Epitome of the Divine Institutes

The first question that arises is whether there is any providence that either made or governs the world. That there is, no one doubts; for the voice and opinion of nearly all philosophers, except the school of Epicurus, is one and the same: that the world could not have come into being without God as its maker, nor subsist without a ruler. And so Epicurus is refuted not only by the most learned men, but also by the testimonies and perceptions of all mortals. For who would doubt providence, when he sees that the heavens and the earth and all things are so arranged and so ordered that they are most fittingly suited not only to wonderful beauty and adornment, but also to the use of men and the convenience of all other living beings? That which is constituted by reason cannot, therefore, have begun without reason, since it is certain that providence exists.

That God is one, and that there cannot be more than one. There follows another question, whether God is one or many; which indeed contains much ambiguity. For not only do individuals disagree among themselves, but also peoples and nations. But whoever follows reason will understand that there can be no more than one Lord, and no more than one Father. For if God, who founded all things, is at once Lord and Father, he must be one, so that the same may be the head and the same the source of all things. Nor can the sum of things subsist otherwise than by all things being referred to one, unless one holds the helm, unless one guides and governs the reins and all the members, as a single mind.

If there are many kings in a swarm of bees, they will perish or be scattered, while discord assails the kings with great commotion; if there are several leaders in a herd, they will fight until one prevails; if there are many commanders in an army, neither can the soldier obey, when different orders are given, nor can unity be maintained among those commanders themselves, when each consults his own interests according to his character. So in this commonwealth of the world, unless there had been one ruler who was also its founder, either this whole mass would have been dissolved, or it could not have been founded at all. Moreover, among many there could not be a whole, since each holds his own offices and his own powers. None of them, therefore, could be called omnipotent, which is the true name of God; for each will be able to do only what lies within himself, and what lies within others he will not dare to touch.

Vulcan will not claim water for himself, nor Neptune fire; Ceres will not claim skill in the arts, nor Minerva the fruits of the earth; Mercury will not claim arms, nor Mars the lyre; Jupiter will not claim medicine, nor Asclepius the thunderbolt; he will more readily catch one hurled by another than hurl one himself. If, therefore, each individually cannot do all things, they have less strength, less power; but he is to be considered God who can do the whole, not he who can do the least part of the whole.

There is therefore one God, perfect, eternal, incorruptible, impassible, subject to no thing by way of power, himself possessing all things, governing all things, whom the human mind cannot estimate by sense, nor the mortal tongue express. For he is more sublime and greater than can be comprehended either by the thought of man or by speech; and finally, to say nothing of the prophets who proclaim the one God, the poets also, and the philosophers, and the seers bear witness to the singular God. Orpheus calls him the primal God, who created the heavens and the sun with the other stars, who created the earth, who created the seas. Likewise our Maro calls the supreme God now spirit, now mind, and says that this mind, diffused as it were through the members, animates the body of the whole world; likewise that God courses through the depths of heaven, through the tracts of sea and land, and that from him all living creatures draw their life.

Nor did Ovid fail to know that the world was fashioned by God, whom he sometimes calls the maker of things, sometimes the fabricator of the world.

But let us come to the philosophers, whose authority is held to be more reliable than that of the poets. Plato asserts monarchy, saying that there is one God, by whom the world was fashioned and perfected with wondrous reason. Aristotle, his pupil, acknowledges that there is one mind which presides over the world. Antisthenes says that there is one natural God, the governor of the whole sum of things. It would take long to recount what Thales, or Pythagoras and Anaximenes before him, or afterward the Stoics, Cleanthes, and Chrysippus and Zeno, or among our own writers Seneca who followed the Stoics, and Cicero himself, proclaimed concerning the supreme God, since all of these both attempted to define what God is, and affirmed that the world is governed by him alone, and that he is subject to no nature, since all nature was generated by him.

Hermes, who by reason of his virtue and knowledge of many arts merited the name Trismegistus, who surpassed the philosophers in the antiquity of his teaching, and who is worshipped as a god among the Egyptians, asserting the majesty of the singular God with boundless praises, calls him Lord and Father; and says that he is without a name, because he has no need of a proper designation, since he is alone; and that he has no parents, because he exists of himself and through himself. The opening of his writing to his son is as follows: To understand God is indeed difficult, but to express him in words is impossible, even for one to whom understanding is possible; for the perfect cannot be comprehended by the imperfect, nor the invisible by the visible.

It remains to speak of the seers. Varro records that there were ten Sibyls: the first from Persia, the second the Libyan, the third the Delphic, the fourth the Cimmerian, the fifth the Erythraean, the sixth the Samian, the seventh the Cumaean, the eighth the Hellespontine, the ninth the Phrygian, the tenth the Tiburtine, whose name is Albunea. Of all these, he says that only the Cumaean's books are three in number, containing the fates of the Romans, and are kept secret, while those of nearly all the others survive singly and are held in common, but are inscribed with the name Sibylline as if under one title; except that the Erythraean, who is said to have lived at the time of the Trojan War, placed her own true name in her book, while those of the others are confused.

All these Sibyls of whom I have spoken, apart from the Cumaean, whom none but the Quindecimviri are permitted to read, testify that there is one God, the chief, the founder, the parent, not begotten by anyone, but sprung from himself, who both has existed from ages past and shall exist for ages to come, and for that reason alone ought to be worshipped, alone feared, alone honored by all living beings. Their testimonies, because I could not abridge them, I have passed over; if you desire them, you must return to the books themselves. Now let us pursue the remaining matters.

These testimonies, therefore, so many and so great, clearly demonstrate that there is one governance in the world, one power, whose origin cannot be conceived nor whose force can be described. Foolish, therefore, are those who think that gods were born of sexual union, since sex itself and the joining of bodies was given by God to mortals for this purpose, that every kind might be preserved through the succession of offspring. But what need have immortals of either sex or succession, whom neither pleasure nor death touches? Those, therefore, who are thought to be gods, since it is established that they were born as men are and that they begat offspring, were certainly mortal; but they came to be believed gods because, having been great and powerful kings, they merited divine honors after their death on account of the benefits they had conferred upon men, and with temples and images erected, their memory was preserved and celebrated as though they were immortal.

But although nearly all nations have been persuaded that gods exist, yet their deeds, as handed down by both poets and historians, declare that they were men. Who does not know in what times Hercules lived, since he both sailed among the Argonauts and, after the sack of Troy, slew Laomedon, the father of Priam, on account of his perjury? From that time a little more than fifteen hundred years are reckoned. This man is not even said to have been born honorably, but was begotten in adultery with Alcmena, and was himself given over to the vices of his begetter. He abstained neither from women nor from men, and traversed the whole world not so much for glory as for lust, and not so much to slay monsters as to sow children. And though he was unconquered, he was nevertheless vanquished by Omphale alone, to whom he handed over his club and the lion's skin, and himself put on a woman's garment, and cast down at the feet of the woman, received wool to spin.

The same man afterward, carried away by the impulse of madness, slaughtered his young children and his wife Megara. Finally, having put on the garment of his wife Deianira, when he was dissolving with sores, unable to bear the pain, he built a pyre for himself on Mount Oeta and burned himself alive upon it. Thus it comes about that even if he could have been believed a god on account of his virtue, yet on account of these things he is believed to have been a man.

Tarquitius records that Aesculapius was born of unknown parents, and for that reason exposed, and gathered up by hunters, nursed at the teats of dogs, and given to Chiron for instruction. He dwelt at Epidaurus, and was buried at Cynosura, as Cicero says, having been struck down by a thunderbolt. Apollo his father did not disdain to tend another's flock, in order to obtain a wife; and when he had unwittingly slain his beloved boy, he inscribed his lamentations upon a flower. Mars, a most valiant man, did not lack the charge of adultery; for he was bound in chains together with his adulteress and made a spectacle. Castor and Pollux did not carry off another's brides with impunity; Homer testifies of them, not with poetic license but with plain truthfulness, that they died and were buried. Mercury, who by his union with Venus begat the Androgyne, merited to be a god because he discovered the lyre and wrestling.

Father Liber, returning victorious after the conquest of India, when he happened to come to Crete, saw Ariadne on the shore, whom Theseus had violated and abandoned. Then, inflamed with love, he took her as his wife, and, as the poets relate, set her crown among the stars. The Mother herself, after the flight and death of her husband, while she was dwelling in Phrygia, a widow and an old woman, kept a handsome young man as her darling; and because he had not kept faith, she deprived him of his genitals and unmanned him. For this reason she even now delights in Galli as her priests.

Whence did Ceres beget Proserpina, if not from fornication? Whence did Latona beget twins, if not from a crime? Venus, exposed to the lusts of gods and men, when she reigned in Cyprus, invented the art of prostitution, and commanded women to ply their trade, lest she alone be held in infamy. What of those very virgins Minerva and Diana—are they chaste? Whence then did Erichthonius spring forth? Did Vulcan pour his seed upon the ground, and did a man grow up from it as a mushroom? Or why did she banish Hippolytus, either to a secret dwelling or to a woman, where he might pass his life alone among unknown groves, and, his name now changed, be called Virbius? What do these things signify, if not incest, which the poets do not dare to confess?

But of all these, Jupiter, their king and father, whom they believe to hold supreme power in heaven—what power did he have, who drove his father Saturn from his kingdom and pursued him with arms as he fled? What continence, who practiced every kind of lust? For the same Jupiter made Alcmena and Leda, wives of the greatest men, infamous through adultery; the same, captivated by the beauty of a boy, violently carried off one who was hunting and practicing manly pursuits, for womanly uses. Why should I recount the violations of virgins, the great number of whom is shown by the number of his sons? Yet in the case of Thetis alone he was more restrained. For it had been foretold that he whom she would bear would be greater than his father. He therefore struggled against his love, lest one greater than himself should be born. He knew, therefore, that he was not of perfect virtue, greatness, and power—he who feared what he himself had done to his own father.

Why, then, is he called greatest and best, when he both defiled himself with sins, which is the mark of the unjust and wicked, and feared one greater than himself, which is the mark of the weak and lesser?

But someone will say that these things were invented by the poets. It is not the poetic way to invent things so as to lie entirely, but to clothe what actually happened in a figure and, as it were, in some variegated veil. Such is the limit of poetic license—not to fabricate everything, which belongs to a liar and a fool, but to alter something with a reason. They said that Jupiter turned himself into a golden shower in order to deceive Danaë. What is the golden shower? Surely golden coins, a great abundance of which he offered and poured into her lap, and by this payment corrupted the fragility of a virgin's mind. So too they speak of an iron shower when they wish to signify a multitude of weapons. He carried off Catamitus in an eagle. What is the eagle? A legion, of course, since the image of this bird is the emblem of a legion. He carried Europa across on a bull. What is the bull?

Surely a ship, which had a figurehead fashioned in the shape of a bull. So too the daughter of Inachus did not actually become a cow and swim across: but she escaped the wrath of Juno in a vessel of that kind, which bore the form of a cow. Finally, when she was brought to Egypt, she became Isis, whose vessel is celebrated on a certain day each year in memory of the flight.

You see, therefore, that the poets have not invented everything, and that they have prefigured certain things, so that while speaking truth they might add something of a divine character to those whom they called gods; as also with regard to kingdoms. For when they say that Jupiter obtained the kingdom of Heaven by lot, they signify either Mount Olympus, on which ancient histories record that Saturn and afterwards Jupiter dwelt, or the region of the East, which is as it were the higher part, because light is born from there; while the West is as it were the lower, and therefore Pluto obtained the underworld by lot; and the sea fell to Neptune, because he held the maritime coast with all its islands. Many things the poets color in this way; those who do not know this accuse them of lying, but only in word.

For in deed they believe; since they fashion images of the gods in such a way that, when they make them male and female, and acknowledge some as spouses, others as parents, others as children, they assent to the poets: for these things cannot exist without intercourse and generation.

But let us set aside the poets. Let us come to history, which rests at once on the credibility of events and on the antiquity of times. Euhemerus was a Messenian, a most ancient writer, who from the sacred inscriptions of ancient temples gathered together the origin of Jupiter, his deeds, and his entire lineage; likewise he traced the parents, homelands, acts, reigns, deaths, and even the tombs of the other gods.

Ennius translated this history into Latin, and his words are these: "As these things are written, the stock and kindred of Jupiter and his brothers have been handed down to us in this manner from the sacred writing." The same Euhemerus, then, records that Jupiter, after he had traveled around the world five times and distributed kingdoms to his friends and kinsmen, and had given laws to men and done many other good things, departed this life in Crete, honored with immortal glory and everlasting memory, and went to the gods; and that his tomb is in Crete, in the town of Gnossus, and that on it is written in ancient Greek letters ΖΑΝ ΚΡΟΝΟΥ, which means Jupiter son of Saturn. It is established, therefore, from what I have recounted, that he was a man and reigned on earth.

Let us pass to earlier times, so that we may discover the origin of the whole error. Saturn is handed down as born of Heaven and Earth. This is certainly incredible. But there is a definite reason why it is so handed down, which one who does not know it rejects as a fable. That the father of Saturn was called Uranus is attested by Hermes and taught by the sacred history. Trismegistus, when he said that there were very few men of perfect learning, numbered among them his own kinsmen: Uranus, Saturn, Mercury. Euhemerus records that this same Uranus was the first to reign on earth, in these words: "In the beginning, Coelus first held supreme power on earth: he established and prepared that kingdom for himself together with his brothers."

I have spoken of the religions that are common to all peoples. I shall now speak of the gods whom the Romans have as their own. Who does not know that the wife of Faustulus, the nurse of Romulus and Remus, to whose honor the Larentinalia are dedicated, was a woman of loose body? And for that reason she was called Lupa, and was depicted in the form of a wild beast. Faula too and Flora were prostitutes, of whom the former was the harlot of Hercules, as Verrius records; the latter, having acquired great wealth by her body, made the people her heir, and therefore the games called Floralia are celebrated in her honor. Tatius consecrated a female image found in the great sewer, and called her the goddess Cloacina.

The Romans, besieged by the Gauls, made siege-engines from women's hair, and for that reason set up an altar and temple to Venus Calva; likewise to Jupiter Pistor, because he had warned them in a dream to make bread from all their grain and throw it upon the enemy, by which act the Gauls, despairing of being able to subdue the Romans by famine, had withdrawn from the siege. Tullus Hostilius made Fear and Pallor into gods. Mind also is worshipped—which, I believe, if they had possessed it, they would never have thought worthy of worship. Marcellus invented Honor and Virtue.

But the senate also established other fictitious gods of this kind: Hope, Faith, Concord, Peace, Modesty, Piety—all of which, since they ought to be real within the minds of men, they placed falsely within walls. Yet these, although they have no substance at all outside of man, I would rather see worshipped than Rubigo, than Fever, which ought not to be consecrated but execrated; than Fornax, with her Fornacalia rites; than Stercutus, who first showed how to enrich the earth with dung; than the goddess Muta, who gave birth to the Lares; than Cunina, who presides over the cradles of infants; than Caca, who betrayed to Hercules the theft of the cattle so that he might kill her brother. How many other monstrosities and mockeries are there, of which I am loath to speak? Yet I am unwilling to pass over Terminus, because he is said not to have yielded even to Jupiter Capitolinus, though he was a shapeless stone.

They think he has the guardianship of boundaries, and public supplication is made to him, that the immovable rock of the Capitol may both preserve and extend the boundaries of the Roman empire.

All these follies were first introduced into Latium by Faunus, who both established bloody rites for his grandfather Saturn, and wished his father Picus to be worshipped as a god, and placed his wife and sister Fatua Fauna among the gods, naming her Bona Dea. Then at Rome Numa, who burdened those rustic and uncultured men with new superstitions, instituted priesthoods and distributed gods among families and clans, in order to draw the minds of a fierce people away from the pursuit of arms. Hence Lucilius, mocking the follies of those who serve vain superstitions, set down these verses: Tullius too complains in his work On the Nature of the Gods that fictitious and invented gods were introduced, and that from this arose false opinions, turbulent errors, and superstitions almost worthy of old women. This judgment ought to be regarded as all the weightier because it was expressed by one who was both a philosopher and a priest.

We have spoken of the gods; now we shall speak of the rites of their worship and their practices. To the Cyprian Jupiter, as Teucer had instituted, a human victim used to be slaughtered. So too the Tauri sacrificed strangers to Diana; the Latiaris Jupiter likewise was propitiated with human blood. Even before Saturn, men of sixty years were cast from a bridge into the Tiber in the name of Apollo, and to the same Saturn the Carthaginians consecrated not only infants, but also, when defeated by the Sicilians, sacrificed two hundred sons of nobles as an expiation. Nor are those things more humane which are done even now to the Great Mother and to Bellona, in which the priests make atonement not with another's blood but with their own—when, with their genitals cut off, they pass from the ranks of men without crossing over to women, or when, with their shoulders slashed, they sprinkle the abominable altars with their own blood. But these things are cruel.

Let us come to the milder ones. The rites of Isis show nothing other than how she lost and found her small son, who is called Osiris. For first the priests and ministers, with all their limbs shaved and their breasts beaten, lament, grieve, and search, imitating the emotion of a mother; then the boy is found through a Cynocephalus. Thus the mournful rites end in rejoicing. The mystery of Ceres is similar to these, in which, with torches lit, Proserpina is sought through the night, and when she is found, the whole rite ends with rejoicing and the waving of torches. The people of Lampsacus sacrifice an ass to Priapus. For that seemed the more fitting victim which could be matched to him to whom it is sacrificed in the greatness of the obscene male member.

Lindos is a town of Rhodes, where the rites of Hercules are celebrated with curses. For when Hercules had taken oxen from a ploughman and sacrificed them, the man avenged his injury with abuse; and when that same man was afterwards appointed priest, it was ordained that with the same curses both he and other priests thereafter should celebrate the rites. The mystery of the Cretan Jupiter concerns how the infant was either hidden from his father or reared. A she-goat is at hand, at whose udders Amalthea suckled the boy. The rites of the mother of the gods likewise show the same thing. For since at that time the Corybantes had covered the crying of the child with the clashing of helmets and the beating of shields, now the image of the event is reproduced in the rites: but in place of helmets, cymbals are carried, and in place of shields, drums, lest Saturn hear the crying child.

These are the mysteries of the gods. Now let us also inquire into the origin of religions, so that we may discover both by whom and in what times they were instituted. Didymus, in those books entitled Ἐξηγήσεως Πινδαρικῆς, records that Melisseus was king of the Cretans, whose daughters were Amalthea and Melissa, who nurtured Jupiter with goat's milk and honey. He introduced new rites and ceremonies of sacred things, and was the first to sacrifice to the gods, that is, to Vesta, who is called Tellus. Hence the Poet: and Tellus first of the gods; and afterwards: to the mother of the gods. Euhemerus, however, in the sacred history says that Jupiter himself, after he had taken power, set up shrines to himself in many places. For as he traveled around the world, whenever he came to any place, he bound the leading men of the peoples to himself by friendship and the right of hospitality.

In order that the memory of this might be preserved, he ordered a shrine to be created for himself, and annual festivals to be celebrated by his hosts. Thus throughout all lands he sowed the worship of his name. When these men lived can easily be calculated. For Thallus writes in his history that Belus, king of the Assyrians, whom the Babylonians worship, and who was a contemporary and friend of Saturn, was more ancient than the Trojan War by three hundred and twenty-two years, and from the capture of Troy there are one thousand four hundred and seventy years. From this it appears that no more than one thousand eight hundred years have passed since, with new cults of the gods being instituted, the human race fell into error.

Rightly, therefore, do the poets record that the golden age, which existed under the reign of Saturn, was changed. For in that time no gods were worshipped: but they knew one God alone. After they subjected themselves to earthly and fragile things, worshipping wood and bronze and stone, a change of the age came about, even unto iron. For with the knowledge of God lost, and that one bond of human society broken, they began to ravage one another, to plunder and to make war. But if they would again lift up their eyes and behold God, who roused them to look upon the sky and upon himself, they would never make themselves bent and low by venerating earthly things, whose folly Lucretius gravely rebukes, saying: And they make souls humble with fear of the gods And press them down, crushed to the earth, to which they return.

Nor do they understand how vain it is to fear those things which you yourself have made, or to hope for any protection from those which, mute and insensible, neither see nor hear the one who supplicates them. What majesty or divine power, then, can those things possess, which were in a man's power either not to be made at all, or to be made otherwise, and which are so even now? For they can be violated and carried off by theft, unless both law and human guardianship protect them. Can he, then, appear to be in possession of his senses, who slaughters the finest victims for such things, consecrates gifts, offers costly garments, as though those who lack all motion can make use of them? Rightly, therefore, did Dionysius, tyrant of Sicily, when he had conquered Greece and occupied it, despoil and mock the gods of Greece; and after the sacrileges he had committed, he returned to Sicily with a prosperous voyage, and held his kingdom until old age. Nor could the violated gods punish him.

How much better it is, having scorned empty things, to turn oneself to God, to guard the condition you have received from God, to guard the name. For man is called ἄνθρωπος because he looks upward. But he looks upward who gazes upon the true and living God who is in heaven, who seeks his maker, the parent of his soul, not only with sense and mind, but also with uplifted face and eyes. But he who prostrates himself before earthly and lowly things assuredly sets what is inferior above himself. For since he himself is the work of God, but a statue is the work of man, a human work cannot be placed before a divine one; and just as God is the parent of man, so man is the parent of the statue. Foolish, therefore, and senseless is he who adores what he himself has fashioned. The author of this detestable and absurd craft was Prometheus, born of Japetus, the uncle of Jupiter.

For when Jupiter, having attained supreme power, wished to establish himself as a god, and to found temples, and sought someone who could fashion the human form, then Prometheus came forward to shape the likeness of a man from rich clay, so true to life that the novelty and refinement of the art was a wonder. In the end, both the men of his own time and afterwards the poets handed him down as the moulder of a true and living man, and we, whenever we praise a finely wrought statue, say that it lives and breathes. And he indeed was the originator of clay images. But later generations both carved in marble and cast in bronze; then in the course of time adornment in gold and ivory was added, so that not only the likenesses dazzled the eyes of men, but the very splendour itself. Thus, beguiled by beauty and forgetful of true majesty, the sensible worshipping the insensible, the rational worshipping the irrational, the living worshipping the lifeless, they deemed these things worthy of worship and veneration.

Now let us also refute those who hold the elements of the world as gods, that is, the sky, the sun, and the moon, who, not knowing their maker, marvel at and adore the works themselves. This error belongs not only to the unlearned, but also to the philosophers; for the Stoics judge that all heavenly bodies are to be counted among the gods, because they have fixed and rational motions by which they most steadfastly preserve the alternations of the seasons that succeed one another. There is therefore no voluntary motion in these things, because they serve laws laid down for them, not by their own sense, but by the workmanship of the supreme creator, who so ordered them that they complete their inexpressible courses and fixed intervals, by which they alternate the succession of days and nights, of summer and winter. But if men admire their effects, their courses, their brightness, their constancy, their beauty, they ought to have understood how much more beautiful, more illustrious, and more powerful is the creator himself and God their maker.

But those men estimated divinity by human sight, not knowing that what comes under the gaze cannot be eternal, nor can what is eternal be comprehended by mortal eyes.

One last matter remains: since it often happens, as we read in histories, that the gods seemed to have displayed their majesty through auguries, through dreams, through oracles, and also through the punishments of those who had committed sacrileges, I must teach what reason brought this about, lest anyone even now fall into the same snares into which those ancients fell. When God, by the power of his majesty, had created the world from nothing, and had adorned the sky with lights, and had filled the earth and sea with living creatures, he then breathed life into man, formed from clay in the image of his own likeness, and placed him in paradise, which he had planted with every kind of fruit-bearing tree, and commanded him not to taste of one tree, in which he had placed for him the knowledge of good and evil, threatening that he would lose life if he did so; but if he kept the commandment, he would remain immortal.

Then the serpent, who was one of God's ministers, envying man because he had been made immortal, enticed him by deceit to transgress the commandment and law of God. And in this way he received knowledge of good and evil; but he lost the life which God had granted to be perpetual. He therefore cast the sinner out of the holy place and banished him to this world, that he might seek his sustenance through toil, that he might endure hardships and afflictions according to his desert; and he surrounded paradise itself with a wall of fire, lest any of mankind should attempt to creep back to that place of perpetual blessedness until the day of judgment. Then death followed upon man by God's sentence; and yet his life, though it had begun to be temporal, reached its end at a thousand years, and that was the span of human life until the time of the flood. For after the deluge the life of men was gradually shortened and reduced to a hundred and twenty years.

But that serpent, who from his deeds received the name of devil, that is, accuser or informer, did not cease to pursue the seed of man, whom he had deceived from the beginning. In the end, having breathed envy into him, he armed the first man born in this world for the slaughter of his brother, so that of the two firstborn men he might destroy one and make the other a parricide. Nor did he rest thereafter from pouring the poison of malice into the hearts of men through each generation, corrupting them, depraving them, and finally overwhelming them with such great crimes that examples of justice were now rare, and men lived after the manner of beasts. When God saw this, he sent his angels to cultivate the life of men and to protect them from all evil. He gave them the command to abstain from earthly things, lest, stained by any defilement, they be deprived of the honour of angels.

But that same crafty accuser enticed even them, while they were dwelling among men, to pleasures, so that they defiled themselves with women. Then, condemned by the sentence of God and cast out for their sins, they lost both the name of angels and their substance. Thus made the satellites of the devil, that they might have a consolation in their own perdition, they turned themselves to the destruction of men, whom they had come to protect.

These are the demons of whom the poets often speak in their poems, whom Hesiod calls the guardians of men. For by their enticements and deceits they so persuaded men as to make them believe that these same beings were gods. Indeed, Socrates used to declare that from his earliest boyhood he had a demon as the guardian and guide of his life, without whose nod and command he could do nothing. They therefore attach themselves to individuals, and under the name of Genii or Penates they occupy households. Shrines are established for them, daily libations are poured for them as for the Lares, honour is given to them as to repellers of evils.

These, from the beginning, in order to turn men away from the knowledge of the true God, introduced new religions and the worship of gods: these taught that the memories of dead kings be consecrated, that temples be established, that images be made, not in order to diminish the honour of God; but to increase their own, which they had lost by sinning: but in order to rob men of life, to take away the hope of true light, lest men attain to the heavenly reward of immortality, from which those beings themselves had fallen. These same ones revealed astrology, and augury, and auspicy; which, though false in themselves, are so governed and so managed by those authors of evils that they are believed to be true. They also devised the illusions of the magical art to deceive the eyes. By their inspiration it comes about that what exists appears not to exist, and what does not exist appears to exist.

They invented necromancy, they invented lots and oracles, that they might delude the minds of men through ambiguous outcomes with lying divination. In temples and at all sacrifices they are present, and by producing certain deceptive prodigies to the wonder of those present, they so beguile men as to make them believe that a divine power dwells in statues and images. They also creep into bodies, as subtle spirits, and by corrupting the members they bring on diseases, which, when appeased by sacrifices and vows, they afterwards relax; they send dreams, or outright terrors, so that they themselves may be entreated, or so that their outcomes may correspond to the truth, in order to increase veneration of themselves. Sometimes they also inflict a measure of punishment upon the sacrilegious, so that whoever has witnessed it may become more fearful and more religious. Thus by their deceits they have drawn darkness over the human race, so that, with truth suppressed, the name of the supreme and singular God might fall into oblivion.

But someone says: "Why, then, does that true God permit these things to happen? Or rather, why does he not remove or destroy the wicked? And why did he give the devil himself ἀρχὴν from the beginning, so that there would be one to corrupt all things, to destroy all things?" I will say briefly why he willed him to be such. I ask whether virtue is a good or an evil. It cannot be denied that it is a good. If virtue is a good, then vice is on the contrary an evil. If vice is evil because it assails virtue, and virtue is good because it afflicts vice, then virtue cannot exist without vice, and if you remove vice, the merits of virtue will be taken away. For no victory can be won without an enemy. Thus it comes about that good cannot exist without evil. Chrysippus, a man of keen intellect, saw this when discoursing on providence, and he refuted those who think that good was made by God but deny that evil was.

Gellius interpreted his opinion in the books of the Attic Nights, speaking thus: "Those to whom it does not seem that the world was established for the sake of God and men, nor that human affairs are governed by providence, think they are using a weighty argument when they speak thus: If there were Providence, there would be no evils. For they say that nothing is less consistent with providence than that in this world, which God is said to have made for the sake of men, there should be so great a force of afflictions and evils. To this Chrysippus, when discoursing in the fourth book On Providence, said: Nothing is more foolish than those who think that goods could have existed if there were not at the same time evils. For since goods are contrary to evils, both must necessarily be set in opposition to each other, and stand as it were supported by a mutual and opposing pressure. For no contrary exists without another contrary.

For in what way could there be a sense of justice, unless there were injustices? Or what else is justice but the absence of injustice? In what way, likewise, can courage be understood, except by contrast with cowardice? What is continence, except by contrast with intemperance? In what way, likewise, would there be prudence, unless there were the contrary imprudence? Therefore, he says, why do not foolish men also desire this: that truth should exist, and there should be no falsehood? For in the same way are good and evil, happiness and misfortune, pleasure and pain. For the one is bound to the other, as Plato says, by their opposite ends; if you take away one, you take away both." You see, therefore, what I have often said, that good and evil are so bound together that the one cannot stand without the other.

Therefore God in his supreme wisdom placed the material of virtue in evils; which he made for this reason, that he might establish for us a contest, in which he might crown the victors with the reward of immortality.

I have shown, as I think, that the worship of the gods is not only impious but also vain; either because they were men whose memory was consecrated after death; or because the images themselves are insensible and deaf, since they are fashioned from earth, and it is not fitting that a man who ought to look toward heavenly things should subject himself to earthly ones; or because the spirits who claim those religions for themselves are unchaste and impure, and therefore condemned by the judgment of God have fallen to the earth, and it is not right to come under the dominion of those over whom you would be superior if you wished to follow the true God. It remains that, since we have spoken of false religion, we should also treat of false wisdom; which philosophers profess, men indeed endowed with the highest learning and eloquence, but far removed from the truth, because they have known neither God nor the wisdom of God.

Although they are clever and eloquent, yet because their wisdom is human, I shall not fear to contend even with them, so that it may appear that falsehood can easily be overcome by truth, and earthly things by heavenly.

They define what Philosophy is in this way: Philosophy is the love or pursuit of wisdom. It is not therefore wisdom itself; because that which loves must necessarily be one thing, and that which is loved another. If it is the pursuit of wisdom, not even so is philosophy wisdom. For wisdom is the thing itself that is sought; but pursuit is that which seeks. The very definition, therefore, or the meaning of the name, declares that philosophy is not wisdom itself; I will say that it is not even the pursuit of wisdom, by which wisdom is not attained. For who could be said to pursue a thing which he can in no way reach? One who pursues medicine, or grammar, or oratory can be called a student of the art he is learning: when he has learned it, he is now called a Physician, now a Grammarian, now an Orator. So too it was fitting that students of wisdom, after they had learned, should be called wise.

But since students of wisdom are called such as long as they live, it is clear that that pursuit is not one by which the thing itself that is sought by the pursuit can be reached; unless perhaps those who study to the end of life in order to be wise will be wise among the dead. But every pursuit has an end that underlies it. That pursuit therefore is not right which has no end.

Moreover, there are two things which seem to fall within philosophy, knowledge and opinion; if these are taken away, all philosophy collapses. Yet both have been taken away from philosophy itself by the foremost princes of philosophers. Socrates took away knowledge, Zeno took away opinion. Let us see whether wisdom is rightly defined, as Cicero defined it, as the knowledge of things divine and human. If this definition is true, wisdom does not fall within the capacity of man. For what mortal could claim for himself to profess that he knows things divine and human? I pass over human things; which, although they are connected with divine things, yet because they belong to man, let us grant that man can know them. Divine things certainly he cannot know by himself, because he is a man: but whoever knows those things must necessarily be divine, and therefore God. But man is neither divine nor God. Man therefore cannot fully know divine things. No one therefore is wise except God, or certainly that man whom God has taught.

Those men, however, because they are neither gods nor taught by God, cannot therefore be wise, that is, knowers of things divine and human. Rightly therefore was knowledge taken away by Socrates and the Academics. Opinion also does not befit the wise man. For each person forms an opinion about what he does not know. But to think you know what you do not know is rashness and folly. Rightly therefore was opinion taken away by Zeno. If therefore there is no knowledge in man, and opinion ought not to exist, philosophy is cut off at the root.

To this is added the fact that philosophy is not uniform: but divided into sects and scattered into many conflicting opinions, it has no stability. For since each sect attacks and afflicts all the others, and there is none among them that is not condemned by the judgment of the rest as foolish, with its members in discord the whole body of philosophy is brought to destruction. Hence the Academy was afterwards born. For when the founders of that sect saw that all philosophy had been overturned by philosophers attacking one another in turn, they undertook war against all, so as to dissolve everything belonging to everyone, themselves asserting nothing except one thing, that nothing can be known. Thus, having abolished knowledge, they undermined the old philosophy. But not even they retained the name of philosophers, who confessed ignorance, because to know nothing is not only unworthy of a philosopher, but even of a man. Thus philosophers, because they have no defense, destroy one another with mutual wounds, and all philosophy itself is consumed and finished by its own weapons.

But it is only Natural Philosophy that totters. What of Moral Philosophy? Is it supported by any firmness? Let us see whether philosophers agree at least in this part, which pertains to the conduct of life.

It is necessary to inquire what the highest good in life is, so that all our life and actions may be directed toward it. When the highest good of man is inquired into, it must be established, first, that it pertains to man alone, then, that it is proper to the soul, and lastly, that it is sought through virtue. Let us see therefore whether the highest good which philosophers determine is such that it touches neither a dumb animal nor the body, nor can be obtained without virtue. Aristippus, the founder of the Cyrenaic sect, who held that the highest good is bodily pleasure, must be driven from the number of philosophers and from the company of men, because he compared himself to a beast. The highest good of Hieronymus is to feel no pain; of Diodorus, to cease to feel pain. But the other living creatures flee from pain, and when they do not feel pain, or cease to feel it, they rejoice.

What then will be given to man as exceptional, if his highest good is judged to be common with beasts? Zeno held the highest good to be living in conformity with nature. But this definition is general. For all living creatures live in conformity with nature, and each has its own nature.

Epicurus asserted the pleasure of the soul. What is the pleasure of the soul? Nothing but joy, by which the soul for the most part luxuriates and relaxes, either in play or in laughter. But this good also befalls dumb creatures, which, when they are satisfied with food, dissolve into joy and wantonness. Dinomachus and Callipho approved of honorable pleasure: but either they said the same as Epicurus, so that the pleasure of the body is dishonorable; or if they considered some bodily pleasures base and others honorable, then that which is ascribed to the body is no longer the highest good. The Peripatetics combine the highest good from goods of soul, body, and fortune. The goods of the soul can be approved.

But if they need assistance to complete happiness, they are certainly weak: the goods of body and fortune, however, are not in man's power; nor is that the highest good which is assigned either to the body or to external things, because this twofold good also reaches beasts, which need both to be in good health and to lack nothing in the way of food. The Stoics are believed to have held somewhat better views, who said that the highest good is virtue. But virtue cannot be the highest good: because, if it is the endurance of evils and hardships, it is not in itself blessed; but it ought to produce or bring forth the highest good, because it cannot be reached without difficulty and the greatest labor. But Aristotle strayed far from reason, who joined honorableness to virtue; as if virtue could ever be separated from what is honorable, or joined to baseness.

Eryllus the Pyrrhonist made knowledge the highest good. This indeed belongs to man, and to the soul alone: but it can come about without virtue. For he is not to be considered blessed who has learned something by hearing, or come to know it by a little reading; nor is it a definition of the highest good, because there can be knowledge of evil things, or at least of useless ones. Even if it be knowledge of good and useful things, which you have attained by labor, it is still not the highest good, because knowledge is not sought for its own sake but for something else. For the arts are learned so that they may serve us either for livelihood, or for glory, or even for pleasure: which certainly cannot be the highest goods. Therefore not even in Ethics do philosophers keep to the rule, since in the very hinge of the matter, that is, in that discussion by which life is formed, they fight among themselves.

Nor can their precepts be equal or alike, when some form men toward pleasure, others toward honorableness, others toward nature, others toward knowledge, others toward seeking, others toward fleeing wealth, others toward feeling no pain, others toward endurance of evils; in all of which, as I showed above, they deviate from reason, because they do not know God.

Let us now see what the highest good is, which is set before the wise man as the highest good. Not only do the sacred writings teach that men are born for justice, but even the philosophers themselves sometimes confess the same. Cicero says thus: "But of all the things that are treated in the discussions of learned men, there is assuredly nothing more excellent than the plain understanding that we are born for justice." This is most true. For we are not born for wickedness, since we are a social and communal animal. Wild beasts are born for savagery. For they cannot live otherwise than by prey and blood. Yet even these, though extreme hunger press them, nevertheless spare animals of their own kind. Birds do the same, which must feed on the flesh of others. How much more ought man, who is joined to man both by the commerce of speech and by the sharing of feeling, to spare man and love him! For this is justice.

But since wisdom alone is given to man, that he may understand God, and this alone is the distinction between man and dumb creatures, justice itself is bound by two duties. One it owes to God, as to a father, the other to man, as to a brother. For we are begotten by the same God. Rightly therefore and correctly it has been said that wisdom is the knowledge of things divine and human. For we must know what we owe to God and what to man; to God, namely, religion, to man, charity. But the former belongs to wisdom, the latter to virtue; and both are comprehended by justice. If therefore it is established that man is born for justice, it is necessary that the just man be subject to evils, so that he may exercise in practice the virtue with which he is endowed. For virtue is the endurance of evils.

He will flee pleasures as an evil; he will despise riches, because they are fragile; and if he has them, he will distribute them, to preserve the wretched; he will not seek honors, because they are brief and fleeting; he will do injury to no one; if he has suffered it, he will not repay it; and he will not pursue one who plunders his goods. For he will judge it a sin to harm a man; and if anyone should arise who compels him to abandon God, he will refuse neither torments nor death. Thus it will come about that he must live both in poverty and in humility and amid insults or even torments.

What then will be the fruit of justice and virtue, if it will have nothing in life but evil? But if virtue, which despises all earthly goods, endures all evils most wisely, and takes up death itself in the performance of duty, cannot be without reward, what remains except that its sole recompense is immortality? For if the blessed life falls within the capacity of man, as philosophers hold, agreeing in this one point, then immortality also falls within it. For that alone is blessed which is incorruptible; that alone is incorruptible which is eternal. Immortality therefore is the highest good, because it belongs to man, to the soul, and to virtue. We are directed entirely toward this, we are born to attain this. For this reason God sets before us virtue and justice, that we may attain that eternal reward by our labors. Of immortality itself, however, we shall treat in its proper place. There remains logical philosophy, which contributes nothing to the blessed life.

For wisdom consists not in the adornment of speech, but in the heart and understanding. But if natural philosophy is also superfluous, and this logical philosophy likewise; and in ethics, which alone is necessary, the philosophers have erred, who could in no way find the highest good—then all Philosophy is found to be empty and useless, which could neither comprehend the nature of man, nor fulfill its duty and function.

Since I have spoken briefly about philosophy, I will now also say a few things about the philosophers. The doctrine of Epicurus is this: first, that there is no providence. And yet he does not deny that gods exist. Both positions are against reason. For if gods exist, then there is providence. For God cannot be understood otherwise, whose proper function is to provide. He says God cares for nothing. Therefore he cares not only for human affairs, but not even for heavenly ones. How then, or on what grounds, do you affirm that he exists? For with divine providence and care excluded, the consequence was that you should say God does not exist at all. As it is, you have left him in word but removed him in fact. Whence, then, does the nature of things come, if God cares for nothing? There are tiny seeds, he says, which can neither be seen nor touched, and by their chance collision all things have arisen and always arise.

If they are neither seen nor perceived by any part of the body, how could you have known that they exist?

Furthermore, if they exist, with what intelligence do they come together so as to produce something? If they are smooth, they cannot cohere; if they are hooked and angular, then they are divisible. For hooks and angles project and can be cut off. But these things are foolish and worthless. What of the fact that the same man makes souls extinguishable? He is refuted not only by all the philosophers and by common persuasion, but also by the responses of seers, the songs of the Sibyls, and finally by the very divine voices of the Prophets; so that it is remarkable that one Epicurus ever arose, who would equate the lot of man with that of cattle and beasts.

What of Pythagoras? He was the first to be called a philosopher; he held that souls are indeed immortal, yet that they pass into other bodies, whether of cattle, or birds, or beasts. Would it not have been better for them to be extinguished along with their own bodies, than to be condemned in this way to alien ones; altogether better not to exist, than after the form of a man to live as a swine or a dog? And that foolish man, in order to lend credibility to his claim, said that he himself had been Euphorbus in the Trojan War, and that after Euphorbus was slain, he had passed into other shapes of animals, and had at last become Pythagoras. O happy man, to whom alone so great a memory was granted! Or rather, unhappy man, to whom, when transferred into a beast, it was not permitted to be ignorant of what he had been! And would that he alone had raved!

He even found those who believed him, and indeed unlearned men, to whom the inheritance of his folly passed.

After him, Socrates held the principate of philosophy, declared the wisest even by an oracle, because he confessed that he alone knew one thing: that he knew nothing. By the authority of that oracle, natural philosophers ought to have refrained from either seeking what they could not know, or thinking they knew what they were ignorant of. Let us see, however, whether Socrates was the wisest, as the Pythian declared. He often made use of this proverb: that what is above us is the same as what is nothing to us. He has already exceeded the bounds of his own maxim. For he who said he knew one thing found another thing he could ever say he knew; but that in vain. For God, who is certainly above us, must be sought, and religion must be embraced, which alone distinguishes us from beasts: and yet Socrates not only repudiated religion but even mocked it, by swearing by a goose and a dog; as though indeed he could not have sworn by Aesculapius, to whom he had vowed a cock?

Behold the sacrifice of a wise man. And because he could not offer it himself, as he was dying he begged his friends to discharge the vow after his death, lest forsooth he be held as a debtor in the underworld. There, assuredly, he both declared and proved that he had known nothing.

His disciple Plato, whom Cicero calls the god of philosophers, who alone of all philosophized in such a way as to come closer to the truth; yet because he was ignorant of God, he fell into error in many things, so that no one has erred worse, first because in his political books he wished all things to be common to all. Concerning property this is tolerable, though it is unjust. For it ought neither to harm anyone if by his own industry he has more, nor to benefit him if by his own fault he has less. But, as I said, it can in some way be endured. But shall wives also be common? Shall children also be common? There will be no distinction of blood, no certain lineage, no families, no kinships, no ties of marriage; but just as in herds of cattle all things are confused and undistinguished, there will be no continence in men, no chastity in women? What conjugal love can exist in either, where there is no certain or exclusive affection?

Who will be dutiful toward a father, not knowing from whom he was born? Who will love a son whom he will suppose to be another's? Moreover, he reserved the senate-house for women, permitted them military service, magistracies, and commands. How great will be the misery of that city in which women will occupy the duties of men? But these things elsewhere more fully. Zeno, the master of the Stoics, who praises virtue, judged that mercy, which is the highest virtue, should be cut away as a disease of the soul—mercy which is dear to God and necessary to men. For who is there, placed in some evil situation, who does not wish to be an object of pity, and does not desire the help of those who come to his aid, who are stirred to render assistance by no other impulse than that of mercy? Though he may call it humanity, though he may call it piety, he changes not the thing but the name.

This is the affection given to man alone, that we might lighten our weakness by mutual assistance; he who removes it reduces us to the life of beasts. For as to his saying that sins are equal, this comes from the same savagery by which he attacks mercy as though it were a disease. For he who makes no distinction between offenses either holds that light ones should be punished with great penalties, which is the mark of a cruel judge, or that grave ones should be punished with light ones, which is the mark of a lax one; both are harmful to the commonwealth. For if the greatest crimes are punished lightly, the boldness of the wicked will grow toward greater deeds; and if a heavier penalty is imposed for light offenses, many citizens, since no one can be without fault, will be brought into danger who, if corrected, could become better.

But those things are trivial. Yet they arise from the same vanity. Xenophanes said that the orb of the moon is eighteen times greater than this earth of ours. And so within its bosom another earth is contained, which is inhabited by men and animals of every kind. Concerning the antipodes too, it can neither be heard nor spoken of without laughter. Yet it is asserted as though it were something serious, that we should believe there are men whose footprints are opposite to ours. Anaxagoras raved more tolerably, who said that snow is black. The sayings of some, but also their deeds, are worthy of ridicule. Democritus abandoned the field left to him by his father, and allowed it to become public pasture. Diogenes, with his chorus of dogs, who professes that supreme and perfect virtue and contempt of all things, preferred to beg his food rather than to acquire it by honest labor, or to have any property of his own. Surely the life of a wise man ought to be an example of living for others.

If all were to imitate the wisdom of these men, how would cities stand? But perhaps those same Cynics were able to furnish an example of modesty, who lay openly with their wives. I do not know what virtue they could defend, who had done away with shame. No better than these is Aristippus, who, I believe, in order to please his mistress Lais, founded the Cyrenaic school, by which he placed the end of the highest good in bodily pleasure, lest either sins should lack authority or vices should lack a teacher. Or are those bolder men more to be approved, who, in order to be said to have despised death, inflicted voluntary death upon themselves? Zeno, Empedocles, Chrysippus, Cleanthes, Democritus, and Cato who imitated them, did not know that according to divine law and right, he who kills himself is held guilty of homicide. For God brought us into this dwelling-place of flesh; he gave us the temporal habitation of the body, that we might dwell in it as long as he himself should will.

It must therefore be held as a sin to wish to depart without God's command. Force must not therefore be applied to nature. He knows how to dissolve his own work. If anyone lays impious hands upon that work and breaks asunder the bonds of the divine handiwork, he attempts to flee from God, whose judgment neither the living nor the dead can escape. Wicked therefore and impious are those whom I named above, who also taught what reasons a voluntary death ought to have, as though it were too little wickedness that they showed themselves murderers of themselves, unless they also instructed others in this impiety.

The sayings and deeds of the philosophers by which their foolishness can be refuted are innumerable. And so, since we cannot enumerate them all, a few will suffice. It is enough to understand that the philosophers are teachers neither of justice, which they did not know, nor of virtue, which they falsely claim. For what can they teach, who so often confess their own ignorance? I pass over Socrates, whose maxim is well known. Anaxagoras declares that all things are surrounded by darkness. Empedocles says that the paths of the senses toward finding truth are narrow. Democritus testifies that truth lies sunk in a certain deep well, which because they find it nowhere, they therefore affirm that no wise man has yet existed.

Since therefore there is no human wisdom (Socrates says in Plato), let us follow divine wisdom, and give thanks to God, who has both revealed and handed it down to us, and let us rejoice that by heavenly beneficence we hold the truth and wisdom which philosophy, sought by so many minds and through so many ages, no one was able to find.

Now since we have refuted false religion, which consists in the worship of gods, and false wisdom, which consists in the philosophers, let us come to true religion and wisdom. And indeed, since they are connected, both must be treated together. For to worship the true God is nothing other than wisdom. For that God is the supreme one and the creator of all things, who made man as it were in his own image. For that reason alone of all animals he gave him reason, that he might render honor to him as to a father, and as to a lord, and by this piety and obedience might merit the reward of immortality. This is the true and divine mystery. But those other things, because they are not true, have no harmony. In philosophy, sacred rites are not celebrated, nor in sacred rites is philosophy treated: and therefore false religion exists, because it has no wisdom; therefore false wisdom, because it has no religion.

But where both are joined together, there truth must necessarily be, so that if truth itself is asked what it is, it may rightly be said to be either wise religion or religious wisdom.

I will now say what wise religion or religious wisdom is. God in the beginning, before he established the world, from the fountain of his own eternity and from his divine and everlasting spirit begot for himself a Son, incorrupt, faithful, corresponding to the virtue and majesty of the Father. He is the power, he is the reason, he is the word of God, he is wisdom. With him as craftsman, as Hermes says, and as counselor, as the Sibyl says, he contrived the glorious and wonderful fabric of this world. Finally, of all the angels whom the same God fashioned from his own spirits, he alone was admitted into partnership of supreme power, he alone was called God. For all things are through him, and without him nothing.

Furthermore, Plato spoke of the first and second God not plainly as a philosopher but as a prophet, having perhaps in this followed Trismegistus, whose words translated from the Greek I have appended: "The Lord and maker of all things, whom we have supposed to be called God, made a second God, visible and sensible. Sensible I say, not because he himself receives sensation, but because he sends sensation and sight. When therefore he had made this one first, and only, and one, he appeared to him most good, and most full of all good things." The Sibyl also says that God, the guide of all things, was made by God; and another, that God the Son of God is to be known, as the examples which I have set out in my books make clear.

Him the prophets, filled with the divine spirit, proclaimed; among whom especially Solomon in the book of Wisdom, and likewise his father, the writer of heavenly hymns, both most illustrious kings, who preceded the times of the Trojan War by one hundred and eighty years, testify that he was born of God. That his name is known to none but himself and the Father, as John teaches in the Revelation. Hermes says that his name cannot be uttered by mortal mouth. By men, however, he is called by two names: Jesus, which is Savior, and Christ, which is King. Savior, because he is the healing and salvation of all who through him believe in God; Christ, because he himself is to come from heaven at the consummation of this age, to judge the world, and, when the resurrection of the dead has been accomplished, to establish for himself an eternal kingdom.

But lest there be any hesitation in you as to why we call him who was born of God before the world Jesus Christ, who was born of a human being less than three hundred years ago, I will briefly set forth the reason for you. He is at once the Son of God and the son of man. For he was born twice. First from God in the spirit before the birth of the world, and afterwards in the flesh from a human being, in the reign of Augustus; of which thing there is a glorious and great mystery, in which both the salvation of men, and the religion of the most high God, and all truth is contained.

For when the wicked and impious worship of the gods first crept in through the snares of demons, then the religion of God remained with the Hebrews alone, who nevertheless kept the worship handed down to them through succession in the manner of their fathers, not by any law, until the time when they went out of Egypt under the leadership of Moses, the first of all the prophets, through whom the law was imposed upon them by God—those who were afterwards called Jews. They therefore served God, bound by the chains of the law. But these same men, gradually straying toward profane rites, took up foreign gods, and, abandoning the worship of their fathers, sacrificed to senseless idols.

Therefore God sent prophets to them, filled with the divine Spirit, who would reproach them for their sins and enjoin repentance, who would threaten the punishment to come and declare what would happen if they persisted in the same offences: that he would send another giver of a new law, and, removing the ungrateful people from the inheritance, would gather for himself another, more faithful people from the foreign nations. But they not only persisted, but even killed those very men who were sent. And so he condemned them for these crimes, and added no further sending of prophets to the stubborn people; but sent his Son, that he might call all nations to the grace of God. Yet he did not exclude even them, impious and ungrateful as they were, from the hope of salvation: but sent him especially to them, so that if by chance they had obeyed, they might not lose what they had received; but if they had not received their God, then, with the heirs disinherited, the nations would come into adoption.

The most high Father therefore commanded him to descend to earth and put on a human body, so that, subject to the passions of the flesh, he might teach virtue and patience not only by words but also by deeds. He was therefore reborn of a virgin without a father, as a man; so that just as in the first, spiritual birth he was created from God alone and became a holy Spirit, so in the second, fleshly birth, begotten of a mother alone, he might become holy flesh, so that through him the flesh which had been subject to sin might be freed from destruction.

That these things were to come to pass as I have set forth, the prophets foretold beforehand. In Solomon it is written thus: The womb of a virgin was weakened, and received a child, and was burdened, and in great compassion became a virgin mother. In Isaiah thus: Behold, a virgin shall receive in her womb, and shall bring forth a son, and you shall call his name Emmanuel, which signifies God with us. For he was with us on earth when he put on flesh; and nonetheless God was in man, and man in God. Moreover, that he was both was foretold beforehand by the prophets. That he was God, Isaiah says thus: They shall worship thee, and shall pray in thee, because God is in thee, and we knew it not, the God of Israel. All they that oppose thee shall be confounded and ashamed, and shall fall into confusion.

Likewise Jeremiah: This is our God, and there shall be no other accounted of beside him, who found out all the way of prudence, and gave it to Jacob his servant, and to Israel his beloved: Afterwards he was seen upon earth, and conversed with men. Likewise, that he was man, the same Jeremiah says: And he is a man, and who shall know him? Isaiah also hands down thus: And the Lord shall send them a man who shall save them, and judging shall heal them. Likewise Moses himself in Numbers: A star shall rise out of Jacob, and a man shall spring up out of Israel. Therefore, since he was God, he took on flesh, so that, made a mediator between God and man, he might lead man to God by his teaching, having overcome death.

We have spoken of the birth; now let us speak of the power and works: which, when he performed them great and wonderful among men, the Jews who saw them thought they were done by magical power, not knowing that all those things which were done by him had been foretold by the prophets. The sick and those languishing with various kinds of diseases he strengthened at once not by any remedy but by the force and power of his word; he healed the infirm, raised the lame to walking, restored sight to the blind, gave speech to the mute, opened the ears of the deaf, cleansed the polluted and defiled, restored their own mind to those maddened by the assault of demons, called back the dead or those already buried to life and light. He likewise satisfied five thousand men with five loaves and two fishes. He likewise walked upon the sea.

He likewise in a storm commanded the wind to be still, and immediately a calm was made: all of which things we find foretold both in the books of the prophets and in the Sibylline verses.

On account of these miracles, when a great multitude flocked to him and believed, as was the case, that he was the Son of God and sent by God, the priests and rulers of the Jews, filled with envy and at the same time stirred by anger because he rebuked their sins and injustice, gathered together to kill him. That this would come to pass, Solomon had declared a little more than a thousand years before in the Wisdom, in these words: Let us lie in wait for the just man, because he is inconvenient to us, and upbraids us with sins against the law. He boasts that he has knowledge of God, and calls himself the son of God. He has become a reproach to our thoughts; he is grievous to us even to behold, because his life is unlike that of others, and his ways are changed. We are esteemed by him as triflers.

He abstains from our ways as from uncleannesses, and he prefers the latter end of the just, and glories that he has God for his father. Let us see then if his words be true, and let us try what shall happen to him. Let us examine him with insults and torments, that we may know his reverence, and prove his patience. Let us condemn him to a most shameful death. These things they thought, and they erred. For their own folly blinded them, and they knew not the mysteries of God.

Unmindful therefore of these writings which they read, they stirred up the people as against an impious man, that they might lead him, once seized, to judgment, and demand his death with impious cries. They alleged as a charge this very thing, that he called himself the Son of God, and that he broke the law by healing men on the Sabbath, which he said he did not break but fulfil. And when Pontius Pilate, who was then governing Syria as legate and acting as judge, perceived that that cause did not pertain to the office of a Roman judge, he sent him to Herod the Tetrarch, and permitted the Jews to be themselves the arbiters of their own law: who, having received the power of the crime, condemned him to the cross, but first beat him with scourges and blows of the hand, crowned him with thorns, spat upon his face, gave him gall and vinegar for food and drink; and amid all this no word of his was heard.

Then the executioners, having cast lots for his tunic and cloak, hung him on the gibbet and nailed him, when on the following day they were about to celebrate the Passover, that is, their feast day. This crime was followed by portents, so that they might understand the wickedness they had committed. For at the very moment when he gave up his spirit, there was both a great earthquake and an eclipse of the sun, so that day was turned into night.

All these things the prophets had foretold were to come to pass thus. Isaiah says: I am not rebellious, neither do I gainsay: I have given my back to the smiters, and my cheeks to them that plucked them; I have not turned away my face from the foulness of spitting. The same concerning the silence: As a sheep I was led to the slaughter, and as a lamb before its shearer without a voice, so he opened not his mouth. Likewise David in Psalm: The scourges were gathered against me, and they knew it not: they were scattered, and felt no remorse; they tempted me, and gnashed their teeth upon me. The same concerning the food and drink, Psalm: And they gave gall for my food, and in my thirst they gave me vinegar to drink. Likewise concerning the cross of Christ: They have dug my hands and my feet, they have numbered all my bones: but they themselves have looked and stared upon me; they parted my garments amongst them, and upon my vesture they cast lots.

Moses in Deuteronomy: And thy life shall hang before thee, and thou shalt fear day and night, and shalt have no trust in thy life. Likewise in Numbers: The Lord is not suspended as a man, neither does he suffer threats as the son of man. Likewise Zechariah: And they shall look upon me whom they have pierced.

Concerning the darkening of the sun, Amos says thus: In that day, saith the Lord, the sun shall go down at noon, and the day of light shall be darkened; and I will turn your feasts into mourning, and your songs into lamentation. Likewise Jeremiah concerning the city of Jerusalem in which he suffered: And her sun is gone down while it was yet day, she is confounded and ashamed, and the residue of them I will deliver to the sword. Nor were these things said in vain. For indeed after a short time the emperor Vespasian subdued the Jews, and laid waste their lands with fire and sword, reduced those besieged by famine, overthrew Jerusalem, triumphed over the captives, and forbade the rest who remained from their lands, so that they might never be permitted to return to their native soil.

These things were done by God on account of that cross of Christ, as Solomon had testified beforehand in their own Scriptures, saying: And Israel shall be for destruction and for a reproach to the people, and this house shall be desolate, and every one that shall pass by it shall be astonished and shall say: For what reason hath God done these evils to this land and to this house? And they shall say, because they forsook the Lord their God, and persecuted their King most beloved of God, and tormented him with great humiliation: for this cause God hath brought upon them all these evils. For what did they not deserve, who destroyed the Lord who had come for their own salvation.

After these things they took the body down from the gibbet and laid it in a tomb. But on the third day before dawn, when an earthquake had occurred and the stone with which they had closed the sepulchre was rolled away, he rose again. In the sepulchre, moreover, nothing was found but the cast-off coverings of the body. That he would rise again on the third day the prophets had long since foretold. David in Psalm: Thou wilt not leave my soul in hell, nor wilt thou give thy Holy One to see corruption. Likewise Hosea: This is my wise Son: wherefore now he shall not resist in the breaking of his children, and I will deliver him from the hand of hell. O death, where is thy judgment, where is thy sting? The same again: He will revive us after two days on the third day.

Having therefore gone into Galilee after the resurrection, he gathered again his disciples, whom fear had put to flight: and having given them the commandments which he wished to be observed, and having ordained the preaching of the Gospel throughout the whole world, he breathed the Holy Spirit into them, and gave them the power of working miracles, so that they might work for the salvation of men both by deeds and by words; and then at last on the fortieth day he returned to the Father, taken up in a cloud. This the prophet Daniel had long since shown, saying: I saw in the 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 they that stood by brought him near before him; and there was given him dominion, and honour, and a kingdom; and all peoples, tribes, and tongues shall serve him, and his power is an everlasting power, which shall not pass away, and his kingdom shall not be destroyed.

Likewise David in Psalm: The Lord said to my Lord: Sit thou at my right hand, until I make thy enemies thy footstool.

Since therefore he sits at the right hand of God, about to tread down his enemies who tormented him, when he shall come to judge the world, it is clear that no hope remains for the Jews, unless, converted to repentance and washed from the blood with which they have defiled themselves, they begin to hope in him whom they denied. Therefore Esdras speaks thus: This Passover is our Saviour and our refuge. Consider, and let it ascend into your heart, that we must humble him in a sign, and after these things we have hoped in him. That the Jews have been disinherited because they rejected Christ, and that we who are of the Gentiles have been adopted in their place, is confirmed by the Scriptures. Jeremiah speaks thus: I have forsaken my house: I have given my heritage into the hands of her enemies. My heritage has become to me as a lion in the forest: she has given her voice against me; therefore I have hated her.

Likewise Malachi: I have no pleasure in you, saith the Lord, and I will not accept a sacrifice from your hands, because from the rising of the sun even unto the going down of the same my name shall be glorified among the Gentiles. Isaiah also speaks thus: I come to gather all nations and tongues; and they shall come and shall see my glory. The same in another place, in the person of the Father to the Son: I the Lord God have called thee in righteousness, and I will hold thine hand, and will strengthen thee: I have given thee as a covenant of my people, for a light of the Gentiles, to open the eyes of the blind, to bring out the bound from their chains, and them that sit in darkness from the prison house.

If therefore the Jews have been rejected by God, as the testimony of the sacred Scriptures declares, and the Gentiles, as we see, have been received, and freed from the darkness of this worldly life and from the chains of demons; then no other hope is set before man, unless he shall have followed the true religion and the true wisdom which is in Christ: he who is ignorant of him is always a stranger to truth and to God. Let neither the Jews nor the philosophers flatter themselves concerning the most high God. He who has not acknowledged the Son could not acknowledge the Father. This is the wisdom and this is the mystery of the most high God. Through him God willed both to be known and to be worshipped. Therefore he sent prophets before to foretell his coming, so that when all things that had been foretold were fulfilled in him, he might then be believed by men to be both the Son of God and God.

Yet it must not be held as though there were two Gods. For the Father and the Son are one. For since the Father loves the Son and grants him all things, and the Son faithfully obeys the Father and wills nothing except what the Father wills, so great a bond cannot by any means be sundered so as to say there are two, in whom the substance, the will, and the faith are one. Therefore the Son is through the Father, and the Father through the Son. One honour is to be rendered to both, as to one God, and it is to be distributed through two acts of worship in such a way that the very division is bound by an inseparable bond. He will retain neither, who separates either the Father from the Son or the Son from the Father.

It remains to answer also those who think it was unfitting and without reason that God should be clothed in a mortal body, that he should be subject to men, that he should endure insults, and even suffer torments and death. I will say what I think, and will compress an immense subject into few words as best I can. He who teaches something ought, I think, himself to do what he teaches, so as to compel men to obey. For if he does not do it, he will detract from the credibility of his own precepts. Examples are therefore necessary, so that what is commanded may have firmness, and if anyone proves stubborn and says that it cannot be done, the teacher may refute him by present deed. Therefore doctrine cannot be perfect when it is handed down in words alone; but it is perfect when it is fulfilled in deeds.

Therefore since Christ was sent to men as a teacher of virtue, in order that his teaching might be perfect, he ought both to teach and to do. But if he had not put on the body of a man, he could not have done what he taught; that is, not to be angry, not to desire riches, not to be inflamed with lust, not to fear pain, to despise death. These are indeed virtues; but they cannot be practised without the flesh. Therefore he took on a body, so that when he taught that the desires of the flesh must be overcome, he himself might do it first, lest anyone should put forward the excuse of the weakness of the flesh.

I will now speak of the mystery of the cross, lest anyone perhaps say: If he had to undergo death, it should not have been one that was infamous and shameful, but one that had something honourable about it. I know indeed that many, while they shrink from the name of the cross, flee from the truth, though in it there is both great reason and great power. For since he was sent for this purpose, to open the way to salvation for the most humble of all, he made himself humble, that he might free them. He therefore took upon himself that kind of death which is customarily inflicted upon the humble, so that the opportunity of imitation might be given to all. Moreover, since he was to rise again, it was not lawful for any part of his body to be cut off, nor for a bone to be broken, which happens to those who are beheaded. The cross therefore was preferable, which preserved the body with bones intact for the resurrection.

To these considerations is added also this, that having undergone suffering and death, it was fitting that he should be exalted. So greatly did the cross exalt him, both in reality and in meaning, that his majesty and power became known to all together with his very passion. For the fact that he stretched out his hands upon the gibbet meant that he spread his wings toward the East and the West, under which all nations from both parts of the world might gather for rest. How great is the power of this sign, and what authority it possesses, is plain to see, since every host of demons is driven out and put to flight by this sign. And just as he himself before his passion drove out demons by word and command, so now the unclean spirits, when they have crept into the bodies of men, are expelled in the name and sign of that same passion, when, wrested and tormented and confessing themselves to be demons, they yield to God who scourges them.

What then can the Greeks have hoped from their religions and from their wisdom, when they see their gods, whom they do not deny to be those same demons, triumphed over by men through the cross.

Therefore the one hope set before men is life, the one harbour of salvation, the one refuge of freedom: if, casting off the errors by which they were held, they open the eyes of their mind and acknowledge God, in whom alone the dwelling-place of truth resides, and despise earthly things and things fashioned from earth, and count for nothing philosophy, which is foolishness before God, and, having embraced true wisdom, that is, religion, become heirs of immortality.

But they resist, not so much the truth as their own salvation; and when they hear these things, they execrate them as some inexpiable crime. But they do not even allow themselves to hear; they think their ears are defiled by sacrilege if they have heard, and they do not now refrain from abuse, but assail with whatever verbal insults they can: and the same men, if they have obtained power, persecute them as public enemies—indeed even more than enemies, whose punishment, when conquered in war, is either death or slavery; nor is there any torment after arms have been laid down, however much they may have deserved to suffer all things, who wished to act so that piety might find a place amid the sword-points.

The cruelty against innocence is unheard of, and does not deserve even the condition of conquered enemies. What is the cause of this great madness? Plainly, because they cannot engage with reason, they press with violence, and without knowing the case they condemn as most guilty those concerning whose very innocence they were unwilling to be satisfied. Nor do they think it enough if those whom they irrationally hate die a swift and simple death; but they tear them with exquisite torments, to satisfy the hatred which is born not of any sin but of truth, which is hateful to those who live wickedly because they are vexed that there are some whose conduct cannot please them. They desire to destroy these by every means, so that they may be free to sin without a witness.

But they say they do these things to defend their gods. First, if they are gods and have some power and divinity, they have no need of the defence and patronage of a man, but defend themselves. Or how can a man hope for help from them, if they cannot even avenge their own injuries? It is therefore foolish and vain to wish to be the avengers of the gods; except that from this their lack of confidence is all the more apparent. For he who undertakes the patronage of the God he worships confesses that God to be nothing; but if he worships him because he considers him powerful, he ought not to wish to defend him by whom he himself is to be defended. We therefore act rightly. For when these defenders of false gods, rebels against the true God, persecute his name in us, we resist neither in deed nor in word; but meek, and silent, and patient, we endure all things whatsoever cruelty can devise against us.

For we have confidence in God, from whom we expect that vengeance will presently follow. Nor is this confidence vain: since the miserable ends of all those who have dared this crime we have partly come to know, and partly see. And no one has gone unpunished for having injured God; and he who was unwilling to learn by word who the true God is, has learned it by his own punishment.

I would like to know, when they compel the unwilling to sacrifice, what reasoning they have with themselves, or to whom they render service by what they do. If to the gods, that is not worship, nor is it an acceptable sacrifice, which is offered by the unwilling, which is extorted by injury, which is wrung out by pain. But if to those whom they compel, it is certainly no benefit, since one would rather die than receive it. If it is not good, why do you call me to it? Why do you invite me to evil? Why not with words but with blows? Why not with reason but with torments of the body? From this it is clear that what you drag me to against my will, not enticing the willing, is evil. What folly it is to wish to consult the interests of one who is unwilling?

Or if someone, pressed by misfortunes, attempts to flee to death, can you, if you have wrested away a sword, or broken a noose, or pulled him back from a precipice, or poured out poison, boast yourself the preserver of the man, when he whom you think you have saved gives you no thanks, and considers that you have dealt badly with him, because you prevented him from the death he desired, because you did not allow him to reach the end, the rest from his miseries? For a benefit ought to be weighed not by the quality of the thing but by the disposition of him who receives it. Why do you count as a benefit what is to me an injury? You wish me to worship your gods, which I consider deadly to myself. If it is good, I do not begrudge it. Enjoy your good alone. There is no reason for you to wish to rescue me from my error, which I have embraced by judgment and will.

If it is evil, why do you drag me into partnership in evil? Use your own lot. I prefer to die in good than to live in evil.

These things can indeed be said with justice. But who will listen, when men who are frenzied and ungoverned think their dominion is diminished if anything in human affairs is left free? And yet religion alone is the thing in which freedom has made its dwelling. For it is a matter that is above all others voluntary, nor can necessity be imposed on anyone to worship what he does not wish. Someone can perhaps pretend; he cannot be made to will it. Finally, when some, overcome by fear of torments or by sufferings, have consented to the execrable sacrifices, they never do of their own accord what they did under compulsion; but when freedom is restored to them and liberty given back, they return to God and appease him with prayers and tears, doing penance not for the will, which they did not have, but for the necessity which they endured; and pardon is not denied to those who make satisfaction. What then does he accomplish who defiles the body, when he cannot change the will?

But men of empty mind, if they have compelled some brave person to pour libations to their gods, exult with incredible eagerness insolently, and rejoice as though they had sent an enemy under the yoke. But if anyone, undaunted by threats or torments, has preferred to set faith before life, against this man their cruelty puts forth its ingenuity, devises unspeakable and intolerable things; and because they know that death for God is glorious, and that this is our victory, if overcoming our torturers we lay down our life for faith and religion, they too strive to conquer. They do not inflict death; but they devise new and unheard-of torments, so that the weakness of the flesh may yield to pain; and if it does not yield, they pause, and apply careful treatment to the wounds, so that with the scars still fresh, repeated torments may inflict greater pain: and exercising this butchery against the innocent, they consider themselves pious and just and religious (for the gods delight in such rites), while they call those impious and desperate.

What perversity is this, that he who is tortured though innocent is called desperate and impious, while the executioner is called just and pious?

But the impious alone among all men are judged, who follow God, who follow truth. Since this is the same as justice, the same as wisdom, these men brand it with the charge either of impiety or of folly; nor do they perceive what it is that deceives them, when they apply the name of good to evil, and the name of evil to good. The earliest philosophers indeed, but especially Plato and Aristotle, said much about justice, asserting and extolling it with the highest praise as a virtue, because it renders to each his own, because it preserves equity in all things; and whereas the other virtues are, as it were, silent and enclosed within, justice alone is not merely bound up with itself nor hidden, but projects itself entirely outward, and is inclined toward doing good, so as to benefit as many as possible: as though, forsooth, justice ought to exist only in judges and in those invested with some power, and not in all men.

And yet there is no man, not even among the weak and the beggars, upon whom justice cannot fall. But because they did not know what it was, whence it flowed, what work it had, they assigned that highest virtue, that is, the common good of all, to a few, and said that it seeks no advantages of its own, but is devoted only to the benefit of others. Nor was it without reason that Carneades arose, a man of the highest talent and acuteness, to refute the discourse of these men and to overturn justice, which had no stable foundation; not because he felt that justice ought to be censured, but in order to show that those who defended it disputed nothing certain, nothing firm concerning justice.

For if justice is the worship of the true God (for what is so just in respect of equity, so pious in respect of honor, so necessary for salvation, as to acknowledge God as a parent, to venerate him as a lord, and to obey his law and precepts?), the philosophers therefore did not know justice, because they neither acknowledged God himself, nor held his worship and law; and therefore they could be refuted by Carneades, whose argument was this: that there is no natural right, and therefore all living creatures, led by nature itself, defend their own advantages, and therefore justice, if it consults the interests of others and neglects its own, ought to be called folly. But if all peoples, in whose hands empire lies, and the Romans themselves, who have possessed the whole world, should wish to follow justice and restore to each his own what they have seized by force and arms, they will return to hovels and poverty.

And if they do this, they must needs be judged just indeed, but yet foolish, who strive to harm themselves in order to benefit others. Then, if someone finds a man who sells gold for brass, or silver for lead, by mistake, and necessity compels one to buy it, will he keep silent and buy it cheaply, or will he rather disclose it? If he discloses it, he will certainly be called just, because he did not deceive; but the same man will be called foolish, who has made a profit for another and a loss for himself. But it is easy to speak of loss. What if his life comes into danger, so that he must either kill or die—what will he do? It can happen that, after a shipwreck, he finds some weak man clinging to a plank; or, fleeing after a defeated army, he finds a wounded man sitting on a horse: will he push either that man from the plank, or this one from the horse, so that he himself may escape?

If he wishes to be just, he will not do so: but the same man will be judged foolish, who, while sparing another's life, betrays his own. If he does it, he will seem wise indeed, because he looks out for himself; but the same man will be evil, because he will harm another.

Those arguments are indeed sharp: but we can answer them most easily. For an imitation of names makes it seem to be so. For justice has the appearance of folly, yet is not folly; and malice has the appearance of wisdom, yet is not wisdom. But just as that malice, clever and shrewd in preserving its own advantages, is not wisdom but cunning and craftiness; so also justice ought not to be called folly, but innocence: because it is necessary both that the just man be wise, and that he who is foolish be unjust. For neither reason nor nature itself permits that he who is just should not be wise; since the just man does nothing at all except what is right and good, and always flees what is crooked and evil. But who can discern good and evil, crooked and right, except one who is wise? The foolish man, however, does evil, because he does not know what good and evil are. He sins for this reason, because he cannot discern the crooked and the right.

Therefore neither can justice belong to the foolish man, nor wisdom to the unjust. He is not therefore foolish who has not pushed the shipwrecked man from the plank, nor the wounded man from the horse, because he refrained from doing harm, which is sin; but to avoid sin belongs to the wise man.

But the reason why he seems foolish at first sight is this: that they suppose the soul is extinguished together with the body; and therefore they refer every advantage to this present life. For if there is nothing after death, he certainly acts foolishly who spares another's soul at the cost of his own, or who consults another's gain more than his own. If death destroys the soul, care must be taken that we live as long and as comfortably as possible: but if an eternal and blessed life survives after death, the just and wise man will certainly despise this bodily life together with all the goods of earth, because he will know what reward he is to receive from God. Let us therefore hold fast to innocence, let us hold fast to justice; let us submit to the appearance of folly, so that we may be able to hold fast to true wisdom.

Even if it seems to men absurd and foolish to prefer to be tortured and to die rather than to offer incense to the gods and depart without harm, let us nevertheless strive with all virtue and all patience to show faithfulness to God. Let not death terrify, let not pain break us, so that the vigor of the soul and unshaken constancy may be preserved. Let them call us fools, provided that they themselves are the most foolish, and blind, and dull, and equal to cattle; who do not understand that it is deadly, having forsaken the living God, to prostrate oneself and adore earthly things; who do not know both that eternal punishment awaits those who shall have venerated insensible images, and that those who shall not have refused either torments or death for the worship and honor of the true God will attain perpetual life. This is the highest faith, this is true wisdom, this is perfect justice. It is of no concern to us what fools judge, what little men think.

We ought to await the judgment of God, so that afterward we may judge those who have judged us.

I have spoken of justice, what it is. It follows that I show what the true sacrifice of God is, what is the most righteous rite of worship, lest anyone suppose that victims, or incense, or costly gifts are desired by God, from whom if hunger, if thirst, if cold, if desire for all earthly things is absent, he therefore makes no use of all those things which are brought into temples and to images of clay: but just as corporeal things are fitting for corporeal beings, so certainly an incorporeal sacrifice is necessary for an incorporeal being. Moreover, God himself has no need of those things which he has granted to man for his use, since the whole earth is in his power: he has no need of a temple, whose dwelling is the world; he has no need of an image, who is incomprehensible both to eyes and to mind; he has no need of earthly lights, who was able to kindle the sun together with the other stars for the use of man.

What therefore does God desire from man, except the worship of the mind, which is pure and holy? For those things which are done with the fingers, or which are outside of man, are inept, fragile, and unwelcome. This is the true sacrifice, not that which is brought forth from a chest, but that which is brought forth from the heart; not that which is poured out by the hand, but that which is poured out by the mind. This is the acceptable victim, which the soul immolates from itself. For what do victims contribute? What incense? What garments? What silver? What gold? What precious stones? If the mind of the worshipper is not pure? Justice alone, therefore, is what God seeks. In this is sacrifice, in this is the worship of God, concerning which I must now discourse, and must teach in what works justice must necessarily be contained.

That there are two paths of human life was not unknown to philosophers, nor to poets: but both introduced them in different ways. The philosophers held that one was the path of industry, the other of idleness: but this is less correct, in that they referred them to the advantages of this life alone. The poets did better, who said that one was the path of the just, the other of the impious. But they err in this, that they say these paths exist not in this life, but in the underworld. We speak more correctly, who say that one is the path of life, the other of death, and that these paths exist here nonetheless. But that right-hand path, along which the just walk, does not lead to Elysium, but to heaven. For they become immortal. The left-hand path leads to Tartarus; for the unjust are condemned to eternal torments. We must therefore hold fast to the path of justice, which leads to life.

Now the first duty of justice is to acknowledge God as a parent, and to fear him as a lord, to love him as a father. For he who animated us with the breath of life is the same who begot us, who nourishes us, who keeps us safe. He has over us not only the license of a father to chastise, but also that of a lord, and the power of life and death; whence a twofold honor is owed to him by man, that is, love together with fear. The second duty of justice is to acknowledge man as a brother. For if the same God made us, and begot all of us for justice and eternal life under equal condition, we are certainly bound together by a fraternal bond, which he who does not acknowledge is unjust. But the origin of this evil, by which the society of men among themselves, by which the bond of kinship has been dissolved, arises from ignorance of the true God.

For he who does not know that fountain of goodness can in no way be good. Hence it is that from the time when many gods began to be consecrated and worshipped by men, justice was put to flight, as the poets relate: thus every covenant was broken, the society of human right was broken. Then each man began to look out for himself, to reckon right in strength, to harm one another, to assail with frauds, to ensnare with deceits, to increase his own advantages at the cost of others' disadvantages; to spare neither kinsmen, nor children, nor parents; to prepare cups for the death of men, to beset the roads with the sword, to infest the seas; to give free rein to lust wherever madness might lead; to hold nothing sacred that unbridled desire did not violate. When these things were being done, then men established laws for themselves for the common advantage, so that they might in the meantime make themselves safe from injuries. But the fear of laws did not suppress crimes, but removed license.

For laws could punish offenses, but could not fortify the conscience. And so what had previously been done openly began to be done in secret. Even the laws were circumvented, since the very guardians of the laws, corrupted by rewards and gifts, sold their verdicts either for the remission of evils or for the destruction of the good. To these were added dissensions, and wars, and mutual plunderings, and the power of raging freely assumed once the laws were suppressed.

When human affairs were in this state, God took pity on us, revealed himself to us and showed himself; so that in him we might learn religion, faith, chastity, mercy; so that, having cast off the error of our former life, we might know both God himself and ourselves, whom impiety had estranged, and might receive, with the Lord himself as teacher, the divine law which joins human things with heavenly: by which law all the errors in which we had been ensnared might be removed together with vain and impious superstitions. What therefore we owe to man, that same divine law prescribes, which teaches that whatever you have rendered to man is rendered to God. But the root of justice, and the entire foundation of equity, is this: that you do not do to anyone what you are unwilling to suffer; but that you measure another's mind by your own.

If it is bitter to bear an injury, and he who has done it seems unjust, transfer to another person what you feel about yourself, and to yourself what you judge about another; and you will understand that you act as unjustly in harming another as another does in harming you. If we turn these things over in our minds, we shall hold fast to innocence, upon which justice stands as upon a first step. For the first thing is not to harm; the next, to do good; and just as in untilled fields, before you begin to sow, the fields must be cleared by pulling up thorns and cutting away all the roots of shrubs: so from our souls vices must first be removed, and then at last virtues must be implanted, from which, sown through the word of God, the harvests of immortality may spring up.

There are three passions, or, to put it thus, three furies, which stir up such great disturbances in the souls of men, and sometimes compel them to transgress so far that they permit no regard for their reputation or their own danger: anger, which desires revenge; avarice, which craves wealth; lust, which seeks pleasures. These vices must be resisted above all things; these roots must be torn out, so that virtues may be grafted in. The Stoics think these passions must be cut away, the Peripatetics that they must be tempered. Neither of them is right: because they cannot be wholly removed, since, being implanted by nature, they have a definite and great purpose; nor can they be diminished, since if they are evil, even tempered and moderate forms of them must be avoided, but if they are good, the full forms of them must be used. We, however, say that they must neither be removed nor diminished.

For those things which God has rationally implanted in man are not evil in themselves: but since they are by nature altogether good, having been granted for the preservation of life, they become evil through misuse; and just as courage, if you fight for your country, is a good thing, but if against your country, an evil: so also the passions, if you direct them toward good uses, will be virtues, but if toward evil ones, they will be called vices. Anger, therefore, was given by God for the restraining of sins, that is, for governing the discipline of those subject to us, so that fear may check licentiousness and curb audacity. But those who do not know its limits grow angry at their equals, or even at their betters. Hence men leap to monstrous crimes: hence they rise to slaughter, hence to wars. Desire also was granted for the seeking and acquiring of the necessities of life. But those who do not know its limits strive insatiably to heap up wealth.

From this have sprung poisonings, frauds, forged wills, and every kind of deceit.

The passion of lust, moreover, is implanted and innate for the procreation of children: but those who do not hold its limits in their soul use it for pleasure alone. From this arise illicit loves, from this adulteries and defilements, from this all corruptions spring. These passions must therefore be brought back within their proper bounds, and directed into the right path, in which, even if they are vehement, they can nevertheless have no fault.

Anger must be held in check when we suffer injury, both so that the evil which threatens from strife may be suppressed, and so that we may hold fast to the two greatest virtues, innocence and patience. Let avarice be broken when we have what is sufficient. For what madness is it to toil in heaping up those things which must of necessity pass to others through robbery, proscription, or death? Let lust not wander beyond the lawful bed, but serve for the begetting of children. For excessive appetite for pleasure both brings danger and generates infamy, and (what is most to be guarded against) acquires eternal death. Nothing is so hateful to God as an unchaste mind and an impure soul. Nor should anyone think that he must abstain only from that pleasure which is taken from the union with a woman's body, but also from the other pleasures of the remaining senses; because these too are vicious, and it belongs to the same virtue to despise them.

The pleasure of the eyes is perceived from the beauty of things, that of the ears from melodious and sweet voices, that of the nostrils from pleasant fragrance, that of taste from sweet foods: against all of which virtue must fight vigorously, lest the soul, ensnared by these enticements, be dragged down from heavenly things to earthly, from eternal to temporal, from immortal life to perpetual punishment. In the pleasures of taste and smell this danger exists, that they can draw one toward luxury. For whoever has been devoted to these will either have no estate at all, or, if he has had one, will consume it, and will afterward lead a detestable life. But he who is carried away by hearing (to say nothing of songs, which so often beguile the inmost senses that they even disturb the settled state of the mind with frenzy, through compositions of certain measured speeches and rhythmical poems, or through clever disputations) is easily led over to impious cults.

Hence it is that those who are themselves eloquent, or who prefer to read eloquent works, do not readily believe the heavenly writings, because they seem unpolished: they do not seek what is true, but what is pleasing; nay, those things seem to them most true which flatter the ears. Thus they reject truth while being captivated by the sweetness of speech. The pleasure that pertains to sight is manifold. For that which is perceived from the beauty of costly things stirs up avarice, which ought to be foreign to the wise and just man: but that which is taken from the appearance of women draws one into that other pleasure of which we have already spoken above.

It remains to speak of spectacles; which, since they are more powerful for corrupting souls, must be avoided by the wise and shunned entirely, inasmuch as they are recorded to have been devised for celebrating the honors of the gods. For the giving of gladiatorial shows is the festival of Saturn. The stage belongs to Father Liber. The games of the Circus are thought to be dedicated to Neptune, so that whoever attends the spectacles now seems to have abandoned the worship of God and passed over to profane rites. But I prefer to speak of the matter itself rather than of its origin. What is so horrible, so foul, as the slaughter of a man? For this reason our life is protected by the most severe laws; for this reason wars are execrable. Yet custom has found a way to commit homicide without war and without laws, and pleasure has claimed for itself what crime has been punished for.

But if to be present at a homicide is to share in the guilt, and the spectator is bound to the same deed as the perpetrator, then in these slaughters of gladiators no less blood is shed by him who watches than by him who acts: nor can he be free from blood who wished it to be shed, nor can he be seen not to have killed, who both cheered the killer and demanded a reward for him. What of the stage? Is it any more holy?—on which comedy tells tales of defilements and love affairs, tragedy of incests and parricides. The shameless gestures of actors too, by which they imitate infamous women, and the lusts which they express in dancing, teach those lusts. For mime is a school of corruptions, in which those things are done in representation which are shameful, so that without shame those things may be done which are real. Young men watch these things, whose slippery age, which ought to be bridled and governed, is schooled in vices and sins by these representations.

The Circus is thought to be more innocent: but the frenzy there is greater; since the minds of the spectators are carried away with such madness that they often rise not only to banquets but even to brawls, fights, and contentions. All spectacles must therefore be fled, so that we may be able to maintain a tranquil state of mind. We must renounce harmful pleasures, lest, beguiled by pestilential sweetness, we fall into the snares of death.

Let virtue alone be pleasing, whose reward is immortal, when it has conquered pleasure. But with the passions overcome and pleasures subdued, the remaining labor in suppressing other things is easy for him who is a follower of God and truth: he will never speak evil, who has hoped for blessing from God. He will not swear falsely, but will not even swear at all, lest at some time he fall into perjury either by necessity or by habit. He will speak nothing deceitfully, nothing dissemblingly; he will neither deny what he has promised, nor promise what he cannot do: he will envy no one, being content with himself and his own; nor will he slander, nor wish ill to another, upon whom perhaps the benefits of God are more abundantly bestowed. He will not steal, nor covet anything belonging to another at all; he will not lend money at interest (for this is to seek gain from the misfortunes of others), yet he will not refuse, if necessity compels someone to borrow.

Let him not be harsh toward his son, nor toward his slave: let him remember that he himself also has a father and a master. He will deal with these as he would wish to be dealt with himself. He will not accept excessive gifts from those of lesser means; for it is not just that the estates of the wealthy should be increased through the losses of the wretched. The ancient precept is, thou shalt not kill, which must not be understood as though we are commanded only to keep our hands from homicide, which is also punished by the public laws. But by this commandment laid down, it will not be lawful even by word to bring danger upon anyone, nor to kill or expose an infant, nor to condemn oneself by voluntary death. Likewise, thou shalt not commit adultery: but by this precept we are forbidden not only to corrupt another's marriage, which is also condemned by the common law of nations, but also to abstain from bodies given over to prostitution.

For the law of God is above the laws; it also forbids those things which are held to be lawful, so as to bring justice to its perfection. Of the same law it is, not to bear false witness, which also extends more broadly. For if false witness harms by lying him against whom it is spoken, and deceives him before whom it is spoken, then one must never lie at all, because a lie always either deceives or harms. Therefore he is not a just man who lies even without harm in idle speech. Nor is it lawful for him to flatter, for flattery is pernicious and deceptive: but he will everywhere guard the truth. Which, though it may be unpleasant for the present, yet, when its fruit and usefulness shall have appeared, will not beget hatred, as the poet says, but gratitude.

I have spoken of those things which are forbidden: I will now speak briefly of those which are commanded. Next to innocence is mercy. For innocence does not do evil, mercy works good; innocence begins justice, mercy completes it. For since the nature of men is weaker than that of the other living creatures, which God fashioned both equipped for inflicting harm and protected for repelling force, He gave us the affection of mercy, so that we might place all the support of our life in mutual assistance. For if we were fashioned by one God, and descended from one man, we are bound together by the right of kinship, and therefore we ought to love every man. And so we must not only refrain from inflicting injury, but must not even avenge injury inflicted upon us, so that perfect innocence may be in us. And therefore God commands us always to pray even for our enemies. We ought therefore to be a common and sharing creature, so that we may strengthen one another by rendering and receiving assistance.

For our frailty is subject to many misfortunes and hardships. Hope that what you see has happened to another can happen to you as well.

You will then be stirred to bring help, if you take on the spirit of him who, placed in misfortune, implores your help. If anyone lacks food, let us share with him; and if anyone naked comes our way, let us clothe him; if anyone suffers injury from one more powerful, let us rescue him. Let our home stand open to strangers or to those in need of shelter. Let our defense not be wanting to orphans, our guardianship to widows. To ransom captives from the enemy is a great work of mercy, to visit and comfort the sick poor. Let us not suffer the destitute or strangers, if they die, to lie unburied. These are the works, these are the duties of mercy, and whoever shall have performed them will offer a true and acceptable sacrifice to God.

This is a more propitious victim before God, who is appeased not by the blood of a beast but by the piety of a man: whom God, because He is just, follows with His own law and His own condition; He has mercy on him whom He sees to be merciful, and is inexorable toward him whom He sees to be harsh toward those who pray. Therefore, that we may be able to do all these things which are pleasing to God, money must be despised, and transferred to heavenly treasuries, where neither thief digs through, nor rust consumes, nor tyrant snatches away; but it is kept for us unto eternal wealth, with God as guardian.

Faith also is a great part of justice: which must be preserved above all by us, who bear the name of faith, especially in religion, because God is prior and greater than man. And if it is glorious to undergo death for friends, for parents, for children, that is, for a human being, and he who has done this obtains lasting memory and praise; how much more for God, who can grant eternal life in exchange for temporal death! And so when a necessity of this kind arises, that we are compelled to fall away from God and pass over to the rites of the nations, let no fear, let no terror bend us from keeping the faith delivered to us. Let God be before our eyes, let Him be in our heart, by whose inward help we may overcome the pain of our vitals and the torments applied to our body. Let us then think of nothing but the rewards of immortal life.

Thus easily, even if our limbs are to be torn apart or burned, shall we endure all things which the madness of tyrannical cruelty will contrive against us. Finally, let us strive to undergo death itself not unwillingly or fearfully, but willingly and undaunted, knowing with what glory before God we are about to be received, coming to the promised things after triumphing over the world; with which goods, with what great blessedness, let us weigh these brief evils of punishment and the losses of this life. But if the opportunity for this glory shall be lacking, faith will have its reward even in peace.

Let it be maintained, therefore, in all the duties of life, let it be maintained in marriage. For it is not enough if you abstain from another's bed or from a brothel. He who has a wife should seek nothing outside her: but, content with her alone, let him keep the sacraments of a chaste and inviolate chamber. For he is an adulterer before God, no less than one guilty of incest, who, casting off the yoke, wallows in foreign pleasure with a free woman or a slave. But just as a woman is bound by the bonds of chastity not to desire another, so let the man be held by the same law, since God has joined man and wife together in the union of one body. Therefore He commanded that a wife not be put away unless convicted of the crime of adultery, so that the bond of the conjugal covenant should never be dissolved except by what faithlessness has broken.

This also is joined to the perfecting of chastity: that not only the sin itself be absent, but even the thought of it. For it is plain that the mind is defiled by however empty a desire; and therefore a just man ought neither to do nor to wish what is contrary to this. The conscience, which God sees through and through and cannot be deceived, must therefore be purged. Let the heart be cleansed of every stain, so that it may be the temple of God, which is illumined not by the gleam of gold or ivory, but by the splendor of faith and chastity.

But all these things are difficult for man, nor does the condition of the frailty of nature allow anyone to be without blemish. The last remedy, therefore, is this: that we flee to penitence, which holds no small place among the virtues, because it is the correction of oneself; so that when by chance we have fallen either in deed or in word, we may at once come to our senses and confess that we have sinned, and pray to God for pardon, which in His mercy He will not deny, except to those who persist in error. Great is the help of penitence, great its consolation. It is the healing of wounds and sins; it is hope, it is the harbor of salvation: he who takes it away cuts off from himself the path of life, because no one can be so just that penitence is never necessary for him. We indeed, even if there be no sin, ought nevertheless to confess to God and repeatedly implore Him for our transgressions, and to give thanks even in adversity.

Let us always render this homage to the Lord. For humility is dear and pleasing to God: and since He receives the penitent sinner more readily than the proud just man, how much more will He receive the just man who confesses, and make him exalted in the heavenly kingdoms on account of his humility.

These are the things which a worshipper of God ought to offer; these are the victims, this the acceptable sacrifice; this is the true worship, when a man brings the pledges of his mind upon the altar of God. That supreme Majesty rejoices in such a worshipper: He receives him as a son, and imparts to him the gift of immortality; concerning which I must now discourse, and refute the persuasion of those who think that souls are extinguished together with bodies. These men, because they neither knew God nor could look into the hidden design of the world, did not comprehend even the nature of man and of the soul. For how could they see what follows, who did not possess the first principle? Denying, therefore, that there is any providence, they of course denied God, who is the source and head of all things.

It followed that they must say either that the things which exist had always existed, or that they had come into being of their own accord, or that they had been compacted together by the aggregation of minute seeds. That they always existed cannot be said, because what exists is also subject to sight; for existence itself cannot be without some beginning. But nothing can come into being of its own accord, because there is no nature without a generator. And how could primary seeds have existed, since seeds arise from things, and things in turn from seeds? There is therefore no seed that does not have an origin. Thus it came about that, since they thought the world was made without any providence, they also thought that man was not generated by any rational design. And if no rational design had been at work in fashioning man, then the soul could not be immortal.

Others, on the contrary, both believed that God is one, and that the world was made by Him, and that it was made for the sake of men, and that souls are immortal. But although they held these views, they did not perceive the causes, the reasons, or the outcomes of this divine work and design, so as to complete the whole mystery of truth and bring it to a close as it were with some final point. But what they could not do, because they did not hold the truth continuously, must be done by us, who have come to know it through God's announcement.

Let us consider, therefore, what reason there was for fashioning so great and so immense a work. God made the world, as Plato supposed: but why He made it, he did not show. Because He is good, he says, and envious of none, He made the things that are good. Yet we see in the nature of things both good and evil. Some perverse person, therefore, such as that godless Theodorus was, might arise and answer Plato: On the contrary, because He is evil, He made the things that are evil. How will he refute him? If God made the things that are good, from where then did so many evils burst forth, which for the most part even prevail over the good? They were contained in matter, he says. Therefore God made either good and evil, or nothing. If He made only good things, then evils, which were not made, are more eternal than the good things, which had a beginning. Those things, therefore, which once began will have an end, and those which always existed will endure.

Evil things, then, are more powerful. But if they cannot be more powerful, neither can they be more eternal. Therefore either both always existed, and God was idle, or both flowed from one source. For it is more fitting that God made all things rather than nothing. Therefore, according to the opinion of Plato, the same God is both good, because He made good things, and evil, because He made evil things. But if this cannot be, it is plain that the world was not made by God because the world is good. For He encompassed all things, both good and evil, and made nothing for its own sake, but for the sake of something else. For a house is built not merely to be a house, but to receive and shelter its inhabitant. Likewise a ship is built not merely to appear as a ship, but so that men may sail in it. Vessels likewise are made not merely to be vessels, but to hold what is necessary for use.

So too God must have made the world for some use. The Stoics say it was made for the sake of men, and rightly. For men enjoy all these good things which the world contains within itself. But why men themselves were made, or what utility that world-fashioning providence has in them, they do not explain. Plato likewise affirms that souls are immortal: but why, or how, or when, or through whom they attain immortality, or what altogether that great mystery is; why those who are to be immortal are first born mortal, and then, after running the course of their temporal life and casting off the remains of their frail bodies, are transferred to that eternal blessedness—this he does not comprehend.

Finally, he explained neither the judgment of God nor the distinction between the just and the unjust: but he thought that souls which have plunged themselves into crimes are condemned to this extent, that they are reborn in cattle, and so pay the penalties of their sins, until they return again to human forms; and that this happens always, and there is no end to the passing back and forth. He introduces for me some kind of game, resembling a dream, in which neither any reason, nor the governance of God, nor any design seems to be present.

I will now tell what that sum is which not even those who spoke truly were able to connect, having brought together the causes and reasons into one. The world was made by God, so that men might be born: men are born, moreover, so that they might acknowledge God the Father, in whom is wisdom; they acknowledge Him, so that they might worship Him, in whom is justice; they worship Him, so that they might receive the reward of immortality; they receive immortality, so that they might serve God forever. Do you see how the first things are connected with the middle, and the middle with the last? Let us examine each point, and see whether reason also underlies them. God therefore made the world for the sake of man. He who does not see this is not much removed from a beast. Who gazes upon the heavens, if not man? Who admires the sun, who the stars, who all the works of God, if not man? Who tills the earth? Who takes fruit from it?

Who sails the sea? Who has fish, who birds, who four-footed beasts in his power, if not man? God therefore made all things for man, because all things have yielded to the use of man. The philosophers saw this: but they did not see what follows, namely that God made man himself for His own sake. For it was consequent, and pious, and necessary, that since He had labored at such great works for man's sake, since He had given him so much honor, so much power, that he should have dominion in the world, man should acknowledge God as the author of such great benefits, who both made the world itself for man's sake and gave him dominion over it, and should render to Him the worship and honor that is His due.

Here Plato went astray; here he lost the truth which he had first seized upon, when he fell silent concerning the worship of that God whom he acknowledged as the maker and father of all things, and did not understand that man is bound to God by the bonds of piety—whence religion itself takes its name—and that this alone is the reason why souls become immortal. He did sense, however, that they are eternal: but he did not descend to that conclusion by degrees. For, with the middle steps cut away, he fell into the truth rather as if over some sheer precipice, and did not advance further, since he had found the truth by chance, not by reason. God must therefore be worshipped, so that through religion, which is the same as justice, man may receive immortality from God, nor is there any other reward for a pious mind: which, if it is invisible, cannot be given by the invisible God save with an invisible recompense.

By very many arguments it can be gathered that souls are eternal. Plato says that what is always moved by itself, and has no beginning of motion, has no end either: and that the soul of man is always moved by itself, which, because it is mobile in thinking, clever in discovering, easy in perceiving, capable in learning, and because it retains the past, comprehends the present, foresees the future, and embraces the knowledge of many things and arts, is immortal; since it has nothing in itself compounded with the corruption of earthly weight. Moreover, the eternity of the soul is understood from virtue and pleasure. Pleasure is common to all animals; virtue belongs to man alone: the former is vicious, the latter honourable; the former is according to nature, the latter contrary to nature, unless the soul is immortal.

For virtue, on behalf of faith and justice, neither fears poverty, nor dreads exile, nor shudders at prison, nor shrinks from pain, nor refuses death: which things, because they are contrary to nature, either virtue is folly, if it both hinders advantages and harms life; or if it is not folly, then the soul is immortal, and therefore despises present goods, because there are others more excellent, which it may attain after the dissolution of its body. That also is the greatest argument of immortality, that man alone acknowledges God. Among dumb creatures there is no suspicion of religion, because they are earthly and prostrate upon the earth. Man therefore looks upright toward heaven, that he may seek God. He therefore cannot but be immortal, who desires the immortal. He cannot be dissoluble, who is in common with God both in countenance and in mind. Finally, man alone makes use of the celestial element, which is fire.

For if light comes through fire, and life through light, it is evident that he who has the use of fire is not mortal, since that which is nearest to him, that which is familiar to him, is that without which neither light nor life can subsist. But why do we gather by arguments that souls are eternal, when we have divine testimonies? For the sacred scriptures and the voices of the prophets teach this. But if this seems too little to anyone, let him read the songs of the Sibyls, let him also consider the responses of the Milesian Apollo; that he may understand that Democritus, and Epicurus, and Dicaearchus raved, who alone of all mortals denied what is evident. With immortality confirmed, it remains to teach by whom, and by what means, and how, and when it is granted. When the fixed and divinely appointed times shall have begun to be completed, the destruction and consummation of all things must come to pass, so that the world may be renewed by God.

That time is near at hand, as much as can be gathered from the number of years and from the signs which have been foretold by the prophets. But since the things that have been said concerning the end of the age and the close of the times are innumerable, those very things that are said must be set forth plainly, since to make use of testimonies would be immense. If anyone desires them, or trusts us too little, let him go to the very sanctuary of the heavenly writings, instructed by whose authority he may perceive that the philosophers erred, who thought either that this world is eternal, or that infinite thousands of years have passed since it was formed. For not yet have six thousand years been completed, at the completion of which number all evil shall then at last be removed, so that justice alone may reign. How far this is to come to pass, I will explain in a few words.

These things are said by the prophets, but as seers, to be future. When the final end of the world shall begin to draw near, wickedness will grow strong, all kinds of vices and frauds will multiply, justice will perish, there will be no faith, peace, mercy, modesty, or truth; force and audacity will prevail; no one will have anything except what has been ill-gotten and defended by the hand. If there are any good men, they will be held as prey and sport. No one will show piety to parents, no one will take pity on an infant or an old man; avarice and lust will corrupt all things. There will be slaughters and effusions of blood. There will be wars, not only foreign and with neighbouring peoples, but also civil. Cities will make war upon one another; every sex and every age will handle arms. The dignity of empire will not be preserved, nor the discipline of the military; but after the manner of brigandage there will be plundering and devastation.

The kingdom will be multiplied, and ten men will seize and divide and devour the world; and there will arise another far more powerful and wicked, who, having destroyed three of that number, will possess Asia, and having brought the rest under his power and enrolled them, will vex the whole earth. He will establish new laws, abrogate the old ones; he will make the state his own, and will change the name of the empire and its seat. Then will be an unspeakable and execrable time, in which no one will wish to live. Finally, affairs will fall into such a state that lamentation will follow the living, and congratulation the dead. Cities and towns will perish, now by the sword, now by fire, now by frequent earthquakes, now by flood of waters, now by pestilence and famine. The earth will bear nothing, made barren either by excessive cold or by heat. All water will be partly changed into blood, partly corrupted by bitterness; so that there will be nothing useful for food, nor wholesome for drink.

To these evils there will also be added portents from heaven, lest anything be wanting to men for terror. Comets will appear frequently. The sun will be darkened with perpetual gloom. The moon will be stained with blood, and will not repair the losses of its lost light. All the stars will fall; nor will their proper order hold for the seasons, winter and summer being confounded. Then also the year, and the month, and the day will be shortened. And Trismegistus has declared this to be the old age and decline of the world. When this shall have come, it must be known that the time is at hand when God will return to transform the age. But amid these evils there will arise an impious king, an enemy not only to the human race but also to God. He will crush, torment, vex, and destroy the remnants of that former tyrant. And then there will be continual tears, unceasing mourning and groaning, and prayers to God that go unheard; no rest from dread, nor sleep for repose.

Day will always increase calamity, night will always increase fear. Thus the whole world will be reduced almost to a desert, certainly to a scarcity of men. Then also the impious one will persecute the just men devoted to God, and will command himself to be worshipped as God. For he will say that he is Christ, of whom he will be the adversary. That these things may be believed, he will receive power to work wonders: so that fire may descend from heaven; that the sun may stop in its course; that an image which he has set up may speak. By which prodigies he will entice many to worship him, and to receive his mark on the hand or forehead. And whoever shall not have worshipped him and received his mark will die by exquisite torments. Thus he will destroy nearly two parts, and a third will flee into deserted wildernesses. But he, raving mad, burning with implacable wrath, will lead an army and besiege the mountain to which the just have fled.

When they see themselves surrounded, they will implore the help of God with a loud voice, and he will hear them, and will send them a deliverer.

Then heaven will be opened in a storm, and Christ will descend in great power; and a fiery brightness will go before him, and an immeasurable force of angels; and all that multitude of the impious will be extinguished, and torrents of blood will flow; and the leader himself will escape, and having repeatedly reassembled his army, will fight a fourth battle, in which, having been captured along with all the other tyrants, he will be handed over to burning. But also the prince of the demons himself, the author and contriver of evils, bound with chains of fire, will be given into custody, so that the world may receive peace, and the earth, vexed through so many ages, may rest.

Peace therefore having been obtained, and all evil suppressed, that just and victorious King will hold a great judgment of the living and the dead upon the earth: and to the living just he will deliver all nations into servitude; but the dead he will raise to eternal life, and will himself reign with them upon the earth, and will found a holy city, and this kingdom of the just will last a thousand years. During that same time, the stars will be brighter, and the brightness of the sun will be increased, and the moon will suffer no diminution. Then will descend from God the morning and evening rain of blessing, and the earth will bring forth every fruit without the labour of men. Honey will drip from the rocks; springs of milk and wine will overflow.

The beasts, having laid aside their ferocity, will become tame; the wolf will wander harmlessly among the flocks, the calf will feed with the lion, the dove will be gathered together with the hawk, the serpent will have no venom, no animal will live on blood. For God will furnish to all an abundant and innocent sustenance.

But when the thousand years have been completed, and the prince of the demons has been released, the nations will rebel against the just, and an innumerable multitude will come to attack the city of the saints. Then will come the final judgment of God against the nations. For he will shake the earth from its foundations, and cities will fall, and he will rain upon the impious fire with sulphur and hail, and they will burn, and will slaughter one another. But the just will hide for a little while under the earth, until the destruction of the nations comes to pass, and they will come forth after the third day, and will see the fields covered with corpses. Then there will be an earthquake, and the mountains will be split, and the valleys will sink down into a great depth, and the bodies of the dead will be heaped into it, and its name will be called Πολυάνδριον.

After these things God will renew the world, and will transform the just into the forms of angels, so that, endowed with the garment of immortality, they may serve God for ever. Then also the impious will rise again, not to life, but to punishment. Them also, the second resurrection having been accomplished, God will raise up, so that, condemned to perpetual torments and delivered to eternal fires, they may pay the penalties deserved for their crimes.

Wherefore, since all these things are true and certain, foretold by the consonant proclamation of all the prophets, since Trismegistus, since Hystaspes, since the Sibyls have sung the same things, it cannot be doubted that all hope of life and salvation is placed in the religion of God alone. And so unless a man shall have received Christ, whom God sent and will send for liberation, unless he shall have known the most high God through him, unless he shall have kept his commandments and law, he will fall into those punishments of which we have spoken. Therefore fragile things must be despised, that we may obtain solid ones; earthly things must be scorned, that we may be honoured with heavenly ones; temporal things must be fled, that we may come to eternal ones.

Let each person educate himself unto justice, form himself unto continence, prepare himself for the contest, equip himself for virtue; so that if perchance the adversary shall have declared war, he may not be torn away from the right and the good by any force, any terror, any torments, may not prostrate himself before insensible images, but may uprightly acknowledge the true and only God: let him cast away pleasures, by whose allurements the lofty soul is dragged down to earth; let him hold to innocence, let him benefit as many as possible, let him acquire for himself incorruptible treasures by good works, so that he may be able, with God as judge, according to the merits of his virtue, to attain either the crown of faith or the reward of immortality.