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Hymns on Faith

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

9. Rhythm the Ninth

Right was once the searching¹ which hath been perverted in our age. Read and seek [to see] that He is the Son, so that thou seek not how He is so. Jordan fled and turned² back to do honour to the ark. Thou searchest and goest in to do dishonour to His Majesty. The right-minded [sons]³ turned themselves so as not to look at Noah, that they might reprove the daring ones. They went backwards to hide what⁴ was uncovered. Do thou turn back the searching which uncovers what is hidden. There they hid what was uncovered: here men pry into what is concealed. The chaste men spread a garment and hid him that they might not see: the disputer, if possible, strippeth the First-born of His glory, that His whole Nature may be scrutinized⁵.

Prove by thyself this, that all which is easy becomes difficult, if thou alterest the nature of it, or disturbest the order of it. Walking is very easy, and yet difficult if thou doest it backwards. Disputing is throughout difficult, because men dispute not orderly. Rashness hath perverted the Faith in our generation, because it is in a perverted way that it questioneth.

God pleaded with Job⁶; He asked him about things before his eyes, and with questions put him to silence. If Job were not able to speak of things before his eyes, who shall dare to plead about the hidden things of the First-born?⁷ Weak was Job⁸, who in his scourges overcame, in his questionings was overcome; on the side⁹ that belonged to him he overcame, on the side that did not belong to him even he was overcome; he overcame in the combat in which it belongs to us to overcome, in investigating he was overcome, for it is not ours to be disputing. The wicked one made confusion, that he might make us to cease from what is in our power, and in what was not belonging to us might make us over-anxious.

Ezechiel He asked if the bones would rise¹⁰, and though the Prophet knew that the dead should be restored, he ventured not to speak of that which he knew. He gathered in all his knowledge, and to the Knower of all things he offered it up. Who shall dare to search into a question which is hidden away from all, and for One alone hath light upon it?

Zachariah also questioned about the mysteries revealed; the Angel therefore wished to prove him, if his earnestness was exhausted, saying thus: Knowest thou not these things?¹¹ He was not ashamed to confess, that he might put the proud to shame. The Prophet was not confident about his own knowledge, as the rash¹² of our day. But Zachariah the priest questioned that he might dispute. The Angel took away his speech that he might make disputers fear; if the Chief Priest was smitten, because he scrutinized and wished to learn the generation and conception of the preacher and servant, terror, and shuddering, and fear to him who shall be bold enough to search into the generation of the Lord of all. Because Zachariah scrutinized, his mouth was bridled¹³ with silence. He afterwards in silence did honour unto that which he had scrutinized. The generation of the First-born how much more should we honour in silence! Since he was blamed that scrutinized the generation in the womb of his own wife¹⁴, let him fear that hath approached to the [Divine] Essence to search out His Well-beloved in His Womb. Zachariah by his questionings let go of the Truth. Every man therefore that questioneth at all, his questioning shews that he has no faith hitherto. His prying looseneth the faith wherewith he had been believing¹⁵. Zachariah sheweth this, since he lost the faith of his heart by the questions of his mouth.

The serpents bit the people in the wilderness. [Moses]¹⁶ fastened up another serpent that they might look thereon and be revived. The sight revived the people [of God] and faith the nations¹⁷. A type of the First-born [this]! It was not¹⁸ searching into Him which healed them; seeing of Him alone revived them. In faith look upon the Lord of types, that He may quicken thee! Also the blood of the sprinkling that was poured out upon the doors, and the cloud¹⁹ too, and the rock, and the pillar, and the rod, these be types of the First-born²⁰. When this gainsaying people did not pry into the glorious types, do not ye Gentiles search into the First-born, that Treasure²¹ of mysteries, lest the blind rejoice [over you].

Though ye were all of one mind, ye have been divided, for that ye have come near to search into the Nature that cannot be searched out. The blind people thought that our Truth itself is false. If it were false, it would necessarily have been minished²², lo! it is altogether strengthened²³! Ye blind perceive not that it is in His Majesty that ye have been straying, for if He had been an Angel or weak man, searching into Him would have been an easy thing; since one would have known that He was a servant. Disputing, then, which is against Him, comes to be in the place of Him. Itself bears witness that He is great, seeing He cannot be searched out, and proclaimeth that He is God, for lo! [all] ages have been wandering in Him, and have not been able to comprehend Him. If all measures were to come and go down to the sea²⁴, they would be short, and be surpassed, and would not contain the whole of it. They are measured by it, yet are unable to measure it; and not because they were surpassed, is that not the sea; for it is even because it is so, that the foolish dared to come down to Him. Whoever is able to search, to him He is poor. The knowledge that is able to comprehend Him that knoweth all things must be greater than Him, since it sufficeth to measure Him entirely. He that can search out the Father and the Son, is greater than Both of Them. Forbear, and let it be an anathema²⁵, for the Father and the Son to be searched into, and for dust and ashes to be lifted up!

Notes

R. i. §. 2. viii. §. 4.
R. viii. §. 6.
pp. 3, 20. n. l.
Gen. 9, 21.
above, p. 116, notes d. e. S. that He may be scrutinized in the whole of Him.
S. came on Job in a suit.
ch. xxxviii. &c.
See note d. on the last R. but one. St. E. would probably regard Job’s questionings, as allowed or even divinely ordered with the purpose of bringing out a certain doctrine. As God asks men questions to carry on His revelations, not because He is ignorant, so His saints might ask of Him. This should be noticed both because on Job i. St. E. conceives Job to have been free from actual sins and also to clear him from any imputation of taking a mere literal sense of Scripture. St. Greg. M. Mor. xx. §. 56. says concisely, ‘What parts soever we go through so as to track out the allegory thereof, throughout the whole of the same ought we also to hold to the historical sense.
R. viii. §. 5. R. xxxviii. §. 4.
On Ezek. xxxvii. p. 194. f. he writes thus: “The Spirit by this vision shewed the Prophet the return of the children of Israel....It was fitting that He should shadow out to him all these things as if of the framing and binding together of bones for the perfecting of a human body ....’ And the Spirit entered into them, &c.’ This he says of the resurrection in the spiritual vision, which took place on the plain: and though to the omnipotence of God the resurrection of a vision and the true one are equally easy, seeing it is by His Will without labour that they are effected, still here it is a vision of a resurrection that He worketh, to be a sign to their defective faith, &c.” The vision would of course try the Prophet’s faith, in the same way as the reality; so far as it was intended to try it, the point is, whether upon the testimony of his senses he will believe a certain doctrine.
Zech. 4, 5.
p. 128, n. f.
S. they bridled his mouth
S. of his womb
Clem. Alex. Strom. vi. §. 80. p. 780. Pott. “Half the world are as afraid, as children are of bugbear, of the Grecian philosophy, being apprehensive of its leading them astray. But if faith with them (for call it knowledge I cannot) be of such a sort that it may be by persuasive discourses loosened, let it be loosened at any rate by these discourses of theirs which belong to men that confess that the truth is not to be theirs; for truth, as one says, is invincible, but falsehood it is that gets loosened.” So too St. Chrys. on Rom. iv. 21. p. 125. O. T. “He that is persuaded with words, may have his persuasion altered too by them. But he, &c.”
Numb. 12, 6.
On Num. xxi. 8. p. 263. a. he says, “Moses fixed it in the door of the tabernacle, that they might turn their faces thither, from whence they had turned them away, and that the place whence healing came forth to them might be honourable in their eyes; the while in it were shadowed out types of Him who said, ‘As Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness for the healing of the children of Israel, so is the Son of Man to be lifted up upon the Cross for the redemption of all nations.’” The same fact he urges vol. ii. p. 483. e. as others have done, against the Jews, as a proof that their law was typical and to pass away. “How came God who in the wilderness wrote and warned the Jew, saying, ‘Thou shalt not make any image or likeness, lest thou die,’ to form a serpent, whereon, as upon God, man should look and be healed?”
p. 136, n. e. fin.
R. xiv. §. 2.
Of the blood, see p. 32, note n. and p. 138, note b. of the cloud I do not recollect any other notice in St E.; of the rock, on Num. xxi. 17. he says, “They say that that rock, which went with them, (1 Cor. x. 4.) even in the time that they journeyed, sent down twelve streams, but in the time of their encamping did not indeed withdraw them altogether, yet did not altogether send them down;” where he evidently has the Apostles filled from Christ in his mind, as he says plainly on Deut. xxxii. 13. that “the rock is a type of Christ, that true Rock Who is the Head of the eternal Building and Fountain of Life.” Of the rod of Aaron which budded, he says on Num. xvii. that “it was a type of the adorable Body of Immanuel, which, although of the same nature with corruptible ones, remained itself alone in the sepulchre incorruptible.”
p. 140.
R. viii. §. 5.
Hil. de Trin. vii. §. 4. “Great is the strength of the truth, which though capable by itself of being understood, yet doth by the very things which oppose it shine forth, so that while abiding unmoveable in its own nature it gaineth firmness for its nature while it is daily attacked. For it is inherent in the Church then to conquer when it is injured, then to be understood when it is set down, then to gain ground when it is deserted.”
To the passages given, p. 87. n. i. the following may be here added from vol. ii. p. 510, c. “Who hath been able to search out the Nature of the Eternal? who hath been able to measure the Lord of the Kingdom and of kings? who hath been able to grasp the depth of the Majesty, or comprehended His hidden things by seeking? In the midst of that strong Sea, thou wilt be lost beneath the sand. Fair as are those waves of His and pleasant withal, still in the deep they will plunge thee. For if thou make it thy pleasure to search into that Sea, and comest near to a single small and gentle wave, it will cast thee into a wave that is great, yea, all its waves one by one will plunge thee down: seeing that Sea is the whole of It in every part of Itself, blended and yet equal in Eternity and in Unitedness; and if thou come nigh to an outer wave of it, into the inmost depth it plungeth thee!”
Vol. ii. p. 485. f. “An anathema be on him that surnameth himself by the name of Apollos and not by the name of Christ. The furnace of an anathema detects them, seeing they are not minded to use the anathema. Blessed be he (St. Paul) by whose anathema they have been detected!”