ing of God, according to its proper measure in each case, and as suits a nature which is made and created. And this measure—this due harmony and proportion between aim and power—it is right that every one should regard even now, who is beginning to see God, that is, to understand Him in purity of heart (ii. 11, 6 f.). But Origen goes on to shew that Scripture concentrates our attention upon the next scene, summed up in the words, resurrection, judgment, retribution. Nowhere is he more studiously anxious to keep to the teaching of the Word than in dealing with these cardinal ideas. For him the resurrection is not the reproduction of any particular organism, but the preservation of complete identity of person, an identity maintained under new conditions, which he presents under the apostolic figure of the growth of the plant from the seed: the seed is committed to the earth, perishes, and yet the vital power it contains gathers a new frame answering to its proper nature. Judgment is no limited and local act, but the unimpeded execution of the absolute divine law by which the man is made to feel what he is and what he has become and to bear the inexorable consequences of the revelation. Punishment is no vengeance, but the just severity of a righteous King, by which the soul is placed at least on the way to purification. Blessedness is no sensuous joy or indolent repose, but the opening vision of the divine glory, the growing insight into the mysteries of the fulfilment of the divine counsels.
In bk. iii. Origen discusses the moral basis of his system. This lies in the recognition of free will as the inalienable endowment of rational beings. But this free will does not carry with it the power of independent action, but only the power of receiving the help which is extended to each according to his capacity and needs and therefore justly implying responsibility for the consequences of action. Such free will offers a sufficient explanation, in Origen's judgment, for what we see and gives a stable foundation for what we hope. It places sin definitely within the man himself, not without him. It preserves the possibility of restoration, while it enforces the penalty of failure. "'God said,' so he writes, 'let us make man in our image after our likeness.' Then the sacred writer adds, 'and God made man: in the image of God made He him.' This therefore that he says, 'in the image of God made He him,' while he is silent as to the likeness, has no other meaning than this, that man received the dignity of the image at his first creation: while the perfection of the likeness is kept in the consummation (of all things); that is, that he should himself gain it by the efforts of his own endeavour, since the possibility of perfection had been given him at the first . . ." (iii. 6, 1). Such a doctrine, he shews, gives a deep solemnity to the moral conflicts of life. We cannot, even to the last, plead that we are the victims of circumstances or of evil spirits. The decision in each case rests with ourselves, yet so that all we have and are truly is the gift of God. Each soul obtains from the object of its love the power to fulfil His will. "It draws and takes to itself," he says in another place, "the Word of God in proportion to its capacity and faith. And when souls have drawn to themselves the Word of God, and have let Him penetrate their senses and their understandings, and have perceived the sweetness of His fragrance . . . filled with vigour and cheerfulness they speed after him" (in Cant. i.). Such a doctrine, so far from tending to Pelagianism, is the very refutation of it. It lays down that the essence of freedom is absolute self-surrender; that the power of right action is nothing but the power of God. Every act of man is the act of a free being, but not an exercise of freedom; if done without dependence upon God, it is done in despite of freedom, responsibly indeed, but under adverse constraint. The decision from moment to moment rests with us, but not the end. That is determined from the first, though the conduct of creatures can delay, through untold ages, the consummation of all things. The gift of being, once given, abides for ever. The rational creature is capable of change, of better and worse, but it can never cease to be. What mysteries lie behind; what is the nature of the spiritual body in which we shall be clothed; whether all that is finite shall be gathered up in some unspeakable way into the absolute,—that Origen holds is beyond our minds to conceive.
Bk. iv. deals with the dogmatic basis of Origen's system. For this to follow the moral basis is unusual and yet intelligible. It moves from the universal to the special; from the most abstract to the most concrete; from the heights of speculation to the rule of authority. "In investigating such great subjects as these," Origen writes, "we are not content with common ideas and the clear evidence of what we see, but we take testimonies to prove what we state, even those which are drawn from the Scriptures which we believe to be divine" (iv. 1). Therefore, in conclusion, he examines with a reverence, insight, humility, and grandeur of feeling never surpassed, the questions of the inspiration and interpretation of the Bible. The intellectual value of the work may best be characterized by one fact. A single sentence from it was quoted by Butler as containing the germ of his Analogy.
Before he left Alexandria Origen wrote ten books of Miscellanies (Στρωματεῖς: cf. Eus. H.E. vi. 18). In these he apparently discussed various topics in the light of ancient philosophy and Scripture (Hieron. Ep. ad Magn. lxx. 4). The three fragments which remain, in a Latin translation, give no sufficient idea of their contents. The first, from bk. vi., touches on the permissibility of deflection from literal truth, following out a remark of Plato (Hieron. adv. Ruf. i. § 18: cf. Hom. xix. in Jer. § 7; Hom. in Lev. iii. § 4). The second, from bk. x., contains brief notes on the history of Susanna and Bel (Dan. xiii. xiv.) added by Jerome to his Comm. on Dan. The third, also from bk. x., gives an interpretation of Gal. v. 13, which is referred to the spiritual understanding of the Scripture narratives (Hieron. ad loc.; Cf. in Jer. iv. xxii. 24. ff.).
The Letter to Julius Africanus on the History of Susanna (Dan. xiii.) contains a reply to objections which Julius urged against the
