In Aegyptiorum adventum

Oration 34. Upon the Arrival of the Egyptians. 1. I shall address those from Egypt, for it is just; since they have come together eagerly, having overcome envy with zeal—this Egypt, which is enriched by a river raining from the earth and swelling like the sea with the seasons (that I too may imitate a little those who are clever in such matters), but enriched also by my Christ, who formerly was exiled into Egypt, but now is supplied from Egypt; then, from Herod’s slaughter of children, now, from the fathers’ love of children; Christ, the new food of those who hunger rightly, the greater grain-dole than any recorded or believed; the bread that comes down from heaven and gives life to the world, indestructible and indissoluble, concerning which I now seem to hear the Father saying, “I called my Son out of Egypt.” 2. For from you the word has sounded forth to all people, being soundly believed and proclaimed, and you are the best givers of fruit of all, especially of those now rightly believing, as far as I know—I, who am not only a lover but also a provider of such food, and not only a native but already a foreigner. For you nourish physically peoples and cities, as far as your philanthropy reaches; and you nourish spiritually, not this or that people, nor this or that city circumscribed by small boundaries, even if they think themselves most brilliant, but the whole inhabited world. And you cure, not a famine of bread, nor a thirst for water—things for which to hunger is no great matter, and not to hunger is easy—

but a famine of hearing the word of the Lord, which is most pitiable to suffer, and now most difficult to cure, since lawlessness has multiplied, and I find few genuine attendants of it. 3. Such is your Joseph the corn-measurer—the same, I may say, as ours—who knew how to foresee famine by surpassing wisdom, and to cure it by words of economy, healing the lean and ill-nourished with the fair and fat of the cattle. And Joseph, whichever you prefer, whether the lover, maker, and namesake of immortality, or his successor in throne, word, and grey hair, the new Peter for us, no less in virtue than in name; by whom the middle was cut out and crushed, even if it still writhes a little and feebly, like the tail of a serpent when cut off; of whom the one, having ended his life in a good old age after many contests and struggles, now, I well know, oversees our affairs from above, and reaches out a hand to those laboring for the good, and all the more so as he is free from bonds; the other hastens to the same end, or release, with the same contests, and already draws near to the things above, but is still with the flesh only so much as to give final aid to the word, and to be on the way with more abundant provisions.

4. You are the offspring and the issues of these great men, of the dogmatists and champions of the truth, and the victors; whom neither time, nor a ruler, nor argument, nor envy, nor fear, nor accuser, nor slanderer, nor one openly warring, nor one secretly plotting, nor one seeming to be our own, nor a stranger, nor gold, the invisible tyrant, by which now many things are tossed about and gambled away, nor courtiers, nor threats, nor long and numbered exiles (for confiscations alone did not make them captives, because of their great wealth, their poverty), nor anything else absent, or present, or expected, lifted up, nor persuaded to become worse, and to betray something of the Trinity, and to be deprived of divinity. On the contrary, they were strengthened by the dangers, and became more ambitious for piety. For such is suffering for Christ: it adds to affection, and becomes like a pledge of the contests to come for the high-minded. Such, O Egypt, are your present narratives and wonders.

5. You praised the Mendesian goats, and the Memphite Apis, a certain fattened and fleshy calf, and the rites of Isis, and the dismemberments of Osiris, and your revered Serapis, a piece of wood worshipped with myth, and time, and the folly of its worshippers, as some unknown and heavenly matter, but matter nonetheless, even if aided by falsehood; and things even more shameful than these, the manifold forms of certain beasts and reptiles, all of which Christ and the heralds of Christ surpassed; others in different ways, each shining forth in their own times; and indeed also the Fathers now mentioned; from whom you know more, O wondrous one, today, than all people together from both ancient and modern accounts. 6. For these reasons I embrace and greet you, best of peoples, most Christ-loving, most fervent in piety, and worthy of your leaders; for I have nothing greater than this to say, nor anything with which I might more entertain you; and I salute you, little with my tongue, but much with the movements of my mind. My people; for I call my own the one who is of one mind and one faith, and a worshipper of the same Fathers and the same Trinity. My people; for it is mine, even if it does not seem so to the envious; and, that those who suffer this may be more stricken, behold I give the right hand of communion before so many witnesses, both visible and invisible; and I repel an old slander with new kindness. My people; for it is mine, even if the smallest claims the greatest. For such is the grace of the Spirit: it makes those of one mind equal in honor. My people; for it is mine, even if from afar.

that we are divinely united, and in a different manner than that of corporeal densities. For bodies are united by place, but souls are harmonized by Spirit. My people, who formerly philosophized about suffering for Christ, now, if you obey me, do not act, but consider the authority to act as sufficient gain, and deem it to offer service to Christ, just as then you offered endurance, so now you offer gentleness. A people for whom the Lord has been appointed to do good, just as to do evil to adversaries. A people whom the Lord chose for himself from all those he called. A people painted on the hands of the Lord, to whom he says, "For you are my will," and, "Your gates are a carving," and all that later belongs to the saved. A people—and do not marvel at my insatiability if I often turn you over—for I take delight in you by the continuity of the address, like those who insatiably feast on certain sights or sounds. 7. But, O people of God and our own, your former festival is indeed beautiful, which you held by the sea, and if any other, a delight to the eyes, when I saw the sea wooded, and covered by a man-made cloud, and the beauty of the ships, and their speed, as if arrayed for a procession, and a moderate wind standing at the stern, as if deliberately attending, and escorting a city on the sea to the city; but the one now seen is more beautiful and more magnificent. For you did not mingle yourselves with the many, nor did you measure piety by the crowd, nor did you endure to become a mob rather than a people of God purified by reason.

But as was fitting, having rendered to Caesar the things of Caesar, you have assigned to God the things of God: to the former the outcome, to the latter the fear; and having nourished the people with your own provisions, you have come yourselves to be nourished by us. For we too distribute grain, and our distribution is perhaps not inferior to yours. Come, eat my bread, and drink the wine which I have mixed for you; I invite you with wisdom to my table. For I praise your gratitude, and I hasten to meet your zeal, because you have come to us as to your own harbor, running to that which is like, and you have honored the kinship of faith, and you have considered it absurd that the insolent should conspire and harmonize with one another concerning higher things, and think to correct each individual weakness by the common bond of union, like ropes strengthened by plaiting, while you yourselves do not understand, nor unite with those of like mind, to whom it is rather fitting; for we ourselves gather both people and divinity. And that you may know that you have not run to us in vain, nor as to strangers and aliens, but have landed among your own, and have been well guided by the Spirit, we will philosophize briefly to you concerning God. And recognize your own, as those who discern their own by the insignia of their arms. 8. I recognize two highest differences among beings, lordship and servitude; not those which tyranny has cut among us, or poverty has separated, but those which nature has distinguished, if one is pleased to call them so. For the first is beyond nature. Of these, one is creative, and ruling, and unmoved; the other is created, and subordinate, and subject to change.

And to speak yet more concisely, the one is above time, the other under time. The one is called God, and stands in the three greatest: cause, creator, and perfecter—I mean the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. These are neither so separated from each other as to be divided in nature, nor so contracted as to be circumscribed into a single person; for the former is of Arian madness, the latter of Sabellian godlessness; but they are more unified than things wholly divided, and more abundant than things perfectly singular. The other is with us and is called creation, even if some surpass others according to the proportion of their nearness to God. 9. These things being so, let whoever has his heart toward the Lord come with us, and let us worship the one divinity in the three, bringing no name of lowliness to the unapproachable glory, but ever bearing on our lips the exaltations of the one God in the three. For if one cannot even properly speak of the magnitude of its nature, due to its infinity and indefiniteness, how shall we introduce lowliness into it? But whoever is alien to God, and for this reason cuts the one being, which is beyond all beings, into an inequality of natures—it would be a wonder if he is not cut by the sword, and his portion placed with the unbelievers, reaping the evil fruit of an evil opinion, both now and hereafter.

10. For concerning the Father, what need is there even to say, when even the concession granted by all to spare those who have been prepossessed by natural conceptions? Even if he bore the first of dishonor, being first cut into Good and Creator by the ancient innovation. But concerning the Son and the Holy Spirit, consider how simply and concisely we shall discourse. If anyone should claim to say of these that they are changeable or alterable, or measured by time, or place, or power, or energy, or not naturally good, or not self-moved, or not self-determined, or a minister, or a hymnodist, or fearful, or being freed, or not co-enumerated—let him show this, and we shall acquiesce, glorified by the dignity of fellow slaves, even if we lose God. But if all that the Father has belongs to the Son, except the cause; and all that the Son has belongs also to the Spirit, except the sonship, and whatever is said corporeally about him on account of my humanity and my salvation, so that taking what is mine, he might grant his own through the new mixture—then cease your idle talk, at least now, O—

sophists of empty words, which fall of their own accord. And why do you die, O house of Israel, that I may lament you from the Scripture? 11. For my part, I revere the appellations of the Word, which are so many, and so lofty and great, that even demons have been put to shame by them; but I also revere the co-equality of the Spirit; and I fear the defined threat against those who blaspheme against it. Blasphemy is not theology, but the alienation from divinity. And it must be observed here that the one blasphemed was the Lord; the one avenged was the Holy Spirit, clearly the Lord. I cannot bear to be unillumined after illumination, counterfeiting one of the three into which I have been baptized, and truly being buried in the water, not for regeneration, but perfected for death. 12. I dare to utter something, O Trinity; and pardon the audacity: for the soul is at stake. I too am an image of God, of the glory above, even if I am placed below. I am not persuaded to be saved by the co-equal. If the Holy Spirit is not God, let it first be deified, and then deify me, its co-equal. But now, what is the deception of the grace, or rather, of those who give the grace, to believe in God, and to ascend without God? Is it one thing to confess, and another to be taught? What thefts and deceptions of words, which through another question and confession lead to something else? Alas for the brightness, if after the bath I am blackened, if I see those not yet purified as brighter, if I am gambled with by the false opinion of the baptizer, if I seek a better Spirit and do not find it! Give me a second bath, and think ill of the first. Why do you begrudge me the perfect regeneration?

Why do you make me, who am a temple of the Spirit as of God, a dwelling-place of a creature? Why do you honor one part of what is mine and dishonor another, judging badly by divinity, so as to cut off for me the gift, or rather, cut me off myself from the gift? Either honor the whole, O new theologian, or dishonor the whole, so that, even if you are impious, you may at least be consistent with yourself, not judging unequally a nature of equal honor. 13. Here is the head of the argument: Glorify with the cherubim, who gather the three sanctities into one lordship, and reveal as much of the first substance as their wings open up to the diligent. Be enlightened with David, who says to the light: "In your light we shall see light," as if in the Spirit the Son—than which what could be more radiant? Thunder with John, the son of thunder, sounding nothing lowly about God, nor from the earth, but high and elevated (knowing the one who is in the beginning, and is toward God, and is God Logos, God, and true God from true Father, but not a good fellow-servant honored only by the name of son; and the other Paraclete, that is, other than the one who says: "God is the Logos"); and when you read, "I and the Father are one," contemplate the unity of substance; when you read, "We shall come to him and make our abode with him," consider the distinction of hypostases; when you read the name of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, the three properties. 14. Be inspired with Luke, conversing with the Acts of the Apostles.

Why do you rank me with Ananias and Sapphira, the novel embezzlers (if indeed the theft of one's own property is truly novel), and that while you embezzle not silver, nor any other cheap and small thing, such as a golden tongue, or a plain one, or a didrachm, as once a greedy soldier, but steal divinity itself, and lie not to a man, but to God, as you have heard? What? Do you not even respect the authority of the Spirit, which breathes upon whom it wills, and when, and for as long as it wills? It comes upon those around Cornelius before baptism, upon others after baptism through the apostles. So that from both sides, both from the fact that it visits in a lordly manner, not a servile one, and from the fact that it is sought for perfection, the divinity of the Spirit is attested. 15. With Paul theologize, who was brought up to the third heaven; sometimes numbering the three hypostases, and this in a varied way, not preserving the order, numbering beforehand, numbering within, numbering under the same thing. Why? To show the equality of honor of the nature. Sometimes mentioning the three; sometimes some, or one, with the missing one certainly implied; and sometimes giving the activity of God to the Spirit, as being no different; sometimes, instead of the Spirit, bringing in Christ; and when he divides the hypostases, saying one God, from whom are all things, and we into him; and one Lord Jesus Christ, through whom are all things, and we through him. But when he unites the one divinity: that from him, and through him, and into him are all things, that is, through the Holy Spirit, as is shown in many places of Scripture. Glory to him for ever and ever. Amen.