in former hymns. The prayers for himself are almost identical. It is also curious to find that he still considered the Spirit the second person of the Trinity; to use his own illustration, "the Father is the root, the Son the branch, the Spirit intermediate between root and branch." Still, the decisive step had been taken by acknowledging Christ as the Saviour of mankind; after that the subsequent steps were natural and almost inevitable. He was baptized, probably about five years after his marriage. How far he then felt it necessary to give up the language and ideas of his old creed may be imagined from the following hymn, addressed to Christ: "Thou camest down to earth and didst sojourn among men and drive the deceiver, the serpent-fiend, from Thy Father's garden. Thou wentest down to Tartarus, where death held the countless races of mankind. The old man Hades feared Thee, the devouring dog (Cerberus) fled from the portal; but, having released the soul of the righteous from suffering, Thou didst offer, with a holy worship, hymns of thanksgiving to the Father. As Thou wentest up on high the daemons, powers of the air, were affrighted. But Aether, wise parent of harmony, sang with joy to his seven-toned lyre a hymn of triumph. The morning star, day's harbinger, and the golden star of evening, the planet Venus, smiled on Thee. Before Thee went the horned moon, decked with fresh light, leading the gods of night. Beneath Thy feet Titan spread his flowing locks of light. He recognized the Son of God, the creative intelligence, the source of his own flames. But Thou didst fly on outstretched wings beyond the vaulted sky, alighting on the spheres of pure intelligence, where is the fountain of goodness, the heaven enveloped in silence. There time, deep-flowing and unwearied time, is not; there disease, the reckless and prolific offspring of matter, is not. But eternity, ever young and ever old, rules the abiding habitation of the gods."
While the old and new were thus strangely blended in his creed, an unexpected event changed the whole current of his life. In defiance of the law, which enacted that no one should hold the governorship of the province of which he was a native, Andronicus had been appointed governor of Pentapolis. A native of Berenice, of low origin, he had gained the office, Synesius says, by bribery. Against his appointment Synesius vigorously protested, in a letter to an influential friend at Constantinople: "Send us legitimate governors; men whom we do not know, and who do not know us; men who will not be biassed in their judgments by their private feelings. A governor is on his way to us who lately took a hostile part in politics here, and who will pursue his political differences on the judgment seat." When the ancient Romans were threatened with oppressive rulers, they chose the bravest of their fellow-citizens as tribunes to protect them. In the 5th cent. of the Christian era, under similar circumstances, the people of Ptolemais elected Synesius a bishop. They knew him as a man of high character and great abilities, universally liked and respected, but probably still more recommended to them by the vigour he had displayed in the recent siege. No one who has attentively studied his life and writings can doubt that he was sincere in his wish to decline the proffered honour. A frank statement of his feelings was made in a letter written to his brother Evoptius, then resident at Alexandria, and intended to be shewn to Theophilus: "I should be devoid of feeling if I were not deeply grateful to the people of Ptolemais who have thought me worthy of higher honours than I do myself. But what I must consider is not the greatness of the favour conferred, but the possibility of my accepting it. That a mere man should receive almost divine honours is indeed most pleasing, if he is worthy of them, but if he is far from being so, his acceptance of them gives but a poor hope for the future. This is no new fear, but one I have long felt, the fear lest I should gain honour among men by sinning against God. From my knowledge of myself I feel I am in every respect unworthy of the solemnity of the episcopal office.[1] . . . I now divide my time between amusements and study. When I am engaged in study, especially religious studies, I keep entirely to myself, in my amusements I am thoroughly sociable. But the bishop must be godly, and therefore like God have nothing to do with amusements, and a thousand eyes watch to see that he observes this duty. In religious matters, on the other hand, he cannot seclude himself, but must be thoroughly sociable, as he is both a teacher and preacher of the law. Single-handed, he has to do the work of everybody, or bear the blame of everybody. Surely then it needs a man of the strongest character to support such a burden of cares without allowing the mind to be overwhelmed, or the divine particle in the soul to be quenched, when he is distracted by such an infinite variety of employments." Again, there was the difficulty of his marriage. "God and the law, and the sacred hand of Theophilus, gave me my wife. I therefore declare openly to all and testify that I will not separate entirely from her, or visit her secretly like an adulterer. The one course would be contrary to piety, the other to law. I shall wish and pray to have a large number of virtuous children." Still more important in his opinion was the question of religious belief. "You know that philosophy is opposed to the opinions of the vulgar. I certainly shall not admit that the soul is posterior in existence to the body. I cannot assert that the world and all its parts will perish together. The resurrection which is so much talked about I consider something sacred and ineffable, and I am far from sharing the ideas of the multitude on the subject." He would indeed be content to keep silence in public on these abstruser points of theology, neither pretending to believe as the multitude, nor seeking to convince them of their errors, "for what has the multitude to do with philosophy? the truth of divine mysteries is
- ↑ ἱερεύς and the kindred terms are applied by Synesius after he became a Christian only to bishops; the term presbyter is always used of the second order of the Christian ministry. Before his conversion he uses ἱερεύς apparently of heathen priests, and on one occasion certainly of Christian presbyters. In one or two instances, however, ἱερεύς may be intended to include presbyters as well as bishops.
