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Hymns on Faith

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

5. Rhythm the Fifth

The knowledge of Angels searcheth in measure, the knowledge of men without measure goeth roaming. Thy mercy put in Thy way inns and milestones¹ that the unsettled disputers might come into order. Blessed he that hath measured his wonder with his knowledge so as to reach the inns. The knowledge of man to the knowledge of an Angel is like a feeble twilight, and even the knowledge of Angels to the knowledge of the Spirit is as a little twinkling. [Yet] the Spirit saith of the Son, ‘Who hath declared His generation?’ Rash-² ness³ is for running on and passing over the boundary which the Spirit⁴ came up to and was still.

When the Angels searched to learn the Generation⁵ of the Son, they directed their questions to those that were higher than they, and these great ones learn at the suggestion of⁶ the Spirit⁷. As the degrees of the Angels, so are the questions of the Angels⁸. There is none among them that dareth to stretch himself unto aught that is greater than his own⁹ measure. Hereto nature witnesseth by the subordination that is therein¹⁰, for rank leadeth unto rank unto that which is the crown: and also the counsels of Jethro made subordinations¹¹ from degree to degree even up to Moses himself. Men, who¹² are of vile degree, trespass over the degrees of Angels to come up to the First-born and search into Him!

It was not, Lord, from envy¹³ in Thee, that Thy works were less than Thee; the work can never be made equal with its¹⁴ Maker. It were a fearful blasphemy if it could be made equal to Him, since the servant would be companion of his Lord, and the Lord fellow-servant of His servant. Blessed be he who hath felt that it was in His love that the Lord condescended and the Maker put on the work¹⁵. There is no work of His that can be compared unto its Maker. For not even are the names of the two equal and more than the names are they themselves unequal. The Lord willed in His love¹⁶ to make His servants share in His names. Priests and kings by grace clad on Thy surnames, and Moses and Joshua Thy names¹⁷.

Merciful was the Lord in that He also clad on our names; even to a grain of mustard seed He condescended to com¹⁸pare Himself. He gave unto us His Names, He took from us our names. His Names made us great, our names made Him small. Blessed be he who covered his own name with Thy goodly Name, and hath ornamented with Thy Name his own names: Let nature be a furnace¹⁹ unto us for the word of truth. Lo, the sun is all of him visible²⁰ to the eye of all; it is not that he is in any thing concealed that the eye cannot search into him. The whole of him is visible before it, yet can it not see one hundredth part of him²¹. In the sun is revealed Thy hidden Generation, and who can gaze upon the might thereof²²?

Again set thy heart [to think] how the sea²³ also is inaccessible. It is not hidden by distance. Lo! though quite in the midst of it, the sailors are tossed about, they cannot [attain] to the end thereof; so is also His Majesty; in it dwell powers, natures, and Angels, and every thing plungeth into it and welleth forth in it, and yet is unable to search Him out! With every thing also is there mingled this common air on which our breath hangeth. Though its fetter gall us not, it entereth into us and cometh forth from us, and is unto us as though it were not. The hand falls upon it and it is not felt beneath it; it flees without changing while it is in the hand; when it is taken, it lets itself not be taken. Its breath passes through bodies, things bound in it are as loose things, that turn them whithersoever they please. They come and go in the midst of it²⁴. On one Breath all depend; It beareth all without weariness; in His fulness they all dwell, and as in an empty space they abide. He is too great to be hidden in any thing. Lo! He is covered though not hidden, for with Himself He veileth Himself.

Parallels to the air, hath He made thee also in the colours²⁵; by them hath He shadowed thee out a likeness of the Eternal, Who [Himself] cannot be shadowed out. For He is near us and far off; though He is in us, He is not; and though the creation is in Him, it is as though it were not in Him; though no one is able to veil himself in Him, yet He covereth him in²⁶ Himself. We have shadowed forth for the sake of our quietness²⁷ the Eternal that cannot be felt: let us not explore Him, but let us depart and go forth by the straight course to silence. If a blind man shall touch a living coal²⁸ to explore it, its brightness profiteth him not, but its heat²⁹ burneth him³⁰. So doth a hidden Essence harm them that search into it, but them that worship it, it advantageth.

The Son is close unto His Father in glory as in name; seeing He is close Him in these two, He is not distant from Him in the third thing. As the Father is unsearchable, so is the Son unsearchable. He that would search into the First-born would search into the Father. The searching into the Begotten is a bridge³¹ which whoso passeth over, passeth on to search into the Father. Bethink thyself, that whoso wisheth to examine and search into the fruit³², his seeking speedily runs into the root that bare it. The Son is a treasurehouse wherein is searching and also treasure, for the daring the searching of Thee, for the merchants³³ Thy³⁴ treasure. Both of them are to be wondered at. The guilty doth searching into Thee employ³⁵; the good is hidden in Thy loving-kindness.

He condescended to come down to thee; taste the fruit of His love, and the sweetness thereof let it delight Thee; let not searching into Him harm thee; for He is able to be a medicine of life³⁶ and a medicine of death. Take from Him that which He brought, give unto Him also that which He will accept. Take from Him and give to Him; take bowels of mercies which He brought, and give works³⁷ which He will accept. Praise Him that brought a blessing; let Him receive of us prayer. Because the Adorable came down to us, He caused adoration to come up from us. Because He gave us the Divine Nature³⁸, we gave Him the human nature; because He brought us the promise, we give Him the faith of Abraham His friend; for almsgivings have we put out to interest³⁹ with Him, that we may demand it of Him⁴⁰ again.

Praise thou the hidden Light by means of the gleaming from Him; hard is it for the eye of the soul to look at the secret Light. By means of the shining from Him⁴¹ it is able to go to meet Him. He sent forth a brightness from Himself to them that sit in darkness. He turned away their eyes from the beauty of worthless things to the beauty of Him that sent Him. Wonder is there and astonishment at our age⁴²! for there are bruises in our bodies, and scars in our souls, and seams in our spirits. Instead then of searching out where there was medicine suited for us, we have probed our Physician, and have searched into His nature and birth. Oh, how bitter is our wound! It is with the Physician that chaseth away our pangs that we have bruised our own selves.

May Thy faith be in my mind a curdle which, when poured into it, may thicken my thoughts⁴³ from prying and straying. I will knock at Thy gate, O Lord, that Thy gift may dwell upon me in righteousness, that my poverty may come and be suddenly enriched, for it oweth ten thousand talents. O Lord, do Thou make me a debtor, that I may make Thee pay interest from what is Thine own.

Notes

Vol. ii. p. 486, c. “Plain is the way for the simple, and that way is faith, which metes out inns and milestones from Paradise back to Paradise, &c.” and p. 495. “Prophets and Apostles handed it down, in it are milestones which the Truth did fix, in it are inns which Love did garnish.”
Is. 53, 8.
p. 129, n. f.
St. E. here conceives the Spirit as setting Himself a limit according to what He saw it to be fitting to disclose to His creatures, according, not to His capacity to reveal, but theirs to receive. On the mysteriousness of such limits he dwells further below, liii. §. 1, &c.
p. 110, n. b.
S. nod of
Basil de Sp. Sancto. xvi. (§. 38.) “Take away from the account the Spirit, and the quires of Angels are disbanded, the prefectures of Archangels come to an end, all things are confounded; of law, order, and boundary will their life be void. For how is it that the Angels say, ‘Glory to God in the Highest, if it be not by the Holy Spirit that they are empowered to do it?....I think that Gabriel also foretelleth not things to come by any other way than by the Spirit’s foreknowledge, seeing one of the divisions of the gifts of the Spirit is prophecy, &c.....How could the Seraphim say, Holy, Holy, Holy, unless taught by the Spirit how often they must utter this doxology, to be true to orthodoxy? &c.”
See on 1 Kings in note e. Greg. Naz. Or. xxxiv. p. 539. ‘I wist not if so great a thing be not incomprehensible even to the intellectual natures above, which through their being near unto God and shone upon by the entire Light, may yet haply clearly see it, if not entirely, yet at least after a more perfect and express sort than we, according to the rank to which they belong, καὶ ἀναλογίαν τῆς τάξεως—who had been contrasting (p. 538.) God’s own knowledge of Himself with that of His creatures. See Dionys. de Cœl. Hier. cap. v. Cyril Thes. p. 266, c. Epiphan. lxiv 33. quoted in St. Jo. Damasc de F O. ii. 3., and Petav. de Ang. ii. 4. §. 5. who has however not given these or any other passages from the Fathers. He shews however that St. Thomas held to the doctrine of St. E. and St. Greg. even after the visibility of God had been authoritatively determined. It should seem difficult to conceive of different orders of Angels, without different degrees of knowledge to be imparted, and of goodness leading them to impart it.
2 Cor. 10, 14.
We have already seen above, n. b. p. 107. St. E.’s way of arguing from analogy upon such subjects: as it is a common habit with him so to argue, an instance or two shall be here added; on Numbers xi. 25. p. 257. he says, “God took of the Spirit that was on him and gave it to the seventy elders. As the fruits of trees receive the juice that distils from their branches, so the seventy elders felt the Spirit which distilled from Moses and entered into them. And again, the sense (of the text) is not that He minished him, but it explains how it was from Christ that all intellectual Spirits received.” On Numbers i. he says, p. 250, e. “Here is a ‘type of the twelve Apostles, by whose means the chosen below were enrolled in the Church on earth, but those above perhaps by the head of their orders. That he did not number the tribe of Levi with Israel, although he was of Israel, is again a type of the Saints, who although they be of the world, yet are not reckoned of the world: The Archangels too are higher than their companies, as the head is above the members.” Again, on Joshua, p. 305, c. “By those that dwell in cities are typified those that stand in the rank of virtues and powers and dominions; those again who have their portion in country places are a semblance of those who stand in a lower contemplation, as Principalities and Angels.” And on 1 Kings iv. p. 454. a. Of the different provisions for the king’s table he says, “first take thee in the fine flour, a type of those Angels, that without a veil, see the things of God, and are counted worthy to see the mysteries from God without the mediation of others. And these be like the fine flour, because it is by a light clear and pure that they are enlightened, and are in their essence pure without spot and without mixture. These are they whom we account Seraphim and Cherubim. But those who eat flower mixed with bran, are those [men] who hitherto have not attained to a capability for the pure light, for hitherto they have not attained a mind pure and perfect every whit, but there is over them a covering like to the bran, &c.” See also vol. i. p. 269. We see here that he holds men and Angels to see God in very different ways; and that in spite of his holding as St. Thomas did, that Angels see God without any medium, he also holds in the text, that Angels themselves see Him in different degrees.
Ex. 18, 13.
S. The vile degrees of man
This seems to have been originally suggested by Plato, (Tim. §. 10. “He who established this universe was good, and in him who is good doth no envy ever at any time have place,”) and is used in a similar way by St. E. R. xlvi. §. 2. St. Athan. c. Gent. §. 41. St. Greg. Naz. p. 16. d. p. 543. d. St. Gr. Nys. c. Eun. p. 372. a. xxi. §. 2. St. Epiphan. i. p. 959. a. If Arianism grew out of Platonism, we should not forget any service the heathen did to orthodoxy, especially when (as Heindorf notices) he is opposing the current heathen notion of the enviousness of the Divinity.
p. 116. ref. 1.
i. e. put on our nature.
p. 133.
‘Names’ seem to mean something more proper than surnames; the latter probably mean such names as Rock, Axe, Worm, King of Righteousness, &c. Joshua is the same as Jesus, in Syriac; Moses’ being called ‘God to Pharaoh’ is probably the other thing alluded to.
Mat. 13, 31.
‘Furnace’ is an expression which occurs xx. §. 3. lvi. §. 5. lxiv. §. 1. vol. ii. p. 321. e. p. 454. d. p. 476. d. &c. for some such idea as capacity for testing—perhaps suggested by Prov. 27, 21.
p. 133.
comp. p. 116, n. e.
p. 126, n. c.
p. 87, n. i.
The compatibility of God’s grace with man’s freedom is noticed as a wonder again xxv. §. 1. It will be right to quote some passages here to shew how strongly he (in common with other writers before Pelagian times) expressed himself upon man’s freedom, as the weight of the passage in the text cannot otherwise be duly appreciated. Vol. ii. p. 326. b. “If Enoch, that lived, found no way to live without the Tree of Life, who is there that can live without the living Son, Whose fruit giveth life to all? No man can gain a reward proportioned to his labour save by justice: no man can receive one greater than his labour save by grace. Whose labour then sufficeth for the price of the Kingdom and receiveth in justice so as not to inherit by grace? There is a drop by justice and the rest by grace. The labour of justice (i. e. which in justice requires reward) is the cause to the Giver, to give for the little great riches without measure. Neither is He blameable for adding, who addeth thus to all things. For a mortal man’s scant labour in the stead of much persuadeth that he will hereafter work: for were he to prolong his life, then his labours had been great. Wherefore it is justice while it is also grace, for it would have been justice had his life been prolonged.” Again ib. p. 461, e. he says, “Thou that art our Healer, heal our free-will: healed may it be by Thee, and by Thee forgiveness gain. Refuse not to assist it, for in Thee its health also standeth. O mighty gift, whereby Thou hast made us greater than the seas that are fettered by their boundaries, than the earth, the heaven, and the mountains that without are very small! May our Lord visit our mind, the will whereof is enfeebled by its wealth, and its thoughts by its possessions, and by its desires enfeebled is its power. For evil, if man willeth not, does not exist, like darkness which existeth not if it be light, or a forest, if it be let run wild, for want of tilling. ......Blessed be the Creator of free-will, the handmaid to whom He hath given power over the soul. Who is to hide free-will that is as the sun shining in the firmament? who deny its dominion whereof the power is as God in might? comp. (vol. i. p. 120.) quoted in p. 117. n. k.....Blessed be He that plaited the commandments that by them free-will might be crowned! Blessed be He that hath made just men numerous, to be witnesses that cry aloud concerning free-will.” See xxv. §. 3. xxviii. §. 2. xxxi. §. 2. lxxix. §. 3. contr. Scrut. i. §. 35. Again, vol. i. p. 143, a. speaking of Cain he says; “if thou doest not well, sin lieth at the door of thy heart; these words go to shew, that God wisheth man’s repentance and waiteth for him to return, and exciteth and giveth opportunities which are a call thereto. They shew also that man has power over himself and a liberty of willing. Lo, sin lieth at the door of thy mind like to a fanged beast at the door of a house, if thou turn thee to it, it will get it power over thee.” St. E., as other Fathers, when arguing with fatalists, insists on the fact of man’s freedom, and does not go into the question of the way in which he became free. See his de Lib. Arbitrio, iii. p. 359. Petavius de Deo ix. 4. and 5. notices how the earlier writers have been causelessly impeached, and may yet be defended upon this subject.
i. e. use the colours in a parallel way to what we have just been using the air: He is near, &c. He here states, what he alludes to, of the prototype instead of the type: otherwise the incomprehensibility of colour is the point to which he draws our attention.
Ps. 31, 20.
p. 118, n. k, fin.
See R. x. §. 4.
S. power
Perhaps the mention of colours reminds him of a blind man, and his having no sense for them. For ‘all the blind do is to persuade their own mind by talking and deceive those that hear them, as if they had a perfect knowledge of their difference, and could even put it into words, being through the incomprehensibility of them to themselves in a state of ignorance’ to apply a seemingly corrupt passage of Epiphanius, i. p. 991. c. Compare vi. §. 1. where the same simile is used to suggest the imperfect vision of God given to man.
See R. vi. fin.
§. 1. lv. §. 1. lxxvii. §. 4.
Pearl vi. §. 3. R. xvi. §. 2.
Mat. 13, 45.
S. fill
vi. §. 2.
vii. §. 2.
xxix. §. 1.
See §. 10. and xxv. §. 3. 4. xxxviii. fin. So of a monk he says, Can. funer. xvi. ‘The priesthood is the talent which thou didst receive of thy Lord to trade therewith; the stock for trading is doubled to Him by interest and by usury too.’
Mat. 25, 27.
p. 87, n. h.
p. 107, n. d.
p. 98, §. 5.