self becoming both for us; Thou hast bruised the head of the serpent, hast broken open the gates of hell, hast overcome him who had the power of death, and hast opened to us the way to resurrection. For the ruin of the enemy and the security of our life, Thou hast put upon those who feared Thee a sign, the sign of Thy holy cross, O eternal God, to whom I am betrothed from the womb, whom my soul has loved with all its might, to whom I have dedicated, from my youth up till now, my flesh and my soul. Oh! send to me an angel of light, to lead me to the place of refreshment, where is the water of peace, in the bosom of the holy fathers. Thou who hast broken the flaming sword, and bringest back to Paradise the man who is crucified with Thee and flees to Thy mercy. Remember me also in Thy kingdom! Forgive me what in word, deed, or thought, I have done amiss! Blameless and without spot may my soul be received into Thy hands, as a burntoffering before Thee!"1

Gregory attended the ecumenical council of Constantinople, and undoubtedly, since he was one of the most eminent theologians of the time, exerted a powerful influence there, and according to a later, but erroneous, tradition, he composed the additions to the Nicene Creed which were there sanctioned.' The council intrusted to him, as "one of the pillars of catholic orthodoxy," a tour of visitation to Arabia and Jerusalem, where disturbances had broken out which threatened a schism. He found Palestine in a sad condition, and therefore dissuaded a Cappadocian abbot, who asked his advice about a pilgrimage of his monks to Jerusalem. "Change of place," says he, "brings us no nearer God, but where thou art, God can come to thee, if only the inn of thy soul is ready.

It is better to go out of the body and to raise one's self to the Lord, than to leave Cappadocia to journey to Palestine." He did not succeed in making peace, and he returned to Cappadocia lamenting that there were in Jerusalem men "who showed a hatred towards their brethren, such as they ought to

1 Gr. Νyss. Περὶ τοῦ βίου τῆς μακαρίας Μακρίνης.

In Niceph. Call. H. E. xiii. 13. These additions were in use several years before 881, and are found in Epiphanius, Anchorate, n. 120 (tom. ii. p. 122).

have only towards the devil, towards sin, and towards the avowed enemies of the Saviour."

Of his later life we know very little. He was in Cor stantinople thrice afterwards, in 383, 385, and 394, and he died about the year 395.

The wealth of his intellectual life he deposited in his numerous writings, above all in his controversial doctrinal works: Against Eunomius; Against Apollinaris; On the Deity of the Son and the Holy Ghost; On the difference between ousia and hypostasis in God; and in his catechetical compend of the Christian faith.' The beautiful dialogue with his sister Macrina on the soul and the resurrection has been already mentioned. Besides these he wrote many Homilies, especially on the creation of the world, and of man," on the life of Moses, on the Psalms, on Ecclesiastes, on the Song of Solomon, on the Lord's Prayer, on the Beatitudes; Eulogies on eminent martyrs and saints (St. Stephen, the Forty Martyrs, Gregory Thaumaturgus, Ephrem, Meletius, his brother Basil); various valuable ascetic tracts; and a biography of his sister Macrina, addressed to the monk Olympios.

Gregory was more a man of thought than of action. He had a fine metaphysical head, and did lasting service in the vindication of the mystery of the Trinity and the incarnation, and in the accurate distinction between essence and hypostasis. Of all the church teachers of the Nicene age he is the nearest to Origen. He not only follows his sometimes utterly extravagant allegorical method of interpretation, but even to a great extent falls in with his dogmatic views. With him, as with Origen, human freedom plays a great part. Both are idealis

1 The Λόγος κατηχητικὸς ὁ μέγας stands worthily by the side of the similar work of Origen, De principiis. Separate edition, Gr. and Lat. with notes, by J. G. Krabinger, Munich, 1838.

* The Hexaëmeron of Gregory is a supplement to his brother Basil's Hexaĕmeron, and discusses the more obscure metaphysical questions connected with this subject. His book on the Workmanship of Man, though written first, may be regarded as a continuation of the Hexaëmeron, and beautifully sets forth the spir Itual and royal dignity and destination of man, for whom the world was prepare and adorned as his palace.

' On his relation to Origen, comp. the appendix of Rupp, 1. c. pp. 243–262.

tic, and sometimes, without intending it or knowing it, fall into contradiction with the church doctrine, especially in eschatology. Gregory adopts, for example, the doctrine of the final restoration of all things. The plan of redemption is in his view absolutely universal, and embraces all spiritual beings. Good is the only positive reality; evil is the negative, the non-existent, and must finally abolish itself, because it is not of God. Unbelievers must indeed pass through a second death, in order to be purged from the filthiness of the flesh. But God does not give them up, for they are his property, spiritual natures allied to him. His love, which draws pure souls easily and without pain to itself, becomes a purifying fire to all who cleave to the earthly, till the impure element is driven off. As all comes forth from God, so must all return into him at last.

§ 166. Gregory Nazianzen.

I. S. GREGORIUS THEOLOGUS, valgo NAZIANZENUS: Opera omnia, Gr. et Lat. opera et studio monachorum S. Benedicti e congreg. S. Mauri (Clemen cet). Paris, 1778, tom. i. (containing his orations). This magnificent edition (one of the finest of the Maurian editions of the fathers) was interrupted by the French Revolution, but afterwards resumed, and with a second volume (after papers left by the Maurians) completed by A. B. Caillau, Par. 1837-'40, 2 vols. fol. Reprinted in Migne's Patrolog. Græc. (tom. 35-38), Petit-Montrouge, 1857, in 4 vols. (On the separate editions of his Orationes and Carmina, see Brunet, Man. du libraire, tom. ii. 1728 sq.)

II. Biographical notices in Gregory's Epistles and Poems, in Socrates, SOZOMEN, THEODORET, RUFINUS, and SUIDAS (s. v. Tpηyópios). GREGORIUS PRESBYTER (of uncertain origin, perhaps of Cappadocia in the tenth century): Bíos Toù гpηyopiov (Greek and Latin in Migne's ed. of the Opera, tom. i. 243-304). G. HERMANT: La vie de S. Basile le Grand et celle de S. Gregoire de Nazianz. Par. 1679, 2 vols. ACTA SANCTORUM, tom. ii. Maji, p. 373 sqq. BENED. EDITORES: Vita Greg. ex iis potissimum scriptis adornata (in Migne's ed. tom. i. pp. 147-242). TILLE MONT: Mémoires, tom. ix. pp. 305-560, 692-731. LE CLERO: Bibliothèque Universelle, tom. xviii. pp. 1-128. W. CAVE: Lives of the Fathers, vol. iii. pp. 1-90 (ed. Oxf. 1840). SOHRÖCKн: Part xiii. pp. 275-466. CARL ULLMANN: Gregorius von Nazianz, der Theologe. Ein Beitrag zur Kirchen- und Dogmengeschichte des 4ten Jahrhun

derts. Darmstadt, 1825. (One of the best historical monographs by a theologian of kindred spirit.) Comp. also the articles cf HEFELE in Wetzer und Welte's Kirchenlexikon, vol. iv. 736 ff., and Gass in Her zog's Encykl. vol. v. 349.

GREGORY NAZIANZEN, or Gregory the Theologian, is the third in the Cappadocian triad; inferior to his bosom friend Basil as a church ruler, and to his namesake of Nyssa as a speculative thinker, but superior to both as an orator. With them he exhibits the flower of Greek theology in close union with the Nicene faith, and was one of the champions of orthodoxy, though with a mind open to free speculation. His life, with its alternations of high station, monastic seclusion, love of severe studies, enthusiasm for poetry, nature, and friendship, possesses a romantic charm. He was "by inclination and fortune tossed between the silence of a contemplative life and the tumult of church administration, unsatisfied with either, neither a thinker nor a poet, but, according to his youthful desire, an orator, who, though often bombastic and dry, labored as powerfully for the victory of orthodoxy as for true practical Christianity."'

Gregory Nazianzen was born about 330, a year before the emperor Julian, either at Nazianzum, a market-town in the south-western part of Cappadocia, where his father was bishop, or in the neighboring village of Arianzus.*

So K. HASE admirably characterizes him, in his Lehrbuch, p. 138 (7th ed.). The judgment of GIBBON (Decline and Fall, ch. xxii.) is characteristic: "The title of Saint has been added to his name: but the tenderness of his heart, and the elegance of his genius, reflect a more pleasing lustre on the memory of Gregory Nazianzen." The praise of "the tenderness of his heart" suggests to the skeptical historian another fling at the ancient church, by adding the note: "I can only be understood to mean, that such was his natural temper when it was not hardened, or inflamed, by religious zeal. From his retirement, he exhorts Nectarius to prosecute the heretics of Constantinople."

Respecting the time and place of his birth, views are divided. According to Suidas, Gregory was over ninety years old, and therefore, since he died in 389 or 390, must have been born about the year 300. This statement was accepted by Pagi and other Roman divines, to remove the scandal of his canonized father's having begotten children after he became bishop; but it is irreconcilable with the fact that Gregory, according to his own testimony (Carmen de vita sua, v. 112 and 238, and Orat. v. c. 23), studied in Athens at the same time with Julian the Apostate, therefore in 355, and left Athens at the age of thirty years. Comp

In the formation of his religious character his mother Nonna, one of the noblest Christian women of antiquity, exerted a deep and wholesome influence. By her prayers and her holy life she brought about the conversion of her husband from the sect of the Hypsistarians, who, without positive faith, worshipped simply a supreme being; and she consecrated her son, as Hannah consecrated Samuel, even before his birth, to the service of God. "She was," as Gregory describes her, "a wife according to the mind of Solomon; in all things subject to her husband according to the laws of marriage, not ashamed to be his teacher and his leader in true religion. She solved the difficult problem of uniting a higher culture, especially in knowledge of divine things and strict exercise of devotion, with the practical care of her household. If she was active in her house, she seemed to know nothing of the exercises of religion; if she occupied herself with God and his worship, she seemed to be a stranger to every earthly occupation: she was whole in everything. Experiences had instilled into her unbounded confidence in the effects of believing prayer; therefore she was most diligent in supplications, and by prayer overcame even the deepest feelings of grief over her own and others' sufferings. She had by this means attained such control over her spirit, that in every sorrow she encountered, she never uttered a plaintive tone before she had thanked God." He especially celebrates also her extraordinary liberality and self-denying love for the poor and the sick. But it seems to be not in perfect harmony with this, that he relates of her: "Towards heathen women she was so intolerant, that she never offered her mouth or hand to them in salutation.' She ate no salt with those who came from the unhallowed altars of idols. Pagan temples she did not look at, much less would she have stepped upon their ground; and she was as far from visiting

Tillemont, tom. ix. pp. 693–697; Schröckh, Part xiii. p. 276, and the admirable monograph of Ullmann, p. 548 sqq. (of which I have made special use in this see tion).

'Against the express injunction of love for enemies, Matt. v. 44 ff. The com mand of John in his 2d Epistle, v. 10, 11, which might be quoted in justification of Nonna, refers not to pagans, but to anti-Christian heretics.