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You proclaim the Father and His Son, whom you call the Father's
intellect or mind, and between these a third, by whom we suppose you
mean the Holy Spirit, and in your own fashion you call these three
Gods. In this, though your expressions are inaccurate, you do in
some sort, and as through a veil, see what we should strive towards;
but the incarnation of the unchangeable Son of God, whereby we are
saved, and are enabled to reach the things we believe, or in part
understand, this is what you refuse to recognize. You see in a
fashion, although at a distance, although with filmy eye, the country
in which we should abide; but the way to it you know not. Yet you
believe in grace, for you say it is granted to few to reach God by
virtue of intelligence. For you do not say, "Few have thought fit
or have wished," but, "It has been granted to few,", distinctly
acknowledging God's grace, not man's sufficiency. You also use
this word more expressly, when, in accordance with the opinion of
Plato, you make no doubt that in this life a man cannot by any means
attain to perfect wisdom, but that whatever is lacking is in the future
life made up to those who live intellectually, by God's providence
and grace. Oh, had you but recognized the grace of God in Jesus
Christ our Lord, and that very incarnation of His, wherein He
assumed a human soul and body, you might have seemed the brightest
example of grace! But what am I doing? I know it is useless to
speak to a dead man, useless, at least, so far as regards you, but
perhaps not in vain for those who esteem you highly, and love you on
account of their love of wisdom or curiosity about those arts which you
ought not to have learned; and these persons I address in your name.
The grace of God could not have been more graciously commended to us
than thus, that the only Son of God, remaining unchangeable in
Himself, should assume humanity, and should give us the hope of His
love, by means of the mediation of a human nature, through which we,
from the condition of men, might come to Him who was so far off, the
immortal from the mortal; the unchangeable from the changeable; the
just from the unjust; the blessed from the wretched. And, as He had
given us a natural instinct to desire blessedness and immortality, He
Himself continuing to be blessed; but assuming mortality, by enduring
what we fear, taught us to despise it, that what we long for He might
bestow upon us.
But in order to your acquiescence in this truth, it is lowliness that
is requisite, and to this it is extremely difficult to bend you. For
what is there incredible, especially to men like you, accustomed to
speculation, which might have predisposed you to believe in this, what
is there incredible, I say, in the assertion that God assumed a
human soul and body? You yourselves ascribe such excellence to the
intellectual soul, which is, after all, the human soul, that you
maintain that it can become consubstantial with that intelligence of the
Father whom you believe in as the Son of God. What incredible thing
is it, then, if some one Soul be assumed by Him in an ineffable and
unique manner for the salvation of many? Moreover, our nature itself
testifies that a man is incomplete unless a body be united with the
soul. This certainly would be more incredible, were it not of all
things the most common; for we should more easily believe in a union
between spirit and spirit, or, to use your own terminology, be tween
the incorporeal and the incorporeal, even though the one were human,
the other divine, the one changeable and the other unchangeable, than
in a union between the corporeal and the incorporeal. But perhaps it
is the unprecedented birth of a body from a virgin that staggers you?
But, so far from this being a difficulty, it ought rather to assist
you to receive our religion, that a miraculous person was born
miraculously. Or, do you find a difficulty in the fact that, after
His body had been given up to death, and had been changed into a
higher kind of body by resurrection, and was now no longer mortal but
incorruptible, He carried it up into heavenly places? Perhaps you
refuse to believe this, because you remember that Porphyry, in these
very books from which I have cited so much, and which treat of the
return of the soul, so frequently teaches that a body of every kind is
to be escaped from, in order that the soul may dwell in blessedness
with God. But here, in place of following Porphyry, you ought
rather to have corrected him, especially since you agree with him in
believing such incredible things about the soul of this visible world
and huge material frame. For, as scholars of Plato, you hold that
the world is an animal, and a very happy animal, which you wish to be
also everlasting. How, then, is it never to be loosed from a body,
and yet never lose its happiness, if, in order to the happiness of the
soul, the body must be left behind? The sun, too, and the other
stars, you not only acknowledge to be bodies, in which you have the
cordial assent of all seeing men, but also, in obedience to what you
reckon a profounder insight, you declare that they are very blessed
animals, and eternal, together with their bodies. Why is it, then,
that when the Christian faith is pressed upon you, you forget, or
pretend to ignore, what you habitually discuss or teach? Why is it
that you refuse to be Christians, on the ground that you hold opinions
which, in fact, you yourselves demolish? Is it not because Christ
came in lowliness, and ye are proud? The precise nature of the
resurrection bodies of the saints may sometimes occasion discussion
among those who are best read in the Christian Scriptures; yet there
is not among us the smallest doubt that they shall be everlasting, and
of a nature exemplified in the instance of Christ's risen body. But
whatever be their nature, since we maintain that they shall be
absolutely incorruptible and immortal, and shall offer no hindrance to
the soul's contemplation, by which it is fixed in God, and as you
say that among the celestials the bodies of the eternally blessed are
eternal, why do you maintain that, in order to blessedness, every
body must be escaped from? Why do you thus seek such a plausible
reason for escaping from the Christian faith, if not because, as I
again say, Christ is humble and ye proud? Are ye ashamed to be
corrected? This is the vice of the proud. It is, forsooth, a
degradation for learned men to pass from the school of Plato to the
discipleship of Christ, who by His Spirit taught a fisherman to
think and to say, "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was
with God, and the Word was God. The same was in the beginning with
God. All things were made by Him; and without Him was not anything
made that was made. In Him was life; and the life was the light of
men. And the light shineth in darkness; and the darkness comprehended
it not." The old saint Simplicianus, afterwards bishop of Milan,
used to tell me that a certain Platonist was in the habit of saying
that this opening passage of the holy gospel, entitled, According to
John, should be written in letters of gold, and hung up in all
churches in the most conspicuous place. But the proud scorn to take
God for their Master, because "the Word was made flesh and dwelt
among us." So that, with these miserable creatures, it is not
enough that they are sick, but they boast of their sickness, and are
ashamed of the medicine which could heal them. And, doing so, they
secure not elevation, but a more disastrous fall.
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