Chapter Sixteen
Objection based on the saying: " If they shall drink any deadly thing, it shall not hurt them" (Mark xvi. 18).
Again, consider in detail that other passage, where He says, "Such signs shall follow them that believe: they shall lay hands upon sick folk, and they shall recover, and if they drink any deadly drug,1 it shall in no wise hurt them." So the right thing would be for those selected for the priesthood, and particularly those who lay claim to the episcopate or presidency, to make use of this form of test. The deadly drug should be set before them in order that the man who received no harm from the drinking of it might be given precedence of the rest. And if they are not bold enough to accept this sort of test, they ought to confess that they do not believe in the things Jesus said. For if it is a peculiarity of the faith to overcome the evil of a poison and to remove the pain of a sick man, the believer who does not do these things either has not become a genuine believer, or else, though his belief is genuine, the thing that he believes in is not potent but feeble.
Chapter Twenty-Four
Answer to the objection based on the saying: "If they shall drink any deadly thing, it shall not hurt them" (Mark xvi. 18).
[We must not take the words about the "sickness" and the "deadly drug" in too literal a sense. Otherwise we shall find them contradicted by two facts. First, those who are unbelievers may likewise recover from deadly drugs, so that the recovery need not consist in whether men are believers or not, but in the power of the drug. Secondly, many unbelievers run away at the first sign of sickness, but we must not therefore argue that those who stay to tend the sick are believers in consequence. Such literal and manward tests will not do, or we shall have people boasting of their faith simply because they have some skill in nursing.
So the "deadly drug" must be taken in a less literal sense, and this "death" is like that wherein S. Paul says, "We are buried with Him in baptism." Here there is a "deadly drug" which actually saves men from the tyranny of sin. For to drink this in faith means the death of the savage nature within, without any harm being received. So that which harms unbelievers does not harm the faithful. We may illustrate this by a stepping-stone, which may be either a help or a stumbling-block; or by the blessing on the world which came from the fall of the Jews (Romans x.); or by the Cross, which causes both light and darkness.
"Laying hands on the sick" must have a similar spiritual explanation. Their "hands" are their practical energies, and the "sick" are changes in the seasons, which are often sick through such things as storms, or want of rain.]
Certainly Polycarp2 is an example of this, for while he exercised the office of bishop at Smyrna, the season of standing crops was greatly sick, when the heaven was not concealed by the smallest cloud, and poured down from the sky a burning heat, scorching to a great degree the vast tracts of land that lay beneath it; and it dried up the moisture of the foliage, and the trouble caused no little difficulty to men. Then that great man of God came, and when he saw the inhabitants thus afflicted, he in a sense laid his hands by means of prayer upon the burnt-up season, and suddenly made all things to be well. And later, when the land was drowned with unlimited rain, and the dwellers in it were in a pitiable state of distress, this same Polycarp stretched his hands to the air and dispelled the calamity, by healing that which was hateful to them. And indeed, before he became bishop, when he was managing a widow's house,3 wheresoever he laid on his hands in faith, all things were well. And why should I stay to speak of the blessings conferred on men by Irenaeus of Lugdunum, or Fabian of Rome, or Cyprian of Carthage? Passing them by, I will say something about men of to-day. How many, by stretching forth their hands in prayer to the heavenly Ruler, for the invisible diseases of suffering which press grievously upon the souls of men, have healed the afflicted invisibly in ways we know not? How many by the laying on of their hands have caused to be well those catechumens who were in their former fever of transgression or disease, raising them to the new blessing of health through the divine and mystical leaven?4 For the responsibility that is laid upon the faithful is not so much zeal in driving away the sufferings of the body (for he knows5 that these things train a man, rather than overthrow the government of his soul), as in driving away, by counsel and action profitable to the soul, those things which are wont to harm the understanding by enslaving the judgment of the reason.
Wherefore, as at least it seems to me, the answer on this point is such as to persuade those who hear it.
Footnotes:
1He inserts the word φάρμακον into the text, which Macarius accepts without comment. The whole quotation is a loose one, and the clauses are in their wrong order.
2Macarius, as belonging to the East himself, only gives details of Polycarp in the list of fathers he mentions, as the others were of the Western Church. The facts here recorded are to be found in the Vita Polycarpi.
3There is little doubt that this is the right reading, for it accords with what is related in the Vita Polycarpi. The MS. reading is not χήρας but χεῖρας, before which διὰ must be inserted if it is to be translated, i.e. "supporting his life by means of his hands."
4i. e. Baptism.
5The use of the singular suggests that the subject is "God" rather than "the faithful."