THE EXTANT WORKS AND FRAGMENTS OF HIPPOLYTUS: PART II. G. FRAGMENTS OF DISCOURSES OR HOMILIES

FRAGMENTS OF DISCOURSES OR HOMILIES.

I.(1) From the Discourse of Hippolytus, Bishop of Rome, on the Resurrection and Incorruption.

Men, he says, "in the resurrection will be like the angels of God,"(2) to wit, in incorruption, and immortality, and incapacity of loss.(3) For the incorruptible nature is not the subject of generation;(4) it grows not, sleeps not, hungers not, thirsts not, is not wearied, suffers not, dies not, is not pierced by nails and spear, sweats not, drops not with blood. Of such kind are the natures of the angels and of souls released from the body. For both these are of another kind, and different from these creatures of our world, which are visible and perishing.

II.(5) From the Discourse of St. Hippolytus, Bishop and Martyr, on the Divine Nature.(6)

God is capable of willing, but not of not willing(7) for that pertains only to one that changes and makes choice;(8) for things that are being made follow the eternal will of God, by which also things that are made abide sustained.

III.(9) St. Hippolytus, Bishop and Martyr, in his Homily on the Paschal Supper.

He was altogether(10) in all, and everywhere; and though He filleth the universe up to all the principalities of the air, He stripped Himself again. And for a brief space He cries that the cup might pass from Him, with a view to show truly that He was also man.(11) But remembering, too, the purpose for which He was sent, He fulfils the dispensation (economy) for which He was sent, and exclaims, "Father, not my will,"(12) and, "The spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak."(13)

IV.(14)

1. Take me, O Samuel, the heifer brought to Bethlehem, in order to show the king begotten of David, and him who is anointed to be king and priest by the Father.

2. Tell me, O blessed Mary, what that was that was conceived by thee in the womb, and what that was that was born by thee in thy virgin matrix. For it was the first-born Word of God that descended to thee from heaven, and was formed as a first-born man in the womb, in order that the first-born Word of God might be shown to be united with a first-born man.

3. And in the second (form),--to wit, by the prophets, as by Samuel, calling back and delivering the people from the slavery of the aliens. And in the third (form), that in which He was incarnate, taking to Himself humanity from the Virgin, in which character also He saw the city, and wept over it.

V.(15)

And for this reason three seasons of the year prefigured the Saviour Himself, so that He should fulfil the mysteries prophesied of Him. In the Passover season, so as to exhibit Himself as one destined to be sacrificed like a sheep, and to prove Himself the true Paschal-lamb, even as the apostle says, "Even Christ," who is God, "our passover was sacrificed for us."(16) And at Pentecost so as to prosignify the kingdom of heaven as He Himself first ascended to heaven and brought man as a gift to God.(17)

VI.(18)

And an ark of imperishable wood was the Saviour Himself. For by this was signified the imperishable and incorruptible tabernacle (of His body), which engendered no corruption of sin. For the man who has sinned also has this confession to make: "My wounds stank, and were corrupt, because of my foolishness."(19) But the Lord was without sin, being of imperishable wood in respect of His humanity,--that is to say, being of the Virgin and the Holy Spirit, covered, as it were, within and without with the purest gold of the Word of God.

VII.(1)

1. He who rescued from the lowest hell the first-formed man of earth when he was lost and bound with the chains of death; He who came down from above, and raised the earthy on high;(2) He who became the evangelist of the dead, and the redeemer of the souls, and the resurrection of the buried,--He was constituted the helper of vanquished man, being made like him Himself, (so that) the first-born Word acquainted Himself with the first-formed Adam in the Virgin; He who is spiritual sought out the earthy in the womb; He who is the ever-living One sought out him who, through disobedience, is subject to death; He who is heavenly called the terrene to the things that are above; He who is the nobly-born sought, by means of His own subjection, to declare the slave free; He transformed the man into adamant who was dissolved into dust and made the food of the serpent, and declared Him who hung on the tree to be Lord over the conqueror, and thus through the tree He is found victor.

2. For they who know not now the Son of God incarnate, shall know in Him who comes as Judge in glory, Him who is now despised in the body of His humiliation.

3. And the apostles, when they came to the sepulchre on the third day, did not find the body of Jesus; just as the children of Israel went up the mount and sought for the tomb of Moses, but did not find it.

VIII.(3)

Under the figure of Egypt he described the world; and under things made with hands, idolatry; and under the earthquake, the subversion, and dissolution of the earth itself. And he represented the Lord the Word as a light cloud, the purest tabernacle. enthroned on which our Lord Jesus Christ entered into this life in order to subvert error.

IX.(4)

Now Hippolytus, the martyr and bishop of [the Province of] Rome, in his second discourse on Daniel, speaks thus:--

Then indeed Azarias, standing along with the others, made their acknowledgments to God with song and prayer in the midst of the furnace. Beginning thus with His holy and glorious and honourable name, they came to the works of the Lord themselves, and named first of all those of heaven, and glorified Him, saying, "Bless the Lord, all ye works of the Lord." Then they passed to the sons of men, and taking up their hymn in order, they then named the spirits [that people Tartarus(5) beneath the earth,] and the souls of the righteous, m order that they might praise God together with them.

X(6)

Now a person might say that these men, and those who hold a different opinion, are yet near neighbours, being involved in like error. For those men, indeed, either profess that Christ came into our life a mere man, and deny the talent of His divinity, or else, acknowledging Him to be God, they deny, on the other hand, His humanity, and teach that His appearances to those who saw Him as man were illusory, inasmuch as He did not bear with Him true manhood, but was rather a kind of phantom manifestation. Of this class are, for example, Marcion and Valentinus, and the Gnostics, who sunder the Word from the flesh, and thus set aside the one talent, viz., the incarnation.

XI(7)

1. The body of the Lord presented both these to the world, the sacred blood and the holy water.

2. And His body, though dead after the manner of man, possesses in it great power of life. For streams which flow not from dead bodies flowed forth from Him, viz., blood and water; in order that we might know what power for life is held by the virtue that dwelt in His body, so as that it appears not to be dead like others, and is able to shed forth for us the springs of life.

3. And not a bone of the Holy Lamb is broken, this figure showing us that suffering toucheth not His strength. For the bones are the strength of the body.