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Hymns on Faith

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

34. Rhythm the Thirty-fourth

Before Adam had sinned, all the creatures were pure; and when he and they were pure, he garnished them with their names. And when the man sinned in his free-will¹, the Creator rejected them by reason of his sins, though he was more unclean than they, that by them He might teach him, and bring him unto pureness. Blessed be He Who by means of beasts taught him not to make himself like them². For like unto beasts and brutes he made himself, as is written.³ By them He shadowed forth man’s own hideousness, that he might see how foul he had made himself; that when he saw his hideousness, he might be disgusted thereat; and when he saw the great blot upon him, he might feel ashamed; and when he saw whereto he was like, he might weep, and seek the brightness⁴ which he had lost.

One mirror serveth to minister unto many in a state of concord: but to Adam were many [given], that in them he might see his own manifold stains⁵. He drew our attention to animals⁶, that we in them might see in what state we are! O wise Creator, Who in them shewed us ourselves! For the mind can see itself, if it be clear; the body cannot examine its face without a mirror. Since then the mind had itself also become like the body, and could not by its own self behold its essence, He took and prepared a mirror from the beasts, that it might see itself; that by the beasts which he treats with scorn, man might reproach himself, that he might⁷ not be ravenous like a wolf, nor be fierce like a beast with fangs, nor get the hiss of a serpent, nor again the silence of a scorpion, or like it in secret smite his fellow; nor like a dog rage at his Maker; and, be not ye as a horse and a mule,⁸ which have no understanding. He called Herod a fox, since he defiled his chamber at all times with his lasciviousness;⁹ he despised the law, and in his impureness he killed the Nazarite, and took a wife who also was like himself, and a damsel came up in the image of them both. In the feast of the profuse banquet they killed the honourable prophet.

Notes

p. 123, n. k. p. 6. Philo l. c. i. §. 70. de Anim. §. 66.
Some thoughts occur here which seem to have been suggested by Philo de Providentia, lib. ii. portions of which are given us in Greek by Euseb. Præp. Ev. viii. 14. and a Latin translation of the whole of which from the Armenian may be found at the end of the Leipsig. Philo. A.D. 1830. St. E. vol. ii. p. 482, e. “The Scriptures witness unto liberty of will, as doth the fire which to be with sinners He prepared for Satan as for them, because he was a transgressor of his own free-will. Thus is punishment exacted of the nature that has free-will, and of the essence that hath liberty. Witness too is the serpent which in Adam’s time was lamed, and the beast that was stoned, because the lecher invisible as well as visible hath defiled it. The cause of their death have man and Satan been. For without the wicked one the serpent had been sound, and the beast without the man were faultless. It is the man and Satan that have made an evil use thereof. For the sake of those who have liberty of will, He killed the beasts to teach them gravity. Witness also is the calf of the Hebrews which was made of gold, that was pure and clean to its Maker. Moses stamped it fine, because of the impure who had contaminated themselves. So too bread and wine are deadly drugs: burnt offerings pollute things pure, and charms themselves defile. The cause of all evils is manifestly liberty of will. Adam and Satan, by their liberty, have introduced the evil of the will.” See ibid. p. 535, c. and iii. p. 571, b.
Ps. 32, 9.
p. 51, n. z.
Vol. ii. p. 532, b. ‘Let us not shape in our minds another image, an idol unseen! Fraud rejoiceth us more than Truth, seeing it is of man’s own framing. Blessed be He whose verity is not framed of parts as a fable! A pearl is the faith, (see p. 89, n. b.) which is not graven; like to the adamant is the Truth, and beneath the chasing tool it hath never been subdued. A wax flexible to every form is error, and it is like a hideous mirror to him that looks therein, and he that is well favoured in it becomes deformed, and he that is fair in it becometh stained. Alas! for the mirror wherein each that looketh hath his stains multiplied.” There is evidently a similarity of thought in this passage and that in the text; in the latter, a confused state of things originating in man’s sin is viewed as a mirror, which may be made useful to him; in the former, another state of things similarly confused as, in fact, detrimental to him; yet each serves as a mirror to him.
S. took, spread our mind over animals
Philo l. c. ii. §. 110.
Ps. 32, 9.
p. 18 and p. 31.