On Adoration and Worship in Spirit and Truth, Book 1

1Book 1. On how man turned aside into a cheap and low life, and on his captivity into sin, and together on the calling and the return that come by a change of mind, and the climb back toward what is better.

Cyril said: There is no need, I think, to ask where you are going, or from where you have come. You would say at once, I am quite sure, that you have come from home, and to us.

Palladius said: True.

Cyril: And this little book in your hands — what is it?

Palladius: A gospel book, the writing of Matthew and of John.

Cyril: And do you think it ought to be carried about anywhere, and to anyone? You would hardly go out rehearsing it in the streets, Palladius. The work spent on this is sweeter at home, and in study.

Palladius: You speak well. I have come to confer with you. And I bring the holy book; for after toiling over a vast amount I still cannot see what our Lord Jesus Christ means when he says, in Matthew, 'Do not think that I came to destroy the Law or the prophets. I did not come to destroy, but to fulfill. For amen I say to you, until heaven and earth pass away, one iota or one stroke shall by no means pass from the Law until all things have come to be.' (Matthew 5:17–18)

2Palladius went on from Matthew: '...one iota or one stroke shall by no means pass from the Law until all things have come to be.' (Matthew 5:18) And in the writing according to John, to the woman from Samaria: 'Believe me, woman, that an hour is coming when you will worship the Father neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem. You worship what you do not know; we worship what we know, because salvation is from the Jews. But an hour is coming, and now is, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth. For the Father also seeks such to worship him. God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit and in truth.' (John 4:21–24)

Cyril said: Then what in these things seems to you the steep place? What is the deep and hard to reach? Tell me, since I ask.

Palladius: A holy word commands us to leave the more ancient customs and to put an end to the righteousness that is in the Law. And Paul said to those who still desired that righteousness even after the faith: 'You have been severed from Christ, you who are being justified in the Law; you have fallen away from grace. For we by the Spirit, from faith, wait for the hope of righteousness.' (Galatians 5:4–5)

And of the way of life according to the Law, though he could show on himself bright and great boasts, he says again: 'Whatever was gain to me, these I have counted loss because of Christ. Indeed I count all things loss because of the surpassing knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ, for whom I suffered the loss of all things, and count them rubbish, that I may gain Christ and be found in him, not having my own righteousness, the one from the Law, but the one from faith in Christ, the righteousness from God.' (Philippians 3:7–9)

He also said plainly that the ancient commandment was not without fault. That is why, he says, the new one through Christ — that is, the gospel one — has been brought in for us, usefully, in its place. He writes: 'For there is a setting-aside of the foregoing commandment because of its weakness and uselessness. For the Law perfected nothing, but the bringing in of a better hope, through which we draw near to God.' (Hebrews 7:18–19)

And again: 'For if that first one had been faultless, no place would have been sought for a second.' (Hebrews 8:7)

For finding fault with them he says: 'Behold, days are coming, says the Lord, and I will complete upon the house of Israel and upon the house of Judah a new covenant, not according to the covenant which I made with their fathers on the day when I took them by the hand to lead them out of the land of Egypt, because they did not remain in my covenant, and I neglected them, says the Lord. Because this is the covenant which I will covenant with the house of Israel after those days, says the Lord, giving my laws into their mind, and on their heart I will write them.' And understanding and interpreting the name of newness with special care: 'In saying "new,"' he says, 'he has made the first old; and what is growing old and aging is near disappearance.' (Hebrews 8:8–10) (Jeremiah 31:31–33) (Hebrews 8:13)

If then the Law perfected nothing, and there has been a setting-aside of the ancient commandment and the bringing in of the second, which brings us near to God, what then does the Savior mean, 'I did not come to destroy the Law, but to fulfill'?

3Palladius went on: If then the Law perfected nothing, and the second commandment has been brought in, which brings us near to God, what then does the Savior mean, 'I did not come to destroy the Law, but to fulfill' (Matthew 5:17)? And that 'it is fitting that we worship God and Father in spirit and truth' (John 4:23–24)? For this, I think, shows that we must cease from the habits and the worship that are according to the Law.

Cyril said: How you have gone out into a wide sea of questions! For what mind would be enough to look brightly into thoughts so fine as to show us the new Scripture as sister and neighbor to what was of old decreed through Moses, who was wise in all things — going through the same things, and the life in Christ not far removed from the legal way of life, if the things marked out for the ancients are led to a spiritual contemplation? For the Law is type and shadow, and the shaping of piety is still as if in birth-pangs, and has the beauty of the truth hidden in itself. Or will you say it is not as I have said?

Palladius: Very much so. But what would the clarification of this be? Or what is the manner of living according to the Gospel and yet seeming still to cling to the ancient commandment, and thinking to fulfill the things through Moses?

Cyril: The account is not simple, as one might guess. Virtue is, I think, a thing both many-branched and many-formed; and the boasts of the life in Christ are varied for us through a very great deal of well-doing. And so divine David, in the forty-fourth psalm, sets beside Christ a pure virgin, the Church, as in the rank of a queen, and puts on her a robe woven with gold and embroidered, saying thus: 'The queen stood at your right hand, in clothing shot with gold, wrapped about and embroidered.' (Psalm 45:9) The gold, as I judge, marks well what is honorable and conspicuous, and the embroidered, the many kinds of virtue. For the Church is exceedingly fair, having the adornment of the mind, not seen with the eyes of the flesh, but into the mind within and the heart — the Jew understood in secret — showing him, with a fine grace, well-formed and choice through a very great many beauties. For as the blessed Paul writes: 'For he is not a Jew who is one in the open, nor is circumcision that which is in the open in the flesh, but he who is a Jew in secret, and circumcision of heart, in spirit not in letter, whose praise is not from men but from God.' (Romans 2:28–29)

Palladius: Tell me, then: when the circumcision in spirit has been brought in, and the sacrifices according to the Law have been overthrown, and that way of life has no place among us, does it not seem somehow unconvincing to say that Christ said, 'I did not come to destroy the Law, but to fulfill'? Or if it is not so, nothing, I think, would stop us from honoring the God of all with sacrifices of cattle and frankincense, bringing him turtledoves and pigeons, and being eager ourselves to fulfill whatever else was customary for the more ancient people.

4Cyril said: And yet, my friend, you are carried a long way from what is fitting. For you think the Law has been overthrown, as if we had no profit from what is his, and as if it were wholly useless for showing anything of the things we need — not rather that it has been turned toward a showing of the truth, though the blessed Paul writes: 'Do we then abolish the Law through faith? By no means! Rather we establish the Law.' (Romans 3:31) For the Law tutors, and carries us well toward the mystery that is in Christ (Galatians 3:24). And we say that the things of old decreed through Moses to the more ancient people are the first elements of the oracles of God (Hebrews 5:12). And if we push aside the tutor, who will still convey us to the mystery of Christ? And if we refuse to learn the first elements of the oracles of God, how, or from where, shall we still arrive at the end? Or is Christ not, according to the Scriptures, the fullness of Law and prophets?

Palladius: Yes.

Cyril: For it is written so. And the fullness of Law and prophets would be this: that every prophetic and legal decree looks, I think, and is turned toward him. That is why, putting the Jews' unbelief to shame, he said: 'Do not think that I will accuse you to the Father; there is one who accuses you, Moses, in whom you have hoped. For if you believed Moses, you would have believed me; for he wrote about me. But if you do not believe his writings, how will you believe my words?' (John 5:45–47) If then he should say he has come not at all to destroy the Law, but rather to bring it to its end (Matthew 5:17), do not think he has worked a total overturning of what was decreed of old; rather a kind of remaking, and, so to speak, a recutting of the things in types toward the true.

Palladius: You have spoken rightly.

Cyril: And this is the sort of thing that had to be done by Christ. Those who have practiced the skill in panels and paintings do not, as soon as they begin to paint, bring upon the pictures the form that lacks nothing and is finished in every part. First they sketch well in a form and in a less beautiful color, and they show beforehand the types of whatever they may have chosen, still rather dim; then, laying over the shadows the shape that is fitting and most suitable to each, they transfer the types into the form that is manifest, and incomparably better than what was at the start. Or is it not so?

Palladius: I say so.

Cyril: And those who practice the bronze-worker's craft, if they should wish to cast a statue, first bring it in wax into a weak form; then, melting it with fire, they pour on the bronze, and so they bring the thing being crafted to a form that is complete and to a beauty that is very fine. And when the many kinds of colors have been thrown upon the shadows, and the bronze also has melted the things of wax, the first shapes, the ones at the beginning, might seem for a little to have been set aside and overthrown. But the thing is not so by nature.

5Cyril went on: And when the many kinds of colors have been thrown upon the shadows, and the bronze also has melted the things of wax, the first shapes, the ones at the beginning, might seem for a little to have been set aside and overthrown. But the thing is not so by nature. For bronze-worker and painter, if they told the truth, would say: We have not destroyed the shadows; we have not sent the types into utter uselessness; we have rather fulfilled them (Matthew 5:17). For what could still be seen more dimly and less beautifully, as in shadows and types, this has gone forward toward what is better and more manifest.

Palladius said: You speak well.

Cyril: And if anyone should choose to search the holy and God-breathed Scripture truly, he will know that what I say is wholly true. For Moses used to put a veil on his own face (Exodus 34:33–35), because the sons of Israel could not gaze into his face, according to what is written.

Palladius: And what does this hint?

Cyril: For minds of the Jews that were still rather dull, the outward things of the Law were somehow bearable — I mean again the things through the letter alone — but the things hidden inside were wholly unbearable and not to be approached, and, so to speak, the true face of the meanings. That is why divine Paul also writes to us: 'For until this day the same veil remains on the reading of the Old Covenant, not being unveiled, because it is abolished in Christ. But to this day, whenever Moses is read, a veil lies on their heart.' (2 Corinthians 3:14–15) But let the things of the Jews stand here. 'And we all,' he says, 'with unveiled face, mirroring the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from glory to glory, as from the Lord, the Spirit; and the Lord is the Spirit.' (2 Corinthians 3:18) (2 Corinthians 3:17) For just as those who look in a mirror would gaze at an image and type of the true, and not at the true itself, in the same way, I think, those who desire to see the beauty of the life in Christ would succeed at the thing longed for in the best way by using the Law as a mirror. For remaking the same image of the things into truth, they will know purely what seems most of all good and well-pleasing to God.

Palladius: Then what would be the reason that the new gospel word was not given to the people of old at the start, and types and shadows were legislated instead?

Cyril: The exact account of God's plan, and how these things would stand, in what is truer, must be referred piously to God who knows all. But reasonings that do not know how to go without good thoughts do carry us somehow, at least to a moderate knowledge, or perhaps even to seeming to know the occasion of the plan. We say, then, that those redeemed from Egypt needed much tutoring, and a kind of upbringing suited to infants. For they were still dull of mind, and very easily carried toward anything most shameful.

6Cyril went on: And for those sick with a love of flesh that is wholly hard to wash off, and caught in passions hard to escape, it was still somehow out of reach, and not ready to hand, to be able to spring up at once toward what is exceedingly fine, so as to take up a manner of life perhaps so bright and beyond nature as to walk on the earth and have their citizenship in heaven (Philippians 3:20), according to what is written. For is not solid food for the mature, and milk the more fitting thing for those still infants (Hebrews 5:12–14)?

Palladius said: Very much so.

Cyril: So then those still infants needed the tutoring that is in types, and, so to speak, a more tender upbringing, not the word that orders toward perfection and is able to carry them to what is complete. And the people from Israel would be found so light and small-minded, and easy toward any of the passions, that if there had been in them an exact testing of habits and attempts, they would not, I think, even have been counted worthy of a shadow. And Moses has shown this. For when God commanded, he himself sprang up the mountain to receive the Law. But they at once slipped down into apostasy. For they have made a calf, and the wretches have dared to say: 'These are your gods, Israel, who brought you up from the land of Egypt.' (Exodus 32:1–4) So at such terrible lightness Moses was distressed, and he broke the tablets on which the Law was (Exodus 32:19), thinking those whose mind was so struck as to forget the wonders worked for them by the divine power, and to assign worship again to a calf, and to come to a remembrance of the worship in Egypt, were not worthy even of a shadow or of types, or of any tutoring from above at all. But then the Law was sketched for the more ancient people on stone tablets by the finger of God (Exodus 31:18), as it is written. And those things were a type of what we believe has come to be in us in Christ. For the Master God of all writes, as it were, in us the knowledge of his own will, using the Son in the Spirit as a pen. For he named him so through David, saying: 'My tongue is a pen of a swift-writing scribe.' (Psalm 45:1) For the Father's pen — that is, the Son — engraved on the hearts of all the knowledge of every good, using the Spirit of the Father and his own as a kind of finger of God. For he named the Spirit the finger of God, saying at one time, 'But if I by the Spirit of God cast out the demons,' (Matthew 12:28) and at another, 'But if I by the finger of God cast out the demons.' (Luke 11:20) And Paul also called us the spiritual letter, saying: 'You are our letter, written in our hearts, known and read by all men, being manifested that you are a letter of God ministered by us, written not with ink but with the Spirit of the living God, not on stone tablets but on tablets of hearts of flesh.' (2 Corinthians 3:2–3)

Palladius: But that the things according to the Law are types and shadows, I too would say, know it well. Come then, putting a fine and exact mind to what was spoken in type, let us search very well the beauty of the truth. For so at last the mystery of the worship in spirit would be clear to no one of those who are.

7Palladius went on: Come then, putting a fine and exact mind to what was spoken in type, let us search very well the beauty of the truth. For so at last the mystery of the worship in spirit would be clear to no one of those who are.

Cyril said: And yet, noble friend, I have shuddered at this greatly, and with reason, and I am very reluctant toward it. For I think the things that have obtained a contemplation so removed and stretched high would be ungraspable for those of our time. And I think a man looking into the depth of the thoughts in the Law must say: 'Who is wise and will understand these things? And understanding, and will know them?' (Hosea 14:9)

Palladius: The thing is not without roughness, my good man. Yet 'Ask,' says Christ, 'and it will be given you; seek and you will find; knock and it will be opened to you.' (Matthew 7:7)

Cyril: We must go on, then, to the need of hunting what makes for profit; and let us also stretch out a petition beforehand, saying: 'Uncover my eyes, and I will perceive your wonders from your Law.' (Psalm 119:18) And we must, as it seems, speak before the rest both of how man turned aside into a cheap and low life, and about slavery, and the captivity under the enemy of all, and how and in what manner these things are worked by us and in us. And then, next, also in what manner we must turn away from the evil, and shake off the yoke of the slavery to it, and spring up again toward what was at the beginning, God saving and helping. For if the word goes for us on this fitting road, the rest also would, I think, belong.

Palladius: You think most rightly.

Cyril: For being able to bear fruit to God and to bring spiritual sacrifices, or to take heart and to be well thought of, when we wish to accomplish virtue, would not, I suppose, be fitting for those still so bound in slavery and in the necessity of passions, but for those whose mind is already somehow sobering toward the free, and who have not left unpracticed the shaking-off of the yoke of the devil's greed.

Palladius: I agree, for you think rightly.

Cyril: Come then, let us say that man was made at the beginning with his mind still somehow above sin and passions, yet not wholly incapable of the turning aside toward whatever he might choose. For it seemed right to God, the best craftsman of all, to fasten to him the reins of his own wishes, and to assign him to do what seemed good by self-commanded impulses. For virtue had to be seen as of choice, and not as from necessity, and not as set unfailingly on laws of nature; for that would be proper to the highest of all beings and to the supremacy. And when the living being had been finished according to the reasons of its own nature, God crafting it, it was at once rich in the likeness toward him. For the image of the divine nature was engraved on it, when the Holy Spirit had been breathed in. For that is the breath of life, since God is life by nature (Genesis 1:26–27) (Genesis 2:7).

8Cyril went on: For that is the breath of life, since God is life by nature (Genesis 2:7).

Palladius said: Did the divine Spirit then become soul for the man?

Cyril: And how is it not wholly absurd to think this way? For the soul would itself also have remained unchangeable; but as it is, it is changeable. And the Spirit is not changeable at all. Or if it suffers change, will the blame run up upon the divine nature itself — if the Spirit is of God and Father, and also of the Son, the one essentially from both, or rather from the Father through the Son, poured out? It is ignorant, then, to think the Spirit has been recast into a soul and has passed over into a man's nature. But what was molded was ensouled by an unspeakable power; and it was at once made beautiful by the gift of the Spirit. For there was no other way for us to be rich in the divine image.

Palladius: You speak well.

Cyril: So then, having adorned the craft-work, God granted the dwelling in paradise (Genesis 2:8–15). And since the one so made splendid, and crowned with the plenty of the goods from above, had to be kept from being easily carried toward arrogance, not knowing the slavery, and that there is a measure of things proper to servants (for what is too wide toward glory, and freedom without measure, carries toward the proud and accursed passion), a law of self-control was given him (Genesis 2:16–17) as an occasion of not being ignorant of the Master, so that through it he might always be called to a remembrance of the one who had commanded with authority, and might know clearly that he is yoked under the statutes of the one who rules. But that unholy and God-hated beast was not still.

Palladius: You would mean, I think, Satan, who was hurled down from the heavenly vaults like lightning (Luke 10:18); for it seemed to him, in a boyish sickness, to wish to be God, and he imagined things beyond his own nature.

Cyril: You guess well. For being inventor and father of envy and of sin (John 8:44), he did not wish to be idle about the living being on earth, that is, the man. Then, coming under him by craft and deceits, he carried him aside into disobedience, using the woman as an instrument of villainy (Genesis 3:1–6). For the pleasures with us and in us always somehow shake us toward what is not fair, that is, into sin; and the woman is a type of pleasure; and the mind is often run down by the flatteries from pleasures toward what it did not wish. What then is seen to have happened in Adam as in a narrative of events and perceptibly, this one may see fulfilled in each of us also, in the mind and hiddenly. For pleasure, rising beforehand, bewitches the mind, and little by little draws it under toward thinking at last that a transgression of the divine law is nothing at all (James 1:14–15). And the disciple of Christ will confirm it.

9Cyril went on: And the disciple of Christ will confirm it, saying: 'Let no one being tempted say, I am tempted from God. For God is untempted of evils, and he himself tempts no one. But each is tempted, being drawn out and baited by his own desire. Then desire, having conceived, bears sin; and sin, when it is finished, gives birth to death.' (James 1:13–15)

Palladius said: The word is exact.

Cyril: So then, having sold away the grace from God, and already stripped of the goods that were at the beginning, human nature was sent out of the paradise of delight (Genesis 3:23–24), and was at once remade toward what is not fair, and having fallen inside corruption was thereafter shown to be so.

Palladius: Necessarily. For want of the gifts from God is nothing else, I think, than a falling-away from every good. And man's nature would very easily sicken into a carrying-aside toward anything out of place, if the grace of the one who saves did not hold it up toward virtue, enriching it with the goods from above and from herself.

Cyril: You speak well. For I would agree, and with much reason; for the living bread, that is, the Word of God, feeds toward the spiritual strength (John 6:51). For it is written that 'and bread strengthens a man's heart.' (Psalm 104:15) And it sets free from slavery and from passions, and gilds well with the boasts that belong to freedom. But when God has as it were drawn in his hand, and does not distribute to us the supply in these things, there is every necessity that we fall into evils we did not wish, and slip away from all virtue, and come as it were under another's yoke, and come to such evils and greed as to be near at last even to losing the understanding that serves us toward any of the goods and is housed with us, and for the heart of the one who has suffered to be shown wholly empty of the wisdom according to God, as if it had gone whoring to Satan, and had been easily carried down into the insolences and wantonnesses under him.

Palladius: Would you show how, or will you leave me floating on bare reasonings?

Cyril: Not at all. For I would show as well as I can the things that happened to the ancients, shaping them with skill into a type of the things of the mind. For the things in sense and in a telling sight would become for us clear and most evident images of the things in a fine contemplation. It is written, then, about the forefather Abraham: 'And there was a famine on the land, and Abraham went down into Egypt to sojourn there, because the famine prevailed on the land.' (Genesis 12:10) For leaving the land dear to him and that had borne him, he shifted toward another, which God had shown. For 'Go out,' he says, 'from your land and from your kindred, and come into a land which I will show you.' (Genesis 12:1) But when the famine was weighing down, and bringing a loss wholly hard to escape, he was forced, and not willingly, to see Egypt. And he did not settle, but rather sojourned in it.

Palladius: What then is this?

10Cyril said: It shapes for us a very fine contemplation of the things less apparent.

Palladius said: In what manner?

Cyril: Rebuking the Jews' unbelief, God said somewhere: 'Behold, I bring a famine on the land, not a famine of bread, nor a thirst of water, but a famine of hearing the word of the Lord. And they will run from east to west seeking the word of the Lord, and they shall not find it.' (Amos 8:11–12) Would not then, my friend, those pressed by such a famine, and fallen out of the supply that holds them toward virtue, and not having the foods from heaven and from above, of every necessity make the mind as it were a migrant and a fugitive, chasing thereafter after the more shameful things, and, as if pushed out of a land of its own — the strength toward virtue — go down into another habit and will, no longer the one under God, but rather one laid under the devil's rule? For the father, I think, and king of sin is the first who brought it into the world, whose image and type one might also receive, I think, and with much reason, as Pharaoh, ruling the Egyptians. Among whom the darkness of having wandered was very deep, and no manner of vice was wholly unpracticed.

Palladius: And what was it that pained blessed Abraham from having come, perhaps, into the Egyptians' land?

Cyril: A very great deal. For he was carried a little beyond every evil. And you may learn this easily too, when the holy Writing speaks: 'And it came to pass when Abraham entered into Egypt, the Egyptians saw the woman, that she was very beautiful, and the rulers of Pharaoh saw her, and they praised her to Pharaoh, and they led her into Pharaoh's house.' (Genesis 12:14–15) See then that the woman almost perished for him, my good man.

Palladius: How sharp the thing is, and enough to grieve.

Cyril: And this will happen about us ourselves, in the mind. For those who might slip away from a fatherland, as it were, of their own — the accustomed and most dear good order and virtue — and come toward the worse, and come under the devil's rule, the evil and opposing powers grow upon them and plot terribly in every way and wholly; and if they should see one of those who have come under them able to have an understanding still fair, they are eager to procure him for their own leader, and they carry him under that one's sowings, so that he may no longer bear fruit to God, but rather to Satan. 'For his foods,' according to what is written, 'are choice' (Habakkuk 1:16); and they soothe, as it were, the mind that has been caught and has slipped, so that, not looking much toward the free, it may not leave the bondage under them. They sometimes procure the pleasures in earthly things, and as it were enrich them with delights toward nothing, just as, of course, the rulers of the Egyptians, when blessed Abraham was losing the woman who lived with him, fawning as it were with honors and with offerings of gifts, wished to carry him far from grieving too much.

11Cyril went on: Just as the rulers of the Egyptians, when blessed Abraham was losing the woman who lived with him, fawning as it were with honors and with offerings of gifts, wished to carry him far from grieving too much. For it is written that 'And they used Abraham well because of her' (Genesis 12:16) — clearly Sarah — 'and there came to be for him sheep and calves and donkeys and servants and maidservants and mules and camels.' For Satan, defrauding us in the things that matter most, and as it were stripping us of free offspring and good fruit, and carrying the well-born mind under his own insolences and wantonnesses out of greed, binds it down with the delight of earthly things. And he has at times driven his madness to this, as to let the trial down even upon Christ himself. 'For leading him up,' it says, 'he showed him all the kingdoms of the inhabited world in a moment of time, and the devil said to him: I will give you this authority, all of it, and their glory, because they have been handed over to me, and I give them to whomever I wish. You then, if you worship before me, it will all be yours.' (Luke 4:5–7)

Palladius said: It stands rightly. Yet tell me, since I ask: what would be the profit for those who have suffered, or the help?

Cyril: God, noble friend, and the grace from him, which does not allow the weakened mind to be under the devil's feet to the end, but shields and takes out the one who can help himself in nothing. And you may see, if you wish, this also having happened in the case of the forefather Abraham. For when the righteous man had given up, and was able to do nothing at all, God came in the middle, and set the woman free from the Egyptians' wantonness. 'For the Lord tested Pharaoh with great and evil testings, and his house, concerning Sarah, Abraham's wife.' (Genesis 12:17) And so he barely let go the one who lived with the righteous man, free of insolence. God alone, then, would take the mind that has been caught out of the devil's hand, and would turn it back into the good order that was at the beginning.

Palladius: So then, pushed down by want of the goods from above, we sometimes go down toward the shameful and abominable.

Cyril: So I say.

Palladius: But it is surely in every way fitting for the God who loves the good, not to let us fall into any of such things.

Cyril: This is most of all fitting for God, and willed, my good man; for he would be least good, and not much a lover of virtue, if he did not have this aim toward us. But we ourselves are causes of the suffering to ourselves, whetting the Master of all into angers; for so he lets a man go toward a weak and cowardly mind. Or do you not hear him crying through one of the holy prophets: 'Behold, I give weakness upon this people, and they shall be weak in it, fathers and sons; neighbor and his neighbor shall perish' (Jeremiah 6:21)? And the most wise Paul also writes about some: 'And as they did not approve to have God in knowledge, God gave them over to a reprobate mind, to do the things that are not fitting.' (Romans 1:28) And more clearly the divine Isaiah sets it down.

12Cyril went on: And more clearly the divine Isaiah sets it down, saying, as from the person of the sons of Israel, or of those who have slipped into sins: 'Behold, you were angry, and we sinned.' (Isaiah 64:5)

Palladius said: Tell me, then: when we grow slack about what is fitting and are caught by sins, shall we throw the cause upon God, and accuse him of the anger, as if we had sinned because of this?

Cyril: We will not bring a charge — for that is madness — but when we say, 'You were angry, and we sinned,' we mean something like this: that if we do not have your goodwill, Master, there is nothing to keep us from being tyrannized by sin, because of the weakness of our nature, and from being liable thereafter to every evil.

Palladius: I understand what you say.

Cyril: So then, stripped of the care from above and of the sparing, and paying the penalties of extreme fading and of the unchecked turnings-aside toward what is cheap, we are shown weak and easy to catch, and sick with everything of that kind. And you may look at these things brightly, if you meet Jeremiah's words. For the wild crowd of the Jews, though they were reveling very richly and going wide in the honors from God, and had already mastered all their enemies, and had driven on perhaps to the very highest of glory among men, practiced a hard and unbroken unbelief. And having all but said farewell to the commandments through Moses, and counting what was decreed worth little account at all, they were carried by unhindered impulses into ruin and destruction. For under an oak, and a white poplar, and a shading tree, according to the prophet's voice, they built altars (Hosea 4:13), and in the groves densest with trees, having fixed precincts for the demons, they thought it right to honor them with sacrifices of cattle and frankincense and all the rest, not blushing to call the things crafted by their own hands gods and saviors and everything of that kind. And they came at times to this folly, as thereafter to make unholy child-slaughters a matter of boasts, and to think they were kindling in this way a very rich sacrifice for them. And the things of impiety were not practiced by those from Israel only up to this. Always bringing as it were an addition to the daring deeds, the unbridled departure toward anything out of place, they provoked him not moderately to angers against themselves, though the lawgiver is kind. And when they shook off the slavery to him in a youthful way, he thereafter let them also be defrauded even by enemies, and be carried already toward a necessary bondage, I mean the one under Chaldeans and Babylonians. For these came, leaving their own homes, enslaved them, and burned the holy and famous city, and it seemed the people being warred on barely asked the prophet Jeremiah where the evil would end for them (2 Kings 25:8–10).

13Cyril went on: And it seemed the people being warred on barely asked the prophet Jeremiah where the evil would end for them. 'And Jeremiah said,' it says: 'Thus you shall say to Zedekiah: Thus says the Lord: Behold, I turn back the war-weapons with which you are fighting in them against the Chaldeans who have shut you up outside the wall, into the middle of this city. And I will war on you with a hand stretched out and with a strong arm, with fury and great anger. And I will strike all who live in this city, the men and the cattle, with a great death, and they shall die.' (Jeremiah 21:3–6) Then after other things: 'And to this people,' he says, 'you shall say, Thus says the Lord: Behold, I have given before your face the way of life and the way of death. He who sits in this city shall die by sword and by famine, and he who goes out to go over to the Chaldeans who have shut you up shall live. And his soul shall be for spoils, and he shall live. Because I have set my face on this city for evils and not for goods, and it shall be given into the hands of the king of Babylon, and he shall burn it with fire.' (Jeremiah 21:8–10) You understand, then, that when we grieve God by the honors given once for all, we wretches will not be able to stand against the strengths of the enemies, and when the divine anger is as it were lying on us and leaping down on us, we shall be slaves instead of free, and we shall live an inglorious and pitiable life.

Palladius said: You speak well.

Cyril: For the law of God carries the tender and well-governed man toward a blameless way of life, and becomes as it were a lamp for each toward the showing of what is useful and needed, and one who is overcome by reverence toward it would live, I think, not without wonder, and would inhabit as it were a holy city — what is set firm toward virtue and has come to stand in piety. But if someone should choose, as if into a thicket and a wood fair with flowers and good timber, to rush readily into the worldly pleasures, and to linger in the delights according to this life, and as it were to receive into mind and heart a swarm of idols — the many-formed pleasure — and to burn to the demons the fruits of his own eagerness, then, then, and with much reason, he would slip away from the sparing from above, and would lie a very ready hunt for those who wish to take him. And being pushed out, as from a holy city, of the good order that was at the beginning, he will thereafter go, as from a necessary yoke, toward what seems good to those who rule, and he will be far from God, at least in the manner of disposition, undergoing the migration into Babylon, that is, the things beyond the bounds of a holy land, in which God is known, and his name is great (Psalm 76:1). That is why those who undergo so hard a labor, and have fallen into enemies' hands, and cannot bear the way of life with them as slavish and servile, have cried out: 'By the rivers of Babylon, there we sat and wept, when we remembered Zion.' (Psalm 137:1) For the human mind, I think, is sick with something of this kind.

Palladius: What do you mean?

14Cyril said: For it is always somehow slack and fallen back toward desire of the goods in hand, and it does not much long for the things of which it would have the power. But if there should be a calling-over to the other side, and it is allowed to be overcome in the bright things it would have, then at last it barely perceives, after suffering, what it ought to have beaten off with every strength, and not to have let the assault come through trial, cutting it off beforehand.

Palladius said: True.

Cyril: It is needed, then, and wise, and of the things most profitable of all, to cut off well beforehand the wretched things and the assault of unwanted bondage, and to try to turn away swiftly from the things which, if we should come to a trial of them, we shall lie in every evil.

Palladius: It is so.

Cyril: And if the yoke of necessary slavery should be brought upon us from divine anger, and also the need to come down into a reprobate mind (Romans 1:28), it is not easy to stand against it. But I would say it is useful, at least, only to keep remembering from what things into what we have been turned, and to lament bitterly the overlooking, and the scarcity of the help from above; 'for the grief according to God works a repentance unto salvation not to be regretted.' (2 Corinthians 7:10) And when divine anger is not hung over us, but it is possible, in our power, to choose and to do what seems good, and to possess still somehow loose and wholly unforced the swing both ways — I mean the one toward what is cheap and the one toward the good — we must refuse with a firm heart the softness as in a cheap and low life, and I think we must love to shake off the pleasures at the enemies' hands, and the doing of things under enemies' power, who are said to rule this age. And even if something should come near that is not without worldly good days — I mean the good days honored in the world — it turns in every way to a shameful and ugly end.

Palladius: How have you said?

Cyril: Do you wish us to speak, taking from ancient examples?

Palladius: Very much so.

Cyril: When a famine was wasting those throughout almost the whole land, those from Jacob thought it good to come to the Egyptians; and they were young men, some ten in number, and the aim of the journey abroad was to buy foods (Genesis 42:1–3), and there was nothing else. And when they had come to this and were at last recognized as brothers, Joseph then giving grain and ruling the Egyptians, Pharaoh received what had been done toward them, 'And Pharaoh said,' it says, 'to Joseph: Say to your brothers: Do this: Fill your wagons, and go away into the land of Canaan, and taking your father and your belongings, come to me, and I will give you of all the goods of Egypt, and you shall eat the marrow of the land. And you, command these things, that they take wagons from the land of Egypt for your children and your wives, and taking your father, come, and do not spare with your eyes your vessels; for all the goods of Egypt shall be yours.' (Genesis 45:17–19)

15Cyril went on: '...and taking your father, come, and do not spare with your eyes your vessels; for all the goods of Egypt shall be yours.' (Genesis 45:20) So the ruler of the Egyptians promised them rest, and to fatten them well with luxury, and he even granted wagons, smoothing, I think, the descent for those who hesitated. But they went down at once with their whole house, having somehow preferred the temporary enjoyment of food to land and country given by God; for it was far better and finer, I suppose, to inhabit that, even if the thing was accomplished with a little labor. And when they had come into Egypt, they thought perhaps they had also escaped thereafter the labors at home, to whom the sense of the delights at hand was somehow sweet. But as time crept on, the crowd noble and free from above and from the fathers runs under the inglorious yoke of slavery (Exodus 1:8–14). So if falling into the more shameful things should come with worldly good days, it must be refused, my good man, if freedom is of any account with us, and the slavish thing and mind is abominable and hated.

Palladius said: You have spoken best.

Cyril: And what? Do we not also say that other thing, which, as it seems to me, is in no moderate labor together with what we have just said, toward profit?

Palladius: What do you mean?

Cyril: Rabshakeh the Babylonian, general of the Assyrians, once dragged a crowd of spear-bearers beyond number, and came to besiege, or rather, having supposed that he would take the holy city from the foundations with very little toil. Then, before the weapons, he put forward the unpracticed — no, the very customary — sickness of the tongue against God. And saying a thousand things of ill omen, he called out at last to those who lived in the holy city: 'Thus says the king of the Assyrians: If you wish to be blessed, come over to me, and each of you shall eat his vine and his fig-trees, and you shall drink water of your cistern, until I come and take you into a land like your land, a land of grain and wine and breads and vineyards.' (2 Kings 18:31–32) (Isaiah 36:16–17) See then that he too promises the luxury and delight upon vine and fig, and he added that 'And you shall drink water of your cistern.' (2 Kings 18:31–32)

Palladius: But what would these things wish to show, if they were led to a spiritual contemplation?

Cyril: In a double manner, I think, the power of what is cheap is brought to its end in us. For either by the pleasures from outside, or by those inborn and in us, being persuaded by ourselves and also by others to revel, those easy toward sin would be caught, having slipped toward anything most shameful. And the Savior's disciple would also show us that this is true, saying in this way, 'that all that is in the world, the desire of the flesh, and the desire of the eyes, and the pride of life.' (1 John 2:16)

16Cyril went on: And the Savior's disciple would also show us that this is true, saying in this way, 'that all that is in the world, the desire of the flesh, and the desire of the eyes, and the pride of life.' (1 John 2:16) For the desire of the flesh is inborn and rooted in us ourselves and remaining, and the divine Paul also named it a law of sin, dwelling in the members of the flesh (Romans 7:23). And the delights and pleasures from outside and brought in are the things through the eyes. For the things from wealth are wondered at through eyes, and also fine clothing, and the things to which some would cling, that they may have the sweetest enjoyment, giving them no small vote. So then vine and fig would be toward a type of the delight and luxury from outside and brought in, showing with a fine grace together the temporary and easily withered character of the things in the world, and with this the sweet together with what is accustomed to darken. For every worldly luxury has a sweet sharing at the moment, but it darkens very much and makes terribly drunk the one who has received it. And the cistern is an image of the inborn motions in us. For these have not been brought in as those have, but they spring as it were in us, bubbling up from the flesh itself. Of all these then, natural and brought on, the evil powers say that the sharing will be free for us, and the enjoyment wholly broad, if, having left self-control as a holy and unshaken city, we go over to the king of Babylon, who was in type of Satan. But Rabshakeh promised that the delight at the moment would be let go to them and given besides, if they went over to the Babylonians. But they were not persuaded, thinking rightly; for there will follow in every way, upon wishing to choose the worldly things, the need to fall into an unwanted slavery, and to come into the rank of those taken by the spear.

Palladius said: The word is exact. And what would be the way out of these things? Tell me, since I would hear it most gladly.

Cyril: What else than the one that stands opposite to the first and at the beginning? For turning aside by swings of our own wishes toward wishing to live shamefully, and pushing away the fineness of the blameless way of life, we have fallen toward a low-born and slavish mind, thinking only the things on the earth (Colossians 3:2), and lying wholly in the pleasures of the flesh. That is why God thereafter also let us slip down into a reprobate mind (Romans 1:28).

Palladius: So then we must run back toward virtue?

Cyril: Without neglect, my good man, no longer longing for the life in the world, according surely to that word spoken rightly through Paul's voice: 'For you died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God.' (Colossians 3:3) But rather thirsting for the enrollment in heaven, and having made the city above as it were fatherland and city, and crying out well to God: 'Let me go, because I am a sojourner on the earth, and a stranger, as all my fathers were.' (Psalm 39:12) For the one who walks on the earth, and has a bright citizenship in heaven (Philippians 3:20), would reasonably appear, from the things themselves, a sojourner and a stranger in truth.

17Cyril went on: For the one who walks on the earth, and has a bright citizenship in heaven (Philippians 3:20), would reasonably appear, from the things themselves, a sojourner and a stranger in truth. And so the Savior's disciple commands that we ourselves also make this a conspicuous and fair boast, saying in this way: 'Beloved, I exhort you as sojourners and strangers to abstain from the fleshly desires which war against the soul.' (1 Peter 2:11)

Palladius said: Would such a disposition then be enough toward the accomplishment of virtue — I mean, putting an end to the fleshly desires?

Cyril: If there should also be added, wisely, the things from the other fairness, clearly the spiritual. For it is written: 'Your commandment is very broad.' (Psalm 119:96) Or is not the stain in us double, of soul and of body? I would think that the things accustomed to wash must follow, and with much reason, equal in force and equal in work to the things accustomed to defile.

Palladius: You have spoken rightly.

Cyril: As then, of course, the dirt is double, of soul and of body, so the thorough cleansing would reasonably be of soul and of body. Yet that thinking it a sojourning, to love the life in the world, is not without profit for those so disposed, to see without toil, if someone should choose to make Abraham an image of the thing, to whom it was said by God: 'Go out from your land and from your kindred and from the house of your father. And come into a land which I will show you, and I will make you into a great nation, and I will bless you, and I will make your name great, and you shall be blessed, and I will bless those who bless you, and those who curse you I will curse, and in you all the tribes of the earth shall be blessed.' (Genesis 12:1–3) You understand how he commanded him to set out not from land and house only, but also from the kindred, and also from the house of the father, and to come into a land which the one who calls would himself show?

Palladius: But what is this?

Cyril: Then is it not somehow clear that, when God calls into a following — clearly the spiritual — and wishes those he would choose to honor to creep out of the life in the world, I mean again the one in pleasures and loves of flesh, it is madness to think anything better than such a thing? For let a man count fatherland and race and father's house and the possession of earthly things as nothing. That is why the Savior himself also called us toward the equal courage, saying: 'He who loves father or mother above me is not worthy of me, and he who loves son or daughter above me is not worthy of me; and whoever does not take his cross and follow after me is not worthy of me.' (Matthew 10:37–38) And he added: 'And everyone who has left brothers or sisters or father or mother or wife or children or fields or houses for the sake of my name shall receive many times more, and shall inherit eternal life.' (Matthew 19:29) Or do you not say that it is the work of the utmost strength understood in Christ, the so bright and conspicuous courage, which counts these things as nothing?

18Cyril went on: Or do you not say that it is the work of the utmost strength understood in Christ, the so bright and conspicuous courage, which counts these things as nothing? And it makes much of the need to follow Christ.

Palladius said: Very much so, since those called to the wedding and refusing the coming have also slipped away from the best hope and from the gladness in Christ. Of whom one said: 'I have married a wife, and I cannot come.' (Luke 14:18–20) And another, saying he had bought a field, made the temporary things better than the calling.

Cyril: Well done, Palladius; for you gladden us, saying what is likely, and from a very great aptitude leaping up well beforehand toward understanding warmly the end of the word. See then that for those who follow God wholly and in every way, and have made the things of the flesh and worldly love of pleasure second to the hope in him, there will follow in every way a rich sharing in the blessing from above. For what does he say to Abraham? 'And I will make you into a great nation, and I will bless you,' (Genesis 12:2) and the things joined to these. You see, then, how great a crowd of spiritual goods he heaped on him? And in what manner Abraham sets out from the land that bore him — how is it not worth seeing? 'For he took,' it says, 'Sarah his wife, and Lot the son of his brother, and all their belongings which they had acquired, and every soul which they had acquired in Haran. And they went out to go into the land of Canaan, and Abraham passed through the land into its length, as far as the place Shechem, to the high oak.' (Genesis 12:5–6) For he went out from Haran, leaving no remnant of himself in it, and as with his whole race and whole house, most eagerly running over into the land of Canaan, which God showed. Then he goes through the land into its length, and comes into the high land. For the one who has wished to follow the divine decrees very well, and to count the calling from above worthy of the best care, let him go out of the life in worldly pleasures wholly through and through, and as with his whole race, having left no remnant of his own mind in the things in which he once was. For so he sets out rightly, and he will go through the land, for he has been called by God, so that, as the blessed Paul writes, he may be strong to grasp with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth of the mystery of Christ (Ephesians 3:18). For then he will go up well toward the high land, that is, toward the habit housed in virtues, and having no longer from any side what is thrown down into love of flesh. And what again of the goods there will be for the one who has already come to this, we shall know from the holy Writings themselves. 'For the Lord appeared,' (Genesis 12:7) it says, 'to Abraham, and said to him: To your seed I will give this land. And Abraham built there an altar to the Lord who had appeared to him.' For while he lingered in the land of his fatherland, and had not yet gone over toward the holy land, only an oracle was given of the need to go over into another, having slighted the land that bore him. But when he came into the land of Canaan with his whole house and with all his gear, and toward the holy land he sprang up, the grace of the seeing of God has been given.

19Cyril went on: But when he came into the land of Canaan with his whole house and with all his gear, and toward the holy land he sprang up, the grace of the seeing of God has been given, and the firmness of the hope in the security of freedom, and the being permitted thereafter to raise an altar. And so for us too, according to the equal figure of the word, while we remain with the world and with the most abominable pleasures according to it, there will be no grace from God; but when we have been called and yield to the divine laws, springing up from the desire and eagerness toward anything of the goods as toward a high land, God puts in the knowledge of his own glory, and promises the firmness of the hope; and so he makes the mind in us strong, as already somehow to be able to bring spiritual sacrifices, and to become a sweet smell of Christ to God and Father (2 Corinthians 2:15), according to what is written; and to present also to him the body, a living sacrifice well-pleasing to God (Romans 12:1), the reasonable and in-spirit worship (John 4:23–24) acceptable with God. For he receives gladly the manners of the worship in spirit, and counts the thing a spiritual sacrifice.

Palladius said: So then we should shift toward the better, setting out from the more shameful; and to receive as most gladly the calling from above, and to love to linger as much as possible in the things honored from the Law and that have obtained the best vote with God. As for seeking to go backward and to return upon something of the things accustomed to do wrong, we shall not be free of blame.

Cyril: No indeed, my friend. For it is wholly hard to choose to be sick again with the things from which one would go out; so that for those once taken out by the power of God from a worldly way of life, it is very perilous even only to look toward it, and as it were to go toward a remembrance of faults, sending the mind into the love of them. And so the divine Singer pleaded, saying: 'Turn away my eyes from seeing vanity.' (Psalm 119:37) For vanity in truth is the distraction of this life, and the empty delight of the temporary things, from which that we should stand apart and to leave, and for the one who has chosen in truth to walk straight to refuse even the mere looking as still in thoughts and with pleasure, one may learn easily from here too.

Palladius: From what do you say?

Cyril: The inhabitants of Sodom, being wildly stung into the pleasures against nature (Romans 1:26–27), and dishonoring the law of intercourse which nature set for the begetting of children, and being whetted by male seasons, and accomplishing everything most out of place, provoked to angers, and as it were forced the Creator, though he is a lover of men, to go toward the penalty upon them. And when the time of the need to suffer was at the doors, the long-suffering toward them having as it were been spent, those who would fulfill this broke in at Sodom. And it is written: 'And two angels came to Sodom at evening. And Lot was sitting at the gate of Sodom.' (Genesis 19:1)

20Cyril went on: And it is written: 'And two angels came to Sodom at evening. And Lot was sitting at the gate of Sodom. And Lot, seeing, rose up to meet them, and bowed with his face to the earth, and said: Behold, lords, turn aside into the house of your servant, and lodge, and wash your feet, and rising early you shall go away on your way. And they said: No. But we will lodge in the street. And he forced them, and they turned aside toward him, and they went into his house, and he made a drink for them. And he baked unleavened cakes for them, and they ate before they lay down.' (Genesis 19:1–3) For Lot, since he was also of Abraham's blood, and had been reared in the laws of rightness, and had taken care of piety toward God in no small account, was sojourning at Sodom. And he was on them an incomer and a stranger both in race and in manner. 'For what fellowship has light with darkness? Or what portion has a believer with an unbeliever,' (2 Corinthians 6:14–15) according to what is written? And having been stronger than the evils of the place, and going the road of life customary to him, he held to holy pursuits, and, honoring the law of hospitality as much as possible, sitting at the inlets of the town, he receives kindly those who run in at them, knowing the thing is dear to God. And when those who would bring the penalty on those who had run wild unbridled into wantonness had come (and it was a pair of angels), he meets them swiftly, and shows beforehand, as a clear sign of the kindness in him, the greeting. For he bowed with his face to the earth, and urges them to go home, and to revel in the laws of love. And they say: No, but we will lodge in the street; marking by this that they are strangers and without a hearth, and whetting, I think, the one who had chosen to show hospitality toward a more intense eagerness, and all but hinting with a fine grace that he would not fittingly let them go, being empty of a hearth and thrown out in the very crossroads; which the righteous man also understood, and forced them the more, and did not take the refusal as a prize, as from a weak and rather watery mind. So he houses them, and set unleavened breads, and made a drink. But these things the righteous man. And the Sodomites, sick with a naked and shapeless pleasure, going round the righteous man's chamber unholy, and having fallen beyond the shamelessness that comes to the utmost, thought it right that the customary things be let go for them to do (Genesis 19:4–5); then, when they ought to have chosen hospitality, they wished to harm with the wantonness against nature. And they wished to disable Lot, who was turning them away from attempts so wild and most abominable, and he would perhaps have been caught even into the suffering itself, if those who save had not been there. 'For the men,' it says, 'stretching out their hands, drew Lot in toward themselves into the house, and they shut the door of the house. And the men who were at the door of the house they struck with sightlessness from small to great, and they were disabled seeking the door.' (Genesis 19:10–11) And the things of the help for him have not been measured in these only. For it is written again: 'And when dawn came, the angels were urgent with Lot, saying: Rising, take your wife and your two daughters whom you have, and go out, that you too may not perish with the lawlessnesses of the city.' (Genesis 19:15)

21Cyril went on: For it is written again: 'And when dawn came, the angels were urgent with Lot, saying: Rising, take your wife and your two daughters whom you have, and go out, that you too may not perish with the lawlessnesses of the city. And they were troubled, and the angels took hold of his hand, and of the hand of his wife, and of his two daughters, in the Lord's sparing them.' (Genesis 19:15–16) This is a sign for you, and a very clear one, that we are not whetted by words only, and leave sin by exhortations into the mind, but that the Savior God of all has come even to this gentleness toward us, as to make the help active, according at least to the, 'You took hold of my right hand, and in your counsel you guided me.' (Psalm 73:23–24) For since man's nature is not very strong, nor sufficiently able to swim out of the evil, God somehow contends along with it toward this. And he is seen assigning a double grace: persuading with admonitions and having found help, and setting it better than the evil at the feet and tyrannizing. And you may see that also true, that the caretakers of righteousness are very few, and the scarcity of good men in life is great; for a faithful man is a labor to find (Proverbs 20:6), according to what is written. Yet such a one is choice, and has been counted worthy of the care from above not as a side-work. For if he is in the world mixed with the others, he undergoes no harm from there, as a lily is snatched from thorns, and a righteous man would not perish with the ungodly (Genesis 18:23–25), according to the voices of the holy ones.

Palladius said: It is fixed, then, that by the sparing from God, and by the running-together of holy angels, we shall both wash off the greed from a cheap and low life, and shall find without dispute that we are caught nowhere and in no way by the penalties of the evil, believing God who has cried clearly through one of the prophets, that 'I am the Lord your God, who holds your right hand, who says to you, Do not fear, Jacob, little Israel, I have helped you, says the Lord, who redeems you, Israel.' (Isaiah 41:13–14)

Cyril: Or would not Lot's having been hung from the angels' hand show the God who can do all as a fellow-worker to the holy ones? For these would be a type of God. Three at the start coming upon Abraham at the oak of Mamre (Genesis 18:1–2), and two visiting Sodom (Genesis 19:1). 'For the Father judges no one,' according to the Savior's own voice, 'but he has given all the judgment to the Son' (John 5:22); the Holy Spirit, clearly, being with him and existing in him by nature also.

Palladius: You understand very well. And let us look round at what follows, if it seems good.

Cyril: Most unreluctant, and I will speak. 'And it came to pass,' it says, 'when they had led him out outside, they said: Save your own soul; do not look round behind, and do not stand in all the country round; save yourself to the mountain, lest you be taken along.' (Genesis 19:17)

22Cyril went on: 'Save your own soul; do not look round behind, and do not stand in all the country round; save yourself to the mountain, lest you be taken along.' (Genesis 19:17) In the, 'Save your own soul,' I say it is clearly spoken: 'Keep yourself pure; and do not share in others' (1 Timothy 5:22) sins.' And be better than the hindrances in the world; for there is no exchange at all for a soul. 'For what will a man be profited, when he gains the whole world, and loses his soul?' (Matthew 16:26) And the need to say that the walking must be made without turning back signifies, I think, perhaps this: not to choose, by turnings-about into a cheap and low life, to think again the equal things with those brought under the penalty of fire from incontinence ('For no one,' he says, 'having put his hand to a plow and turned back is fit for the kingdom of the heavens' (Luke 9:62)); but that we must hold the road toward salvation, not being distracted this way and that, and keeping in ourselves a mind light and easy to scatter by stale fantasies of worldly desires, but complete and sleepless, and having practiced always to look toward the straight. And I will say the still greater thing; for the angel says not only that he must already make the walking without turning back; he also added usefully, 'Do not stand in all the country round. Save yourself to the mountain, lest you be taken along.'

Palladius said: And what would 'Do not stand in all the country round' wish to show?

Cyril: The sluggish, I think, and weak toward the need to fly out of the evil, which is perilous and damaging.

Palladius: Tell how.

Cyril: A prophetic word said: 'Woe, those who do the work of the Lord carelessly (Jeremiah 48:10). — And run that you may grasp (1 Corinthians 9:24),' the divine Paul himself also says somewhere. For not wishing to do most strongly and in eagerness the running-away from the more shameful things, the mind having itself hard to tear away toward the ancient things, and as it were setting out sullenly from each of the cheap and low, and shifting most reluctantly toward what is of a nature to help — this would be nothing else than to stand at last in a country round of vice, though a person ought to go out at a run. For it would be of the things possible, before coming outside the bounds of evil, always delaying and drawing back, to be caught by the penalty, before the stain is thoroughly cleansed, before the defilement melted into the soul from the ancient slackness is washed off, before the charges are unloaded, and one runs under the saving yoke, to rest through Christ. Best then of exhortations is, 'Do not stand in all the country round,' that is: Be not caught having delayed in any manner of a cheap and low life, but go up rather, as to a mountain, into some exceptional and conspicuous life, having nothing thrown on the ground, but shining in a high and lifted-up virtue, and set free from the lowest mind, that is, the earthly and fleshly. For it is written that 'The strong ones of God of the earth have been lifted up very much.' (Psalm 47:9) For the mind proper to holy things is highest of the earthly things.

23Cyril went on: 'And the vulture's young fly the high things (Job 5:7),' according to what is written, if they have their citizenship as on a mountain in heaven (Philippians 3:20), and take for themselves the fatherland above. And Paul also writes somewhere: 'Seek the things above, not the things on the earth.' (Colossians 3:1–2)

Palladius said: So then the mountain of the mind is the life in sanctification, and the lifted-up character of the exceptional way of life, the one in uncleannesses and sin-loving, and melted into earthly things, being understood as below.

Cyril: You have spoken well; for the word shows us this very well, and you might still wonder at this also.

Palladius: At what?

Cyril: For the blessed angel said that divine Lot, running through without neglect and without turning back, must spring up to the mountain. He pleaded, saying: 'I ask, Lord, since your servant has found mercy before you, and you have magnified your righteousness, which you do upon my soul's living; but I shall not be able to be saved through to the mountain, lest the evils overtake me, and I die. Behold, this city is near for me to flee there, which is small; there I shall be saved. Is it not small, and my soul shall live? And he said to him,' it says: 'Behold, I have admired your face also in this word, of not overthrowing the city about which you spoke. Hurry then to be saved there, for I shall not be able to do a thing until you enter there. Therefore he called the name of that city Zoar. The sun came out upon the land, and Lot entered into Zoar.' (Genesis 19:18–23)

Palladius: And what profit would there be for us through these things also? I would wish, as you well know, to learn it through.

Cyril: Or do you not understand, though you have leaned much toward a very great aptitude, that for those who have just run out of a cheap and low life, and think they must go upon the path of salvation, virtue is not at once, nor from first attempts, graspable, nor is the thing that seems good easy to walk? But neither would one easily be brought up into an exceptional way of life, nor would he become far from the passions as it were reared with him, but he will be outside of such things gently, at least as far as eagerness toward better things and beginnings of attempts; yet not very high, or far; and he would all but go over into a land as into another, into a life that is praised, but has not yet obtained a high and conspicuous glory, such as was the tutoring according to the Law, carrying toward beginnings of a best and good life. For it is written: 'The beginning of a good road is to do the just things.' (Proverbs 16:7) For in the way that, for those who have been eager about knowledge and long for the mystical contemplation, the word of catechesis would be suitable at the start and most fitting of all; but when they dart through toward a man already mature, and into the measure of stature of the fullness of Christ (Ephesians 4:13), the more solid food would already somehow be fitting.

25Cyril went on: 'For I have admired your face,' he says, 'of not overthrowing the city about which you spoke.' (Genesis 19:21–23) For the way of life that does not have itself perfectly toward virtue is in truth unwanted by God, and being overcome by the passions in anything at all is rejectable to him and not far from condemnation. Yet from love of men he permits, and having measured to the nature what is reachable at the start, he commands that they be saved, even those still practicing the good, and not yet wholly stepping through the blameable training. But even for those who have come to these measures, and drive into this condition, the running-in would not come without the divine light and the torch-bearing from above. 'For the sun rose,' it says, 'and Lot entered into Zoar.'

Palladius said: How very much you have said what is likely!

Cyril: So then divine Lot ran in into the city still small, God permitting him; but the woman who followed him and ran out with him was also convicted as weak toward this. 'For she looked,' it says, 'behind, and she became a pillar of salt.' (Genesis 19:26) And see that the firm mind and the youthful spirit, even if it should not arrive perfectly, perhaps, at what pleases God, having begun to accomplish virtue, still makes habits of passions little by little toward what has itself better. But the weak and cowardly, whose sign is the woman, is wholly made useless by the turnings-about into a cheap and low life. For this, I think, is what becoming a pillar of salt shows; which would be a symbol of a mind withered, and of a mind laid to go over toward silliness, and having already somehow driven on into a last insensibility. And salt that has been made foolish will no longer be strong for anything, the Savior himself also said; and it will be made wholly useless, sent outside, and thrown under men's feet (Matthew 5:13). So the woman was turned to stone, and not long after Lot added what was lacking. For it is written that 'Lot went up from Zoar, and sat in the mountain, he and his two daughters with him. For they feared to live in Zoar, and they lived in the cave, he and his two daughters with him.' (Genesis 19:30) For the mind goes forward as by steps upon what has itself completely, and springs up little by little toward what was at the beginning, not being suitably able, nor very sufficiently. And it goes forward and goes up toward the better, being tented by prudence and spiritual courage as by some daughters of its own, and having left below the pleasure-loving and cowardly, of which the woman is toward a type. And it lives thereafter as on a mountain and in a cave; the mountain showing us well the high and lifted-up toward the spiritual good condition, and the cave the fixed and seated character of the remaining in virtue. For it is written about good men: 'He who walks in righteousness, speaking a straight road, hating lawlessness and injustice, and shaking his hands from gifts, making his ears heavy that he may not hear a judgment of blood, shutting his eyes that he may not see injustice, this one shall live in a high cave of a strong rock.' (Isaiah 33:15–16) And the word upon this would also be for us not unconvincing in another way. For the rock is Christ (1 Corinthians 10:4), because of the strength and unhurt nature of the highest of all beings. And the cave in Christ would be understood as the Church, the lodging of the holy ones, the shelter of those who are pious, which the righteous inhabit, and also as many as refuse the penalty through fire.

26Cyril went on: The Church is the lodging of the holy ones, which the righteous inhabit, and also as many as refuse the penalty through fire.

Palladius said: How well the word stands for us, my good man! And I for my part would wish the exercise to go for us also through as many other proofs as you will. For to love to know richly what makes for profit, I would think worth everything.

Cyril: And yet, Palladius, you say what is likely. For the thing would be a fruit of a mind in us most loving of learning, and the word from us will be better than reluctance, not seeming to me the same as practicing an untimely silence running in upon narratives so bright and worth loving. So then, that we must fence ourselves off wholly and in every way, as far as it is possible, from the disposition and sharing toward what is cheap; and also that being able to look up toward virtue would be added in no other way than according to this same manner, we shall see without toil, putting the eye of the mind in well, both to the things according to divine Abraham, and to the things accomplished beyond word at the going-out of those from Israel, which they made in the times of the Egyptians' greed, having broken the bonds.

Palladius: Speak then in parts. For know well that you gladden us richly, if you should choose to do these things.

Cyril: We were saying, then, that divine Abraham, once pressed out by an unbearable famine and by wants of the needed things, made the descent into Egypt not wished (Genesis 12:10), and gave the necessities the rule. And being a stranger and an incomer, Pharaoh maltreated him with griefs and greeds. For he wished to disable the woman who lived with him, burned with unmixed pleasures into a longing for shameful work. But God did not allow this to be accomplished. 'For he tested,' it says, 'Pharaoh with great testings concerning Sarah, Abraham's wife.' (Genesis 12:17) And Pharaoh is an image and type of diabolic incontinence. For that one's aim, and of the things most eagerly pursued, is to love to put into the understandings of the holy ones also the seeds of the uncleanness in him, so that they may choose to bear fruit the things dear to him and according to pleasure. And these would be, I think, the charges into a many-formed sin. And everyone then would be caught, and will lie unwilling under that one's greeds. For the nature is sick with the lack of strength, yet God does not allow it, drawing back as it were the attempts against the holy ones, and the plots of the evil one. And it has happened that divine Abraham escaped the harms in no other way, except, having left the Egyptians' land, he went up again toward the place at the beginning and given by God, where, having also arrived, he was a quiet caretaker of good pursuits. And it is written: 'And Abraham went up from Egypt, he and his wife, and all that was his, and Lot with him, into the wilderness. And Abraham was very rich, with cattle and silver and gold, and he went where he had gone out into the wilderness as far as Bethel.' (Genesis 13:1–4)

27Cyril went on: 'And Abraham went up from Egypt, he and his wife, and all that was his, and Lot with him, into the wilderness. And Abraham was very rich, with cattle and silver and gold, and he went where he had gone out into the wilderness as far as Bethel, as far as the place where his tent was formerly, between Bethel and between Ai, to the place of the altar which he had made there at the beginning. And Abraham called there on the name of the Lord.' (Genesis 13:2–4) You understand, then, that with those who run up out of worldly incontinence into another holy life, all that is theirs must as it were set out together? For the forefather Abraham ran away from the Egyptians' land with his whole house and whole race, and I would add, with all his gear. For we must leave wholly, and love to shift as with a whole house into the wilderness, that is, into an undisturbed and clean condition of mind, from which also at the beginning man's nature went out, turning aside toward the worse by want of the goods from above. For the descent to strangers would mark this riddlingly, from a land as it were and tent of the things at the beginning and most dear, in which there is also an altar. For running back thus, until we come to be in the place and country of the altar at the beginning, that is, of the sanctification long grown with us, we too call on the God of all, saying that prophetic address: 'Lord, besides you we know no other. We name your name.' (Isaiah 26:13)

Palladius said: You have spoken most finely.

Cyril: And you may see the thing standing for us in no other way, if you also look well through the things that came to be upon the sons of Israel in their times; whom, when the Egyptians had taken them, a famine having pushed them down at the start, even those holy from above and from the root, and free, yoking them into a bondage unexpected and unpracticed for them, they forced wildly, having composed some such occasion of the cruelty upon them. 'For another king arose,' it says, 'over Egypt, who did not know Joseph. And he said to his race: Behold, the race of the sons of Israel, a great crowd, and it is strong beyond us; come, let us deal wisely with them, lest they multiply, and, whenever war happens, these too will be added to the opponents, and having warred us out, they will go out from the land.' (Exodus 1:8–10) For it pained, I think, the ruler of the Egyptians' land, that those under a necessary bond, yoked not according to judgment, should even choose at some time to look toward freedom. 'And he set over them,' it says, 'taskmasters of the works, that they might maltreat them from the works, and they built fortified cities for Pharaoh, Pithom and Rameses, and On, which is Heliopolis.' (Exodus 1:11) For the fruits of the unbearable greed were the continual endurance of suffering upon clay and brickmaking, and cities towered with walls, and raisings of mounds in the fields, and these were accomplished unpaid and with long sweat for those who labored. For the world-rulers of this age, having taken under hand the wretched souls of men, wear them out in clay and brickmakings and in the things done toward earth and about earth, and having bound them to an evil and profitless trial (Ephesians 6:12).

28Cyril went on: For the world-rulers of this age, having taken under hand the wretched souls of men, wear them out in clay and brickmakings and in the things done toward earth and about earth, and having bound them to an evil and profitless trial (for such the works of the flesh and about it appear), they force them to receive a bitter and wholly toilsome life, which will in no manner bring in what helps for those forced to practice it. For what would the works and passions of the flesh profit our wretched soul? And as it were a gain will be laid up from us for the devil and the demons, and it will be wealth and a boast of the opposing kingdom, just as, of course, Pharaoh also thought it of no small glory for himself that those from Israel should raise cities for him, having been forced to come to this unpaid and without food.

Palladius said: It is so. For the word is very clear.

Cyril: So then the labor of the Israelites writes down a shaping and as it were a clear image of our vain and unholy pursuits on earth, Satan himself lying on them and leaping on them, and the evil powers with him, whom the divine Scripture marks with the names of the taskmasters; and I for my part would say that this is the evil distraction, full of sweat and labor, and filled as it were with clay and uncleanness and a mud-like pleasure. But God even then pitied those maltreated in a most unholy and wild way by the Egyptians' greeds, and serving beside what was due. For he at once made Moses, the best of all, a servant of the gentleness toward them. Or shall we not also find God doing this toward us ourselves? For to us who have slipped into sins he grants the mercy, and at once puts his own law into the hearts of all as a mediator, carrying them toward a free life.

Palladius: I understand what you say.

Cyril: Do you wish, then, cutting the breadth of the history, that we say what is likely as we can?

Palladius: Very much so.

Cyril: It is written then thus: 'And after these things Moses and Aaron went in to Pharaoh, and said to him: Thus says the Lord, the God of Israel: Send out my people, that they may feast to me in the wilderness. And Pharaoh said: Who is he, whose voice I shall hear, so as to send out the sons of Israel? I do not know the Lord, and I will not send Israel out.' (Exodus 5:1–2) For those around Moses and Aaron affirmed that Israel must be let go from the Egyptians' country and land, God calling to a feast; for it is a true feast in truth to loose oneself from the yoke of the unwanted slavery, and to come thereafter under God, and to fulfill the things dear to him, no one standing against, or forcing one to choose instead and to love what seems good to him.

29Cyril went on: For it is a true feast to loose oneself from the yoke of the unwanted slavery, and to come thereafter under God, and to fulfill the things dear to him, no one standing against, or forcing one to choose instead and to love what seems good to him. And Pharaoh is very unbridled in tongue, and grows bold against the glory of God, saying he neither knows who the Lord is, nor will let Israel go. And divine Moses does not stop at all, and he strongly affirms that what seems good to God must be brought to its end. For when Satan blocks those who would have come under him from going into freedom, they must take heart, and become better than everything, I think, without any hindrance, and be seen least cowardly, but lie on it, saying: 'The God of the Hebrews has called us. We will go then a way of three days into the wilderness, that we may sacrifice to our God, lest death or murder meet us.' (Exodus 5:3) For these things the wise Moses also cried out to us then. For it is not, he says, after the likeness toward you, O Egyptians, that a calf is worship for us Hebrews, nor a pig, or a goat, or a man's statue, and a shadow of birds, and images of creeping things, the things set in shrines (Romans 1:23). The God and Master who crafted this whole has called us. Great then, and not ranked with the Egyptians' gods, and above all the creation, is the God of the Hebrews, who calls us into the wilderness, to bring there the sacrifice well-pleasing to him. Egypt then is named a darkening, and I think those of us who are spiritually must apply ourselves to the things in shadow and types. For we must leave very well every thing, I think, that is accustomed to darken, and, having gone out as from a country lying under the tyrant, I mean Satan, the easiness in sins, be eager in a youthful way to go over into a loosed and cleaner life, and to step through a road of a lawful way of life, not laid under demons; for then we shall be able well to sacrifice to God the fruits of righteousness. And he affirmed that those from Israel must be sent a way of three days according to the wilderness, showing by this that they are not near the bounds of a cheap and low life and of the life being tyrannized. And divine Moses also uses a wise pretext, and says with a very ready occasion that those called by God must be separated from Egypt: 'Lest somehow death meet us,' he says, 'or murder.'

Palladius said: And what is this? For it is not ready for those who wish to understand.

Cyril: I will tell: it was a custom for Egyptians, and it has been kept even until now among the worshipers of the idols, that those going in at temples must refuse to meet a dead body. For they say it is the highest defilement not only if someone should choose to touch, but even if it should fall in upon the mere sights. So from the customs among themselves he persuades them to think that the sacrificing would not be clean for them, if, when they had begun to do this from some unforeseen place, a dead man or a murder should happen upon them — that is, either one who has ended by a law of nature, or one forced out by the murderers.

30Cyril went on: That is, either one who has ended by a law of nature, or one forced out by the murderers. For you, he said, have temples and precincts, bolts and gates, inside which, having perhaps run in, it will be possible to sacrifice purely, as you yourselves think according to yourselves; but we, sacrificing of necessity in the middle of a city, in crossroads and in fields, are defiled by the sights of the dead. For there is wholly nothing to keep it off by bounds. And the word of the history would have for us the persuasive in the customs of the Egyptians, and what was said by Moses, who was wise in all things, would be rightly said, even if it should be understood spiritually. For we must sacrifice as in a wilderness, and complete a holy feast to God, setting out from the Egyptians', and also refuse the sight of death. For with a leisured mind, and one that has come to stand far from being darkened in a worldly way, and setting the eye free from the things that carry it down into deadness and corruption, we shall sacrifice purely to the God who rules all. And dead works would be the things of the flesh. And worldly darkening is the muddying from evil and vain distractions, defiling the clean and clear ether of the mind. That it is fitting for those who wish to worship purely to be separated from these, the word of the history also persuades us.

Palladius said: And this at least is not unclear; so complete for me what follows.

Cyril: So then a hard-to-bear and sharp longing for the ancient freedom ran in, I think, upon those from Israel; and already having turned aside toward this, they provoked terribly to angers the one who binds them in the yokes of slavery. And saying that the desires upon such things are a work of leisure, he commands that the sweat upon the works be stretched tight for them, the accustomed quota being demanded without delay, and the distribution of the straw being cut off from them contrary to custom; for he said that 'You are idle, you are idlers; because of this you say, Let us go and sacrifice to our God. Now then go and work; for the straw shall not be given, and you yourselves shall give the quota of the brickmaking. So the scribes of the sons of Israel saw themselves in evils, saying: You shall not fall short of the brickmaking, the due for the day. And they met Moses and Aaron coming to meet them, as they were going out from Pharaoh, and they said to them: May God look upon you, and judge, because you have made our smell abominable before Pharaoh and before his servants, to give a sword into his hands to kill us.' (Exodus 5:8–9) (Exodus 5:17–21) For, my friend, do you not say it is exact, that whenever someone should choose to loose himself from the yoke of the devil's greed, and to take up instead the bright and free boast of the worship toward God, and to be still and to know the true Master, according to what is sung in the Psalms: 'Be still and know that I am the Lord God,' (Psalm 46:10) he will accuse us of the leisure and will upon this as an unholy thing.

31Cyril went on: He will accuse us of the leisure and will upon this as an unholy thing, and the enemy of all rises up together with the other evil and unclean spirits, forcing them wildly to hold without stopping to fleshly and earthly uncleanness and to the things in the world, according to what is customary for each, and least allowing them to hold off from the well-worn cheap and low life, and making even this hard to get, so that the evil may not, by being too ready, be spat out and come to a glut? For this, I think, is what the demanding the quota of the brickmaking strongly, and depriving them of the things through which it would come easily — that is, the straw — shows. And we are somehow of a nature, then most of all, to seek the customary things most eagerly and most strongly, and to be burned toward them with hotter desires, when something in between should appear that of necessity carries us toward not being able to obtain them. And when a divine law is retraining the human mind from the more shameful things, a long longing then most of all slips in, calling toward the same things, and all but persuading us to cry out against the lawgiver; and of this again the scribes of the sons of Israel are a proof as in shadows, worn out in the works, and not seeing the easy road upon them; for they were in want of straw, and they accused Moses and Aaron very much of the cause brought upon them (Exodus 5:18–21), saying they had become an occasion, and that they had endured a more grievous assault of the greed, for no other reason than that a longing for freedom had slipped into them, having been persuaded by their words.

Palladius said: Do you not think you are saying what is likely and true?

Cyril: Wholly, Palladius; for as soon as a useful desire and a good reasoning has perhaps stirred us toward the need to choose the things that seem good to God, and we have remembered a law toward piety, the enemy of all presses down more badly upon what is of a nature to harm, yet God draws out and saves. And so he said to Moses: 'Go, say to the sons of Israel, saying, I am the Lord, and I will lead you out from the domination of the Egyptians, and I will rescue you from their slavery, and I will redeem you with a high arm and a great judgment, and I will take you to myself for a people. And I will be your God, and you shall know that I am the Lord your God, who led you out from the land of Egypt, from the domination of the Egyptians.' (Exodus 6:6–7) For when Satan turns us away, and raises us out of every good desire, and pushes aside the turnings toward this by whatever manners he can, the law of God urges toward a good will, showing the one who helps as unbroken, and whetting into good daring by the richest hope, and strengthening by faith, and assigning us to God, in truth savior and redeemer.

Palladius: How best of all a thing, and saving, is the faith, and the need to thirst to follow God!

Cyril: You have spoken rightly. And that the faith creeps toward the good as its end, you will know well, when our word has come to its own aim.

32Cyril went on: And that the faith creeps toward the good as its end, you will know well, when our word has come to its own aim. For when those around Moses came again to Pharaoh to speak, and to persuade him to let Israel go from the Egyptians' land and to loose them from the old bonds, they wished to put him to shame with signs beyond word, and they showed a recasting of a rod into a serpent (Exodus 7:10–12), and they promised most readily that they could still accomplish the greater and more lifted-up things, clearly through God. But he commanded his own magicians to do equal work, all but crying by this: We are not ignorant of such works. There are very many among the Egyptians, or of your kind; and wonder-working is a practice for the magicians, among whom you too are numbered. And when he grew very hard, and would not let Israel go, four terrible plagues, each worse than the last, are brought on; for a change of water into blood (Exodus 7:20–21) was accomplished beyond expectation, and frogs (Exodus 8:6) and gnats (Exodus 8:17), and last a dog-fly (Exodus 8:24), already made Pharaoh somehow softer, as from a necessity not to be borne. Calling in then those around Moses, he says: 'Go in and sacrifice to the Lord your God in the land. And Moses said, It is not possible for it to be so; for we shall sacrifice the abominations of the Egyptians to the Lord our God. For if we sacrifice the abominations of the Egyptians to the Lord our God before them, we shall be stoned. We will go a way of three days into the wilderness, and we will sacrifice to the Lord our God, as he said to us. And Pharaoh said: I will send you out, and you shall sacrifice to the Lord your God in the wilderness, but you shall not stretch far in going.' (Exodus 8:25–28) For when Satan stands against, and has known in a youthful way to set his own hatred of the good against our eagernesses toward the good, God sets himself against him, and presses him down when he grows bold, and tames him with plagues. And then he barely permits, not willingly; yet he tries all the same to persuade us to make the worship toward God not exact, and not yet to leave wholly the slavery to him. For he commanded the Jews that they must sacrifice not outside his own land, but in it. And Moses most wisely says, 'It is not possible for it to be so.' For the inventor of sin is always an introducer of the cheap and low things; and the divine law sends them out, and forbids the doing of whatever would seem good to that one. Those who wish to live rightly must therefore attend not to whatever the Evil One would say, deceiving, but to what the divine oracle cries out to us. 'For a lamp,' he says, 'to my feet is your law, and a light to my paths.' (Psalm 119:105)

Palladius said: True.

Cyril: So then, when the Evil One holds us, or wishes to shut us in and to make us under him, we must worship the only God who is so by nature, and going as far as possible from double-mindedness, let us say, 'It is not possible for it to be so.' For no one can serve two masters; for either he will hate the one and love the other; or he will hold to the one, and despise the other (Matthew 6:24).

33Cyril went on: And it is written again, 'Woe to fearful hearts, and slack hands, and to a sinner treading upon two paths!' (Sirach 2:12) For I for my part say we must make a clean and blameless worship to the God who rules all, having left wholly the worship under that one; and so seek to go toward the better with a firm heart; and otherwise, 'We shall sacrifice the abominations of the Egyptians,' (Exodus 8:26) he says, 'to the Lord our God. For if we sacrifice the abominations of the Egyptians before them, we shall be stoned.' And as far as it belongs to the word of the history, the refusal has a ready occasion. For abominations here he says are the objects of worship; and calves were worship for the Egyptians. These, he says, if we sacrifice to the God of the Hebrews, we shall in every way and wholly whet the Egyptians to angers, who make the thing hard to bear. And sometimes the word is also persuasive. But as far as it belongs to a spiritual contemplation, it has no moderate profit. For what the crowd of the demons knows most of all to honor, and makes much of, and counts worthy of every account, we, putting it to death, complete a worship most sweet to God.

Palladius said: How have you said?

Cyril: Or are not the passions of the flesh honorable among themselves? And not wholly through themselves, but since through them we perish, and are bound tight toward the slavery under them?

Palladius: True.

Cyril: These then, putting to death and as it were slaughtering, we shall be a smell of sweet fragrance to God. And Paul writes: 'Present your bodies a living sacrifice, well-pleasing to God, your reasonable worship.' (Romans 12:1) And someone would do such a thing rightly, putting to death the members on the earth, fornication, uncleanness, passion, evil desire, and the greed (Colossians 3:5). Each then of the passions in us is an abomination of the Egyptians of the mind, that is, most worshipful. For that it is a custom for the divine Scripture to call an abomination what is in the rank of an idol, and as it were a worship, God persuades, saying through Jeremiah's voice, about the Jews' Synagogue: 'What has the beloved done in my house, an abomination?' (Jeremiah 11:15) And if someone should wish to say that an abomination of the Egyptians is as it were a hated thing and a refusal, he would not go out from the fitting mind; for the things the unclean spirits are always accustomed to hate and to abominate, these will be laid up from us as a smell of sweet fragrance to God, and a spiritual sacrifice: faith, meekness, self-control, soundness of mind, love of one another, and the boasts of genuineness toward God.

Palladius: And who would be those who sacrifice in the land of the Evil One? And who would be understood as those outside the land?

Cyril: For those who have not yet gone out from the Egyptians', and who sacrifice to God in it, are very many, and perhaps beyond number; and those outside and in a wilderness, very few and choice.

34Cyril went on: And those outside and in a wilderness, very few and choice; 'for many are called,' (Matthew 22:14) he says, 'but few chosen.' We have all then been called into freedom through the faith in Christ, and we have been redeemed from diabolic tyranny, Christ carrying us toward this, being well prefigured for the people of old in Moses and Aaron, so that in the same you may understand Emmanuel, being lawgiver and high priest and apostle, in the manner of the plan. But the most of those called still linger in the old evils, and having not yet gone out with a whole mind from worldly deceit, they worship God as in a naked and mere faith. These we say are those who sacrifice in Egypt, or who have come a little outside. 'For you shall not stretch far,' (Exodus 8:28) says the hard-hearted Pharaoh, even if you run out from the Egyptians' land. Those, however, who wish to please God with a whole transfer toward the good, and who have been set free even wholly from worldly confusion, are carried outside the Egyptians', and they run away from the tyrant's hand, and, as in a wilderness, in the leisured and loosed life, they sacrifice cleanly, being clean, to God. And I for my part would also say, in another manner, that those running from the worshiping of the creation beside the one who created (Romans 1:25), toward truth, and called into knowledge of the God who is so by nature, must be carried farthest from the Egyptians' land. For those who have not yet rubbed off the remnants of the ancient deceit from their own mind have not yet gone out perfectly. For some observe days and months and seasons and years (Galatians 4:10). These, called toward the free dignity through Christ, still living in the Egyptians', sacrifice to God, keeping a life that would not be unwanted by Satan. And if someone should go out wholly, having said farewell to the more ancient customs, he sacrifices in a wilderness, and practices the life worthy of every praise.

Palladius said: I agree; for you think rightly. And let the word go for us again with the stream.

Cyril: So then Pharaoh lies, and denies the promise, and does not yet let those from Israel go. Then he was maltreated with three other plagues, and he barely nods, saying he will let them go; and he was caught having lied again. 'For he is a liar, and has not stood in the truth,' (John 8:44) according to the Savior's voice. And God, threatening, and also putting it in, sends the most violent hail (Exodus 9:23–25) upon the Egyptians, and also the locust (Exodus 10:12–15), the field-destroyer, if we must also take a voice from the Greeks and say it. Then, then, the spear-bearers of Pharaoh's abomination, once terrible and unbroken, barely make a very great outcry against him, saying: 'How long shall this be a snare for us? Send out the men, that they may worship the Lord their God. Or do you wish to know that Egypt has perished?' (Exodus 10:7) And from here again it comes to me to think that Satan is perhaps somehow better than the powers under him, in the things in which winning would be fitting for him. For they, as it seems, are very hard and wholly unsoftened.

35Cyril went on: For they, as it seems, are very hard and wholly unsoftened, and late and barely would they still go, at least into a moderate sense of the divine anger; but he is lifted above in a wildness beyond word, and hardened to the utmost. For it is written that 'His heart has been fixed like a stone, and he has stood like an unhammered anvil.' (Job 41:24) So when a very great outcry had come to be upon him, he barely said to those around Moses: 'Go and worship the Lord your God. But who also are those who go?' (Exodus 10:8–11) And Moses says: 'With our young men and our elders we will go, with our sons and our daughters, and our sheep, and our oxen; for it is the feast of the Lord our God. And he said to them: Let the Lord be with you, in that I send you out — not also your household stuff? See, that evil is set before you. Not so; but let the men go, and worship God, for this you yourselves seek.' Understand then, my friend, that Moses said the breaking-up must be made in the best way; but he says, not so; and that he will let them go in part, and that what is left must as it were be a hostage for the returns of those who set out, the household stuff itself also remaining in Egypt. For let every young man of yours go, he says; and every race in its primes. But the divine Moses strongly affirms that we should set out very well, nothing having been overlooked; but together with those in youth and in old age, with sons and daughters, and herds of oxen, and other flocks. For it is fitting for those who are eager to take for themselves the true freedom to love to be set free from the evils in the world, and to go a path upon virtues, leaving no remnant at all of their own soul and mind, through which they would again be carried under the greeds of the evil one. And the divine law calls to this young men and virgins, elders with younger (Psalm 148:12), according to the Singer's voice, and every kind of the age understood in Christ. To whom the divine John also called, saying: 'I have written to you, children, because you have known the Father; I have written to you, fathers, because you have known him from the beginning; I have written to you, young men, because you are strong, and the word of God remains in you, and you have conquered the evil one.' (1 John 2:13–14) And they would also be, in another way, young men a type of courage, and elders of prudence, and sons and daughters of the infancy understood in Christ; for with courage, and prudence, and the simplicity according to God, we shall set out from sin into sanctification. 'Take heart,' he says, 'and let your heart be strengthened.' (Psalm 31:24) And again: 'Become prudent as the serpents, and simple as the doves.' (Matthew 10:16) And having said that sheep and oxen run off together, he would mark, I think, that it is fitting not even to let go to Satan the bodily and less reasonable motions in us. And so the divine Paul writes: 'For as you presented your members slaves to uncleanness and to lawlessness unto lawlessness, so now present your members slaves to righteousness unto sanctification.' (Romans 6:19)

36Cyril went on: And so the divine Paul writes: 'For as you presented your members slaves to uncleanness and to lawlessness unto lawlessness, so now present your members slaves to righteousness unto sanctification.' (Romans 6:19)

Palladius said: Why then does Pharaoh let those in youth and in their primes go, and take for himself the others?

Cyril: For whom do you say is the one who remains in Egypt?

Palladius: There were, I think, women in every way, children not yet in youth, and weak elders, and livestock without reason.

Cyril: Then, my good man, how do you not think that other thing at once?

Palladius: What do you say?

Cyril: For those swelling and young, and having a more prime habit toward piety, he counts burdensome; for he longs, I think, even unwilling, to be rid of those who have stood against, who are also able to act against him, and to help themselves when they are wronged, according at least to the, 'Stand against the devil, and he will flee from you.' (James 4:7) And he takes much for himself of what is not of a nature to take heart, and as a weak and unwarlike race, and he loves a mind sick in itself with the female and soft, and such as has left youth and is without strength, and still boyish, and the thick and less reasonable, as in type with oxen and sheep.

Palladius: You have spoken well.

Cyril: And the hard-minded and unbending Pharaoh lies again. Then, when their whole country, so to speak, is being spent by the assaults of the locust, he makes Moses sent-for, Aaron running in with him, and says: 'Go and worship the Lord your God, only leave the sheep and the oxen, and let your household stuff run off with you.' (Exodus 10:24–26) And Moses said: 'But you too shall give us whole burnt-offerings, and sacrifices which we shall make to the Lord our God; and our cattle shall go with us, and we shall not leave behind a hoof; for from them we shall take to worship the Lord our God.'

Palladius: And what mind would we fit to what was said by Moses, who was wise in all things? Or how would one take the things from Egypt and Pharaoh, and assign them to God?

Cyril: And yet, my friend, the word is clear. For the one who has stood against and fights those who wish to be pious, if it should not be wholly possible that some lie under him, desires at least to have this in part; but the law of God teaches that the leaving must be made very cutting, allowing nothing whatever to lie and remain under him — not of soul, not a portion of mind, not an occasion of a bodily motion. And besides, we must also bring to God the finest and exceptional things of the life in the world. For this, I think, is what taking from Egypt, and sacrificing to God, shows. Or would not those who contend for our holy and divine doctrines through worldly wisdom do this?

37Cyril went on: Or would not those who contend for our holy and divine doctrines through worldly wisdom, and hunt the brightness in diction and the sharpness in knowledge, and complete the reasonable worship to God, do this? 'For all wisdom is from the Lord,' (Sirach 1:1) according to what is written. But we say that the poets and prose-writers among the Greeks came to this brightness according to fine speech in a worldly spirit. And so the divine Paul: 'We have not received,' (1 Corinthians 2:12–13) he says, 'the spirit of this world, but the Spirit from God, that we may see the things freely given us by God; which we also speak, not in words taught of human wisdom, but in a demonstration of spirit.' (1 Corinthians 2:4) And that Moses was still in shadows in truth, when he said the exceptional things of the life in the world would not become rejectable to the God who is so by nature, he shows at once clearly, yet as in type and shadow. For when God commanded them to spoil the Egyptians (Exodus 3:21–22), he said they must borrow gold and silver vessels, from tent-companion and neighbor (Exodus 11:2), which is also brought to its end through women. For the thing is always somehow whispering and most talkative, and well-devised toward deceit. And gold and silver vessels from the Egyptians would be, I think, as I said just now, the things with which it was likely some of those in the world would be made solemn, even if they knew the true God. And what I say is something of this kind again. For the motions of mind and soul are common to all men, and the aptitude toward anything of good and of evil. But those who have used the advantages of nature well accomplish the glorious and exceptional life. Those, however, who turn them aside most mindlessly upon what is not fitting, somehow counterfeit the goods of nature and go the path upon the most shameful things. For courage and prudence are fine for those who have used them best, and damaging for those who do not have them rightly; for it is possible to take heart and to be prudent with praise and applause; and it is possible again to possess these with much outcry. These then are common and in all, both in those still wandering and in those who know God. When then the courage that was of old a worker of a cheap and low life, and the sharpness in understanding, are turned by us toward what seems good to God, they will all but, having been taken from Egyptians (Exodus 12:35–36) and from the life in the world, become holy and acceptable to God; for they are recast into a need of virtue, and a service of sanctification, just as, of course, the gold and silver vessels from Egypt were shown useful toward the construction and completion of the holy tent (Exodus 25:1–8). And after the spoiling of the Egyptians, and the death of the firstborn (Exodus 12:29), those from Israel are barely redeemed, having sacrificed the lamb toward a type of Christ (Exodus 12:3–7); for there was no other way to be able to obtain such a thing, since all redemption is in Christ, and through him every good giving (James 1:17). And they are sent out from the Egyptians' land in the middle of the night, all but being set free from darkness and from slavery together (Exodus 12:29–33). For in the dark of the mind, and not in the divine light, the being a slave into sin always somehow loves to be. 'For everyone who practices the worthless things hates the light,' (John 3:20) according to the Savior's voice.

38Cyril went on: 'For everyone who practices the worthless things hates the light,' (John 3:20) according to the Savior's voice. And the dough is carried out unleavened, and they flee without a provision of food. 'For the Egyptians,' it says, 'forced the people, to throw them out from the land in haste. For they said that we all are dying. And the people took up also their dough before the lumps were leavened, their kneadings bound in their garments upon their shoulders.' (Exodus 12:33–34) For I do not think that those who are about to cling to God, and have chosen a kinship toward him, must bring along a remnant of worldly vice, nor provision themselves with others' and unholy foods, clearly the ones of the mind; but they must love to be unleavened breads, the longing thereafter for the one who gives life to the world; for such would feast purely, and, completing the worship worth taking up to God, they remain under him through all.

Palladius said: It is fixed, then, that those who would be both lovers of God and good must as it were reach some holy and sacred land, of the life under Christ and not under a tyrant; and be eager to sacrifice not in the enemies', that is, not being in the sin-loving habit, and not very blameless, but rather in eagernesses toward virtue, and in a condition of habits housed outside the devil's tyranny.

Cyril: Do not suppose it stands in another way than this, my good man; for the word has been made rightly for us. And it is possible, if it seems good, to look at these things also through another image. For when those who lived in the holy city, I mean Jerusalem, dared through the running-away toward anything out of place to grieve the Savior God of all, they came under the hand of the Babylonians, who, having taken them as captives of the spear, commanded them to serve (2 Kings 25:1–11). For it was a necessity to yield to those who ruled, even them not willing. And they, being very much at a loss, and wailing over the unexpected disasters, sought at times at least to find a small consolation of the labor. And this was, to blunt the sharpness of the grief in them by the hymn-singings toward God; 'For I remembered God and was glad,' (Psalm 77:3) the divine David said, showing the hymn-singing toward God as a spiritual feast. But it seemed somehow shameful to those who wished to strike up and to fulfill the customary things, to love to put so sweet a sound into the ears of the foreigners, and already as it were to throw into the air the melody most sweet and most clear to themselves, the Babylonians sometimes smiling down, and being wholly burdened at the songs through instruments. That is why they also said: 'By the rivers of Babylon there we sat and wept, when we remembered Zion' (Psalm 137:1); in which, according to the laws and customs of the Jews, the sacrifice of praise was brought with strings and instruments being completed, and charming with the songs those who came to the divine temple. And when they were bound tight in a stranger's yoke of slavery, lamenting they say: 'On the willows in the midst of it we hung our instruments.'

39Cyril went on: And when they were bound tight in a stranger's yoke of slavery, lamenting they say: 'On the willows in the midst of it we hung our instruments' (Psalm 137:2); marking by this very thing that they were idle in songs. For the willow is a fruitless plant, or rather a fruit-destroying one; for it is said so by the poets among the Greeks. The instruments of song were then laid up toward idleness and fruitlessness; and crying out the occasion of this ease they say: 'How shall we sing the Lord's song on a foreign land?' (Psalm 137:4) And when Baruch had carried them Jeremiah's words, 'They all wept,' it says, 'and they fasted and prayed a prayer before the Lord; and they gathered silver, as each one's hand was able; and they sent it to Jerusalem to Joakim son of Hilkiah, son of Shallum the priest, and to the priests and to all the people found with him in Jerusalem.' (Baruch 1:5–7) And after other things: 'And they said: Behold, we have sent silver to you; buy with the silver whole burnt-offerings and for sin, and frankincense, and make manna, and offer it upon the altar of the Lord our God.' (Baruch 1:10) For they thought it fitting for themselves no longer to sacrifice, being housed outside a holy land, and acting for the time no longer under God, but yoked as it were to another and having fallen under the tyrannical hand; yet to those who still lived in the holy city, and had obtained the glory of the holy liturgy, they assign the worship, using, clearly, a right reasoning toward the examination of what is fitting and needed. And the most wise Daniel himself also, though he held to holy pursuits, and was a captive together with the others, outwitted the thing of necessity. And in what manner, I will say: for he prayed three times of the day (Daniel 6:10). But the windows in the upper rooms were looking and opened toward Jerusalem for him. For it is written so. For he thought his own prayer would then barely be acceptable with God, if, from a foreign and hated land, he could, if not perhaps in flesh, at least in thoughts be separated, and with the eyes of the mind, looking toward the land most dear to God, and as if having slipped into the temple itself, he might bring the petition for whatever he would choose.

Palladius said: Well indeed, in truth, the whole word has been fitted together for us.