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Hymns on Faith

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

22. Rhythm the Twenty-second

Praise thou the Lord of all, Who fashioned and strung for Himself two lyres¹², that of the Prophets, and also of the Apostles. Thus one finger struck the two distinct sounds of the two covenants. And yet, though the lyre hath different sounds, it is the same lyre and the same player; the lyres of Truth also, my son, have different sounds, though the Truth be one³. Also one flute is able to generate distinct sounds. To the healthy ear it pipeth healthful sounds; to the ear of children simple sounds; to the ear of the sickly a feeble sound. These trumpets of Truth likewise set perfect sounds before him that is perfect⁴, but to him that is a child, they frame promises of milk and honey⁵.

Who ever took a harp or horn, when men had set him for a help unto the commonweal, to sound one note at leisure and be gone? ’tis by diversity of notes that a rescue is secured⁶. Thus therefore in many ways have the notes of the Truth set forth and sealed the Faith. The Father and the Son are my son, true to⁷ Their Names. If Jesus is dishonoured by fools, that dishonour [is done to] the Father also, and His Name is false and not true.⁸

That Jesus that endured the mocking of strangers also endureth great dishonour from worshippers. Great insult is it to the Trinity, if it be in borrowed names⁹ that a man is baptized! How should thy blasphemy be a song of praise? how should thy deficiency¹⁰ be as a superabundant gain? How should thy strife, O daring man, be a treasurehouse of edification?

The Son knoweth His Father as a fruit doth its tree¹¹, and He also knoweth His Fruit as being the Stock. Lo! this knowledge of Them Both, in Both of Them is hidden and closed up: this knowledge of the Begotten and the Begetter is in a Treasury whose door is sealed up in mighty silence, and before the door is awful silence¹², and the keeper of it also is a strong Cherub.

What mouth is that, my son, that shall question, or that shall speak near the door of that treasurehouse hidden and still? The Angels above¹³ when they gaze upon it, seal up their mouths with the silence of discernment. Whosoever knoweth not the awfulness of that place, as a drunken man chattering is he, and also his hearers. But if he abase himself, my son, the pride of him who was drunken is silent at Him and adores.

Notes

p. 217, n. g.
St. Clem. Al. Strom. vi. §. 88. p. 784. Pott. gives the different mystical senses of a harp, more than one of which occur in these Rhythms, as follows: “The harp in the Psalmist allegorically signifieth in its first sense, the Lord; and in the second, those who continually strike their souls under the Lord as Chief Musician: the elect people would also be called a harp owing to the breathing of the Word upon them, and owing to their knowledge of God they are heard uttering glory notes, and stricken so as to express belief in the Word; and you can also take it in another way of the musical harmony in the Church between the Law and the Prophets, and the Apostles with the Gospel too, and the melody which in each Prophet doth according to the changes of persons in the choir finally come out.”
R. xix. §. 3.
p. 152, n. b.
Milk and honey were given at Baptism. See Cotel. on Barn. i. p. 19. and on Tertullian de Bapt. p. 163, n. u.
i. e. The combination of notes is what gives them the power of sounding a retreat, &c.
S. in
John 5, 23.
i. e. If, as the heretics say, the Names do not indicate something real. See on lxii. §. 4. Perhaps St. E. may be thought here to incline to the view of St. Athanasius, that heretical Baptism was invalid, c. Arian. ii. §. 42. p. 339. O. T. where St. A. speaks of “the rite administered by them as altogether empty and unprofitable, making a show, but in reality being no help towards religion;” and §. 43. “as deficient in religious meaning, so that he who is sprinkled by them is rather polluted by irreligion than redeemed.” A passage from Didymus de Trin. ii. 15. is worth adding, “Those who come over to orthodoxy, even if they happen to have been baptized, are yet baptized—for rebaptized we do not call it, since they have not the true Baptism, not the Eunomians owing to their making but one immersion and saying that it is only into the Lord’s death that they are baptized, and not the Phrygians from their not baptizing into the Three sacred Persons, but believing that Father, Son, and Holy Ghost are the same.” D. also mentions innovations upon the form, p. 294. If the text appears to imply regularity in the use of the Name, it will appear from xxviii. §. 7. that the Divine Persons were only mentioned to cheat the unwary, not in the proper way. Hence what Mingarelli says of Didymus may apply to our author, that he looks on heretical Baptism as invalid only in the case of heretics who altered the form as the Eunomians did. See Greg. Nys. ii. p. 295, d. Didym. p. 279. Epiphan. i. p. 992. Sozom. H. E. vi. 26. and Reading’s note. Tim. Presb. ap. Cot. M. G. iii. p. 384. mentions, that the Eunomians objected to baptizing the uncomely parts, using but one immersion, and that only partial. See Coustant on Dionys. Alex. Ep. i. ad Sixt. Rom.
See note d.
Didym. de Trin. p. 25. “If in the beginning of the creation the first trees came into being with the fruits from them upon them at the time, and it is no absurdity for the fruit to have sprung up along with the root; in what way is it incompetent for the all-competent Father to have had the Fruit of His own Son in Him at the beginning, and for the Brightness to have shone with no interval from the glory of His Substance?” and Cyril of Alex. Thes. p. 304, c. and p. 308, b. “If....the tree is known by its fruit, and the Fruit of the Father is the Son, such must He of necessity be as that is which is generate from Him.” St. C. as well as St. E. frequently applies the name καρπὸς to the Son, and ῥίζα to the Father. See above, p. 10. n. a. and xlii. §. 3. l. §. 1. lxxvi. §. 1. lxxvii. §. 4. contr. Scrut. i. §. 12. &c. and St. Cyr. Thes. p. 45, c. p. 126, c. p. 239, c. p. 240, e. p. 326, b. Dial. p. 413, e. &c. Vid. Petav. de Trin. v. 5. §. 15. Newman on Athan. p. 284, note e.
p. 115, n. a.
R. v. §. 2. R. viii. §. 2.