Глава десятая Критика безбожных обычаев, людского невежества и косности

§ LXXXIX. About a custom that brings misfortune You say that it is unreasonable to abolish the custom handed down to you by your fathers. But why don’t we eat the first food, i.e. milk, to which we were accustomed from birth by a wet nurse? Why do we increase or decrease our father's property, rather than keep it equal to what we received? Why don’t we spit food on our father’s clothes and do the rest that we did, causing laughter, as babies, but, even if we didn’t have good teachers, we improved ourselves? Further, during sea voyages, deviations from the path, although dangerous and sometimes disastrous, in a certain respect turn out to be pleasant. In life, abandoning the bad, passion-filled and godless custom, even if the fathers are angry, will we not deviate towards the truth and seek the truly existing Father, rejecting the habit like a poisonous potion? For the best thing we can do is to show you that piety is hostile to an insane and unlucky custom. For such a great good, greater than which nothing has yet been given by God to the human race, would never have been hated and would not have been forbidden, if, captured by custom, stopping your ears, throwing off the reins like unruly horses, gnawing at the bit, you would not run away from admonitions, wanting to get rid of us, the drivers of your life; rushing in madness towards the disastrous cliffs, they would not consider the holy word of God a curse. § XC. About punishment for villains and for the prince of evil himself Therefore, retribution awaits you for your choice, in accordance with the words of Sophocles: A lost mind, an unnecessary rumor, an empty thought; and the most obvious things are unknown to you, that the good and pious will receive a good reward, since they honored the good; those who, on the contrary, are bad - deserved punishment. Punishment awaits the prince of evil himself. The prophet Zechariah threatens him: “May He who delivered Jerusalem condemn you. Isn’t this a brand pulled from the fire?” (Zechariah 3:2). Is it possible that people have an inherent desire for voluntary death? Why did they resort to this deadly brand, with which they will burn, when they can live well in accordance not with custom, but with the will of God? After all, God gives life, but a harmful custom after a person leaves this world brings punishment and vain repentance. “Having endured, even the foolish realized” that superstition destroys, but piety saves. § XCI. About the repulsive appearance of idolaters Look at the idolaters with dirty hair, in offensively soiled and torn clothes, not knowing what it means to wash, with the length of their nails like beasts, many without genitals and showing in practice that the churches of idols are some kind of graves or prisons. It seems to me that these people mourn the gods, and do not worship them, feeling towards them a kind of pity rather than reverence. And looking at this, you still continue to remain blind and will not look at the Lord of the entire universe and, having escaped from the earthly prison, will you not resort to heavenly compassion? After all, God, in His immeasurable love for mankind, supports people: like a mother bird flies to a chick that has fallen from the nest. If a snake attacks him, The mother, grieving for her offspring, dear to her heart, is spinning God the Father seeks His creation, and heals it from error, and pursues the snake, and again accepts the chick, encouraging it to return to the nest. § XCII. Examples of dogs, horses, ox and donkey, worms, pigs, eagles Now further. The lost dogs, following the trail, found their owner by scent, and the horses, having shaken off their rider, obeyed the master thanks to only one whistle. “The ox knows its owner, and the ass its owner’s manger, but Israel does not know Me.” What about the Lord? He is not vindictive, he still regrets, he still insists on repentance. I want to ask you, doesn’t it seem strange to you that you, people created by God, who received your soul from Him and belong entirely to Him, are in slavery to another master, serving a tyrant instead of the King, an evil one instead of a good one? For who, tell me, I adjure you with the truth, abandons what is good and remains in evil, being rational? Who is the one who, avoiding God, spends his life with demons? Who, who might be the son of God, enjoys slavery? Or who, capable of becoming a citizen of heaven, strives into darkness, when one can cultivate paradise, walk across heaven, having a share in the unmixed life-giving source, following, like Elijah, through the air, behind a radiant cloud and contemplating the saving rain? However, people, swarming (as worms swarm in swamps and sewage) in pleasures, feed on useless and meaningless pleasures and are a kind of pig-like people. For pigs “rejoice in mud more” than in clean water, and “rush furiously towards the garbage,” according to Democritus. So, under no circumstances, under no circumstances will we turn into slaves and become like pigs! But as true children of light, let us raise our eyes and look at him, so that the Lord does not expose us as illegal - in the same way the sun tests the eagles. § XCIII. About Heavenly Inheritance Let us repent and move from ignorance to knowledge, from recklessness to prudence, from intemperance to self-control, from lawlessness to justice, from godlessness to God! It is a wonderful courageous act to become a defector to God’s camp. We are allowed to partake of many good things, but especially those to which God Himself alludes, saying through Isaiah: “There is an inheritance for those who serve the Lord”: a wonderful and desirable inheritance. It is not gold, it is not silver, it is not clothing here on earth, where there is moth, and where the robber sneaks up, looking enviously at vain wealth, but the treasure of salvation, to which, having become admirers of the Word, we must strive. Good deeds depart from here with us and fly side by side on the wings of truth. § XCIV. About Heavenly Inheritance (continued) The inheritance in question entrusts us with God's everlasting covenant, as an everlasting gift. Our caring Father, the real Father, does not cease to exhort, admonish, educate, love, for he continues to save and advises the best: “Be just,” says the Lord, “those who are thirsty, go to the water, and those who have no silver, go and buy and drink without silver.” He almost shouts to the font, to salvation, to the light and says: “I give you the sea and the earth, O child, and the sky, and all living things that are in them, I give you. Only, O child, strive for the Father!” God will reveal himself to you for free: the truth is not exchanged, it is not traded. Given to you are the feathered and the floating, and those that live on the earth. The Father created this so that, while enjoying, you would thank Him. The illegitimate son, who is the son of perdition, will buy with silver, he is destined to serve mammon; the Father hands it over to you as if it were yours - I turn to His legitimate, loving son, because of whom He creates to this day and to whom He only promises, saying: “And the land will not be sold forever,” for it is not subject to waste: “for all the land is Mine.” It can become yours too if you accept God. Therefore, the Scripture preaches the gospel to those who believe: “The saints of the Lord will inherit the glory of God and His power.” Which one, oh friend, tell me? “Whatever the eye has not seen, the ear has not heard, and has not come to the heart of man; and they will rejoice in the kingdom of their Lord forever. Amen". § XCV. About the choice between death and life and about innate faith People, you have the divine promise of grace, you have also heard the threat of punishment; The Lord saves with them, raising a person with fear and mercy. Why are we delaying? Why don't we evade punishment? Why don't we accept the gift? Why don’t we choose the best – God – instead of the evil one, and put wisdom above idolatry, and don’t exchange death for life? “Behold, I have laid before your face,” he says, “death and life.” The Lord is testing you: will you choose life? like a father, he advises to obey God. “For if you are willing and obey Me,” he says, “you will eat the good things of the earth,” this is mercy for obedience; “But if you deny and persist, sword and fire will devour you” - condemnation for disobedience. “The mouth of the Lord hath spoken it,” the law of truth, the Word of the Lord. Do you want me to become a good advisor for you? Listen, and I, in accordance with my strength, will state the essence of the matter. It is necessary that you, reflecting on goodness as such, invite your innate faith as a reliable witness, openly choosing the best, and not discuss whether you should follow it, but do good. After all, one should, say, doubt whether it is worth getting drunk. You'll get drunk before you consider this question. You also do not carefully study whether you should go on a rampage, but immediately go on a rampage. You only find out whether you should be pious and obey this wise God and His Christ - that is what you deign to think and study and do not think about what is due to God. § XCVI. A call to enter the field of truth Trust us, at least as much as you trust drunkenness, to become sober; Believe it, it’s like outrage to live! If you wish to obey, having acquired a clear faith in the untold mysteries of God, I will perhaps give you abundant reasons in favor of the Word. You (after all, after the instructions you received, your father’s customs no longer have power over you and do not turn you away from the truth), listen to how things stand with what follows. Let not the name of the Lord cause you shame, “which harms a man in many ways,” turning him away from salvation. Having taken off our clothes, we will openly compete according to the rules on the lists of truth, when the holy Word will appear as the judge, and the ruler of the games will be the Lord of the universe. For we are assigned a considerable reward - immortality. Don’t pay any more attention to what some rabble of the square says about you, godless choruses of superstition, pushed into the very abyss by stupidity and madness, creators of idols and worshipers of stones. They dared to deify people, writing down Alexander the Great as the thirteenth god, who was convicted by Babylon, revealing him dead. § XCVII. About the justice of God I admire the Chios sophist, whose name is Theocritus. After the death of Alexander, he, ridiculing the unfounded opinions of people about the gods, told the citizens: “Be calm, O men, while you see the gods dying before people.” He who worships and takes as his companions visible gods and a surging crowd of such creatures is much more unfortunate than these very demons. It cannot be said about God that He, like demons, is unjust. On the contrary, He is just to the highest degree, and there is no other way to become like Him than to become just yourself. Craft people, hit the road everyone! With baskets you honor the scary-looking Goddess-craftswoman, daughter of Zeus, stupid craftsmen working with stone and worshiping stone. § XCVIII. God is the Creator of the animate statue Let your Phidias or Polykleitos, and Praxiteles, and Apelles, and all those engaged in handicrafts, perishable craftsmen of the earth's dust, appear. For then, says a certain prophecy, earthly affairs will go badly when people believe the statues. Let the masters of cheap trinkets come (because I won’t stop calling). Not one of them made an animated image or sculpted a tender body out of the earth. Who made the brain soft, who strengthened the bones? Who pulled the tendons? Who filled the vessels and poured blood into them? Who covered the body with leather? How can any of them make the eyes see? Who breathed the soul, who imparted a sense of justice, who promised immortality? There is only one Creator of the universe, the greatest Master, the Father; He created such an animated statue - a man. Your Olympian, an image of an image that greatly distorts the truth, is an insensitive work made by the hands of an Athenian. For the image of God is His Word (the Divine Word is the true Son of Mind, the primary Light from Light), but the image of the word is true man, i.e. the mind that is in man, called for this reason created “in the image and likeness of God,” compared by our senses with the divine Word and therefore rational. It seems obvious that statues that have the appearance of people are an earthly image of a perishable, visible person and a short-lived impression that is far from the original. §XIX. Ignorance is the cause of human disasters It seems to me that life has become full of madness - it is so readily devoted to matter. The custom that gave you a taste of slavery and meaningless troubles was nourished by people's vain opinions. The cause of lawless regulations and false prophecies was ignorance, which, having become the culprit of terrible disasters for the human race and finding numerous incarnations for demons in disgusting idols, put a sign of long death on those who followed it. Defiled, take the pure water of reason, perform ablution, cleanse yourself from custom with drops of truth: you must ascend to heaven clean. You, man, look for the most common thing - the One who created you; You, son, find out what is most private - the Father. Are you still in sins, mired in pleasures? To whom will the Lord say: “Yours is the Kingdom of Heaven”? It is yours, if only you deign, having chosen God, to believe and follow the short path laid out by the sermon, upon hearing which the Ninevites, thanks to sincere repentance, replaced the expected conquest of their country by their enemies with a wonderful salvation. § C. Man is born to contemplate the sky Someone might ask, “How will I ascend to heaven?” The way is the Lord, “the narrow way,” but descending from heaven, narrow, but leading to heaven. Узкий, презираемый на земле, широкий, чтимый на небесах. Не слышавшему Слово, извинением за его заблуждение служит неведение. He who has heard the word, but contrary to reason, does not obey Him with his soul, the more rational he seems, the more his understanding harms him, since reason will become an accuser for him, who has not chosen the best. Ибо человек устроен так, чтобы быть в близких отношениях с Богом. Just as we do not force the horse to plow and the ox to hunt, but force each animal to do what it is supposed to do by nature, so we, having understood that internal, exclusive and characteristic thing that distinguishes people from all other living beings, and advising us to prepare enough means for centuries - piety and piety - piety and piety, we call for the knowledge of God. Engage in farming, we say, if you are a farmer, but while cultivating the field, know God. You who love sea travel, swim, but at the same time call upon the heavenly Pilot. Knowledge found you fighting - listen to the heavenly Strategist, who orders what is just. § CI. The pagans spend their lives dying Sober up, as if you were weighed down by a drunken sleep, and, looking around a little, think about what the stones you worship mean to you, and what you are senselessly wasting on matter. You spend both your money and your means of living on ignorance, just as you spend your life itself on death, seeing in this alone the fulfillment of your vain hope. Unable to feel sorry for yourself, you, being enslaved by a bad custom, are not ready to listen to those who feel sorry for you for your error. Gravitating towards the mentioned custom, you, of your own free will, until your very last breath, rush towards destruction: “for light has come into the world, and people loved darkness more than light” (John 3:19), although you can eliminate what stands in the way of salvation: arrogance, wealth, fear, repeating what the poet said: Where am I bringing the money and where am I going? You do not regret, discarding these empty fictions, parting with the custom itself and saying to vanity: Goodbye, dreams, deceit and lies, because you are nothing. § CII. Fate, wealth, love, sleep, stars are not gods What do you consider, O people, to be Hermes Tikhon, Hermes Andokidas and Hermes Amyite? Isn’t it clear to everyone that these are stones, like Hermes himself? Just as God is not the halo around the sun and the rainbow, but only celestial phenomena, just as God is not the day, year and time, which consist of them, so is not God the sun and the moon, which rule them all. Who, being in their right mind, would consider correction, punishment, punishment, retribution to be gods? After all, neither the Erinyes, nor the Moirai, nor the Rock are gods, since the state, glory and wealth, which painters depict as blind, are not gods. If you deify shame, desire and love, then let shame, passion, charm and intercourse follow them. Perhaps, after this, you will, with sufficient reason, not consider the twins sleep and death as gods, states that living beings have by nature. You will rightly say that not the goddesses Kera, Fate and Moira. If discord and battle are not the gods, then Ares and Enyo are not the gods. If the gods are no longer lightning, peruns and downpours, then are the gods fire and water? What about shooting stars and comets caused by changes in the air? He who says that chance is a god, let him say that action is also one. § CIII. Unfeeling statues and unfeeling people If from all of the above and from those hand-made and insensitive statues nothing is recognized as God, but a certain care of divine power is manifested in relation to us, then there is nothing left to do but agree that the only true God exists and has always existed. But you, foolish ones, are like people who have drunk mandrake or some other potion. May God allow you to finally sober up from this dream and come to know Him, so that neither gold, nor stone, nor wood, nor action, nor passion, nor illness, nor fear may seem like a deity. After all, there are thirty thousand on earth, which feeds many, demons, not immortal, but not mortal either (for they do not have feelings to be involved in death), - stone and wooden human rulers, mocking man and insidiously destroying his life with the help of custom. “The earth is the Lord’s, and all that fills it” (Ps. 23:1); How then do you dare not know the Lord, enjoying what belongs to Him? “Leave My land,” the Lord will tell you, “do not touch the water that I give, the fruits that I grow; return, O man, your food to God. Know your Master, be a creation that belongs to Him!” Is it fair that His property should be alienated? Alienated, deprived of kinship, loses authenticity. Are you not becoming insensitive, like Niobe, or rather, I will tell you something more mysterious, like the Hebrew woman (the ancients called her the wife of Lot)? This woman was petrified because of her attachment to the inhabitants of Sodom, who were atheists, fallen into wickedness, hard-hearted and stupid. § CIV. Man is sacred, not animals and stones Consider that these words were spoken to you from above: do not think that stones, wood, birds and snakes are shrines, and not people. On the contrary, recognize people as truly sacred, and consider animals and stones for what they are. For unfortunate, pitiful people believe that God speaks through the raven and the jackdaw, and not through a man, and they honor the raven as the messenger of God, but they persecute the man of God, who does not croak or cackle, but speaks clearly. Woe to those who do not expect mercy from heaven and do not evade punishment, who try to inhumanly kill those who teach them wisely and philanthropically and call for justice; for they do not believe God and do not comprehend His power. But just as the Lord’s love for mankind is unspeakable, so is his hatred of evil. Anger feeds punishment for sin, but the Lord's love for mankind rewards repentance. The saddest thing is to lose God's help. So, blindness of the eyes and deafness of the ears are more painful than other greed for bad things: one of them took away the view of the sky, the other deprived of divine teaching. §CV. Blindness and deafness of the pagans But you, being crippled to perceive the truth and blind in mind and deaf in understanding, do not grieve and are not indignant! You did not want to see heaven and its Creator and do not strive to hear the Creator and Father of all and learn about Him, choosing salvation. Nothing stands in the way of those who are hastening to know God, be it lack of education, poverty, obscurity, poverty. No one wants to replace true wisdom by striking it with copper (an expression from Homer’s Iliad - Ed.) or with iron. It's beautifully said: The Good One is the savior everywhere. For the zealot of the just, as an admirer of the One who lacks nothing, is content with little, in nothing else, as in God Himself, preserving the treasure of his happiness, where there is no moth, no robber, no pirate, but only the eternal Giver of goods. You are rightly likened to those snakes whose ears are closed to spellcasters. “For the spirit in them,” says Scripture, “is like that of a serpent, like that of a deaf asp that stops its ears and does not hear the voice of exorcists” (Ps. 57:5, 6). §CVI. About old skin and wings But let your wildness be enchanted by heavenly singing. Heed our short speech and spew out the deadly poison from yourself, so that you may be freed from death, like snakes from their old skin. Listen to me and don’t close your ears, don’t block the way to the words, but accept them with your soul! The medicine of immortality is wonderful: get up and crawl no more, because the enemies of the Lord will lick the dust, says Scripture, lift your head from the ground, look at the sky, admire its appearance, stop plotting against the heels of the righteous and making the path to the truth difficult. Become smart and harmless! Then the Lord, perhaps, will give you the wings of simplicity (He intended to provide them to earth-born creatures), so that, leaving the holes, you will dwell in the heavens. We only need to repent with all our hearts in order to embrace God with all our hearts. Let the whole congregation of the people trust in Him! Pour out your hearts before Him, - Scripture addresses those in whom there is no guile, pitying them and making them filled with justice. Believe, man, in Man and God! Believe, man, in the Suffered and Honored Living God! Believe, slaves, the Deceased One! Believe, all people, the only God of all people! Believe and you will receive salvation as a reward. Seek the Lord, and your soul will live. He who seeks Him cares about his own salvation: if you have found God, you have life. §CVII. Hymn to God - a righteous man So, let us seek in order to live. The price of discovery is life with God. Let all who seek You rejoice and be glad in You, and let them say continually: May the Lord be magnified. A beautiful hymn to God - an immortal man instructed in justice, in whose heart the sayings of truth are inscribed. For in what other place, if not in a prudent soul, should justice, love, shame and meekness be written down? It is necessary, I think, for those who have imprinted these divine writings on their souls to consider wisdom the best starting point for themselves, whatever their destiny in life, and recognize it as a calm haven of salvation. Thanks to her, children have good fathers who turned to the Father, parents have sons who have come to know the Son, wives have husbands who remember the Bridegroom, slaves have masters freed from the greatest slavery. §CVIII. About people more stupid than animals; about human and divine laws Animals are happier than people living in delusion. They, like you, are ignorant of the truth, but they do not pretend to know it, and they do not have a race of hypocrites. Fishes are not superstitious, birds are not idolaters; They marvel at heaven alone, since they cannot comprehend God without being worthy of reason. And you, who have made yourselves more stupid than dumb creatures, and have lived for so many years in godlessness, are not ashamed?! You were children, then youths, then young men, then men, but you were never kind people. At least be ashamed of old age, come to your senses and come to your senses at the end of your life; at least at the end of it, know God, so that the end of life becomes for you the beginning of salvation. You have grown old in superstition, but when you are young you will come to true worship of God: God will recognize you as His innocent children. Let the Athenian obey the laws of Solon, the Argive the laws of Phoroneus, and the Spartiate the laws of Lycurgus. If you consider yourself God’s, then heaven is your homeland, and God is the lawgiver. What kind of laws are these? - Do not kill, do not commit adultery, do not corrupt boys, do not steal, do not bear false witness, love the Lord your God. There is an addition to this - reasonable laws, holy sayings written in the hearts themselves: Love your neighbor as yourself; offer the other to the one who slaps you on the cheek and do not covet it, for with one desire you commit adultery. § CIX. About the tart taste of salvation Indeed, how much better is it for people from the very beginning not to want what they should not want than to get what they want? But you do not accept the tart taste of salvation. Just as we rejoice in sweet food, preferring it to others because of the pleasure received from eating it (although bitter, irritating feelings heal us and heal us, and the weak in the stomach are strengthened by unpleasant-tasting medicines), so habit delights and tickles. But it pushes us into the abyss, but the truth leads us to heaven. Stern at first, but kind nurse of young men; she is both a venerable gyneceus and a wise gerusia, not difficult to reach, not so that it cannot be comprehended, but located very close, living in three parts of our body: in the hands, lips and heart, as the wise Moses says. This is a true symbol of truth, the fulfillment of which requires thought, deed, and word. Do not be afraid that many deceptive fantasies will lead you away from wisdom: voluntarily leave the absurd custom, just as children, when they become adults, throw away their toys. § CX. About the Lord and His deeds With incomprehensible speed and favor, which are not difficult to obtain, the divine power, illuminating the earth, filled everything with the saving seed. After all, the Lord would not have accomplished such a great deed in such a short time without divine Providence, despised for His appearance, honored for His deeds, cleansing, delivering and merciful. The Divine Logos, whose divinity no one doubts, is equal to the Ruler of the universe, for He is His Son, and “the Word was with God” (John 1:1). There was not a moment from the beginning of the sermon when He did not inspire faith, He was not unrecognized when, donning the mask of a man and clad in flesh, He played in the saving drama of human nature. After all, He was a legitimate participant in the competition, laboring in this field together with His creation. Very soon becoming famous among all people, rising faster than the sun from the Father's will, he easily revealed God to us, taught us and showed us by this, coming to our aid, where He comes from and Who He is, the Herald of Peace, the Reconciler, our Savior, the life-giving Logos, the peace-giving Source, pouring out over the entire face of the earth, thanks to Whom the universe became, as they say, an ocean of good.