Lev 21 list finished; bodily illness not guilt; spiritual type; bishop blameless

Cyril: …him a crushing of hand or crushing of foot, or humpbacked, or white-spotted, or thin-lidded the eyes, or a human in whom if there should be in him wild itch, or lichen, or single-testicled; everyone who is in him a blemish from the seed of Aaron the priest will not draw near of the bringing the sacrifices to the Lord, because a blemish is in him. The gifts of his God he will not come forward to bring; the gifts of his God, the Holy of holies, and from the holy things he will eat, yet toward the veil he will not come forward, and toward the altar he will not draw near, because he has a blemish; and he will not profane the holy of his God, because I am Lord the one sanctifying them.’

Palladius: So then, tell me, is bodily sickness unto a charge for some? And does the Creator write nature even unwillingly corrupted?

Cyril: Well done, O Palladius; for you think rightly. For cause and writing would sometimes become for some who have voluntary the turning-aside of their own mind unto the base things, and who have prized the inclination unto anything whatsoever of the outlandish; but to blame for the sicknesses around the flesh, happening naturally and unwillingly, I somehow think hard and unsympathetic, and not without share of the charges unto left-handedness. So then it is possible from here to think around that, that the creator of the wholes would not have written the nature of a human upon unwilling causes, nor would he as unholy have sent out the one sick bodily from the liturgy arranged with him; but as again from type of the bodily things he thins us down unto more elegant counsels, and under-shows the many-formed of the passions in soul, and gives to think that the matter is God-hated. Or did not also all-divine Paul say that the well-famed vote upon all the marvelled-at things must follow those chosen unto priesthood? ‘In order that,’ (Titus 1:6–7) he says, ‘the human of God may be complete, fully fitted unto every good work.’ (Leviticus 21:18–23) And indeed he insisted that the bishop also must be unreprovable, and very clearly; and in these he was making much accuracy.

Palladius: I say so. And what then would be also the word upon each of the sicknesses just now numbered for us, I would wish, as you well know, to learn.

Cyril: Come then part by part, taking up as in a form, let us say the things going into mind: ‘A human,’ he says, ‘into your generations, from your race, in whom if there should be in him a blemish, will not come forward to offer the gifts of his God.’ (2 Timothy 3:17) Safe the word, bitter the oracle. For the law has been set not against only those then come from Aaron, but it extends unto all the race, and against every priestly blood, and creeps through unto every time. For this, I think, makes clear the, ‘From your race into your generations.’ (1 Timothy 3:2) For always somehow unacceptable to God is what does not have blamelessly. And a time one would not be able to say, according to which the condemned would become dear to him, as rather upon the spiritual sicknesses;