書信與論戰集（CSEL） 第 30 章

BOOK ONE. Among all the divine authorities that are contained in the Holy Scriptures, the Gospel deservedly excels. For what the Law and the Prophets foretold as to come, this is shown in the Gospel as rendered and fulfilled.

Of this Gospel the first preachers were the apostles, who saw the Lord Himself and our Savior Christ even present in the flesh; and they took care to announce to the human race—the office of evangelizing having been imposed upon them—not only those things which they remembered as heard from His mouth or done by Him before their own eyes, as spoken and done, but also those things which, before they had cleaved to Him through discipleship, had been divinely accomplished in His nativity or infancy or boyhood, and which, being worthy of memory, they were able to inquire into and learn, whether from Him Himself or from His parents or from any others whatever by most certain evidence and most faithful testimonies.

Of these, certain ones—that is, Matthew and John—even published in separate books writings about Him, such as seemed fit to be written. And lest it should be thought that, as regards perceiving and preaching the Gospel, it made any difference whether those announce it who followed the same Lord here appearing in the flesh with the service of discipleship, or those who faithfully believed what had been ascertained from them, it was provided by divine providence, through the Holy Spirit, that to certain ones also of those who followed the first apostles, authority should be granted not only of announcing but even of writing the Gospel. These are Mark and Luke.

But other men, who attempted or dared to write anything about the deeds of the Lord or of the apostles, were not such in their own times that the Church should place faith in them and receive their writings into the canonical authority of the holy books—not only because they were not such men as ought to be believed when they narrate, but also because they inserted into their writings certain things falsely, which the catholic and apostolic rule of faith and sound doctrine condemns.

These four evangelists, therefore, most widely known throughout the whole world—and perhaps four for this reason, because there are four parts of the earth, through whose entirety, by the very sacrament of their number, they in a manner declared that Christ's Church was to be spread abroad—are reported to have written in this order: first Matthew, then Mark, thirdly Luke, lastly John. Whence there was one order for them of knowing and preaching, but another of writing. For as to knowing and preaching, those assuredly were first who followed the Lord present in the flesh, heard Him speaking and saw Him acting, and were sent from His mouth to evangelize.

But in composing the Gospel—which must be believed to have been divinely ordained—out of the number of those whom the Lord chose before His passion, two held the first and the last place: first Matthew, last John; so that the remaining two, who were not of that number, yet had followed Christ speaking in them, being as it were sons to be embraced, and thereby placed in the middle position, might be fortified on either side by them. Of these four indeed only Matthew is reported to have written in the Hebrew tongue, the others in Greek.

And although each is seen to have held a certain order of his own in narrating, yet not one of them is found to have wished to write as though ignorant of another preceding him, or to have passed over as unknown things which another is found to have written; but, as it was inspired to each one, he added the not-superfluous cooperation of his own labor. For Matthew is understood to have undertaken the incarnation of the Lord according to the royal line, and most things done and said by Him according to the present life of men. Mark, following him, seems as it were his attendant and abbreviator.

For with John alone he said nothing; alone by himself very few things; with Luke alone fewer; but with Matthew a great many, and many things in almost the very same and identical words, whether in agreement with him alone or with the rest. Luke, however, appears more occupied about the priestly line and person of the Lord. For even in ascending to David himself, he did not follow the royal stem, but through those who were not kings comes out to Nathan the son of David, who was himself not a king either—unlike Matthew, who, descending through Solomon the king, followed in order the other kings also, preserving among them a mystical number, of which we shall speak later.

For the Lord Jesus Christ, the one true king and the one true priest—the former to rule us, the latter to expiate us—declared that He enacted His own figure in these two persons, singly commended among the fathers: whether by that title which was fixed above His cross, 'King of the Jews' (whence, by a hidden prompting, Pilate answered, 'What I have written, I have written'—for it had been foretold in the Psalms, 'Do not corrupt the inscription of the title'); or, as regards the person of the priest, in that He taught us to offer and to receive, whence He sent before a prophecy about Himself, saying, 'You are a priest forever according to the order of Melchizedek.' And by many other documents of the divine Scriptures Christ appears as king and priest.

Hence David himself—who is not without reason more frequently called father than the father of Abraham, and whom both Matthew and Luke held in common (the one as him from whom Christ descended through Solomon, the other as him to whom Christ ascends through Nathan)—although he was openly a king, yet also prefigured the person of the priest when he ate the loaves of the presentation, which it was not lawful to eat except for priests alone. To this is added that Luke alone also mentions Mary having been shown by the angel to be the kinswoman of Elizabeth, who was the wife of Zechariah the priest; concerning whom the same Luke wrote that he had her as wife from the daughters of Aaron, that is, from the tribe of the priests.

Since, therefore, Matthew directed his intention toward the person of the king, and Luke toward that of the priest, they both especially commended the humanity of Christ. For it is according to man that Christ was made both king and priest, to whom God gave the throne of David His father, that of His kingdom there should be no end, and that He should be, to intercede for us, the mediator of God and men, the man Christ Jesus. But Luke did not have an abbreviator joined to him, as Matthew had Mark; and this perhaps not without some sacrament, because it belongs to kings not to be without the attendance of companions.

Whence he who had undertaken to narrate the royal person of Christ had joined to himself as it were a companion, who in a manner followed his footsteps; but the priest, since he alone entered into the holy of holies, therefore Luke, whose intention was about the priesthood of Christ, did not have as it were a following associate who in a manner abbreviated his narration. These three evangelists, nevertheless, were chiefly engaged in those matters which Christ enacted temporally through human flesh; but John, on the other hand, especially aimed at the very divinity of the Lord, by which He is equal to the Father, and took care above all to commend it in his Gospel, as much as he believed sufficient among men.

Thus he is borne far above those three, so that you may see these in a manner conversing on earth with Christ the man, but him as having transcended the cloud by which all the earth is covered, and having reached the clear heaven, whence, with the most acute and most steadfast keenness of mind, he might behold in the beginning the Word, God with God, through whom all things were made, and might recognize Him made flesh, that He might dwell among us—that He received flesh, not that He was changed into flesh. For unless the assumption of flesh had taken place with the divinity preserved unchangeable, it would not be said, 'I and the Father are one,' for the Father and the flesh are not one. And this testimony of the Lord about Himself the same John alone recorded, and: 'He who has seen me has seen the Father also,' and:

'I in the Father and the Father in me,' and: 'That they may be one, as we also are one,' and: 'Whatever the Father does, these same things the Son also does likewise,' and if there are any other things which intimate to those who rightly understand the divinity of Christ, in which He is equal to the Father—John almost alone set these down in his Gospel, as though he had drunk more abundantly, and in a manner more intimately, the secret of His divinity from the very breast of the Lord, upon which he was accustomed to recline at His banquet. Accordingly, since two virtues are set before the human soul, one active, the other contemplative—the one by which one journeys, the other to which one arrives; the one by which one labors, that the heart may be cleansed to see God, the other by which one is at leisure and God is seen:

the former is in the precepts for exercising this temporal life, the latter in the doctrine of that everlasting life. And through this the former works, the latter rests, because the former is in the purgation of sins, the latter in the light of the purged. And through this, in this mortal life the former is in the work of good conduct, but the latter rather in faith, and among very few, through a mirror in an enigma and in part, in some vision of unchangeable truth. These two virtues are understood to be figured in the two wives of Jacob—concerning whom I discoursed against Faustus the Manichean, according to my small measure, as much as seemed to suffice for that work. For Leah is interpreted 'laboring,' but Rachel 'the vision of the beginning.'

From which it is given to be understood, if you attend diligently, that the three evangelists, having more copiously pursued the temporal deeds and sayings of the Lord which would especially avail for the forming of the morals of the present life, were engaged about that active virtue; but John, narrating far fewer deeds of the Lord, yet writing more diligently and more abundantly His sayings—those especially which would intimate the unity of the Trinity and the felicity of eternal life—held his intention and preaching in commending the contemplative virtue.

Whence those who from that Apocalypse interpreted the four living creatures as referring to the four evangelists seem to me to have attended to something more probable—those who understood the lion in Matthew, the man in Mark, the calf in Luke, the eagle in John—than those who assigned the man to Matthew, the eagle to Mark, the lion to John. For they wished to draw a certain conjecture from the beginnings of the books, not from the whole intention of the evangelists, which was rather to be searched out. For much more fittingly is he who especially commended the royal person of Christ signified by the lion. Whence in the Apocalypse also the lion is mentioned together with the royal tribe itself, where it is said: 'The lion of the tribe of Judah has conquered.'

For according to Matthew the Magi are also narrated to have come from the East to seek and adore the king, who was born and appeared to them through a star; and King Herod himself dreads the infant king, and, in order to be able to kill Him, slays so many little ones. But that Luke was signified by the calf, on account of the greatest victim of the priest, neither of them doubted. For there the discourse of the narrator begins from Zechariah the priest; there the kinship of Mary and Elizabeth is mentioned; there the mysteries of the first priesthood fulfilled in the infant Christ are narrated; and whatever other things can be diligently observed, by which it may appear that Luke had his intention about the person of the priest.

Mark, therefore, who wished to narrate neither the royal nor the priestly line, neither the kinship nor the consecration, and yet is shown to have been engaged in those things which Christ the man did, seems to be signified in those four living creatures only by the figure of the man. But these three animals—whether the lion or the man or the calf—walk upon the earth; whence these three evangelists were chiefly occupied in those things which Christ did in the flesh, and in the precepts of exercising the mortal life which He handed down to those who bear flesh. But John indeed, like an eagle, flies above the clouds of human weakness, and beholds the light of unchangeable truth with the most acute and most steadfast eyes of the heart.

These holy chariots of the Lord, by which, borne through the world, He subdues the peoples under His gentle yoke and light burden, certain men, whether out of impious vanity or out of unskilled rashness, assail with slanders, in order to detract from the faith of their truthful narration—through whom the Christian religion, disseminated throughout the world, has come forth with such great fruitfulness that unbelieving men now scarcely dare to mutter their slanders even among themselves, restrained by the faith of the nations and the devotion of all peoples.

Nevertheless, because they still, by their slanderous disputations, either hold some back from the faith, lest they believe, or, as far as they are able, agitate and disturb those already believing; and because some brethren, their faith being safe, desire to know what they may reply to such questions, whether for the advancement of their own knowledge or for refuting the empty talk of those others—with the Lord our God inspiring and helping (which would that it might profit also for their own salvation!)—we have undertaken in this work to demonstrate the error or rashness of those who think they can bring forth cunning enough accusations against the four books of the Gospel, which the four evangelists wrote each singly. And that this may be done, it must be shown how these four writers do not contradict one another.

For this they are accustomed, as it were the palm of their vanity, to object—that the evangelists themselves disagree among themselves. But first this must be discussed, which is wont to move some: why the Lord Himself wrote nothing, so that it is necessary to believe others writing about Him.

For this they say, even most especially those pagans who do not dare to blame or blaspheme the Lord Jesus Christ Himself, and attribute to Him the most excellent wisdom—yet only as to a man—but say that His disciples attributed to their master more than He was, so that they called Him the Son of God and the Word of God, through whom all things were made, and that He and God the Father are one, and whatever similar things there are in the apostolic writings, by which we have learned that He, together with the Father, is to be worshiped as one God. For they think He is to be honored as a most wise man, but deny that He is to be worshiped as God.

When, therefore, they ask why He Himself wrote nothing, they seem to have been ready to believe about Him what He Himself had written about Himself, not what others had proclaimed about Him according to their own judgment. Of these I ask: why concerning certain of their most noble philosophers did they believe what those philosophers' disciples left written in memory, when they themselves had written nothing about themselves? For Pythagoras, than whom Greece then had nothing more illustrious in that contemplative virtue, is reported to have written nothing, not only about himself, but not even about any matter whatsoever.

Socrates, however, whom in turn they set above all others in the active philosophy by which morals are shaped — so much so that they do not keep silent about the fact that he was even pronounced by the testimony of their own god Apollo to be the wisest of all men — treated the fables of Aesop in a few verses, applying his own words and metres to another's matter. So far was he from wishing to write anything of his own that he said he did even this under compulsion by the command of his own daemon, as Plato, the most noble of his disciples, records. Yet in that very work he chose to adorn another's opinions rather than his own.

What reason, then, is there why concerning those men they should believe what their disciples entrusted to writing about them, yet refuse to believe about Christ what His disciples wrote concerning Him — especially since they confess that the rest of mankind were surpassed by Him in wisdom, although they refuse to confess Him to be God? Or could those men, whom they do not doubt were far inferior to Him, produce truthful disciples about themselves, while He could not? But if this is said most absurdly, then let them believe about Him whom they confess to be wise, not what they themselves wish, but what they read in the writings of those who learned the things they wrote from that wise man. Then let them say from what source they were able even to know or hear that He was most wise.

If it is by the spreading of report, is report a surer messenger about Him than His own disciples, by whose preaching that very report blazed forth throughout the whole world? In the end let them set report against report, and believe that report about Him which is the greater. For indeed the report which, concerning the Catholic Church that they marvel to see diffused over the whole earth, is scattered abroad with wondrous brightness, incomparably outdoes the thin rumours of these men. Moreover, that report, so great and so celebrated that these men, dreading it, gnaw within their own bosoms their trembling and lukewarm little contradictions — now more afraid of being heard than desirous of being believed — proclaims Christ to be the only-begotten Son of God and God, through whom all things were made. If therefore they choose report as their witness, why do they not choose this one, which shines out with such great brightness?

If they choose Scripture, why not the Gospel Scripture, which prevails with such great authority? We at least believe about their gods those things which their own Scripture, more ancient, and their report, more widely celebrated, contain. And if these things are to be adored, why do they laugh at them in the theatres? But if they are to be laughed at, still more are they to be laughed at when they are adored in the temples. It remains, then, that these men should be willing to be witnesses about Christ — men who rob themselves of the credit of knowing what they say, by speaking what they do not know. Or if they claim to possess certain books which they assert He wrote, let them produce them for us. For surely they must be most useful and most wholesome, seeing that, as they themselves confess, a most wise man wrote them. But if they are afraid to bring them forth, then certainly they are evil; and further, if they are evil, then no most wise man wrote them;

but they confess Christ to be most wise: therefore Christ wrote no such thing. Yet these men are so senseless that they say those books, which they suppose He wrote, contain the arts by which they think He worked those miracles whose fame has spread everywhere. And by such a supposition they betray what they themselves love and long after — since indeed they think Christ was most wise for the very reason that He knew (so they imagine) certain unlawful things, which not only Christian discipline but even the administration of an earthly commonwealth rightly condemns. And surely those who affirm that they have read such books of Christ — why do they themselves do no such things as they marvel that He did from such books?

What too of the fact that by a certain divine judgement some of them so err — those who either believe or wish it to be believed that Christ wrote such things — that they say those same books were inscribed to Peter and Paul, as though with an epistolary heading? And it may be that certain enemies of the name of Christ, or men who thought that by such execrable arts they could lend the weight of authority to so glorious a name, wrote such things under the name of Christ and of the apostles. In which most deceitful audacity they have been so blinded that they are deservedly laughed at even by boys who, still in a boyish way, know the Christian writings in the rank of readers.

For when they wished to fabricate that Christ had written some such thing to His disciples, they considered to whom it might most readily be believed He could have written — namely to those who had clung to Him most intimately, to whom that as it were secret matter might worthily be committed; and Peter and Paul occurred to them, because, I suppose, they had seen these two depicted together with Him in many places, since Rome commemorates the merits of Peter and Paul the more famously and solemnly on account of the very same day of their passion. Thus they thoroughly deserved to err — men who sought Christ and His apostles not in the holy books but on painted walls; and no wonder if, being inventors, they were deceived by painters.

For during the whole time that Christ lived in mortal flesh with His disciples, Paul was not yet His disciple; Him, after His passion, after His resurrection, after His ascension, after the sending of the Holy Spirit from heaven, after the conversion and wondrous faith of many Jews, after the stoning of Stephen the deacon and martyr — while he was still called Saul and was grievously persecuting those who had believed in Christ — He called from heaven and made His disciple and apostle. How therefore could He have written books (which they wish it to be thought He wrote before He died) to His disciples Peter and Paul as to His most intimate friends, when Paul was not yet His disciple?

Let those also consider this — those who rave that by magical arts He was able to do such great things and by that very art consecrated His own name so as to turn the peoples toward Himself — whether by magical arts He could have filled, before He was born on earth, with the divine Spirit so many prophets, who foretold about Him such things to come as we now read already past in the Gospel, and such things present as we now see throughout the whole world. For if by magical arts He brought it about that He should be worshipped even when dead, He was not a magician before He was born — He, for whose prophesied coming a single nation was appointed, whose whole commonwealth in its entire administration was a prophecy of that King who was to come and to found for Himself a heavenly city out of all nations.

Accordingly, of that Hebrew nation, appointed (as I said) to prophesy Christ, there was no other god save the one God, the true God, who made heaven and earth and all things that are in them. Having offended Him, they were often made subject to their enemies; and now too, for the most grievous crime of having slain Christ, they have been utterly rooted out from Jerusalem itself, which was the capital of their kingdom, and subjugated to the Roman empire. Now the Romans were accustomed, concerning the gods of the nations they subdued, to propitiate them so as to be worshipped, and to take up their sacred rites. This they refused to do concerning the God of the Hebrew nation, whether they assailed it or conquered it.

I believe it was because they saw that, if they received the sacred rites of that God who commanded that He alone be worshipped, and even that idols be destroyed, they would have to abandon all those things which they had before undertaken to worship — by whose religions they supposed their empire had grown. In this the deceit of the demons deceived them most of all. For assuredly they ought to have understood that their kingdom had been given and increased by the hidden will of the true God, in whose hands is the sovereign power over all things, and not by the favour of those gods; who, if they had had any power in this matter, would rather have protected their own so that they might not be overcome by the Romans, or would have subdued those very Romans and brought them into subjection. For neither can they say that their piety and morals were loved and chosen by the gods of the nations whom they conquered.

They will never say this, if they recall their own beginnings — the asylum of criminals and the fratricide of Romulus. For neither, when Remus and Romulus established the asylum, so that whoever was guilty of any crime might flee thither having committed much, did they give precepts of repentance for the saving of the souls of the wretched; but rather they armed with the reward of impunity a hand of fearful men gathered against their own cities, whose laws they feared. Nor, when Romulus killed his brother, who had perpetrated no evil against him, did he have in mind the justice of avenging rather than the sovereignty of ruling. Did the gods, then, love such morals — gods hostile to their own cities by favouring the enemies of those cities?

Nay rather, neither by defending those cities did they press upon them, nor by going over to these Romans did they help them at all; for they have not in their power to give and take away a kingdom, but the one and true God does this by a hidden judgement — not about to make blessed forthwith those to whom He has given an earthly kingdom, nor forthwith wretched those from whom He has taken it away, but making men blessed or wretched for another reason and from another source. He distributes temporal and earthly kingdoms to whom He wills and for as long as He wills, according to the predestined order of the ages, either by permitting or by granting. Hence neither can they say: Why, then, did the God of the Hebrews, whom you call the supreme and true God, not only not subjugate the Romans to them, but not even help the Hebrews themselves, that they might not be subjugated by the Romans?

For their manifest sins went before, on account of which the prophets had so long beforehand foretold to them that this would come; and chiefly because with impious fury they slew Christ, in which sin they were blinded through the deserts of their other hidden sins. That His passion would be of profit to the nations was foretold by the same prophetic attestation. Nor did anything else make more manifest that the kingdom and temple and priesthood and sacrifice of that nation, and that mystic anointing which in Greek is called chrism —

whence the name of Christ shines forth, and on account of which that very nation called its kings 'christs' (anointed) — that all these had been appointed for nothing else than to foretell Christ. This is shown by the fact that, after the resurrection of the slain Christ began to be preached to the believing nations, all those things ceased — the Romans not knowing it, through whose victory, and the Jews not knowing it, through whose subjugation, it came about that those things ceased. The few pagans who have remained do not notice this truly marvellous thing: that the God of the Hebrews, offended by the vanquished and not received by the victors, is now proclaimed and worshipped by all nations. For He is the God of Israel, of whom, so long before, the prophet thus addressed the people of God: 'And He who has delivered you, the God of Israel, shall be called the God of the whole earth.'

This has been accomplished through the name of Christ, who came to men from the very seed of Israel, who was the grandson of Abraham, from whom the nation of the Hebrews began; for to Israel himself also it was said: 'And in your seed shall all the tribes of the earth be blessed.'

Hence it is shown that the God of Israel, the one God who made heaven and earth, cares for human affairs justly and mercifully — in such a way that justice does not shut out mercy, nor mercy hinder justice — and that He Himself was not conquered in His Hebrew people, in that He permitted their kingdom and priesthood to be assailed and destroyed by the Romans; since indeed, through the Gospel of Christ, the true King and Priest (which that kingdom and priesthood prefigured as things to come), the God of Israel Himself now everywhere destroys the idols of the nations — the very idols which, that they might not be destroyed, the Romans refused to receive His sacred rites, just as they received the rites of the gods of other nations whom they conquered.

Thus He both took away the kingdom and priesthood of that prophetic nation, because He who was promised through them had now come, and subjected to His own name, through Christ the King, the Roman empire by which that nation was conquered; and He converted it, by the strength and devotion of the Christian faith, to the overthrowing of the idols for whose honour His sacred rites had not been received. I think, therefore, that it was not by magical arts that Christ brought it about — before He was born among men — that the things to come about Himself should be foretold through so many prophets, and through the kingdom and priesthood of a certain nation as well. For the people of that kingdom, now destroyed, dispersed everywhere by the marvellous providence of God, though without any anointing of king or priest —

in which anointing (chrism) the name of Christ appears — yet still retains the relics of certain of their observances; while the Roman world, neither conquered nor subjugated, has not received those sacred rites of idol worship, so that it might carry the prophetic books as a testimony to Christ, and thus from the books of enemies the truth of the prophesied Christ might be proved. Why then do the wretched men still, by praising Christ ill, betray themselves? If any magical writings have been composed under His name, since Christ's teaching is vehemently hostile to these arts, let them rather understand from this how great is that Name, by adding which even those who live contrary to His precepts try to lend honour to their nefarious arts.

For just as, through the diverse errors of men, many have even founded various heresies against the truth under His name, so even the enemies of Christ perceive that, in persuading what they put forward against Christ's teaching, they have no weight of authority for themselves unless it bears the name of Christ. What of the fact that these empty praisers of Christ and crooked disparagers of the Christian religion do not dare to blaspheme Christ, because certain of their philosophers — as Porphyry the Sicilian sets forth in his books — consulted their gods as to what they should answer concerning Christ, and those gods were compelled by their own oracles to praise Christ? And no wonder, since we read even in the Gospel that the demons confessed Him; and it is written in our prophets:

'For the gods of the nations are demons.' And by this, lest they should strive against the responses of their own gods, they hold back their blasphemies from Christ and pour them out upon His disciples. But it seems to me that those gods of the nations, whom the philosophers of the pagans were able to consult, would also — if they were questioned about the disciples of Christ — themselves likewise be compelled to praise them.

Nevertheless these men argue thus: that this overthrow of temples and condemnation of sacrifices and breaking of idols is brought about not by the teaching of Christ, but by that of His disciples, whom they contend taught something other than what they had learned from Him — thus wishing, while honouring and praising Christ, to pull down the Christian faith; because indeed it was through the disciples of Christ that both the deeds and the words of Christ were announced, on which the Christian religion rests — a religion still hostile to these very few men, who now no longer assail it, but nevertheless still mutter against it.

But if they refuse to believe that Christ taught such things, let them read the prophets, who not only commanded that the superstitions of idols be overthrown, but also foretold that this overthrow would come to pass in Christian times. If these prophets deceived, why is it fulfilled with such great manifestation? If they spoke the truth, why is so great a divinity resisted? Yet these things must be more diligently inquired of them: whom do they think the God of Israel to be? Why did they not receive Him to be worshipped, like the gods of other nations which the Roman empire subdued — especially since it is their own opinion that all gods are to be worshipped by the wise man? Why then was He alone rejected from the number of the rest? If He is of very great power, why is He alone not worshipped by them?

If He is of little or no power, why, when their idols are crushed, is He alone now worshipped by almost all nations? They will never be able to free themselves from the bond of this question — men who, while worshipping greater and lesser gods (whom they think to be gods), do not worship this God who has prevailed over all whom they worship. For if He is of great virtue, why was He judged worthy of rejection? If He is of little or no virtue, why, though rejected, could He do so much? If He is good, why is He alone separated from the other good ones? If He is evil, why is He alone not overcome by so many good ones? If He is truthful, why are His precepts spurned? If He is a liar, why are His predictions fulfilled? In the end, let them think of Him what they will.

Do not the Romans think that even evil gods are to be worshipped, they who made shrines to Pallor and Fever? Who advise that the good demons are to be invited and the evil demons to be appeased? Whatever, then, they may suppose about Him, why did they judge that He alone was neither to be invoked nor to be propitiated? Who is this God, either so unknown that among so many gods He alone is still not found, or so well known that by so many men He alone is now worshipped? Nothing therefore remains for them to say as to why they refused to receive this God's sacred rites, except that He willed Himself alone to be worshipped, but forbade those gods of the nations, whom these men were already worshipping, to be worshipped. But this very thing is rather to be required of them: whom, or of what kind, they think —

this God to be — He who refused that other gods be worshipped, to whom these men made temples and idols, and who had such power that His will was stronger for overthrowing their idols than theirs was for preventing His sacred rites from being received. Certainly the opinion of that philosopher of theirs is betrayed, whom they affirmed to have been, even by an oracle, the wisest of all men. For it is the opinion of Socrates that each single god ought to be worshipped in such a manner as he himself has prescribed himself to be worshipped. Accordingly the utmost necessity was laid upon these men not to worship the God of the Hebrews; because, if they wished to worship Him in another manner than He Himself had said He was to be worshipped, they would certainly not be worshipping Him, but what they themselves had invented.

But if they wished to worship Him in that manner which He Himself prescribed, they saw that others were not to be worshipped by them, whom He forbade to be worshipped. And on this account they spurned the worship of the one true God, lest they should offend the many false ones — judging rather that the wrath of these would harm them than that His benevolence would profit them. But let that necessity have been vain and that timidity ridiculous: now we ask what these men think about this God — men to whom it is pleasing that all gods should be worshipped. For if this God is not to be worshipped, how are all worshipped, when this one is not worshipped? But if He is to be worshipped, then not all are to be worshipped, since, unless He alone is worshipped, this God is not worshipped.

Or will they perhaps say that this one is not a god, since they call those gods who — as we believe — can do nothing except what they are permitted by His judgement, not so as to profit anyone, but so that they cannot even harm any except those whom He judges ought to be so harmed, who can do all things? But, as they themselves are compelled to confess, they certainly could do less than He. For if they are gods whose seers, when consulted by men — though I would not say they deceived — nevertheless gave close answers about private affairs, how is He not a God whose seers not only answered fittingly the things which were consulted for the moment, but also foretold, from what was not consulted, so long beforehand, concerning the whole human race and all nations, those things which we now both read and see?

If they call him a god by whom Sibylla, being filled, chanted the fates of the Romans, how is He not a God who exhibited what He foretold — that both the Romans and all nations would, through the Gospel of Christ, believe in Him the one God, and would overthrow all the idols of their fathers? Finally, if they call those gods who never dared through their seers to say anything against this God, how is He not a God who through His seers not only commanded that their idols be overthrown, but also foretold that they would be overthrown among all nations by those who, forsaking those idols, would be commanded to worship the one God, and, being so commanded, would serve Him?

Or let them read, if they can, that any of the Sibyls, or any others of their own seers, foretold this as future: that the God of the Hebrews, the God of Israel, would be worshipped by all nations; and that whereas the worshippers of other gods had rightly before spurned Him, the future writings of His prophets would also stand in authority so lofty that, in obedience to them, even the Roman empire would order the idols to be destroyed; and that they also warned that such precepts should not be obeyed. Let them read these things, if they can, out of any of the books of their own seers.

For I forbear to say that the things which are read in their books speak testimony on behalf of our religion, that is, the Christian religion — things which they could have heard from the holy angels and from our very prophets, just as even the demons were compelled to confess Christ present in the flesh. But I forbear these things, which, when we bring them forward, they contend have been fabricated by our own people. It is they, wholly they, who must be pressed to bring forth from the seers of their own gods anything prophesied against the God of the Hebrews, just as we cite from the books of our prophets so many and such great things against their gods, and observe His commands, and recite His predictions, and demonstrate the accomplished facts.

Those very few who now remain prefer to grieve that these things are fulfilled rather than to acknowledge that God who was able to foretell the things to be fulfilled — although in their own false gods, which are truly demons, they seek nothing else as a great thing than that they may learn from their responses that something is to come to pass for them. Since these things are so, why do the wretched men not rather understand that He is the true God, whom they see so separated from the fellowship of their gods that, whereas they who profess that all gods are to be worshipped are compelled to confess Him a god, they are not permitted to worship Him along with the rest? Since therefore they cannot be worshipped together, why is not He chosen who forbids these to be worshipped, forsaking these who do not forbid Him to be worshipped? Or, if they do forbid it, let it be read.

For what ought rather to be recited to their peoples in their temples, where nothing of the kind ever resounded? And surely the prohibition of so many against one ought to be more widely known and more powerful than that of one against so many. For if the worship of this God is impious, the gods are useless who do not restrain men from impiety; but if the worship of this One is pious, since in it it is enjoined that those be not worshipped, then the worship of those is impious.

But if they so confidently forbid this One to be worshipped that they fear more to be heard than they dare to forbid, who from this very fact would not be wise enough to perceive that He is rather to be chosen, who so publicly forbids those to be worshipped, who commanded their idols to be overthrown, foretold it, and overthrew them — rather than those, whom we do not know to have commanded that He be not worshipped, whom we do not read to have foretold anything, and whom we do not see to have had any power? I ask, let them answer: who is this God, who so persecutes all the gods of the nations, who so betrays and so extinguishes all their sacred rites? Why should I interrogate men who have vanished away in their thinking as to who He may be? Some say: He is Saturn — I believe on account of the sanctifying of the sabbath, because these men assigned that day to Saturn.

But their own Varro, than whom they find no one more learned among themselves, supposed the God of the Jews to be Jupiter, judging it to make no difference by what name He is called, so long as the same thing is understood — deterred, I believe, by His supreme height. For since the Romans are not accustomed to worship anything higher than Jupiter, which their Capitol testifies clearly enough, and they hold him to be the king of all the gods, when Varro observed that the Jews worship the supreme God, he could suspect nothing other than Jupiter. But whether they think Saturn or Jupiter to be the God of the Jews, let them say: when did Saturn dare to forbid another god to be worshipped — not even Jupiter himself, who is reported to have expelled him from his kingdom, the son his father?

And if this Jupiter, as being the more powerful and the victor, pleased his worshippers, let them not worship Saturn, the conquered and expelled. But neither did this one forbid Jupiter to be worshipped, and the very god whom he was able to conquer he nevertheless permitted to be a god. 'These,' they say, 'are fables, either to be interpreted by the wise or to be laughed at; but we worship Jupiter, of whom Maro says: All things are full of Jove' — that is, the spirit that gives life to all things. Rightly then did Varro too suppose that Jupiter is worshipped by the Jews, because He says through the prophet: 'I fill heaven and earth.' What of that which the same poet calls the aether? How do they take it? For thus he says: 'Then the almighty Father, the aether, descends in fruitful showers into the lap of his glad spouse.'

For they say the aether is not spirit, but a lofty body, by which the sky is stretched out above the air. Or is it granted to the poet now to speak according to the Platonists, so that God is not a body but a spirit, and now according to the Stoics, so that God is a body? What, then, do they worship in the Capitol? If a spirit, if indeed the corporeal sky itself, what is that shield of Jupiter doing there, which they call the Aegis? For the origin of this name is thus given: that a she-goat (capra) nourished Jupiter when he was hidden from his mother. Or do the poets lie about this too? Are the Capitols of the Romans, then, the works of poets? But what does that variety mean — not poetic but plainly mimic — of seeking the gods among the philosophers in books, and of adoring them among the poets in the temples?

But was that Euhemerus also a poet, who set forth most plainly that both Jupiter himself and Saturn his father and Pluto and Neptune his brothers were men — so that their worshippers ought rather to give thanks to the poets, because the many things the poets invented were not to dishonour them but rather to adorn them? Although Cicero records that this very Euhemerus was translated into the Latin tongue by the poet Ennius. Was Cicero himself too a poet, who admonishes the man with whom he disputes in the Tusculans, as one privy to secrets, saying: 'But if I should try to scrutinize things ancient and to dig out from those things which the writers of Greece have handed down, those very gods of the greater nations will be found to have set out from here into heaven'?

'Inquire whose tombs are pointed out in Greece; recollect, since you have been initiated, the things that are handed down in the mysteries; then at last you will understand how widely this extends.' Here certainly he confesses plainly enough that these men's gods were men, but he benevolently conjectures that they attained to heaven. And yet that even this honour of reputation was conferred upon them by men, he did not hesitate to say publicly, when speaking of Romulus: 'He who founded this city,' he says, 'Romulus, we have raised up to the immortal gods by benevolence and fame.' What wonder is it, then, if the men of more ancient times did concerning Jupiter and Saturn and the rest what the Romans did concerning Romulus — what, finally, in more recent times they even wished to do concerning Caesar?

To these Virgil also added the flattery of his verse, saying: 'Lo, the star of Dionaean Caesar has come forth.' Let them therefore see to it, lest perchance historical truth should show the tombs of the false gods on earth, while poetic vanity does not fix, but feigns, their stars in heaven. For in truth that star is not Jupiter's, nor that one Saturn's; but after their death men imposed these names upon the constellations, established since the beginning of the world, men who wished those dead ones to be held as it were for gods. Concerning which — what such great evil did chastity, or what such great good did pleasure, deserve, that among the stars which revolve with the sun and moon, Venus should have a star and Minerva should not?

But grant that Cicero the Academic was more uncertain than the poets, who dared to record the tombs of the gods and commit them to writing — though he did not presume this on the strength of his own opinion, but reported it from the very tradition of their sacred rites. Does Varro too either invent it like a poet or lay it down doubtfully like an Academic, when he says that the rites of such gods were composed out of the life or death of each of them, according to how they lived among men or how they died? And was Leon, that Egyptian priest, either a poet or an Academic — he who disclosed to Alexander of Macedon an origin of these gods indeed different from the Greeks' opinion, yet in such a way that he declared them to have been men? But what is this to us?

Let them say that they do not worship Jupiter as a dead man, nor dedicated the Capitol to a dead man, but to the life-giving spirit that fills the world; and let them interpret his shield, made of goat-skin in honour of his nurse, however they please. What do they say of Saturn? What Saturn do they worship? Is it not he who 'first came from Olympus, fleeing the arms of Jove and exiled from his realm now taken away, who gathered together a race untaught and scattered on the high mountains, and gave them laws, and chose that it be called Latium, since in these shores he had lain hidden in safety'? Is not his very image, which is fashioned with the head covered, a sign of one, as it were, in hiding? Did he not himself teach agriculture to the Italians, as the sickle he holds shows? 'No,' they say;

'for see now — even if there was such a man and some king of whom these things are told, we nevertheless interpret Saturn as "universal time," as even his Greek name shows; for he is called Cronos, which, with an aspirate added, is also the word for time (chronos), whence in Latin too he is called Saturnus, as though sated (saturetur) with years.' What is now to be done with these people, I do not know, who, while trying to interpret the names and images of their gods in a better sense, confess that their greater god and the father of the rest is time. For what else do they indicate than that all their gods are temporal, whose very father they make out to be time itself?

At this their more recent Platonist philosophers, who lived already in Christian times, were ashamed, and attempted to interpret Saturn differently, saying that he was called Cronos as if from the fullness (satiety) of intellect, because in Greek satiety is coros and intellect or mind is nous. To this the Latin name too seems to lend support, as though composed of a first Latin part and a later Greek one, so that it should be spoken as Saturnus, as if satur nous ('sated mind'). They saw how absurd it would be if Jupiter, whom they thought or wished to be thought an eternal god, were held to be the son of Time.

But according to this novel interpretation — which, had their ancients held it, it would be strange had it escaped Cicero and Varro — they call Jupiter, the son of Saturn, a spirit as it were flowing forth from that supreme Mind, which they hold to be like the soul of this world, filling all celestial and terrestrial bodies. Whence comes that line of Maro which I mentioned a little before: 'Of Jupiter all things are full.' Would not these men, if they could, change not only the interpretation but also the superstition of men, and set up either no images at all, or Capitols to Saturn rather than to Jupiter?

For they argue that no rational soul becomes wise except by participation in that supreme and unchangeable Wisdom — not only the soul of any man, but even the soul of the world itself, which they call Jupiter. Now that there is a certain supreme Wisdom of God, by participation in which whatever soul becomes truly wise is made wise, we not only grant, but even most emphatically proclaim. But whether this whole corporeal mass which is called the world has a certain soul, or as it were its own soul, that is, a rational life by which it is governed just as every animal is governed, is a great and hidden question; and this opinion ought neither to be affirmed unless it has been found to be true, nor refuted unless it has been found to be false.

But what does this matter to man, even if it forever remains hidden from him, since no soul becomes wise or blessed from any other soul whatsoever, but only from that sole supreme and unchangeable Wisdom of God? Yet the Romans, who founded the Capitol not for Saturn but for Jupiter, and the other nations that thought Jupiter above all was to be worshipped over the rest of the gods, did not hold what these men held. For these, according to their new opinion, if they had had any power in these matters, would rather have dedicated the highest citadels to Saturn, and would above all have destroyed the astrologers and casters of nativities, who set Saturn — whom these men call the maker of the wise — among the other stars as a maleficent god.

This opinion so prevailed against them in the minds of men that they are unwilling even to name him, calling him 'the Old Man' rather than Saturn, with so timid a superstition that even the Carthaginians almost changed the name of their own street, more frequently calling it 'the Street of the Old Man' than 'the Street of Saturn.' It is therefore plain what the worshippers of images are convicted of worshipping and what they attempt to gloss over. But from these new interpreters of Saturn it must also be asked what they think of the God of the Hebrews. For it pleased even them to worship all the gods along with the nations, since it shamed them, proud as they were, to be humbled under Christ for the remission of sins. What then do they think of the God of Israel?

If they do not worship Him, they do not worship all the gods; but if they do worship Him, they do not worship Him as He commanded Himself to be worshipped, for they also worship others whom He forbade to be worshipped. For through those prophets He forbade these things — the very prophets through whom He foretold that these things themselves, which their images now suffer at the hands of Christians, would come to pass.

For whether angels were sent to those prophets, to show them figuratively, through the fitting appearance of sensible things, the one Creator God of all, the one true God to whom all things are subject, and to declare in what manner He commanded Himself to be worshipped; or whether the minds of some among them were so exalted by the Holy Spirit that they beheld these things with that vision by which the very angels behold them — it stands firm nonetheless that they served that God who forbade other gods to be worshipped, and that they served Him with the faith of piety, in the kingdom and priesthood of their commonwealth, and in the sacred rites that signified Christ, the King and Priest who was to come.

Furthermore, among the gods of the nations — whom these men, while unwilling to worship Him who cannot be worshipped together with them, are unwilling to worship — let them say what is the reason that not one of them is found who forbids another to be worshipped, seeing that they set them over diverse offices and functions, and would have them to be presidents over the things that properly pertain to each.

For if Jupiter does not forbid Saturn to be worshipped — because Saturn is not that man who drove out his father from the kingdom, but either the body of heaven or a spirit filling heaven and earth, and therefore cannot forbid worship to be paid to that supernal Mind from which he is said to have emanated — and if for the same reason Saturn does not forbid Jupiter to be worshipped, because he was not overcome by him rebelling, as Saturn himself was by that one I know not whom whose arms he fled when he came into Italy, but rather favours the first Mind of the soul begotten from himself: then at least Vulcan should forbid the worship of Mars, the adulterer of his wife; Hercules should forbid the worship of Juno, his persecutor. What is this so foul concord among them, that not even the chaste virgin Diana forbids the worship — I will not say of Venus, but of Priapus?

For if one man wished to be both a hunter and a farmer, he would be the servant of both — yet gods who are ashamed to build even neighbouring temples for such a man. But let them interpret Diana as whatever virtue they please, and let them interpret Priapus too as the god of fecundity, in such a way, forsooth, that in the impregnation of women it should shame them to have Juno for such a helper. Let them say what they please, let them interpret as they think fit — provided that the God of Israel confounds all their arguments; who, since He forbade all those gods to be worshipped, and was forbidden by none of them to be worshipped, and commanded, foretold, and effected the overthrow of their images and rites, has sufficiently shown that they are false and deceitful, and that He is the true and truthful God.

But how should one not marvel that these now-few worshippers of the many false gods are unwilling to obey Him — concerning whom, when they are asked who indeed this God is, they may answer by opining whatever they please, yet they dare not deny that He is God, because, if they should deny it, they are most easily convicted by His works and by His predictions both foretold and fulfilled? For I do not adduce those things which they think themselves free not to believe — that He in the beginning made heaven and earth and all that is in them; nor those very ancient things: that He translated Enoch; that He destroyed the impious by the flood; that He delivered righteous Noah and his household by the wood; but from Abraham I begin His deeds among men.

For to him was made, through an angelic oracle, a manifest promise which we now see fulfilled. To him indeed it was said: 'In thy seed shall all nations be blessed' — from whose seed came the people of Israel, whence came the Virgin Mary, who bore Christ, in whom let them now dare to deny that all nations are blessed, if they can. This promise was made also to Isaac, Abraham's son; this also to Jacob, Abraham's grandson, who was also called Israel, from whom the whole people was both propagated and named, so that the God of this people was called the God of Israel — not that He is not the God of all nations, whether not yet knowing Him or now knowing Him, but because in this people He willed the power of His promises to appear more manifestly.

For that people, first multiplied in Egypt and delivered from that bondage through Moses with many signs and wonders, having subdued very many nations, received also the land of promise, in which it reigned through its own kings sprung from the tribe of Judah. This Judah was one of the twelve sons of Israel, the grandson of Abraham; and thence they were surnamed Jews. Many things they did with God Himself aiding them; many things they endured for their sins with Him Himself scourging them, until there should come the Seed to whom it was promised, in whom all nations should be blessed and should of their own accord break in pieces the images of their fathers. For it was not in Christian times, but so long before, that what is now fulfilled through the Christians was foretold.

The very Jews who have remained enemies of the name of Christ — concerning whose future faithlessness even those prophetic writings are not silent — these same possess and read a prophet who says: 'O Lord my God and my refuge in the day of evils, to Thee shall the nations come from the ends of the earth and shall say: Truly our fathers worshipped lies, images, and there is no profit in them.' Behold, now it comes to pass; behold, now the nations come from the ends of the earth to Christ, saying these very things and breaking the images. For this too is a great thing which God has bestowed upon His Church spread abroad everywhere.

So that the Jewish nation, deservedly conquered and scattered throughout the lands — lest these things should be thought fabricated by us — might everywhere carry the codices of our prophets and become, though hostile to our faith, a witness of our truth. How then did the disciples of Christ teach what they did not learn from Christ — as fools in their folly boast — namely, that the superstition of the gentile gods and of images should be abolished? Can it be said that the disciples of Christ invented even those prophecies which are now read in the codices of Christ's enemies? For who overthrew these things but the God of Israel? For to that very people it was said, through the divine words made to Moses: 'Hear, O Israel, the Lord thy God is one Lord.'

'Thou shalt not make to thyself an idol, nor any likeness of anything, neither of things that are in heaven above nor of things that are in the earth beneath.' And that He might also overthrow these things when He should receive power, He is thus commanded: 'Thou shalt not adore their gods, neither shalt thou serve them; thou shalt not do according to their works, but destroying thou shalt destroy them, and breaking thou shalt break their images.' But who would say that Christ and the Christians do not pertain to Israel, since Israel was the grandson of Abraham, to whom first, and then to Isaac his son, and then to Israel himself his grandson, it was said what I have already mentioned: 'In thy seed shall all nations be blessed'?

And this we now see coming to pass in Christ, since from thence sprang that Virgin, of whom the prophet of the people of Israel and of the God of Israel sang, saying: 'Behold, a virgin shall conceive and shall bear a son, and they shall call His name Emmanuel.' Now Emmanuel is interpreted 'God with us.' Therefore the God of Israel, who forbade other gods to be worshipped, who forbade idols to be fashioned, who commanded them to be overthrown, who through the prophet foretold that the nations from the ends of the earth would say, 'Truly our fathers worshipped lies, images, in which there is no profit' — He it is who, through the name of Christ and the faith of Christians, commanded, promised, and brought about the overthrow of all these superstitions.

In vain, therefore, do these wretches — because they have been forbidden by their own gods, that is, by demons who fear the name of Christ, to blaspheme Christ — wish to make alien to Him that teaching by which Christians dispute against idols and root out, wherever they can, all those false religions. Let them answer concerning the God of Israel, whom both the books of the Christians and even those of the Jews attest to teach and command these things; concerning Him let them consult their gods, who forbade Christ to be blasphemed; concerning the God of Israel, if they hear anything insulting, let them answer. But whom shall they consult? Or where shall they now consult? Let them read the books of their own.

If they think the God of Israel to be Jupiter, as Varro wrote — to speak for the moment according to their opinion — why then do they not believe Jupiter that idols must be destroyed? If they think Him to be Saturn, why do they not worship Him? Or why do they not worship Him in the manner in which He commanded Himself to be worshipped through those prophets by whom He fulfilled the things He foretold? Why do they not believe Him that images are to be overthrown and that other gods are not to be worshipped?

But if He is neither Jupiter nor Saturn — because, if He were one of them, He would not say so much against the rites of their Jupiter and Saturn — who then is He, who alone is not worshipped by these men for the sake of other gods, and who, when the other gods are overthrown, so manifestly brings it to pass that He alone is worshipped, every proud loftiness being humbled which had raised itself against Christ, persecuting and slaying Christians for the sake of idols? Now certainly they seek where to hide themselves when they wish to sacrifice, or where to shut away their very gods, lest they be found by Christians and broken in pieces. Whence this, if not from fear of the laws and of the kings through whom the God of Israel exerts His power over those now made subject to the name of Christ — as long before He promised, saying through the prophet:

'And all the kings of the earth shall adore Him, all the nations shall serve Him.' Surely now is fulfilled what is repeatedly sung through the prophet: that He would spare His impious people — not indeed the whole of it, for many of the Israelites believed in Christ, since from thence too were His apostles — and would humble every proud and injurious man, that He alone might be exalted, that is, might be made manifest to men as alone lofty and mighty, until the idols should be cast away by the believers and hidden by the unbelievers, when the earth is shattered by fear of Him, that is, when earthly men are broken by fear, dreading the law either of Himself or of those who, believing in Him and reigning over the nations, would forbid such sacrileges.