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16. But their contention is that to use the phrase" with him" is
altogether strange and unusual, while "through him" is at once most
familiar in Holy Scripture, and very common in the language of the
brotherhood. What is our answer to this? We say, Blessed are the
ears that have not heard you and the hearts that have been kept from the
wounds of your words. To you, on the other hand, who are lovers of
Christ, I say that the Church recognizes both uses, and deprecates
neither as subversive of the other. For whenever we are contemplating
the majesty of the nature of the Only Begotten, and the excellence of
His dignity, we bear witness that the glory is with the Father;
while on the other hand, whenever we bethink us of His bestowal on us
of good gifts, and of oar access to, and admission into, the
household of God, we confess that this grace is effected for us
through Him and by Him.
It follows that the one phrase "with whom" is the proper one to be
used in the ascription of glory, while the other, "through whom,"
is specially appropriate in giving of thanks. It is also quite untrue
to allege that the phrase "with whom" is unfamiliar in the usage of
the devout. All those whose soundness of character leads them to hold
the dignity of antiquity to be more honourable than mere new-fangled
novelty, and who have preserved the tradition of their fathers
unadulterated, alike in town and in country, have employed this
phrase. It is, on the contrary, they who are surfeited with the
familiar and the customary, and arrogantly assail the old as stale,
who welcome innovation, just as in dress your lovers of display always
prefer some utter novelty to what is generally worn. So you may even
still see that the language of country folk preserves the ancient
fashion, while of these, our cunning experts in Iogomachy, the
language bears the brand of the new philosophy.
What our fathers said, the same say we, that the glory of the Father
and of the Son is common; wherefore we offer the doxology to the
Father with the Son. But we do not rest only on the fact that such
is the tradition of the Fathers; for they too followed the sense of
Scripture, and started from the evidence which, a few sentences
back, I deduced from Scripture and laid before you. For "the
brightness" is always thought of with "the glory," "the image"
with the archetype, and the Son always and everywhere together with
the Father; nor does even the close connexion of the names, much less
the nature of the things, admit of separation.
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