Acts 17:21

21. Moreover, if discourse must be bestowed upon any, and this so take up the speaker that he have not time to work with his hands, are all in the monastery able to hold discourse unto brethren which come unto them from another kind of life, whether it be to expound the divine lessons, or concerning any questions which may be put, to reason in an wholesome manner? Then since not all have the ability, why upon this pretext do all want to have nothing else to do? Although even if all were able, they ought to do it by turns; not only that the rest might not be taken up from necessary works, but also because it sufficeth that to many hearers there be one speaker. To come now to the Apostle; how could he find time to work with his hands, unless for the bestowing of the word of God he had certain set times? And indeed God hath not willed this either to be hidden from us. …

Observe how he meets with greater trials among the Jews than among the Gentiles. Thus in Athens he undergoes nothing of this kind; the thing goes as far as ridicule, and there an end: and yet he did make some converts: whereas among the Jews he underwent many perils; so much greater was their hostility against him. “His spirit,” it says, “was roused within him when he saw the city all full of idols.” Nowhere else were so many objects of worship to be seen. But again “he disputed with the Jews in the synagogue, and in the market daily with them that met with him. Then certain of the philosophers of the Stoics and Epicureans encountered him.” ( v. 18 .) It is a wonder the philosophers did not laugh him to scorn, speaking in the way he did. “And some said, What does this babbler mean to say?” insolently, on the instant: this is far from philosophy. …

(Recapitulation.) ( b ) “And while Paul waited,” etc. ( v. 16 .) It is providentially ordered that against his will he stays there, while waiting for those others. ( a ) “His spirit,” it says, “within him” παρωξύνετο . It does not mean there anger or exasperation: just as elsewhere it says, “There was παροξυσμὸς between them.” ( ch. xv. 30 .) ( c ) Then what is παρωξύνετο ? Was roused: for the gift is far removed from anger and exasperation. He could not bear it, but pined away. “He reasoned therefore in the synagogue,” etc. ( v. 17 .) Observe him again reasoning with Jews. By “devout persons” he means the proselytes. For the Jews were dispersed everywhere before (mod. text “since”) Christ’s coming, the Law indeed being henceforth, so to say, in process of dissolution, but at the same time (the dispersed Jews) teaching men religion. …

I was glad to receive your letter just now, the more so as you wrote from Jerusalem. I thank you for informing me about the brethren that there assembled, and about those who wish, on account of disputed points, to disturb the simple. But about these things let the Apostle charge them not to give heed to those who contend about words, and seek nothing else than to tell and hear some new thing. But do you, having your foundation sure, even Jesus Christ our Lord, and the confession of the fathers concerning the faith, avoid those who wish to say anything more or less than that, and rather aim at the profit of the brethren, that they may fear God and keep His commandments, in order that both by the teaching of the fathers, and by the keeping of the commandments, they may be able to appear well-pleasing to the Lord in the day of judgment. …

He next proceeds once more to slander us as dishonouring the generation of the Son by human similitudes, and mentions what was written on these points by our father, where he says that while by the word “Son” two things are signified, the being formed by passion, and the true relationship to the begetter, he does not admit in discourses upon things divine the former sense, which is unseemly and carnal, but in so far as the latter tends to testify to the glory of the Only-begotten, this alone finds a place in the sublime doctrines. …

12. In the palmy days of the Church, when all was well, the present elaborate, far-fetched and artificial treatment of Theology had not made its way into the schools of divinity, but playing with pebbles which deceive the eye by the quickness of their changes, or dancing before an audience with varied and effeminate contortions, were looked upon as all one with speaking or hearing of God in a way unusual or frivolous. But since the Sextuses and Pyrrhos, and the antithetic style, like a dire and malignant disease, have infected our churches, and babbling is reputed culture, and, as the book of the Acts says of the Athenians, we spend our time in nothing else but either to tell or to hear some new thing. O what Jeremiah will bewail our confusion and blind madness; he alone could utter lamentations befitting our misfortunes.

42. What is it that they maintain? Look at the terms of their imposture. “We assert that connumeration is appropriate to subjects of equal dignity, and sub-numeration to those which vary in the direction of inferiority.” “Why,” I rejoined, “do you say this? I fail to understand your extraordinary wisdom. Do you mean that gold is numbered with gold, and that lead is unworthy of the connumeration, but, because of the cheapness of the material, is subnumerated to gold? And do you attribute so much importance to number as that it can either exalt the value of what is cheap, or destroy the dignity of what is valuable? Therefore, again, you will number gold under precious stones, and such precious stones as are smaller and without lustre under those which are larger and brighter in colour. …