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71. Is answer to the objection that the doxology in the form "with
the Spirit" has no written authority, we maintain that if there is no
other instance of that which is unwritten, then this must not be
received. But if the greater number of our mysteries are admitted into
our constitution without written authority, then, in company with the
many others, let us receive this one. For I hold it apostolic to
abide also by the unwritten traditions. "I praise you," it is
said, "that ye remember me in all things, and keep the ordinances as
I delivered them to you;" and "Hold fast the traditions which ye
have been taught whether by word, or our Epistle." One of these
traditions is the practice which is now before us, which they who
ordained from the beginning, rooted firmly in the churches, delivering
it to their successors, and its use through long custom advances pace
by pace with time. If, as in a Court of Law, we were at a loss for
documentary evidence, but were able to bring before you a large number
of witnesses, would you not give your vote for our acquittal? I think
so; for "at the mouth of two or three witnesses shall the matter be
established." And if we could prove clearly to you that a long period
of time was in our favour, should we not have seemed to you to urge
with reason that this suit ought not to be brought into court against
us? For ancient dogmas inspire a certain sense of awe, venerable as
they are with a hoary antiquity. I will therefore give you a list of
the supporters of the word (and the time too must be taken into account
in relation to what passes unquestioned). For it did not originate
with us. How could it? We, in comparison with the time during which
this word has been in vogue, are, to use the words of Job, "but of
yesterday." I myself, if I must speak of what concerns me
individually, cherish this phrase as a legacy left me by my fathers.
It was delivered to me by one who spent a long life in the service of
God, and by him I was both baptized, and admitted to the ministry of
the church. While examining, so far as I could, if any of the
blessed men of old used the words to which objection is now made, I
found many worthy of credit both on account of their early date, and
also a characteristic in which they are unlike the men of
to-day--because of the exactness of their knowledge. Of these some
coupled the word in the doxology by the preposition, others by the
conjunction, but were in no case supposed to be acting
divergently,--at least so far as the right sense of true religion is
concerned.
72. There is the famous Irenaeus, and Clement of Rome;
Dionysius of Rome, and, strange to say, Dionysius of Alexandria,
in his second Letter to his namesake, on "Conviction and
Defence," so concludes. I will give you his very words.
"Following all these, we, too, since we have received from the
presbyters who were before us a form and rule, offering thanksgiving in
the same terms with them, thus conclude our Letter to you. To God
the Father and the Son our Lord Jesus Christ, with the Holy
Ghost, glory and might for ever and ever; amen." And no one can
say that this passage has been altered. He would not have so
persistently stated that he had received a form and rule if he had said
"in the Spirit." For of this phrase the use is abundant: it was
the use of "with" which required defence. Dionysius moreover in the
middle of his treatise thus writes in opposition to the Sabellians,
"If by the hypostases being three they say that they are divided,
there are three, though they like it not. Else let them destroy the
divine Trinity altogether." And again: "most divine on this
account after the Unity is the Trinity." Clement, in more
primitive fashion, writes, "God lives, and the Lord Jesus
Christ, and the Holy Ghost." And now let us bear how Irenaeus,
who lived near the times of the Apostles, mentions the Spirit in his
work "Against the Heresies." "The Apostle rightly calls carnal
them that are unbridled and carried away to their own desires, having
no desire for the Holy Spirit," and in another passage Irenaeus
says, "The Apostle exclaimed that flesh and blood cannot inherit the
kingdom of the heavens lest we, being without share in the divine
Spirit, fall short of the kingdom of the heavens." If any one
thinks Eusebius of Palestine worthy of credit on account of his wide
experience, I point further to the very words he uses in discussing
questions concerning the polygamy of the ancients. Stirring up himself
to his work, he writes "invoking the holy God of the Prophets, the
Author of light, through our Saviour Jesus Christ, with the Holy
Spirit."
73. Origen, too, in many of his expositions of the Psalms, we
find using the form of doxology "with the Holy Ghost. The opinions
which he held concerning the Spirit were not always and everywhere
sound; nevertheless in many passages even he himself reverently
recognises the force of established usage, and expresses himself
concerning the Spirit in terms consistent with true religion. It is,
if I am not mistaken, in the Sixth Book of his Commentary on the
Gospel of St. John that he distinctly makes the Spirit an object of
worship. His words are:--"The washing or water is a symbol of the
cleaning of the soul which is washed clean of all filth that comes of
wickedness; but none the less is it also by itself, to him who yields
himself to the God-head of the adorable Trinity, through the power
of the invocations, the origin and source of blessings." And again,
in his Exposition of the Epistle to the Romans "the holy powers,"
he says "are able to receive the Only-begotten, and the Godhead of
the Holy Spirit." Thus I apprehend, the powerful influence of
tradition frequently impels men to express themselves in terms
contradictory to their own opinions. Moreover this form of the
doxology was not unknown even to Africanus the historian. In the
Fifth Book of his Epitome of the Times he says "we who know the
weight of those terms, and are not ignorant of the grace of faith,
render thanks to the Father, who bestowed on us His own creatures,
Jesus Christ, the Saviour of the world and our Lord, to whom be
glory and majesty with the Holy Ghost, for ever." The rest of the
passages may peradventure be viewed with suspicion; or may really have
been altered, and the fact of their having been tampered with will be
difficult to detect because the difference consists in a single
syllable. Those however which I have quoted at length are out of the
reach of any dishonest manipulation, and can easily be verified from
the actual works.
I will now adduce another piece of evidence which might perhaps seem
insignificant, but because of its antiquity must in nowise be omitted
by a defendant who is indicted on a charge of innovation. It seemed
fitting to our fathers not to receive the gift of the light at eventide
in silence, but, on its appearing, immediately to give thanks. Who
was the author of these words of thanksgiving at the lighting of the
lamps, we are not able to say. The people, however, utter the
ancient form, and no one has ever reckoned guilty of impiety those who
say "We praise Father, Son, and God's Holy Spirit." And if
any one knows the Hymn of Athenogenes, which, as he was hurrying on
to his perfecting by fire, he left as a kind of farewell gift to his
friends, he knows the mind of the martyrs as to the Spirit. On this
head I shall say no more.
74. But where shall I rank the great Gregory, and the words
uttered by him? Shall we not place among Apostles and Prophets a man
who walked by the same Spirit as they; who never through all his days
diverged from the footprints of the saints; who maintained, as long as
he lived, the exact principles of evangelical citizenship? I am sure
that we shall do the truth a wrong if we refuse to number that soul with
the people of God, shining as it did like a beacon in the Church of
God; for by the fellow-working of the Spirit the power which he had
over demons was tremendous, and so gifted was he with the grace of the
word "for obedience to the faith among ... the nations," that,
although only seventeen Christians were handed over to him, he brought
the whole people alike in town and country through knowledge to God.
He too by Christ's mighty name commanded even rivers to change their
course, and caused a lake, which afforded a ground of quarrel to some
covetous brethren, to dry up. Moreover his predictions of things to
come were such as in no wise to fall short of those of the great
prophets. To recount all his wonderful works in detail would be too
long a task. By the superabundance of gifts, wrought in him by the
Spirit in all power and in signs and in marvels, he was styled a
second Moses by the very enemies of the Church. Thus in all that he
through grace accomplished, alike byword and deed, a light seemed ever
to be shining, token of the heavenly power from the unseen which
followed him. To this day he is a great object of admiration to the
people of his own neighbourhood, and his memory, established in the
churches ever fresh and green, is not dulled by length of time. Thus
not a practice, not a word, not a mystic rite has been added to the
Church besides what he bequeathed to it. Hence truly on account of
the antiquity of their institution many of their ceremonies appear to be
defective. For his successors in the administration of the Churches
could not endure to accept any subsequent discovery in addition to what
had had his sanction. Now one of the institutions of Gregory is the
very form of the doxology to which objection is now made, preserved by
the Church on the authority of his tradition; a statement which may be
verified without much trouble by any one who likes to make a short
journey. That our Firmilian held this belief is testified by the
writings which he has left. The contemporaries also of the illustrious
Meletius say that he was of this opinion. But why quote ancient
authorities? Now in the East are not the maintainers of true religion
known chiefly by this one term, and separated from their adversaries as
by a watchword? I have heard from a certain Mesopotamian, a man at
once well skilled in the language and of unperverted opinions, that by
the usage of his country it is impossible for any one, even though he
may wish to do so, to express himself in any other way, and that they
are compelled by the idiom of their mother tongue to offer the doxology
by the syllable "and," or, I should more accurately say, by their
equivalent expressions. We Cappadocians, too, so speak in the
dialect of our country, the Spirit having so early. as the division
of tongues foreseen the utility of the phrase. And what of the whole
West, almost from Illyricum to the boundaries of our world? Does it
not support this word?
75. How then can I be an innovator and creator of new terms, when
I adduce as originators and champions of the word whole nations,
cities, custom going back beyond the memory of man, men who were
pillars of the church and conspicuous for all knowledge and spiritual
power? For this cause this banded array of foes is set in motion
against me, and town and village and remotest regions are full of my
calumniators. Sad and painful are these things to them that seek for
peace, but great is the reward of patience for sufferings endured for
the Faith's sake. So besides these let sword flash, let axe be
whetted, let fire burn fiercer than that of Babylon, let every
instrument of torture be set in motion against me. To me nothing is
more fearful than failure to fear the threats which the Lord has
directed against them that blaspheme the Spirit. Kindly readers will
find a satisfactory defence in what I have said, that I accept a
phrase so dear and so familiar to the saints, and confirmed by usage so
long, inasmuch as, from the day when the Gospel was first preached up
to our own time, it is shewn to have been admitted to all full rights
within the churches, and, what is of greatest moment, to have been
accepted as bearing a sense in accordance with holiness and true
religion. But before the great tribunal what have I prepared to say
in my defence? This; that I was in the first place led to the glory
of the Spirit by the honour conferred by the Lord in associating Him
with Himself and with His Father at baptism; and secondly by the
introduction of each of us to the knowledge of God by such an
initiation; and above all by the fear of the threatened punishment
shutting out the thought of all indignity and unworthy conception. But
our opponents, what will they say? After shewing neither reverence
for the Lord's honour nor fear of His threats, what kind of defence
will they have for their blasphemy? It is for them to make up their
mind about their own action or even now to change it. For my own part
I would pray most earnestly that the good God will make His peace
rule in the hearts of all, so that these men who are swollen with pride
and set in battle array against us may be calmed by the Spirit of
meekness and of love; and that if they have become utterly savage, and
are in an untamable state, He will grant to us at least to bear with
long suffering all that we have to bear at their hands. In short "to
them that have in themselves the sentence of death," it is not
suffering for the sake of the Faith which is painful; what is hard to
bear is to fail to fight its battle. The athlete does not so much
complain of being wounded in the struggle as of not being able even to
secure admission into the stadium. Or perhaps this was the time for
silence spoken of by Solomon the wise. For, when life is buffeted by
so fierce a storm that all the intelligence of those who are instructed
in the word is filled with the deceit of false reasoning and
confounded, like an eye filled with dust, when men are stunned by
strange and awful noises, when all the world is shaken and everything
tottering to its fall, what profits it to cry, as I am really
crying, to the wind?
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