(NOTE: The electronic text obtained from The Electronic Bible Society was
not completely corrected. EWTN has corrected all mistakes found.)

Transliteration of Greek words: All phonetical except: w = omega; h serves
three puposes: 1. = Eta; 2. = rough breathing, when appearing intially
before a vowel; 3. = in the aspirated letters theta = th, phi = ph, chi =
ch. Accents are given immediately after their corresponding vowels: acute =
' , grave = `, circumflex = ^. The character ' doubles as an apostrophe,
when necessary.

THE OCTAVIUS OF MINUCIUS FELIX.

[Translated by the Rev. Robert Ernest Wallis, Ph.D.]

CHAP. I.--ARGUMENT: MINUCIUS RELATES HOW DELIGHTFUL TO HIM IS THE
RECOLLECTION OF THE THINGS THAT HAD HAPPENED TO HIM WITH OCTAVIUS WHILE HE
WAS ASSOCIATED WITH HIM AT ROME, AND ESPECIALLY OF THIS DISPUTATION.

   WHEN I consider and mentally review my remembrance of Octavius, my
excellent and most faithful companion, the sweetness and charm of the man
so clings to me, that I appear to myself in some sort as if I were
returning to past times, and not merely recalling in my recollection things
which have long since happened and gone by. Thus, in the degree in which
the actual contemplation of him is withdrawn from my eyes, it is bound up
in my heart and in my most intimate feelings. And it was not without reason
that that remarkable and holy man, when he departed this life, left to me
an unbounded regret for him, especially since he himself also glowed with
such a love for me at all times, that, whether in matters of amusement or
of business, he agreed with me in similarity of will, in either liking or
disliking the same things.(1) You would think that one mind had been shared
between us two. Thus he alone was my confidant in my loves, my companion in
my mistakes; and when, after the gloom had been dispersed, I emerged from
the abyss of darkness into the light of wisdom and truth, he did not cast
off his associate, but--what is more glorious still--he outstripped him.
And thus, when my thoughts were traversing the entire period of our
intimacy and friendship, the direction of my mind fixed itself chiefly on
that discourse of his, wherein by very weighty arguments he converted
Caecilius, who was still cleaving to superstitious vanities, to the true
religion.(2)

CHAP. II--ARGUMENT: THE ARRIVAL OF OCTAVIUS AT ROME DURING THE TIME OF THE
PUBLIC HOLIDAYS WAS VERY AGREEABLE TO MINUCIUS. BOTH OF THEM WERE DESIROUS
OF GOING TO THE MARINE BATHS OF OSTIA, WITH CAECILIUS ASSOCIATED WITH THEM
AS A COMPANION OF MINUCIUS. ON THEIR WAY TOGETHER TO THE SEA, CAECILlUS,
SEEING AN IMAGE OF SERAPIS, RAISES HIS HAND TO HIS MOUTH, AND WORSHIPS IT.

   For, for the sake of business and of visiting me, Octavius had hastened
to Rome, having left his home, his wife, his children, and that which is
most attractive in children, while yet their innOCent years are attempting
only half-uttered words,--a language all the sweeter for the very
imperfection of the faltering tongue. And at this his arrival I cannot
express in words with how great and with how impatient a joy I exulted,
since the unexpected presence of a man so very dear to me greatly enhanced
my gladness. Therefore, after one or two days, when the frequent enjoyment
of our continual association had satisfied the craving of affection, and
when we had ascertained by mutual narrative all that we were ignorant of
about one another by reason of our separation, we agreed to go to that very
pleasant city Ostia, that my body might have a soothing and appropriate
remedy for drying its humours from the marine bathing, especially as the
holidays of the courts at the vintage-time had released me from my cares.
For at that time, after the summer days, the autumn season was tending to a
milder temperature. And thus, when in the early morning we were going
towards the sea along the shore (of the Tiber), that both the breathing air
might gently refresh our limbs, and that the yielding sand might sink down
under our easy footsteps with excessive pleasure; Caecilius, observing an
image of Serapis, raised his hand to his mouth, as is the custom of the
superstitious common people, and pressed a kiss on it with his lips.

CHAP. III.--ARGUMENT: OCTAVIUS, DISPLEASED AT THE ACT OF THIS SUPERSTITIOUS
MAN, SHARPLY REPROACHES MINUCIUS, ON THE GROUND THAT THE DISGRACE OF THIS
WICKED DEED IS REFLECTED NOT LESS ON HIMSELF, AS CAECILIUS' HOST, THAN ON
CAECILIUS.

   Then Octavius said: "It is not the part of a good man, my brother
Marcus, so to desert a man who abides by your side at home and abroad, in
this blindness of vulgar ignorance, as that you should suffer him in such
broad daylight as this to give himself up to stones, however they may be
carved into images, anointed and crowned; since you know that the disgrace
of this his error redounds in no less degree to your discredit than to his
own." With this discourse of his we passed over the distance between the
city and the sea, and we were now walking on the broad and open shore
There the gently rippling wave was smoothing the outside sands as if it
would level them for a promenade; and as the sea is always restless, even
when the winds are lulled, it came up on the shore, although not with waves
crested and foaming, yet with waves crisped and cuffing. Just then we were
excessively delighted at its vagaries, as on the very threshold of the
water we were wetting the soles of our feet, and it now by turns
approaching broke upon our feet, and now the wave retiring and retracing
its course, sucked itself back into itself. And thus, slowly and quietly
going along, we tracked the coast of the gently bending shore, beguiling
the way with stories. These stories were related by Octavius, who was
discoursing on navigation. But when we had occupied a sufficiently
reasonable time of our walk with discourse, retracing the same way again,
we trod the path with reverted footsteps. And when we came to that place
where the little ships, drawn up on an oaken framework, were lying at rest
supported above the (risk of) ground-rot, we saw some boys eagerly
gesticulating as they played at throwing shells into the sea. This play is:
To choose a shell from the shore, rubbed and made smooth by the tossing of
the waves; to take hold of the shell in a horizontal position with the
fingers; to whiff it along sloping and as low down as possible upon the
waves, that when thrown it may either skim the back of the wave, or may
swim as it glides along with a smooth impulse, or may spring up as it
cleaves the top of the waves, and rise as if lifted up with repeated
springs. That boy claimed to be conqueror whose shell both went out
furthest, and leaped up most frequently.

CHAP. IV.--ARGUMENT: CAECILIUS, SOMEWHAT GRIEVED AT THIS KIND OF REBUKE
WHICH FOR HIS SAKE MINUCIUS HAD HAD TO BEAR FROM OCTAVIUS, BEGS TO ARGUE
WITH OCTAVIUS ON THE TRUTH OF HIS RELIGION. OCTAVIUS WITH HIS COMPANION
CONSENTS, AND MINUCIUS SITS IN THE MIDDLE BETWEEN CAECILIUS AND OCTAVIUS.

   And thus, while we were all engaged in the enjoyment of this spectacle,
Caecilius was paying no attention, nor laughing at the contest; but silent,
uneasy, standing apart, confessed by his countenance that he was grieving
for I knew not what. To whom I said: "What is the matter? Wherefore do I
not recognise, Caecilius, your usual liveliness? and why do I seek vainly
for that joyousness which is characteristic of your   glances even in
serious matters?" Then said he: "For some time our friend Octavius' speech
has bitterly vexed and worried me, in which he, attacking you, reproached
you with negligence, that he might under cover of that charge more
seriously condemn me for ignorance. Therefore I shall proceed further: the
matter is now wholly and entirely between me and Octavius. If he is willing
that I, a man of that form of opinion, should argue with him, he will now
at once perceive that it is easier to hold an argument among his comrades,
than to engage in close conflict after the manner of the philosophers. Let
us be seated on those rocky barriers that are cast there for the protection
of the baths, and that run far out into the deep, that we may be able both
to rest after our journey, and to argue with more attention," And at his
word we sat down, so that, by covering me on either side, they sheltered me
in the midst of the three.(1) Nor was this a matter of observance, or of
rank, or of honour, because friendship always either receives or makes
equals; but that, as an arbitrator, and being near to both, I might give my
attention, and being in the middle, I might separate the two. Then
Caecilius began thus: --

CHAP. V.--ARGUMENT: CAECILIUS BEGINS HIS ARGUMENT FIRST OF ALL BY REMINDING
THEM THAT IN HUMAN AFFAIRS ALL THINGS ARE DOUBTFUL AND UNCERTAIN, AND THAT
THEREFORE IT IS TO BE LAMENTED THAT CHRISTIANS, WHO FOR THE MOST PART ARE
UNTRAINED AND ILLITERATE PERSONS, SHOULD DARE TO DETERMINE ON ANYTHING WITH
CERTAINTY CONCERNING THE CHIEF OF THINGS AND THE DIVINE MAJESTY: HENCE HE
ARGUES THAT THE WORLD IS GOVERNED BY NO PROVIDENCE, AND CONCLUDES THAT IT
IS BETTER TO ABIDE BY THE RECEIVED FORMS OF RELIGION.

   "Although to you, Marcus my brother, the subject on which especially we
are inquiring is not in doubt, inasmuch as, being carefully informed in
both kinds of life, you have rejected the one and assented to the other,
yet in file present case your mind must be so fashioned that you may hold
the balance of a most just judge, nor lean with a disposition to one side
(more than another), lest your decision may seem not to arise so much from
our arguments, as to be originated from your own perceptions. Accordingly,
if you sit in judgment on me, as a person who is new, and as one ignorant
of either side, there is no difficulty in making plain that all things in
human affairs are doubtful, uncertain, and unsettled, and that all things
are rather probable than true. Wherefore it is the less(1) wonderful that
some, from the weariness of thoroughly investigating truth, should rashly
succumb to any sort of opinion rather than persevere in exploring it with
persistent diligence. And thus all men must be indignant, all men must feel
pain,(2) that certain persons--and these unskilled in learning, strangers
to literature, without knowledge even(3) of sordid arts--should dare to
determine on any certainty concerning the nature at large, and the (divine)
majesty, of which so many of the multitude of sects in all ages (still
doubt), and philosophy itself deliberates still. Nor without reason; since
the mediocrity of human intelligence is so far from (the capacity of)
divine investigation, that neither is it given us to know, nor is it
permitted to search, nor is it religious to ravish,(4) the things that are
supported in suspense in the heaven above us, nor the things which are
deeply submerged below the earth; and we may rightly seem sufficiently
happy and sufficiently prudent, if, according to that ancient oracle of the
sage, we should know ourselves intimately. But even if we indulge in a
senseless and useless labour, and wander away beyond the limits proper to
our humility, and though, inclined towards the earth, we transcend with
daring ambition heaven itself, and the very stars, let us at least not
entangle this error with vain and fearful opinions. Let the seeds of all
things have been in the beginning condensed by a nature combining them in
itself--what God is the author here? Let the members of the whole world be
by fortuitous concurrences united digested, fashioned--what God is the
contriver? Although fire may have lit up the stars; although (the lightness
of) its own material may have suspended the heaven; although its own
material may have established the earth by its weight;(5) and although the
sea may have flowed in from moisture,(6) whence is this religion? Whence
this fear? What is this superstition? Man, and every animal which is born,
inspired with life, and nourished,(7) is as a voluntary concretion of the
elements, into which again man and every animal is divided, resolved, and
dissipated. So all things flow back again into their source, and are turned
again into themselves, without any artificer, or judge, or creator. Thus
the seeds of fires, being gathered together, cause other suns, and again
others, always to shine forth. Thus the vapours of the earth, being
exhaled, cause the mists always to grow, which being condensed and
collected, cause the clouds to rise higher; and when they fall, cause the
rains to flow, the winds to blow, the hail to rattle down; or when the
clouds clash together, they cause the thunder to bellow, the lightnings to
grow red, the thunderbolts to gleam forth. Therefore they fall everywhere,
they rush on the mountains, they strike the trees; without any choice,(8)
they blast places sacred and profane; they smite mischievous men, and
often, too, religious men. Why should I speak of tempests, various and
uncertain, wherein the attack upon all things is tossed about without any
order or discrimination?--in shipwrecks, that the fates of good and bad men
are jumbled together, their deserts confounded?--in conflagrations, that
the destruction of innocent and guilty is united?--and when with the
plague-taint of the sky a region is stained, that all perish without
distinction?--and when the heat of war is raging, that it is the better men
who generally fall? In peace also, not only is wickedness put on the same
level with (the lot of) those who are better, but it is also regarded in
such esteem,(9) that, in the case of many people, you know not whether
their depravity is most to be detested, or their felicity to be desired.
But if the world were governed by divine providence and by the authority of
any deity, Phalaris and Dionysius would never have deserved to reign,
Rutilius and Camillus would never have merited banishment, Socrates would
never have merited the poison. Behold the fruit-bearing trees, behold the
harvest already white, the vintage, already dropping, is destroyed by the
rain, is beaten down by the hail. Thus either an uncertain truth is hidden
from us, and kept back; or, which is rather to be believed, in these
various and wayward chances, fortune, unrestrained by laws, is ruling over
us.

CHAP. VI.--ARGUMENT: THE OBJECT OF ALL NATIONS, AND ESPECIALLY OF THE
ROMANS, IN WORSHIPPING THEIR DIVINITIES, HAS BEEN TO ATTAIN FOR THEIR
WORSHIP THE SUPREME DOMINION OVER THE WHOLE EARTH.

   "Since, then, either fortune is certain or nature is uncertain, how
much more reverential and better it is, as the high priests of truth, to
receive the teaching of your ancestors, to cultivate the religions handed
down to you, to adore the gods whom you were first trained by your parents
to fear rather than to know(1) with familiarity; not to assert an opinion
concerning the deities, but to believe your forefathers, who, while the age
was still untrained in the birth-times of the world itself, deserved to
have gods either propitious to them, or as their kings.(2) Thence,
therefore, we see through all empires, and provinces, and cities, that each
people has its national rites of worship, and adores its local gods: as the
Eleusinians worship Ceres; the Phrygians, Mater;(3) the Epidaurians,
Aesculapius; the Chaldaeans; Belus; the Syrians, Astarte; the Taurians,
Diana; the Gauls, Mercurius; the Romans, all divinities. Thus their power
and authority has occupied the circuit of the whole world: thus it has
propagated its empire beyond the paths of the sun, and the bounds of the
ocean itself; in that in their arms they practise a religious valour; in
that they fortify their city with the religions of sacred rites, with
chaste virgins, with many honours, and the names of priests; in that, when
besieged and taken, all but the Capitol alone, they worship the gods which
when angry any other people would have despised;(4) and through the lines
of the Gauls, marvelling at the audacity of their superstition, they move
unarmed with weapons, but armed with the worship of their religion; while
in the city of an enemy, when taken while still in the fury of victory,
they venerate the conquered deities; while in all directions they seek for
the gods of the strangers, and make them their own; while they build altars
even to unknown divinities, and to the Manes. Thus, in that they
acknowledge the sacred institutions of all nations, they have also deserved
their dominion. Hence the perpetual course of their veneration has
continued, which is not weakened by the long lapse of time, but increased,
because antiquity has been accustomed to attribute to ceremonies and
temples so much of sanctity as it has ascribed of age.

CHAP. VII.--ARGUMENT: THAT THE ROMAN AUSPICES AND AUGURIES HAVE BEEN
NEGLECTED WITH ILL CONSEQUENCES, BUT HAVE BEEN OBSERVED WITH GOOD FORTUNE.

   "Nor yet by chance (for I would venture in the meantime even to take
for granted the point in debate, and so to err on the safe side) have our
ancestors succeeded in their undertakings either by the observance of
auguries, or by consulting the entrails, or by the institution of sacred
rites, or by the dedication of temples. Consider what is the record of
books. You will at once discover that they have inaugurated the rites of
all kinds of religions, either that the divine indulgence might be
rewarded, or that the threatening anger might be averted, or that the wrath
already swelling and raging might be appeased. Witness the Idaean
mother,(5) who at her arrival both approved the chastity of the matron, and
delivered the city from the fear of the enemy. Witness the statues of the
equestrian brothers,(6) consecrated even as they had showed themselves on
the lake, who, with horses breathless,(7) foaming, and smoking, announced
the victory over the Persian on the same day on which they had gained it.
Witness the renewal of the games of the offended Jupiter,(8) on account of
the dream of a man of the people. And an acknowledged witness is the
devotion of the Decii. Witness also Curtius, who filled up the opening of
the profound chasm either with the mass, or with the glory of his
knighthood. Moreover, more frequently than we wished have the auguries,
when despised, borne witness to the presence of the gods:, thus Allia is an
unlucky name; thus the battle of Claudius and Junius is not a battle
against the Carthaginians, but a fatal shipwreck. Thus, that Thrasymenus
might be both swollen and discoloured with the blood of the Romans,
Flaminius despised the auguries; and that we might again demand our
standards from the Parthians, Crassus both deserved and scoffed at the
imprecations of the terrible sisters. I omit the old stories, which are
many, and I pass by the songs of the poets about the births, and the gifts,
and the rewards of the gods. Moreover, I hasten over the fates predicted by
the oracles, lest antiquity should appear to you excessively fabulous. Look
at the temples and lanes of the gods by which the Roman city is both
protected and armed: they are more august by the deities which are their
inhabitants, who are present and constantly dwelling in them, than opulent
by the ensigns and gifts of worship. Thence therefore the prophets, filled
with the god, and mingled with him, collect futurity beforehand, give
caution for dangers, medicine for diseases, hope for the afflicted, help to
the wretched, solace to calamities, alleviation to labours. Even in our
repose we see, we hear, we acknowledge the gods, whom in the day-time we
impiously deny, refuse, and abjure.

CHAP. VIII.--ARGUMENT: THE IMPIOUS TEMERITY OF THEODORUS, DIAGORAS, AND
PROTAGORAS IS NOT AT ALL TO BE ACQUIESCED IN, WHO WISHED EITHER ALTOGETHER
TO GET RID OF THE RELIGION OF THE GODS, OR AT LEAST TO WEAKEN IT. BUT
INFINITELY LESS TO BE ENDURED IS THAT SKULKING AND LIGHT-SHUNNING PEOPLE OF
THE CHRISTIANS, WHO REJECT THE GODS, AND WHO, FEARING TO DIE AFTER DEATH,
DO NOT IN THE MEANTIME FEAR TO DIE.

   "Therefore, since the consent of all nations concerning the existence
of the immortal gods remains established, although their nature or their
origin remains uncertain, I suffer nobody swelling with such boldness, and
with I know not what irreligious wisdom, who would strive to undermine or
weaken this religion, so ancient, so useful, so wholesome, even although he
may he Theodorus of Cyrene, or one who is before him Diagoras the
Melian,(1) to whom antiquity applied the surname of Atheist,--both of whom,
by asseverating that there were no gods, took away all the fear by which
humanity is ruled, and all veneration absolutely; yet never will they
prevail in this discipline of impiety, under the name and authority of
their pretended philosophy. When the men of Athens both expelled Protagoras
of Abdera, and in public assembly burnt his writings, because he disputed
deliberately(2) rather than profanely concerning the divinity, why is it
not a thing to be lamented, that men (for you will bear with my making use
pretty freely of the force of the plea that I have undertaken)--that men, I
say, of a reprobate, unlawful, and desperate faction, should rage against
the gods? who, having gathered together from the lowest dregs the more
unskilled, and women, credulous and, by the facility of their sex,
yielding, establish a herd of a profane conspiracy, which is leagued
together by nightly meetings, and solemn fasts and inhuman meats--not by
any sacred rite, but by that which requires expiation--a people skulking
and shunning the light, silent in public, but garrulous in corners. They
despise the temples as dead-houses, they reject the gods, they laugh at
sacred things; wretched, they pity, if they are allowed, the priests; half
naked themselves, they despise honours and purple robes. Oh, wondrous folly
and incredible audacity! they despise present torments, although they i
fear those which are uncertain and future; and while they fear to die after
death, they do not fear to die for the present: so does a deceitful hope
soothe their fear with the solace of a revival.(3)

CHAP. IX.--ARGUMENT: THE RELIGION OF THE CHRISTIANS IS FOOLISH, INASMUCH AS
THEY WORSHIP A CRUCIFIED MAN, AND EVEN THE INSTRUMENT ITSELF OF HIS
PUNISHMENT. THEY ARE SAID TO WORSHIP THE HEAD OF AN ASS, AND EVEN THE
NATURE OF THEIR FATHER. THEY ARE INITIATED BY THE SLAUGHTER AND THE BLOOD
OF AN INFANT, AND IN SHAMELESS DARKNESS THEY ARE ALL MIXED UP IN AN
UNCERTAIN MEDLEY.

   "And now, as wickeder things advance more fruitfully, and abandoned
manners creep on day by day, those abominable shrines of an impious
assembly are maturing themselves throughout the whole world. Assuredly this
confederacy ought to be rooted out and execrated. They know one another by
secret marks and insignia, and they love one another almost before they
know one another. Everywhere also there is mingled among them a certain
religion of lust, and they call one another promiscuously brothers and
sisters, that even a not unusual debauchery may by the intervention of that
sacred name become incestuous: it is thus that their vain and senseless
superstition glories in crimes. Nor, concerning these things, would
intelligent report speak of things so great and various,(4) and requiring
to be prefaced by an apology, unless truth were at the bottom of it. I hear
that they adore the head of an ass, that basest of creatures, consecrated
by I know not what silly persuasion,--a worthy and appropriate religion for
such manners. Some say that they worship the virilia of their pontiff and
priest,(5) and adore the nature, as it were, of their common parent. I know
not whether these things are false; certainly suspicion is applicable to
secret and nocturnal rites; and he who explains their ceremonies by
reference to a man punished by extreme suffering for his wickedness, and to
the deadly wood of the cross, appropriates fitting altars for reprobate and
wicked men, that they may worship what they deserve. Now the story about
the initiation of young novices is as much to be detested as it is well
known. An infant covered over with meal, that it may deceive the unwary, is
placed before him who is to be stained with their rites: this infant is
slain by the young pupil, who has been urged on as if to harmless blows on
the surface of the meal, with dark and secret wounds. Thirstily--O horror!-
-they lick up its blood; eagerly they divide its limbs. By this victim they
are pledged together; with this consciousness of wickedness they are
covenanted to mutual silence.(1) Such sacred rites as these are more foul
than any sacrileges. And of their banqueting it is well known all men speak
of it everywhere; even the speech of our Cirtensian(2) testifies to it. On
a solemn day they assemble at the feast, with all their children, sisters,
mothers, people of every sex and of every age. There, after much feasting,
when the fellowship has grown warm, and the fervour of incestuous lust has
grown hot with drunkenness, a dog that has been tied to the chandelier is
provoked, by throwing a small piece of offal beyond the length of a line by
which he is bound, to rush and spring; and thus the conscious light being
overturned and extinguished in the shameless darkness, the connections of
abominable lust involve them in the uncertainty of fate. Although not all
in fact, yet in consciousness all are alike incestuous, since by the desire
of all of them everything is sought for which can happen in the act of each
individual.

CHAP. X.--ARGUMENT: WHATEVER THE CHRISTIANS WORSHIP, THEY STRIVE IN EVERY
WAY TO CONCEAL: THEY HAVE NO ALTARS, NO TEMPLES, NO ACKNOWLEDGED IMAGES.
THEIR GOD, LIKE THAT OF THE JEWS, IS SAID TO BE ONE, WHOM, ALTHOUGH THEY
ARE NEITHER ABLE TO SEE NOR TO SHOW, THEY THINK NEVERTHELESS TO BE
MISCHIEVOUS, RESTLESS, AND UNSEASONABLY INQUISITIVE.

   "I purposely pass over many things, for those that I have mentioned are
already too many; and that all these, or the greater part of them, are
true, the obscurity of their vile religion declares. For why do they
endeavour with such pains to conceal and to cloak whatever they worship,
since honourable things always rejoice in publicity, while crimes are kept
secret? Why have they no altars, no temples, no acknowledged images?(3) Why
do they never speak openly, never congregate freely, unless for the reason
that what they adore and conceal is either worthy of punishment, or
something to be ashamed of? Moreover, whence or who is he, or where is the
one God, solitary, desolate, whom no free people, no kingdoms, and not even
Roman superstition, have known? The lonely and miserable nationality of the
Jews worshipped one God, and one peculiar to itself; but they worshipped
him openly, with temples, with altars, with victims, and with ceremonies;
and he has so little force or power, that he is enslaved, with his own
special nation, to the Roman deities. But the Christians, moreover, what
wonders, what monstrosities do they feign!--that he who is their God, whom
they can neither show nor behold, inquires diligently into the character of
all, the acts of all, and, in fine, into their words and secret thoughts;
that he runs about everywhere, and is everywhere present: they make him out
to be troublesome, restless, even shamelessly inquisitive, since he is
present at everything that is done, wanders in and out in all places,
although, being occupied with the whole, he cannot give attention to
particulars, nor can he be sufficient for the whole while he is busied with
particulars. What! because they threaten conflagration to the whole world,
and to the universe itself, with all its stars, are they meditating its
destruction?--as if either the eternal order constituted by the divine laws
of nature would be disturbed, or the league of all the elements would be
broken up, and the heavenly structure dissolved, and that fabric in which
it is contained and bound together(4) would be overthrown.(5)

CHAP. XI.--ARGUMENT: BESIDES ASSERTING THE FUTURE CONFLAGRATION OF THE
WHOLE WORLD, THEY PROMISE AFTERWARDS THE RESURRECTION OF OUR BODIES: AND TO
THE RIGHTEOUS AN ETERNITY OF MOST BLESSED LIFE; TO THE UNRIGHTEOUS, OF
EXTREME PUNISHMENT.

   "And, not content with this wild opinion, they add to it and associate
with it old women's fables:(6) they say that they will rise again after
death, and ashes, and dust; and with I know not what confidence, they
believe by turns in one another's lies: you would think that they had
already lived again. It is a double evil and a twofold madness to denounce
destruction to the heaven and the stars, which we leave just as we find
them, and to promise eternity to ourselves, who are dead and extinct--who,
as we are born, so also perish! It is for this cause, doubtless, also that
they execrate our funeral piles, and condemn our burials by fire, as if
every body, even although it be withdrawn from the flames, were not,
nevertheless, resolved into the earth by lapse of years and ages, and as if
it mattered not whether wild beasts tore the body to pieces, or seas
consumed it, or the ground covered it, or the flames carried it away; since
for the carcases every mode of sepulture is a penalty if they feel it; if
they feel it not, in the very quickness of their destruction there is
relief. Deceived by this error, they promise to themselves, as being good,
a blessed and perpetual life after their death; to others, as being
unrighteous, eternal punishment. Many things occur to me to say in
addition, if the limits of my discourse did not hasten me. I have already
shown, and take no more pains to prove,(1) that they themselves are
unrighteous; although, even if I should allow them to be righteous, yet
your agreement also concurs with the opinions of many, that guilt and
innocence are attributed by fate. For whatever we do, as some ascribe it to
fate, so you refer it to God: thus it is according to your sect to believe
that men will, not of their own accord, but as elected to will. Therefore
you feign an iniquitous judge, who punishes in men, not their will, but
their destiny. Yet I should be glad to be informed whether or no you rise
again with bodies;(2) and if so, with what bodies--whether with the same or
with renewed bodies? Without a body? Then, as far as I know, there will
neither be mind, nor soul, nor life. With the same body? But this has
already been previously destroyed. With another body? Then it is a new man
who is born, not the former one restored; and yet so long a time has passed
away, innumerable ages have flowed by, and what single individual has
returned from the dead either by the fate of Protesilaus, with permission
to sojourn even for a few hours, or that we might believe it for an
example? All such figments of an unhealthy belief, and vain sources of
comfort, with which deceiving poets have trifled in the sweetness of their
verse, have been disgracefully remoulded by you, believing undoubtingly(3)
on your God.

CHAP. XII.--ARGUMENT: MOREOVER, WHAT WILL HAPPEN TO THE CHRISTIANS
THEMSELVES AFTER DEATH, MAY BE ANTICIPATED FROM THE FACT THAT EVEN NOW THEY
ARE DESTITUTE OF ALL MEANS, AND ARE AFFLICTED WITH THE HEAVIEST CALAMITIES
AND MISERIES.

   "Neither do you at least take experience from things present, how the
fruitless expectations of vain promise deceive you. Consider, wretched
creatures, (from your lot) while you are yet living, what is threatening
you after death.(4) Behold, a portion of you--and, as you declare, the
larger and better portion--are in want, are cold, are labouring in hard
work and hunger; and God suffers it, He feigns; He either is not willing or
not able to assist His people; and thus He is either weak or inequitable.
Thou, who dreamest over a posthumous immortality, when thou art shaken by
danger,(5) when thou art consumed with fever, when thou art torn with pain,
dost thou not then feel thy real condition? Dost thou not then acknowledge
thy frailty? Poor wretch, art thou unwillingly convinced of thine
infirmity, and wilt not confess it? But I omit matters that are common to
all alike. Lo, for you there are threats, punishments, tortures, and
crosses; and that no longer as objects of adoration, but as tortures to be
undergone; fires also, which you both predict and fear. Where is that God
who is able to help you when you come to life again, since he cannot help
you while you are in this life? Do not the Romans, without any help from
your God, govern, reign, have the enjoyment of the whole world, and have
dominion over you? But you in the meantime, in suspense and anxiety, are
abstaining from respectable enjoyments. You do not visit exhibitions; you
have no concern in public displays; you reject the public banquets, and
abhor the sacred contests; the meats previously tasted by, and the drinks
made a libation of upon, the altars. Thus you stand in dread of the gods
whom you deny. You do not wreath your heads with flowers; you do not grace
your bodies with odours; you reserve unguents for funeral rites; you even
refuse garlands to your sepulchres--pallid, trembling beings, worthy of the
pity even of our gods! Thus, wretched as you are, you neither rise again,
nor do you live in the meanwhile. Therefore, if you have any wisdom or
modesty, cease from prying into the regions of the sky, and the destinies
and secrets of the world: it is sufficient to look before your feet,
especially for untaught, uncultivated, boorish, rustic people: they who
have no capacity for understanding civil matters, are much more denied the
ability to discuss divine.

CHAP. XIII.--ARGUMENT: CAECILIUS AT LENGTH CONCLUDES THAT THE NEW RELIGION
IS TO BE REPUDIATED; AND THAT WE MUST NOT RASHLY PRONOUNCE UPON DOUBTFUL
MATTERS.

   "However, if you have a desire to philosophize, let any one of you who
is sufficiently great, imitate, if he can, Socrates the prince of wisdom.
The answer of that man, whenever he was asked about celestial matters, is
well known: 'What is above us is nothing to us.' Well, therefore, did he
deserve from the oracle the testimony of singular wisdom, which oracle he
himself had a presentiment of, that he had been preferred to all men for
the reason, not that he had discovered all things, but because he had
learnt that he knew nothing. And thus the confession of ignorance is the
height of wisdom. From this source flowed the safe doubting of Arcesilas,
and long after of Carneades, and of very many of the Academics,(1) in
questions of the highest moment, in which species of philosophy the
unlearned can do much with caution, and the learned can do gloriously.
What! is not the hesitation of Simonides the lyric poet to be admired and
followed by all? Which Simonides, when he was asked by Hiero the tyrant
what, and what like he thought the gods to be, asked first of all for a day
to deliberate; then postponed his reply for two days; and then, when
pressed, he added only another; and finally, when the tyrant inquired into
the causes of such a long delay, he replied that, the longer his research
continued, the obscurer the truth became to him.(2) In my opinion also,
things which are uncertain ought to be left as they are. Nor, while so many
and so great men are deliberating, should we rashly and boldly give an
opinion in another direction, lest either a childish superstition should be
introduced, or all religion should be overthrown."

CHAP. XIV.--ARGUMENT: WITH SOMETHING OF THE PRIDE OF SELF-SATISFACTION,
CAECILIUS URGES OCTAVIUS TO REPLY TO HIS ARGUMENTS; AND MINUCIUS WITH
MODESTY ANSWERS HIM, THAT HE MUST NOT EXULT AT HIS OWN BY NO MEANS ORDINARY
ELOQUENCE, AND AT THE HARMONIOUS VARIETY OF HIS ADDRESS.

   Thus far Caecilius; and smiling cheerfully (for the vehemence of his
prolonged discourse had relaxed the ardour of his indignation), be added
"And what does Octavius venture to reply to this, a man of the race of
Plautus,(3) who, while he was chief among the millers, was still the lowest
of philosophers?" "Restrain," said I, "your self-approval against him; for
it is not worthy of you to exult at the harmony of your discourse, before
the subject shall have been more fully argued on both sides; especially
since your reasoning is striving after truth, not praise. And in however
great a degree your discourse has delighted me by its subtile variety, yet
I am very deeply moved, not concerning the present discussion, but
concerning the entire kind of disputation--that for the most part the
condition of truth should be changed according to the powers of discussion,
and even the faculty of perspicuous eloquence. This is very well known to
occur by reason of the facility of the hearers, who, being distracted by
the allurement of words from attention to things, assent without
distinction to everything that is said, and do not separate falsehood from
truth; unaware that even in that which is incredible them is often truth,
and in verisimilitude falsehood. Therefore the oftener they believe bold
assertions, the more frequently they are convinced by those who are more
clever, and thus are continually deceived by their temerity. They transfer
the blame of the judge to the complaint of uncertainty; so that, everything
being condemned, they would rather that all things should be left in
suspense, than that they should decide about matters of doubt. Therefore we
must take care that we do not in such sort suffer from the hatred at once
of all discourses, even as very many of the more simple kind are led to
execration and hatred of men in general. For those who are carelessly
credulous are deceived by those whom they thought worthy; and by and by, by
a kindred error, they begin to suspect every one as wicked, and dread even
those whom they might have regarded as excellent. Now therefore we are
anxious--because in everything there may be argument on both sides; and on
the one hand, the truth is for the most part obscure; and on the other side
there is a marvellous subtlety, which sometimes by its abundance of words
imitates the confidence of acknowledged proof--as carefully as possible to
weigh each particular, that we may, while ready to applaud acuteness, yet
elect, approve, and adopt those things which are right."

CHAP. XV.--ARGUMENT: CAECILIUS RETORTS UPON MINUCIUS, WITH SOME LITTLE
APPEARANCE OF BEING HURT, THAT HE IS FOREGOING THE OFFICE OF A RELIGIOUS
UMPIRE, WHEN HE IS WEAKENING THE FORCE OF HIS ARGUMENT. HE SAYS THAT IT
SHOULD BE LEFT TO OCTAVIUS TO CONFUTE ALL THAT HE HAD ADVANCED.

   "You are withdrawing," says Caecilius, "from the office of a religious
judge; for it is very unfair for you to weaken the force of my pleading by
the interpolation of a very important argument, since Octavius has before
him each thing that I have said, sound and unimpaired, if he can refute
it." "What you are reproving," said I, "unless I am mistaken, I have
brought forward for the common advantage, so that by a scrupulous
examination we might weigh our decision, not by the pompous style of the
eloquence, but by the solid character of the matter itself. Nor must our
attention, as you complain, be any longer called away, but with absolute
silence let us listen to the reply of our friend Januarius,(4) who is now
beckoning to us."

CHAP. XVI.--ARGUMENT: OCTAVIUS ARRANGES HIS REPLY, AND TRUSTS THAT HE SHALL
BE ABLE TO DILUTE THE BITTERNESS OF REPROACH WITH THE RIVER OF TRUTHFUL
WORDS. HE PROCEEDS TO WEAKEN THE INDIVIDUAL ARGUMENTS OF CAECILIUS. NOBODY
NEED COMPLAIN THAT THE CHRISTIANS, UNLEARNED THOUGH THEY MAY BE, DISPUTE
ABOUT HEAVENLY THINGS BECAUSE IT IS NOT THE AUTHORITY OF HIM WHO ARGUES,
BUT THE TRUTH OF THE ARGUMENT ITSELF, THAT SHOULD BE CONSIDERED.

   And thus Octavius began: "I will indeed speak as I shall be able to the
best of my powers, and you must endeavour with me to dilute the very
offensive strain of recriminations in the river(1) of veracious words. Nor
will I disguise in the outset, that the opinion of my friend Natalis(2) has
swayed to and fro in such an erratic, vague, and slippery manner, that we
are compelled to doubt whether your(3) information was confused, or whether
it wavered backwards and forwards(4) by mere mistake. For he varied at one
time from believing the gods, at another time to being in a state of
hesitation on the subject; so that the direct purpose of my reply was
established with the greater uncertainty,(5) by reason of the uncertainty
of his proposition. But in my friend Natalis--I will not allow, I do not
believe in, any chicanery--far from his simplicity is crafty trickery.(6)
What then? As he who knows not the right way, when as it happens one road
is separated into many, because he knows not the way, remains in anxiety,
and dares neither make choice of particular roads, nor try them all; so, if
a man has no stedfast judgment of truth, even as his unbelieving suspicion
is scattered, so his doubting opinion is unsettled. It is therefore no
wonder if Caecilius in the same way is cast about by the tide, and tossed
hither and thither among things contrary and repugnant to one another; but
that this may no longer be the case, I will convict and refute all that has
been said, however diverse, confirming and approving the truth alone; and
for the future he must neither doubt nor waver. And since my brother broke
out in such expressions as these, that he was grieved, that he was vexed,
that he was indignant, that he regretted that illiterate, poor, unskilled
people should dispute about heavenly things; let him know that all men are
begotten alike, with a capacity and ability of reasoning and feeling,
without preference of age, sex, or dignity. Nor do they obtain wisdom by
fortune, but have it implanted by nature; moreover, the very philosophers
themselves, or any others who have gone forth unto celebrity as discoverers
of arts, before they attained an illustrious name by their mental skill,
were esteemed plebeian, untaught, half-naked. Thus it is, that rich men,
attached to their means, have been accustomed to gaze more upon their gold
than upon heaven, while our sort of people, though poor, have both
discovered wisdom, and have delivered their teaching to others; whence it
appears that intelligence is not given to wealth, nor is gotten by study,
but is begotten with the very formation of the mind. Therefore it is
nothing to be angry or to be grieved about, though any one should inquire,
should think, should utter his thoughts about divine things; since what is
wanted is not the authority of the arguer, but the truth of the argument
itself: and even the more unskilled the discourse, the more evident the
reasoning, since it is not coloured by the pomp of eloquence and grace; but
as it is, it is sustained by the rule of right.

CHAP. XVII.--ARGUMENT: MAN OUGHT INDEED TO KNOW HIMSELF, BUT THIS KNOWLEDGE
CANNOT BE ATTAINED BY HIM UNLESS HE FIRST OF ALL ACKNOWLEDGES THE ENTIRE
SCOPE OF THINGS, AND GOD HIMSELF. AND FROM THE CONSTITUTION AND FURNITURE
OF THE WORLD ITSELF, EVERY ONE ENDOWED WITH REASON HOLDS THAT IT WAS
ESTABLISHED BY GOD, AND IS GOVERNED AND ADMINISTERED BY HIM.

   "Neither do I refuse to admit what Caecilius earnestly endeavoured to
maintain among the chief matters, that man ought to know himself, and to
took around and see what he is, whence he is, why he is; whether collected
together from the elements, or harmoniously formed of atoms, or rather
made, formed, and animated by God. And it is this very thing which we
cannot seek out and investigate without inquiry into the universe; since
things are so coherent, so linked and associated together, that unless you
diligently examine into the nature of divinity, you must be ignorant of
that of humanity. Nor can you well perform your social duty unless you know
that community of the world which is common to all, especially since in
this respect we differ from the wild beasts, that while they are prone and
tending to the earth, and are born to look upon nothing but their food, we,
whose countenance is erect, whose look is turned towards heaven, as is our
converse and reason, whereby we recognise, feel, and imitate God,(7) have
neither right nor reason to be ignorant of the celestial glory which forms
itself into our eyes and senses. For it is as bad as the grossest sacrilege
even, to seek on the ground for what you ought to find on high. Wherefore
the rather, they who deny that this furniture of the whole world was
perfected by the divine reason, and assert that it was heaped together by
certain fragments(1) casually adhering to each other, seem to me not to
have either mind or sense, or, in fact, even sight itself. For what can
possibly be so manifest, so confessed, and so evident, when you lift your
eyes up to heaven, and look into the things which are below and around,
than that there is some Deity of most excellent intelligence, by whom all
nature is inspired, is moved, is nourished, is governed? Behold the heaven
itself, how broadly it is expanded, how rapidly it is whirled around,
either as it is distinguished in the night by its stars, or as it is
lightened in the day by the sun, and you will know at once how the
marvellous and divine balance of the Supreme Governor is engaged therein.
Look also on the year, how it is made by the circuit of the sun; and look
on the month, how the moon drives it around in her increase, her decline,
and decay. What shall I say of the recurring changes of darkness and light;
how there is thus provided for us an alternate restoration of labour and
rest? Truly a more prolix discourse concerning the stars must be left to
astronomers, whether as to how they govern the course of navigation, or
bring on(2) the season of ploughing or of reaping, each of which things not
only needed a Supreme Artist and a perfect intelligence, nor only to
create, to construct, and to arrange; but, moreover, they cannot be felt,
peceived and understood without the highest intelligence and reason. What!
when the order of the seasons and of the harvests is distinguished by
stedfast variety, does it not attest its Author and Parent? As well the
spring with its flowers, and the summer with its harvests, and the grateful
maturity of autumn, and the wintry olive-gathering,(3) are needful; and
this order would easily be disturbed unless it were established by the
highest intelligence. Now, how great is the providence needed, lest there
should be nothing but winter to blast with its frost, or nothing but summer
to scorch with its heat, to interpose the moderate temperature of autumn
and spring, so that the unseen and harmless transitions of the year
returning on its footsteps may glide by! Look attentively at the sea; it is
bound by the law of its shore. Wherever there are trees, look how they are
animated from the bowels of the earth! Consider the ocean; it ebbs and
flows with alternate tides. Look at the fountains, how they gush in
perpetual streams! Gaze on the rivers; they always roll on in regular
courses. Why should I speak of the aptly ordered peaks of the mountains,
the slopes of the hills, the expanses of the plains? Wherefore should I
speak of the multiform protection provided by animated creatures against
one another?--some armed with horns, some hedged with teeth, and shod with
claws, and barbed with stings, or with freedom obtained by swiftness of
feet, or by the capacity of soaring furnished by wings? The very beauty of
our own figure especially confesses God to be its artificer: our upright
stature, our uplooking countenance, our eyes placed at the top, as it were,
for outlook; and all the rest of our senses as if arranged in a citadel.

CHAP. XVIII.--ARGUMENT: MOREOVER, GOD NOT ONLY TAKES CARE OF THE UNIVERSAL
WORLD, BUT OF ITS INDiVIDUAL PARTS. THAT BY THE DECREE OF THE ONE GOD ALL
THINGS ARE GOVERNED, IS PROVED BY THE ILLUSTRATION OF EARTHLY EMPIRES. BUT
ALTHOUGH HE, BEING INFINITE AND IMMENSE--AND HOW GREAT HE IS, IS KNOWN TO
HIMSELF ALONE--CANNOT EITHER BE SEEN OR NAMED BY US, YET HIS GLORY IS
BEHELD MOST CLEARLY WHEN THE USE OF ALL TITLES IS LAID ASIDE.

   "It would be a long matter to go through particular instances. There is
no member in man which is not calculated both for the sake of necessity and
of ornament; and what is more wonderful still, all have the same form, but
each has certain lineaments modified, and thus we are each found to be
unlike to one another, while we all appear to be like in general. What is
the reason of our being born? what means the desire of begetting? Is it not
given by God, and that the breasts should become full of milk as the
offspring grows to maturity, and that the tender progeny should grow up by
the nourishment afforded by the abundance of the milky moisture? Neither
does God have care alone for the universe as a whole, but also for its
parts. Britain is deficient in sunshine, but it is refreshed by the warmth
of the sea that flows around it. The river Nile tempers the dryness of
Egypt; the Euphrates cultivates Mesopotamia; the river Indus makes up for
the want of rains, and is said both to sow and to water the East. Now if,
on entering any house, you should behold everything refined, well arranged,
and adorned, assuredly you would believe that a master presided over it,
and that he himself was much better than all those excellent things. So in
this house of the world, when you look upon the heaven and the earth, its
providence, its ordering, its law, believe that there is a Lord and Parent
of the universe far more glorious than the stars themselves, and the parts
of the whole world. Unless, perchance--since there is no doubt as to the
existence of providence--you think that it is a subject of inquiry, whether
the celestial kingdom is governed by the power of one or by the rule of
many; and this matter itself does not involve much trouble in opening out,
to one who considers earthly empires, for which the examples certainly are
taken from heaven. When at any time was there an alliance in royal
authority which either began with good faith or ceased without bloodshed? I
pass over the Persians who gathered the augury for their chieftainship from
the neighing of horses;(1) and I do not quote that absolutely dead fable of
the Theban brothers.(2) The story about the twins (Romulus and Remus), in
respect of the dominion of shepherds, and of a cottage, is very well known.
The wars of the son-in-law and the father-in-law(3) were scattered over the
whole world; and the fortune(4) of so great an empire could not receive two
rulers. Look at other matters. The bees have one king; the flocks one
leader; among the herds there is one ruler. Canst thou believe that in
heaven there is a division of the supreme power, and that the whole
authority of that true and divine empire is sundered, when it is manifest
that God, the Parent of all, has neither beginning nor end--that He who
gives birth to all gives perpetuity to Himself--that He who was before the
world, was Himself to Himself instead of the world? He orders everything,
whatever it is, by a word; arranges it by His wisdom; perfects it by His
power. He can neither be seen--He is brighter than light; nor can be
grasped--He is purer than touch;(5) nor estimated; He is greater than all
perceptions; infinite, immense, and how great is known to Himself alone.
But our heart is too limited to understand Him, and therefore we are then
worthily estimating Him when we say that He is beyond estimation. I will
speak out in what manner I feel. He who thinks that he knows the magnitude
of God, is diminishing it; he who desires not to lessen it, knows it not.
Neither must you ask a name for God. God is His name. We have need of names
when a multitude is to be separated into individuals by the special
characteristics of names; to God, who is alone, the name God is the whole.
If I were to call Him Father, you would judge Him to be earthly; if a King,
you would suspect Him to be carnal; if a Lord, you will certainly
understand Him to he mortal. Take away the additions of names, and you will
behold His glory. What! is it not true that I have in this matter the
consent of all men? I hear the common people, when they lift their hands to
heaven, say nothing else but Oh God, and God is great, and God is true, and
if God shall permit. Is this the natural discourse of the common people, or
is it the prayer of a confessing Christian? And they who speak of Jupiter
as the chief, are mistaken in the name indeed, but they are in agreement
about the unity of the power.

CHAP. XIX.--ARGUMENT: MOREOVER, THE POETS HAVE CALLED HIM THE PARENT OF
GODS AND MEN, THE CREATOR OF ALL THINGS, AND THEIR MIND AND SPIRIT. AND,
BESIDES, EVEN THE MORE EXCELLENT PHILOSOPHERS HAVE COME ALMOST TO THE SAME
CONCLUSION AS THE CHRISTIANS ABOUT THE UNITY OF GOD.

   "I hear the poets also announcing 'the One Father of gods and men;' and
that such is the mind of mortal men as the Parent of all has appointed His
day.(6) What says the Mantuan Maro? Is it not even more plain, more
apposite, more true? 'In the beginning,' says he, 'the spirit within
nourishes, and the mind infused stirs the heaven and the earth,' and the
other members 'of the world. Thence arises the race of men and of
cattle,'(7) and every other kind of animal. The same poet in another place
calls that mind and spirit God. For these are his words:(8) 'For that God
pervades all the lands, and the tracts of the sea, and the profound heaven,
from whom are men and cattle; from whom are rain and fire.'(9) What else
also is God announced to be by us, but mind, and reason, and spirit? Let us
review, if it is agreeable, the teaching of philosophers. Although in
varied kinds of discourse, yet in these matters you will find them concur
and agree in this one opinion. I pass over those untrained and ancient ones
who deserved to be called wise men for their sayings. Let Thales the
Milesian be the first of all, for he first of all disputed about heavenly
things. That same Thales the Milesian said that water was the beginning of
things, but that God was that mind which from water formed all things. Ah!
a higher and nobler account of water and spirit than to have ever been
discovered by man. It was delivered to him by God. You see that the opinion
of this original philosopher absolutely agrees with ours. Afterwards
Anaximenes, and then Diogenes of Apollonia, decide that the air, infinite
and unmeasured, is God. The agreement of these also as to the Divinity is
like ours. But the description of Anaxagoras also is, that God is said to
be the motion of an infinite mind; and the God of Pythagoras is the soul
passing to and fro and intent, throughout the universal nature of things,
from whom also the life of all animals is received. It is a known fact,
that Xenophanes delivered that God was all infinity with a mind; and
Antisthenes, that there are many gods of the people, but that one God of
Nature was the chief of all; that Xeuxippus(1) acknowledged as God a
natural animal force whereby all things are governed. What says Democritus?
Although the first discoverer of atoms, does not he especially speak of
nature, which is the basis of forms, and intelligence, as God? Strato also
himself says that God is nature. Moreover, Epicurus, the man who feigns
either otiose gods or none at all, still places above all, Nature.
Aristotle varies, but nevertheless assigns a unity of power: for at one
time he says that Mind, at another the World, is God; at another time he
sets God above the world.(2) Heraclides of Pontus also ascribes, although
in various ways, a divine mind to God. Theophrastus, and Zeno, and
Chrysippus, and Cleanthes are indeed themselves of many forms of opinion
but they are all brought back to the one fact of the unity of providence.
For Cleanthes discoursed of God as of a mind, now of a soul, now of air,
but for the most part of reason. Zeno, his master, will have the law of
nature and of God, and sometimes the air, and sometimes reason, to be the
beginning of all things. Moreover, by interpreting Juno to be the air,
Jupiter the heaven, Neptune the sea, Vulcan to be fire, and in like manner
by showing the other gods of the common people to be elements, he forcibly
denounces and overcomes the public error. Chrysippus says almost the same.
He believes that a divine force, a rational nature, and sometimes the
world, and a fatal necessity, is God; and he follows the example of Zeno in
his physiological interpretation of the poems of Hesiod, of Homer, and of
Orpheus. Moreover, the teaching of Diogenes of Babylon is that of
expounding and arguing that the birth of Jupiter, and the origin of
Minerva, and this kind, are names for other things, not for gods. For
Xenophon the Socratic says that the form of the true God cannot be seen,
and therefore ought not to be inquired after. Aristo the Stoic(3) says that
He cannot at all be comprehended. And both of them were sensible of the
majesty of God, while they despaired of understanding Him. Plato has a
clearer discourse about God, both in the matters themselves and in the
names by which he expresses them; and his discourse would be altogether
heavenly, if it were not occasionally fouled by a mixture of merely civil
belief. Therefore in his Timoeus Plato's God is by His very name the parent
of the world, the artificer of the soul, the fabricator of heavenly and
earthly things, whom both to discover he declares is difficult, on account
of His excessive and incredible power; and when you have discovered Him,
impossible to speak of in public. The same almost are the opinions also
which are ours. For we both know and speak of a God who is parent of all,
and never speak of Him in public unless we are interrogated.(4)

CHAP. XX.--ARGUMENT: BUT IF THE WORLD IS RULED BY PROVIDENCE AND GOVERNED
BY THE WILL OF ONE GOD, AN IGNORANT ANTIPATHY OUGHT NOT TO CARRY US AWAY
INTO THE ERROR OF AGREEMENT WITH IT: ALTHOUGH DELIGHTED WITH ITS OWN
FABLES, IT HAS BROUGHT IN RIDICULOUS TRADITIONS. NOR IS IT SHOWN LESS
PLAINLY THAT THE WORSHIP OF THE GODS HAS ALWAYS BEEN SILLY AND IMPIOUS, IN
THAT THE MOST ANCIENT OF MEN HAVE VENERATED THEIR KINGS, THEIR ILLUSTRIOUS
GENERALS, AND INVENTORS OF ARTS, ON ACCOUNT OF THEIR REMARKABLE DEEDS, NO
OTHERWISE THAN AS GODS,

   "I have set forth the opinions almost of all the philosophers whose
more illustrious glory it is to, have pointed out that there is one God,
although with many names; so that any one might think either that
Christians are now philosophers, or that philosophers were then already
Christians. But if the world is governed by providence, and directed by the
will of one God, antiquity of unskilled people ought not, however delighted
and charmed with its own fables, to carry us away into the mistake of a
mutual agreement, when it is rebutted by the opinions of its own
philosophers, who are supported by the authority both of reason and of
antiquity. For our ancestors had such an easy faith in falsehoods, that
they rashly believed even other monstrosities as marvellous wonders;(5) a
manifold Scylla, a Chimaera of many forms, and a Hydra rising again from
its auspicious wounds, and Centaurs, horses entwined with their riders; and
whatever Report was allowed(6) to feign, they were entirely willing to
listen to. Why should I refer to those old wives' fables, that men were
changed from men into birds and beasts, and from men into trees and
flowers?--which things, if they had happened at all, would happen again;
and because they cannot happen now, therefore never happened at all. In
like manner with respect to the gods too, our ancestors believed
carelessly, credulously, with untrained simplicity; While worshipping their
kings religiously, desiring to look upon them when dead in outward forms,
anxious to preserve their memories in statues,(1) those things became
sacred which had been taken up merely as consolations. Thereupon, and
before the world was opened up by commerce, and before the nations
confounded their rites and customs, each particular nation venerated its
Founder, or illustrious Leader, or modest Queen braver than her sex, or the
discoverer of any sort of faculty or art, as a citizen of worthy memory;
and thus a reward Was given to the deceased, and an example to those who
were to follow.

CHAP. XXI.--ARGUMENT: OCTAVIUS ATTESTS THE FACT THAT MEN WERE ADOPTED AS
GODS, BY THE TESTIMONY OF EUHEMERUS, PRODICUS, PERSAEUS, AND ALEXANDER THE
GREAT, WHO ENUMERATE THE COUNTRY, THE BIRTHDAYS, AND THE BURIAL-PLACES OF
THE GODS. MOREOVER HE SETS FORTH THE MOURNFUL ENDINGS, MISFORTUNES, AND
DEATHS OF THE GODS. AND, IN ADDITION, HE LAUGHS AT THE RIDICULOUS AND
DISGUSTING ABSURDITIES WHICH THE HEATHENS CONTINUALLY ALLEGE ABOUT THE FORM
AND APPEARANCE OF THEIR GODS.

   "Read the writings of the Stoics,(2) or the writings of wise men, you
will acknowledge these facts with me. On account of the merits of their
virtue or of some gift, Euhemerus asserts that they were esteemed gods; and
he enumerates their birthdays, their countries, their places of sepulture,
and throughout various provinces points out these circumstances of the
Dictaean Jupiter, and of the Delphic Apollo, and of the Pharian Isis, and
of the Eleusinian Ceres. Prodicus speaks of men who were taken up among the
gods, because they were helpful to the uses of men in their wanderings, by
the discovery of new kinds of produce. Persaeus philosophizes also to the
same result; and he adds thereto, that the fruits discovered, and the
discoverers of those same fruits, were called by the same names; as the
passage of the comic writer runs, that Venus freezes without Bacchus and
Ceres. Alexander the Great, the celebrated Macedonian, wrote in a
remarkable document(3) addressed to his mother, that under fear of his
power there had been betrayed to him by the priest the secret of the gods
having been men: to her he makes Vulcan the original of all, and then the
race of Jupiter. And you behold the swallow and the cymbal of Isis,(4) and
the tomb of your Serapis or Osiris empty, with his limbs scattered about.
Then consider the sacred rites themselves, and their very mysteries: you
will find mournful deaths, misfortunes, and funerals, and the griefs and
wailings of the miserable gods. Isis bewails, laments, and seeks after her
lost son, with her Cynocephalus and her bald priests; and the wretched
Isiacs beat their breasts, and imitate the grief of the most unhappy
mother. By and by, when the little boy is found, Isis rejoices, and the
priests exult, Cynocephalus the discoverer boasts, and they do not cease
year by year either to lose what they find, or to find what they lose. Is
it not ridiculous either to grieve for what you worship, or to worship that
over which you grieve? Yet these were formerly Egyptian rites, and now are
Roman ones. Ceres with her torches lighted, and surrounded s with a
serpent, with anxiety and solicitude tracks the footsteps of Proserpine,
stolen away in her wandering, and corrupter. These are the Eleusinian
mysteries. And what are the sacred rites of Jupiter? His nurse is a she-
goat, and as an infant he is taken away from his greedy father, lest he
should be devoured; and clanging uproar(6) is dashed out of the cymbals of
the Corybantes, lest the father should hear the infant's wailing. Cybele of
Dindymus--I am ashamed to speak of it--who could not entice her adulterous
lover, who unhappily was pleasing to her, to lewdness, because she herself,
as being the mother of many gods, was ugly and old, mutilated him,
doubtless that she might make a god of the eunuch. On account of this
story, the Galli also worship her by the punishment of their emasculated
body. Now certainly these things are not sacred rites, but tortures. What
are the very forms and appearances (of the gods)? do they not argue the
contemptible and disgraceful characters of your gods?(7) Vulcan is a lame
god, and crippled; Apollo, smooth-faced after so many ages; AEsculapius
well bearded, notwithstanding that he is the son of the ever youthful
Apollo; Neptune with sea-green eyes; Minerva with eyes bluish grey; Juno
with ox-eyes; Mercury with winged feet; Pan with hoofed feet; Saturn with
feet in fetters; Janus, indeed, wears two faces, as if that he might walk
with looks turned back; Diana sometimes is a huntress, with her robe girded
up high; and as the Ephesian she has many and fruitful breasts; and when
exaggerated as Trivia, she is horrible with three heads and with many
hands. What is your Jupiter himself? Now he is represented in a statue as
beardless, now he is set up as bearded; and when he is called Hammon, he
has horns; and when Capitolinus, then he wields the thunderbolts; and when
Latiaris, he is sprinkled with gore; and when Feretrius, he is not
approached;(1) and not to mention any further the multitude of Jupiters,
the monstrous appearances of Jupiter are as numerous as his names. Erigone
was hanged from a noose, that as a virgin she might be glowing(2) among the
stars. The Castors die by turns, that they may live. AEsculapius, that he
may rise into a god, is struck with a thunderbolt. Hercules, that he may
put off humanity, is burnt up by the fires of OEta.(3)

CHAP. XXII.--ARGUMENT: MOREOVER, THESE FABLES, WHICH AT FIRST WERE INVENTED
BY IGNORANT MEN, WERE AFTERWARDS CELEBRATED BY OTHERS, AND CHIEFLY BY
POETS, WHO DID NO LITTLE MISCHIEF TO THE TRUTH BY THEIR AUTHORITY. BY
FICTIONS OF THIS KIND, AND BY FALSEHOODS OF A YET MORE ATTRACTIVE NATURE,
THE MINDS OF YOUNG PEOPLE ARE CORRUPTED, AND THENCE THEY MISERABLY GROW OLD
IN THESE BELIEFS, ALTHOUGH, ON THE OTHER HAND, THE TRUTH IS OBVIOUS TO THEM
IF THEY WILL ONLY SEEK AFTER IT.

   "These fables and errors we both learn from ignorant parents, and, what
is more serious still, we elaborate them in our very studies and
instructions, especially in the verses of the poets, who as much as
possible have prejudiced(4) the truths by their authority. And for this
reason Plato rightly expelled from the state which he had founded in his
discourse, the illustrious Homer whom he had praised and crowned.(6) For it
was he especially who in the Trojan was allowed your gods, although he made
jests of them, still to interfere in the affairs and doings of men: he
brought them together in contest; he wounded Venus; he bound, wounded, and
drove away Mars. He relates that Jupiter was set free by Briareus, so as
not to be bound fast by the rest of the gods; and that he bewailed in
showers of blood his son Sarpedon, because he could not snatch him from
death; and that, enticed by the girdle of Venus, he lay more eagerly with
his wife Juno than he was accustomed to do with his adulterous loves.
Elsewhere Hercules threw out dung, and Apollo is feeding cattle for
Admetus. Neptune, however, builds walls for Laomedon, and the unfortunate
builder did not receive the wages for his work. Then Jupiter's thunderbolt
is fabricated(7) on the anvil with the arms of AEneas, although there were
heaven, and thunderbolts, and lightnings long before Jupiter was born in
Crete; and neither could the CyclOps imitate, nor Jupiter himself help
fearing, the flames of the real thunderbolt. Why should I speak of the
detected adultery of Mars and Venus, and of the violence of Jupiter against
Ganymede,--a deed consecrated, (as you say,) in heaven? And all these
things have been put forward with this view, that a certain authority might
be gained for the vices s of men. By these fictions, and such as these, and
by lies of a more attractive kind, the minds of boys are corrupted; and
with the same fables clinging to them, they grow up even to the strength of
mature age; and, poor wretches, they grow old in the same beliefs, although
the truth is plain, if they will only seek after it. For all the writers of
antiquity, both Greek and Roman, have set forth that Saturn, the beginner
of this race and multitude, was a man. Nepos knows this, and Cassius in his
history; and Thallus and Diodorus speak the same thing. This Saturn then,
driven from Crete, by the fear of his raging son, had come to Italy, and,
received by the hospitality of Janus, taught those unskilled and rustic men
many things,--as, being something of a Greek, and polished,--to print
letters for instance, to coin money, to make instruments. Therefore he
preferred that his hiding-place, because he had been safely hidden (latent)
there, should be called Latium; and he gave a city, from his own name, the
name of Saturnia, and Janus, Janiculum, so that each of them left their
names to the memory of posterity. Therefore it was certainly a man that
fled, certainly a man who was concealed, and the father of a man, and
sprung from a man. He was declared, however, to be the son of earth or of
heaven, because among the Italians he was of unknown parents; as even to
this day we call those who appear unexpectedly, sent from heaven, those who
are ignoble and unknown, sons of the earth. His son Jupiter reigned at
Crete after his father was driven out. There he died, there he had sons. To
this day the cave of Jupiter is visited, and his sepulchre is shown, and he
is convicted of being human by those very sacred rites of his.

CHAP. XXIII.--ARGUMENT: ALTHOUGH THE HEATHENS ACKNOWLEDGE THEIR KINGS TO BE
MORTAL, YET THEY FEIGN THAT THEY ARE GODS EVEN AGAINST THEIR OWN WILL, NOT
BECAUSE OF THEIR BELIEF IN THEIR DIVINITY, BUT IN HONOUR OF THE POWER THAT
THEY HAVE EXERTED. YET A TRUE GOD HAS NEITHER RISING NOR SETTING. THENCE
OCTAVIUS CRITICISES THE IMAGES AND SHRINES OF THE GODS.

   "It is needless to go through each individual case, and to develope the
entire series of that race, since in its first parents their mortality is
proved, and must have flowed down into the rest by the very law of their
succession, unless perhaps you fancy that they were gods after death; as by
the perjury of Proculus, Romulus became a god; and by the good-will of the
Mauritanians, Juba is a god; and other kings are divine who are
consecrated, not in the faith of their divinity, but in honour of the power
that they exercised. Moreover, this name is ascribed to those who are
unwilling to bear it. They desire to persevere in their human condition.
They fear that they may be made gods; although they are already old men,
they do not wish it. Therefore neither are gods made from dead people,
since a god cannot die; nor of people that are born, since everything which
is born dies. But that is divine which has neither rising nor setting. For
why, if they were born, are they not born in the present day also?--unless,
perchance, Jupiter has already grown old, and child-bearing has failed in
Juno, and Minerva has grown grey before she has borne children. Or has that
process of generation ceased, for the reason that no assent is any longer
yielded to fables of this kind? Besides, if the gods could create,(1) they
could not perish: we should have more gods than all men together; so that
now, neither would the heaven contain them, nor the air receive them, nor
the earth bear them. Whence it is manifest, that those were men whom we
both read of as having been born, and know to have died. Who therefore
doubts that the common people pray to and publicly worship the consecrated
images of these men; in that the belief and mind of the ignorant is
deceived by the perfection of art, is blinded by the glitter of gold, is
dimmed with the shining of silver and the whiteness of ivory? But if any
one were to present to his mind with what instruments and with what
machinery every image is formed, he would blush that he had feared matter,
treated after his fancy by the artificer to make a god.(2) For a god of
wood, a portion perhaps of a pile, or of an unlucky log, is hung up, is
cut, is hewn, is planed; and a god of brass or of silver, often from an
impure vessel, as was done by the Egyptian king,(3) is fused, is beaten
with hammers and forged on anvils; and the god of stone is cut, is
sculptured, and is polished by some abandoned man, nor feels the injury
done to him in his nativity, any more than afterwards it feels the worship
flowing from your veneration; unless perhaps the stone, or the wood, or the
silver is not yet a god. When, therefore, does the god begin his existence?
Lo, it is reeked, it is wrought, it is sculptured--it is not yet a god; lo,
it is soldered, it is built together--it is set up, and even yet it is not
a god; lo, it is adorned, it is consecrated, it is prayed to--then at
length it is a god, when man has chosen it to be so, and for the purpose
has dedicated it.

CHAP. XXIV.--ARGUMENT: HE BRIEFLY SHOWS, MOREOVER, WHAT RIDICULOUS,
OBSCENE, AND CRUEL RITES WERE OBSERVED IN CELEBRATING THE MYSTERIES OF
CERTAIN GODS.

   "How much more truly do dumb animals naturally judge concerning your
gods? Mice, swallows, kites, know that they have no feeling: they gnaw
them, they trample on them, they sit upon them; and unless you drive them
off, they build their nests in the very mouth of your god. Spiders, indeed,
weave their webs over his face, and suspend their threads from his very
head. You wipe, cleanse, scrape, and you protect and fear those whom you
make; while not one of you thinks that he ought to know God before he
worships Him; desiring without consideration to obey their ancestors,
choosing rather to become an addition to the error of others, than to trust
themselves; in that they know nothing of what they fear. Thus avarice has
been consecrated in gold and silver; thus the form of empty statues has
been established; thus has arisen Roman superstition. And if you reconsider
the rites of these gods, how many things are laughable, and how many also
pitiable! Naked people run about in the raw winter; some walk bonneted, and
carry around old bucklers, or beat drums, or lead their gods a-begging
through the streets. Some fanes it is permitted to approach once a year,
some it is forbidden to visit at all. There is one place where a man may
not go, and there are some that are sacred from women: it is a crime
needing atonement for a slave even to be present at some ceremonies. Some
sacred places are crowned by a woman having one husband, some by a woman
with many; and she who can reckon up most adulteries is sought after with
most religious zeal. What! would not a man who makes libations of his own
blood, and supplicates (his god) by his own wounds, be better if he were
altogether profane, than religious in such a way is this? And he whose
shameful parts are cut off, how greatly does he wrong God in seeking to
propitiate Him in this manner! since, if God wished for eunuchs, He could
bring them as such into existence, and would not make them so afterwards.
Who does not perceive that people of unsound mind, and of weak and degraded
apprehension, are foolish in these things, and that the very multitude of
those who err affords to each of them mutual patronage? Here the defence of
the general madness is the multitude of the mad people.

CHAP. XXV.--ARGUMENT: THEN HE SHOWS THAT CAECILIUS HAD BEEN WRONG IN
ASSERTING THAT THE ROMANS HAD GAINED THEIR POWER OVER THE WHOLE WORLD BY
MEANS OF THE DUE OBSERVANCE OF SUPERSTITIONS OF THIS KIND. RATHER THE
ROMANS IN THEIR ORIGIN WERE COLLECTED BY CRIME, AND GREW BY THE TERRORS OF
THEIR FEROCITY. AND THEREFORE THE ROMANS WERE NOT SO GREAT BECAUSE THEY
WERE RELIGIOUS, BUT BECAUSE THEY WERE SACRILEGIOUS WITH IMPUNITY.

   "Nevertheless, you will say that that very superstition itself gave,
increased, and established their empire for the Romans, since they
prevailed not so much by their valour as by their religion and piety.
Doubtless the illustrious and noble justice of the Romans had its beginning
from the very cradle of the growing empire. Did they not in their origin,
when gathered together and fortified by crime, grow by the terror of their
own fierceness? For the first people were assembled together as to an
asylum. Abandoned people, profligate, incestuous, assassins, traitors, had
flocked together; and in order that Romulus himself, their commander and
governor, might excel his people in guilt, he committed fratricide.(1)
These are the first auspices of the religious state! By and by they carried
off, violated, and ruined foreign virgins, already betrothed, already
destined for husbands, and even some young women from their marriage vows--
a thing unexampled(2)--and then engaged in war with their parents, that is,
with their fathers-in-law, and shed the blood of their kindred. What more
irreligious, what more audacious, what could be safer than the very
confidence of crime? Now, to drive their neighbours from the land, to
overthrow the nearest cities, with their temples and altars, to drive them
into captivity, to grow up by the losses of others and by their own crimes,
is the course of training common to the rest of the kings and the latest
leaders with Romulus. Thus, whatever the Romans hold, cultivate, possess,
is the spoil of their audacity. All their temples are built from the spoils
of violence, that is, from the ruins of cities, from the spoils of the
gods, from the murders of priests. This is to insult and scorn, to yield to
conquered religions, to adore them when captive, after having vanquished
them. For to adore what you have taken by force, is to consecrate
sacrilege, not divinities. As often, therefore, as the Romans triumphed, so
often they were polluted; and as many trophies as they gained from the
nations, so many spoils did they take from the gods. Therefore the Romans
were not so great because they were religious, but because they were
sacrilegious with impunity. For neither were they able in the wars
themselves to have the help of the gods against whom they took up arms; and
they began to worship those when they were triumphed over, whom they had
previously challenged. But what avail such gods as those on behalf of the
Romans, who had had no power on behalf of their own worshippers against the
Roman arms? For we know the indigenous gods of the Romans--Romulus, Picus,
Tiberinus, and Consus, and Pilumnus, and Picumnus. Tatius both discovered
and worshipped Cloacina; Hostilius, Fear and Pallor. Subsequently Fever was
dedicated by I know not whom: such was the superstition that nourished that
city,--diseases and ill states of health. Assuredly also Acca Laurentia,
and Flora, infamous harlots, must be reckoned among the diseases(3) and the
gods of the Romans. Such as these doubtless enlarged the dominion of the
Romans, in opposition to others who were worshipped by the nations: for
against their own people neither did the Thracian Mars, nor the Cretan
Jupiter, nor Juno, now of Argos, now of Samos, now of Carthage, nor Diana
of Tauris, nor the Idaean Mother, nor those Egyptian--not deities, but
monstrosities--assist them; unless perchance among the Romans the chastity
of virgins was greater, or the religion of the priests more holy: though
absolutely among very many of the virgins unchastity was punished, in that
they, doubtless without the knowledge of Vesta, had intercourse too
carelessly with men; and for the rest their impunity arose not from the
better protection of their chastity, but from the better fortune of their
immodesty. And where are adulteries better arranged by the priests than
among the very altars and shrines? where are more panderings debated, or
more acts of violence concerted? Finally, burning lust is more frequently
gratified in the little chambers of the keepers of the temple, than in the
brothels themselves. And still, long before the Romans, by the ordering of
God, the Assyrians held dominion, the Medes, the Persians, the Greeks also,
and the Egyptians, although they had not any Pontiffs, nor Arvales, nor
Salii, nor Vestals, nor Augurs, nor chickens shut up in a coop, by whose
feeding or abstinence the highest concerns of the state were to be
governed.

CHAP. XXVI.--ARGUMENT: THE WEAPON THAT CAECILIUS HAD SLIGHTLY BRANDISHED
AGAINST HIM, TAKEN FROM THE AUSPICES AND AUGURIES OF BIRDS, OCTAVIUS
RETORTS BY INSTANCING THE CASES OF REGULUS, MANCINUS, PAULUS, AND CAESAR.
AND HE SHOWS BY OTHER EXAMPLES, THAT THE ARGUMENT FROM THE ORACLES IS OF NO
GREATER FORCE THAN THE OTHERS.

   "And now I come to those Roman auspices and auguries which you have
collected with extreme pains, and have borne testimony that they were both
neglected with ill consequences, and observed with good fortune. Certainly
Clodius, and Flaminius, and Junius lost their armies on this account,
because they did not judge it well to wait for the very solemn omen given
by the greedy pecking of the chickens. But what of Regulus? Did he not
observe the auguries, and was taken captive? Mancinus maintained his
religious duty, and was sent under the yoke, and was given up. Paulus also
had greedy chickens at Cannae, yet he was overthrown with the greater part
of the republic.(1) Caius Caesar despised the auguries and auspices that
resisted his making his voyage into Africa before the winter, and thus the
more easily he both sailed and conquered. But what and how much shall I go
on to say about oracles? After his death Amphiaraus answered as to things
to come, though he knew not (while living) that he should be betrayed by
his wife on account of a bracelet. The blind Tiresias saw the future,
although he did not see the present. Ennius invented the replies of the
Pythian Apollo concerning Pyrrhus, although Apollo had already ceased to
make verses; and that cautious and ambiguous oracle of his, failed just at
the time when men began to be at once more cultivated and less credulous.
And Demosthenes, because he knew that the answers were feigned, complained
that the Pythia philippized. But sometimes, it is true, even auspices or
oracles have touched the truth. Although among many falsehoods chance might
appear as if it imitated forethought; yet I will approach the very source
of error and perverseness, whence all that obscurity has flowed, and both
dig into it more deeply, and lay it open more manifestly. There are some
insincere and vagrant spirits degraded from their heavenly vigour by
earthly stains and lusts. Now these spirits, after having lost the
simplicity of their nature by being weighed down and immersed in vices, for
a solace of their calamity, cease not, now that they are ruined themselves,
to ruin others; and being depraved themselves, to infuse into others the
error of their depravity and being themselves alienated from God, to
separate others from God by the introduction of degraded superstitions. The
poets know that those spirits are demons; the philosophers discourse of
them; Socrates knew it, who, at the nod and decision of a demon that was at
his side, either declined or undertook affairs. The Magi, also, not only
know that there are demons, but, moreover, whatever miracle they affect to
perform, do it by means of demons; by their aspirations and communications
they show their wondrous tricks, making either those things appear which
are not, or those things not to appear which are. Of those magicians, the
first both in eloquence and in deed, Sosthenes,(2) not only describes the
true God with fitting majesty, but the angels that are the ministers and
messengers of God, even the true God. And he knew that it enhanced His
veneration, that in awe of the very nod and glance of their Lord they
should tremble. The same man also declared that demons were earthly,
wandering, hostile to humanity. What said Plato,(3) who believed that it
was a hard thing to find out God? Does not he also, without hesitation,
tell of both angels and demons? And in his Symposium also, does not he
endeavour to explain the nature of demons? For he will have it to be a
substance between mortal and immortal--that is, mediate between body and
spirit, compounded by mingling of earthly weight and heavenly lightness;
whence also he warns us of the desire of love,(4) and he says that it is
moulded and glides into the human breast, and stirs the senses, and moulds
the affections, and infuses the ardour of lust.

CHAP. XXVII.--ARGUMENT: RECAPITULATION. DOUBTLESS HERE IS A SOURCE OF
ERROR: DEMONS LURK UNDER THE STATUES AND IMAGES, THEY HAUNT THE FANES, THEY
ANIMATE THE FIBRES OF THE ENTRAILS, DIRECT THE FLIGHTS OF BIRDS, GOVERN THE
LOTS, POUR FORTH ORACLES INVOLVED IN FALSE RESPONSES. THESE THINGS NOT FROM
GOD; BUT THEY ARE CONSTRAINED TO CONFESS WHEN THEY ARE ADJURED IN THE NAME
OF THE TRUE GOD, AND ARE DRIVEN FROM THE POSSESSED BODIES. HENCE THEY FLEE
HASTILY FROM THE NEIGHBOURHOOD OF CHRISTIANS, AND STIR UP A HATRED AGAINST
THEM IN THE MINDS OF THE GENTILES WHO BEGIN TO HATE THEM BEFORE THEY KNOW
THEM.

   "These impure spirits, therefore--the demons--as is shown by the Magi,
by the philosophers, and by Plato, consecrated under statues and images,
lurk there, and by their afflatus attain the authority as of a present
deity; while in the meantime they are breathed into the prophets, while
they dwell in the shrines, while sometimes they animate the fibres of the
entrails, control the flights of birds, direct the lots, are the cause of
oracles involved in many falsehoods. For they are both deceived, and they
deceive; inasmuch as they are both ignorant of the simple truth, and for
their own ruin they confess not that which they know. Thus they weigh men
downwards from heaven, and call them away from the true God to material
things: they disturb the life, render all men(1) unquiet; creeping also
secretly into human bodies, with subtlety, as being spirits, they feign
diseases, alarm the minds, wrench about the limbs; that they may constrain
men to worship them, being gorged with the fumes of altars or the
sacrifices of cattle, that, by remitting what they had bound, they may seem
to have cured it. These raging maniacs also, whom you see rush about in
public, are moreover themselves prophets without a temple; thus they rage,
thus they rave, thus they are whirled around. In them also there is a like
instigation of the demon, but there is a dissimilar occasion for their
madness. From the same causes also arise those things which were spoken of
a little time ago by you, that Jupiter demanded the restoration of his
games in a dream, that the Castors appeared with horses, and that a Small
ship was following the leading of the matron's girdle. A great many, even
some of your own people, know all those things that the demons themselves
confess concerning themselves, as often as they are driven by us from
bodies by the torments of our words and by the fires of our prayers. Saturn
himself, and Serapis, and Jupiter, and whatever demons you worship,
overcome by pain, speak out what they are; and assuredly they do not lie to
their own discredit, especially when any of you are standing by. Since they
themselves are the witnesses that they are demons, believe them when they
confess the truth of themselves; for when abjured by the only and true God,
unwillingly the wretched beings shudder in(2) their bodies, and either at
once leap forth, or vanish by degrees, as the faith of the sufferer assists
or the grace of the healer inspires. Thus they fly from Christians when
near at hand, whom at a distance they harassed by your means in their
assemblies. And thus, introduced into the minds of the ignorant, they
secretly sow there a hatred of us by means of fear. For it is natural both
to hate one whom you fear, and to injure one whom you have feared, if you
can. Thus they take possession of the minds and obstruct the hearts, that
men may begin to hate us before they know us; lest, if known, they should
either imitate us, or not be able to condemn us.

CHAP. XXVIII.--ARGUMENT: NOR IS IT ONLY HATRED THAT THEY AROUSE AGAINST THE
CHRISTIANS, BUT THEY CHARGE AGAINST THEM HORRID CRIMES, WHICH UP TO THIS
TIME HAVE BEEN PROVED BY NOBODY. THIS IS THE WORK OF DEMONS. FOR BY THEM A
FALSE REPORT IS BOTH SET ON FOOT AND PROPAGATED. THE CHRISTIANS ARE FALSELY
ACCUSED OF SACRILEGE, OF INCEST, OF ADULTERY, OF PARRICIDE; AND, MOREOVER,
IT IS CERTAIN AND TRUE THAT THE VERY SAME CRIMES, OR CRIMES LIKE TO OR
GREATER THAN THESE, ARE IN FACT COMMITTED BY THE GENTILES THEMSELVES.

   "BUT how unjust it is,(3) to form a judgment on things unknown and
unexamined, as you do! Believe us ourselves when penitent, for we also were
the same as you, and formerly, while yet blind and obtuse, thought the same
things as you; to wit, that the Christians worshipped monsters, devoured
infants, mingled in incestuous banquets. And we did not perceive that such
fables as these were always set afloat by those (newsmongers), and were
never either inquired into nor proved; and that in so long a time no one
had appeared to betray (their doings), to obtain not only pardon for their
crime, but also favour for its discovery: moreover, that it was to this
extent not evil, that a Christian, when accused, neither blushed nor
feared, and that he only repented that he had not been one before. We,
however, when we undertook to defend and protect some sacrilegious and
incestuous persons, and even parricides, did not think that these
(Christians) were to be heard at all. Sometimes even, when we affected to
pity them, we were more cruelly violent against them, so as to torture
them(4) when they confessed, that they might deny, to wit, that they might
not perish; making use of a perverse inquisition against them, not to
elicit the truth, but to compel a falsehood. And if any one, by reason of
greater weakness, overcome with suffering, and conquered, should deny that
he was a Christian, we showed favour to him, as if by forswearing that name
he had at once atoned for all his deeds by that simple denial. Do not you
acknowledge that we felt and did the same as you feel and do? when, if
reason and not the instigation of a demon were to judge, they should rather
have been pressed not to disavow themselves Christians, but to confess
themselves guilty of incests, of abominations, of sacred rites polluted, of
infants immolated. For with these and such as these stories, did those same
demons fill up the ears of the ignorant against us, to the horror of their
execration. Nor yet was it wonderful, since the common report of men,(1)
which is, always fed by the scattering of falsehoods, is wasted away when
the truth is brought to light. Thus this is the business of demons, for by
them false rumours are both sown and cherished. Thence arises what you say
that you hear, that an ass's head is esteemed among us a divine thing. Who
is such a fool as to worship this? Who is so much more foolish as to
believe that it is an object of worship? unless that you even consecrate
whole asses in your stables, together with your Epona,(2) and religiously
devours those same asses with Isis. Also you offer up and worship the heads
of oxen and of wethers, and you dedicate gods mingled also of a goat and a
man, and gods with the faces of dogs and lions. Do you not adore and feed
Apis the ox, with the Egyptians? And you do not condemn their sacred rites
instituted in honour of serpents, and crocodiles, and other beasts, and
birds, and fishes, of which if any one were to kill one of these gods, he
is even punished with death. These same Egyptians, together with very many
of you, are not more afraid of Isis than they are of the pungency of
onions, nor of Serapis more than they tremble. at the basest noises
produced by the foulness of their bodies. He also who fables against us
about our adoration of the members of the priest, tries to confer upon us
what belongs really to himself. (Ista enim impudicitae eorum forsitan sacra
sint, apud quos sexus omnis membris omnibus prostat, apud quos iota
impudicitia vocatur urbanitas; qui scortorum licentiae invident, qui medios
viros lambunt, libidinoso ore inguinibus inhaerescunt, homines malae
linguae etiam si tacerent, quos prius taedescit impudicitiae suae quam
pudescit.) Abomination !they suffer on themselves such evil deeds, as no
age is so effeminate as to be able to bear, and no slavery so cruel as to
be compelled to endure.

CHAP. XXIX.--ARGUMENT: NOR IS IT MORE TRUE THAT A MAN FASTENED TO A CROSS
ON ACCOUNT OF HIS CRIMES IS WORSHIPPED BY CHRISTIANS, FOR THEY BELIEVE NOT
ONLY THAT HE WAS INNOCENT, BUT WITH REASON THAT HE WAS GOD. BUT, ON THE
OTHER HAND, THE HEATHENS INVOKE THE DIVINE POWERS OF KINGS RAISED INTO GODS
BY THEMSELVES; THEY PRAY TO IMAGES, AND BESEECH THEIR GENII.

   "These, and such as these infamous things, we are not at liberty even
to hear; it is even disgraceful with any more words to defend ourselves
from such charges. For you pretend that those things are done by chaste and
modest persons, which we should not believe to be done at all, unless you
proved that they were true concerning yourselves. For in that you attribute
to our religion the worship of a criminal and his cross,(4) you wander far
from the neighbourhood of the truth, in thinking either that a criminal
deserved, or that an earthly being was able, to be believed God. Miserable
indeed is that man whose whole hope is dependent on mortal man, for all his
help is put an end to with the extinction of the man.(5) The Egyptians
certainly choose out a man for themselves whom they may worship; him alone
they propitiate; him they consult about all things; to him they slaughter
victims; and he who to others is a god, to himself is certainly a man
whether he will or no, for he does not deceive his own consciousness, if he
deceives that of others. "Moreover, a false flattery disgracefully caresses
princes and kings, not as great and chosen men, as is just, but as gods;
whereas honour is more truly rendered to an illustrious man, and love is
more pleasantly given to a very good man. Thus they invoke their deity,
they supplicate their images, they implore their Genius, that is, their
demon; and it is safer to swear falsely by the genius of Jupiter than by
that of a king. Crosses, moreover, we neither worship nor wish for.(6) You,
indeed, who consecrate gods of wood, adore wooden crosses perhaps as parts
of your gods. For your very standards, as well as your banners; and flags
of your camp, what else are they but crosses glided and adorned? Your
victorious trophies not only imitate the appearance of a simple cross, but
also that of a man affixed to it. We assuredly see the sign of a cross,(7)
naturally, in the ship when it is carried along with swelling sails, when
it glides forward with expanded oars; and when the military yoke is lifted
up, it is the sign of a cross; and when a man adores God with a pure mind,
with handsoutstretched. Thus the sign of the cross either is sustained by a
natural reason, or your own religion is formed with respect to it.

XXX.--ARGUMENT: THE STORY ABOUT CHRISTIANS DRINKING THE BLOOD OF AN INFANT
THAT THEY HAVE MURDERED, IS A BAREFACED CALUMNY. BUT THE GENTILES, BOTH
CRUELLY EXPOSE THEIR CHILDREN NEWLY BORN, AND BE FORE THEY ARE BORN DESTROY
THEM BY A CRUEL ABORTION. CHRISTIANS ARE NEITHER ALLOWED TO SEE NOR TO HEAR
OF MANSLAUGHTER.

   "And now I should wish to meet him who says or believes that we are
initiated by the slaughter and blood of an infant. Think you that it can be
possible for so tender, so little a body tO receive those fatal wounds; for
any one  to shed, pour forth, and drain that new blood of a youngling, and
of a man scarcley come into existence? No one can believe this, except one
who can dare to do it. And I see that you at one time expose your begotten
children to wild beasts and to birds; at another, that you crush them when
strangled with a miserable kind of death. There are some women who, by
drinking medical preparations,(1) extinguish the source of the future man
in their very bowels, and thus commit a parricide before they bring forth.
And these things assuredly come don from the teaching of your gods. For
Saturn did not expose his children, but devoured them. With reason were
infants sacrificed to him by parents in some parts of Africa, caresses and
kisses repressing their crying, that a weeping victim might not be
sacrificed. Moreover, among the Tauri of Pontus, and to the Egyptian
Busiris, it  was a sacred rite to immolate their guests, and for the Galli
to slaughter to Mercury human, or rather inhuman, sacrifices. The Roman
sacrificers buried living a Greek man and a Greek woman, a Gallic man and a
Gallic woman; and to this day, Jupiter Latiaris is worshipped by them with
murder; and, what is worthy of the son of Saturn, he is gorged with the
blood of an evil and criminal man. I believe that he himself taught
Catiline to conspire under a compact of blood, and Bellona to steep her
sacred rites with a draught of human gore, and taught men to heal epilepsy
with the blood of a man, that is, with a worse disease. They also are not
unlike to him who devour the wild beasts from the arena, besmeared and
stained with blood, or fattened with the limbs or the entrails of men. To
us it is not lawful either to see or to hear of homicide; and so much do we
shrink from human blood, that we do not use the blood even of eatable
animals in our food.

CHAP. XXXI.--ARGUMENT: THE CHARGE OF OUR ENTERTAINMENTS BEING POLLUTED WITH
INCEST, IS ENTIRELY OPPOSED TO ALL PROBABILITY, WHILE IT IS PLAIN THAT
GENTILES ARE ACTUALLY GUILTY OF INCEST. THE BANQUETS OF CHRISTIANS ARE NOT
ONLY MODEST, BUT TEMPERATE. IN FACT, INCESTUOUS LUST IS SO UNHEARD OF, THAT
WITH MANY EVEN THE  MODEST ASSOCIATION OF THE SEXES GIVES RISE TO A BLUSH.

   "And of the incestuous banqueting, the plotting of demons has falsely
devised an enormous fable against us, to stain the glory of our modesty, by
the loathing excited by an outrageous infamy, that before inquiring into
the truth it might turn men away from us by the terror of an abominable
charge. It was thus your own Fronto(2) acted in this respect: he did not
produce testimony, as one who alleged a charge, but he scattered reproaches
as a rhetorician. For these things have rather originated from your own
nations. Among the Persians, a promiscuous association between sons and
mothers is allowed. Marriages with sisters are legitimate among the
Egyptians and in Athens. Your records and your tragedies, which you both
read and hear with pleasure, glory in incests: thus also you worship
incestuous gods, who have intercourse with mothers, with daughters, with
sisters. With reason, therefore, is incest frequently detected among you,
and is continually permitted. Miserable men, you may even, without knowing
it, rush into what is unlawful: since you scatter your lusts promiscuously,
since you everywhere beget children, since you frequently expose even those
who are born at home to the mercy of others, it is inevitable that you must
come back to your own children, and stray to your own offspring. Thus you
continue the story of incest, even although you have no consciousness of
your crime. But we maintain our modesty not in appearance, but in our heart
we gladly abide by the bond of a single marriage; in the desire of
procreating, we know either one wife, or none at all. We practise sharing
in banquets, which are not only modest, but also sober: for we do not
indulge in entertainments nor prolong our feasts with wine; but we temper
our joyousness with gravity, with chaste discourse, and with body even more
chaste (divers of us unviolated) enjoy rather than make a boast of a
perpetual virginity of a body. So far, in fact, are they from indulging in
incestuous desire, that with some even the (idea of a) modest intercourse
of the sexes causes a blush. Neither do we at once stand on the level of
the lowest of the people, if we refuse your honours and purple robes; and
we are not fastidious, if we all have a discernment of one good, but are
assembled together with the same quietness with which we live as
individuals; and we are not garrulous in corners, although you either blush
or are afraid to hear us in public. And that day by day the number of us is
increased, is not a ground for a charge of error, but is a testimony which
claims praise; for, in a fair mode of life, our actual number both
continues and abides undiminished, and strangers increase it. Thus, in
short, we do not distinguish our people by some small bodily mark, as you
suppose, but easily enough by the sign of innocency and modesty. Thus  we
love one another, to your regret, with a mutual love, because we do not
know how to hate. Thus we call one another, to your envy, brethren: as
being men born of one God and Parent, and companions in faith, and as
fellow-heirs in hope. You, however, do not recognise one another, and you
are cruel in your mutual hatreds; nor do you acknowledge one another as
brethren, unless indeed for the purpose of fratricide.

CHAP. XXXII.--ARGUMENT: NOR CAN IT BE SAID THAT THE CHRISTIANS CONCEAL WHAT
THEY WORSHIP BECAUSE THEY HAVE NO TEMPLES AND NO ALTARS, INASMUCH AS THEY
ARE PERSUADED THAT GOD CAN BE CIRCUMSCRIBED BY NO TEMPLE, AND THAT NO
LIKENESS OF HIM CAN BE MADE. BUT HE IS EVERYWHERE PRESENT, SEES ALL THINGS,
EVEN THE MOST SECRET THOUGHTS  OF OUR HEARTS; AND WE LIVE NEAR TO HIM, AND
IN HIS PROTECTION.

   "But do you think that we conceal what we worship, if we have not
temples and altars? And yet what image of God shall I make, since, if you
think rightly, man himself is the image of God? What temple shall I build
to Him, when this whole world fashioned by His work cannot receive Him? And
when I, a man, dwell far and wide, shall I shut up the might of so great
majesty within one little building? Were it not better that He should be
dedicated in our mind, consecrated in our inmost heart? Shall I offer
victims and sacrifices to the Lord, such as He has produced for my use,
that I should throw back to Him His own gift? It is ungrateful when the
victim fit for sacrifice is a good disposition, and a pure mind, and a
sincere judgment.(1) Therefore he who cultivates innocence supplicates God;
he who cultivates justice makes offerings to God; he who abstains from
fraudulent practices propitiates God; he who snatches man from danger
slaughters the most acceptable victim. These are our sacrifices, these are
our rites of God's worship; thus, among us, he who is most just is he who
is most religious. But certainly the God whom we worship we neither show
nor see. Verily for this reason we believe Him to be God, that we can be
conscious of Him, but cannot see Him; for in His works, and in all the
movements of the world, we behold His power ever present when He thunders,
lightens, darts His bolts, or when He makes all bright again. Nor should
you wonder if you do not see God. By the wind and by the blasts of the
storm all things are driven on and shaken, are agitated, and yet neither
wind nor tempest comes under our eyesight. Thus we cannot look upon the
sun, which is the cause of seeing to all creatures: the pupil of the eye is
with drawn from his rays, the gaze of the beholder is dimmed; and if you
look too long, all power of sight is extinguished. What! can you sustain
the Architect of the sun Himself, the very source of light, when you turn
yourself away from His lightnings, and hide yourself from His thunderbolts?
Do you wish to see God with your carnal eyes, when you are neither able to
behold nor to grasp your own soul itself, by which you are enlivened and
speak? But, moreover, it is said that God is ignorant of man's doings; and
being established in heaven, He can neither survey all nor know
individuals. Thou errest, O man, and art deceived; for from where is God
afar off, when all things heavenly and earthly, and which are beyond this
province of the universe, are known to God, are full of God? Everywhere He
is not only very near to us, but He is infused into us. Therefore once more
look upon the sun: it is fixed fast in the heaven, yet it is diffused over
all lands equally; present everywhere, it is associated and mingled with
all things; its brightness is never violated. How much more God, who has
made all things, and looks upon all things, from whom there can be nothing
secret, is present in the darkness, is present in our thoughts, as if in
the deep darkness. Not only do we act in Him, but also, I had almost said,
we live with Him,

CHAP. XXXIII.--ARGUMENT: THAT EVEN' IF GOD BE SAID TO HAVE NOTHING AVAILED
THE JEWS, CERTAINLY THE WRITERS OF THE JEWISH ANNALS ARE THE MOST
SUFFICIENT WITNESSES THAT THEY FORSOOK GOD BEFORE THEY WERE FORSAKEN BY
HIM.

   "Neither let us flatter ourselves concerning our multitude. We seem
many to ourselves, but to God we are very few. We distinguish peoples and
nations; to God this whole world is one family. Kings only know all the
matters of their kingdom by the ministrations of their servants: God has no
need of information. We not only live in His eyes, but also in His bosom.
But it is objected that it availed the Jews nothing that they themselves
worshipped the one God with altars and temples, with the greatest
superstition. You are guilty of ignorance if you are recalling later events
while you are forgetful or unconscious of former ones. For they themselves
also, as long as they worshipped our God--and He is the same God of all--
with chastity, innocency, and religion, as long as they obeyed His
wholesome precepts, from a few became innumerable, from poor became rich,
from being servants became kings; a few overwhelmed many; unarmed men
overwhelmed armed ones as they fled from them, following them up by God's
command, and with the elements striving on their behalf. Carefully read
over their Scrip-  tures, or if you are better pleased with the Roman
writings,(1) inquire concerning the Jews in the books (to say nothing of
ancient documents) of Flavius Josephus(2) or Antoninus Julianus, and you
shall know that by their wickedness they deserved this fortune, and that
nothing happened which had not before been predicted to  them, if they
should persevere in their obstinacy. Therefore you will understand that
they forsook before they were forsaken, and that they were not, as you
impiously say, taken captive with their God, but they were given up by God
as deserters from His discipline.

CHAP. XXXIV.--ARGUMENT: MOREOVER, IT IS NOT AT ALL TO BE WONDERED AT IF
THIS WORLD IS TO BE CONSUMED BY FIRE, SINCE EVERYTHING WHICH HAS A
BEGINNING HAS ALSO AN END. AND THE ANCIENT PHILOSOPHERS ARE NOT AVERSE FROM
THE OPINION OF THE PROBABLE BURNING UP OF THE WORLD. YET IT IS EVIDENT THAT
GOD, HAVING MADE MAN FROM NOTHING, CAN RAISE HIM UP FROM DEATH INTO LIFE.
AND ALL NATURE SUGGESTS A FUTURE RESURRECTION.

   "Further, in respect of the burning up of the world, it is a vulgar
error not to believe either that fire will fall upon it in an unforeseen
way, or that the world will be destroyed by it.(3) For who of wise men
doubts, who is ignorant, that all things which have had a beginning perish,
all things which are made come to an end? The heaven also, with all things
which are contained in heaven, will cease even as it began. The nourishment
of the seas by the sweet waters of the springs shall pass away into the
power of fire.(4) The Stoics have a constant belief that, the moisture
being dried up, all this world will take fire; and the Epicureans have the
very same opinion concerning the conflagration of the elements and the
destruction of the world. Plato speaks, saying that parts of the world are
now inundated, and are now burnt up by alternate changes; and although he
says that the world itself is constructed perpetual and indissoluble, yet
he adds that to God Himself, the only artificer,(5) it is both dissoluble
and mortal. Thus it is no wonder if that mass be destroyed by Him by whom
it was reared. You observe that philosophers dispute of the same things
that we are saying, not that we are following up their tracks, but that
they, from the divine announcements of the prophets, imitated the shadow of
the corrupted truth. Thus also the most illustrious of the wise men,
Pythagoras first, and Plato chiefly, have delivered the doctrine of
resurrection with a corrupt and divided faith; for they will have it, that
the bodies being dissolved, the souls alone both abide for ever, and very
often pass into other new bodies. To these things they add also this, by
way of misrepresenting the truth, that the souls of men return into cattle,
birds, and beasts. Assuredly such an opinion as that is not worthy of a
philosopher's inquiry, but of the ribaldry of a buffoon.(6) But for our
argument it is sufficient, that even in this your wise men do in some
measure harmonize with us. But who is so foolish or so brutish as to dare
to deny that man, as he could first of all be formed by God, so can again
be re-formed; that he is nothing after death, and that he was nothing
before he began to exist; and as from nothing it was possible for him to be
born, so from nothing it may be possible for him to be restored? Moreover,
it is more difficult to begin that which is not, than to repeat that which
has been. Do you think that, if anything is withdrawn from our feeble eyes,
it perishes to God? Every body, whether it is dried up into dust, or is
dissolved into moisture, or is compressed into ashes, or is attenuated into
smoke, is withdrawn from us, but it is reserved for God in the custody of
the elements. Nor, as you believe, do we fear any loss from  sepulture,(7)
but we adopt the ancient and better custom of burying in the earth. See,
therefore, how for our consolation all nature suggests a future
resurrection. The sun sinks down and arises, the stars pass away and
return, the flowers die and revive again, after their win-try decay the
shrubs resume their leaves, seeds do not flourish again. unless they are
rotted:(8) thus the body in the sepulchre is like the trees which in winter
hide their verdure with a deceptive dryness. Why are you in haste for it to
revive and return, while the winter is still raw? We must wait also for the
spring-time of the body. And I am not ignorant that many, in the
consciousness of what they deserve, rather desire than believe that they
shall be nothing after death; for they would prefer to be altogether
extinguished, rather than to be restored for the purpose of punishment. And
their error also is enhanced, both by the liberty granted them in this
life, and by God's very great patience, whose judgment, the more tardy it
is, is so much the more just.

CHAP. XXXV.--ARGUMENT: RIGHTEOUS AND PIOUS MEN SHALL BE REWARDED WITH
NEVER-ENDING FELICITY, BUT UNRIGHTEOUS MEN SHALL BE VISITED WITH ETERNAL
PUNISHMENT. THE MORALS OF CHRISTIANS ARE FAR MORE HOLY THAN THOSE OF THE
GENTILES.

   "And yet men are admonished in the books and poems of the most learned
poets of that fiery river, and of the heat flowing in manifold turns from
the Stygian marsh,--things which, prepared for eternal torments, and known
to them by the information of demons and from the oracles of their
prophets, they have delivered to us. And therefore among them also even
king Jupiter himself swears religiously by the parching banks and the black
abyss; for, with foreknowledge of the punishment destined to him, with his
worshippers, he shudders. Nor is there either measure termination to these
torments. There the intelligent fire(1) burns the limbs and restores them,
feeds on them and nourishes them. As the fires of the thunderbolts strike
upon the bodies, and do not consume them; as the fires of Mount AEtna and
of Mount Vesuvius, and of burning where, glow, but are not wasted; so that
penal fire is not fed by the waste of those who burn, but is nourished by
the unexhausted eating away of their bodies. But that they who know not God
are deservedly tormented as impious, as unrighteous persons, no one except
a profane man hesitates to believe, since it is not less wicked to be
ignorant of, than to offend the Parent of all, and the Lord of all. And
although ignorance of God is sufficient for punishment, even as knowledge
of Him is of avail for pardon, yet if we Christians be compared with you,
although in some things our discipline is inferior, yet we shall be found
much better than you. For you forbid, and yet commit, adulteries; we are
born(2) men only for our own wives: you punish crimes when committed; with
us, even to think of crimes is to sin: you are afraid of those who are
aware of what you do; are even afraid of our own conscience alone, without
which we cannot exist: finally, from your numbers the prison boils over;
but there is no Christian there, unless he is accused on account of his
religion, or a deserter.

CHAP. XXXVI.--ARGUMENT: FATE IS NOTHING, EXCEPT SO FAR AS FATE IS GOD.
MAN'S MIND IS FREE, AND THEREFORE SO IS HIS ACTION: HIS BIRTH IS NOT
BROUGHT INTO JUDGMENT. IT IS NOT A MATTER OF INFAMY, BUT OF GLORY, THAT
CHRISTIANS ARE REPROACHED FOR THEIR POVERTY; AND THE FACT THAT THEY SUFFER
BODILY EVILS IS NOT AS A PENALTY, BUT AS A DISCIPLINE.

   "Neither let any one either take comfort from, or apologize for what
happens from fate. Let what happens be of the disposition of fortune, yet
the mind is free; and therefore man's doing, not his dignity, is judged.
For what else is fate than what God has spoken(3) of each one of us? who,
since He can foresee our constitution, determines also the fates for us,
according to the deserts and the qualities of individuals. Thus in our case
it is not the star under which we are born that is punished, but the
particular nature of our disposition is blamed. And about fate enough is
said; or if, in consideration of the time, we have spoken too little, we
shall argue the matter at another time more abundantly(4) and more fully.
But that many of us are called poor, this is not our disgrace, but our
glory; for as our mind is relaxed by luxury, so it is strengthened by
frugality. And yet who can be poor if he does not want, if he does not
crave for the possessions of others, if he is rich towards God? He rather
is poor, who, although he has much, desires more. Yet I will speak(5)
according as I feel. No one can be so poor as he is born. Birds live
without any patrimony, and day by day the cattle are fed; and yet these
creatures are born for us--all of which things, if we do not lust after, we
possess. Therefore, as he who treads a road is the happier the lighter he
walks, so happier is he in this journey of life who lifts himself along in
poverty, and does not breathe heavily under the burden of riches. And yet
even if we thought wealth useful to us, we should ask it of God. Assuredly
He might be able to indulge us in some measure, whose is the whole; but we
would rather despise riches than possess them:(6) we desire rather
innocency, we rather entreat for patience, we prefer being good to  being
prodigal; and that we feel and suffer the human mischiefs of the body is
not punishment --it is warfare. For fortitude is strengthened by
infirmities, and calamity is very often the discipline of virtue; in
addition, strength both of mind and of body grows torpid without the
exercise of labour. Therefore all your mighty men whom you announce as an
example have flourished illustriously by their afflictions. And thus God is
neither unable to aid us, nor does He despise us, since He is both the
ruler of all men and the lover of His own people. But in adversity He looks
into and searches out each one; He weighs the disposition of every indi-
vidual in dangers, even to death at last; He investigates the will of man,
certain that to Him nothing can perish. Therefore, as gold by the fires, so
are we declared by critical moments.

CHAP. XXXVII.--ARGUMENT: TORTURES MOST UNJUSTLY INFLICTED FOR THE
CONFESSION OF CHRIST'S NAME ARE SPECTACLES WORTHY OF GOD. A COMPARISON
INSTITUTED BETWEEN SOME OF THE BRAVEST OF THE HEATHENS AND THE HOLY
MARTYRS. HE DECLARES THAT CHRISTIANS DO NOT PRESENT THEMSELVES AT PUBLIC
SHOWS AND PROCESSIONS, BECAUSE THEY KNOW THEM, WITH THE GREATEST CERTAINTY,
TO BE NO LESS IMPIOUS THAN CRUEL.

   "How beautiful is the spectacle to God when a Christian does battle
with pain; when he is drawn up against threats, and punishments, and
tortures; when, mocking(1) the noise of death, he treads under foot the
horror of the executioner; when he raises up his liberty against kings and
princes, and yields to God alone, whose he is; when, triumphant and
victorious, he tramples upon the very man who has pronounced sentence
against him! For he has conquered who has obtained that for which he
contends. What soldier would not provoke peril with greater boldness under
the eyes of his general? For no one receives a reward before his trial, and
yet the general does not give what he has not: he cannot preserve life, but
he can make the warfare glorious. But God's solidier is neither forsaken in
suffering, nor is brought to an end by death. Thus the Christian may seem
to be miserable; he cannot be really found to be so. You yourselves extol
unfortunate men to the skies; Mucius Scaevola, for instance, who, when he
had failed in his attempt against the king, would have perished among the
enemies unless he had sacrificed his right hand. And how many of our people
have borne that not their right hand only, but their whole body, should be
burned--burned up without any cries of pain, especially when they had it in
their power to be sent away! Do I compare men with Mucius or Aquilius, or
with Regulus? Yet boys and young women among us treat with contempt crosses
and tortures, wild beasts, and all the bugbears of punishments, with the
inspired(2) patience of suffering. And do you not perceive, O wretched men,
that there is nobody who either is willing without reason to undergo
punishment, or is able without God to bear tortures? Unless, perhaps, the
fact has deceived you, that those who know not God abound in riches,
flourish in honours, and excel in power. Miserable men! in this respect
they are lifted up the higher, that they may fall down lower. For these are
fattened as victims for punishment, as sacrifices they are crowned for the
slaughter. Thus in this respect some are lifted up to empires and
dominations, that the unrestrained exercise of power might make a market of
their spirit to the unbridled licence that is Characteristic of a ruined
soul.(3) For, apart from the knowledge of God, what solid happiness can
there be, since death must come? Like a dream, happiness slips away before
it is grasped. Are you a king? Yet you fear as much as you are feared; and
however you may be surrounded with abundant followers, yet you are alone in
the presence of danger. Are you rich? But fortune is ill trusted; and with
a large travelling equipage the brief journey of life is not furnished, but
burdened. Do you boast of the fasces and the magisterial robes? It is a
vain mistake of man, and an empty worship of dignity, to glitter in purple
and to be sordid in hind. Are you elevated by nobility of birth? do you
praise your parents? Yet we are all born with one lot; it is only by virtue
that we are distinguished. We therefore, who are estimated by our character
and our modesty, reasonably abstain from evil pleasures, and from your
pomps and exhibitions, the origin of which in connection with sacred things
we know, and condemn their mischievous enticements. For in the chariot
games who does not shudder at the madness of the people brawling among
themselves? or at the teaching of murder in the gladiatorial games? In the
scenic games also the madness is not less, but the debauchery is more
prolonged: for now a mimic either expounds or shows forth adulteries; now
nerveless player, while he feigns lust, suggests it; the same actor
disgraces your gods by attributing to them adulteries, sighs, hatreds; the
same provokes your tears with pretended sufferings, with vain gestures and
expressions. Thus you demand murder, in fact, while you weep at it in
fiction.

CHAP. XXXVIII.--ARGUMENT: CHRISTIANS ABSTAIN FROM THINGS CONNECTED WITH
IDOL SACRIFICES, LEST ANY ONE SHOULD THINK EITHER THAT THEY YIELD TO
DEMONS, OR THAT THEY ARE ASHAMED OF THEIR RELIGION. THEY DO NOT INDEED THE
COLOUR AND SCENT OF FLOWERS, FOR THEY ARE ACCUSTOMED TO USE THEM SCATTERED
ABOUT LOOSELY AND NEGLIGENTLY, AS WELL AS TO ENTWINE THEIR  NECKS WITH
GARLANDS; BUT TO CROWN THE HEAD OF A CORPSE THEY THINK SUPERFLUOUS      AND
USELESS.    MOREOVER, WITH THE SAME  TRANQUILLITY WITH WHICH THEY LWE THEY
BURY THEIR DEAD, WAITING WITH A VERY CERTAIN HOPE THE CROWN OF ETERNAL
FELICITY. THEREFORE THEIR RELIGION, REJECTING ALL THE SUPERSTITIONS OF THE
GENTILES, SHOULD BE ADOPTED AS TRUE BY ALL MEN.

   "But that we despise the leavings of sacrifices, and the cups out of
which libations have been poured, is not a confession of fear, but an
assertion of our true liberty. For although nothing which comes into
existence as an inviolable gift of God is corrupted by any agency, yet we
abstain, lest any should think either that we are submitting to demons, to
whom libation has been made, or that we are ashamed of our religion. But
who is he who doubts of our indulging ourselves in spring flowers, when we
gather both the rose of spring and the lily, and whatever else is of
agreeable colour and odour among the flowers? For these we both use
scattered loose and free, and we twine our necks with them in garlands.
Pardon us, forsooth, that we do not crown our heads; we are accustomed to
receive the scent of a sweet flower in our nostrils, not to inhale it with
the back of our head or with our hair. Nor do we crown the dead. And in
this respect I the more wonder at you, in the way in which you apply to a
lifeless person, or to one who does not feel, a torch; or a garland(1) to
one who does not smell it, when either as blessed he does not want, or,
being miserable, he has no pleasure in, flowers. Still we adorn our
obsequies with the same tranquillity with which we live; and we do not bind
to us a withering garland, but we wear one living with eternal flowers from
God, since we, being both ate and secure in the liberality of our God, are
animated to the hope of future felicity by the confidence of His present
majesty. Thus we both rise again in blessedness, and are already living in
contemplation of the future. Then let Socrates the Athenian buffoon see to
it, confessing that he knew nothing, although boastful in the testimony of
a most deceitful demon; let Arcesilaus also, and Carneades, and Pyrrho, and
all the multitude of the Academic philosophers, deliberate; let Simonides
also for ever put off the decision of his opinion. We despise the bent
brows of the philosophers, whom we know to be corrupters, and adulterers,
and tyrants, and ever eloquent against their own vices. We who(2) bear
wisdom not in our dress, but in our mind  we do not speak meat things, but
we live them we boast that we have attained what they have sought for with
the utmost eagerness, and have not been able to find. Why are we
ungrateful?  why do we grudge if the truth of divinity has ripened in the
age of our time? Let us enjoy our benefits, and let us in rectitude
moderate our judgments; let superstition be restrained; let impiety be
expiated; let true religion be preserved.

CHAP. XXXIX.--ARGUMENT: WHEN OCTAVIUS HAD FINISHED THIS ADDRESS, MINUCIUS
AND CAECILIUS SATE FOR SOME TIME IN ATTENTIVE AND SILENT WONDER. AND
MINUCIUS INDEED KEPT SILENCE IN ADMIRATION OF OCTAVIUS, SILENTLY REVOLVING
WHAT HE HAD HEARD.

   When Octavius had brought his speech to a close, for some time we were
struck into silence, and held our countenances fixed in attention and as
for me, I was lost in the greatness of my admiration, that he had so
adorned those things which it is easier to feel than to say, both by
arguments and by examples, and by authorities derived from reading; and
that he had repelled the malevolent objectors with the very weapons of the
philosophers with which they are armed, and had moreover shown the truth
not only as easy, but also as agreeable.

CHAP. XL.--ARGUMENT: THEN CAECILIUS EXCLAIMS THAT HE IS VANQUISHED BY
OCTAVIUS; AND  THAT, BEING NOW CONQUEROR OVER ERROR, HE  PROFESSES THE
CHRISTIAN RELIGION. HE POST PONES, HOWEVER, TILL THE MORROW HIS TRAINING IN
THE FULLER BELIEF OF ITS MYSTERIES.

   While, therefore, I was silently turning over these things in my own
'mind, Caecilius broke forth: "I congratulate as well my Octavius as
myself, as much as possible on that tranquillity in which we live, and I do
not wait for the decision. Even thus we have conquered: not unjustly do I
assume to myself the victory. For even as he is my conqueror, so I am
triumphant over error. Therefore, in what belongs to the substance of the
question, I both confess concerning providence, and I yield to God;(3) and
I agree concerning the sincerity of the way of life which is now mine. Yet
even still some things remain in my mind, not as resisting the truth, but
as necessary to a perfect training(4) of which on the morrow, as the sun is
already sloping to his setting, we shall inquire at length in a more
fitting and ready manner."

CHAP. XLI.--ARGUMENT:FINALLY, ALL ARE PLEASED, AND JOYFULLY DEPART:
CAECILIUS, THAT HE HAD BELIEVED; OCTAVIUS, THAT HE HAD CONQUERED; AND
MINUCIUS, THAT THE FORMER HAD BELIEVED, AND THE LATTER HAD  CONQUERED.

"But for myself," said I, "I rejoice more fully on behalf of all of us;
because also Octavius has conquered for me, in that the very great
invidiousness of judging is taken away from me. Nor can I acknowledge by my
praises the merit of his words: the testimony both of man, and of one man
only, is weak. He has an illustrious reward from God, inspired by whom he
has pleaded, and aided by whom he has gained the victory."

   After these things we departed, glad and cheerful: Caecilius, to
rejoice that he had believed; Octavius, that he had succeeded; and I, that
the one had believed, and the other had conquered.


Taken from "The Early Church Fathers and Other Works" originally published
by Wm. B. Eerdmans Pub. Co. in English in Edinburgh, Scotland beginning in
1867. (ANF 4, Roberts and Donaldson). The digital version is by The
Electronic Bible Society, P.O. Box 701356, Dallas, TX 75370, 214-407-WORD.

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