The Error of the Pagan Religions

There is no one who doubts that the Four Elements are the principles of created things (that is, fire, water, air, and earth). But these Elements are diverse, or contrary in their power. The nations are therefore in error who, while they assign primacy to the elements, still reckon fire as the supreme God, as though the rest derive their substance from it by heat: not knowing that all the Elements are joined together by their very contrariety, and that they themselves also have God as their maker, who, setting each in its own places and orders, created what we gather either by mind or by thought, or certainly what we perceive with our eyes, composed by the divine fellowship of His Word, with the balanced governance of bodies throughout this whole.

The inhabitants of Egypt, receiving the benefits of waters, worship water, supplicate waters, venerate waters with a superstitious continuance of vows. But in their rites (which they call mysteries) they add tragic deaths and the dreadful contests of a calamity to be feared. They say that incest was committed with a sister and adultery, and that this crime was avenged by the severe punishment of a husband. Isis is the sister, Osiris the brother, Typhon the husband; when he had discovered that his wife Isis had been corrupted by the incestuous desires of her brother, he killed Osiris, tore him limb from limb, and cast the quivering members of the wretched body along all the banks of the river Nile. Isis, having repudiated Typhon, in order both to bury her brother and her husband, took to herself her sister Nephthys as a companion, and Anubis the hunter. Upon him a dog's head was placed, because by the craft of a tracking dog he found the parts of the torn body. Thus Isis delivered the found Osiris to burial.

These were indeed kings and likewise tyrants in Egypt, but Osiris just, apart from what he committed with his sister. Typhon furious, unrestrained, and arrogant. Therefore the one is worshipped, the other is shunned. This is the sum of the Isiac rite. In their inner sanctuaries they have an idol of Osiris buried: this they mourn with yearly lamentations, they shave their heads, so that they may bewail the pitiable fate of their king dishonoured by the disgrace of his head, they beat their breasts, they tear their arms, they reopen the scars of old wounds, so that in their souls through yearly lamentations the destruction of the dreadful and pitiable death may be reborn. And when they have done these things on fixed days, then they pretend that they are finding the remains of the torn body, and when they have found them, as though their grief were lulled, they rejoice.

O wretched and fleeting mortality, that you send your kings grim funeral offerings year by year, neglecting the supreme God who composed all things by the governance of His divine craft, and you lose both your hope and your life. Nor are you corrected by the splendour of the light shown to you, nor do you seek the marks of recovered liberty, nor do you acknowledge the hope of salvation restored to you, nor do you ask for pardon from repentance of past crimes. In vain do you think that this water, which you worship, will ever profit you. There is another water by which renewed men are reborn. This water which you worship year by year, another force dries up when the channels of the veins are parched, or else the deadly blood of your king defiles it.

That water which you despise is adorned with the fiery majesty of the venerable Spirit: so that from it, through the old scars of conscience, a saving health may be poured upon believing men. But in these funerals and lamentations, which are truly funerals, which have taken place, whose remains exist even today (for both the tomb of Osiris exists today in Egypt, and the remains of the burned body are seen), their defenders wish to add a physical explanation. Saying that the seeds of grain are Osiris, that Isis is the earth, that Typhon is heat: and because the ripened crops, matured by heat, are gathered for the sustenance of man and separated from their fellowship with the earth, and again are sown as winter approaches, they wish this to be the death of Osiris, when the crops are rendered; and the finding, when the crops, conceived by the generative warmth of the earth, have begun to be produced again by a new generation.

Grant that this is the true explanation of those rites, grant that vows are paid to divine powers on account of the crops, what do you add of incest, what of adultery, what of the destruction of a pitiable punishment? Why do you show to wandering men who simply desire to sin a wicked example from your rites? Let the physical explanation you speak of be concealed in another manner. But what needed to be concealed that is known to all? Why do you mourn the crops of the earth, and lament the growing seeds? All these things have been given for the sustenance of the human race by the divine generosity of the supreme God. Thanks must be given to the supreme God for this, nor is the bounty of the supreme God to be mourned. Weep rather that you err, and lament that you ever restore your error with lamentations. Do not seek in yearly rites the funeral of another; rather prepare consolations for your own funerals year by year. O wretched man!

You rejoice at having found I know not what, while you lose your soul from these rites year by year. You find nothing there but a statue which you yourself placed, except something which you must again either seek or mourn. Seek rather the hope of salvation, seek the beginning of light, seek what may commend you to the supreme God or restore you to Him. And when you have found the true way of salvation, rejoice, and then with the uplifted freedom of speech proclaim Εὑρήκαμεν, συγχαίρομεν when after your repentance you shall have been freed from these calamities by the mercy of the supreme God.

The Phrygians who inhabit Pessinus, along the banks of the river Gallus, assign the primacy of the elements to the earth, and wish it to be the mother of all things. Then, in order that they too might make for themselves a yearly order of rites, they consecrated with yearly lamentations the love of a wealthy woman and their queen, who wished tyrannically to avenge the disdain of the beloved youth. And in order to satisfy the angry woman, or to seek consolation for her in her repentance, they boasted that he whom they had shortly before buried had come back to life, and since the woman's mind burned with the impatience of excessive love, they made temples for the dead youth. Then what the angry woman had done on account of the injury of the scorned beauty, the priests, ordering this, wished to suffer upon themselves.

Thus in the yearly rites the pomp of that funeral is arranged with honour to that earth, and while men are persuaded that they worship the earth, they venerate the destruction of a wretched death. There too, most sacred emperors, so that this error may be concealed, they wish these rites also to be composed with a physical explanation. They wish the earth to love the crops, and they wish the beloved to be this very thing which is born from the crops; and the punishment which it sustained, they wish to be what the reaper does to the ripe crops with his scythe. They call its death the fact that the gathered seeds are stored away: its life again, the fact that the cast seeds are stored anew in their yearly turns. I would now wish them to answer me when I inquire why they have joined this simplicity of seeds and crops with crime, with death, with disdain, with punishment, with love. Was there then nothing else that could be said?

Was there nothing that wretched mortality could do in giving thanks to the supreme God for the crops? That you may give thanks for the reborn crops, you wail; that you may rejoice, you mourn. Nor has it ever repented you, when you have seen the true explanation, that you once did this, but you act so that, occupied with yearly lamentations, you always flee life and seek death. Let them tell me what profit this has been to the crops, that they sow their tears in yearly wailings in sadness, that they groan over the calamities of a slain man's funeral, which they say is composed by physical explanation—you mourn and lament, and you conceal your lamentations under another explanation. The farmer knows when to break the earth with the plough, when to commit the grain to the furrows. He knows when to gather the harvests ripened by the sun's heat. He knows when to thresh the dried grain.

This is the physical explanation, these are the true sacrifices, which are fulfilled by the annual labour of men of sound mind. This simplicity is what the divinity seeks, that men in gathering fruits should serve the ordered laws of the seasons. Why have the fictions of a wretched death been sought for this order? Why is that concealed with tears which ought not to have been concealed? Whence they must confess that these rites were composed not in honour of the crops, but in honour of another's death. For as to their saying that the earth is the mother of all the Gods—those who assign the first place to this element—she is truly the mother of their gods, and we do not deny or refuse it: because from her they always make their collected gods either of stone or of wood. The whole earth is surrounded by seas, and again is enclosed within the circle of the encompassing Ocean.

It is also covered by the rounded height of the sky, blown through by winds, sprinkled by rains, and confesses its fear by the tremors of continual earthquakes. Consider what awaits you who worship these things, since your Gods betray their own weakness to you by daily confessions.

The Assyrians and a part of the Africans wish air to hold the leadership of the elements, and they venerate it under an imagined form. For they have consecrated this same element, under the name of Juno or of the Virgin Venus—if indeed virginity ever pleased Venus—and Juno indeed, lest incest should be lacking to her as well, they wish to have been made the wife of Jupiter from his sister. They have effeminated this element, moved by I know not what veneration. Is it because air is interposed between the sea and the sky that they attend upon it with the effeminate voices of priests? Tell me, is this why they seek a woman in a man, whom the chorus of his priests can serve in no other way unless they effeminate their countenance, polish their skin, and dishonour the male sex with feminine adornment? One may see in the very temples, amid public groaning, pitiable mockeries—men suffering womanly things, and laying bare this stain of an impure and shameless body with glorious ostentation.

They publish their crimes, and confess the vice of a defiled body with the greatest mark of delight. They adorn their hair, nourished in womanly fashion, and clad in delicate garments they scarcely sustain their head upon a weary neck. Then, when they have thus made themselves strangers to men, filled with the sound of flutes, they call upon their Goddess, so that, filled with an impure spirit, they may as it were foretell future things to vain men. What monster is this, what prodigy? They deny that they are men, and yet they are; they wish to be believed women, but the quality of the body, such as it is, confesses otherwise. One must also consider what manner of divine power it is that takes such delight in the lodging of an impure body, that clings to shameless members, that is appeased by the pollution and defilement of the body. Blush, O wretched ones, at your supineness; God made you otherwise.

When your company shall have come before the tribunal of the judging God, you will bring nothing with you that the God who made you will recognise. Cast away this error of so great a calamity, and at last forsake the pursuits of a profane mind. Do not condemn the body which God made by the wicked law of the Devil; come to the aid of your calamities while time yet permits. The mercy of God is rich, He forgives willingly. Leaving the ninety-nine sheep, He seeks the one that is lost. And to the returning prodigal son the father restores his garment and prepares a feast. Let not the multitude of your crimes cause you to despair: the supreme God through His Son Jesus Christ our Lord liberates those who are willing, and willingly forgives the penitent, nor does He require much in order to forgive. By faith alone and repentance you can redeem whatever you have lost by the wicked persuasions of the Devil.

The Persians and all the Magi who inhabit the borders of the Persian region hold fire above all else and think it ought to be placed before all the elements. These men therefore divide Jupiter into two powers, transferring his nature to both sexes, and assign the substance of fire to the images of both male and female; and the woman they establish with a triple face, binding her with monstrous serpents. They do this so that they may in no way dissent from their author the devil: but that their goddess, defiled by serpents, may be adorned with the foul emblems of the devil. The man, however, they worship as a driver of cattle, and they transfer his rites to the power of fire. As his Prophet has handed down to us, saying: Μικτάξω μυστάκυ ὁ κλοπίης σύνδετε πατρος ἀγανοῦ. This one they call Mithras. His rites they hand down in hidden caves, so that, always submerged in the dark squalor of shadows, they may not see the grace of bright and clear light.

O blind consecration of a deity; O abominable inventions of a wicked law, to be fled! You believe him to be a god whose crimes you confess. You therefore, who say that sacrifice is rightly offered in these temples not after the Persian rite of the Magi, why do you praise these rites of the Persians? I know, you think this worthy of the Roman name, and of the rites of the Persians. But let the laws of the Persians follow [lacuna] [lacuna] as she is consecrated armed with shield, breastplate, corselet, sword, and spear [lacuna] There is also a third part, which has received dominion over the rough and secret places of forests and wild beasts. The last part of this threefold division concerns the paths of lusts, which point out base desires and the enticements of perverse cupidity. Therefore they assign one part to the head, so that it may seem in some way to denote the anger of man.

Another they place in the heart, so that it may seem to hold, after the manner of forests, the variety of diverse thoughts which we conceive with manifold intent. The third part is established in the liver, whence lust and pleasure are born. For there the gathered fertility of the generative seeds stirs the desire of cupidity with natural goads. Consider carefully, therefore, what this division accomplishes, so that you may perceive how easily the reasoning of truth assails this invention. If the soul is divided, and its substance is separated by a different kind of efficacy, its order being dissolved, it begins to be what it was not. For mind is one thing, anger another, lust another. This separation therefore dissolves the soul, and it suffers the greatest loss from this partition, nor does this thing preserve the whole form of itself, which is separately divided through three contrary parts, and (to speak the truth) becomes mortal through the very division. For that which can be divided is a body.

But that which is a body must necessarily be mortal. Therefore if the soul is divided, it is a body. If it is a body, it must necessarily be a mortal thing. A fine and illustrious companion to this error. The greatest benefit is conferred upon us from this consequence. By the inventions of these absurdities they wish souls to be mortal.

Thus, most sacred emperors, have the Elements been consecrated by lost men. But there still remain other superstitions whose secrets must be laid open, those of Liber and Libera, which must all be made known to your sacred minds in particular, so that in these profane religions too you may know that the deaths of men have been consecrated. Liber, then, was the son of Jupiter, namely of the Cretan king. Since he had been begotten of an adulterous mother, he was reared by his father with more care than was fitting. The wife of Jupiter, whose name was Juno, moved by the fury of a stepmother's heart, prepared snares of every kind for the destruction of the infant. The father, setting out on a journey abroad, because he knew the silent indignation of his wife, lest anything should be done by treachery by the angry woman, entrusted the guardianship of his son to suitable guardians (as it seemed to him).

Then Juno, having seized an opportune moment for her treachery, and inflamed all the more strongly by this, because the departing father had handed over to the boy both the throne of the kingdom and the sceptre, first corrupted the guardians with royal rewards and gifts, then placed her own attendants, who were called Titans, in the inner parts of the palace, and so beguiled the boyish mind with rattles and a cunningly wrought mirror, that, forsaking the royal seat, he was led by the desire of a childish heart to the place of the ambush. There he was seized and slaughtered. And so that no trace of the murder could be found, the crowd of attendants divided among themselves the limbs cut into pieces. Then, so that one crime might be added to another, because the cruelty of the tyrant was greatly feared, they consumed the cooked limbs of the boy in various ways, so that they might feast upon a human corpse with a banquet unheard of until that day.

The heart, which she had seen, was kept by his sister, whose name was Minerva, both because she herself had been a participant in the crime, and so that there might be a clear token of disclosure, and so that she might have something with which to appease the onslaught of her raging father. When Jupiter returned, his daughter set forth to him the order of the crime. Then the father, moved by the deadly calamity of the disaster and the bitter cruelty of grief, put the Titans to death after tormenting them with various kinds of punishments. Nor was any torment or penalty omitted in avenging his son, but raging through every kind of punishment, he avenged the death of his son in whatever manner he could, with a father's affection indeed, but with tyrannical power.

Then, because the father could no longer endure the torments of his grieving heart, and because the sorrow arising from bereavement was assuaged by no consolations, he fashioned his image from gypsum in a work of modelling; and the heart, from which the crime had been revealed, brought by his sister, he placed in that part of the moulded figure where the lines of the breast had been formed. After this he built a temple in place of a tomb, and appointed the boy's tutor as priest. His name was Silenus. The Cretans, in order to appease the savagery of the raging tyrant, appointed festival days of mourning, and composed an annual rite with a triennial consecration, doing all things in order which the boy either did or suffered in dying.

They tear a live bull with their teeth, stirring up their cruel feasts in annual commemorations, and wailing with discordant cries through the secret places of the forests, they feign the madness of a raging mind, so that that crime might be believed to have been done not through treachery but through madness: a chest is carried forth, in which the sister had secretly hidden the heart; with the playing of flutes and the tinkling of cymbals they counterfeit the rattles by which the boy had been deceived. Thus by a subject people was a god made in honour of a tyrant, who could not even have a burial. There was also another Liber, a tyrant at Thebes, conspicuous for the power of magic art. He, having seized the minds of women with certain poisons and incantations, commanded cruel deeds at his own pleasure upon those driven to frenzy, so that he might have noblewomen, bereft of their senses, as servants both of his lusts and of his crimes.

What crimes he committed, or what deed he commanded of a mother against her son, or of sisters against their brother, is handed down daily on the stage by the authors of tragic verse, so that the criminal cruelty of the wicked tyrant may always be reborn in the minds of hearers through mournful recitations. Him Lycurgus, protected by a sober conspiracy of men, stripped of his kingdom and drove from his homeland. For that effeminate man could not long endure the agreement of men. That he was effeminate and served the lusts of his lovers is sung in the gymnasia of the Greeks. Nor was Lycurgus content merely with his flight and exile, but fearing lest he, fleeing and received by others, might sow even in another region the ridiculous seeds of his crimes, he girded himself with the sword and pursued the disgrace of his homeland with a threatening edict.

Then Liber, casting aside the fillets which he bound with leafy circles of vine-crowns, fled with his half-male retinue (for only the companions of his debaucheries and infamies and lusts followed him) and wandered in the utmost trembling of despair through all the shores of the neighbouring sea. There among drunken girls and wine-sodden old men, while he still went before with the pomp of his crimes, one hideous in a black garment, another terrible with a serpent displayed, another bloody of mouth as he tore apart the living limbs of a beast, he was seized by Lycurgus and hurled from a nearby cliff, which had made an immense precipice with pathless rocks, into the sea, so that his mangled body, long tossed by the waves of the sea, might call back the minds of wandering peoples to the order of sanity and sobriety by a stern act of punishment. This end of Liber Homer, in order to reveal his flight and trembling, and to show his death, states: [lacuna] Διώνυσος δὲ φοβηθεὶς Δύσαθ' ἁλὸς κατὰ κῦμα· Θέτις δ' ὑπεδέξατο κόλπῳ Δειδιότα· κρατερὸς γὰρ ἔχε τρόμος ἀνδρὸς ὁμοκλῇ.

You he imitates, Lycurgus, and follows your sober institution, nor does our consul Posthumius deviate from your salutary laws. For as we find in the Annals, the crimes of the Bacchanalia were detected when disclosed by a certain young man named Ebutius. The morals of the city of Rome were still uncorrupted at that time, nor did anyone seek out foreign superstitions with dissolute habits: then neither did the senate fail the consul, nor the laws the Republic, nor the consul the laws. But when all who handed down the criminal inventions of this rite had been investigated, the death penalty was decreed by the senate's judgment against all slaves, nay against Romans, after examination by inquisition. Nor did the avenging swords of the consul rest so long as this evil had not been cut out by the roots. O punishment worthy of the Roman name! O laudable constancy of ancient virtue! The consul was unwilling even to spare his own citizens, when foreign vices are corrected for the sake of purging the homeland.

This pollution of a sacred rite follows upon, and imitates the order of a funeral, with the death of a daughter consecrated by Ceres, the woman of Henna. For whatever the father in Crete had done on account of his son, all of this Ceres at Henna, having lost her daughter, established in the impatience of a mother's grief; how this came to pass I shall briefly touch upon. Many sought the only daughter of Ceres—whom the Greeks call Persephone, and our people, with a changed word, call Proserpina—for the bond of marriage. The mother carefully judged the merits of each suitor. And while the mother's decision still seemed uncertain to all, a wealthy rustic, who on account of his riches bore the name Pluto, unable to endure the delay of postponement in his reckless ardor of desire, and complaining of the fires of his headstrong love, seized the maiden when he found her near the lake of Pergus.

Now the lake of Pergus, within the borders of the city of Henna, is quite pleasant and agreeable, and its pleasantness arises from the variety of its flowers. For throughout the whole year it is crowned by flowers succeeding one another in turn. There you will find whatever swells into the stalk of the hyacinth; there the foliage of the narcissus, or that which paints the golden rose above; there white ivy creeps softly along the ground, and sweet marjoram, blushing gently, is found among purple violets; nor do white lilies forsake that garland. Altogether a fitting place, which by its charm would both invite and hold the hearts of maidens. In this place, when the maiden had been found by Pluto near evening, she was seized by force, and placed upon a vehicle, with her garments torn and her hair disheveled, she was carried off. Nor did her preserved nails avail anything against the rustic lover, nor did her crying and wailing help, nor the clamor of the other maidens.

Then one of them, running swiftly, made faster by fear itself since no one came from the city to help, announced the abduction of the maiden to her mother. The mother, indignant against the abductor, led an armed band. Nor did the woman's approach escape Pluto's notice, but when he turned his eyes back toward the city and saw the countless throngs coming with the mother, he took a fatal resolve out of desperation. He directed the four-horse chariot that drew the vehicle through the middle of the lake. It was plunged into deep whirlpools; there, submerged with the beloved maiden, he provided a mournful spectacle of the daughter's death for the grieving mother. The people of Henna, in order to find some consolation for the mother's grief, invented the fiction that the king of the underworld had carried off the maiden. And so that belief might follow the fiction, they boasted that he had emerged with the maiden near Syracuse through another place.

They build a temple, with carefully pooled resources, both to the abductor and to the maiden, and they decree annual vows in the temple. But by no means is the mother's grief overcome, nor are the torments of a woman's impatience assuaged. But believing truly that her daughter had been seen near Syracuse, with Triptolemus her farm-steward as guide, she arrived by night journeys at the shore of the city of Syracuse in mourning garb and squalid filth, nor was there lacking one to deceive the credulous mother about her misfortunes. Then one Pandarus, I know not who, said that he had seen the abductor boarding a ship with the maiden not far from Pachynus. The woman was persuaded—she who desired to hear by any means that her daughter was alive—and she rewarded the city with boundless gifts. The Syracusans, moved by the woman's generosity, consecrate the abduction of the maiden, and, soothing the mother's grief, they adorn the procession of the wretched funeral with the honor of temples.

But not even this suffices the mother; she boards a ship and seeks her daughter along foreign shores. Thus tossed by waves and storms she arrived at a place in the city of Attica. There, received as a guest, she distributed grain still unknown to the inhabitants. The place received its name from her homeland and from the woman's arrival. For it was called Eleusis, because Ceres had come there, having left Henna. And so, both because of the very dispensation of the grain she had brought, and because she had imparted the discipline of gathering crops, after her death, on account of the benefit that arose from the abundance of grain, she was both buried in that place and consecrated, and called by a divine name together with her daughter. For the frivolity of the Greeks loves to call by divine names those who have conferred something upon them, or who have aided them by counsel or valor.

And thus the gratitude for benefits is repaid by them in such a way that they call gods, and believe to be gods, those who have at some time been of use to them. Thus Nisa has no doubt about Liber, nor does Sparta waver about its new stars, and sad Oeta burns and consecrates Hercules, and the tomb of Jupiter, still dead, is worshipped by the vain Cretans. There is added, however, most sacred Emperors, to the increase of this profane error, the fact that the inventions of the Greeks defend these men (that is, Liber and Proserpina) with a kind of greater authority. For they wish to refer Liber to the Sun, and, calling Proserpina Libera, they fabricate that she is the Moon. How absurd and how wretched this is, we can gather from the very reasoning of truth. Who has seen the Sun as a boy? Who deceived him? Who killed him? Who tore him apart? Who divided him? Who feasted upon his members? Who carried off the Moon? Who hid her?

Who made her the wife of Pluto? But they wish again to protect this error by physical reasoning, and think that they venerate by this passion the undivided and the divided mind, that is, τὸν ἀμέριστον καὶ τὸν μεμερισμένον νοῦν. Tell me, O you mortals, why do you add funerals to natural things? Why do you pollute the disposition of God with the atrocity of cruel deaths? What need was there for so harsh and cruel a torment? What does this persuasion mean, that the order of deadly calamity should be joined to divine things? That mortal calamity should be joined in grief to the nature of the stars, which God made by the highest fixed laws? To what end does what you do serve? You mingle earthly things with heavenly, perishable with eternal, dark with luminous, consecrating the sorrows and griefs of men with divine honors.

If the Sun, with all the human race convened, were to speak in an assembly, he might perhaps strike at your despair with this speech: Who, O mortal men, daily rebelling against the most high God in various ways, has driven you to so great a crime as to say, in the profane error of your wicked desire, that I both die and live at your will? And would that, in the customary manner, the fictions of your mad thinking proceeded in at least one form! Would that the wickedness of your criminal thought ran its course without insult to me! Now, hurling yourselves over precipices, you spare not even me, and your speech has no reverence; but with my dishonor you hasten to your own ruin and death. Some, in Egypt, plunge me with stubborn fury of mind into the waves and swift eddies of the Nile. Others lament with severed members. Others, having slain me with a cruel death, either boil me in a pot, or fix the torn members of my body upon seven spits.

One who has flattered me somewhat with calm speech invents that I am the driver of a four-horse chariot. Cast away at last the ruin of so great a madness, and, convinced by wholesome persuasion, seek the true path of salvation. He is an enemy of God who has either conceived or invented these things; nor does a simple or ordinary punishment attend his crime, who pollutes sacred things with profane persuasions, who invents such things about the glorious work of God. Mourn your dead, yourselves likewise about to die a like death. Send funeral offerings to your kings, as you wish, and soothe their bereavements by another kind of remedy. Mourn Liber, mourn Proserpina, mourn Atys, mourn Osiris, but without insult to our dignity. I do not wish you to lead me through their tombs and ashes; I do not wish my name to supply fuel for your error. I was made for the light of day by God; this alone suffices me. Why do you deprive me of the dignity of my honorable office?

God made me one thing, commanded me to be another, and you divide me according to your whim, tear me apart according to the desire of your will? Whatever I am, I simply obey God, nor do I wish you to understand anything about me other than what you see. This is pleasing to God, this God gladly embraces, this leads men to the path of salvation: if, casting aside errors, you hear the grace of God simply and faithfully. These things, most sacred Emperors, let it suffice to have said in the manner of a prosopopoeia. But I now, formed by the teaching of the sacred scriptures, address lost men with religious speech. If they are gods whom you worship, why do you mourn them? Why do you lament them with annual griefs? If they are worthy of tears and mourning, why do you heap divine honor upon them?

Do therefore one of two things: either be unwilling to mourn them, if they are gods; or, if you think them worthy of mourning and tears, be unwilling to call them gods, lest the majesty of the divine name be polluted by your mourning and tears. But because a ruined mind, entangled in the snares of wicked desire, can be recalled by no reasoning, I shall pursue the rest, so that, with all things made public and exposed that profane wickedness has consecrated, the mercy of God in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ may raise up the fallen, call back to himself those who flee, confirm those who doubt, correct those who err, and, what is most important, grant life to the dying.

In very many cities of the East—though this evil has also made its way to us—Adonis is mourned as the husband of Venus, and his assailant is shown to those standing around, along with the wound. For Mars, transformed into the shape and form of a wild boar, in order to claim the first place in Venus's love for himself, strikes the youth as he rashly rushes against him. If Adonis was a god, why did he not know of his rival's treachery? If a man, why did he contend with one greater than himself? But I also hear from another source that he had a conjugal union with Venus. Vulcan, unless I am mistaken, is held by these worshippers of gods to be the husband of Venus. O laughable persuasion of vain men! Placed as an adulterer between two husbands, he is caught by one and conquers the other.

But see what body the adulterer god chose for himself, in order to overcome the husband—he preferred to be a boar: who, if he had the power of changing his body, ought rather to have taken on the shape and form of a lion. But those who know the natures of animals say that the lion, in that fierceness of its wild spirit, preserves the virtue of chastity. Rightly therefore is the form of the lion spurned by the adulterer, and the form of a libidinous animal chosen. Let us now treat the secrets of the Gospel tradition. The Lord, having cast out the demon, grants him a herd of swine. And not without reason, so that, tossed with libidinous animals through harsh precipices and waves, through the various deaths of the swine, the unclean spirit might be consumed by a fitting death.

I hear that Cinyras of Cyprus gave a temple to a harlot friend of his, whose name was Venus. That he also initiated very many into the Cyprian Venus, and assigned them to vain consecrations. That he also ordained that whoever wished to be initiated should give, in the name of a fee to the goddess, an as into the hand, with the secret of Venus imparted to him. What that secret is, we must all understand in silence, because we cannot explain this very thing more openly on account of its shamelessness. Well does the lover Cinyras serve under harlot's laws; he ordered that a coin be given by her priests to the consecrated Venus, as to a prostitute.

Those who worship Sabazius Jupiter lead a serpent through their bosom when they are initiated. Still the vices of the first error run rampant, and whatever destroyed man is worshipped, and the cunning and malicious cruelty of the deadly serpent is adored.

In the rites of the Corybantes a parricide is worshipped. For one brother was slain by two, and lest any evidence should reveal the killing of the brother's death, he is consecrated by the parricide brothers at the foot of Mount Olympus. The foolish persuasion of the Macedonians worships this same one. This is the Cabirus, to whom the Thessalonians once supplicated with bloody hands in bloody rites. It must therefore be considered what manner of divinity it is that parricide madness, in order to worship parricide, invented.

Wherefore, whoever venerates these rites with a devoted mind, whoever finds the dreadful contagion of this superstition pleasing, either seeks consolation for his own evils, or silently praises their crimes in his thoughts, wishing this, seeking this, and above all earnestly desiring that what was permitted to his gods may also be permitted to him, and that a likeness of such a way of life may lead him into fellowship with it. If someone takes delight in adultery, he looks to Jupiter and from him draws fuel for his lust, approves, imitates, and praises what his god does—deceiving in the form of a swan, carrying off in the form of a bull, playing the part of a satyr, and, that he might grow accustomed to being lavish in shameful acts, corrupting an imprisoned royal maiden with gold flowing abundantly. If someone takes delight in the embraces of boys, let him seek Ganymede in the bosom of Jupiter, let him behold Hercules searching for Hylas with impatient love, let him learn of Apollo seized by longing for Hyacinthus.

Let another look upon Chrysippus, another upon Pelops, so that through their gods they may say it is lawful for them to do whatever today is punished most severely by Roman laws. It is difficult to enumerate all their adulteries. Who seizes Amymone? Who Alope? Who Menalippe? Who Chione and Hippothoe? Surely your god is said to have done these things. He whom they wish to correct the sins of erring men with stern oracles loves Sterope, carries off Aethusa, ravishes Zeuxippe, seeks Prothoe, and pays court to Arsinoe with adulterous desire. But from that herd of corrupted women, one girl both avoided and overcame the god who loved her. For the god who prophesies and foretells the future could neither find Daphne nor violate her. If someone suffers womanly things and seeks consolation for an effeminate body, let him look upon Liber representing to his lover, even after death, the rewards of promised lust by an imitation of shameful intercourse.

If someone is armed with a monstrous burning desire to bring about his father's destruction, let him take his example from Jupiter. He who desires his brother's blood, let him follow the practice of the Corybantes, and let those who desire incest take their examples from Jupiter. He lay with his mother, he took his sister as wife; and that he might complete the full crime of incest, he also assailed his daughter with the mind of a corruptor. If someone pursues inferiors with the hissing of rivalry and desires to torment an adversary with cruel ferocity, let him learn from Apollo, through the fate of Marsyas, the manner of cruel torments. If someone covets another's property and attempts to accomplish this with the death of its owner, let him see how Hercules, after killing Geryon, drove away the Iberian cattle. If someone rejoices in the indiscriminate slaughter of men, let him carefully examine the perverse desires of Mars. The crowd of sinners has gathered the seeds of nearly all crimes from their gods.

And that a ruined soul might commit crime with impunity, it defends itself with greater authority from the preceding examples of crimes. If a seducer seeks the rewards of debauchery, if he desires to learn the way of solicitation, let him see the gold of Jupiter in the bosom of the corrupted woman. If a public parricide desires to betray with wicked cupidity the guardianship of a kingdom entrusted to him, let him look to those who betrayed Saturn to his son. How far the right of hospitality is violated, how far the laws of friendship are disturbed, how far the holy bond of the table is profaned. If someone is inclined to seek injury, let him learn the order of crimes from the fate of Tantalus. O sad consolation of criminal desire!

O persuasion worthy of tears! O bloody meditation of wretched imitation! You have made a stage of heaven, and have led wandering souls through sheer precipices with cruel ruin, since to men desiring to sin the path of crimes is shown by the examples of the gods. But in this law of crimes, in this confession of wickedness, let us give thanks to those who have revealed to us, even without our knowing it, the destructions and deaths of these gods: so that we might learn all things through so many obstacles. For even among the ancients, although the venerable majesty of our Lord Jesus Christ had not yet illumined the earth, there was a devout constancy in scorning superstitions. The chaste and sober Diomedes wounds Venus, conquers and strikes Mars. By the decree of Otus and Ephialtes, the war-mighty Mars, condemned to temporary exile, endured the iron bonds of chains. Jupiter mourns his son Sarpedon, slain at Troy. And Neptune did not receive from the proud king the wages of the builders of the walls.

Apollo tends the flocks of another king. And another reports to the one who sees all things the deaths of the slain cattle. Sparta buries the Castors, Hercules burns on Oeta, and Aesculapius is struck by lightning elsewhere, Vulcan, hurled down by his father, breaks his foot. Liber, fleeing Lycurgus, dies. Venus is caught and exposed in adultery, and after the god's marriage she pursues the bed of the mortal Anchises. Saturn, fearing for his kingdom, devours his sons. He, fleeing from Crete into Italy, is hidden there by the Spartans. Juno spurns him for love of a catamite, and the Moon descends to Endymion, and Jupiter, deceived while bringing aid to the Trojans against the will of his wife and daughter, falls asleep. O shameful confession, O miserable and indefensible cult; O pitiable condition of harsh servitude! The sacrilegious tyranny of rulers dragged holy men, who worshipped God with devoted mind, to the cult of these gods, and that one crime might be added to another, death was decreed for those who refused.

Transfer your temples rather to the theatre, so that the secrets of these religions may be handed down on the stage, and that wickedness may omit nothing, make actors your priests. No more fitting place for these religions can be found. There let a base crowd sing of the loves of the gods. There let dancers [lacuna] the fates and deaths. There in the temples of the gods the ruined and womanish crime is better taught by impious and criminal masters.

What he either venerated or worshipped. He is worshipped in Egypt, he is adored there, a crowd of Neocori guards his image, and the wandering people, in memory of antiquity, preserves with contentious zeal today the order of sacred rites established in honor of a most upright and most prudent man. But also in this image itself, as in the others, unclean spirits of demons are gathered by continual sacrifices. For the souls accomplish nothing, and the blood poured out by the continual slaughter of cattle, except that the substance of the demons, who are begotten by the procreation of the devil, may be nourished by this blood. For Porphyry, the defender of the Stoics, the enemy of God and of truth, has revealed this to us with clear proofs in many writings of wicked impiety. For in the books which he calls περὶ τῆς εὐλογίων φιλοσοφίας, praising his majesty, he confessed his weakness.

For in the opening portions of the books (that is, placed at the very beginning) he said: Serapis, having been called and placed within the body of a man, gave such responses. Let the lost men now tell me, which is greater—he who calls and commands and confines, or he who is called and obeys? And when he comes, he is confined by the power of the one commanding him within the body of the man who receives him. We give thanks, Porphyry, that in your books you have revealed to us the nature of your gods. We have learned through you how far your gods serve living men. Your Serapis is called by a man, and comes, and when he has come, he is immediately confined at command, and the necessity of speaking is perhaps imposed upon him against his will. Thus among us your gods, when they have begun to harm men, are chastised by the scourges of holy speech.

Thus your gods, placed in the bodies of men, are tormented by the word of God with the fire of spiritual flames, and those who among you are worshipped as gods, among us, subjected to human authority by the healing of devout faith through the grace of Christ, both endure torments while resisting and are subdued, conquered by avenging punishments.

I shall also endeavor to explain what the Penates are, lest anything be passed over by me. Those who think that life is nothing other than the license to eat and drink have fashioned these gods for themselves out of the lowliness of their desire, consecrating under this name, for the welfare of men, the nourishments of the body which are obtained from daily feasts. Because the weakness of the body is restored through feasts, they have decreed that food alone is God, not knowing the truth of the divine oracle. For when our Lord Jesus Christ, solicitous for our salvation, was contending with the devil in a struggle of his divine majesty, and in order to free from his jaws the man he bore, he shook him with this reply. For when the devil said to him: If you are the Son of God, command that these stones become bread, the Lord answered him and said: Man does not live by bread alone, but by every word of God.

Not knowing, therefore, the substance of the human race, they consecrated daily feasts under this name. For everything that men eat is called penus; hence also the pantry is called cella penaria, hence also the Penates—composed by abject and prostrate men out of wretched thought. But learn what Vesta is, lest you think it something ancient or discovered with great awe. It is the domestic fire which serves in hearths for daily use. Therefore let it have cooks as its priests, not wretched virgins, who, scorning the very embers of the fire, are either compelled to sin with a prostituted body, or, persevering in virginity, lose the honorable dignity of a glorious name.

Hear also what the divine power of the Palladium is. It is an image made from the bones of Pelops. Abaris the Scythian is said to have made it; now consider what sort of thing it is that a barbarian Scythian consecrated. Is there anything composed by human reason among the Scythians, and could that fierce people, always advancing with cruel and inhuman savagery, find anything right in establishing religions? Abaris sold this image to the Trojans, making vain promises to foolish men. A god was sold so that he might benefit the buyer, and the buyer humbly adored whatever he had seen put up for auction a little before. The substance of the image itself is from the bones of Pelops. If human folly wishes wretched men to venerate bones, gather at least the remains of a purer and more chaste man. Let there accrue to the idol you make some merit from the virtues of the man. Pelops was the darling of a lover, and long endured the losses of a prostituted modesty.

But neither was he lacking in crime when grown to manhood. For he killed with the treachery of a betrayer the man whose daughter he was seeking. He also assailed the betrayer himself with perjuries, and lest he should pay the promised rewards, he hurled this same man over sheer precipices. Behold, whose bones were chosen to become a god, to guard cities and kingdoms. But he never guarded or benefited anyone, and what awaited him he saw from the fates of the cities in which he dwelt. Troy was burned by the Greeks, Rome by the Gauls, and from both conflagrations the Palladium was preserved. But preserved not by its own powers, but by human protection: for men rescue it from both places, and it was carried away lest it should burn in the human conflagration. So great a divinity required human protection, and sought human aid lest it should burn. The Palladium was deferred from the fire, not delivered.

The sentence stands, the punishment remains, the fire threatens, the fire presses, which it will not be able to avoid. Already the heavenly flame is in labor, already the coming of divine retribution is made manifest, already the destruction of future ruin is announced; in this conflagration the Palladium will not be able to find a hiding place; this fire searches out hidden things, seeks what is concealed: and whatever has destroyed erring men through vain persuasions, it encompasses with the swift devastation of flames. For there comes (he says) the day of the Lord like a burning furnace. You have heard what is coming. There is nothing gathered from you that can be stored in the storehouses of the Lord: you will burn like stubble, whose empty worthlessness is preserved in ashes and cinders, on which the ravening violence of fire feeds with its innate breath.

This is your end and your finish: this is the punishment which God has decreed for those who have deceived men, that he who against the will of God has either deceived or destroyed a wretched man shall burn in perpetual flames. I wish indeed to inquire carefully whose Minerva they wish this to be the sign of. For it is established that there were several Minervas, and no one disagrees on this point. Let us therefore speak of the origin, institution, art, and purpose of each, so that from all of these it may be possible to discover in whose name of Minerva the Palladium was consecrated.

Antiquity, as we read, hands down that there were five Minervas. One is the daughter of Vulcan, who founded Athens, whom a rustic crowd accompanied from rural places into the order of urban life. There was another in Egypt, daughter of Nilus the king, mistress of the art of weaving. The third was born of Saturn as her father. But they record that she was a virgin: for she never kept herself within the modesty befitting the female sex, but always pursued arms and the clamour of battles and the bloody pursuits of war. The fourth was the daughter of Jupiter, the Cretan king, who brought to her father the slain Liber. The fifth was born of Pallas as her father and Tritonis as her mother, and, called by her father's name, she was named Pallas by men.

This one, driven by the madness of parricide and the impulse of frenzied recklessness, slew her father Pallas with a cruel death: and not content with the simple death of her father, so that she might enjoy her crimes the longer and triumph more cruelly over her father's death, she adorned herself with the spoils of his body, that she might make public the deed of parricide through cruel display. The Palladium is consecrated, O abomination!, in her name. This is the Pallas who is worshipped, this is she who is preserved by pontifical law, and whose image is adoringly venerated. Apply fire, heap up the flames, so that it may be said to burn with your daily sacrifices. For what else does a parricide deserve, but that, before the sentence of God, she be consumed daily by avenging flames in the perpetual alternation of fires? They are tombs, most sacred emperors, that should be called, not temples. They should rather be called the pyres of the wretched.

For in honour of ruined men, the pitiable servitude of mankind builds halls in place of sepulchres. There the ashes of burned bodies are kept, here the cinders of the dead are stored away by irreligious custom, so that the calamity of bitter deaths may be renewed by the daily blood of victims, so that the outcome of sad lamentation, renewed, may be reborn in annual mourning, so that a fresher wailing may stir up grief that had been lulled to sleep, so that the wretched mind of mankind may learn from the rite of these sacred observances both to honour and to commit parricides, incests, and murders. These things must be cut away, most sacred emperors, utterly and destroyed, and corrected by the most severe laws of your edicts, lest the deadly error of this presumption continue to defile the Roman world, lest the wickedness of a pestilential custom grow strong. Whatever strives to destroy a man of God, let it no longer hold dominion on earth.

They are unwilling, to be sure, and they resist, and with headlong desire they seek their own destruction: but come to the aid of the wretched, deliver those who are perishing; for this purpose the supreme God has entrusted empire to you, that through you the wound of this injury may be healed. We know the peril of their crime, the penalties of their error are well known; but it is better that you deliver the unwilling than that you grant destruction to those who desire it. The sick are pleased by what is contrary to them, and when adverse health has taken possession of a man's body, perverse things are demanded by the suffering against their own recovery. A mind captivated by the vice of languor always desires the increase of its diseases, and spurning the remedies of physicians it scorns them, rejects the cure of medicine, and hastens with headlong eagerness toward its own destruction.

Then, if the evil of the disease has grown stronger, greater remedies are sought, and medicine opposes itself more forcefully on behalf of men's health. Harsh foods, bitter drinks are administered to the unwilling: and if the evil has grown worse, fire too is applied and the knife. Thus a man, having recovered his health and having had his well-being restored to him, acknowledges with the judgment of a sound mind that everything he unwillingly suffered through the vice of his ailing body was done entirely for his own benefit.

Receive also, most sacred princes, the names of these gods and the reasoning by which they were composed. This light, which by God's command, having put the darkness to flight, restores day to men, and which directs the course of its journey through the span of twelve hours, they wished to call the Sun, not because it is alone, as some would have it, since there are also the sky and the moon and many other stars which we see, of which some shine in a single series and in perpetual cohesion and joined together, while others, scattered across the whole sky, measure out their wandering courses by their own movements. But it is called Sol because, when it has risen, with all the other stars obscured, it shines alone. This same moon also received the name Lucina from its nocturnal light. Some also wished her to be called Diana, because, shining through the night, she makes for men almost a second day.

They wished Neptune to be named from swimming, fashioning the substance of the name from what they gladly did. The whole earthly force and nature they call Dis Pater; for this is the nature of the earth, that all things both fall back into it and again, having sprung from it, come forth, which fact showed the wealth and riches of the earth. They wish Proserpina to denote the substance of crops; because crops are of use to men when they have begun to be sown. The earth itself they name Ceres, a name borrowed from the sowing of fruits. Mars received his name from the chances of war, as though he turns great things. Minerva likewise is a warlike name, as though she either diminishes or threatens. The beauty of men was called Venus. The name Apollo they fashioned from human misfortunes, in the Greek tongue, as though he either loses or destroys all things entrusted to him. They also call the Sun Apollo, because, set each day at its setting, it loses the brightness of its light.

Now to destroy the Greeks say ἀπολλύειν. You see how turbulent error devised your fabricated and fictitious gods, how by old wives' superstitions both their forms and their names were handed down to you. But truth has exposed all these things, and the reasoning of a sound mind has discovered them, so that, once all things had been investigated and uncovered which sacrilegious error had concealed, the path of truth might shine forth. For all these things, having been ill composed, were at first a source of terror to mortals: then, once the novelty was spent, as though men were recovering from a long illness, a certain contempt born of wonder arose. Thus little by little, what had stupefied the mind, it dared to inquire into carefully, and at once the keen intellect directed itself into the hidden recesses of fabricated and vain superstitions. Then, from continual investigations, having gathered by reason the explanation of hidden things, it arrived at the causes, so that the human race might first learn, then despise, and thirdly reject the pitiable inventions of profane religions.

It is now pleasing to explain by what signs or by what symbols the pitiable crowd of men recognizes itself within these very superstitions. For they have their own signs, their own responses, which the discipline of the Devil has handed down to them in these assemblies of sacrileges. In a certain temple, so that a man about to die may be admitted into the inner parts, he says: I have eaten from the tympanum, I have drunk from the cymbal, and I have learned the secrets of the religion. Which is said in the Greek tongue: ἐκ τυμπάνου βέβρωκα, ἐκ κυμβάλου πέπωκα, γέγονα μυστικός. Wretchedly, miserable man, you confess to the crime you have committed; you have drunk in the pestilential poison of venom, and with the impious impulse of frenzy you lap up a deadly cup; death always follows that food, and eternal punishment. That which you declare you have drunk constricts the vital vein unto death, and the seat of the soul, contaminated by the continuance of evils, throws you into confusion.

There is another food, which bestows health and life; there is another food, which commends and restores man to the supreme God; there is another food, which relieves the languishing, recalls the wandering, raises up the fallen, which bestows upon the dying the marks of eternal immortality. Seek the bread of Christ, the cup of Christ, so that, with earthly frailty despised, the substance of man may be nourished by immortal food. But what is this bread and what is this cup? Concerning which wisdom proclaims aloud in the books of Solomon, for it says: Come, and eat of my breads, and drink the wine which I have mingled, and Melchisedech, king of Salem and priest of the most high God, offered to Abraham returning the grace of blessing with bread and wine. Also when Isaac had blessed Jacob, when Esau likewise humbly sought the same from his father, his father answered him: I have made him your lord, and all his brothers I have made his servants, with wheat and wine I have confirmed him.

Then Esau bewailed his misfortune with pitiful lamentation, because he had lost the grace of wheat and wine, that is, of future happiness. Moreover, that this divine bread is bestowed by God upon consecrated men, the Holy Spirit says through Isaiah: Thus says the Lord: Behold, those who serve me shall eat, but you shall hunger. Behold, those who serve me shall rejoice, but you shall be confounded; the Lord shall slay you. Not only is this bread denied by the supreme God to the sacrilegious and impious, but punishment is also promised, and the destruction of bitter death is decreed, so that the outcome of divine retribution may be thrust upon those with hungering throats. The venerable responses of the thirty-third psalm also follow upon this same point; for the Holy Spirit says through David: Taste and see, for the Lord is sweet.

Sweet is the heavenly nourishment, sweet is the food of God, nor does it hold within itself the sad torment of wretched hunger, and it drives out from the marrow of men the poisonous venom of the preceding poison. That these things are so, the following responses of the oracle declare; for it says: Fear the Lord, his holy ones, for there is no want to those who fear him. The rich have been in need and have hungered; but those who seek the Lord shall lack no good thing. You who walk thus in the temple adorned with the toga praetexta, you who gleam with purple, whose head is weighed down with gold or laurel, shameful poverty pursues your error, the burdensome weight of destitution hangs over your neck. That poor man whom you despise is generous and rich; Abraham prepares a space for him in his bosom.

Then you, across the intervening spaces of flames, to soothe the wounds of your conscience, will beg from him a thin drop of dripping water, and Lazarus, even willing, will be able neither to give nor to obtain for you any relief from your pain. For the merits of each are weighed with equal grace: to him life is granted on account of the evils of this age; to you, on account of the goods of this age, perpetual punishment of torments is decreed. But that it might be stated more plainly who that bread is through which the destruction of wretched death is overcome, the Lord himself marked it with his holy and venerable mouth, lest through various treatises the hopes of men be led astray by perverse interpretations. For John says in the Gospel: I am the bread of life; he who comes to me shall not hunger, and he who believes in me shall never thirst.

Likewise in what follows he signifies the same thing in a similar manner; for he says: If anyone thirsts, let him come and drink, he who believes in me. And again he himself, that he might hand on to believers the substance of his majesty, says: Unless you eat the flesh of the Son of man and drink his blood, you shall not have life in you. Therefore let there be nothing between you and the tympana, O food of hatred, wretched mortals; seek the grace of saving food, and drink the immortal cup. Christ calls you back to the light with his feasts, and quickens with his divine gifts your limbs rotting with heavy poison and your members growing numb. Renew with heavenly food the man who is lost, so that whatever in you is dead may be reborn through divine benefactions. You have learned what it befits you to do; choose what you will: from that side death is born, from this side immortal life is given.

You also say: Χαῖρε, νύμφιε· χαῖρε, νέον φῶς. Why do you hurl the wretched man thus over precipices, O calamitous persuasion? Why do you promise him the marks of false hope? There is no light among you, nor is there any bridegroom who deserves to hear this. There is one divine power, one bridegroom of men, whose grace Christ has received. You will not be able to transfer to yourself the glory of another's happiness, nor will you be able to be adorned with the splendour of the heavenly divinity. You have been cast into darkness and filth: there reign squalor, filth, murk, darkness, and the horror of perpetual night. If you wish that even a faint gleam of light may shine for you, raise your face, and lift up your downcast eyes, and, abandoning these things, betake yourself to him who said: I am the light of the world; by whose divine precepts it is ordained that in this earthly life our work may shine day by day.

But it cannot shine unless the ornaments of an unblemished conscience protect us, unless an upright and uncorrupted life commend us; then the grace of true light will rise upon us; then the author of light will make himself known to us; then we can both receive and behold the true light. But that the wickedness of the sacrilegious utterance may be suppressed, I will prove by the oracles of the sacred readings who the true bridegroom is; so that it may be shown that Christ is the bridegroom and the Church the bride: from which venerable father spiritual children are begotten day by day. In this proof let the venerable secrets of the prophets be laid open. Let the faith of the holy oracles stand by us. Joel, moved by the divine Spirit, speaks thus: Sound the trumpet in Sion, sanctify a fast, and proclaim a healing, gather the people, sanctify the Church, receive the elders, gather the suckling infants, let the bridegroom go forth from his chamber, and the bride from her bridal chamber.

Jeremiah likewise signifies the same thing in a similar manner; for he says, when he threatens Jerusalem with a fierce oracle: And I will take away from the cities of Judah and from the streets of Jerusalem the voice of those rejoicing, the voice of the Bridegroom and the voice of the bride.

The Holy Spirit also foretells the going forth of the Bridegroom through the Psalms. In the eighteenth Psalm this oracle is found; for it says: And he, as a bridegroom coming forth from his chamber, rejoiced as a giant to run his course. His going forth is from the end of heaven, and his circuit even to the end thereof, and there is none that can hide from his heat. Let the more secret mysteries be laid open: in the Apocalypse we shall find who the Bridegroom is; for it is written thus: Come, I will show thee the new bride, the wife of the Lamb. And he carried me away in the spirit to a great and high mountain, and showed me the holy city Jerusalem descending out of heaven.

We must also inquire what the teaching of the Gospel hands down to us on this same matter; for we shall find it thus recorded in the Gospel of John: Ye yourselves are my witnesses that I said, to those who were sent from Jerusalem unto me, that I am not the Christ, but that I am sent before him. He that hath the bride is the bridegroom, but the friend of the bridegroom, who standeth and heareth him, rejoiceth greatly because of the bridegroom's voice. The mystery of this thing has been shown; the choir of wise virgins awaits the coming of this Bridegroom; holy virginity bears lights before him with wakeful care; to servants awaiting the Bridegroom the gift of blessed rewards is promised. For we find in the Gospel of Luke: Let your loins be girded and your lamps burning, and ye yourselves like unto men that wait for their lord, when he shall return from the wedding; that, when he cometh and knocketh, they may open unto him.

Blessed are those servants whom the Lord, when he cometh, shall find watching. Behold, the Bridegroom has been shown forth by the oracles of venerable responses. Why dost thou, placed in bitter circumstances, impose upon thyself a blessed name? If thou desirest, being set free, to follow the light of the Bridegroom, cast away thy errors, and, solicitous with wakeful care, chastise the preceding deeds of thy life with religious devotion. Then, when the Bridegroom shall find thee watching in his name, when he shall have recognized the merits of thy faith, he will give the greatest reward, he will give the full gift; thou shalt enter with him into the bridal chamber of heaven, thou shalt see the kingdoms of the world, and that thou mayest be able to be a partaker of them, the grace of immortality shall be conferred upon thee by the most merciful and most just Lord.

The sign of another profane sacrament is: Θεὸς ἐκ Πέτρας. Why do you transfer this holy and venerable secret to profane acts by an adulterated profession? There is another stone, which God promised he would send for the establishing of the foundations of the promised Jerusalem. Christ is shown to us by the signification of the venerable stone. Why dost thou, by furtive fraud, transfer to defiled superstitions the dignity of a venerable name? Ruin follows thy stone, and the fatal collapse of falling rooftops. Our stone, founded by the hand of God, builds up, confirms, raises, fortifies, and adorns with the splendor of perpetual immortality the grace of the restored body: for Isaiah says of this, at the prompting of the Holy Spirit: Thus saith the Lord: behold, I lay in the foundations of Zion a precious stone, elect, the chief corner stone, honored, and he that believeth in him shall not be confounded.

In the Psalms likewise a similar response is given; for the Holy Spirit says: The stone which the builders rejected, the same is become the head of the corner. Is not this the Lord's doing, and it is marvellous in our eyes? Through many prophets the Holy Spirit shows the order of that name: for the prophet Zechariah says: Behold, I bring forth my servant, whose name is the Branch, for upon the stone which I have set before Jesus, upon one stone, there are seven eyes. But that it may be more plainly established, let us lay open the more ancient secrets of the venerable readings. In Deuteronomy it is thus contained: And thou shalt write upon the stone all this law. Jesus of Nave also, by divine command, comprehended this in particular; for he says: And he took a great stone, and set it up there before the Lord.

And Jesus said unto the people: Behold, this stone shall be a witness unto me, because it hath heard all the words of the Lord, which he spake unto you. And it shall be a witness unto us in the last days, when ye shall have departed from the Lord your God.

Moreover, that through this stone, that is, through our Lord Jesus Christ, both those gods shall fall and the multitude of temples, Daniel openly explained in venerable oracles; for he says, when interpreting the dream of the king: And behold an image, an image exceeding great, and the appearance of that image was terrible, stood before thee; whose head was of fine gold, his breast and his arms of silver, his belly and his thighs of brass, his legs partly of iron and partly of clay, until a stone was cut out of the mountain without hands, and smote the image upon his feet that were of iron and clay, and broke them in pieces, and then was the iron, the clay, the brass, the silver, and the gold broken to pieces together, and became like the chaff of the summer threshing floors, and the wind carried them away, so that no place was found for them. And the stone that smote the image became a great mountain, and filled the whole earth.

What place is there on earth which the name of Christ has not possessed? Where the sun rises, where it sets, where the north is raised up, where the south inclines, the majesty of the venerable name has filled all. And although in certain regions the limbs of idolatry still quiver; yet the matter stands thus, that this pestilential evil may be utterly cut away from all Christian lands. Concerning the stone of the idolaters, of which they say: Θεὸς ἐκ Πέτρας, what does the oracle of the prophets answer? But who has withstood, or whom does that stone spare?

This holy stone, however, that is, Christ, either sustains the foundations of faith, or, placed in the corner (Actor. Iv, 11), joins the members of two walls with equal and measured proportion, that is, gathers the nations into one from the Old and New Testament: or certainly unites the diversity of body and soul to man with inviolate immortality; or promulgates the law, or bears testimony against sinners; or (which is more) smites the image of the devil, so that, with him overcome and prostrated and turned to ashes and embers, raising on high the summit of his own sublimity, he may hold the pure sovereignty of dominion. You now, Constantius and Constans, most sacred emperors, the virtue of your venerable faith must also be implored, which is raised above men and separated from earthly frailty, and joins itself in fellowship with heavenly things, which in all its acts follows, as far as it can, the will of the most high God.

Only a little remains, that by your laws the devil may lie utterly prostrated, that the fatal contagion of extinguished idolatry may perish. The venom of this poison has vanished, and day by day the substance of profane desire breathes its last. Raise the standard of faith; the Divinity has reserved this for you, by whose favor, standing eminent, you are the prostrators of all your enemies, by whose deeds the Roman empire was being weakened. Raise the sign of the venerable law, enact, promulgate what is profitable; may it be auspicious and fortunate for the Republic, that you have prostrated the army with so many heaps of slain enemies. God has also made you happy partakers of his glory and his will; Christ in his favor has reserved for your hands the destruction of idolatry and the ruin of profane temples for your people. He with spiritual arms has conquered evil spirits, you have conquered earthly evils.

Raise the trophies of victory, and let the great title of triumphs be brought forth: rejoicing in the overthrow of profane things, exult more mightily, exult confidently. Your felicity is joined with the power of God; with Christ fighting for the salvation of men, you have conquered.

Let all the symbols of profane religion be set forth in order, that we may prove that the most wicked enemy of the human race has transferred from the holy and venerable oracles of the prophets to the defiled crimes of his own frenzy. For we find it also said thus: ελικερος διμορφοι. That god of yours is not two-formed, but many-formed. For the form of the deceiver is changed into many shapes. He himself is the basilisk and the scorpion, who is trodden down by the secure footsteps of the faithful: he himself is the malicious serpent, whose head deceived mortality crushes: he himself is the tortuous dragon, who is led by a hook, who is shut up captive: that god of yours is adorned with the locks of the Lernaean serpent, seeing to it that, when the lord of dying serpents is struck down, a multitude may succeed. Why dost thou swarm with hydras thus ever reborn? Why dost thou compose thyself with a fruitful offspring of crimes?

We have learned the way of thy death; we know by what remedies the poisons of thy art are overcome. We drink the immortal blood of Christ; the blood of Christ is joined to our blood. This is the saving remedy against thy crimes, which excludes the deadly venom from the people of God. Who has seen that god of theirs, whom they mourn, with horns? What are those horns which he boasts of having? There are other horns, which the prophet commemorates at the prompting of the Holy Spirit, which thou, O devil, thinkest thou canst transfer to thy defiled countenance. Whence dost thou seek ornaments and glory for thyself? The horns signify nothing other than the venerable sign of the cross. By the one extended and straight arm of this sign the world is sustained, the earth is bound together.

And by the joining of the two which go along the sides, the east is touched, the west is lifted up, so that thus the whole orb, made firm by a threefold stability, may hold the foundations of the root of immortality of the fixed work: this venerable secret the prophet has handed down to us. For we shall find it thus written in Habakkuk: His virtue covered the heavens, and the earth is full of his praise. And his brightness shall be as the light; he shall have horns in his hands. And there was the hiding of his power, and he set his love. The word shall go, and shall go forth before his steps. Behold the venerable horns of the Cross, behold the immortal summit of holy power, behold the divine joining of a glorious work.

Thou, O Christ, dost sustain the world and the earth with outstretched hands, thou dost sustain the heavenly dominion; our salvation clings to thy immortal shoulders; thou, O Lord, dost bear the sign of eternal life, thou dost announce this to us by a venerable impulse through the prophets. For Isaiah says: Behold, a son is born unto us, the government is upon his shoulder, and his name is called the messenger of great counsel. These are the horns of the Cross, by which all things are alike lifted up and held together. By these horns the life of men is well sustained. That Amalek might be conquered, Moses with outstretched hands imitated these horns; that he might more easily obtain what he greatly besought, he made for himself a cross from his rod. Hasten with swift speed to these horns, flee to these horns with humble veneration.

May justice, equity, chastity, mercy, patience, faith fix you to these horns: that, bearing the venerable insignia before you, rejoicing in the majesty of the consecrated font, you may be partakers both of the burial of Christ and of his life.

Let us also set forth another symbol, that by the effort of thought the crimes may be revealed; the whole order of which must be told, so that it may be plain to all that the law of divine dispensation has been corrupted by the perverse imitation of the devil. On a certain night an image is laid supine upon a bier, and mourned with lamentations arranged by numbers. Then, when they have satisfied themselves with feigned lamentation, a light is brought in. Then the throats of all who had been weeping are anointed by the priest; and when they have been anointed, the priest whispers this in a slow murmur: Θαρρεῖτε, μύσται τοῦ θεοῦ σεσωσμένου, Ἔσται γὰρ ἡμῖν ἐκ πόνων σωτηρία. Why dost thou exhort the wretched to rejoice? Why dost thou compel deceived men to be glad? What hope, what salvation dost thou promise them by thy fatal persuasion? Why dost thou trouble them with a false promise?

The death of thy god is known, his life does not appear, nor has any divine oracle ever responded concerning his resurrection, nor did he show himself to men after death, that he might be believed, nor did he promise any proofs of this work, nor did he show by preceding examples that he would do this. Thou dost bury an idol, thou dost mourn an idol, thou dost bring an idol forth from burial, and, wretched one, when thou hast done these things, thou dost rejoice. Thou dost set free thy god, thou dost arrange the prostrate members of stone, thou dost set upright an insensible rock. Let thy god have thanks from thee; may he reward thee with equal gifts, and wish thee to be a partaker of himself; mayest thou die as he dies, mayest thou live as he lives. For as to the anointing of the throats with ointment, who would not despise that crime with contempt for its vanity?

The devil therefore has his Christs, and because he himself is Antichrist, he leads wretched men by a criminal fellowship to the dishonor of his name. Reserve this ointment for the dying, so that those whom thou hast caught in thy snares, smeared with thy poisoned ointment, thou mayest always plunge into mournful and fatal destruction.

There is another ointment, which God the Father delivered to his only Son, which the Son bestows upon believers by the divine majesty of his name. The ointment of Christ is compounded with an immortal composition, and tempered with the spiritual fragrances of its ingredients. This ointment strips the rotting limbs of men from their mortal bonds, so that, the first man being buried, another man may straightway be born more happily from that same man. And that this may be explained more plainly, the mysteries of the sacred readings must be laid open. For David speaks thus, to convey the grace of this ointment: Thou art fairer in form than the sons of men, grace is poured upon thy lips: therefore God hath blessed thee for ever. Gird thy sword upon thy thigh, O most mighty, in thy splendour and thy beauty attend, go forward prosperously, and reign. Because of truth and meekness and justice: and thy right hand shall lead thee wonderfully.

The arrows of the most mighty are sharp, peoples shall fall under thee in the heart of the king's enemies. Thy throne, O God, is for ever and ever: the sceptre of thy kingdom is a right sceptre. Thou hast loved justice and hated iniquity, therefore God thy God hath anointed thee with the oil of gladness above thy fellows. Myrrh and aloes and cassia from thy garments, from the ivory palaces, out of which they have made thee glad. We have perceived the secrets of the immortal ointment, and the order of the divine dispensation has been shown to us. An everlasting kingdom and the diadem of heaven have been conferred upon our Lord together with the majesty of the ointment. But who this one is who has received the power of ruling the world, who is adorned with the majesty of a name worthy of veneration, another oracle shows us; for that same David says: Why have the nations raged, and the peoples meditated vain things?

The kings of the earth stood up, and the princes assembled together against the Lord and against his Christ. Why dost thou so exalt thyself, O sacrilegious persuasion? Why dost thou ensnare wretched men with unbridled recklessness? The ointment of Christ bestows the sovereignty of heaven; your ointment kindles the flames of hell.

But what that priest composes with impure mouth and with the polluted contamination of words, it is our pleasure to examine with diligent inquiry. When their god has been liberated, he persuades his companions to be of good cheer, to hold the confidence of good hope. O in how wretched, how mournful bonds does this fleeting cunning entangle itself! Who liberates your god? For whom has he accomplished that over which he labours? Learn, learn what you do not know, learn what you do not see. Christ the Son of God, in order to free the human race from the bonds of death, endured all these things: to remove the yoke of harsh captivity, to restore man to the Father, to reconcile man with God in a favourable reconciliation once the offence had been appeased, to show by his own example the fruit of the promised resurrection—the Son of God did what he had previously promised: he shut the gates of the infernal abode, and by trampling death underfoot he overthrew the necessity of the harsh law.

Through three days the throng of the just was thus freshly gathered by him, lest the wickedness of death should lord it over them any longer, lest the merit of the just should collapse through long despair; he broke the everlasting bars, and the iron doors, at Christ's command, fell down: behold, the earth trembled, and, shaken in the stability of its foundations, acknowledged the divine power of Christ present. Before the appointed time the revolving course of the world hastens the day forward; and the sun, its span of daylight hours not yet completed, turns with quickened course toward night. Behold, the topmost veil is rent asunder, and the darkness of night hides the world in deeper gloom. All the elements were thrown into turmoil as Christ fought, at that very moment when he first armed a human body against the tyranny of death. For three days the battle was waged in this conflict, until death was broken, its powers of malice overcome.

Why, O devout man, O man of Christ, dost thou despair and faint with your accustomed impatience? Thou canst not endure the delay of three days, and dost confess thy anxiety and despair with fresh prayers? That thou wouldst do this on that day the Holy Spirit signifies with a venerable voice, when through David he says: We are counted as sheep for the slaughter. Arise, why sleepest thou, O Lord? Arise, and cast us not off for ever. Why turnest thou thy face away? Thou forgettest our poverty and our tribulation: for our soul is humbled in the dust, our belly cleaveth to the earth. Arise, O Lord, help us, and redeem us for thy name's sake. Behold, after three days a day brighter than usual arises, and the grace of its former light is restored to the sun. Christ the Almighty God is adored in the more resplendent rays of the sun. The saving divine power exults, and a throng of the just and holy accompanies his triumphal chariot.

Then mortal nature, raised up, cries out with uplifted joy: Where, O death, is thy sting? Then the saving divine power, going before, commands the heavenly gates to be opened for him. Open, open, and throw back the immortal bars. Christ God, having trampled death, calls back to heaven the man whom he had taken up. This is foretold with a holy voice by the venerable prophet, and the voice of one commanding is heard from the prophetic mouth; for the Holy Spirit speaks thus, to show us the power of Christ commanding: Lift up your gates, O princes, and be ye lifted up, O eternal gates, and the king of glory shall enter. This is commanded to angels who do not know; for they could not have known when the Word of God descended to earth; and so they too answer with an anxious question: Who is this king of glory? To those who ask, Christ answered with the manifest majesty of his divine power: The Lord strong and mighty, the Lord mighty in battle.

The Son of God is straightway recognized by the guardians of heaven, and whatever had previously escaped them they now acknowledge. They behold the spoils of the prostrated enemy, and, recalling the order of the first dispensation, they too together with those ascending cry out again with a repeated voice: Lift up your gates, O ye who are set over them, and be ye lifted up, O eternal gates, and the king of glory shall enter. The Father, upon the return of the Son, restores the promised sceptres of the kingdom, and grants him the seat of the royal throne with equal power, that he may command, that he may reign, that he may hold sway, that he may rule with the perpetual majesty of his divine power.

Hear what the Holy Spirit commanded Daniel to say concerning him: I saw in a vision of the night, and behold, one like the Son of man coming with the clouds of heaven, came even to the Ancient of days, and stood in his sight, and they that stood by brought him near. And there was given him royal power, and all the kings of the earth and the kingdom and all glory served him. And his power is an everlasting power, which shall not be taken away, and his kingdom shall not be destroyed. These same things are shown to us by holy revelation; for we find it written thus in the Apocalypse: And I turned to see the voice that spoke with me; and being turned, I saw seven golden candlesticks, and in the midst of the candlesticks one like to the Son of man, clothed with a garment down to the feet, and he was girt about the breasts with a golden girdle.

And his head and his hairs were white as white wool, as snow, and his eyes were as a flame of fire, and his feet like unto fine brass, as if in a burning furnace, and his voice as the sound of many waters: and he had in his right hand seven stars, and out of his mouth went a sharp two-edged sword; and his face was as the sun shineth in his strength. And when I had seen him, I fell at his feet as dead. And he laid his right hand upon me, saying: Fear not, I am the first and the last, and the living one, who was dead; and behold I am living for ever and ever, and I have the keys of death and of hell. After the resurrection also, when he gave certain commandments to his disciples, he concluded the order of the immortal commandments with this law: All power is given to me in heaven and in earth.

Go therefore and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost, teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you. But that God the Father, making him a sharer in the kingdom, granted him the seat of the royal throne, this is taught by the oracle: The Lord said to my Lord, sit thou at my right hand, until I make thy enemies thy footstool. The Lord will send forth the rod of thy strength out of Sion: rule thou in the midst of thy enemies. With thee is the principality in the day of thy strength, in the brightness of the saints, and from the womb before the day star I begot thee. The Lord hath sworn, and he will not repent. Those are the enemies of God, most sacred emperors, who disturb the order of truth with a contrary law, who conceive sacrilegious vows at the prompting of perverse desire, who in the frenzy of a profane mind worship either wood or stone forever.

Placed in this position, we must lay open the order of the holy dispensation: so that whatever the prophetic discipline of the holy word of God has handed down to us in our investigation may be set forth specifically for the refutation of the stains of profane error, lest [lacuna] as we have said, those who handed down their sacrileges to the erring have devised. Thus let the order of truth be sought out by us with greater care. And so, with the remaining matters suspended for a little while, let the discourse be transferred to the explanation of these things which are true.

Grant me, O lords and emperors, the patience of your holy ears, that we may fully set forth for your clemency what we promise. Why God, that is, the Son of God, suffered to become man, will be shown to your piety in a brief and true account. When God made the first man, that is, Adam, in his own image, he gave him a fixed law of commandments. He, deceived through the woman, that is, Eve, by the persuasions of the devil, lost the dignity of the glory promised to him. There was a tree in paradise, through which he lost the grace of the rewards promised by God. Man was made from the clay of virgin earth: for as yet, as Scripture says, it had not rained upon the earth. He, having despised the commandments of God, afflicted the human race with the bonds of mortality. All this needed both to be reformed and corrected, and the reformation of the origin had to reform the beginnings.

Adam, made from the clay of virgin earth, lost by his own transgression the life that had been promised. Through the Virgin Mary and the Holy Spirit, Christ was born and received both immortality and a kingdom. The tree of wood offered its pestiferous food to those who were deceived: the wood of the cross restored life with an immortal structure. Adam despised; Christ obeyed God. Thus by divine dispensation whatever Adam lost, Christ found. For after many ages, in the last stretches of time (that is, in what is nearly the last week of the ages), the Word of God united himself with a human body, to free man, to conquer death, to join the frailty of the human body with divine immortality. For what would so great a multitude of saints do? What hope of salvation for them? What reward for their merits, if under one and the same condition of fate they too were held bound by the inescapable bonds of mortality?

Abel, Enoch, Noah, Shem, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob would have nothing to promise themselves of God's mercy and majesty: they too, after so great a merit of faith, would go along with all the rest equally condemned, and one and the same death would receive all the saints of God, nor would piety have any reward with God, if one and the same condition of death swallowed all alike. But God had promised Abraham a kingdom more clearly than the stars of heaven: therefore Mary the Virgin, descending from the lineage of Abraham, conceives God, so that the offspring of the aforementioned men might be joined by the bond of immortal fellowship, and thus the human race, joined through one who is equally man and God by the equal bond of fellowship, might attain to the sovereignty of immortality by the merit of obedience. Since therefore, most sacred emperors, we have satisfied your attentive ears, let us pursue the rest, that speech, purifying, may be able to cleanse even so the filth of polluted ears.

There follows yet another symbol, which is handed down with great ceremony to the credulous ears of wretched men: Ταῦρος δράκοντος, καὶ δράκων ταύρου πατὴρ. At times, O devil, you have betrayed the marks of your defiled name; at times you have confessed your infamous name with your own voice. I know what you were, what you dared to do; I know what the malicious persuasion of your crimes has wrought. This was what you so earnestly promised Eve when you were destroying her, when you said to her: Ye shall be as Gods. Then you were preparing temples for yourself and your followers, and making shrines, and consecrating the filth of your venomous mouth with impious ceremonies. You creep through temples, and feed miserably on the blood of slaughtered victims. Nor was blood lacking to your poisons, nor the half-burned parts of cremated bodies; you have also frequently stained yourself with the blood of human victims. And your rage is sated with the blood of the temple, or the altar of Carthage, and your poisons have been nourished by parched throats.

Doing these things, you boast that you benefit wretched men, so that you may destroy them by your cruelty, deceive them by persuasion, and lay them low by promises. Thus do you provide for your own, O parricide. Flee, O wretched men, flee, and abandon this contagion with all the speed you can muster. It is a dragon that is worshipped. He cannot hide; he has himself confessed the nature of his own name. Punishment follows upon a confessed criminal. Hear what the holy prophet declares by divine inspiration. This oracle of Isaiah has been handed down to us by faith, for he says: In that day God shall bring his sword, holy and great and strong, upon the dragon, the great serpent, and the crooked, and shall slay the dragon. The will of God is the substance of the perfection of his work. The sentence pronounced upon the dragon is just: whatever God has spoken is accomplished. This is the consolation of the dragon about to die: that a great multitude of the lost accompanies him to his destruction.

If the day of his death is sought, he was struck down when he saw God made man, and when the divine power of Christ appeared to us. After that day, whoever has followed the way of this serpent must necessarily die with the serpent. Those gods whom you worship, he himself fashioned, he himself composed. If your stubborn minds persist in this error, you too shall burn together with your gods, so that whatever your authors deserved by divine judgment may be transferred also to your destruction through the bond of your fellowship with them. Believe me, the devil has left nothing untried that might weaken or destroy wretched man: therefore he transforms himself into all shapes with manifold variety, therefore he fashioned himself with cunning of every kind, so that he might ensnare men with varied and manifold deceits and destroy them.

The ruined executioner, O abomination, arranged that his rites should always be renewed through wood, so that, because he knew it would come to pass that the life of man, nailed to the wood of the cross, would be bound fast in the bond of perpetual immortality, he might thereby deceive those destined for ruin by an imitation of wood. In the Phrygian rites, which they call those of the Mother of the gods, a pine tree is felled each year, and an image of a young man is bound to the middle of the tree. In the rites of Isis, a trunk is cut from a pine tree; the middle part of this trunk is carefully hollowed out, and an idol of Osiris made from those cuttings is buried in it. In the rites of Proserpina, a felled tree is shaped and fashioned into the likeness of a maiden, and when it has been brought within the city, it is mourned for forty nights, and on the fortieth night it is burned.

But those other pieces of wood which I mentioned are likewise consumed by flame; for even after a year the flame devours the pyre of those same pieces of wood. You have erred, wretch, and erred grievously; that fire will be able to profit you nothing; in vain do you flatter yourself with that flame, ever renewing it with your inventions. The fire that exacts punishment for your crimes rages on in perpetual and unceasing torment. Learn the order of the divine and saving wood, so that you may know that you can be helped by no means whatsoever. From the flood, a wooden ark delivered the human race. Then Abraham lays wood upon the shoulders of his only son. A wooden staff protected the people of God as they departed from Egypt. Wood restored a sweet taste to the bitter waters of myrrh. By a wooden staff, saving water is brought forth from the spiritual rock. And, that Amalek might be overcome, Moses is stretched out around the staff with hands extended.

The patriarch dreams of a ladder of wood with an angel resting upon it, and sees others ascending and others descending by the same. And the law of God is entrusted to a wooden ark, so that through all these things, as through certain steps, the salvation of men might arrive at the wood of the cross. Wherefore the wood of the cross sustains the fabric of heaven, strengthens the foundations of the earth, and leads to life the men fastened to it. The wood of the devil burns always and perishes, and leads believing men with its ashes down to the depths of Tartarus. Let us also consider by reason what manner of thing that other is. The devil, consecrating his tree, causes a ram to be sacrificed at the roots of the felled tree in the dead of night. Who persuaded you to this, O wicked one? From what pestilential desire did you learn this? Do you always array yourself against the Lord most high with impious desire?

Therefore the stern judgment of divinity casts you down from heaven in abject humiliation; therefore the sentence of God decrees perpetual punishment for you, because to your crimes day by day there is always added a new crime, because you strive to deceive man by the fraudulent persuasion of God. See what this mocking enemy has devised for himself.

To Abraham, about to sacrifice his son at God's command, a ram is substituted and bound at the roots of a nearby tree. The most high God, about to deliver his people from the tyranny of the Egyptians, commanded that a ram be slain by night, and ordered that the doorposts be smeared with its blood. He commands that it be prepared by a fixed number of men during a nocturnal meal, and imposes upon that sacrifice the name of Passover. But this the providence of the divine majesty devised as an image of things to come, so that through a true sign he might show us the Passover. Therefore when the Prophet, moved by the divine Spirit, foretold the passion of our Lord, he said: He was led as a sheep to the slaughter; as a lamb before its shearer, so he opened not his mouth. In his humiliation his judgment was taken away. Who shall declare his generation? For his life is taken from the earth.

Another prophet also answered these same things with a like oracle: Lord, make it known to me, and I shall know; then I saw their devices. I was led as a gentle lamb to the slaughter. Against me they devised a device, saying: Come, let us put wood into his bread, and let us cut off his life from the earth. Moreover, that our Lord is called a Lamb is shown to us by holy revelation. For in the Apocalypse we find it written thus: And I saw in the midst of the throne and of the four living creatures and in the midst of the elders a Lamb standing, as though it had been slain, having seven horns and seven eyes, which are the seven spirits of God sent forth into all the earth. And he came and took the book from the right hand of him that sat on the throne.

And when he had taken the book, the four living creatures and the twenty-four elders fell down before the Lamb, each having golden harps full of the fragrant incense of supplications, which were the prayers of the saints, and they sang a new song, saying: Worthy art thou to take the book and to open its seals, for thou wast slain and hast redeemed us to God by thy blood out of every tribe and tongue and people and nation, and hast made us a kingdom and priests to our God, and we shall reign upon the earth. John also calls the Son of God by the name of Lamb, that he too might answer to the prophetic promise; for he says in the Gospel: The next day John sees Jesus coming toward him and says: Behold the Lamb of God, behold him who takes away the sins of the world.

For the salvation of men the venerable blood of that Lamb is shed, so that the Son of God may redeem his saints by the outpouring of his precious blood: so that those who are set free by the blood of Christ may first be consecrated by the immortal majesty of that blood. The blood shed before idols has helped no one. And lest the blood of cattle deceive or destroy wretched men: that blood defiles, it does not redeem, and through various misfortunes it presses men down into death. Wretched are those who are stained by the outpouring of sacrilegious blood. The Taurobolium or Criobolium drenches you with the wicked pollution of blood.

Let these filths which you gather be washed away. Seek out noble springs, seek pure waters, so that there, after many stains, the blood of Christ together with the Holy Spirit may make you white. But in order that full persuasion may recall wretched men to a sound mind, greater authority is needed, so that, with minds healed and restored, no trace of the preceding pestilence may remain. What idols are, therefore, and what substance they possess, has been shown by the oracles of the prophets and by the divine voice, all of which must be set forth in particular, so that this may be recognized as brought forth not by our own rashness, but delivered to us by divine teaching and sealed by a heavenly voice.

What its substance is, is shown by the venerable voice of wisdom; for it says in the books of Solomon: All the idols of the nations they have esteemed as gods, which have neither the sight of eyes to see, nor nostrils to perceive breath, nor ears to hear, nor fingers of hands to handle. But also their feet are slow to walk. For a man made them, and he who borrowed breath fashioned them. Yet no man among men will be able to form a God for himself: for since he is mortal, he fashions a dead thing with wicked hands. But he is better than those whom he worships, since he himself has lived, but they never: What more do we seek? Divine wisdom addresses us with its voice, and taught whatever it had seen in the secrets of God, and showed what was wholesome, lest fragile and fleeting mortality should hasten to its own destruction and death. The Holy Spirit gives the same warning beforehand in the Psalms.

For we find in psalm cxxxiv that it is written thus: The idols of the nations are silver and gold, the work of men's hands. They have a mouth and speak not, they have eyes and see not, they have ears and hear not. For there is no breath in their mouth; they that make them are like unto them. If the craftsman who, for show, either carved or cast a great statue, is struck by the divine condemnation of a curse, what he ought to hope for must be considered, who calls what another sold a God. Jeremiah also, when by God's command he gave precepts to the people, addressed the people with this speech: Say in your hearts, it is fitting for thee to be adored, O Lord. But my angel is with you, and I will require the law from your souls.

Their tongue is polished by the craftsman, they themselves also overlaid with gold and silver are false, and cannot speak: and as for a virgin who has received gold at the urging of a lover, so crowns have been fashioned above the heads of their gods. But there are times when the priests will take away gold and silver from their gods, and spend it upon themselves. They will also give of it to prostitutes and harlots, and they will adorn them like men with garments, gods of silver and gold and wood. He adds also in what follows, to shake off all hesitating doubt: Above its body and head fly owls and swallows and birds likewise. Whereby you shall know that they are not gods. Therefore fear them not. It is gold that they have around them for appearance; unless someone wipes away the rust, it will not shine. For neither will they feel when they are melted down; they were bought at a price, in whom there is no spirit; without feet they are carried upon shoulders.

He adds also, that the confirmed mind may be more strongly strengthened: Knowing therefore from these things that they are not gods, fear them not. And to show the wretched disgrace of their priests, he adds: In their houses the priests sit, having their tunics torn and their heads and beards shaved, whose heads are bare. But they roar, crying out against their gods, as the dead cry out in hell. That kings and nations also are going to pronounce these things concerning them, the same prophet signifies with a prophetic voice; for he says: It shall be known afterward, to all nations and kings, that they are false; because it is manifest that they are not gods, and that no work of God is in them. They will not raise up a king for a region, nor will they give rain to men. They will not discern judgment, nor will they free a region from injury, because they can do nothing.

And when fire falls upon the house of wooden and gilded and silvered gods, their priests will save themselves: but they themselves will be burned like beams in the midst. Neither will they withstand a king nor war; how is it to be thought or accepted that they are gods? Neither from thieves nor from robbers will the wooden and gilded and silvered gods deliver themselves, from whom those who are strong will take away the gold and silver with which they are covered. Take away, take away with the axe, most sacred emperors, the ornaments of the temples. Let the fire of the mint, or the flame of the smelting furnaces, consume these gods. Transfer all votive offerings to your own use and that of the Lord.

After the destruction of the temples you have been advanced to greater power by the might of God; you have conquered enemies, you have extended the empire: and that greater glory might be added to your virtues, with the order of the seasons changed and defied, in winter (which has never happened before, nor will happen) you have trodden under your oars the swelling and raging waves of the Ocean. The wave of a sea already almost unknown to us trembled, and the Briton was struck with fear at the unexpected face of the emperor. What more do you wish? The elements, conquered by your virtues, have yielded. That God commands idols not to be made, the writings of the most holy law declare. For in Exodus we find it written thus: You shall not make for yourselves gods of silver, nor gods of gold. And again in the same book I find the voice of God commanding: You shall not make for yourself an idol, nor the likeness of anything.

The Holy Spirit lays shame upon the wretched, because it desires to recall those who err, not to destroy them. And it says through Isaiah: You shall be confounded with confusion, you who trust in graven images, who say to molten things: you are our gods. It also gives the law which the consecrated people shall keep with devoted perpetuity, and commands thus: You shall adore the Lord your God, and him alone shall you serve. And in Deuteronomy similar commandments of God are known; for it says: There shall be no other gods before me. It adds also, to impress upon their minds the weight of his majesty: See, see that I am he, and there is no God besides me. I will kill and I will make alive, I will strike and I will heal, and there is none who can deliver out of my hands.

In the Apocalypse also this same thing is shown by holy revelation; for it is written thus: And I saw another angel flying in the midst of heaven, having the eternal Gospel, to announce it upon the earth to every nation and tribe and tongue and people, saying with a loud voice: Fear rather the Lord, and give glory to him; for the hour of his judgment is come; and adore him who made heaven and earth, the sea and all things that are in them. Our Lord Jesus Christ also, keeping the paternal ordinances of the law, proclaims this same thing with a venerable decree; for he says: Hear, O Israel, the Lord is your God, and you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your strength; this is the first; and the second is like to it: you shall love your neighbor as yourself. On these two commandments the whole Law and the Prophets depend.

Now follows this divine and venerable commandment, and the holy conclusion of the immortal Lord; for he adds, to show more plainly the way of salvation, and speaks thus: But this is eternal life, that they may know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent. You know the order of the sacred commandments; what you ought to follow, what to flee, you have learned from the venerable and immortal voice. Hear again what destruction awaits those who despise them, with what calamities the necessity of the venerable law has bound them: for the closing clause of the venerable commandments gathers these words together: He that sacrifices to gods shall be put to death, save only to the Lord.

If the dreadful punishment were to strike only the sacrilegious man alone: if the severity of the law threatened only the one who sins, the obstinate fury of rashness would well fortify itself for sacrilege: but now it threatens also his stock and offspring, and acts so that no part of the most wicked seed may remain, that no trace of the profane race may endure. He that sacrifices, it says, to gods shall be rooted out. Consider what you do, wretched and lamentable persuasion. Your crime destroys very many, and the fruitful punishment is divided through the whole substance of your race. But why it rages thus against those who sacrifice is shown by the manifest signification of the ordered authority of the law in Deuteronomy: for we find it written thus: They sacrificed to demons, and not to God. Do not transfer yourself to defiled and polluted spirits, do not hope for help from inferior beings: do not supplicate those over whom, by the grace of God, you ought already to have dominion.

Behold, it is a demon whom you worship; when it hears the name of God and of his Christ, it trembles, and barely collects itself to give us trembling words in answer to our questions: clinging to a man it is torn, burned, beaten, and immediately confesses its committed crimes. You are forbidden by the prohibition of the venerable law to worship this being, to supplicate it, to bend your knee prostrate before it. Hence the punishment of severity, hence the dread sentence to be feared with the terror of condemnation. Why, when God has granted you freedom by his indulgence, do you rather choose the yoke of slavery? [lacuna] The most high God does not cease to assail this crime with a saving voice, but his mercy hastens to correct erring men with frequent threatening. Hear what the divine voice says through the prophet Isaiah: They have adored gods which the fingers of men have made, and man is bowed down, and man is humbled, and I will not forgive them.

And now he addresses you, O profane men, as an angered deity, and still rebukes your errors with a sacred voice; for he says in what follows through the same prophet: To them you have poured out libations, and to them you have offered sacrifices. Shall I not be angry at these things, says the Lord? Still the saving God delays his indignation, suspends his severity, if perchance you may repent of your sinning, so that you may in some manner abandon the destruction of your sacrilegious will. Behold, even in the very impulse of indignation he persuades again with a measured voice, and restrains the goads of his wrath; for he says through the prophet Jeremiah: Walk not after strange gods to serve them, and adore them not, lest you provoke me to anger by the works of your hands to your own destruction. Why here, inclined to sacrilege, do you stop your ears? Why here, in the ardor of obstinate fury, do you hasten to destruction and death?

God has made you free; it is in your own hand whether you live or perish. Why do you hurl yourself over precipices? Standing on a slippery path, and placed on the very point of falling, suspend at last your tottering steps? Behold, sentence is pronounced, behold, punishment is decreed: the divine moderation has long spared your crimes: long has it looked upon your wickedness with forbearance: you arrive at that perilous point where hope and prayers fail. And that you may be more plainly instructed, learn the destruction of condemnation. Concerning this matter in the Apocalypse the whole order of the answer is set forth; for it is written thus: If any man adore the beast and his image, and receive his mark on his forehead and in his hand, he also shall drink of the wine of the wrath of God, mingled in the cup of his wrath. And he shall be tormented with fire and brimstone before the eyes of the Lamb, and the smoke of their torments shall ascend for ever and ever.

And they shall have no rest day nor night, whosoever adore the beast and his image.

But upon you also, most sacred Emperors, necessity is laid to avenge and punish this evil, and by the law of the most high God it is enjoined upon you that your severity should pursue the crime of idolatry in every way. Hear and commit to your holy minds what God commands concerning this crime. In Deuteronomy this law is prescribed: for it says: But if thy brother, or thy son, or thy wife who is in thy bosom, or thy friend who is equal to thine own soul, shall entreat thee secretly, saying: Let us go and serve other gods of the nations, thou shalt not consent to him, and thou shalt not hearken to him, and thine eye shall not spare him, and thou shalt not conceal it, but shalt surely declare concerning him. Thine hand shall be upon him first to slay him, and the hand of all the people afterward. They shall stone him and he shall die, because he sought to turn thee away from the Lord thy God.

He commands that neither son be spared, nor brother, and through a beloved wife he draws the sword of vengeance. He pursues even a friend with lofty severity, and all the people is armed to tear asunder the bodies of the sacrilegious. Even upon whole cities, if they shall have been found guilty of this crime, destruction is decreed: and, that your providence may learn this more plainly, I will set forth the sentence of the established law. In the same book the Lord appoints punishment upon whole cities in these words; for he says: Or if thou shalt hear in one of the cities which the Lord thy God giveth thee to dwell there, men saying: Let us go and serve other gods, whom ye have not known: thou shalt surely smite all that dwell in that city with the edge of the sword, and shalt burn the city with fire, and it shall be without inhabitant. It shall not be built again for ever.

And the Lord shall turn away from the fierceness of his anger, and shall give thee mercy, and shall have compassion upon thee, and shall multiply thee, if thou shalt hearken to the voice of the Lord thy God, and shalt keep his commandments. The most high God promises you, most sacred Emperors, the rewards of his mercy, and decrees the increase of very great enlargement. Do therefore what he commands, fulfil what he enjoins. Your auspices have been heaped with greater gifts, at the beginning of the faith you placed you felt the increase of divine favour. Never did the venerable hand of God forsake you, never did it deny you aid in your labours. The wedges of your adversaries were laid low, and arms that rebelled always fell before your sight. Proud peoples were sent under the yoke, and the hopes of Persia collapsed. Nor shall cruelty armed with its own evils be able to stand long against you. Both of you have felt the power of God, each by a different outcome.

Upon you the crown of heavenly victory has been bestowed, and by your felicity our hardships are relieved. These rewards the most high God, most sacred Emperors, has rendered to you for your faith. With these distinguished recompenses he meanwhile invites you to the mysteries of the venerable law. With pure mind, with devoted conscience, with uncorrupted soul, let your clemency ever look toward heaven, ever await aid from God, worship the venerable divinity of Christ, and for the salvation of the world and your own salvation offer spiritual sacrifices to the saving God. So shall all things come to you prosperously: victories, wealth, peace, abundance, health, and triumphs, that, protected by the divine majesty, you may govern the world with a happy reign.