文集（天主之城·論三位一體等） 第 11 章

[I] It is the settled judgment of all who can in any way use reason, that all men wish to be blessed. But while mortal weakness inquires who are blessed, or whence they become so, many and great controversies have been stirred up, over which the philosophers have worn out their studies and their leisure; to bring these forward and discuss them is both long and unnecessary. For if he who reads these things recalls what we did in the eighth book in choosing philosophers with whom this question of the blessed life which is to come after death might be handled—whether we can attain to it by serving with religion and sacred rites the one true God, who is also the maker of the gods, or many gods:

he does not expect that the same things should be repeated here also, especially since, by re-reading, if perchance he has forgotten, he can assist his memory. For we chose the Platonists, deservedly the most renowned of all philosophers, for this reason: because they were able to be wise enough to perceive that the immortal and rational, or intellectual, soul of man cannot be blessed except by participation in the light of that God by whom both it and the world were made; and thus they deny that anyone can attain that which all men seek, namely the blessed life, who has not adhered, by the purity of a chaste love, to that one supreme Good, which is the unchangeable God.

But because they too, whether yielding to the vanity and error of the peoples, or, as the Apostle says, "becoming vain in their imaginations," supposed—or wished it to be supposed—that many gods were to be worshipped, so that some of them held that even to demons divine honors of sacred rites and sacrifices were to be rendered (to whom we have already in no small measure replied): now it must be seen and discussed, as much as God grants, in what manner the immortal and blessed—established in the heavenly seats, dominions, principalities, powers, whom these men call gods, and some of whom they name either good demons or, with us, angels—are to be believed to wish that religion and piety be preserved by us;

that is, to speak more openly, whether it pleases them that we perform sacred rites and sacrifice to themselves also, or only to their God, who is also ours, or that we consecrate by the rites of religion any things of ours, or our very selves. For this is the worship owed to the divinity, or, if it must be said more expressly, to the deity; for signifying which by a single word—since no sufficiently suitable Latin one occurs to me—I introduce the Greek where necessary, to intimate what I mean to say. For latreia, wherever it is placed in the holy Scriptures, our translators have rendered as "service." But that service which is owed to men, according to which the Apostle enjoins that servants ought to be subject to their masters, is usually called by another name in Greek;

but latreia, according to the custom by which those spoke who composed for us the divine oracles, is always—or so frequently as to be almost always—called that service which pertains to the worship of God. Accordingly, if only "worship" (cultus) itself be spoken of, it does not seem to be owed to God alone. For we are said to "cultivate" (colere) men also, whom we frequent with honorable remembrance or presence. Nor is it only those to whom we subject ourselves with religious humility, but even certain things which are subject to us, that are said to be "cultivated." For from this word are called both husbandmen (agricolae) and settlers (coloni) and inhabitants (incolae), and they call the very gods "heaven-dwellers" (caelicolae) for no other reason than that they cultivate—that is, inhabit—heaven, not indeed by venerating but by dwelling, as though certain settlers of heaven;

not as those are called coloni who owe a condition to their native soil for the sake of agriculture under the dominion of the owners, but as a certain great author of Latin eloquence says: "An ancient city there was; Tyrian settlers held it." For he called them coloni from inhabiting, not from agriculture. Hence also cities founded from greater cities, as it were by swarms of peoples, are called "colonies." And through this it is altogether most true that worship (cultus), by a certain proper notion of this word, is owed to none but God; but because the worship of other things also is spoken of, therefore in Latin the worship owed to God cannot be signified by a single word.

For religion itself too—although it seems more distinctly to signify not any worship whatsoever, but the worship of God (whence by this name our translators rendered that which is called in Greek threskeia)—nevertheless, because by the Latin custom of speaking, not of the unlearned but even of the most learned, religion is said to be exhibited both to human kinships and affinities and to any relationships whatsoever, ambiguity is not avoided by this word when the question turns upon the worship of the deity, so that we might confidently be able to say that religion is nothing but the worship of God, since this word seems to be unusually withdrawn from signifying the observance of human relationship. Piety too is commonly understood, properly speaking, as the worship of God, which the Greeks call eusebeia.

Yet this word is said to be used also of the dutiful conduct shown toward parents. But in the common speech of the people this name is likewise frequently applied to works of mercy; which I judge to have come about because God commands these especially to be done, and testifies that they please Him either in place of sacrifices or above sacrifices. From this habit of speech it has come to pass that God Himself is called 'pious' (pius); though the Greeks, by no usage of their own tongue, call Him eusebes, even while the common people among them employ eusebeia also for mercy. Hence in certain places of the Scriptures, that the distinction might appear more sure, they preferred to say not eusebeia, which sounds as compounded from good worship, but theosebeia, which sounds as compounded from the worship of God.

But neither of these can we express in a single word. Therefore that which in Greek is called latreia and in Latin is rendered 'service'—but that service by which we worship God; or that which in Greek is threskeia, and in Latin is called 'religion'—but that religion which is ours toward God; or that which they call theosebeia, which we cannot express in a single word but can name 'the worship of God': this we declare to be owed to Him alone who is the true God and who makes His worshippers gods. Whatever immortal and blessed beings there are dwelling in the heavenly habitations, if they do not love us nor wish us to be blessed, they are by no means to be worshipped. But if they love us and wish us blessed, surely they wish us blessed from that source whence they too are blessed; or are they blessed from one source and we from another?

[II] But with these more excellent philosophers we have no conflict on this question. For they saw, and in their writings copiously set forth in many ways, that those beings are made blessed from the same source as we, by a certain intelligible light being set before them, which is God for them and is other than they, by whom they are illumined so as to shine and by participation in whom they subsist perfect and blessed. Often and at length Plotinus, expounding the meaning of Plato, asserts that not even that soul which they believe to be the soul of the universe is blessed from any other source than ours, and that this is a light which the soul itself is not, but by which it was created, and by whose intelligible illumination it intelligibly shines.

He also gives a likeness to those incorporeal things drawn from these visible and vast heavenly bodies, as though God were the sun and the soul the moon. For they think the moon is illumined by being set opposite the sun. That great Platonist therefore says that the rational soul—or rather it should be called the intellectual soul, of which kind he understands the souls of the immortal and blessed beings also to be, whom he does not doubt to dwell in the heavenly seats—has above itself no nature save God, who fashioned the world and by whom the soul itself was made; and that a blessed life and the light of the understanding of truth are furnished to those beings on high from no other source than that from which it is furnished also to us; which agrees with the Gospel, where it is read: 'There was a man sent from God, whose name was John;'

'this man came for a witness, that he might bear witness of the Light, that all might believe through him. He was not that Light, but was to bear witness of the Light. That was the true Light, which lighteth every man that cometh into this world.' By which distinction it is sufficiently shown that the rational or intellectual soul, such as was in John, cannot be a light to itself, but shines by participation in another, the true Light. This John himself also confesses, when bearing witness to Him he says: 'Of His fullness have we all received.'

[III] Since these things are so, if the Platonists, or whoever else perceived these truths, had, in knowing God, glorified Him as God and given thanks, and had not become vain in their thoughts, nor in part become authors of the errors of the peoples and in part not dared to resist them: surely they would confess that both for those immortal and blessed beings and for us mortal and wretched ones, in order that we may be able to be immortal and blessed, there is one God of gods to be worshipped, who is both ours and theirs. To Him we owe the service which in Greek is called latreia, whether in any sacraments or in ourselves. For we, all together and each singly, are His temple, since He deigns to inhabit both the concord of all and each single one;

being no greater in all than in each single one, since He is neither extended by mass nor diminished by division. When our heart is lifted up to Him, it is His altar; we appease Him by His Only-begotten as our priest; we slay to Him bloody victims, when we strive even unto blood for His truth; we burn to Him the sweetest incense, when in His sight we are aglow with pious and holy love; we vow and render to Him His gifts in us and our very selves; we dedicate and consecrate to Him the memory of His benefits by solemn feasts and appointed days, lest through the rolling of time ungrateful forgetfulness creep in; we sacrifice to Him upon the altar of the heart the victim of humility and praise, kindled by the fervid fire of charity.

To see Him, so far as He can be seen, and to cleave to Him, we are cleansed from every stain of sins and evil desires, and consecrated in His name. For He Himself is the fountain of our blessedness, He is the end of all our longing. Choosing Him, or rather re-choosing Him (for we had lost Him by neglecting Him)—re-choosing Him therefore, whence 'religion' is said to be named, we tend toward Him by love, that by reaching Him we may rest, blessed for this reason, that we are made perfect by that end. For our good, concerning whose end there is a great contention among the philosophers, is no other than to cleave to Him, by whose incorporeal embrace alone (if it may be so said) the intellectual soul is filled and made fruitful with true virtues.

We are commanded to love this Good with the whole heart, the whole soul, and the whole strength; to this Good we ought both to be led by those from whom we are loved, and to lead those whom we love. Thus are fulfilled those two commandments on which hang all the law and the prophets: 'Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind,' and, 'Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself.' For that a man might know how to love himself, an end was set for him to which he should refer all that he did, that he might be blessed; for no one who loves himself wishes anything other than to be blessed. But this end is to cleave to God.

Now therefore, to one who already knows how to love himself, when it is commanded that he love his neighbor as himself, what else is commanded than that he commend to him, as far as he can, the love of God? This is the worship of God, this is true religion, this is right piety, this is the service owed to God alone. Whatever immortal power therefore, however endowed with virtue, if it loves us as itself, wishes us to be subject to Him, that we may be blessed, to whom it too being subject is blessed. If then it does not worship God, it is wretched, because it is deprived of God; but if it does worship God, it does not wish itself to be worshipped in God's stead. For it rather votes for that divine sentence and favors it with the strength of its love, whereby it is written: 'He that sacrificeth unto the gods shall be rooted out, save unto the Lord alone.'

[IV] For—to be silent now about other things that pertain to the homage of religion by which God is worshipped—there is certainly no man who would dare to say that sacrifice is owed to any but God. Many things indeed borrowed from divine worship have been rendered to human honors, whether through excessive humility or through pestilent flattery; yet in such a way that those to whom these were rendered were held to be men, who are said to be worshipped and venerated, and, if much is added to them, even to be adored: but who has judged that sacrifice should be offered save to Him whom one either knew or supposed or feigned to be a god? How ancient, moreover, is the worship of God in sacrificing, those two brothers Cain and Abel sufficiently indicate, of whom God rejected the sacrifice of the elder and looked upon that of the younger.

[V] But who would be so foolish as to think that the things offered in sacrifices are necessary for any uses of God? Although the divine Scripture testifies to this in many places, yet, that we may not be long, it will suffice to recall that brief word from the Psalm: 'I said unto the Lord, Thou art my Lord, for Thou hast no need of my goods.' Not only, therefore, of cattle or of any other corruptible and earthly thing, but not even of a man's own righteousness is God to be believed to have need, and all worship rightly rendered to God profits man, not God. For no one would say that he had done a service to a fountain if he drank of it, or to the light if he saw by it.

Nor, from the fact that other sacrifices in victims of cattle were offered by the ancient fathers—which the people of God now reads about but does not do—is anything else to be understood, save that by those things were signified these things that are wrought within us, to the end that we may cleave to God and consult our neighbor's welfare toward the same end. A visible sacrifice, therefore, is the sacrament, that is, the sacred sign, of an invisible sacrifice. Whence that penitent in the prophet, or the prophet himself, seeking to have God propitious to his sins, says: 'If Thou hadst desired sacrifice, I would surely have given it; in burnt offerings Thou wilt not delight. A sacrifice to God is a broken spirit; a broken and humbled heart God will not despise.'

Let us consider how, where he said that God does not will sacrifice, there he shows that God does will sacrifice. He wills not, therefore, the sacrifice of a slaughtered beast, and He does will the sacrifice of a contrite heart. By that, then, which he said God does not will, is signified this which he subjoined that God does will. Thus, therefore, he said God wills not those things in the way in which by the foolish they are believed to be willed, as though for the sake of His own pleasure. For if He did not will that those sacrifices which He does will (of which this is one: a contrite and humbled heart in the sorrow of penitence) should be signified by those sacrifices which He was supposed to desire as if delightful to Himself, He would surely not have commanded that these be offered in the old law.

And therefore they had to be changed at a fitting and now certain time, lest they should be believed to be desirable to God Himself, or at any rate acceptable in us, rather than the things which are signified by them. Hence also in another place of another Psalm He says: 'If I were hungry, I would not tell thee; for the whole world is mine and the fullness thereof. Shall I eat the flesh of bulls, or drink the blood of goats?'—as though He said: 'Certainly, if these were necessary to me, I would not seek from thee things which I have in my own power.' Then, adding what those things signify, He says: 'Offer unto God the sacrifice of praise, and pay thy vows unto the Most High, and call upon me in the day of tribulation, and I will deliver thee, and thou shalt glorify me.' Likewise in another prophet:

'Wherewith,' he says, 'shall I lay hold of the Lord, take hold of my God most high? Shall I lay hold of Him in burnt offerings, in yearling calves? Will the Lord be pleased with thousands of rams, or with tens of thousands of fat he-goats? Shall I give my firstborn for my impiety, the fruit of my womb for the sin of my soul? Has it been shown thee, O man, what is good? Or what does the Lord require of thee but to do judgment and to love mercy and to be ready to walk with the Lord thy God?' And in this prophet's words both are distinguished, and it is sufficiently declared that God does not for their own sake require those sacrifices by which are signified these sacrifices which God does require. In the epistle which is inscribed 'To the Hebrews':

'Forget not,' he says, 'to do good and to communicate; for with such sacrifices God is well pleased.' And hence, where it is written: 'I will have mercy rather than sacrifice,' nothing else ought to be understood than that one sacrifice is preferred to another sacrifice; since that which by all is called sacrifice is the sign of the true sacrifice. But mercy is the true sacrifice; whence it was said, which I recalled a little before: 'For with such sacrifices God is well pleased.' Whatever things, therefore, are read in the ministry of the tabernacle or the temple to have been divinely commanded in many ways concerning sacrifices, are referred, by way of signification, to the love of God and neighbor.

For on these two commandments, as it is written, hang all the law and the prophets. [VI] Accordingly, a true sacrifice is every work by which it is brought about that we cleave to God in holy fellowship, referred, that is, to that end of good by which we can be truly blessed. Whence even that mercy itself, by which help is given to a man, if it is not done for God's sake, is not a sacrifice. For although it is done or offered by a man, yet sacrifice is a divine thing, so that the old Latins named it by this very word (sacrificium, 'a making sacred'). Whence man himself, consecrated in the name of God and vowed to God, in so far as he dies to the world that he may live to God, is a sacrifice. For this too pertains to the mercy which each one shows to himself. Therefore it is written:

'Have mercy on thy soul, pleasing God.' Our body also, when we chastise it with temperance, if we do this—in the way we ought—for God's sake, that we may not present our members as weapons of iniquity unto sin, but as weapons of righteousness unto God, is a sacrifice. Exhorting to which the apostle says: 'I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercy of God, that ye present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, well-pleasing to God, your reasonable service.' If, then, the body, which the soul uses as an inferior thing, as a servant or as an instrument, when its good and right use is referred to God, is a sacrifice:

how much more is the soul itself a sacrifice, when it refers itself to God, so that, kindled by the fire of His love, it may lose the form of worldly desire and, subjected to Him as to the unchangeable form, be reformed, being thereby pleasing to Him because it has received from His beauty! This the same apostle consequently adds, saying: 'And be not conformed to this world; but be ye reformed in the newness of your mind, that ye may prove what is the will of God, that which is good and well-pleasing and perfect.' Since, therefore, true sacrifices are works of mercy, whether toward ourselves or toward our neighbors, which are referred to God;

and since works of mercy are done for no other reason than that we may be freed from misery and thereby that we may be blessed (which comes about only by that Good of which it is said: 'But for me it is good to cleave to God'): surely it is brought about that the whole redeemed City itself, that is, the congregation and society of the saints, is offered to God as a universal sacrifice through the great Priest, who also offered Himself in His passion for us, that we might be the body of so great a Head, according to the form of a servant. For it was this form that He offered, in this form that He was offered, because according to it He is Mediator, in it He is Priest, in it He is Sacrifice.

When therefore the apostle had exhorted us that we present our bodies a living sacrifice, holy, well-pleasing to God, our reasonable service, and be not conformed to this world, but be reformed in the newness of our mind, to prove what is the will of God, that which is good and well-pleasing and perfect—which whole sacrifice we ourselves are: 'For I say,' he says, 'through the grace of God which is given to me, to all that are among you, not to be more wise than it behooves to be wise, but to be wise unto sobriety; even as God hath dealt to every one the measure of faith. For as we have many members in one body, but all members have not the same acts: so we, being many, are one body in Christ;'

'and every one members one of another, having diverse gifts according to the grace that is given to us.' This is the sacrifice of Christians: the many, one body in Christ. Which also the Church frequents in that sacrament of the altar well known to the faithful, where it is shown to her that in the very thing which she offers, she herself is offered. [VII] Rightly do those immortal and blessed beings, established in the heavenly seats, who rejoice together in the participation of their Creator—by whose eternity they are made firm, by whose truth they are made certain, by whose gift they are made holy—since they mercifully love us mortal and wretched ones, that we may become immortal and blessed, not wish us to sacrifice to them, but to Him whose sacrifice they too, together with us, have come to know that they themselves are.

For with them we are one City of God, to which it is said in the Psalm: 'Glorious things are spoken of thee, O city of God'; of which one part sojourns as a pilgrim in us, another part gives aid in them. From that heavenly City, indeed, where the will of God is the intelligible and unchangeable law, from that heavenly court, as it were (for there is exercised there a care concerning us), that holy Scripture, ministered to us through angels, descended, where it is read: 'He that sacrificeth unto the gods shall be rooted out, save unto the Lord alone.' To this Scripture, to this law, to such precepts, so great miracles have borne witness, that it sufficiently appears to whom the immortal and blessed beings, who wish us to be that which they themselves are, wish us to sacrifice.

[VIII] For if I should recall things too ancient, I shall seem to be unrolling further back than is enough what miracles were wrought bearing witness to the promises of God, whereby, thousands of years before, He foretold to Abraham that in his seed all the nations were to have a blessing.

For who would not marvel that to this same Abraham a barren wife bore a son at that time of old age when even a fertile woman could no longer bear; and that in the sacrifice of the same Abraham a flame made from heaven ran between the divided victims; and that to this same Abraham the heavenly burning of Sodom was foretold by the angels—those angels whom, in the likeness of men, he had received into hospitality, and through whom he had held the promises of God concerning offspring to come; and that, with the burning now imminent, there was wrought through those same angels a wondrous deliverance of Lot, his brother's son, from Sodom, whose wife, looking back on the way and suddenly turned into salt, admonished by a great sacrament that no one on the way of his deliverance ought to long for the things left behind?

But those things—how great and how many they are—which were already wondrously wrought through Moses on behalf of the people of God, for delivering them from the yoke of slavery in Egypt, where the magicians of Pharaoh, that is, of the king of Egypt, who oppressed that people by his domination, were permitted to do certain marvels, to the end that they might be the more marvelously overcome! For they did their deeds by sorceries and magical incantations, to which the evil angels, that is, the demons, are given over; but Moses, by so much the more powerfully as he was more just, in the name of God who made heaven and earth, with the angels serving him, easily overcame them.

Finally, at the third plague, when the magicians failed, ten plagues were accomplished through Moses with a great disposition of mysteries, whereby the hard hearts of Pharaoh and of the Egyptians yielded to letting the people of God go. And soon he repented, and when, as the Hebrews were departing, they endeavored to pursue them, while those crossed on dry ground through the divided sea, the wave returning upon itself from this side and that covered and overwhelmed them. What shall I say of those miracles which, while that same people was being led through the desert, grew frequent with astounding divine power: that the waters which could not be drunk, when wood was cast into them as God had commanded, were freed from bitterness and satisfied the thirsty;

that manna came from heaven to the hungry, and, when a measure had been fixed for those gathering, whatever anyone had gathered beyond it rotted with worms breeding therein, but on the day before the sabbath a double portion was gathered—because on the sabbath it was not lawful to gather—violated by no putrefaction; that to those desiring to feed on flesh, which seemed as though none could suffice for so great a people, the camp was filled with birds, and the ardor of their craving was extinguished by a loathing of satiety; that the enemies who met them and hindered their passage and gave battle were, while Moses prayed and his hands were stretched out in the figure of the cross, laid low with not one of the Hebrews falling;

that the seditious in the people of God, who divided themselves from the divinely-ordained fellowship, were, as a visible example of an invisible punishment, swallowed up alive by the gaping earth; that the rock struck by the rod poured out abundant streams for so great a multitude; that the deadly bites of the serpents, the most just punishment of sins, were healed by a bronze serpent lifted up on wood and looked upon, so that both the afflicted people might be succored, and death might be signified as destroyed by death, as it were by the likeness of a crucified death? Which serpent, indeed, being kept in memory of the deed, when afterwards the erring people began to worship it as an idol, Hezekiah the king, serving God with religious authority, broke in pieces with great praise for his piety.

[IX] These and many other things of this sort, all of which it is too long to recount, were done to commend the worship of the one true God and to forbid that of the many and false. But they were done by simple faith and the confidence of piety, not by incantations and songs composed by the art of wicked curiosity, which they call either magic, or by the more detestable name goetia, or by the more honorable name theurgy—those who as it were attempt to distinguish these things, and would have some, given over to unlawful arts, seem damnable, whom the common people also call sorcerers (for these, they say, pertain to goetia), but others seem praiseworthy, to whom they impute theurgy; whereas both alike are bound by the deceitful rites of demons under the names of angels.

For Porphyry too promises a certain kind of purgation of the soul through theurgy, yet hesitantly and, as it were, with a somewhat shamefaced discussion; but he denies that this art furnishes to anyone a return to God; so that you may see him fluctuate, with alternating opinions, between the vice of sacrilegious curiosity and the profession of philosophy. For now he warns that this art is to be guarded against as deceitful and dangerous in the very performance and prohibited by the laws; now again, as though yielding to its praisers, he says it is useful for cleansing a part of the soul—not indeed the intellectual part, by which the truth of intelligible things is perceived, things having no likenesses of bodies; but the spiritual part, by which the images of corporeal things are grasped.

For he says that this part is made, through certain theurgic consecrations which they call teletai, fit and apt for the reception of spirits and angels and for seeing the gods. Yet he confesses that from these theurgic rites no purgation accrues to the intellectual soul, such as would make it fit for seeing its own God and beholding those things which truly are. From which it can be understood of what sort of gods, or of what sort a vision, he says is made by theurgic consecrations, in which those things are not seen which truly are. Finally, he says that the rational soul—or, as he more likes to call it, the intellectual soul—can escape into its own realm, even if that which is its spiritual part has been purged by no theurgic art;

but that its spiritual part is purged by the theurgist only so far that it does not thereby attain to immortality and eternity. And so, although he distinguishes angels from demons, discoursing that the airy places are of demons and the ethereal or empyrean of angels, and though he advises that one should make use of the friendship of some demon, by whose carrying one might be lifted even a little from the earth after death, yet he declares that there is another way to the heavenly fellowships of the angels: nevertheless he testifies, by a confession in a manner expressed, that the society of demons is to be guarded against, when he says that the soul, paying its penalties after death, shudders at the worship of the demons by whom it was encompassed;

and theurgy itself, which he commends as though a conciliator of angels and gods, he could not deny to operate among such powers as either themselves envy the purgation of the soul, or serve the arts of the envious, bringing forth on this matter the complaint of some Chaldean or other: 'A good man in Chaldea complains,' he says, 'that his efforts to purge a soul were frustrated with great toil, when a man powerful for the same things, touched by envy, had by sacred prayers bound the powers he had adjured, so that they would not grant what was asked. Therefore that one bound them,' he says, 'and this one did not loose them.' By which token, he said, it appears that theurgy is a discipline for accomplishing as much good as evil, both among gods and among men;

and that the gods too suffer, and are led into those disturbances and passions which Apuleius attributed in common to demons and to men; yet he separates the gods from these by the loftiness of an ethereal seat, and asserts Plato's opinion in that distinction. [X] Behold now another Platonist, whom they report to be more learned, Porphyry, says that through some theurgic discipline or other even the gods themselves are bound by passions and disturbances, since they could be adjured and held by sacred prayers, so as not to furnish purgation to the soul, and so terrified by him who commanded evil, that they could not, by another who asked good, through the same theurgic art, be freed from that fear and released to grant the benefit.

Who would not see that all these are the fabrications of deceitful demons, save one who is their most wretched slave and a stranger to the grace of the true Deliverer? For if these things were done among good gods, surely there the beneficent purger of a soul would prevail more than the malevolent hinderer. Or if to just gods the man on whose behalf it was being done seemed unworthy of purgation, they surely ought not, terrified by the envious one, nor, as he himself says, hindered through fear of a more powerful deity, but by free judgment, to have refused it.

But it is a marvel that that benign Chaldean, who desired to purge a soul by theurgic rites, did not find some higher god who might either terrify still more and compel the terrified gods to do good, or restrain from them the one who was terrifying them, so that they might freely do good—if indeed sacred rites were lacking to the good theurgist, whereby he might first purge from that plague of fear the very gods whom he invoked as purgers of the soul. For what is the reason why a more powerful god can be brought in by whom they are terrified, and cannot be brought in one by whom they are purged? Or is there found a god who hears the envious and strikes fear into the gods lest they do good; and is there not found a god who hears the benevolent and takes fear away from the gods that they may do good?

O splendid theurgy! O purgation of the soul to be proclaimed, where unclean envy commands more than pure beneficence obtains! Nay rather, the deceit of malignant spirits is to be guarded against and detested, and the saving doctrine is to be heard. For as to the fact that those who work these filthy purgations by sacrilegious rites see certain marvelously beautiful images, as this man relates, whether of angels or of gods, as though with a purged spirit (if indeed they see any such thing), this is what the apostle says: 'For Satan transforms himself as an angel of light.'

For those phantasms are his, who, desiring to ensnare the wretched souls of many by the deceitful rites of false gods, and to turn them away from the true worship of the true God, by which alone they are cleansed and healed, turns himself into all forms, as was said of Proteus—pursuing as an enemy, aiding deceitfully, harming in both ways. [XI] This Porphyry was the wiser when he wrote to Anebo the Egyptian, where, like one consulting and inquiring, he both betrays the sacrilegious arts and overthrows them. And there, indeed, he reproves all the demons, whom he says, through imprudence, draw in humid vapor, and are therefore not in the ether but in the air beneath the moon and in the very globe of the moon;

Yet nonetheless he does not dare to assign to all the demons all the deceptions, malices, and follies by which he is rightly moved. For he calls some of them benevolent demons, after the manner of others, although he confesses that as a class they are all imprudent. He wonders, moreover, that the gods are not only enticed by victims but are also compelled and forced to do what men wish; and, if the gods are distinguished from the demons by having body and the demons by being incorporeal, how the sun and moon and the other visible things in heaven, which he does not doubt to be bodies, are to be reckoned gods; and, if they are gods, how some are said to be beneficent and others maleficent; and how, being corporeal, they can be joined to things incorporeal.

He also inquires, as if in doubt, whether in those who divine and work certain marvels there are passions of the soul, or whether some spirits come from without through whom they are able to do these things; and he rather conjectures that they come from without, on the ground that by applying stones and herbs they bind certain persons, and open closed doors, and marvellously perform something of that kind. Whence he says that some hold there is a certain kind of being, whose property it is to give ear, deceptive by nature, of every form and manifold, feigning gods and demons and the souls of the dead, and that this is what produces all these things which appear to be good or evil;

but that concerning the things which are truly good it renders no help—nay rather, it neither knows these things, but even ill-advises, calumniates, and sometimes hinders the diligent followers of virtue, and is full of rashness and pride, delighting in the reek of sacrifice, captivated by flatteries, and the rest—all which things, concerning this kind of deceptive and malignant spirits that come into the soul from without and mock the human senses, whether drowsy or awake, he does not affirm as things of which he himself is persuaded, but so faintly does he suspect or doubt them that he ascribes these opinions to others. For it was hard for so great a philosopher either to know or confidently to convict the whole diabolical fellowship, which any little Christian old woman does not hesitate to affirm and most freely detests.

Unless perhaps he is ashamed to offend both the man to whom he writes, Anebo, as a most illustrious high-priest of such rites, and the other admirers of such works as of things divine and pertaining to the worship of the gods. Nevertheless he goes on, and, as it were by way of inquiry, mentions those things which, soberly considered, cannot be attributed to any but malignant and deceptive powers. For he asks why, when the better are invoked, command is given as to worse, that they may execute a man's unjust orders; why they do not hearken to one who prays after he has touched a woman, while they themselves make no delay in leading anyone whatsoever into incestuous couplings;

why they enjoin that their priests must abstain from animal food, lest indeed they be polluted by bodily vapours, while they themselves are enticed by other vapours and by the reek of victims; and while their observer is forbidden to touch a corpse, yet these rites are for the most part celebrated over corpses; what is the reason that a man subject to any vice at all directs threats, not against a demon or the soul of some dead person, but against the sun and moon themselves or against any of the celestial bodies, and terrifies them falsely, so as to wring the truth out of them. For he threatens even to shatter the heaven and other things impossible for man, so that those gods, like most foolish boys, terrified by false and ridiculous threats, may do what is commanded.

He says also that a certain Chaeremon, skilled in such sacred—or rather sacrilegious—rites, wrote that the things which among the Egyptians are celebrated in the stories about Isis or about Osiris her husband have the greatest power of compelling the gods to do what is commanded, when he who compels by incantations threatens to betray or overthrow those very mysteries; where he even declares terribly that he will scatter the limbs of Osiris, should they neglect to do what is bidden. That a man should utter these and suchlike vain and insane threats against the gods—and not against just any gods, but against the very celestial ones that shine with starry light—and that not without effect, but compelling them by violent power and by these terrors leading them to do whatever he wills, Porphyry rightly marvels at;

nay rather, under the guise of one who marvels and seeks the causes of such things, he gives us to understand that these things are wrought by those spirits whose class he described above under the opinion of others—spirits deceptive not, as he himself put it, by nature, but by vice, who feign gods and the souls of the dead, but do not, as he says, merely feign to be demons: they plainly are demons.

And as for what seems to him to be the case—that by herbs and stones and animals and certain fixed sounds and words and shapes and figments, and also by certain movements of the stars observed in the revolution of the heaven, powers are fashioned on earth by men suited for carrying out various effects—all this belongs to those same demons, mockers of the souls that are subject to them, and displaying to themselves voluptuous sport out of the errors of men. Therefore either Porphyry, truly doubting and inquiring into these things, nevertheless mentions those very facts by which they may be convicted and refuted, and shown to belong not to the powers that favour us in our laying hold of the blessed life, but to the deceiver demons;

or else—that we may suspect something better of the philosopher—he wished by this means not to offend the Egyptian, given over to such errors and supposing himself to know some great things, with the proud authority as it were of a teacher, nor to disturb him by the wrangling of one openly opposing, but as it were by the humility of one inquiring and desiring to learn, to turn him to reflect upon these things and to show how contemptible, and even to be shunned, they are. In fine, near the end of the letter he begs to be taught by him what, from Egyptian wisdom, is the way to blessedness.

As for the rest, he says that those whose intercourse with the gods was such that they troubled the divine mind for the sake of finding a runaway slave, or acquiring an estate, or on account of a marriage or trade or something of that kind, seem to him to have cultivated wisdom in vain; and that those very deities with whom they had intercourse, even if they foretold true things about other matters, yet, since concerning blessedness they gave no sure nor sufficiently fitting counsel, were neither gods nor benevolent demons, but either that one who is called the deceiver, or wholly a human invention. [XII] But since through these arts things so great and of such a kind are wrought that they exceed the whole measure of human capacity:

what remains but that those things which seem marvellously to be foretold or done as if by divine power, and yet are not referred to the worship of the one God—to whom simply to cleave, as even the Platonists confess and in many ways testify, is the sole beatifying good—be prudently understood to be the mockeries of malignant demons and seductive hindrances, which are to be guarded against by true piety? But on the other hand, whatever miracles are wrought, whether by angels or in whatever manner, so divinely that they commend the worship and religion of the one God, in whom alone is the blessed life—these are to be believed to be truly done by them, or through them, who love us according to truth and piety, God Himself working in them.

For we must not listen to those who deny that the invisible God works visible miracles, since He, even according to them, made the world, which surely they cannot deny to be visible. Whatever marvellous thing, therefore, is done in this world, it is assuredly less than the whole of this world—that is, the heaven and the earth and all that is in them—which God certainly made. But just as He Himself who made them, so also the manner in which He made them is hidden and incomprehensible to man. Although, therefore, the miracles of visible natures have grown cheap through the constancy of our seeing them, yet, when we contemplate them wisely, they are greater than the most unwonted and rarest of marvels. For man himself is a greater miracle than any miracle wrought through man.

Wherefore God, who made the visible heaven and earth, does not disdain to work visible miracles in heaven or on earth, whereby He may rouse to the worship of Himself the invisible God the soul that is still given over to visible things; but where and when He does it, an unchangeable counsel rests with Him, in whose ordering all the times whatsoever that are to come are already made. For, moving temporal things, He is not Himself moved in time, nor does He know things to be done otherwise than done, nor does He hearken to those who invoke Him otherwise than He sees those who are about to invoke Him. For even when His angels hearken, He hearkens in them, as in His true temple not made with hands, as in His holy men; and His eternal commands, beheld in His law, are temporally fulfilled.

[XIII] Nor ought it to disturb us that, although He is invisible, He is often recorded to have appeared visibly to the fathers. For just as the sound by which a thought established in the silence of the understanding is heard is not the same as the thought itself, so also the form in which God, established in an invisible nature, was seen was not the same as He Himself. Yet nevertheless He Himself was seen in that same bodily form, just as that very thought is heard in the sound of the voice; nor were they ignorant that they saw the invisible God in a bodily form which He Himself was not. For Moses both spoke with Him who spoke, and yet said to Him: If I have found grace before Thee, show me Thyself, that I may knowingly see Thee.

Since, therefore, it behoved that the law of God should be given awesomely in the edicts of angels, not to one man or to a few wise men, but to a whole nation and an immense people: in the sight of that same people great things were done on the mountain, where the law was given through one man, while the multitude beheld the fearful and tremendous things that were being done. For the people of Israel did not believe Moses in the manner that the Lacedaemonians believed their own Lycurgus, namely, that he had received the laws which he framed from Jove or Apollo. For when the law was being given to the people, whereby the one God was commanded to be worshipped, in the sight of that people itself, so far as divine providence judged sufficient, the creation was seen, by marvellous signs and motions of things, to serve the Creator in the giving of that same law.

[XIV] But just as the right instruction of one man, so also that of the human race, in so far as it pertains to the people of God, has advanced by certain articulations of times, as of ages, by steady progressions, so that from things temporal one might rise to grasp things eternal, and from things visible to things invisible; yet in such wise that even in that time when visible rewards were divinely promised, still the one God was commended as to be worshipped, lest the human mind should, even for the sake of those earthly benefits of a transitory life, be subjected to any but the true Creator and Lord of the soul. For whoever denies that all things which either angels or men can afford to men are in the power of the one Omnipotent, is insane.

Concerning providence, indeed, the Platonist Plotinus argues, and proves that it reaches, from the supreme God, whose is intelligible and ineffable beauty, even down to these earthly and lowest things, by the beauty of little flowers and of leaves; all which things, as though abject and most swiftly perishing, he affirms could not have the most comely numbers of their forms, unless they were formed from thence, where the intelligible and unchangeable form, having all things together, endures. This the Lord Jesus showed there, where He says: Consider the lilies of the field; they toil not, neither do they spin. But I say unto you, that not even Solomon in all his glory was so arrayed as one of these. But if the grass of the field, which today is and tomorrow is cast into the oven, God so clothes:

how much more you, O you of little faith? Most excellently, therefore, the human soul, still weak with earthly desires, learns to expect from the one God alone those very things which it temporally longs for, the lowest and earthly goods necessary for this transitory life and to be despised in comparison with the everlasting benefits of that other life, so that it may not depart from His worship even in the desiring of these things, but by contempt of them and by turning away from them may attain unto Him.

[XV] Thus, then, it pleased the divine providence to order the course of the times, so that, as I have said and as is read in the Acts of the Apostles, the law was given in the edicts of angels concerning the worship of the one true God, in which also the Person of God Himself appeared visibly—not indeed through His own substance, which ever remains invisible to corruptible eyes, but by certain signs through the creature made subject to the Creator—and spoke, syllable by syllable through the transitory little intervals of time, in the utterances of a human tongue: He who in His own nature neither begins to speak nor ceases, not corporeally but spiritually, not sensibly but intelligibly, not temporally but, so to say, eternally;

which His ministers and messengers hear more purely with Him, not with the ear of the body but of the mind—they who enjoy His unchangeable truth, immortally blessed; and what they hear must be done in ineffable ways and brought down even to these visible and sensible things, they accomplish without delay and without difficulty. But this law was given by a distribution of times, which at first held, as has been said, earthly promises, by which nevertheless eternal things were signified—things which many celebrated in visible sacraments, but few understood.

Yet the worship of the one God is there enjoined with the most manifest attestation of both words and of all things—not one out of the crowd, but He who made heaven and earth and every soul and every spirit, which is not what He Himself is. For He made them, they were made; and that they may be, and may fare well, they have need of Him by whom they were made. [XVI] To which angels, therefore, do we judge that we ought to give credence concerning the blessed and everlasting life? To those who wish themselves to be worshipped with religious rites, demanding that sacred things and sacrifices be rendered to themselves by mortals, or to those who say that all this worship is owed to the one God, Creator of all, and enjoin that it be rendered to Him with true piety—by the contemplation of whom they too are blessed, and promise that we shall be so?

For that vision of God is a vision of such great beauty, and so worthy of such great love, that without it Plotinus does not hesitate to call one most wretched, however endowed and abounding in any other goods. Since, therefore, some angels rouse us by marvellous signs to worship this one God, but others to worship themselves with the worship due to God alone—and this in such a way that the former forbid these latter to be worshipped, while the latter dare not forbid Him to be worshipped—let the Platonists answer which are rather to be believed, let whatever philosophers answer, let the theurgists answer, or rather the periurgists (for this is a name more worthy of all those arts); and finally let men answer, if any sense of their own nature—that they were created rational—still lives in any part of them;

let them answer, I say, whether sacrifice ought to be offered to those gods or angels who bid sacrifice be offered to themselves, or to that One alone, to whom sacrifice is bidden by these who forbid it both to themselves and to those others. If neither these nor those wrought any miracles, but only gave commands—some indeed that sacrifice be offered to themselves, but others forbidding it and bidding it to the one God alone—piety itself ought sufficiently to discern which of these descended from the pride of arrogance, and which from true religion. Nay, I will say still more: if only those who demand sacrifices for themselves moved human souls by marvellous deeds, while those who forbid this and bid sacrifice be offered to the one God alone by no means deigned to work these visible miracles:

assuredly the authority of the latter would have to be preferred, not by the sense of the body, but by the reason of the mind. But since God, in order to commend the utterances of His truth, has brought it about that, through those immortal messengers who proclaim not their own pride but His majesty, greater, more certain, more manifest miracles should be wrought—lest those who demand sacrifices for themselves should the more easily persuade the weak among the pious of a false religion, on the ground that they show certain astonishing things to their senses—who at last would please to be so foolish as not to choose the true things to follow, where he also finds the greater things to marvel at?

For those miracles of the gods of the Gentiles which history commends (I do not speak of those which, at hidden intervals of time, by the secret causes of the world itself—yet causes established and ordered under divine providence—come to pass as portents; such as unwonted births of animals and unusual appearances of things in sky and earth, whether merely terrifying or even harmful, which by their most deceitful cunning are said to be procured and appeased by demonic rites; but I speak of those which manifestly enough appear to be done by their own force and power, as when the images of the household gods, the Penates, which Aeneas carried away in his flight from Troy, are reported to have migrated from place to place; that Tarquin cut a whetstone with a razor;

that the Epidaurian serpent attached himself as a companion to Aesculapius sailing to Rome; that the ship in which the image of the Phrygian mother was being conveyed, rendered immovable by such great efforts of men and oxen, a single little woman, having bound it with her girdle, moved and drew along as a testimony of her chastity; that a Vestal virgin, about whose corruption a question was pending, filling a sieve with water from the Tiber, and it not flowing through, removed the controversy)—these things, therefore, and such as these, are in no wise to be compared, in power and greatness, to those which we read to have been done among the people of God; how much less those things which were adjudged to be forbidden and to be punished even by the laws of those very peoples who worshipped such gods, namely, magical or theurgical arts!

most of which deceive the senses of mortals merely in outward appearance by imaginary mockery, such as bringing down the moon, 'until,' as Lucan says, 'brought nearer, she foams down upon the herbs set beneath'; while some, even if they seem in performance to be matched by certain deeds of the pious, yet the very end by which they are distinguished shows that these our miracles incomparably excel. For by those miracles the gods are so much the less to be worshipped with sacrifices, the more they demand them; but by ours the one God is commended, who shows, both by the testimony of His scriptures and afterwards by the removal of those very sacrifices, that He needs no such things. If, therefore, angels demand sacrifice for themselves, those are to be preferred to them who demand it not for themselves, but for God, Creator of all, whom they serve.

For hereby they show with how sincere a love they cherish us, when through sacrifice they wish us to be subjected not to themselves but to Him, by the contemplation of whom they too are blessed, and to attain unto Him from whom they themselves have not departed. But if the angels who wish sacrifices to be made not to one but to many wish it made not to themselves but to those gods whose angels they are: even so, those angels are to be preferred to them who are angels of the one God of gods, to whom they so bid sacrifice be offered that they forbid it to any other, whereas none of the former forbids it to Him alone, to whom these bid that sacrifice be offered.

But further, if—as their proud deceit rather indicates—they are neither good angels nor angels of good gods, but evil demons, who wish not the one and supreme God alone, but themselves, to be worshipped with sacrifices: what greater protection is to be chosen against them than that of the one God, whom the good angels serve, who bid us to serve with sacrifice, not themselves, but Him whose sacrifice we ourselves ought to be? [XVII] Accordingly, the law of God, which was given in the edicts of angels, in which the one God of gods was commanded to be worshipped with the religion of sacred rites, while all others whatsoever were forbidden, was placed in an ark, which ark was called the ark of the testimony.

By which name it is sufficiently signified that God, who was worshipped through all those things, is not wont to be circumscribed or contained in a place, although His responses and certain signs to human senses were given from the place of that ark—but rather that the testimonies of His will were furnished thence; which also that same law was, written on tablets of stone and placed in the ark, as I have said, which, in the time of their pilgrimage in the wilderness, the priests carried with due veneration together with the tabernacle, which was likewise called the tabernacle of the testimony; and there was a sign, that by day a cloud appeared, which by night shone like fire; and when this cloud moved, the camp moved, and where it stood, the camp was pitched.

Now to that law were rendered testimonies of great miracle besides these which I have mentioned, and besides the voices which were uttered from the place of that ark. For when the same ark crossed over as they entered the land of promise, the river Jordan, standing still on its upper part and running down on its lower part, afforded a dry place of crossing both to the ark itself and to the people. Then, the ark having been carried around seven times, the walls of the city which first met them as hostile, worshipping after the manner of the Gentiles very many gods, suddenly fell, assaulted by no hand, struck by no battering-ram.

After these things, moreover, when they were now in the land of promise and that same ark had, on account of their sins, been captured by the enemy, those who had captured it placed it honourably in the temple of their god, whom they worshipped above the rest, and departing, shut it up; but on the morrow, when they had opened it, they found the image to which they made supplication fallen down and shamefully broken to pieces. Then they themselves, driven by prodigies and more shamefully punished, restored the ark of the divine testimony to the people from whom they had taken it. And what sort of a restoration it was! They set it upon a wagon, and yoked to it heifers from which they had drawn away the calves that were sucking, and let them go whithersoever they would, desiring here too to make trial of the divine power.

But those heifers, without any man to lead or guide them, treading steadfastly the way toward the Hebrews, nor recalled by the lowings of their hungering young, carried back a great sacrament to their worshippers. These things and suchlike are small to God, but great for the wholesome terrifying and instructing of mortals. For if the philosophers, and especially the Platonists, are praised for having been wiser than the rest, as I mentioned a little before, because they taught that divine providence administers these lowest and earthly things also, by the testimony of manifold beauties which are begotten not only in the bodies of animals but even in herbs and grass:

how much more evidently do those things attest divinity which are done at the hour of His proclamation, where that religion is commended which forbids sacrifice to all things celestial, terrestrial, and infernal, bidding it be offered to the one God only—who alone, loving and beloved, makes men blessed—and who, prefixing the appointed times of those sacrifices, and foretelling that they were to be changed for the better through a better Priest, testifies that He does not covet these things, but through them signifies other and more excellent things; not that He Himself may be exalted by these honours, but that we, kindled by the fire of His love to worship Him and to cleave to Him, may be roused to that which is good for us, not for Him. [XVIII] But will anyone say that these miracles are false, and were not done, but lyingly written?

Whoever says this, if he denies that any writings whatever are to be believed concerning these matters, can also say that no gods at all care for mortal affairs. For they persuaded men that they were to be worshipped in no other way than by the effects of marvellous works, of which the history of the Gentiles too is witness—the gods of which were able to display themselves as marvellous rather than to show themselves useful.

Wherefore, in this work of ours, of which we now have the tenth book in hand, we have not undertaken to refute those who either deny that there is any divine power, or contend that it does not care for human affairs, but those who prefer their own gods to our God, the Founder of the holy and most glorious City—not knowing that He Himself is also the invisible and unchangeable Founder of this visible and changeable world, and the most true Bestower of the blessed life not out of the things which He founded, but out of Himself. For His most truthful prophet says: But for me it is good to cleave to God. For concerning the end of the good, indeed, it is inquired among the philosophers, to the attaining of which all duties are to be referred. Nor did this man say:

But for me it is good to abound in riches, or to be distinguished by the purple and to excel by sceptre or diadem; nor, as some even of the philosophers did not blush to say: For me the pleasure of the body is good; nor what seemed better men to say something better: For me the virtue of my mind is good; but: For me, he says, it is good to cleave to God. This He had taught him, to whom alone sacrifice is to be offered, as His holy angels also, by the very attestation of miracles, admonished. Whence he himself too had become a sacrifice to Him, seized and burning with whose intelligible fire he glowed, and was borne, with holy longing, into His ineffable and incorporeal embrace.

But further, if the worshippers of many gods (whatever kind they suppose their gods to be) believe that miracles were wrought by them, whether from the histories of civil affairs or from magical books, or, as they more honourably think, theurgical books: what reason is there why they should be unwilling to believe that these things were done in those writings to which so much the greater faith is due, as He is great above all, to whom alone they enjoin that sacrifice be offered? [XIX] But those who think that these visible sacrifices are fitting for other gods, while to Him, as invisible, invisible and greater sacrifices are fitting for the greater and better One, and better sacrifices for the better One—such as are the offices of a pure mind and a good will: assuredly they know not that these are signs of those things, just as sounding words are signs of things.

Wherefore, just as in praying and praising we direct significant utterances to Him to whom we offer in our heart the very things which we signify: so in sacrificing let us know that a visible sacrifice is to be offered to none other than to Him whose invisible sacrifice we ourselves ought to be in our hearts. Then do the angels favour us and rejoice with us, and, according to their powers, help us toward this very thing—the angels and the higher powers, mightier by their very goodness and piety. But if we should wish to render these things to them, they do not gladly accept them, and, when they are so sent to men that their presence is perceived, they most openly forbid it. There are examples in the holy writings.