Sermons & Letters 151 part 1/2

CHAPTER I. — When the brethren and our fellow-priests, whom the see of blessed Peter directed to the holy council, returned to us, we learned that your Love, by heavenly aid, had together with us come forth victorious over both the impiety of Nestorius and the madness of Eutyches. Wherefore we glory in the Lord, singing with the prophet: Our help is in the name of the Lord, who made heaven and earth (Ps. 123:8): who has permitted us to sustain no detriment in our brethren, but confirmed by the irretractable assent of the whole brotherhood those things which He had first defined through our ministry:

so that it might truly show itself to have proceeded from Him, that what was first formed by the first of all sees should receive the judgement of the whole Christian world: that in this too the members might agree with the head. In which a larger matter of rejoicing accrues to us, since the enemy struck himself down all the more, the more savagely he rose up against the ministers of Christ. For lest it should seem to be flattering assent of the other sees toward that see which the Lord of all set to preside over the rest, or lest any other adverse suspicion could creep in, there were first found those who doubted concerning our judgements. And while some, incited by the author of dissension, leap forth into wars of contradiction, by the dispensing of Him who orders all goodness, using its evil author for the greater good, a greater good was reached.

For the gifts of divine grace come more sweetly, as often as they are acquired not without great toils; and continued peace through ease is wont to seem a lesser good than that restored through labours. Truth itself too shines forth more clearly, and is more firmly retained, while what faith had first taught, examination afterward confirms. Finally, the merit of the priestly office shines the more, where the authority of the highest is so preserved that in nothing is the liberty of the lower thought to be diminished. And to the greater glory of God the end of the examination is profitable, when the confidence of exerting oneself is taken up for this, that adversity may be vanquished: lest what is by itself proved reprobate should seem to be suppressed by the prejudice of silence. CHAPTER II.

— Rejoice therefore, dearest brother, and in the only-begotten Son of God rejoice as a victor. He conquered through us for Himself, whose truth of flesh was denied. He conquered through us and for us, He for whom we conquered. This is the second festival for the world after the coming of the Lord. Restored to the age, the enemy being cast down, is the mystery of the divine incarnation: which the enemy of the human race, because he could not take it away in the realities themselves, obscured by calumnies. Nay rather, the immortal mystery had perished from the heart of the unbelieving, because so great a salvation profits nothing to the unbelieving, Truth itself saying to His disciples: He that believeth and is baptized shall be saved; but he that believeth not shall be condemned (Mark 16:16).

The radiance of the Sun of righteousness, impeded throughout the East by the dense clouds of Nestorius and Eutyches, shone forth pure from the West, where it placed its highest summit chiefly in the apostles and doctors. Although He must be believed never to have been lacking even there, where He reserved for Himself excellent confessors, so that, when the ancient foe again attempted, through the impenitent heart of a second Pharaoh, to extinguish the seed and sons of promise of Abraham's faith, by God's mercy, growing faint, he could do nothing but harm himself. Concerning whom the Almighty wrought even that more marvellous thing, that those also whom he had summoned to himself as allies for the slaughter of the Israelite people, He did not submerge together with the author of tyranny, but gathered together with His own people;

and, as the fount of mercy knew to be truly worthy of Himself and possible to Himself alone, He made those who had been conquered by us to be victors together with us. For since the spirit of falsehood is alone truly the enemy of the human race, there is no doubt that all now triumph over him whom the truth has claimed for herself. Now indeed it appears how divine in authority are those sayings of our Redeemer, when they are so aptly fitted against the enemies of the faith that it is not permitted to doubt that they were spoken of these very men: You, He says, are of your father the devil, and the desires of your father you will to fulfil. He was a murderer from the beginning, and stood not in the truth, because truth is not in him. When he speaks a lie, he speaks of his own, for he is a liar, and the father of it (John 8:44). CHAPTER

III. — Nothing therefore is to be wondered at, that these men who have believed a falsehood concerning the nature of our God agree with their father also concerning these matters; asserting that whatever was seen, whatever was heard, whatever finally, by the witness of the Gospel, was touched and handled in the only-begotten Son of God, was not of Him whose it was proved to be, but of a substance co-eternal and co-essential with the Father: as though either the nature of the Divinity were transfixed by the wood of the cross, or the unchangeable could grow through the ages, and the eternal Wisdom could advance in wisdom, or God, who is Spirit, could from time to time be filled with the Spirit. In this too his bitter madness betrays from what author it came, that, as much as in him lies, it has striven to harm all men.

For he who afflicted you by persecuting, depraved the rest by impelling them to consent to the crime. But not even us, though he had wounded us in the individual brethren, who are our members, did he make exempt from a special grief, upon whom, with a boldness new and unheard-of before and incredible, he strove to inflict injury against our very head. But would that, at least after so many evils, coming to his senses, he had not saddened us also by his own ruin of eternal damnation. What measure of crime did he omit, to whom not even this could suffice, that — sparing neither the living nor the dead — he steeped his hands, already long since polluted, in the blood of an innocent and Catholic priest, having renounced the truth and approved falsehood? And since it is written:

He that hateth his brother is a murderer (1 John 3:15); he fulfilled in works that which by hatred he was already bound to have done, as if he had heard neither these things, nor that which the Lord says: Learn of me, for I am meek and humble of heart, and you shall find rest for your souls. For my yoke is sweet, and my burden light (Matt. 11:29,30). A worthy preacher of diabolical error, he was found an Egyptian devastator; who like a most savage tyrant of the Church imposed his abominable blasphemies upon the venerable brethren through a violent throng of seditious men, and through the bloody hands of soldiers. And since by the voice of our Redeemer it is confirmed that the author of murder and of falsehood is one and the same (John 8:44), he alike fulfilled both:

as though the Scriptures were written not that things might be guarded against, but that they might be perpetrated, dragging to the heap of his own perdition those things which the Son of God gave as a warning unto salvation. That too he passed over with a too deaf ear, which was said by the same Lord: I speak that which I have seen with my Father, and you do that which you have seen with your father (Ibid. 38). CHAPTER IV. — Therefore, while he plotted to take away from Flavian of holy memory the life of the present age, he deprived himself of the light of the true life. While he strove to expel you from your Churches, he separated himself from the fellowship of Christians. While he drags very many, and impels them to consent to error, he wounded his own soul with a manifold wound: alone beyond all, and through all, and for all guilty, who was to all the cause of guilt.

But although your Fraternity, strengthened by solid food, seems by no means to need these things, yet, that we may fulfil what belongs to our place, concerning the word of the Apostle who says: Besides those things which are without, my daily instance, the solicitude of all the Churches. Who is weak, and I am not weak? Who is scandalized, and I am not on fire (2 Cor. 11:28,29)?

This above all, dearest brother, we believe must be enjoined upon the present occasion: that as often as, by the ministry of divine grace, we either immerse in or cleanse with the font of doctrine those who are outside, we depart in nothing from those rules of the faith which the Divinity of the Holy Spirit set forth in the Council of Chalcedon, but weigh our discourse with all caution between the double enemy of this new-fangled treachery: not now — far be it — as men debating about doubtful matters, but building up with supreme authority the things that have been well defined;

since in the letter of the Apostolic See, confirmed by the assent of the universal holy synod, we know that so many testimonies of divine authority have been heaped together, that no one can any longer doubt, save one who has chosen rather to bring upon himself the darkness of errors; and the synodal acts — both those in which the definition of the faith is first read to have been framed, and those in which the aforesaid letters of the Apostolic See were defended, with the zeal also of your fraternity — and above all the address to the most pious princes of the whole council, are fortified by so many testimonies of the preceding Fathers, that they have power to persuade any imprudent and stubborn mind, provided it be not already condemned along with the devil for its impiety.

Chapter V. — Whence it is also fitting for us to take precaution against the enemies of the Church, that we leave them absolutely no occasion of calumny, so far as it concerns us, and that in acting against the Nestorians or the Eutychians we never seem to have turned our back upon either party; but that we shun and condemn both enemies of Christ with an even balance: so that, as often as the profit of the hearers, however great, demands it, we strike them together with their dogmas most promptly and most evidently with a worthy anathema, lest, if this be done by us either too obscurely or too tardily, it be thought done unwillingly. And although the matter itself suffices to admonish your prudence of this, yet experience too has now taught it.

But blessed be our God, whose invincible truth has shown you, according to the judgment of the Apostolic See, to be clean of every stain of heresy. To Him you will render a worthy grace in return for such labours, if you preserve yourself such as we have proved and do prove you, for the defence of the universal Church. For in that God has dissolved the deceits of all the calumniators, we acknowledge the greatest care of most blessed Peter on behalf of us all; who, after he had confirmed the judgment of his See in the definition of the faith, allowed nothing reprobate to appear concerning the person of any of you who laboured with us for the catholic faith: because indeed, with the Holy Spirit judging, none of those could go forth otherwise than victor, whose faith had already conquered. Chapter VI.

— As for what remains, we exhort you that, since we have learned that certain remnants of the Eutychian and Nestorian error have there survived, you should now also labour together with the Apostolic See. For the victory which Christ our Lord has granted to His Church, so long as we dwell in this world, although it bestows greater confidence, nevertheless does not wholly remove solicitude; nor was it given that we should sleep, but that we should labour more sweetly. Whence in this also we wish to be aided by the solicitude of your vigilance, so that, with your report running its course, you may hasten to instruct the Apostolic See what progress the Lord's teaching is making in those regions: to the end that we may aid the priests of that region in whatever the need may require.

But concerning those things which, in the oft-mentioned council, were attempted by unlawful presumption against the venerable Nicene canons, we have written to our brother and fellow-bishop, the prelate of the See of Antioch; adding also that which you charged us by word through our vicars, on account of the wickedness of certain monks of your region, and specially decreeing this: that besides the priests of the Lord no one dare to preach, whether monk or layman, who boasts himself under the name of any learning whatsoever. Which letters, however, for the benefit of the universal Church, we have willed to come to the notice of all through our aforesaid brother and fellow-bishop Maximus:

and for this reason we have been unwilling to add a copy of them to these, because we do not doubt that the things we enjoined upon our aforesaid brother and fellow-bishop are to be fulfilled. And in another hand: May God keep you safe, dearest brother. Given on the third day before the Ides of June, in the consulship of Opilio, most illustrious man. Chapter I. — By so many proofs, through all the Churches of Christ, has the faith of your piety become known, that if any anxiety is engendered on behalf of the common religion, your aid is rightly sought. And because, mindful of the stewardship entrusted to me, I have need to send forward my cares even into things that are to come, I am not improperly desirous to be aided by the zeal of your clemency: so that in that observance which is always varied by a fixed reckoning, no error may be able to be incurred.

For the Paschal feast, in which the sacrament of human salvation is chiefly contained, although it must always be celebrated in the first month, is nevertheless so mutable by the condition of the lunar course, that very often an ambiguous choice of the most sacred day occurs, and from this it very often comes to pass — which is not permitted — that not all the Church at once observes what ought to be but one. The holy Fathers therefore endeavoured to remove the occasion of this error, delegating all this care to the bishop of Alexandria (since among the Egyptians the skill of this computation seemed to have been handed down from ancient times), through whom each year the day of the aforesaid solemnity should be indicated to the Apostolic See, by whose writings a general notice might run through to the more distant Churches.

Chapter II. — But Theophilus of holy memory, bishop of the Alexandrian Church, when he had gathered together a hundred years in number of this observance, determined that the Paschal feast of the seventy-sixth year was to be kept far otherwise than others had decreed. For, placing the order of the sacred observance following one upon another from the first consulship of Theodosius the elder, of august memory, so that the reckoning of the longer period might be held recorded in his letters — of which computation the seventy-fourth is the year in which, on the day before the Ides of April, we celebrated holy Easter; but in the following year, on the day before the Nones of April, the same festival must, God being favourable, be kept, as the order of the centenary annotation regularly declares;

but in the year which will be the seventy-sixth, that day of Easter is found assigned which the authority of no precedent, of no ordinance, admits from the time of the Lord's Passion. For we recognize the eighth day before the Kalends of May to have been fixed by him, which too greatly exceeds the limit of the ancient ordinance; whereas others have appointed the fifteenth day before the Kalends of May to this festivity. Indeed, from the eleventh before the Kalends of April up to the eleventh before the Kalends of May a lawful span has been fixed, within which the necessity of all variations is enclosed: so that we can have the Lord's Easter neither earlier nor later.

For that the festivity is seen sometimes to have reached the tenth and the ninth before the Kalends of May is defended by a certain reasoning. Because although the day of the Resurrection seems to have gone beyond the terminus, yet the day of the Passion will not be found to have passed the appointed limit. But to bring the Paschal observance to the eighth before the Kalends of May is a transgression too unwonted and manifest. Chapter III. — Since therefore in that centenary computation of Theophilus, as I said, the seventy-sixth year is shown to have appointed the day of Easter against ecclesiastical custom, and no light offence is committed if in the very beginning of the sacrament the truth and unity is not held by the universal Church, I beseech your clemency that you deign to lend your zeal:

so that the Egyptians, or any others who seem to have a sure knowledge of this computation, may resolve the scruple of this anxiety, that the general observance may be directed to that day which neither abandons the norm of the paternal ordinances nor strays beyond the appointed limits. And whatever your piety shall learn concerning this consultation, let it command to come speedily to my notice: so that in the divine mysteries no fault of dissonance may arise. Given on the seventeenth day before the Kalends of July, in the consulship of Opilio, most illustrious man.

Concerning the Paschal observance, Theophilus of holy memory, writing to Theodosius the elder, Augustus, over a hundred years, from the first consulship of the aforesaid prince, arranged the order of the feast, of which instruction the seventy-fourth year is now unfolding; in which, in the consulship of Opilio, on the day before the Ides of April, the sacred solemnity was celebrated; whence in the following year, on the day before the Nones of April, the same festival will reasonably follow. But the year which will be the seventy-sixth is known to have an annotation of the said bishop, which is discordant from the example of all antiquity and from every authority of the Fathers.

Indeed, he transferred the Lord's Easter to the eighth before the Kalends of May, too evidently exceeding the limits anciently prefixed, whereas he could have noted the Paschal solemnity on the fifteenth day before the Kalends of May, as others determined. Whence, because no small anxiety is engendered in me, lest this persuasion be strengthened among the Egyptians, I have directed writings to the most Christian and most clement prince, in which I have carefully set forth the cause of the scruple, and have humbly requested that he devote his effort, as he is wont, worthily to the cult of religion: that he may command those who seem to have a perfect knowledge of this computation to come together into one and diligently to inquire:

lest perchance this definition be held, and this excess, which seems to be repugnant to earlier times, be imputed to our connivance or negligence, and there come to pass in our days what was never before presumed. But because it behoves your fraternity to be a partaker with me in this care, and to guard beforehand lest anything such befall, deign more frequently to suggest to the most religious and most faithful prince, that he may without dissimulation command the Egyptians to be admonished, lest on the day of the highest festivity there be sin either by some dissension or by transgression. And whatever a more diligent solicitude shall find concerning this matter, let the most glorious emperor command to come quickly to my notice:

since it pertains both to his salvation and to that of all, that the worship of God be injured by no error. Given on the seventeenth day before the Kalends of July, in the consulship of Opilio, most illustrious man. Chapter I. — How great is my care for the catholic faith, and with what solicitude, so far as the Lord aids, I ought to take precaution lest the truth of the Gospel ever be resisted by the unskilled or the impious, I do not doubt your piety knows. And therefore, together with the office of salutation, by which your clemency is always to be honoured by me, I beseech the Lord that He may gladden me concerning your safety, and may cause the cause of the faith — in which the hearts of certain monks within the province of Palestine had been troubled — to be more and more aided through you:

that, as far as can be done by the zeal of your piety, all confidence may be withdrawn from heretical perversity. For those whom neither the reasoning of the sacraments, nor the authority of the Scriptures, nor the very testimonies of the sacred places moved, what were to be feared for them save an abrupt peril? Let it profit the Churches, then — as by God's favour it does profit — and let it profit the human race itself, taken up in the incarnation of the Word of God, that you willed the dwelling-place of your habitation to be there where both the tokens of miracles and the proofs of sufferings proclaim to you our Lord Jesus Christ to be, as true God, so also true man, in the unity of person. Chapter.

II. — If therefore the aforesaid venerate and love the catholic name, and wish to be numbered among the members of the Lord's body, let them detest the depraved errors which they had rashly admitted, and do penance for their impious blasphemies and bloody deeds.

Let them submit, for the salvation of their souls, to the synodal decrees which were confirmed in the city of Chalcedon. And because true faith and quiet humility do not attain to understanding the sacrament of human salvation, let them believe what they read in the Gospel, what they confess in the Creed, and let them not be mingled with impious dogmas. For the catholic faith, as it condemns Nestorius, who dared to preach two persons in our one Lord Jesus Christ, so it condemns also Eutyches together with Dioscorus, who deny that the truth of human flesh was taken up in the womb of the Virgin Mother from the only-begotten God the Word.

But if your exhortation shall have profited anything toward the conversion of the aforesaid — which will bestow upon you eternal glory — I ask that you indicate this to me by a letter of your clemency; that I may rejoice both that you have taken the fruit of a good work, and that they have not perished from the mercy of the Lord. Given on the seventeenth day before the Kalends of July, in the consulship of Opilio, most illustrious man. Chapter I.

— To my solicitude, which I owe to the universal Church and to all her sons, it has been made manifest by the report of many that some offence was brought upon the minds of your beloved, while either unskilled interpreters, as it appears, or malicious ones, made you understand certain things otherwise than they were preached by me, being unable to translate from the Greek into Latin aptly and properly, since in explaining subtle and difficult matters scarcely does any disputant suffice even for himself in his own tongue. This, however, has so profited in my regard, that, while you disapprove those things which the catholic faith rejects, we understand you to be more the friends of true things than of false; and rightly to refute that which even I myself detest, from the institution of ancient doctrine.

For although my letter given to Flavian, bishop of holy memory, suffices of itself for its own manifestation, and needs in nothing either purgation or exposition; yet other writings of mine also accord with the same, in which likewise the sense of my preaching is in the open. For having the necessity of discoursing against the heretics, who had disturbed many peoples of Christ, I made manifest, both to the most clement princes, and to the holy synodal council, and to the Church of Constantinople, what, concerning the incarnation of the Word, according to the evangelical and apostolic doctrine, we ought to be wise and to feel; and in nothing did I depart from the confession of the holy Fathers:

because there is one, true, singular, catholic faith, to which nothing can be added nor diminished; which Nestorius first, and now Eutyches, with differing assertion indeed but with like impiety, have attempted to assail, and have tried to introduce into the Church of God two heresies contrary to one another, so that each was rightly condemned by the disciples of truth: because it was too insane and sacrilegious, that which both perceived with varied falsehood. Chapter.

II. — Let Nestorius therefore be anathematized, who believed the blessed Virgin Mary to be the mother only of the man, so as to make one person of the flesh, another of the Deity, nor to perceive one Christ in the Word of God and the flesh, but preached separately and disjointedly one Son of God, another son of man — whereas, while that unchangeable essence of the Word remained, which is with the Father and the Holy Spirit timeless and coeternal, the Word so became flesh within the virginal womb, that by one conception and one birth the same Virgin, according to the union of both substances, was both the handmaid of the Lord and His mother. Which Elizabeth also, as the evangelist Luke declares, understood and said: Whence is this to me, that the mother of my Lord should come to me (Luke i, 43)?

Let Eutyches also be smitten with the same anathema, who, rolled about through the impious errors of the old heretics, chose the third dogma of Apollinaris; so that, the truth of human flesh and soul being denied, he asserts our whole Lord Jesus Christ to be of one nature, as though the Deity of the Word itself had converted itself into flesh and soul; and that to be conceived and to be born, to be nourished and to grow, to be crucified and to die, to be buried and to rise again, and to ascend into heaven and to sit at the right hand of the Father — whence He will come to judge the living and the dead — belonged only to that essence which receives none of these things in itself without the truth of the flesh:

since the nature of the Only-begotten is the nature of the Father, is the nature of the Holy Spirit, at once impassible, at once unchangeable, the undivided unity and consubstantial equality of the eternal Trinity. Whence if this heretic dissents from the perversity of Apollinaris, lest he be convicted of holding the Deity to be passible and mortal, and yet dares to pronounce one nature of the incarnate Word — that is, of the Word and the flesh — he passes without doubt into the madness of Manichaeus and Marcion, and believes that the Mediator of God and men, the man Jesus Christ, did all things in pretence, and that no human body was in Him, but a phantastic appearance of a body appeared to the eyes of the beholders. Chapter III.

— Since the catholic faith has long detested these lies of impiety, and the sacrileges of such men have been condemned by the concordant sentences of the Fathers spread throughout the whole world, whoever they are so blinded and alienated from the light of truth, that they deny that human — that is, our — nature has been in the Word of God from the time of the incarnation, let them show wherein they usurp for themselves the Christian name, and by what reasoning they accord with the Gospel of truth, if through the birth of the blessed Virgin either flesh without Deity, or Deity without flesh, arose. For as it cannot be denied that the Word became flesh and dwelt among us (John i, 14), so it cannot be denied that God was in Christ, reconciling the world to Himself (2 Cor. v, 19).

But what reconciliation can there be, whereby God might be rendered propitious to the human race, unless the Mediator of God and men took up the cause of all? And by what reasoning could He fulfil the truth of a mediator, unless He who in the form of God was equal to the Father were in the form of a servant a partaker also of ours: so that through one new man there might be a renewal of the old estate; and the bond of death, contracted by the transgression of one, might be loosed by the death of One who alone owed nothing to death? For the shedding of the just blood on behalf of the unjust was so potent for privilege, so rich for a price, that if the whole company of captives believed in their Redeemer, no tyrannical bonds would retain them: since, as the Apostle says, where sin abounded, grace did more abound (Rom.