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Translated by Frederick Crombie.
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This Part: 128 Pages
Page 4
6. There are also many other things which escape our notice, and are known to Him alone who is the physician of our souls. For if, on account of those bad effects which we bring upon ourselves by eating and drinking, we deem it necessary for the health of the body to make use of some unpleasant and painful drug, sometimes even, if the nature of the disease demand, requiring the severe process of the amputating knife; and if the virulence of the disease shall transcend even these remedies, the evil has at last to be burned out by fire; how much more is it to be understood that God our Physician, desiring to remove the defects of our souls, which they had contracted from their different sins and crimes, should employ penal measures of this sort, and should apply even, in addition, the punishment of fire to those who have lost their soundness of mind! Pictures of this method of procedure are found also in the holy Scriptures. In the book of Deuteronomy, the divine word threatens sinners with the punishments of fevers, and colds, and jaundice, [2245] and with the pains of feebleness of vision, and alienation of mind and paralysis, and blindness, and weakness of the reins. If any one, then, at his leisure gather together out of the whole of Scripture all the enumerations of diseases which in the threatenings addressed to sinners are called by the names of bodily maladies, he will find that either the vices of souls, or their punishments, are figuratively indicated by them. To understand now, that in the same way in which physicians apply remedies to the sick, in order that by careful treatment they may recover their health, God so deals towards those who have lapsed and fallen into sin, is proved by this, that the cup of God's fury is ordered, through the agency of the prophet Jeremiah, [2246] to be offered to all nations, that they may drink it, and be in a state of madness, and vomit it forth. In doing which, He threatens them, saying, That if any one refuse to drink, he shall not be cleansed. [2247] By which certainly it is understood that the fury of God's vengeance is profitable for the purgation of souls. That the punishment, also, which is said to be applied by fire, is understood to be applied with the object of healing, is taught by Isaiah, who speaks thus of Israel: "The Lord will wash away the filth of the sons or daughters of Zion, and shall purge away the blood from the midst of them by the spirit of judgment, and the spirit of burning." [2248] Of the Chaldeans he thus speaks: "Thou hast the coals of fire; sit upon them: they will be to thee a help." [2249] And in other passages he says, "The Lord will sanctify in a burning fire" [2250] and in the prophecies of Malachi he says, "The Lord sitting will blow, and purify, and will pour forth the cleansed sons of Judah." [2251]
[2245] Aurigine [aurugine]. Deut. xxviii.
[2246] Cf. Jer. xxv. 15, 16.
[2247] Cf. Jer. xxv. 28, 29.
[2248] Isa. iv. 4.
[2249] Isa. xlvii. 14, 15; vid. note, chap. v. S: 3 [p. 280, supra. S].
[2250] Isa. x. 17, cf. lxvi. 16.
[2251] Cf. Mal. iii. 3.
Reference address : https://www.ellopos.net/elpenor/greek-texts/fathers/origen/principiis.asp?pg=4
