Hymns and Sermons of Saint Ephrem the Syrian, Volume 1

How did Christ overcome fate and defeat its laws? If nothing resists fate, horoscopes must never lie. If, however, they sometimes lie, it must be acknowledged that the earth and the sea are subject not to fate but to God, and that man is freely ruled by Him.” He wrote many hymns on free will, by which the doctrines of the pseudo-reformers of the 16th century are excellently overturned. Then the Holy Doctor proves that one principle exists, by whose powerful and wise will all things were created: spiritual substances, light and darkness, and flesh. Therefore, darkness is not evil in itself, but all evil proceeds from the free will of man. He develops all these things in an Oriental and most ornate style. After he confuted Bardesanes, Marcion, and Manes by reason, he attacks them from the Scriptures, and at the same time proves that there exists one God, most powerful, good, and just, who created all things, lifted up fallen man through His incarnate Son, and ordains afflictions and other evils for his salvation. As the Holy Doctor develops these, he simultaneously asserts various dogmas of the Christian faith and the sacraments, especially that of the Eucharist.

Ephrem shows himself in the same way in the eighty-seven hymns on faith against the scrutinizers or the Aëtian and Eunomian heretics, and others who had brought the Arian heresy into Mesopotamia. But at the same time, while he overturns the fraudulent doctrines of the Arians, he discusses deeply and most eloquently in elegant verses the incomprehensible nature of God and the most august Trinity—a mystery which, for the powers of human wit, he explains in a most persuasive manner, drawing similitudes from the nature of the Orient, especially from the brilliant sun and light found there, and drawing arguments from the form of baptism, from the nature of the supreme good, and most of all from the Scriptures. He establishes the divine and temporal generation of the Word in such a way that you do not know what is more to be admired: such charming speech in a man not trained in Greek disciplines, or such a sublime and acute wit in a monk continuously occupied with prayers. All these hymns were edited by the Roman editors from the most ancient codices of the 6th century, and their authority is greatly confirmed by the codices of the 5th and 6th centuries that are stored in the British Museum. From these codices, I have collected various readings and the tones to which the hymns were to be sung, which the Roman editors omitted along with the responses.

Songs concerning the deceased.

Of the same kind are the things which the Sun of the Syrians wrote against the Jews spreading in Mesopotamia and against the impiety of Julian. But the nature of the songs or elegies which the Holy Doctor wrote concerning the deceased is quite different. Indeed, he composed these necrosima original: "songs for the dead", stirred not less by the death of his friends, whose praises he wove with a variety of verses, than by the final judgment.