II
Part II.-Of the Resurrection of the Flesh.
The whole man, then, believes; the whole is washed;
Abstains from sin, or truly suffers wounds
For Christ's name's sake: he rises a true man,
Death, truly vanquish, shall be mute. But not
Part of the man,-his soul,-her own part left
Behind, will win the palm which, labouring
And wrestling in the course, combinedly
And simultaneously with flesh, she earns.
Great crime it were for two in chains to bear
A weight, of whom the one were affluent
The other needy, and the wretched one
Be spurned, and guerdons to the happy one
Rendered. Not so the Just-fair Renderer
Of wages-deals, both good and just, whom we
Believe Almighty: to the thankless kind
Full is His will of pity. Nay, whate'er
He who hath greater mortal need doth need
That, by advancement, to his comrade he
May equalled be, that will the affluent
Bestow the rather unsolicited:
So are we bidden to believe, and not
Be willing to cast blame unlawfully
On the Lord in our teaching, as if He
Were one to raise the soul, as having met
With ruin, and to set her free from death
So that the granted faculty of life
Upon the ground of sole desert (because
She bravely acted), should abide with her;
While she who ever shared the common lot
Of toil, the flesh, should to the earth be left,
The prey of a perennial death. Has, then,
The soul pleased God by acts of fortitude?
By no means could she Him have pleased alone
Without the flesh. Hath she borne penal bonds?
The flesh sustained upon her limbs the bonds.
Contemned she death? But she hath left the flesh
Behind in death. Groaned she in pain?
The flesh Is slain and vanquisht by the wound. Repose
Seeks she? The flesh, spilt by the sword in dust,
Is left behind to fishes, birds, decay,
And ashes; torn she is, unhappy one!
And broken; scattered, she melts away.
Hath she not earned to rise? for what could she
Have e'er committed, lifeless and alone?
What so life-grudging cause impedes, or else
Forbids, the flesh to take God's gifts, and live
Ever, conjoined with her comrade soul,
And see what she hath been, when formerly
Converted into dust? After, renewed
Bear she to God deserved meeds of praise,
Not ignorant of herself, frail, mortal, sick.
Contend ye as to what the living might
Of the great God can do; who, good alike
And potent, grudges life to none? Was this
Death's captive? shall this perish vanquished
Which the Lord hath with wondrous wisdom made,
And art? This by His virtue wonderful
Himself upraises; this our Leader's self
Recalls, and this with His own glory clothes
God's art and wisdom, then, our body shaped
What can by these be made, how faileth it
To be by virtue reproduced? No cause
Can holy parent-love withstand; (lest else
Ill's cause should mightier prove than Power Supreme;)
That man even now saved by God's gift, ma, learn
(Mortal before, now robed in light immense
Inviolable, wholly quickened, soul
And body) God, in virtue infinite,
In parent-love perennial, through His King
Christ, through whom opened is light's way; and now,
Standing in new light, filled now with each gift,
Glad with fair fruits of living Paradise,
May praise and laud Him to eternity,
Rich in the wealth of the celestial hall.
Book II.-Of the Harmony of the Old and New Laws.
After the faith was broken by the dint
Of the foe's breathing renegades, and sworn
With wiles the hidden pest emerged; with lies
Self-prompted, scornful of the Deity
That underlies the sense, he did his plagues
Concoct: skilled in guile's path, he mixed his own
Words impious with the sayings of the saints.
And on the good seed sowed his wretched tares,
Thence willing that foul ruin's every cause
Should grow combined; to wit, that with more speed
His own iniquitous deeds he may assign
To God clandestinely, and may impale
On penalties such as his suasion led;
False with true veiling, turning rough with smooth,
And, (masking his spear's point with rosy wreaths,)
Slaying the unwary unforeseen with death
Supreme. His supreme wickedness is this:
That men, to such a depth of madness sunk!
Off-broken boughs! should into parts divide
The endlessly-dread Deity; Christ's deeds
Sublime should follow with false praise, and blame
The former acts, God's countless miracles,
Ne'er seen before, nor heard, nor in a heart
Conceived; and should so rashly frame in words
The impermissible impiety
Of wishing by "wide dissimilitude
Of sense" to prove that the two Testaments
Sound adverse each to other, and the Lord's
Oppose the prophets' words; of drawing down
All the Law's cause to infamy; and eke
Of reprobating holy fathers' life
Of old, whom into friendship, and to share
His gifts, God chose. Without beginning, one
Is, for its lesser part, accepted. Though
Of one are four, of four one, yet to them
One part is pleasing, three they (in a word)
Reprobate: and they seize, in many ways,
On Paul as their own author; yet was he
Urged by a frenzied impulse of his own
To his last words: all whatsoe'er he spake
Of the old covenant seems hard to them
Because, deservedly, "made gross in heart."
Weight apostolic, grace of beaming word,
Dazzles their mind, nor can they possibly
Discern the Spirit's drift. Dull as they are,
Seek they congenial animals! But ye
Who have not yet, (false deity your guide,
Reprobate in your very mind, ) to death's
Inmost caves penetrated, learn there flows
A stream perennial from its fount, which feeds
A tree, (twice sixfold are the fruits, its grace!)
And into earth and to the orb's four winds
Goes out: into so many parts doth flow
The fount's one hue and savour. Thus, withal,
From apostolic word descends the Church,
Out of Christ's womb, with glory of His Sire
All filled, to wash off filth, and vivify
Dead fates. The Gospel, four in number, one
In its diffusion 'mid the Gentiles, this,
By faith elect accepted, Paul hands down
(Excellent doctor!) pure, without a crime;
And from it he forbade Galatian saints
To turn aside withal; whom "brethren false,"
(Urging them on to circumcise themselves,
And follow "elements,"leaving behind
Their novel "freedom,") to "a shadow old
Of things to be" were teaching to be slaves.
These were the causes which Paul had to write
To the Galatians: not that they took out
One small part of the Gospel, and held that
For the whole bulk, leaving the greater part
Behind. And hence 'tis no words of a book,
But Christ Himself, Christ sent into the orb,
Who is the gospel, if ye will discern;
Who from the Father came, sole Carrier
Of tidings good; whose glory vast completes
The early testimonies; by His work
Showing how great the orb's Creator is:
Whose deeds, conjoined at the same time with words,
Those faithful ones, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John,
Recorded unalloyed (not speaking words
External), sanctioned by God's Spirit, 'neath
So great a Master's eye! This paschal Lamb
Is hung, a victim. on the tree: Him Paul,
Writing decrees to Corinth, with his torch,
Hands down as slain, the future life and God
Promised to the fathers, whom before
He had attracted.
See what virtue, see
What power, the paschal image has; ye thus
Will able be to see what power there is
In the true Passover. Lest well-earned love
Should tempt the faithful sire and seer, to whom
His pledge and heir was dear, whom God by chance
Had given him, to offer him to God
(A mighty execution!), there is shown
To him a lamb entangled by the head
In thorns; a holy victim-holy blood
For blood-to God. From whose piacular death,
That to the wasted race it might be sign
And pledge of safety, signed are with blood
Their posts and thresholds many: -aid immense!
The flesh (a witness credible) is given
For food. The Jordan crossed, the land possessed,
Joshua by law kept Passover with joy,
And immolates a lamb; and the great kings
And holy prophets that were after him,
Not ignorant of the good promises
Of sure salvation; full of godly fear
The great Law to transgress, (that mass of types
In image of the Supreme Virtue once
To come,) did celebrate in order due
The mirrorly-inspected passover.
In short, if thou recur with rapid mind
To times primordial, thou wilt find results
Too fatal following impious words. That man
Easily credulous, alas! and stripped
Of life's own covering, might covered be
With skins, a lamb is hung: the wound slays sins,
Or death by blood effaces or enshrouds
Or cherishes the naked with its fleece.
Is sheep's blood of more worth than human blood,
That, offered up for sins, it should quench wrath?
Or is a lamb (as if he were more dear!)
Of more worth than much people's? aid immense
As safeguard of so great salvation, could
A lamb, if offered, have been price enough
For the redeemed? Nay: but Almighty God,
The heaven's and earth's Creator, infinite,
Living, and perfect, and perennially
Dwelling in light, is not appeased by these,
Nor joys in cattle's blood. Slain be all flocks;
Be every herd upburned into smoke;
That expiatively 't may pardon win
Of but one sin: in vain at so vile price;
Will the stained figure of the Lord-foul flesh-
Prepare, if wise, such honours: but the hope
And faith to mortals promised of old-
Great Reason's counterpart -hath wrought to bring
These boons premeditated and prepared
Erst by the Father's passing parent-love;
That Christ should come to earth, and be a man!
Whom when John saw, baptism's first opener, John,
Comrade of seers, apostle great, and sent
As sure forerunner, witness faithful; John,
August in life, and marked with praise sublime,
He shows, to such as sought of olden time
God's very Paschal Lamb, that He is come
At last, the expiation of misdeed,
To undo many's sins by His own blood,
In place of reprobates the Proven One,
In place of vile the dear; in body, man;
And, in life, God: that He, as the slain Lamb,
Might us accept, and for us might outpour
Himself Thus hath it pleased the Lord to spoil
Proud death: thus wretched man will able be
To hope salvation. This slain paschal Lamb
Paul preaches: nor does a phantasmal shape
Of the sublime Lord (one consimilar
To Isaac's silly sheep ) the passion bear,
Wherefore He is called Lamb: but 'tis because,
As wool, He these renewed bodies clothes,
Giving to many covering, yet Himself
Never deficient. Thus does the Lord shroud
In His Sire's virtue, those whom, disarrayed
Of their own light, He by His death redeemed,
Virtue which ever is in Him. So, then,
The Shepherd who hath lost the sheep Himself
Re-seeks it. He, prepared to tread the strength
Of the vine, and its thorns, or to o'ercome
The wolf's rage, and regain the cattle lost,
And brave to snatch them out, the Lion He
In sheepskin-guise, unasked presents Himself
To the contemned teeth, baffling by His garb
The robber's bloody jaws. Thus everywhere
Christ seeks force-captured Adam; treads the path
Himself where death wrought ruin; permeates
All the old heroes' monuments; inspects
Each one; the One of whom all types were full;
Begins e'en from the womb to expel the death
Conceived simultaneously with seed
Of flesh within the bosom; purging all
Life's stages with a silent wisdom; debts
Assuming; ready to cleanse all, and give
Their Maker back the many whom the one
Had scattered. And, because one direful man
Down-sunk in pit iniquitous did fall,
By dragon-subdued virgin's suasion led;
Because he pleased her wittingly; because
He left his heavenly covering behind:
Because the "tree" their nakedness did prove;
Because dark death coerced them: in like wise
Out of the self-same mass re-made returns
Renewed now,-the flower of flesh, and host
Of peace,-a flesh from espoused virgin born,
Not of man's seed; conjoined to its own
Artificer; without the debt of death.
These mandates of the Father through bright stars
An angel carries down, that angel-fame
The tidings may accredit; telling how
"A virgin's debts a virgin, flesh's flesh,
Should pay." Thus introduced, the Giant-Babe,
The Elder-Boy, the Stripling-Man, pursues
Death's trail. Thereafter, when completed was
The ripe age of man's strength, when man is wont
To see the lives that were his fellows drop
By slow degrees away, and to be changed
In mien to wrinkles foul and limbs inert,
While blood forsakes his veins, his course he stayed,
And suffered not his fleshly garb to age.
Upon what day or in what place did fall
Most famous Adam, or outstretched his hand
Rashly to touch the tree, on that same day,
Returning as the years revolve, within
The stadium of the "tree" the brave Athlete,
'Countering, outstretched His hands, and, penalty
For praise pursuing, quite did vanquish death,
Because He left death of His own accord
Behind, disrobing Him of fleshly slough,
And of death's dues; and to the "tree" affixed
The serpent's spoil-"the world's prince" vanquisht quite!
Grand trophy of the renegades: for sign
Whereof had Moses hung the snake, that all,
Who had by many serpents stricken been,
Might gaze upon the dragon's self, and see
Him vanquisht and transfixt. When, afterwards,
He reached the infernal region's secret waves,
And, as a victor, by the light which aye
Attended Him, revealed His captive thrall,
And by His virtue thoroughly fulfilled
The Father's bidding, He Himself re-took
The body which, spontaneous, He had left:
This was the cause of death: this same was made
Salvation's path: a messenger of guile
The former was; the latter messenger
of peace: a spouse her man did slay; a spouse
Did bear a lion: hurtful to her man
A virgin proved; a man from virgin born
Proved victor: for a type whereof, while sleep
His body wrapped, out of his side is ta'en
A woman, who is her lord's rib; whom, he,
Awaking, called "flesh from his flesh, and bones
From his own bones; "with a presaging mind
Speaking. Faith wondrous! Paul deservedly,
(Most certain author!) teaches Christ to be
"The Second Adam from the havens." Truth,
Using her own examples, doth refulge;
Nor covets out of alien source to show
Her paces keen: this is a pauper's work,
Needy of virtue of his own! Great Paul
These mysteries-taught to him-did teach; to wit,
Discerning that in Christ thy glory is,
O Church! from His side, hanging on high "tree,"
His lifeless body's "blood and humour" flowed.
The blood the woman was; the waters were
The new gifts of the font: this is the Church,
True mother of a living people; flesh
New from Christ's flesh, and from His bones a bone.
A spot there is called Golgotha,-of old
The fathers' earlier tongue thus called its name,-
"The skull-pan of a head: "here is earth's midst;
Here victory's sign; here, have our elders. taught,
There was a great head found; here the first man,
We have been taught, was buried; here the Christ
Suffers; with sacred blood the earth grows moist.
That the old Adam's dust may able be,
Commingled with Christ's blood, to be upraised
By dripping water's virtue. The "one ewe"
That is, which, during Sabbath-hours, alive
The Shepherd did resolve that He would draw
Out of th' infernal pit. This was the cause
Why, on the Sabbaths, He was wont to cure
The prematurely dead limbs of all flesh;
Or perfected for sight the eyes of him
Blind from his birth-eyes which He had not erst
Given; or, in presence of the multitude,
Called, during Sabbath-hours, one wholly dead
To life, e'en from the sepulchre. Himself
The new man's Maker, the Repairer good
Of th' old, supplying what did lack, or else
Restoring what was lost. About to do-
When dawns "the holy day"-these works, for such
As hope in Him, in plenitude, (to keep
His plighted word,) He taught men thus His power
To do them.
What? If flesh dies, and no hope
Is given of salvation, say, what grounds
Christ had to feign Himself a man, and head
Men, or have care for flesh? If He recalls
Some few, why shall He not withal recall
All? Can corruption's power liquefy
The body and undo it, and shall not
The virtue of the Lord be powerful
The undone to recall?
They, who believe
Their bodies are not loosed from death, do no,
Believe the Lord, who wills to raise His own
Works sunken; or else say they that the Good
Wills not, and that the Potent hath not power,-
Ignorant from how great a crime they suck
Their milk, in daring to set things infirm
Above the Strong. In the grain lurks the tree;
And if this rot not, buried in the earth,
It yields not tree-graced fruits. Soon bound will be
The liquid waters: 'neath the whistling cold
They will become, and ever will be stones,
Unless a mighty power, by leading on
Soft-breathing warmth, undo them. The great bunch
Lurks in the tendril's slender body: if
Thou seek it, it is not; when God doth will,
'Tis seen to be. On trees their leaves, on thorns
The rose, the seeds on plains, are dead and fail,
And rise again, new living. For man's use
These things doth God before his eyes recall
And form anew-man's, for whose sake at first
The wealthy One made all things bounteously.
All naked fall; with its own body each
He clothes. Why man alone, on whom He showered
Such honours, should He not recall in all
His first perfection to Himself? man, whom
He set o'er all? Flesh, then, and blood are said
To be not worthy of God's realm, as if
Paul spake of flesh materially. He
Indeed taught mighty truths; but hearts inane
Think he used carnal speech: for pristine deeds
He meant beneath the name of "flesh and blood; "
Remembering, heavenly home-slave that he is,
His heavenly Master's words; who gave the name
Of His own honour to men born from Him
Through water, and from His own Spirit poured
A pledge; that, by whose virtue men had been
Redeemed, His name of honour they withal
Might, when renewed, receive. Because, then, He
Refused, on the old score, the heavenly realm
To peoples not yet from His fount re-born,
Still with their ancient sordid raiment clad-
These are "the dues of death"-saying that that
Which human is must needs be born again,-
"What hath been born of flesh is flesh; and what
From Spirit, life; " and that the body, washed,
Changing with glory its old root's new seeds,
Is no more called "from flesh: "Paul follows this;
Thus did he speak of "flesh." In fine, he said
This frail garb with a robe must be o'erclad,
This mortal form be wholly covered;
Not that another body must be given,
But that the former one, dismantled, must
Be with God's kingdom wholly on all sides
Surrounded: "In the moment of a glance,"
He says, "it shall be changed: "as, on the blade,
Dispreads the red corn's face, and changes 'neath
The sun's glare its own hue; so the same flesh,
From "the effulgent glory" borrowing,
Shall ever joy, and joying, shall lack death;
Exclaiming that"the body's cruel foe
Is vanquisht quite; death, by the victory
Of the brave Christ, is swallowed; " praises high
Bearing to God, unto the highest stars.
Book III.-Of the Harmony of the Fathers of the Old and New Testaments.
Now hath the mother, formerly surnamed
Barren, giv'n birth: now a new people, born
From the free woman, joys: (the slave expelled,
Deservedly, with her proud progeny;
Who also leaves ungratefully behind
The waters of the living fount, and drinks-
Errant on heated plains-'neath glowing star: )
Now can the Gentiles as their parent claim
Abraham; who, the Lord's voice following,
Like him, have all things left, life's pilgrimage
To enter. "Be glad, barren one; "conceive
The promised people; "break thou out, and cry,"
Who with no progeny wert blest; of whom
Spake, through the seers, the Spirit of old time:
She hath borne, out of many nations, one;
With whose beginning are her pious limbs
Ever in labour.
Hers "just Abel" was,
A pastor and a cattle-master he;
Whom violence of brother's right hand slew
Of old. Her Enoch, signal ornament,
Limb from her body sprung, by counsel strove
To recall peoples gone astray from God
And following misdeed, (while raves on earth
The horde of robber-renegades, ) to flee
The giants'sacrilegious cruel race;
Faithful in all himself. With groaning deep
Did he please God, and by deserved toil
Translated is reserved as a pledge,
With honour high. Perfect in praise, and found
Faultless, and just-God witnessing the fact-
In an adulterous people, Noah (he
Who in twice fifty years the ark did weave)
By deeds and voice the coming ruin told.
Favour he won, snatched Out of so great waves
Of death, and, with his progeny, preserved.
Then, in the generation following,
Is Abraham, whose sons ye do deny
Yourselves to be; who first-race, country, sire,
All left behind-at suasion of God's voice
Withdrew to realms extern: such honours he
At God's sublime hand worthily deserved
As to be father to believing tribes
And peoples. Jacob with the patriarchs
(Himself their patriarch) through all his own
Life's space the gladdest times of Christ foresang
By words, act, virtue, toil. Him follows-free
From foul youth's stain-Joseph, by slander feigned,
Doomed to hard penalty and gaol: his groans
Glory succeeds, and the realm's second crown, so
And in dearth's time large power of furnishing
Bread: so appropriate a type of Christ,
So lightsome type of Light, is manifest
To all whose mind hath eyes, that they may see
In a face-mirror their sure hope.
Himself
The patriarch Judah, see; the origin
Of royal line, whence leaders rose, nor kings
Failed ever from his seed, until the Power
To come, by Gentiles looked for, promised long,
Came.
Moses, leader of the People, (he
Who, spurning briefly-blooming riches, left
The royal thresholds,) rather chose to bear
His people's toils, afflicted, with bowed neck,
By no threats daunted, than to gain himself
Enjoyments, and of many penalties
Remission: admirable for such faith
And love, he, with God's virtue armed, achieved
Great exploits: smote the nation through with plagues;
And left their land behind, and their hard king
Confounds, and leads the People back; trod waves;
Sunk the foes down in waters; through a "tree"
Made ever-hitter waters sweet; spake much
(Manifestly to the People) with the Christ,
From whose face light and brilliance in his own
Reflected shone; dashed on the ground the law
Accepted through some few, -implicit type,
And sure, of his own toils!-smote through the rock;
And, being bidden, shed forth streams; and stretched
His hands that, by a sign, he vanquish might
The foe; of Christ all severally, all
Combined through Christ, do speak. Great and approved,
He rests with praise and peace. But Joshua,
The son of Nun, erst called Oshea-this man
The Holy Spirit to Himself did join
As partner in His name: hence did he cleave
The flood; constrained the People to pass o'er;
Freely distributed the land-the prize
Promised the fathers!-stayed both sun and moon
While vanquishing the foe; races extern
And giants' progeny outdrave; razed groves;
Altars and temples levelled; and with mind
Loyal performed all due solemnities:
Type of Christ's name; his virtue's image. What
Touching the People's Judges shall I say
Singly? whose virtues, it unitedly
Recorded, fill whole volumes numerous
With space of words. But vet the order due
Of filling out the body of my words,
Demands that, out of many, I should tell
The life of few.
Of whom when Gideon, guide
Of martial band, keen to attack the foe,
(Not keen to gain for his own family,
By virtues, tutelary dignity, )
And needing to be strengthened in the faith
Excited in his mind, seeks for a sign
Whereby he either could not, or could, wage
Victorious war; to wit, that v. with the dew
A fleece, exposed for the night, should be
Moistened, and all the ground lie dry around
(By this to show that, with the world, should dry
The enemies' palm); and then again, the fleece
Alone remaining dry, the earth by night
Should with the self-same moisture be bedewed:
For by this sign he prostrated the heaps
Of bandits; with Christ's People 'countering them
Without much soldiery, with cavalry
Three hundred-the Greek letter Tau, in truth,
That number is -with torches armed, and horns
Of blowers with the mouth: then was the fleece,
The people of Christ's sheep, from holy seed
Born (for the earth means nations various,
And scattered through the orb), which fleece the word
Nourishes; night death's image; Tau the sign
Of the dear cross; the horn the heraldings
Of life; the torches shining in their stand
The glowing Spirit: and this testing, too,
Forsooth, an image of Christ's virtue was:
To teach that death's fierce battles should not be
By trump angelic vanquished before
Th' indocile People be deservedly
By their own fault left desolate behind,
And Gentiles, flourishing in faith, received
In praise.
Yea, Deborah, a woman far
Above all fame, appears; who, having braced
Herself for warlike toil, for country's sake,
Beneath the palm-tree sang how victory
Had crowned her People; thanks to whom it was
That the foes, vanquisht, turned at once their backs,
And Sisera their leader fled; whose flight
No man, nor any band, arrested: him,
Suddenly renegade, a woman's hand-
Jael's -with wooden weapon vanquished quite,
For token of Christ's victory. With firm faith
Jephthah appears, who a deep-wounding vow
Dared make-to promise God a grand reward
Of war: him then, because he senselessly
Had promised what the Lord not wills, first meets
The pledge dear to his heart; who suddenly
Fell by a lot unhoped by any. He,
To keep his promise, broke the sacred laws
Of parenthood: the shade of mighty fear
Did in his violent mind cover his vow
Of sin: as solace of his widowed life
For wickedness, renown, and, for crime, praise,
He won.
Nor Samson's strength, all corporal might
Passing, must we forget; the Spirit's gift
Was this; the power was granted to his head.
Alone he for his People, daggerless,
Armless, an ass-jaw grasping, prostrated
A thousand corpses; and no bonds could keep
The hero bound: but after his shorn pride
Forsook him thralled, he fell, and, by his death,-
Though vanquisht,-bought his foes back 'neath his power.
Marvellous Samuel, who first received
The precept to anoint kings, to give chrism
And show men-Christs, so acted laudably
In life's space as, e'en after his repose,
To keep prophetic rights.
Psalmographist
David, great king and prophet, with a voice
Submiss was wont Christ's future suffering
To sing: which prophecy spontaneously
His thankless lawless People did perform:
Whom God had promised that in time to come,
Fruit of his womb, a holy progeny,
He would on his sublime throne set: the Lord's
Fixt faith did all that He had promised.
Corrector of an inert People rose
Emulous Hezekiah; who restored
Iniquitous forgetful men the Law:
All these God's mandates of old time he first
Bade men observe, who ended war by prayers,
Not by steel's point: he, dying, had a grant
Of years and times of life made to his tears:
Deservedly such honour his career Obtained.
With zeal immense, Josiah, prince
Himself withal, in like wise acted: none
So much, before or after!-Idols he
Dethroned; destroyed unhallowed temples; burned
With fire priests on their altars; all the bones
Of prophets false updug; the altars burned,
The carcases to be consumed did serve
For fuel!
To the praise of signal faith,
Noble Elijah, (memorable fact!)
Was rapt; who hath not tasted yet death's dues;
Since to the orb he is to come again.
His faith unbroken, then, chastening with stripes
People and frenzied king, (who did desert
The Lord's best service), and with bitter flames
The foes, shut up the stars; kept in the clouds
The rain; showed all collectively that God
Is; made their error patent;-for a flame,
Coming with force from heaven at his prayers,
Ate up the victim's parts, dripping with flood,
Upon the altar: -often as he willed,
So often from on high rushed fire; the stream
Dividing, he made pathless passable;
And, in a chariot raised aloft, was borne
To paradise's hall.
Disciple his Elisha was, succeeding to his lot:
Who begged to take to him Elijah's lot
In double measure; so, with forceful stripe,
The People to chastise: such and so great
A love for the Lord's cause he breathed. He smote
Through Jordan; made his feet a way, and crossed
Again; raised with a twig the axe down-sunk
Beneath the stream; changed into vital meat
The deathful food; detained a second time,
Double in length, the rains; cleansed leprosies;
Entangled foes in darkness; and when one
Offcast and dead, by bandits'slaughter slain
His limbs, after his death, already hid
In sepulchre, did touch, he-light recalled-
Revived.
Isaiah, wealthy seer, to whom
The fount was oped,-so manifest his faith!
Poured from his mouth God's word forth. Promised was
The Father's will, bounteous through Christ; through him
It testified before the way of life,
And was approved: but him, though stainless found,
And undeserving, the mad People cut
With wooden saw in twain, and took away
With cruel death.
The holy Jeremy
Followed; whom the Eternal's Virtue bade
Be prophet to the Gentiles, and him told
The future: who, because he brooded o'er
His People's deeds illaudable, and said
(Speaking with voice presaging) that, unless
They had repented of betaking them
To deeds iniquitous against their slaves,
They should be captived, bore hard bonds, shut up
In squalid gaol; and, in the miry pit,
Hunger exhausted his decaying limbs.
But, after he did prove what they to hear
Had been unwilling, and the foes did lead
The People bound in their triumphal trains,
Hardly at length his wrinkled right hand lost
Its chains: it is agreed that by no death
Nor slaughter was the hero ta'en away.
Faithful Ezekiel, to whom granted was
Rich grace of speech, saw sinners' secrets; wailed
His own afflictions; prayed for pardon; saw
The vengeance of the saints, which is to be
By slaughter; and, in Spirit wrapt, the place
Of the saints' realm, its steps and accesses,
And the salvation of the flesh, he saw.
Hosea, Amos, Micah, Joel, too,
With Obadiah, Jonah, Nahum, come;
Habakkuk, Zephaniah, Haggai,
And Zechariah who did violence
Suffer, and Malachi-angel himself!
Are here: these are the Lord's seers; and their choir,
As still they sing, is heard; and equally
Their proper wreath of praise they all have earned.
How great was Daniel! What a man!
What power!
Who by their own mouth did false witnesses
Bewray, and saved a soul on a false charge
Condemned; and, before that, by mouth resolved
The king's so secret dreams; foresaw how Christ
Dissolves the limbs of kingdoms; was accused
For his Lord's was made the lions' prey;
And, openly preserved before all eyes,
Rested in peace.
His Three Companions, scarce
With due praise to be sung, did piously
Contemn the king's iniquitous decree,
Out of so great a number: to the flames
Their bodies given were; but they preferred,
For the Great Name, to yield to penalties
Themselves, than to an image stretch their palms
On bended knees. Now their o'erbrilliant faith,
Now hope outshining all things, the wild fires
Hath quencht, and vanquisht the iniquitous!
Ezra the seer, doctor of Law, and priest
Himself (who, after full times, back did lead
The captive People), with the Spirit filled
Of memory, restored by word of mouth
All the seers' volumes, by the fires and mould
Consumed.
Great above all born from seed
Is John whose praises hardly shall we skill
To tell: the washer of the flesh: the Lord's
Open forerunner; washer, too, of Christ,
Himself first born again from Him: the first
Of the new convenant, last of the old,
Was he; and for the True Way's sake he died,
The first slain victim.
See God-Christ! behold
Alike, His Twelve-Fold Warrior-Youth! in all
One faith, one dove, one power; the flower of men;
Lightening the world with light; comrades of Christ
And apostolic men; who, speaking truth,
Heard with their ears Salvation, with their eyes
Saw It, and handled with their hand the late
From death recovered body, and partook
As fellow-guests of food therewith, as they
Themselves bear witness.
Him did Paul as well (Forechosen apostle, and in due time sent),
When rapt into the heavens, behold: and sent
By Him, he, with his comrade Barnabas,
And with the earlier associates
Joined in one league together, everywhere
Among the Gentiles hands the doctrine down
That Christ is Head, whose members are the Church,
He the salvation of the body, He
The members' life perennial;
He, made flesh, He, ta'en away for all, Himself first rose
Again, salvation's only hope; and gave
The norm to His disciples: they at once
All variously suffered, for His Name,
Unworthy penalties.
Such members bears
With beauteous body the free mother, since
She never her Lord's precepts left behind,
And in His home hath grown old, to her Lord
Ever most choice, having for His Name's sake
Penalties suffered. For since, barren once,
Not yet secure of her futurity,
She hath outgiven a people born of seed
Celestial, and been spurned, and borne the spleen
Of her own handmaid; now 'tis time to see
This former-barren mother have a son
The heir of her own liberty; not like
The handmaid's heir, yoked in estate to her,
Although she bare him from celestial seed
Conceived. Far be it that ye should with words
Unlawful, with rash voice, collectively
Without distinction, give men exemplary
(Heaven's glowing constellations, to the mass
Of men conjoined by seed alone or blood),
The rugged bondman's name; or that one think
That he may speak in servile style about
A People who the mandates followed
Of the Lord's Law. No: but we mean the troop
Of sinners, empty, mindless, who have placed
God's promises in a mistrustful heart;
Men vanquisht by the miserable sweet
Of present life: that troop would have been bound
Capital slavery to undergo,
By their own fault, if sin's cause shall impose
Law's yoke upon the mass. For to serve God,
And be whole-heartedly intent thereon,
Untainted faith, and freedom, is thereto
Prepared spontaneous.
The just fathers, then, And holy stainless prophets, many, sang
The future advent of the Lord; and they
Faithfully testify what Heaven bids
To men profane: with them the giants, men
With Christ's own glory satiated, made
The consorts of His virtue, filling up
The hallowed words, have stablished our faith;
By facts predictions proving.
Of these men
Disciples who succeeded them throughout
The orb, men wholly filled with virtue's breath,
And our own masters, have assigned to us
Honours conjoined with works.
Of whom the first
Whom Peter bade to take his place and sit
Upon this chair in mightiest Rome where he
Himself had sat, was Linus, great, elect,
And by the mass approved. And after him
Cletus himself the fold's flock undertook;
As his successor Anacletus was
By lot located: Clement follows him;
Well known was he to apostolic men:
Next Evaristus ruled without a crime
The law. To Sixtus Sextus Alexander
Commends the fold: who, after he had filled
His lustral times up, to Telesphorus
Hands it in order: excellent was he,
And martyr faithful. After him succeeds
A comrade in the law, and master sure:
When lo! the comrade of your wickedness,
Its author and forerunner-Cerdo highs-
Arrived at Rome, smarting with recent wounds:
Detected, for that he was scattering
Voices and words of venom stealthily:
For which cause, driven from the band, he bore
This sacrilegious brood, the dragon's breath
Engendering it. Blooming in piety
United stood the Church of Rome, compact
By Peter: whose successor, too, himself,
And now in the ninth place, Hyginus was,
The burden undertaking of his chair.
After him followed Pius-Hermas his
Own brother was; angelic "Pastor" he,
Because he spake the words delivered him:
And Anicetus the allotted post
In pious order undertook.'Neath whom
Marcion here coming, the new Pontic pest,
(The secret daring deed in his own heart
Not yet disclosed,) went, speaking commonly,
In all directions, in his perfidy,
With lurking art. But after he began
His deadly arrows to produce, cast off
Deservedly (as author of a crime
So savage), reprobated by the saints,
He burst, a wondrous monster! on our view.
Book IV.-Of Marcion's Antitheses.
What the Inviolable Power bids
The youthful people, which, rich, free, and heir,
Possesses an eternal hope of praise
(By right assigned) is this: that with great zeal
Burning, armed with the love of peace-yet not
As teachers (Christ alone doth all things teach ),
But as Christ's household-servants-o'er the earth
They should conduct a massive war; should raze
The wicked's lofty towers, savage walls,
And threats which 'gainst the holy people's bands
Rise, and dissolve such empty sounds in air.
Wherefore we, justly speaking emulous words,
Out of his own words even strive to express
The meaning of salvation's records, which Is
Large grace hath poured profusely; and to ope
To the saints' eyes the Bandit's covert plague:
Lest any untrained, daring, ignorant,
Fall therein unawares, and (being caught)
Forfeit celestial gifts. God, then, is One
To mortals all and everywhere; a Realm
Eternal, Origin of light profound;
Life's Fount; a Draught fraught with all wisdom. HE
Produced the orb whose bosom all things girds;
Him not a region, not a place, includes as
In circuit: matter none perennial is,
So as to be self-made, or to have been
Ever, created by no Maker: heaven's,
Earth's, sea's, and the abyss's Settler is
The Spirit; air's Divider, Builder, Author,
Sole God perpetual, Power immense, is He.
Him had the Law the People shown to be
One God, whose mighty voice to Moses spake
Upon the mount. Him this His Virtue, too,
His Wisdom, Glory, Word, and Son, this Light
Begotten from the Light immense, proclaims
Through the seers' voices, to be One: and Paul,
Taking the theme in order up, thus too
Himself derives; "Father there is One
Through whom were all things made: Christ One, through whom
God all things made; " to whom he plainly owns
That every knee doth bow itself; of whom
Is every fatherhood in heaven and earth
Called: who is zealous with the highest love
Of parent-care His people-ward; and wills
All flesh to live in holy wise, and wills
His people to appear before Him pure
Without a crime. With such zeal, by a law
Guards He our safety; warns us loyal be;
Chastens; is instant. So, too, has the same
Apostle (when Galatian brethren
Chiding)-Paul-written that such zeal hath he.
The fathers'sins God freely rendered, then,
Slaying in whelming deluge utterly Parents alike with progeny, and e'en
Grandchildren in "fourth generation" now
Descended from the parent-stock, when He
Has then for nearly these nine hundred years
Assisted them. Hard does the judgment seem?
The sentence savage? And in Sodom, too,
That the still guiltless little one unarmed
And tender should lose life: for what had e'er
The infant sinned? What cruel thou mayst think,
Is parent-care's true duty. Lest misdeed
Should further grow, crime's authors He did quench,
And sinful parents' brood. But, with his sires,
The harmless infant pays not penalties
Perpetual, ignorant and not advanced
In crime: but lest he partner should become
Of adult age's guilt, death immature
Undid spontaneous future ills.
Why, then,
Bids God libation to be poured to Him
With blood of sheep? and takes so stringent means
By Law, that, in the People, none transgress
Erringly, threatening them with instant death
By stoning? and why reprobates, again,
These gifts of theirs, and says they are to Him
Unwelcome, while He chides a People press
With swarm of sin? Does He, the truthful, bid,
And He, the just, at the same time repel?
The causes if thou seekst, cease to be moved
Erringly: for faith's cause is weightier
Than fancied reason. Through a mirror -shade
Of fulgent light!-behold what the calf's blood,
The heifer's ashes, and each goat, do mean:
The one dismissed goes off, the other falls
A victim at the temple.
With calfs blood
With water mixt the seer (thus from on high
Bidden) besprinkled People, vessels all,
Priests, and the written volumes of the Law.
See here not their true hope, nor yet a mere
Semblance devoid of virtue: but behold
In the calf's type Christ destined bodily
To suffer; who upon His shoulders bare
The plough-beam's hard yokes, and with fortitude
Brake His own heart with the steel share, and poured
Into the furrows water of His own
Life's blood. For these "temple-vessels" do
Denote our bodies: God's true temple He,
Not dedicated erst; for to Himself
He by His blood associated men,
And willed them be His body's priests, Himself
The Supreme Father's perfect Priest by right.
Hearing, sight, step inert, He cleansed; and, for a "book,"
Sprinkled, by speaking. words of presage, those
His witnesses: demonstrating the Law
Bound by His holy blood.
This cause withal Our victim through "the heifer" manifests
From whose blood taking for the People's sake
Piacular drops, them the first Levite bare
Within the veil; and, by God's bidding, burned
Her corse without the camp's gates; with whose ash
He cleansed lapsed bodies. Thus our Lord (who us
By His own death redeemed), without the camp
Willingly suffering the violence
Of an iniquitous People, did fulfil
The Law, by facts predictions proving; who
A people of contamination full
Doth truly cleanse, conceding all things, as
The body's Author rich; within heaven's veil
Gone with the blood which-One for many's deaths-
He hath outpoured.
A holy victim, then,
Is meet for a great priest; which worthily
He, being perfect, may be proved to have,
And offer. He a body hath: this is
For mortals a live victim; worthy this
Of great price did He offer, One for all.
The semblance of the "goats" teaches that they
Are men exiled out of the "peoples twain"
As barren; fruitless both; (of whom the Lord
Spake also, in the Gospel, telling how
The kids are severed from the sheep, and stand
On the left hand ): that some indeed there are
Who for the Lord's Name's sake have suffered: thus
That fruit has veiled their former barrenness:
And such, the prophet teaches, on the ground
Of that their final merit worthy are
Of the Lord's altar: others, cast away
(As was th' iniquitous rich man, we read,
By Lazarus ), are such as have remained
Exiled, persistent in their stubbornness.
Now a veil, hanging in the midst, did both
Dissever, and had into portions twain
Divided the one shrine. The inner parts
Were called "Holies of holiest" Stationed there
An altar shone, noble with gold; and there,
At the same time, the testaments and ark
Of the Law's tablets; covered wholly o'er
With lambs'skins dyed with heaven's hue; within
Gold-clad; and all between of wood. Here are so
The tablets of the Law; here is the urn
Replete with manna; here is Aaron's rod
Which puts forth germens of the cross -unlike
The cross itself, yet born of storax-tree -And over it-in uniformity
Fourfold-the cherubim their pinions spread,
And the inviolable sanctities
Covered obediently. Without the veil
Part of the shrine stood open: facing it,
Heavy with broad brass, did an altar stand;
And with two triple sets (on each side one)
Of branches woven with the central stem,
A lampstand, and as many lamps:
The golden substance wholly filled with light
The temple.
Thus the temple's outer face,
Common and open, does the ritual
Denote, then, of a people lingering
Beneath the Law; amid whose gloom there shone
The Holy Spirit's sevenfold unity
Ever, the People sheltering. And thus
The Lampstand True and living Lamps do shine
Persistently throughout the Law and Seers
On men subdued in heart. And for a type
Of earth, the altar-so tradition says-
Was made. Here constantly, in open space,
Before all eyes were visible of old
The People's "works," which ever-"not without
Blood" -it did offer, shedding out the gore
Of lawless life. There, too, the Lord-Himself
Made victim on behalf of all-denotes
The whole earth -altar in specific sense.
Hence likewise that new covenant author, whom
No language can describe, Disciple John,
Testifies that beneath such altar he
Saw souls which had for Christ's name suffered,
Praying the vengeance of the mighty God
Upon their slaughter. There, meantime, is rest.
In some unknown part there exists a spot
Open, enjoying its own light; 'tis called
"Abraham's bosom; "high above the glooms,
And far removed from fire, yet 'neath the earth.
The brazen altar this is called, whereon
(We have recorded) was a dusky veil.
This veil divides both parts, and leaves the one
Open, from the eternal one distinct
In worship and time's usage. To itself'
Tis not unfriendly, though of fainter love,
By time and space divided, and yet linked
By reason.'Tis one house, though by a veil
Parted it seems: and thus (when the veil burst,
On the Lord's passion) heavenly regions oped
And holy vaults, and what was double erst
Became one house perennial. Order due
Traditionally has interpreted
The inner temple of the people called
After Christ's Name, with worship heavenly,
God's actual mandates following; (no "shade".
Is herein bound, but persons real; ) complete
By the arrival of the "perfect things."
The ark beneath a type points out to us
Christ's venerable body, joined, through "wood,"
With sacred Spirit: the aërial skins
Are flesh not born of seed, outstretcht on "wood; "
At the same time, with golden semblance fused,
Within, the glowing Spirit joined is
Thereto; that, with peace granted, flesh might bloom
With Spirit mixt. Of the Lord's flesh, again,
The urn, golden and full, a type doth bear.
Itself denotes that the new covenant's Lord
Is manna; in that He, true heavenly Bread,
Is, and hath by the Father been transfused
Into that bread which He hath to His saints
Assigned for a pledge: this Bread will He
Give perfectly to them who (of good works
The lovers ever) have the bonds of peace
Kept. And the double tablets of the law
Written all over, these, at the same time,
Signify that that Law was ever hid
In Christ, who mandate old and new fulfilled,
Ark of the Supreme Father as He is,
Through whom He, being rich, hath all things given.
The storax-rod, too, nut's fruit bare itself;
(The virgin's semblance this, who bare in blood
A body:) on the "wood" conjoined 'twill lull
Death's bitter, which within sweet fruit doth lurk,
By virtue of the Holy Spirit's grace:
Just as Isaiah did predict "a rod"
From Jesse's seed -Mary-from which a flower
Issues into the orb.
The altar bright with gold
Denotes the heaven on high, whither ascend
Prayers holy, sent up without crime: the Lord
This "altar" spake of, where if one doth gifts
Offer, he must first reconciliate
Peace with his brother: thus at length his prayers
Can flame unto the stars. Christ, Victor sole
And foremost. Priest, thus offered incense born
Not of a tree, but prayers. The cherubim
Being, with twice two countenances, one,
And are the one word through fourfold order led;
The hoped comforts of life's mandate new,
Which in their plenitude Christ bare Himself
Unto us from the Father. But the wings
In number four times six, the heraldings
Of the old world denote, witnessing things
Which, we are taught, were after done. On these
The heavenly words fly through the orb: with these
Christ's blood is likewise held context, so told
Obscurely by the seers' presaging mouth.
The number of the wings doth set a seal
Upon the ancient volumes; teaching us
Those twenty-four have certainly enough
Which sang the Lord's ways and the times of peace:
These all, we see, with the new covenant
Cohere. Thus also John; the Spirit thus
To him reveals that in that number stand
The enthroned elders white and crowned, who (as
With girding-rope) all things surround, before
The Lord's throne, and upon the glassy sea
Subigneous: and four living creatures, winged
And full of eyes within and outwardly,
Do signify that hidden things are oped,
And all things shut are at the same time seen,
In the word's eye. The glassy flame-mixt sea
Means that the laver's gifts, with Spirit fused
Therein, upon believers are conferred.
Who could e'en tell what the Lord's parentcare
Before His judgment-seat, before His bar,
Prepared hath? that such as willing be
His forum and His judgment for themselves
To antedate, should 'scape! that who thus hastes
Might find abundant opportunity!
Thus therefore Law and wondrous prophets sang;
Thus all parts of the covenant old and new,
Those sacred rights and pregnant utterances
Of words, conjoined, do flourish. Thus withal,
Apostles' voices witness everywhere;
Nor aught of old, in fine, but to the new
Is joined.
Thus err they, and thus facts retort
Their sayings, who to false ways have declined;
And from the Lord and God, eternal King,
Who such an orb produced, detract, and seek
Some other deity 'neath feigned name,
Bereft of minds, which (frenzied) they have lost;
Willing to affirm that Christ a stranger is
To the Law; nor is the world's Lord; nor doth will
Salvation of the flesh; nor was Himself
The body's Maker, by the Father's power.
Them must we flee, stopping (unasked) our ears;
Lest with their speech they stain innoxious hearts.
Let therefore us, whom so great grace of God
Hath penetrated, and the true celestial words
Of the great Master-Teacher in good ways
Have trained, and given us right monuments;
Pay honour ever to the Lord, and sing
Endlessly, joying in pure faith, and sure
Salvation. Born of the true God, with bread
Perennial are we nourished, and hope
With our whole heart after eternal life.
Book V.-General Reply to Sundry of Marcion's Heresies.
The first Book did the enemy's words recall In
order, which the senseless renegade
Composed and put forth lawlessly; hence, too,
Touched briefly flesh's hope, Christ's victory,
And false ways' speciousness. The next doth teach
The Law's conjoined mysteries, and what
In the new covenant the one God hath
Delivered. The third shows the race, create
From freeborn mother, to be ministers
Sacred to seers and patriarchs; whom Thou,
O Christ, in number twice six out of all,
Chosest; and, with their names, the lustral times
Of our own elders noted, (times preserved
On record,) showing in whose days appeared i
The author of this wickedness, unknown,
Lawless, and roaming, cast forth with his brood.
The fourth, too, the piacular rites recalls
Of the old Law themselves, and shows them types
In which the Victim True appeared, by saints
Expected long since, with the holy Seed.
This fifth doth many twists and knots untie,
Rolls wholly into sight what ills soe'er
Were lurking; drawing arguments, but not
Without attesting prophet.
And although
With strong arms fortified we vanquish foes,
Yet hath the serpent mingled so at once
All things polluted, impious, unallowed,
Commaculate, -the blind's path without light!
A voice contaminant!-that, all the while
We are contending the world's Maker is
Himself sole God, who also spake by voice
Of seers, and proving that there is none else
Unknown; and, while pursuing Him with praise,
Who is by various endearment known,
Are blaming-among other fallacies-
The Unknown's tardy times: our subject's fault
Will scarce keep pure our tongue. Yet, for all that,
Guile's many hidden venoms us enforce
(Although with double risk ) to ope our words.
Who, then, the God whom ye say is the true,
Unknown to peoples, alien, in a word,
To all the world? Him whom none knew before?
Came he from high? If 'tis his own he seeks,
Why seek so late? If not his own, why rob
Bandit-like? and why ply with words unknown
So oft throughout Law's rein a People still
Lingering 'neath the Law? If, too, he comes
To pity and to succour all combined,
And to re-elevate men vanquisht quite
By death's funereal weight, and to release
Spirit from flesh's bond obscene, whereby
The inner man (iniquitously dwarfed)
Is held in check; why, then, so late appear
His ever-kindness, duteous vigilance?
How comes it that he ne at all before
Offered himself to any, but let slip
Poor souls in numbers? and then with his mouth
Seeks to regain another's subjects: ne'er
Expected; not known; sent into the orb.
Seeking the "ewe" he had not lost before,
The Shepherd ought to have disrobed himself
Of flesh, as if his victor-self withal
Had ever been a spirit, and as such
Willed to rescue all expelled souls,
Without a body, everywhere, and leave
The spoiled flesh to earth; wholly to fill
The world on one day equally with corpses
To leave the orb void; and to raise the souls
To heaven. Then would human progeny
At once have ceased to be born; nor had
Thereafter any scion of your kith
Been born, or spread a new pest o'er the orb.
Or (since at that time none of all these things
Is shown to have been done) he should have set
A bound to future race; with solid heart
Nuptial embraces would he, in that case
Have sated quite; made men grow torpid, reft
Of fruitful seed; made irksome intercourse
With female sex; and closed up inwardly
The flesh's organs genital: our mind
Had had no will, no potent faculty
Our body: after this the "inner man"
Could withal, joined with blood, have been infused
And cleaved to flesh, and would have ever been
Perishing. Ever perishes the "ewe: "
And is there then no power of saving her?
Since man is ever being born beneath
Death's doom, what is the Shepherd's work, if thus
The "ewe" is stated to be found? Unsought
In that case, but not rescued, she is proved.
But now choice is allowed of entering
Wedlock, as hath been ever; and that choice
Sure progeny hath yoked: nations are born
And folk scarce numerable, at whose birth
Their souls by living bodies are received;
Nor was it meet that Paul (though, for the time,
He did exhort some few, discerning well
The many pressures of a straitened time)
To counsel men in like case to abide
As he himself: for elsewhere he has bidden
The tender ages marry, nor defraud
Each other, but their compact's dues discharge.
But say, whose suasion hash, with fraud astute,
Made you "abide," and in divided love
Of offspring live secure, and commit crime
Adulterous, and lose your life? and, though
'Tis perishing, belie (by verbal name)
That fact.. For which cause all the so sweet sounds
Of his voice pours he forth, that "you must do,
Undaunted, whatsoever pleases you; "
Outwardly chaste, stealthily stained with crime!
Of honourable wedlock, by this plea,
He hath deprived you. But why more? 'Tis well
(Forsooth) to be disjoined! for the world, too,
Expedient 'tis! lest any of your seed
Be born! Then will death's organs cease at length!
The while you hope salvation to retain,
Your "total man" quite loses part of man,
With mind profane: but neither is man said
To be sole spirit, nor the flesh is called
"The old man; "nor unfriendly are the flesh
And spirit, the true man combined in one,
The inner, and he whom you call "old foe; "
Nor are they seen to have each his own set
Of senses. One is ruled; the other rules,
Groans, joys, grieves, loves; himself to his own flesh
Most dear, too; through which his humanity
Is visible, with which commixt he is
Held ever: to its wounds he care applies;
And pours forth tears; and nutriments of food
Takes, through its limbs, often and eagerly:
This hopes he to have ever with himself
Immortal; o'er its fracture doth he groan;
And grieves to quit it limb by limb: fixt time
Death lords it o'er the unhappy flesh; that so
From light dust it may be renewed, and death
Unfriendly fail at length, when flesh, released,
Rises again. This will that victory be
Supreme and long expected, wrought by Him,
The aye-to-be-revered, who did become
True man; and by His Father's virtue won: Who
man's redeemed limbs unto the heavens
Hath raised, and richly opened access up
Thither in hope, first to His nation; then
To those among all tongues in whom His work
Is ever doing: Minister imbued
With His Sire's parent-care, seen by the eye
Of the Illimitable, He performed,
By suffering, His missions.
What say now
The impious voices? what th' abandoned crew?
If He Himself, God the Creator's self,
Gave not the Law, He who from Egypt's vale
Paved in the waves a path, and freely gave
The seats which He had said of old, why comes
He in that very People and that land
Aforesaid? and why rather sought He not
Some other peoples or some rival realms?
Why, further, did He teach that, through the seers,
(With Name foretold in full, yet not His own,)
He had been often sung of? Whence, again,
Could He have issued baptism's kindly gifts,
Promised by some one else, as His own works?
These gifts men who God's mandates had transgressed,
And hence were found polluted, longed for,
And begged a pardoning rescue from fierce death.
Expected long, they came: but that to those
Who recognised them when erst heard, and now
Have recognised them, when in due time found,
Christ's true hand is to give them, this, with voice
Paternal, the Creator-Sire Himself
Warns ever from eternity, and claims;
And thus the work of virtue which He framed,
And still frames, arms, and fosters, and doth now
Victorious look down on and reclothe
With His own light, should with perennial praise Abide.
What hath the Living Power done
To make men recosnise what God can give
And maul can suffer, and thus live? But since
Neither predictions earlier nor facts
The latest can suede senseless frantic men
That God became a man, and (after He
Had suffered and been buried) rose; that they
May credit those so many witnesses
Harmonious, who of old did cry aloud
With heavenly word, let them both learn to trust
At least terrestrial reason.
When the Lord
Christ came to be, as flesh, born into the orb
In time of king Augustus' reign at Rome,
First, by decree, the nations numbered are
By census everywhere: this measure, then,
This same king chanced to pass, because the Will
Supreme, in whose high reigning hand doth lie
The king's heart, had impelled him: he was first
To do it, and the enrolment was reduced
To orderly arrangement. Joseph then
Likewise, with his but just delivered wife
Mary, with her celestial Son alike,
Themselves withal are numbered. Let, then, such
As trust to instruments of human skill,
Who may (approving of applying them
As attestators of the holy word)
Inquire into this census, if it be
But found so as we say, then afterwards
Repent they and seek pardon while time still
Is had
The Jews, who own to having wrought
A grave crime, while in our disparagement
They glow, and do resist us, neither call
Christ's family unknown, nor can affirm
They hanged a man, who spake truth, on a tree:
Ignorant that the Lord's flesh which they bound
Was not seed-gendered. But, while partially
They keep a reticence, so partially
They triumph; for they strive to represent
God to the peoples commonly as man.
Behold the error which o'ercomes you both!
This error will our cause assist, the while,
We prove to you those things which certain are.
They do deny Him God; you falsely call
Him man, a body bodiless! and ah!
A various insanity of mind
Sinks you; which him who hath presumed to hint
You both do, sinking, sprinkle: for His deeds
Will then approve Him man alike and God
Commingled, and the world will furnish signs
No few.
While then the Son Himself of God
Is seeking to regain the flesh's limbs,
Already robed as King, He doth sustain
Blows from rude palms; with spitting covered is
His face; a thorn-inwoven crown His head
Pierces all round; and to the tree Himself
Is fixed; wine drugged with myrrh, is drunk, and gall
Is mixt with vinegar; parted His robe,
And in it lots are cast; what for himself
Each one hath seized he keeps; in murky gloom,
As God from fleshly body silently
Outbreathes His soul, in darkness trembling day
Took refuge with the sun; twice dawned one day;
Its centre black night covered: from their base
Mounts move in circle, wholly moved was earth,
Saints'sepulchres stood ope, and all things Joined
In fear to see His passion whom they knew!
His lifeless side a soldier with bare spear
Pierces, and forth flows blood, nor water less
Thence followed. These facts they agree to hide,
And are unwilling the misdeed to own,
Willing to blink the crime.
Can spirit, then,
Without a body wear a robe? or is't
Susceptible of penalty? the wound
Of violence does it bear? or die? or rise?
Is blood thence poured? from what flesh. since ye say
He had none? or else, rather, feigned He? if
'Tis safe for you to say so; though you do
(Headlong) so say, by passing over more
In silence. Is not, then, faith manifest?
And are not all things fixed? The day before
He then should suffer, keeping Passover,
And handing down a memorable rite
To His disciples, taking bread alike
And the vine's juice, "My body, and My blood
Which is poured for you, this is," did He say;
And bade it ever afterward be done.
Of what created elements were made,
Think ye, the bread and wine which were (He said)
His body with its blood? and what must be
Confessed? Proved He not Himself the world's
Maker, through deeds? and that He bore at once
A body formed from flesh and blood?
This God
This true Man, too, the Father's Virtue 'neath
An Image, with the Father ever was,
United both in glory and in age;
Because alone He ministers the words
Of the All-Holder; whom He upon earth
Accepts; through whom He all things did create:
God's Son, God's dearest Minister, is He!
Hence hath He generation, hence Name too,
Hence, finally, a kingdom; Lord from Lord;
Stream from perennial Fount! He, He it was
Who to the holy fathers (whosoe'er
Among them doth profess to have "seen God" )-
God is our witness-since the origin
Of this our world, appearing, opened up
The Father's words of promise and of charge
From heaven high: He led the People out;
Smote through th'iniquitous nation; was Himself
The column both of light and of cloud's shade;
And dried the sea; and bids the People go
Right through the waves, the foe therein involved
And covered with the flood and surge: a way
Through deserts made He for the followers
Of His high biddings; sent down bread in showers
From heaven for the People; brake the rock;
Bedewed with wave the thirsty; and from God
The mandate of the Law to Moses spake
With thunder, trumpet-sound, and flamey column
Terrible to the sight, while men's hearts shook.
After twice twenty years, with months complete,
Jordan was parted; a way oped; the wave
Stood in a mass; and the tribes shared the land,
Their fathers' promised boons! The Father's word,
Speaking Himself by prophets' mouth, that He
Would come to earth and be a man, He did
Predict; Christ manifestly to the earth
Foretelling.
Then, expected for our aid,
Life's only Hope, the Cleanser of our flesh,
Death's Router, from th' Almighty Sire's empire
At length He came, and with our human limbs
He clothed Him. Adam-virgin-dragon-tree,
The cause of ruin, and the way whereby
Rash death us all had vanquisht! by the same
Our Shepherd treading, seeking to regain
His sheep-with angel-virgin-His own flesh-
And the "tree's" remedy; whence vanquisht man
And doomed to perish was aye wont to go
To meet his vanquisht peers; hence, inter-posed,
One in all captives' room, He did sustain
In body the unfriendly penalty
With patience; by His own death spoiling death;
Becomes salvation's cause; and, having paid
Throughly our debts by throughly suffering
On earth, in holy body, everything,
Seeks the infern! here souls, bound for their crime,
Which shut up all together by Law's weight,
Without a guard, were asking for the boons
Promised of old, hoped for, and tardy, He
To the saints'rest admitted, and, with light,
Brought back. For on the third day mounting up,
A victor, with His body by His Sire's
Virtue immense, (salvation's pathway made,)
And bearing God and man is form create,
He clomb the heavens, leading back with Him
Captivity's first-fruits (a welcome gift
And a dear figure to the Lord), and took
His seat beside light's Father, and resumed
The virtue and the glory of which, while
He was engaged in vanquishing the foe
He had been stripped; conjoined with Spirit; bound
With flesh, on our part. Him, Lord, Christ, King, God,
Judgment and kingdom given to His hand,
The father is to send unto the orb.
(N.B.-It has been impossible to note the changes which I have had to make in the text of the Latin. In some cases they will suggest themselves to any scholar who may compare the translation with the original; and in others I must be content to await a more fitting opportunity, if such ever arise, for discussing them.)
Elucidations.
I'
Appendix, p. 127.
About these versifications, which are "poems" only as mules are horses, it is enough to say of them, with Dupin, "They are no more Tertullian's than they are Virgil's or Homer's. The poem called Genesis seems to be that which Gennadius attributes to Salvian, Bishop of Marseilles. That concerning the Judgment of God was, perhaps, composed by Verecundus, an African bishop. In the books Against Marcion there are some opinions different from those of Tertullian. There is likewise a poem To a Senator in Pamelius' edition, one of Sodom, and in the Bibliotheca Patrum one of Jonas and Nineve; the first of which is ancient, and the other two seem to be by the same author."
It is worth while to observe that this rhymester makes two bishops out of one. Cletus and Anacletus he supposes different persons, which brings Clement into the fourth place in the see of Rome. Our author elsewhere makes St. Clement the immediate successor of the apostles.
II
Or is there ought, etc., l. 136, p. 137.
In taking leave of Tertullian, it may be well to say a word of his famous saying, Cerlum est quia impossibile est. It occurs in the tract De Carne Chrisli, and is one of those startling epigrammatic dicta of our author which is no more to be pressed in argument than any other bon-mot of a wit or a poet. It is evidently designed as a rhetorical climax, to enforce the same idea which we find in the hymn of Aquinas: -
"Et si sensus deficit, Ad
firmandum cor sincerum
Sola fides sufficit."
As Jeremy Taylor argues, the condition is, that holy Scripture affirms it. If that be the case, then "all things are possible with God: "I believe; but I do not argue, for it is impossible with men. This is the plain sense of the great Carthaginian doctor's pithy rhetoric. But Dr. Bunsen sets it on all-fours, and treats it as if it were soberly designed to defy reason, -that reason to which Tertullian constantly makes his appeal against Marcion, and in many of his sayings hardly less witty. Speaking of Hippolytus, that writer remarks, "He might have said on some points, Credibile licet ineptum: he would never have exclaimed with Tertullian, `Credibile quia ineptum.'"Why attempt to prove the absurdity of such a reflection? As well attempt to defend St. John's hyperbole against a mind incapable of comprehending a figure of speech.