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Hymns on Faith

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

7. The Pearl, Rhythm the Seventh

As in a race saw I the disputers, the children of strife, [trying] to taste fire, to see the air, to handle the light: they were troubled at the gleaming, they struggled to make divisions. The Son, Who is too subtle for the mind, did they seek to feel¹: and the Holy Ghost Who cannot be explored, they thought to explore with their questionings. The Father Who never at any time was searched out, have they explained and disputed of². The sound form of our faith is from Abraham³, and our repentance is from Nineveh and the house of Rahab⁴, and ours are the expectations of the Prophets⁵, ours of the Apostles.⁶

And envy is from Satan: the evil usage of the evil calf⁷ is from the Egyptians. The hateful sight of the hateful image of four faces⁸ is from the Hittites. Accursed disputation, that hidden moth, is from the Greeks⁹. The bitter [enemy] read and saw orthodox teachings¹⁰, and subverted them; he saw hateful things, and sowed them; and he saw hope, and he turned upside down and cut it off. The disputation that he planted, lo! it hath yielded a fruit bitter¹¹ to the tooth.

Satan saw that the Truth strangled him, and united himself to the tares, and secreted his frauds, and spread his snares for the faith¹², and cast upon the priests the darts of the love of principality. They made contests for the throne, to see which should first obtain it. There was that meditated in secret and kept it close: there was that openly combated for it: and there was that with a bribe crept up to it: and there was that with fraud dealt wisely to obtain it. The paths differed, the scope was one, and they were alike. Him that was young, and could not even think of it, because it was not time for him; and him that was hoary and shaped out dreams for time beyond; all of them by his craftiness did the wicked one persuade and subdue. Old men, youths, and even striplings, aim at rank!

His former books did Satan put aside, and put on others: the [Jewish] people who was grown old had the moth and the worm devoured and eaten and left and deserted: the moth came into the new garment of the new peoples: he saw the crucifiers who were rejected and cast forth as strangers: he made of those of the household, pryers; and of worshippers, they became disputants. From that garment the moth gendered and wound it up and deposited it. The worm gendered in the storehouse of wheat, and sat and looked on: and lo! the pure wheat was mildewed, and devoured were the garments of glory! He made a mockery of us, and we of ourselves, since we were besotted! He sowed tares, and the bramble shot up in the pure vineyard! He infected the flock, and the leprosy broke out, and the sheep became hired servants of his! He began in the [chosen] people, and came unto the Gentiles, that he might finish.

Instead of the reed which the former people made the Son hold, others have dared with their reed¹³ to write in their tracts that He is only a Son of man. Reed for reed does the wicked one exchange against our Redeemer, and instead of the coat of many colours¹⁴, wherewith they clothed Him, appellations hath he dyed craftily: with diversity of names he¹⁵ clothed Him, either that of a creature or of a thing made, when He was the Maker; and as he plaited for Him by silent men speechless thorns, vociferous thorns from the mind hath he plaited [now] by the voice, as rhythms, and concealed the spikes amid melodies¹⁶ that they might not be perceived.

Satan saw that he was detected in his former [frauds,] that the spitting was discovered, and vinegar and thorns, nails and wood, garments and reed and spear, which smote Him, and were hated and openly known; he changed his frauds; instead of the blow with the hand, by which our Lord was overcome, he brought in distractions; and instead of the spitting, scrutinizing entered in; and instead of garments, secret divisions; and instead of the reed, came in strife to smite us on the face. Haughtiness called for rage its sister, and there answered and came envy, and wrath, and pride, and fraud. They have taken counsel against our Redeemer as on that day when they took counsels at His Passion. And instead of the cross, a hidden wood hath strife become; and instead of the nails, questionings have come in; and instead of hell, apostacy; the copy of both Satan would renew again. Instead of the sponge which was cankered with vinegar and wormwood, he gave prying, the whole of which is cankered with death. The gall which they gave Him did our Lord put away from Him; the subtle questioning which the rebellious one hath given, to fools is sweet.

And as at that time there were judges against them, lo,¹⁷ the judges are as it were against us, and instead of a hand-writing are their commands. Priests that consecrate crowns, set snares for kings; instead of the priesthood praying for royalty that wars may cease from among men, subversive wars do they teach which set kings to combat with those¹⁸ round about. O Lord, make the priests and kings peaceful, that in one Church priests may pray for their kings, and kings spare those round about them; and may the peace which is within Thee become ours, Lord, Thou that art within and without all things¹⁹!

Notes

adv. Scrut. iv. §. 3.
This was the boast of the Anomoeans. Basil. c. Eun. i. §. 12. “What pride and extravagance is it a sign of, to fancy that they have discovered the Essence of God who is over all! For with their high speaking they well-nigh cast him into the shade, who said, ‘Above the stars will I set my throne,’ (Is. 14, 13.) seeing it is not against the stars or the heaven that they are so bold, but the Essence of the God of the universe which they proudly pretend to enter into.” See adv. Scrut. i. not. a.
comp. adv. Scrut. ii. note d.
On Josh. 2, 9. For I know that God hath delivered unto you the land, &c. he makes Rahab say, “This forty years is this land yours: and now it is that we might repent, that we have continued in it up to this day.”
p. 77, §. 20.
Gen. 15, 6.
So St. James of Nisibis in Gall. v. xcii. St. Austin on Ps. lxxiii. §. 16. The calf might be at once intended for a symbol of God, and also a copy from the worship of Apis.
From vol. ii. p. 384. we learn that St. E. is here casting a glance at the followers of Bardesanes or Manes: “The sun that elsewhere is not worshipped, how cometh he to be honoured here: calves that have elsewhere fallen into dishonour, how come they to be worshipped here: But and if a man say, that ‘these belong to our country, and so they have taken refuge here’—lo! our country has many that are novel and odious things unnumbered: for here we mean evils that are not indigenous: here sins are visited, that once were not done in our country. Of the idol with four faces Micha did the type invent. The brazen serpent in our country no men offered to or worshipped, &c.” It seems that St. E. looked on Micah’s Teraphim as an imitation of the Cherubim, a sense which will perhaps suit all places where Teraphim are mentioned as well as any.
p. 112, n. g.
See §. 4. and Tertullian’s Apol. p. 55. O. T. “The counsels of God they both snatched at the time the prophets were proclaiming them, and now also they cull in the readings which echo them,” &c.
S. bitterness
adv. Scrut. xxxvii. §. 2. §. 3. p. 90. n. b.
Reeds just mentioned are used all over the East to write with.
St. E. assumes that the type of Joseph was fulfilled in Christ to the letter: as he (vol. i. p. 109. ii. 286.) explains Christ’s garment of His Body, the stripes He had received in It, might occur to him as fulfilling the type.
adv. Scr. 1. fin.
This alludes probably to Bardesanes, the existence of whose rhythmical compositions induced St. E. to try and counteract them by orthodox ones of the same kind. See adv. Scrut. lxv. fin. and vol. ii. p. 439. d. Sozom. H. E. iii. 16.
Luke 23, 14. 15.
contr. Scrut. i. §. 13.
i. e. Omnipresent in space, but not limited by space. The expression occurs in Epiphan. i. p. 968. The doctrine occurs often in St. E. see adv. Scrut. iv. §. 4. v. §. 5. 6. contr. Scrut. i. §. 33. St. Athan. de Incarn. §. 17. thus explains the manner in which the formula is true. “He is without all things in respect of His Essence, but within all things by His influences.” This however is not the usual doctrine, (see O. T. note n. p. 101.) yet perhaps one may suggest, that St. Ath. had some pantheistic system in his eye, which would represent God as so within all things as the soul is in the body, and that the phrase ‘within all things by His influences’ may mean, only in such sense within them as by His presence in them to influence them, not in such sense as to be confined by them. See what St. E. says above, p. 22, 3. “He was entirely in the womb while He was again wholly in every thing,” an expression which seems to illustrate the text and St. Athanasius. Comp. the passage quoted in note c. on adv. Scrut. R. vi.