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Hymns on Faith

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

30. Rhythm the Thirtieth

God who is the Lord of all, who is not numbered¹ with His works, as if among them, who is not subject to metre, or weight, or touch, or colour, or measure, is not confined in space, for He is not as the spreading forth of the wind or the sunbeams, that any thing comprehend to Him. Knowledge is His Essence; for all that have knowledge² are strangers to His Substance³. For what escapes these rebellious men is, that the thing made comprehendeth not its Maker. The natures of Angels are fire and spirit⁴: the natures of bodies are dust and water. The Nature of the Lord of all who can perceive? that Nature which these three natures are inadequate to the explanation of and which it is above them to say how, or where, or in what shape It exists?

Explain unto us these three things for instance, how great thou wilt say, when asked, that He is? how great His measure is and His weight? or His height and length of whatsoever is His? or again, how and what His appearance is, if He be hard or soft or hot or cold, and also let His place be explained, if He dwelleth in place and in space also? Every thing which is made, created, or stablished, is liable to these things and the like to them; for either they have metre and weight, or touch and colour, or extension and place⁵. In these three things, being threefold types, all are comprised, all subsist, save the Trinity: as for the creatures they have quality, quantity also, and locality.

The Glorious One humbled Himself to all similitudes, and He hungered till then for His humiliation. The Tree lowered Itself as much as was fitting; His Fruit⁶ condescended to every humiliation: the Tree put on condescension so far as to use⁷ similitudes; the Fruit came down and clothed Himself with suffering in reality. He spoke, and did all that He taught, that He might be a mirror to His hearers. As He taught in words, so He also shewed His teaching in Himself; for by actions He made the paths⁸ as clear as if He had taught them. He also was afraid of the contempt⁹ that He had taught men not to practise. They compelled Him to go; and He went where He was not called. Thus also He concealed His knowledge¹⁰, that He might teach those that were puffed up and proud, that these frantic men might be restrained from explaining Him¹¹¹².

For the Fruit is blessed, being as His Root. He put on humility in His temptations¹³. The abysses and the waves of His wisdom He veiled and concealed though questioned. Scriptures which to us were of small account did He cite to the serpent, and lamed him and stopped his disputing and questioning. Our Lord cited from Moses, but the¹⁴ daring cite from error¹⁵; for the serpent, subtle and disputatious, clothed his disciples with his own cast-off skin. Put off and cast away his cast-off skin, lest thou become corrupt and be destroyed by familiarity¹⁶ with him who destroyeth all. They that are new and white, in their newness have put on the moth of self-will¹⁷: and, since it lay hid in their garments, have been corrupted and changed. Put ye on leaves which are strangers to the moth¹⁸.

Since that disputer is subtle and acute, his intricacies overthrow the single-hearted. Put not on the disputatiousness of that servant; let not thy free-will become a fellow-servant of his, for that evil servant grindeth his fellow-servants, that¹⁹ he may stamp his own image upon them and dye them with his own stain. Whoso putteth on his likeness, it is not possible for him to see his own deformity. If then thou seest that the All-knowing hath become little, fancy not that He²⁰ knoweth not. The love of us it was that made Him small, that He might not know. For He became small that He might measure thee, that thou mightest not be small. The humiliation was that thou mightest turn thyself aside from searching into Him Who searcheth all²¹. For if thou art so weak as to be unable to struggle with wine²², if what is lowly overcometh thee, how much more would that Generation lead thee into perplexity?

Notes

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Asseman. renders thus: Ipsius essentia Ratio est, hanc extra si quid aliud cogitas, ab ejus notione longissime abis. This is a paraphrase, and to me not a very clear one. It might be rendered thus: Ipsius essentia scientia est: omnia autem quæ sciunt, ab Ejus Substantiâ tamen procul absunt; i. e. ‘With Him to know and to be are identical: creatures which have knowledge, are yet strangers to all but His doings and attributes. Himself they cannot attain to.’ See p. 191. The sense here given to [Syriac] seems to be required by the context. It means the stem or stock of a tree, and is the Chaldee word used in Isaiah vi. 13. where our version has ‘substance.’ It is obvious enough to take some ordinary solid substance as the type of ‘substance’ in its metaphysical sense: ὕλη in Greek, mula ‘a root’ in Sanscrit, stoff in German, [Hebrew] in Heb. and [Syriac] in Syr. bone, are similar instances. Basil, c. Eun. i. 12. “How great is the insolence of men that profess to know the substance of God! I should like to ask them what they have to say about the earth on which they stand, and from which they are? What account they will give us of its substance, because if they can give any unanswerable statement about things on the ground, and close at their feet; then we may trust them when they are so positive about things out of the reach of all thought. What then is the substance of the earth? what the method of comprehending it? Let them tell us in answer, whether it was reason which arrived at this, or sense, and if it is sense that they say, to which of the senses is it comprehensible? Is it to sight? nay, for that graspeth colours. To touch then? why this also discriminates between hardness and softness, hot and cold, and the like, and of these no one would assert any to be substance, unless he was gone into a state of downright derangement.” This passage seems almost to have been known to St. E. See §. 2. Either passage supplies us with the ordinary ecclesiastical sense of the word ‘Substance,’ as somewhat in no case cognizable to the senses. See xxxi. §. 1. The ‘three things’ allude to the common definition of body, τὸ τριχῆ διάστατον μετὰ ἀντιτυπίας. Sext. Empir. Pyrrh. H. iii. §. 39. ii. §. 30. &c.
S. Stock.
p. 146, n. c.
See p. 170, n. c.
On the use of Tree and Fruit for Father and Son, see n. e. p. 179. St. E. means, that the Father in condescending to ask questions and represent Himself as a man, did in a manner humble Himself to our needs. The Son did this, and far more also.
S. unto
S. [Syriac]
Syr. [Syriac] i. e. spittle. St. E. alludes probably as to the rest of Matth. 5, 22. so in particular to the word [Syriac], which, though from another root, is from a similar sounding one. This fear is one of the ‘blameless passions,’ (see p. 199, n. a) which in us are not subject to our discretion, as they were in Christ. On Sam. i. p. 359. f. he writes thus: “In that Jonathan tasted a little of the honey in his vehement hunger, he depicts to us a type of the Son of God, Who when He came into the world, and subjected Himself at His own will to the weakness of our nature, ate and drank as one of flesh, not with concupiscence, but according to the necessity of the condition of the flesh.” See Jo. Damasc. F. O. iii. 20. St. E. probably conceives Christ as afraid of contempt, because it is natural and not necessarily blameable for man to be afraid of it; or from Ps. xxxi. 14. ‘fear is on every side, while they conspire,’ &c. although the present Syriac omits the words ‘fear—side.’ Unfortunately we have no commentary from St. E. upon Isai. 50, 6.
§. 5. p. 190, n. g.
St. Irenæus, ii. 28. §. 6. “Being irrationally puffed up, ye have the audacity to say, that ye know the unspeakable mysteries of God, although the Lord Himself being Son of God admitted the Father only to know the day and hour of the judgment, saying plainly ‘of that day and hour knoweth no man nor yet the Son but the Father only.’ If then the Son was not ashamed to refer the knowledge of that day to the Father only, but said what was true, let not us either be ashamed to reserve to God such matters in discussion as are too great for us.”
S. His genealogy.
p. 135, n. c.
Mat. 4, 4. &c.
i. e. from Pagan books; a common source of heresies. See Vol. ii. p. 444, a. of Manes, p. 490, c. of Eutactus, above, p. 128, n. f. In ii. p. 468, c. he says, ‘They saw that all the children of error were all of them one, who from the Greeks all got the hated name of ὕλη.’ In i. p. 276. in explaining of what the unclean birds are types, he says, ‘the wild fowl is a type of those that labour in the doctrines of Paganism, and read by night continually at the barren fables and mischievous narrations of the Greeks, and on the Peace which is the doctrine of the Crucified they ponder not.
[Syriac]. See on l. §. 5. Vol. ii. p. 533. ‘Error as money did the evil one stamp, and in all ages did he recast wickedness, and in all times stamp fraud, &c.’ St. Austin on Ps. lvii. notices the serpent’s wisdom in the same respect, though as part of the wisdom to be imitated.
p. 103, §. 4.
This alludes to Adam and Eve covering themselves with leaves, and implies a contrast to that covering drawn from Ezek. xlvii. 12. where he writes as follows: “And by the river upon the bank thereof, &c. &c.” i. e. In words and deeds they are perfect by reason of their offerings and their tithes, which they as it were flower with in the beginning of their months and in their feasts, these he means that depend upon and are bound up with the strength of God. And at the beginning of all their months they will bring forth first fruits, because they drink water from the sanctuary. And their fruit shall be for meat, and their leaves for healing. This is by reason of the divine laws which yield life and health to them that wash in the stream; i. e. that depart not from the law, but are as those lofty trees upon the banks of a stream, rejoicing like that tree which is planted, &c. Ps. i.
comp. Mat. 18, 28.
§. 3. p. 190, n. g.
R. xvii. §. 2.
R. xxviii. §. 1.