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Translated by Ch. Browne and J. Swallow.
Gregory Theologian Bilingual Anthology, Resources Online and in Print
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21 Pages
Page 7
11. On these grounds, as I have said, I leave others, who have leisure to admire the minor details of his character, to admire and extol him. I call them minor details only in comparing him and his character with his own standard, for that which hath been made glorious hath not been made glorious, even though it be exceeding splendid by reason of the glory that surpasseth, [3299] as we are told; for indeed the minor points of his excellence would suffice to win celebrity for others. But since it would be intolerable for me to leave the word and serve [3300] less important details, I must turn to that which is his chief characteristic; and God alone, on Whose behalf I am speaking, can enable me to say anything worthy of a soul so noble and so mighty in the word.
12. In the palmy days of the Church, when all was well, the present elaborate, far-fetched and artificial treatment of Theology had not made its way into the schools of divinity, but playing with pebbles which deceive the eye by the quickness of their changes, or dancing before an audience with varied and effeminate contortions, were looked upon as all one with speaking or hearing of God in a way unusual or frivolous. But since the Sextuses [3301] and Pyrrhos, and the antithetic style, like a dire and malignant disease, have infected our churches, and babbling is reputed culture, and, as the book of the Acts [3302] says of the Athenians, we spend our time in nothing else but either to tell or to hear some new thing. O what Jeremiah [3303] will bewail our confusion and blind madness; he alone could utter lamentations befitting our misfortunes.
[3299] 2 Cor. iii. 10.
[3300] Acts vi. 2.
[3301] Sextuses. Sextus Empiricus (cent. 3 a.d.) a leader of the later Sceptic school. Pyrrho of Elis (cent. 4 b.c.) was the founder of the earlier.
[3302] Acts xvii. 21.
[3303] Lam. i. 1.
Reference address : https://www.elpenor.org/gregory-nazianzen/athanasius-alexandria.asp?pg=7
