S. Eutychiani papae et martyris epistolae duae

OF SAINT

EUTYCHIAN, POPE AND MARTYR

LETTER AND DECREES OF DOUBTFUL AUTHENTICITY.

LETTER I.

TO JOHN AND TO ALL THE BISHOPS OF THE PROVINCE OF BAETICA.

On faith in the Incarnation of the Lord.

How Christ, the property of each nature being kept intact, was true God and true man.

To his dearest brethren John and all the bishops established throughout the province of Baetica, Eutychian, bishop, greeting in the Lord.

The fairness of the request urges us to assent gladly to the desire of your fraternity (Symmachus, Letter V, to St Caesarius), and to reply briefly to your inquiries.

And although I know your love to be devoted to every good work (St Leo, Letter XLVI), yet, that it may be more effective towards those who do not rightly understand, we direct how you ought to instruct them concerning the incarnation of our Saviour. This one, then, is the immovable foundation, this the one blessed rock of faith, confessed by the mouth of Peter: Thou art, he says, the Christ, the Son of the living God (Matt. 16:16), bearing in itself as many arguments of truth as there will be questions of perversity and calumnies of unbelief raised (St Leo, p. 97, from the books of St Hilary On the Trinity, which he cites). Now in the rest let there be the dispensation of the Father's will. Therefore the birth and the body, and after that the cross, the death of hell, is our salvation; for for the sake of the human race the Son of God was born of the Virgin and of the Holy Spirit, the very

serving Him in this operation, and, by His own power, that is, God's, overshadowing, He sowed for Himself the beginnings of a body and established the first beginnings of flesh, so that, made man of a virgin, He might receive into Himself the nature of flesh, through which, [by] the fellowship of this commingling, the body of the whole human race might exist sanctified in Him. And just as all were founded in Him through that by which He willed to be bodily, so in turn He would be referred back into all through that which is invisible in Him. The invisible image of God, therefore, did not refuse the shame of a human beginning, and passed through conception, birth, wailing and cradle, and all the indignities of our nature. What worthy return, then, shall be paid by us for the affection of so great a condescension? He, therefore, of an origin from God that cannot be told, the one only-begotten God, implanted in the womb of the holy Virgin, grows into the form of a human body: He Who contains all things, within Whom and through Whom all things are, is brought forth by the law of human birth. He at Whose voice archangels and angels tremble, and heaven and earth and all the elements of this world are dissolved, is heard in the wailing of infancy. He Who is invisible and incomprehensible, not to be measured by sight, sense or touch, is wrapped in a cradle. If anyone considers these things unworthy of God, he confesses himself bound by a benefit so much the greater, the less these things befitted the majesty of God. He through Whom man was made had no need to be made man; but we had need that God should become flesh and dwell in us, that is, that by the assumption of flesh the One should inhabit the inward parts of all flesh. His humility is our nobility; His indignity is our honour. What He, God, [was] subsisting in flesh, that we in turn [are], renewed from flesh into God. Plainly he does not know his own life who is ignorant of Christ Jesus as true man, just as of Him as true God. And it is a matter of the same peril not to believe Jesus Christ, or the Holy Spirit, to be God, or to deny the flesh of our body in Christ (The same St Leo, in the same place, from the same St Hilary). Therefore, He says, everyone who shall confess Me before men, I also will confess him before My Father, Who is in heaven; but whoever shall deny Me before men, I also will deny him before My Father, Who is in heaven (Matt. 10). These things the Word made flesh (John 1) spoke, and the man Jesus Christ, the Lord of majesty, taught, Himself constituted mediator in Himself for the salvation of the Church, and by that very mystery of the Mediator between God and men existing as one on both sides, while He Himself, from natures united into one and the same, is the same reality of each nature; yet in such a way that He should lack neither in either, lest perhaps by being born man He should cease to be God, and again, by remaining God, should not be man. This, therefore, is the true faith of human blessedness: to proclaim God and man, to confess Word and flesh; neither to be ignorant of God, that He is man, nor to be ignorant of the flesh, that it is the Word. The only-begotten God, therefore, born man of a virgin (The same, the same letter, from the same

St Hilary), and, according to the fullness of times, being about to be of profit in Himself unto God-man, He kept this manner of evangelical discourse throughout all things, that He taught that He was to be believed the Son of God, and proclaimed and admonished that He was the son of man, as man speaking and doing all the things that are God's, then as God speaking and doing all the things that are man's; yet in such a way that, in that very speech of both kinds, He never spoke except with the signification of man and of God. This, therefore, is for the heretics an occasion of deceiving the simple and ignorant, so that they falsely claim that the things said by Him according to man were said according to a weakness of the divine nature; and because He is one and the same, speaking all that He speaks about Himself, they contend that He spoke all things concerning the divinity. Nor indeed do we deny that all that speech which abides with Him is the speech of His own nature. But if Jesus Christ is both man and God, and neither, when He is man, is He then for the first time God, nor then, when He is both man and God, is He then not also God, nor after the man in God is He not whole man and whole God, it must be said that His mystery is one and the same as that of His kind. And when you distinguish in Him man from God according to time, then distinguish the speech of God and of man. And when you confess God and man in time, then judge the words of God and of man in time. But when He is of man and God, again you understand the time of the whole man and now of the whole God: since that was said for the demonstration of time, the things that were said being fitted to the time; so that, since it is one thing for God to be before man, another for Him to be man and God, another for Him after man and God to be whole man and whole God, you may not confuse the mystery of the dispensation by times and kinds, since according to the quality of the kinds and natures it is necessary that His speech, with the mystery of man, was one when not yet born, another when still about to die, another when eternal. For our sake, therefore, Jesus Christ, doing all these things, and born a man of our body, spoke according to the custom of our nature, yet not omitting to be of His own nature, that is, what God is. For although in birth and passion and death He carried through the business of our nature, yet He performed all those very things by the power of His own nature. Do you see that God and man are so proclaimed that death is ascribed to the man, but the raising of the flesh to God? Yet not so that He who died is one, and He through whom the dead man rises is another. For, the flesh being stripped off, Christ died; and again, raising Christ from the dead, the same is Christ, stripping Himself of the flesh. Understand the nature of God in the power of the resurrection; recognize the dispensation of man in death. And though both were done by their own natures, yet remember that He is one Christ Jesus, Who is both. These things

therefore had to be shown by us in a few [words], so that we might remember that the form of each nature is treated in our Lord Jesus Christ: because He who, remaining in the form of God, took up the form of a servant, by no means lost the divinity. For the rest, brethren, we exhort you to admonish them to turn to Him. Whence it is written: Son, do not delay to turn to the Lord, and do not put it off from day to day. For His wrath will come suddenly, and in the time of vengeance He will destroy you. Do not be anxious over unjust riches: they will profit you nothing in the day of overshadowing and of vengeance. Do not winnow yourself into every wind, and do not go in every way. For so the sinner is proved by a double tongue. Be steadfast in the way of the Lord, and in the truth of your understanding, and in knowledge: and let the word of peace and of justice accompany you. Be gentle in hearing the word of God, that you may understand: and with wisdom give an answer. If you have understanding, answer your neighbour: but if not, let your hand be upon your mouth, lest you be caught in an undisciplined word and be put to confusion. Honour and glory are in the speech of the sensible man: but the tongue of the imprudent is his overthrow. Do not be called a whisperer, and do not be caught by your tongue and be put to confusion. For upon the thief is confusion and repentance, and a most evil branding upon the double-tongued: but for the whisperer hatred, and enmity, and contumely. Justify the small and the great alike. Do not become an enemy to your neighbour instead of a friend. For the evil man shall inherit reproach and contumely, and so shall every sinner who is envious and double-tongued. Do not extol yourself in the thought of your soul like a bull, lest perhaps your strength be dashed down through folly: and it shall eat up your leaves, and destroy your fruits: and you shall be left like a dry tree in the desert. For a wicked soul destroys him who has it, and gives him over to the joy of the enemy, and leads him into the lot of the ungodly (Sir. 6). With such exhortations, brethren, admonish one another in turn, and always pursue good things, and shun evil ones. For with great zeal (Gelasius, Ep. 9) (according to the blessed Apostle) one must take care lest the faith and discipline of the Lord be blasphemed (1 Tim. 6). And if those things must sometimes be permitted which (provided the integrity of the rest is assured) cannot of themselves do harm: yet those things must be guarded against with great care which cannot be admitted without manifest discolouring. But if even those things which are believed may at times be allowed without any loss are excused either because regard for circumstances and times compels it, or by consideration of a hastened provision: how much more must those things in no way be mutilated which neither any necessity nor any ecclesiastical advantage at all extorts? Therefore, brethren, we have set these things forth, so that those kinds of produce which it is not lawful to offer upon the altar according to the constitution of the apostles and of their successors (Canons 3, 4, 5 of the Apostles, in the version of Dionysius Exiguus) may be brought to the house of the priests, and be blessed by the priests, and, having been blessed by a simple blessing, may at last be consumed by the people: beans only and grapes, and the other things which the apostles