The Consultations of Zacchaeus and Apollonius

APOLLONIUS.—The occasion, Zacchaeus, has granted opportunity to me and to those present, that what we formerly spoke of only in passing, we may now freely bring forth and put to the test. For you may easily understand, if you inquire diligently, that all sects of religions and all rites of sacred things have flowed from rational beginnings: but the sect of your belief is so superfluous and irrational that it seems to me it can be received only through folly. For what is so absurd, and so at variance with human reason, as that Christ, whom you call the Son of God, should be believed to be God and man equally and at once? That a virgin should bear a conception without seed? That God should be born of a woman; that afterward, through the successive stages of ages, he should know, feel, suffer, and endure the lowliness of earthly acts? That, fixed then to a cross, he should go to death, and at the last, being dead, should raise himself?

Nor is it enough for the authors of this persuasion to add their assent to so foolish a tradition, unless they also condemn with contemptuous attack the immortal gods of the nations. Moreover, they despise the world, which flourishes in its own eternity, as though it were temporary and brief; promising to themselves, who live without any establishment of Fate, the blessedness of immortality after the resurrection of dead bodies. The reason for which observance (if indeed reason is to be the name for so foolish a persuasion of men) can you give, or dare you, demonstrate it with the examination of those present; so that either, convicted, you may depart from error, or, I, overcome under the same condition, may join your tradition with the assembly as witness.

ZACCHAEUS.—Anyone indeed can easily dare even to bring forth truth concerning God, if only something congruous to your wisdom, and not abhorrent to such justice, could be brought forth from divine matters: for it is your opinion that the wise man opines nothing, believes nothing, is not deceived, but knows all things by himself, and does not suffer hidden and unknown things, nor allows greater possibility to the Creator than to the creature, judging equally of the sense of God and of man: and especially you hold this intent of disputation against Christians: whence this very collection of yours began by wishing afterward to know what you had first condemned.

APOLL.—The facility of your belief, and the confession undertaken against the reason of the whole world and the law of nature, has compelled me to speak more vehemently, and to argue more strictly. Nevertheless, if there is confidence in answering, first disclose to me this assurance: how do you wish Christ to be seen as God or Son of God, whom afterward you do not deny to be man also: since surely he ought to be proclaimed either God or man, because it is evident to the understanding of all that one can become the other, but both cannot be at once.

ZACCH.—This subtlety belongs to your quibbles, that you refuse to believe by first destroying the part that has been received, and give your hand to this end with small matters, that you may undermine the whole. Whence silence is most fitting toward you; because, since it is a lighter fault not to relate than to injure, you neither wish to believe in God, and yet cannot speak without injury to him.

APOLL.—But I believe that comparisons of these treatises are always profitable to those who doubt, and I affirm from experience that one comes to the fountain of truth by certain streams of inquiry; and for this reason it is the doctrine of all sects, that by hearing you may understand what before you did not know: for it is easier, if reason is at hand, for things heard to be believed, than for things unheard to be known. Concerning this matter, if it is worthy, set forth specifically what is proposed, lest, while we contend in vain, those who are present be filled not with the understanding they hoped for, but with weariness.

ZACCH.—It is plainly worthy that the mysteries of heavenly counsels be known; and the truth concerning the divinity of Christ is so simple and shining of itself, that although no one can worthily express it, yet anyone may easily understand it, if he shows the will of one about to believe: in which matter even I, who am the least of Christians, would not keep silent, were I not instructed by the law to avoid occasions of such disputes. For where there is no progress, conflict is forbidden. Whence if you strive only to dispute and be refuted with impunity, not intending to believe, seek out the Epicureans and Platonists, and the other portents of similar sects. We have no such custom.

APOLL.—Set that aside, and do this, by no means departing from the proposed condition, namely that the other party follow him who, before the same hearers, shall have prevailed in the end. And since, as you truly say, no one justly reckons it a burden to speak for religion, I, being about to speak of Christ limb by limb, first disclose the clear reason, so that if you can prove him to be God or Son of God, I may more easily agree to the rest of the things recorded as done or to be done by him; nor will it grieve me to believe freely what the gods could not prevent.

ZACCH. And I believe through him himself that you also can easily be led away from the error of gentilism—he who can raise up for himself inhabitants even from stones—if you, laying aside the arrogance of a false wisdom, do not refuse in your heart, once you have recognized by the facts, him whose majesty you either knowingly neglect or ignorantly seek: for behold, your gods will hear one speaking fortified by the faith of Christ, and they will not forbid it. But I marvel that you, who put forward the form of all knowledge, should inquire doubtfully whether Christ is God or Son of God, when you are not ignorant that even the volumes of your own authors testify to his divinity, and set forth the cross which you deride; from which I will now bring forward for the present the examples of two.

For Plato, whom you account most learned and most wise, when speaking of the revealing of Christ's majesty, even hinted at his sign in these words, asserting that there would be a God whose sign is rounded and crossed. Likewise the Sibyl, most divinely inspired, as you assert, in her songs sounded forth the property of the holy name along with the dignity of his nature: this same woman afterward, in one verse, signified God and the cross, which you refute with many disputations, setting forth the aforesaid poem thus:

Happy that God, who hangs from the lofty wood.

See, though in differing words, yet the confession of both is expressed. He designates the one who is to come, because he perceived that he was to be made manifest in man: she calls him happy, because she foresees the divine power in the frailty of that man, and victory in the death of that same man. Yet these are not therefore to be followed because it was sometimes permitted to them, as it were through a dream, to speak true wisdom; nor so that gentilism might seem to have deserved foreknowledge from God, but so that even your own authors might speak of Christ as God and Son of God—who, though false in almost everything, erred in this matter as if by likelihood of truth.

APOLL.—You remember well enough, for the moment, the sayings of both: but since there is liberty of proof, let your preceding statement be checked by an equal saying; namely, that those whose authority ought (not) to be received in all things, perhaps erred humanly in this matter. Whence if Christ is truly God or Son of God, this ought to be taught not only by the writings of the ancients, but by present examples.

ZACCH.—How unjust is the intent of gentile persuasion! When it asserts something for itself, it makes use of its own sources; when it is refuted, it does not even believe its own. The defense of our faith is not so poor or needy that it should rely for its proof only on external testimonies, nor seek outside what is within itself. Hear the unclean spirits of demons, who are your deities, terrified under the invocation of this name, not denying Christ to be God and Son of God, and, as if guilty ones under torments of interrogation, raging not because it pleases them to say it, but confessing what is wrung from them; and if you disparage our belief and faith, at least believe your own gods; or if there is no shame in another way, let not men deny what even demons confess.

APOLL.—Why do you strive to object to me the various inventions of demons in place of all reasoning, and the shifting testimony of uncertain spirits in place of the whole argument of faith? If this alone is your proof, you would more honorably have recourse to the authority of the aforesaid authors.

ZACCH.—It would be fair for you first to believe the testimonies of your own authors; then not to weigh lightly the unwilling confession of demons: because unless they were driven by invisible torments, they would surely more easily speak freely on their own behalf than always lie against themselves. But since in every matter the riches of God are inestimable, his true majesty is spread abroad especially in the honoring of his own name being approved and in men being provoked to faith. Whence if these things are small, unheard-of remedies of healings follow, and the ineffable benefits of God extended even to the dead. Thus, at Christ's command, the blind are given sight, hearing is restored to the deaf, the lame walk, lepers are cleansed, the dead are raised.

And if you do not believe these things to have been done by him, know that they were done, or are done, by men in his name; who surely, if he were not the Son of God or God, would be believed to have falsely put on manhood, and would neither be present when invoked, nor grant signs profitable to those in need; because it can plainly be understood that God does not consent to a lie, nor can men merit signs through a lie.

APOLL.—These things you speak would seem not far from belief, if what follows deserved credence: for, to say nothing of other matters for the present, what reason or necessity was there for God to come to the earth? ZACCH.—No necessity indeed embraces God, since he is always free and subject to no passion: all things are subject to him through himself, nor is he subject to anyone. Nevertheless his judgment is absolute and certain: Unless you believe, you will not understand. Accordingly, if you raise your mind, wandering in darkness, to the light of heavenly understanding, so as to believe that God can do whatever he wills; you will not indeed find necessity, so far as it concerns him, for his coming to the earth—nay, since he is always everywhere—in order to appear visibly in man, but you will understand that there was a will accompanied by reason.

APOLLONIUS.—Just as it cannot be doubted that God can do what he wills, so it is evident that he does not will things contrary to and unworthy of himself; and therefore, if there was no necessity, show with reason his will. ZACCHAEUS.—First entrust this to your mind: whatever God has shown, undertaken, and endured among men has as its cause either the saving of the human race or its restoration; in this he so loved always the benefits which he had given from the beginning, that he bestowed more pardon through his indulgences than he exacted vengeance for evil. For the sake of man the volumes of Scripture are filled with examples of the past, and with exhortation for the present, and moreover are completed with the hope and fear of things to come; so that if faithful promises did not entice men to the acknowledgment and worship of the Creator, which is the highest justice, the dread of the announced judgment might constrain them.

Since therefore these provisions availed but little through the prophets, the Savior granted his own presence, so that the power might fulfill, together with preaching, the whole work of our salvation, lest chastisement should always be thought to come from man alone; since in Christ both doctrine and deeds and signs made divinity shine forth, and he compelled us not by force to the imitation of justice and holiness, but invited us by wonders. And so, about to carry out a work of such great condescension, how ought he to have descended to earthly things, except that he should sustain that man in the frail matter of men, whom she was to see present, hear teaching, and imitate as he worked?

APOLLONIUS.—Granted that the reason for his coming to earth together with his will seems probable, since God is declared to have come out of pity for man: was it truly impossible for him to make, from whatever loftier matter, an incorruptible body, which, once assumed, would bring aid to man in such a way that he would not be burdened by corruptible man? ZACCHAEUS.—God, doing all things from his own will, assumes nothing that is burdensome to himself as though compelled; but just as he cannot be deceived, so he himself does not deceive. Therefore it was fitting that what was done by him be true, not feigned, nor that a phantasm be displayed in the manner of illusions in place of man, but that this be what he wished to be seen to be.

And so, about to come in true man for the salvation of all, he had both to be born, and to undergo the increments of age in the order of life, so that he might at the same time both teach those things which man can do, and not command to be done what he himself had not first done through the man he assumed.

APOLLONIUS.—Let there be, if you please, an abridgment of the contest on this point too. Was it not at least unworthy for him to be formed within a woman's womb? Or is it credible that he who was to be born was conceived without seed? ZACCHAEUS.—I said a while ago, understanding follows faith, and the human mind perceives, only through faith, those things which are higher than itself and near to God. For if, from matter not subsisting, or from whatsoever, as you said a little before, God when he willed was able to make man, surely it was easier from subsisting matter, and his own, so that nothing would be untrue, and it would be more wonderful, and would not involve the mixture of seed. Or what animal or element is dearer to God than man?

What matter for so great a formation was more fitting than the holy Virgin, within whom the Spirit of God fashioned a body from the chosen flower of her most pure womb: in which the Son of God dwelt, conversing among men? And lest it seem incredible that this could be done through the Spirit of God, consider what the spirit of the world can do, which indeed is not God, but one of the works of God; how easily it binds with rigor the naturally dissolved earth, turns waters into ice, from the same producing also snow, which changes weight into lightness, color into whiteness; the same hardens crystal with its blasts, which will not receive the softness of its own nature: and after these things believe that it was not impossible for God, what you understand to be possible for a creature.

APOLLONIUS.—Do you also testify that the Virgin gave birth? For creation, as you assert, effected not from the incorruptible God but from corruptible matter, in what way did it exceed the measure of its own fragility? ZACCHAEUS.—O wisdom of the world, perceiving nothing divine in your persuasion! You hear that the salvation of all was accomplished by the work of God within man; and though you understand the conception to have occurred without disturbance of the body, you do not believe that it came forth without its dissolution! Where then is the benefit or the power of God, if the sacred conjunction communicates to human fragility only the name, not the honor? You do not believe Christ to be God chiefly for this reason, that he is proclaimed to have been born of a Virgin contrary to the custom of human birth.

But I believe rather that he passed into the glory of God from this very fact, that being in some respect unlike our condition even according to manhood, he both fittingly fulfilled the order of birth, and did not violate the integrity of his mother's body by the necessity of being born. There is no doubt, therefore, since the creation is from the spirit of the incorruptible God, that the bringing forth was also incorruptible; and that what was fragile in man was rather preserved by the power of divinity, than that what was of God was diminished by the fragility of man.

APOLLONIUS.—Grant that Christ's divinity and birth stand thus, because, on account of God whom you always mix into your reasoning, it must be judged that the Virgin too could have given birth; what point was there in an infant wailing in the cradle, then lingering in childish ignorance, or in not passing through the slippery time of adolescence with greater years, when by divine possibility he might have begun immediately from manly firmness what he was going to do? ZACCHAEUS.—From this the very reason of life, joined with the will of divinity, answers you: that he who had endured the delays of the growing womb should also keep to the appointed time of age; nor should he disdain to live as a man, who had deigned to be born thus. For when would he be believed to have truly put on man, if he had passed over these stages of life? But perhaps he ought to have disdained something of man, he who came to teach humility and patience.

How much more modestly, proving himself both God and man, did he prefer the wondrous and not reject the weak! Hence it is written that he grieved in sorrow, slept in weariness, desired food in hunger, wept in mourning, and groaned in death; so that, while the sublime works comprehended above showed him true God, these tearful things spoke him true man. Since he both endured, by taking them up, the things that are proper to us, and, by a word, when he willed, brought to pass the things possible to God alone.

APOLLONIUS.—I recall that a while ago varieties of healings and the raisings of the dead were brought forward; in which, however, I do not see any special wonder of Christ, since even more skilled magicians raise the dead, and physicians grant remedies for all manner of infirmities. ZACCHAEUS.—Nor does it escape me that by magical incantations it is not the spirits of the dead but of demons that are called forth, and that these for a little while feign through phantasm what they are not: adding besides a condition to the falsehood, that either, unseen, they answer, or, if seen, they are silent: so that the phantom of shades mocks the feeble wishes of the imprudent.

But the souls of the departed, their bodies dissolved, are led to their due abodes, and according to their merits abide either in the places of the blessed until the day of the future judgment, and are not subject to the invocations of magicians, or, shut up in certain prisons, are forbidden to come to the upper world: so it happens that, while these either disdain to come or are held back, demons feign their likeness, so that they may both be always present in the deceit which they love, and may frustrate, by an imitation of the true, those who believe in such things. But the cures of physicians, made from many concoctions of herbs, do not profit immediately nor to all; and if ever a deeper disease has taken hold in the sick, either the entrails are burned and scorched by fire, or a hidden ruin is cut away by iron: nothing is done for remedy by command, nothing is accomplished by word alone.

And certainly we can all confess that medicine derogates from what is naturally in man the power to be; it cannot add what is not there—which is the opposite estimation of Christ's works. A blind man, having no matter of sight from the beginning, and presenting empty places for eyes, anointed with clay just as man was first made, received his sight: one who knew not how to walk is commanded to walk: blood flowing in a woman is stopped by a word: by command an ear cut off is restored whole: leprosy flees not by medicine, but by word. The corpse decayed in the tomb is bidden both to come forth and to live; nor does he show only a sudden presence to onlookers, but takes part in all the acts of men, and rejoices to live for years to come. Who besides God could so feed with only five loaves so many thousands of men that they were satisfied?

Who walked upon the sea with his feet, and freely trod, by walking, the immense element, so that the waves, serving as his path, fixed firm footprints? Who commanded the winds, and by a word calmed the storms raging into tempest? Who made wine from water, and from the same nature into the same, without the understanding of change, brought forth the advance of a better kind? These things Christ did in man, in order to prove himself also God, in the sight of many. And so, if an echo is to be equated with speech, or foam with fountains, or shadow with true light, then the works of men might not unworthily be joined in comparison with the powers of God: since in the one case there is only this delay of remedies, that they be commanded to help; in the other, things granted almost vanish before they are even felt, through labor.

Apollonius.—If, as you strive to have it believed, God abiding in man performed the aforesaid miracles, did he then also wish to undergo and suffer the cross? Or for what reason, being about to snatch others from death, did he himself not escape death? Or how will he benefit others, who was not able to benefit himself? Since in this he ought rather to have confirmed the faith of those doubting concerning him, by first showing in his own deliverance that he would also be the deliverer of others. In this matter either a reason must necessarily be given, or it is not just enough to demand belief.

Zacchaeus.—In this too your estimation is mistaken, in that you believe divinity suffered injury in the affliction of the cross; which, being incomprehensible and free, could neither suffer nor be held: but through the man he assumed he waged a certain triumph over the devil, when, imposing on the wood the victory of the flesh, he overcame, through man, without injury to himself, him who had led man into sin with injury to God. Man, therefore, not divinity, was given to the cross; and he who had sinned through wood was fixed on wood. And this was for God the chief reason or will for assuming man, that the sin contracted by man might be taken away through man, and that from him the faith of the resurrection might begin, since it was established that he must be the first to rise: for, being pure and free from all sin, he willed to suffer for all, so that he might be preferred to all not by power alone, but by merit.

You see, then, what is the pomp of divine power and the victory of life: not to have deserved death, but to have taken it away from those who deserved it, and to have affixed to the standard of a spiritual triumph a guilt not his own; since, while no man is free from sins, whoever else would have given his life only for himself, it was necessary that he perish for all who, owing nothing of guilt for himself, though he could not be condemned, consented also to be killed, lest perpetual death should hold us.

Apollonius.—Setting this aside for the moment, tell me who this devil is, or whence he comes, whom you affirm to have been the instigator of I know not what sin; disclose, if it does not displease you, the sin of man itself, whose atrocity, as you assert, was so great that it could not be expiated except by the cross of Christ alone: for once the quality of the crime, if there is any, has been examined, it will more readily become clear what this so highly extolled preaching of the cross has actually accomplished.

Zacch.—I am not at all reluctant to explain the beginnings of the ancient offense, and to set forth in a simple narrative what degree of evil the transgression of the first man produced; so that you, who desire only to hear the causes of sin, may also come to know more closely the Creator of the human race.

For when God had made all things out of nothing, he fashioned man, the inhabitant of the world, from clay, and to the body, still rude and lifeless, he granted spirit and sense; spirit by which we draw the common air, by which we move our limbs; sense by which we differ from the other animals: then he added a proper freedom of living, granting free rule over all things; then immortality was granted, with a condition, and a law was set in the will—not one which, being difficult to observe, would bring danger to one ignorant of it, but one which, being made known, so that it should not be usurped, might preserve so great a grace of the Creator along with the benefit of immortality.

Thus man being placed among the delights of paradise—a most pleasant place indeed, corrupted by no inclemency or variation of the breezes—an abundant power of eating from every fruit of the precious trees is given; but among the many, the use of one tree only is forbidden, so that man, ever beholding that forbidden tree, might remember him who had forbidden it, and, though set above all things, might not forget the Author who was set above himself; and might so know all things subjected to himself, that he himself might be subject to him who had subjected them to him: and at the same time, lest man, made rational, should grow torpid like the brute animals without any observance, but rather, by means of that sense which he alone had received as pre-eminent, might understand both how to be wary and how to merit, between commandment and benefit.

Envying this blessedness, the devil, through the serpent, which was more cunning than the other animals, enticed first the woman, that is, the human being of the weaker sex and of a mind more easily persuaded to believe, to violate the forbidden taste of the tree: afterward, through her, he deceived the man by a similar falsehood, asserting that they would become like God if they did not abstain from the fruits of that tree, which divinity had, as it were, reserved for that very reason, lest it should share heavenly knowledge with men. Deceived by these tricks, he drove them into the most wicked sin, so that they dared to wish—though they could not—to be like the Creator through the transgression of the commandment.

By this deceit, despoiled of the benefit of immortality, they are cast out of paradise; removed from that inviolable temperate clime, and about to live under this corruptible air, a garment of skins is at once put upon them, and harsh labor is assigned for seeking sustenance; so that they might turn the soil, which would give nothing of its own accord, and, toiling amid thorns and thistles, though they gathered much, they would nonetheless remain subject to the sentence of death.

This first transgression of the prohibition was the cause of all evils and the beginning of death; yet patience did not grant its full effect to a swift vengeance of God, but softened the force of the more severe edict by the interposition of time; so that merit of pardon might come from the labor of repentance, and that those who had fallen might teach their descendants the observance of justice, for whose sake life which they had lost might be restored, they who had fallen through their own fault. Yet these intervals of piety and the pathway of the salutary way were not held to by satisfaction through conversion; rather the increase of vices grew, and the abuse of succeeding men consumed it; so that afterward, as the sentence of death grew stronger, only the pouring out of the flood could quench the stain of burning crimes.

APOLL.—It is a suspect hearing to pass over things that move one deeply: for if God is both impassible and good, how is he now also angry or avenging? For anger signifies passibility, and vengeance an evil.

ZACCH.—God is the equal judge of human deeds, who renders rewards to the good, punishment to the wicked: he is good when he repays; when he punishes, he is just. Whence anger does not signify passibility, but disapproval; and vengeance is not an evil, but a just thing.

APOLL.—One must yield to the reverence due divinity, especially since this must always be believed of God, which is worthy of his honor. Wherefore, bringing back the narrative to the suspended point, explain, as a consultant, if it is worthy to be heard, how, after the flood, men were either made or born.

ZACCH.—It is truly worthy to unfold God's remedy toward us from the beginning, and to declare that the seed of the human race was preserved in Noah after the flood, and that from him descent came through his posterity—not, in the childish manner, fashioning Deucalion and Pyrrha by stones cast behind the back. And so, the earth having been washed by the flood, Noah alone, because he alone was found just, is preserved together with his offspring for the propagation of the human race; the sentence of death, however, still remaining as it does now, so that immortality might be restored, with the resurrection, according to the merit of one's conduct. For some time the form of justice endured among men, and the discipline flourished through the memory of example, and reverence was preserved by fear.

But just as long prosperity has always bred security out of abundance, and out of security forgetfulness, and out of forgetfulness abuse; so, forgetting through fear, men forgot the Author, and rushed from vices into sacrilege: no longer content to dwell on the earth, as though about to ascend to heaven, they build a tower, and by human hand the heights of the clouds are violated. O inexplicable goodness of God, and mercy that none can fittingly express! Not to obey God is a just death, yet to have aspired to the seat of God went unpunished. Behold the gentleness of divine clemency: the rash are not punished in their crime, but are led away from the crime; and where the heavenly judgment ought to have raged, signs of power are instead displayed.

Moreover, a way of repentance and understanding is opened; for whereas up to that time there was still one speech for all, into the numerous nations which are now scattered throughout the world, the tongue of each is divided, and in the midst of the most fervent labor, each speaks only what he alone understands. For while audacity persisted in the building of the crime, suddenly those asking did not know how to ask, those serving did not know how to obey, and the things brought to those laboring as though necessary were contrary to their purpose. Thus what was begun was abandoned not by punishment but by weariness, so that afterward, by miracles, a fear should come upon all with astonishment, without the example of a punishment; since whoever had lost the knowledge of the former tongue would relate to his own people, into whose new speech he had passed, the reason why. But what does it profit to have covered over crimes with a flood?

What does it profit that this engine of madness was destroyed by indulgence and not by punishment? Behold again, O man, you confound the elements to the injury of God, transferring the honor and worship of invisible majesty to visible creatures. If you look up to height, God is above; if to greatness, he is more immense, being everywhere; if to splendor, the Creator is more radiant, and it is necessary that he who made the beauty should surpass, by this very power, what he made: let this, finally, be the distance between Creator and creature, that the things we behold may hold such admiration, that they may not, out of reverence, lose sight of those things which, because of their majesty, we cannot see.

APOLL.—If the faith of these things which you recall is true, then God's dealing with men is beyond estimation, and his patience is without end. But since, the work of the tower having been left aside, you have recalled that the nations were made throughout the whole earth by the diversity of tongues; explain, if you have the capacity of knowledge, in due order and without burdening us, how the sect of the Jews crept in with Moses; or for what reason, after so many ages of time had been consumed, the giving of the Law emerged, since law is naturally inserted into the senses of man.

ZACCH.—From the first man down to the time I mentioned, through the successive generations, the knowledge of God was retained by a thread; and the law, even though not written in letters, as you yourself have professed, was naturally inserted in the senses: but after both had faded through neglect, Abraham, a man of singular faith, is chosen, whom God established as the father of all belief, for this merit—that he, without hesitation, left his house, his homeland, and his kin at God's call, to go to unknown and foreign lands; lest, dwelling among his kindred, he be given over to the servitude of idols, and lose the grace of faith which he already merited and was to increase, or at least hold it with less warmth: again, in his own extreme old age and that of his wife, their limbs already chilled by age, he did not despair that a son would be born to him, because God had promised this to him, believing that the difficulty of nature would be overcome by the possibility of the divine promise: whom afterward, when he was his only son, at God's command he brought without hesitation to be slain upon the altar; striving to give more to the Creator than to affection, and at the same time trusting that even from the burnt ashes he could be given back whole, he whom the fire, for God's sake, had consumed.

But the divinity, never harsh to believers, did not allow so choice a man to be bereft, but only to be tried; for under the stroke of the sword, already about to strike, he substituted a ram for the one intent upon it, a gentler victim; so that devotion might be fulfilled without loss of piety, and nonetheless he who had preferred God to affection might receive the grace of faith.

By such belief, therefore, he merited the promise of a flowing land for the seed that would follow him, and the prince of the Jewish people first received circumcision. Not that the foreskin prejudiced justice or faith, or that God had created something superfluous in man which he afterward ordered to be cut away; but so that, among the other nations, the offspring of the chosen man might be known by a mark of the body.

And so that same people, on account of the want of the regions they inhabited, passed over into Egypt: not that God could not have provided them abundance in any place whatsoever; but so that, being about to lead them out of Egypt again, he might teach how great he was by miracles. A great people grows from this offspring, and its scantness increases even to the point of provoking envy by its multitude; so that when the Egyptians feared they would become too strong for them, they strove to afflict them with unworthy labors, as those subjected to a debt of servitude, and moreover, by the savage violence of an edict, they gave the male sex to death from the womb, so that exposure might take the newborn, and labor take the strong.

Under these afflictions the foreign people gathered together to God, the Author handed down to them by their forefathers, and through their fathers demanded worship of the divinity for their deliverance; by which it came about that, against the force of the cruel edict, Moses was first raised secretly by his parents; then, having been found by Pharaoh's daughter, when he had been exposed for fear of the decree, he was instructed in all the wisdom of the Egyptians, and received the commands for freeing God's people, lest, either untaught by chance, or of moderate understanding, if he had not been trained in all their wisdom, he might seem carelessly both to have believed and to be carrying out what he had undertaken.

To him God speaks through fire from the bush, and shows him signs to prevail against the Egyptians: by which, indeed, both those whose servitude was being loosed might believe, and those who were going to resist might be deterred, and both peoples might be preserved through this display of wonders; since, the hand of God being plainly beheld, the stubborn might be admonished to turn from their impiety, and the afflicted might be freed.

Then, when Moses demanded, by God's authority, the release of the aforementioned people, the magicians resist him before Pharaoh, king of the Egyptians, striving to deceive him by imitating the wonders he had performed: and for a while the likeness does not yield to the truth, nor the illusion to the signs; but they are permitted to struggle somehow, not that the falsehood of the profane might win, but that the power of God might shine forth more widely. For although in the matter of the diverse plagues they seemed to do the same as Moses did, they could not undo what they had done. And as this monstrous science is wont, they knew how to harm, but knew not how to help; praying that the cessation of the evils which they themselves had brought might come again from him whom they were trying to imitate. Thus at last they were compelled, by the force of the inimitable signs and by the confession of their own impotence, to let the people go.

They are warned, by God's judgment, that as they set out they should feign a celebration of joy under the guise of a brief departure, and, to adorn their absent solemnities, obtain a tribute from their hosts, and keep it as recompense for their long labor—not out of desire to defraud, but as an honor of wages. These, deceived, while as yet knowing nothing about the retaining of the wealth—wealth which they had compelled those departing to adorn themselves with—with malice reviving, pursue in anger those they had let go, and, with the army of the Egyptians pressing upon them, hope of escape fails those in fear, since enemies pressed from behind, and the sea opposed them in front.

God is present to the terrified, and in the depth of the despairing's fear, heavenly aid does battle: darkness, first cast between them through the day, precedes like an impenetrable barrier and defends them, and, with the order of the elements changed, the interposed darkness of night protects the trembling from the onslaught of the pursuers. Then Moses is commanded to strike the vast sea with his rod, and by command to remove the waters of the deep to provide a way for those crossing; on either side a lofty column of waves rises up, and you would say the waves stood arrayed as at a signal of military custom, and that the sea, hardened into the likeness of a wall, was divided in obedience to one who understood it.

Dry ground opens for those walking, and the depths of the sea, hollowed out, are emptied by the mass on either side; and while the people were passing over to the other shore, the pursuers pressing upon those departing, the sea, struck again by Moses, likewise closes back upon itself; and as though, because of the injury to God, the immensity of the avenging element flowed together with a swifter return, an innumerable multitude of chariots and horses, with their chosen riders, is submerged; and the band of warriors, mingled with the sands, was covered over as though it had never been.

From these beginnings, under the leadership of Moses, the people of the Jews were taken up from Abraham; and after the crossing of the sea they were led on until the wilderness in which they remained for forty years. A pillar of light went before them by night as a guide of the journey: the same, also, by day, going before in a cloud lest weariness should overcome them worn out, protected them from the injury of the heat. Thus, with the elements plainly serving them, they enjoyed the help of God to such a degree that in his benefits they experienced not only the condescension of heavenly power, but also the indulgence of paternal piety; and though amazed between wonder and need, they did not fear signs and dangers.

APOLLONIUS.—Pleasing indeed is the knowledge of what has been said; but unless it is fortified by fullness of reasoning, it is weak. What then was the cause that, once the sea had been crossed, freed by such great wonders of things, they were led into the wilderness; or why afterward were they tormented in the deserts by so long a banishment of time? Since besides, the horrid bareness of the regions offered them no nourishment or other necessities of life; whence then was food for the multitude; or for what reason was this so great a punishment for those who had been freed; or how afterward the law was given, explain.

ZACCHAEUS.—Neither was that a punishment of banishment, nor were necessities lacking in the deserts and squalid places; but the provision of food for men was more precious in its showing, and the circuit of the wilderness itself fitting: and this was the chief cause of the delays, that there the preceding examples of wonders might be increased; and because we always love what we are accustomed to, provision had to be made lest they should at once reach the promised land by a short and direct way—those in whom the desire to return to Egypt, as was soon proved, might at some time creep in; since even in the midst of great abundance the desires accustomed to an unknown land, and the profane rite of sacred things from which they were especially to be kept away, would occur to them; lest, moreover, the wars of expelling the nations from those same regions, although by the foregoing divine action they would bring them no loss, should immediately terrify them.

At the same time also, that after the hardship of the wilderness the promised dwelling might please the more—though its charm, inestimable in itself, would commend it—yet the remembrance of what had gone before would make it more fitting. And see the clemency of divinity in its patience. To those who hoped for food not by suppliant prayer, but who complained tumultuously of its lack, it furnishes a certain cloud of provision, and human bodies feed on the food of angels: so that the nightly outpouring of bounty not only closed the place for complaint, but, gathered for use, was left over in abundance. There, throughout all the time I have mentioned, in wondrous fashion, neither shoe nor garment wore out, nor did the growth of hair or nails prevail as usual; but as though immortality had already been restored, a simple wholeness preserved the unchangeable form of man.

There Moses is called up into the mountain to receive the Law, and, held for forty days and nights in converse with God, brings back the precepts written on tablets of stone: alas for wickedness! He finds those he had left behind corrupted by sacrilege, while they were still refreshed by manna and heavenly delight. For when this same people had accused Moses of delay as though he were not to return, sated by the aforesaid abundance, they quickly forgot the God by whom they had been led out of Egypt; through wantonness they began to demand gods to worship; and, having cast the women's jewelry into the fire, they professed themselves given over to that religion which recalled the form of the idol worshipped in Egypt.

Moses, returning, faithfully raged against the crime, and, having reduced to dust the head of the bull that had been made in the likeness of the Egyptian abomination, in indignation he broke the tablets brought down for the law, judging those unworthy of God's writing whom such a daring curse had defiled. Nor did he cease from the onset of his wrath until, sectioners having been sent through the camp, the offense was expiated by the slaughter of many, and, the wrong to God having been appeased, the precepts, restored on tablets, were brought back; by whose restoration it was shown that God did not hate those whom he permitted to be corrected, but did not wish those destroyed whom he thus wished to be chastised.

This circuit of the wilderness, then, these benefits of God toward the people once received, lasted forty years: then the law was divinely given, which by its promulgation brought not a novelty of precepts, but a restoration of natural justice; so that what before only a few, and those wise, knew, all now might behold and read through; nor might ignorance have place for excuse, since what one does not perceive to be innate in himself he should not seek by the senses alone, but recognize by sight.

APOLLONIUS.—That law naturally clings to human senses, and that there is in all an understanding of what harms and what benefits, what is fair or unjust, is clear knowledge; since we know both to love what is our own and to hate the contrary, and that to render what is pleasing to another is goodness, and again that wickedness inflicts on another what displeases. Hence what more the law given through Moses brought than nature had handed down, I cannot understand, unless the character of the precepts be set forth.

ZACCHAEUS.—The knowledge of God, and fear joined with love, is the first law. For what does it profit to know God, if to love and fear him is not in the heart? Then follows the perfected order of justice, to strive after piety, and in the observances of good works to rise above by purity of mind. Moreover, present punishment is attached to offenses and expiations are joined to wrongs, and in the final summation of the precepts it is commanded not to do to others what you would not wish done to you; and again, to do to others what you would wish done to you. Likewise the creation of this world is inserted, and this conspiring of the elements the same maker who had made it from nothing set forth, showing that human error had brought in as co-eternal with him what belonged to his own work.

After Moses, as the spans of time ran on, since through the abuse of salutary precepts the worship of idols increased, the frequent rebuke of the prophets is added, and they announce and precede many kinds of remedies for the coming of Christ, whom we have now experienced, and now await. For God, lest he punish even rarely, threatens the more often, wishing the severity of heavenly wrath to be feared rather than exercised.

The stubborn nation of the Jews not only refuses to be corrected, but disdains to be reproved; and they punished with various torments the prophets sent by God's command, so that the tradition of human superstitions might not lack its usurped honors, marking out by intent perversity that perhaps they would be corrected by the presence of God, whom yet afterward, giving him to the cross, they refused to believe even after signs and mighty works, though they had known he was to come, and recognized that he had come.

APOLLONIUS.—If then his coming was so necessary that, being about to provide by himself the form of justice, he did not refuse to suffer for all, showing in his own death the hope of a new resurrection, why then were both the benefit of God and the salvation of men delayed by so great a stretch of time? ZACCHAEUS.—By a great dispensation, as you have been able to see, of God, the human race has from the beginning always been protected and preserved; and if you briefly review the whole, you will see that the order of divine providence conspired to this end, that it should not be necessary by the just judgment of God for men to be destroyed: for the sentence of death could have been carried out immediately upon the first transgression, so that the violators of the edict might be punished, and yet, in consideration of repentance, time for living was granted.

Afterward, as sins increased, the earth was corrupted; but the pollution of the element was so washed away that through Noah the remnants of the human race were preserved. After the flood, a strong and now multiplied band rose up to build a tower, and it was not destroyed for the enormity of its daring, but, that it might be corrected, was scattered amid wonder. Afterward, since faithlessness did not cease, just as Noah was set apart in the flood for the sake of generation, so Abraham was set apart to propagate faith amid a certain flood of vices: the people multiplied through his offspring was polluted by the contagion of the Egyptians, and was recalled to the worship of God not by the severity of judgment, but by benefits and signs: again in the wilderness they departed from the true Creator by making carved gods: as though men had then for the first time been made, or did not have the law in their sense, the law of God, written in speech, is delivered through Moses.

But since impiety nonetheless crept along, the preaching of the prophets is added, and, with times interspersed, divine solicitude, ever on watch, either restrains from error, or, punishing moderately, chastises those living in error. He himself, at the last, the maker of heaven, earth, and man, like the lord of a great household, his faithful servants having been sent ahead, grants the coming of his power, not disdaining the assumption of an earthly body for the salvation of men: and turning to the passion of the cross and death that very body which he had put on, he showed forth both the fullness of the law and of salvation. You ask why he did not come earlier? Is it not plain that the last things ought to have been delayed, and the end postponed, so that the fullness of times might guard the fullness of justice, and that between the handing down and the judgment, through length of time, forgetfulness might not take away what the great condescension of God had granted?

For if Christ had come in the middle of time, or at any earlier time whatever, then not abuse alone would have carried away faith, but along with abuse, forgetfulness as well, and no care of justice would gnaw at the hearts of men; since it would be harder to believe ancient examples, when scarcely is faith given to recent ones. Behold, even now the relics of the blessed sepulcher hold the marks of the Lord's cross and death, and the place marked out by the multitude then present testifies, after the sight of the resurrection, to the heavenly ascension: the footprints pressed into the ground still remain almost fresh, and the regions visited by his works show forth examples of powers: and by many Christ, because he died, is not thought to be God; or because, if he is God, it is not believed that he could have died and risen again after death; though, besides other things, death proves the man, and resurrection the God.

There exist besides the acts of apostolic conduct, and we are taught, almost as by those present, to follow the form of justice, since what we read that they did while living, we often see done even now before the very ashes of the dead. Scarcely by the nearness of the end and the terror of the impending judgment are we compelled, forsaking idols, to worship the true divinity; and between the first coming of Christ, which we know, and the second, which we await, we are constrained, by a salutary brevity and by the very narrowness of the times, neither to admit forgetfulness of the precepts, nor to despair of the coming of promised blessedness. You see then it was necessary that, by this shutting in of the ages, the nearness of the other coming should not allow the end to be endangered, and that the imminent terror of judgment should require justice to be kept; especially since he was to bring the greatest and most perfect things, and what is perfect cannot but be last.

For consider how many his earlier coming would have saved, certainly more than it will now make, since it will have found them estranged from the faith; the later coming would have lost them; since him whom the remedies of such cures did not heal, the order of the announced examination will condemn; and it may be an equal ground for despairing of perpetuity, whether one says that God, through the law, knows and does not will justice, rather than that he does the things that seem to belong to justice, and that God, through the law, does not will to be known.

APOLLONIUS.—We are not ignorant that souls, once bodies are laid aside, return to God, that is, to their own author; but that in these the stain contracted first by human acts is purged by aethereal fire, so that they may again be mingled with God, from whom they surely are, pure and simple. Whence, if you perhaps wish this to be seen as judgment, it is not a predetermined consummation of all things that makes the end, but the order of those departing.

ZACCHAEUS.—Your whole definition is in error: for how could the souls of men undergo judgment, if they were of God? For the simple substance of divinity is not purged, because it cannot be defiled either: for purging cannot be without suffering, which, as we know, the divine substance does not admit. The souls of men, therefore, are not of God, but made by God, and a work of the Creator, not partakers of Divinity. But when the time of the aforesaid judgment shall have come, all the dead shall receive again the bodies they once had, so that with them they may either receive what was justly done, or suffer for what was wickedly committed. But Christ will manifestly come again from the heavens: before his tribunal we shall stand, by his sentence the merits of all shall be weighed: and he who suffered under judgment shall judge, leaving no trace of iniquity, since he will render immortality in the kingdom to the faithful, and to unbelievers perpetual torment in sorrow.

APOLLONIUS.—Can even this be asserted by the wise: that ancient ashes of the dead, and, in tombs consumed by the age of centuries, scarcely a remaining ash of bone, can again be composed into bodies, and the pristine vigor of limbs be made solid by the gathering of doubtful dust? Hence I would more easily agree that souls can be subjected to any judgment, than that the bodies of the dead can be recalled to the order of life.

ZACCHÆUS.—You have forgotten both my admonition and your own promise, if you maintain that anything is impossible for God. He who made what was not, that it might be—can He then not make what had been, to be again? Or is it not more difficult for us to make what has never existed, than to repair what once existed? But let human estimation not fail to grasp this possibility of God, if the present creatures do not teach it, if the seasons do not mark it by the variety of their forms. Different trees are stripped bare by the harshness of winter, and once their leaves have fallen you might believe that, along with their grace, the hope of budding has perished.

But when the milder breath of spring has blown, in wondrous fashion the moisture held in the roots climbs to the heights, creating in the flowers a whiteness together with a beauty which it did not have in the wood: fruits are added to the trees, and a certain clothing appears in the leaves, and what was not in the tree is seen in due season. What of the seeds cast into the fields? Do they not display a full assurance of resurrection? The bowels of the earth are opened, that bare grains may be committed to the furrows; and what the soil has not covered has no power of being born again. From this too consider the power of the Creator even in small things: unless the seeds have rotted they do not rise again, and unless they have first died they do not come back to life. Surely they are not sunk into the furrows still green, nor do they lie hidden covered over with stalks? Whence, then, does the manifold seed come from the one?

Whence does the new whiteness of the chaff emerge along with the ears? By what means does the force of germination climb from the root into the ears, or how afterward is the white softness of the grain changed from the green blades? Certainly you would not believe such things could happen in like manner, unless you always saw it. If, then, in these things which pertain to man's food, the earth renders as God ordained from the beginning, will He not do the same in the restoration of man himself? Man, having become a witness of God's wonders, must after the resurrection marvel most of all at himself, for what he had praised before in the things subject to him. Wherefore, once the reasoning of all these things has been perceived, you should not fail to know that the ashes or embers of the dead are the seed of bodies, from which, at the coming of His majesty, Christ will raise up both merits and forms according to desert.

For it is too little for the divine clemency merely to restore the forms that had been, unless splendor also adorns the bodies of the good, and the disgrace of deformity darkens those of the wicked.

APOLLONIUS.—Grant for the moment that from tombs, as from the known resting-places of the dead, the ashes are restored into bodies; and that, because souls know their own buried members, they confidently reclaim them from those same places: but what of those who have been drowned in the waves or laid low in wars, and those who, slain by robbers, have lacked funeral rites, leaving their limbs to be devoured, not buried; is it credible that they can be restored into the same bodies they had, when not even remnants of their ashes can be found?

ZACCHÆUS.—If you believed that God can do all things, you would judge this in the end an easy thing to accomplish, nor would you weigh by human argument whether that which He had said must be done, could be done: and therefore faith is the highest merit above all good things, because it does not doubt that what God has said will be fulfilled. But the explanation of this matter is as follows: all the elements and all creatures answer to no sense or intellect of ours, and seem to subsist merely as brute things attentive only to the observance of their own service, either because we are unworthy of their command, or because we do not know the secrets of the world: but they both understand and revere God, and so obey His commands, that at His nod they straightway fulfill His precepts.

Whatever, then, of bodies of fish, beasts, or others is consumed by digestion, is mingled either with the waters or with the earth: nor can it happen in any way that from what has in whatever manner subsisted, nothing at all remains; but these two elements preserve the more precious substance, from whatever it has fallen, and guard it within themselves as if marked by a special color, to be restored to the resurrection, nor can it ever settle as if lost, for it must both be sought out by the divine power and will of itself come forth: thus, with all things serving, the scattered remnants of dispersed bodies shall return to their own form and body; so that in the miracle of the resurrection the merit of faith is increased for believers by that very thing which for others is an increase of unbelief.

APOLLONIUS.—For some time now the intent of your discourse has been tending toward this, that, in recalling that each of the elements was made from nothing, you might also diminish the world—which we believe exists of itself and will remain by its own eternity—with a beginning, and enclose it within an end; and although I grasp the order of your argument, whereby you have recalled in what preceded that it was made by God, nevertheless confirm by reasoning in what way you would have us believe that the inexplicable mass of the heavens either was made, or that, as it now is, it will not always be so.

ZACCHÆUS.—All the elements, then, which you reckon as it were coeternal with God, were, as I have already said, made by Him out of nothing, and joined together into this form of the world by a wonderful conspiring together; and just as they took their beginning from God's creation, so too they will attain everlastingness by His kindness: and therefore they are not coeternal with Him by whom they were made; for there is no doubt that to their maker things are not only unequal, but subject. This, moreover, is most clearly evident to the understanding, that the world was composed of many parts; whence it can easily be perceived that divinity is not inherent within it, but presiding over it, since divinity alone needs no other's aid, but is one in itself, and simple and perfect, because incorporeal; and therefore God is invisible and incorruptible: which qualities do not belong to this world in its activity and contemplation, but show that even the things which are begotten from the world itself are corporeal.

Whatever besides we perceive to be either done or created by the same under divine ordinance, belongs not to its own will, but to its office. Behold the passages of the sun and the courses of the moon, and how each day both must repeat their rising and their setting through the changes of the seasons. At the coming of night the sun loses the day, which yet it does not always illumine, being sometimes shut out, as it were, by the interposing of clouds. The moon suffers her own diminishment, and under the ordinance of her ruler either loses or receives the fullness of her light. Consider besides the various courses of the stars, and the signs obedient to reason, and the sea swelling at known months, and, under a fixed dispensation of the hours, keeping its excess and its measure, now resting in calm, now troubled by storm.

The earth, soaked with rains, is softened, and again is either bound by frost or dried by heat: for it trembles in fear at the sight of God, and by its motion confesses itself subject to His command. The very air is often corrupted by a more pernicious breath, and, once burdened, becomes pestilential. Rains are overcome by the pious prayers of men to the Lord, and a long serenity is likewise changed by supplication: and all things either serve the order laid upon them, or are turned, under religious entreaty, to the necessary use of man. These, under names applied to them, you severally and collectively venerate as God. But if this is so, they are falsely reckoned as gods, and the error is manifest; but if instead you say there are certain beings who by God's decree preside over these things, it is plain folly to equate the subject with the one who subjects.

For there are not many gods, but one former of all begotten and living things, who, just as He made all things, also governs them, and with equal command both ordains that things shall endure and that they shall fall. You see, therefore, that a beginning is not to be assigned to God alone, from whom the beginning of all things proceeded, nor is His majesty to be reckoned co-eternal with them, since it is He who will make them eternal, as with man. For at His coming, things now destroyed shall be changed for the better, so that, along with man, they may endure immortal, whereas now indeed, because of our sins, though unwilling and groaning, they are polluted either by suffering or by sight; since those things which are immense in their suffering are contaminated by being seen.

Thus it shall come to pass that, with the elements renewed along with man for the better, the memory and the authors of vices shall perish; while even those beings are cleansed who lost their inborn purity not by deeds, but by the knowledge of deeds.

APOLLONIUS.—It is indeed hard to believe that the world, which stands by so great an admiration of its powers, could ever be either destroyed or remade; but since you affirm that it is to be changed by the possibility of God, what will its future be without anything at all? Or what kind of restoration will render clearer that whose magnitude and grace are already so great that its magnitude cannot be grasped by reason or knowledge, nor its splendor be increased? It is fitting, therefore, that what definition or judgment ought to be followed concerning this be not passed over in silence, as befits the instruction you have promised.

ZACCHÆUS.—You say rightly indeed, that to our understanding the reason of it, in God's providence, is entirely incomprehensible; but a manifold splendor will increase the form of the present grace: since a far ampler light will come to it from the Creator, than that which was implanted by Him in creatures. We ought, therefore, to measure the invisible from the visible, and to weigh the incorruptible from admiration of the corruptible: for as the righteous rise to eternal joys, a new heaven and a fresh earth will be revealed: and thereupon a light, multiplied beyond that of the sun, will pour itself forth from the sight of God; for the sun is far more distant from God than we are from that very sun.

Rather, those whom their merits have advanced in this life through various degrees of righteousness will possess the splendor of the sun, and thus each shall enjoy, in the honors of the happiness attained, such a portion that neither is the higher exalted, nor the lower disdained, but each so loves his own joys that he compensates for the difference of brightness by an equal immortality. No interposing of night will then violate the continuity of day and light: for God, present to the sight of those who behold Him, and divinity ever the companion of the blessed's gladness, will put darkness to flight, and will be as the joining of the day.

No envy will trouble the wretched, no suspicion the unwary, no pain of mind or of body; nor will any necessity, or occasion, or will of sin cause death either to be deserved or to be feared: all things will bloom with fruits, the beauty of all things unchanged by any variety of season: fragrance will vie with loveliness: there no untimely rains will trouble with darkness, nor will frost or heat corrupt the freedom of the everlasting air: but a gentle mildness will remain perpetually, and no recollection of things past will vex the inestimable joys of that blessedness; so that even if a future dissolution did not take away the use of this present world, the righteous would rather rejoice that it had passed away than grieve over it.

APOLLONIUS.—Great, as you say, is the exhortation of things to come, but it has not yet been shown that the religion of the gentiles is vain, or that their divinities are called gods void of the honor of divinity; seeing that certain responses are given from the shrines, and future things are made known in the temples: and if these are both true and profitable to those who inquire, in vain do you Christians attempt to destroy what you cannot take away.

ZACCHÆUS.—These things indeed which the inspection of entrails is wont to show in the temples, and to portend as future from the shrines, are neither always true, nor, as I think, ever profitable to anyone; for if they are adverse, and come from God for correction, they cannot be changed except by Him alone. And what does it profit to have known things foretold, if the things predicted cannot be avoided? But if they are not from God, they can be neither good nor true, and just as they do no harm, so they do no good: but whether they are false, or indeed have some element of truth by chance, all are the contrivances of demons, who both wish to be hoped in, and are accustomed to deceive those who hope in them; so that, once they have drawn men away from the worship of God, they may also strip them of His benefits and separate them from His goodness.

These beset the temples of the gentiles, those have set up their seat in your shrines under the names of dead men; and because they have nowhere else to abide upon the earth, they rush headlong through the air beneath the clouds, and, searching out all things in swift flight, either announce what they have already seen, or, as though to be guarded against, foretell as adverse the things they themselves are wickedly about to do. For although they are wicked and unstable spirits, and polluted by every crime and guilt, they nevertheless are not without the benefit and vigor of that incorporeal nature and substance whose dignity they lost along with heaven, and of necessity they know more than men, whose creation is loftier, and whose perception is not confined by an earthly body. And what, I ask, is their divination? Are they not likewise, along with the men whom they have seized through vices, terrified at the invocation of Christ?

They wish of their own accord to predict certain things, and concerning things absent or future, they announce them as though evident, while they either hope for relief from their torments, or imitate those who predict, in order to deceive. Yet all pretense of divination concerns earthly things and deeds: they foresee nothing done beforehand that belongs to God; they know nothing of the heavenly before they see it; and, what is more to be wondered at, they do not even discover the thoughts in the hearts of men.

Are these not the very beings to whom you are not ashamed to ascribe the worship due to true divinity, to whom the life and hope of man is entrusted, though deceit is ever their design, and subtlety of deceiving is their substitute for divination? To these too you fashion images, either cast in fire, or offer for adoration in wood or carved things, from which that god is the more venerable to you which is the better polished by the artisan's hand; and divinity is the clearer, if the painting be the fairer: nor is there any zeal to seek the Creator, nor is any sense applied to recognizing the true God. Is it not manifest madness that man should be subjected as to a God to those whom you could subject to yourself by believing them God, and that the aids of life should be sought from those who are, without doubt, in a state of guilt?

If you think they will be of profit, and therefore trust that they ought to be placated, believe that they will be propitious and of profit to anyone, if, when spurned by the faithful, they do harm, if they work mischief upon those by whom, for God's sake, they are held in contempt. Since, then, they fear us, they are set over you. And see in what manner they ought to be regarded, who can never be of profit, and cannot always do harm, since it were easier for them, and they do not cease to wish it.

APOLLONIUS.—Your rebuke indeed has the appearance of truth, but it can be refuted by turning it back upon you. For we adore the images or likenesses of those whom either we believe, by true religion, to be gods, or whom, taught by the traditions of the ancients, we know are not gods: but you, to whom this is an abomination, why do you, under the reverence owed to kings, venerate with public adoration even the images of men, whether painted in wax or cast in metals, and, as you yourselves proclaim that honor is owed to God alone, give it also to men? But if this is unlawful and contrary to the law, why do you Christians do it, or why do your priests not forbid it, lest what you ascribe to us as sacrilege in our ignorance, you yourselves undergo knowingly under the excuse of official duty?

ZACCHAEUS.—This indeed I neither ought to approve nor can I, because by the clear pronouncements of God we are permitted to adore neither the elements, nor Angels, nor any of the principalities whatsoever of heaven, earth, or air. For this is the special name of divine office, and a reverence higher than all earthly veneration: but just as flattery first drove men to this evil, so now custom scarcely calls them back from the error; in which, however, you detect only a careless deference, not any divine worship.

For, on account of the likeness of beloved faces, eager joys do more than perhaps those to whom it is shown require, or than it behooves those showing it to perform; and although stricter Christians shudder at this custom of careless deference, and priests do not cease to forbid it, nevertheless he whose likeness is greeted is not called God, nor are the images adored with incense, nor do they stand to be worshipped upon altars, but they are set forth in memory according to merits, so as to furnish to posterity an example of praiseworthy deeds, or to reprove the living for their abuse of it.

You see, then, that there is nothing in what you find fault with that is similar to your errors, nor is it just that more careless offices be conferred upon profane acts; since even those to whom this can be referred either would not wish it done, if consulted, or, though they do not curtail any custom of vain glory, presuming nothing rashly as divine, confess themselves to be mortal and unworthy of the honor of God, to whom they owe both what they are, and to whose faith perhaps they owe their having merited to be what they are.

APOLLONIUS.—You could have noticed at the outset of this proposition that I touched upon this with but a slight objection, because the perfect observance of your profession, as you would have it, ought to admit absolutely nothing by which God could be provoked: but now, setting these aside, explain plainly, if it seems good, why you refuse that there is fate for man, or for what reason you think there is no necessity of decree seen therein; since these very things are found and are so certain through the course of the stars and the reckoning of the moon, that no one can easily avoid what the fixed conditions of his own nativity have appointed shall come to him.

ZACCHAEUS.—I believe you understand that the name "fate" is taken from the interpretation of speech, and that what is thought to be so called has its being not in some thing, but in a word; but if there is any necessity of decree, which it is impious to believe, God is either ignorant of human life, or unjust: unjust, if he himself has appointed good and evil things for those who have not deserved them; ignorant, if he permits it to be decreed by another while he himself stands aside. For if it is necessary that men be good, why are merits ascribed to the will; if that they be evil, why is there punishment for what is done? Then the law too is superfluous, and I know not for what reason the laws of the world are established, if what a man has done rightly is to be ascribed to outcomes, and what wrongly, to necessity.

Why, besides, does the same God, the founder rather of good things, either threaten judgment or promise blessedness in so many volumes of the Scriptures? What do the religious prayers of men accomplish, or what does earnest supplication avail, if some power of decree afflicts men who have not deserved it, and who, upon coming forth into the light by birth, cannot avoid what seems fit to it? But on the contrary, God, who is just and never unequal in any judgment, just as he himself formed all things, so also governs all things, establishing a law from the beginning that we should only be good; nay, because we are so created and born, that we should not be changed; and not only that we should not be evil, but that we should not even wish to be evil, so that we might always do good, not that we, deserving evils, should sometimes suffer them.

But this foreknowledge, as it seems, of all wickednesses in man, the devil, its author, has devised, that, as it were through an innocent astrology, those may be more secretly deceived who do not know that this is his fraud. For among all the arts of his crimes, none seeks the doubtful more perniciously, nor does any other more subtly call men away from the worship of God, than this: that, whereas we all know we owe to God what we are formed and born to be, he persuades us that we owe to fate what we live. We are deceived, unless this is for some the chief care under the guise of whole religion, that they should not be ignorant of future things.

Whether they will or no, they become bound to him from whom they have learned, because they believe; and while they pursue these things, they depart from faith and religion; and, what is more cruel, under the appearance of innocence the evil is not guarded against, since it is not believed possible to be avoided, nor, if it is something prosperous, is it asked of God, since it is hoped for as something that will necessarily come to pass. Consider besides the very stage-setting of these malefic arts: the quality of the signs, the position of the moon, the day, the hour, the name of the inquirer are sought out. Behold, already the divination is uncertain, where both the questioner and the answerer can be deceived. Afterward, whatever degree of prosperous things is foretold, and adverse things are foretold together with a condition of escaping them. Indeed here too the fraud of the aforementioned craftsman shines forth, in that he confesses those things to be uncertain which he announces can be escaped.

For God does not appoint adversities for the innocent, nor does he assign evils to those who have not deserved them. You see, then, both that the fraud of diabolical art mocks the divine patience and human curiosity, and that, as it were in the reckoning of the moon and the course of the stars, a hidden wound and poison of treachery lie concealed, so that between the knowledge and foreknowledge of future things, both reverence for God and love of justice among men are diminished, since God must be believed either to have appointed evils for those being born, or to be unable to remove what has been appointed by another.

APOLLONIUS.—As far as I see, great is the power of this devil, since, contrary, as is understood, to the will of God, he has inserted even into the course of the moon and the stars those things by which he might be able to harm men: yet in what manner are those things to be believed to come from elsewhere, which are known when observed there? I think, however, that men can be deluded by him in hidden falsehoods; but that astrology simply agrees with the signs and the stars: and that it ought not therefore to be judged harmful, because it withholds nothing concerning events, but rather to be judged useful, since it either announces prosperous things, or foretells things to be guarded against.

ZACCHAEUS.—I said before that astrology is a more savage evil for this reason, that it is reckoned innocent; but although it is covered and shut up in inscrutable subtlety, yet its own working, as I have explained, is disclosed by its body and its outcome. For it is not from God; and therefore it is not to be believed to cohere with the stars; which is, in the first place, uncertain and untrustworthy, and then vain in its working, and therefore it is superfluous to observe it, since it will profit nothing. It is, moreover, a mark of much foolishness to fear the things it foretells, since they can both be escaped, upon the very confession of the one foretelling them, and can especially be overcome by prayers turned toward God. But to hope for something prosperous from it is utterly foolish, since it can so easily either be deceived or deceive.

But suppose it sometimes truly announces something; what wisdom is it, with manifest guilt, to await rather doubtful outcomes from such prodigies, than, ever secure in faith, to hope for remedy or reward from God?

Know this further, that there is a certain principate held by the devil in crimes, and that various ministries of unclean spirits serve under him: for under his wicked division, some present the face of concupiscence, and kindle the fuel of luxury; through certain ones lust is carried headlong, and avarice makes use of their offices; others persuade to bloody deeds through love of possessing, and frauds, the sisters of thefts. (They rejoice at those they recognize.) These preside over sorrows, and are certain to instill terrors into the fearful: a crowd of others is exercised in torments, that the bodies of unhappy men may be shaken the more savagely by affliction: by some, insanity is increased under the waxing of the moon, and, as it were from the fullness of the purest light, the affliction of the possessed comes, under a certain measure of evil either being aggravated or beginning: some await the magic art, and reckon it their task to counterfeit the shapes of the dead in pretense: to these also the more learned in divinations run before, and, as it were, a simple astrology embraces the most subtle of deceivers.

Others foretell auguries in birds, and show by certain parts on either side the flight of things flying; and thus, with that same inciter and patron of all falsehoods, demons serve for different wages of crimes, so that, stretching out unwearied snares for the human race, they can neither be avoided nor thrown off by men; if, however, as those beings wish everything either to be believed or done, the whole of it were either believed or done.

APOLLONIUS.—The question set aside a while ago returns opportunely to be answered: whence then, or who are these demons whom you have declared a while ago to dwell in the temples of the gentiles, and now more pointedly to preside over or take part in all crimes? Who likewise is their prince, whom you call the devil? Or from what were they cast down to these works, if indeed there was for them any dignity of a loftier nature? For how the things which you mentioned above are brought about by them will be shown only by their kind and quality.

ZACCHAEUS.—Indeed even now their nature is the same as it was from the beginning, because what God has once created, He either changes for the better, or He Himself does not abolish it: but they lost their heavenly dignity, not by their Creator's will, but by their own will. Since you also ask the causes of their offense, learn both from the reasoning of the Scriptures. When God was founding all things, He made two kinds of creation as the chief ones, to which He gave function and sense according to their office: Angels in the heavens, men on the earth: the Angels are incorporeal and truly spirits; but we carry heavenly sense within earthly bodies.

And although by the gift of the Creator the will is free to both, yet there is greater occasion for sinning in men, who must be on guard both in mind and in body: for souls sin by desires, bodies by acts. Those, then, are nearer to God who are more free; and because they are always ministers and intermediaries of the same commands, therefore they know more. So (as) whatever you see done on earth by degrees of powers and dignities, it is a shadow of heavenly things: so there too, more according to God's gift, the manner of discipline and of orders serves the commands of the presiding God, and at the nod of ineffable majesty, the innumerable multitude of Angels is ruled by the obedience of Archangels.

But he who is now the devil and prince of demons was the first of all Angels; who, preeminent over the rest in creation and rank, while he was lifted up by pride, was made lower than all: for he wished to seem to be God, which he was not; and because he had been made first among all, by comparing himself to Divinity he wished to assume the honor of the Creator: on account of the presumption of this daring, he was cast out of heaven with a certain number of his inferiors who had given their assent; whom, after he had dragged them with him to the earth, as though repairing his lost principality, he made his satellites out of Angels; and, as I mentioned a little before, he consoles himself, since return to heaven is denied him, with the offices of crimes and the evils of the fallen.

There he first, going before as a seducer in the serpent, incited the first man to violate the law of the precept; and in what followed he has always turned the good creation of us into crimes through the blandishments of life; and although it was by the hands of men, yet it was he who was pressing on when Christ was crucified.

To him envy, swelling pride, cruelty, and lust mixed with concupiscence are always in the filth of his heart and are his joy: and lest he should always lay bare, by pursuing impious or polluted things, the subtle fictions of his wickedness, he mixed honorable things with the shaping and effects of crimes; striving to seem that virginity pleases him, that chastity ought to be dedicated to idols, so that what he destroys in reality he might seek after in name; granting also something more of his deceit to the purified, and however willingly indulging man's sect, provided that no one can either know God when He is unknown, or worship Him, when He acts, according to His own will and law. Those, then, are the demons, and this one their prince, the devil; these the name of Christ, hidden within the inmost parts of men, terrifies and torments.

These construct against all the snares mentioned above, catching by allurements those whom they cannot by fear, so that when they have made them offensive to God by whatever means, they draw them away from hope of immortality both by delight in present things and by disbelief in things to come.

APOLLONIUS.—If the devil is as evil as you say, and so obstinate in crimes, God, foreknowing the future, ought neither to have created something evil, nor to have raised it to such a summit of dignity, lest He should create either an adversary for Himself, or an enemy for men; and if you have the knowledge, let the account of the reason for this deed follow. ZACCHAEUS.—God made nothing thoroughly evil in His work, nor is there anything harmful implanted in these creatures, but it is rather sought after by them, since all things were made to please, not to harm: but God granted free will first to the Angels as afterward to men, otherwise they would have differed in nothing from mute animals contrary to nature, that is, as I already said concerning men, composed in a certain torpor of ignorance, either all things would be permitted, or nothing would be permitted. Was God then, the fount of all reason, going to create for Himself irrational ministers?

Or what reason is there in their senses, if there is no power in the will? What obedience, finally, or what worship of God would there be, unless the likeness of servants followed as a consequence upon the commands of one who bids? But if the Creator is to be blamed on account of each one's voluntary evil—which it is impious to say—one could argue in this way about all things, because all things were made for good use, yet they have evil outcomes, if you wish to use them otherwise. Is fire evil? And yet surely things brought too near it are burned up: earth buries, but when it is undermined: the seas were not gathered together for shipwrecks, and yet they engulf ships approached at the wrong time. Were high places built for the purpose of falling? And yet unless we stand more carefully at the summits, we fall. Iron was given to men for the turning of fields into furrows and for the cutting of wood, and thence wars have taken up swords.

Is death set in a rope? And yet many end their life by the noose. Who assigned stones to stonings, who assigned wood to crosses, on account of men? Are the highest dignities given to kings for the reason that tyrannies may more easily be assumed? How good is the creation of wine! And yet, drunk too freely, it produces madness. The very juices of herbs which are mixed for medicines meant to help, either harm the unwary too harshly, or, drunk too largely, destroy. Marriages were permitted for the sake of begetting children, and from lawful unions unlawful adulteries are committed. What, I ask, ought God more justly to have done, than to create a rational creature of Angels and men, and neither deprive it of liberty, nor fail to imbue it with the knowledge of caution?

But if God, foreknowing the future, ought not to have created such a being, or preferred it to the rest, then neither ought He to have made man, or preferred him to all others, whom He knew would sin: and, as you say, not even the elements themselves ought to have been made, if they were to be of no use, or since all things can do harm, if you do not use them as they were made to be used. How much more approvable is this order of divine providence, that for this reason He committed the highest things first to him who was going to dare unlawful things, so that a more attentive care of justice and a love of the Creator might be instilled through fear in those who were to come, and at the same time that it might be shown that not even Angels are tempted with impunity, since presumption cast down even an Archangel.

You see, then, that he was made good by God's creation, and was set on high by His benefit, and by his own will, which he had received free, changed goodness into malice, and lost his dignity through insolence.

APOLLONIUS.—These things too which you have said about the creation and fall of the devil seem to be done with reason: but explain clearly what the cause is that, after the daring of such great presumption, as I already asked, he was not immediately destroyed along with his satellites. ZACCHAEUS.—God's judgment is not only from power, but from reason, He who wills that in condemnation there be not only the sentence of the judge, but also the conscience of the offender, through a certain postponement for repentance, always showing mercy to those who wish to return to Him. And although in all His equity He is just, yet He is more inclined toward mercy, nor does He hasten to avenge with swift indignation, He whose judgment none can succeed.

He strives, therefore, to save, not to destroy, what He has created, and hence He is of an inexpressible patience, and never of a hasty vengeance: for if the devil himself and the other companions of his ruin, before the growth of their subsequent misdeeds, and before the betrayal of the heavenly secrets which they knew in part, had offered penitent hands liable to repentance, washing away the crime of pride by the pleading of humility, surely the angelic honor would have returned to them, nor would the wretched now be wallowing in their filth, whom, once captured, they press down with the snares of wickedness, and take on, in the unhappy lot of vices, as though for the consolation of their own ruin. See besides, between the sins and the justice of men and demons, that from the mutual struggle of luxury and virtues there arises the reward of immortality.

God, the arbiter of merits, watches us fighting daily, and calmly beholds spiritual snares overcome by fragile flesh: surely the guilt of so sublime a creature ought to be punished in this way, and the pride of the Angel raised up against God ought to be subjected to men, so that he who did not wish his own Author to be over him, should now suffer the rule of his subjects instead; and however much he draws men, the masters of their own will, into a worse part, yet he sends more of them through himself to the seat of God by proof of virtues and faith.

You see, then, that the devil and his participants are, by God's providence, kept for the future judgment even with a certain benefit to men, so that the long-suffering of the Creator might give the fallen a place for repentance; and if the periods of indulgence had profited nothing, they would be condemned by their own sentence rather than God's; to whose guilt this is daily added from without, that although we are exercised toward justice by their attacks, nonetheless earthly frailty prevails all the more in this, because they lost, with none opposing them, what they had in angelic substance.

APOLLONIUS.—I understand the sum of your assertion comes to this conclusion, that you affirm that Christ the Son of God came to the earth, or will come again, not only to restore man, but also to condemn the devil and his consorts; but if this is so, an Angel too could have been sent, who, without injury to God, could both separate the good from the evil and destroy the evil, and by divine authority punish the prince of evils himself along with his companions.

ZACCHAEUS.—The first cause indeed which Christ the Son of God had for wishing to come to the earth was that He might not allow man, on the point of perishing, to perish, or that He might restore him once lost: but this too was joined to His providence, that just as He overcame the devil and his companions in man at His first coming, so He might judge them in man at His second; nor would it have been difficult for God, through any power of the heavenly host, to bring an end to the present age, and to punish those aforementioned: but because the aforesaid author of wickedness had wished to seem to be God, as I already explained, it was fitting that the Son of God be manifested visibly, so that it might be openly known by both Angels and men who each of them was, and that the presumptuous one might be refuted face to face, so that no doubt henceforth might remain in either creature about the understanding of the one majesty.

To these causes is added besides, that He who had formed man before, under the condition of immortality, ought Himself to restore him for the better. For it was unbecoming that man, made corruptible by God, should be rendered incorruptible by an Angel, after he had merited this by the proof of faith. What indeed is more worthy of God's munificence, than that He should grant His own presence unto the height of blessedness, and that He should grant, to man restored, what He had denied to him untried? So that finally, Him whom we follow through such great sufferings of evils, whom we confess and believe amid the world's envy and dangers, we may see Him, as we desire, freed from all these things, reigning in His own majesty.

ZACCHAEUS.—The understanding of this matter is easy, nor need all the proofs be sought among spiritual things; since even the present manner of life clearly teaches how it comes about that all things flow to the wicked, or that necessary things are lacking to the good. For these, by a reversed turn of their acts, not only pursue with obstinacy things sought after, but moreover plunder what belongs to others; these devote the whole time of their life to whatever gains, and seek their hope in money. But those, on account of the occasion of sin, avoid even honorable pursuits of profit, and, not tenaciously guarding what has been justly gained, prefer peace to quarrels, and hope for the Avenger as the author of justice. It is added, that pity never moves the wicked, or scarcely brings them even to give a little.

But for the good, the expense of the poor is their work, and the outlay of good will is always ready in action: because indeed the subversion of morals comes chiefly from abundance, the inciter of crimes, favoring only his own, supplies ample wealth to those who exult; so that luxury may creep in with the successes of joys: then abundance may turn into feasting, and captive drunkenness be watered with vices. Hence there is less care for God among those who abound, and confidence in present things does not allow them to hope for the riches of the future; but God of long patience allows the swollen to be cast into dissolution, and strengthens the afflicted in suffering, about to render the judgment promised to all, so that there each one may receive what he has done here, and suffer this forever, in proportion to how he despised and vexed his inferiors and subjects for a time.

APOLLONIUS.—Clearly also this question is a little better than what it produced from nothing. Its parts have all been made plain; and were I not afraid of seeming tiresome in adding something, as it were, to the heap of explanation you have given so far, I would not idly ask what this is: that infants, wholly ignorant of vices and sins, are struck by various ills, and sometimes, coming forth from the womb, are seized either by weakness, or are snatched off to an untimely death by some unripe force; that a savage madness torments the innocent, and that the piety and justice of that undoubted majesty, ready as it is for all, does not come to their aid. So, if, as I said, it is no trouble, tell it briefly, and show me all of it.

ZACCHÆUS.—You indeed ask for more than can suffice for one who believes, and by your inquiry you overstep the bounds of necessary knowledge; but lest you waver or hesitate through some uncertainty in the reception of the faith, and lest the disputation of unbelievers concerning God’s justice hold any ground whatsoever, attend to what ought to be thought. (God made man from four elements—dry, moist, hot, and cold. In the spleen the cold is placed, the hot in the gall, the moist is reckoned in the blood, the dry in the bones; and this, as you understand, is a wondrous conspiring together, whereby out of contraries the Maker’s work is preserved in man, and by the ingenuity of divine art they show, in their union, a more excellent form than each singly possessed in itself before.

Thus it appears that whatever is renewed by the Creator always tends toward the better. These elements, then, flow together in equal parts at conception, and so meet from every region of the inward parts that the offspring in no way exceed the equality set by the Creator; but this integrity of birth is tempered, by either the deficiency or the excess of one or the other parent, and whatever has wrongly prevailed in the one growing together within the womb, or soon after coming forth from the womb, brings forth either sicknesses or deaths.

For there are in man twin veins, which hold among all others the chief principate of breath and blood, and being scattered from that very seat of the vital parts by tiny channels, they illumine the whole body, and by their known courses keep open and explored the pathway of life; and if some force should block one of these aforesaid veins, it works ruin through undoubted debility and death: whence infants very often are made wholly deprived of the light of day, or an untimely death snatches away little ones at once.)

Sometimes also, because of the sins or merits of these same parents, there is a swift end for infants; because by the taking away of loved ones the good are tested, the unjust are punished; and those who do not feel themselves reproved by other pains and losses are afflicted even by bereavements: but a greater fire of faith tries the just, since even in lighter matters they are proved steadfast by the loss even of their affections.

But as for the fact that an unspeakable madness of demons vexes those not yet conscious of good or evil, the cause indeed lies with the parents, though in differing ways: if they are wicked, and are not amended by the aforesaid or similar chastisements, they are also reproved by the destruction of their innocent children. But those whose manner of life is upright, and who by themselves overcome diabolical malice, are nevertheless wearied by such snares, nor are they free from the exercise of vexations, since the deceitful power cannot otherwise prevail to harm them—always weaving in this its wicked cunning, so that, whether these things happen on account of vices or on account of faith, it may affirm God to be either unjust or negligent, if perchance it can persuade any to think so.

But by whatever art it torments either little ones or their parents, God’s justice is lacking in neither case: for even to infants the passing from this life, evil as it is, grants this better thing, that those born of wicked parents should not at some time become like their begetters; and for those same parents who begot them it must be reckoned a benefit, that by the temporary pain of those vexed they are either delivered from sins, being good, or are increased in merit, growing in faith. You have, then, the reasons for your questions, and a clear understanding of all your uncertainties laid open. Therefore, now being made subject to God, render the faith promised to the council, and, casting away this wisdom of the world, believe the utterances of true wisdom; and, ceasing to ask of yourself higher things, entrust the reckoning of the heavenly secrets to the knowledge and counsel of their Author.

For although you have now learned many things, and some matters concerning the inner things of faith remain, do not suppose that man can know all things that are of God, save what He Himself has taught man to know, or has permitted, by divine inspiration, to understand. Come then, and by the confession of a devoted mouth bear witness to the faith received with simplicity of heart, and be not terrified by any heavy burden of precepts: light is the service of God, and the whole necessity of the law lies within man’s own will—which, when you have found it fully revealed, you will rejoice so much in acknowledging that, although repentance may sting you for your former error, yet a greater gladness will come from confession.

APOLLONIUS.—Already for some time now my will is ready, the very will you seek; but just as places filled with rubble must be cleared before foundations can be laid, so it was fitting that the mind be purged of doubts, and ignorance be instructed by knowledge, so that a firm cleansing of the old errors might open a clear approach to faith. Wherefore, because previously, being too occupied, I could not hold fast the full revelation of the law, now repeat it to me digested into a few words; and what I had heard almost without being ready to receive it, I shall, once examined in manifold ways, receive with veneration.

ZACCHÆUS.—I will indeed repeat it, and I will speak it in briefer words, to be impressed upon the depths of your soul. For Christians the integrity of the faith is the fullness of righteousness, that is: to know God, to worship Him, to fear Him, to love Him; not to adore or worship a thing made by hand, nor to feed on the profane foods of sacrifices offered to idols. Behold, now no longer is the blood of a plentiful victim, or the smell of a polluted fire, required: you will have worshipped God fittingly if you give yourself wholly to God on behalf of all, holding fast, above all others, two chief precepts—that you love God more than yourself, but love man as yourself; since no one can profit himself from himself alone as much as He can profit either all in common or each singly. And what is more equitable than that you should love man as yourself, from whom, in turn, you wish to be loved likewise, if you desire to be consoled?

Thus to render as you desire good things to be rendered to you: certainly not to shut out the hope of most blessed eternity for the sake of a fleeting pleasure of the briefest time, nor to cling to the vanity of present things and destroy faith in things to come; since of the two it is plain which is the more advantageous—I will not say in the judgment of God, but in the judgment of any honest man—to place one’s hope, and, for the sake of choosing what is to come, to despise the present, rather than, for the sake of a passing present enjoyment, to let slip what is to abide.

APOLLONIUS.—That the majesty of God is one and simple, and that by Him things visible and invisible were founded, all indeed perceive, and all can understand; likewise that full faith is owed to His law and His promises, and that full righteousness rightly is subject to divine possibility—he who does not believe shall lack the eternal effect of the resurrection; and whoever denies that You, Christ, are the Son of God and God abiding in man, and does not confess and proclaim You as the redeemer of the human race, by the triumph of the cross raised up into the heavens; whoever does not hope that there will be a rewarder of holy labor, or an avenger of crimes—let that one, groaning in the fellowship of the devil, go as an exile to perpetual darkness, and, plunged in the horrors of profound night, be rolled amid the burnings of the blazing mire.

But let it be far from me now to think anything beyond what concerns God and His affairs, or to wish to know or seek anything except what has been taught by Him; only let no penalty accompany the fault of ignorance or slow credulity. Let the polluted seats of idols fall, and let the temples of accursed abomination be emptied, and let divination itself—which, as I see, is either woven of manifold demonic frauds or false—perish beneath the reverence of holy religion. I shall follow God, Christ, and the way of salvation, loving Him above my soul and all my inward being, resolved to love in myself only what He has loved.

But you, who have been the minister of the divine gift in me, having yourself received grace from its Author, deliver to me, I beg, the fullness of the faith; deliver the mysteries of the inner sacrament, and pour upon this perishable substance the renewal of a loftier hope; for if you who have been present at our discussions believe anything of this, the joys of true light have so flooded my mind, that although I regret having long been ignorant of God, Christ, and His loving-kindness, yet I hope that, even though acknowledged late, my having believed will belong to eternal blessedness.

Since the best and most desirable path to the exercise of righteousness is to live piously, and to guard the rule of life itself by the observance of deeds and of knowledge; it is a matter of the chief study among all good things, either always to speak to God or to speak faithfully concerning God, and to devote what is greatest in man—the office of tongue and mind—to the praises of its Maker; yet not so to be lifted up by the fervor of pious will that the vows of faith, resting upon their proper foundation, overrun in any respect the manner of thinking and professing, or that a bolder approach trample the sacred bounds of divine preaching beyond what is lawful. Not, therefore, from presumption, but ready in faith, we first undertake an insinuation concerning the Holy Trinity; afterward, proceeding in plain exposition against the Jews, and then against the heretics, we shall also expose the schismatic error of the Novatianists.

Thus instruction gathered from many volumes will serve as an abridgment, not laboring over everything in each single matter. Having found by experience, then, that the subject is better handled between persons, we shall bring our Zacchæus and our now Apollonius, with more robust knowledge, to the aforesaid stages of the case, so that, in the manner of the earlier book, the rivals of our religion may be forestalled in condemnation; and that he who is kindled with zeal for learning may desire to live for God and perish to vice. Now, then, all these things will be set forth and proved between the two in gentle conference, so that with fitting brevity it may be shown what ought to be received, what avoided; since the credulity of the faithful is confirmed by heavenly examples, and the perfidy of the profane is overthrown chiefly by their own understandings.

APOLLONIUS.—If anyone, Zacchæus, either suffices in words, or grasps in mind, to render worthy thanks to God for the benefits bestowed upon him by His mercy—I above all ought to discharge this office of confession and of mind, I who, by His inspiration or by your teaching, having been unwound from so many snares of error, have laid down the chains of death, and, having put off the earthly man, have passed by God’s adoption into the hope of heavenly joys; and, moreover, having been made a partaker of the eternal sacrifice—nay, rather, by receiving God, made a part of Him—ought with the whole vigor of my mind both to seek after salutary things and to destroy what is crooked.

But since, in rendering the due return of thanks, we are not even sufficient for what we perceive by understanding, this alone is the way of return open to the unequal: that God, the bestower of all indulgence, by that condescension whereby He is present to our thoughts, may look upon the vow of those in debt, and accept the will in place of the deed. However great, then, the joy unspeakable that I have gained, greater still is my fear of ignorance now that some knowledge has begun to be mine; and a heavy care disturbs my mind, lest, being made conscious of spiritual secrets, I be found either ignorant or fearful as to how much of the sacred fullness may be lawfully heard and spoken.

For, in laying down for me the first precepts of the faith, you required simple belief only in the Father, from whom are all things, and the Son, through whom all things were made; but afterward, in the handing on of the mystery being entered upon, a confession of the Holy Spirit also was exacted of me by you, and my whole belief was directed toward the Trinity.

APOLLONIUS.—Mindful, then, of your promise, disclose whether there is a third Person in the honor of religion, or whether the name has been taken up from the usage of manifold reverence and not from a distinct appellation: for if you unlock these hidden things of heavenly wisdom, whatever has succeeded well in the reception of the faith now coming to me will be strengthened by a more perfect knowledge, once it is brought to completion; it will follow, too, that having been consulted, you may set forth the teachings of the heretics as well, and all the depravities of schisms, so that they may the more quickly be avoided, provided you first show how the things already granted ought to be believed.

ZACCHÆUS.—Those girded for the pay of the spiritual warfare ought indeed always to be trained by the exercise of instruction, as it were under the expectation of impending wars, and to abhor idleness; but many things which you seek have already been set forth both at length and with sublimity, and refuse, as it were, the labor of new instruction, and so plainly has all this ambiguity long since been discussed, that now not merely untrained perceptions in interpretation, but even words themselves, are not to be had unless well-worn.

Moreover, it is a most notorious source of distaste in any composition either to rub over again things already known, or to set forth, with the author suppressed, matter inserted from clearer records; wherefore it may perhaps be more fitting for each of us to resort to the exemplars of the ancients, and to draw teaching of this kind from the volumes of illustrious men: since it is doubtless more profitable for you to learn perfect things from the more learned, and safer for me to keep silence about the greatest matters.

APOLLONIUS.—And I too believe that certain men, as our faith grew, disputed at greater length upon these matters, and that through so many courses of years and times the talents of spiritual men were possessed, not by silence, but by merits. Nevertheless, matters diffusely treated become known more slowly to untrained minds, and prolix things burden the understanding before they teach it. And therefore, the excuse ceasing, let the fervor for what is useful shut out the fear of envy, and let the love of unconquerable faith overcome the grace of the repose you embrace, the shame of it being relieved by the saying of the old proverb. For what can be said by anyone that has not been said before? Or what knowledge is there in our affairs so hidden that the practice of our predecessors has not illumined it? Wherefore first reveal to me this with certainty concerning the Holy Spirit: is He God, or is He some possession of God? And is He to be believed a gift of divinity, or its fullness?

It will be needful, however, that whatever you set down as the sacraments of the faith for one about to believe simply, be proved by testimonies.

ZACCHAEUS.—Although your demand be a burden, and the intent of so great a question weave a certain business, since the matter to be spoken of is of arduous work, and is to be regarded more by faith than by words: yet since you cease not to require great things from the humble, and since dominical fervor arouses the opportunity of recitation, because we are commanded not to keep the substance of faith pressed down to the earth, that is, not to retain it enclosed in the secret places of the heart, but to lend it out by a ready reckoning to the knowledge of those who desire it, and to multiply it as it were by usury: let us, trembling at the exposition of the ineffable majesty, but secure in confession, open our mouths, committed to their Author.

God is one, and although the Trinity is distinguished in persons and names, yet it is not distant from itself nor from its own eternity, but the divinity abiding before the ages in the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit is believed truly and properly to be one and the same, and can neither be divided by our interpretations, nor again, the Trinity being turned into the person of one, be confounded. Thus therefore the Holy Spirit, as the Father and the Son, is God. Nor in the Trinity is there one, but the Trinity is one. This is the full faith, this our belief. Therefore we suffer them neither to be esteemed nor called Gods, but we confess God in the aforesaid persons and names.

For the ineffable divinity has not so presented itself as to be able to be enclosed or apprehended even within names and persons: but that what it was, it might be known to be, it gave to believers an understanding of itself in part, as much as the narrowness of human speech could grasp. But do not think these things were withheld from you before, but rather not believed before; because, coming from the multitude of idols, you would have supposed here too that gods were being preached to you, had not the beginnings of the tradition kept silent that which the fullness of faith contains.

APOLLONIUS.—As far as it is given to understand, the hoped-for faith is present in your interpretations, and reason of exposition adheres to truth; nevertheless, sacred citations demand that the same statements be confirmed, that the stability of pure belief be established, and that a certain height of truth be constituted by reading, the arguments now ceasing; because it may seem incongruous to speak thus of God, without rather bringing forth those things by which He Himself willed to be made known. On which account, out of many things which I think cannot be enumerated at present, nor do I demand that they be now enumerated—since meanwhile I seek the order of doctrine, not the body of history—having also a few clear things to say, restore authority to what has been remembered. For, as I said, things thrown out lightly will waver, unless, built up by human words, they be further supported by divine examples.

ZACCHAEUS.—You fittingly demand that faith be given rather to those things which the Divinity itself has spoken in testimony of itself; and rightly that a few things be brought forth out of innumerable ones; since the proof of true majesty, although it has plurality, does not need plurality; and to the believer even a few things suffice, which the unbelieving, even if they search among many, do not know. Hence, first from the books of the Old Testament, afterward also of the New, acknowledge the Holy Spirit in the substance of one divinity, the book of Genesis thus beginning: In the beginning God made heaven and earth; and the earth was invisible and unformed; and the Spirit of God was borne over the waters. He is the beginning, who, to the Jews asking who he was, said: The beginning, which also I speak to you; whence also in another place it is said of him: In the head of the book it is written of me.

Now the Spirit of God was borne over the waters, that from these He might produce all living things, Himself supplying to the raw elements, as it were, the seeds of His own fire, He who now infuses the gifts of sanctification upon the purified. David likewise, God inspiring him, testifies: By the word of the Lord the heavens were established, and by the Spirit of His mouth all their host. See how full is the brevity, and how clearly it recurs to the mystery of unity; placing the Father in "the Lord," the Son in the signification of "the Word," he named the Holy Spirit "of the mouth of the Most High." And lest the utterance of voice be reckoned in "the Word," he teaches that the heavens were made through Him: lest a mere breath be reckoned in "Spirit," he showed the fullness of virtue in Him.

For where there is virtue, there must necessarily also be a subsisting person; where "all" is signified, it is not taken away from the two but is completed in the third; not that it alone should have what belongs to the whole, but that what is last in mere name should not have less. Again, the same prophet, while praying, sets forth the Trinity: Create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a right spirit within my bowels. Cast me not away from Thy face, and take not Thy Holy Spirit from me. Restore unto me the joy of Thy salvation, and confirm me with Thy principal Spirit. The principal Spirit is the Father's, the right Spirit is the Son's, but the Holy is distinguished by the addition of its own name.

Nor be you moved by the addition of these terms, that the Holy Spirit is signified by the prophetic appellation as "principal" and "right." Although the property is one in each, yet because God is Spirit, lest a confusion of persons should arise in our understanding, a diversity of names has been added: for he who is holy is necessarily right; nor again can he be right unless he be holy: but "principal," because from Him the only-begotten Son, and from Him proceeding the Holy Spirit; concerning whom Isaiah, under the person of God speaking of Christ, set down these words: I have spoken; and I have called and led him, and made his way prosperous: come near to me and hear these things. I have not spoken in secret from the beginning; when they came to pass, there was I: and now the Lord has sent me, and His Spirit.

Likewise the angel, announcing to Mary the mysteries of the holy nativity, sets forth like things of the same, thus: The Spirit of God shall come upon thee, and the power of the Most High shall overshadow thee. The Lord afterward, speaking of the calling of the nations, preaching the Holy Spirit within the one name of the divinity, said: Going therefore now, teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Paul the apostle likewise: Now he who confirms us with you in Christ, and who has anointed us, is God, who also has sealed us, and given the pledge of the Spirit in our hearts. And again, while praying heavenly things for the Corinthians, he added this: The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, and the charity of God, and the communication of the Holy Spirit be with you all.

Wherefore, mindful of the truth proposed, do not require the multitude of sentences which most abundantly avail; because, as I said, it is the custom of the faithful to believe God in few things; but to remember many is the office rather of diligence profiting by itself, than of one teaching.

APOLLONIUS.—Already indeed the simple assertion had produced faith that the Holy Spirit is believed truly and properly God; but because it is easier to give consent to words than to borrow understanding for the senses, it was needful to examine firmly what had been undertaken, and to confirm the voluntary confession by heavenly teachings. Now, however, unfolding the depravities of the sects which are opposed to us, begin, if it seem good, from the Jews as first principle—why the untamable people refuses God and the Son of God, Christ, and are unwilling that the creature Lord of all should subsist in either birth, He who assuredly, before all the nations now saved and that have been saved, knowing through the law and the prophets the knowledge of things to come, could in no wise be ignorant of what was to be done for the salvation of the world, since they both knew God and were not without the utterances of God.

ZACCHAEUS.—Your estimation is not mistaken, that the nativity of our Redeemer, both that according to God and that according to man, which now abides in one and the same, is contained throughout all the volumes of the Scriptures; and that the mysteries of the holy advent have been openly revealed to the Jews, which it would not be beyond the mind to relate summarily, if the order of the words followed by attentive senses in all things could be pursued. But since our desire is for simple understanding, not for a difficulty contrary to conflict, let it suffice for your hearing to behold the whole light in part of its brightness from the tasted heights, and to run through both briefly. Thus in the book of Genesis, when the conflagration of the Sodomites is related, an act of one will, indeed, as always, but not of one person, is shown, Scripture saying: And the Lord rained from the Lord out of heaven.

Moses again, set in the rock by God's command, when he beheld His hinder parts, designated the distinction of the Trinity in number, saying: Lord, Lord, Lord, merciful and compassionate. And through David, speaking to the Son of God the Father, these are the words: From the womb before the daystar I begot thee. Through Solomon, moreover, the Son Himself testifies of Himself: When the Lord prepared the heaven, I was present with Him. When He set apart His throne, and made clouds upon the strong winds; when He established the fountains fixed beneath the heaven: when He made firm the foundations of the earth, I was with Him, disposing all things; I was one in whom He delighted: daily I rejoiced before His face, when He rejoiced in the completed world. The same again, while questioning of His and the Father's name, sets forth the property of true nativity, saying: What is His name, or what is the name of His Son? Let these things concerning Christ according to divinity suffice for the present.

But as to the belief in the assumed body, Moses, first commanded to preach this to the people, speaks thus: In the last days God will raise up for you a Prophet from your brothers, like unto me: him you shall hear; and whoever will not hear that Prophet, I will avenge, saith the Lord. Which testimony was confirmed by the Savior, when in the Gospel, rebuking those same Jews, He says: If you believed Moses, you would believe me also: for he wrote of me. Likewise, under countless instances, under the person of the same Moses, God, when commending Jesus of Nun to the fierce people, admonished that in the surname of the earthly leader the name of the future and heavenly one should be known: for God said to Moses: Behold this Jesus who stands by thee: see that thou spurn him not, for he also will be obedient to thee; and my name is in him.

Most plainly, finally, through the patriarch Jacob the truth of the prophetic blessing was fulfilled, when it is intimated in these words that both a leader and a prince, that is, a king and a priest, should belong to the Jews up to His time: The leader shall not fail from the thighs of Judah, nor the prince from Israel, until He come to whom it is reserved: and He is the expectation of the nations. Balaam likewise, in Numbers, announces the same things, saying: A star shall rise out of Jacob, and a man shall arise out of Israel. This the Magi in the regions of the East, always retaining, were the first, having observed the star, to announce the rising of the Savior; and what had once been prophesied through the author of their art was fulfilled through them, having come to know it by the observation of the eternal light. Through Isaiah, finally, God speaks: Behold, I lay in Sion a chosen, precious cornerstone; and he who believes in Him shall not be confounded.

The same prophet thus recalls that this same One was to be born of a Virgin: Behold, a Virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and they shall call his name Emmanuel, which is interpreted: God with us. Again, under the words of these same Jews groaning in the future judgment, when they shall behold Christ in the majesty of the Father, he set down these things: There is no God besides thee: for thou art God; and we knew it not. Jeremiah, moreover, in the voices of the faithful people expounds these things: This is our God, and none other shall be reckoned beside Him: who found out the whole way of prudence, and gave it to Jacob his servant, and to Israel his beloved: afterward he was seen upon the earth, and conversed with men. Micah also thus revealed the very place from which He was to come: And thou, Bethlehem, house of Ephrata, art thou not small to be reckoned among the thousands of Judah?

For out of thee shall he come forth unto me who shall be Prince in Israel; and his goings forth are from the beginning of days. Innumerable other things besides are read and are available, which most openly teach the mystery of the twofold nativity in Christ God; but it is reasonable to confute the lost and rebellious only by their own authorities: and, as I have already admonished, the purpose is to answer your question rather than the intent of those resisting; for the reason of contentions may need prolixity; but it is fitting that the studies of those seeking counsel be satisfied with brief things.

APOLLONIUS.—There is no doubt that faith cannot in any way be withdrawn from these testimonies, and that proofs of this kind ought to be disapproved with equanimity not even by the Jews themselves, unless they prefer rather to rave; especially since, being made known from their own volumes, they shine forth with such clear integrity that even if you reckon them without an advocate, they prove themselves. Nevertheless, I would wish to be made more certain by what examples these same Jews are driven into the contrary, and to be taught not only by the right ones but equally by the contrary; since that teaching alone can be consummated in truth which shows to those in error not only wherein they can be corrected, but also wherein they are depraved of themselves.

ZACCHAEUS.—You hold fast what has been very often impressed upon you, that God is one, that is, that the divinity of the Trinity is one, and that in the use of this word the meaning is of one substance, not of one person: but for them this is the source of error and the occasion of their faithlessness, that these words are spoken to them on Mount Horeb by the voice of God: Hear, O Israel, the Lord thy God is one God. And again: I am God, and beside me there is no God. And a third time: I am God, and I am not changed; my glory I will not give to another. Not indeed to none, but not to another; that is, I will give it only to him through whom I have established in predestination that the immortality lost by you from the beginning should be restored to something better: for he truly cannot be changed, who admits neither diminution nor increase.

Since indeed there is no other Divinity, it follows necessarily that God is not to be called other. Yet this was said to the Jews concerning the unity of the Divinity not as to those who were ignorant of it, but as a warning to those about to transgress into idols, that they should not, namely, interpret or worship gods, who knew the one in substance and majesty. It is furthermore clear that when God was ordaining the creation of the world and of man, the mystery of the Trinity was shown forth, Scripture saying: And God said: Let us make man to our image and likeness.

When He says “our,” He indeed reveals that it is not of one; but when He brings forth “to the image and likeness,” He insinuates the equality of the distinction, so that in the same work there is an open recognition of the Trinity, in which neither is the plurality empty, nor the likeness discordant, while the following words are likewise handed down thus: And God said: Let it be made: and, God made: and, God blessed.

Therefore God the Father announces what is to be done, the Son accomplishes what is said, the Holy Spirit confirms it with blessing: and it is necessary that the author of the whole creation be one God, even though the speech of the one declaring is “Let us make”; which reasoning of the faith the ancient blessing through Moses finally unfolds and confirms, in which he is bidden to bless the people by the sacrament of the threefold invocation; for God says to Moses: Thus shalt thou bless my people, that I also may bless them: The Lord bless thee and keep thee: and the Lord shew his face upon thee, and have mercy on thee: the Lord lift up his face upon thee, and give thee peace.

From this you understand that it makes no difference to the indissociable and unchangeable God, if the words of human efficiency do not conspire toward all the properties of the statements; since it has been left to the clear understanding of the faithful, that whatever is said to be created or effected by God should always be believed to be done and effected by the Trinity.

APOLLONIUS.—By special proofs the nativity of Christ in God and in man has been shown, and it has appeared beyond doubt that the Holy Spirit, remaining in the same substance, fulfills the mystery of the perfect Trinity. Whence now confirm the same thing, if it is available, by the edition of the Scriptures, whether the Passion of the Lord's cross was also foretold, or whether in some body of the old law the signs of that venerable death are noted beforehand; so that, with a little care bestowed, the order of the instruction we have begun may finally illuminate this part of the sacred work, which the teaching of the simple tradition revealed some time ago.

ZACCHAEUS.—There is plainly, in all the Scriptures, an open proclamation not only of the Passion, but also of the Resurrection and of the consent of heaven, and the prophetic mouths sang beforehand, foreknowing that the kingdom of God in us would take its beginning from the Passion of Christ. David above the rest speaking thus: Say among the nations, God hath reigned from the wood. Not that we were not always under the rule of God from our condition; but as long as we dissented from His worship and will, we were reckoned as strangers. Whence Moses also prophetically rebukes the foretold people, saying: Thy life shall be hanging before thine eyes, and thou shalt fear day and night, and shalt not believe thy life. Concerning which it is likewise written in Numbers: Not as a man is God hanged, nor as the son of man does he suffer threats.

For truly in that reproach that he called himself the Son of God, he endured all things, and was not given to death as a man, whom the cross received not for any crime. Through the prophet Amos indeed the Spirit speaks that at midday, as happened in his Passion, night would come; for he says: And it shall be in that day, saith the Lord, the sun shall go down at noon, and the day shall be darkened over the earth in the light. And Jeremiah: She that bore is affrighted, and her soul feared. The sun went down while it was yet midday, and she was confounded. Under the very words of the Lord Himself, moreover, Isaiah most openly declared even the injury of the torments and mockery, saying: I have given my back to the scourges, and my cheeks to the palms, and I have not turned away my face from the shame of spitting. Hence also through David He had foretold before: They have dug my hands and my feet, and numbered all my bones.

They indeed considered and looked upon me. They parted my garments among them, and upon my vesture they cast lots. It is a matter known to all, that his garment was divided by the soldiers who delivered him to the cross, and that one out of all the garments was assigned by lot before judgment. Likewise the mixture of vinegar and gall which the same Jews gave to the Lord hanging on the cross was foretold long before through David, who says: They gave me gall for my food, and in my thirst they gave me vinegar to drink. So too through Zachariah He complained of the bitterness of His wounds, saying: They shall look on me, whom they have pierced.

For piercing his side with a lance; because it was not lawful for those raging against him, now already dead, to break a bone, they fulfilled what had once been said to Moses; for the Lord says to Moses: They shall take a lamb of a year old, full grown, from the lambs and the kids, and the whole multitude of the synagogue shall kill it in the evening; and they shall eat it that night; and you shall not break a bone of it. Finally, the Spirit prophesied that thieves would be joined to His hanging, saying: And he shall be reckoned among the wicked. Concerning the bargain of the unhappy Judas, moreover, who was one of the apostles, and betrayed the Saviour after receiving thirty pieces of silver, Scripture was not silent, so much so that it even designated the amount of the money; for it says: And they made the price of him that was prized, thirty pieces of silver. Let these testimonies suffice to prove the Passion.

Now recognize the Resurrection under the very words of the Saviour speaking to the Father, David teaching most fully: Thou wilt not leave my soul in hell, nor wilt thou suffer thy holy one to see corruption. The aforesaid prophet could not say this of himself, who will remain until the day of the common resurrection in that corruption to which he has been added along with the fathers. Likewise through Isaiah: Now will I arise, now will I be glorified, now will I be exalted, now shall you see, now shall you be ashamed. Truly it was foretold concerning the Saviour that a delay of two days in the underworld would be granted him, and afterward the ascension that follows, whereby the body, laid down of its own will, taking it up again of its own will, He raised on high. This number of days after his resurrection the prophet Osee indicated more openly, saying: God has quickened us on the third day, after two days we shall rise again.

Isaiah indeed, indicating the whole assurance of the Passion and the Ascension, set this forth in his preaching: As a sheep he was led to the slaughter, and as a lamb before his shearer, without a voice, so he opened not his mouth. In his humiliation his judgment was taken away. But who shall declare his generation? For his life shall be taken away from the earth. David likewise, under the words of God the Father speaking to the Son, proclaimed not only the Ascension but also the Judgment, saying: The Lord said to my Lord: Sit thou at my right hand, until I make thy enemies thy footstool.

Since therefore, as the prophet testifies, the Lord spoke to the Lord; to whom is it doubtful, that the Father insinuates to the Son, passing from man into the glory of divinity, the power of the heavenly judgment and the force of exercising majesty, just as He Himself in the Gospel says of this very place, that it was never said to any of the angels or of men, that sitting at the right hand of God the Father he should trample under the feet of his name the enemies subjected to him? Zachariah, applying this to himself as shown to him, spoke thus: And the Lord showed me Jesus the great priest standing before the face of the angel of the Lord; and the devil stood at his right hand to be his adversary. And the Lord said to the devil: The Lord rebuke thee, O devil, the Lord rebuke thee, who has chosen Jerusalem. Is not this a brand plucked out of the fire?

That is, has not the Passion now already been accomplished, and, the frailty of man being laid aside, has not everlasting power succeeded to Christ? Daniel also, bringing forth like things concerning the same, says: I beheld: and lo, in the clouds of heaven one like the son of man came even to the Ancient of days: and they that stood by offered him, and there was given to him royal power, and all the earth, and every tribe, and all glory shall serve him: and his power is an everlasting power, which shall not be taken away; and his kingdom shall not be corrupted. These things, therefore, the Jews hear and recount: they know these things, and yet they do not believe in Christ, whom they know not to have adjured by the fathers; but they pretend not to know, since they have always so lived even in that very law which they profess, that what they confessed with their lips, they denied at the same time in heart and in deed.

ZACCHAEUS.—It is a faithful and true profession to hold that both are the precepts of one God, and to confess that the law handed down through Moses was not abrogated through Christ, but fulfilled, He Himself so declaring in the Gospels: I have not come to destroy the law, but to fulfill it. For long ago the law had been the promise of evangelical preaching, God speaking thus through Isaiah: The law shall go forth from Sion, and the word of the Lord from Jerusalem. That is, the consummate teaching of justice and faith through Christ shall be recognized in the Church. And again Micah: The law shall go forth from Sion, and the word of the Lord from Jerusalem: and he shall judge among many peoples, and he shall rebuke and expose strong nations. Otherwise, the old law already having been given, what else but the things of the Gospels was being announced as to be added?

Concerning which He likewise spoke through Jeremiah: Behold the days come, and I will accomplish upon the house of Israel and the house of Judah a new testament. Not according to the testament which I made with their fathers, when I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt. That is, I will ordain a milder one in the Gospels, and those things shall cease, of which it is written: I gave them precepts that were not good, in which they shall not be justified; but he who does them shall live in them. Certain things, therefore, in the law were established more severely for this reason, that they might humble a rebellious people, wanton with accustomed heathenism, rather than allow them to be lifted up as though about to be justified; and, as by a certain custody of present discipline, restrain by the terror of punishment those whom the slow threat of judgment could not yet keep in check, dwelling as they still were far from the end of the age.

Hence this: An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth: You shall not eat, you shall not touch. Hence the defined observance of months, and the festivity of new moons: hence the fixed journey of the Sabbath, and a liberty shut off by idleness in almost all matters of human action. But the primary reasoning of accustomed abomination required that the sacrifice of beasts and birds be consecrated; because they could not at once be kept from these things, it was more prudent to reject them gradually, to be abolished, than to punish them as immediately to be forbidden.

But there is another and evident reason for this, that although they offered sacrifices in the manner of the gentiles, they were nevertheless being taught to offer to God what they had formerly been accustomed to render to idols; and being occupied with the manifold acts of sacrifice, no space or occasion was afforded even for thinking of transgression; since what they might desire was not taken away from them, and there always remained something which the intention of their devotion could not exhaust. At length they soon hear the prophet: What is the multitude of your sacrifices to me, saith the Lord? I am full. I do not want the burnt offerings of rams, and the fat of lambs, and the blood of goats and bulls: neither come thus into my sight. For who hath required these things at your hands? You shall not add to trample my court. If you bring fine flour, it is vain: incense is an abomination to me. Your new moons and sabbaths and the great day I cannot endure.

My soul hateth the fast and your feast days. You have become unto me a satiety. I will not forgive your sins. That is, your crimes are not to be purged by these expiatory rites; but he prophetically showed what would be the purification in our baptism, saying: Wash yourselves, be clean. That is, when the time of that visitation shall come, follow the sacraments of the spiritual laver: And if your sins be as scarlet, I will make them white as snow; but if as crimson, I will make them white as wool. In scarlet is signified the darkness of sins, in crimson the bloodstained mind.

To such as these, then, through Christ a change for the better was proclaimed, and in place of the outworn victims of cattle and birds, the heavenly gift of the faithful is celebrated by a pure offering, and against all the snares of the hostile enemy we are fortified by the admixture of a spiritual sacrifice; and in the man assumed by him that decree of God the Father is fulfilled: Thou art a Priest for ever after the order of Melchisedech. When therefore the time of the Gospels shone forth, grace at once released those whom the servitude of the law held bound, and it was proclaimed by the sacred mouth of the Lord: Come to me, all you that labour and are burdened, and you shall find rest for your souls. Take up my yoke upon you, and learn of me, because I am meek and humble of heart: for my yoke is sweet, and my burden light.

But lest the rigor of the aforesaid vengeances should remain, and the remedy of healthful penitence, bearing down upon the guilt, should snatch away the end, he determined that the punishments to be exacted should be set apart for judgment, the Lord in the Gospel thus proclaiming: Vengeance is mine, and I will repay: since, unless just amendment follow, no one avenges more rightly than he who is not deceived in the proof of the offense.

Thus, then, the torpor of the sabbath also was abolished, and no time was excluded to the faithful from good work; the Lord himself thus speaking in the Gospels: For it is lawful to do good on the sabbath days. And: The Son of man is Lord of the sabbath. Furthermore, the faculty of eating suitable things was granted; since, as he himself testified: Not the things that enter into the mouth defile a man; but those that come out of the mouth.

Thus all these things, which had been for a punishment to the rebellious, are dissolved by the liberty granted through Christ; and, a few things ceasing from superstition, those things were added which truly merit justice: and therefore, between the beginnings and the fullness of faith, the law crept in as an intermediary, to break the wild minds of the Jews by the difficulty of such sanctions, and to persuade them the more readily to receive the grace of the coming indulgence, than the release from long servitude and the freedom once longed for would have rendered even more lovable to unbelievers.

APOLLONIUS.—Not without reason had I foreseen, in the questioning of this cause, that there was some counsel of divine providence, that these things, permitted to the rude people from the beginnings as if to profit and please them, should be commanded, which afterward it was fitting should be abolished. What, I ask, is there of sanctification or merit in circumcision for these same Jews, that they still flatter themselves with it now in place of baptism, when you had signified in the tenor of the preceding book that it was established only as a signet of the chosen offspring? And beyond doubt it is clear that they will lack the rewards of righteousness, if, trusting in this diminution of the body alone, they base upon it the proofs of their whole hope—those who, the injury of the flesh being rejected, ought rather to rejoice in the bloodless gifts of the Holy Spirit.

ZACCHAEUS.—You rightly recall that the exposition of the earlier book was of this kind: that in carnal circumcision there was a signet of faith, not the state of righteousness, Scripture recording: And God said to Abraham: This is my covenant which you shall keep, between me and you; you and your seed with you. Every male among you shall be circumcised, and you shall circumcise the flesh of your foreskin. And it shall be for a sign of the covenant between me and you.

That this was carnally observed up to Christ the subsequent act of Joshua the son of Nun proves, who, after the departure from the desert in which those same Jews had lived forty years, and no one had been subject to this injury, because in the wilderness there was no intermingling of foreign peoples, was commanded to sign the people, and, the custom being enjoined on the fathers, to impose upon those about to cross the Jordan the recognition of their ancestral belief, Scripture saying: And the Lord said to Joshua the son of Nun: Make thee knives of stone, and sitting circumcise the children of Israel a second time. This indeed happened also according to the letter: but it has been extended to us more by prophetic interpretation. For that Joshua, ours in name only, but in fact too, the Angel announcing to the Shepherds in the Gospels: There is born to you, he says, this day a Savior, whom you shall call Jesus: for he shall save his people from their sins.

In the "second" sons, moreover, is understood the people of the gentiles, and in the stone cuttings the disciplines of the Gospel agree. Whence Moses first prophesied such things, saying: In the last days God shall circumcise your heart, and the heart of a people like your own, to love your God. Jeremiah likewise proclaims not the flesh to be circumcised, but the hearts, saying: Circumcise yourselves to your God; and also circumcise the foreskin of your heart.

But the Lord in the Gospel most clearly attests to the prince of the Jews, that absolutely no one can be saved without the laver of spiritual water, or obtain possession of that kingdom; for he says: Amen, amen I say to thee: Unless a man be born again of water and the Holy Spirit, he shall not see the kingdom of God. Concerning this, however, he had foretold beforehand through Isaiah: Remember not former things, and do not call to mind ancient things. Behold I make new things, which shall now arise: and you shall know them; and I will make a way in the desert, and rivers in a place without water, to give drink to my chosen race, and my people whom I have acquired, that I might set forth my powers. And again: If they shall thirst through the desert, he will bring them water out of the rock; the rock shall be split and water shall flow, and my people shall drink. And a third time: Rivers of living water shall flow from his belly.

Therefore, according to the Apostle, Circumcision is nothing, and uncircumcision is nothing, but the observance of the commandments of God. This, fulfilled in the faith of evangelical belief, and by the grace of baptism, does not now, as before, signify a people or a sex: but, turning the injury of the flesh into a spiritual signet, excludes no sex, distinguishes no nation; and, equally saving all in itself, reckons uncircumcision among vices, and hands over circumcision to be in conduct; because that which is of true sanctification is discerned in faith; that which is of manifest faith is reckoned to the works of righteousness, not to the injury of the body.

APOLLONIUS.—As I had understood, of this dispensation too there is a sure proof, and the vain presumption of the Jews, who believe that what was commanded according to the reckoning of the time, and preserved not the state of faith but the knowledge of lineage, is to be reckoned to them in place of the gift of baptism. Why, when the patriarchs held the merits of righteousness, was it lawful for them to have several wives in marriage and union at once? Nor was it reckoned as sin—God certainly knowing it—what is now so forbidden and punished, that it is judged worthy not only of offense to God, but is judged most justly deserving vengeance from men.

ZACCHAEUS.—Manifold indeed among many is the cause of that license, but this is to be believed the principal one; that, the order of perfection being set apart, belief in God should first be founded; and the law, brought in rather to establish faith, should not remove what it had found to be, as it were, innocent, and that only those things should be marked as unlawful which were truly believed to be mortal sins. Hence Abraham's faith was reckoned to him for righteousness, and devotion gave way to merits, Scripture saying: Abraham believed God, and it was reckoned to him unto righteousness. Then, because Divinity, cherishing a small people, wished it to rejoice in numerous offspring, so that it might be increased beyond others, whom it loved beyond others, and might escape the curse of the law, whoever should substitute seed in offspring.

But this excuse is common to all, and is not for the sake of a few, but of the people; the patriarchs, however, are judged apart from this; for while each believed that Christ, promised from his seed, would come forth, and had not yet read that he would arise without seed, burning with love for such offspring they entered into marriages with many women, judging it too weak a thing to entrust the hope of so sublime a progeny to a single marriage alone. For by these words of God the promise was first made to Abraham: In thy seed shall all nations be blessed. In almost equal measure the patriarch Jacob is honored by speech, the Lord saying to him: I am thy God: increase and fill the nations, and Churches of the nations shall be from thee: kings shall come forth from thy loins; and the land which I gave to Abraham and Isaac, I will give to thee and to thy seed after thee.

David, moreover, in the spirit, more plainly recalls these promises to himself, saying: The Lord hath sworn to David, and he will not repent; of the fruit of thy womb I will set upon thy throne. A similar order of that promise is kept through Isaiah; for he says: A rod shall come forth out of the root of Jesse, and a flower shall rise out of his root, in him shall the nations hope. In the rod is shown the venerable integrity of Mary; in the fragrance of the flower Christ is signified by grace, he himself teaching this in the Song of Songs: I am the flower of the field, and the lily of the valleys. Therefore these simple desires of the eager ones were softened, the Lord speaking through Isaiah, while for the salvation of the human race, through the occasion of a sign, the virginal birth is shown, the prophet speaking to Achaz the promise of this gift thus: Behold the Lord shall give a sign. A virgin shall conceive and bear a son.

Behold the third.

The first cause, then, is that they did not simply abuse things forbidden, and Divinity wished the unwise people to be increased by pursuits directed into numerous offspring. This, further, was joined to it, that the saints' incautious desires supposed that Christ, promised from their race, would come to them in time through the accumulation of multiple marriage, until the preaching of continence, now near at hand, revealed that he was to be born of a virgin, and the same one, gradually the restorer and founder of our salvation, growing in righteousness, would bring to fulfillment what he had once, through the dispensation of an unripe time, deferred.

APOLLONIUS.—As far as I judge, and I believe it is evident to the understanding of all, the simplicity of the saints is absolved from all suspicions of fiercer concupiscence; especially since God, the searcher of minds, would not have given them the prerogative of righteousness, if he had approved as a presumed wrong that which had not been forbidden by dispensation. But now, since the reasons, as it now seems, have been worked through, an unexpected question creeps in, as to what was the special offense of the gentiles, which for so many ages and times repelled them, cast off from the instruction of God, and now embraces and teaches them, called by the hope of eternal gifts, while the Jews are utterly driven from the grace of God, to whom belonged both the prior use in the reception of the law, and the first lot in election.

ZACCHAEUS.—God has repelled none of the believers from the beginning, nor did the gentiles displease their Creator before, forgetful of his benefits and of their own condition, out of reverence or honor for him they worshipped insensible creatures, and, venerating images of men and cattle, were justly made like to those things which they preferred to themselves, though they had been made superior by God; Scripture recording: The idols of the gentiles are silver and gold, the works of men's hands. Let them that make them become like unto them, and all such as trust in them. Likewise Solomon: Man made them, and he that borrowed a spirit, formed them. But no man will be able to fashion a God like unto himself; since, being mortal, he fashions with wicked hands what is dead: he himself is better than those he worships; since he himself has lived, but they never.

And again: Beholding the works, they did not know who was the artificer; but they thought fire, or spirit, or air, or the circuit of the stars, or excessive water, or the sun, or the moon, to be gods, rulers of the earth's orb. Since, therefore, neglecting the Creator, they had placed the whole confidence of their hope in such things, they received the wages of their own work, so that, rushing of their own accord into every kind of filthiness, they became strangers to the instruction of God, who served only vices, and, sunk in crimes, would not recognize the way of attaining immortality before they believed in the mediator of God and men: whence it is written in Deuteronomy that the Church from the gentiles is to be preferred to the Synagogue: You shall be, it says, nations for the head: but the unbelieving people for the tail.

But for the Jews, as long as faith and righteousness flourished, the love of God likewise did not depart from them, God himself attesting this through Isaiah in the Canticle: I will sing now to my beloved a song of my beloved vineyard. The complaint in the Canticle is against Christ the beloved; the vineyard is the synagogue: for this too he says in what follows: And now, man of Judah, and you who dwell in Jerusalem, judge between me and my vineyard: what more should I have done for my vineyard that I have not done for it? For the vineyard of the Lord of hosts is the house of Israel. The man of Judah is the Saviour, as above; but those who dwell in Jerusalem are those whose foot runs in the faith of the Church. Thus the Lord urges that a kind of equal reckoning be recognized between himself and the people of the Jews.

What further marvel or benefit could he yet bestow upon them that had not already been done—for whom there was deliverance from the most grievous slavery of Egypt, and hands freed from the basket; for whom there were countless signs against Pharaoh and all the Egyptians, as in the pillar of cloud and light, visible by day and night as the guiding help of divinity, and the impenetrable separation of darkness from their pursuers? Besides, the unheard-of flight of the sea, and the defense against the violence of those pressing on by the warring element itself; manna in the wilderness, and the use, without wear of adornment or garments, for a long span of years: likewise the expulsion of nations unequal in force and number, and the inheritance established in possession of a flowing land. What of the rebuke that often fell upon sinners, and transgression abolished by the punishment of a few, deaths of sinners remitted, and the persistent leniency almost reduced to abuse by the one granting it?

So then, against such raging evils of unfaithfulness, what better remedy could be added than that, for the healing of the perishing, by the will both of the Father and of the Holy Spirit, the Son of God should be sent, who, deigning to assume the matter of our frailty, took up whole man into God, so that, if man would believe, he might save the whole in his own adoption? But it remained for the unbelieving that the sentence should be fulfilled upon them and now upon their descendants: Seeing they may see and not perceive; understanding with the heart they may not understand; hearing with the ears they may not hear; lest at any time they should be converted, and I should heal them, says the Lord. And again: Woe to the sinful nation, a people full of sins, wicked children. And a third time: The daughter of Zion shall be left as a booth in a vineyard, and as a lodge in a garden of cucumbers, and as a city that is being besieged.

Confirming these things once spoken through the prophet, the Lord approved them in the Gospel, saying: Jerusalem, Jerusalem, you who kill the prophets and stone those sent to you; how often would I have gathered your children as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, and you would not? Behold, your house is left to you desolate. That is, what was formerly the dwelling of God is now the dwelling of demons: because whatever true religion has abandoned, profane superstition claims for itself.

Where, then, the ruin of the Jews was completed in the slaying of Christ, faith in the promises opened to the belief of the Gentiles: and just as from the beginning great salvation was promised not to the dignity of lineage but to the merits of faith, the Lord himself teaching this when those same Jews, as a proof rather of their faith, boasted themselves to be sons of Abraham: You, he said, are born of the devil as father, and you do his works. For if you were sons of Abraham, you would do his works; that is, a like faith would appear in you: and just as he, in every difficulty of human hesitation, believed me, so you also with equal gentleness would believe. Yet the Divinity does not, out of pity for them, will that this hardness of heart of theirs should remain, but has permitted it to arise on account of their unbelief, and, according to the Apostle: In part blindness has happened in Israel, that the faith of the Gentiles might come in.

Thus, for obtaining the good things of eternity, the prerogative of lineage does not suffice for the Jews unless faith also supports their origin; and again their offense alone does not save us, unless we, being preferred, fear likewise the example of the humbled; and believing that one and undoubted way in Christ lies open to both peoples, we hold fast the untainted gifts of faith; as he himself taught us in the Gospel, saying: I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father but by me. And: He who believes in me shall be saved. That is, so that as there is one God, so there might be one people of believers forever serving the will of the Creator: and he does not reject worship, since, while the justice of God bears down on neither party, he rejoices that those who confess in believing are absolved, whom unbelief had condemned beforehand in their authors.

APOLL.—Great is the folly of the Jews, if they do not know things so plain; more damnable their obstinacy, if, knowing them, they despise them: but whether they are ignorant or understand and refuse, they cannot be free of guilt, since they must bear either the judgment of negligence in abuse, or the guilt of unbelief. Leaving these, then, to their own ruin, if that is what they choose, unfold to me the kinds and characteristics of the heretics, so that, standing in the faith as on an immovable rock, when the waves of unfaithfulness begin to assail me, being forewarned they may not move me. For although I believe it would befit a simple mind not to know their depravities and errors, yet it belongs to a more fortified faith to know them, for the sake of caution.

ZACCH.—So great and so countless are the plagues of the heretics, that it is difficult not only to enumerate them but even shameful to name them; so has the detestable tradition of their manifest depravities blinded these wretches by turning them from the faith, so has the subtlety of diabolical fraud immersed itself in the senses of the perishing, that even heretics believe themselves to have heretics of their own. These, then, abandoning apostolic tradition, have followed masters of unfaithfulness, and have changed the name of religion along with its meaning. For as it pleased each one to deceive and seduce the unknowing populace, and to procure for himself honor out of crime, he taught that God should be believed either in part, or wholly denied: and having, moreover, the name of Christ, they named it their own, so that in whatever way they might not be far from sacrilege, having abandoned the name of Christ, they took the title of their religion from a man.

For what difference does it make whether one receives a name from an idol or from a man, if he ceases to be called a Christian? From that one, then, each heresy is now named, by whose authorship it transgressed, and they take such delight in the particularity of their crime that they do not even understand that they are cut off from the unity of religion by the very fact that they have lost the faith even in name.

So from Manes come the Manichaeans, and likewise from Marcion a people that took its name as offspring: Photinus too divides his own by a name: Sabellius likewise demands that part of his assembly be called after him: the error of the Patripassians imposed a name on them; and Arius, holding the citadel in the devil's inheritance, names his flock of the lost after himself. Besides these, countless portents of such monstrosities are spoken of, which the vileness of their folly makes unworthy even of rebuke: yet, joined as it were in an appendix to the impiety of the aforesaid, they do not cease to attack the Church and Christ. But since nothing is ever stronger than truth, when the waves are dashed on every side, the weight of the great mass stands unmoved, and things hostile are broken by their own blows, while the intent of the unfaithful rises only to this—that, though differing among themselves, while each singly desires to destroy our faith, all together confirm it.

For Manichaeus maintains that there are two gods, and two principles, of which he would have one believed good, the other evil; good, namely, is he who softened the truth of the ancient precepts by the publication of the Gospel: evil is he who made this world, and who spoke through Moses and the other prophets. They assert, moreover, that the Redeemer of the human race did not have the reality of flesh, but only its appearance.

Marcion, indeed, confesses the Son of God according to divinity, but denies him according to manhood. Further, Photinus says that the Son of God is the son of a man assumed from Mary in time, and affirms that he did not exist before time. Sabellius, along with the unbelief in which he blasphemes the Son of God as the others do, also denies the Holy Spirit, and takes up the truth of the deity only in the Father. The Patripassian indeed asserts that there is a Father, but that he himself soon becomes his own Son, and that the same one descends from an innate substance into birth and passion; likewise that the Holy Spirit too is the same person, not a third.

Arius, climbing to the heights, is about to fall to the depths, and confesses a Trinity in persons and names, but excludes the unity of divinity; establishing the Son of God, through whom all things were created, to be a creature and not the Creator: and moreover, to the naming of the titles he adds degrees of dignity, making him lower in honor whom he later names in name.

These are the principal sects of the heretics, and such deadly persuasions of men are dragged into diverse doctrines, that they either divide by their interpretations the simple substance of the indivisible God and the ineffable majesty of divinity, or dishonor it by degrees, since they both invent things unworthy of God, and deny what is eternal and proper to him.

APOLL.—It can doubtless be judged from these, whom you say are held in first place, of what sort are those sects of heretics which can be condemned even by such as these. But since it was proposed in our undertaking that everything be established by examples, unfold, by the qualities of their interpretations, from what Scriptures they have at last built up these divisions and degrees of unfaithfulness, and by what understanding they have been led down to these precipices. For although I have not yet heard what is alleged by them, I nevertheless perceive without hesitation that these wretches err, and that the integrity of the catholic faith alone remains; since it refuses and yet keeps guarded the fullness of the Trinity and its spiritual constitutions, both proved and received.

ZACCH.—If better things could rightly be said of evils, surely it would seem more pardonable not to know God than to confess him impiously: but since those too are condemned by the edicts of the heavenly statutes who neglect to know God through the law, the same condition awaiting perennial evils will embrace those who refuse to believe faithfully, Scripture recalling: He who does not know shall not be known. Those who have sinned without the law shall perish without the law. Rightly calling these same men Antichrists, who, destroying the true religion by hidden unfaithfulness, so that they may more easily assail the faith, pretend to believe and preach God. And now first Manichaeus, entering upon the impiety of his own tradition, in order to maintain two gods and two principles, has made faithful Scriptures into unfaithful authorities, taking up especially that saying of David, where he says: With you is the principle in the day of your power.

Not understanding that the principle spoken of is in the Word, which truly abiding is proclaimed in Christ: the day of the passion and of the judgment soon to come, and the whole of divinity fulfilled not in two, but in the Trinity. They say, moreover, that he who made this world is evil, because it is written: The world is placed in the evil one. These elements which we perceive are not to be thought harmful, nor are they to be believed to generate or possess anything evil, since, disposed by the operation of God, they pleased him greatly when they were made, Scripture saying: Behold, all things were very good. But by malignity our own iniquity is meant, and by world the human race is designated, John teaching this when he preaches of the coming of the Saviour: for he says: He came into this world, and the world did not know him.

If they assert a different creator for the Gospels and the Law, because in the Law there is present retribution, while in the Gospels a place is given for pardon: the Law indeed demands requital for injury, and sanctions an equal measure for what was lost; yet God does not avenge twice for the same thing: and the punishments meted out in the body, according to the quality of the offense, are to be weighed, we believe, by a milder judgment. Here, indeed, a time for making satisfaction is granted: but unless worthy fruit of repentance and works follow, there is eternal fire and the undying worm; the Lord himself attesting this in the same Gospels: Whose worm shall not die, nor shall the fire be quenched. There shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth.

Therefore there is not another God in Christ, nor another principle; but the same one is the author both of the law once given and now fulfilled: nor is anyone evil in the Trinity, because one alone is called good: but since in one God the unity of divinity is expressed, the same equality of goodness and unity must necessarily be understood: since in the Law the severity that guards justice is not to be thought malice, and in the Gospels goodness is not to be believed apart from justice.

Moreover they add this, that there was not true flesh in Christ, but from I know not what matter or fluid a frivolous appearance was shown forth in place of a man. What then did the whole preaching of the prophets foretell concerning his bodily nativity? What did the angels speak at various times? Was John perhaps not sent, or is that saying of God the Father false: Behold I send my angel before thy face, who shall prepare thy way? What, finally, did the infusion of the Holy Spirit accomplish within the most blessed Virgin? Why was not the time of the swelling womb passed over unto abolition, according to what was foretold? Where are the whole signs of a happy childbirth, and a birth loftier than the condition of all other mothers? An infant wailing in the manger, a boy growing in age and wisdom, and among the assembly of chosen elders a disputant of divine understandings?

What, I ask, would shameless impiety not say, if the founder of the salvation of all had not done these things: if the unbelieving crowd of Jews, despising him as he preached, and understanding only the supposed origin, not the mystery of the true nativity, had kept silent, saying: Is not this the son of Joseph the carpenter, and are not his mother and his brothers with us? These, then, are the stages of a true man, and the certain advance of common years, the Gospels thus attesting: Jesus advanced in age and wisdom and grace with God and men. He deserved therefore to be what he was born, who pleased God by justice and purity of life, and his fellows by meekness and humility.

Add the use of a manifest body; and although his life was of inimitable sanctity, yet the nature of human weakness needs the aid of garments; he hungers, he thirsts, he grieves, he rests, he suffers pain just as he is moved to weeping, nor does he further scorn or pass over any act; indeed he is even tempted by spiritual wiles, and conquers, and is tested by the confession of his own enemy, whether he be the same, the Son of God. To him, in exhortation of victorious constancy, angels ministered; he was betrayed with a kiss, was seized and suffered: and if unhappy faithlessness wishes to be proved that he was a true man, let it hear him crying from the cross before he died: God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me? For where there is humility and injury, understand the man: where there is virtue and divinity, believe the God, the Apostle thus teaching: God was in Christ reconciling the world to himself.

For behold, weak and subject, in the appointed place with the Apostles as he had foretold, rising on the third day scarcely to be believed he returned to the amazed, and with the jaws of hell broken, he appeared, about to establish his seat in heaven. Thanks to thee, Thomas, who alone of all believed more slowly, who, feeling the places of the nails and demanding the marks of the whole passion, in confessing insisted that it be proved to you, what was one day to be denied by the faithless. Surely they would more easily contend that he who they feign lived without a body had returned incorporeal, gathering from this the support of their former deceit, from the fact that he walked upon the sea with his feet, that he passed unhindered through closed doors, and that, received by a shining cloud, he ascended again to the paternal throne, about to come again.

Let them not be ignorant that Peter, at his bidding, walked upon the waves, and let them not be unaware that, his chains falling of themselves, he was released from the custody of the prison by an angel: and let them confess that Paul, to escape the envy of vanity, whether in the body or out of the body, yet under God's knowledge, went even to the third heaven: let them recall, finally, that Elijah was taken up in a fiery chariot, and that the prophets, watching him depart, saw him undertake a journey unheard-of for man. These men, now not believing such powers in the Son of God, while they abjure the sacrament of the true incarnation and dissemble the act, both refuse to allow the man to have what he deserved, and do not believe that God could do what he did.

APOLLONIUS.—The impiety of this sect has become plain, and the manifestly execrable persuasion, worthy of condemnation, although it was inspected at the beginning of the narration, has nevertheless been made clearer from its own particulars: it now follows that you set forth what perversity, from I know not what alien source, exists in the tradition of the others, or what defense each will offer, keeping to your manner; for a distinction ordered specifically will remove confusion from the understanding, while it becomes clearer by the light of expositions, that what is wrapped in the darkness of errors always flees the light of truth. ZACCHAEUS.—It was mentioned above that the Marcionites believe the Son of God according to his divinity, but deny him according to his humanity: the Photinians, on the contrary, say the Son of God exists from the time of his earthly nativity, but deny him before all ages.

Behold the truth in one comparison of contending faithlessnesses: at the same time neither confesses what is wholly true, and what is wholly true both together do not refuse. For the Son of God, born in the Word before the creation of all ages from the Father, is eternal from the eternal, true from the true. Nor can there be in him anything other than what is always in the Father, he himself teaching this in the Gospels: All things whatsoever the Father has are mine. And yet these are not claimed by him as if solely his own, but as common, such that in each they are full. And again: Abraham saw my day, and rejoiced. And, Before Abraham was, I am. Likewise it is said to the patriarch Jacob: Make an altar to that God who appeared to you when you fled from the face of your brother Esau. He again in the Gospel spoke thus to the Father: Glorify me, Father, with the glory which I had with thee before the world was made.

This is he who went before the people coming out of Egypt in the cloud. Him Isaiah testifies he saw with manifest sight. He, finally, when questioned by Joshua son of Nun in battle, declared that he would be the prince of the heavenly host: For no one has ever known the Father except the Son (as it is written), and he to whom the Son wills to reveal him. He always gave himself to human sight, because, marveling (thus) at the heavenly fellowship for our frailty, he was already meditating to be understood, in the man he was to become. Let these things then, said concerning the Marcionites, according to divinity, suffice.

Let the Photinian heresy in turn acknowledge his bodily nativity. The Lord said to the prophet Nathan: Go, say to my servant David: You shall not build me a temple, but I will raise up your seed after you, and establish his kingdom: he shall build a house for my name, and I will set up his throne forever, and I will be to him a father, and he shall be to me a son. Likewise in Genesis the patriarch Jacob had prophesied of him beforehand: Judah, your brothers shall praise you: your hands shall be upon the back of your enemies: the sons of your father shall bow down to you. Judah is a lion's whelp: from the shoot, my son, you have ascended: reclining you slept as a lion and as a lion's whelp: who shall rouse him up?

Perhaps it is not unknown that this is the nature of that most noble beast, that the lion cub is born as a complete bodily form without breath, and lying thus for two days receives the use of common life by the breathing of its parent: hence this comparison applied to the Savior's rising, he rightly added: Who shall rouse him up? None indeed but the Father. Judah, however, was not worshiped by his brothers: but because the Savior assumed a body from that same tribe, in the words of the prophetic blessing the Savior is in Judah, and believers are reckoned among the brothers; he himself thus testifying in the Gospels: These are my brothers, who do the will of my Father who is in heaven. Isaiah likewise says: Strengthen the feeble hands, and confirm the weak knees: our Lord repays judgment: he himself shall come and save us.

Then the eyes of the blind shall be opened, and the ears of the deaf shall hear: then the lame shall leap as a hart: and the tongue of the mute shall be plain.

Indeed we know this to have been done already in the Gospel: but we trust it will be done more fully in the resurrection, when renewed limbs shall be joined to dry bones, and after the dust of the bodies assumed we shall be clothed with the gifts of spiritual form; the Apostle thus teaching: This mortal must put on immortality, and this corruptible must put on incorruption. That we may be conformed to the form of the body of Christ, whom Jeremiah, foretelling that he would come in the body, says: And he is a man, and who shall know him? For it had not been necessary to speak of God with the addition of man, unless it were that man might likewise be shown in God. David, moreover, under the words of the Lord himself, says: The Lord said to me: You are my Son; this day have I begotten you.

Which testimony is confirmed in the Gospel by the twofold voice of the Father: first when he sent forth him baptized by John from the Jordan: second when, suffused on the mountain with the splendor of future glory, he sat between Moses and Elijah. These words then thundered from the same God the Father at both times concerning the same one: This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased: hear him. That is, no longer Moses, who then displayed the form of the law, or Elijah, who bore the figure of the Prophets; but hear this one, to whom both speech is given in power, and in virtue the law of grace. For thus Scripture had foretold of him: There shall arise for you the sun of justice, and healing in his wings. Paul also preaching says: But when the fullness of time came, God sent his Son, who was made for him according to the flesh.

John likewise says: Every spirit that confesses Christ to have come in the flesh is of God: but he who denies is not of God, but is antichrist.

You see, then, that the teachings of the Photinians and Marcionites can very easily be refuted; but the ancient serpent has bound minds imbued with deadly deceits in dire knots, so that they defend, by a certain presumption of constancy, the ruin of an inexplicable sect. Nevertheless, through the confession of each, the truth of manifest divinity shines forth, while the discordant malice of the contenders and the dull faithlessness of one side affirms the part denied by the other, since it has denied the part confessed by the other.

APOLLONIUS.—Plain also in these matters is the inspection of the separate exposition, and the undoubted perversity of each sect has laid bare the inventions of unhappy depravities. Let the order now proceed to the other heresies, and let the begun series run through the general spread of them all, so that the light of faith, brought in, may unfold, as it were, the bosoms hidden within the volumes of breasts like venomous serpents; not because such deserve to be recognized, but lest, while unknown, they creep more easily to the harm of doubting minds.

ZACCHAEUS.—I believe you retain what was noted in the preceding title, that by the Sabellians especially the Holy Spirit is denied, and is called, in the traditions of the impious, a gift rather than a giver; and that the authority for this evil is chiefly claimed from the sacred testimonies themselves, because it is read both to be given and to be received; the Savior thus speaking to the Apostles: And breathing on them he said: Receive the Holy Spirit. Some also of the disciples, questioned by Paul, Have you received the Holy Spirit? Said that they had neither received it, nor knew if it existed. The reasoning of these understandings is as follows. He is indeed given, not because he does not offer himself, but so that he may be shown to be within the one who bestows him: for as the Father is in the Son, and the Son in the Father, so the Holy Spirit is in both, and again both are conspicuous in him.

By this reasoning, therefore, he who is first given by the Savior is said to be coming after his ascension; and he whom he promises to send afterward from himself, he shows to be already in himself; and likewise, the same Lord, promising that after his coming and his own ascension he would be with us until the consummation of the world, says: And I will be, he says, with you even to the consummation of the world. And again: Unless I go, that Paraclete will not come. So connected and inseparable is the giving in the infusion that it proves undeniably, in the act of God, another person in expectation, while he who ascends to the Father is nonetheless with us, and he is rightly believed to have been given by the one about to ascend who is promised to be present.

For although the Apostles, before the Savior's ascension, had obtained the gift of the Holy Spirit, yet afterward they received its fullness in him, the book of Acts thus teaching: And suddenly there came from heaven a sound as of a mighty wind coming; and it filled the whole house where they were sitting: and there appeared to them divided tongues: and it sat like fire upon each of them. Indeed the Spirit is also manifest in speech, the same Scripture recalling: And the Spirit said to Philip: Go near to the eunuch's chariot. And again: Separate for me Paul and Barnabas for the work for which I have taken them. The Lord, moreover, in the Gospel commends reverence for the Holy Spirit with a threat, saying: Whoever shall blaspheme against the Holy Spirit, it shall not be forgiven him neither here nor in the world to come.

He sanctifies the hearts of the faithful, and forms and directs them to every perfection of heavenly grace, the Lord proclaiming: But when the Paraclete comes, whom I will send you from my Father, he shall guide you, and he shall convict the world concerning their sins. He is not, therefore, a gift, but the giver; not some donation, but the bestower of gifts: he is not sanctified, but himself sanctifies; never appearing among creatures, but always within the substance of the Trinity, the Apostle thus teaching: There are diversities of graces, but the same Spirit: and diversities of ministries, but the same Lord: and diversities of operations, but the same God. But all these things the one and the same Spirit works.

Now indeed it is exceedingly foolish to affirm that he is to be reckoned the same as an Angel or one of the supernal powers, since it is not possible for an Angel to be infused into many, whereas this is possible for him by virtue of his own divinity. That one, an Angel, holds only such a place as he is sent to or returns from by God: but he is so present in one place that he is likewise always everywhere, as the Psalmist says: Whither shall I go from thy Spirit. The same prophet thus shows Angels to have been made: Who makest, he says, thy Angels spirits, and thy ministers a burning fire. But that the Holy Spirit is God, Scripture clearly shows, saying: For God is Spirit. Free in his bestowals, simple in majesty, and agreeing in the will of the Father and the Son, not subordinate, the Apostle so testifying: The Spirit apportions to each as he wills.

He fills all things and is not diminished; he is received by all, and himself receives nothing; he tempers pious minds with holy governance, and is found needing nothing; in judgment he is just, prompt in his gift. For indeed the death of Ananias made known his justice; and Cornelius approved, not in vain, that God was believed even before Peter's invocation taught it: yet not these testimonies alone attest or prove his person subsisting in the Godhead.

The living likeness of the living God came in the form of a dove from the supernal seats of the heavens, and by him, that he might be the Redeemer of the world and be adored by the Angels, Christ also was anointed, as he himself recounts of Isaiah in the Gospels: The Spirit of God is upon me, because he hath anointed me Therefore by these testimonies, and by countless others besides, the ruinous error of the Sabellians is shown, who, specially refuting the Holy Spirit, contaminate with sacrilegious tradition the fulness of solid majesty; not perceiving that he is shown, as the need of our case requires, either in the Father or in the Son, or again, these same persons abiding in themselves: because although the whole salvation of our belief consists in believing and confessing one God as he is through all things, yet it cannot be absent from the faith that the Trinity is not without a third.

APOLL.—Different indeed from the aforementioned is the error and cause of the Sabellians; but, as I believe, the outcome of this perfidy is similar, and its recompense to be compared with the preceding ones; since they separate the Holy Spirit, abiding in the power and substance of God, from the unity of the Trinity, and, resisting all the Scriptures, attack the faith of the Trinity. But leaving these also numbered among the profane, let the perversity of the rest be refuted, lest they suppose that what has not been laid open by exposition is rather suppressed than merely left aside, and lest, if mention chance to be omitted when inquirers seek it, a certain spark of dying embers grow again into a fire—a matter which the authority of the Scriptures perhaps does not pass over in silence.

ZACCH.—I had forewarned at the beginning of the first inquiry that the fulness of ineffable majesty can in some measure be understood by faith, but cannot as is fitting be made plain in words; since the very distinctness of names and persons is brought about by the effective working of truth, not by a difference of substantial status: because, since even sense is unequal to the beholding of divinity, no one doubts that the substance of speech is much weaker than that of the mind. This difficulty then, arising from human weakness, is embraced by the authors of all errors. Among these the Patripassian has chosen for himself this portion of impiety: that because the Son is the firstborn from the Father, and the Holy Spirit proceeds from him, therefore the Father and the Word are the same, and it seems that flesh was assumed by him, and the passion too; and likewise the same also of the Holy Spirit.

Thus no author is proclaimed within the Trinity, but only a division of divinity is proclaimed to its own loss, unless the Trinity is believed to be brought back into communion: concerning which, as I have very often recalled, what cannot be grasped by sense should be reckoned rather ineffable than nonexistent. Now it is recognized in many ways that the injury of the passion is absent not only from the Father but also from the Word. For it was not the incorporeal divinity, but the body, that was fastened to the cross; and whatsoever the Son of God endured beneath the honor of heavenly power is reckoned not to the Word, but to the man assumed. And since sin was in the first man, how could the redemption announced to the human race for so many ages come to pass, unless the blood of a true man again had expiated it?

And though many testimonies have already taught of his death, yet lest the aforesaid heresy claim that nothing has been adduced against it, we shall take a few from the abundant multitude of examples. David then, under the words of the Lord himself, says: I became obedient unto death. And again: They laid me among the tombs like the dead of the age. And thirdly: I am become as a man without help, free among the dead. O inestimable power of God, and inscrutable wisdom of God! How is he, who a little before was like the dead of the age, now without help, free among the dead?

Unless because, as he himself had foretold: It behooved the Son of man to suffer and be crucified by the scribes and chief priests, and, having conquered death, to return from the dead on the third day; that for the accomplishment of our salvation he might receive dominion over the living and the dead alike, and that there might be established the example of the most exalted charity, that we ourselves might drink for him the cup of the passion, which he did not refuse to drink for all. Manifest, then, is the Trinity in persons and in names, but the divinity is one; nor do we accept the Patripassian union, but we embrace the catholic unity in God. From this interpretation, then, the aforementioned dissent, and they strive to impose false meanings upon hidden things, while they affirm that what is from the Father exists only in him, ascribing whatever is proper to the man specially to the injury of the divinity.

APOLL.—How I feared lest some stronger or more hidden evil should lurk within the secret bowels of that perfidy! For at the first face of your account I did not perceive the members of our faith to be so clear, and I attributed the obscurity, wrapped in the frauds of the guilty, rather to ignorance than to malice. So then the approved order of your teaching has mingled the author's mangled rage with ruin and dependency. Now disclose in like manner what the Arians assume against the truth of our belief; so that if they are shown to teach a wickedness either the same or more covert, they may be judged deservedly execrable, clinging to the flock of the aforesaid, if by crafty traditions they take away what by profession of title they do not refuse.

ZACCH.—I said before that the Arians hold the citadel of perfidy, and are to be thought guilty of greater ruin the more, by professing loftier things, they seem to put forward an entire faith while they refuse the integrity of the faith: for they call the Son of God not Creator, but creature, and say that he is superior to the rest only in this, that he was made first from God the Father, not begotten; and that he is subject to time because he was born. This impiety they confirm by the cunning of such a saying: There was, he says, when he was not. O savage malice of the impious! Could God at some time not have been? Or how is he begotten, if it be asserted that he was made also according to his divinity? For since it is proper to God alone always to have been, being born from him and within him, what else can he be than what the Father is?

Or how is that one a Father, if in the Word there is some assumption, not a true nativity? But if he is a true Father, the Son also is true; and if in nothing dissimilar, then indeed he is the certain image of his begetter. And this agrees in the prophet: My heart hath uttered a good word. And again: Before the day-star I begot thee. But to these they at once oppose those words which are uttered under the words of the Lord himself in the person of the man assumed: The Father, he says, is greater than I. And, I came not to do my own will, but the will of him that sent me, the Father. Finally they wrest to a deeper sense the words of Solomon: Wisdom, he says, was created before all things. And, The Lord created me in the beginning of his ways.

But if they do not consider these to have been foretold of the author of our redemption in foreknowledge, as I have said, and think that Solomon in the same Spirit meant something other than the rest, let them hear of the equality of substance and of one divinity, and know the Father and the Son, though not the same in persons and names, yet one in majesty: I, he says, and my Father are one. And again: Philip, so long a time am I with you, and have you not known me? He that sees me, sees the Father also. And thirdly: All things whatsoever the Father hath are mine; and what the Son wills, the Father also wills the same; and: As the Father worketh, the Son worketh also. Likewise he asks in turn to be glorified by the Father; but again he professes before men that the Father has been glorified by him. But by what means can he be enclosed within any extension of times, by whom the times themselves were created?

Or to whom is a beginning to be ascribed, through whom the beginnings of all things came forth? Behold, O Arian, the blind persuasion, and the sense of your whole impiety exceeding all bounds. Suppose that in your opinion it could transgress the beginnings of things, and bring prejudice upon the solid majesty. Is it not open madness to assign to God, to whom you owe all things, the name of an inferior substance, and, as it were, to define the immeasurable as though it were small? What, O wicked man, has he so greatly deserved in you: nay, what has he not granted you above the rest, when, forming you after all things, he indulged you thus, that you should return evil for good, that you should prefer to be tares rather than wheat? Made last of all creatures, through him you have been made superior to the things he made, whom you profanely strive to mix in with his own creation.

You, from the trodden clay, as he himself does not deny, in sense, in form and in power are the image and likeness of God; moreover you preside over the earth from which you were taken; you, the weaker, rule over the stronger, you enter the deep borne on slight timbers, and the elements serve, not rule, one made subject to you: for you the years change in gracious or useful courses, and the variety of things brings forth the ordered fruits of all the seeds: for you the birds of the air fall, and the creatures born in the waters are nourished and live.

I say nothing of the fact that, exempted from the general ruin, you are restored to the hope you had lost; that, stripped by yourself of the gift of immortality, through him you are again clothed as worthy from the beginning; and, as though this liberality were but a small thing, you shall besides ascend to heaven if you deserve it: and, no longer to be burdened by the weight of your matter, you shall be mingled with the choirs of Angels, and for so many ages, as a possessor of everlasting joy, you shall behold the invisible God. What more? If you keep the faith of catholic adoption, you shall remain forever an heir of God, and a joint-heir with Christ. But driven from these and such arguments, they nonetheless strive to cling to malicious understandings, taking up this from the Gospels, that he did not know the hour and day of his coming.

Grant them this, that the man assumed did not know beforehand until he received power over things earthly and heavenly, being received into the glory of God; but did the divinity of the Word also not know, or, since the Son is always in the Father, and the Father in the Son, will one know something while the other does not know it? And though it be by the will of the Father, will he yet be wholly ignorant of what he himself is to do? Since in the very reason of the Father's will there is not subjection but consent; David in the Spirit teaching thus under his very words: That I might do thy will, O my God, I have desired it. He is not, then, obedient as one subjected, but doing the Father's will in his own will: he is said to be sent, but so that another might be understood.

He also knows all things according to the man; and he foreknows future things in such a way that it is clear it was rather fitting for us not to know the day of the consummation, than that he was wholly ignorant of it. Finally, for this reason we too are kept in the dark about the end of our own life, that the anxiety of an uncertain outcome may make us more attentive to righteousness, and that, being prepared against every occasion of sin, we may more easily avoid death, if we daily fear the coming of death; for Scripture, generally foreseeing this, forewarned, saying: Fool, this night thy soul shall be required of thee: the things thou hast prepared, whose shall they be? Likewise the Apostles are forewarned, the Saviour saying: Pray without ceasing; for you know not when the Son of man shall come.

That is: Fear and uncertain expectation are more profitable for you, lest confidence undermine those who feel secure, and knowledge of future things deceive those who fear nothing; since it is more wholesome for you to dare while fearing, having cast away hope of long continuance, than to trust that what you believe cannot be corrected in time will be corrected in due course. Yet the whole perfidy of the heretics concerning both nativities of Christ is overthrown chiefly by two testimonies, John's Gospel thundering thus: In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. This was in the beginning with God. All things were made by him, and without him was made nothing. And again: And the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us: and we saw his glory, the glory as it were of the only-begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth.

You see, then, that no place is left to the Arians by which they might rightly dissent from the integrity of our faith: since the same Son of God is proclaimed as only-begotten before the ages, and now firstborn; possessing the truth of an earthly body, and not laying aside heavenly power, he embraced by both nativities what before he possessed only by his divinity.

APOLL.—The error and depravity of all the sects had indeed become clear already in the first exposition; but that it might shine forth more readily, the firmness of the subsequent teaching was necessarily added, and the method, running through each point, competently uncovered whatever the tradition of wicked interpretation had veiled. Wherefore now, that no instruction be lacking to the mind, disclose, I ask, what cause separates the Novatians from us, so that departing from Catholic belief, they not only form assemblies outside the Church, but, as I believe, even attack the faith of her from whose peace of unity they withdrew out of hatred.

ZACCH.—You rightly understand that unity of faith cannot belong to those who have abandoned the unity of the Church; for it does not matter how one departs, if he separates himself of his own will from her body, the Lord saying this in the Gospels: He who is not with me is against me, and he who does not gather with me scatters. For these were once with us, but were torn away by a certain author, Novatus; they are not, however, to be equated with heretics, because they dissent not from the catholic confession, but from charity, and withdraw from God's mercy—out of mere severity—those whom, once entangled in the snares of the enemy, they refuse to allow to be restored. They call themselves clean, and, to use their own word, Cathari, ever forgetful of the divine warning, in which the Spirit first says in Job: For who is clean from filth, not even if his life on earth be but one day?

Whence the Psalmist also, thinking similarly, says: In sins did my mother conceive me. And John in his Epistle: If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us. Thus they believe that those sins which have never been brought into confession, but can, as it were, lie hidden perpetually, are most cunningly suppressed and need not be punished by more severe judgments. But to those who confess, along with amendment of the present for past sins, God himself declares that not only is pardon not denied, but even the privilege of righteousness is bestowed, thus speaking through Isaiah, announcing these things to the converted: Declare thou thy iniquities first, that thou mayest be justified. Behold, along with pardon, a reward, and the recompense of a certain honor in simple confession: God promises the fruit of righteousness to him against whom Novatian pronounces harsh sentence; and he promises absolution with grace to him whom Novatian expels lest he be saved.

Yet these men had no lawful primacy of priesthood, nor was the highest see of the pontificate theirs, but discord, growing strong by stealth as in a kind of tyranny, follows the aforesaid author of schism, and, excluded from the fellowship of holy communion, they prefer to be handed over to Satan forever rather than be recalled by God through the exhortation of spiritual grace; refusing to accept the countless examples of Scripture, by which it is known, in unambiguous interpretation, both that the fallen ought to be urged on, and that those returning ought to be received, the Book of Psalms beginning thus: Blessed is the man who has not walked in the counsel of the ungodly, and has not stood in the way of sinners. Blessed, therefore, is he who did not so depart as to scorn returning, and, receiving the benefit of better counsel, wretchedly ceased from the ungodly, once he understood that correction was rather to be sought.

Likewise blessed is he who did not stand in the way of sinners—he, certainly, who, having entered into vices, did not remain in vices, the same teaching this in what follows, when, prefacing an excuse for the sins of inadvertence, conscious of our frailty, he set down: Who understands his faults? That is, it is easier to commit them than to know them. He adds in his prayers that he may be cleansed both from the sins of others and from his own hidden ones, confidently affirming that he will be spotless if those things do not master him in which he had formerly sinned. Behold, he is made pure even from the greatest fault who condemns in himself crimes never to return; and he glories in the honor of being spotless who has chosen to be what he once refused to be, while rejecting the enjoyment of what he had loved. A like sentence of God is found through Ezekiel, saying: Why will you die, O sons of men? Turn to me, and I will turn to you.

That is: The path you are pursuing is the way to hell, and true death lies in the despair of pardon: I am not one who begrudges the abolishing of crimes, I who so gently warn that they not even be committed, who unfold the inviolable form of my judgment in these words: I do not wish the death of him who is dying; let him only return and live. And: If the wicked man turn himself from his iniquities which he has committed, and keep all my commandments, and do justice and judgment, he shall surely live and shall not die. None of his transgressions which he has committed shall be remembered. Yet Novatian not only forbids that this gift of God and this most worthy decree of holy remission be restored in the abolishing of sin, but stubbornly refuses to let it pertain to pardon at all.

Lest indeed he wholly depart from these and similar teachings, dismissing only the lightest and few offenses, he rejects, in whatever correction, the force of manifest indulgence: though the Savior in the Gospels recalls that all things are cleansed through almsgiving, and, just as water quenches fire, so almsgiving quenches sin. In the end, having left the whole flock, the shepherd seeks the one sheep of the faith, and, having found it, lays it upon his shoulders, setting greater joy in its recovery, once lost, than he had in those that were safe. The Apostle, moreover, says that the Galatians were being formed again in him after the manner of birth, whom, their vices reviving, he had in vain first brought forth in the regeneration of the mind. Whence also Peter and James, the Lord's brother, affirm that a multitude of sins is atoned for by a work of charity accomplished, protesting in similar words: Charity, he says, covers a multitude of sins.

Thus, having plainly examined these things, you understand that the Novatians, blinded by fierce obstinacy, wish to satisfy their own malice rather than the will of God; while toward their neighbors, and after compunction for past deeds—men who are perhaps even better than those who judge them—they both condemn what has been confessed, and do not absolve what has been expiated; things which both can be forgiven, and ought not to be concealed.

APOLL.—It is a manifest and evident principle, not, I would say, of God, with whom is the sum of mercy, but even in the judgment of just men, that they are not to be led as beyond remedy who, having trampled underfoot the depravity of their vices, betake themselves to better things, and who, having formerly been careless either through the ignorance of youth or occupied by the errors of various mischances, seek again the path of faith, and, having cast off the enticement of the flesh which they had formerly preferred, wash away by acts of a heavenly manner of life whatever they had before polluted through love of earthly things.

But perhaps these things are granted only before the pouring of baptism, and the Novatians have some authority by which they contend that those defiled after the spiritual washing cannot be cleansed, and affirm that the inviolable gift of the Holy Spirit can be given by men once, but, once lost, cannot be restored: their assertion being supported perhaps from without by this, that a place for repentance is not denied by them, but pardon must be hoped for from God; and satisfaction must be rendered for deeds done, not reckoned as merits. What, then, ought to be replied or urged against those persisting in such a position, unfold in your accustomed manner of exposition: so that by occasion of our discourse both correction may be urged upon the wicked, and pardon upon the afflicted; while, by the very obstinacy of the irreligious, whatever ground of hope is proven for those in despair may be laid open.

ZACCH.—It is indeed more blessed to keep undefiled the gifts of spiritual grace, and to carry forward, incorrupt, the gift of heavenly indulgence to the coming judgment, David teaching this fully: Blessed are the undefiled in the way. The Apostle likewise says: That we may be able, brethren, to keep whole both soul and body and spirit unto the day of our Lord Jesus Christ. But some are led to the slippery path of sin by the ignorance of incautious youth, others by the fervor of earthly enticement; David in the Spirit speaking these words under the guise of his own excuse: Remember not, O Lord, the sins of my youth, and my ignorances. For it is indeed the plea of just prayers that a form of remission be reckoned for deeds done in weaker years, and that wrongs committed be forgiven by the privilege of age; because in this same testimony no idle history is related through the prophet, but rather the ready proneness of that age to fall is indicated.

Lest, in this stage of years, the Novatians should think they hold some special ground, let them hear Solomon proclaiming similar things without exception of times: Who shall boast that he has a clean heart, and that he is pure from sin? Excluded, then, is the vanity of silent falsehood: however pure he may appear to human eyes, he is not therefore not guilty, because he is defiled before his own conscience and before God. This weakness of our frailty, then, divine goodness has permitted to be cleansed by a threefold degree of indulgence, granting first all things through baptism; afterward covering intervening sins through penance; and determining that none at all shall be reckoned, if the fervor of martyrdom absolve one entirely from every stain of the body, the Psalmist saying: Blessed are they whose iniquities are forgiven, and whose sins are covered. Blessed is the man to whom the Lord will not impute sin.

All sins, then, are remitted in baptism, since only those things contracted afterward are charged to account: they are covered in penance, which, if repeated, revive again. But in martyrdom none can be imputed, because they are blotted out first by the precious shedding of blood, and do not recur to the prejudice of the body happily extinguished. But however much supported by penance, they will deny that it is within their own power to forgive grave sins, though they know equally that it belongs to their office and profession either to bind what is harsh, or to release what has been atoned for; the sentence of the Savior teaching this to Peter, in whose person the power of all priests is united: Whatsoever you shall bind on earth shall be bound also in heaven; and whatsoever you shall loose on earth shall be loosed also in heaven.

It is permitted, then, that sins be forgiven without exception, provided only that, once sent into oblivion, they do not return; nor, as it is written, let the dog return to the horror of its own vomit, nor let the sow, once washed by pious labors from filth, long to be plunged again in the mire, destined to suffer more danger after the remedies than it had endured in falling into the beginnings of evil, the Lord thus warning in the Gospels: Behold, thou art made whole; sin no more, lest something worse befall thee. Do not doubt: God always weighs the present, not the past; for he says this: In whatever way I find thee, in that I will judge thee, says the Lord.

But if after baptism, that is, after the reception of the Holy Spirit, there is no place for the renewal of grace to us; how is it that Aaron, already indeed a priest, being freed from a grave offense, recovered the rank of pontificate he had lost, and how did Miriam, after the infusion of leprosy, deserve to be cleansed from heaven, she who had been set apart lest she should defile anyone? For in the camp the congregation of the spiritual Church is signified; but leprosy is shown as the figure of mortal sin. Why does the patriarch David, needing expiation for a double bloodshed, ask that the Spirit of his former grace be renewed in him, promising God with evident confidence that the conversion of the wicked will be called forth by the example of his own pardon: and further, having prayed that the abundance of speech be granted him in the praises of God, he obtained the authority of preaching, saying: Thou shalt open my lips, and my mouth shall declare thy praise.

But to the sinner God said: Why dost thou declare my justices, and take my covenant in thy mouth? Unless perhaps they contend that there was another Spirit in the prophets than the one we now receive, or that there was none at all, and they set up a God more severe under the grace of the Gospels than under the Law; who will confess that Peter, that is, the very foundation of the Church, although he did not remain in his crime, was nonetheless in crime; and let them understand that, remembering the Lord's warning, he washed away not the guilt of unfaithfulness but of weakness with the bitterness of tears. Likewise the return of that prodigal in the Gospel, his spiritual substance consumed, and confessing that he had sinned against heaven, is not refused as defiled, nor rejected as prodigal, but is received with the embraces falling upon his neck, that is, with catholic peace, of the father; who indeed could not have been a son at all unless first through the adoption of baptism.

He also rejoiced in the array of the great banquet, that is, he was endowed with the honor of divine communion; receiving faith in the ring, the garment of grace in the robe: moreover he is fed with the flesh of the calf, that is, he is made a partaker of the sacred body by the assumption of eternal inheritance; having obtained the full ornaments of Apostolic dignity.

Finally, the Savior indicates that even blasphemy, which surpasses all other crimes, can be forgiven, and does not refuse that sins committed against himself be blotted out, if by the labor of true conversion we merit that, under his precept, heaven consent with the judgment of the priests; by which confidence in the Savior's decree, the Teacher invites those who are cleansed of their vices through faith not only to pardon but to the honor of the nations, saying: But if a man shall have cleansed himself from these, he shall be a vessel sanctified unto honor, profitable to the Lord, prepared unto every good work. Therefore, as in the unity of the Godhead there is Trinity, so in the one name of baptism there is a threefold cleansing; the Lord speaking thus to the Apostles: I have yet, he says, to be baptized with a baptism which you know not.

Yet, intending to leave to all an example of this degree, he himself, acting in the flesh, went through it. In the Jordan he was baptized; he endured the semblance of penance in the desert: but that which belonged to the highest purification, he fulfilled in his passion.

Whence you perceive that the Novatians, living under every occasion of sin, most foolishly refuse against themselves what they understand God to have granted on their behalf; and that the Church alone, as in faith, so also in piety nearest to God, is deservedly called queen above the vile herd of concubines, since she, holding the place of the right hand, condemns from on high the children of the left; delivering the whole faith to those who come to her, and not barring the way to those who desire to return to her; while she both preaches the manifest divinity to the faithful, and prefers, by the hope of readier pardon, to call back the perishing, rather than to confound with despair those who might perhaps be corrected.

APOLL.—It is plain that the Novatians foolishly refuse to pardon sins, and, forgetful of their own frailty, rejoice more in the condemnation of the fallen than in the amendment of the converted: but unless manifold expostulation breeds weariness, add this one further firmness to the completion of the work, that, embracing the whole body of belief, you may enumerate the summits of the divine mysteries, and set down to be committed to memory those things which you have delivered to the understanding of everlasting hope, so that, the word being enclosed in few perceptions, frequent confession may be able to recall what faithful insinuation has fitted into the form of catholic brevity.

ZACCH.—Indeed the reasoning already run through in each several case might have sufficed, and the text of all the interpretations shining clear: but lest any scruple arise from variety of meanings, lest any ambiguity be stirred up from the plurality of the responses; holding fast the sacred order of the whole faith, you will always recall these things. There is one God the Father, who has always had this as His own peculiar property, that He is Father, receiving nothing but bringing forth all things from Himself; unchangeable, invisible, inestimable, eternal.

There is also the Son, distinct from the Father in name and person, not in substance, of full majesty as the begetter, likewise perfect and everlasting; nor is He to be believed, according to the opinions of the faithless, to be from time because He was born; but abiding with the Father before the ages, He was shown to us, in time, as the assumed Savior; He is now to be believed and confessed one and the same, and to remain so; since His manifest divinity does not admit that He was ever not; nor again does the assumption of true flesh suffer that, the creation of the Holy Spirit ceasing, He should not be believed to have been born of the Virgin.

There is also the Holy Spirit, likewise from the Father as from the Son, to be reckoned other only in person and name, not in majesty or substance; not begotten as the Son, but proceeding from the Father, of the same power, divinity, honor, and will alike, always doing the same thing that the Father and the Son do, and furnishing the same: the shaper of wisdom, the giver of faith, the bestower of gifts, the granter of sanctification, the remitter of sins, the divider of graces, ever mingled with the Father and the Son in every goodness of works; never at any time created, but ever creating. It is fitting that this One be believed and confessed, adored, worshipped, and feared perpetually; and to be loved with such purity of heart, that, as He Himself is always in the Father and in the Son, so in Him may be believed the fullness of the Father and the Son.

You have the true and simple account of the meanings sought, and the affection of a brief response befitting knowledge: it remains, as you recall was said at the beginning, that as a diligent reader you keep watch over the fuller volumes of the elders, and, content in this matter with brevity alone, you may glory in the knowledge of a loftier doctrine: believe that we have answered rather to your private will than for public publication. And indeed the immensity of heavenly secrets restrains us from proceeding further, and the greatness of the ineffable majesty forbids senses blunted by their own weakness; and now, the hours declining toward their setting, a shadow neighboring to darkness spreads abroad, and it is fitting that minds attentive through frequent interpretation both be refreshed and be released.

But do you, guarding these things with the whole labor of mind and body, never abandon the faith, never abandon the confession: lest, while pursuing things unlawful, you exceed things lawful; and, desiring impossible things, be stripped of things salutary, God thus forewarning: Seek not the things that are too high for thee, and search not into things above thy ability. That is, whatever has not been revealed to you concerning heavenly or infernal things by His own law, do not at all listen to or believe; since the devil, unable to deceive by vices of the flesh those whom he cannot so deceive, undermines them by such zeal and vanity; and, setting up arbiters of hidden knowledge, forces them to seek stone under stone, that they may find the serpent.

Therefore let it suffice to adhere to canonical doctrines, and, for one inquiring into the knowledge of divine histories, to be ignorant of nothing but what is written, and with the utmost diligence continually to remember Christ the Lord crucified, and to be founded, who will come in judgment upon risen bodies, and will reign forever with the elect. These things you will believe with confidence, these things to come you will profess, so that, gathered into the assemblies of the saints, you may both be granted and enjoy the most gracious honor of eternal life. Thus, amid the surrounding storms of sins and the tides of a collapsing age, keeping the rule of justice, you may deserve, especially by integrity of faith, those things which are to remain forever after the age.

APOLL.—Great indeed is the publication of the former book, and clear understandings have taught the sense and faith of the matters; but no less is to be ascribed to the usefulness of the present than to the grace of the preceding: because although, as you yourself have professed, you have run through matters treated by many, yet brevity has brought a benefit which the eloquence of prolix discourses rarely earns; and the fruit is not small. First, to know by clear exposition the divinity of the threefold unity, then the fall of the Jews in their faithlessness, and the ruin of every impiety in the heretics; then finally, convicted in your folly, O Novatian, you have learned, by manifest testimonies of the Scriptures, how much you detract from yourself out of God's indulgence.

Moreover a brief conclusion of the faith has been added, and all these things have so settled upon the heart, that it is my desire to continue in these second matters, to consummate my longing in these: only let this unbegotten Creator of all things, through Him whom He begot from Himself and within Himself as God, and who now, embracing the flower of the assumed body dwelling and to remain in both nativities, hear us likewise through the Holy Spirit about to fulfill; and not refuse to bestow, by the effect of foster prayer, what He has granted the will for; and may He, gentle, guard and direct the servant crawling with small steps among His precepts, confessing the Trinity in persons and names, God in majesty and substance; yet He will requite both by the benefits of His mercy, if both by living I fulfill His will, and represent, by the joys of the future resurrection, the faith preserved by the traditions of the fathers.

Now framing this third little book, we shall speak of the form of catholic conversation, by which we wish to instruct others, not by which we wish ourselves to be exalted: this, with the degrees of observance arranged, will show what can be or is wont to be accomplished by man, according to divine sentences, tempering the sum in such a way for the small and the middling that it in no wise detracts from the humbler what it is about to confer upon the more capable; but as the Apostle says: Let each one, claiming faith for himself, keep it to himself, and let not him who judges glory in anyone in the Lord: being sure to keep more cautiously in his own case what he judged more gravely in another's.

Devoting our zeal for a little while to this work, then, we shall exercise the accustomed persons under fitting disputation; and, the disciple having been instructed by the teacher he has come to know, we shall summon him by the honor of an arduous profession to undertake the manner of a stricter discipline, and, the acts of approved monks being set forth, to introduce mention of the future consummation: for one briefly examining which the obscurity concerning Antichrist will be resolved; so that, these things having been gone through in particular, the final faith of the resurrection may lie open, which, though long since well believed and received, will yet be confirmed, expressed in simple words, by the divine promise.

First, therefore, as in the other books, Apollonius, reporting the extended spaces of the conversation, will as it were resume, after adjournment, the doctrine supported by authority and affability, so that, surveying the members of the aforesaid order, he may desire more strictly to serve justice, and, devoting the remainder of his life to God, may not refuse also to die for His name, since, weighing the tenor in each several matter, he knows what it befits a man to will, what to dare: because it is little firm to entrust everything to confidence alone, and it is nothing meriting to be subject in all things to weakness.

APOLLONIUS.—If it has been fittingly compared, O Zacchaeus, that what we often find in dumb animals, we should also observe in the senses of certain men; assuredly this, coming specially upon me, has confirmed the meaning of the old saying: for just as other animals always return to those places where at some time they have fed well, nor, enticed by more abundant pastures, can they forget what they perceived while fasting: so we, after the hunger of the word and, as I now understand, the thirst of doctrine, eagerly seek your conversations, and cling with confidence to discourses already tried; from which, namely, we have received the foods of heavenly knowledge, and the draughts of divine understanding.

For behold, scarcely yet free from the vast errors of paganism, now breathing the newness of infused regeneration, we already know, by your handing on, the integrity of the faith, and, tearing apart all the members of the heretics, we embrace the gift of catholic confession, and, trusting in God as author, we possess the coverings of a house built upon the rock; if the same Bestower of all good things grant it, we shall behold from the watchtower of the evangelical tower the doings of earthly conversation and the blind vanities of the age. But however good it may be, first, to know one's own Creator as He is, and however sure the foundations of true salvation lie in the reception of faith; yet the ordering of belief is one thing, and that of life another: and although the wave of the torrents of wickedness, striking against it, does not undermine the solid mass of the spiritual edifice; yet the metals of justice do not adorn it, if no works of virtue lend it support.

Wherefore, since from such pursuits we have ceased for a time past, not in mind, restore to us, as you recall, the discourses postponed after our rest with fresh minds; and, being consulted, set forth what form of living it especially befits us to enter upon: so that, while you salutarily urge spiritual indulgence, you may finally establish these things from the Scriptures decreed, which, while holding the faith, do not omit the grace of works of virtue.

ZACCHAEUS.—I remember our conference was suspended some time ago at the day's end, and, the causes of inquiry increasing, time rather than zeal was lacking; wherefore now we yield to you on this condition, that, seeking from us the form of living, you receive a fitting degree of knowledge—not that we may glory in ourselves, but because we wish, from God, to profit others: in which, however, it is not an absurd forewarning to fortify one's undertakings with safe beginnings, and, for desires abiding in observance, always to strive toward the ascent to better things. For the Lord says in the Gospel: No one, He says, about to build a tower, does not first sit down and reckon the cost. Lest, the work interrupted, things too incautiously begun be mocked, and what had before been the object of vows become hateful.

Such is the case of those about to attack enemies: it teaches the combatants to know beforehand their own strength, and, having weighed the might of the opposing line, either to enter a treaty or to give battle, lest a late complaint of weakness compel one to turn one's back to the pursuer, and, after the repentance of a headlong deed, one be forced to undergo, in a changed place, either a mournful or a shameful condition.

Therefore the first way, and one without distinction, is to believe firmly in God, and when you have believed well, to fear the more; and beyond this, as we have often said, to love with the whole heart the One who is feared: not because He is equally able to do good and evil, but because He prefers rather to bestow good things, and never takes vengeance for our fault as we deserve. The consequent good is the purity of a simple life, and, with crimes held in hatred, zeal for charity toward one's neighbors. For thus it is written: You shall love the Lord your God with your whole heart, and with your whole soul, and with all your strength; and your neighbor as yourself. In this passage mention is not made of nearness alone, but he is rightly called a neighbor who, overwhelmed by misfortunes, is helped, and, comforted by adoptive compassion, renders to God with an affection of thanksgiving what he does not have by kinship of race.

Whence comes that saying of Solomon: Shut up alms in the heart of the poor man, and it shall entreat for you against every evil. And again: He who has mercy on the poor lends to God. David likewise: I was young, and now am old, and I have not seen the just forsaken, nor his seed seeking bread. All the day he is merciful and lends, and his seed shall be in blessing. Job similarly says: I delivered the poor man from the hand of the powerful, and I helped the fatherless who had no helper. The mouth of the widow blessed me always, when I was an eye to the blind, and a foot to the lame, and a father to the weak. And the Lord in the Gospel taught that He is comforted in the persons of the humble, saying: Amen I say to you, what you have done to one of the least, you have done to me.

The Apostle also says: He who sows sparingly shall also reap sparingly; and he who sows in blessings shall also reap of blessings. But let each one do according as he has purposed in his heart, not as it were of sadness or of necessity; for God loves a cheerful giver. Moreover, the Spirit through Isaiah declares that the whole work of mercy is profitable, saying: Loose every bond of injustice, undo the chokings of forced dealings, let the broken go free, and scatter every unjust engagement. Break your bread for the hungry, and bring the needy who has no roof into your house. If you see one naked, clothe him, and do not despise the members of your own household. Then your light shall break forth as the morning, and your garments shall speedily arise, and your justice shall go before you, and the glory of God shall surround you. Then you shall call, and I will hear you; while you are yet speaking I will say, Behold, here I am.

Therefore substance acquired without frauds, if so possessed, is acceptable; and it is not moderate wealth but the greed for riches that is the cause of sin, the Lord Himself protesting: Woe to you rich, who have your consolation. And again: With difficulty shall they who have riches enter into the kingdom of heaven.

Honorable marriages, however, do not displease God, and the modest love of the solemn marriage-bed for the procreation of children is approved, Scripture saying: For this cause a man shall leave his father and his mother, and shall cleave to his wife; and the two shall be in one flesh. And again: What God has joined, let no man put asunder. And according to the Apostle: All food that is sold in the shambles is without fault; since, as the same Apostle says: The kingdom of God is not food and drink, but justice and peace in the Holy Spirit. Yet excess in the use of either is pernicious, the Lord thus warning: Take heed that your hearts be not weighed down with wine and surfeiting. This too Solomon had already foretold: To whom is woe, to whom are bloodshot eyes? Is it not to those who tarry over wine, and go about seeking where banquets are made? Whence the Apostle gives precepts to Timothy about taking wine on account of infirmity, but in moderation.

He says this also elsewhere: Let no one deceive you; drunkards shall not possess the kingdom of God. In this manner of life, then, and in the discipline of a sober way of living, let the mind be ready toward God; and let frequent fasts and constant prayers in supplication either merit or produce righteousness, so that, taken up in the sentence of the Gospel, one so living may be accompanied and protected by: Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace to men of good will. These things suffice for the moderate, if the fervor of the exalted be lacking.

That the promises of everlasting life are granted to such, the authority of all the Scriptures declares: so that if among those most brilliant stars of the coming kingdom exceeding splendor does not raise up the lowly, their faults do not overwhelm them, and the diversity of mansions, as He Himself recalls, with the Father, gives consolation; and that final edict of the exhorting Lord comes to help: All who have believed in me shall not be confounded. That is, that no force may separate from Christ those whom pure faith has once bound to Him, and that they may be saved by the integrity of the saving sign, who reject those things which, on account of toil, are difficult or impossible, or who have feared to undertake them because they are arduous and great.

APOLLONIUS.—The truth of this teaching is plain, and its counsel is this: that loving God above all affections, even if we cannot grasp the highest things, we should nonetheless in no way fall short even of the moderate ones; and if the honor and splendor of the exalted does not come, the eternal sentence should not condemn the humble. But it is truly the mark of a sluggish or diffident soul, and one hoping nothing exceptional from God's munificence, for a man to whom the highest things have been proposed to grow torpid in small matters, and to value the convenience of this life so highly that he disregards the kingdoms of inestimable ages, or, despised by a certain condition of the common crowd, to mourn too late that he did not seek what he can no longer merit once his life's course is spent.

Therefore be pleased to teach us, from the sacred sayings, what manner of life and what higher rationale of a loftier purpose there should be for us, since labor does not so despise the weak that it offers no encouragement through confidence in the divine call, even in those matters which, as you yourself said, are proclaimed as though impossible, and where merit is not bound by time, and the act is perhaps lighter than is believed.

ZACCHAEUS.—Narrow indeed and arduous is the way that leads to life; but since all things are possible to believers, insofar as the reason of our frailty allows, the summits of divine gifts must always be sought under the invocation of God; especially since the Lord, in our own body, doing absolutely nothing that man cannot accomplish, has enjoined, saying to the Apostles: Behold, I have left you an example, that you should follow it. That is: let the excuse of impossibility be set aside; I teach that you are able to do the things which I myself did not refuse to do. Wherefore, If you would be perfect (as the same Lord said to the young man who consulted Him), go, sell all your goods, and give to the poor; and come, follow me. That is: forgetting and rejecting earthly things, desire heavenly things; and, as He Himself adds, saying, You shall abound in the riches of spiritual wealth.

For such is the cause of voluntary poverty before God, that having become poor for a time, you may remain rich forever, and, despising the fleeting dignity or pleasure of the world for love of Him, you may obtain and possess heavenly delights. Therefore the unbreakable chains of this world must be broken, and certain burdens of goods and estates must be cast off, so that, desiring to come to our Redeemer, we may be pressed by no necessities of sin: for even though, along with the very will to sin, necessity is absent, the occasion is nonetheless always to be feared, and fault sometimes creeps in under seemingly honorable acts; the Gospel itself testifying to this truth: Whoever does not renounce all that he possesses, and take up his cross, and follow me, cannot be my disciple. Therefore we must strive that we may first be His disciples, and afterward be able to be His friends.

For the condition of servitude ceases, if spiritual merit succeeds to it, He Himself saying: If you do what I command you, behold, I will no longer call you servants, but friends. There, labor is pleasant to those living thus, and for the sake of such hope, injury outweighs all delights, gentle humility, patient contempt, scanty food, and poor clothing; and with the flesh subdued under the empire of the spirit, the oblique pursuits of vices are to be unlearned: to conquer anger, to owe nothing to envy, to cultivate its opposite gentleness, to detest arrogance, to reject the vanity of human glory, and to restrain the tongue, that most savage evil, from detraction; so that thus, with the trappings of the old man stripped away, that saying of the Apostle may not be quoted in vain: As we have borne the image of the earthly, let us also bear the image of the heavenly; and let us be imitators of Him, as he was of Christ, confidently claiming: But our conversation is in heaven.

And, The Lord is my portion. When we are always intent on these things, we admit neither by sight nor by hearing anything by which sin is wont to be either committed or contemplated to be committed.

APOLLONIUS.—The wishes of this question have been sufficiently answered, and the merits of true perfection have become so evident that a certain fervor of desiring to experience it has crept into my soul, and it has separated the use of the present life from all occasions of sin.

Tell me, then, what sort of congregation or sect of monks there now is, or for what reason they are held worthy even of the hatred of our own people: for surely, if they pursue honorable things, and do not dissent from the unity of the faith, they ought rather to be imitated than avoided, because, as I judge, it is a crime and sin before God of the same kind to hate the good as it is not to avoid the wicked; since it cannot in any way happen that one who loves the wicked would rather be good; or again, that one is not driven by the goads of malice who, however much he displays the appearance of goodness, is in truth that very thing which he undeservedly execrates in others.

ZACCHAEUS.—You weigh this proposal with just estimation, that those who pursue such a life ought not to be hateful to the faithful, lest, by an uncertain judgment of the mind, offense be taken against the good on account of the wicked; and as it is written: They who hate the just shall offend. Woe to those who call evil good. For manifold is the form of this observance, and under one name of purpose there are diverse kinds of monks: but such is the case of all, as you know it to be in every order, that on account of the variety of morals there is also a diversity of wills: whence the profession itself is irreproachable and holy; but certain persons, under the veil of this way of life, commit deeds worthy of hatred, and although they are charged with dissimilar guilt, they all generally depart from their profession.

For those among the erring whose soul is more utterly lost feign abstinence and continence for a time, and at first creep in by pursuits of slippery familiarity, and, mocking the little women they have ensnared with vain pretenses, entice them into the service of wretched lust: while they either gape after gifts, and seek foul gains of avarice, or overcome their subjects by deceit, and lead them away from their resolve of devoted chastity. Others, however, begin faithfully, and strive to serve justice with an ardent purpose; then, having undertaken it too rashly, they do not persevere, and give up what they began, or indeed are softened by the persuasions of those who envy them or who shrink from attempting it themselves, and depart from the rigor of their institute; then, grown accustomed to a laxer way, they return to every allurement of the body, and, making their first faith void, praise the order of common life, so as to accuse the conduct of the harder purpose.

From this you understand that the integrity of enduring effort is not to be condemned on account of these and those like them, nor is the glory and reverence of those who sublimely complete their most holy labor to be diminished; since, as has been said, it is the person rather than the order that gives offense, nor can it rightly be despised on account of some, what is magnanimously kept by many. But these truly follow the manner of this profession, who, as has already been said, having entirely cut off the bonds of the world, occupy themselves in the exercise of the law, and, awaiting the promises in full, strive to fulfill the precepts in full: but among these too there is no small difference of observance; and although it is dear to all to merit the glory of things to come, some nevertheless strive for the highest, others for the middling.

Some also, content with a small degree of observance, as it were in the last rank of this sect, only live celibate lives, either never having experienced marriage and rejecting it, or, warned by the memory of those lost, avoid second marriages if they had a first: since it commonly happens to those not on guard that either they do not find in a second marriage what they lost in the first, or again they suffer in what follows what they lacked in the one that is gone. These, I say, take part in the affairs of common life, and do not seek out solitude, retaining the custom of this life; so that even if they can be free from sins, they nonetheless lie open to the occasion of sins; since, with the law of the body pulling in the other direction, it is more difficult to accomplish great things for those who can see evils while not wishing to.

Their dress is neither dishonorable nor mean; and either it is the same food and drink common to all, or rarely abstinent and cut back in few things. Likewise they do not burn with vigor of psalm-singing, nor do they break their nightly rest with any vigils; they contribute to the want of the poor not a lavish but a manageable sum: their faith is warm, but not fervent; and their mind is religious, but not wholly devoted to religion. This custom, however, belongs to the better sort: they dwell first in more remote places, even if they live in cities, and they do not display the very order of their way of life boastfully, but consider it a matter of sin to wish to suppress it in the face of the exhortations of others.

For these there is one common place of assembling, but a differing manner of remaining; humble clothing, and food that is not pleasing; nor does it matter from what liquid especially they are quenched, or with how cheap a drink one is satisfied, so long as it keeps away the pleasure of drinking, and excludes from the body the force of necessity. But their zeal for psalm-singing is frequent and intent, and devotion for praising God is distributed at fixed changes of the hours: a continual labor of fasting lasting until evening, and the daily work is carried on according to one's skill; and what is proper to each is not his own, and what is lacking is held in common. Therefore sluggishness is execrable to all, and sustenance not earned by labor is unfitting. Likewise mats are spread for beds, and the body, permitted to sleep, is covered with small coverings; indeed even fixed times for supplication are set in the night, and known vigils.

Moreover they are never caught unaware by the coming of day, but the hour of dawn always rouses them zealously singing psalms, and morning devotion compels the offering of praises to God. Now those for whom the first degree of observance is set inhabit alone the desert and squalid places of the wilderness, and being called by their true name, pass a solitary life, or dwelling in underground caves hollowed out of rock, tempering themselves from sun and rain, they feed on stale bread without any addition of foods, taking pure drink from springs: their clothing is either of skins or of haircloth, and the whole use of their life is spent in the struggle of mind and body. Now indeed unceasing prayers to God, and supplication, take the place of sacrifice; or if ever there is a cessation from prayer, divine praise is sung by way of psalmody, and the alacrity of the mind is kindled by the exercise of religious joy.

Moreover there is present a warlike host of demons, and a victorious constancy often engages with the wiles of unclean spirits. A continual persistence in fasting, and sleepless nights, and their little bodies lie down either without supports on the ground, or are hardened for a little while cast upon stone, so that sleep may seem not to be driven away by an injurious brevity, but repelled. Such is the diversity of monks, and such is the heavenly discipline on earth of those living spiritually in this manner. But for the name of God, death is a votive thing to all of them, and the holy departure is a desirable pomp, since no injury in this age is repaid for it; a thing which is to be rewarded with sublime honor, and is to remain without any change through the ages.

APOLL.—Great indeed is the praise of such virtues, and glorious is the servitude of those who serve the will or the praises of God; since by studies of this kind both the pernicious blandishments of this life are avoided, and the rewards of everlasting beatitude are sought after. Yet show, in order, from the beginning of the instruction undertaken, that the several things which you have mentioned above as being done by faithful monks flow from a precept of God admonishing them: for without doubt it is clear that these things are of uncertain weight, if they have not been undertaken by the authority of him by whom they are also believed to be rewarded.

ZACCH.—The special reason for monks to seek out secret places is, first, that they might avoid, as has already been said, even the occasion of sin, and that for those whose will is right in purpose, the act cannot be otherwise; and likewise, that, being about to take up war against the world, they might be broken by no allurement of the world; for fervent faith in the spirit is hostile to the things of the world, as John proclaims in his Epistle, saying: Love not the world, neither the things that are in the world. If any man love the world, the love of the Father is not in him; for all that is in the world is the lust of the flesh, and the lust of the eyes, and the ambition of the world. James likewise: Know ye not, brethren, that the friendship of this world is enmity with God? Whosoever therefore will be a friend of this world becometh an enemy of God.

That humility of clothing, moreover, and the continual labor of fasting is acceptable to God, David specially indicates, saying: I, when they troubled me, was clothed with sackcloth: and I humbled my soul with fasting. And again: I made sackcloth my garment. And: I did mingle my bread with ashes, and tempered my drink with weeping. And the Lord, proclaiming the manner of John, says: What went ye out into the desert to see? A man clothed in soft garments? Behold, they that are clothed in soft garments are in the houses of kings. Thereby he indicates that a refined garment belongs where there is also an abundant use of pleasures: for his clothing was of camel's hair, that is, lacking even the softness of wool. Likewise he was girt with a girdle of skin; and drinking neither wine nor strong drink, he ate locusts and wild honey: not seeking supplies of an elegant and more prepared banquet, he used only that which would neither bring luxury nor beget expense to his chosen way of life.

Whence to Elijah, about to undertake a great journey at God's command, only water and cheap bread are set by the Angel. Daniel, indeed, that he might obtain the fulfillment of his desires, does not partake of drink or food. The Lord Himself, moreover, in fasting and humility conquers the devil, as the Apostle says: He emptied Himself, taking the form of a servant, that we might be made rich by His poverty, and be saved from injury. Yet when He wished to govern the Church gathered in the same way from the Gentiles, He also preached abstinence in these words: It is good neither to eat flesh, nor to drink wine, wherein is luxury.

That is, that the humbled mind may think more upon God, and remove the flesh, made subject, alike from excess and expense, by which indeed we are occupied in seeking, and troubled in spending: whereas if we are rather intent upon the kingdom of God, that saying is not lacking as regards the provision of necessities, wherein it is written: Be not anxious what ye shall eat, or what ye shall drink, or wherewith ye shall be clothed; for after these things do the Gentiles seek: namely, those whose god is their belly, and whose whole hope is in their throat. For whom, after the manner of animals, the sole and chief care is eating and drinking. This confidence in the matter He confirmed at once by such an example: Behold the fowls of the air: they sow not, neither do they reap, nor gather into barns: and your Father feedeth them: are ye not much better than they, O ye of little faith?

For your Father knoweth that ye have need of all these things; therefore seek ye first the kingdom of God, and all these things shall be added unto you: that is, they shall be supplied even when unlooked for. Whence the Apostle, that all things might be possessed, declares that nothing ought to be possessed with anxiety, saying: As having nothing, and yet possessing all things. Thus you understand that those subject all things to their own dominion who have despised all things, and that those are believed poor, by the judgment of the foolish, who are wealthy in the promise of God, and who despise small temporal things that they may merit great eternal ones; and these are content to lack in this world what others procure, at the risk of honesty and life, throughout this whole age, only that these things either soon perish while the same men still live in the world, or, whenever they are to depart from the world, are left behind, perishable things with the perishing world.

APOLL.—It has become clear that contempt of the world, together with humility of dress and a purpose of continence, shines forth by the oracles of sacred instruction; and that those merit more in heavenly things who have presumed little upon earthly things, and that monks are trained to this end by hard observances, that they may cut away not only the vices, but the very matter of vices. Wherefore now set forth openly, by the same authorities of the Scriptures, the precept of continence and virginity; and explain why celibates, not merely those made so by chance, but those abstaining from lawful unions, rightly indeed condemn what is unlawful, but nonetheless either scorn or reject what is lawful; which things, if indeed they have come as aforesaid by precept of the Divinity, are wholesomely required; but if they are separated from heavenly instruction, for what reason are they enjoined as though obligatory, being both difficult in observance and fruitless in labor?

ZACCH.—To Adam indeed it was said from the beginning: It is not good for man to be alone. And presently followed the sentence of procreation: Increase and multiply, and fill the earth. But woman, made for him and out of him, existed before as dissolution rather than marriage, until disobedience made them exiles from paradise—those whom obedience would have kept within paradise—and after their departure from the blessed seat, being cast out, he knew his wife, the book of Genesis teaching this: And Adam knew his wife, and she conceived and bore a son. Therefore the labor imposed came before marriage, and, destined to suffer thorns and thistles, they added guilty unions; weariness followed in procreations, and another decree preceded the woman about to bear: In sorrow and grief, it says, shalt thou bring forth children. Whom, indeed, being thus created, various mishaps and mournings, as we see, snatch away. Whence the Apostle proclaims, saying: Nevertheless such shall have tribulation of the flesh.

Yet the marriage-bed is not dishonorable, nor is the unstained couch without fruit: indeed the offspring of saints comes from it; and what is praised in virginity belongs to marriage too, but the reward of continence is more sublime; and virginity is loftier, and can neither fear that it is lesser, nor ought to exult that it is greater: but let catholic interpretation, distinguishing them, attribute praises of chastity to honorable marriages; let it reckon the merit of continence to those who abstain; let it ascribe the reward of virginity to the intact. This is not to condemn what is good, but to persuade toward what is better; whence there is this clear testimony of continence in the Scriptures: The Lord knew, it says, that Israel was diminished, and there was none left but the continent. Which Solomon, foreseeing in the Spirit, says: A time to embrace, and a time to be far from embracing. Because it is of the old precept that the earth be filled by procreations; but of the new, that continence and virginity fill heaven.

Whence through Zechariah the Lord says: Holy stones are rolled upon the earth, wheat for the young men, and sweet-smelling wine for the virgins. In the Gospel, finally, diverse kinds of eunuchs are mentioned: but to those especially is the possession of the kingdom assigned who have made themselves eunuchs for its sake and love; that is, not those whom the necessity of impossibility compels, but those whom the will makes continent. For thus it is written, the Lord disputing: There are eunuchs who were made so by men; and there are eunuchs who were born so from their mother's womb; and there are eunuchs who have made themselves eunuchs for the kingdom of heaven's sake. Of whom it is said through Isaiah: I will give them a better place than sons and daughters.

Yet He professed this reward to be so arduous and sublime, that when the Apostles said in a certain place: If the case of a man be so with his wife, it is not expedient to marry, He answered: He that is able to receive it, let him receive it. Therefore it is not a precept concerning the continent, but a persuasion; nor is virginity enjoined so as to be a matter of necessity, but it is praised so that it may be a matter of will, the Apostle attesting: Now concerning virgins I have no commandment of the Lord: but I give counsel, as one that hath obtained mercy of the Lord to be faithful. I suppose therefore that this is good for the present necessity, that it is good for a man so to be.

But John in the Apocalypse declares that only those follow the footsteps of the Lamb who have not been defiled by intercourse with women, saying: These are they which follow the Lamb whithersoever he goeth; these are they which were not defiled with women; for they are virgins. Rightly, therefore, better things are preferred, yet the things which are lower are not evil; nor is any fault signified in marriage; but, as you learned a little before, on account of the necessity of the imminent end, lest, according to the Gospel, Woe be unto them that are with child and give suck, continence is urged, and at the same time, that those who have devoted themselves to marriage may sometime be given over to a strict satisfaction; and, recalling the burdens of sins, may strive more tightly to be restored to God, since rightly even those who have committed unlawful things abstain from what is lawful.

APOLL.—I too knew that the purpose of virginity and continence was of sublime merit, especially since those dedicated to reverence of God consecrate the human will: since they both undertake what is worthy of common veneration, and imitate a life of angelic dignity or manner of living. But since I believed this in this matter to be a command, not counsel, authority ought to be given from the Scriptures. Now, however, briefly disclose what custom of praying and psalm-singing is so frequent, or whence the pursuit of such teachings has flowed down to the monks: for although the moment of continual supplication be great, yet the zeal for singing seems idle; since rarity makes for greater attentiveness even in supplication itself, and it is fitting that the divine majesty be honored rather by serious praises than by pleasant ones.

ZACCHAEUS.—It is right that we present ourselves attentive to prayer and wholly earnest in all things before the sight of God, and that we ask, with our senses made subject, for a prosperous governance of our actions; but it is necessary that he obtain more swiftly who entreats more often, the Lord declaring in the Gospels: Amen I say to you, if he will not give on account of friendship, he will give on account of importunity; that is, if one can obtain little by merit, the frequency of asking will prevail. Whence again: Pray without ceasing, that you may be counted worthy to escape the evils that are to come upon you. Through Solomon likewise the Spirit says: Be not hindered from praying always. The Apostle in like manner: Praying unceasingly, give thanks to God: for this is his will. But in that text of the songs of the holy canticle, everything is earnest, and everything is venerable; and so worthy of holy observances, that by it divinity is always either praised or entreated.

For this the divine indulgence there provided, when it took counsel for our weakness and for our misuse, that mingling gentleness with sorrows, and sweetness with severity, it would not allow us to depart in any way from remembrance of itself, since it delighted that its benefits be not only spoken but also sung, Moses first teaching thus after the crossing of the Red Sea: Let us sing to the Lord, for he is gloriously honored. David likewise, in choosing what he should chiefly offer to God for the requital of good things, settled upon the delight of singing and psalm-playing; for he says: I will sing to the Lord who has bestowed good things upon me. And: I will sing psalms to your name, O Most High. And again: Be exalted, Lord, in your strength; we will sing and psalm your mighty deeds.

Through Jeremiah indeed God says that those devoted to such pursuits will be multiplied in glory: There will be, he says, from these singers, the voice of those praising; and I will multiply them, and they shall not be diminished.

Moreover the three boys, untouched in the furnace of fire, repay their turn of salvation with a canticle of praise. When the hymn had been said with the Apostles, the Lord goes on to the mountain; so that the freedom of holy festivity might have as example the authority of him who had consummated it, who had instructed us in all things. That this, however, is to be celebrated at fixed hours of day and night, David established in the account of his own action, saying: I, he says, will cry out in the evening, in the morning, and at noon. And again: Seven times a day I have given praise to you. And a third time: I will cry out by day, and you will not hear; and by night, and it is not folly to me.

Therefore it shamed neither king nor prophet to exult in the praises of God, and thus he taught us fully that we please God in these things; so that, when he showed that there would be for him nightly vigils of spiritual canticles, he proclaims also the time of that very office: At midnight I arose to confess to your name, O Lord. At these same hours perhaps the Savior affirmed in the Gospel that he would come, since the firstborn of Egypt were struck when the angel smote them; and what is to be done by Christ concerning the powerful of this world at the end was signified by the prefiguration of that plague. Finally Paul, together with Silas, engaged in such meditation, were heard by the other prisoners in the jail, and neither punishment restrained them from this solemnity.

Whence you perceive that the frequency of psalm-singing and of prayer is celebrated by the just offices of the saints, and that they await, secure, the common end, or, should it come, their own proper end, in such an act, while in this delight of minds both the honor of faith and the eagerness of souls increase; and amid the cares of the age and of professed unrest, joyful grace obtains what sadder discipline cannot prevail to obtain.

APOLLONIUS.—Well has the knowledge of the consummation been brought forward in the narration of the holy acts; and the unterminated end of the age, as it is reported, has been offered for us to inquire into the more freely. By what outcome of present things, then, or in what manner will the times recorded in the preceding books be concluded? Whence besides come the threats of the nations, so confident, and the proud contentions of the profane? Will there be some one who assumes the sacred title, or will any mortal dare to lie that he is the Son of God?

For it does not seem probable to me that the remnants of diabolical fraud, scarcely residing in very few, should grow strong again into the catholic law; and however much the divine power lacks bounds, that the injury of the ancient serpent should be deferred even to this, that he should bring back the deadly wars of perfidy extinguished for so many ages, and, prostrate throughout all the regions of the earth before the worship of the Church, again lift up his impious head—he who is so tormented by the invocation of the venerable majesty, that he now scarcely dares approach even the wallowing-places of criminals themselves, while, tortured by the hidden disasters of his own fires, he trembles all over at whatever he hears from the name of the catholic religion.

ZACCHAEUS.—You desire that savage things be recalled to memory, and that the ineluctable crushing of the human race be brought forth in the narration of the last things; things which must be told with such tearful exaggeration that, as it is written, there have never been nor shall be such things. But it is the defection of human faith and the immensity of sins that will bring these things to maturity; nor are they decreed as by some necessity, but foretold from foreknowledge, Scripture declaring of the Amorrhites: Not yet, it says, are the sins of the Amorrhites fulfilled. Daniel likewise, because a fulfilment of offenses is to come, affirms that the consummation will follow. Whence also the Lord in the Gospel, complaining of the misuse of the human race, says: When the Son of man comes, do you think he will find faith upon the earth?

The Apostle too, rebuking the iniquity of these times, says: There shall be, he says, in the last days perilous times; men lovers of themselves, blasphemers, proud, disobedient to parents, senseless, unruly, without affection, without mercy: who, though they knew the justice of God, that is, the coming judgment, did not understand it; since those who do such things are worthy of death. By their merit, then, it is a sure faith that Antichrist will come, indeed that the devil will serve under the person of a man; but he will detest paganism, and will urge circumcision. For otherwise he could not be believed to be the Son of God, unless he falsely claimed to have brought about the restoration of the old law; and first he will subject to himself the Jews, the very head of all perfidy and deceit. For they know that Christ is to come, and confess him the everlasting judge; but in order to excuse the atrocity of the crime they committed, they do not believe that he came in the body which they slew.

But the heretics, the aforesaid impostor will assert himself to be God, yet lesser than the Father, so that he may finally mingle their impiety into his own ruin, and in both cases that sentence from the Gospels may be fulfilled: They will believe, it says, in iniquity, who were unwilling to believe the truth. Then, the gentiles, like cattle lacking rational sense, he will seize by the wonder of phantasms, so that with almost all the peoples of the nations ensnared, even the elect, if it could be done, might be seduced by such deceits: and the multitude will provide the authority for this evil. Thence he will bring in again the error of the old evil; and he who at first is to tear up the vestiges of idols, will command statues to be set up for himself in holy places; and forcing them to be adored atrociously, he will strive subtly to restore what he had pretended to hate.

For, as I have said, such a crime will constrain those ignorant by signs, the inconstant by rewards, the saints by torments to venerate with suppliant adoration images of ill-omened abomination and death-dealing countenances; nowhere will there be safe flight for those retreating, nor any hiding-place to conceal them in hidden spots, since they will be betrayed even by their own kin while hiding, and those fleeing will be consumed by starvation. For the Lord says in the Gospel, speaking of the evils of that time: And man will hand over, he says, his neighbor. That the faithful will be slain by want, the Apocalypse thus declares: He will make all, small and great, rich and poor, free and slave, give themselves marks on their right hand or on their foreheads; so that no one may buy or sell, except he who has the mark or the name of the beast.

Whom Daniel foretold in these words: There shall arise a king, impudent of face, understanding dark sentences; and his power shall be mighty; he shall corrupt and manage marvels, and shall destroy the mighty and the holy people: deceit shall be magnified in his hand and in his heart, and by abundance he shall corrupt many, and shall stand for the destruction of many. And again: The king shall be lifted up against every mighty one, and shall be magnified above every god: and he shall speak proud things, and shall prosper until the wrath be accomplished: for it shall be done in the consummation: and he shall not regard the god of his fathers: nor shall he go after the desire of women.

Therefore you understand that the king of that accursed time is to be reckoned above all others, who will strive to catch by allurement those whom he could not corrupt by violence and fraud, and, not regarding the gods of his fathers, that is, of the gentiles, presenting a deadly chastity in an enervated body as if pure, will lay waste the holy people, that is, the Christian people, with cruel slaughter. But this mourning of the world and the tribulation of the just will be followed by the marks of heavenly wrath, and before the great day of the Lord arrives, the grief of unspeakable evils will precede the end of all things, while, before the last dissolution of the world, it must be that the remnants of the human race either perpetually perish in sacrileges, or, because of sacrileges, no longer live in the world.

APOLLONIUS.—You have taught, very clearly and plainly, that Antichrist will indeed come, and that he will rage for the destruction of the world and against the catholic law; but when he is to come, for how long a time he is to be, the exposition begun has not touched upon: therefore run through with careful mind what times shall close his reign, what signs shall run before his coming; since if, amid such great power of signs and of kingship, he displays the will of spiritual wickedness, he can neither be destroyed by any means, nor be more clearly denounced; the discernment of his falsity, as I judge, will not be within reach even of the faithful themselves, nor will any kinds of remedies save the doubtful; if the compulsion of transgressions, full of atrocity and of phantasms, remains obscure in its notion.

Whence distinguish also this portion of ambiguous matters by the publication of divine authority; so that, with frauds torn out by the roots, both the doubtful may be instructed and the weak confirmed, while the snares of the deceiver are betrayed, and the madness of the raving one is perhaps constrained by the brevity of the time.

ZACCHAEUS.—Manifestly indeed Antichrist will come, but Christ is at once to follow after; and although the day or hour of his coming, as he himself says, not even the angels know, because the Father has reserved the knowledge of this secret to his own power; yet evident signs have been sent before, as he himself teaches shortly after, by which, once the quality of the present time is weighed, we may recognize that the last things are close at hand. For thus he says: When you shall see signs in the heavens, and portents on the earth, nation rising against nation, kingdom against kingdom, wars and rumors of wars, famine and earthquakes in various places; then shall be the beginning of sorrows, but not yet the end. Run through now each of these, and consider from what is being done or has been done what remains: you will surely perceive that only this is lacking, which could now be ascribed to or joined with the last things. For who, born, lives possessing peace in his homeland?

What people within its native soil is left to its accustomed labor, or is kept from bringing or dreading peril, either by regard for its own safety or by domestic affection? The impious fury of warring burns, and atrocious madness delights in arms and in plunder: hence the gaping jaws of avarice are fed by blood, and when it has set almost everything ablaze with deaths inflicted, still thirsting, it either lays low or despoils what remains. Love does not preserve neighbors, justice does not preserve strangers: meanwhile groaning piety is exiled, and, driven from human minds, is compelled to remove the footprints it had formerly left behind. Moreover kingdoms clash with kingdoms, and unsuspected ones drive the Augusti from the just seats of their scepters. Add the unspeakable threats of portents, the very frequent earthquakes of the earth, and the many signs that have flashed in the sky. Why should I speak of the deadly outcomes of famine, and the greeds of the failing filled with unspeakable foods of human bodies?

The mind shudders to say that hunger has been fed by parricides, and that the remains of beloved bodies, so that they might perish more cruelly than they had lived, have been buried in the bowels of their own.

Consider, I ask, whether this age can long bear what human speech scarcely dares to utter. Whether these things rage thus while the devil is idle; which, although they ought rightly to be reckoned to our sins, are nevertheless carried out under cover of his working; who, being about to come face to face very soon, is so pressed by the straits of his final days that he has already begun to do that which the Gospels foretold must be fulfilled through the desolation of the world: for to these things which have now been mentioned the Lord added: When you shall see the abomination of desolation standing in the holy place: let him who reads understand; that is, when there shall be a solitude of all lands, and the abomination of accursed images shall be set before the sacred altars, and this gospel shall have been preached in the whole world, then shall be the end.

What portion or dwelling-place of the earth is there now, then, which does not know the name of our religion—nay, which has not sent forth from itself members believing in us? Whence the preaching of the Gospel is understood to be almost already fulfilled: yet it will be completed in the discourse of Elijah, who is then to come; for in three and six years he foretold that Antichrist would come first, then Christ; who, although he is designated in the Apocalypse as about to reign for an equal time, the Savior nevertheless intimates in the Gospel that his days are to be shortened, lest the flesh, overcome by intolerable evils through length of time, should succumb: for thus he says: And unless those days had been shortened, no flesh should be saved.

Not that the fixed ordering of days and nights established from the beginning is to be changed, or the spans of the hours of the running times cut short; but just as the slaughter of the people announced by Nathan earned, by divine mercy, only three hours in place of three days, so we believe that the reign of that accursed time is to be diminished not in duration but in number; and that a measure is to be imposed not upon the divine ordination but upon the commands of the raging one; so that in the resurrection, after the struggle of so great a contest, both the devotion of the faithful and the perfidy of the impious may not remain hidden; while both the brief dominion of the ancient enemy is driven off, and the reverence due to God at his coming is honored by the confessions of the saints.

APOLLONIUS.—As far as it appears, and as I believe is clear to anxious minds, the obscurity of the ambiguous prophecy has been resolved, and the whole knowledge of the last time has been set plainly forth; especially since, the evils of these days confirming what is said, the reasoning is clear, nor is anything else believed rightly to remain, except that the presence of the foretold prophet be shown. But now grant this one thing to crown the questions already put: that you teach that the resurrection is already believed and promised out of the possibility of God; lest a bare assertion of so great a wonder should occur without the authority of the heavenly ordinances; but let the things intimated in the earlier books be confirmed by the instruction now given, bringing joy to believers, taking away argument from doubters, while they shall both confess it possible from the power of God, and know it will be accomplished from his promise.

ZACCHAEUS.—So full is the divine mercy's generosity toward men, that he willed to prove beforehand, before doing, those things which earthly frailty scarcely believes, and to confirm believers with truths before he should prove to those who would come to believe through doubts: for since he has set this part of his gift throughout well-nigh all the volumes of Scripture, he showed by a special effect through Ezekiel that men can more easily be raised up by him than they were made, and that it is vain to mourn here, as if lost, those for whom there is no impossibility of restoration. For he says: And the spirit of the Lord took me: and behold, the face of the plain, and it was full of bones. And he led me around them in a circuit; and behold, they were very dry. And he said to me: Son of man, shall these bones live? And I said, Thou knowest, Lord. And he said to me: Prophesy over them, and say: Dry bones, hear the word of the Lord.

Thus says the Lord: Behold, I will bring sinews and flesh upon you, and cover you with skin, and give you spirit, and you shall live. And behold, bone came together to bone, and sinews and flesh grew upon them, and skin came up over them; and they lay without spirit. And he said to me: Prophesy, son of man, to the spirit, and say: Thus says the Lord to the spirit: Come, spirit, from the four corners of heaven, and breathe upon these bones, and they shall live. And it came to pass: and they stood upon their feet, an exceeding great congregation. And he said to me: Son of man, these bones are the house of Israel. Who say: Our hope is utterly vain; we have perished. And they shall know that I am the Lord, when I shall bring them out of their graves, and shall give life to my people, and shall place them in their own land, and shall do these things, says the Lord.

Whence the Savior says to the Sadducees who did not believe in the resurrection: How have you not read, The God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob? He is not indeed the God of the dead, but of the living. But the Apostle, by comparison drawn from the elements, also proclaimed a distinction of merits, saying: One is the glory of the sun, and another the glory of the moon, and another the glory of the stars; for star differs from star in glory: so also shall be the resurrection of the dead. But John affirms that even those whom the sea covers with its waves are to be restored, saying: And the sea shall give up its dead. Then that word of David singing shall be fulfilled: God shall come manifestly, and shall not keep silence: fire shall burn before him, and a mighty tempest round about him.

Whence Peter in his Epistle says: What manner of persons ought we to be, brethren, in that day, when the heavens shall pass away with a great rushing, and the elements shall be dissolved with burning heat? Then that word shall be uttered in the voice of the holy Apostle: O death, where is thy sting? Death is swallowed up in thy victory. And they who now, with tearful seeds, fill the ways of justice, bringing back the sheaves of a precious death, shall shine with the honor of exalted crowns. Of whom it is written: The saints shall exult in glory, they shall rejoice in their beds. And again: They shall leap for joy like calves loosed from their bonds. And they shall run to and fro like sparks among the reeds. These shall be invited by the words of the Lord, seated upon the established throne of heaven: Come, ye blessed of my Father; receive the kingdom prepared for you before the foundation of the world.

That sentence pursuing the impious: I have kept silence, shall I always keep silence? That is, no longer subject as one who could be crucified by those who deny me, but sustained by the paternal majesty which you scorned—I who had died from the weakness of the flesh, live by the power of God, and, presiding on the throne of the eternal judge, I condemn my enemies by no other decree than that which I had foretold in the Gospels: Depart, ye cursed, into everlasting fire, which my Father hath prepared for the devil and his angels, where there is weeping and gnashing of teeth. These are the things which you may be warned of by our voice: these are to be fled from by labor of mind and body, and those things to be sought which are prepared for the elect, whose greatness and form you should not inquire into: for it shall be: What eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, nor hath it entered into the heart of man.

But if we hear or behold the inestimable delights of certain regions, and scarcely credible scents; if in some nations rivers flow turbid with gold, and gems are as common as stone; if cinnamon and amomum grow everywhere in abundance; if, finally, soft frankincense-bearing trees and precious balsam-woods drip with fragrance; if even for us, under corruptible air, painted lilies shine so brightly, and permit no imitation of themselves by any garment or scent: what the graces of eternal riches are to have, what the splendor of heavenly dignities, speech and sense cannot express: only accept this without doubt, that nothing there shall be necessary, nothing shall be lacking, but God will generate for all, out of an inestimable novelty of joys, whatever shall be judged worthy of the possession of his presence.

Now, I say, fortified as far as I have been able by my instruction, I unceasingly admonish you, not to look back on things left behind while setting the plow to God's cultivation, nor, striving toward the proposed prize, to slacken the course of your fervent purpose. Unless the contest is completed, the palm does not follow; nor unless the struggle is finished is the triumph of glorious renown granted. Whence in Solomon: Praise is sung at the going forth. And in the Gospel: He who shall have persevered to the end, he shall be saved. So let your faith be happy, and always remember him who instructed you toward God, nor be too much moved by the terror of the age or of the evils impending.

God is the helper in all things, and by the ministering of the power of his spirit the flood of tempests will dissolve into light foam; provided only the first arms of a surpassing conscience be not lacking; and if the necessity of the foretold tribulation should come, let a firm confession sustain against the enemy: he will give patience in sorrow to the believer, who promised he would himself supply also the words; and he will graciously bestow the aid of martyrdom, who admonished us to guard the honor of his name even by death, saying: He who shall lose his soul for my sake shall save it unto life everlasting. And again: He who shall leave wife, children, parents, and all that he has for my name's sake, shall receive a hundredfold in this age, and in the age to come a hundredfold more, and life everlasting.

Yet to this end he allows those known to him to be tried for a little while, that having endured the same labor of trial they may be pleasing to themselves, and that there justice may reward the afflicted, when he shall begin to judge their persecutors.

Prayer to God. APOLLONIUS.—The order of questions is completed, and the vows in the answers are fulfilled; the testimonies of Scripture, having been gone through, have kindled the fire of a more devoted faith: you have the ready fruit of your instruction, and, unless the weakness of the flesh should hinder, the prepared will of the spirit: let him alone furnish the substance for its accomplishment, who has permitted us, by his gift, to desire great things. For what does exceeding care for the body avail, when it will at some time be reduced to dust? What good will soft slumbers do, without the exercise of merits? What good the honor of the age sought with great labor or price, and the flattery of foods that perishes beyond the throat? There is no respect of persons there, nor do the burdens of wealth follow the dead: naked we entered into this world, naked we must depart; and as David says: The men of riches shall sleep, and shall find nothing in their hands.

And according to Solomon many shall have to say such things: What has pride profited us? Or what has the boasting of riches brought us? All those things have passed away like a shadow.

Instruct rather the mind bound to your worship, O maker of all creatures, and you who alone are the searcher of the reins and heart, accomplish what is in our vows, that when you shall lift up to break the earth, when heaven shall be folded up like a book, and all things shall be dissolved with terrible burning, let there first be integrity of faith in the suppliant, and let no despair confound his conscience: then, in the sight of your majesty, may the countless multitude of attending angels, after the great honors of the patriarchs and the assemblies of shining prophets, after the exalted thrones of the apostles and the crowned hosts of blessed martyrs, the happy companies of confessors likewise, and the ranks of unpolluted priests, receive the following crowd of your servant, and may the labor of true perfection cleanse whatever stains there are of this life: but if you, the bestower of eternal gifts, should grant to indulge the poor man, so that the proof of catholic confession may come also through death, or, since the weaker perhaps cannot prevail in the deeds of a slippery way of life, may the pure devotion of blood sanctify him: it shall be that, rejoicing forever in your gift, I shall truly remember that I sang in your praises: What shall I render to the Lord for all that he has rendered to me?

I will take the cup of salvation, and call upon the name of the Lord.