Platonists in their impiety blush to acknowledge._
You proclaim the Father and His Son, whom you call the Father's
intellect or mind, and between these a third, by whom we suppose you
mean the Holy Spirit, and in your own fashion you call these three
Gods. In this, though your expressions are inaccurate, you do in some
sort, and as through a veil, see what we should strive towards; but
the incarnation of the unchangeable Son of God, whereby we are saved,
and are enabled to reach the things we believe, or in part understand,
this is what you refuse to recognise. You see in a fashion, although
at a distance, although with filmy eye, the country in which we should
abide; but the way to it you know not. Yet you believe in grace, for
you say it is granted to few to reach God by virtue of intelligence.
For you do not say, "Few have thought fit or have wished," but, "It
has been granted to few,"--distinctly acknowledging God's grace,
not man's sufficiency. You also use this word more expressly, when,
in accordance with the opinion of Plato, you make no doubt that in
this life a man cannot by any means attain to perfect wisdom, but
that whatever is lacking is in the future life made up to those who
live intellectually, by God's providence and grace. Oh, had you but
recognised the grace of God in Jesus Christ our Lord, and that very
incarnation of His, wherein He assumed a human soul and body, you
might have seemed the brightest example of grace![426] But what am
I doing? I know it is useless to speak to a dead man,--useless, at
least, so far as regards you, but perhaps not in vain for those who
esteem you highly, and love you on account of their love of wisdom or
curiosity about those arts which you ought not to have learned; and
these persons I address in your name. The grace of God could not have
been more graciously commended to us than thus, that the only Son of
God, remaining unchangeable in Himself, should assume humanity, and
should give us the hope of His love, by means of the mediation of
a human nature, through which we, from the condition of men, might
come to Him who was so far off,--the immortal from the mortal; the
unchangeable from the changeable; the just from the unjust; the blessed
from the wretched. And, as He had given us a natural instinct to desire
blessedness and immortality, He Himself continuing to be blessed, but
assuming mortality, by enduring what we fear, taught us to despise it,
that what we long for He might bestow upon us.
But in order to your acquiescence in this truth, it is lowliness that
is requisite, and to this it is extremely difficult to bend you. For
what is there incredible, especially to men like you, accustomed to
speculation, which might have predisposed you to believe in this,--what
is there incredible, I say, in the assertion that God assumed a
human soul and body? You yourselves ascribe such excellence to the
intellectual soul, which is, after all, the human soul, that you
maintain that it can become consubstantial with that intelligence of
the Father whom you believe in as the Son of God. What incredible
thing is it, then, if some one soul be assumed by Him in an ineffable
and unique manner for the salvation of many? Moreover, our nature
itself testifies that a man is incomplete unless a body be united with
the soul. This certainly would be more incredible, were it not of all
things the most common; for we should more easily believe in a union
between spirit and spirit, or, to use your own terminology, between the
incorporeal and the incorporeal, even though the one were human, the
other divine, the one changeable and the other unchangeable, than in a
union between the corporeal and the incorporeal. But perhaps it is the
unprecedented birth of a body from a virgin that staggers you? But,
so far from this being a difficulty, it ought rather to assist you to
receive our religion, that a miraculous person was born miraculously.
Or, do you find a difficulty in the fact that, after His body had been
given up to death, and had been changed into a higher kind of body
by resurrection, and was now no longer mortal but incorruptible, He
carried it up into heavenly places? Perhaps you refuse to believe this,
because you remember that Porphyry, in these very books from which
I have cited so much, and which treat of the return of the soul, so
frequently teaches that a body of every kind is to be escaped from, in
order that the soul may dwell in blessedness with God. But here, in
place of following Porphyry, you ought rather to have corrected him,
especially since you agree with him in believing such incredible things
about the soul of this visible world and huge material frame. For, as
scholars of Plato, you hold that the world is an animal, and a very
happy animal, which you wish to be also everlasting. How, then, is
it never to be loosed from a body, and yet never lose its happiness,
if, in order to the happiness of the soul, the body must be left
behind? The sun, too, and the other stars, you not only acknowledge
to be bodies, in which you have the cordial assent of all seeing men,
but also, in obedience to what you reckon a profounder insight, you
declare that they are very blessed animals, and eternal, together
with their bodies. Why is it, then, that when the Christian faith is
pressed upon you, you forget, or pretend to ignore, what you habitually
discuss or teach? Why is it that you refuse to be Christians, on the
ground that you hold opinions which, in fact, you yourselves demolish?
Is it not because Christ came in lowliness, and ye are proud? The
precise nature of the resurrection bodies of the saints may sometimes
occasion discussion among those who are best read in the Christian
Scriptures; yet there is not among us the smallest doubt that they
shall be everlasting, and of a nature exemplified in the instance of
Christ's risen body. But whatever be their nature, since we maintain
that they shall be absolutely incorruptible and immortal, and shall
offer no hindrance to the soul's contemplation by which it is fixed
in God, and as you say that among the celestials the bodies of the
eternally blessed are eternal, why do you maintain that, in order to
blessedness, every body must be escaped from? Why do you thus seek
such a plausible reason for escaping from the Christian faith, if not
because, as I again say, Christ is humble and ye proud? Are ye ashamed
to be corrected? This is the vice of the proud. It is, forsooth, a
degradation for learned men to pass from the school of Plato to the
discipleship of Christ, who by His Spirit taught a fisherman to think
and to say, "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God,
and the Word was God. The same was in the beginning with God. All
things were made by Him; and without Him was not anything made that
was made. In Him was life; and the life was the light of men. And the
light shineth in darkness; and the darkness comprehended it not."[427]
The old saint Simplicianus, afterwards bishop of Milan, used to tell me
that a certain Platonist was in the habit of saying that this opening
passage of the holy gospel, entitled "According to John," should be
written in letters of gold, and hung up in all churches in the most
conspicuous place. But the proud scorn to take God for their Master,
because "the Word was made flesh and dwelt among us."[428] So that,
with these miserable creatures, it is not enough that they are sick,
but they boast of their sickness, and are ashamed of the medicine which
could heal them. And, doing so, they secure not elevation, but a more
disastrous fall.