Hymns on Faith

Notes

1. R. xlvi. §. 2. R. lxii. §. 3. 4.
2. R. lii. §. 1. contr. Scrut. R. l. §. 17.
3. See p. 150, n. c. p. 190, n. f. p. 205, n. b. Vol. ii. p. 480, c. “The false teachers have been deceived by the expression ‘He repented,’ a sound word which is bitter to the infirm, and they distorted it, while it only explained how great Adam was. Lo! God essayed to persuade him that he was not the vessel of an impotent workman, seeing it was no other Workman that restored him. Dumbness belongs to the [other] creatures, but Adam had discourse by his nature. The seas are spread out, and the mountains are fixed, but Adam commands. Perversely then have men understood the word, and yet it has at this day currency, and it is the way with men to find fault [and say] that ‘God exalted one whose character He did not discern; and Saul too beareth witness of His having repented also of having made him king and given him authority, and yet he proved perverse: what is not seen in Adam’s case, is plain in Saul’s.’ It was that He might reprove the slanderers, that He by the kingdom ensnared the freewill, which has full power. He nourished and brought up children, and they corrupted themselves and proved perverse. Which is it that the hearers ought to blame? God that honoured? or those that disgraced man?” Ibid. p. 506, e. “Whose nature would be made greater by that great One, unless He denied Himself by taking what is not in Him. For this He did when He said He ate, and ate not the sacrifice that the fire ate. (Ps. 50, 13. Levit. 9, 24.) He denied Himself by taking the appearance of a man, though He is hidden from all in His Essence: so did He by that repenting which is not in Him, that He might awaken it in our race in which it is. That, however, He might not be as it were divided with Himself as if hating altogether the truth which is with Him; He on the other hand confessed the verity of His Nature, that He might shew of what manner He is. When He stated that He hungered for fat, He on the other hand confessed that He eateth not sacrifices: when He stated that He dwelt in the Sanctuary, He also shewed that the Heavens are filled with Him. He denied His majesty, that He might shew how merciful He was, &c.” P. 514, c. “When it was known that His Nature as unchangeable, was far from passions, He feared not to put on repentance; hence He was not ashamed to be as one zealous; hence He did not hesitate to sleep and slumber, yea, and ask for sacrifice. No method did He neglect to assist freewill, that the accuser might shew his madness, and the Merciful One His goodness.” And so on 1 Sam. 15, 11. he says: “He said that ‘He repented,’ not that God changeth His purpose, but because He willed to change what He had done—as Samuel explained it to Saul when he said, ‘God is not a man that He should take counsel.’ Yet why did God speak thus? That Saul might know that the Lord willed to change the good He had done him, and that Saul himself might also learn that he ought to change his own evil doings. God spake also in this way to the righteous Noah concerning the destruction of Adam’s race in the days of the flood, when He said, ‘It repenteth Me that I have made them,’ not that God Himself, who sinneth not, was capable in His own Nature of repentance, but that He might preach to sinners repentance, &c.” These passages shew how often St. E. thought it worth while to insist that such expressions were accommodations to human weakness, and were not (as the Anthropomorphists contended) to be taken as literal. A passage from St. Basil c. Eun. ii. §. 24. will recall us to the more immediate object of St. E.’s allusion in the text to those expressions. “That God then is with the strictest propriety called Father, as also that the name is not one implying impression from without, but relationship (οὐχὶ πάθους ἀλλʼ οἰκειώσεως ἐστὶν ὄνομα) either in the way of grace as in men’s case, or in the way of nature as in that of the Only-Begotten, has been sufficiently declared. (see on R. xlv. §. 4.) But let us grant this expression too to be figurative, and used by a metaphor as countless others are. As then, when we hear of God being angry and asleep and flying, and of other such expressions which in their obvious sense furnish unbecoming assertions, we neither expunge the expressions of the Spirit, nor take what is said in a corporeal sense; for what possible reason, when this expression is employed so frequently by the Holy Spirit, are we not to look for meanings to it becoming God?”
4. or asserted
5. By asserting that the denial of one of God’s Names entails a denial of all, St. E. seems to assert, that one attribute involves the other, and cannot be contemplated without it: which is the very position of Eunomius that St. Basil and St. Gr. Nyss. combated. For Eunomius contended for this principle in regard to all the attributes, because his theory concerning one, viz. ingenerateness, required it. If ingenerateness, he argued, does not imply and involve incorruptibility, then incorruptibility is, in some respect or other, contrary to ingenerateness, and at this rate God is compounded of contraries. But this cannot be so, since He is a simple Essence, and therefore ingenerateness does involve incorruptibility, and by parity of reasoning every other attribute. To this a reply to this effect was made: Our conceptions of God must be carefully distinguished from the Reality, which they inadequately represent. God’s attributes are in fact identical with this Reality: but we must not argue from this that the attributes, as they exist in our conceptions, are identical with each other, since this would confound and put an end at once to all reasoning upon the subject. We must keep conceptions distinct which are distinct, and remember that they and not the Reality are all that we can reason upon. See Petav. de Deo i. 6—11. No sense then must be put upon the text, which shall subvert this important principle. It may perhaps be only meant to imply that we have exactly the same kind of evidence, viz. God’s testimony, of His Fathership and Creatorship, that we have of His Justice, Goodness, &c.; going by sense only we may find objections to one as much as to the other: he who denies the latter will soon come to deny the former, they being in fact, though not in our conception of them, linked one into the other. In regard to the illustration here used, it may be mentioned that in vol. i. p. 12, c. he says, that “the heaven and the earth and fire and wind and water were created out of nothing as Scripture testifies;” and ibid. n. e. “the remnant of other things were made out of these same things which existed.” See also p. 7, c. where he shews how the creation of things not specified in Scripture as created, are implied to be created within the six days. Here he omits earth and heaven, because they make up the world of which the others are the pillars. His caution against denying the obvious sense of Gen. 1. is quite to the purpose to add: “By Heaven and earth He means the very Heaven and the very earth. Let no man then suppose that there are allegories (Syr. Targums) on the work of the six days: neither may one say that the things which took place in the days took place in a moment, nor that the names are empty ones, or that other things are intimated to us by the names. But let us know, that as the Heaven and earth which were created in the beginning are in very deed Heaven and earth, and it is not any thing else that is surnamed to us by the name of Heaven and earth; so the remnant of things made, and of the courses which come after are not empty appellations, since the realities of the natures suit closely to the appellations of the names.” p. 6. So in the text he implies that the Name Father has a reality corresponding to it as much as that of ‘just,’ ‘good,’ ‘creator,’ &c. See R. lii. §. 1.
6. Comp. n. a. p. 244.
7. Basil above in n. z. p. 72.
8. Assem. renders in Filium, which is not exact; St. E. means, that the Jews did not believe through or by the Son in “the Three Names which have made a trench, &c.” comp. vol. iii. p. 592, c. St. Gr. Nyss. ii. p. 339. “If it be only that they may lay themselves a sort of foundation and starting-place for their blasphemy, that they allow an existence to the Son and the Spirit, it may be a bold way of putting it perhaps, but, at that rate, more profitable would it be to them to desert to the Jews’ worship and forswear the faith than to do an insult to the title of ‘Christians,’ by their pretended admission. For they by continuing up to the present time in the rejection of the word, only carry their impiety so far as not to admit that Christ has come, but to be hoping that He will come; but for any conception wicked and subversive of the opinion they hold of Him whom they expect, none such can one hear them utter. (Comp. p. 71, n. z.) But these of the new circumcision, or rather, to use the Apostle’s word, of the concision, do not deny that He who was expected, has come, but imitate those who in unbelief and insolence dishonoured the presence of the Lord in the flesh. They essayed to cast stones at the Lord; these with blasphemous words throw stones at the word of truth: they alleged the lowness and ingloriousness of the birth after the flesh, not affecting the Birth before all ages; and these in the same way by denying the profession of the glorious and lofty and unutterable Birth from the Father, assert that it was by creation that He has His Being.” The Eunomians deny the Father to be properly Father, and thus do not believe by or through the Son’s means.
9. S. to nature. R. lvii. §. 1.
10. R. xli. §. 4.
11. R. xi. §. 3. R. lx. §. 1.
12. Job 33, 23.
13. Mat. 21, 10. Mark 6, 3. John 6, 42.
14. p. 46. see Gal. 1, 6. 7.
15. Mat. 24, 24.
16. R. xxxvii. §. 3.
17. R. xxxiii. §. 1.
18. See Athan. de Decr. S. N. §. 24. p. 40. O. T. Greg. Nys. ii. p. 299, a. “Eunomius thinks the perverted fancy of his own mind more worthy of credit than those who in all the whole world are glorifying the Name of Christ.”
19. p. 274, n. c.
20. p. 74, n. d.
21. p. 223, n. d.
22. [Syriac]. Ass. renders, cogita ipsum in animo id versare unum, ut, te accedentem complexus, secum, præcipitem trahat. This, on the whole, appears to give the true sense of the words, (comp. R. xlviii. §. 3.) and their meaning seems to be: ‘If thou justifiest thy free enquiry by the pretence, that thou art dragging Satan out of the lurking places which the so called orthodox doctrine (as you would speak) affords him, be assured, that he is only devising meanwhile how to make thee tenfold more the child of hell.’—Zeal for the truth was pretended by Eunomius, Apol. §. 2. as well as Arius, in Athan. p. 185. As for the earlier part of the section, its meaning is very obscure: perhaps it may mean, Satan has relinquished his plan of making traps for men’s souls below the surface of the earth, (see n. b. p. 221. where however the Syr. word differs,) which traps are types of fables of the mind’s own creating, he having observed that to an acute and wrangling spirit they were evident enough: he has now given men a wide waste ‘a land of thorns’ (see p. 220.) to dispute in, which engulphs his victims as successfully as the precipice, while it appears to be open ground.