Miscellanies 7.16.93–8.1.2

But those who are ready to toil for the finest things will not give up seeking the truth before they obtain the demonstration from the Scriptures themselves. There are, then, certain criteria common to all human beings, such as the sense organs; and there are others that belong to those who have willed and practiced what is true, the criteria of true and false arguments that work skillfully through mind and reasoning. And the greatest thing is to lay aside conceit, taking one's stand between exact understanding and rash pretension to wisdom, and to know that whoever hopes for eternal rest knows also that its entrance is toilsome and “narrow.” And let the one who has once received the good news and, as it says, “seen salvation,” in the very hour in which he recognizes it, not “turn back, like Lot's wife,” either to his former life devoted to the things of sense, or to the heresies; for they are somehow quarrelsome, not knowing the God who is. “For he who loves father or mother more than me,” the true Father and Teacher of the truth, who regenerates, recreates, and nurses the chosen soul, “is not worthy of me”; worthy, he means, of being a son of God and a disciple of God, and at the same time his friend and kin. “For no one who looks back and puts his hand to the plow is fit for the kingdom of God.” But, it seems,

to the many, even now, Mary seems to be a woman who has given birth, because of the birth of the child, though she was not (for some say that after she gave birth she was examined by a midwife and found to be a virgin). Such to us are the Lord's Scriptures: they give birth to the truth and remain virgins, keeping the mysteries of the truth hidden. “She has borne and has not borne,” says the scripture, as having conceived from herself, not from intercourse. That is why the Scriptures have conceived for those who know, while the heresies, not having learned them, pass them by as though they had not conceived. And though all human beings have the same faculty of judgment, some, following the reason that convinces, form their convictions, while others, having given themselves up to pleasures, force Scripture to suit their desires. The lover of truth needs, I think, vigor of soul; for those who take on the greatest matters must err most greatly, unless they have received the rule of truth from the truth itself and hold to it. Such people, having fallen from the right road, naturally err in most particulars as well, because they have no criterion of true and false trained to choose exactly what is needful. For if they had one, they would obey the divine Scriptures.

Just as, then, if someone were to turn from a human being into a beast, like those bewitched by Circe, so the one who has kicked against the church's tradition and bolted off into the opinions of human heresies has lost being a man of God and remaining faithful to the Lord. But the one who has run back from this deceit, listening to the Scriptures and entrusting his life to the truth, is, as it were, made complete, from a human being into a god. For we have as the first principle of our teaching the Lord, who through the prophets, through the gospel, and through the blessed apostles, “in many ways and in many parts,” leads to knowledge from beginning to end. And if anyone were to suppose that the first principle needs something else, it would no longer truly be kept as a first principle. He, then, who of himself believes the Lord's Scripture and voice, which works through the Lord for the benefit of human beings, is reasonably worthy of trust; indeed, we use it as the criterion for discovering things. Everything that is judged is still not trustworthy before it has been judged, so that what needs judging is not a first principle. Reasonably, then, having grasped by faith the first principle, which cannot be demonstrated, and receiving in abundance the demonstrations about the first principle from the first principle itself, we are trained by the voice of the Lord for full knowledge of the truth. For we would not pay attention to human beings who simply make assertions, since others are equally free to assert the opposite. And if it is not enough simply to state one's opinion, but what is said must be confirmed, we do not wait for testimony from human beings; we confirm what is being sought by the voice of the Lord, which is more reliable than all demonstrations, or rather is the only demonstration. By this understanding, those who have only tasted the Scriptures are believers, while those who have gone further are exact judges of the truth, those who know; for even in the affairs of life craftsmen have something more than laymen, and shape what is better beyond common notions.

So we too, demonstrating fully from the Scriptures themselves about the Scriptures, are persuaded from faith by way of demonstration. And even if those who pursue the heresies dare to use the prophetic Scriptures, first, they do not use all of them; then, they do not use them whole, nor as the body and texture of the prophecy dictates, but, picking out what is said ambiguously, they turn it to their own opinions, plucking a few scattered sayings here and there, not considering what is meant by them but misusing the bare wording itself. For in nearly all the passages they bring forward you would find that they attend to the words alone, changing the meanings, neither knowing how they are meant nor using the very selections they bring as they naturally stand. But the truth is not found by changing the meanings (for in that way they will overturn all true teaching), but by considering what is perfectly proper and fitting to the Lord and the almighty God, and by confirming each thing demonstrated from the Scriptures by similar Scriptures in turn. So they neither wish to turn to the truth, ashamed to give up the advantage of self-love, nor have they any way to establish their own opinions, since they do violence to the Scriptures. Having gone ahead and put out false doctrines among people, plainly fighting against almost all the Scriptures and continually refuted by us who contradict them, they still hold out even now: they refuse to accept some of the prophetic writings, and they slander us as being of another nature and unable to understand what is theirs; and sometimes, when refuted, they even deny their own doctrines, ashamed to confess openly what they boast of teaching in private.

For so one can see it in all the heresies, going through the depravity of their doctrines. For when they are overthrown by us, as we show clearly that they oppose the Scriptures, one of two things can be seen done by those who lead the doctrine: they despise either the consistency of their own doctrines or the prophecy itself, or rather their own hope; and each time they choose what seems to them more evident rather than what was spoken by the Lord through the prophets and attested and confirmed by the gospel, and by the apostles as well. Seeing, then, that the danger for them concerns not one doctrine but the preservation of their sects, not the discovery of the truth (for when they met with the things that lie in plain view among us, they despised them as cheap), and eager to go beyond the common faith, they departed from the truth. For not having learned the mysteries of the church's knowledge, nor having taken in the grandeur of the truth, too lazy to go down to the depth of things, they read the Scriptures superficially and passed them by.

Puffed up, then, by a conceit of wisdom, they go on quarreling, having shown plainly that they care more for seeming than for philosophy. For example, laying down first principles of things that are not necessary, moved by human opinions, and then contriving an end that follows necessarily from them, they fight, because of the refutations, against those who practice the true philosophy; and they will endure anything and, as they say, pull every rope, even if they are going to be impious by disbelieving the Scriptures, rather than change their position. They do this out of ambition for their sect and for the much-talked-of first seat in their churches, for the sake of which they also embrace the first couch at the banquet of their falsely named love-feast. But among us the full knowledge of the truth supplies faith, from those already believing, to those not yet believing, and this faith becomes, so to speak, the substance of demonstration. But, it seems, no heresy at all has ears to hear what is beneficial, only ears open to pleasure. For one of them would be healed, if only he were willing to obey the truth. The treatment of conceit, as of every passion, is threefold: learning its cause and how it might be removed; and third, training the soul and accustoming it to be able to follow what has been judged right.

For as a troubled eye cannot see clearly, so the soul, muddied by doctrines contrary to nature, cannot see the light of the truth distinctly, but overlooks even what lies at its feet. They say that eels too are caught in muddy water because they are blinded. And as naughty children shut out their tutor, so these people shut the prophecies out of their church, regarding them with suspicion because of their reproof and admonition. Indeed, they stitch together a great many lies and fictions, so that they may seem to have good reason for not accepting the Scriptures. In this way, then, they are not pious, since they are displeased with the divine commandments, that is, with the Holy Spirit. And as almonds are called empty, not when there is nothing in them but when what is in them is useless, so we say that the heretics are empty of the purposes of God and the traditions of Christ, leading off doctrines truly bitter, like the wild almond, except for those which, because the truths are so evident, they could not put aside and conceal.

Just as in war the soldier must not leave the post his general has assigned him, so one must not leave the post given by the Word, whom we have received as ruler of knowledge and of life. But most people have not even examined this: whether one must follow someone, and whom, and how. For as the Word is, so too should the believer's life be, so as to be able “to follow God,” who from the beginning “brings all things to their end by a straight path.” And when someone transgresses the Word, and through it God, then, if he became weak because some impression fell upon him suddenly, he must keep rational impressions ready at hand; but if he has been overcome by a habit that had already taken hold and has become “common,” as Scripture says, the habit must be stopped entirely and the soul trained to resist it; and if conflicting doctrines seem to drag some people along, these must be removed, and one must go to the “peacemakers” of doctrines, who with the divine Scriptures charm away the fears of the timid among the inexperienced, making the truth clear through the harmony of the covenants. But, it seems, we lean toward what is well thought of, even if it is contrary to the truth, rather than toward the truth; for the truth is austere and grave. And since there are three dispositions of the soul, ignorance, conceit, and understanding, the gentiles are in ignorance, the true church in understanding, and those of the heresies in conceit.

At any rate, nothing is plainer than that those who understand affirm confidently what they know, as do those who are conceited about what they suppose, so far as confident affirmation without demonstration goes. At any rate, they despise and laugh at one another. And it happens that the same thought is held in the highest honor by some and convicted of madness by others. And yet we have learned that pleasure, which is to be assigned to the gentiles, is one thing; strife, which is to be attributed to the heresies, another; joy, which is to be claimed for the church, another; and gladness, which is to be granted to the one who truly knows, yet another. And as, if someone attends to Ischomachus, he will make him a farmer; Lampis, a shipowner; Charidemus, a general; Simon, a horseman; Perdix, a tradesman; Crobylus, a cook; Archelaus, a dancer; Homer, a poet; Pyrrho, a disputer; Demosthenes, an orator; Chrysippus, a logician; Aristotle, a natural scientist; and Plato, a philosopher; so the one who obeys the Lord and has followed the prophecy given through him is made perfectly complete after the image of the Teacher, a god going about in flesh. Those, then, fall from this height who do not follow God wherever he leads; and he leads according to the “God-breathed Scriptures.” Though the things human beings do are countless, there are roughly two sources of all sin, ignorance and weakness (both in our power, in those who neither wish to learn nor, again, to master desire); through the first people judge badly, and through the second they are not strong enough to follow what has been judged rightly. For neither could someone deceived in his judgment act well, even if he were fully able to do what he knew; nor could one able to judge what is right show himself blameless in his deeds if he is weak.

Consistently, then, two kinds of discipline are handed down, each suited to one kind of sin: for the first, knowledge and the clear demonstration from the testimony of the Scriptures; for the second, training according to reason, guided by faith and fear. Both grow together into perfect love. For the end of the one who knows, here at least, is, I think, twofold: in some matters understanding contemplation, in others action. Would that these heretics too, learning from these notes, might come to their senses and turn to the almighty God. But if, like “the deaf serpents,” they “will not listen to the song,” new in its telling but most ancient, may they at least be disciplined by God, enduring the fatherly admonitions before the judgment, until they are put to shame and repent, rather than cast themselves, through their harsh disobedience, into the final judgment. For there are also certain partial disciplines, which are called chastisements, into which many of us fall who have been in transgression and have slipped away from the Lord's people; but as children are chastised by their teacher or their father, so we are chastised by providence. God does not take vengeance (for vengeance is repaying evil with evil), but he chastises for the benefit, both common and individual, of those who are chastised. These things I have set down wishing to keep lovers of learning from falling easily into heresies. And I have used these words eager to put a stop to the prevailing ignorance, or stupidity, or ill condition, or whatever one should call it, and trying to persuade and bring to the truth those who are not wholly incurable.

For there are some who will not even bear to listen at all to those who urge them toward the truth; indeed, they set about talking nonsense, pouring out blasphemous words against the truth, and granting themselves knowledge of the greatest of realities without having learned, sought, toiled, or found the consistent sequence of the truth. One might pity them, or hate them, for such perversity. But if anyone happens to be curable, able to bear the frankness of the truth, which like fire or iron cuts and burns away their false opinions, let him lend the ears of his soul. And this will happen if they do not, in their haste to be idle, push the truth away, or, grasping at glory, force themselves to innovate. For those are idle who, when they could supply from the Scriptures themselves the demonstrations proper to the divine Scriptures, choose what is at hand and what helps their pleasures; and those desire glory who deliberately twist, by other arguments, what the blessed apostles and teachers have handed down as belonging naturally to the God-breathed words, opposing human teachings to the divine tradition in order to set up their sect. For truly, among men so great, in the church's knowledge I mean, what argument was left over for Marcion, say, or Prodicus, and those like them who did not walk the straight road? For they would not have surpassed in wisdom the men before them so as to discover something to add to what those men truly said; they should have been content if they had been able to learn what had been handed down before.

The one who knows, then, alone among us, having grown old in the Scriptures themselves and preserving the apostolic and ecclesiastical soundness of doctrine, lives most rightly according to the gospel, since he is sent back by the Lord to find in the law and the prophets whatever demonstrations he seeks. For the life of the one who knows, I think, is nothing else than deeds and words in keeping with the Lord's tradition. But “knowledge is not in all.” “For I do not want you to be ignorant, brothers,” says the apostle, “that all were under the cloud and partook of spiritual food and drink,” clearly showing that not all who hear the word have taken in the greatness of knowledge in deed and word. That is why he added, “But with not all of them was he well pleased.” Who is this? The one who said, “Why do you call me Lord, and do not do the will of my Father?” That is, the Savior's teaching, which is our spiritual food and a drink that knows no thirst, the “water” of knowing “life.” “Yes,” they say, “but knowledge is said to puff up.” To them we reply: perhaps it is apparent knowledge that is said to puff up, if one takes the word to mean “to be conceited”; but if, as is more likely, the apostle's word means to think in a lofty and true way, the difficulty is resolved. Still, following the Scriptures, let us confirm what has been said.

“Wisdom,” says Solomon, “has puffed up her own children.” For surely the Lord did not produce vanity in young people by his teaching; rather, he makes them confident in the truth and high-minded in the knowledge handed down through the Scriptures, and disdainful of whatever drags them down into sin. That is what the word “puffed up” means: wisdom has implanted grandeur in the children of her instruction through what she teaches. Indeed, the apostle says, “And I will know not the word of those who are puffed up, but their power,” that is, whether you understand the Scriptures in a lofty way (which means truly, and nothing is greater than truth). For in this lies the power of wisdom's puffed-up children. As if to say, “I will know whether you rightly think great things of your knowledge.” For “God is known,” as David says, “in Judea,” that is, to those who are Israelites according to knowledge; for Judea is interpreted “confession.” Reasonably, then, the apostle has said, “‘You shall not commit adultery, you shall not steal, you shall not covet,’ and any other commandment, is summed up in this word: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’” For one must never, as those who pursue the heresies do, commit adultery against the truth or steal the church's rule, gratifying one's own desires and love of glory to the deception of one's neighbors, whom one ought above all to love and so teach to hold fast to the truth itself. It has been said plainly, at any rate, “Proclaim among the nations his deeds,” so that those who have heard beforehand may not be judged but converted. But those who “deceive with their tongues” have their penalties written down.

Those, then, who take up impious words and lead others off, using the divine words not well but wrongly, neither enter the kingdom of heaven themselves nor allow those they have deceived to reach the truth. Nor do they themselves have the key of the entrance, but a false one, what common speech calls a counter-key; with it they do not open the front gate, as we enter through the Lord's tradition, but cutting a side door and secretly digging through the wall of the church, overstepping the truth, they set themselves up as initiators of the souls of the impious. For that they made their human assemblies later than the catholic church needs few words. For the Lord's teaching at his coming, beginning under Augustus and Tiberius Caesar, was completed in the middle of the times of … Augustus; that of his apostles, up to Paul's ministry at least, was completed under Nero. But those who devised the heresies came later, around the times of the emperor Hadrian, and they lasted as late as the age of Antoninus the elder, like Basilides, even if he claims as his teacher Glaucias, as they themselves boast, the interpreter of Peter. Likewise they report that Valentinus heard Theudas; and Theudas had been a pupil of Paul.

For Marcion, who lived at the same time as they did, associated as an old man with younger men. … After him Simon for a short time heard Peter preaching. This being so, it is evident from the most ancient and truest church that these later heresies, and those still later in time, have been newly invented as counterfeits. From what has been said, then, it has become clear, I think, that the true church, the one that is truly ancient, is one, and into it those who are righteous according to God's purpose are enrolled. For since God is one and the Lord is one, what is supremely honorable is also praised for its oneness, being an imitation of the one first principle. So the one church shares in the nature of the One, the church which the heresies try forcibly to cut up into many. In substance, then, in conception, in origin, and in pre-eminence, we say that the ancient and catholic church is alone, gathering together “into the unity of the one faith,” the faith according to its own covenants, or rather according to the one covenant at different times, by the will of the one God through the one Lord, those already appointed, whom God predestined, having known before the foundation of the world that they would be righteous. And the pre-eminence of the church, like the origin of its constitution, lies in its oneness, surpassing all other things and having nothing like or equal to itself.

But these matters must wait until later. Of the heresies, some are named after a person, as those of Valentinus, Marcion, and Basilides, even though they boast of bringing forward the opinion of Matthias; for as the teaching of all the apostles was one, so also was their tradition. Others are named after a place, as the Peratics; others after a nation, as that of the Phrygians; others after a practice, as that of the Encratites; others after peculiar doctrines, as those of the Docetists and the Haematites; others after their premises and what they have honored, as those called Cainites and Ophites; and others after what they have lawlessly practiced and dared, as those of the Simonians who are called Entychites.

Having shown, then, a small opening, as it were, “to the lovers of the sight of truth,” from the law about sacrifices, concerning the common run of the Jews and concerning the heresies, which are mystically set apart as unclean from the divine church, let us bring the discourse to a close. For Scripture declares clean and acceptable to God those sacrificial animals that divide the hoof and chew the cud, since the righteous make their journey to the Father and to the Son through faith (for this is the steadiness of those that divide the hoof); they “meditate night and day” on “the oracles of God” and chew them over in the storehouse of learning in their soul; this …, which is also the exercise of knowledge, the law expresses allegorically as the chewing of the cud by the clean animal. But whatever has neither of these, or only one of them, it sets apart as unclean. For instance, those that chew the cud but do not divide the hoof signify most of the Jews, who have the oracles of God in their mouths, but do not have the faith and the footing, resting on the truth, that carries one through the Son to the Father. Hence such creatures are a slippery kind, since they are not cloven-footed and do not rest on the double support of faith. “For no one,” it says, “knows the Father except the Son, and the one to whom the Son reveals him.” And conversely, those too are unclean that divide the hoof but do not chew the cud. For these point to the heretics, who stand upon the name of the Father and the Son, but are too weak to work out and grind fine the exact clarity of the oracles, and who, moreover, pursue the works of righteousness roughly and not precisely, if they pursue them at all.

To such people the Lord says, “Why do you call me ‘Lord, Lord,’ and do not do what I say?” And those that neither divide the hoof nor chew the cud are wholly unclean. “But you, Megarians,” says Theognis, “are neither third nor fourth nor twelfth, neither in account nor in number,” but “like the chaff which the wind drives from the face of the earth,” and “like a drop from a bucket.” Having gone through these matters beforehand, and having sketched the ethical topic in summary, and having sown, as we promised, here and there and scattered about, the sparks of the doctrines of true knowledge, so that the discovery of the holy traditions may not be easy for any of the uninitiated who comes upon them, let us pass on to what we promised.

The Miscellanies are somewhat like, not those cultivated gardens planted in rows for the pleasure of the eye, but rather a shady, densely wooded mountain planted with cypress and plane, laurel and ivy, and apple trees together with olives and figs, the planting of fruit-bearing and fruitless trees deliberately mixed together because of those who dare to carry off and steal the ripe fruit, since the writing wishes to escape notice. From these the farmer, transplanting and replanting, will lay out a beautiful garden and a delightful grove. The Miscellanies, then, aim neither at order nor at style, since they deliberately wish not to be Greek even in their diction, and they have sown the doctrines in hidden fashion and not openly, so as to make readers, if any should be found, industrious and inventive. For there are many and various baits, because fish differ. And now, after this seventh Miscellany, we will make our discourse on what follows from another beginning.

But not even the most ancient of the philosophers were inclined to dispute and to raise difficulties; much less, surely, should we, who hold to the truly true philosophy, whom Scripture expressly urges to inquire, so as to search things out, for the sake of finding. For the more recent of the Greek philosophers, out of empty and fruitless ambition, are carried away into useless chatter, refuting and wrangling at once; the barbarian philosophy, on the contrary, casting out all strife, said: “Seek and you will find; knock and it will be opened; ask and it will be given to you.” The argument that proceeds by question and answer, then, knocks in its inquiry at the door of truth, as it seems; and when what stood in the way has been opened by investigation, a contemplation grounded in scientific knowledge arises.

To those who knock in this way, I think, what is sought is opened; and to those who thus ask their questions according to the Scriptures, the goal toward which they are moving comes from God: the gift of God-given knowledge, firmly grasped through inquiry that truly shines out by reason. For it is not possible to find without seeking; nor to seek without searching; nor to search thoroughly without unfolding and laying open what is sought by questioning, bringing it to clarity; nor, again, having gone through every examination, not then to receive the prize, the scientific knowledge of what was sought. But the one who has sought can find; and he will seek if he first thinks that he does not know. Drawn on from there by longing toward the discovery of the good, he seeks with good sense, without love of contention or of glory, asking and answering, and in addition examining the things said themselves. For it is fitting that those who hold not only to the divine Scriptures but also to the common notions should conduct their inquiries so that the finding ends in some useful goal. Another place and another crowd await the turbulent among men and the quibbles of the marketplace; but the lover of truth, who is also its disciple, ought to be peaceable even in inquiries, advancing without self-love and with love of truth, by scientific demonstration, toward knowledge that firmly grasps its object.