Works of Symeon

SYMEON, MOST BLESSED ARCHBISHOP OF THESSALONICA: AGAINST HERESIES AND CONCERNING THE ONE RIGHT FAITH OF US CHRISTIANS, AND CONCERNING THE SACRED RITES AND MYSTERIES OF THE CHURCH, A DIALOGUE, AND CONCERNING THE DIVINE TEMPLE AND THE ARCHPRIESTS, PRIESTS AND DEACONS THEREIN, AND THE SACRED VESTMENTS WHEREWITH EACH OF THESE IS CLOTHED, AND CONCERNING THE DIVINE MYSTAGOGY, AND THE EXPLANATION OF THE SYMBOL OF THE ORTHODOX FAITH OF CHRISTIANS, AND A SETTING FORTH OF ITS PHRASES, WHENCE THEY WERE COLLECTED AND AGAINST WHOM THEY WERE ESTABLISHED. FURTHERMORE, ARTICLES EMBRACING THE ORTHODOX FAITH, THAT IS, TWELVE ARTICLES, AND SHOWING THAT THESE ARE CONTAINED IN THE SACRED SYMBOL. AND CONCERNING THE VIRTUOUS PRINCIPLES, AND RESPONSES TO CERTAIN QUESTIONS ASKED OF HIM BY A BISHOP, AND FINALLY CONCERNING THE PRIESTHOOD. WITH WHICH IS THE EXPLANATION OF THE ECCLESIASTICAL OFFICE BY THE MOST WISE AND LEARNED MARK EUGENICUS, METROPOLITAN OF EPHESUS.

Printed at the expense of the most pious, most glorious, most illustrious, and most serene sovereign, Lord John Ducas, Voivode of all Moldovlachia, most magnificent lord and leader of all Ukraine. By the care and correction of the most learned notary of the Great Church, Lord John Molybdos of Heraclea. In the venerable, patriarchal, and sovereign monastery of the foremost Apostles, called Cetățuia, in the year of salvation 1683, in the month of October. IN JASSY OF MOLDAVIA.

Christ, grant unto him who has labored, Thy most blessed aid.

DEDICATORY ADDRESS OF DOSITHEOS TO JOANNES DUCAS

To the most illustrious, most noble, most pious, most serene, and most magnificent lord and prince of all Moldo-Wallachia, and for the third time of Ukraine, or the first, Lord JOANNES DUCAS Voyevoda, in the Holy Spirit the most beloved son of our humility, apostolic blessing in the holy kiss.

^A Comparing one of the holy Fathers with the man of the Gospel, he said: "What grace you have been deemed worthy of, O man, in seeing God!" Abraham saw and heard, but outwardly, that is, through images. Job saw and heard, but through a tempest and clouds. Moses saw in the bush and on Mount Sinai, but he saw through riddles on the rock, and especially when at the cleft of the rock, he saw the back parts. Isaiah saw, but outwardly, on a high throne, it is clear. Ezekiel saw, but he too outwardly, in the midst of four living creatures. And to leave out the rest, Daniel saw, but in a vision of the night. They saw, yet they did not have the Holy Spirit. They had the spirit of prophecy—for the Lord says, "I will take from your spirit" to Moses—but they did not have the Holy Spirit. Hence the Scripture says of the Samaritans: "For the Holy Spirit had not yet fallen upon any of them." And some disciples said to Paul in Ephesus: ^B "We have not even heard whether there is a Holy Spirit." It is not that the Holy Spirit is not contained in Scripture, but that since no one of the ancients had received the Holy Spirit, they said, "We have not even heard whether there is a Holy Spirit." But you have been deemed worthy of such grace substantially, as the Lord promised: "And I," He says, "will ask the Father, and He will give you another Paraclete, that He may abide with you for ever, the Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive, because it neither sees Him nor knows Him. But you know Him, for He abides with you, and will be in you." Do you see, O Christian, what grace you have received? Grace for which not even the prophets, nor the friends of God, the patriarchs, were deemed worthy? ^C Whence the Lord said: "Amen I say to you, many prophets and just men have desired to see what you see, and have not seen, and to hear what you hear, and have not heard." Thus, only to the faithful, in the last days, when the Word of God had dwelt among us, was the Holy Spirit given, and He abides with us for ever, according to the measure of the gift of Christ. And the measure of this gift has abounded in our age toward your illustriousness, because in the times of your rule, the Greek type has also been given to our race, by which spiritual joy is evangelized to the whole world. And King Josiah, having read the book of the law before Israel, which walked in Jerusalem, is praised; but your illustriousness, distributing this book by type to the Catholic Church, not showing one that is shadowy, but the whole Gospel truth, and especially at the proper time, is blessed. For the heathens, having turned aside from the straight road of the Christian dogmas, and the heretics and schismatics, having pushed away the path ^D accurate to the apostles and to the Fathers, have fallen into thorns and thistles. Wishing to fill the Church with them, they missed their mark, while the royal road of the Lord is secured by ineffable bulwarks, by the writings of the holy Fathers. Of which a compendium is the book of the present Father in the Holy Spirit, the Archbishop of Thessaloniki of holy memory, Symeon. Whom you now illuminate like a light through the type, and make manifest from the hidden, and visible from the invisible, so that the murderers may not break into the Church, as against a leaning wall and a broken hedge, having fulfilled the prophecy of the oracle. But that it is the characteristic of pious princes, as much as in their power, to serve the worshipful and Catholic religion of the Orthodox Christians, the equal-to-the-apostles Constantine confirms. This, he says, is incumbent above all upon one goal, that among the most blessed multitudes of the Catholic Church, one faith, ^A and sincere love, and a like-minded piety toward the All-Powerful God might be maintained. And if it is true what was said by some wise man, that in natural things one ought to praise God, and justice, and providence; in ethics, law and communion; and in politics, to teach what is good: all these things your great-mindedness has now accomplished; [providing] everything about the true theology of God and divine things, as much as concerns creation, and providence, and eternal judgment, and what concerns the mysteries, and customs, and rites, and the ecclesiastical hierarchy, and the communion of the Orthodox, and the excommunication of heretics and schismatics, and whatever is in accordance with Scripture concerning godly polity, and the Holy Spirit, the Creator of this, the light of the saints, or a compendium of those things said to the saints—which the most blessed Symeon compiled in simple language ^B fervently, having dedicated himself to God through this work. But since it is also an ancient and most venerable custom of old Epirus to be grateful to one's friends—for Pyrrhus, the king of the Epirotes, upon the death of a certain friend of Aerope, did not bear it with moderation, but he...