and seeking excuse for their own lapses? Would that they judged rightly! For there would be some benefit even in bile, as the proverb says, if we were made more cautious by the fear of enemies; but now, with hatred and the wickedness that darkens the reason, and on account of which not even blame possesses any credibility, they approach to judge. Where then are those who hate both divinity and us equally? For this, of all that we suffer, is the most magnificent thing: that we are in peril along with God. Where are those who are indeed gentle and placid judges of their own affairs, but severe censors of the affairs of others, so that here too they may falsify the truth? Where are those who possess wounds and yet reproach us for stripes? Those who slander the stumbling blocks, while they themselves suffer the falls? Those who wallow in the mire and rejoice in our stains? Those who are blinded by beams, and yet bring forward specks, A which neither cause great pain when they persist, nor are difficult to remove and blow away from the eyes, while meanwhile they themselves are darkened, oppressed by the mass of beams?
III. On Peace III
III. Come, be participants in our secrets; we call you to the council, even though you are detested; we use our enemies as arbiters—O the arrogance, or rather the boldness!—so that you may depart ashamed and defeated (what could be more strange than this?) having learned of our health from the very fact that we have been ill. For we have not contended concerning the Godhead, but have struggled for the sake of good order; nor did we dispute as to which of the B impieties should rather be chosen: whether that which constricts God, or that which cuts, whether [one should cut] the Spirit alone from the divine essence, or also the Son along with the Spirit, the one portion or the two of impiety. For these are, to sum up in a chapter, the present maladies; since they place "ascensions in their heart"—not of confession, but of abjuration; not of theology, but of blasphemy. For one is more ambitious than another in the wealth of impiety, as if they feared, not to be impious, but to be moderate and more humane C than others.
IV. Our situation, however, is not the same. For where the Godhead is concerned, we are in agreement and concord no less than the Godhead is with itself, if it be not too great a thing to say; and we have become one lip and one voice, contrary to those who once built the tower. For they conspired for evil; but as for us, for every best thing we cultivate concord, so that with one mind in one mouth we may glorify the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit, D and this be said of us, that in truth God is in us, who unites those who unite Him, and...
from whom glory is brought to those who bring glory; and that He may not only be preached, but also believed. B But there were other matters upon which we differed; and wrongly, too, regarding these, for I will not deny it (since one ought to give no opportunity or handle to the devil, nor license to wicked tongues), yet not in such measure as it seems to those who calumniously attack our affairs. For since, being human, it was inevitable that we should err in some way, this is our transgression: we were excessively fond of our pastors, and we were unable to discover which of two excellent men was more to be sought, until it befell us to admire both equally. This is our crime; let him who wishes condemn or acquit us on this charge. This is the protection of the heretics. Besides this, you have nothing, even if you desire it most intensely. "Dead flies," says the author, "corrupt the sweetness of oil" C; envy indeed will wish to infect those things which are right, but it will not be able. For truth is the strongest of all things, as it seems to me and to Esdras.
V. We, therefore, have settled our dissensions among ourselves, and we will continue to settle them. For it is not possible that sons should pass unjust judgment upon their fathers, especially with the common Trinity intervening, for whose sake we are being warred upon, and for whose sake we shall not wage war. I am the sponsor of peace, small though I am for so great a cause, since God gives grace to the humble, but brings the high down even to the ground. D What will that benefit you, O our common peacemakers? For you are peacemakers, and you confer this favor upon us unwillingly. For you are not pious for that reason, if we should happen to sin in some matter, whether small or great; we indeed are not to be praised for the vice, if we sin at all, but you are nonetheless impious, even if we do sin; unless you are even more so, because you are more harsh toward those who are stumbling. And that you may know that we are of one mind in all things, and that you may learn from these things that we have always been of one mind, you have been persuaded, as I think, even by what is visible: a candid father and an obedient son, sitting together and appearing in harmony; and if there was any spark of goodwill and concord remaining in you, having fanned this, let the word also persuade you. You have heard therefore, and the wonder still rings in my ears; and I know that what is within you is greater than that which is in the air.
A But you shall hear us again, if you desire it again; and if what has been frequently made public is not enough for proof, then let those temptations and stonings (98) which we have already suffered, and for which we have prepared ourselves, complete it—counting it a loss not to suffer, rather than to suffer; and this all the more, in that we have tasted of the dangers (99) endured for Christ, from which we have also brought back an excellent fruit, namely, the increase of this people.
B VI. What then do you wish? Are you convinced of this, and is there no need for us to be burdened with this matter, nor to have a second discourse on the Godhead, and do you spare my weakness, by which I can scarcely even utter these things to you? Or is it necessary, as with those who are hard of hearing, to sound the same word often, so that by the persistence of the voice we may at last reach the ears of those who hear? You seem to me to invite me to speak by your quiet and silence. For indeed, the proverb (1) teaches that silence is also consent. Therefore, receive the word of both of us, from one soul and one mouth. C But I am vexed that I cannot, having ascended some high mountain, and having obtained a voice equal to my desire, speak at once to all those who think wrongly about religion in the whole world, as if in a common theater: "O sons of men, how long are you heavy-hearted? Why do you love vanity and seek falsehood," introducing not one nor a simple nature of the Godhead, but either three, alienated from one another and distracted—and it is no marvel to say, even fighting with defects and excesses—or one, but a barren and narrow one, D which does not possess the capacity to be the cause of great things, as if it could not, or would not, and this for two reasons: either out of envy or out of fear—the former, that nothing equal might be introduced, the latter, that nothing hostile and warring might be brought in? Yet by how much God is more precious than created things, by so much is it more magnificent for the first cause, for the Godhead, to come through an intervening Godhead to created things, than for the Godhead to have been established as the result of created things, as is pleasing to those who are excessively inquisitive and speculative.
VII. For if we were about, in confessing the dignity of the Son and the Spirit, to introduce these as being without beginning, or to refer them to another principle, there would truly be fear lest God be dishonored, or something contrary to God be introduced by us. But since, by as much as you exalt (4) the Son, or the Spirit,
you do not place them above the Father, nor remove them from the cause: but rather refer thereto the glorious generation and the wonderful procession—I will ask you briefly, you who are so fond of generation and so fond of the principle: which of the two dishonors God more? He who establishes as a principle such things as you introduce, or he who establishes not such things, but those equal in nature and equal in glory, and such as our doctrine professes? Or will it be for you a great, and indeed most ample honor, that you have a son—and this all the more if he refers to the father in all things, and truly bears the likeness of his begetter—and it would be less pleasant for you to command six hundred servants than to be the parent of one son: yet for God will there be something greater and more excellent than being Father of the Son, which indeed is an accession of glory, not a falling away, as is also being the producer of the Spirit? Or does it escape you that, while you establish a principle for creatures—I mean of the Son and of the Spirit—you neither honor the principle B nor cease to dishonor what is from it? The former, because you introduce a principle that is trivial and unworthy of divinity; the latter, because they are trivial, and you make them not only creatures, but more contemptible than all other creatures; since, if it was for their sake that they came into being, and at a certain time, just like instruments before an artisan—which before the artisan were not, nor would they have come to exist otherwise, if God had not willed to create something through them, as if the mere will did not suffice. For everything that is made for the sake of something else is more contemptible than that for whose sake it was made.
VIII. But I, establishing as the principle of divinity what is timeless, inseparable, and infinite, honor both the principle C and what proceeds from the principle equally: the former, because it is the principle of such things; the latter, because they are in such a way and such things, and from such a principle, separated neither by time, nor by nature, nor by any venerable distinction; existing as one in their distinction, and as distinct in their connection—though it be a strange thing to say—and no less to be praised for the relation they have to one another than if each were taken and understood by itself. A perfect Trinity from three perfect ones, the Monad being moved on account of its riches, and the Dyad being surpassed (for it is above matter and form, D of which bodies consist), and the Trinity being defined on account of its perfection; for the first surpasses the composition of the binary, so that the divinity may neither remain narrow, nor be poured out into the infinite. For the former lack of ambition, and the latter is disorder; and the former is entirely Judaic, while the latter is Hellenic and polytheistic.
A IX. And I consider this, too—perhaps not unlearnedly, nor ignorantly, but with very great circumspection—that for you there is no danger at all in introducing the Son as begotten. For the Unbegotten does not suffer any of those things that pertain to bodies and matter in the act of begetting, because He is not even a body; and this, common notions about God readily concede. Why then do we fear a fear where there is no fear, and why are we impious to no purpose, as the saying goes? But for me there is a danger of suffering a loss of deity if I should admit a creature. For what is created is not God, nor is the fellow-servant the Master, even if it be granted the first places of servitude and creation, and only this much is humanely attributed to it, though it be insulted. For he who deprives one of the honor that is owed does not honor him more by what he gives, than he dishonors him by what he takes away, even if the act has the pretense and veil of honor.
B X. But if you invent passions for me concerning the generation, I also will invent the same for myself concerning the creation; for I know that not even that which is created is created without passion. But if it has not been begotten, according to you, nor created, according to the true word, accept from the argument what is left over for you—you who are bold enough to say almost the same thing through the appellation of creature. And you, indeed, an evil judge and arbiter of the deity, leave nothing unattempted, you dare everything; for you could not brighten your own name in any other way than if, like those who are of tyrannical character and inclined toward seizing the properties of others, you likewise removed God C from rule and dominion. I, on the contrary, have one utterance, the same and concise: the Trinity is truly the Trinity, brothers. But the Trinity is not an enumeration of unequal things (for what else would prevent us from naming a decade, and a hundred, and a myriad if it is composed with such numbers? For many things—and even more than these—fall into number), but a collection of equals and of those equal in honor, since the name connects those things that are united by nature, and does not allow those things that do not know dissolution to be dissipated by a dissolving number.
D XI. Thus we think, and thus we are disposed, yet in such a way that we leave it to the Trinity Itself alone, and to those whom the Trinity, through a purified mind, has revealed or will reveal this in this life or in the next, to know what relation and order these have toward one another; for our part, let us acknowledge one and the same nature of deity, marked by the Unoriginate, the Begotten, and the Proceeding, as in us by the mind, the word, and the spirit.
A (So far as intelligible things can be conjectured from sensible things, and the greatest from the least, since no image reaches the truth), it is observed to be self-consistent, ever the same, ever perfect, devoid of quality, quantity, and time; uncreated, and of such a nature that it has never lacked anything, and will never lack anything; incomprehensible, never forsaking itself, and never to be forsaken. It is lives and Life, lights and Light, goods and Good, glories and Glory, true and Truth, and the Spirit of Truth; holy things and Holiness itself. Each is God, if considered separately, that is to say, by the mind separating what cannot be separated. Yet the Three together are God, when understood together by reason of the same motion and essence; B having this principle, that it has left nothing above itself, nor has it surpassed anything else (for there was nothing), nor again is it to leave or surpass anything after itself (for there will be nothing), nor finally does it admit anything equal to itself. For there is nothing among all created, servile, participating, and circumscribed things that can reach that uncreated, sovereign, participated, and infinite nature. But some things are far distant from it, while others approach it more closely, and will approach it; and this not by nature, but by grace—namely, when the service correctly rendered to the Trinity has risen above service. Unless, perhaps, this very thing is also freedom and sovereignty: to recognize lordship properly, and not, through abjection of mind, to confuse and jumble together those things that are distinct. Furthermore, if it is so great and honorable to have served such beings, how great then must their mastery be reckoned? And if the knowledge itself is beatitude, how great, pray, is that which is known?
C XII. This is what that great mystery desires for us: this in the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit, and the common name, faith and regeneration, the abjuration of atheism and the confession of deity. For this is that common name. Wherefore, to despise or to separate any one of the Three is to despise the confession itself—that is, the regeneration, the divinity, the deification, the hope. See what gifts the Spirit bestows upon us when we proclaim Him as God, and of what things He deprives us when He is spurned and rejected. For I forgo mentioning the terror and the wrath, whose threats are D directed not at those who worship, but at those who despise. And these things have been philosophized for you briefly in a dogmatic manner, not a contentious one; in a fisherman’s manner, not an Aristotelian one; spiritually, not with guile; ecclesiastically, not with street-talk; for profit, not for display; so that you might know that those of us who are declaiming against our opponents are thinking the same thing, and...
are inspired by the same spirit, and breathe the same truth. Do not be like those who are starving, gathering up our little defects—if one must call them faults or trivialities—for it is a sign of ultimate wretchedness not to have security in one’s own strengths, but to rely on and trust in the infirmities of others.
B XIII. Behold, we join our right hands before your eyes. Behold what the Trinity, whom we equally honor and worship, has achieved. May this render you more gracious and cause you to think more rightly concerning religion. Would that we were heard, and that this day, which is called holy, might become a day not of disagreement, but of openness; not a monument of temptation, but a triumphant festival; so that our mutual concord, and that of almost the whole world, which was already in part healthy, is now recovering its health, and is beginning to be healthy, may also become for you a cause of salvation and renewal. O holy, and adorable, and long-suffering Trinity! For thou art long-suffering, who for so long bearest with those by whom thou art divided. O Trinity, of whom I have long since been deemed worthy to be a worshiper and a sincere herald! O Trinity, who shalt at some time be known by all, whether through illumination or through punishment! Mayest thou also accept those who now heap insults upon thee as thy worshipers, and may we not lose anyone, not even of the least, even if I have to suffer some loss of grace because of it; for I do not dare to speak as much as the Apostle.
XIV. What now? Are these things unpleasing to you, and is your tongue twisted and laboring to bring forth a refutation? We shall see this too in due time, when you have more leisure than we do; and we shall examine those witty and elegant offspring—or rather, miscarriages—of yours, when we have broken or crushed the eggs of the asps with sound and solid argumentation, and clearly demonstrated them to be empty and vain, and brought out into the open the basilisk of impiety hidden within them; a basilisk indeed, yet dead and imperfect and motionless, having died in the very pangs of birth, and, to use your own expression, "not existing" before it was brought forth—for I choose to use your own words, that I might find some favor with you—detestable for its conception no less than it is miserable for its miscarriage. This, believe me, will be granted to us by Him who has given us the power to walk upon the asp and the basilisk, and to tread upon serpents and scorpions; who will also crush Satan under our feet in haste, whether he be fallen like lightning from heaven because of his ancient splendor, or whether as a serpent fleeing because of his later crookedness and his transformation into a creature that crawls upon the earth, so that [we might diminish] some small part of the evils...
let us breathe, having escaped entirely from pain, and sorrow, and groaning, now and hereafter, in Christ Jesus our Lord, to whom be glory and power for ever and ever. Amen.
ADMONITION ON ORATION XXIV
I. Before we arrive at the subject of this oration, we must weigh who this Cyprian is, whose praises Gregory here pursues so magnificently. For no small controversy exists among the learned on this matter. Some militate for Cyprian of Carthage, others for the Antiochene; and it seems very difficult to establish peace among the discordant in such a variety of opinions. For if one attends to these words of the Theologian (n. 6): "This Cyprian, formerly a great name among the Carthaginians, now however of the whole world," etc., and elsewhere (n. 12): "A pastor is created.... For he is placed over not only the Church of Carthage, nor of Africa, by him and because of him even now famous and celebrated, but also," etc., it will indeed seem that the Theologian wished to celebrate the name of Cyprian of Carthage. A However, the sequence of the oration exhibits many things that can in no way match this Cyprian, and indeed which are repugnant. Must it be said, therefore, that Gregory erred and confused two Cyprians? Billius noted this (39); and to vindicate our Gregory from error or a lapse of memory, he fabricates a twin Cyprian born at Carthage; nor does he think it absurd that two men of the same name, born in the same city, occupied the same see at different times. But he immediately confesses that, "as we sometimes, deceived by the similarity of appearance, take one for the other in twin brothers; so Gregory, in the two men of the same name, joined by the similarity of many virtues, may have attributed to the Antiochene some things that were suited to the Carthaginian." The same knot of difficulty long held the learned Oxford editor of Cyprian of Carthage in uncertainty (40); but he approaches a different way of untying the knot. For Fell, moved by a veneration toward our Gregory equal to that of Billius, lest the Theologian be blamed in this matter, recognizes only one Cyprian, and that the Carthaginian, but counts what is related of the Antiochene among fables. Nay, he even openly declares that Gregory could not have erred so carelessly as to confuse the bishop of Antioch with the one of Carthage.
II. But there remain most ancient monuments by which it is plainly demonstrated that Cyprian, bishop of Antioch in Phoenicia, did indeed exist. B For it is established among the learned that the deeds of Cyprian the Antiochene and Justina were written immediately after their martyrdom. A work still exists divided into three parts or books. The first part embraces the wonderful conversion of Cyprian and Justina. In the second, Cyprian weaves a confession of his life and crimes, and furthermore a series of magical arts. In the third, finally, the martyrdom of both is described. The second part of this work, already found in Latin in the Bodleian library, had been printed by Fell at Oxford in the year 1700. But the twin parts, namely the first and the third, which had not yet appeared, being found also in Latin in the ancient codex of St. Owen of Rouen, were published in their *Thesaurus of Anecdotes* (41) by our learned investigators of antiquity, Dom Edmund Martene and Dom Ursinus Durand, with the addition of the second part, which had already been made public by the Oxford editor. The primitive text of the first and third parts is indeed missing. But the second part, namely the confession of Cyprian, has come down to us intact in Greek. The Colbert library provided this. But after the old Latin interpretation published by Fell was compared with the Greek text, it seemed to teem with so many and such serious flaws and errors that it became necessary to publish a new translation of this work into Latin. Dom Prudentius Maran undertook this work; and he published the confession of Cyprian the Antiochene, rendered into Latin by himself, with the Greek text in the year 1727, at the end of his new edition of the *Works of Saint Cyprian of Carthage*.
III. Furthermore, Eudocia Augusta, wife of Theodosius the Younger, wrote of the Acts of Cyprian and Justina in heroic verse, C according to Photius (42), likewise in three books, and in the same order that we just reported, not to the license of art, but to the faith of history. Gregory himself cites the confession of Cyprian, and commemorates concerning him the same things as Eudocia. "Who then," says Dom Prudentius Maran (43), "can persuade himself that he never existed, of whom monuments exist from the time in which he is said to have lived, of almost equal age? Fables in remote ages