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Hymns on Faith

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

47. Rhythm the Forty-seventh

The work of artisans, the weaving of clever workmen, the beams and the cunning work, bracelets and necklaces, books and calculations, meters and measures, have men found out by their wisdom, when they measure the earth, and when they weigh the waters—these are things easy to the learned and hard to common men1. Yet if the simple are not able to scrutinize the wise, though it is but a little by which they have surpassed them in advantage of learning, how far short does the wisdom of the wise fall of Him, who created all in His Wisdom! and how mad must they be to think that2 they can scrutinize and search into the Nature of the Creator, and the Generation of the Maker!

Let us feel awed to think, how it is by these little and deficient natures, (by which used as types they are not able to attain to the fair Beauty of the Real One, or the Generation of the True One,) that He has perplexed the enquirers into all these. For if they were unable to attain to the creatures by scrutiny, how far short would they be of Him that is far beyond3 all! Our being stopped amid4 the weak boundaries of visible things, shews that the measures of our thought reach not unto the Son, the Beginning5 of whom none is able to explore, since His Father is in all things hidden from all. And how much soever a man may reach out his intellect and his mind, He will not have His place explored nor His magnitude comprehended6. Be awed then at the creatures and honour the Creator, and do not strive to search into the Nature which is greater than all!

For vain-glory is the cause of thy scrutinizing, Thou weak and feeble nature! go forth, go see thy shame in the midst of thy contest which thine enemy reproacheth thee with, and along with him do thou [reproach] thyself also, that thou mayest know that haughtiness is the cause of thy strife. For into these things Prophets pried not, and the just men, the Apostles, did not scrutinize. Was it that they were unlearned men? Moses will put thee to shame, who7 was learned, and yet cast quite away from him the wisdom of Egypt, and wrote with plainness the Truth in open8 characters.

Daniel too was learned and had been taught wisdom in Babel, such that she was not to be compared even with a gleaming of it: the bands of the wise men, that came in to the trial, in all sciences all of them did he silence. And since he knew that the treasury of revelations was closed, prayer gave him the key of interpretations; He was meditative above all the just, and when he heard that the words were sealed up in secrecy, he sealed his own mouth with silence, and bounded9 his questioning, and was yet for the sake of his countrymen prevailed upon and asked with discretion; and as he knew that he was a man he asked things pertaining to men, and reverenced the things pertaining to the Divinity10.

The bold [disputant] forgets his nature, that he is a man, and leaveth the things pertaining to man and scrutinizeth those pertaining to the [Divine] Essence. If then he forget his own nature, whose nature should he search into? for he forgetteth his own measures and turneth wanton. If he had cast up his strong wine and known that he is a mortal, then11 had he been silent and had kept the measures of mortals.

Look at that Daniel, who, though a Prophet indeed,12 asked the Angels that he might learn simple things: the foolish seek, each of them, into hidden things and put them13 forth. Moses also a glorious Prophet, asked in fear about His Name, I AM14; yet we pry into hidden things in sport. The Apostle was more subtle than these rash [disputers] when he went into the city that was the metropolis of the15 Greeks, spoke to them of their own that he might shew that he knew it; but when they were overcome, then he cast aside their weapon, and taught them the truth: they rejected the16 medicine of life, since they had now of a long time been17 enfeebled with the disease of disputations.

Sit thee in the contest that thou mayest see the strifes: for in a clear place before them comes a thing as clear as day, which clear as it is they cannot see, though striving, and struggling, and shouting. If then thou examinest them who have come to a stand-still18 in things clear, how much more will the foolish men be overwhelmed in the Sea of hidden things. Go again, seek an assembly19 which is all still and clear, and20 cast in amongst them searching and strife, and sit thee down and contemplate the composed persons that are turned frantic, the quiet that are disturbed and that disturb. If a single one is prostrated there, then all shout together. Searching it is, the smoke whereof hath blinded many!

Notes

  1. Comp. R. lvi. §. 5. G. Nyss. ii. p. 765. mentions that Eunomius held the arts to be inspired by God, in such way as to deny the agency of created wisdom in excogitating and inventing new things in them. Perhaps the use of the arts made against him here might have put him upon this, which was a Gentile notion. See Diod. Sic. i. 25. Philo Bybl. ap. Eus. P. E. p 31. Tert. de Spect. 10. 12. &c. Greg. Naz. p. 554. makes a somewhat similar use of certain arts.
  2. Ps. 104, 24. Wisd. 9, 16.
  3. This phrase answers to the ‘O ἐπέκεινα πάντων common in Greek writers.
  4. §. 7.
  5. p. 69, n. t.
  6. R. iv. §. 4, 5. R. v. §. 6. xlii. §.
  7. Acts 4, 13; 7, 22.
  8. i. e. not in hieroglyphics which he mentions vol. ii. p. 145. as used by the heathen for their mysteries.
  9. Dan. 12, 4. 6. 9.
  10. See R. viii. §. 7. and p. 67, n. p. p. 205, n. b. The prophecies of Daniel relate chiefly to the affairs of the world, ‘as it is God’s world,’ rather than to any detailed account of God’s attributes and dealings with His Church. As the “soothsayers and Chaldeans proclaimed that it was by their soothsaying and calculations that they had raised the king of Babylon, Daniel was to come in and wrestle with them by his God, of whom they thought that He would certainly be overcome by the gods of the Babylonians.” (on chap. ii.)
  11. Comp. Is. 28, 7.
  12. Comp. n. d, p. 120.
  13. Dan. 7, 16.
  14. contr. Scrut. i. §. 48. Vol. ii. p. 554, f. “Moses witnesseth to us that he called no other by the Name of ‘Essence.’ They were called gods, but essentials [or ever-beings] were they not called: that by one Name He might teach us the taste of His grace, and by another Name let us know the mightiness of His Essence, that we might confess both. To Moses did He reveal His Name, since He called Himself, I AM, which is the Name of His Essence. And never at any time did He surname another by this Name, as by His [other] Names He did many; that by the one Name which He left, He might shew us that He alone is the Essential, and that there is no other.” It may be just mentioned in justification of the old translation ‘I AM’ here preserved, that the force of the Name lies not in the tense employed, but in the fact that Being is all that can be predicated of God. See Maimon. ap. Petav. de Deo i. 6. §. 5. So St. Hilary de Trin. i. §. 5. says of this passage, (Ex. 3, 14.) “I felt mere wonder at so finished a description touching God, which put the incomprehensible knowledge of the Divine Nature into words the best suited for making It understood to man. For that no one thing is more peculiar to God than Being, is understood, because the very fact that He is, belongeth to One neither ceasing at any time, nor begun, &c.”
  15. Acts 17, 28.
  16. ib. 18.
  17. ib. 21.
  18. §. 2.
  19. The sea and assembly in commotion are compared in Homer, Iliad, ii. 144.
  20. Prov. 17, 14. R. xxxix. §. 2.

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