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

Transliteration of Greek words: All phonetical except: w = omega; h serves
three puposes: 1. = Eta; 2. = rough breathing, when appearing initially
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.


ST. AUGUSTIN

THE CITY OF GOD, BOOKS IX-X

[Translated by Rev. Marcus Dods, D.D.]


BOOK IX.

ARGUMENT: HAVING IN THE PRECEDING BOOK SHOWN THAT THE WORSHIP OF DEMONS
MUST BE ABJURED, SINCE THEY IN A THOUSAND WAYS PROCLAIM THEMSELVES TO BE
WICKED SPIRITS, AUGUSTIN IN THIS BOOK MEETS THOSE WHO ALLEGE A DISTINCTION
AMONG DEMONS, SOME BEING EVIL, WHILE OTHERS ARE GOOD; AND, HAVING EXPLODED
THIS DISTINCTION, HE PROVES THAT TO NO DEMON, BUT TO CHRIST ALONE, BELONGS
THE OFFICE OF PROVIDING MEN WITH ETERNAL BLESSEDNESS.

CHAP. 1.--THE POINT AT WHICH THE DISCUSSION HAS ARRIVED, AND WHAT REMAINS
TO BE HANDLED.

   SOME have advanced the opinion that there are both good and bad gods;
but some, thinking more respectfully of the gods, have attributed to them
so much honor and praise as to preclude the supposition of any god being
wicked. But those who have maintained that there are wicked gods as well as
good ones have included the demons under the name "gods," and sometimes
though more rarely,  have called the gods demons; so that they admit that
Jupiter, whom they make the king and head of all the rest, is called a
demon by Homer.(1) Those, on the other hand, who maintain that the gods are
all good, and far more excellent than the men who are justly called good,
are moved by the actions of the demons, which they can neither deny nor
impute to the gods whose goodness they affirm, to distinguish between gods
and demons; so that, whenever they find anything offensive  in the deeds or
sentiments by which unseen spirits manifest their power, they believe this
to proceed not from the gods, but from the demons. At the same time they
believe that,  as no god can hold direct intercourse with men, these demons
hold the position of mediators, ascending with prayers, and returning with
gifts. This is the opinion of the Platonists, the ablest and most esteemed
of their philosophers, with whom we therefore chose to debate this
question,--whether the worship of a number of gods is of any service toward
obtaining blessedness in the future life. And this is the reason why, in
the preceding book, we have inquired how the demons, who take pleasure in
such things as good and wise men loathe and execrate, in the sacrilegious
and immoral fictions which the poets have written not of men, but of the
gods themselves, and in the wicked and criminal violence of magical arts,
can be regarded as more nearly related and more friendly to the gods than
men are, and can mediate between good men and the good gods; and it has
been demonstrated that this is absolutely impossible.

CHAP. 2.--WHETHER AMONG THE DEMONS, INFERIOR TO THE GODS, THERE ARE ANY
GOOD. SPIRITS UNDER WHOSE GUARDIANSHIP THE HUMAN SOUL MIGHT REACH TRUE
BLESSEDNESS.

   This book, then, ought, according to the promise made in the end of the
preceding one, to contain a discussion, not of the difference which exists
among the gods, who, according to the Platonists, are all good, nor of the
difference between gods and demons, the former of whom they separate by a
wide interval from men, while the latter are placed intermediately between
the gods and men, but of the difference, since they make one, among the
demons themselves. This we shall discuss so far as it bears on our theme.
It has been the common and usual belief that some of the demons are bad,
others good; and this opinion, whether it be that of the Platonists or any
other sect, must by no means be passed over in silence, lest some one
suppose he ought to cultivate the good demons in order that by their
mediation he may be accepted by the gods, all of whom he believes to be
good, and that he may live with them after death; whereas he would thus be
ensnared in the toils of wicked spirits, and would wander far from the true
God, with whom alone, and in whom alone, the human soul, that is to say,
the soul that is rational and intellectual, is blessed.

CHAP. 3.--WHAT APULEIUS ATTRIBUTES TO THE DEMONS, TO WHOM, THOUGH HE DOES
NOT DENY THEM REASON, HE DOES NOT ASCRIBE VIRTUE.

   What, then, is the difference between good and evil demons? For the
Platonist Apuleius, in a treatise on this whole subject,(1) while he says a
great deal about their aerial bodies, has not a word to say of the
spiritual virtues with which, if they were good, they must have been
endowed. Not a word has he said, then, of that which could give them
happiness; but proof of their misery he has given, acknowledging that their
mind, by which they rank as reasonable beings, is not only not imbued and
fortified with Virtue so as to resist all unreasonable passions, but that
it is somehow agitated with tempestuous emotions, and is thus on a level
with the mind of foolish men. His own words are: "It is this class of
demons the poets refer to, when, without serious error, they feign that the
gods hate and love individuals among men, prospering and ennobling some,
and opposing and distressing others. Therefore pity, indignation, grief,
joy, every human emotion is experienced by the demons, with the same mental
disturbance, and the same tide of feeling and thought. These turmoils and
tempests banish them far from the tranquility of the Celestial gods." Can
there be any doubt that in these words it is not some inferior part of
their spiritual nature, but the very mind by which the demons hold their
rank as rational beings, which he says is tossed with passion like a stormy
sea? They cannot, then, be compared even to wise men, who with undisturbed.
mind resist these perturbations to which they are exposed in this life, and
from which human infirmity is never exempt, and who do not yield themselves
to approve of or perpetrate anything which might deflect them from the path
of wisdom and law of rectitude. They resemble in character, though not in
bodily appearance, wicked and foolish men. I might indeed say they are
worse, inasmuch as they have grown old in iniquity, and incorrigible by
punishment. Their mind, as Apuleius says, is a sea tossed with tempest,
having no rallying point of truth or virtue in their soul from which they
can resist their turbulent and depraved emotions.

CHAP. 4.--THE OPINION OF THE PERIPATETICS AND STOICS ABOUT MENTAL EMOTIONS.

   Among the philosophers there are two opinions about these mental
emotions, which the Greeks call pathh, while some of our own writers, as
Cicero, call them perturbations,(2) some affections, and some, to render
the Greek word more accurately, passions. Some say that even the wise man
is subject to these perturbations, though moderated and controlled by
reason, which imposes laws upon them, and so restrains them within
necessary bounds. This is the opinion of the Platonists and Aristotelians;
for Aristotle was Plato's disciple, and the founder of the Peripatetic
school. But others, as the Stoics, are of opinion that the wise man is not
subject to these perturbations. But Cicero, in his book De Finibus, shows
that the Stoics are here at variance with the Platonists and Peripatetics
rather in words than in reality; for the Stoics decline to apply the term
"goods" to external and bodily advantages,(3) because they reckon that the
only good is virtue, the art of living well, and this exists only in the
mind. The other philosophers, again, use the simple and customary
phraseology, and do not scruple to call these things goods, though in
comparison of virtue, which guides our life, they are little and of small
esteem. And thus it is obvious that, whether these outward things are
called goods or advantages, they are held in the same estimation by both
parties, and that in this matter the Stoics are pleasing themselves merely
with a novel phraseology. It seems, then, to me that in this question,
whether the wise man is subject to mental passions, or wholly free from
them, the controversy is one of words rather than of things; for I think
that, if the reality and not the mere sound of the words is considered, the
Stoics hold precisely the same opinion as the Platonists and Peripatetics.
For, omitting for brevity's sake other proofs which I might adduce in
support of this opinion, I will state but one which I consider conclusive.
Aulus Gellius, a man of extensive erudition, and gifted with an eloquent
and graceful style, relates, in his work entitled Noctes Atticae(1) that he
once made a voyage with an eminent Stoic philosopher; and he goes on to
relate fully and with gusto what I shall barely state, that when the ship
was tossed and in danger from a violent storm, the philosopher grew pale
with terror. This was noticed by those on board, who, though themselves
threatened with death, were curious to see whether a philosopher would be
agitated like other men. When the tempest had passed over, and as soon as
their security gave them freedom to resume their talk, one of the
passengers, a rich and luxurious Asiatic, begins to banter the philosopher,
and rally him because he had even become pale with fear, while he himself
had been unmoved by the impending destruction. But the philosopher availed
himself of the reply of Aristippus the Socratic, who, on finding himself
similarly bantered by a man of the same character, answered, "You had no
cause for anxiety for the soul of a profligate debauchee, but I had reason
to be alarmed for the soul of Aristippus." The rich man being thus disposed
of, Aulus Gellius asked the philosopher, in the interests of science and
not to annoy him, what was the reason of his fear? And he willing to
instruct a man so zealous in the pursuit of knowledge, at once took from
his wallet a book of Epictetus the Stoic,(2) in which doctrines were
advanced which precisely harmonized with those of Zeno and Chrysippus, the
founders of the Stoical school. Aulus Gellius says that he read in this
book that the Stoics maintain that there are certain impressions made on
the soul by external objects which they call phantasiae, and that it is not
in the power of the soul to determine whether or when it shall be invaded
by these. When these impressions are made by alarming and formidable
objects, it must needs be that they move the soul even of the wise man, so
that for a little he trembles with fear, or is depressed by sadness, these
impressions anticipating the work of reason and self-control; but this does
not imply that the mind accepts these evil impressions, or approves or
consents to them. For this consent is, they think, in a man's power; there
being this difference between the mind of the wise man and that of the
fool, that the fool's mind yields to these passions and consents to them,
while that of the wise man, though it cannot help being invaded by them,
yet retains with unshaken firmness a true and steady persuasion of those
things which it ought rationally to desire or avoid. This account of what
Aulus Gellius relates that he read in the book of Epictetus about the
sentiments and doctrines of the Stoics I have given as well as I could,
not, perhaps, with his choice language, but with greater brevity, and, I
think, with greater clearness. And if this be true, then there is no
difference, or next to none, between the opinion of the Stoics and that of
the other philosophers regarding mental passions and perturbations, for
both parties agree in maintaining that the mind and reason of the wise man
are not subject to these. And perhaps what the Stoics mean by asserting
this, is that the wisdom which characterizes the wise man is clouded by no
error and sullied by no taint, but, with this reservation that his wisdom
remains undisturbed, he is exposed to the impressions which the goods and
ills of this life (or, as they prefer to call them, the advantages or
disadvantages) make upon them. For we need not say that if that philosopher
had thought nothing of those things which he thought he was forthwith to
lose, life and bodily safety, he would not have been so terrified by his
danger as to betray his fear by the pallor of his cheek. Nevertheless, he
might suffer this mental disturbance, and yet maintain the fixed persuasion
that life and bodily safety, which the violence of the tempest threatened
to destroy, are not those good things which make their possessors good, as
the possession of righteousness does. But in so far as they persist that we
must call them not goods but advantages, they quarrel about words and
neglect things. For what difference does it make whether goods or
advantages be the better name, while the Stoic no less than the Peripatetic
is alarmed at the prospect of losing them, and while, though they name them
differently, they hold them in like esteem? Both parties assure us that, if
urged to the commission of some immorality or crime by the threatened loss
of these goods or advantages, they would prefer to lose such things as
preserve bodily comfort and security rather than commit such things as
violate righteousness. And thus the mind in which this resolution is well
grounded suffers no perturbations to prevail with it in opposition to
reason, even though they assail the weaker parts of the soul; and not only
so, but it rules over them, and, while it refuses its consent and resists
them, administers a reign of virtue. Such a character is ascribed to Aeneas
by Virgil when he says,

  "He stands immovable by tears,
   Nor tenderest words with pity hears."(3)

CHAP. 5.--THAT THE PASSIONS WHICH ASSAIL THE SOULS OF CHRISTIANS DO NOT
SEDUCE THEM TO VICE, BUT EXERCISE THEIR VIRTUE.

   We need not at present give a careful and copious exposition of the
doctrine of Scripture, the sum of Christian knowledge, regarding these
passions. It subjects the mind itself to God, that He may rule and aid it,
and the passions, again, to the mind, to moderate and bridle them, and turn
them to righteous uses. In our ethics, we do not so much inquire whether a
pious soul is angry, as why he is angry; not whether he is sad, but what is
the cause of his sadness; not whether he fears, but what he fears. For I am
not aware that any right thinking person would find fault with anger at a
wrongdoer which seeks his amendment, or with sadness which intends relief
to the suffering, or with fear lest one in danger be destroyed. The Stoics,
indeed, are accustomed to condemn compassion.(1) But how much more
honorable had it been in that Stoic we have been telling of, had he been
disturbed by compassion prompting him to relieve a fellow-creature, than to
be disturbed by the fear of shipwreck! Far better and more humane, and more
consonant with pious sentiments, are the words of Cicero in praise of
Caesar, when he says, "Among your virtues none is more admirable and
agreeable than your compassion."(2) And what is compassion but a fellow-
feeling for another's misery, which prompts us to help him if we can? And
this emotion is obedient to reason, when compassion is shown without
violating right, as when the poor are relieved, or the penitent forgiven.
Cicero, who knew how to use language, did not hesitate to call this a
virtue, which the Stoics are not ashamed to reckon among the vices,
although, as the book of the eminent Stoic, Epictetus, quoting the opinions
of Zeno and Chrysippus, the founders of the school, has taught us, they
admit that passions of this kind invade the soul of the wise man, whom they
would have to be free from all vice. Whence it follows that these very
passions are not judged by them to be vices, since they assail the wise man
without forcing him to act against reason and virtue; and that, therefore,
the opinion of the Peripatetics or Platonists and of the Stoics is one and
the same. But, as Cicero says,(3) mere logomachy is the bane of these
pitiful Greeks, who thirst for contention rather than for truth. However,
it may justly be asked, whether our subjection to these affections, even
while we follow virtue, is a part of the infirmity Of this life? For the
holy angels feel no anger while they punish those whom the eternal law of
God consigns to punishment, no fellow-feeling with misery while they
relieve the miserable, I no fear while they aid those who are in danger;
and yet ordinary language ascribes to them also these mental emotions,
because, though they have none of our weakness, their acts resemble the
actions to which these emotions move us; and thus even God Himself is said
in Scripture to be angry, and yet without any perturbation. For this word
is used of the effect of His vengeance, not of the disturbing mental
affection.

CHAP. 6.--OF THE PASSIONS WHICH, ACCORDING TO APULEIUS, AGITATE THE DEMONS
WHO APE SUPPOSED BY HIM TO MEDIATE BETWEEN GODS AND MEN.

   Deferring for the present the question about the holy angels, let us
examine the opinion of the Platonists, that the demons who mediate between
gods and men are agitated by passions. For if their mind, though exposed to
their incursion, still remained free and superior to them, Apuleius could
not have said that their hearts are tossed with passions as the sea by
stormy winds.(4) Their mind, then,--that superior part of their soul
whereby they are rational beings, and which, if it actually exists in them,
should rule and bridle the turbulent passions of the inferior parts of the
soul,--this mind of theirs, I say, is, according to the Platonist referred
to, tossed with a hurricane of passions. The mind of the demons, therefore,
is subject to the emotions of fear, anger, lust, and all similar
affections. What part of them, then, is free, and endued with wisdom, so
that they are pleasing to the gods, and the fit guides of men into purity
of life, since their very highest part, being the slave of passion and
subject to vice, only makes them more intent on deceiving and seducing, in
proportion to the mental force and energy of desire they possess?

CHAP. 7.--THAT THE PLATONISTS MAINTAIN THAT THE POETS WRONG THE GODS BY
REPRESENTING THEM AS DISTRACTED BY PARTY FEELING, TO WHICH THE DEMONS AND
NOT THE GODS, ARE SUBJECT.

   But if any one says that it is not of all the demons, but only of the
wicked, that the poets, not without truth, say that they violently love or
hate certain men,--for it was of them Apuleius said that they were driven
about by strong currents of emotion,--how can we accept this
interpretation, when Apuleius, in the very same connection, represents all
the demons, and not only the wicked, as intermediate between gods and men
by their aerial bodies? The fiction of the poets, according to him,
consists in their making gods of demons, and giving them the names of gods,
and assigning them as allies or enemies to individual men, using this
poetical license, though they profess that the gods are very different in
character from the demons, and far exalted above them by their celestial
abode and wealth of beatitude. This, I say, is the poets' fiction, to say
that these are gods who are not gods, and that, under the names of gods,
they fight among themselves about the men whom they love or hate with keen
partisan feeling. Apuleius says that this is not far from the truth, since,
though they are wrongfully called by the names of the gods, they are
described in their own proper character as demons. To this category, he
says, belongs the Minerva of Homer, "who interposed in the ranks of the
Greeks to restrain Achilles."(1) For that this was Minerva he supposes to
be poetical fiction; for he thinks that Minerva is a goddess, and he places
her among the gods whom he believes to be all good and blessed in the
sublime ethereal region, remote from intercourse with men. But that there
was a demon favorable to the Greeks and adverse to the Trojans, as another,
whom the same poet mentions under the name of Venus or Mars (gods exalted
above earthly affairs in their heavenly habitations), was the Trojans' ally
and the foe of the Greeks, and that these demons fought for those they
loved against those they hated,--in all this he owned that the poets stated
something very like the truth. For they made these statements about beings
to whom he ascribes the same violent and tempestuous passions as disturb
men, and who are therefore capable of loves and hatreds not justly formed,
but formed in a party spirit, as the spectators in races or hunts take
fancies and prejudices. It seems to have been the great fear of this
Platonist that the poetical fictions should be believed of the gods, and
not of the demons who bore their names.

CHAP. 8.--HOW APULEIUS DEFINES THE GODS WHO DWELL IN HEAVEN, THE DEMONS WHO
OCCUPY THE AIR, AND MEN WHO INHABIT EARTH.

   The definition which Apuleius gives of demons, and in which he of
course includes all demons, is that they are in nature animals, in soul
subject to passion, in mind reasonable, in body aerial, in duration
eternal. Now in these five qualities he has named absolutely nothing which
is proper to good men and not also to bad. For when Apuleius had spoken of
the celestials first, and had then extended his description so as to
include an account of those who dwell far below on the earth, that, after
describing the two extremes of rational being, he might proceed to speak of
the intermediate demons, he says, "Men, therefore, who are endowed with the
faculty of reason and speech, whose soul is immortal and their members
mortal, who have weak and anxious spirits, dull and corruptible bodies,
dissimilar characters, similar ignorance, who are obstinate in their
audacity, and persistent in their hope, whose labor is vain, and whose
fortune is ever on the wane, their race immortal, themselves perishing,
each generation replenished with creatures whose life is swift and their
wisdom slow, their death sudden and their life a wail,--these are the men
who dwell on the earth."(2) In recounting so many qualities which belong to
the large proportion of men, did he forget that which is the property of
the few when he speaks of their wisdom being slow? If this had been
omitted, this his description of the human race, so carefully elaborated,
would have been defective. And when he commended the excellence of the
gods, he affirmed that they excelled in that very blessedness to which he
thinks men must attain by wisdom. And therefore, if he had wished us to
believe that some of the demons are good, he should have inserted in his
description something by which we might see that they have, in common with
the gods, some share of blessedness, or, in common with men, some wisdom.
But, as it is, he has mentioned no good quality by which the good may be
distinguished from the bad. For although he refrained from giving a full
account of their wickedness, through fear of offending, not themselves but
their worshippers, for whom he was writing, yet he sufficiently indicated
to discerning readers what opinion he had of them; for only in the one
article of the eternity of their bodies does he assimilate them to the
gods, all of whom, he asserts, are good and blessed, and absolutely free
from what he himself calls the stormy passions of the demons; and as to the
soul, he quite plainly affirms that they resemble men and not the gods, and
that this resemblance lies not in the possession of wisdom, which even men
can attain to, but in the perturbation of passions which sway the foolish
and wicked, but is so ruled by the good and wise that they prefer not to
admit rather than to conquer it. For if he had wished it to be understood
that the demons resembled the gods in the eternity not of their bodies but
of their souls, he would certainly have admitted men to share in this
privilege, because, as a Platonist, he of course must hold that the human
soul is eternal. Accordingly, when describing this race of living beings,
he said that their souls were immortal, their members mortal. And,
consequently, if men have not eternity in common with the gods because they
have mortal bodies, demons have eternity in common with the gods because
their bodies are immortal.

CHAP. 9.--WHETHER THE INTERCESSION OF THE DEMONS CAN SECURE FOR MEN THE
FRIENDSHIP OF THE CELESTIAL GODS.

   How, then, can men hope for a favorable introduction to the friendship
of the gods by such mediators as these, who are, like men, defective in
that which is the better part of every living creature, viz., the soul, and
who resemble the gods only in the body, which is the inferior part? For a
living creature or animal consists of soul and body, and of these two parts
the soul is undoubtedly the better; even though vicious and weak, it is
obviously better than even the soundest and strongest body, for the greater
excellence of its nature is not reduced to the level of the body even by
the pollution of vice, as gold, even when tarnished, is more precious than
the purest silver or lead. And yet these mediators, by whose interposition
things human and divine are to be harmonized, have an eternal body in
common with the gods, and a vicious soul in common with men,--as if the
religion by which these demons are to unite gods and men were a bodily, and
not a spiritual matter. What wickedness, then, or punishment has suspended
these false and deceitful mediators, as it were head downwards, so that
their inferior part, their body, is linked to the gods above, and their
superior part, the soul, bound to men beneath; united to the celestial gods
by the part that serves, and miserable, together with the inhabitants of
earth, by the part that rules? For the body is the servant, as Sallust
says: "We use the soul to rule, the body to obey;"(1) adding, "the one we
have in common with the gods, the other with the brutes." For he was here
speaking of men; and they have, like the brutes, a mortal body. These
demons, whom our philosophic friends have provided for us as mediators with
the gods, may indeed say of the soul and body, the one we have in common
with the gods, the other with men; but, as I said, they are as it were
suspended and bound head downwards, having the slave, the body, in  common
with the gods, the master, the soul,  in common with miserable men,--their
inferior part exalted, their superior part depressed. And therefore, if any
one supposes that, because they are not subject, like terrestrial animals,
to the separation of soul and body by death, they therefore resemble the
gods in their eternity, their body must not be considered a chariot of an
eternal triumph, but rather the chain of an eternal punishment.

CHAP. 10.--THAT, ACCORDING TO PLOTINUS, MEN, WHOSE BODY IS MORTAL, ARE LESS
WRETCHED THAN DEMONS, WHOSE BODY IS ETERNAL.

   Plotinus, whose memory is quite recent,(2) enjoys the reputation of
having understood Plato better than any other of his disciples. In speaking
of human souls, he says, "The Father in compassion made their bonds
mortal;"(3) that is to say, he considered it due to the Father's mercy that
men, having a mortal body, should not be forever confined in the misery of
this life. But of this mercy the demons have been judged unworthy, and they
have received, in conjunction with a soul subject to passions, a body not
mortal like man's, but eternal. For they should have been happier than men
if they had, like men, had a mortal body, and, like the gods, a blessed
soul. And they should have been equal to men, if in conjunction with a
miserable soul they had at least received, like men, a mortal body, so that
death might have freed them from trouble, if, at least, they should have
attained some degree of piety. But, as it is, they are not only no happier
than men, having, like them, a miserable soul, they are also more wretched,
being eternally bound to the body; for he does not leave us to infer that
by some progress in wisdom and piety they can become gods, but expressly
says that they are demons forever.

CHAP. 11.--OF THE OPINION OF THE PLATONISTS, THAT THE SOULS OF MEN BECOME
DEMONS WHEN DISEMBODIED.

   He(4) says, indeed, that the souls of men are demons, and that men
become Lares if they are good, Lemures or Larvae if they are bad, and Manes
if it is uncertain whether they deserve well or ill. Who does not see at a
glance that this is a mere whirlpool sucking men to moral destruction? For,
however wicked men have been, if they suppose they shall become Larvae or
divine Manes, they will become the worse the more love they have for
inflicting injury; for, as the Larvae are hurtful demons made out of wicked
men, these men must suppose that after death they will be invoked with
sacrifices and divine honors that they may inflict injuries. But this
question we must not pursue. He also states that the blessed are called in
Greek eudai'mones, because they are good souls, that is to say, good
demons, confirming his opinion that the souls of men are demons.

CHAP. 12.--OF THE THREE OPPOSITE QUALITIES BY WHICH THE PLATONISTS
DISTINGUISH BETWEEN THE NATURE OF MEN AND THAT OF DEMONS.

   But at present we are speaking of those beings whom he described as
being properly intermediate between gods and men, in nature animals, in
mind rational, in soul subject to passion, in body aerial, in duration
eternal. When he had distinguished the gods, whom he placed in the highest
heaven, from men, whom he placed on earth, not only by position but also by
the unequal dignity of their natures, he concluded in these words: "You
have here two kinds of animals: the gods, widely distinguished from men by
sublimity of abode, perpetuity of life, perfection of nature; for their
habitations are separated by so wide an interval that there can be no
intimate communication between them, and while the vitality of the one is
eternal and indefeasible, that of the others is fading and precarious, and
while the spirits of the gods are exalted in bliss, those of men are sunk
in miseries."(1) Here I find three opposite qualities ascribed to the
extremes of being, the highest and lowest. For, after mentioning the three
qualities for which we are to admire the gods, he repeated, though in other
words, the same three as a foil to the defects of man. The three qualities
are, "sublimity of abode, perpetuity of life, perfection of nature." These
he again mentioned so as to bring out their contrasts in man's condition.
As he had mentioned "sublimity of abode," he says, "Their habitations are
separated by so wide an interval;" as he had mentioned "perpetuity of
life," he says, that "while divine life is eternal and indefeasible, human
life is fading and precarious;" and as he had mentioned "perfection of
nature," he says, that "while the spirits of the gods are exalted in bliss,
those of men are sunk in miseries." These three things, then, he predicates
of the gods, exaltation, eternity, blessedness; and of man he predicates
the opposite, lowliness of habitation, mortality, misery.

CHAP. 13.--HOW THE DEMONS CAN MEDIATE BETWEEN GODS AND MEN IF THEY HAVE
NOTHING IN COMMON WITH BOTH, BEING NEITHER BLESSED LIKE THE GODS, NOR
MISERABLE LIKE MEN.

   If, now, we endeavor to find between these opposites the mean occupied
by the demons, there can be no question as to their local position; for,
between the highest and lowest place, there is a place which is rightly
considered and called the middle place. The other two qualities remain, and
to them we must give greater care, that we may see whether they are
altogether foreign to the demons, or how they are so bestowed upon them
without infringing upon their mediate position. We may dismiss the idea
that they are foreign to them. For we cannot say that the demons, being
rational animals, are neither blessed nor wretched, as we say of the beasts
and plants, which are void of feeling and reason, or as we say of the
middle place, that it is neither the highest nor the lowest. The demons,
being rational, must be either miserable or blessed. And, in like manner,
we cannot say that they are neither mortal nor immortal; for all living
things either live eternally or end life in death. Our author, besides,
stated that the demons are eternal. What remains for us to suppose, then,
but that these mediate beings are assimilated to the gods in one of the two
remaining qualities, and to men in the other? For if they received both
from above, or both from beneath, they should no longer be mediate, but
either rise to the gods above, or sink to men beneath. Therefore, as it has
been demonstrated that they must possess these two qualities, they will
hold their middle place if they receive one from each party. Consequently,
as they cannot receive their eternity from beneath, because it is not there
to receive, they must get it from above; and accordingly they have no
choice but to complete their mediate position by accepting misery from men.

   According to the Platonists, then, the gods,  who occupy the highest
place, enjoy eternal blessedness, or blessed eternity; men, who occupy the
lowest, a mortal misery, or a miserable mortality; and the demons, who
occupy the mean, a miserable eternity, or an eternal misery. As to those
five things which Apuleius included in his definition of demons, he did not
show, as he promised, that the demons are mediate. For three of them, that
their nature is animal, their mind rational, their soul subject to
passions, he said that they have in common with men; one thing, their
eternity, in common with the gods; and one proper to themselves, their
aerial body. How, then, are they intermediate, when they have three things
in common with the lowest, and only one in common with the highest? Who
does not see that the intermediate position is abandoned in proportion as
they tend to, and are depressed towards, the lowest extreme? But perhaps we
are to accept them as intermediate because of their one property of an
aerial body, as the two extremes have each their proper body, the gods an
ethereal men a terrestrial body, and because two of the qualities they
possess in common with man they possess also in common with the gods,
namely, their animal nature and rational mind. For Apuleius himself, in
speaking of gods and men, said, "You have two animal natures." And
Platonists are wont to ascribe a rational mind to the gods. Two qualities
remain, their liability to passion, and their eternity,--the first of which
they have in common with men, the second with the gods; so that they are
neither wafted to the highest nor depressed to the lowest extreme, but
perfectly poised in their intermediate position. But then, this is the very
circumstance which constitutes the eternal misery, or miserable eternity,
of the demons. For he who says that their soul is subject to passions would
also have said that they are miserable, had he not blushed for their
worshippers. Moreover, as the world is governed, not by fortuitous hap-
hazard, but, as the Platonists themselves avow, by the providence of the
supreme God, the misery of the demons would not be eternal unless their
wickedness were great.

   If, then, the blessed are rightly styled eudemons, the demons
intermediate between gods and men are not eudemons. What, then, is the
local position of those good demons, who, above men but beneath the gods,
afford assistance to the former, minister to the latter? For if they are
good and eternal, they are doubtless blessed. But eternal blessedness
destroys their intermediate character, giving them a close resemblance to
the gods, and widely separating them from men. And therefore the Platonists
will in vain strive to show how the good demons, if they are both immortal
and blessed, can justly be said to hold a middle place between the gods,
who are immortal and blessed, and men, who are mortal and miserable. For if
they have both immortality and blessedness in common with the gods, and
neither of these in common with men, who are both miserable and mortal, are
they not rather remote from men and united with the gods, than intermediate
between them. They would be intermediate if they held one of their
qualities in common with the one party, and the other with the other, as
man is a kind of mean between angels and beasts,--the beast being an
irrational and mortal animal, the angel a rational and immortal one, while
man, inferior to the angel and superior to the beast, and having in common
with the one mortality, and with the other reason, is a rational and mortal
animal. So, when we seek for an intermediate between the blessed immortals
and miserable mortals, we should find a being which is either mortal and
blessed, or immortal and miserable.

CHAP. 14.--WHETHER MEN, THOUGH MORTAL, CAN ENJOY TRUE BLESSEDNESS.

   It is a great question among men, whether man can be mortal and
blessed. Some, taking the humbler view of his condition, have denied that
he is capable of blessedness so long as he continues in this mortal life;
others, again, have spurned this idea, and have been bold enough to
maintain that, even though mortal, men may be blessed by attaining wisdom.
But if this be the case, why are not these wise men constituted mediators
between miserable mortals and the blessed immortals, since they have
blessedness in common with the latter, and mortality in common with the
former? Certainly, if they are blessed, they envy no one (for what more
miserable than envy?), but seek with all their might to help miserable
mortals on to blessedness, so that after death they may become immortal,
and be associated with the blessed and immortal angels.

CHAP, 15.--OF THE MAN CHRIST JESUS, THE MEDIATOR BETWEEN GOD AND MEN.

   But if, as is much more probable and credible, it must needs be that
all men, so long as they are mortal, are also miserable, we must seek an
intermediate who is not only man, but also God, that, by the interposition
of His blessed mortality, He may bring men out of their mortal misery to a
blessed immortality. In this intermediate two things are requisite, that He
become mortal, and that He do not continue mortal. He did become mortal,
not rendering the divinity of the Word infirm, but assuming the infirmity
of flesh. Neither did He continue mortal in the flesh, but raised it from
the dead; for it is the very fruit of His mediation that those, for the
sake of whose redemption He became the Mediator, should not abide eternally
in bodily death. Wherefore it became the Mediator between us and God to
have both a transient mortality and a permanent blessedness, that by that
which is transient He might be assimilated to mortals, and might translate
them from mortality to that which is permanent. Good angels, therefore,
cannot mediate between miserable mortals and blessed immortals, for they
themselves also are both blessed and immortal; but evil angels can mediate,
because they are immortal like the one party, miserable like the other. To
these is opposed the good Mediator, who, in opposition to their immortality
and misery, has chosen to be mortal for a time, and has been able to
continue blessed in eternity. It is thus He has destroyed, by the humility
of His death and the benignity of His blessedness, those proud immortals
and hurtful wretches, and has prevented them from seducing to misery by
their boast of immortality those men whose hearts He has cleansed by faith,
and whom He has thus freed from their impure dominion.

   Man, then, mortal and miserable, and far removed from the immortal and
the blessed, what medium shall he choose by which he may be united to
immortality and blessedness? The immortality of the demons, which might
have some charm for man, is miserable; the mortality of Christ, which might
offend man, exists no longer. In the one there is the fear of an eternal
misery; in the other, death, which could not be eternal, can no longer be
feared, and blessedness, which is eternal, must be loved. For the immortal
and miserable mediator interposes himself to prevent us from passing to a
blessed immortality, because that which hinders such a passage, namely,
misery, continues in him; but the mortal and blessed Mediator interposed
Himself, in order that, having passed through mortality, He might of
mortals make immortals (showing His power to do this in His own
resurrection), and from being miserable to raise them to the blessed
company from the number of whom He had Himself never departed. There is,
then, a wicked mediator, who separates friends, and a good Mediator, who
reconciles enemies. And those who separate are numerous, because the
multitude of the blessed are blessed only by their participation in the one
God; of which participation the evil angels being deprived, they are
wretched, and interpose to hinder rather than to help to this blessedness,
and by their very number prevent us from reaching that one beatific good,
to obtain which we need not many but one Mediator, the uncreated Word of
God, by whom all things were made, and in partaking of whom we are blessed.
I do not say that He is Mediator because He is the Word, for as the Word He
is supremely blessed and supremely immortal, and therefore far from
miserable mortals; but He is Mediator as He is man, for by His humanity He
shows us that, in order to obtain that blessed and beatific good, we need
not seek other mediators to lead us through the successive steps of this
attainment, but that the blessed and beatific God, having Himself become a
partaker of our humanity, has afforded us ready access to the participation
of His divinity. For in delivering us from our mortality and misery, He
does not lead us to the immortal and blessed angels, so that we should
become immortal and blessed by participating in their nature, but He leads
us straight to that Trinity, by participating in which the angels
themselves are blessed. Therefore, when He chose to be in the form of a
servant, and lower than the angels, that He might be our Mediator, He
remained higher than the angels, in the form of God,--Himself at once the
way of life on earth and life itself in heaven.

CHAP. 16.--WHETHER IT IS REASONABLE IN THE PLATONISTS TO DETERMINE THAT THE
CELESTIAL GODS DECLINE CONTACT WITH EARTHLY THINGS AND INTERCOURSE WITH
MEN, WHO THEREFORE REQUIRE THE INTERCESSION OF THE DEMONS.

   That opinion, which the same Platonist avers that Plato uttered, is not
true, "that no god holds intercourse with men."(1) And this, he says, is
the chief evidence of their exaltation, that they are never contaminated by
contact with men. He admits, therefore, that the demons are contaminated;
and it follows that they cannot cleanse those by whom they are themselves
contaminated, and thus all alike become impure, the demons by associating
with men, and men by worshipping the demons. Or, if they say that the
demons are not contaminated by associating and dealing with men, then they
are better than the gods, for the gods, were they to do so, would be
contaminated. Four this, we are told, is the glory of the gods, that they
are so highly exalted that no human intercourse can sully them. He affirms,
indeed, that the supreme God, the Creator of all things, whom we call the
true God, is spoken of by Plato as the only God whom the poverty of human
speech fails even passably to describe; and that even the wise, when their
mental energy is as far as possible delivered from the trammels of
connection with the body, have only such gleams of insight into His nature
as may be compared to a flash of lightning illumining the darkness. If,
then, this supreme God, who is truly exalted above all things, does
nevertheless visit the minds of the wise, when emancipated from the body,
with an intelligible and ineffable presence, though this be only
occasional, and as it were a swift flash of athwart the darkness, why are
the other gods so sublimely removed from all contact with men, as if they
would be polluted by it? as if it were not a sufficient refutation of this
to lift up our eyes to those heavenly bodies which give the earth its
needful light. If the stars, though they, by his account, are visible gods,
are not contaminated when we look at them, neither are the demons
contaminated when men see them quite closely. But perhaps it is the human
voice, and not the eye, which pollutes the gods; and therefore the demons
are appointed to mediate and carry men's utterances to the gods, who keep
themselves remote through fear of pollution? What am I to say of the other
senses? For by smell neither the demons, who are present, nor the gods,
though they were present and inhaling the exhalations of living men, would
be polluted if they are not contaminated with the effluvia of the carcasses
offered in sacrifice. As for taste, they are pressed by no necessity of
repairing bodily decay, so as to be reduced to ask food from men. And touch
is in their own power. For while it may seem that contact is so called,
because the sense of touch is specially concerned in it, yet the gods, if
so minded, might mingle with men, so as to see and be seen, hear and be
heard; and where is the need of touching? For men would not dare to desire
this, if they were favored with the sight or conversation of gods or good
demons; and if through excessive curiosity they should desire it, how could
they accomplish their wish without the consent of the god or demon, when
they cannot touch so much as a sparrow unless it be caged?

   There is, then, nothing to hinder the gods from mingling in a bodily
form with men, from seeing and being seen, from speaking and hearing. And
if the demons do thus mix with men, as I said, and are not polluted, while
the gods, were they to do so, should be polluted, then the demons are less
liable to pollution than the gods. And if even the demons are contaminated,
how can they help men to attain blessedness after death, if, so far from
being able to cleanse them, and present them clean to the unpolluted gods,
these mediators are themselves polluted? And if they cannot confer this
benefit on men, what good can their friendly mediation do? Or shall its
result be, not that men find entrance to the gods, but that men and demons
abide together in a state of pollution, and consequently of exclusion from
blessedness? Unless, perhaps, some one may say that, like sponges or things
of that sort, the demons themselves, in the process of cleansing their
friends, become themselves the filthier in proportion as the others become
clean. But if this is the solution, then the gods, who shun contact or
intercourse with men for fear of pollution, mix with demons who are far
more polluted. Or perhaps the gods, who cannot cleanse men without
polluting themselves, can without pollution cleanse the demons who have
been contaminated by human contact? Who can believe such follies, unless
the demons have practised their deceit upon him? If seeing and being seen
is contamination, and if the gods, whom Apuleius himself calls visible,
"the brilliant lights of the world,"(1) and the other stars, are seen by
men, are we to believe that the demons, who cannot be seen unless they
please, are safer from contamination? Or if it is only the seeing and not
the being seen which contaminates, then they must deny that these gods of
theirs, these brilliant lights of the world, see men when their rays beam
upon the earth. Their rays are not contaminated by lighting on all manner
of pollution, and are we to suppose that the gods would be contaminated if
they mixed with men, and even if contact were needed in order to assist
them? For there is contact between the earth and the sun's or moon's rays,
and yet this does not pollute the light.

CHAP. 17.--THAT TO OBTAIN THE BLESSED LIFE, WHICH CONSISTS IN PARTAKING OF
THE SUPREME GOOD, MAN NEEDS SUCH MEDIATION AS IS FURNISHED NOT BY A DEMON,
BUT BY CHRIST ALONE.

   I am considerably surprised that such learned men, men who pronounce
all material and sensible things to be altogether inferior to those that
are spiritual and intelligible, should mention bodily contact in connection
with the blessed life. Is that sentiment of Plotinus forgotten?--"We must
fly to our beloved fatherland. There is the Father, there our all. What
fleet or flight shall convey us thither? Our way is, to become like
God."(2) If, then, one is nearer to God the liker he is to Him, there is no
other distance from God than unlikeness to Him. And the soul of man is
unlike that incorporeal and unchangeable and eternal essence, in proportion
as it craves things temporal and mutable. And as the things beneath, which
are mortal and impure, cannot hold intercourse with the immortal purity
which is above, a mediator is indeed needed to remove this difficulty; but
not a mediator who resembles the highest order of being by possessing an
immortal body, and the lowest by having a diseased soul, which makes him
rather grudge that we be healed than help our cure. We need a Mediator who,
being united to us here below by the mortality of His body, should at the
same time be able to afford us truly divine help in cleansing and
liberating us by means of the immortal righteousness of His spirit, whereby
He remained heavenly even while here upon earth. Far be it from the
incontaminable God to fear pollution from the man(1) He assumed, or from
the men among whom He lived in the form of a man. For, though His
incarnation showed us nothing else, these two wholesome facts were enough,
that true divinity cannot be polluted by flesh, and that demons are not to
be considered better than ourselves because they have not flesh.(2) This,
then, as Scripture says, is the "Mediator between God and man, the man
Christ Jesus,"(3) of whose divinity, whereby He is equal to the Father, and
humanity, whereby He has become like us, this is not the place to speak as
fully as I could.

CHAP. 18.--THAT THE DECEITFUL DEMONS, WHILE PROMISING TO CONDUCT MEN TO GOD
BY THEIR INTERCESSION, MEAN TO TURN THEM FROM THE PATH OF TRUTH.

   As to the demons, these false and deceitful mediators, who, though
their uncleanness of spirit frequently reveals their misery and malignity,
yet, by virtue of the levity of their aerial bodies and the nature of the
places they inhabit, do contrive to turn us aside and hinder our spiritual
progress; they do not help us towards God, but rather prevent us from
reaching Him. Since even in the bodily way, which is erroneous and
misleading, and in which righteousness does not walk,--for we must rise to
God not by bodily ascent, but by incorporeal or spiritual conformity to
Him,--in this bodily way, I say, which the friends of the demons arrange
according to the weight of the various elements, the aerial demons being
set between the ethereal gods and earthy men, they imagine the gods to have
this privilege, that by this local interval they are preserved from the
pollution of human contact. Thus they believe that the demons are
contaminated by men rather than men cleansed by the demons, and that the
gods themselves should be polluted unless their local superiority preserved
them. Who is so wretched a creature as to expect purification by a way in
which men are contaminating, demons contaminated, and gods contaminable?
Who would not rather choose that way whereby we escape the contamination of
the demons, and are cleansed from pollution by the incontaminable God, so
as to be associated with the uncontaminated angels?

CHAP. 19.--THAT EVEN AMONG THEIR OWN WORSHIPPERS THE NAME "DEMON" HAS NEVER
A GOOD SIGNIFICATION.

   But as some of these demonolators, as I may call them, and among them
Labeo, allege that those whom they call demons are by others called angels,
I must, if I would not seem to dispute merely about words, say something
about the good angels. The Platonists do not deny their existence, but
prefer to call them good demons. But we, following Scripture, according to
which we are Christians, have learned that some of the angels are good,
some bad, but never have we read in Scripture of good demons; but wherever
this or any cognate term occurs, it is applied only to wicked spirits. And
this usage has become so universal, that, even among those who are called
pagans, and who maintain that demons as well as gods should be worshipped,
there is scarcely a man, no matter how well read and learned, who would
dare to say by way of praise to his slave, You have a demon, or who could
doubt that the man to whom he said this would consider it a curse? Why,
then, are we to subject ourselves to the necessity of explaining away what
we have said when we have given offence by using the word demon, with which
every one, or almost every one, connects a bad meaning, while we can so
easily evade this necessity by using the word angel?

CHAP. 20.--OF THE KIND OF KNOWLEDGE WHICH PUFFS UP THE DEMONS.

   However, the very origin of the name suggests something worthy of
consideration, if we compare it with the divine books. They are called
demons from a Greek word meaning knowledge.(1) Now the apostle, speaking
with the Holy Spirit, says, "Knowledge puffeth up, but charity buildeth
up."(2) And this can only be understood as meaning that without charity
knowledge does no good, but inflates a man or magnifies him with an empty
windiness. The demons, then, have knowledge without charity, and are
thereby so inflated or proud, that they crave those divine honors and
religious services which they know to be due to the true God, and still, as
far as they can, exact these from all over whom they have influence.
Against this pride of the demons, under which the human race was held
subject as its merited punishment, there was exerted the mighty influence
of the humility of God, who appeared in the form of a servant; but men,
resembling the demons in pride, but not in knowledge, and being puffed up
with uncleanness, failed to recognize Him.

CHAP.  21.--TO WHAT  EXTENT THE  LORD WAS PLEASED TO MAKE HIMSELF KNOWN TO
THE DEMONS.

   The devils themselves knew this manifestation of God so well, that they
said to the Lord though clothed with the infirmity of flesh, "What have we
to do with Thee, Jesus of Nazareth? Art Thou come to destroy us before the
time?"(1) From these words, it is clear that they had great knowledge, and
no charity. They feared His power to punish, and did not love His
righteousness. He made known to them so much as He pleased, and He was
pleased to make known so much as was needful. But He made Himself known not
as to the holy angels, who know Him as the Word of God, and rejoice in His
eternity, which they partake, but as was requisite to strike with terror
the beings from whose tyranny He was going to free those who were
predestined to His kingdom and the glory of it, eternally true and truly
eternal. He made Himself known, therefore, to the demons, not by that which
is life eternal, and the unchangeable light which illumines the pious,
whose souls are cleansed by the faith that is in Him, but by some temporal
effects of His power, and evidences of His mysterious presence, which were
more easily discerned by the angelic senses even of wicked spirits than by
human infirmity. But when He judged it advisable gradually to suppress
these signs, and to retire into deeper obscurity, the prince of the demons
doubted whether He were the Christ, and endeavored to ascertain this by
tempting Him, in so far as He permitted Himself to be tempted, that He
might adapt the manhood He wore to be an example for our imitation. But
after that temptation, when, as Scripture says, He was ministered to(2) by
the angels who are good and holy, and therefore objects of terror to the
impure spirits, He revealed more and more distinctly to the demons how
great He was, so that, even though the infirmity of His flesh might seem
contemptible, none dared to resist His authority.

CHAP. 22.--THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN THE KNOWLEDGE OF THE HOLY ANGELS AND THAT
OF THE DEMONS.

   The good angels, therefore, hold cheap all that knowledge of material
and transitory things which the demons are so proud of possessing,--not
that they are ignorant of these things, but because the love of God,
whereby they are sanctified, is very dear to them, and because, in
comparison of that not merely immaterial but also unchangeable and
ineffable beauty, with the holy love of which they are inflamed, they
despise all things which are beneath it, and all that is not it, that they
may with every good thing that is in them enjoy that good which is the
source of their goodness. And therefore they have a more certain knowledge
even of those temporal and mutable things, because they contemplate their
principles and causes in the word of God, by which the world was made,--
those causes by which one thing is, approved, another rejected, and all
arranged. But the demons do not behold in the wisdom of God these eternal,
and, as it were, cardinal causes of things temporal, but only foresee a
larger part of the future than men do, by reason of their greater
acquaintance with the signs which are hidden from us. Sometimes, too, it is
their own intentions they predict. And, finally, the demons are frequently,
the angels never, deceived. For it is one thing, by the aid of things
temporal and changeable, to conjecture the changes that may occur in time,
and to modify such things by one's own will and faculty,--and this is to a
certain extent permitted to the demons,--it is another thing to foresee the
changes of times in the eternal and immutable laws of God, which live in
His wisdom, and to know the will of God, the most infallible and powerful
of all causes, by participating in His spirit; and this is granted to the
holy angels by a just discretion. And thus they are not only eternal, but
blessed. And the good wherein they are blessed is God, by whom they were
created. For without end they enjoy the contemplation and participation of
Him.

CHAP. 23.--THAT THE NAME OF GODS IS FALSELY GIVEN TO THE GODS OF THE
GENTILES, THOUGH SCRIPTURE APPLIES IT BOTH TO THE HOLY ANGELS AND JUST MEN.

   If the Platonists prefer to call these angels gods rather than demons,
and to reckon them with those whom Plato, their founder and master,
maintains were created by the supreme God,(1) they are welcome to do so,
for I will not spend strength in fighting about words. For if they say that
these beings are immortal, and yet created by the supreme God, blessed but
by cleaving to their Creator and not by their own power, they say what we
say, whatever name they call these beings by. And that this is the opinion
either of all or the best of the Platonists can be ascertained by their
writings. And regarding the name itself, if they see fit to call such
blessed and immortal creatures gods, this need not give rise to any serious
discussion between us, since in our own Scriptures we read, "The God of
gods, the Lord hath spoken;"(2) and again, "Confess to the God of gods;"(3)
and again, "He is a great King above all gods."(4) And where it is said,
"He is to be feared above all gods," the reason is forthwith added, for it
follows, "for all the gods of the nations are idols, but the Lord made the
heavens."(5) He said, "above all gods," but added, "of the nations;" that
is to say, above all those whom the nations count gods, in other words,
demons. By them He is to be feared with that terror in which they cried to
the Lord, "Hast Thou come to destroy us?" But where it is said, "the God of
gods," it cannot be understood as the god of the demons; and far be it from
us to say that "great King above all gods" means "great King above all
demons." But the same Scripture also calls men who belong to God's people"
gods:" "I have said, Ye are gods, and all of you children of the Most
High."(6) Accordingly, when God is styled God of gods, this may be
understood of these gods; and so, too, when He is styled a great King above
all gods.

   Nevertheless, some one may say, if men are called gods because they
belong to God's people, whom He addresses by means of men and angels, are
not the immortals, who already enjoy that felicity which men seek to attain
by worshipping God, much more worthy of the title? And what shall we reply
to this, if not that it is not without reason that in holy Scripture men
are more expressly styled gods than those immortal and blessed spirits to
whom we hope to be equal in the resurrection, because there was a fear that
the weakness of unbelief, being overcome with the excellence of these
beings, might presume to constitute some of them a god? In the case of men
this was a result that need not be guarded against. Besides, it was right
that the men belonging to God's people should be more expressly called
gods, to assure and certify them that He who is called God of gods is their
God; because, although those immortal and blessed spirits who dwell in the
heavens are called gods, yet they are not called gods of gods, that is to
say, gods of the men who constitute God's people, and to whom it is said,
"I have said. Ye are gods, and all of you the children of the Most High."
Hence the saying of the apostle, "Though there be that are called gods,
whether in heaven or in earth, as there be gods many and lords many, but to
us there is but one God, the Father, of whom are all things, and we in Him;
and one Lord Jesus Christ, by whom are all things, and we by Him."(7)

   We need not, therefore, laboriously contend about the name, since the
reality is so obvious as to admit of no shadow of doubt. That which we say,
that the angels who are sent to announce the will of God to men belong to
the order of blessed immortals, does not satisfy the Platonists, because
they believe that this ministry is discharged, not by those whom they call
gods, in other words, not by blessed immortals, but by demons, whom they
dare not affirm to be blessed, but only immortal, or if they do rank them
among the blessed immortals, yet only as good demons, and not as gods who
dwell in the heaven of heavens remote from all human contact. But, though
it may seem mere wrangling about a name, yet the name of demon is so
detestable that we cannot bear in any sense to apply it to the holy angels.
Now, therefore, let us close this book in the assurance that, whatever we
call these immortal and blessed spirits, who yet are only creatures, they
do not act as mediators to introduce to everlasting felicity miserable
mortals, from whom they are severed by a twofold distinction. And those
others who are mediators, in so far as they have immortality in common with
their superiors, and misery in common with their inferiors (for they are
justly miserable in punishment of their wickedness), cannot bestow upon us,
but rather grudge that we should possess, the blessedness from which they
themselves are excluded. And so the friends of the demons have nothing
considerable to allege why we should rather worship them as our helpers
than avoid them as traitors to our interests. As for those spirits who are
good, and who are therefore not only immortal but also blessed, and to whom
they suppose we, should give the title of gods, and offer worship and
sacrifices for the sake of inheriting a future life, we shall, by God's
help, endeavor in the following book to show that these spirits, call them
by what name, and ascribe to them what nature you will, desire that
religious worship be paid to God alone, by whom they were created, and by
whose communications of Himself to them they are blessed.


BOOK X.

ARGUMENT.

IN THIS BOOK AUGUSTIN TEACHES THAT THE GOOD ANGELS WISH GOD ALONE, WHOM
THEY THEMSELVES SERVE, TO RECEIVE THAT DIVINE HONOR WHICH IS RENDERED BY
SACRIFICE, AND WHICH IS CALLED "LATREIA." HE THEN GOES ON TO DISPUTE
AGAINST PORPHYRY ABOUT THE PRINCIPLE AND WAY OF THE SOUL'S CLEANSING AND
DELIVERANCE.

CHAP. 1.--THAT THE PLATONISTS THEMSELVES HAVE DETERMINED THAT GOD ALONE CAN

CONFER HAPPINESS EITHER ON ANGELS OR MEN, BUT THAT IT YET REMAINS A
QUESTION WHETHER THOSE SPIRITS WHOM THEY DIRECT US TO WORSHIP, THAT WE MAY
OBTAIN HAPPINESS, WISH SACRIFICE TO BE OFFERED TO THEMSELVES, OR TO THE ONE
GOD ONLY.

    IT is the decided opinion of all who use their brains, that all men
desire to be happy. But who are happy, or how they become so, these are
questions about which the weakness of human understanding stirs endless and
angry controversies, in which philosophers have wasted their strength and
expended their leisure. To adduce and discuss their various opinions would
be tedious, and is unnecessary. The reader may remember what we said in the
eighth book, while making a selection of the philosophers with whom we
might discuss the question regarding the future life of happiness, whether
we can reach it by paying divine honors to the one true God, the Creator of
all gods, or by worshipping many gods, and he will not expect us to repeat
here the same argument, especially as, even if he has forgotten it, he may
refresh his memory by reperusal. For we made selection of the Platonists,
justly esteemed the noblest of the philosophers, because they had the wit
to perceive that the human soul, immortal and rational, or intellectual, as
it is, cannot be happy except by partaking of the light of that God by whom
both itself and the world were made; and also that the happy life which all
men desire cannot be reached by any who does not cleave with a pure and
holy love to that one supreme good, the unchangeable God. But as even these
philosophers, whether accommodating to the folly and ignorance of the
people, or, as the apostle says, "becoming vain in their imaginations,"(1)
supposed or allowed others to suppose that many gods should be worshipped,
so that some of them considered that divine honor by worship and sacrifice
should be rendered even to the demons (an error I have already exploded),
we must now, by God's help, ascertain what is thought about our religious
worship and piety by those immortal and blessed spirits, who dwell in the
heavenly places among dominations, principalities, powers, whom the
Platonists call gods, and some either good demons, or, like us, angels,--
that is to say, to put it more plainly, whether the angels desire us to
offer sacrifice and worship, and to consecrate our possessions and
ourselves, to them or only to God, theirs and ours.

   For this is the worship which is due to the Divinity, or, to speak more
accurately, to the Deity; and, to express this worship in a single word as
there does not occur to me any Latin term sufficiently exact, I shall avail
myself, whenever necessary, of a Greek word. Latrei'a, whenever it occurs
in Scripture, is rendered by the word service. But that service which is
due to men, and in reference to which the apostle writes that servants must
be subject to their own masters,(2) is usually designated by another word
in Greek,(3) whereas the service which is paid to God alone by worship, is
always, or almost always, called latrei'a in the usage of those who wrote
from the divine oracles. This cannot so well be called simply "cultus," for
in that case it would not seem to be due exclusively to God; for the same
word is applied to the respect we pay either to the memory or the living
presence of men. From it, too, we derive the words agriculture, colonist,
and others.(1) And the heathen call their gods "coelicolae," not because
they worship heaven, but because they dwell in it, and as it were colonize
it,--not in the sense in which we call those colonists who are attached to
their native soil to cultivate it under the rule of the owners, but in the
sense in which the great master of the Latin language says, "There was an
ancient city inhabited by Tyrian colonists."(2) He called them colonists,
not because they cultivated the soil, but because they inhabited the city.
So, too, cities that have hired off from larger cities are called colonies.
Consequently, while it is quite true that, using the word in a special
sense, "cult" can be rendered to none but God, yet, as the word is applied
to other things besides, the cult due to God cannot in Latin be expressed
by this word alone.

   The word "religion" might seem to express more definitely the worship
due to God alone, and therefore Latin translators have used this word to
represent thrhskei'a; yet, as not only the uneducated, but also the best
instructed, use the word religion to express human ties, and relationships,
and affinities, it would inevitably introduce ambiguity to use this word in
discussing the worship of God, unable as we are to say that religion is
nothing else than the worship of God, without contradicting the common
usage which applies this word to the observance of social relationships.
"Piety," again, or, as the Greeks say, euse'beia, is commonly understood as
the proper designation of the worship of God. Yet this word also is used of
dutifulness to parents. The common people, too, use it of works of charity,
which, I suppose, arises from the circumstance that God enjoins the
performance of such works, and declares that He is pleased with them
instead of, or in preference to sacrifices. From this usage it has also
come to pass that God Himself is called, pious,(3) in which sense the
Greeks never use eusebei^n, though euse'beia is applied to works of charity
by their common people also. In some passages of Scripture, therefore, they
have sought to preserve the distinction by using not eise'beia, the more
general word, but theose'beia, which literally denotes the worship of God.
We, on the other hand, cannot express either of these ideas by one word.
This worship, then, which in Greek is called latrei'a, and in Latin
"servitus" [service], but the service due to God only; this worship, which
in Greek is called thrhskei'a, and in Latin "religio," but the religion by
which we are bound to God only; this worship, which they call theose'beia,
but which we cannot express in one word, but call it the worship of God,--
this, we say, belongs only to that God who is the true God, and who makes
His worshippers gods.(4) And therefore, whoever these immortal and blessed
inhabitants of heaven be, if they do not love us, and wish us to be
blessed, then we ought not to worship them; and if they do love us and
desire our happiness, they cannot wish us to be made happy by any other
means than they themselves have enjoyed,--for how could they wish our
blessedness to flow from one source, theirs from another?

CHAP. 2.--THE OPINION OF PLOTINUS THE PLATONIST REGARDING ENLIGHTENMENT
FROM ABOVE.

   But with these more estimable philosophers we have no dispute in this
matter. For they perceived, and in various forms abundantly expressed in
their writings, that these spirits have the same source of happiness as
ourselves,--a certain intelligible light, which is their God, and is
different from themselves, and illumines them that they may be penetrated
with light, and enjoy perfect happiness in the participation of God.
Plotinus, commenting on Plato, repeatedly and strongly asserts that not
even the soul which they believe to be the soul of the world, derives its
blessedness from any other source than we do, viz., from that Light which
is distinct from it and created it, and by whose intelligible illumination
it enjoys light in things intelligible. He also compares those spiritual
things to the vast and conspicuous heavenly bodies, as if God were the sun,
and the soul the moon; for they suppose that the moon derives its light
from the sun. That great Platonist, therefore, says that the rational soul,
or rather the intellectual soul,--in which class he comprehends the souls
of the blessed immortals who inhabit heaven,--has no nature superior to it
save God, the Creator of the world and the soul itself, and that these
heavenly spirits derive their blessed life, and the light of truth from
their blessed life, and the light of truth, the source as ourselves,
agreeing with the gospel where we read, " There was a man sent from God
whose name was John; the same came for a witness to bear witness of that
Light, that through Him all might believe. He was not that Light, but that
he might bear witness of the Light. That was the true Light which lighteth
every man that cometh into the world;"(1) a distinction which sufficiently
proves that the rational or intellectual soul such as John had cannot be
its own light, but needs to receive illumination from another, the true
Light. This John himself avows when he delivers his witness: "We have all
received of His fullness."(2)

CHAP. 3.--THAT THE PLATONISTS, THOUGH KNOWING SOMETHING OF THE CREATOR OF
THE UNIVERSE, HAVE MISUNDERSTOOD THE TRUE WORSHIP OF GOD, BY GIVING DIVINE
HONOR TO ANGELS, GOOD OR BAD

   This being so, if the Platonists, or those who think with them, knowing
God, glorified Him as God and gave thanks, if they did not become vain in
their own thoughts, if they did not originate or yield to the popular
errors, they would certainly acknowledge that neither could the blessed
immortals retain, nor we miserable mortals reach, a happy condition without
worshipping the one God of gods, who is both theirs and ours. To Him we owe
the service which is called in Greek latrei'a, whether we render it
outwardly or  inwardly; for we are all His temple, each of us severally and
all of us together, because He condescends to inhabit each individually and
the whole harmonious body, being no greater in all than in each, since He
is neither expanded nor divided. Our heart when it rises to Him is His
altar; the priest who intercedes for us is His Only-begotten; we sacrifice
to Him bleeding victims when we contend for His truth even unto blood; to
Him we offer the sweetest incense when we come before Him burning with holy
and pious love; to Him we devote and surrender ourselves and His gifts in
us; to Him, by solemn feasts and on appointed days, we consecrate the
memory of His benefits, lest through the lapse of time ungrateful oblivion
should steal upon us; to Him we offer on the altar of our heart the
sacrifice of humility and praise, kindled by the fire of burning love. It
is that we may see Him, so far as He can be seen; it is that we may cleave
to Him, that we are cleansed from all stain of sins and evil passions, and
are consecrated in His name. For He is the fountain of our happiness, He
the end of all our desires. Being attached to Him, or rather let me say,
re-attached,--for we had detached ourselves and lost hold of Him,--being, I
say, re-attached to Him,(3) we tend towards Him by love, that we may rest
in Him, and find our blessedness by attaining that end, For our good, about
which philosophers have so keenly contended, is nothing else than to be
united to God. It is, if I may say sod by spiritually embracing Him that
the intellectual soul is filled and impregnated with true virtues. We are
enjoined to love this good with all our heart, with all our soul, with all
our strength. To this good we ought to be led by those who love us, and to
lead those we love. Thus are fulfilled those two commandments on which hang
all the law and the prophets: "Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all
thy heart, and with all thy mind, and with all thy soul;" and" Thou shalt
love thy neighbor as thyself."(4) For, that man might be intelligent in his
self-love, there was appointed for him an end to which he might refer all
his actions, that he might be blessed. For he who loves himself wishes
nothing else than this. And the end set before him is "to draw near to
God."(5) And so, when one who has this intelligent self-love is commanded
to love his neighbor as himself, what else is enjoined than that he shall
do all in his power to commend to him the love of God? This is the worship
of God, this is true religion, this right piety, this the service due to
God only. If any immortal power, then, no matter with what virtue endowed,
loves us as himself, he must desire that we find our happiness by
submitting ourselves to Him, in submission to whom he himself finds
happiness. If he does not worship God, he is wretched, because deprived of
God; if he worships God, he cannot wish to be worshipped in God's stead. On
the contrary, these higher powers acquiesce heartily in the divine sentence
in which it is written, "He that sacrificeth unto any god, save unto the
Lord only, he shall be utterly destroyed."(6)

CHAP. 4.--THAT SACRIFICE IS DUE TO THE TRUE GOD ONLY.

   But, putting aside for the present the other religious services with
which God is worshipped, certainly no man would dare to say that sacrifice
is due to any but God. Many parts, indeed, of divine worship are unduly
used in showing honor to men, whether through an excessive humility or
pernicious flattery; yet, while this is done, those persons who are thus
worshipped and venerated, or even adored, are reckoned no more than human;
and who ever thought of sacrificing save to one whom he knew, supposed, or
feigned to be a god? And how ancient a part of God's worship sacrifice is,
those two brothers, Cain and Abel, sufficiently show, of whom God rejected
the elder's sacrifice, and looked favorably on the younger's.

CHAP. 5.--OF THE SACRIFICES WHICH GOD DOES NOT REQUIRE, BUT WISHED TO AS
OBSERVED FOR THE EXHIBITION OF THOSE THINGS WHICH HE DOES REQUIRE.

   And who is so foolish as to suppose that the things offered to God are
needed by Him for some uses of His own? Divine Scripture in many places
explodes this idea. Not to be wearisome, suffice it to quote this brief
saying from a psalm: "I have said to the Lord, Thou art my God: for Thou
needest not my goodness."(1) We must believe, then, that God has no need,
not only of cattle, or any other earthly and material thing, but even of
man's righteousness, and that whatever right worship is paid to God profits
not Him, but man. For no man would say he did a benefit to a fountain by
drinking, or to the light by seeing. And the fact that the ancient church
offered animal sacrifices, which the people of God now-a-days read of
without imitating, proves nothing else than this, that those sacrifices
signified the things which we do for the purpose of drawing near to God,
and inducing our neighbor to do the same. A sacrifice, therefore, is the
visible sacrament or sacred sign of an invisible sacrifice. Hence that
penitent in the psalm, or it may be the Psalmist himself, entreating God to
be merciful to his sins, says, "If Thou desiredst sacrifice, I would give
it: Thou delightest not in whole burnt-offerings. The sacrifice of God is a
broken heart: a heart contrite and humble God will not despise."(2) Observe
how, in the very words in which he is expressing God's refusal of
sacrifice, he shows that God requires sacrifice. He does not desire the
sacrifice of a slaughtered beast, but He desires the sacrifice of a
contrite heart. Thus, that sacrifice which he says God does not wish, is
the symbol of the sacrifice which God does wish. God does not wish
sacrifices in the sense in which foolish people think He wishes them, viz.,
to gratify His own pleasure. For if He had not wished that the sacrifices
He requires, as, e.g., a heart Contrite and humbled by penitent sorrow,
should be symbolized by those sacrifices which He was thought to desire
because pleasant to Himself, the old law would never have enjoined their
presentation; and they were destined to be merged when the fit opportunity
arrived, in order that men might not suppose that the sacrifices
themselves, rather than the things symbolized by them, were pleasing to God
or acceptable in us. Hence, in another passage from another psalm, he says,
"If I were hungry, I would not tell thee; for the world is mine and the
fullness thereof. Will I eat the flesh of bulls, or drink the blood of
goats?"(3) as if He should say, Supposing such things were necessary to me,
I would never ask thee for what I have in my own hand. Then he goes on to
mention what these signify: "Offer unto God the sacrifice of praise, and
pay thy vows unto the Most High. And call upon me in the day of trouble: I
will deliver thee, and thou shall glorify me."(4) So in another prophet:
"Wherewith shall I come before the Lord, and bow myself before the High
God? Shall I come before Him with burnt-offerings, with calves of a year
old? Will the Lord be pleased with thousands of rams, or with ten thousands
of rivers of oil? Shall I give my first-born for my transgression, the
fruit of my body for the sin of my soul? Hath He showed thee, 0 man, what
is good; and what doth the Lord require of thee, but to do justly, and to
love mercy, and to walk humbly with thy God?"(5) In the words of this
prophet, these two things are distinguished and set forth with sufficient
explicitness, that God does not require these sacrifices for their own
sakes, and that He does require the sacrifices which they symbolize. In the
epistle entitled "To the Hebrews" it is said, "To do good and to
communicate, forget not: for with such sacrifices God is well pleased."(6)
And. so, when it is written," I desire mercy rather than sacrifice,"(7)
nothing else is meant than that one sacrifice is preferred to another; for
that which in common speech is called sacrifice is only the symbol of the
true sacrifice. Now mercy is the true sacrifice, and therefore it is said,
as I have just quoted, "with such sacrifices God is well pleased." All the
divine ordinances, therefore, which we read concerning the sacrifices in
the service of the tabernacle or the temple, we are to refer to the love of
God and our neighbor. For "on these two commandments," as it is written,
"hang all the law and the prophets."(8)

CHAP. 6.--OF THE TRUE AND PERFECT SACRIFICE.

   Thus a true sacrifice is every work which is done that we may be united
to God in holy fellowship, and which has a reference to that supreme good
and end in which alone we can be truly blessed.(9) And therefore even the
mercy we show to men, if it is not shown for God's sake, is not a
sacrifice. For, though made or offered by man, sacrifice is a divine thing,
as those who called it sacrifice(1) meant to indicate. Thus man himself,
consecrated in the name of God, and vowed to God, is a sacrifice in so far
as he dies to the world that he may live to God. For this is a part of that
mercy which each man shows to himself; as it is written, "Have merry on thy
soul by pleasing God."(2) Our body, too, as a sacrifice when we chasten it
by temperance, if we do so as we ought, for God's sake, that we may not
yield our members instruments of unrighteousness unto sin, but instruments
of righteousness unto God.(3) Exhorting to this sacrifice, the apostle
says, "I beseech you, therefore, brethren, by the mercy of God, that ye
present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable to God, which is
your reasonable service."(4) If, then, the body, which, being inferior, the
soul uses as a servant or instrument, is a sacrifice when it is used
rightly, and with reference to God, how much more does the soul itself
become a sacrifice when it offers itself to God, in order that, being
inflamed by the fire of His love, it may receive of His beauty and become
pleasing to Him, losing the shape of earthly desire, and being remoulded in
the image of permanent loveliness? And this, indeed, the apostle subjoins,
saying, "And be not conformed to this world; but be ye transformed in the
renewing of your mind, that ye may prove what is that good, and acceptable,
and perfect will of God."(5) Since, therefore, true sacrifices are works of
mercy to ourselves or others, done with a reference to God, and since works
of mercy have no other object than the relief of distress or the conferring
of happiness, and since there is no happiness apart from that good of which
it is said, "It is good for me to be very near to God,"(6) it follows that
the whole redeemed city, that is to say, the congregation or community of
the saints, is offered to God as our sacrifice through the great High
Priest, who offered Himself to God in His passion for us, that we might be
members of this glorious head, according to the form of a servant. For it
was this form He offered, in this He was offered, because it is according
to it He is Mediator, in this He is our Priest, in this the Sacrifice.
Accordingly, when the apostle had exhorted us to present our bodies a
living sacrifice, holy, acceptable to God, our reasonable service, and not
to be conformed to the world, but to be transformed in the renewing of our
mind, that we might prove what is that good, and acceptable, and perfect
will of God, that is to say, the true sacrifice of ourselves, he says, "For
I say, through the grace of God which is given unto me, to every man that
is among you, not to think of himself more highly than he ought to think,
but to think soberly, according as God hath dealt to every man the measure
of faith. For, as we have many members in one body, and all members have
not the same office, so we, being many, are one body in Christ, and every
one members one of another, having gifts differing according to the grace
that is given to us."(7) This is the sacrifice of Christians: we, being
many, are one body in Christ. And this also is the sacrifice which the
Church continually celebrates in the sacrament of the altar, known to the
faithful, in which she teaches that she herself is offered in the offering
she makes to God.

CHAP. 7.--OF THE LOVE OF THE HOLY ANGELS, WHICH PROMPTS THEM TO DESIRE THAT
WE WORSHIP THE ONE TRUE GOD, AND NOT THEMSELVES.

   It is very right that these blessed and immortal spirits, who inhabit
celestial dwellings, and rejoice in the communications of their Creator's
fullness, firm in His eternity, assured in His truth, holy by His grace,
since they compassionately and tenderly regard us miserable mortals, and
wish us to become immortal and happy, do not desire us to sacrifice to
themselves, but to Him whose sacrifice they know themselves to be in common
with us. For we and they together are the one city of God, to which it is
said in the psalm, "Glorious things are spoken of thee, O city of God;"(8)
the human part sojourning here below, the angelic aiding from above. For
from that heavenly city, in which God's will is the intelligible and
unchangeable law, from that heavenly council-chamber,--for they sit in
counsel regarding us,--that holy Scripture, descended to us by the ministry
of angels, in which it is written, "He that sacrificeth unto any god, save
unto the Lord only, he shall be utterly destroyed,"(9)--this Scripture,
this law, these precepts, have been confirmed by such miracles, that it is
sufficiently evident to whom these immortal and blessed spirits, who desire
us to be like themselves, wish us to sacrifice.

CHAP. 8.--OF THE MIRACLES WHICH GOD HAS CONDESCENDED TO ADHIBIT THROUGH THE
MINISTRY OF ANGELS, TO HIS PROMISES FOR THE CONFIRMATION OF THE FAITH OF
THE GODLY.

   I should seem tedious were I to recount all the ancient miracles, which
were wrought in attestation of God's promises which He made to Abraham
thousands of years ago, that in his seed all the nations of the earth
should be blessed.(1) For who can but marvel that Abraham's barren wife
should have given birth to a son at an age when not even a prolific woman
could bear children; or, again, that when Abraham sacrificed, a flame from
heaven should have run between the divided parts;(2) or that the angels in
human form, whom he had hospitably entertained, and who had renewed God's
promise of offspring, should also have predicted the destruction of Sodom
by fire from heaven;(3) and that his nephew Lot should have been rescued
from Sodom by the angels as the fire was just descending, while his wife,
who looked back as she went, and was immediately turned into salt, stood as
a sacred beacon warning us that no one who is being saved should long for
what he is leaving? How striking also were the wonders done by Moses to
rescue God's people from the yoke of slavery in Egypt, when the magi of the
Pharaoh, that is, the king of Egypt, who tyrannized over this people, were
suffered to do some wonderful things that they might be vanquished all the
more signally! They did these things by the magical arts and incantations
to which the evil spirits or demons are addicted; while Moses, having as
much greater power as he had right on his side, and having the aid of
angels, easily conquered them in the name of the Lord who made heaven and
earth. And, in fact, the magicians failed at the third plague; whereas
Moses, dealing out the miracles delegated to him, brought ten plagues upon
the land, so that the hard hearts of Pharaoh and the Egyptians yielded, and
the people were let go. But, quickly repenting, and essaying to overtake
the departing Hebrews, who had crossed the sea on dry ground, they were
covered and overwhelmed in the returning waters. What shall I say of those
frequent and stupendous exhibitions of divine power, while the people were
conducted through the wilderness?--of the waters which could not be drunk,
but lost their bitterness, and quenched the thirsty, when at God's command
a piece of wood was cast into them? of the manna that descended from heaven
to appease their hunger, and which begat worms and putrefied when any one
collected more than the appointed quantity, and yet, though double was
gathered on the day before the Sabbath (it not being lawful to gather it on
that day), remained fresh? of the birds which filed the camp, and turned
appetite into satiety when they longed for flesh, which it seemed
impossible to supply to so vast a population? of the enemies who met them,
and opposed their passage with arms, and were defeated without the loss of
a single Hebrew, when Moses prayed with his hands extended in the form of a
cross? of the seditious persons who arose among God's people, and separated
themselves from the divinely-ordered community, and were swallowed up alive
by the earths a visible token of an invisible punishment?  of the rock
struck with the rod, and pouring out waters more than enough for all the
host? of the deadly serpents' bites, sent in just punishment of sin, but
healed by looking at the lifted brazen serpent, so that not only were the
tormented people healed, but a symbol of the crucifixion of death set
before them in this destruction of death by death? It was this serpent
which was preserved in memory of this event, and was afterwards worshipped
by the mistaken people as an idol, and was destroyed by the pious and God-
fearing king Hezekiah, much to his credit.

CHAP. 9.--OF THE ILLICIT ARTS CONNECTED WITH DEMONOLATRY, AND OF WHICH THE
PLATONIST PORPHYRY ADOPTS SOME, AND DISCARDS OTHERS.

   These miracles, and many others of the same nature, which it were
tedious to mention, were wrought for the purpose of commending the worship
of the one true God, and prohibiting the worship of a multitude of false
gods. Moreover, they were wrought by simple faith and godly confidence, not
by the incantations and charms composed under the influence of a criminal
tampering with the unseen world, of an art which they call either magic, or
by the more abominable title necromancy,(4) or the more honorable
designation theurgy; for they wish to discriminate between those whom the
people call magicians, who practise necromancy, and are addicted to illicit
arts and condemned, and those others who seem to them to be worthy of
praise for their practice of theurgy,--the truth, however, being that both
classes are the slaves of the deceitful rites of the demons whom they
invoke under the names of angels.

For even Porphyry promises some kind of purgation of the soul by the help
of theurgy, though he does so with some hesitation and shame, and denies
that this art can secure to any one a return to God; so teat you can detect
his opinion vacillating between the profession of philosophy and an art
which he feels to be presumptuous and sacrilegious. For at one time he
warns us to avoid it as deceitful, and prohibited by law, and dangerous to
those who practise it; then again, as if in deference to its advocates, he
declares it Useful for cleansing one part of the soul, not, indeed, the
intellectual part, by which the truth of things intelligible, which have no
sensible images, is recognized, but the spiritual part, which takes
cognizance of the images of things material. This part, he says, is
prepared and fitted for intercourse with spirits and angels, and for the
vision of the gods, by the help of certain theurgic consecrations, or, as
they call them, mysteries. He acknowledges, however, that these theurgic
mysteries impart to the intellectual soul no such purity as fits it to see
its God, and recognize the things that truly exist. And from this
acknowledgment we may infer what kind of gods these are, and what kind of
vision of them is imparted by theurgic consecrations, if by it one cannot
see the things which truly exist. He says, further, that the rational, or,
as he prefers calling it, the intellectual soul, can pass into the heavens
without the spiritual part being cleansed by theurgic art, and that this
art cannot so purify the spiritual part as to give it entrance to
immortality and eternity. And therefore, although he distinguishes angels
from demons, asserting that the habitation of the latter is in the air,
while the former dwell in the ether and empyrean, and although he advises
us to cultivate the friendship of some demon, who may be able after our
death to assist us, and elevate us at least a little above the earth,--for
he owns that it is by another way we must reach the heavenly society of the
angels,--he at the same time distinctly warns us to avoid the society of
demons, saying that the soul, expiating its sin after death, execrates the
worship of demons by whom it was entangled. And of theurgy itself, though
he recommends it as reconciling angels and demons, he cannot deny that it
treats with powers which either themselves envy the soul its purity, or
serve the arts of those who do envy it. He complains of this through the
mouth of some Chaldaean or other: "A good man in Chaldaea complains," he
says, "that his most strenuous efforts to cleanse his soul were frustrated,
because another man, who had influence in these matters, and who envied him
purity, had prayed to the powers, and bound them by his conjuring not to
listen to his request. Therefore," adds Porphyry, "what the one man bound,
the other could not loose." And from this he concludes that theurgy is a
craft which accomplishes not only good but evil among gods and men; and
that the gods also have passions, and are perturbed and agitated by the
emotions which Apuleius attributed to demons and men, but from which he
preserved the gods by that sublimity of residence, which, in common with
Plato, he accorded to them.

CHAP. 10.--CONCERNING THEURGY, WHICH PROMISES A DELUSIVE PURIFICATION OF
THE SOUL BY THE INVOCATION OF DEMONS.

   But here we have another and a much more learned Platonist than
Apuleius, Porphyry, to wit, asserting that, by I know not what theurgy,
even the gods themselves are subjected to passions and perturbations; for
by adjurations they were so bound and terrified that they could not confer
purity of soul,--were so terrified by him who imposed on them a wicked
command, that they could not by the same theurgy be freed from that terror,
and fulfill the righteous behest of him who prayed to them, or do the good
he sought. Who does not see that all these things are fictions of deceiving
demons, unless he be a wretched slave of theirs, and an alien from the
grace of the true Liberator? For if the Chaldaean had been dealing with
good gods, certainly a well-disposed man, who sought to purify his own
soul, would have had more influence with them than an evil-disposed man
seeking to hinder him. Or, if the gods were just, and considered the man
unworthy of the purification he sought, at all events they should not have
been terrified by an envious person, nor hindered, as Porphyry avows, by
the fear of a stronger deity, but should have simply denied the boon on
their own free judgment. And it is surprising that that well-disposed
Chaldaean, who desired to purify his soul by theurgical rites, found no
superior deity who could either terrify the frightened gods still more, and
force them to confer the boon, or compose their fears, and so enable them
to do good without compulsion,--even supposing that the good theurgist had
no rites by which he himself might purge away the taint of fear from the
gods whom he invoked for the purification of his own soul. And why is it
that there is a god who has power to terrify the inferior gods, and none
who has power to free them from fear? Is there found a god who listens to
the envious man, and frightens the gods from doing good? and is there not
found a god who listens to the well-disposed man, and removes the fear of
the gods that they may do him good? O excellent theurgy! O admirable
purification of the soul!--a theurgy in which the violence of an impure
envy has more influence than the entreaty of purity and holiness. Rather
let us abominate and avoid the deceit of such wicked spirits, and listen to
sound doctrine. As to those who perform these filthy cleansings by
sacrilegious rites, and see in their initiated state (as he further tells
us, though we may question this vision) certain wonderfully lovely
appearances of angels or gods, this is what the apostle refers to when he
speaks of "Satan transforming himself into an angel of light."(1) For these
are the delusive appearances of that spirit who longs to entangle wretched
souls in the deceptive worship of many and false gods, and to turn them
aside from the true worship of the true God, by whom alone they are
cleansed and healed, and who, as was said of Proteus, "turns himself into
all shapes,"(2) equally hurtful, whether he assaults us as an enemy, or
assumes the disguise of a friend.

CHAP. 11.--OF PORPHYRY'S EPISTLE TO ANEBO, IN WHICH HE ASKS FOR INFORMATION
ABOUT THE DIFFERENCES AMONG DEMONS.

   It was a better tone which Porphyry adopted in his letter to Anebo the
Egyptian, in which, assuming the character of an inquirer consulting him,
he unmasks and explodes these sacrilegious arts. In that letter, indeed, he
repudiates all demons, whom he maintains to be so foolish as to be
attracted by the sacrificial vapors, and therefore residing not in the
ether, but in the air beneath the moon, and indeed in the moon itself. Yet
he has not the boldness to attribute to all the demons all the deceptions
and malicious and foolish practices which justly move his indignation. For,
though he acknowledges that as a race demons are foolish, he so far
accommodates himself to popular ideas as to call some of them benignant
demons. He expresses surprise that sacrifices not only incline the gods,
but also compel and force them to do what men wish; and he is at a loss to
understand how the sun and moon, and other visible celestial bodies,--for
bodies he does not doubt that they are,--are considered gods, if the gods
are distinguished from the demons by their incorporeality; also, if they
are gods, how some are called beneficent and others hurtful, and how they,
being corporeal, are numbered with the gods, who are incorporeal. He
inquires further, and still as one in doubt, whether diviners and
wonderworkers are men of unusually powerful souls, or whether the power to
do these things is communicated by spirits from without. He inclines to the
latter opinion, on the ground that it is by the use of stones and herbs
that they lay spells on people, and open closed doors, and do similar
wonders. And on this account, he says, some suppose that there is a race of
beings whose property it is to listen to men,--a race deceitful, full of
contrivances, capable of assuming all forms, simulating gods, demons, and
dead men,--and that it is this race which bring about all these things
which have the appearance of good or evil, but that  what is really good
they never help us in, and are indeed unacquainted with, for they make
wickedness easy, but throw obstacles in the path of those who eagerly
follow virtue; and that they are filled with pride and rashness, delight in
sacrificial odors, are taken with flattery. These and the other
characteristics of this race of deceitful and malicious spirits, who come
into the souls of men and delude their senses, both in sleep and waking, he
describes not as things of which he is himself convinced, but only with so
much suspicion and doubt as to cause him to speak of them as commonly
received opinions. We should sympathize with this great philosopher in the
difficulty he experienced in acquainting himself with and confidently
assailing the whole fraternity of devils, which any Christian old woman
would unhesitatingly describe and most unreservedly detest. Perhaps,
however, he shrank from offending Anebo, to whom he was writing, himself
the most eminent patron of these mysteries, or the others who marvelled at
these magical feats as divine works, and closely allied to the worship of
the gods.

   However, he pursues this subject, and, still in the character of an
inquirer, mentions some things which no sober judgment could attribute to
any but malicious and deceitful powers. He asks why, after the better class
of spirits have been invoked, the worse should be commanded to perform the
wicked desires of men; why they do not hear a man who has just left a
woman's embrace, while they themselves make no scruple of tempting, men to
incest and adultery; why their priests are commanded to abstain from animal
food for fear of being polluted by the corporeal exhalations, while they
themselves are attracted by the fumes of sacrifices and other exhalations;
why the initiated are forbidden to touch a dead body, while their mysteries
are celebrated almost entirely by means of dead bodies; why it is that a
man addicted to any vice should utter threats, not to a demon or to the
soul of a dead man, but to the sun and moon, or some of the heavenly
bodies, which he intimidates by imaginary terrors, that he may wring from
them a real boon,--for he threatens that he will demolish the sky, and such
like impossibilities,--that those gods, being alarmed, like silly children,
with imaginary and absurd threats, may do what they are ordered. Porphyry
further relates that a man, Chaeremon, profoundly versed in these sacred or
rather sacrilegious mysteries, had written that the famous Egyptian
mysteries of Isis and her husband Osiris had very great influence with the
gods to compel them to do what they were ordered, when he who used the
spells threatened to divulge or do away with these mysteries, and cried
with a threatening voice that he would scatter the members of Osiris if
they neglected his orders. Not without reason is Porphyry surprised that a
man should utter such wild and empty threats against the gods,--not against
gods of no account, but against the heavenly gods, and those that shine
with sidereal light,--and that these threats should be effectual to
constrain them with resistless power, and alarm them so that they fulfill
his wishes. Not without reason does he, in the character of an inquirer
into the reasons of these surprising things, give it to be understood that
they are done by that race of spirits which he previously described as if
quoting other people's opinions,--spirits who deceive not, as he said, by
nature, but by their own corruption, and who simulate gods and dead men,
but not, as he said, demons for demons they really are. As to his idea that
by means of herbs, and stones, and animals, and certain incantations and
noises, and drawings, sometimes fanciful, and sometimes copied from the
motions of the heavenly bodies, men create upon earth powers capable of
bringing about various results, all that is only the mystification which
these demons practise on those who are subject to them, for the sake of
furnishing themselves with merriment at the expense of their dupes. Either,
then, Porphyry was sincere in his doubts and inquiries, and mentioned these
things to demonstrate and put beyond question that they were the work, not
of powers which aid us in obtaining life, but of deceitful demons; or, to
take a more favorable view of the philosopher, he adopted this method with
the Egyptian who was wedded to these errors, and was proud of them, that he
might not offend him by assuming the attitude of a teacher, nor discompose
his mind by the altercation of a professed assailant, but, by assuming the
character of an inquirer, and the humble attitude of one who was anxious to
learn, might turn his attention to these matters, and show how worthy they
are to be despised and relinquished. Towards the conclusion of his letter,
he requests Anebo to inform him what the Egyptian wisdom indicates as the
way to blessedness. But as to those who hold intercourse with the gods, and
pester them only for the sake of finding a runaway slave, or acquiring
property, or making a bargain of a marriage, or such things, he declares
that their pretensions to wisdom are vain. He adds that these same gods,
even granting that on other points their utterances were true, were yet so
ill-advised and unsatisfactory in their disclosures about blessedness, that
they cannot be either gods or good demons, but are either that spirit who
is called the deceiver, or mere fictions of the imagination.

CHAP. 12.--OF THE MIRACLES WROUGHT BY THE TRUE GOD THROUGH THE MINISTRY OF
THE HOLY ANGELS.

   Since by means of these arts wonders are done which quite surpass human
power, what choice have we but to believe that these predictions and
operations, which seem to be miraculous and divine, and which at the same
time form no part of the worship of the one God, in adherence to whom, as
the Platonists themselves abundantly testify, all blessedness consists, are
the pastime of wicked spirits, who thus seek to seduce and hinder the truly
godly? On the other hand, we cannot but believe that all miracles, whether
wrought by angels or by other means, so long as they are so done as to
commend the worship and religion of the one God in whom alone is
blessedness, are wrought by those who love us in a true and godly sort, or
through their means, God Himself working in them. For we cannot listen to
those who maintain that the invisible God works no visible miracles; for
even they believe that He made the world, which surely they will not deny
to be visible. Whatever marvel happens in this world, it is certainly less
marvellous than this whole world itself,--I mean the sky and earth, and all
that is in them,--and these God certainly made. But, as the Creator Himself
is hidden and incomprehensible to man, so also is the manner of creation.
Although, therefore, the standing miracle of this visible world is little
thought of, because always before us, yet, when we arouse ourselves to
contemplate it, it is a greater miracle than the rarest and most unheard-of
marvels. For man himself is a greater miracle than any miracle done through
his instrumentality. Therefore God, who made the visible heaven and earth,
does not disdain to work visible miracles in heaven or earth, that He may
thereby awaken the soul which is immersed in things visible to worship
Himself, the Invisible. But the place and time of these miracles are
dependent on His unchangeable will, in which things future are ordered as
if already they were accomplished. For He moves things temporal without
Himself moving in time, He does not in one way know things that are to be,
and, in another, things that have been; neither does He listen to those who
pray otherwise than as He sees those that will pray. For, even when His
angels hear us, it is He Himself who hears us in them, as in His true
temple not made with hands, as in those men who are His saints; and His
answers, though accomplished in time, have been arranged by His eternal
appointment.

CHAP. 13.--OF THE INVISIBLE GOD, WHO HAS OFTEN MADE HIMSELF VISIBLE, NOT AS
HE REALLY IS, BUT AS THE BEHOLDERS COULD BEAR THE SIGHT.

   Neither need we be surprised that God, invisible as He is, should often
have appeared visibly to the patriarchs. For as the sound which
communicates the thought conceived in the silence of the mind is not the
thought itself, so the form by which God, invisible in His own nature,
became visible, was not God Himself. Nevertheless it is He Himself who was
seen under that form, as that thought itself is heard in the sound of the
voice; and the patriarchs recognized that, though the bodily form was not
God, they saw the invisible God. For, though Moses conversed with God, yet
he said, "If I have found grace in Thy sight, show me Thyself, that I may
see and know Thee."(1) And as it was fit that the law, which was given, not
to one man or a few enlightened men, but to the whole of a populous nation,
should be accompanied by awe-inspiring signs, great marvels were wrought,
by the ministry of angels, before the people on the mount where the law was
being given to them through one man, while the multitude beheld the awful
appearances. For the people of Israel believed Moses, not as the
Lacedaemonians believed their Lycurgus, because he had received from
Jupiter or Apollo the laws he gave them. For when the law which enjoined
the worship of one God was given to the people, marvellous signs and
earthquakes, such as the divine wisdom judged sufficient, were brought
about in the sight of all, that they might know that it was the Creator who
could thus use creation to promulgate His law.

CHAP. 14.--THAT THE ONE GOD IS TO BE WORSHIPPED NOT ONLY FOR THE SAKE OF
ETERNAL BLESSINGS, BUT ALSO IN CONNECTION WITH TEMPORAL PROSPERITY, BECAUSE
ALL THINGS ARE REGULATED BY HIS PROVIDENCE.

   The education of the human race, represented by the people of God, has
advanced, like that of an individual, through certain epochs, or, as it
were, ages, so that it might gradually rise from earthly to heavenly
things, and from the visible to the invisible. This object was kept so
clearly in view, that, even in the period when temporal rewards were
promised, the one God was presented as the object of worship, that men
might not acknowledge any other than the true Creator and Lord of the
spirit, even in connection with the earthly blessings of this transitory
life. For he who denies that all things, which either angels or men can
give us, are in the hand of the one Almighty, is a madman. The Platonist
Plotinus discourses concerning providence, and, from the beauty of flowers
and foliage, proves that from the supreme God, whose beauty is unseen and
ineffable, providence reaches down even to these earthly things here below;
and he argues that all these frail and perishing things could not have so
exquisite and elaborate a beauty, were they not fashioned by Him whose
unseen and unchangeable beauty continually pervades all things.(2) This is
proved also by the Lord Jesus, where He says, "Consider the lilies, how
they grow; they toil not, neither do they spin. And yet I say unto you that
Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these. But if God so
clothe the grass of the field, which to-day is and to-morrow is cast into
the oven, how much more shall He clothe you, O ye of little faith.!"(2) It
was best, therefore, that the soul of man, which was still weakly desiring
earthly things, should be accustomed to seek from God alone even these
petty temporal boons. and the earthly necessaries of this transitory life,
which are contemptible in comparison with eternal blessings, in order that
the desire even of these things might not draw it aside from the worship of
Him, to whom we come by despising and forsaking such things.

CHAP. 15.--OF THE MINISTRY OF THE HOLY ANGELS, BY WHICH THEY FULFILL THE
PROVIDENCE OF GOD.

   And so it has pleased Divine Providence, as I have said, and as we read
in the Acts of the Apostles,(1) that the law enjoining the worship of one
God should be given by the disposition of angels. But among them the person
of God Himself visibly appeared, not, indeed, in His proper substance,
which ever remains invisible to mortal eyes, but by the infallible signs
furnished by creation in obedience to its Creator. He made use, too, of the
words of human speech, uttering them syllable by syllable successively,
though in His own nature He speaks not in a bodily but in a spiritual way;
not to sense, but to the mind; not in words that occupy time, but, if I may
so say, eternally, neither beginning to speak nor coming to an end. And
what He says is accurately heard, not by the bodily but by the mental ear
of His ministers and messengers, who are immortally blessed in the
enjoyment of His unchangeable truth; and the directions which they in some
ineffable way receive, they execute without delay or difficulty in the
sensible and visible world. And this law was given in conformity with the
age of the world, and Contained at the first earthly promises, as I have
said, which, however, symbolized eternal ones; and these eternal blessings
few understood, though many took a part in the celebration of their visible
signs. Nevertheless, with one consent both the words and the visible rites
of that law enjoin the worship of one God,--not one of a crowd of gods, but
Him who made heaven and earth, and every soul and every spirit which is
other than Himself. He created; all else was created; and, both for being
and well-being, all things need Him who created them.

CHAP. 16.--WHETHER THOSE ANGELS WHO DEMAND THAT WE PAY THEM DIVINE HONOR,
OR THOSE WHO TEACH US TO RENDER HOLY SERVICE, NOT TO THEMSELVES, BUT TO
GOD, ARE TO BE TRUSTED ABOUT THE WAY TO LIFE ETERNAL.

   What angels, then, are we to believe in this matter of blessed and
eternal life?--those who wish to be worshipped with religious rites and
observances, and require that men sacrifice to them; or those who say that
all this worship is due to one God, the Creator, and teach us to render it
with true piety to Him, by the vision of whom they are themselves already
blessed, and in whom they promise that we shall be so? For that vision of
God is the  beauty of a vision so great, and is so infinitely desirable,
that Plotinus does not hesitate to say that he who enjoys all other
blessings in abundance, and has not this, is supremely miserable.(2) Since,
therefore, miracles are wrought by some angels to induce us to worship this
God, by others, to induce us to worship themselves; and since the former
forbid us to worship these, while the latter dare not forbid us to worship
God, which are we to listen to? Let the Platonists reply, or any
philosophers, or the theurgists, or rather, periurgists,(3)--for this name
is good enough for those who practise such arts. In short, let all men
answer,--if, at least, there survives in them any spark of that natural
perception which, as rational beings, they possess when created,--let them,
I say, tell us whether we should sacrifice to the gods or angels who order
us to sacrifice to them, or to that One to whom we are ordered to sacrifice
by those who forbid us to worship either themselves or these others. If
neither the one party nor the other had wrought miracles, but had merely
uttered commands, the one to sacrifice to themselves, the other forbidding
that, and ordering us to sacrifice to God, a godly mind would have been at
no loss to discern which command proceeded from proud arrogance, and which
from true religion. I will say more. If miracles had been wrought only by
those who demand sacrifice for themselves, while those who forbade this,
and enjoined sacrificing to the one God only, thought fit entirely to
forego the use of visible miracles, the authority of the latter was to be
preferred by all who would use, not their eyes only, but their reason. But
since God, for the sake of commending to us the oracles of His truth, has,
by means of these immortal messengers, who proclaim His majesty and not
their own pride, wrought miracles of surpassing grandeur, certainty, and
distinctness, in order that the weak among the godly might not be drawn
away to false religion by those who require us to sacrifice to them and
endeavor to convince us by stupendous appeals to our senses, who is so
utterly unreasonable as not to choose and follow the truth, when he finds
that it is heralded by even more striking evidences than falsehood?

   As for those miracles which history ascribes to the gods of the
heathen,--I do not refer to those prodigies which at intervals happen from
some unknown physical causes, and which are arranged and appointed by
Divine Providence, such as monstrous births, and unusual meteorological
phenomena, whether startling only, or also injurious, and which are said to
be brought about and removed by communication with demons, and by their
most deceitful craft,--but I refer to these prodigies which manifestly
enough are wrought by their power and force, as, that the household gods
which Aeneas carried from Troy in his flight moved from place to place;
that Tarquin cut a whetstone with a razor; that the Epidaurian serpent
attached himself as a companion to Aesculapius on his voyage to Rome; that
the ship in which the image of the Phrygian mother stood, and which could
not be moved by a host of men and oxen, was moved by one weak woman, who
attached her girdle to the vessel and drew it, as proof of her chastity;
that a vestal, whose virginity was questioned, removed the suspicion by
carrying from the Tiber a sieve full of water without any of it dropping:
these, then, and the like, are by no means to be compared for greatness and
virtue to those which, we read, were wrought among God's people. How much
less can we compare those marvels, which even the laws of heathen nations
prohibit and punish,--I mean the magical and theurgic marvels, of which the
great part are merely illusions practised upon the senses, as the drawing
down of the moon, "that," as Lucan says, "it may shed a stronger influence
on the plants?"(1) And if some of these do seem to equal those which are
wrought by the godly, the end for which they are wrought distinguishes the
two, and shows that ours are incomparably the more excellent. For those
miracles commend the worship of a plurality of gods, who deserve worship
the less the more they demand it; but these of ours commend the worship of
the one God, who, both by the testimony of His own Scriptures, and by the
eventual abolition of sacrifices, proves that He needs no such offerings.
If, therefore, any angels demand sacrifice for themselves, we must prefer
those who demand it, not for themselves, but for God, the Creator of all,
whom they serve. For thus they prove how sincerely they love us, since they
wish by sacrifice to subject us, not to themselves, but to Him by the
contemplation of whom they themselves are blessed, and to bring us to Him
from whom they themselves have never strayed. If, on the other hand, any
angels wish us to sacrifice, not to one, but to many, not, indeed, to
themselves, but to the gods whose angels they are, we must in this case
also prefer those who are the angels of the one God of gods, and who so bid
us to worship Him as to preclude our worshipping any other. But, further,
if it be the case, as their pride and deceitfulness rather indicate, that
they are neither good angels nor the angels of good gods, but wicked
demons, who wish sacrifice to be paid, not to the one only and supreme God,
but to themselves, what better protection against them can we choose than
that of the one God whom the good angels  serve, the angels who bid us
sacrifice, not to themselves, but to Him whose sacrifice we our selves
ought to be?

CHAP. 17.--CONCERNING THE ARE OF THE COVENANT, AND THE MIRACULOUS SIGNS
WHEREBY GOD AUTHENTICATED THE LAW AND THE PROMISE.

   On this account it was that the law of God, given by the disposition of
angels, and which commanded that the one God of gods alone receive sacred
worship, to the exclusion of all others, was deposited in the ark, called
the ark of the testimony. By this name it is sufficiently indicated, not
that God, who was worshipped by all those rites, was shut up and enclosed
in that place, though His responses emanated from it along with signs
appreciable by the senses, but that His will was declared from that throne.
The law itself, too, was engraven on tables of stone, and, as I have said,
deposited in the ark, which the priests carried with due reverence during
the sojourn in the wilderness, along with the tabernacle, which was in like
manner called the tabernacle of the testimony; and there was then an
accompanying sign, which appeared as a cloud by day and as a fire by night;
when the cloud moved, the camp was shifted, and where it stood the camp was
pitched. Besides these signs, and the voices which proceeded from the place
where the ark was, there were other miraculous testimonies to the law. For
when the ark was carried across Jordan, on the entrance to the land of
promise, the upper part of the river stopped in its course, and the lower
part flowed on, so as to present both to the ark and the people dry ground
to pass over. Then, when it was carried seven times round the first hostile
and polytheistic city they came to, its walls suddenly fell down, though
assaulted by no hand, struck by no battering-ram. Afterwards, too, when
they were now resident in the land of promise, and the ark had, in
punishment of their sin, been taken by their enemies, its captors
triumphantly placed it in the temple of their favorite god, and left it
shut up there, but, on opening the temple next day, they found the image
they used to pray to fallen to the ground and shamefully shattered. Then,
being themselves alarmed by portents, and still more shamefully punished,
they restored the ark of the testimony to the people from whom they had
taken it. And what was the manner of its restoration? They placed it on a
wagon, and yoked to it cows from which they had taken the calves, and let
them choose their own course, expecting that in this way the divine will
would be indicated; and the cows without any man driving or directing them,
steadily pursued the way to the Hebrews, without regarding the lowing of
their calves, and thus restored the ark to its worshippers. To God these
and such like wonders are small, but they are mighty to terrify and give
wholesome instruction to men. For if philosophers, and especially the
Platonists, are with justice esteemed wiser than other men, as I have just
been mentioning, because they taught that even these earthly and
insignificant things are ruled by Divine Providence, inferring this from
the numberless beauties which are observable not only in the bodies of
animals, but even in plants and grasses, how much more plainly do these
things attest the presence of divinity which happen at the time predicted,
and in which that religion is commended which forbids the offering of
sacrifice to any celestial, terrestrial, or infernal being, and commands it
to be offered to God only, who alone blesses us by His love for us, and by
our love to Him, and who, by arranging the appointed times of those
sacrifices, and by predicting that they were to pass into a better
sacrifice by a better Priest, testified that He has no appetite for these
sacrifices, but through them indicated others of more substantial
blessing,--and all this not that He Himself may be glorified by these
honors, but that we may be stirred up to worship and cleave to Him, being
inflamed by His love, which is our advantage rather than His?

CHAP. 18.--AGAINST THOSE WHO DENY THAT THE BOOKS OF THE CHURCH ARE TO BE
BELIEVED ABOUT THE MIRACLES WHEREBY THE PEOPLE OF GOD WERE EDUCATED.

   Will some one say that these miracles are false, that they never
happened, and that the records of them are lies? Whoever says so, and
asserts that in such matters no records whatever can be credited, may also
say that there are no gods who care for human affairs. For they have
induced men to worship them only by means of miraculous works, which the
heathen histories testify, and by which the gods have made a display of
their own power rather than done any real service. This is the reason why
we have not undertaken in this work, of which we are now writing the tenth
book, to refute those who either deny that there is any divine power, or
contend that it does not interfere with human affairs, but those who prefer
their own god to our God, the Founder of the holy and most glorious city,
not knowing that He is also the invisible and unchangeable Founder of this
visible and changing world, and the truest bestower of the blessed life
which resides not in things created, but in Himself. For thus speaks His
most trustworthy prophet: "It is good for me to be united to God."(1) Among
philosophers it is a question, what is that end and good to the attainment
of which all our duties are to have a relation? The Psalmist did not say,
It is good for me to have great wealth, or to wear imperial insignia,
purple, sceptre, and diadem; or, as some even of the philosophers have not
blushed to say, It is good for me to enjoy sensual pleasure; or, as the
better men among them seemed to say, My good is my spiritual strength; but,
"It is good for me to be united to God." This he had learned from Him whom
the holy angels, with the accompanying witness of miracles, presented as
the sole object of worship. And hence he himself became the sacrifice of
God, whose spiritual love inflamed him, and into whose ineffable and
incorporeal embrace he yearned to cast himself. Moreover, if the
worshippers of many gods (whatever kind of gods they fancy their own to be)
believe that the miracles recorded in their civil histories, or in the
books of magic, or of the more respectable theurgy, were wrought by these
gods, what reason have they for refusing to believe the miracles recorded
in those writings, to which we owe a credence as much greater as He is
greater to whom alone these writings teach us to sacrifice?

CHAP. 19.--ON THE REASONABLENESS OF OFFERING, AS THE TRUE RELIGION TEACHES,
A VISIBLE SACRIFICE TO THE ONE TRUE AND INVISIBLE GOD.

   As to those who think that these visible sacrifices are suitably
offered to other gods, but that invisible sacrifices, the graces of purity
of mind and holiness of will, should be offered, as greater and better, to
the invisible God, Himself greater and better than alI others, they must be
oblivious that these visible sacrifices are signs of the invisible, as the
words we utter are the signs of things. And therefore, as in prayer or
praise we direct intelligible words to Him to whom in our heart we offer
the very feelings we are expressing, so we are to understand that in
sacrifice we offer visible sacrifice only to Him to whom in our heart we
ought to present ourselves an invisible sacrifice. It is then that the
angels, and all those superior powers who are mighty by their goodness and
piety, regard us with pleasure, and rejoice with us and assist us to the
utmost of their power. But if we offer such worship to them, they decline
it; and when on any mission to men they become visible to the senses, they
positively forbid  it. Examples of this occur in holy writ.   Some fancied
they should, by adoration or sacrifice, pay the same honor to angels as is
due to God, and were prevented from doing so by the angels themselves, and
ordered to render it to Him to whom alone they know it to be due. And the
holy angels have in this been imitated by holy men of God. For Paul and
Barnabas, when they had wrought a miracle of healing in Lycaonia, were
thought to be gods, and the Lycaonians desired to sacrifice to them, and
they humbly and piously declined this honor, and announced to them the God
in whom they should believe. And those deceitful and proud spirits, who
exact worship, do so simply because they know it to be due to the true God.
For that which they take pleasure in is not, as Porphyry says and some
fancy, the smell of the victims, but divine honors. They have, in fact,
plenty odors on all hands, and if they wished more, they could provide them
for themselves. But the spirits who arrogate to themselves divinity are
delighted not with the smoke of carcasses but with the suppliant spirit
which they deceive and hold in subjection, and hinder from drawing near to
God, preventing him from offering himself in sacrifice to God by inducing
him to sacrifice to others.

CHAP. 20.--OF THE SUPREME AND TRUE SACRIFICE WHICH WAS EFFECTED BY THE
MEDIATOR BETWEEN GOD AND MEN.

   And hence that true Mediator, in so far as, by assuming the form of a
servant, He became the Mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus,
though in the form of God He received sacrifice together with the Father,
with whom He is one God, yet in the form of a servant He chose rather to be
than to receive a sacrifice, that not even by this instance any one might
have occasion to suppose that sacrifice should be rendered to any creature.
Thus He is both the Priest who offers and the Sacrifice offered. And He
designed that there should be a daily sign of this in the sacrifice of the
Church, which, being His body, learns to offer herself through Him. Of this
true Sacrifice the ancient sacrifices of the saints were the various and
numerous signs; and it was thus variously figured, just as one thing is
signified by a variety of words, that there may be less weariness when we
speak of it much. To this supreme and true sacrifice all false sacrifices
have given place.

CHAP. 21 .--OF THE POWER DELEGATED TO DEMONS FOR THE TRIAL AND
GLORIFICATION OF THE SAINTS, WHO CONQUER NOT BY PROPITIATING THE SPIRITS OF
THE AIR, BUT BY ABIDING IN GOD.

   The power delegated to the demons at certain appointed and well-
adjusted seasons, that they may give expression to their hostility to the
city of God by stirring up against it the men who are under their
influence, and may not only receive sacrifice from those who willingly
offer it, but may also extort it from the unwilling by violent
persecution;--this power is found to be not merely harmless, but even
useful to the Church, completing as it does the number of martyrs, whom the
city of God esteems as all the more illustrious and honored citizens,
because they have striven even to blood against the sin of impiety. If the
ordinary language of the Church allowed it, we might more elegantly call
these men our heroes. For this name is said to be derived from Juno, who in
Greek is called Here, and hence, according to the Greek myths, one of her
sons was called Heros. And these fables mystically signified that Juno was
mistress of the air, which they suppose to be inhabited by the demons and
the heroes, understanding by heroes the souls of the well-deserving dead.
But for a quite opposite reason would we call our martyrs heroes,--
supposing, as I said, that the usage of ecclesiastical language would admit
of it,--not because they lived along with the demons in the air, but
because they conquered these demons or powers of the air, and among them
Juno herself, be she what she may, not unsuitably represented, as she
commonly is by the poets, as hostile to virtue, and jealous of men of mark
aspiring to the heavens. Virgil, however, unhappily gives way, and yields
to her; for, though he represents her as saying, "I am conquered by
Aeneas,"(1) Helenus gives. Aeneas himself this religious advice:

  "Pay vows to Juno: overbear
   Her queenly soul with gift and prayer."[2]

In conformity with this opinion, Porphyry-expressing, however, not so much
his own views as other people's--says that a good god or genius cannot come
to a man unless the evil genius has been first of all propitiated, implying
that the evil deities had greater power than the good; for, until they have
been appeased and give place, the good can give no assistance; and if the
evil deities oppose, the good can give no help; whereas the evil can do
injury without the good being able to prevent them. This is not the way of
the true and truly holy religion; not thus do our martyrs conquer Juno,
that is to say, the powers of the air, who envy the virtues of the pious.
Our heroes, if we could so call them, overcome Here, not by suppliant
gifts, but by divine virtues. As Scipio, who conquered Africa by his valor,
is more suitably styled Africanus than if he had appeased his enemies by
gifts, and so won their mercy.

CHAP. 22.--WHENCE THE SAINTS DERIVE POWER AGAINST DEMONS AND TRUE
PURIFICATION OF HEART.

   It is by true piety that men of God cast out the hostile power of the
air which opposes  godliness; it is by exorcising it, not by propitiating
it; and they overcome all the temptations of the adversary by praying, not
to him, but to their own God against him. For the devil cannot conquer or
subdue any but those who are in league with sin; and therefore he is
conquered in the name of Him who assumed humanity, and that without sin,
that Himself being both Priest and Sacrifice, He might bring about the
remission of sins, that is to say, might bring it about through the
Mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus, by whom we are
reconciled to God, the cleansing from sin being accomplished. For men are
separated from God only by sins, from which we are in this life cleansed
not by our own virtue, but by the divine compassion; through His
indulgence, not through our own power. For, whatever virtue we call our own
is itself bestowed upon us by His goodness. And we might attribute too much
to ourselves while in the flesh, unless we lived in the receipt of pardon
until we laid it down. This is the reason why there has been vouchsafed to
us, through the Mediator, this grace, that we who are polluted by sinful
flesh should be cleansed by the likeness of sinful flesh. By this grace of
God, wherein He has shown His great compassion toward us, we are both
governed by faith in this life, and, after this life, are led onwards to
the fullest perfection by the vision of immutable truth.

CHAP. 23. --OF THE PRINCIPLES WHICH, ACCORDING TO THE PLATONISTS, REGULATE
THE PURIFICATION OF THE SOUL.

   Even Porphyry asserts that it was revealed by divine oracles that we
are not purified by any sacrifices(1) to sun or moon, meaning it to be
inferred that we are not purified by sacrificing to any gods. For what
mysteries can purify, if those of the sun and moon, which are esteemed the
chief of the celestial gods, do not purify? He says, too, in the same
place, that "principles" can purify, lest it should be supposed, from his
saying that sacrificing to the sun and moon cannot purify, that sacrificing
to some other of the host of gods might do so. And what he as a Platonist
means by "principles," we know.(2) For he speaks of God the Father and God
the Son, whom he calls (writing in Greek) the intellect or mind of the
Father;(3) but of the Holy Spirit he says either nothing, or nothing
plainly, for I do not understand what other he speaks of as holding the
middle place between these two. For if, like Plotinus in his discussion
regarding the three principal substances,(4) he wished us to understand by
this third the soul of nature, he would certainly not have given it the
middle place between these two, that is, between the Father and the Son.
For Plotinus places the soul of nature after the intellect of the Father,
while Porphyry, making it the mean, does not place it after, but between
the others. No doubt he spoke according to his light, or as he thought
expedient; but we assert that the Holy Spirit is the Spirit not of the
Father only, nor of the Son only, but of both. For philosophers speak as
they have a mind to, and in the most difficult matters do not scruple to
offend religious ears; but we are bound to speak according to a certain
rule, lest freedom of speech beget impiety of opinion about the matters
themselves of which we speak.

CHAP. 24.--OF THE ONE ONLY TRUE PRINCIPLE WHICH ALONE PURIFIES AND RENEWS
HUMAN NATURE.

   Accordingly, when we speak of God, we do not affirm two or three
principles, no more than we are at liberty to affirm two or three gods;
although, speaking of each, of the Father, or of the Son, or of the Holy
Ghost, we confess that each is God: and yet we do not say, as the Sabellian
heretics say, that the Father is the same as the Son, and the Holy Spirit
the same as the Father and the Son; but we say that the Father is the
Father of the Son, and the Son the Son of the Father, and that the Holy
Spirit of the Father and the Son is neither the Father nor the Son. It was
therefore truly said that man is cleansed only by a Principle, although the
Platonists erred in speaking in the plural of principles. But Porphyry,
being under the dominion of these envious powers, whose influence he was at
once ashamed of and afraid to throw off, refused to recognize that Christ
is the Principle by whose incarnation we are purified. Indeed he despised
Him, because of the flesh itself which He assumed, that He might offer a
sacrifice for our purification,--a great mystery, unintelligible to
Porphyry's pride, which that true and benignant Redeemer brought low by His
humility, manifesting Himself to mortals by the mortality which He assumed,
and which the malignant and deceitful mediators are proud of wanting,
promising, as the boon of immortals, a deceptive assistance to wretched
men. Thus the good and true Mediator showed that it is sin which is evil,
and not the substance or nature of flesh; for this, together with the human
soul, could without sin be both assumed and retained, and laid down in
death, and changed to something better by resurrection. He showed also that
death itself, although the punishment of sin, was submitted to by Him for
our sakes without sin, and must not be evaded by sin on our part, but
rather, if opportunity serves, be borne for righteousness' sake. For he was
able to expiate sins by dying, because He both died, and not for sin of His
own. But He has not been recognized by Porphyry as the Principle, otherwise
he would have recognized Him as the Purifier. The Principle is neither the
flesh nor the human soul in Christ but the Word by which all things were
made. The flesh, therefore, does not by its own virtue purify, but by
virtue of the Word by which it was assumed, when "the Word became flesh and
dwelt among us."(1) For speaking mystically of eating His flesh, when those
who did not understand Him were offended and went away, saying, "This is an
hard saying, who can hear it?" He answered to the rest who remained, "It is
the Spirit that quickeneth; the flesh profiteth nothing."(2) The Principle,
therefore, having assumed a human soul and flesh, cleanses the soul and
flesh of believers. Therefore, when the Jews asked Him who He was, He
answered that He was the Principle.(3) And this we carnal and feeble men,
liable to  sin, and involved in the darkness of ignorance, could not
possibly understand, unless we were cleansed and healed by Him, both by
means of what we were, and of what we were not. For we were men, but we
were not righteous; whereas in His incarnation there was a human nature,
but it was righteous, and not sinful. This is the mediation whereby a hand
is stretched to the lapsed and fallen; this is the seed "ordained by
angels," by whose ministry the law also was given enjoining the worship of
one God, and promising that this Mediator should come.

CHAP. 25.--THAT ALL THE SAINTS, BOTH UNDER THE LAW AND BEFORE IT, WERE
JUSTIFIED BY FAITH IN THE MYSTERY OF CHRIST'S INCARNATION.

   It was by faith in this mystery, and godliness of life, that
purification was attainable even by the saints of old, whether before the
law was given to the Hebrews (for God and the angels were even then present
as instructors), or in the periods under the law, although the promises of
spiritual things, being presented in figure, seemed to be carnal, and hence
the name of Old Testament. For it was then the prophets lived, by whom, as
by angels, the same promise was announced; and among them was he whose
grand and divine sentiment regarding the end and supreme good of man I have
just now quoted, "It is good for me to cleave to God."(4) In this psalm the
distinction between the Old and New Testaments is distinctly announced. For
the Psalmist says, that when he saw that the carnal and earthly promises
were abundantly enjoyed by the ungodly, his feet were almost gone, his
steps had well-nigh slipped; and that it seemed to him as if he had served
God in vain, when he saw that those who despised God increased in that
prosperity which he looked for at God's hand. He says, too, that, in
investigating this matter with the desire of understanding why it was so,
he had labored in vain, until he went into the sanctuary of God, and
understood the end of those whom he had erroneously considered happy. Then
he understood that they were cast down by that very thing, as he says,
which they had made their boast, and that they had been consumed and
perished for their inequities;  and  that that whole fabric of temporal
prosperity had become as a dream when one awaketh, and suddenly finds
himself destitute of all the joys he had imaged in sleep. And, as in this
earth or earthy city they seemed to themselves to be great, he says, "O
Lord, in Thy city Thou wilt reduce their image to  nothing." He also shows
how beneficial it had been for him to seek even earthly blessings only from
the one true God, in whose power are all things, for he says, "As a beast
was I before Thee, and I am always with Thee." "As a beast," he says,
meaning that he was stupid. For I ought to have sought from Thee such
things  as the ungodly could not enjoy as well as I, and not those things
which I saw them enjoying in abundance, and hence concluded I was serving
Thee in vain, because they who declined to serve Thee had what I had not.
Nevertheless, "I am always with Thee," because even in my desire for such
things I did not pray to other gods. And consequently he goes on, "Thou
hast holden me by my right hand, and by Thy counsel Thou hast guided me,
and with glory hast taken me up;" as if all earthly advantages were left-
hand blessings, though, when he saw them enjoyed by the wicked, his feet
had almost gone. "For what," he says, "have I in heaven, and what have I
desired from Thee upon earth?" He blames himself, and is justly displeased
with himself; because, though he had in heaven so vast a possession (as he
afterwards understood), he yet sought from his God on earth a transitory
and fleeting happiness;--a happiness of mire, we may say. "My heart and my
flesh," he says, "fail, O God of my heart." Happy failure, from things
below to things above! And hence in another psalm He says, "My soul
longeth, yea, even faileth, for the courts of the Lord."(1) Yet, though he
had said of both his heart and his flesh that they were failing, he did not
say, O God of my heart and my flesh, but, O God of my heart; for by the
heart the flesh is made clean. Therefore, says the Lord, "Cleanse that
which is within, and the outside shall be clean also."(2) He then says that
God Himself,--not anything received from Him, but Himself,--is his portion.
"The God of my heart, and my portion for ever." Among the various objects
of human choice, God alone satisfied him. "For, lo," he says, "they that
are far from Thee shall perish: Thou destroyest all them that go a-whoring
from Thee,"--that is, who prostitute themselves to many gods. And then
follows the verse for which all the rest of the psalm seems to prepare: "It
is good for me to cleave to God,"--not to go far off; not to go a-whoring
with a multitude of gods. And then shall this union with God be perfected,
when all that is to be redeemed in us has been redeemed. But for the
present we must, as he goes on to say, "place our hope in God." "For that
which is seen," says the apostle, "is not hope. For what a man sees, why
does he yet hope for? But if we hope for that we see not, then do we with
patience wait for it."(3) Being, then, for the present established in this
hope, let us do what the Psalmist further indicates, and become in our
measure angels or messengers of God, declaring His will, and praising His
glory and His grace. For when he had said, "To place my hope in God," he
goes on, "that I may declare all Thy praises in the gates of the daughter
of Zion." This is the most glorious city of God; this is the city which
knows and worships one God: she is celebrated by the holy angels, who
invite us to their society, and desire us to become fellow-citizens with
them in this city; for they do not wish us to worship them as our gods, but
to join them in worshipping their God and ours; nor to sacrifice to them,
but, together with them, to become a sacrifice to God. Accordingly, whoever
will lay aside malignant obstinacy, and consider these things, shall be
assured that all these blessed and immortal spirits, who do not envy us
(for if they envied they were not blessed), but rather love us, and desire
us to be as blessed as themselves, look on us with greater pleasure, and
give us greater assistance, when we join them in worshipping one God,
Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, than if we were to offer to themselves
sacrifice and worship.

CHAP. 26.--OF PORPHYRY'S WEAKNESS IN WAVERING BETWEEN THE CONFESSION OF THE
TRUE GOD AND THE WORSHIP OF DEMONS.

   I know not how it is so, but it seems to me that Porphyry brushed for
his friends the theurgists; for he knew all that I have adduced, but did
not frankly condemn polytheistic worship. He said, in fact, that there are
some angels who visit earth, and reveal divine truth to theurgists, and
others who publish on earth the things that belong to the Father, His
height and depth. Can we believe, then, that the angels whose office it is
to declare the will of the Father, wish us to be  subject to any but Him
whose will they declare? And hence, even this Platonist himself judiciously
observes that we should rather imitate than invoke them. We ought not,
then, to fear that we may offend these immortal and happy subjects of the
one God by not sacrificing to them; for this they know to be due only to
the one true God, in allegiance to whom they themselves find their
blessedness, and therefore they will not have it given to them, either in
figure or in the reality, which the mysteries of sacrifice symbolized. Such
arrogance belongs to proud and wretched demons, whose disposition is
diametrically opposite to the piety of those who are subject to God, and
whose blessedness consists in attachment to Him. And, that we also may
attain to this bliss, they aid us, as is fit, with sincere kindliness, and
usurp over us no dominion, but declare to us Him under whose rule we are
then fellow-subjects. Why, then, O philosopher, do you still fear to speak
freely against the powers which are inimical both to true virtue and to the
gifts of the true God? Already you have discriminated between the angels
who proclaim God's will, and those who visit theurgists, drawn down by I
know not what art. Why do you still ascribe to these latter the honor of
declaring divine truth? If they do not declare the will of the Father, what
divine revelations can they make? Are not these the evil spirits who were
bound over by the incantations of an  envious man,(1) that they should not
grant purity of soul to another, and could not, as you say, be set free
from these bonds by a good man anxious for purity, and recover power over
their own actions? Do you still doubt whether these are wicked demons; or
do you, perhaps, feign ignorance, that you may not give offence to the
theurgists, who have allured you by their secret rites, and have taught
you, as a mighty boon, these insane and pernicious devilries? Do you dare
to elevate above the air, and even to heaven, these envious powers, or
pests, let me rather call them, less worthy of the name of sovereign than
of slave, as you yourself own; and are you not ashamed to place them even
among your sidereal gods, and so put a slight upon the stars themselves?

CHAP. 27.--OF THE IMPIETY OF PORPHYRY, WHICH IS WORSE THAN EVEN THE MISTAKE
OF APULEIUS.

   How much more tolerable and accordant with human feeling is the error
of your Platonist co-sectary Apuleius! for he attributed the diseases and
storms of human passions only to the demons who occupy a grade beneath the
moon, and makes even this avowal as by constraint regarding gods whom he
honors; hut the superior and celestial gods, who inhabit the ethereal
regions, whether visible, as the sun, moon, and other luminaries, whose
brilliancy makes them conspicuous, or invisible, but believed in by him, he
does his utmost to  remove beyond the slightest stain of these
perturbations. It is not, then, from Plato, but from your Chaldaean
teachers you have learned to elevate human vices to the ethereal and
empyreal regions of the world and to the celestial firmament, in order that
your theurgists might be able to obtain from your gods divine revelations;
and yet you make yourself superior to these divine revelations by your
intellectual life, which dispenses with these theurgic purifications as not
needed by a philosopher. But, by way of rewarding your teachers, you
recommend these arts to other men, who, not being philosophers, may be
persuaded to use what you acknowledge to be useless to yourself, who are
capable of higher things; so that those who cannot avail themselves of the
virtue of philosophy, which is too arduous for the multitude, may, at your
instigation, betake themselves to theurgists by whom they may be purified,
not, indeed, in the intellectual, but in the spiritual part of the soul.
Now, as the persons who are unfit for philosophy form incomparably the
majority of mankind, more may be compelled to consult these secret and
illicit teachers of yours than frequent the Platonic schools. For these
most impure demons, pretending to be ethereal gods, whose herald and
messenger you have become, have promised that those who are purified by
theurgy in the  spiritual part of their soul shall not indeed return to the
Father, but shall dwell among the ethereal gods above the aerial regions.
But such fancies are not listened to by the multitudes of men whom Christ
came to set free from the tyranny of demons. For in Him they have the most
gracious cleansing, in which mind, spirit, and body alike participate. For,
in order that He might heal the whole man from the plague of sin, He took
without sin the whole human nature. Would that you had known Him, and would
that you had committed yourself for healing to Him rather than to your own
frail and infirm human virtue, or to pernicious and curious arts! He would
not have deceived you; for Him your own oracles, on your own showing,
acknowledged holy and immortal. It is of Him, too, that the most famous
poet speaks, poetically indeed, since he applies it to the person of
another, yet truly, if you refer it to Christ, saying, "Under thine
auspices, if any traces of our crimes remain, they shall be obliterated,
and earth freed from its perpetual fear."(1) By which he indicates that, by
reason of the infirmity which attaches to this life, the greatest progress
in virtue and righteousness leaves room for the existence, if not of
crimes, yet of the traces of crimes, which are obliterated only by that
Saviour of whom this verse speaks. For that he did not say this at the
prompting of his own fancy, Virgil tells us in almost the last verse of
that 4th Eclogue, when he says, "The last age predicted by the Cumaean
sibyl has now arrived;" whence it plainly appears that this had been
dictated by the Cumaean sibyl. But those theurgists, or rather demons, who
assume the appearance and form of gods, pollute rather than purify the
human spirit by false appearances and the delusive mockery of unsubstantial
forms. How can those whose own spirit is unclean cleanse the spirit of man?
Were they not unclean, they would not be bound by the incantations of an
envious man, and would neither be afraid nor grudge to bestow that hollow
boon which they promise. But it is sufficient for our purpose that you
acknowledge that the intellectual soul, that is, our mind, cannot be
justified by theurgy; and that even the spiritual or inferior part of our
soul cannot by this act be made eternal and immortal, though you maintain
that it can be purified by it. Christ, however, promises life eternal; and
therefore to Him the world flocks, greatly to your indignation, greatly
also to your astonishment and confusion. What avails your forced avowal
that theurgy leads men astray, and deceives vast numbers by its ignorant
and foolish teaching, and that it is the most manifest mistake to have
recourse by prayer and sacrifice to angels and principalities, when at the
same time, to save yourself from the charge of spending labor in vain on
such arts, you direct men to the theurgists, that by their means men, who
do not live by the rule of the intellectual soul, may have their spiritual
soul purified?

CHAP. 28.--HOW IT IS THAT PORPHYRY HAS BEEN SO BLIND AS NOT TO RECOGNIZE
THE TRUE WISDOM--CHRIST.

   You drive men, therefore, into the most palpable error. And yet you are
not ashamed of doing so much harm, though you call yourself a lover of
virtue and wisdom. Had you been true and faithful in this profession, you
would have recognized Christ, the virtue of God and the wisdom of God, and
would not, in the pride of vain science, have revolted from His wholesome
humility. Nevertheless you acknowledge that the spiritual part of the soul
can be purified by the virtue of chastity without the aid of those theurgic
arts and mysteries which you wasted your time in learning. You even say,
sometimes, that these mysteries do not raise the soul after death, so that,
after the termination of this life, they seem to be of no service even to
the part you call spiritual; and yet you recur on every opportunity to
these arts, for no other purpose, so far as I see, than to appear an
accomplished theurgist, and gratify those who are curious in illicit arts,
or else to inspire others with the same curiosity. But we give you all
praise for saying that this art is to be feared, both on account of the
legal enactments against it, and by reason of the danger involved in the
very practice of it. And would that in this, at least, you were listened to
by its wretched votaries, that they might be withdrawn from entire
absorption in it, or might even be preserved from tampering with it at all!
You say, indeed, that ignorance, and the numberless vices resulting from
it, cannot be removed by any mysteries, but only by the patriko`s nou^s,
that is, the Father's mind or intellect conscious of the Father's will. But
that Christ is this mind you do not believe; for Him you despise on account
of the body He took of a woman and the shame of the cross; for your lofty
wisdom spurns such low and contemptible things, and soars to more exalted
regions. But He fulfills what the holy prophets truly predicted regarding
Him: "I will destroy the wisdom of  the wise, and bring to nought the
prudence  of the prudent."(2) For He does not destroy and bring to nought
His own gift in them,  but what they arrogate to themselves, and do not
hold of Him. And hence the apostle, having quoted this testimony from the
prophet, adds, "Where is the wise? where is  the scribe? where is the
disputer of this world? Hath not God made foolish the wisdom of this world?
For after that, in the wisdom of God, the world by wisdom knew   not God,
it pleased God by the foolishness of preaching to save them that believe.
For  the Jews require a sign, and the Greeks seek after wisdom; but we
preach Christ crucified, unto the Jews a stumbling-block, and unto the
Greeks foolishness; but unto them which are called, both Jews and Greeks,
Christ the power of God, and the wisdom of God. Because the foolishness of
God is wiser than men; and the weakness of God is stronger than men."(1)
This is despised as a weak and foolish thing by those who are wise and
strong in themselves; yet this is the grace which heals the weak, who do
not proudly boast a blessedness of their own, but rather humbly acknowledge
their real misery.

CHAP. 29.--OF THE INCARNATION OF OUR LORD JESUS CHRIST, WHICH THE
PLATONISTS IN THEIR IMPIETY BLUSH TO ACKNOWLEDGE.

   You proclaim the Father and His Son, whom you call the Father's
intellect or mind, and between these a third, by whom we suppose you mean
the Holy Spirit, and in your own fashion you call these three Gods. In
this, though your expressions are inaccurate, you do in some sort, and as
through a veil, see what we should strive towards; but the incarnation of
the unchangeable Son of God, whereby we are saved, and are enabled to reach
the things we believe, or in part understand, this is what you refuse to
recognize. You see in a fashion, although at a distance, although with
filmy eye, the country in which we should abide; but the way to it you know
not. Yet you believe in grace, for you say it is granted to few to reach
God by virtue of intelligence. For you do not say, "Few have thought fit or
have wished," but, "It has been granted to few,"--distinctly acknowledging
God's grace, not man's sufficiency. You also use this word more expressly,
when, in accordance with the opinion of Plato, you make no doubt that in
this life a man cannot by any means attain to perfect wisdom, but that
whatever is lacking is in the future life made up to those who live
intellectually, by God's providence and grace. Oh, had you but recognized
the grace of God in Jesus Christ our Lord, and that very incarnation of
His, wherein He assumed a human soul and body, you might have seemed the
brightest example of grace!(2) But what am I doing? I know it is useless to
speak to a dead man,--useless, at least, so far as regards you, but perhaps
not in vain for those who esteem you highly, and love you on account of
their love of wisdom or curiosity about those arts which you ought not to
have learned; and these persons I address in your name. The grace of God
could not have been more graciously commended to us than thus, that the
only Son of God, remaining unchangeable in Himself, should assume humanity,
and should give us the hope of His love, by means of the mediation of a
human nature, through which we, from the condition of men, might come to
Him who was so far off,--the immortal from the mortal; the unchangeable
from the changeable; the just from the unjust; the blessed from the
wretched. And, as He had given us a natural instinct to desire blessedness
and immortality, He Himself continuing to be blessed; but assuming
mortality, by enduring what we fear, taught us to despise it, that what we
long for He might bestow upon us.

   But in order to your acquiescence in this truth, it is lowliness that
is requisite, and to this it is extremely difficult to bend you. For what
is there incredible, especially to men like you, accustomed to speculation,
which might have predisposed you to believe in this,--what is there
incredible, I say, in the assertion that God assumed a human soul and body?
You yourselves ascribe such excellence to the intellectual soul, which is,
after all, the human soul, that you maintain that it can become
consubstantial with that intelligence of the Father whom you believe in as
the Son of God. What incredible thing is it, then, if some one Soul be
assumed by Him in an ineffable and unique manner for the salvation of many?
Moreover, our nature itself  testifies that a man is incomplete unless a
body be united with the soul. This certainly would be more incredible, were
it not of all  things the most common; for we should more easily believe in
a union between spirit and  spirit, or, to use your own terminology,
between the incorporeal and the incorporeal, even though the one were
human, the other divine, the one changeable and the other unchangeable,
than in a union between the corporeal and the incorporeal. But perhaps it
is the unprecedented birth of a body from a virgin that staggers you? But,
so far from this being a difficulty, it ought rather to assist you to
receive our religion, that a miraculous person was born miraculously. Or,
do you find a difficulty in the fact that, after His body had been given up
to death, and had been changed into a higher kind of body by resurrection,
and was now no longer mortal but incorruptible, He carried it up into
heavenly places? Perhaps you refuse to believe this, because you remember
that Porphyry, in these very books from which I have cited so much, and
which treat of the return of the soul, so frequently teaches that a body of
every kind is to be escaped from, in order that the soul may dwell in
blessedness with God. But here, in place of following Porphyry, you ought
rather to have corrected him, especially since you agree with him in
believing such incredible things about the soul of this visible world and
huge material frame. For, as scholars of Plato, you hold that the world is
an animal, and a very happy animal, which you wish to be also everlasting.
How, then, is it never to be loosed from a body, and yet never lose its
happiness, if, in order to the happiness of the soul, the body must be left
behind? The sun, too, and the other stars, you not only acknowledge to be
bodies, in which you have the cordial assent of all seeing men, but also,
in obedience to what you reckon a profounder insight, you declare that they
are very blessed animals, and eternal, together with their bodies. Why is
it, then, that when the Christian faith is pressed upon you, you forget, or
pretend to ignore, what you habitually discuss or teach? Why is it that you
refuse to be Christians, on the ground that you hold opinions which, in
fact, you yourselves demolish? Is it not because Christ came in lowliness,
and ye are proud? The precise nature of the resurrection bodies of the
saints may sometimes occasion discussion among those who are best read in
the Christian Scriptures; yet there is not among us the smallest doubt that
they shall be everlasting, and of a nature exemplified in the instance of
Christ's risen body. But whatever be their nature, since we maintain that
they shall be absolutely incorruptible and immortal, and shall offer no
hindrance to the soul's contemplation, by which it is fixed in God, and as
you say that among the celestials the bodies of the eternally blessed are
eternal, why do you maintain that, in order to blessedness, every body must
be escaped from? Why do you thus seek such a plausible reason for escaping
from the Christian faith, if not because, as I again say, Christ is humble
and ye proud? Are ye ashamed to be corrected? This is the vice of the
proud. It is, forsooth, a degradation for learned men to pass from the
school of Plato to the discipleship of Christ, who by His Spirit taught a
fisherman to think and to say, "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word
was with God, and the Word was God. The same was in the beginning with God.
All things were made by Him; and without Him was not anything made that was
made. In Him was life; and the life was the light of men. And the light
shineth in darkness; and the darkness comprehended it not."(1) The old
saint Simplicianus, afterwards bishop of Milan, used to tell me that a
certain Platonist was in the habit of saying that this opening passage of
the holy gospel, entitled, According to John, should be written in letters
of gold, and hung up in all churches in the most conspicuous place. But the
proud scorn to take God for their Master, because "the Word was made flesh
and dwelt among us."(2) So that, with these miserable creatures, it is not
enough that they are sick, but they boast of their sickness, and are
ashamed of the medicine which could heal them. And, doing so, they secure
not elevation, but a more disastrous fall.

CHAP.30.--PORPHYRY'S EMENDATIONS AND MODIFICATIONS OF PLATONISM,

   If it is considered unseemly to emend anything which Plato has touched,
why did Porphyry himself make emendations, and these not a few? for it is
very certain that Plato wrote that the souls of men return after death to
the bodies of beasts.(3) Plotinus also, Porphyry's teacher, held this
opinion;(4) yet Porphyry justly rejected it. He was of opinion that human
souls return indeed into human bodies, but not into the bodies they had
left, but other new bodies. He shrank from the other opinion, lest a woman
who had returned into a mule might possibly carry her own son on her back.
He did not shrink, however, from a theory which admitted the  possibility
of a mother coming back into a girl and marrying her own son. How much more
honorable a creed is that which was taught by the holy and truthful angels,
uttered by the prophets who were moved by God's Spirit, preached by Him who
was foretold as the coming Saviour by His forerunning heralds, and by the
apostles whom He sent forth, and who filled the whole world with the
gospel,--how much more honorable, I say, is the belief that souls return
once for all to their own bodies, than that they return again and again to
divers bodies? Nevertheless Porphyry, as I have said, did considerably
improve upon this opinion, in so far, at least, as he maintained that human
souls could transmigrate only into human bodies, and made no scruple about
demolishing the bestial prisons into which Plato had wished to cast them.
He says, too, that God put the soul into the world that it might recognize
the evils of matter, and return to the Father, and be for ever emancipated
from the polluting contact of matter. And although here is some
inappropriate thinking (for the soul is rather given to the body that it
may do good; for it would not learn evil unless it did it), yet he corrects
the opinion of other Platonists, and that on a point of no small
importance, inasmuch as he avows that the soul, which is purged from all
evil and received to the Father's presence, shall never again suffer the
ills of this life. By this opinion he quite subverted the favorite Platonic
dogma, that as dead men are made out of living ones, so living men are made
out of dead ones; and he exploded the idea which Virgil seems to have
adopted from Plato, that the purified souls which have been sent into the
Elysian fields (the poetic name for the joys of the blessed) are summoned
to the river Lethe, that is, to the oblivion of the past,

  "That earthward they may pass once more,
   Remembering not the things before,
   And with a blind propension yearn
   To fleshly bodies to return."(1)

This found no favor with Porphyry, and very justly; for it is indeed
foolish to believe that souls should desire to return from that life, which
cannot be very blessed unless by the assurance of its permanence, and to
come back into this life, and to the pollution of corruptible bodies, as if
the result of perfect purification were only to make defilement desirable.
For if perfect purification effects the oblivion of all evils, and the
oblivion of evils creates a desire for a body in which the soul may again
be entangled with evils, then the supreme felicity will be the cause of
infelicity, and the perfection of wisdom the cause of foolishness, and the
purest cleansing the cause of defilement. And, however long the blessedness
of the soul last, it cannot be rounded on truth, if, in order to be
blessed, it must be deceived. For it cannot be blessed unless it be free
from fear. But, to be free from fear, it must be under the false impression
that it shall be always blessed,--the false impression, for it is destined
to be also at some time miserable. How, then, shall the soul rejoice in
truth, whose joy is rounded on falsehood? Porphyry saw this, and therefore
said that the purified soul returns to the Father, that it may never more
be entangled in the polluting contact with evil. The opinion, therefore, of
some Platonists, that there is a necessary revolution carrying souls away
and bringing them round again to the same things, is raise. But, were it
true, what were the advantage of knowing it? Would the Platonists presume
to allege their superiority to us, because we were in this life ignorant of
what they themselves were doomed to be ignorant of when perfected in purity
and wisdom in another and better life, and which they must be ignorant of
if they are to be blessed? If it were most absurd and foolish  to say so,
then certainly we must prefer Porphyry's opinion to the idea of a
circulation of souls through constantly alternating happiness and misery.
And if this is just, here is a Platonist emending Plato, here is a man who
saw what Plato did not see, and who did not shrink from correcting so
illustrious a master, but preferred truth to Plato.

CHAP. 31.--AGAINST THE ARGUMENTS ON WHICH THE PLATONISTS GROUND THEIR
ASSERTION THAT THE HUMAN SOUL IS CO-ETERNAL WITH GOD.

   Why, then, do we not rather believe the divinity in those matters,
which human talent cannot fathom? Why do we not credit the assertion of
divinity, that the soul is not co-eternal with God, but is created, and
once was not? For the Platonists seemed to themselves to allege an adequate
reason for their rejection of this doctrine, when they affirmed that
nothing could be everlasting which had not always existed. Plato, however,
in writing concerning the world and the gods in it, whom the Supreme made,
most expressly states that they had a beginning and yet would have no end,
but, by the sovereign will of the Creator, would endure eternally. But, by
way of interpreting this, the Platonists have discovered that he meant a
beginning, not of time, but of cause. "For as if a foot," they say, "had
been always from eternity in dust, there would always have been a print
underneath it; and yet no one would doubt that this print was made by the
pressure of the foot, nor that, though the one was made by the other,
neither was prior to the other; so," they say, "the world and the gods
created in it have always been, their Creator always existing, and yet they
were made." If, then, the soul has always existed, are we to say that its
wretchedness has always existed? For if there is something in it which was
not from eternity, but began in time, why is it impossible that the soul
itself, though not previously existing, should begin to be in time? Its
blessedness, too, which, as he owns, is to be more stable, and indeed
endless, after the soul's experience of evils,--this undoubtedly has a
beginning in time, and yet is to be always, though previously it had no
existence. This whole argumentation, therefore, to establish that nothing
can be endless except that which has had no beginning, falls to the ground.
For here we find the blessedness of the soul, which has a beginning, and
yet has no end. And, therefore, let the incapacity of man give place to the
authority of God; and let us take our belief regarding the true religion
from the ever-blessed spirits, who do not seek for themselves that honor
which they know to be due to their God and ours, and who do not command us
to sacrifice save only to Him, whose sacrifice, as I have often said
already, and must often say again, we and they ought together to be,
offered through that Priest who offered Himself to death a sacrifice for
us, in that human nature which He assumed, and according to which He
desired to be our Priest.

CHAP. 32.--OF THE UNIVERSAL WAY OF THE SOUL'S DELIVERANCE, WHICH PORPHYRY
DID NOT FIND BECAUSE HE DID NOT RIGHTLY SEEK IT, AND WHICH THE GRACE OF
CHRIST HAS ALONE THROWN OPEN.

   This is the religion which possesses the universal way for delivering
the soul; for except by this way, none can be delivered. This is a kind of
royal way, which alone leads to a kingdom which does not totter like all
temporal dignities, but stands firm on eternal foundations. And when
Porphyry says, towards the end of the first book De Regressu Animae, that
no system of doctrine which furnishes the universal way for delivering the
soul has as yet been received, either from the truest philosophy, or from
the ideas and practices of the Indians, or from the reasoning(1) of the
Chaldaeans, or from any source whatever, and that no historical reading had
made him acquainted with that way, he manifestly acknowledges that there is
such a way, but that as yet he was not acquainted with it. Nothing of all
that he had so laboriously learned concerning the deliverance of the soul,
nothing of all that he seemed to others, if not to himself, to know and
believe, satisfied him. For he perceived that there was still wanting a
commanding authority which it might be right to follow in a matter of such
importance. And when he says that he had not learned from any truest
philosophy a system which possessed the universal way of the soul's
deliverance, he shows plainly enough, as it seems to me, either that the
philosophy of which he was a disciple was not the truest, or that it did
not comprehend such a way. And how can that be the truest philosophy which
does not possess this way? For what else is the universal way of the soul's
deliverance than that by which all souls universally are delivered, and
without which, therefore, no soul is delivered? And when he says, in
addition, "or from the ideas and practices of the Indians, or from the
reasoning of the Chaldaeans, or from any source whatever," he declares in
the most unequivocal language that this universal way of the soul's
deliverance was not embraced in what he had learned either from the Indians
or the Chaldaeans; and yet he could not forbear stating that it was from
the Chaldaeans he had derived these divine oracles of which he makes such
frequent mention. What, therefore, does he mean by this universal way of
the soul's deliverance, which had not yet been made known by any truest
philosophy, or by the doctrinal systems of those nations which were
considered to have great insight in things divine, because they indulged
more freely in a curious and fanciful science and worship of angels? What
is this universal way of which he acknowledges his ignorance, if not a way
which does not belong to one nation as its special property, but is common
to all, and divinely bestowed? Porphyry, a man of no  mediocre abilities,
does not question that such a way exists; for he believes that Divine
Providence could not have left men destitute of this universal way of
delivering the soul. For he does not say that this way does not exist, but
that this great boon and assistance has not yet been discovered, and has
not come to his knowledge. And no wonder; for Porphyry lived in an age when
this universal way of the soul's deliverance,--in other words, the
Christian religion,--was exposed to the persecutions of idolaters and
demon-worshippers, and earthly rulers,(2) that the number of martyrs or
witnesses for the truth might be completed and consecrated, and that by
them proof might be given that we must endure all bodily sufferings in the
cause of the holy faith, and for the commendation of the truth. Porphyry,
being a witness of these persecutions, concluded that this way was destined
to a speedy extinction, and that it, therefore, was not the universal way
of the soul's deliverance, and did not see that the very thing that thus
moved him, and deterred him from becoming a Christian, contributed to the
confirmation and more effectual commendation of our religion.

   This, then, is the universal way of the soul's deliverance, the way
that is granted by the divine compassion to the nations universally. And no
nation to which the knowledge of it has already come, or may hereafter
come, ought to demand, Why so soon? or, Why so late?--for the design of Him
who sends it is impenetrable by human capacity. This was felt by Porphyry
when he confined himself to saying that this gift of God was not yet
received, and had not yet come to his knowledge. For though this was so, he
did not on that account pronounce that the way itself had no existence.
This, I say, is the universal way for the deliverance of believers,
concerning which the faithful Abraham received the divine assurance, "In
thy seed shall all nations be blessed."(1) He, indeed, was by birth a
Chaldaean; but, that he might receive these great promises, and that there
might be propagated from him a seed "disposed by angels in the hand of a
Mediator,"(2) in whom this universal way, thrown open to all nations for
the deliverance of the soul, might be found, he was ordered to leave his
country, and kindred, and father's house. Then was he himself, first of
all, delivered from the Chaldaean superstitions, and by his obedience
worshipped the one true God, whose promises he faithfully trusted. This is
the universal way, of which it is said in holy prophecy, "God be merciful
unto us, and bless us, and cause His face to shine upon us; that Thy way
may be known upon earth, Thy saving health among all nations."(3) And
hence, when our Saviour, so long after, had taken flesh of the seed of
Abraham, He says of Himself, "I am the way, the truth, and the life."(4)
This is the universal way, of which so long before it had been predicted,
"And it shall come to pass in the last days, that the mountain of the
Lord's house shall be established in the top of the mountains, and shall be
exalted above the hills; and all nations shall flow unto it. And many
people shall go and say, Come ye, and let us go up to the mountain of the
Lord, to the house of the God of Jacob; and He will teach us of His ways,
and we will walk in His paths: for out of Sion shall go forth the law, and
the word of the Lord from Jerusalem."(5) This way, therefore, is not the
property of one, but of all nations. The law and the word of the Lord did
not remain in Zion and Jerusalem, but issued thence to be universally
diffused. And therefore the Mediator Himself, after His resurrection, says
to His alarmed disciples, "These are the words which I spake unto you while
I was yet with you, that all things must be fulfilled which were written in
the law of Moses, and in the prophets, and in the Psalms, concerning me.
Then opened He their understandings that they might understand the
Scriptures, and said unto them, Thus it is written, and thus it behoved
Christ to suffer, and to rise from the dead the third day: and that
repentance and remission of sins should be preached in His name among all
nations, beginning at Jerusalem."(6) This is the universal way of the
soul's deliverance, which the holy angels and the holy prophets formerly
disclosed where they could among the few men who found the grace of God,
and especially in the Hebrew nation, whose commonwealth was, as it were,
consecrated to prefigure and fore-announce the city of God which was to be
gathered from all nations, by their tabernacle, and temple, and priesthood,
and sacrifices. In some explicit statements, and in many obscure
foreshadowings, this way was declared; but latterly came the Mediator
Himself in the flesh, and His blessed apostles, revealing how the grace of
the New Testament more openly explained what had been obscurely hinted to
preceding generations, in conformity with the relation of the ages of the
human race, and as it pleased God in His wisdom to appoint, who also bore
them witness with signs and miracles some of which I have cited above. For
not only were there visions of angels, and words heard from those heavenly
ministrants, but also men of God, armed with the word of simple piety, cast
out unclean spirits from the bodies and senses of men, and healed
deformities and sicknesses; the wild beasts of earth and sea, the birds of
air, inanimate things, the elements, the stars, obeyed their divine
commands; the powers of hell gave way before them, the dead were restored
to life. I say nothing of the miracles peculiar and proper to the Saviour's
own person, especially the nativity and the resurrection; in the one of
which He wrought only the mystery of a virgin maternity, while in the other
He furnished an instance of the resurrection which all shall at last
experience. This way purifies the whole man, and prepares the mortal in all
his parts for immortality. For, to prevent us from seeking for one
purgation for the part which Porphyry calls intellectual, and another for
the part he calls spiritual, and another for the body itself, our most
mighty and truthful Purifier and Saviour assumed the whole human nature.
Except by this way, which has been present among men both during the period
of the promises and of the proclamation of their fulfillment, no man has
been delivered, no man is delivered, no man shall be delivered.

   As to Porphyry's statement that the universal way of the soul's
deliverance had not yet come to his knowledge by any acquaintance he had
with history, I would ask, what more remarkable history can be found than
that which has taken possession of the whole world by its authoritative
voice? or what more trustworthy than that which narrates past events, and
predicts the future with equal clearness, and in the unfulfilled
predictions of which we are constrained to believe by those that are
already fulfilled? For neither Porphyry nor any Platonists can despise
divination and prediction, even of things that pertain to this life and
earthly matters, though they justly despise ordinary soothsaying and the
divination that is connected with magical arts. They deny that these are
the predictions of great men, or are to be considered important, and they
are right; for they are rounded, either on the foresight of subsidiary
causes, as to a professional eye much of the course of a disease is
foreseen by certain pre-monitory symptoms, or the unclean demons predict
what they have resolved to do, that they may thus work upon the thoughts
and desires of the wicked with an appearance of authority, and incline
human frailty to imitate their impure actions. It is not such things that
the saints who walk in the universal way care to predict as important,
although, for the purpose of commending the faith, they knew and often
predicted even such things as could not be detected by human observation,
nor be readily verified by experience. But there were other truly important
and divine events which they predicted, in so far as it was given them to
know the will of God. For the incarnation of Christ, and all those
important marvels that were accomplished in Him, and done in His name; the
repentance of men and the conversion of their wills to God; the remission
of sins, the grace of righteousness, the faith of the pious, and the
multitudes in all parts of the world who believe in the true divinity; the
overthrow of idolatry and demon worship, and the testing of the faithful by
trials; the purification of those who persevered, and their deliverance
from all evil; the day of judgment, the resurrection of the dead, the
eternal damnation of the community of the ungodly, and the eternal kingdom
of the most glorious city of God, ever-blessed in the enjoyment of the
vision of God,--these things were predicted and promised in the Scriptures
of this way; and of these we see so many fulfilled, that we justly and
piously trust that the rest will also come to pass. As for those who do not
believe, and consequently do not understand, that this is the way which
leads straight to the vision of God and to eternal fellowship with Him,
according to the true predictions and statements of the Holy Scriptures,
they may storm at our position, but they cannot storm it.

   And therefore, in these ten books, though not meeting, I dare say, the
expectation of some, yet I have, as the true God and Lord has vouchsafed to
aid me, satisfied the desire of certain persons, by refuting the objections
of the ungodly, who prefer their own gods to the Founder of the holy city,
about which we undertook to speak. Of these ten books, the first five were
directed against those who think we should worship the gods for the sake of
the blessings of this life, and the second five against those who think we
should worship them for the sake of the life which is to be after death.
And now, in fulfillment of the promise I made in the first book, I shall go
on to say, as God shall aid me, what I think needs to be said regarding the
origin, history, and deserved ends of the two cities, which, as already
remarked, are in this world commingled and implicated with one another.


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. (LNPF I/II, Schaff). The digital version is by The Electronic Bible
Society, P.O. Box 701356, Dallas, TX 75370, 214-407-WORD.

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