Two paths; the abominations of Egypt

Cyril went on: And it is written again, 'Woe to fearful hearts, and slack hands, and to a sinner treading upon two paths!' For I for my part say we must make a clean and blameless worship to the God who rules all, having left wholly the worship under that one; and so seek to go toward the better with a firm heart; and otherwise, 'We shall sacrifice the abominations of the Egyptians,' he says, 'to the Lord our God. For if we sacrifice the abominations of the Egyptians before them, we shall be stoned.' And as far as it belongs to the word of the history, the refusal has a ready occasion. For abominations here he says are the objects of worship; and calves were worship for the Egyptians. These, he says, if we sacrifice to the God of the Hebrews, we shall in every way and wholly whet the Egyptians to angers, who make the thing hard to bear. And sometimes the word is also persuasive. But as far as it belongs to a spiritual contemplation, it has no moderate profit. For what the crowd of the demons knows most of all to honor, and makes much of, and counts worthy of every account, we, putting it to death, complete a worship most sweet to God.

Palladius said: How have you said?

Cyril: Or are not the passions of the flesh honorable among themselves? And not wholly through themselves, but since through them we perish, and are bound tight toward the slavery under them?

Palladius: True.

Cyril: These then, putting to death and as it were slaughtering, we shall be a smell of sweet fragrance to God. And Paul writes thus: 'Present your bodies a living sacrifice, well-pleasing to God, your reasonable worship.' And someone would do such a thing rightly, putting to death the members on the earth, fornication, uncleanness, passion, evil desire, and the greed. Each then of the passions in us is an abomination of the Egyptians of the mind, that is, most worshipful. For that it is a custom for the divine Scripture to call an abomination what is in the rank of an idol, and as it were a worship, God persuades, saying through Jeremiah's voice, about the Jews' Synagogue: 'What has the beloved done in my house, an abomination?' And if someone should wish to say that an abomination of the Egyptians is as it were a hated thing and a refusal, he would not go out from the fitting mind; for the things the unclean spirits are always accustomed to hate and to abominate, these will be laid up from us as a smell of sweet fragrance to God, and a spiritual sacrifice: faith, meekness, self-control, soundness of mind, love of one another, and the boasts of genuineness toward God.

Palladius: And who would be those who sacrifice in the land of the Evil One? And who would be understood as those outside the land?

Cyril: For those who have not yet gone out from the Egyptians', and who sacrifice to God in it, are very many, and perhaps beyond number; and those outside and in a wilderness, very few and choice.