died in infancy without having laid in this life any foundation, good or bad, whereby any 1547 yeveaAoyeiv 1548 tv mpdc ti mw¢ Exel trv Woxrv. 1549 — mepittr). Sifanus must have had epi tt in his Cod.; “sed mentis circa aliquam rem actio.” 1550S. Johni. 4 On Infants' Early Deaths.
return according to his deserts may be given him?” To this we shall make answer, with our eye fixed upon the consequences of that which we have already laid down, that this happiness in the future, while it is in its essence a heritage of humanity, may at the same time be called in one sense a recompense; and we will make clear our meaning by the same instance as before. Let us suppose two persons suffering from an affection of the eyes; and that the one surrenders himself most diligently to the process of being cured, and undergoes all that Medicine can apply to him, however painful it may be; and that the other indulges without restraint in baths!°>!
and wine-drinking, and listens to no advice whatever of his doctor as to the healing of his eyes. Well, when we look to the end of each of these we say that each duly receives in requital the fruits of his choice, the one in deprivation of the light, the other in its enjoyment; by a misuse of the word we do actually call that which necessarily follows, a recompense. We may speak, then, in this way also as regards this question of the infants: we may say that the enjoyment of that future life does indeed belong of right to the human being, but that, seeing the plague of ignorance has seized almost all now living in the flesh, he who has purged himself of it by means of the necessary courses of treatment receives the due reward of his diligence, when he enters on the life that is truly natural; while he who refuses Virtue’s purgatives and renders that plague of ignorance, through the pleasures he has been entrapped by, difficult in his case to cure, gets himself into an unnatural state, and so is estranged from the truly natural life, and has no share in the existence which of right belongs to us and is congenial to us. Whereas the innocent babe has no such plague before its soul’s eyes obscuring» > its measure of light, and so it continues to exist in that natural life; it does not need the soundness which comes from purgation, because it never admitted the plague into its soul at all. Further, the present life appears to me to offer a sort of analogy to the future life we hope for, and to be intimately connected with it, thus; the tenderest in- fancy is suckled and reared with milk from the breast; then another sort of food appropriate to the subject of this fostering, and intimately adapted to his needs, succeeds, until at last he arrives at full growth. And so I think, in quantities continually adapted to it, in a sort of regular progress, the soul partakes of that truly natural life; according to its capacity and its power it receives a measure of the delights of the Blessed state; indeed we learn as much from Paul, who had a different sort of food for him who was already grown in virtue and for the imperfect “babe.” For to the last he says, “I have fed you with milk, and not with meat: for hitherto ye were not able to bear it!>*?.” But to those who have grown to the full measure of intellectual maturity he says, “But strong meat belongeth to those that are of full age, even those who by reason of use have their senses exercised...Now it is not right 1551 For an explanation of such a restriction, see Bingham, vol. viii. p. 109 (ed. 1720). 1552 emimpooBovons On Infants' Early Deaths.
to say that the man and the infant are in a similar state however free both may be from any contact of disease (for how can those who do not partake of exactly the same things be in an equal state of enjoyment?); on the contrary, though the absence of any affliction from disease may be predicated of both alike as long as both are out of the reach of its influence, yet, when we come to the matter of delights, there is no likeness in the enjoyment, though the percipients are in the same condition. For the man there is a natural delight in discussions, and in the management of affairs, and in the honourable discharge of the duties of an office, and in being distinguished for acts of help to the needy; in living, it may be, with a wife whom he loves, and ruling his household; and in all those amusements to be found in this life in the way of pastime, in musical pieces and theatrical spectacles, in the chase, in bathing, in gymnastics, in the mirth of banquets, and anything else of that sort. For the infant, on the contrary, there is a natural delight in its milk, and in its nurse’s arms, and in gentle rocking that induces and then sweetens its slumber. Any happiness beyond this the tenderness of its years naturally prevents it from feeling. In the same manner those who in their life here have nourished the forces of their souls by a course of virtue, and have, to use the Apostle’s words, had the “senses” of their minds “exercised,” will, if they are translated to that life beyond, which is out of the body, proportionately to the condition and the powers they have attained participate in that divine delight; they will have more or they will have less of its riches according to the capacity acquired. But the soul that has never felt the taste of virtue, while it may indeed remain perfectly free from the sufferings which flow from wickedness having never caught the disease of evil at all, does nevertheless in the first instance!>°° partake only so far in that life beyond (which consists, according to our previous definition, in the knowing and being in God) as this nursling can receive; until the time comes that it has thriven on the contemplation of the truly Existent as on a congenial diet, and, becoming capable of receiving more, takes at will more from that abundant supply of the truly Existent which is offered.
Having, then, all these considerations in our view, we hold that the soul of him who has reached every virtue in his course, and the soul of him whose portion of life has been simply nothing, are equally out of the reach of those sufferings which flow from wickedness. Nev- ertheless we do not conceive of the employment of their lives as on the same level at all. The one has heard those heavenly announcements, by which, in the words of the Prophet, “the glory of God is declared!>°®,” and, travelling through creation, has been led to the apprehen- sion of a Master of the creation; he has taken the true Wisdom for his teacher, that Wisdom which the spectacle of the Universe suggests; and when he observed the beauty of this ma- 1555 mapa trv mpwrny (i.e. dpa).
On Infants' Early Deaths.
terial sunlight he had grasped by analogy the beauty of the real sunlight!>°’; he saw in the solid firmness of this earth the unchangeableness of its Creator; when he perceived the im- mensity of the heavens he was led on the road towards the vast Infinity of that Power which encompasses the Universe; when he saw the rays of the sun reaching from such sublimities even to ourselves he began to believe, by the means of such phenomena, that the activities of the Divine Intelligence did not fail to descend from the heights of Deity even to each one of us; for if a single luminary can occupy everything alike that lies beneath it with the force of light, and, more than that, can, while lending itself to all who can use it, still remain self- centred and undissipated, how much more shall the Creator of that luminary become “all in all,” as the Apostle speaks, and come into each with such a measure of Himself as each subject of His influence can receive! Nay, look only at an ear of corn, at the germinating of some plant, at a ripe bunch of grapes, at the beauty of early autumn, whether in fruit or flower, at the grass springing unbidden, at the mountain reaching up with its summit to the height of the ether, at the springs on its slopes bursting from those swelling breasts, and running in rivers through the glens, at the sea receiving those streams from every direction and yet remaining within its limits, with waves edged by the stretches of beach and never stepping beyond those fixed boundaries of continent: look at these and such-like sights, and how can the eye of reason fail to find in them all that our education for Realities requires? Has a man who looks at such spectacles procured for himself only a slight power for the 1557 This mysticism of Gregory is an extension of Origen’s view that there are direct affinities or analogies between the visible and invisible world. Gregory here and elsewhere proposes to find in the facts of nature nothing less than analogies with the energies, and so with the essence, of the Deity. The marks stamped upon the Creation translate these energies into language intelligible to us: just as the energies in their turn translate the essence, as he insists on in his treatise against Eunomius. This world, in effect, exists only in order to manifest the Divine Being. But the human soul, of all that is created, is the special field where analogies to the Creator are to be sought, because we feel both by their energies alone; both the soul and God are hid from us, in their essence. “Since,” he says (De Hom Opif. c. xi.) “one of the attributes we contemplate in the Divine nature is in- comprehensibility of essence, it is clearly necessary that in this point ‘the image’ should be able to show its re- semblance to the Archetype. For if, while the Archetype transcends comprehension, the essence of ‘the image’ were comprehended, the contrary character of the attributes we behold in them would prove the defect of ‘the image’; but since the essence of our Mind eludes our knowledge, it has an exact resemblance to the Supreme essence, figuring as it does by its own unknowableness the incomprehensible Being.” Therefore, Gregory goes to the interior facts of our nature for the actual proof of theological doctrine. God is “spirit” because of the spirituality of the soul. The “generation” of the Son is proved by the Will emanating from the Reason. Gregory follows this line even more resolutely than Origen. He was the first Father who sought to explain the Trinity by the triple divisions of the soul which Platonism offered. Cf. his treatise De eo quod sit ad immutabilitatem, &c., On Infants' Early Deaths.
enjoyment of those delights beyond? Not to speak of the studies which sharpen the mind towards moral excellence, geometry, I mean, and astronomy, and the knowledge of the truth that the science of numbers gives, and every method that furnishes a proof of the unknown and a conviction of the known, and, before all these, the philosophy contained in the inspired Writings, which affords a complete purification to those who educate themselves thereby in the mysteries of God. But the man who has acquired the knowledge of none of these things and has not even been conducted by the material cosmos to the perception of the beauties above it, and passes through life with his mind in a kind of tender, unformed, and untrained state, he is not the man that is likely to be placed amongst the same surroundings as our argument has indicated that other man, before spoken of, to be placed; so that, in this view, it can no longer be maintained that, in the two supposed and completely opposite cases, the one who has taken no part in life is more blessed than the one who has taken a noble part in it. Certainly, in comparison with one who has lived all his life in sin, not only the innocent babe but even one who has never come into the world at all will be blessed. We learn as much too in the case of Judas, from the sentence pronounced upon him in the Gospels!°°®; namely, that when we think of such men, that which never existed is to be preferred to that which has existed in such sin. For, as to the latter, on account of the depth of the ingrained evil, the chastisement in the way of purgation will be extended into infin- ity? >? but as for what has never existed, how can any torment touch it?—However, not- withstanding that, the man who institutes a comparison between the infantine immature life and that of perfect virtue, must himself be pronounced immature for so judging of realities. Do you, then, in consequence of this, ask the reason why so and so, quite tender in age, is quietly taken away from amongst the living? Do you ask what the Divine wisdom contemplates in this? Well, if you are thinking of all those infants who are proofs of illicit connections, and so are made away with by their parents, you are not justified in calling to account, for such wickedness, that God Who will surely bring to judgment the unholy deeds done in this way. In the case, on the other hand, of any infant who, though his parents have nurtured him, and have with nursing and supplication spent earnest care upon him, never- theless does not continue in this world, but succumbs to a sickness even unto death, which is unmistakably the sole cause of it, we venture upon the following considerations. It is a 1560 that have come into existence, but also provides that some should be never mixed up at all in the sign of the perfection of God’s providence, that He not only heals maladies 1558S. Matt. xxvi. 24. 1559 gic Ametpov mapatetvetar. Such passages as these must be set against others in Gregory, such as the concluding part of the De Animd et Resurrectione,in arriving at an exact knowledge of his views about a Universal "ATOKATHOTAGIG On Infants' Early Deaths.
things which He has forbidden; it is reasonable, that is, to expect that He Who knows the future equally with the past should check the advance of an infant to complete maturity, in order that the evil may not be developed which His foreknowledge has detected in his future life, and in order that a lifetime granted to one whose evil dispositions will be lifelong may not become the actual material for his vice. We shall better explain what we are thinking of by an illustration.
Suppose a banquet of very varied abundance, prepared for a certain number of guests, and let the chair be taken by one of their number who is gifted to know accurately the pecu- liarities of constitution in each of them, and what food is best adapted to each temperament, what is harmful and unsuitable; in addition to this let him be entrusted with a sort of absolute authority over them, whether to allow as he pleases so and so to remain at the board or to expel so and so, and to take every precaution that each should address himself to the viands most suited to his constitution, so that the invalid should not kill himself by adding the fuel of what he was eating to his ailment, while the guest in robuster health should not make himself ill with things not good for him!°*! Be and fall into discomfort from over-feeding Suppose, amongst these, one of those inclined to drink is conducted out in the middle of the banquet or even at the very beginning of it; or let him remain to the very end, it all de- pending on the way that the president can secure that perfect order shall prevail, if possible, at the board throughout, and that the evil sights of surfeiting, tippling, and tipsiness shall be absent. It is just so, then, as when that individual is not very pleased at being torn away from all the savoury dainties and deprived of his favourite liquors, but is inclined to charge the president with want of justice and judgment, as having turned him away from the feast for envy, and not for any forethought for him; but if he were to catch a sight of those who were already beginning to misbehave themselves, from the long continuance of their drinking, in the way of vomitings and putting their heads on the table and unseemly talk, he would perhaps feel grateful to him for having removed him, before he got into such a condition, from a deep debauch. If our illustration > is understood, we can easily apply the rule which it contains to the question before us. What, then, was that question? Why does God, when fathers endeavour their utmost to preserve a successor to their line, often let the son and heir be snatched away in earliest infancy!? 642 To those who ask this, we shall reply with the illustration of the banquet; namely, that Life’s board is as it were crowded with a vast abundance and variety of dainties; and it must, please, be noticed that, true to the practice of gastronomy, all its dishes are not sweetened with the honey of enjoyment, 1561 Read with L. Sifanus, pn KataAAnAw tpogii. 1562 gic MANOwpiKNy andtav exnintwv. 1563 Oewpnua. 1564 Reading év t@ atéAet tijg NAiKtas.
On Infants' Early Deaths.
but in some cases an existence has a taste of some especially harsh mischances!°°° given to it: just as experts in the arts of catering desire how they may excite the appetites of the guests with sharp, or briny, or astringent dishes. Life, I say, is not in all its circumstances as sweet as honey; there are circumstances in it in which mere brine is the only relish, or into which an astringent, or vinegary, or sharp pungent flavour has so insinuated itself, that the rich sauce becomes very difficult to taste: the cups of Temptation, too, are filled with all sorts of beverages; some by the error of pride?
produce the vice of inflated vanity; others lure on those who drain them to some deed of rashness; whilst in other cases they excite a vomiting in which all the ill-gotten acquisitions of years are with shame surrendered!°°’, Therefore, to prevent one who has indulged in the carousals to an improper extent from lingering over so profusely furnished a table, he is early taken from the number of the banqueters, and thereby secures an escape out of those evils which unmeasured indulgence procures for gluttons. This is that achievement of a perfect Providence which I spoke of; namely, not only to heal evils that have been committed, but also to forestall them before they have been committed; and this, we suspect, is the cause of the deaths of new-born infants. He Who does all things upon a Plan withdraws the materials for evil in His love to the individual, and, to a character whose marks His Foreknowledge has read, grants no time to display by a pre-eminence in actual vice what it is when its propensity to evil gets free play. Often, too, the Arranger of this Feast of Life exposes by such-like dispensations the cunning device of the “constraining cause” of money-loving ”””, so that this vice comes to the light bared of all specious pretexts, and no longer obscured by any misleading screen!°©, For most declare that they give play’? v0 to their cravings for more, in order that they may make their offspring all the richer; but that their vice belongs to their nature, and is not caused by any external necessity, is proved by that inexcusable avarice which is observed in childless persons. Many who have no heir, nor any hope of one, for the great wealth which they have laboriously gained, rear a countless brood within themselves of wants instead of children, and they are left without a channel into which to convey this incurable disease, though they cannot find an excuse in any necessity for this failing! 71, But take the case of some who, during their 1565 Reading ovpntwydtwv (for ovpmopdtwv. Morell).
1567 = 1a tig aioxpas dnoticews TOV EMETOV dAveKivnoav 1568 — THV GEGOPLOMEVV Tis PAapyuptas aveyKnv.
1569 menAavnpevw 1571 ob €xovtes mod th avayKny Tig && 207 pwottas tavtns EMAVEVEYKWOL On Infants' Early Deaths.
sojourn in life, have been fierce and domineering in disposition, slaves to every kind of lust, passionate to madness, refraining from no act even of the most desperate wickedness, robbers and murderers, traitors to their country, and, more execrable still, patricides, mother-killers, child-murderers, mad after unnatural intercourse; suppose such characters grow old in this wickedness; how, some one may ask, does this harmonize with the result of our previous investigations? If that which is taken away before its time in order that it may not continu- ously glut itself, according to our illustration of the banquet, with Life’s indulgences, is providentially removed from that carouse, what is the special design in so and so, who is of that disposition, being allowed to continue his revels?”
to old age, steeping both himself and his boon companions in the noxious fumes of his debauchery? In fine, you will ask, wherefore does God in His Providence withdraw one from life before his character can be perfected in evil, and leave another to grow to be such a monster that it had been better for him if he had never been born? In answer to this we will give, to those who are inclined to receive it favourably, a reason such as follows: viz. that oftentimes the existence of those whose life has been a good one operates to the advantage of their offspring; and there are hundreds of passages testifying to this in the inspired Writings, which clearly teach us that the tender care shown by God to those who have deserved it is shared in by their successors, and that even to have been an obstruction, in the path to wickedness, to any one who is sure to live wickedly, is a good result!>’?, But seeing that our Reason in this matter has to grope in the dark, clearly no one can complain if its conjecturing leads our mind to a variety of conclusions. Well, then, not only one might pronounce that God, in kindness to the Founders of some Family, withdraws a member of it who is going to live a bad life from that bad life, but, even if there is no antecedent such as this in the case of some early deaths, it is not un- reasonable to conjecture that they would have plunged into a vicious life with a more desperate vehemence than any of those who have actually become notorious for their wickedness.
That nothing happens without God we know from many sources; and, reversely, that God’s dispensations have no element of chance and confusion in them every one will allow, who realizes that God is Reason, and Wisdom, and Perfect Goodness, and Truth, and could not admit of that which is not good and not consistent with His Truth’>”4, Whether, then, the early deaths of infants are to be attributed to the aforesaid causes, or whether there is some further cause of them beyond these, it befits us to acknowledge that these things happen for the best. I have another reason also to give which I have learnt from the wisdom of an Apostle; a reason, that is, why some of those who have been distinguished for their 1572 €umaporvet 1573 Ke@dAatov; lit. “a sum total:” cf. below, émi Kepadat& 251° ovvantéov, “we must summarize.” 1574 The text is in confusion here: but the Latin supplies: “Nothing reasonable fails in reason; nothing wise, in wisdom; neither virtue nor truth could admit of that which is not good,” &c.
On Infants' Early Deaths.
wickedness have been suffered to live on in their self-chosen course. Having expanded a thought of this kind at some length in his argument to the Romans!>”> , and having retorted upon himself with the counter-conclusion, which thence necessarily follows, that the sinner could no longer be justly blamed, if his sinning is a dispensation of God, and that he would not have existed at all, if it had been contrary to the wishes of Him Who has the world in His power, the Apostle meets this conclusion and solves this counter-plea by means of a still deeper view of things. He tells us that God, in rendering to every one his due, sometimes even grants a scope to wickedness for good in the end. Therefore He allowed the King of Egypt, for example, to be born and to grow up such as he was; the intention was that Israel, that great nation exceeding all calculation by numbers, might be instructed by his disaster. God’s omnipotence is to be recognized in every direction; it has strength to bless the de- serving; it is not inadequate to the punishment of wickedness!°”®; and so, as the complete removal of that peculiar people out of Egypt was necessary in order to prevent their receiving any infection from the sins of Egypt in a misguided way of living, therefore that God-defying and infamous Pharaoh rose and reached his maturity in the lifetime of the very people who were to be benefited, so that Israel might acquire a just knowledge of the two-fold energy of God, working as it did in either direction; the more beneficent they learnt in their own persons, the sterner by seeing it exercised upon those who were being scourged for their wickedness; for in His consummate wisdom God can mould even evil into co-operation with good. The artisan (if the Apostle’s argument may be confirmed by any words of ours)—the artisan who by his skill has to fashion iron to some instrument for daily use, has need not only of that which owing to its natural ductility lends itself to his art, but, be the iron never so hard, be it never so difficult to soften it in the fire, be it even impossible owing to its adamantine resistance to mould it into any useful implement, his art requires the co- operation even of this; he will use it for an anvil, upon which the soft workable iron may be beaten and formed into something useful. But some one will say, “It is not all who thus reap in this life the fruits of their wickedness, any more than all those whose lives have been vir- tuous profit while living by their virtuous endeavours; what then, I ask, is the advantage of their existence in the case of these who live to the end unpunished?” I will bring forward to meet this question of yours a reason which transcends all human arguments. Somewhere in his utterances the great David declares that some portion of the blessedness of the virtuous will consist in this; in contemplating side by side with their own felicity the perdition of the reprobate. He says, “The righteous shall rejoice when he seeth the vengeance; he shall wash his hands in the blood of the ungodly!°’””; not indeed as rejoicing over the torments of 1575 Rom. iii. 3-9; iv. 1, 2; ix. 14-24; xi, 22-36. 1576 This sentence is not in the Greek of the Paris Edition, and is not absolutely necessary to the sense.
On Infants' Early Deaths.