Select Orations (2/40/43) 3-1 part 3/5

of which he was the dispenser, and a very rich one, though the poorest and most destitute of any we know, healing not a hunger for bread nor a thirst for water, but a longing for the word that is truly life-giving and nourishing, and that brings unto growth of spiritual stature him who is well nourished.

From these things, then, and such as these—for why should one linger in saying all?—just when he who bore the name of piety had been translated and had sweetly breathed his last in those hands of his, he is led up to the lofty throne of the episcopate;

not without toil, nor without envy and struggle on the part both of those presiding over his native land and of the most wicked men of the city who were ranged with them.

But the Holy Spirit had to prevail;

and indeed it does prevail, with much to spare.

For He stirs up from abroad those who would anoint him, men renowned for piety and zealots, and along with these the new Abraham and our Patriarch—I mean my own father—about whom something marvelous also comes to pass.

For not only had he failed through the multitude of his years, but he was also worn down by sickness and was at his last breaths, yet he dares the journey, to give aid by his vote and taking courage in the Spirit.

And let me say something concise: laid as a corpse, as in a tomb, in the litter, he comes back young, strong, looking upward, made vigorous by the hand and the anointing—and it is no great thing to say, by the very head of him who was anointed.

Let this be added to the ancient narratives: that toil bestows health, and zeal raises the dead, and old age leaps when it is anointed by the Spirit.

Having thus been deemed worthy of the presidency—as was likely for men who had become such, and had obtained such grace, and were so regarded—he shamed in nothing of what followed either his own philosophy or the hopes of those who had believed in him;

but ever so much surpassing himself as he had before shown himself to surpass others, thinking most nobly and most philosophically about these matters.

For he held that it is the virtue of a private man not to be evil, or to be in some small degree good;

but the vice of a ruler and leader, and especially of such a rule, is not to excel the many by much, nor always to appear superior, nor to make his virtue commensurate with his dignity and throne;

for it is hard, he said, to attain the highest point of the mean, and by the abundance of one's virtue to draw the many toward moderation;

or rather—that I may philosophize about these things in a better way—what I behold concerning the Savior (and I think each of the wiser men does too), namely, that when He came among us, having taken the form of what is both above us and ours, this same thing I reckon to have come to pass here also;

not by His receiving increase through these things—for what could be more perfect than that which is perfect from the beginning?—but by these things being little by little laid bare and made manifest.

And the man's virtue I think received then not an addition but a greater operation, employing in authority a more abundant material.

First, he makes this plain to all: that it was no work of human favor toward him, but a gift of God, the thing that had been given;

and our own case will also show it.

For what fellow-philosophizing he did with me, who was philosophizing about that occasion!

For while all the others supposed that I would run to what had happened and rejoice greatly—which perhaps another might indeed have felt—and would share in the rule rather than be a subordinate power, and inferred this from our friendship;

since I, fleeing the burdensome—for in all things, if any man does, so do I—and at the same time the invidiousness of the occasion, especially while those concerned with him were still in travail and in turmoil, remained at home, having bridled my longing by force; he blames me, indeed, yet pardons me.

And after this, when I came but did not accept the honor of the chair, for the same reason, nor the precedence over the presbyters, he neither blamed me, and even commended me—doing well—choosing rather to be accused of pride by a few, who did not understand this dispensation, than to do anything contrary to reason and to his own counsels.

And yet how could a man more clearly have shown himself to have a soul superior to all flattery and fawning, and looking to one thing only, the law of the good, than by thinking thus concerning us, whom he had known among the first of his own friends and intimates?

Then he softens the party that was at variance with him, and heals it with words of a high-minded physician;

for he does this neither with flattery nor servilely, but quite vigorously and magnificently, as one who looks not to the present only, but also dispenses for the future obedience.

For seeing that the gentle is slack and effeminate, and the austere is harsh and self-willed, he aids both by means of each other;

having tempered the resistant with equity and the gentle with firmness;

needing little of speech, but able to do the more by deed toward the healing;

not enslaving by art, but appropriating by goodwill;

not employing domination, but winning men over by being able yet sparing;

and the greatest thing, by causing all to be overcome by his mind and to recognize that his virtue was unapproachable, and to consider it their one salvation to be ranged with him and under him, and their one peril to clash with him, and to reckon estrangement from him as alienation from God;

so that willingly they withdrew and were overcome and bowed as before the crash of thunder, each striving to be first before the other in making his defense, and converting the measure of their hostility into a measure of goodwill and of progress toward virtue—which indeed they found to be their one strongest defense;

except if anyone, on account of incurable wickedness, was neglected and cast aside, that he might be crushed and consumed within himself, like rust consumed together with the iron.

And when his affairs at home went according to his mind, and as none of the unbelievers, who had been ignorant of him too, would have supposed, he conceives in his mind something greater and loftier.

For while all the others looked only at what was at their feet, and reckoned how their own situation might be made secure—if indeed it is secure—and went no further, being able neither to conceive nor to accomplish anything great and bold;

and yet, moderate as he was in other things, in these he does not practice moderation;

but lifting up his head on high and turning the eye of his soul all around, he takes within his view the whole inhabited world, as far as the saving word had run.

Seeing the great inheritance of God, that people fashioned by His own words and laws and sufferings—the holy nation, the royal priesthood—in evil plight, torn apart into a thousand opinions and errors;

having grown to a beauty and greatness beyond measure, so as to cover all the earth and to overspread both mountains and cedars;

this same inheritance ravaged by that wicked and savage boar, the devil;

he did not consider it enough to bewail the calamity quietly and merely to lift up his hands to God alone, and to seek from Him deliverance from the besetting evils, while he himself slept;

but he judged that he ought also in some measure to give aid and to contribute something from himself.

For what could be more grievous than this disaster? And the man who looks on high ought rather to be zealous for the common good. For when one man fares well or ill, this leaves no mark upon the whole;

but when the whole is in such or such a state, it is of all necessity that each individual likewise share that condition.

Pondering and considering these things, that guardian and champion of the common good—since 'a feeling heart is a moth to the bones,' as it seems both to Solomon and to truth;

and insensibility is light-hearted, but sympathy is full of grief; and a wasting of the heart is persistent reflection—

and a wasting of the heart is persistent reflection;

he consumed what remained of his flesh in anxious cares, until he should find a remedy for the evil;

he sought help, whether divine or human, that might stay the common conflagration and the darkness that held us in its grip.

One thing, then, he devised, and it was exceedingly salutary.

Gathering himself together as best he could, and shutting himself up with the Spirit, and setting in motion all human reasonings, and searching out every depth of the Scriptures, he composed a treatise on true religion, and by his antithetical arguments and conflicts beat back most of the audacity of the heretics;

those who came to close quarters he overthrew with the close-combat weapons of his tongue;

those at a distance he struck down with arrows shot from his ink, no less honoured than the engravings on the tablets of the Law;

he laid down laws not for one nation of Judaea, and that a small one, concerning meats and drinks and temporary sacrifices and the purifications of the flesh;

but for every race and part of the inhabited world, concerning the word of truth, from which salvation also is won.

And since a deed without reason and a word without deed are alike imperfect, he added to his word the support that comes from doing;

to some he came in person, to others he sent embassies; some he summoned, admonished, reproved, rebuked, threatened, upbraided; he fought on behalf of nations, cities, and individuals, devising every kind of salvation, healing on every side;

he was that Bezalel, the architect of the divine tabernacle, using every material and craft for the work, and weaving all things into the rich abundance and harmony of one single beauty.

Why need I tell the rest? But there came against us again the emperor who warred on Christ and tyrannized over the faith, with greater impiety and a fiercer onslaught, inasmuch as the word now confronted him as a stronger antagonist—like that unclean and wicked spirit which, when it has gone out of a man and wandered about, returns to the same with more spirits to dwell there, as we have heard in the Gospels.

Of this one that man became an imitator, at once seeking to recover his former defeat and to add something to his earlier struggles;

for he thought it dreadful and outrageous that, while ruling over many nations, accounted worthy of great glory, and having subdued all around him by the might of his impiety, and overpowered everything in his path, he should be seen to be inferior to one man and one city, and to incur ridicule—not only from those leaders of godlessness who urged him on, but, as he supposed, from all mankind.

He sought rather to strike them with terror, to make himself dreadful by his innovations against the very elements of nature.

A strange land and sea were rumoured to be the work of this new creator; an army sailing over the mainland and marching over the deep; islands seized and the sea scourged, and all that clearly belonged to a frenzied host and generalship—a terror to the more ignoble, but a laughing-stock to the more manly and steadfast in spirit.

But that man, warring against us, had need of none of these things;

what was worse and more harmful than those things, this he was heard to do and to say.

He set his mouth against heaven, speaking blasphemy on high, and his tongue ranged over the earth.

And brilliant indeed were his first youthful exploits, but more brilliant his last contests against us.

What do I mean by the first? Banishments, exiles, confiscations, plots both open and secret;

persuasion, where there was opportunity;

force, where persuasion was of no avail.

Some were thrust out of the churches—all who held the right doctrine and were of our side;

others were brought in—all who chanced to belong to the imperial perdition, those who exacted signed professions of impiety, those who wrote things yet more grievous than these.

Presbyters were burnt at sea;

impious generals, not conquering the Persians, nor subduing the Scythians, nor purging away any other barbarian nation;

but making war on churches and dancing in triumph over the altars, and defiling the bloodless sacrifices with the blood of men and of victims, and outraging the modesty of virgins.

And to what end? That Jacob the patriarch might be cast out, and Esau brought in his stead—he who was hated even before his birth.

These are the tales of his first youthful exploits, which even to this day move tears in many as they come to mind and are heard.

But when, having gone through all, he rushed upon this unshaken and inviolable mother of the churches as if to enslave her, and upon the one remaining living spark of the truth;

then for the first time he perceived that he had taken evil counsel.

For as an arrow falling upon something stronger is beaten back, and as a cable that has snapped recoils, so he, encountering such a champion of the Church and being shattered against so great a bulwark, was dissolved.

Now the other things one may hear from those who were then put to the test, as they recount and narrate them;

but there is no one who does not relate it, of all men.

But so many marvel as know the contests of that time—the assaults, the promises, the threats, those sent to him from the order of the judges and attempting to persuade him, those from the military, those from the women's quarters, the men among women and women among men, those manly only in their impiety, who, lacking the power to be naturally lewd, play the harlot with the only means they have, their tongue; the chief cook Nabuzardan, threatening the knives of his trade, and to be sent into his own fire.

But what of all his deeds I most admire, and cannot pass over even if I wished, this I will give to my discourse, compressing it as far as possible.

Who does not know the prefect of that time, who used much of his own audacity especially against us, since he too had been initiated—or rather brought to ruin—into baptism by those people;

and who entered as though to a feast, not as one summoned to judgment.

How could I worthily describe either the insolence of the prefect, or the man's firm and prudent resistance to him?

'You there'—he said, addressing him by name, for he did not yet deign to call him bishop—'what means this daring against so great a power, and this presumption beyond all others?' 'On what account,' said the noble man, 'and what is this madness? For I do not yet understand.'

'Because you do not practise the emperor's religion,' he said, 'when all others have bowed and been overcome.'

'Because my Emperor,' he said, 'does not will these things, nor can I endure to worship any created thing, being myself a creature of God and bidden to be a god.'

'And we—what do we seem to you?' 'Nothing at all,' he said, 'in commanding these things.'

'What then? Is it no great thing for you to be ranked with us and to have us as your associates?' 'Prefects, indeed,' he said, 'you are, and of the illustrious—I will not deny it—but not more honoured than God.

And to have you as associates is a great thing;

for how not? You too are a creation of God; but only as some others of those ranked under us;

for Christianity is characterized not by persons, but by faith.'

Then indeed the prefect, stirred, boiled the more with rage, and rose up from his seat, and used harsher words against him.

'What then? Do you not fear the authority?' said he.

'Lest what should happen, and lest I should suffer what?' 'Lest you suffer some one of the many things that are in my power.'

'What are these? Let them be made known to us.'

'If anything else,' he said, 'threaten away;

for none of these touches us.' And the prefect said:

'How, and in what manner?' 'Because,' he said, 'one who has nothing cannot be caught by confiscation, unless you need these threadbare rags of mine and these few books, in which is all my livelihood;

as for exile, I do not know it, who am circumscribed by no place, and have neither this as my own which I now inhabit, and every place is mine into which I may be cast;

or rather, every place is God's, of whom I am a sojourner and a pilgrim;

as for tortures, what could they lay hold of, when there is no body? unless you mean the first blow, for of this alone are you master;

and death is a benefactor, for it will send me the sooner to God, for whom I live and conduct my life, and to whom for the most part I have already died, and toward whom I have long been pressing from afar.' At these things the prefect was astounded;

'No one,' he said, 'has hitherto so spoken to me, and with such boldness'—adding his own name.

'For perhaps,' he said, 'you have never met a bishop, or assuredly he would have spoken to you in this manner, contending for such things.

For in other matters we are gentle, prefect, and humbler than any other, this the commandment enjoining; and not only to such a power, but to no single ordinary person do we raise our brow;

but where God is the thing in peril and at stake, despising all else, we look to Him alone.

Fire and sword and wild beasts and the claws that tear the flesh are to us a delight rather than a terror.

In the face of these, insult, threaten, do whatever you will, enjoy your authority.

Let the emperor also hear this: you shall not take us, nor persuade us to consent to the impiety, even if you threaten things yet more grievous.' When the prefect had said and heard these things, and had learned the man's resistance to be so undaunted and invincible, he sent him out and dismissed him, no longer with the same threats, but with a certain respect and deference.

And going to the emperor himself with all speed,

'We are vanquished, O Emperor,' he said, 'by the man set over this Church.

The man is stronger than threats, firmer than arguments, mightier than persuasion.

One must try some other of the more ignoble sort; but this man we must either openly compel, or not expect that he will yield to threats.' Whereupon the emperor, condemning himself and overcome by the man's praises—for even an enemy admires the virtue of a man—neither commanded that force be used, and suffered the same as iron, which is softened by fire yet nonetheless remains iron;

and as for the threat, he did not accept communion with him, being ashamed to change his course, but sought some excuse, one as plausible as possible;

and this too the discourse will make plain.

For having entered the holy place with all his bodyguard about him—

it was the day of the Epiphany, and a festal gathering;

and becoming part of the people, he thus made pretence of fellowship;

and it is worth while not to pass over this either.

For when he had gotten inside and was thunderstruck by the psalmody that fell upon his ear, and saw the ocean of the people, and all the good order, both that about the sanctuary and that nearby, more angelic than human;

and he saw the one set before the people standing erect, like the Samuel whom Scripture describes, unbending in body and look and mind, as though nothing strange had happened, but as though, so to speak, planted firmly toward God and the sanctuary;

and those standing about him in a certain fear and reverence;

when he saw these things, and could compare what he saw with no precedent, he suffered something human: his sight and soul were filled with darkness and dizziness from amazement.

And this was as yet unnoticed by the many.

But when the gifts had to be presented at the divine table, of which he was himself the offerer, and no one took part with him, as was the custom, it being uncertain whether the saint would receive them, then his condition became known.

For he reeled, and had not one of those from the sanctuary stretched out a hand and stayed his reeling, he would have fallen a fall worthy of tears.

But what he discussed with the emperor himself, and with how much philosophy, when once again, after a fashion, he admitted us into fellowship within the veil and came into his sight and into discourse, longing for it for a good while—what need is there even to say, save that they were the voices of God, which were heard by those about the emperor and by us who entered with him? This becomes the beginning of the emperor's kindness toward us and the first settlement;

this resolve dissolved, like a flood, the greater part of the harassment that then beset us.

But here is another deed not less than those mentioned.

The wicked prevailed, and exile was decreed against the man;

and nothing was lacking of what conduced to this.

Night was at hand, the carriage made ready, those who hated him exulting, the godly in dejection, we about the eager traveller, and all else filled with everything that belongs to a noble dishonour.

For He who smote the firstborn of Egypt when it grew harsh against Israel, this same One struck the emperor's son also with a blow of sickness;

thence the writ of exile, hence the decree of sickness;

and the hand of the wicked scribe was stayed, and the saint was preserved, and a godly man became the gift of a fever, chastening a reckless emperor.

What could be more just or more swift than these things? And what followed upon them: the emperor's son was ill and in evil case of body;

and what then did the father do? seeking aid for the malady on every side, and choosing out the best of physicians, and devoting himself to prayers, if ever at any other time, and casting himself down upon the ground;

for suffering makes even emperors humble.

But when he found no remedy for the evil from anywhere, he had recourse to the faith of the man;

and he did not summon him through himself, being ashamed at his recent outrage, but entrusted the embassy to others, the closest and dearest to him.

And he came, in no way shrinking back nor, like some other man, rising up against the occasion; and at once with his presence the sickness became lighter, and the father of better hopes;

and had he not mingled brine with the fresh water—at once both summoning this man and trusting in the heterodox—the boy, recovering health, would have been preserved alive in his father's hands;

and this was believed by those who were then present and shared in the affliction.

And they say the same thing happened a little later to the prefect also.

Him too a certain sickness, falling upon him, bowed down into the saint's hands.

And in truth a blow becomes a lesson to the right-minded, and adversity is often better than prosperity.

He was ill, he wept, he was distressed, he sent messages, he entreated;

'You have your defence,' he cried;

'grant me salvation.' And indeed he obtained it, as he himself confessed, and persuaded many who knew it not;

for he never ceased both to marvel at that man's deeds and to recount them.

Were his dealings with those persons, then, of such a kind and brought to such an end;

but his dealings with others of a different kind—either over small matters, or fought in small fashion, or pursued with moderation, or worthy of silence, or not very praiseworthy? Surely not.

But He who once stirred up against Israel Hadad the troubler, this same One stirred up against him also the prefect of the Pontic district;

ostensibly as one indignant on behalf of some woman, but in truth as one fighting on the side of impiety, and setting himself against true religion.

I pass over all the other insults of every kind that he heaped upon the man—which is the same as to say, upon God, against whom and for whose sake the war was waged.

But what most of all both shamed the insolent man and exalted the contender—if indeed philosophy is something great and lofty, and to be seen mastering the multitude by it—this I will give to my discourse.

A certain woman of distinction, whose husband had not long before departed this life, the assessor of the judge sought to force, dragging her unwilling toward marriage.

And she, having no way to escape the tyranny, took counsel that was not so much bold as prudent.

She fled for refuge to the holy table, and made God her protector against the outrage.

What then ought to have been done, in the name of the Trinity itself!

—that I may say something even forensically amid the praises—not to speak of the great Basil and the lawgiver in such matters for all men, but of any other far inferior to him, yet a priest nonetheless? Was he not to lay claim to her, to hold her fast, to care for her, to stretch out his hand, by the loving-kindness of God and by the law that has honoured the altars? Was he not to be willing to do and suffer anything sooner than to take any inhuman counsel against her, and to outrage both the holy table and the faith with which she supplicated? 'No,' says the new judge, 'but all must be subject to my power, and Christians must become traitors to their own laws.' The one sought the suppliant;

but the other raged, and at last sent some of those in authority to search out the saint's little chamber, not so much out of need as out of insult.

What do you say? The house of that man free from passion, whom angels attend, on whom even women shrink to look? And not this only, but he commands him to appear in person and make his defence;

and not gently and humanely, but as one of the condemned.

And he sat presiding, full of rage and arrogance.

And he stood, like my Jesus when Pilate judged Him.

But the thunderbolts held back, and the sword of God was still being whetted and was deferred;

and the bow was bent, yet held back, leaving room for repentance.

Behold now another wrestling of the contender and the persecutor.

He commanded the rag about his neck to be flung off as with a sling.

But he said: 'I will strip off for you, if you wish, my little tunic too.'

He threatened to beat the fleshless man;

'You are treating my liver,' he said, 'you see how it is wasting me away, healing me by such lacerations.'

So they were in this state.

But the city, when it perceived the evil and the common danger of all—for each man counted this outrage as a danger to himself—was set entirely on fire and kindled into frenzy;

and as when a swarm is stirred up by smoke, one after another is roused and rises up, every race and every age—especially those who occupy themselves with the making of arms and the imperial weaving.

For they are more hot-blooded about such matters, and have boldness from their freedom of speech.

And everything was a weapon to each man—whatever was at hand from his trade, or anything else improvised for the occasion.

in their hands, the stones held ready, the cudgels at the prepared, one course for all, one shout, a common eagerness.

Wrath, the dread hoplite or general.

Nor were the women then unarmed, the occasion sharpening them;

their weaving-shuttles were their ashen spears;

and they remained women no longer, strengthened by their zeal, and transformed into the courage of men.

they thought they would share in true religion, if they tore him to pieces;

and that man was the more godly in their eyes who should first lay a hand on the one who dared such things.

What then did that haughty and reckless judge do? He was a suppliant, pitiable, wretched, lower than anyone—until there appeared the martyr without blood and the crowned victor without wounds, who by force restrained the people, mastered though they were by reverence, and saved his own suppliant and insulter.

These things did the God of the saints, who works all things and refashions them for the better, who sets Himself against the proud, but measures out grace to the humble.

For what would He not have done—He who clove the sea, and turned back the river, and tyrannized over the elements, and by the stretching out of hands set up trophies, in order to save a fugitive people—what would He not do to deliver this man also out of his dangers? Thus the worldly war here came to its end, and had a conclusion from God's right hand, worthy of that man's faith.

But here now begins the war of the bishops, and of those allied with them;

of which great was the dishonour, but greater the harm to those under their rule.

For who could persuade others to be moderate, when those set over them were so disposed? For they were not even from earlier times kindly disposed toward him, three of them being the culprits.

For neither did they agree with him in the doctrine of the faith, except by all necessity, being forced by the multitudes;

nor had they entirely put away their pettiness over his ordination.

And to be far surpassed in glory was of all things the heaviest to them, even if it was most shameful to confess.

And there arose also another sort of difference, which renewed these troubles.

For when our homeland was divided into two governments and metropolises, and many of the places from the former were attached to the new, thence their affairs too fell into faction.

For the one claimed that our affairs too should be divided along with the civil divisions;

and on this account he laid claim to those who had recently come over, as already belonging to him and separated from the other.

But the other held to the old custom and to the division handed down from the fathers of old.