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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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54 Pages
Page 54
For what you have not become, that you are not. "As many as received Him," thus speaks the Gospel of those who have been born again, "to them gave He power to become the sons of God [2058] ." Now the child born of any one is entirely of a kindred nature with his parent. If, then, you have received God, if you have become a child of God, make manifest in your disposition the God that is in you, manifest in yourself Him that begot you. By the same marks whereby we recognize God, must this relationship to God of the son so born be exhibited. "He openeth His hand and filleth every living thing with His good pleasure." "He passeth over transgressions." "He repenteth Him of the evil." "The Lord is good to all, and bringeth not on us His anger every day." "God is a righteous Lord, and there is no injustice in Him [2059] ;" and all other sayings of the like kind which are scattered for our instruction throughout the Scripture;--if you live amidst such things as these, you are a child of God indeed; but if you continue with the characteristic marks of vice in you, it is in vain that you babble to yourself of your birth from above. Prophecy will speak against you and say, "You are a son of man,' not a son of the Most High. You love vanity, and seek after leasing.' Know you not in what way man is made admirable [2060] '? In no other way than by becoming holy."
It will be necessary to add to what has been said this remaining statement also; viz. that those good things which are held out in the Gospels to those who have led a godly life, are not such as can be precisely described. For how is that possible with things which "eye hath not seen, neither ear heard, neither have entered into the heart of man [2061] "? Indeed, the sinner's life of torment presents no equivalent to anything that pains the sense here. Even if some one of the punishments in that other world be named in terms that are well known here, the distinction is still not small. When you hear the word fire, you have been taught to think of a fire other than the fire we see, owing to something being added to that fire which in this there is not; for that fire is never quenched, whereas experience has discovered many ways of quenching this; and there is a great difference between a fire which can be extinguished, and one that does not admit of extinction. That fire, therefore, is something other than this. If, again, a person hears the word "worm," let not his thoughts, from the similarity of the term, be carried to the creature here that crawls upon the ground; for the addition that it "dieth not" suggests the thought of another reptile than that known here. Since, then, these things are set before us as to be expected in the life that follows this, being the natural outgrowth according to the righteous judgment of God, in the life of each, of his particular disposition, it must be the part of the wise not to regard the present, but that which follows after, and to lay down the foundations for that unspeakable blessedness during this short and fleeting life, and by a good choice to wean themselves from all experience of evil, now in their lifetime here, hereafter in their eternal recompense [2062] .
[2058] S. John i. 12
[2059] These quotations are from the LXX. of Ps. cxlv. 16; ciii. 12 (Is. xliii. 25); Joel ii. 13; Ps. vii. 11 (Heb. "God is angry every day"); xcii. 15.
[2060] Ps. iv. 2, 3. In the last verse the LXX. has ethaumastose; which the Vulgate follows, i.e. "He hath made his Saint wonderful" (the Hebrew implies, "hath wonderfully separated"). That thaumastoutai (three of Krabinger's Codd., and Morell's) is the reading here (omitted in Editt.), is clear from the whole quotation from the LXX. of this Psalm.
[2061] Is. lxiv. 4; 1 Cor. ii. 9.
[2062] The section beginning here, which one Cod. (Vulcobius'), used by Hervetus, exhibits, is "evidently the addition of some blundering copyist." P. Morell considers it the portion of a preface to a treatise against Severus, head of the heretics called Acephali. But Severus was condemned under Justinian, a.d. 536: and the Acephali themselves were no recognized party till after the Council of Ephesus (those who would follow neither S. Cyril, nor John of Damascus, in one meaning of the term, i.e. "headless"), or after the Council of Chalcedon (those who rejected the Henoticon of the Emperor Zeno, addressed to the orthodox and the Monophysites, in the other meaning). It is quoted by Krabinger, none of whose Codd. recognize it.
The End
Reference address : https://www.elpenor.org/nyssa/great-catechism.asp?pg=54
