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Gregory Nazianzen calls “the rhetoric of their lives.” And surely the knowledge that this is so is encouraging to him who would fain believe in the high destiny of man—surely it is encouraging to know that, in spite of “the inhuman dearth of noble natures,” mankind can still so dearly love moral beauty as to hold it more precious than any other human force.
Gregory Nazianzen, one of the most accomplished masters of Greek literature, declared that the chief value which he set upon it was, that in possessing it, he had something of worth to esteem as nothing in comparison of Christian truth.
Gregory of Nazianzen, his friend, says "that well built and furnished houses stood on both sides of streets symmetrically laid out about the church, and contained rooms for the sick, and the infirm of every variety were intrusted to the care of doctors and nurses."
The eucharist is called by the fathers imago, signum, figura, similitudo, as Hospinian instanceth out of Origen, Nazianzen, Augustine, Hilary, Tertullian, Ambrose.
Gregory Nazianzen breathes the same spirit: 'One of us has oppressed the poor, and wrested from him his portion of land, and wrongly encroached upon his landmarks by fraud or violence, and joined house to house, and field to field, to rob his neighbour of something, and has been eager to have no neighbour, so as to dwell alone on the earth.
This public event is described by Ambrose, bishop of Milan, in an epistle to the emperor Theodosius, which must provoke the severe animadversion of the Jews; by the eloquent Chrysostom, who might appeal to the memory of the elder part of his congregation at Antioch; and by Gregory Nazianzen, who published his account of the miracle before the expiration of the same year.
There is a peace, saith Nazianzen, that is unprofitable; again, there is a discord, saith he, that is profitable. For we must conditionally desire peace, so far as is lawful before God, and so far as we may conveniently. For otherwise Christ Himself brought not peace into the world, but a sword. Wherefore, if the pope will have us be reconciled to him, his duty is first to be reconciled to God.
Be that however as it may, some of the early writers against Christianity such, for instance, as the physician Celsus were fond of adducing this anecdote in proof of a magnanimity which not even Christianity could surpass; to which use of the anecdote Origen opposed the awful silence of our Saviour upon the cross, and Gregory of Nazianzen pointed out that, though it was a noble thing to endure inevitable evils, it was yet more noble to undergo them voluntarily with an equal fortitude.
Years after, a friend, writing to me in remonstrance at the excesses, as he thought them, of my disciples, applied to me my own verse about St. Gregory Nazianzen, "Thou couldst a people raise, but couldst not rule."
Justin Martyr, Clement of Alexandria, Eusebius, Athanasius, Gregory Nazianzen, Basil, and John Chrysostom are only a few of the brilliant names among Greek and Latin writers, who added a lasting glory to literature and the Church. To the Roman belongs the second place in the classic literature of antiquity.
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