Library › St Ephrem the Syrian › Hymns on Faith

Hymns on Faith

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

59. Rhythm the Fifty-ninth

The waters of our expiation and the stream of our Atonement have become to them [the waters] of strife¹, since in them their disputings range themselves on two sides. The [Jewish] people strove in the wilderness, the² Gentiles strive in the Church; they contended angrily concerning the waters of the Red Sea, and now these contend angrily about the waters of the Sanctuary. Praises be to Thy Atonement! Who is there that striveth not, who is there that asketh not his comrade [saying], ‘who baptized thee then, and whence was thy baptism received?’ Who is it that doth not admonish and adjure another [saying], let not such and such a schismatic priest’s hand baptize thee³? and so they have come to be waters of strife to parties of strife.

The Holy Spirit we called on at Baptism⁴. The bold disputers have rejected the truth: they strive, and say that it is not right to make Him equal with the Father and the Son. Who is it that hath despised the Holy Spirit, and hath numbered with the embodied Him who admitteth not of a body? Yet in no place⁵ have the Prophets brought in a charge of weakness against Him, or the Apostles of deficiency. As a servant and minister, as a creature and subordinate person, the Prophets never have preached Him, as they preached the Son. For He is high above any body⁶, and high above all these. From Him by Himself let us search: for if they must needs write unto us the Nature of the Father and the Son and the Spirit, and reveal concerning the Maker that when nothing was made, He did make⁷; and, as these say, wrote of the Son also that He was created, how was it that they revealed not unto us, of this Third Person, of what Nature He was?

Who knoweth not that he rangeth in his thoughts, and numbereth in order⁸ the Threefold Names of the Father, the Son, and the Spirit? And it is meet that as he reckoneth up Their Names, so also he should reveal Their Natures. If then it be written, let them read it: if not written, let them confess that their Nature is hidden. Inasmuch as He hath not given a revelation to us concerning the Third [Person], He sheweth most clearly that it is not the Natures of the Father and the Son and the Spirit into which we ought to search; but the anxious care of the Good One hath been, how by all means and by all occasions He might shew mercy unto the children of men!

Wherefore without controversy allow, that every thing which is given in writing, or by word, that names, and appellations, aim at giving mankind the life more abundantly⁹. It is not for scrutiny nor for distinctions, that we should search into Their Nature, but that we might be instructed in the greatness of Their Love. Say that the Holy Spirit hath not taken flesh. He is high above voices and the odious sounds of voices that have been uttered. Proclaim the Divinity of our Lord and His Humanity, since these are words which the Holy Books have scattered and cast into the ears of men.

His Word is peaceable, since our Lord giveth peace¹⁰ unto all: it is we that have made war in it, we that have devised tumults in it. We hate staying over it, we turn aside from it because we have offended against it. We have taken and disturbed the peace in it, seeing that through it we have quarrelled with our brethren: we have killed plain men with it: with it we hate one another: with it too we have invited ruin into our souls. The fountain of brightness which floweth down from the Bright One, which had never at any time been disturbed, their arguings have made turbid, and the peaceful flock hath drunk disturbance, and hath itself also been disturbed¹¹; and the uncleanness hath gone into and disturbed the clearness: the shepherds have drunk it, and the flock along with them. Strife came in and hath separated the flocks from the head-shepherds, and they that should feed the flocks feed them not. They ate the fat ones, and the weak ones they strengthened not, nor have they healed the sickly ones: and them that were bruised have they not bound up, and them that were astray have they not brought back. The evil that the son of Buzi saw, he wrote; he also pro¹²phesied of what was to come: he shadowed out a type to us, in what he saw. Doubt not concerning this, as it is a narration told by many mouths. May the lying mouths be put to silence, Lord, and set a watch over my mouth, that my¹³ heart may not go astray into an evil word!

Notes

R. lxv. §. 1.
Gen. 26, 21. Ex. 17, 7. Ps. 106, 7. 32. Ezech. 47, 12. p. 203, n. g.
p. 197. p. 178, n. d.
p. 196, n. c. Nat. Alex. Sæc. iv. diss. xliii. p. 526.
R. lii. §. 5. R. liii. §. 2, &c.
Some heretics appear to have held, that the Holy Spirit was hypostatically united to the dove at the Jordan, a notion which may first have been suggested by Tertullian de Carne Christi. 3. and is combated by Chrys. in Matt. 3,16. and by St. Austin c. Max. i. cap. 19: a similar opinion to which the Manicheans appear to have held. See Acacii Alex. Ep. ad Petr. Fullon. in Harduin Concil. ii. p. 844. “The Manichean, like you, wholly denying the Only-begotten Son of God and the birth of the Virgin, said that the Holy Spirit, who came down from Heaven in the shape of a dove in the river Jordan, took a body from the water, and conversed among men, and was nailed to the Cross, and underwent death for us.” (referred to by Petav. de Inc. v. 4. §. 4.) In Archel. Caschar. cap. 50. Manes uses the expression ‘as a dove’ as explanatory of ‘being found as man,’ to disprove the reality of Christ’s Body. It is not to me very clear to what heresy St. E. is alluding: [see §. 4.] perhaps he wishes to shew that Aetius, by making the Spirit finite, approximated to the Montanists in some respects, and to the Manicheans in others, either of these parties making the Spirit incarnate in their Paraclete, and thus by introducing a duality, obliterating the Catholic doctrine of the Trinity. St. Basil de Sp. S. cap. 2. notices a principle of Aetius, as that on which the Pneumatomachi or Macedonians founded their heresy, viz. that things unlike were declared in unlike terms, and that, conversely, what are declared in unlike terms, are unlike.’ From this they argued, that the Holy Spirit was not consubstantial with the Son. This will perhaps serve to shew why St. E. appears in this §. to pass from the Macedonian, to Montanist or Manichean, heresy, and from those again to the Anomeans. St. Basil, c. Eun. ii. §. 33. and §. 84. says, Eunomius was the first to call the Holy Spirit a creature, and that he asserted that He was created by the Only-begotten, who Himself was created by the Father. (where see Ducæus.) To this blasphemy St. E. plainly alludes in the end of the §.
R. lx. §. 1.
See p. 181, n. c. p. 234, n. f. and p. 219, n. c. St. E. probably means, that if the heretics contend that God comes under number, they ought to be able to give some account of the natures of their gods: if on the contrary there is no such subjection of the Holy Spirit taught in prophecy, as there is taught us of the Son, they ought to infer that the Trinity does not consist of natures, but is One Nature, and that in order to suffer, a second Nature was taken by One of the Persons—to shew mercy, &c.
S. ‘wished to throw the fulness into.’ The same phrase occurs vol. ii. p. 461. “Glory to Him who threw the fulness into our free-will,” i. e. gave us a perfect freedom of will.
R. liii. §. 3. R. lxvi. §. 2. R. lxviii. §. 1. p. 279, n. d.
R. xxxv. §. 2.
Ezech. 34, 4. &c.
Ps. 141, 3.