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Translated by W. Moore and H. A. Wilson
St Gregory of Nyssa Resources Online and in Print
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This Part: 128 Pages
Page 54
But if any one thinks that these charges are brought against them by us ungenerously and unfairly, let him consider independently our author's writings, both what we have previously alleged, and what is inferred in logical connection with our citations. For in direct contravention of the law of the Lord--(for the deliverance to us of the means of initiation constitutes a law),--he says that baptism is not into the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, as Christ commanded His disciples when He delivered to them the mystery, but into an artificer and creator, and "not only Father," he says, "of the Only-begotten, but also His God [1018] ." Woe unto him who gives his neighbour to drink turbid mischief [1019] ! How does he trouble and befoul the truth by flinging his mud into it! How is it that he feels no fear of the curse that rests upon those who add aught to the Divine utterance, or dare to take aught away? Let us read the declaration of the Lord in His very words--"Go," He says, "teach all nations, baptizing them in the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost." Where did He call the Son a creature? Where did the Word teach that the Father is creator and artificer of the Only-begotten? Where in the words cited is it taught that the Son is a servant of God? Where in the delivery of the mystery is the God of the Son proclaimed? Do ye not perceive and understand, ye who are dragged by guile to perdition, what sort of guide ye have put in charge of your souls,--one who interpolates the Holy Scriptures, who garbles the Divine utterances, who with his own mud befouls the purity of the doctrines of godliness, who not only arms his own tongue against us, but also attempts to tamper with the sacred voices of truth, who is eager to invest his own perversion with more authority than the teaching of the Lord? Do ye not perceive that he stirs himself up against the Name at which all must bow, so that in time the Name of the Lord shall be heard no more, and instead of Christ Eunomius shall be brought into the Churches? Do ye not yet consider that this preaching of godlessness has been set on foot by the devil as a rehearsal, preparation, and prelude of the coming of Antichrist? For he who is ambitious of showing that his own words are more authoritative than those of Christ, and of transforming the faith from the Divine Names and the sacramental customs and tokens to his own deceit,--what else, I say, could he properly be called, but only Antichrist?
[1018] These last words are apparently a verbal quotation, those preceding more probably a paraphrase of Eunomius statement.
[1019] Cf. Hab. ii. 15 (LXX.). It is possible that the reading tholeran for doleran, which appears both in Oehler's text and in the Paris edition, was a various reading of the passage in the LXX., and that S. Gregory intended to quote exactly.
Reference address : https://www.elpenor.org/nyssa/against-eunomius-3.asp?pg=54
