Gregory Nazianzen the Theologian In Defence of His Flight to Pontus and His Return, After His Ordination to the Priesthood, with an Exposition of the Character of the Priestly Office (Oration II), Complete

Translated by Ch. Browne and J. Swallow.

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Page 14

29. And if you examine more closely, how great is the distinction between the married and the unmarried, and among the latter between hermits and those who [2617] live together in community, between those who are proficient and advanced in contemplation and those who barely hold on the straight course, between townsfolk again and rustics, between the simple and the designing, between men of business and men of leisure, between those who have met with reverses and those who are prosperous and ignorant of misfortune. For these classes differ sometimes more widely from each other in their desires and passion than in their physical characteristics; or, if you will, in the mixtures and blendings of the elements of which we are composed, and, therefore, to regulate them is no easy task.

30. As then the same medicine and the same food are not in every case administered to men's bodies, but a difference is made according to their degree of health or infirmity; so also are souls treated with varying instruction and guidance. To this treatment witness is borne by those who have had experience of it. Some are led by doctrine, others trained by example; some need the spur, others the curb; some are sluggish and hard to rouse to the good, and must be stirred up by being smitten with the word; others are immoderately fervent in spirit, with impulses difficult to restrain, like thoroughbred colts, who run wide of the turning post, and to improve them the word must have a restraining and checking influence.

31. Some are benefited by praise, others by blame, both being applied in season; while if out of season, or unreasonable, they are injurious; some are set right by encouragement, others by rebuke; some, when taken to task in public, others, when privately corrected. For some are wont to despise private admonitions, but are recalled to their senses by the condemnation of a number of people, while others, who would grow reckless under reproof openly given, accept rebuke because it is in secret, and yield obedience in return for sympathy.

[2617] Those who, &c. migadas, cf. xxi., 10, where monadikoi and hoi tes ereuias are distinguished from migades and hoi tes epimixias. Clemencet here holds that hoi tes eremias are hermits as distinguished from coenobites, but does not hint at any further subdivision between the koinonikoi and the migades. Cf. also xliii. 62; xxi. 19. Montaut, "Revue Critique, &c." (pp. 48-52) attempts to distinguish between the migades and the koinonikoi. But although he confirms the overthrow by Clemencet of the views of previous translators, he leaves Clemencet's own position really unweakened. S. Gregory uses the two terms as practically convertible. In xxi., S: 19, (which Montaut misinterprets) he explains that the life of the coenobite is a hermit-life in its relation to the world which he has forsaken, while it has opportunities in community-life for the growth of those virtues which are required by the relation of man to man. Cf. Bened. edition (Clemencet), Praef. Gener., Pars. II., S: iii. sub finem.

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