74. But where shall I rank the great
Gregory, i.e.
Gregory, bishop of Neocæsarea, known as Gregorius Thaumaturgus,
or Gregory the Wonder-worker. To the modern reader
“Gregory the Great” more naturally suggests Gregory of
Nazianzus, but this he hardly was to his friend and contemporary,
though the title had accrued to him by the time of the accepted
Ephesine Council in 431 (vide Labbe, vol. iv. p. 1192)
Gregory the Wonder-worker, † c. 270. and the words
uttered by him? Shall we not place among Apostles and
Prophets a man who walked by
the same Spirit as they;
2 Cor. xii.
18. who never through
all his days diverged from the footprints of the saints; who
maintained, as long as he lived, the exact principles of evangelical
citizenship? I am sure that we shall do the truth a wrong if we
refuse to number that soul with the people of God, shining as it did
like a beacon in the Church of God; for by the fellow-working of the
Spirit the power which he had over demons was tremendous, and so gifted
was he with the grace of the word “for obedience to the faith
among…the nations,”
Rom. i. 5. that,
although only seventeen Christians were handed over to him, he
brought the whole people alike in town and country through knowledge
to God. He too by Christ’s mighty name commanded even
rivers to change their course,
e.g.according to the legend, the Lycus.
cf. Newman, Essays on Miracles, p.
267. and caused
a lake, which afforded a ground of quarrel to some covetous
brethren, to dry up. The
story is told by Gregory of Nyssa, Life of Greg. Thaum. Migne
xlvi. 926–930. Moreover
his predictions of things to come were such as in no wise to fall
short of those of the great prophets. To recount all his
wonderful works in detail would be too long a task. By the
superabundance of gifts, wrought in him by the Spirit in all power
and in signs and in marvels, he was styled a second Moses by the
very enemies of the Church. Thus in all that he through grace
accomplished, alike by word and deed, a light seemed ever to be
shining, token of the heavenly power from the unseen which followed
him. To this day he is a great object of admiration to the
people of his own neighbourhood, and his memory, established in the
churches ever fresh and green, is not dulled by length of
time. Thus not a practice, not a word, not a mystic rite has
been added to the Church besides what he bequeathed to it.
Hence truly on account of the antiquity of their institution many of
their ceremonies appear to be defective. The
Neocæsareans appear to have entertained a Puritan objection to
the antiphonal psalmody becoming general in the Church in the time
of Basil. cf. Ep. ccvii. For his successors in the
administration of the Churches could not endure to accept any
subsequent discovery in addition to what had had his sanction.
Now one of the institutions of Gregory is the very form of the
doxology to which objection is now made, preserved by the Church on
the authority of his tradition; a statement which may be verified
without much trouble by any one who likes to make a short
journey. That our Firmilian held this belief is testified by
the writings which he has left.
Firmilian, like Gregory the Wonder-worker, a pupil of Origen,
was bishop of Cæsarea from before a.d.
232 (Euseb. vi. 26) to 272 (Euseb. vii. 30). By some his death
at Tarsus is placed in 264 or 5. The
contemporaries also of the illustrious Meletius say that he was of
this opinion. But why quote ancient authorities? Now in
the East are not the maintainers of true religion known chiefly by
this one term, and separated from their adversaries as by a
watchword? I have heard from a certain Mesopotamian, a man at
once well skilled in the language and of unperverted opinions, that
by the usage of his country it is impossible for any one, even
though he may wish to do so, to express himself in any other way,
and that they are compelled by the idiom of their mother tongue to
offer the doxology by the syllable “and,” or, I should
more accurately say, by their equivalent expressions. We
Cappadocians, too, so speak in the dialect of our country, the
Spirit having so early as the division of tongues foreseen the
utility of the phrase. And what of the whole West, almost from
Illyricum to the boundaries of our world? Does it not support
this word?