A Poem Against the Heathen

I have examined, I confess, all sects, ANTONIUS;

I have sought out many things, I have run through each and every one:

But I have found nothing better than to believe in Christ.

These things I have resolved to set down in gentle verse:

And lest it displease, that I unfold such poems;

David himself entreated the lyre with melodious voice,

By whose example we shall sing small things for great,

Telling what things are to be fled, followed, and revered,

While yet in all things both the matter and the cause be proved.

The Jewish people first knew not even the wondrous

Grace of God; for then, rescued from wicked Pharaoh,

And having crossed the sea on foot, with a shining pillar

As guide, who saw the hostile horsemen swallowed up,

And to whom nothing was lacking even in the desert fields,

To whom manna from heaven and a spring from the rock flowed.

After these things, that same people denied God who had bestowed so much:

And while with maddened heart it seeks another deity,

It lost in kindled fires the gold it had sent.

The Pagan likewise adores the stones he himself has carved,

And makes for himself what he himself ought to fear.

Then he worships images which he fashions from bronze in such a way

That whenever it pleases him, he melts the coined forms down,

Or more often turns them into shameful shapes.

Hence he slaughters wretched beasts; and the minds of the gods

Whom he supposes to be angry, he seeks in the warm lung,

And prays for a man's life through the death of a beast.

What does he seek, pardon for forgiveness, who demands it with blood?

For what manner of thing is that? How foolish? How worthy of reproach?

When almighty God once formed man, man dares to form a god. Lest crimes be lacking,

The master even sells him, the buyer acquires him for himself.

Shall I believe the Philosophers have any reason,

Who lack reason, for whom wisdom is vain?

There are Cynics, like dogs, as their name betrays;

There are also those who follow the uncertain doctrine of Plato,

Whom the long-sought substance of the soul confounds,

Ever discussing, yet unable to define;

Whence they love to describe Plato's book On the Soul,

Which beyond its title contains nothing certain within.

There are also the Physicists, called by the name of Nature,

Whom the ancient, rough, and unformed life delights.

For one of them, once carrying a staff and an earthen vessel,

Which alone he had thought useful, alone worth having,

The one as an aid, the other as a means of drinking—

When he had seen a farmer standing and drawing up water

With upturned hands to drink, he broke the earthen vessel,

And casting it far away, said that superfluities must be removed,

A peasant taught him that he could also despise that.

These drink no wine, nor are they nourished by bread for food.

Nor do they recline on a bed, nor ward off cold with garments;

And ungrateful to God, they refuse what he has provided.

What shall I say of the diverse rites? And shall I speak of temples

Founded to gods and goddesses? What the Capitols are first—

These wish their god, and the wife of the god, and his very sister

To be there, whom Virgil, their own author, notes

By saying: Both Sister and Wife. More is told of Jupiter,

That he even defiled his own daughter and gave her to his brother;

And that to capture others, he changed his own form;

Now he was a serpent, now a bull, now a swan and a bird:

And by transforming himself, he shows what manner of being he was,

A form other than his own pleased him more than his proper one.

More shamefully than these he fashioned an eagle, and came

Into the unspeakable embrace of a boy. What does the crowd of his worshippers say?

Let them either deny that he is Jupiter, or confess this disgrace.

He has a name certainly, which cannot be justified by reason.

They perform rites to Jupiter, and say O best Jupiter,

And they pray to him, and place Father Janus in the first rank.

This Janus was a king, who by his own name made Janiculum, a man who revealed himself; who since he could

Look forward upon many things to come, they depicted him with a double face.

And the ancient Latins called him twin-faced Janus.

He, because he came by ship to the Ausonian shores,

A coin was first struck in his honor of such a kind

That one side bore his head, the other side a ship.

Mindful of this, whatever coins are now stamped

Call these heads and ships from the ancient practice.

What do they hope from Jupiter, who is second after the king,

And who is set before them in the words of those who pray?

He has also a mother taken by a shepherd's love:

For the shepherd is prior to Jupiter, or even to Jove himself;

But better did the shepherd wish to preserve chaste modesty,

And spurned the goddess, who in savage fashion cut off

His manly parts, lest he should ever touch

Another's marriage-bed, he who refused to enter hers.

Yet this, this was the just sentence of the gods,

That he should not become a husband, who was not made an adulterer?

Now too the half-men bewail their shameful mysteries:

Nor are men lacking whom these contagions transform,

And within they worship something secret as though greater:

And they call it holy; if a chaste man should wish to enter there,

He will be deemed profane. Thus the stricter priest himself

Avoids the intercourse of women, and submits to that of men.

O blind mind of men! From their rites always

The stage provokes laughter, yet they do not withdraw from this error.

They assert that Saturn is the father of Jupiter, and that he devoured

His own children before, and soon vomited forth

The unspeakable feast from his belly; but afterward by his wife's craft

A stone substituted for Jupiter was plunged into his bowels:

Which had he not done, Jupiter would have been consumed.

And they call him Chronos, and fictitiously Chronos, because time

Consumes what it creates, and promises again what it has consumed.

Why then do they fashion a name obliquely in place of time?

Him also, because he often feared for himself on account of his offspring,

Cast down from heaven by Jupiter, they say he lay hidden through the fields

Of Italy, and that it was therefore then called Latium.

Great is either god! One is hidden in the earth,

The other could not know the hiding-places of the earth.

Hence the ancient Quirites established the Latiarian evil,

That a slaughtered man might satisfy the empty name.

What darkness of soul is this? What are these heedless hearts?

What is worshipped is nothing, and bloody rites are performed.

What of the fact that they also conceal the Unconquered one in dark caves,

And what they cover in darkness, they dare to call the sun?

Who would worship in secret the light and the heavenly star,

And hide it in the underworld, unless it were the cause of evil things?

What of the fact that they do not conceal the Isiac sistrum and the dog's head,

But place them in public places?

They seek something, to be sure, and rejoice when it is found;

And again they lose it, so that they may seek it again.

What wise man could bear this—that those, as it were, shut up the sun,

While these openly display the monstrosities of their own gods?

What has Serapis deserved, who is thus torn apart by them

Through various and shameful places? He is ever made

A wild beast, and a dog, and the foul carcass of an ass,

Now a man, now bread, now a body languishing with sickness.

While they do such things, they confess that he feels nothing.

What shall I say also of Vesta, whom the priest himself denies

Knowing what she is! And yet in the innermost depths within

An ever-unextinguished fire is feigned to be kept.

Why is she a goddess, not a god? Why is fire said to be feminine?

This woman indeed, as Hyginus commends, was the first

To weave a garment from new thread in former times,

Named from her own name, which she herself handed over

To Vulcan, who had then shown her to keep

The hidden hearths. He in turn, glad at the gift,

Offered it to the Sun, through whom he had previously discovered

The adultery of Mars. Now all the credulous crowd

Hang garments to the Sun at the Vulcanalia:

And to mark Venus, Adonis is then also carried forth:

Then they cast dung, they throw him out as dung.

If you inquire into all things, they seem all the more laughable.

Here another thing is added: you hear that the Virgins whom they call Vesta's

Carry five-yearly feasts to a Dragon,

Who however either does not exist, or if he does, is the devil himself,

The former persuader contrary to the human race.

And they venerate him, who now in the name of Christ

Both trembles and hangs, and confesses all his deeds.

What is the mind of men, that they speak falsehoods for truths,

Who worship what must be abandoned, and on the contrary abandon what must be worshipped?

Now it will be enough for us to have told of vain fears.

All these things I first, when I had obtained the clear light,

Neither long uncertain, nor driven by so many storms,

The holy Church received in the saving harbor,

And after wandering waves placed me in a tranquil seat:

So that now it may be permitted to me, the cloud of evils wiped away,

To hope in the promised time for serene light.

Now that former salvation, which forgetful Adam lost,

Then truly at the persuasion of the evil one, now with Christ as helmsman,

Rescued from the rocks, shall rise again to endure forever.

For our Ruler so governs all things on every side;

That he who has now taken away from us the error of the mind,

May by a better way open the lights of paradise.

Happy is our Faith, dedicated to one and certain God.

For there is one God, the Son of one substance,

One vigor is in both, one power.

For the Word of God, Christ, shone forth from the Father's heart,

And was always, who not as one born,

But going forth from the mouth, removed that empty chaos,

And took away the formless void of the woven night:

And distributed to their places sea, lands, air, sky.

And to these, darkness being driven away, he gave a twofold light.

But when all things marveled at the new sun rising,

He drew these four beginnings from various things.

There are men on the earth, stars are added to the sky,

The bird hangs in the air, the fish swims in the liquid deep.

Thus he adorned each of the elements with their own forms,

He bound these things though diverse, and joined what was separated,

And separated what was joined, which things now divided cohere.

For the ocean encloses the earth, the sea is enclosed, and the air itself

Is enclosed in the middle beneath the ethereal axis.

This sky also, which we see sublime above us,

Is below six others rising at equal intervals,

And after seven thrones, after so many celestial kingdoms,

All the rest, which towers above all others,

Which surpasses above, which stretches everywhere on high,

Which lies open without end, which no mind comprehends,

Is the house of inaccessible light, and the holy seat

Of the mighty God, from where afar he beholds what he has made subject.

All things thus stand firm, while the Spirit encompasses all.

These same things, the use of which is granted to us,

Which the lower heaven encompasses in its great City.

Though all things are apart, they are held together in one peace.

Finally they have one name, all things are the World.

The Greeks too of old called this the Cosmos:

Hence, distinguishing it thus composed, each language

Called it Cosmos from ornament, World from light.

For where the sun shines, all this was foul in shadow,

And the example remains, whenever night fouls all things,

And teaches from darkness what grace of light has been given.

He who made so many good things, who has thus worked everywhere,

This is God from the heart of God, this is the Spirit of his mouth,

The holy Word of the Father, the maker of such great things:

Let not the Pagan boast himself, if he avoids idols, And thinks it enough that he believes in one divine power.

How shall he worship God, who does not worship his Word?

Who does not venerate his Power with like honor?

And he who confesses God to be invisible and incomprehensible,

If he also thinks upon Christ, will find the same.

For since no one can comprehend the Word,

No one can see it; only its works are seen.

For in the Father the Son made all things, in the Son the Father made all things,

And whatever he gave by power, he guards by love.

Thus was and shall stand the Savior, turned toward eternity,

Who bore errors, who made true things to be seen,

And with the Father appeased, restored the perishing world.

Nor is it a wonder if he rules all things, who created all things,

Who gave the whole from nothing, and preferred light to darkness,

And commanded day to succeed night;

And what was in the flesh, remits the sins of the flesh.

For he sees that the frail easily fall into easy lapses,

And yet correcting, he will grant one pardon to all,

(And I shall say a new thing, nor shall I regret having said it)

And he will be more merciful than just. For if indeed he should wish

To be just, no one will escape punishment without guilt:

For the just man condemns evils, the merciful one forgives all.

This he does, so that the gifts of the life to come may be established,

And what guilt brought, indulgence may restore again:

Which if they shall not have been granted to the people who ask,

Then almost no one will be free from every fault.

Who could, by merit, attain the promised light?

Then it will be permitted to touch with joy the kingdoms of heaven;

Then death itself will be able to die, when throughout all time

Life will be everlasting, because then in the blessed seat

There is no place for sinning, where there is no desire.

Such great glory remains kept for the faithful people.

He grants this more, he has given this also as a greater gift,

That the sinner who repents, having fallen before,

You do not cause to be counted in the number of the sinning crowd:

For punishment is sufficient, when one's own guilt is a grief;

Fear is its own penalty; the torment of guilt

He then endures as it were, who confesses he has deserved it.

What could be better, or what more moderate?

He judges, inquires, chastises, spares, honors,

He who conquers all things, nor is conquered by anger itself.

What we now see from the present to be future;

For when often threatening he gathers dreadful clouds,

And flashes with fire too red in holy terror,

And thunders with gloomy rains and dark clouds,

Every kind of creature fears destruction; but the power of life

Will cease, and equally he clears the sky and minds.

This too he bids us hope then, who now proves himself able

To destroy all things, if he refuses to will to destroy.

Thus the salvation to be renewed is shown to the age to come,

And the eternal mercy of the eternal God shall endure.