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76. To what then shall I liken our present condition? It may be
compared, I think, to some naval battle which has arisen out of time
old quarrels, and is fought by men who cherish a deadly hate against
one another, of long experience in naval warfare, and eager for the
fight. Look, I beg you, at the picture thus raised before your
eyes. See the rival fleets rushing in dread array to the attack.
With a burst of uncontrollable fury they engage and fight it out.
Fancy, if you like, the ships driven to and fro by a raging tempest,
while thick darkness falls from the clouds and blackens all the scenes
so that watchwords are indistinguishable in the confusion, and all
distinction between friend and foe is lost. To fill up the details of
the imaginary picture, suppose the sea swollen with billows and whirled
up from the deep, while a vehement torrent of rain pours down from the
clouds and the terrible waves rise high. From every quarter of heaven
the winds beat upon one point, where both the fleets are dashed one
against the other. Of the combatants some are turning traitors; some
are deserting in the very thick of the fight; some have at one and the
same moment to urge on their boats, all beaten by the gale, and to
advance against their assailants. Jealousy of authority and the lust
of individual mastery splits the sailors into parties which deal mutual
death to one another. Think, besides all this, of the confused and
unmeaning roar sounding over all the sea, from howling winds, from
crashing vessels, from boiling surf, from the yells of the combatants
as they express their varying emotions in every kind of noise, so that
not a word from admiral or pilot can be heard. The disorder and
confusion is tremendous, for the extremity of misfortune, when life is
despaired of, gives men license for every kind of wickedness.
Suppose, too, that the men are all smitten with the incurable plague
of mad love of glory, so that they do not cease from their struggle
each to get the better of the other, while their ship is actually
settling down into the deep.
77. Turn now I beg you from this figurative description to the
unhappy reality. Did it not at one time appear that the Arian
schism, after its separation into a sect opposed to the Church of
God, stood itself alone in hostile array? But when the attitude of
our foes against us was changed from one of long standing and bitter
strife to one of open warfare, then, as is well known, the war was
split up in more ways than I can tell into many subdivisions, so that
all men were stirred to a state of inveterate hatred alike by common
party spirit and individual suspicion. But what storm at sea was ever
so fierce and wild as this tempest of the Churches? In it every
landmark of the Fathers has been moved; every foundation. every
bulwark of opinion has been shaken: everything buoyed up on the unsound
is dashed about and shaken down. We attack one another. We are
overthrown by one another. If our enemy is not the first to strike
us, we are wounded by the comrade at our side. If a foeman is
stricken and falls, his fellow soldier tramples him down. There is at
least this bond of union between us that we hate our common foes, but
no sooner have the enemy gone by than we find enemies in one another.
And who could make a complete list of all the wrecks? Some have gone
to the bottom on the attack of the enemy, some through the unsuspected
treachery, of their allies, some from the blundering of their own
officers. We see, as it were, whole churches, crews and all,
dashed and shattered upon the sunken reefs of disingenuous heresy,
while others of the enemies of the Spirit of Salvation have seized the
helm and made shipwreck of the faith. And then the disturbances
wrought by the princes of the world have caused the downfall of the
people with a violence unmatched by that of hurricane or whirlwind.
The luminaries of the world, which God set to give light to the souls
of the people, have been driven from their homes, and a darkness
verily gloomy and disheartening has settled on the Churches. The
terror of universal ruin is already imminent, and yet their mutual
rivalry is so unbounded as to blunt all sense of danger. Individual
hatred is of more importance than the general and common warfare, for
men by whom the immediate gratification of ambition is esteemed more
highly than the rewards that await us in a time to come, prefer the
glory of getting the better of their opponents to securing the common
welfare of mankind. So all men alike, each as best he can, lift the
hand of murder against one another. Harsh rises the cry of the
combatants encountering one another in dispute; already all the Church
is almost full of the inarticulate screams, the unintelligible noises,
rising from the ceaseless agitations that divert the right rule of the
doctrine of true religion, now in the direction of excess, now in that
of defect. On the one hand are they who confound the Persons and are
carried away into Judaism; on the other hand are they that, through
the opposition of the natures, pass into heathenism. Between these
opposite parties inspired Scripture is powerless to mediate; the
traditions of the apostles cannot suggest terms of arbitration. Plain
speaking is fatal to friendship, and disagreement in opinion all the
ground that is wanted for a quarrel. No oaths of confederacy are so
efficacious in keeping men true to sedition as their likeness in error.
Every one is a theologue though he have his soul branded with more
spots than can be counted. The result is that innovators find a
plentiful supply of men ripe for faction, while self-appointed scions
of the house of place-hunters reject the government of the Holy
Spirit and divide the chief dignities of the Churches. The
institutions of the Gospel have now everywhere been thrown into
confusion by want of discipline; there is an indescribable pushing for
the chief places while every self-advertiser tries to force himself
into high office. The result of this lust for ordering is that our
people are in a state of wild confusion for lack of being ordered; the
exhortations of those in authority are rendered wholly purposeless and
void, because there is not a man but, out of his ignorant impudence,
thinks that it is just as much his duty to give orders to other people,
as it is to obey any one else.
78. So, since no human voice is strong enough to be heard in such a
disturbance, I reckon silence more profitable than speech, for if
there is any truth in the words of the Preacher, "The words of wise
men are heard in quiet," in the present condition of things any
discussion of them must be anything but becoming. I am moreover
restrained by the Prophet's saying, "Therefore the prudent shall
keep silence in that time, for it is an evil time," a time when some
trip up their neighbours' heels, some stamp on a man when he is down,
and others clap their hands with joy, but there is not one to feel for
the fallen and hold out a helping hand, although according to the
ancient law he is not uncondemned, who passes by even his enemy's
beast of burden fallen under his load. This is not the state of things
now. Why not? The love of many has waxed cold; brotherly concord is
destroyed, the very name of unity is ignored, brotherly admonitions
are heard no more, nowhere is there Christian pity, nowhere falls the
tear of sympathy. Now there is no one to receive "the weak in
faith," but mutual hatred has blazed so high among fellow clansmen
that they are more delighted at a neighbour's fall than at their own
success. Just as in a plague, men of the most regular lives suffer
from the same sickness as the rest, because they catch the disease by
communication with the infected, so nowadays by the evil rivalry which
possesses our souls we are carried away to an emulation in wickedness,
and are all of us each as bad as the others. Hence merciless and sour
sit the judges of the erring; unfeeling and hostile are the critics of
the well disposed. And to such a depth is this evil rooted among us
that we have become more brutish than the brutes; they do at least herd
with their fellows, but our most savage warfare is with our own
people.
79. For all these reasons I ought to have kept silence, but I was
drawn in the other direction by love, which "seeketh not her own,"
and desires to overcome every difficulty put in her way by time and
circumstance. I was taught too by the children at Babylon, that,
when there is no one to sopport the cause of true religion, we ought
alone and all unaided to do our duty. They from out of the midst of
the flame lifted up their voices in hymns and praise to God, reeking
not of the host that set the truth at naught, but sufficient, three
only that they were, with one another. Wherefore we too are
undismayed at the cloud of our enemies, and, resting our hope on the
aid of the Spirit, have, with all boldness, proclaimed the truth.
Had I not so done, it would truly have been terrible that the
blasphemers of the Spirit should so easily be emboldened in their
attack upon true religion, and that we, with so mighty an ally and
supporter at our side, should shrink from the service of that
doctrine, which by the tradition of the Fathers has been preserved by
an unbroken sequence of memory to our own day. A further powerful
incentive to my undertaking was the warm fervour of your "love
unfeigned," a and the seriousness and taciturnity of your
disposition; a guarantee that you would not publish what I was about
to say to all the world,--not because it would not be worth making
known, but to avoid casting pearls before swine, My task is now
done. If you find what I have said satisfactory, let this make an
end to our discussion of these matters. If you think any point
requires further elucidation, pray do not hesitate to pursue the
investigation with all diligence, and to add to your information by
putting any uncontroversial question. Either through me or through
others the Lord will grant full explanation on matters which have yet
to be made clear, according to the knowledge supplied to the worthy by
the Holy Spirit. Amen.
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