That those are not Gods who are worshipped by the populace is known from
the following. There were once kings, who, because of their memory as
kings, began later to be worshipped even in death. Thereupon, temples were
established for them; thereupon, to retain the features of the dead by an
image statues were formed, and men sacrificed victims and celebrated
festal days giving them honor. Thereupon, these rites became sacred for
posterity, which were taken up as consolations for those first concerned.
Let us see whether this truth also holds in individual cases.
Chapter 2
Melicertes and Leucothea are plunged into the sea and later become
divinities of the sea; the Casters die alternately that they may live;
Aesculapius is struck by lightning that he may rise into a god; Hercules
is consumed by the fires of Oeta that he may put off the man. Apollo
tended the flocks of Admetus; Neptune built walls for Laomedon and the
unfortunate builder received no wages for his work. The cave of Jupiter
is seen in Crete and his tomb is pointed out, and it is clear that Saturn
was driven into exile by him; from his hiding place Latium received its
name. This one was the first to teach how to print letters and how to
stamp coins in Italy. Hence the treasury is called Saturn's. He always was
the cultivator of the rustic life, and so he is depicted carrying a
sickle. Janus had received him, when driven into exile, in hospitality,
from whose name the Janiculum was so called and the month of January was
established. He himself is represented with two faces, because, placed in
the middle, he appears to the year equally as it begins and as it recedes.
The Mauri indeed manifestly worship kings and do not conceal this name by
any covering.
Chapter 3
From this the religion of the gods is variously changed throughout
individual nations and provinces, since not one God is worshipped by all,
but the cult of its ancestors proper to each is preserved. Alexander the
Great wrote to his mother that this is so in a famous volume, saying that
because of fear of his power the secret about the gods as men, which was
preserved in the memory of ancestors and kings, was revealed to him by a
priest. From this the rites of worshipping and sacrificing have developed.
But if the gods were born at some time, why are they not born
today?--unless perchance Jupiter has grown old or the faculty of bearing
in Juno has failed.
Chapter 4
But why do you think that the gods have power in behalf of the Romans,
whom you see have availed nothing for their own (worshippers) against
their arms? For we know that the gods of the Romans are indigenous.
Romulus was made a god when Proculus committed perjury, and Picus and
Tiberinus and Pilumnus and Consus whom Romulus wished to be worshipped as
the god of fraud as if the god of counsels, after his perfidy resulted in
the rape of the Sabine women. Tatius also invented and worshipped the
goddess Cloacina; Hostilius, Pavor and Pallor. Presently Februss was
dedicated by someone or other and the harlots Acce and Flora. These are
Roman gods. But Mars is Thracian and Jupiter Cretan and Juno either Argur
or Samian or Carthaginian and Diana of Taurus, and the mother of gods from
Mt. Ida, and Egyptian monsters, not divinities, which surely, if they had
had any power, would have saved their own and their people's kingdoms.
Plainly there are also among the Romans conquered household gods, whom
Aeneas as a fugitive conveyed here. There is also bald Venus, much more
disgraced by her baldness here than by being wounded in Homer.
Chapter 5
Moreover kingdoms do not come into existence by merit, but they are varied
by chance. Moreover the Syrians and Persians formerly held an empire; and
we know that the Greeks and the Egyptians have ruled. Thus, with changes
of powers time for ruling fell to the Romans also as well as to others.
But if you should go back to their origin, you would blush. A people is
gathered together from the vicious and the criminal, and, after an asylum
was established, impunity from crime makes a large number; presently that
the king himself may have the chief place in crime, Romulus becomes a
parricide and, in order to form a marriage, he begins an affair of concord
through discord. They steal; they rage; they deceive to increase the
resources of the state; their marriages are broken agreements of
hospitality and cruel wars with their fathers-in-law. Also the consulship
is the highest step in Roman honors. So we see that the consulship began
as did the kingdom; Brutus kills his sons that praise for the dignity may
grow from the approval of the crime. Therefore, not from holy observances
nor from auspices or auguries did the Roman kingdom grow, but it guards
its appointed time with a definite limit. Moreover, Regulus observed the
auspices and was captured, and Mancinus maintained his religion and was
sent under the yoke; Paulus had chickens that fed and yet at Cannae he was
slain; Gaius Caesar spurned the auguries and the auspices that restrained
from sending ships to Africa before winter, and so much the more easily
did he both sail and conquer.
Chapter 6
Yet in all these affairs there is the principle of misleading and
deceiving and leading the foolish and wasteful people astray by tricks
that becloud the truth. They are impure and vagrant spirits, which, after
they have been immersed in earthly vices and have receded from heavenly
vigor because of earthly contagion, themselves ruined do not cease to ruin
others, and themselves depraved to infuse the error of depravity in
others. These demons the poets also know, and Socrates declared that he
was instructed and ruled according to the will of a demon, and thence the
Magi have power to cause dangers or mockeries, of whom the chief one,.
Ostanes, both denies that the form of the true God can be seen and says
that true angels stand by His throne. In this also Plato with like
reasoning agrees, and, while maintaining one God, calls the rest angels or
demons. Hermes Trismegistus speaks of one God, and confesses that He is
incomprehensible and impossible of estimation.
Chapter 7
So these spirits lurk under statues and consecrated images; they inspire
the hearts of seers with their afflatus; they animate the fibres of
entrails; they control the flight of birds; they rule lots; they effect
oracles; they always involve falsehood with the truth, for they are both
deceived and deceive; they disturb life; they disquiet sleep; also these
spirits creeping into bodies stealthily terrify minds; they distort the
limbs; they break down health; they provoke diseases, so as to coerce
people to worship them, so as to seem, when glutted with the steam from
altars and the piles of cattle, by removing what they had constrained, to
have affected a cure. This is a cure on their part: the cessation of
injury to their worshippers, and they have no other desire than to call
men away from God and to turn them from an understanding of the true
religion to superstition with regard to themselves. Since they themselves
are under punishment, (they have no other desire than) to seek companions
for themselves in punishments, whom they will make by their error sharers
in their own crime. Yet these (spirits), when adjured by us through the
true God, immediately withdraw and confess and are forced to go out of the
bodies which they have possessed. You may see them struck with the lashes
of the unseen majesty at our voice and prayer, burned with fire, stretched
out with the increase of a growing punishment, shriek, groan, implore,
confess to their very listeners, who worship them, whence they come and
when they depart, so that they either leap out at once or vanish
gradually, according as the faith of sufferer gives aid or the grace of
the healer draws near. Hence they force the populace to hate our name, so
that men begin to hate us before they know us, lest they either be able to
imitate us when we are known or not be able to condemn.
Chapter 8
Therefore, one is the Lord of all. For that sublimity cannot have a peer,
since it alone holds all power. Let us borrow an example for the divine
government even from the earth. When did an alliance of kinship ever
either begin with trust and cease without bloodshed? Thus the brotherhood
of the Thebans was disrupted, discord enduring even in death as their
funeral pyres were in disagreement. And one kingdom does not take the
Roman twins, whom one hospice took to womb. Pompey and Caesar were
related, and yet they did not hold the bond of relationship in the urge
for power. And you should not marvel at man, since in this all nature
agrees. The bees have one king, and there is one leader among flocks, and
one ruler among herds. Much rather is there one ruler of the world, who by
His word orders all things, whatever exist, arranges them according to
plan, accomplishes them by His power.
Chapter 9
This One cannot be seen, He is too bright to see; cannot be comprehended,
He is too pure to grasp; cannot be estimated, He is too great to be
imagined. And so we thus estimate God worthily, when we declare Him
inestimable. Indeed what temple can God have, whose temple is the whole
world? And when I as man dwell far and wide, shall I enclose the power of
so great majesty within a small temple? He must be dedicated in our mind;
He must be consecrated in our heart. You should not seek a name for God;
God is His name. There is need of words there where a multitude is to be
distinguished by the appropriate characteristics of designations. To God,
who is alone, is the whole name of God. Therefore, He is one even wherever
He is diffused. For even the populace naturally confesses God in many
things, when the mind and soul of their author and origin are admonished.
We hear it frequently said: 'O God' and 'God sees' and 'I commend to God'
and 'God will render to me' and 'Whatever God wishes' and 'If God shall
grant.' But what a height of sin is this--to be unwilling to acknowledge
Him of whom you cannot be ignorant.
Chapter 10
Now that Christ is, and how through Him salvation came to us, this is the
plan, this the means. At first the Jews had favor with God. Thus at one
time they were just; thus ancestors were obedient to their religious
views. Hence the excellence of their kingdom flourished and the greatness
of their race advanced. But afterwards having become undisciplined and
puffed up with confidence in their fathers, when they contemned the divine
precepts, they lost the favor that was granted them. How their lives
became profane, what offense to their violated religion was contracted,
they themselves also bear witness, who, though silent in voice, confess by
their end; dispersed and straggling they wander about; exiles from their
soil and climate, they are tossed upon the hospitality of strangers.
Chapter 11
Furthermore, God had predicted before that it would happen that, as the
world passed on and the end of the universe was now at hand, God would
gather to Himself from every nation and people and place much more
faithful worshippers, who would draw from the divine gifts the favor which
the Jews had lost by contemning their religious principles, after having
received it. Therefore, as the ruler and master of this grace and
teaching, the Word and the Son of God is sent, who is proclaimed through
all the prophets as the Enlightener and Teacher of the human race. He is
the power of God; He is the reason; He is His wisdom and glory; He enters
into a virgin; the Holy Spirit put on flesh; God mingles with man. This
is our God; this our Christ who, as mediator of the two, puts on man, to
lead him to the Father. Christ wished to be what man is, that man might be
able to be what Christ is.
Chapter 12
The Jews too knew that Christ would come, for He was always being
announced to them by the admonishment of the prophets. But since His
advent was signified as twofold, the one which would perform the office
and example of man, the other which would confess God, not understanding
the first advent which preceded hidden in the passion, they believe only
the one which will be manifest in His power. Moreover, that the people of
the Jews were unable to understand this was the desert of their sins; they
were so punished for the blindness of wisdom and intelligence, that those
who were unworthy of life had life before their eyes and saw it not.
Chapter 13
So when Christ Jesus according to the former predictions of the prophets
by His word and the command of His voice drove demons out of man, released
paralytics, cleansed the leprous, illuminated the blind, gave the power to
walk to the halt, brought life back to the dead, compelled the elements to
be servants unto Him, the winds to serve Him, the seas to obey Him, those
of the lower regions to yield to Him, the Jews who had believed Him only a
man from the humility of His flesh and body, thought Him a sorcerer from
the freedom of His power. Hence their masters and leaders, that is those
whom He surpassed in teaching and wisdom were so inflamed with anger and
roused with indignation that they finally seized Him and handed Him over
to Pontius Pilate who at that time was procurator of Syria for the Romans,
and demanded His crucifixion and death by violent and stubborn
approbations.
Chapter 14
He himself also had predicted that these would do this, and the testimony
of all the prophets had thus preceded, that He should suffer, not that He
might feel death, but that He might conquer it, and that, when He had
suffered, He should return again to heaven to show the force of divine
majesty. Thus the course of events fulfilled the prophecy. For when He had
been crucified, forestalling the office of the executioner He of His own
accord gave up His spirit, and on the third day of His own accord He rose
again from the dead. He appeared to His disciples just as He had been; He
offered Himself to be recognized to those who looked on and had been
joined with Him, and conspicuous by the firmness of His corporeal
substance He tarried for forty days, that they might be instructed by Him
according to the precepts of life and learn what they should teach. Then,
when a cloud had spread about Him he was raised up into heaven, that as
victor He might bring to the Father the man whom He loved, whom He put on,
whom He protected from death, soon to come from heaven for the punishment
of the devil and the judgment of the human race with the strength of an
avenger and the power of a judge; but the disciples scattered over the
world, with their Master and God advising, gave out precepts for
salvation, led man from the error of darkness to the way of light, endowed
the blind and ignorant with eyes to recognize the truth.
Chapter 15
And that the proof might not be the less solid and the confession of
Christ not be a matter of pleasure, they are tried by torments, by
crosses, by many kinds of punishments. Pain, which is the witness of
truth, is applied, so that Christ, the son of God, who is believed to have
been given to man for life, might be proclaimed not only by the
proclamation of the voice but by the testimony of suffering. Therefore,
we accompany Him, we follow Him, we hold Him the Leader of our journey,
the Source of light, the Author of salvation, as He promises heaven as
well as the Father to those who seek and believe. What Christ is, we
Christians will be, if we follow Christ.
