Letters & Polemics (CSEL) 3 part 26/87

For he says many such things concerning the one true God, the fabricator of the world, such as the truth holds; and I know not how, by that darkening of the heart, he slips down to these things—so that he wishes men always to be subject to the gods whom he confesses to be made by men, and laments that these things are in a future time to be taken away, as though anything could be more unhappy than the man whose own fictions lord it over him; whereas it is easier that a man, by worshipping as gods those whom he has made, should himself not be a man, than that the gods whom man has made should be able to exist by his worship. For it sooner comes to pass that a man, placed in honour, not understanding, is compared to the beasts, than that to the work of God made in His image—that is, to man himself—the work of man should be preferred.

Wherefore man deservedly falls away from Him who made him, when he sets above himself that which he himself has made. These vain, deceptive, ruinous, and sacrilegious things Hermes the Egyptian grieved over, because he knew that the time was coming when they should be taken away; but he grieved as shamelessly as he knew imprudently. For the Holy Spirit had not revealed these things to him, as to the holy prophets, who, foreseeing these things, said with exultation: 'If man shall make gods, behold, they themselves are not gods'; and in another place: 'It shall come to pass in that day, says the Lord, I will exterminate the names of the idols from the earth, and there shall no more be any memory of them'; but properly concerning Egypt, as it pertains to this matter, the holy Isaiah thus prophesies:

'And the things made by hand of Egypt shall be moved at His presence, and their heart shall be overcome within them,' and the rest of this kind. Of which sort were also those who rejoiced that what they knew was to come had come; such as Symeon, such as Anna, who recognized Jesus as soon as He was born; such as Elizabeth, who recognized Him even when conceived, in the Spirit; such as Peter, saying, by the revelation of the Father: 'Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God.' But to this Egyptian those spirits had disclosed the future times of their own perdition—those who, even when the Lord was present in the flesh, said, trembling: 'Why hast Thou come to destroy us before the time?'

either because it was sudden to them, which they indeed supposed to be future, but later; or because they called this very thing their perdition, by which it came to pass that, being known, they were despised, and this was 'before the time,' that is, before the time of judgement, in which they are to be punished with eternal damnation, together with all the men also who are held in their fellowship—as says the religion which neither deceives nor is deceived, not as does this man, who, as it were blown hither and thither by every wind of doctrine, and mingling false things with true, grieves as for a religion about to perish, which he afterward confesses to be error. CHAPTER XXIV. How Hermes confessed the error of his ancestors, which nevertheless he grieved was to be destroyed.

For after many things he returns to this very point, to say again concerning the gods which men have made, speaking thus: 'But of such matters let such things now be enough said. Let us return again, he says, to man and to reason, from which divine gift man was called a rational animal. For the things said of man, though they are marvellous, are less to be marvelled at. For of all marvels this surpassed all wonder, that man was able to discover the divine nature and to produce it. Since, therefore, our forefathers erred much concerning the nature of the gods, being unbelieving and not attending to the worship and divine religion, they invented an art whereby they might make gods.

To this discovered art they joined a power suited from the nature of the world, and mingling these together, since they could not make souls, by calling up the souls of demons or of angels they implanted them in holy images and divine mysteries, through which the idols might have power both of doing good and of doing harm.' I know not whether the demons themselves, when adjured, would confess as this man has confessed. 'Since, he says, our forefathers erred much concerning the nature of the gods, being unbelieving and not attending to the worship and divine religion, they invented an art whereby they might make gods.' Did he say at least that they erred moderately, so that they might invent this art of making gods, or was he content to say: They erred, without adding and saying:

They erred much? This much error, then, and the unbelief of those not attending to the worship and divine religion, invented an art whereby it might make gods. And yet this thing, which much error and unbelief and the soul's aversion from divine worship and religion invented—that man by art should make gods—this the wise man grieves over, as though the divine religion were to be taken away at a certain appointed time to come. See whether he is not compelled both, by a divine power, to betray the past error of his ancestors, and, by a diabolical power, to grieve over the future punishment of the demons. For if their forefathers, erring much concerning the nature of the gods, by unbelief and the soul's aversion from divine worship and religion, invented an art whereby they might make gods:

what wonder is it, if this detestable art—whatever it has wrought, being turned away from divine religion—is taken away by divine religion, when truth amends error, faith refutes unbelief, conversion corrects aversion? For if, suppressing the causes, he had said that his forefathers had invented an art whereby they might make gods, it would surely have been our part—if we had any sense of what is right and pious—to attend and to see that they would by no means have come to this art, whereby man makes gods, if they had not wandered from the truth, if they had believed those things which are worthy of God, if they had turned their mind to divine worship and religion;

and yet, if we ourselves were to state the causes of this art to be the much error of men, and unbelief, and the aversion of the erring and faithless soul from divine religion, the impudence of those resisting the truth would somehow be tolerable. But when this same man himself, who admires above all other things the power of this art in man—whereby it was granted him to make gods—and grieves that a time is to come in which all these fictions of gods, set up by men, shall be commanded by laws even to be taken away, nevertheless confesses and expresses the causes why men came to these things, saying that his forefathers, by much error and unbelief, and by not turning their mind to divine worship and religion, invented this art whereby they might make gods:

What ought we to say, or rather what ought we to do, but render the greatest thanks we can to the Lord our God, who took these things away by causes contrary to those by which they were established? For what the multitude of error established, the way of truth has taken away; what unbelief established, faith has taken away; what aversion from the worship of divine religion established, conversion to the one true and holy God has taken away. And this not in Egypt alone, which alone that spirit of demons bewails in this passage, but in all the earth, which sings to the Lord a new song, just as the truly sacred and truly prophetic Scriptures foretold, where it is written: 'Sing to the Lord a new song; sing to the Lord, all the earth.' For the title of this psalm is this:

'When the house was being built after the captivity.' For a house is built to the Lord — the city of God, which is the holy Church — in all the earth after that captivity in which demons held captive and possessed those men of whom, when they believe in God, the house is built as of living stones. For it was not the case that, because a man made gods, he was therefore not himself possessed by them — he who had made them — when by worshipping he was drawn into their fellowship; I mean the fellowship not of stupid idols, but of cunning demons. For what are idols but that which the same Scripture says: 'They have eyes, and shall not see' — and whatever such thing must be said of materials, however skillfully shaped, yet lacking life and sense?

But unclean spirits, bound to these same images by that wicked art, had wretchedly led captive the souls of their worshippers by drawing them into their fellowship. Whence the apostle says: 'We know that an idol is nothing; but the things which the Gentiles sacrifice, they sacrifice to demons and not to God; I would not that you should be partakers with demons.' After this captivity, therefore, in which men were held by malignant demons, the house of God is built in all the earth; whence that psalm received its title, where it says: 'Sing to the Lord a new song; sing to the Lord, all the earth. Sing to the Lord, bless his name; show forth his salvation from day to day. Declare his glory among the Gentiles, his wonders among all peoples;'

for the Lord is great and greatly to be praised; he is to be feared above all gods. For all the gods of the nations are demons, but the Lord made the heavens.' He, therefore, who grieved that the time would come when the worship of idols and the dominion of demons over those who worshipped them would be taken away, being instigated by an evil spirit, always wished that this captivity should remain, after the passing of which the psalm sings that a house is built in all the earth. Hermes foretold the one with grieving; the prophet foretold the other with rejoicing.

And because the Spirit who sang these things through the holy prophets is victorious, even Hermes himself was compelled in marvellous ways to confess that those things which he did not wish, and grieved, to be taken away had been established not by the prudent and faithful and religious, but by the erring and unbelieving and those turned away from the worship of divine religion. For although he calls them gods, yet when he says they were made by such men as we ought by no means to be, he shows, willing or unwilling, that they are not to be worshipped by those who are not such as were they by whom they were made — that is, by the prudent, the faithful, the religious; and at the same time he demonstrates that those very men who made them brought upon themselves the having as gods those who were not gods. For that prophetic word is true:

'If a man shall make gods, behold, they themselves are not gods.' When, therefore, Hermes had called such gods — gods of such men, made by art by such men — that is, when he called demons bound by I-know-not-what art to idols by the chains of their own desires gods made by men, he yet did not grant them what the Platonist Apuleius did (whereof we have already said enough, and have shown how unfitting and absurd it is): namely, that they should themselves be the interpreters and intercessors between the gods whom God made and the men whom the same God made, bringing prayers from the one and bearing back gifts from the other. For it is too foolish to believe that gods whom men have made avail more before the gods whom God made than do those very men avail whom the same God made.

For a demon, bound to an image by impious art, was made a god by man — but for such a man, not for every man. What sort of god, then, is this, whom no man would make save one erring and unbelieving and turned away from the true God? Moreover, if the demons who are worshipped in temples, set within images — that is, within visible idols — by I-know-not-what art, by those men who by this art made gods while they erred and were turned away from divine worship and religion — if such demons are neither messengers nor interpreters between men and gods, both because of their most wicked and most shameful morals, and because men, though erring and unbelieving and turned away from divine worship and religion, are nevertheless without doubt better than those whom they themselves made gods by art —

it remains that whatever they can do, they do as demons: either by bestowing as it were benefits, the more harmful because the more deceiving, or by doing harm openly (yet neither of these except when they are permitted by the deep and secret providence of God) — but not that, as middle beings between men and gods, they avail much among men through the friendship of the gods. For these demons can in no way be friends to the good gods, whom we call holy angels, and rational creatures of the holy heavenly habitation, whether thrones or dominions or principalities or powers; from whom they are as far removed in the affection of mind as vices are far from virtues and malice from goodness. CHAPTER XXV.

Concerning those things which can be common to the holy angels and to good men. In no way, therefore, is the goodwill or beneficence of the gods, or rather of the good angels, to be sought after through the as it were mediation of demons, but through the likeness of good will, by which we are with them and live with them and worship with them the God whom they worship, even though we cannot see them with bodily eyes. But in so far as we are wretched through unlikeness of will and through the frailty of weakness, in so far we are far from them by the merit of our life, not by the place of our body. For it is not because we dwell on earth in the condition of the flesh, but if by the uncleanness of heart we savour earthly things, that we are not joined to them. But when we are healed, so that we become such as they are,

we draw near to them meanwhile by faith, if we believe — with them also favouring us — that we are made blessed by him by whom they too were made. CHAPTER XXVI. That all the religion of the pagans was bound up with dead men. It is indeed to be carefully noted how this Egyptian, while he grieved that the time was coming when those things would be taken away from Egypt which he confesses were established by men greatly erring and unbelieving and turned away from the worship of divine religion, said among other things: 'Then shall this land, the most holy seat of shrines and temples, be most full of sepulchres and of the dead' — as though, forsooth, if those things were not taken away, men would not be doomed to die, or the dead would have to be laid elsewhere than in the earth;

and surely, the more time and days rolled on, the greater would be the number of sepulchres on account of the greater number of the dead. But this is what he seems to grieve at: that the memorials of our martyrs should succeed to their shrines and temples — so that, namely, those who read these things with a mind averse and perverse toward us might think that gods were worshipped by the pagans in temples, but dead men are worshipped by us in sepulchres. For impious men, with such great blindness, stumble as it were against mountains, and will not see the things that strike their own eyes — so that they do not attend to the fact that in all the writings of the pagans either no gods are found, or scarcely any are found, who were not men, and to whom, when dead, divine honours were paid.

I pass over what Varro says: that all the dead are reckoned by them to be Manes-gods, and he proves it through those sacred rites which are paid to almost all the dead, where he also mentions funeral games — as though this were the greatest token of divinity, that games are not wont to be celebrated save to deities. Hermes himself, of whom we now treat, in that very same book, where as it were foretelling things to come and lamenting he says: 'Then shall this land, the most holy seat of shrines and temples, be most full of sepulchres and of the dead,' bears witness that the gods of Egypt were dead men.

For when he had said that his ancestors, greatly erring concerning the nature of the gods, unbelieving and not giving heed to divine worship and religion, had found out an art by which they might make gods, he says: 'To this invention they joined a power drawn from the nature of the world and suited to it; and mingling these, since they could not make souls, by calling forth the souls of demons or of angels they set them within holy images and divine mysteries, through which the idols might have powers both of doing good and of doing harm.' Then he goes on, as though about to prove this by examples, and says:

'For your grandfather, O Asclepius, the first discoverer of medicine, to whom a temple is consecrated on a mountain of Libya near the shore of the crocodiles, in which lies his earthly man — that is, his body; for the rest of him, or rather the whole of him, if the whole man is in the consciousness of life, has returned, the better part, to heaven, even now affording to sick men all those aids which are wont to be supplied by the art of medicine, by his divine power.' Behold, he said that a dead man was worshipped as a god in that place where he had his sepulchre — being himself deceived and deceiving, when he says that he 'returned to heaven.'

Then adding something else, he says: 'And Hermes, whose ancestral name is mine — does he not, dwelling in his namesake country, aid and preserve all mortals coming from every quarter?' For this elder Hermes, that is, Mercury, whom he says was his grandfather, is reported to be in Hermopolis, that is, in the city of his own name. Behold, he says that two gods were men, Aesculapius and Mercury. But concerning Aesculapius both Greeks and Latins hold this same view; yet many do not think Mercury was mortal, though this man testifies that he was his grandfather. But it is one thing that he is one, another that this is another, though they are called by the same name. I do not greatly contend whether the one be one and this be another; yet this one too —

like Aesculapius, was made a god from a man, according to the testimony of so great a man among his own, this Trismegistus, his own descendant. He still adds and says: 'But Isis, the wife of Osiris — how many good things do we know that she bestows when propitious, how many harms when angry!' Then, in order to show that the gods whom men make by that art are of this kind (whence he gives us to understand that he opines the demons to have come into being from the souls of dead men, whom — through the art which men greatly erring, unbelieving and irreligious found out — he says were set within images, because those who made such gods could by no means make souls), when he had said of Isis what I have mentioned, 'how many harms we know that she does when angry,' he went on and added:

'For earthly and worldly gods are easily provoked to anger, inasmuch as they are made and compounded by men of both natures.' By 'of both natures' he means of soul and body, so that the demon stands for the soul, and the image for the body. 'Whence it has come about,' he says, 'that these holy animals are named by the Egyptians, and that there are worshipped throughout their several cities the souls of those whose souls were consecrated while living, so that they are inhabited under their laws and named by their names.' Where now is that as it were mournful complaint, that the land of Egypt, the most holy seat of shrines and temples, would become most full of sepulchres and of the dead?

Truly the deceitful spirit, by whose prompting Hermes said these things, was compelled through this very man to confess that even then that land was most full of sepulchres and of the dead whom they worshipped as gods. But the grief of the demons spoke through him, who mourned that their future punishments were impending at the memorials of the holy martyrs. For in many such places they are tormented and confess, and are cast out from the bodies of the men they possess. CHAPTER XXVII. Concerning the manner of honour which Christians render to the martyrs. Yet we do not set up for these same martyrs temples, priesthoods, sacred rites and sacrifices, since not they themselves, but their God, is our God.

We do indeed honour their memorials as those of holy men of God, who contended even to the death of their bodies for the truth, that the true religion might be made known, with falsehoods and fictions overthrown — a religion which, even if some perceived it beforehand, they suppressed it through fear. But who among the faithful ever heard a priest standing at the altar — even one built over the holy body of a martyr for the honour and worship of God — say in the prayers:

'I offer to thee a sacrifice, O Peter, or Paul, or Cyprian,' when at their memorials it is offered to God, who made them both men and martyrs and associated them with his holy angels in heavenly honour — so that by that solemnity we may both give thanks to the true God for their victories, and stir ourselves up to the imitation of such crowns and palms, the same God being invoked for help, by the renewal of their memory? Whatever observances of the religious, therefore, are employed in the places of the martyrs are ornaments of memorials, not sacred rites or sacrifices to the dead as to gods.

Whoever, too, bring their feasts thither (which indeed is not done by the better sort of Christians, and in most lands no such custom exists) — yet whoever do this, when they have set them down, pray and take them away, that they may feed upon them or even distribute from them to the needy — they wish them to be sanctified for themselves through the merits of the martyrs in the name of the Lord of the martyrs. But that these are not sacrifices to the martyrs, he knows who knows the one sacrifice of Christians, which is offered even there. We, therefore, worship our martyrs neither with divine honours nor with human crimes, as those people worship their gods; nor do we offer sacrifices to them, nor turn their reproaches into their sacred rites.

For concerning Isis, the wife of Osiris, the Egyptian goddess, and concerning their parents, who are all written to have been kings (to which parents of hers, when she was sacrificing, she found a crop of barley and showed the ears thereof to her royal husband and to his counsellor Mercury, whence they will have her to be also Ceres) — what and how great evils have been committed to memory, not by poets, but by their own mystic writings, as Alexander writes to his mother Olympias, with the priest Leo disclosing them — let those read who will or can, and let those who have read recall them, and let them see to what dead men, or for what deeds of theirs, sacred rites were instituted as to gods.

Far be it that they should dare in any part to compare those whom, although they hold them as gods, with our holy martyrs, whom we nevertheless do not hold as gods! For so we do not appoint priests nor offer sacrifices to our martyrs, because it is incongruous, undue, unlawful, and owed to the one God alone — that we should delight them neither with their own crimes nor with most shameful games, where either these men celebrate the disgraces of their gods, if, being men, they committed such things, or the feigned delights of harmful demons, if they were not men. Of this kind of demons Socrates would not have had a god, if he had a god;

but perhaps to him, a man foreign and innocent of that art of making gods, those who wished to excel in that same art foisted such a god upon him. Why say more? That these spirits are not to be worshipped for the sake of the blessed life which is to come after death, no one even moderately prudent doubts. But perhaps they will say that all the gods indeed are good, but that of the demons some are bad and some good, and they will judge that those through whom we may attain to the life eternally blessed are to be worshipped — those, namely, whom they suppose to be good. Of what sort this opinion is must now be considered in the following volume. BOOK IX. CHAPTER I. To what point the foregoing discussion has come, and what must be discussed concerning the remaining question.

Some have opined that there are both good and bad gods; but some, thinking better things of the gods, attributed so much of honour and praise to them that they dared not believe any of the gods to be evil. But those who said that some gods are good and some bad called the demons also by the name of gods — though the gods too, but more rarely, by the name of demons — so that they confess that Jupiter himself, whom they will have to be the king and chief of the rest, is called a demon by Homer. But those who assert that all the gods are none but good, and far more excellent than those men who are reckoned good, are rightly moved by the deeds of the demons, which they cannot deny;

and reckoning that these can in no way be committed by gods, all of whom they wish to be good, they are compelled to introduce a difference between gods and demons, so that whatever rightly displeases them in evil works or affections, by which the hidden spirits manifest their power, they may believe to be of demons, not of gods. But because they think these same demons are so set as middle beings between men and gods — as though no god mingles with man — that hence they bear up things desired, thence bring back things obtained; and the Platonists, the chief and most noble of the philosophers, hold this opinion, with whom, as with the more excellent, it has pleased us to examine this question, whether the worship of many gods avails for attaining the blessed life which is to come after death:

in the foregoing book we inquired by what means the demons, who delight in such things as good and prudent men shun and condemn — that is, in the sacrilegious, shameful, criminal fictions of the poets, not about any chance man, but about the very gods, and in the wicked and punishable violence of the magic arts — could, as if nearer and more friendly to the good gods, reconcile good men to them; and it has been found that by no reasoning is this possible. CHAPTER II. Whether among the demons, over whom the gods are superior, there is any portion of good ones, by whose protection the human soul may attain to true blessedness.

Accordingly, this book, as we promised at the end of that one, must contain a discussion concerning the difference (if they wish there to be any) — not of the gods among themselves, all of whom they call good, nor of the difference of gods and demons, the former of whom they far and highly separate from men, while they place the latter between gods and men — but concerning the difference of the demons themselves, in so far as it pertains to the present question. For among most people it is customary to say that some demons are good, others bad;

and whether this be the opinion of the Platonists too, or of any others whatever, by no means is its discussion to be neglected, lest anyone should suppose that good demons, as it were, are to be followed by him — through whom, as through middle beings, he affects and strives to be reconciled to the gods, all of whom he believes to be good, that he may as it were be able to be with them after death — and so, ensnared by malignant spirits and deceived by their fallacy, he should wander far from the true God, with whom alone, and in whom alone, and concerning whom alone, the human soul, that is, the rational and intellectual soul, is blessed. CHAPTER III. What Apuleius ascribes to the demons, to whom, while he does not deny reason, he assigns nothing of virtue. What, then, is the difference of good and evil demons?

Since indeed the Platonist Apuleius, discoursing universally concerning these and saying so much about their aerial bodies, was silent about the virtues of their minds, with which they would be endowed if they were good. He was silent, therefore, about the cause of blessedness, but he could not be silent about the token of misery, confessing that their mind, by which he declared them to be rational, was not at least imbued and fortified with virtue so as in no way to yield to the irrational passions of the soul, but that it too, as is the manner of foolish minds, is agitated in a kind of stormy way by tempestuous perturbations. For his words on this matter are these: 'From this number of demons,' he says, 'the poets are wont, not at all far from the truth, to feign certain gods to be haters and lovers of certain men;'