See here, I pray, how great is the difference between us and God: for the distance is immeasurable. For He is slow to anger, and long-suffering, and of incomparable gentleness and love to mankind: but we children of earth are quick unto anger, hasty unto impatience, and refuse with indignation to be judged by others when we are found out in committing any wrong act; while we are most ready to find fault with others. And therefore God the Lord of all affirms, saying; "For My thoughts are not as your thoughts, nor your ways as My ways; but as the heaven is far from the earth, so are My ways from your ways, and My thoughts from your thoughts." Such, then, is He Who is Lord of all: but we, as I said, being readily vexed, and easily led into anger, take sometimes severe and intolerable vengeance upon those who have occasioned us some trifling annoyance: and though commanded to live according to the Gospel, we fall short of the practice commanded by the law. For the law indeed said, "Eye for eye; tooth for tooth; hand for hand:" and commanded that an equal retribution should suffice: but we, as I |256 said, though perhaps we have suffered but a trifling wrong, would retaliate very harshly, not remembering Christ, who said: "The disciple is not greater than his teacher, nor the slave than his master;" Who also, "when He was reviled, reviled not again; when suffering, threatened not; but committed His cause to Him Who judgeth righteously." As treading this path much-enduring Job also is justly admired: for it is written of him, "What man is like Job, who drinketh wrongs like a draught?" For their benefit, therefore, He rebuked the disciples, gently restraining the sharpness of their wrath, and not permitting them to murmur violently against those who sinned, but persuading them rather to be longsuffering, and to cherish a mind immovable by ought of this.
It benefited them also in another way: they were to be the instructors of the whole world, and to travel through the cities and villages, proclaiming everywhere the good tidings of salvation. Of necessity, therefore, while seeking to fulfil their mission, they must fall in with wicked men, who would reject the divine tidings, and, so to speak, not receive Jesus to lodge with them . Had Christ, therefore, praised them for wishing that fire should come down upon the Samaritans, and that so painful a torment should be inflicted upon them, they would have been similarly disposed in many other instances, and when men disregarded the sacred message, would have pronounced their condemnation, and called down fire upon them from above. And what would have been the result of such conduct? The sufferers would have been innumerable, and no longer would the disciples have been so much physicians of the sick, as torturers rather, and intolerable to men everywhere. For their own good, therefore, they were rebuked, when thus enraged beyond measure at the contumely of the Samaritans: in order that they might learn that as ministers of the divine tidings, they must rather be full of longsuffering and gentleness; not revengeful; not given to wrath, nor savagely attacking those who offend them.
And that the ministers of God's message were longsuffering, |257 Paul teaches us, saying, "For I think that God hath set forth us the apostles last, as it were, condemned to death; for we are made a spectacle unto the world, and to angels, and to men. Being reviled, we bless; being defamed, we persuade: we have become the offscouring of the world; the refuse of all men up to this day." He wrote also to others, or rather to all who had not yet received Christ in them, but, so to speak, were still afflicted with the pride of the Samaritans: "We pray you in Christ's stead, be ye reconciled to God."
Great, therefore, is the benefit of the gospel lessons to those who are truly perfect in mind; and may we also, taking them unto ourselves, benefit our souls, ever praising Christ the Saviour of all: by Whom and with Whom to God the Father be praise and dominion, with the Holy Ghost, for ever and. ever, Amen.
[Selected footnotes moved to the end and renumbered. Almost all marginalia, any purely textual footnotes, most Greek or Syriac material has been omitted without notice]
1. Mai here inserts μὴ in the Greek, which equally with the Syriac has no negative: but certainly without reason, as the meaning is, that when they took their final departure from the city, it was to be from the same house which they had first entered.
2. The Nestorians.
3. These words contain the supposed defence of Nestorius, confining the appellation "Christ" to the divine Person, the Word, and denying it to the human person, the "Son of man," or "Son of David." But they require some modification: for Nestorius did not confine the appellation, Christ, to the divine Person, but said that it was a title common to both. So in his letter to Cyril, Harduin's Conc. I. 1278, having quoted the words of the Creed, "We believe in Jesus Christ, our Lord, His only-begotten Son," he says, 'Observe, I pray, how, having laid down as foundations the terms Lord, Jesus, Christ, Only-begotten, and Son, as common both to the Godhead and the manhood, they proceed to build upon them the tradition of the Incarnation, and the Passion, and the Resurrection.' And soon afterwards commenting upon Phil. ii. 5, he says, 'St. Paul being about to speak of the Passion, that no one may imagine God the Word to be capable of suffering, uses the term Christ, as significative of the Substance incapable of suffering and of that capable of suffering in a single person.' So again he does not object to the title of Χπιστοτόκος being applied to the Virgin; οὐ φθονῶ τῆς φωνῆς τῇ Χριστοτόκῳ παρθένῳ : Quat. xxi. p. 1412. What he denied was that there was any such union of the two natures in our Lord as for the Virgin to be correctly called Θεοτόκος , or for it to be orthodox to affirm the divinity of our Lord considered as the Son of man. Thus in Quat. xvi, p. 1415, he says, 'Because God was present in that which was assumed, viz., human nature, that which was assumed, as being joined with That Which assumed it, is also called God, because of the Assumer.' Ἐπειδήπερ ἐν τῷ ληφθέντι Θεὸς, ἐκ τοῦ λαβόντος ὁ ληφθεὶς, ὡς τῷ λαβόντι συναφθεὶς, συγχρηματίζει Θεός . But in this very quaternion he says that Christ is a title applicable to either nature: 'The appellation Christ, like that of Son, and Lord, as used in the Scriptures of the Only-Begotten, expresses the two natures, signifying at one time the Godhead, at another the manhood, and at another both together.' Nevertheless he affirmed that these titles were used differently of the two natures: for while they belonged to the divinity absolutely, they belonged to the manhood only κατὰ συνάφειαν , by conjunction: for the two natures were not united but coupled, each energizing separately and apart. And this συνάφεια was the very keystone of his doctrine, so that he well said in Quat. xv. ἀσύγχυτον τὴν τῶν φύσεων τηρῶμεν συνάφειαν . In Cyril's answer to his letter preserved in Harduin I. 1286, we have a most temperate and exact statement of the doctrine sanctioned by the council of Ephesus, and confirmed subsequently at Chalcedon; 'Confessing that the Word was substantially united---- ἡνῶσθαι not συνῆφθαι ----to the flesh, we worship one Son and Lord Jesus Christ, not putting them apart and distinguishing between man and God, nor regarding them as joined to one another by oneness of dignity and command: nor again giving the name of Christ in one special sense to the Word of God, and in another special sense to the seed of the woman: but acknowledging one Christ only, even the Word of God the Father, with the flesh which He made His own." This last quotation shews with what, modification we are to take the less exact statement in the text; in answering which, however, S. Cyril refutes, not the confining the title, Christ, to the divinity, but the separation of the natures, shewing that Peter acknowledged Him Whom he saw present before him as "the Son of God the Father, the "Word That sprang forth from His substance."
4. The Copyist has here apparently omitted a line to the effect that the Scriptures also ascribe the church to Christ.
5. As the Syriac has but one preposition [Syriac] with which to express both εἰς and ἐν , the translation may either be "into" the Name, or "in" the Name,
6. A few passages occur in the Aurea Catena, ascribed to S. Cyril, not contained in the Greek, and such are generally also not recognised by the Syriac. The commencement of this homily is, however, an instance to the contrary, the purport of it being very correctly given; as also another passage which occurs towards the end.
7. Aquinas (Ed. Ven. 1775, vol. v. 134), has "Quod autem incomparabiliter exercitium pacis Christi superet delicias et pretiosa mundi, insinuat subdens; Quid proficit &c." It is impossible to conjecture what can have been the reading of the translator in the Library of the Fathers, who renders it, 'But that incomparable exercise of the passion of Christ, which surpasses the delights and precious things of the world, is alluded to when He adds, 'What is a man advantaged,' " &c.
8. In this argument S. Cyril takes the being ashamed in a good sense, as "feeling reverence at." Similarly it is understood by the Vulgate: Qui enim erubuerit Me, et Meos sermones, hunc Filius hominis erubescet. This Wiclif renders, "Whoso schameth Me and My wordis, mannes Sone shall schame him," &c. And the sense in which he uses shame we may see in his version of Luke xviii. 2: "There was a juge in a citee, that drede not God, neither schamede of men."
9. Mai adds a passage from B, giving a completely distinct reason for the transfiguration, namely, that it was to teach the disciples that at the resurrection the body is not "put off, but a sort of light-like glory envelopes it."
10. Again Mai ascribes a passage from B and F to Cyril, remarking upon the terror with which the disciples fell to the ground on hearing the Father's voice, that it proves the necessity of Christ's mediatorship in human form, inasmuch as the glory of God would otherwise have been unendurable to mankind. The passage following the quotation from St. John he omits.
11. This title of Deity, which is of very frequent occurrence in S. Cyril's works, is the Greek translation of "Jehovah Sabaoth," the Lord of Hosts, Ps. xxiv. 10; and this again the Latins render, "Dominus virtutum." By "powers" the Syrians understood an order of the angelic hierarchy, inferior only to the Cherubs and Seraphs. Among the MSS. obtained by the late Dr. Mill from the Syriac Christians of Malabar, I have found two lists of ecclesiastical and angelic dignities, in which they are ranked as follows: 1. Players on musical instruments. 2. Singers. 3. Doorkeepers. 4. Readers. 5. Subdeacons. 6. Deacons. 7. Priests. 8. Visitors. 9. Chorepiscopi. 10. Bishops. 11. Metropolitans. 12. Patriarchs. 13. Angels. 14. Archangels. 15. Principalities. 16. Dominions. 17. Thrones. 18. Lordships. 19. Powers. 20. Cherubs. 21. Seraphs. By visitors, though the title is taken from the Peschito version of 1 Pet. ii. 25, I imagine the περιοδευταὶ of the Greek Canons to be meant; and the Chorepiscopi, or Village-bishops, had no power to ordain any one above a subdeacon.
12. Aquinas translates correctly, Nescientes procedere rectis incessibus: for though incessus is properly the act of walking, yet as early as Tacitus it began to be used for a path. The translator of the Aurea Catena nevertheless renders it, "not knowing how to continue in the right beginnings."
13. In the text S.Cyril has the right reading "ears," but both here and afterwards he changes it to "hearts," possibly through inadvertence, as no MS. contains this reading, though the more obvious expression.
14. This translation of Lev. xvi. 8. was apparently adopted by S. Cyril to escape from an objection brought against the passage by Julian, as proving the existence of a Deus Averruncus, "an evil-averting demon." For the text is rightly translated by the Sept. κλῆρον ἕνα τῷ κυρίῳ καὶ κλῆρον ἕνα τῷ ἀποπομπαίῳ : "one lot for the Lord, and the other lot for the scapegoat," as the A. V. renders it. But as ἀποπομπαῖος in classical Greek signifies a "demon who averts evil," Julian inferred from it the existence of these inferior powers, unto one of which he supposed the second goat was offered: and therefore Cyril, not being acquainted with Hebrew, gives it another meaning, of which the Greek may possibly admit: namely, that two lots were written for the goats, inscribed with these two names, conf. Lib. ix. contra Jul. vi. 301. E. So again in his Epistle to Acacius, V. pt. ii. 224. arguing against a faction, who had adopted the same opinions, he says, "He commanded therefore two goats to be offered, and two lots to be written for them, so as for the one goat to be called Lord, and the other goat ἀποπομπαῖος . These therefore were the names of the goats." In modern times, Bochart, Suicer, and Gesenius, all adopt Julian's view, that ἀποπομπαῖος is equivalent to ἀποτροπαῖος , though it draws but slight confirmation from Josephus, who says, indeed, that the goat was an ἀποτροπιασμὸς , an averting of evil, but evidently is referring to v. 21. where Aaron is commanded to lay the sins of the people upon the goat's head. That Cyril had never heard of this meaning of ἀποπομπαῖος is plain; for he calls it ὄνομα τοι-ς μὲν ἱεροῖς νόμοις οὐκ ἐγνωσμένον, ἐντριβὲς δὲ ἴσως ἑαυτῷ , i. e. to Julian : and nothing could be more unsafe than to interpret the language of the Sept. by classical Greek usage. That the Jews of the second century understood it in a passive sense is plain from Aquila, who renders it ἀπολελυμένος , and Symmachus who gives ἀπερχόμενος : while the Greek fathers always treat it as equal to ἀποπεμπόμενος , and the Latins as Emissarius, i. e. the goat sent away. Besides, it is quite impossible to suppose that either the Sept., or Aquila and the other Greek translators of the O.T., meant their renderings as an equivalent of the Hebrew [Hebrew], any more than our own translators their word "scapegoat:" for there is not the most distant connection between the Hebrew and any of these significations. They are mere substitutions of the general sense of the passage for a word confessedly untranslatable; for Jonathan, Onkelos, the Samaritan, and most other versions, retain the original word, as does also the A. V. in the margin: or perhaps, they may have supposed it to be explained by [Hebrew], as it occurs in vv. 10. 21. 22. As regards the meaning of [Hebrew] Azazel, some consider it to be the name of a mountain; Bochart, "the wastes:" others, one of the four chiefs of the devils, whose names Menachem on Lev. assures us are Sammael, Azazel, Azael, and Machazeel: others, that it is Satan's lieutenant, so called in the hymn against Marcion cited by Epiphanius from Irenaeus:----
ἅ σοι χορηγεῖ σὸς πατὴρ Σατὰν ἀεὶ δἰ ἀγγελικῆς δυνάμεως Ἀζαζὴλ ποιεῖν .
Upon the whole, I think Ewald's opinion, Krit. Gr. p. 243, is the most defensible, that Azazel means "total separation or removal;" for Gesenius' objection, that Moses would not have used so hard a word when simpler expressions were at hand, has little force, since possibly Moses may have preserved in this rite some patriarchal observance: and nothing is so retentive of ancient words,----as well as also of customs and ideas,----as the ritual of a nation.
15. The MS. reads, "as becometh the rich;" but as the argument is not addressed to them in particular, I imagine that the translator mistook ὁσίοις for πλουσίοις , and have translated accordingly.
16. This reading is also found in most copies of the Philoxenian Version.
17. In the margin this is explained by "they make fumigations, like persons burning spices."
18. In the margin this passage is said to be spoken "against the sorcerers."