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Hymns on Faith

St Ephrem the Syrian, tr. Morris, 1847; selections

1. Rhythm the First

The Rhythms of St. Ephrem the Syrian upon the Faith, against the Disputers1

Instead of that all-quickening standard2 which He Who teacheth all had set for us, a new faith hath this presumptuous3 generation made for us. He Who knoweth all knoweth what is the cause of their stirrings4. If pride was the cause of them, may our Lord restrain its haughtiness, and if strife was the cause of them, may our Lord increase our harmony, and if love was the cause of them, may He reveal to them that be His, what is His. O thou that shootest at a great Mountain, fancy not that thine arrows have hit! from thyself they have gone a little way, and that standard they have not hit. For high is that Generation of the Son above the questioning of man. Set thyself a standard of thine own stock like that which is near thee, that by the testimony of what is near, that which is far may be believed. Let the soul be to thee a standard, for those that philosophize about it miss of it5. For one confesses that it exists, another [says] that it existeth not. One puts it in subjection to death6, another above the power of death. One maketh it out of something, and another, out of nothing7. He that sees its greatness makes it a small part of somewhat great8, and he that sees its evanescence, maketh it a breath of air. There is that maketh it a breathing, and there is also that calleth it blood9. One that seeth its fieriness, says that it is of fire10, another that seeth its viewlessness11, lays down that it is of the wind. One makes it a part of God12, and another an inspiration [from God]. One maketh it of one essence, and another of many essences13. There is that maketh it of one element, and there is that maketh it of seven14 compounded elements15. There is that magnifieth and extols its nature, and there is that degradeth its race and maketh it little. If then in regard to the bewildered soul, that which even dreams bewilder, men of research be so bewildered as to have come short of it, who is able to trace out that untraceable Generation? Come let us wonder at him who says of the soul that it does not exist, for when the soul is even dwelling in him, it yet disputes against itself, it rejects itself, in that it says of its own essence that it exists not. The soul that gropeth not out its own self, [so as to know] whether it exists or exists not, sufficeth not to feel itself. How should it, which is at a loss what to say of itself16, be able to search out Him by Whose hands it was created. Though in its proper nature not to be seen, its own mirror17 is, to let it see that it exists: in this, [the gift of] speech, hath the soul been able to see itself, forasmuch as it is by that gift that its glory is greater than that of the dumb animals. While then the soul exists, yet to itself it exists not, to its knowledge. For how can it not exist? for see! it is comprehended by its workings; and when from the Creator it existed, it perished by its own free-will. If then in regard to all this the soul rejecteth its true nature, and feeleth not its own majesty; this soul that denieth itself, what is there that it shall be able to confess to exist as it really does? And if the soul misseth of the very investigation of its own self, what shall it seek out by its searching? what shall it comprehend by its questioning? and if it be so far from itself, how shall it find the Secret One?

If then our knowledge knows not how to know itself, how shall it dare to raise difficulties about the Generation of Him that knoweth all things? The thing made that knoweth not itself, how should it seek into its Maker? The mighty Nature, that never was not, is spoken of by all mouths. The mouth that willeth to speak of That which is unspeakable, bringeth Him to littleness, in that it sufficeth not for His greatness. Every one then that wisheth to magnify God exceedingly, as He is great in His own Nature, himself in magnifying Him is magnified in Him. Restrain searching which sufficeth not [to reach] Him, and gain silence, which is becoming, of Him. Give me, Lord, to use them both discerningly, that I may neither search rashly, nor be silent carelessly. Teach me words of edification, and make me gain the silence of discernment.

Notes

  1. Or investigators, in which sense it would apply to the Anomœans as affecting to be able to explore the Nature of God. The word however is, I think, used of logicians, and so I have given it a rendering which falls in with the fondness for Aristotelian subtleties ascribed to the Anomœans (against whom these Rhythms are aimed) by St. E. vol. ii. p. 485, d. S. Bas. c. Eun. i. 9. S. Greg. Nys. ii. pp. 294. 602. 862. c. Naz. p. 529. Cyril. Thes. p. 89. Epiphan. Hær. lxxvi. p. 923, d. p. 931, d. p. 964, c. p. 989, d. Socrat. H. E. ii. 35. Ambr. de Fide, i. §. 42. Austin de Trin. xv. §. 20.
  2. ‘Standard’ is here used for the substance of the faith irrespectively of the sources of it—Ass. renders ‘regula fidei.’ Much as we shall see that St. E. insists on the study of Holy Writ, (see xxxv. fin. xlvi. §. 1. lvi. fin. lix. §. 5. lxiv. §. 5. cont. Scr. iii. §. 19.) the following passages will shew that he thought it was the Church who alone could teach the faith. In ii. p. 442. he says, “In the Church is the Truth perfect and perfecting Her. Great is the Church of true [believers], because great is Her bosom, and able to contain the fulness of both Testaments. For broken fountains are convicted of being unable to receive waters in themselves: for the old bottles by its newness doth the strong wine break, which by its roughness cleanseth the new.” And presently, after comparing the heretics to those who would cut a body to pieces and try to give it life again, he adds, “The Church doth that body of Truth rejoice, which is orderly in its limbs, and perfected in its expressions, to be relied upon in its promises, and crowned by its noble acts. The Truth forms a head lift up on high: the two Testaments its wide spread hands, the Apostles its senses, the Prophets the righteous and the Just serve for its limbs.” On 1 Sam. xiv. p. 324. f. he says, “And that he hid it from his father and mother, and revealed it to bis bride, this is a type of our Lord, who, as was determined, hid from the synagogue the mystery of the Gospel, which was hidden from generations and ages, and revealed the riches of the glory of this mystery among the Gentiles, and explained it to the Church.” Vol. ii. p. 494. f. “The Prophets delivered it to the Apostles. Blessed be the Lord of successions! He handed it down from Adam even to Noah: it reached from Noah to Abraham, and from Abraham on to Moses, and from Moses unto David, and from David to the Captivity, and from Babylon to our Redeemer. (comp. Athanas. de D. S. N. §. 5. p. 8. O. T.) Then the [Jewish] people was scattered, and cut short and put aside all their traditions. Aside also was the presence of the Apostles put. Blessed He that has kept up their traditions. He that gave commandment concerning the ark, He it was that built the tabernacle of His people. He that did all these things, He it was that fixed Holy Church. He that ordereth the successions of natures and creatures, He it is that ordered the successions of Prophets and of Apostles from one age even to another. Blessed be He that begun and perfecteth.” If instead of ‘traditions’ we render successions, as may be done, still he plainly contemplates doctrine as delivered through those successions. Again, vol. i. p. 454, f. he says, “When thou hearest of the well-ordered ministry of Solomon’s princes, and the exact arrangement of those who brought the supply of bread to the great congregation of men and women, and purveyed hay and barley for the stallions and the horses, bethink thyself of the all-pervading beautiful order which Immanuel has stamped upon His Church. For these spiritual princes nourish all the children of the Church in their order: the chief shepherds, to wit, offer deep things to the perfect, and to penitents and those that stand without the gates they bring hay and barley —not that these mysteries are barley and hay, but that men such as those, have their conversation like the beasts, and consequently are not nourished as rational men. Nourished however they are, seeing we give nourishment even to beasts; as the Prophet says, Thou, Lord, shalt save both man and beast.” These passages bring out the force of the first sentence; they shew St. E. to conceive of the faith as somewhat substantive, as held by the Church only, as old, and so opposed to the new doctrine, and lastly, as dispensed by the Church. It may be added that the word [Syriac] is used for a mark or butt to aim at, in which sense it corresponds to the ἐκκλησιαστικὸς σκόπος of St. Athanasius, c. Arian. iii. §. 28. As the soul may be a standard for the natural reason to aim at, so God is for the reason enlightened by Baptism: see note b, on p. 87.
  3. Theodoret H. Fab. iv. 3. states, that Eunomius was daring enough to say that there was nothing of things divine that he was ignorant of, but that he was acquainted exactly with God’s very Essence, and had the same knowledge of God that God had of Himself.... and other things did he devise beside, that he might seem to be a discoverer of new doctrines. So Chrysost. de Incomp. i. and ii. Epiphan. lxxvi. p. 916, b. and Basil quoted p. 102, n. a.
  4. St. E. (who was called the Prophet of the Syrians) here and elsewhere (see Pearl, vii, §. 3. §. 4. &c. adv. Scrut. lxiv. 1. cont. Scrut. iii. §. 26—30.) seems to look on heresies as a scourge mysterious in its origin and its tendencies. To him we may apply a remark of St. Austin, de Trin. iv. 23. “The minds of some men are so far exalted by the Holy Spirit, that it is not through Angels, but through their own selves, that they behold, in the Sovereign Citadel of all things, the causes of things to come existing.”
  5. See below, lvii. vol. ii. p. 471, d. Greg. Naz. Or. xxxiv. p. 552, a. Nys. c. Eun. p. 749, a. Chrys. de Incomp. v. p. 343, b. where man’s ignorance of his own soul is similarly used. Sextus Empiricus urges the same, though with a sceptical aim, as follows, ‘That the soul is incomprehensible appears from this: of those who have disputed about the soul, (to pass over the rife and endless battling about it,) some have said that it did not exist, some that it did; some have doubted. If then the dogmatists allow that this is a controversy which cannot be settled, they do thereby allow the incomprehensibility of the soul.’ Pyrrh. Hyp. ii. 5. p. 74. Fabr.
  6. This was the case with the Stoics who, according to Numenius, held that the soul was generate and corruptible, and that the soul of the virtuous lasted only till the resolution of all things into fire, (Euseb. P. Evan. xv. 20.) an opinion very similar to one widely maintained in the East.
  7. Perhaps he means those who define soul to be that which moves itself, although such conceived it to be eternal, see Aristot. de An. ii. 2.
  8. This was commonly held in the East, (see Windischm. Philos. in Fortg. der Weltgesch. p. 636. Kleuker zum Zend Av. 1. pt. ii. p. 119.) where the soul was thought to be a part of God, conceived as come out of himself to create. On the next words Stobaeus may be cited, (Ecl. Phys. p. 93. quoted by Fabric.) ‘Anaxagoras, Anaximenes, Archelaus, and Diogenes of Apollonia make the soul of air.’ See also S. Empir. p. 174.
  9. Aristot. as above mentions some who thought the soul blood. Euseb. P. E. i. 18. p. 24. mentions Epicurus as believing it to be in the blood. S. Empir. p. 516, and the note.
  10. So Parmenides and Leucippus according to Stobaeus, and Democritus, according to him and Aristotle.
  11. S. spirituality
  12. See n. g. What St. E. objects to in calling the soul an inspiration from God is the calling it so in such sense as to imply He alienated any portion of Himself. A notion like this seems to have prevailed amongst certain Anthropomorphists in the tract against them given to St. Cyril, cap. v. St. E. held the inspiration mentioned in Gen. to be not the substance of the soul, but the supernatural gift. See vol. i. p. 146. e.
  13. Empedocles is mentioned by Aristotle as believing that the soul was made up of the several elements, and that each element was itself a soul. Epicurus thought it made of air, fire, spirit, and a fourth unnamed element. Stobaeus. Hahn takes ‘essences’ of the Æons and refers to his Bardes. p. 73.
  14. Plutarch de Plac. Phil. iv. 4. Diog. Laert. vii. §. 1. lxiii. mentions that the Stoics made the soul consist of eight elements, whereof one was the governing faculty. And Philo, de Mundi Op. §. 40. and elsewhere, notices that the soul has seven divisions, if we do not reckon in that faculty. Any closer approach to St. E.’s statement, I am not able to point out.
  15. S. mixtures
  16. S. which grinds its mouth on itself
  17. What he means by its own mirror is, I believe, the gift of speech which reflects its inward workings. The editor and Hahn differ somewhat in their explanations. As far as I understand him, I have followed the latter.

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