This he tries to abolish in such a way as to deny that there is a knowledge of things to come, and to contend with all his might that there is no such thing at all, whether in man or in God, and no prediction of things. Thus he both denies God's foreknowledge and tries to overthrow every prophecy, clearer than light, by empty argumentations, and by setting against himself certain oracles which can easily be refuted—which, however, not even these does he refute. But in refuting these conjectures of the astrologers his discourse reigns, because they are truly such as to destroy and refute themselves. Yet much more tolerable are those who establish even starry fates, than this man who takes away the foreknowledge of things to come. For both to confess that God is, and to deny that He is foreknowing of things to come, is the most open madness.
And he himself, when he saw this, even attempted that which is written: 'The fool said in his heart, There is no God'; but not in his own person. For he saw how invidious and troublesome it was, and therefore he made Cotta dispute on this matter against the Stoics in the books On the Nature of the Gods, and preferred to deliver his sentence for Lucilius Balbus, to whom he gave the part of the Stoics to defend, rather than for Cotta, who contends that there is no divine nature. But in the books On Divination he openly impugns, of his own accord, the foreknowledge of things to come. And this he seems to do wholly lest he should consent that fate exists, and lose free will. For he thinks that, foreknowledge of things to come being granted, fate follows so closely that it cannot at all be denied.
But however these most tortuous contentions and disputations of the philosophers may stand, we, as we confess the most high and true God, so confess His will and supreme power and foreknowledge; nor do we fear that we do not by will that which we do by will, because He, whose foreknowledge cannot be deceived, foreknew that we should do it—which Cicero feared, so as to impugn foreknowledge, and the Stoics feared, so as not to say that all things come to pass by necessity, although they contended that all things come to pass by fate. What is it, then, that Cicero feared in the foreknowledge of things to come, so that he strove to undermine it by a detestable disputation? Namely, because, if all things to come are foreknown, they will come in that order in which they were foreknown to be going to come;
and if they come in this order, the order of things is certain to God foreknowing; and if the order of things is certain, the order of causes is certain; for nothing can come to pass which some efficient cause has not preceded; but if the order of causes is certain, by which comes about everything that comes about, then, he says, all things that come to pass come to pass by fate. But if this is so, nothing is in our power, and there is no choice of the will; and if we grant this, he says, all human life is overthrown, in vain are laws given, in vain are reproaches, praises, censures, exhortations applied, and no justice has appointed rewards for the good and punishments for the wicked.
Lest, therefore, these unworthy, absurd, and ruinous consequences should befall human affairs, he is unwilling that there should be any foreknowledge of things to come; and he forces the religious mind into these straits, that it must choose one of two things: either that there is something in our will, or that there is foreknowledge of the future; for he judges that both cannot be true together, but that if the one is affirmed, the other is abolished. If we choose foreknowledge of the future, free choice of the will is taken away; if we choose free choice of the will, foreknowledge of the future is taken away. He therefore, as a great and learned man, and one most prudently and skillfully concerned for human life, chose, of these two, the free choice of the will;
and in order to establish this, he denied the foreknowledge of the future; and thus, while he wished to make men free, he made them sacrilegious. But the religious mind chooses both, confesses both, and by the faith of piety affirms both. How so? he says; for if there is foreknowledge of the future, all those things follow which are linked together, until it comes to this, that there is nothing in our will. But if there is something in our will, by the same steps retraced one arrives at this, that there is no foreknowledge of the future. For through all those steps the regress runs thus: if there is free will, not all things happen by fate; if not all things happen by fate, there is no fixed order of all causes;
if there is no fixed order of causes, neither is there a fixed order of things in the foreknowledge of God, since they cannot come to pass except by preceding and effecting causes; if the order of things in God's foreknowledge is not fixed, then not all things come about as He foreknew that they would come; but if not all things come about as they were foreknown by Him to come, then, he says, there is in God no foreknowledge of all things future. But we, against these sacrilegious and impious presumptions, both affirm that God knows all things before they come to pass, and that we do by our will whatsoever we feel and know is done by us only when we will it. Yet we do not say that all things happen by fate; nay, we say that nothing happens by fate;
for since the name of fate is wont to be employed by speakers in the sense in which it is commonly used, that is, in the configuration of the stars at the moment when anyone is conceived or born, we show that, since the thing itself is asserted in vain, the name avails nothing. But the order of causes, in which the will of God has the greatest power, we neither deny, nor designate by the term fate—unless perhaps we understand 'fate' as derived from 'fari', that is, from speaking; for we cannot deny that it is written in the sacred Scriptures: 'God hath spoken once; these two things have I heard, that power belongeth unto God; and unto Thee, O Lord, belongeth mercy: for Thou renderest to every man according to his works.' For what is said,
'He hath spoken once,' is to be understood as 'immovably,' that is, unchangeably—'He hath spoken,' even as He unchangeably knows all things that are to be and that He Himself will do. In this sense, then, we might call fate from 'speaking', were it not that this name is already wont to be understood in another matter, toward which we do not wish the hearts of men to be inclined. Nor does it follow that, if the whole order of causes is fixed to God, therefore there is nothing in the free choice of our will. For our very wills are in the order of causes, which is fixed to God and is comprised in His foreknowledge, since human wills also are the causes of human deeds.
And thus He who foreknew the causes of all things assuredly could not be ignorant, among those causes, of our wills also, which He foreknew to be the causes of our deeds. For even that which the same Cicero concedes—that nothing happens unless an efficient cause precedes—is enough to refute him in this question. For what does it profit him to say that nothing indeed happens without a cause, yet that not every cause is fatal, because there is a fortuitous cause, a natural cause, a voluntary cause? It suffices that he confesses that everything which happens does not happen save by a preceding cause.
For we say that those causes which are called fortuitous—whence also fortune has received its name—are not nothing, but hidden; and we attribute them either to the will of the true God or to that of any spirits whatever; and the natural causes we by no means sever from the will of Him who is the author and founder of all nature. Now the voluntary causes are either of God, or of angels, or of men, or of any animals—if indeed those motions of souls devoid of reason are to be called wills, by which they do certain things according to their nature, when they either seek or avoid something. But by the wills of angels I mean either those of the good, whom we call angels of God, or those of the evil, whom we call angels of the devil or even demons;
so also the wills of men, both of the good and of the evil. And from this it is gathered that there are no efficient causes of all the things which come to pass except voluntary causes—that is, of that nature which is the spirit of life. For this air or wind is also called 'spirit'; but since it is a body, it is not the spirit of life. The Spirit of life, then, who quickens all things and is the creator of every body and of every created spirit, is Himself God, a Spirit assuredly uncreated. In His will is the supreme power, which aids the good wills of created spirits, judges the evil, orders all, and to some grants powers, to others grants them not. For as He is the creator of all natures, so is He the giver of all powers, but not of wills.
For evil wills are not from Him, since they are contrary to nature, which is from Him. Bodies, therefore, are more subject to wills: some to ours, that is, to those of all mortal living beings, and of men rather than of beasts; some to those of angels; but all are above all subject to the will of God, to whom even all wills are subject, since they have no power save what He grants. The cause of things, therefore, which makes and is not made, is God; but other causes both make and are made, such as are all created spirits, especially the rational. Corporeal causes, however, which are made rather than make, are not to be reckoned among efficient causes, since they can only do that which the wills of spirits do through them.
How then does the order of causes, which is fixed to the foreknowing God, bring it about that there is nothing in our will, when in that very order of causes our wills hold so great a place? Let Cicero then contend with those who call this order of causes fatal, or rather who call it by the very name of fate—which we especially abhor on account of the word, which is not wont to be understood in its true sense. But in that he denies that the order of all causes is most certain and most fully known to the foreknowledge of God, we detest him more than the Stoics do. For either he denies that there is a God—which indeed he attempted to do in his books On the Nature of the Gods, under the person of another;
or, if he confesses that there is a God whom he denies to be foreknowing of the future, even so he says nothing other than what that fool said in his heart: 'There is no God.' For he who does not foreknow all things future is assuredly not God. Wherefore our wills also have just so much power as God willed and foreknew that they should have; and therefore whatever power they have, they have most certainly, and what they are to do, they themselves will most assuredly do, because He whose foreknowledge cannot be deceived foreknew that they would have such power and would do such things.
Wherefore, if it pleased me to apply the name of fate to anything, I would rather say that fate belongs to the weaker, namely the will of the stronger who has him in his power, than that by that order of causes, which the Stoics call fate—not in the usual but in their own manner—the choice of our will is taken away. CHAPTER X. Whether any necessity dominates the wills of men. Hence neither is that necessity to be feared, by fearing which the Stoics labored to distinguish the causes of things in such a way as to withdraw some from necessity and subject others to it; and among those which they wished to be under necessity they placed our wills also, lest, forsooth, they should not be free if they were made subject to necessity.
For if that is to be called our necessity which is not in our power, but which effects what it can even if we are unwilling—as is the necessity of death—it is manifest that our wills, by which we live rightly or wrongly, are not under such a necessity. For we do many things which, if we were unwilling, we should certainly not do. To this belongs, first of all, the very act of willing; for if we will, it is; if we do not will, it is not; for we should not will if we were unwilling. But if that is defined to be necessity according to which we say that it is necessary that a thing be so, or come to pass so, I know not why we should fear it, lest it take from us the liberty of the will.
For neither do we place the life of God and the foreknowledge of God under necessity if we say that it is necessary that God always live and foreknow all things; just as His power is not diminished when it is said that He cannot die or be deceived. For He cannot do this in such a way that, if He could, He would assuredly be of less power. Rightly indeed is He called almighty, who nevertheless cannot die or be deceived. For He is called almighty by doing what He wills, not by suffering what He does not will; and if this should befall Him, He would by no means be almighty. Hence it is that He cannot do certain things, precisely because He is almighty. So also, when we say that it is necessary that, when we will, we will by free choice,
we both speak the truth beyond all doubt, and yet we do not thereby subject free choice itself to a necessity that takes away liberty. There are, therefore, our wills, and they themselves do whatever we do by willing, which would not be done if we were unwilling. But whatever anyone suffers unwillingly through the will of other men, even so the will avails—not indeed his own, yet a man's will; but the power is God's. For if there were only will and it could not do what it willed, it would be hindered by a more powerful will; nor yet would the will be anything but a will, nor another's, but his who willed, even though he could not fulfill what he willed.
Hence, whatever a man suffers contrary to his own will, he ought not to attribute to the wills of men, or of angels, or of any created spirit, but rather to His who gives power to those who will. It is not, therefore, on this account that there is nothing in our will, because God foreknew what would be in our will. For He who foreknew this did not foreknow nothing. But if He who foreknew what would be in our will foreknew not nothing, but indeed something, then assuredly, even with Him foreknowing, there is something in our will. Wherefore we are in no way compelled, either, retaining the foreknowledge of God, to take away the choice of the will, or, retaining the choice of the will, to deny (which is impious) that God is foreknowing of the future;
but we embrace both, both faithfully and truly confess both: the one, that we may believe well; the other, that we may live well. But one lives ill if one does not believe well concerning God. Hence far be it from us to deny His foreknowledge in order that we may will freely—He by whose aid we are free or shall be free. Accordingly, laws, rebukes, exhortations, praises, and reproaches are not in vain, since He foreknew that these also would be; and they avail very greatly, in the measure that He foreknew they would avail; and prayers avail for obtaining those things which He foreknew He would grant to those who pray; and justly have rewards been appointed for good deeds, and punishments for sins. For a man does not therefore sin because God foreknew that he would sin;
nay rather, it is for this reason not doubted that he himself sins when he sins, because He whose foreknowledge cannot be deceived foreknew that not fate, not fortune, not anything else, but he himself would sin. And if he should be unwilling, he assuredly does not sin; but if he should be unwilling to sin, even this He foreknew. CHAPTER XI. On the universal providence of God, by whose laws all things are governed.
God, therefore, the supreme and true, with His Word and the Holy Spirit—which three are one—the one almighty God, creator and maker of every soul and of every body, by partaking of whom they are happy who are happy by truth and not by vanity; who made man a rational animal of soul and body; who, when man sinned, neither suffered him to go unpunished nor abandoned him without mercy; who gave to the good and the evil being even in common with stones, seminal life even in common with trees, sentient life even in common with cattle, intellectual life in common with the angels alone; from whom is every mode, every species, every order; from whom is measure, number, weight;
from whom is whatsoever exists naturally, of whatever kind it is, of whatever estimation it is; from whom are the seeds of forms, the forms of seeds, the motions of seeds and of forms; who gave also to flesh its origin, beauty, health, fecundity of propagation, the disposition of its members, the well-being of concord; who gave also to the irrational soul memory, sense, appetite, but to the rational soul moreover mind, understanding, will; who left not heaven and earth only, nor angel and man only, but not even the entrails of the smallest and most contemptible animal, nor the feather of a bird, nor the little flower of a plant, nor the leaf of a tree, without a harmony of their parts and a kind of peace, as it were:
by no means is He to be believed to have willed that the kingdoms of men and their dominations and servitudes should be alien from the laws of His providence. CHAPTER XII. By what manners the ancient Romans deserved that the true God, although they did not worship Him, should enlarge their empire. Accordingly, let us see what manners of the Romans, and for what cause, the true God—in whose power are also the earthly kingdoms—deigned to aid in the enlarging of their empire.
Now, that we might be able to discuss this more fully, we have written the preceding book also as pertaining to this matter—namely, that in this affair those gods, whom they thought ought to be worshiped even for trifling things, have no power at all; and the earlier parts of the present volume, which we have carried thus far, treat of doing away with the question of fate, lest anyone, to whom it had already been made persuasive that the Roman empire was not propagated and preserved by the worship of those gods, should rather attribute it to some unknown fate than to the most powerful will of the supreme God.
The ancient and earliest Romans, therefore, as far as their history teaches and commends, although—like other nations, except the one people of the Hebrews—they worshiped false gods and sacrificed victims not to God but to demons, nevertheless were 'greedy of praise and liberal of money; they desired immense glory and honorable riches'; this they most ardently loved; for this they wished to live, for this they did not hesitate to die; all other desires they suppressed by this one immense desire. In short, their very fatherland, since to serve seemed inglorious but to rule and command glorious, they desired first with all zeal to be free, and then to be mistress.
因此，他們既不堪忍受王者的統治，「便為自己設立一年一任的職權和兩位統帥，這兩位因『商議』（consulendo）而被稱為執政官，而非因『治理統管』（regnando et dominando）被稱為王或主」；雖然「王」（reges）按理似乎更宜由「統治」（regendo）得名，正如「王國」由「王」而來，而「王」如前所述由「統治」而來。但王者的威儀，被視為並非統治者的紀律、亦非商議者的仁慈，乃是專橫者的驕傲。於是，塔克文王被逐、執政官設立之後，便有那同一作者列在羅馬人讚譽中的事——「自由一旦得著，國家在短時間內增長之巨，實在難以言述；
Hence it is that, not enduring kingly domination, 'they made for themselves yearly commands and two commanders, who were called consuls from consulting (consulendo), not kings or lords from reigning and dominating (regnando et dominando)'; although kings indeed would seem better named from ruling (regendo), so that kingdom is from kings, but kings, as has been said, from ruling. But kingly pomp was reckoned not the discipline of one ruling, nor the benevolence of one consulting, but the pride of one domineering. So, when King Tarquin had been expelled and consuls instituted, there followed what the same author set down among the praises of the Romans—that 'it is incredible to relate how much the state, once liberty was attained, grew in a short time;
so great a desire of glory had come upon them.' This greed of praise, then, and this desire of glory, wrought those many wondrous things—laudable, to be sure, and glorious according to the estimation of men. The same Sallust praises the great and illustrious men of his own times, Marcus Cato and Gaius Caesar, saying that for a long time that republic had no one great in virtue, but that within his own memory there had been those two of immense virtue, of differing characters. But among the praises of Caesar he set down that he longed for himself a great command, an army, a new war, wherein his virtue might shine forth. Thus it came about, in the prayers of men great in virtue, that Bellona should rouse wretched nations to war and lash them with her bloody scourge, that there might be a place where their virtue should shine forth.
This indeed that greed of praise and desire of glory accomplished. Therefore, first from the love of liberty, then also from that of domination and from the desire of praise and glory, they did many great things. To them their own distinguished poet renders testimony of both things; for thence he says: 'Nor less did Porsenna command that the ejected Tarquin be received, and pressed the city with a mighty siege; the sons of Aeneas rushed upon the sword for liberty.' Then, accordingly, it was a great thing for them either bravely to die or to live free. But when liberty had been attained, so great a desire of glory had come upon them, that liberty alone was too little, unless dominion also were sought—while that was held a great thing which the same poet says, as though Jove were speaking:
'Nay, even harsh Juno, who now wearies sea and lands and heaven with fear, shall change her counsels for the better, and shall together with me cherish the Romans, lords of the world and the toga-clad nation. So it is decreed. There shall come an age, as the lustres glide by, when the house of Assaracus shall crush Phthia and famed Mycenae into servitude, and shall lord it over vanquished Argos.' These things indeed Virgil, bringing in Jove as though foretelling things to come, was himself already recalling as done and beholding as present; but for this reason I wished to recall them, that I might show that the Romans so held dominion after liberty, that it was set down among their great praises.
Hence too is that other passage of the same poet, where, when he set before the arts of other nations those very arts proper to the Romans, of reigning and commanding and subduing and warring down peoples, he says: 'Others shall hammer out more softly the breathing bronze (I grant it indeed), shall draw forth living countenances from the marble, shall plead causes better, and shall trace with the rod the courses of the heaven and tell the rising stars: but thou, O Roman, remember to rule the peoples with thy sway (these shall be thine arts), to impose the manner of peace, to spare the subjected and to war down the proud.'
These arts they exercised the more skillfully, the less they gave themselves to pleasures and to the enervation of mind and body in coveting and increasing riches, and through these corrupting their morals—by plundering wretched citizens, by lavishing upon base stage-players. Hence those who already surpassed and abounded in such a stain of morals, when Sallust was writing these things and Virgil was singing, strove after honors and glory not by those arts, but by deceits and frauds. Whence the same author says: 'But at first ambition rather than avarice exercised the minds of men, which vice nevertheless was nearer to virtue. For the good man and the slothful alike desire for themselves glory, honor, command;
but the one,' he says, 'strives by the true way; the other, because good arts are wanting to him, contends by deceits and frauds.' These are those good arts—namely, to arrive at honor and glory and command through virtue, not through fraudulent ambition; which, nevertheless, the good man and the slothful alike desire for themselves; but the one, that is the good man, strives by the true way. The way is virtue, by which he strives as toward the end of possession, that is, toward glory, honor, command. That the Romans had this ingrained, their very temples of the gods among them indicate, which they set up most closely joined—of Virtue and Honor—holding as gods the things which are given by God. Whence it can be understood what end they wished virtue to have, and to what those who were good referred it—namely, to honor;
for the wicked did not have it, although they desired to have honor, which they tried to obtain by evil arts, that is, by deceits and frauds. Cato is the more praised. For of him he says: 'The less he sought glory, the more it followed him.' Since indeed glory, with the desire of which they burned, is the judgment of men thinking well of men; and therefore virtue is better, which is content with no human testimony but that of its own conscience. Whence the apostle says: 'For our glory is this: the testimony of our conscience'; and in another place: 'But let every man prove his own work, and then shall he have glory in himself alone, and not in another.'
Glory, therefore, and honor, and command, which they desired for themselves and to which the good strove to arrive by good arts—virtue ought not to follow these, but these to follow virtue. For neither is there true virtue except that which tends to that end where is the good of man, than which there is none better. Whence even the honors which Cato sought he ought not to have sought, but the state ought to have given them to him for his virtue, without his seeking them. But since in that memory there were two Romans great in virtue, Caesar and Cato, the virtue of Cato seems to have been far nearer to truth than that of Caesar. Accordingly, what manner of state it was at that time, and what it had been before, let us see in Cato's own sentence: 'Do not suppose,' he says, 'that it was by arms that our ancestors made the republic great from small.
If it were so, we should have it far more beautiful. For of allies and citizens, and besides of arms and horses, we have a greater abundance than they had. But there were other things which made them great, which we have none of: at home industry, abroad just rule, a mind free in counsel, subject neither to wrongdoing nor to lust. In place of these we have luxury and avarice, public want, private opulence; we praise riches, we follow sloth; between the good and the bad there is no distinction; ambition possesses all the rewards of virtue. Nor is it any wonder:
when you each separately take counsel for yourselves, when at home you are slaves to pleasures, here to money or favor, the result is that an assault is made upon the defenseless republic.' He who hears these words of Cato or of Sallust thinks that all the ancient Romans who are praised, or the greater part of them, were at that time such as these. It is not so; otherwise the things would not be true which he himself likewise writes—those which I recalled in the second book of this work, where he says that injuries of the more powerful, and on account of them the secession of the plebs from the fathers, and other dissensions, existed at home even from the very beginning, and that men acted with no more equitable and moderate justice than during the time after the kings were expelled, so long as there was fear from Tarquin, until the grave war which had been undertaken on his account against Etruria should be ended;
but afterward the fathers exercised the plebs with servile rule, scourged them after the manner of kings, drove them from their land, and, with the rest excluded, alone held sway in command; and that the end of these discords—while the one party wished to dominate and the other refused to serve—came in the Second Punic War, because again a grave fear began to press, and to restrain restless minds from those disturbances by another greater care, and to recall them to civil concord. But through certain few, who were good after their own measure, great affairs were administered; and, those evils being tolerated and tempered, by the providence of the few good men that state went on growing;