THE TRUE EXCELLENCE OF MAN.
The most of men have a disposition unstable and heedless, like the
nature of storms. “Want of faith has done many good things, and
faith evil things.” And Epicharmus says, “Don’t forget to exercise
incredulity; for it is the sinews of the soul.” Now, to disbelieve
truth brings death, as to believe, life; and again, to believe the lie
and to disbelieve the truth hurries to destruction. The same is the
case with self-restraint and licentiousness. To restrain one’s self
from doing good is the work of vice; but to keep from wrong is the
beginning of salvation. So the Sabbath, by abstinence from evils, seems
to indicate self-restraint. And what, I ask, is it in which man differs
from beasts, and the angels of God, on the other hand, are wiser than
he? “Thou madest him a little lower than the angels.”[483] For some do
not interpret this scripture of the Lord, although He also bore flesh,
but of the perfect man and the gnostic, inferior in comparison with the
angels in time, and by reason of the vesture [of the body]. I call then
wisdom nothing but science, since life differs not from life. For to
live is common to the mortal nature, that is to man, with that to which
has been vouchsafed immortality; as also the faculty of contemplation
and of self-restraint, one of the two being more excellent. On this
ground Pythagoras seems to me to have said that God alone is wise,
since also the apostle writes in the Epistle to the Romans, “For the
obedience of the faith among all nations, being made known to the
only wise God through Jesus Christ;”[484] and that he himself was a
philosopher, on account of his friendship with God. Accordingly it is
said, “God talked with Moses as a friend with a friend.”[485] That,
then, which is true being clear to God, forthwith generates truth.
And the gnostic loves the truth. “Go,” it is said, “to the ant, thou
sluggard, and be the disciple of the bee;” thus speaks Solomon.[486]
For if there is one function belonging to the peculiar nature of each
creature, alike of the ox, and horse, and dog, what shall we say is the
peculiar function of man? He is like, it appears to me, the Centaur, a
Thessalian figment, compounded of a rational and irrational part, of
soul and body. Well, the body tills the ground, and hastes to it; but
the soul is raised to God: trained in the true philosophy, it speeds
to its kindred above, turning away from the lusts of the body, and
besides these, from toil and fear, although we have shown that patience
and fear belong to the good man. For if “by the law is the knowledge
of sin,”[487] as those allege who disparage the law, and “till the law
sin was in the world;”[488] yet “without the law sin was dead,”[489] we
oppose them. For when you take away the cause of fear, sin, you have
taken away fear; and much more, punishment, when you have taken away
that which gives rise to lust. “For the law is not made for the just
man,”[490] says the Scripture. Well, then, says Heraclitus, “They would
not have known the name of Justice if these things had not been.” And
Socrates says, “that the law was not made for the sake of the good.”
But the cavillers did not know even this, as the apostle says, “that
he who loveth his brother worketh not evil;” for this, “Thou shalt not
kill, thou shalt not commit adultery, thou shalt not steal; and if
there be any other commandment, it is comprehended in the word, Thou
shalt love thy neighbour as thyself.”[491] So also is it said, “Thou
shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and thou shalt love
thy neighbour as thyself.”[492] And “if he that loveth his neighbour
worketh no evil,” and if “every commandment is comprehended in this,
the loving our neighbour,” the commandments, by menacing with fear,
work love, not hatred. Wherefore the law is productive of the emotion
of fear. “So that the law is holy,” and in truth “spiritual,”[493]
according to the apostle. We must, then, as is fit, in investigating
the nature of the body and the essence of the soul, apprehend the
end of each, and not regard death as an evil. “For when ye were the
servants of sin,” says the apostle, “ye were free from righteousness.
What fruit had ye then in those things in which ye are now ashamed?
For the end of those things is death. But now, being made free from
sin, and become servants to God, ye have your fruit unto holiness,
and the end everlasting life. For the wages of sin is death: but the
gift of God is eternal life, through Jesus Christ our Lord.”[494] The
assertion, then, may be hazarded, that it has been shown that death
is the fellowship of the soul in a state of sin with the body; and
life the separation from sin. And many are the stakes and ditches of
lust which impede us, and the pits of wrath and anger which must be
overleaped, and all the machinations we must avoid of those who plot
against us,--who would no longer see the knowledge of God “through a
glass.”
“The half of virtue the far-seeing Zeus takes
From man, when he reduces him to a state of slavery.”
As slaves the Scripture views those “under sin” and “sold to sin,” the
lovers of pleasure and of the body; and beasts rather than men, “those
who have become like to cattle, female-mad horses, neighing after
their neighbours’ wives.”[495] The licentious is “the lustful ass,”
the covetous is the “savage wolf,” and the deceiver is “a serpent.”
The severance, therefore, of the soul from the body, made a life-long
study, produces in the philosopher gnostic alacrity, so that he is
easily able to bear natural death, which is the dissolution of the
chains which bind the soul to the body. “For the world is crucified to
me, and I to the world,” the [apostle] says; “and now I live, though in
the flesh, as having my conversation in heaven.”[496]