HIS GENERAL CHARACTER AS A THEOLOGIAx\ she has faith, which is surer than demonstration \" He developes the truth of the Resur- rection as much by the fulfihiient of God's promises as by metaphysics: and it has been considered as one of the proofs that the treatise What is being ^ in the iinage of God' 1 is not his that this subordination ofphilosophical proof to the witness of the Holy Spirit is not preserved in it. Nevertheless there was a large field, larger even than in the next century, in which ration- alizing was not only allowable, but was even required of him. In this there are three questions which Gregory has treated with particular fulness and originality. They are:—i. Evil; 2. The relation between the ideal and the actual Man ; 3. Spirit. I. He takes, to begin with, Origen's view of evil. Virtue and Vice are not opposed to each other as two Existencies : but as Being is opposed to not-Being. Vice exists only as an absence. But how did this arise? In answering this question he seems sometimes to come very near Manicheism, and his writings must be read very carefully, in order to avoid fixing upon him the groundless charge that he leaves evil in too near connexion with Matter. But the passages ^ which give rise to this charge consist of comparisons found in his homilies and meditations ; just as a modern theologian might in such works make the Devil the same as Sin and Death. The only imperfection in his view is that he is unable 3 to regard evil as not only suffered but even permittedhy God. But this imperfection is inseparable from his time : for Manicheism was too near and its opposition too little overcome for such a view to be possible for him ; he could not see that it is the only one able thoroughly to resist Dualism. Evil with Gregory is to be found in the spontaneous proclivity of the soul towards Matter: but not in Matter itself. Matter, therefore, in his eschatology is not to be burnt up and annihilated : only soul and body have to be refined, as gold (this is a striking comparison) is refined. He is very clear upon the relations between the three factors, body, matter, and evil. He represents the mind as the mirror of the Archetypal Beauty : then below the mind comes body (^vo-ts) which is connected with mind and pervaded by it, and when thus trans- figured and beautified by it becomes itself the mirror of this mirror : and then this body in its turn influences and combines Matter. The Beauty of the Supreme Being thus penetrates all things : and as long as the lower holds on to the higher all is well. But if a rupture occurs anywhere, then Matter, receiving no longer influence from above, reveals its own deformity, and imparts something of it to body and, through that, to mind : for matter is in itself 'a shapeless unorganized thing 1' Thus the mind loses the image of God. But evil began when the rupture was made : and what caused that ? When and how did the mind become separated from God ? Gregory answers this question by laying it down as a principle, that everything created is subject to change. The Uncreate Being is changeless, but Creation, since its very beginning was owing to a change, i.e. a calling of the non-existent into existence, is liable to alter. Gregory deals here with angefic equally as with human nature, and with all the powers in both, especially with the will, whose virtual freedom he assumes throughout. That, too, was created ; therefore that, too, could change. It was possible, therefore, that, first, one of the created spirits, and, as it actually happened, he who was entrusted with the supervision of the earth, should choose to turn his eyes away from the Good ; he thus looked at a lower good ; and so began to be envious and to have irdOr^. All evil followed in a chain from this beginning ; according to the principle that the beginning of anything is the cause of all that follows in its train. 1 In verba 'faciamus kominem,* I. p. 140. 1 of the earth, so that the thought great in wickedness should vanish, 2 De Per/. Christiani Forma, III. p. 294,he calls the ' Prince of j and the darkness should be lightened, &c.' darkness ' the author of sin and death : hi Christi Resurrect. III. | 3 As expressed by S. ThomasAquinas Summ. I. Qu. xix. Art. 9, p. 386, he calls Satan ' the heart of the earth : ' and p. 387 identifies I ^^° "^^ nolente, nee volente, sed permittente Deus neque vult him with sin. 'And so the real wisdom visits that arrogant heart ! ^^"' "^^"^ ^"'' "°" ^""'^"^ ^"^^P""''"^'*^''^ "^^'^ <^^"- 4 De Vinrinit. c. xi.