Library › St Ephrem the Syrian › Hymns on Faith

Hymns on Faith

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

63. Rhythm the Sixty-third

Who doth not perceive, my son, that whatsoever hath surnames, hath had them given from some occasion; and that when there is very urgent cause, at the time of a testament bonds and loans¹, they come to an end, and are broken off: and veritable names are requisite at that time, that they may seal the truth? Who doth not know that when our Lord was crucified, He cried to His Father, and commended His orphans and disciples, saying, ‘Father, take and keep them.’ And when² He was raised again, He sealed by His Resurrection His Sonship to that Father, and made His Name to pass through the assay-furnace, that it might be believed on in all the world. Who doth not confess, that even during³ His Crucifixion it was to His Father He cried, and commended the⁴ Flesh⁵ of His Humanity⁶? And that they might believe that He was the Son, His voice rent the graves, and rent the⁷ sanctuary; it scattered the nation of crucifiers, and gathered together the nations; and they believed in His Divinity, and confessed Him the Very God, the Son of Very God. His Voice was as a witness, shouted, confessed, avouched, and wrote, and sealed, that He was not a servant, who as a Son fled to His Father.

Since the watch was a man of distinguishing mind, who is called ‘centurion,’ he diligently observed how the voices of our Redeemer, who cried unto His Father, were in a voice diverse from all voices. The earth beneath it shook, the sun above it darkened, yea, he also cried, and set to his seal⁸ that He was the Son of God. From the Lord of all Himself one may learn how sweet He is; for He called not Himself by the name of the [eternal] Essence⁹, for the Name of Eternal were great and high in His justice, rather than in graciousness. Neither can the height of His name and His surname be brought down, so that He should invest the creatures with it, since it is the Name belonging to the [eternal] Essence.

Who would not marvel at His Name and at His mercy? for His Name is inaccessible to all, and His Love condescendeth even to all. Since He hath other Names which are sweet, and accommodate themselves to creatures, and which¹⁰ are condescending in order to magnify His works by His surnames, it was in these that He came down, and clothed His own creatures with His Names. The Heavenly King made kings¹¹ of His servants: because He was God, He called them¹² also by the name of gods; and because He was Judge, lo, His servants are judges; and because they were travellers, weary did He call Himself by name¹³; and by reason of their riding He also made Himself a rider¹⁴, that He might in all things be like unto us.

Who is there that is in such sort wholly unwise and hard-hearted, as to fancy ever so short a while, that because men were called by His Names, that the nature of man and of God is one [and the same]¹⁵; or again who, because the Lord was called by the Name of His servants, would imagine a thing made and the Maker to admit of being compared¹⁶ together? For when He called us kings by His own Name, the reality was His, the likeness ours. Again, when He called Himself by the names of His servants, the nature is ours, His is the surname, in the place of the true name: and the borrowed¹⁷ name is plain, both in our case, and in His case. Now by His mercies wittingly did He set His own Names upon His own creatures¹⁸, not for disputation, but for consolation. Let questioning be stopped, my brethren, and let us pray more. For when He shineth forth¹⁹ unto us, He is as of our race, and though distinct in all things from all things, yet is He with all things in all things²⁰.

Wherefore, if He were to separate Himself, He could not clothe His creatures²¹ with His Names; and if according to our wickedness He abhorred us greatly, then had He²² made a snare, such as never may be made, of the Scriptures which have eradicated the bristlings of perverse questions, the ulcers of disputation. Who would not be astonied at what evil servants and despisers have done, instead of praising their merciful Lord, who by His Son came to us? He shared²³ His heart with us: Himself dwelt with us, and spoke confidingly: and that they might taste His Love, He tasted of their bitterness.

Notes

These words have some little difficulties, yet not such as affect the main sense, which plainly is, That names given for some occasion, as e. g. titles of office and the like in addressing a person, are dropped upon other occasions, such as those mentioned in the text, in which the testator, &c. wishes to designate A or B, not as he happens to be governor or proconsul or the like, but as he is A or B. In the same way Christ when about to make a Testament with His Blood, to be of force after He was dead, did not say, ‘Why callest thou Me good? There is none good but God,’ or use any such economical expression, but said plainly, ‘Father.’ The words ‘eo tempore quo testamentum signaretur’ occur in a form mentioned in Justinian Instit. ii. tit. 10. §. 7. What the particular words testament, &c. mean precisely is not easy to determine; perhaps the word rendered testament means a will generally, that rendered bonds a written codicil, and the remaining one an oral request at death. The ‘assay-furnace’ mentioned presently probably means the fury of Jews and heretics against His title of Son. See p. 122, n. i.
John 17, 11. Rom. 1, 4.
S. upon
Luke 23, 46.
or Body
This difficulty is palliated in the Latin translation, which gives carnem et spiritum suum. That something is here asserted which St. E. thought was generally received doctrine is plain from the beginning of the sentence; that those who really or seemingly held the Divine Nature to have been separated from the Body at death were few is certain, (see Petav. de Inc. xii. 19. and Thomassin ibid. iv. 9. §. 27.) and it is not a priori likely that St. E. should mean by this deviation from the statement of Scripture to imply, that he held that the Soul only and not the Body remained united to the Divine Nature during the three days, an impression which the text might at first sight convey. Neither (with the present reading) does it account, satisfactorily, for the change, to assume that ‘Flesh’ stands for the whole Human Nature of Christ, as in John i. 14.: although considering that ‘commend’ is expressed above by a different word from that in St. Luke, that might not be inadmissible.—St. Athan. de Inc. c. Arian §. 5. has the following remark upon the passage, which will perhaps help to shew St. E.’s object here. “He commends all mankind to the Father by Himself, as they are quickened in Him; for they be His members, and the members being many are one Body, which is the Church, &c.” quoting Gal. iii. 28. What St. E. then may mean is, to consider the voice at the Crucifixion in its effects upon the Church, and hence, as He is speaking of the Resurrection, he is led to mention not its effects upon men’s souls in the intermediate state, but upon their bodies afterwards. In vol. i. p. 561. we find the following passage, in which there is a reference to the way in which Scripture blends the First-fruits with the effects on the lump. “Isaiah had said, Take a lump of figs, &c. 2 Kings 20, 7. The lump of figs which was put upon Hezekiah’s boil, and by which being put on it a cure began to be effected, is a type of the Incarnation of Christ out of our nature. For from the time that God condescended to Flesh, and was united with It, the cure of Adam’s boils began. But the figs be a type of the generations out of which the lump of healing effect was derived unto us. Beautifully then doth Scripture add, that it was on the third day that Hezekiah’s cure was perfected, and he went up to the House of the Lord; because it was not before the third day that Christ healed by His Resurrection our mortality; and He became the First-fruits of them that slept, and made ready for us an ascent to the House not made with hands. For the Apostle Paul saith, Eph. 1, 6. God lifted us up with Him, and made us sit in Heaven in our Lord Jesus Christ.” In the same way he may here apply what is said in Scripture of Christ to the orphans and disciples who were, by virtue of His commendation of Himself to His real Father, to attain to the adoption, to wit, the redemption of the body. So above, p. 23. in a passage throughout parallel to this, he says, ‘When upon the Cross He quickened the dead, His Body quickened them, yea, rather His Will.’ Yet the addition here ‘yea rather’ makes the meaning plain, not to say that ‘Body’ ought to occupy the place of ‘them’ to make this clause parallel to the text in this point also. What one would suspect is, that a letter should be altered, and we should read ‘Body of our humanity.’ Vol. iii. p. 507, b. “O Lord, when Thy mercifulness moved Thee to come down and put on the Flesh [or Body] of our humanity, &c.” See R. lxxiii. §. 2. and R. lxxvii. §. 1. This taken in connexion with the way in which St. E. speaks of the Old Adam, (p. 328, n. c.) would give a good meaning to the passage, the main object of which is to shew Christ called God ‘Father’ to the last. Didymus, de Trin. iii. 30. is worth quoting, as shewing what use may be made of the text against heretics. “Through His own Person He commends the human nature which is quickened into Him by faith, which also He deigned to call His members, or possibly He partly teaches all to know how much Arius was in error herein, he having supposed Him not to have a soul in the Incarnation; and partly teaches all to pray at their last breath, and use this voice, confessing in a right spirit, that it is from God that the being of us men originates, and to Him that we have to return. And so what took place was a precept.” See also p. 350, n. d. and Le Quien ad J. Dam. F. O. iii. §. 24. The expression, however, in St. E., as it stands, would go the other way; it is so strange that this note cannot pretend to do more than A.’s version, i. e. to palliate the difficulty.
Mat. 27, 50. p. 23. Is. 60, 5. Zech. 8, 22.
p. 23. Mat. 27, 54.
R. xlvii. §. 6. &c. Scrut. i. §. 12. n. l.
p. 273, n. d.
p. 256, n. h.
John 10, 35. 1 Cor. 6, 3. 1 Sam. 2, 25. (Hebr.)
see p. 183, n. d.
S. chariot p. 285, n. d.
R. lxii. §. 4.
R. lviii. §. 2. S. would weigh a thing &c. by comparison.
R. lx. §. 1.
§. 5. p. 278, n. c.
p. 336, n. a.
p. 105, n. i. R. xlv. R. lv. §. 2.
§. 4.
[Syriac] p. 330, ref. 8.
S. made plain with us.