, or show that you, pleading for the true word, are being wronged by nonsense. But since I have talked with you about these things in a petty way, come, let me speak as a philosopher more magnificently. [12] There is one homeland for all lofty souls, my friend, the Jerusalem above, in which we deposit our citizenship. There is one race for all: if you wish to look at what is below, the dust; if at what is higher, the inbreathing, which we have received, which we were commanded to keep, and with which I must stand to give account of my nobility from above and of the image. Everyone, then, is noble who has kept this by virtue and by inclining toward the archetype; and everyone is ignoble who has confounded it by vice and put on another form, that of the serpent. These homelands below and these races are playthings of our passing life and of our stage. For a homeland is whatever each has first occupied, by tyranny or by misfortune, a land in which all are equally strangers and sojourners, however long we play with the names. And a noble race is one that was rich long ago or is puffed up now; an ignoble one, that of poor fathers, whether through misfortune or through decency. For how is that noble from above which begins now in some and ends in others, and is not given to some but is written down for others? This is what I think of these things. And therefore I leave you to pride yourself on tombs and myths; but I try, as far as I can, to cleanse myself of deceit, so that I may either keep my nobility or recover it.

So, then, and for these reasons, I came to you, small as I am and from a poor homeland, and that not willingly nor self-invited, like many of those who now leap at positions of leadership, but called and compelled, following fear and the Spirit. Otherwise may I be warred against here still longer in vain, and free no one from error, and may those who pray that my soul be childless have their wish, if what I say is false. And since I came, perhaps not with mean authority (if I may boast a little, in the manner of folly), which of the insatiable did I imitate? In what did I emulate the times, though I had such examples, without which it is among the difficult and rare things not to be bad? Which churches did we dispute with you? What money, though you are rich in both beyond need, and we are needy in both? What imperial decree spurned did we resent? Which rulers did we court against you? Whose rashness did we denounce? And as for what was done to me, what was it?

“Lord, do not lay this sin to their charge,” I said then (for I remembered Stephen’s words in time), and I pray it now. “Reviled, we bless; persecuted, we endure; blasphemed, we entreat.” If I do you wrong in bearing tyranny, forgive me this wrong; I have borne tyranny from others too; and thanks be that I was charged with gentleness as if it were folly. For I reason thus, using reasonings far loftier than yours: what small part are these of the spittings and blows of Christ, for whom and because of whom these dangers come? I value them all less than the one crown of thorns, which uncrowned our conqueror, and through which I learn to be crowned with the roughness of life; than the one reed, through which a rotten power was ended; than the one gall, the one vinegar, through which we were healed of the bitter taste; than the one long-suffering in his passion. If he is betrayed with a kiss, he rebukes but does not strike. If he is suddenly seized, he reproaches but follows; and if you cut off Malchus’s ear with a sword out of zeal, he will be indignant and restore it; and if someone flees in a linen cloth, he protects him; and if you ask for the fire of Sodom on those who lead him away, he will not rain it down; and if he takes a robber hanging for his wickedness, he brings him into paradise for his goodness. Let everything of the lover of mankind be loving, as are Christ’s sufferings; to which what greater thing could we offer, if, when God was even put to death for us, we would not pardon even small things to our equals?

Besides this, I have reasoned, and still reason, in this way (consider whether not very rightly), as I have often taught you. They have the houses, we the one who dwells in them; they the temples, we God; and besides, we have become temples of the living God, and living ones, living victims, rational burnt offerings, perfect sacrifices, gods through the Triad that is worshipped. They have the crowds, we the angels; they rashness, we faith; they threatening, we praying; they striking, we bearing; they gold and silver, we a purified word. “You have made yourself houses of two and three storeys” (recognize the words of Scripture), “a house panelled, with windows set apart”? But these are not yet loftier than my faith and the heavens to which I am borne. Is my flock small? But it is not carried over cliffs. Is my fold narrow? But it is inaccessible to wolves, it does not admit a robber, nor is it climbed over by thieves and strangers. I shall see it wider, I know well. Many of the present wolves I must number among the sheep, perhaps even among the shepherds. This the good Shepherd announces to me, for whose sake I lay down my life for the sheep. I do not fear for the small flock, for it is easily surveyed; I know my own, and I am known by my own. Such are those who know God and are known by God. “My sheep hear my voice,” the voice that I heard from the divine oracles, that I was taught by the holy Fathers, that I have taught alike at every time, not conforming to the times, and that I will not cease to teach; the voice with which I was born and with which I depart. [16] … and the new Judaism that confines the Godhead to the unbegotten alone; nor the Christ of Photinus, a Christ from below, beginning from Mary. But they worship the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit, one Godhead: God the Father, God the Son, God, if you will not be angry, the Holy Spirit; one nature in three properties, intelligent, perfect, subsisting by themselves, divided in number, and not divided in Godhead.

Let everyone who threatens me today leave me these words; let those who wish lay claim to the rest. The Father does not tolerate the Son’s loss, nor the Son the Holy Spirit’s; and they would suffer loss if they were ever creatures, for what is created is not God. Nor do I bear the loss of my own perfection. “One Lord, one faith, one baptism.” If this were made void for me, from whom shall I have a second? What do you say, you who baptize to ruin or rebaptize? Can one be spiritual without the Spirit? Does one share in the Spirit who does not honour the Spirit? And does one honour him who is baptized into a creature and a fellow servant? It is not, it is not so, however much you say. I will not lie to you, unoriginate Father; I will not lie to you, only-begotten Word; I will not lie to you, Holy Spirit. I know to whom I made my confession, whom I renounced, and to whom I enlisted myself. I do not accept being taught the words of the faithful, and learning to confess the truth as unbelievers do, and becoming one with the lie; going down to be perfected and coming up less perfect; being baptized to live and being killed in the water, like embryos that die in the birth pangs and receive death together with birth. Why do you make me blessed and wretched at once, newly enlightened and unenlightened, divine and godless, so that I make shipwreck even of the hope of refashioning? The word is short: remember your confession. Into what were you baptized? Into the Father? Good, but that is still Jewish. Into the Son? Good; no longer Jewish, but not yet perfect. Into the Holy Spirit? Excellent; this is perfect. Then simply into these, or also into some common name of them? Yes, a common one. What is it? Clearly, that of God. Believe in this common name, however much you divide; prosper and reign, and pass from here to the blessedness there, which is, as it seems to me, the more distinct apprehension of these very things; to which may we too attain, in Christ himself our God, to whom be glory and might, with the unoriginate Father and the life-giving Spirit, now and always and for ever and ever.