Orations (other than the Theological Orations) 34.1–35.4

I will address those from Egypt, for it is right, since they have come together eagerly, overcoming envy by zeal: from this Egypt which a river enriches, raining up from the earth and becoming a sea in its season (that I too may imitate a little those who are clever in such matters); but my Christ enriches it too, once a fugitive into Egypt, but now supplied from Egypt; then because of Herod’s murder of children, now because of the fathers’ love for their children: Christ, the new food of those who hunger rightly, a greater distribution of grain than any recorded and believed; the bread that comes down from heaven and gives life to the world, a life imperishable and indestructible; about whom I seem to hear even now the Father saying, “Out of Egypt I called my son.”

For from you the word has sounded forth to all men, soundly believed and preached; and you are the best bearers of fruit of all, especially of those who now believe rightly, as far as I know, who am not only a lover of such food but also its supplier, and not only at home but now abroad as well. For you feed peoples and cities bodily, as far as your kindness extends; and you feed spiritually not this or that people, nor this or that city bounded by small limits, however splendid they think themselves, but almost the whole world. And you cure not hunger for bread nor thirst for water, which it is no great thing to suffer and easy not to suffer, but a famine of hearing the word of the Lord, which is most pitiable to suffer and now most laborious to cure, since lawlessness has multiplied, and I find few genuine healers of it. [3] Such was your Joseph, the measurer of grain, which is to say ours too, who knew how to foresee famine by surpassing wisdom and to cure it by words of good management, healing the ugly and lean cows with the fair and fat ones. And take whichever Joseph you like: either the lover, maker, and namesake of immortality, or his successor in throne, in word, and in grey hairs, our new Peter, no less in virtue than in name; by whom the middle position was cut off and crushed, even if it still writhes a little, feebly, like the tail of a snake cut in two. Of these, the one, having ended his life in a good old age after many contests and struggles, now looks down on our affairs from above, I know well, and stretches out a hand to those who labour for the good, all the more as he is free from bonds; the other is hastening to the same end, or departure, after the same contests, and is already near the things above, but is still in the flesh just enough to help the word with his last efforts, and to set out on his journey with more abundant provisions. [4] Of these you are the nurslings and the offspring, of these great teachers, contenders, and victors for the truth; whom no time, no potentate, no argument, no envy, no fear, no accuser, no slanderer, no open enemy, no secret plotter, no one who seemed to be ours, no stranger, no gold, the invisible tyrant by which most things are now tossed about and played like dice, no flattery, no threats, no long and repeated exiles (for they could not even be caught by confiscation, because of their great wealth, their lack of possessions), nor anything else at all, present or expected, lifted up or persuaded to become worse, to betray anything of the Triad, or to cause the Godhead loss. On the contrary, they were strengthened by dangers and became more zealous for piety. For such is suffering for Christ: it adds to love, and becomes for the great-minded a sort of pledge of further contests … wonders.

But you, Egypt, used to praise to me the goats of Mendes, and the Apis of Memphis, a fattened and fleshy calf, and the rites of Isis, and the tearing apart of Osiris, and your solemn Serapis, a block of wood worshipped with myth and age and the folly of his worshippers, as some unknown and heavenly matter, but matter nonetheless, even if falsehood comes to its aid; and things still more shameful than these, the many-shaped images of crocodiles and reptiles. All these Christ has surpassed, and the heralds of Christ, who shone forth each in his own time, and especially the Fathers just mentioned; through whom you are better known today, wonderful Egypt, than through all your stories, old and new, put together.

For these reasons I embrace and greet you, best of peoples, most Christ-loving and most fervent in piety, and worthy of your leaders (for I can say nothing greater than this, nor anything with which I could better entertain you as guests); and I welcome you, a little with my tongue, but much more with the movements of my mind. My people! For I call mine those who are of one mind and one faith with me, worshippers of the same Triad taught by the same Fathers. My people! Mine, even if it does not seem so to the envious; and, so that those who feel so may be struck all the more, see, I give you the right hand of fellowship before so many witnesses, visible and invisible, and I drive away an old slander by new kindness. My people! Mine, even if I, the least, claim the greatest as my own; for such is the grace of the Spirit: it makes those of one mind equal in honour. My people! Mine, even if from afar, because we are joined divinely, and in another way than those who are near. For bodies are joined by place, but souls are fitted together by the Spirit. My people, who formerly practised the philosophy of suffering for Christ, and now that of not doing harm, if you will listen to me, but count the power to do it a sufficient gain, and think that you offer worship to Christ, as then by endurance, so now by gentleness. A people over whom the Lord stands ready to do good, as he stands ready to do harm to their opponents. A people whom the Lord has chosen for himself out of all whom he called.

… inscribed on the hands of the Lord; to whom it is said, “For you are my will, says the Lord,” and, “Your gates are carved work,” and all that is said to those who are saved hereafter.

… and do not wonder at my insatiability if I often turn back to you; for I revel in calling you again and again, like those who fill themselves insatiably with spectacles or music.

But, people of God, and ours too, fine also was your festival the other day, which you held on the sea, and delightful, if anything was, to the eyes …

… when I saw the sea turned into a forest and covered with a cloud made by hands, and the beauty and speed of the ships, as if arrayed for a procession, and a moderate wind standing at the stern as if escorting them on purpose and conveying the sea-borne city once more; but finer and more magnificent is what is seen now. For you did not mingle yourselves with the many, nor measure piety by numbers, nor consent to become a mob rather than a people of God purified by the word; but having brought, as is fitting, to Caesar the things of Caesar, you rendered to God the things of God, to the one tax, to the other fear; and having fed the people with your goods, you have come to be fed by us yourselves. For we too distribute grain, and grain perhaps not inferior to yours. “Come, eat my bread and drink the wine that I have mixed for you”; with Wisdom I call you to my table. For I praise your good sense and run to meet your eagerness, that you have put in with us as at your own harbour, hastening to those who are like you; that you have honoured the kinship of faith, and have thought it absurd that those who insult the things above should agree and be fitted together with one another, and should think to mend the rottenness of each by the common bond, like strands strengthened by being twisted together, while you yourselves did not come together and bind yourselves to those of the same mind, as is far more fitting; for we also bring the Godhead together. And that you may know that you did not hasten to us in vain, nor as to strangers and foreigners, but have put in among your own and been well guided by the Spirit, we will speak to you briefly about God. And recognize your own, like those who recognize their own side by the insignia on their arms.

I recognize two highest distinctions among beings, lordship and servitude: not those which among us tyranny has cut or poverty has divided, but those which nature has distinguished, if one likes to call it so; for the First is beyond nature. Of these, the one is creative, originating, and unmoved; the other made, subject, and changing. Or, to put it still more briefly, the one is above time, the other under time. The first is called God, and subsists in three greatest ones, the Cause, the Creator, and the Perfecter: I mean the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit; who are neither so detached from one another as to be divided in nature, nor so contracted as to be circumscribed in one person; the former belongs to the Arian madness, the latter to the Sabellian godlessness; but the Godhead is more unitary than things wholly divided, and more abundant than things completely singular. The other is with us and is called creation, even if some created things surpass others according to the measure of their nearness to God. [9] This being so, whoever has his heart toward the Lord, let him come with us, and let us worship the one Godhead in the three, attributing no name of lowliness to the unapproachable glory, but always carrying in our throats the exaltations of the one God in three. For of him whose very greatness of nature one cannot properly speak of, because of his infinity and boundlessness, how shall we assert lowliness? But whoever is estranged from God, and therefore cuts the one essence that is above all beings into an inequality of natures, it would be a wonder if he were not cut in two by the sword, and his portion appointed with the unbelievers, reaping the evil fruit of an evil opinion, now and hereafter.

About the Father, what need is there to speak, since what all concede spares him, as people are preoccupied by natural notions? Though even he bore the first dishonour, being the first to be cut into a Good God and a Creator by the ancient innovation. About the Son and the Holy Spirit, see how simply and briefly we shall discourse. If anyone can say that either of these is changeable or alterable, or measured by time, or place, or power, or operation, or not naturally good, or not self-moved, or not free, or a minister, or a singer of hymns, or one who fears, or one who is set free, or not to be numbered with the Father, let him show it, and we shall be content, glorified by the dignity of our fellow servants, even if we lose God. But if … except causation, and all that belongs to the Son belongs also to the Spirit, except sonship and the things said of the Son bodily because of my humanity and my salvation, so that, taking what is mine, he might give what is his by the new mingling: then stop talking nonsense, at least now, late as it is, you sophists of empty words, which fall of themselves. “And why will you die, house of Israel?”, that I may lament over you in the words of Scripture.

For my part, I revere the titles of the Word, so many, so lofty and great, which even demons respected; I revere the equal honour of the Spirit; and I fear the threat laid down for those who blaspheme against him. And blasphemy is not to confess him as God, but to estrange him from the Godhead. And one must observe here that what was blasphemed was the Lord, but what avenged it was the Holy Spirit, clearly as Lord. … to be unenlightened after the enlightenment, falsifying any of the three into whom I have been baptized, and to be truly buried in the water, perfected not for regeneration but for death.

I dare to say something, O Triad, and pardon my rashness, for the danger concerns my soul. I too am an image of God, of the glory above, even if I am set below. I am not persuaded that I am saved by one of equal rank with me. If the Holy Spirit is not God, let him first be made god, and so make me god, his equal. But as it is, what a deception of grace, or rather of those who give grace, to believe into God and come up godless; to confess one thing and be taught another! What thefts and deceptions of words, leading through one question and confession to something else! Alas for my brightness, if after the washing I have been blackened, if I see those not yet cleansed brighter than myself, if I am gambled away by the baptizer’s false belief, if I seek a better Spirit and do not find him! Give me a second washing, and think badly of the first. Why do you begrudge me perfect regeneration? Why do you make me, who am a temple of the Spirit as of God, the dwelling place of a creature? Why do you honour one of my objects of worship and dishonour the other, judging wrongly about the Godhead, so as to cut the gift off from me, or rather me off from the gift? Either honour the whole, you new theologian, or dishonour the whole, so that, even if you are impious, you may at least be consistent with yourself, and not judge unequally a nature equal in honour.

The sum of my discourse: glorify him with the cherubim, who join the three holinesses into one lordship, and show as much of the first essence as their wings uncover to the diligent. Be illumined with David, who says to the Light, “In your light we shall see light,” that is, the Son in the Spirit; and what could be more radiant than this? Thunder with John, the son of thunder, sounding nothing low or earthly about God, but what is lofty and sublime: knowing him who was in the beginning, and was with God, and is God the Word, as God, and true God from the true Father, and not a good fellow servant honoured only with the title of Son; and knowing the other Paraclete, clearly other than the one who speaks, who is God the Word; and when you read “I and the Father are one,” having your ear filled with the oneness of essence; and when “we will come to him and make our dwelling with him,” reckoning the distinction of the hypostases; and when the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, the three properties. [14] Be inspired with Luke, conversing with the Acts of the Apostles. Why do you range yourself with Ananias and Sapphira, those strange embezzlers (if indeed theft of one’s own property is strange), and that embezzling not silver, nor anything else cheap and small, like a golden tongue or a bare double drachma, as a greedy soldier once did, but stealing the Godhead itself, and lying not to man but to God, as you have heard? What? Do you not even respect the authority of the Spirit, who breathes on whom he wills, and when, and as much as he wills? He comes upon Cornelius and those with him before baptism, upon others after baptism through the apostles; so that from both sides, from his coming as master and not as servant, and from his being sought for perfection, the deity of the Spirit is attested.

Speak of God with Paul, who was caught up to the third heaven; who sometimes numbers the three hypostases together, and that in varying order, not keeping their order fixed, putting the same one now first, now in the middle, now last. To what end? To show the equality of honour of the nature. Sometimes he mentions two of the three, sometimes one, since the one remaining certainly follows; sometimes he ascribes the operation of God to the Spirit, as being no different; sometimes he puts Christ in place of the Spirit; and when he distinguishes the hypostases, he says, “One God, from whom are all things, and we for him; and one Lord Jesus Christ, through whom are all things, and we through him”; but when he gathers together the one Godhead, “For from him and through him and to him are all things,” that is, clearly, through the Holy Spirit, as is shown in many places of Scripture; to whom be glory for ever and ever. Amen.

What can be said that is as great as what the eyes see? What word equals the good things that are present to our sight? Behold, the spectacle we could hardly believe lies before our eyes, which we often prayed to see; but what we longed for has proved better than our prayers. Here again are honours to the martyrs, long neglected before this; again assemblies of the priests of God; again choirs and spiritual festivals. The assembly is crowded, eager to keep festival, not to fight. O the marvel! The weapons have been thrown from their hands, the battle line is broken up, the war is forgotten. No longer are the voices of those raising war cries heard; instead, feasts, gladness, and peaceful joys dance around the whole city, which of old was the mother of martyrs, but for a long time in between had no share in the honour of her children. But now she has received everything and abounds, as the Apostle says. Well done, martyrs! This prize too is yours: you have won the long war, I know well, and these achievements come from your sweat. You raised the trophy for peace. You drew the priests of God to yourselves. You set the choir-leaders of the Holy Spirit over this assembly. How great a loss have those suffered whose life did not last until this spectacle, so that, after having their fill of gloom, they might enjoy the blessings of peace!

Gone and vanished is the deceit of heresy, like a mist scattered by the Holy Spirit; the clear sky of peace has shone out, and in it the stars of the city appear, sparkling in the bright light of truth, not allotted to night and darkness, but all visible by day, shining with the true light of righteousness. And since, as the Apostle says, the night is far spent, or rather has vanished altogether, and everything is brightened by the light of day, the beasts that roam by night flee and are driven together into the thickets and caves; the heretical bats flee, squeaking and dim-sighted before the light of truth, and slip into the holes of the rocks, clinging to one another’s heads. From this day the bands of revellers and drunkards have ceased. Clothes-thieves, housebreakers, thieves, and every other work of the night have hidden themselves, since the light of peace has risen again. But while that night darkened everything with the gloom of deceit, what deeds were done? Deeds worthy of oblivion and deep silence, lest the present grace be defiled by the memory of unpleasant things. For how could anyone tell the evils of that night? And how could anyone keep silent about them? What tragedy has such suffering? What myth invents such disasters? What playwright cried out such suffering on the stage? The disaster is beyond words, the sufferings beyond the power of those who tell them. [3] The base of the devil was … a chorus. Here he pitched his camp and stationed his own shield-bearers. Here was the army of falsehood, the champions of deceit, the expedition of the demons, the legions of unclean spirits; or, to use outside names, from here the wicked army of demonic Furies rioted against the Church. For so I am led to name the women who, beyond their nature, played the man for evil. There was one Jezebel in the days of Elijah, murderous against the prophets of the Lord, and the God-inspired history pillories her, so that, I think, all later life might be taught by the memory of that licentious woman. So many like that Jezebel sprang up suddenly from the land, like hemlock, surpassing the one I have mentioned in the excess of their bitterness. If you disbelieve what I say, examine the history. She gave Naboth’s vineyard to the slack Ahab, so that he might turn the vineyard into a garden, an ornament of luxury, a woman’s indulgence; these women tried by force to bring the living vineyard of God, I mean the Church, to utter destruction, carrying out the evil themselves. What example shall I find for my discourse? What image shall I devise for this wickedness? I saw a picture of this kind on a plastered wall; and hold up my heart, swelling at the memory of these evils; or rather, share my pain, for I am telling sufferings that are ours, not others’. What, then, is the picture to which I compare these events? It was a shameless chorus of women, each twisting herself into some dancing posture. The myths call such women Maenads. Their hair was tossed by the breezes, their look was madness, torches were carried in their hands, and the flames from them whirled with the turning of their bodies; a breeze in the folds of their robes spoiled their seemliness; their feet tiptoed and leapt; modesty and decorum touched nothing of what was done.

In the middle of this chorus was an image of a man of this sort: half-female, ambiguous in nature, effeminate in appearance, lying on the border between the sexes, loose in his posture, as if carried away by stupor and drunkenness. Sprawling on a carriage, he was drawn by beasts through the chorus of Maenads. Much unmixed wine from a mixing bowl was around him, and some chattering creatures of strange nature surrounded the image, hairy-faced, leaping around it on goats’ legs. Such were the stories of that night. Women known for the dishonour of their sex, a common reproach to their nature, danced away the decorum customary among women and led a procession through the middle of the city, making a show of their nature disgracing itself; arming their hands with stones instead of shields, looking murder with the shameless glance of their eyes, they got inside the divine precincts and set their Corybant on the sacred throne. Then came drunkenness and unmixed wine, the Pans from the hermitages, night, promiscuous living, and all the things the Apostle forbids us to speak of, saying, “The things done by them in secret it is shameful even to speak of.” For who could go through precisely in words the fire, the stones, the slaughters, the wounds? Whom of the servants of the holy houses did they strive to overturn from their foundations? Which zealot for the truth did they beat to death with clubs in the middle of the city, so that the suspected murder prevented the real one? But I do not know how my discourse slipped away from the pleasure that is fitting, lingering over earthly stories. Let us return, then, to where we left off, so as to wash away that briny hearing with sweet and drinkable words. For “on a day of gladness,” it says, “there is forgetfulness of evils.” I return, then, to the same point: that night and gloom have vanished, and the rays of peace shine all around through the clear sky with the light of truth. Therefore everything foul and profane has been cast out of the divine precincts, and in their place the houses of the pious have been brought in, full of every gladness, and nothing is lacking for joy: the guests, the hosts, the table full of good foods …