Hymns on Faith

Notes

1. See Op. Gr. ii. p. 263. d. Clem. Al. Pæd. ii. §. 118. p. 241. Pott. Origen in S. Matt. below, note h. Hil. on Ps. 118, 1. §. 10. Greg. Thaum. in Combef. Bibl. Concion. vi. p. 331. Cyril. c. Nestor. p. 32. “To a pearl also doth our Lord Jesus Christ compare Himself, saying, The Kingdom of Heaven is like unto a merchantman seeking goodly pearls: who, when he had found one pearl of great price, went and sold all that he had, and bought it.” (Mat. 13, 45.) I also hear Him displaying Himself otherwise unto us, and saying, ‘I am the Flower of the field, and the Lily of the vallies.’ (Cant. 2, 22.) For He hath in His own Nature that Brightness of God and the Father which beseemeth Divinity, and also maketh Himself to savour of sweetness, the spiritual sweetness I mean. Now as in the case of a pearl and of a lily too, a body is conceived of as their subject, but the brightness in it or the sweetness as may be, is conceived on its own proper ground as different from the things in which they are: and, again, their inseparable qualities are proper to themselves, and not diverse from the natures which possess them;—in the same way, I think, are we to reason and feel about Emmanuel also: for in their nature the Godhead and flesh are things diverse: yet the Body was the Word’s proper Body, and from the Body the Word which was made one therewith is not separate.”
2. S. children of
3. above, p. 30, n. i.
4. James of Edessa, (in vol. 1. p. 126. e.) “The sun is a sphere, and round on all sides, in the semblance of a pearl clear and round, so that it may on all quarters equally give light: and indeed all the shining bodies of heaven are of that semblance.”
5. the searching of.
6. S. filtered, above, p. 47. This word occurs also ii. p. 324. f. of Elijah’s purifying himself, adv. Scrut. lxxv. §. 1. of the sun’s heat: it is used in the Hexapla on Is. xxv. 7. note c. from whence I have taken the word in the text, St. E. as other Fathers, understanding that place of the Lord’s Body as given in the Eucharist. Compare Wisdom 8, 20. ‘Being good I came into a body undefiled,’ where however the Syr. has another word. In the next words he alludes to 1 Cor. 1, 13. the undivided Truth referring to the form of words used at Baptism, perhaps as well as to Christ. See adv. Scrut. lii. §. 1. fin. lxv. §. 1. fin. and n. h. p. 87.
7. Its pure Conception, i. e. the Pearl’s, i e. Christ’s, the true Pearl’s. The passage is rather obscurely worded, its meaning seems to be, I saw His pure Conception of Mary, who, with the Son within her, is a type of the Church. This passage may be illustrated by the following, from Aretas’ Catena on the Apocalypse, xii. 2. p. 351. l. 9. Some have taken the vision to refer to the Mother of the Lord....whom as being pure and free from things earthly, he describes to be in heaven and not upon earth, being as the Angels: and yet though so highly excelling in purity she partook of our lump: for what is it that David saith of the Lord’s conception? ‘He shall descend as rain upon a fleece, and as a drop which droppeth upon the earth;’ meaning by ‘earth’ the Holy Mother of the Lord, in that she was consubstantial with us earthy beings. But let Eutyches his impious dogma touching the Mother of God and the Lord’s Incarnation, be cast forth out of the divine precincts. And that she was clothed with the sun, and had the moon under her feet, Habakkuk is a sufficient voucher in those words of his: ‘The sun was lifted up, and the moon stood still in her order,’ meaning the Sun of Righteousness, Christ the Saviour, who by the preaching of the Gospel was exalted and set aloft: while the moon, i. e. the Jews’ synagogue, no longer received after Christ’s manifestation any accession by proselytes from the Gentiles.....With this too what Gabriel said to the Virgin harmonizeth: ‘The Power of the Most High shall overshadow thee:’ for to have a covering cast about one, is all one with being overshadowed. Others again, of whom is S. Methodius (see his Conviv. Virg. viii. §. 7.) of Patara, adapt the vision to holy Church as considering that this passage does not go well with the Lord’s Birth, because He had been brought forth such a long while before it. The Church then is clad with the Sun of Righteousness, and also has the light of the law, that nightly-shining moon.” The fact however that two views of the passage existed, shews that it admitted a twofold application. Epiph. Hær. lxxviii. § 11. inclines to applying it to St. Mary, while St. Austin de Trad. Symboli ad Cat. iv. §. 1. says, that ‘the woman signifies Mary, who, being spotless, brought forth our spotless Head, who herself also shewed forth in herself a figure of holy Church, so that as she in bringing forth a Son remained a Virgin, so the Church also should during the whole of time be bringing forth His members, and yet not lose her virgin estate.” This view of St. Mary, as the type of the Church, (see above, p. 52, note z.) seems absolutely necessary to reconcile the two interpretations.
8. On Jerem. 43, 7. quoting Is. 19, 1. he says, ‘The Cloud on which the Lord rode, figureth to us the Mother of God the Virgin Mary,’ as Jerome takes it also on the place, and so St. Ambr. de Inst. Virg. c. xiii. and Aretas on Apoc. xiv. 14. of Is. xix, 1. ‘which cloud the divine Fathers have taken of Mary the Ever-virgin.’ Theodoret also, though less distinctly, gives the place the same interpretation. On the words ‘her type the heaven,’ St. E.’s language de Laud. B. M. V. iii. p. 607. c. will serve as a comment. “She is the new Heaven, wherein the King of kings dwelt: He rose in her, and came out into the world, having framed and put on the likenesses of her;” and a little before, “To us did Mary to-day become the Heaven which bore up God: for into her did there come down and dwell the Godhead Most High,”.... “from her there rose to us a Star, and He folded back the darkness of the Gentiles;” and ii. p. 329. e. “Mary is the gate of the (Bright One, i.e.) Star, by whose means were enlightened the world and its inhabitants that were in the dark.”
9. See above, p. 51. n. z. The passage here may be looked upon either as a confirmation of the supposition there noticed, or as receiving its meaning from the last note. In vol. ii. p. 328. the following occurs, which perfectly confirms the evidence offered in p. 51. while it throws more particularly light on this passage. After contrasting the use Eve and the Blessed Virgin made of the eye and the ear, he proceeds, “the eye is by the light made bright at the access thereof, and gains splendour by its means, and fairness by its rising, and brilliance by its brilliancy, and comeliness by its beauteousness. Mary is typified by the eye, Light dwelt within her and purified her mind and made her imagination fair, purified her thoughts and cleared her Virginity. The river that baptized Him, was again a type of His Conception; the soft womb of the water conceived Him in purity, and brought him forth in brilliancy, and raised Him up in glory. In the pure bosom mayest thou learn of the daughter of our race, who conceived without a man, and brought forth without seed, and brought up by the Gift the Lord of the Gift. The rising was in His river, the brightness in His sepulchre, and His rays He gave out on the top of the mount, and His rising light in the womb; and He glistened in His lifting up, and was bright in His Ascension. Brightness did Moses put on: he was clad with Him from without. The river wherein He was baptized put on brightness from within. The body in which He dwelt was made brilliant from within, as Moses was from the glory.”
10. Assem. assumes the word here used means Noah’s ark, (see above, p. 35. n. t. and adv. Scrut. xlix. §. 2.) and then renders [Syriac] thalamos, to suit Gen. vi. 16. To me it appears much more likely that the same Ark which was above noticed as a type of Christ’s Body, should here be put in contrast with the pearl to which he had just compared It; and in the Op. Gr. ii. p. 266, d. and p. 267, a. p. 271, c. where the same comparison of the pearl occurs, he speaks of the πτυχαὶ τῶν κογχῶν. See below, iii. §. 4.
11. comp. p. 45.
12. S. a daughter of light
13. V. Athenæus. p. 93. Orig. in Matt. x. §. 7. “The production of the pearls in India is said to be brought about in a long time, the animal undergoing sundry changes and vicissitudes till the time it is full-grown. It is narrated farther that the shell of the animal that has the pearl opens itself with a sort of gape, and when in this state receiveth into itself the dew of heaven: and if this be clear and free from turbidness when it gets filled with it, then it proves very bright, and conceives a large and well-shaped gem. But if it be at any time a misty and unequal and stormy dew that it partakes of, then it is impregnated with a pearl clouded, and faulty through blemishes....The Indian pearl is also... white in colour, like a transparent silver, and is slightly translucent with a faintly pallid lustre, and has for the most part a round shape. It is of a delicious hue also, and looks too tender for a mineral.” (See below, iv. §. 4.) Then after saying, §. 8. that Christ is the Pearl of great price, he adds, “Among all kinds of words which promise the Truth and which produce it, the merchant looks for pearls: and let us suppose that the shells which conceive from the dew of heaven, and are from heaven impregnate with the Word of Truth, are the prophets, those goodly pearls which in the text under consideration the merchant man is seeking. But the Leader of the band of pearls, [upon the finding of which, as he had been saying, the others are likewise found,] the Pearl of great price, is the Christ of God, the Word, Who is above the precious letters and meanings of the Law and of the Prophets, upon the finding of whom all the rest are with facility received.” This will perhaps throw a light upon the meaning of the passage, though I am not clear that I understand it. The other or second Rain, perhaps means ‘the latter rain,’ which he explains on Hosea vi. 3. as follows: “He that believeth upon Christ is enabled from Baptism to embrace as it were by a mystical light the knowledge of God; and after that, His doctrine is as a rain that bedeweth them that are worthy: and, as an antitype of the latter rain, by the revelation of the Spirit He enricheth the soul, and then it beginneth to bring forth green things and to produce heavenly fruit.” As if he had said, In the pearl, this clear sky, this type of heaven, thou hast seen not only the former Rain, or Christ who came from it into us at Baptism, but also His subsequent gifts and illuminations, which, though elsewhere found, are all from Him and in Him who is the true Pearl of great price. In the next words there is a change of structure not uncommon in Semitic languages: the verb is made to agree with the genitive ‘ears’ instead of agreeing with ‘cleft.’ Impassioned language even in Holy Writ is obscure, (e. g. 2 Sam. 23.): no wonder then, if St. E. drinking from the second shower only, speaks indistinctly.
14. This is of course said against the Anomæans. A comparison of God with the sea occurs often, as adv. Scrut. xliii. §. 1. contr. Scrut.ii. §. 4 —Vol. ii. p. 453. “They have not wholesomely observed the boundaries of doctrine: for boundaries Three are set for the faithful, which for man to go beyond it is not open nor yet possible. Within these let us bind up our imagination’s roving. Each then with Each is with ungrudging fulness blended, and if man would pass through One, against Them All he trespasseth, and falleth among ten thousand thousand snares. The Generation is His wall, the deepest of the Flood: powerless to reach to it is the fire of burning strife. Upon this wall his adversary impingeth and is vanquished: the silence of that benumbeth our discourse, and letteth it not attain to the searching out of the fountains of the waves of His floods, which make it ebb and cast it down. Let us leave them within, (i. e. the Anomœans,) and speak of the Chaldeans.”
15. contr. Scrut. i. 19.
16. comp. Hos. 4, 3. Zeph. 1, 3.
17. S. O great fear!
18. Eccles. 8, 11.
19. See James 3, 10.