Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, Ser. II, Vol. XII:
The Letters and Sermons of Leo the Great.: Sermon XVI

Sermon XVI.

On the Fast of the Tenth Month.

I.  The prosperous must show forth their thankfulness to God, by liberality to the poor and needy.

The transcendent power of God’s grace, dearly beloved, is indeed daily effecting in Christian hearts the transference of our every desire from earthly to heavenly things.  But this present life also is passed through the Creator’s aid and sustained by His providence, because He who promises things eternal is also the Supplier of things temporal.  As therefore we ought to give God thanks for the hope of future happiness towards which we run by faith, because He raises us up to a perception of the happiness in store for us, so for those things also which we receive in the course of every year, God should be honoured and praised, who having from the beginning given fertility to the earth and laid down laws of bearing fruit for every germ and seed, will never forsake his own decrees but will as Creator ever continue His kind administration of the things that He has made.  Whatever therefore the cornfields, the vineyards and the olive groves have borne for man’s purposes, all this God in His bounteous goodness has produced:  for under the varying condition of the elements He has mercifully aided the uncertain toils of the husbandmen so that wind, and rain, cold and heat, day and night might serve our needs.  For men’s methods would not have sufficed to give effect to their works, had not God given the increase to their wonted plantings and waterings.  And hence it is but godly and just that we too should help others with that which the Heavenly Father has mercifully bestowed on us.  For there are full many, who have no fields, no vineyards, no olive-groves, whose wants we must provide out of the store which God has given, that they too with us may bless God for the richness of the earth and rejoice at its possessors having received things which they have shared also with the poor and the stranger.  That garner p. 124 is blessed and most worthy that all fruits should increase manifold in it, from which the hunger of the needy and the weak is satisfied from which the wants of the stranger are relieved, from which the desire of the sick is gratified.  For these men God has in His justice permitted to be afflicted with divers troubles, that He might both crown the wretched for their patience and the merciful for their loving-kindness.

II.  Almsgiving and fasting are the most essential aids to prayer.

And while all seasons are opportune for this duty, beloved, yet this present season is specially suitable and appropriate, at which our holy fathers, being Divinely inspired, sanctioned the Fast of the tenth month, that when all the ingathering of the crops was complete, we might dedicate to God our reasonable service of abstinence, and each might remember so to use his abundance as to be more abstinent in himself and more open-handed towards the poor.  For forgiveness of sins is most efficaciously prayed for with almsgiving and fasting, and supplications that are winged by such aids mount swiftly to God’s ears:  since as it is written, “the merciful man doeth good to his own soul 699 ,” and nothing is so much a man’s own as that which he spends on his neighbour.  For that part of his material possessions with which he ministers to the needy, is transformed into eternal riches, and such wealth is begotten of this bountifulness as can never be diminished or in any way destroyed, for “blessed are the merciful, for God shall have mercy on them 700 ,” and He Himself shall be their chief Reward, who is the Model of His own command.

III.  Christians’ pious activity has so enraged Satan that he has multiplied heresies to wreak them harm.

But at all these acts of godliness, dearly-beloved, which commend us more and more to God, there is no doubt that our enemy, who is so eager and so skilled in harming us, is aroused with keener stings of hatred, that under a false profession of the Christian name he may corrupt those whom he is not allowed to attack with open and bloody persecutions, and for this work he has heretics in his service whom he has led astray from the catholic Faith, subjected to himself, and forced under divers errors to serve in his camp.  And as for the deception of primitive man he used the services of a serpent, so to mislead the minds of the upright he has armed these men’s tongues with the poison of his falsehoods.  But these treacherous designs, dearly beloved, with a shepherd’s care, and so far as the Lord vouchsafes His aid, we will defeat.  And taking heed lest any of the holy flock should perish, we admonish you with fatherly warnings to keep aloof from the “lying lips” and the “deceitful tongue” from which the prophet asks that his soul should be delivered 701 ; because “their words,” as says the blessed Apostle, “do creep as doth a gangrene 702 .”  They creep in humbly, they arrest softly, they bind gently, they slay secretly.  For they “come,” as the Saviour foretold, “in sheeps’ clothing, but inwardly they are ravening wolves 703 ;” because they could not deceive the true and simple sheep, unless they covered their bestial rage with the name of Christ.  But in them all he is at work who, though he is really the enemy of enlightenment, “transforms himself into an angel of light 704 .”  His is the craft which inspires Basilides; his the ingenuity which worked in Marcion; he is the leader under whom Sabellius acted; he the author of Photinus’ headlong fall, his the authority and his the spirit which Arius and Eunomius served:  in fine under his command and authority the whole herd of such wild beasts has separated from the unity of the Church and severed connexion with the Truth.

IV.  Of all heresies Manicheism is the worst and foullest.

But while he retains this ever-varying supremacy over all the heresies, yet he has built his citadel upon the madness of the Manichees, and found in them the most spacious court in which to strut and boast himself:  for there he possesses not one form of misbelief only, but a general compound of all errors and ungodlinesses.  For all that is idolatrous in the heathen, all that is blind in carnal Jews, all that is unlawful in the secrets of the magic art, all finally that is profane and blasphemous in all the heresies is gathered together with all manner of filth in these men as if in a cesspool 705 .  And hence it is too long a matter to describe all their ungodlinesses:  for the number of the charges against them exceeds my supply of words.  It will be sufficient to indicate a few instances, that you may, from what you hear, conjecture what from modesty we omit.  In the matter of their rites, however, which are as indecent morally as they are religiously, we cannot keep p. 125 silence about that which the Lord has been pleased to reveal to our inquiries, lest any one should think we have trusted in this thing to vague rumours and uncertain opinions.  And so with bishops and presbyters sitting beside me, and Christian nobles assembled in the same place, we ordered their elect men and women to be brought before us.  And when they had made many disclosures concerning their perverse tenets and their mode of conducting festivals, they revealed this story of utter depravity also, which I blush to describe but which has been so carefully investigated that no grounds for doubt are left for the incredulous or for cavillers.  For there were present all the persons by which the unutterable crime had been perpetrated, to wit a girl at most ten years old, and two women who had nursed her and prepared her for this outrage.  There was also present the stripling who had outraged her, and the bishop, who had arranged their horrible crime.  All these made one and the same confession, and a tale of such foul orgies 706 was disclosed as our ears could scarcely bear.  And lest by plainer speaking we offend chaste ears, the account of the proceedings shall suffice, in which it is most fully shown that in that sect no modesty, no sense of honour, no chastity whatever is found:  for their law is falsehood, their religion the devil, their sacrifice immorality.

V.  Every one should abjure such men, and give all the information they possess about them to the authorities.

And so, dearly beloved, renounce all friendship with these men who are utterly abominable and pestilential, and whom disturbances in other districts have brought in great numbers to the city 707 :  and you women especially refrain from acquaintance and intercourse with such men, lest while your ears are charmed unawares by their fabulous stories, you fall into the devil’s noose, who, knowing that he seduced the first man by the woman’s mouth, and drove all men from the bliss of paradise through feminine credulity, still lies in watch for your sex with more confident craft that he may rob both of their faith and of their modesty those whom he has been able to ensnare by the servants of his falseness.  This, too, dearly beloved, I entreat and admonish you loyally to inform us 708 , if any of you know where they dwell, where they teach, whose houses they frequent, and in whose company they take rest:  because it is of little avail to any one that through the Holy Ghost’s protection he is not caught by them himself, if he takes no action when he knows that others are being caught.  Against common enemies for the common safety all alike should exercise the same vigilance lest from one member’s wound other members also be injured, and they that think such men should not be given up, in Christ’s judgment be found guilty for their silence even though they are not contaminated by their approval.

VI.  Zeal in rooting out heresy will make other pious duties more acceptable.

Display then a holy zeal of religious vigilance, and let all the faithful rise in one body against these savage enemies of their souls.  For the merciful God has delivered a certain portion of our noxious foes into our hands in order that by revelation of the danger the utmost caution might be aroused.  Let not what has been done suffice, but let us persevere in searching them out:  and by God’s aid the result will be not only the continuance in safety of those who still stand, but also the recovery from error of many who have been deceived by the devil’s seduction.  And the prayers, and alms, and fasts that you offer to the merciful God shall be the holier for this very devotion, when this deed of faith also is added to all your other godly duties.  On Wednesday and Friday, therefore, let us fast, and on Saturday let us keep vigil in the presence of the most blessed Apostle Peter; who, as we experience and know, watches unceasingly like a shepherd over the sheep entrusted to him by the Lord, and who will prevail in his entreaties that the Church of God, which was founded by his preaching, may be free from all error, through Christ our Lord.  Amen.

Footnotes

Prov. xi. 17.

S. Matt. v. 7.

Ps. cxx. 2.

2 Tim. ii. 17.

S. Matt. vii. 15.

2 Cor. xi. 14.

Strong as this language undoubtedly is, it is perhaps almost justifiable, if the story which he proceeds to indicate is not only true but characteristic of the sect.

Exsecramentum, cf. Serm. LXXV. chap 7, ad illa non sacra sed exsecramenta perveniunt, quæ propter communem verecundiam non sunt nostro sermone promenda.

The Ball. quote Aug. (Conf. v. chap. 10) to show that Rome had long ago been infested with Manichees.  They identify the disturbances Leo here speaks of with Genseric’s invasion of Africa and occupation of Carthage in 438.

For a like injunction, cf. Serm. X., chap. 4, where the presbyters are to be told.