論異教之謬 第 1 章

...what the Maker has wrought in the fashioning of man, as we have said before, must be specially unfolded through the yearly admonitions of the lost. In testimony of the truth, by manifest reasonings and by the witness of examples, we shall prove that divination was invented and perfected through the devil, so that by this means the spirit, with thought defiled, in the hope of a fleeting happiness and with perverse discernment, might pervert wretched men entangled in perpetual calamities. There is no one to be found who doubts that the four elements are the principles of created things, that is, fire, water, air, and earth. But these elements are diverse, or contrary, in their power.

And so the nations are in error, who, while they attribute supremacy to the elements, still reckon fire as though it were the supreme god, as though the rest derived their substance from it by heat, not knowing that all the elements are joined together precisely by their own mutual contrariety, and that they themselves too have God as their Maker, who, setting each one in its own place and order, created it—a whole that we gather either by mind or by thought, or which we certainly perceive with our eyes to be composed by the divine fellowship of His Word, the proportions of bodies being held in even measure throughout the whole. The inhabitants of Egypt, receiving the benefits of waters, worship water, supplicate water, and venerate waters with a superstitious continuation of vows.

But in their rites, which they call mysteries, they add tragic deaths and the fearful contests of a dreadful calamity: incest committed with a sister and adultery, and this crime avenged by the husband's severe punishments. Isis is the sister, Osiris the brother, Typhon the husband. When he had discovered that his wife Isis had been corrupted by the incestuous lusts of her brother, he killed Osiris and tore him limb from limb, and cast the quivering members of the wretched body along all the banks of the river Nile. Isis, having repudiated Typhon, in order both to bury her brother and her spouse, took to herself as helpers her sister Nephthys and Anubis the hunter, on whom for this reason a dog's head was placed, because by the skill of a tracking dog he found the pieces of the mangled body.

Thus Isis handed over Osiris, when found, for burial. These were indeed in Egypt at once kings and tyrants: but Osiris was just, except for that which he committed with his sister; Typhon was raging, unrestrained, and proud: therefore the one is worshipped, the other shunned. This is the sum of the Isiac rite: in their inner shrines they keep the buried idol of Osiris, this they bewail with yearly mournings, they shave their heads, that they may weep over the pitiable fate of their king dishonored by the disgrace of a shaven head, they beat their breasts, they tear their arms, they reopen the scars of old wounds, so that by yearly mournings the ruin of that deadly and pitiable death may be reborn in their minds:

and when they have done these things on certain days, they then pretend to seek the remains of the mangled body, and when they have found them, they rejoice as though their mournings were lulled to rest. O wretched and perishable mortality! That you should send deadly funeral offerings to your kings year by year, neglecting the supreme God, who has composed all things by the ordering of divine craftsmanship, you both lose your hope and your life, nor are you corrected by the splendor of the light shown to you, nor do you seek the tokens of recovered liberty, nor do you recognize the hope of the salvation restored to you, nor do you, out of repentance for past crimes, ask for pardon. In vain do you suppose that this water which you worship will ever profit you: there is another water by which renewed men are reborn.

This water which you worship year by year, some other force dries up when the channels of its veins are boiled away, or else the deadly blood of your king defiles it; but that water which you despise—the kindled water—is adorned with the majesty of the venerable Spirit, so that from it, through the old scars of conscience, saving health may be poured upon believing men. But in these deaths and mournings, which are true funerals, which actually took place, of which even today the relics remain—for the tomb of Osiris is even today in Egypt and the relics of the cremated body are seen—their defenders wish to add a physical explanation, saying that Osiris is the seed of crops, Isis the earth, Typhon the heat:

and because the ripened crops are gathered by heat for the life of men, and being separated are parted from their fellowship with the earth, and again, as winter draws near, are sown, they want this to be the death of Osiris, when they store away the crops, but his finding, when the crops, conceived by the genial nurturing of the earth, again begin to be generated by yearly procreation. Grant that this is the true explanation of those rites of yours; grant that vows are paid to the deities on account of the crops: why do you add incest, why adultery, why the ruin of a pitiable punishment? Why do you display from your rites an evil example to erring men who simply desire to sin? Let the physical explanation which you allege be concealed under some other kind. But what was there to conceal, which is known to all?

Why do you bewail the crops of the earth and lament the growing seeds? For the sustenance of the human race all these things have been bestowed by the divine bounty of the supreme God: thanks are to be rendered to the supreme God for this, and the generosity of the supreme God is not to be lamented. Rather weep for the fact that you go astray, and bewail your error, ever repairing it with mournings: do not in yearly rites seek out a death that belongs to another: rather prepare consolations for your own deaths year by year. O wretched man! You rejoice that you have found I know not what, while year by year you lose your soul through these rites. You find nothing there but an image which you yourself set up, except that you must again either seek it or lament it.

Rather seek the hope of salvation, seek the beginning of light, seek what may either commend you to the supreme God or restore you to Him, and when you have found the true way of salvation, rejoice, and then with upright freedom of speech proclaim: 'We have found, we rejoice together,' when you have been freed by the indulgence of the supreme God from these calamities after your repentance. The Phrygians, who inhabit Pessinus around the banks of the river Gallus, attribute supremacy among the other elements to earth, and want it to be the mother of all.

Then, in order that they too might establish for themselves a yearly cycle of rites, with yearly mournings they consecrated the love of a rich woman and their queen, who wished tyrannically to avenge the disdain of the youth she loved; and so that they might either satisfy the enraged woman or seek a consolation for her repentance, they boasted that the one whom they had a little before buried had come back to life; and when the woman's mind burned with the impatience of excessive love, they built temples to the dead youth. Then what the enraged woman had done because of the injury of her spurned beauty, this she wished the priests ordained by her to suffer. Thus in yearly rites, along with honor to the earth, the pomp of that funeral is arranged, and while men were being persuaded that they worship the earth, they venerate the ruin of a wretched death.

Here too, most sacred emperors, in order that this error may be concealed, they want these rites also to have been composed with a physical explanation: they say the crops love the earth, and that Attis is that very thing which is born from the crops, and that the punishment he endured is this—what the reaper does with his sickle to the ripe crops: they call his death the fact that the gathered seeds are stored away, and his life again, that the scattered seeds are stored up in yearly alternations. I would wish that they now answer me as I inquire, why they have joined this simplicity of seeds and crops with a funeral, with a death, with disdain, with punishment, with love? Was there then nothing else that might be said? Was there nothing for which wretched mortality might render thanks to the supreme God for the crops?

In order to give thanks for the reborn crops, you howl; in order to rejoice, you beat your breast; nor, when you have seen the true explanation, did it ever repent you of having done this, but you act in such a way that, occupied with yearly mournings, you ever flee life and seek death. Let them tell me: what profit was there to the crops in this, that they should bewail their own offspring with yearly howlings, that they should groan over the calamities of a strewn funeral, a thing which they say was composed by a physical explanation? You mourn and lament, and you conceal your mournings under another explanation. The farmer knows when to break up the earth with the plough, knows when to commit the grain to the furrows, knows when to gather the crops ripened by the heat of the sun, knows when to thresh the parched corn:

this is the physical explanation, these are the true sacrifices, which are performed by men of sound mind with yearly labor: this simplicity does divinity require, that men in gathering the fruits should serve the ordered laws of the seasons. Why have fictions of a wretched death been sought for this order? Why is concealed by tears what ought not to have been concealed? Hence they must of necessity confess that these rites were composed not in honor of the crops, but in honor of another's death. For as to the fact that they say the earth is the mother of all the gods, those who assign the first part to this element—she is truly the mother of their gods, and we do not deny it nor refuse it, since from her they always make their gods either of stone or of wood.

The seas flow around the whole earth, and again it is bound, enclosed, by the encircling ring of the surrounding Ocean; it is covered too by the round loftiness of the sky, it is buffeted by winds, sprinkled with rains, and by the tremblings of its constant motion it confesses its own fear. Consider what awaits you who worship these things, since your gods betray their own weakness to you by daily confessions. The Assyrians and a part of the Africans wish air to hold the leadership of the elements, and they venerate it under an imagined figure: for this very same [that is, air] they consecrated under the name of Juno or of the virgin Venus—if indeed virginity ever pleased Venus. Juno, indeed—lest even here incest should be lacking—they want to have been made the wife of Jupiter from being his sister.

They have indeed made this element effeminate, moved by I know not what veneration. Is it because air is interposed between sea and sky that they attend it with the effeminate voices of priests? Tell me: is this a deity, which seeks a woman in a man, which the chorus of its priests cannot otherwise serve, unless they make their countenance effeminate, smooth their skin, and disgrace the male sex by womanish adornment? In the very temples may be seen, amid public groaning, pitiable mockeries: men suffering womanish things, and revealing this stain of an impure and shameless body with boastful display. They publish abroad their misdeeds and confess the vice of their contaminated body with the greatest blot of delight:

They adorn after a womanish manner their carefully tended hair, and, clad in delicate garments, they scarcely hold up their head on a weary neck. Then, when they have thus made themselves estranged from men, filled with the music of pipes they call upon their goddess, so that, filled with an abominable spirit, they may, as it were, foretell things to come to foolish men. What a monster is this, or what a portent? They deny that they are men and yet are not women: they wish to be believed women, but the quality of their body, such as it is, confesses something else. It must also be considered what kind of deity this is, which is so delighted by the lodging of an impure body, which clings to shameless members, which is appeased by the polluted contamination of the body. Blush, O wretches, at this very height of yours: God made you otherwise.

When your cohort comes before the tribunal of the judging God, you will bring back with you nothing that the God who made you may recognize. Cast off this error of so great a calamity, and at length forsake the pursuits of a profane mind; do not condemn, by the criminal law of the devil, the body which God made; while time still allows, come to the aid of your own calamities. The mercy of God is rich; He pardons gladly: leaving the ninety-nine sheep, He seeks the one that was lost, and when the prodigal son returns, the father both gives back his garment and prepares a feast. I do not wish the multitude of your crimes to make you despair: the supreme God, through His Son Christ our Lord, sets free those who are willing, and gladly pardons the penitent, nor does He demand much in order to pardon:

By faith alone and by repentance you can redeem whatever you have lost through the wicked persuasions of the devil. The Persians and all the Magi, who inhabit the borders of the Persian region, prefer fire and think that fire ought to be set before all the elements. These, then, divide fire into two powers, transferring its nature to both sexes and assigning the substance of fire to the likeness of both man and woman: and the woman indeed they set up with a threefold countenance, binding her with monstrous serpents. This they do for the reason that they may not in any way dissent from the devil, their author, but that their goddess, teeming with serpents, may be adorned with the spotted insignia of the devil.

But the man, whom they worship as a good driver-away, his rites they transfer to the power of fire, as his prophet has handed down to us, saying: 'Initiate of cattle-stealing, right-hand son of a good father.' Him they call Mithras, but they hand down his rites in hidden caves, so that, always sunk in the obscure squalor of darkness, they may shun the grace of bright and serene light. O dread consecration of deities! O fictions of a barbarous law, to be fled from! You believe him to be a god, of whose crimes you confess. You therefore who say that in these temples duly... by the Persian rite of the Magi—why do you alone praise these things of the Persians? If you think this worthy of the Roman name, that it should serve the rites of the Persians, the laws of the Persians... which, armed with shield, covered with breastplate [with sword and spear], is consecrated.

There is also a third part, which in the rough and secret places of the woods comprehends the fellowship of the wild beasts of the fields. The last part of this threefold division reckons the ways of lusts, which in darkness displays depraved desires and the slumbers of cupidity. Therefore they assign one part to the head, as in some way it seems to be of man... they place another in the heart, so that it may seem to hold the variety of diverse thoughts which we conceive with manifold purpose, after the manner of forests. The third part is constructed in the liver, whence are born lust and pleasure. For there the gathered fecundity of generative seeds, by natural goads, stirs up the desire of cupidity.

Consider diligently, therefore, what this division accomplishes, so that the reasoning of truth may easily assail the fabrication. The soul is divided and is separated in its very substance by a diverse kind of activity, and, its order dissolved, it begins to be what it had been. For mind is one thing, anger another, lust another. This separation, then, dissolves the soul and suffers the greatest loss from this partition, nor does the thing keep the whole appearance of itself, which, separated into three contrary parts, is divided, and, to say it more truly, becomes mortal by this very division. For what can be divided is a body: what is a body, must of necessity be mortal. Therefore if the soul is divided, it is a body:

if it is a body, the thing itself must of necessity be mortal—a notable and splendid consequence of this error. A very great benefit is conferred upon us from this consequence: by the fabrications of these trifles they wish souls to be mortal. Thus, most sacred emperors, the elements have been consecrated by lost men. But there still remain other superstitions, whose secrets must be laid open: those of Liber and Libera, all of which must be specially imparted to your sacred minds, so that in these profane religions too you may know that the deaths of men have been consecrated. Liber, then, was the son of Jupiter, namely of a Cretan king. He, having been begotten of an adulterous mother, was reared at his father's house more carefully than was fitting.

The wife of Jupiter, whose name was Juno, stirred up by the fury of a stepmother's mind, was in every way preparing ambushes for the death of the infant. The father, setting out abroad, because he knew the silent indignations of his wife, lest anything should be done by guile by the angry woman, entrusted the guardianship of his son to suitable guardians, as it seemed to him.

Then Juno, having gained an opportune time for her ambush, and the more fiercely inflamed from this fact, that the departing father had handed over to the boy both the throne of the kingdom and the scepter, first corrupted the guardians with royal rewards and gifts, then stationed her own attendants, who were called the Titans, in the inner parts of the palace, and with rattles and a skillfully made mirror so enticed the boyish mind that, the royal seats being deserted, by the desire of his boyish heart he was led to the place of the ambush. There, intercepted, he is slaughtered, and, so that no trace of the murder could be found, the throng of attendants divides among themselves his limbs cut up joint by joint.

Then, so that another crime might be added to this crime, because the cruelty of the tyrant was greatly feared, they consume the boy's limbs cooked in various ways, so as to feast on unheard-of banquets of a human corpse down to that very day. The heart, divided off, his sister kept for herself—her name was Minerva, who was herself also a partner in the crime—both that there might be a manifest token for the accusation, and that she might have wherewith to soften the onslaught of the raging father. When Jupiter returned, his daughter laid out the order of the crime.

Then the father, stirred by the deadly calamity of the disaster and by the atrocity of bitter grief, kills the Titans, tortured in a... manner, nor was there omitted in the avenging of his son any torment or punishment, but, raging through every kind of penalty, he avenged the murder of his son, such as he was—with a father's affection indeed, but with tyrannical power. Then, because the father could no longer bear the torments of his mourning soul, and because the grief arising from bereavement was soothed by no consolations, he fashioned his image of plaster in modeled work, and the heart of the boy—by which the crime had been disclosed when the sister informed on it—he places in that part of the figure where the lineaments of the breast had been formed.

After this, in place of a tomb he builds a temple, and appoints the boy's tutor as priest: his name was Silenus. The Cretans, in order to soften the savagery of the raging tyrant, establish festive days of the funeral and arrange a yearly rite with a triennial consecration, doing everything in order which the dying boy either did or suffered. They mangle a living bull with their teeth, rousing cruel banquets with yearly commemorations, and, through the secret places of the woods, wailing with discordant cries, they feign the madness of a raging soul, so that that crime might be believed to have been committed not by fraud but by madness: a chest is carried in front, in which the sister had secretly hidden the heart; with the music of pipes and the clashing of cymbals they counterfeit the rattles by which the boy had been deceived.

Thus in honor of the tyrant, by a servile populace, one was made a god who could not have a burial. There was also another Liber at Thebes, a tyrant conspicuous for the power of the magic art. He, when he had taken possession of the minds of women by certain poisons and incantations, commanded cruel deeds at his own pleasure to those whom he had driven to frenzy, so that he might have noble women, robbed of their wits, as ministers of his lusts and crimes. What crimes he committed, or how great a deed of horror he commanded—a mother against her son, or sisters against their brother—is daily handed down on the stages by the authors of tragic verse, so that the criminal cruelty of the wicked tyrant may ever be reborn in the minds of the hearers through deadly recountings.

This man Lycurgus, protected by a sober conspiracy of men, stripped of his kingdom and drove from his country: for being effeminate he could no longer withstand the agreement of the men. For that he was effeminate and a slave to the lusts of his lovers is sung in the gymnasia of the Greeks. Nor was Lycurgus content merely with his flight and exile, but, fearing lest, fleeing and received by others, he should sow in another region too the mocking seeds of his crimes, girded with the sword, he pursued the disgrace of his country with a threatening edict.

Then Liber, having cast off the fillets which he used to bind with the vine-leaf circlets of garlands, fleeing with a half-male retinue—for only the companions of his debaucheries and disgraces and lusts had followed him—wandered along all the shores of the neighboring sea with the utmost trembling of despair. There, among drunken girls and wine-soaked old men, while the pomp of his crimes still went before him—one foul in a black cloak, another terrible with a serpent displayed, another bloody of mouth as he tears apart the living limbs of a beast—by Lycurgus...

...seized, through a nearby cliff which had formed an immense precipice with its trackless rocks, he is hurled into the sea, so that his mangled body, long tossed by the waves of the sea, might recall the minds of erring peoples to the order of sanity and sobriety by a severe punishment. This end of Liber, Homer, in order to disclose his flight and trembling and to show his death, declares thus: 'smitten with an ox-goad: and Dionysus, terrified, plunged beneath the wave of the sea, and Thetis received him, trembling, into her bosom; for a strong trembling held him at the man's threatening shout.' He imitates you, Lycurgus, and follows your sober institution, nor does he stray from your salutary laws—even our consul Postumius.

For, as we find in the books of the annals, the crimes of the Bacchanalia were detected when a certain youth named Aebutius informed of them. Morals were as yet uncorrupted in the city of Rome, nor did anyone with dissolute manners seek after foreign superstitions. Then neither did the senate fail the consul, nor the laws the commonwealth, nor the consul the laws, but, when all who were handing down the criminal contrivances of this rite had been investigated, against them all, by a severe—nay, by a Roman—examination of inquiry, capital punishment was decreed by the sentence of the council, nor did the avenging swords of the consul rest so long as this evil had not been cut out by the roots. O punishment worthy of the Roman name! O praiseworthy constancy of ancient virtue!

Nor would the consul spare his own fellow-citizens, when foreign vices are corrected for the cleansing of the fatherland. There follows this contagion of the sacred rite, and imitates the order of that funeral, the death of a daughter consecrated by Ceres, a woman of Henna; for whatever the father in Crete had done concerning his son, all this Ceres established at Henna, when she had lost her daughter, through the impatience of a mother's grief. How this came about I shall touch upon in a brief account. Many sought the only daughter of Ceres — whom the Greeks call Persephone, and ours, with the word altered, call Proserpina — for the partnership of marriage.

The anxious mother judged the merits of each suitor; and while the mother's verdict still seemed uncertain to all, a rich rustic, who because of his riches bore the name of Pluto, with the rash heat of his desire — since he could not bear the delays of postponement and was burning with the fires of an unseemly love — seized the maiden, found near Percus. Now Percus is a lake within the bounds of the city of Henna, exceedingly pleasant and charming, whose loveliness arises from the variety of its flowers; for through the whole year it is crowned with blossoms that succeed one another in turn.

There you will find whatever swells of the hyacinth upon its stalk; there the foliage of the narcissus, or that which paints a golden rose above; there the white ivy creeps softly along the ground, and amid the purple violets is found the marjoram blushing sweetly red; nor do the white lilies forsake that garland: in short, a place fitted by its charm both to invite the hearts of girls and likewise to detain them. In this place, when the maiden had been found near evening by Pluto, she is seized by force and, set upon a chariot, with her garments torn and her hair disheveled, is carried off; nor did her cut nails avail anything against the rustic lover, nor did her cries and wailing help, nor the clamor of the other girls.

Then one of them, running swiftly — since no one came to help from the city — made faster by very fear, announced to the mother the seizing of the maiden. Indignant against the ravisher, the mother led an armed band; nor did the woman's coming escape Pluto, but when he turned his eyes back toward the city and saw countless columns coming with the mother, he took a deadly resolve out of desperation: he drove the four-horse chariot, by which the carriage was drawn, through the middle of the lake — which was sunk in deep abysses. There, drowned together with the maiden he loved, he furnished to the pitiable mother a deadly spectacle of her daughter's death.

The people of Henna, that they might find from some quarter a solace for the mother's grief, feigned that the king of the underworld had carried off the maiden; and that fact might follow upon the fiction, they put it about that he had emerged again with the maiden by another place near Syracuse. They duly build a temple both to the ravisher and to the maiden, with their costs carefully combined, and decree yearly vows in the temple. But by no means is the mother's grief overcome, nor are the torments of a woman's impatience healed; rather, believing truly that her daughter had been seen near Syracuse, she came by night journeys, with Triptolemus her bailiff as guide, to the shore of the city of Syracuse, in mourning garb and squalid filth. Nor was there lacking there one to deceive the credulous mother amid her calamities.

A certain Pandarus said that he had seen — I know not whom — not far from Pachynus, the ravisher boarding a ship with the maiden. The woman was persuaded, for since she longed to hear that her daughter lived in whatever fashion, she rewarded the city with boundless gifts. The Syracusans, prompted by the woman's generosity, consecrated the seizing of the maiden, and to soothe the mother's grief they adorned the procession of the wretched funeral with the honor of temples. But not even this sufficed the mother; rather, boarding a ship, she sought her daughter along foreign shores. Thus tossed by waves and tempests, she came to a place of an Attic city; there, received in hospitality, she distributed to the inhabitants the wheat hitherto unknown to them. The place took its name from her fatherland and from the woman's coming, for it was called Eleusis, because thither Ceres had come, having left Henna.

Thus, because she herself, by dispensing the grain she had brought, had handed down the discipline of gathering crops, after her death — on account of the benefit that arose from the abundance of crops — she was both buried in that place and likewise consecrated, and called by a divine name together with her daughter. For the levity of the Greeks loves to call by divine names those who have bestowed anything upon them, or who have helped them by counsel or by valor; and thus the gratitude of benefits is repaid by them in such a way that they call them gods, and believe them to be gods, who have at some time profited them. Thus Nysa does not doubt concerning Liber, nor does Sparta hesitate about new stars; sorrowful Oeta burns and consecrates Hercules, and by the empty Cretans the tomb of a Jupiter who is by now dead is still adored.

Yet there is added, most sacred emperors, to the increase of this profane error, the fact that they defend these two-named beings — that is, Liber and Proserpina — with a seemingly greater authority: for the fictions of the Greeks would have Liber referred to the sun, while calling Proserpina 'Libera' they fashion her to be the moon. How absurd and how pitiable this is, we can gather from the very reckoning of the truth. Who has seen the sun as a boy? Who deceived it? Who killed it? Who tore it? Who divided it? Who feasted upon its limbs? Who carried off the moon? Who hid it? Who made it Pluto's wife? But this error too they wish to shield, in turn, by a physical reasoning.

The undivided mind and the divided — that is, the unparted and the parted mind — by this reasoning they think they can venerate them. Tell me, O wretched mortals, why do you add deaths to natural things? Why do you defile God's ordering with the atrocity of cruel deaths? What need was there of so harsh and cruel a torment? What does this persuasion of yours intend, that the train of a deadly calamity should be joined to divine things? That the nature of the stars, which the supreme God made by fixed laws, should be coupled with the griefs of a mortal calamity? To what purpose serves what you do? You mingle earthly things with heavenly, perishable with celestial, dark with shining, consecrating the sorrows and griefs of men with divine honors.

If the Sun, when the whole human race had been called together, were to speak in an assembly, perhaps he would strike at your desperation with such an oration as this: 'Who has driven you on to so great a crime — you perishable men, daily rebelling against the supreme God in various ways — to such a point that, by the profane error of a wicked desire, you say I both die and live at your pleasure? And would that the fancies of your insane thought proceeded in the customary manner, or at least in but one kind; would that the wickedness of your criminal thought ran its course without insult to me! As it is, hurling yourselves over precipices, you do not spare even me, nor has your speech any reverence, but with my disgrace you hasten to your own destruction and death.'

'Some drown me in Egypt in the waves of the Nile and its rushing eddies, with obstinate frenzy of mind; others bewail me with my manhood cut off; others, having me slain by a cruel death, either boil me in a pot or fix my torn limbs upon seven spits. He who has flattered me a little with gentle speech feigns that I am the charioteer of a four-horse car. Cast off at last the ruin of so great a madness, and being summoned by a saving persuasion, seek the true way of salvation. He is an enemy of God who has either thought or feigned these things; nor does a simple or customary penalty attend his crime — he who defiles holy things with profane persuasions, who fashions such things concerning the glorious work of God.'

'Mourn your dead — you yourselves likewise destined to die a like death — send to your kings the funeral offerings you wish, and soothe their bereavements by another sort of remedy. Mourn Liber, mourn Proserpina, mourn Attis, mourn Osiris, but without insult to my dignity. I do not wish you to lead me through their tombs and ashes; I do not wish my name to supply fuel to your error. At the beginning of the day I was made by God; this alone suffices me. Why do you rob me of the dignity of an honorable office? God made me one thing, bade me be one thing, and you divide me according to your lust, tear me according to the desire of your own caprice. Whatever I am, I simply obey; nor do I wish you to understand anything else about me than what you see.'

This is pleasing to God, this God gladly embraces, this leads men to the way of salvation: if, casting off your errors, you drink in the grace of God simply and faithfully. Let it suffice, most sacred emperors, that I have said these things in a speech of impersonation. But now I, formed by the instruction of the sacred readings, address lost men with a religious discourse. If those whom you worship are gods, why do you mourn them? Why do you bewail them with yearly griefs? If they are worthy of tears and grief, why do you heap divine honor upon them? Do, then, one of two things: either do not mourn them, if they are gods, or, if you deem them worthy of grief and tears, do not call them gods, lest by your griefs and tears the majesty of the divine name be defiled.

But since a lost mind, entangled in the snares of wicked desire, can by no reasoning be called back, I shall pursue the rest, so that, when all things are exposed and uncovered which profane wickedness has consecrated, the mercy of God, in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, may raise up the fallen, call back to himself those who flee, confirm the doubting, correct the erring, and — what is most important — grant life to the dying. In very many cities of the East, although this evil has made its passage even to us, Adonis is bewailed as it were the husband of Venus, and his slayer and his wound are shown to the bystanders. For Mars, changed into the likeness and form of a wild boar, that he might claim for himself the foremost part in the love of Venus, struck the youth who rushed incautiously against him.

If Adonis was a god, why did he not know the rival's ambush? If a man, why did he contend with a superior? But I hear that another also had a marital partnership with Venus: Vulcan, unless I am mistaken, is by these worshippers of the gods declared to be Venus's husband. O laughable persuasion of vain men! An adulterer set between two husbands is caught by the one and conquers the other. But consider: in order that the adulterer-god might conquer the husband, what body he chose for himself! He preferred to be a boar — he who, if he had the power of changing his body, ought rather to have taken on the likeness and form of a lion. But those who know the natures of animals say that the lion, amid all the ferocity of his wild spirit, preserves the virtue of chastity.

Deservedly, then, by the adulterer the form of the lion is spurned and that of a lustful animal is chosen. Here now let us treat the secrets of the gospel tradition. When the demon was cast out, the Lord granted it a herd of swine — and not without reason: that, tossed together with lustful animals over hard precipices and through the waves, by the various deaths of the swine the unclean spirit might be torn asunder by a fitting destruction. I hear that Cinyras the Cyprian gave a temple to his beloved harlot — her name was Venus — and that he also initiated very many into the Cyprian Venus and assigned them to vain consecrations, and that he even established that whoever wished to be initiated, once the secret of Venus had been handed over to him, should give one as in the name of a fee to the goddess.

What sort of secret this is, we ought all to understand in silence, since on account of its baseness we cannot explain this very thing more openly. Well did the lover Cinyras serve the laws of harlotry: he ordered alms to be given to consecrated Venus by her priests as to a whore. Those who worship Sabazius lead a serpent through the bosom when they initiate Jupiter: even now the vices of the first error run their course, and whatever has destroyed men is worshipped, and the cunning and malicious cruelty of a deadly serpent is adored. In the rites of the Corybantes a fratricide is worshipped: for one brother was slain by two, and lest any token should reveal the slaying of the fraternal death, he was consecrated by his parricidal brothers beneath the roots of Mount Olympus. This same one the foolish persuasion of the Macedonians worships.

This is Cabirus, to whom the Thessalonians once made supplication with bloody mouth and bloody hands. It is therefore to be considered what sort of deity that is, which a parricidal madness, in order to conceal a parricide, devised. Wherefore whoever venerates these sacred rites with devoted mind, whomever the dreaded contagion of this superstition pleases, either seeks solace for his own evils, or in silent thought praises their crimes — wishing this, seeking this, and assuredly above all greatly desiring this: that to himself too may be lawful what was lawful for his gods, and that a likeness of morals may lead him too to the fellowship of such a life. Someone delights in adultery: he looks to Jupiter, and from there he gathers fuel for his own desire.

He approves, imitates, and praises that his god deceives in the form of a swan, ravishes in the form of a bull, sports in the form of a satyr, and — that he may grow accustomed to be lavish in his outrages — that he corrupted a royal maiden shut away, with gold flowing copiously. Someone delights in the embraces of boys: let him seek Ganymede in the bosom of Jupiter, let him behold Hercules seeking Hylas with impatient love, let him learn of Apollo captivated by desire for Hyacinthus; let one behold Chrysippus, another Pelops, that through his gods he may say it is lawful for him to do whatever today is most severely punished by Roman laws. It is hard to enumerate all their adulteries — who corrupted Amymone, who Alope, who Menalippe, who Chione and Hippothoe: surely your god is remembered to have done these things.

That one, whom they would have correct the sins of erring men by stern oracles, loves Sterope, ravishes Aethusa, defiles Zeuxippe, pursues Prothoe, and woos Arsinoe with adulterous desire. But out of that herd of corrupted women one girl both escaped and conquered the amorous god: Daphne — though the god divines and foretells the future, he could neither find nor ravish her. Someone submits to womanish acts and seeks solace for his effeminate body: let him behold Liber requiting his lover, even after death, with the rewards of promised lust, in imitation of a shameful coupling. If anyone, with monstrous heat of desire, is armed for the destruction of his father's life, let him take his beginning from Jupiter.

He who desires a brother's blood, let him follow the institution of the Corybantes; and let examples be taken from Jupiter by those who desire incest: he lay with his mother, took his sister to wife, and, to complete the whole crime of incest, he assailed even his daughter with the mind of a corrupter. Some inferior man pursues a rival with envious hissing and longs to torment his adversary with cruel savagery: let him learn from Apollo, from the misfortunes of Marsyas, the agonies of cruel torments. Someone covets another's property and attempts to accomplish this with the death of the owner: let him behold how Hercules, having slain Geryon, drove off the Iberian cattle. If anyone rejoices in the indiscriminate slaughter of men, let him diligently inspect the perverse lusts of Mars.

The sinning crowd gathers the seeds of nearly all crimes from their own gods, and, that a lost mind may be able to commit a crime with impunity, it defends itself with greater authority from the preceding examples of crimes. If a corrupter seeks the rewards of debauchery, if he chooses to learn the way of seduction, let him behold the gold of Jupiter in the bosom of a corrupted woman. If a public traitor desires, by wicked greed, to betray the guardianship of a kingdom committed to him, let him look to those who betrayed Saturn to his son. To what extent the right of hospitality may be injured, or to what extent the laws of friendship may be disturbed, or to what extent the holy fellowship of the table may be violated — if anyone, prone to wrongdoing, inquires, behold, let him learn the order of crimes from the misfortunes of Tantalus.

O sad solace of criminal desire! O lamentable persuasion of men! O bloody meditation of unhappy imitation! You have made a stage out of heaven, and you have led erring souls through sheer precipices into cruel calamity, when to men desirous of sinning the way of crimes is pointed out by the examples of the gods. But amid this law of crimes, amid this confession of wickedness, let us give thanks to those who have, even without our knowing, betrayed to us the destructions and deaths of these their gods, so that we might learn all things through so many obstacles. For there was even among the ancients — although the venerable condescension of our Lord Christ had not yet illumined the earth — a religious constancy in despising superstitions.

Diomedes, chaste and sober, wounds Venus, conquers and strikes Mars. By the edict of Otus and Ephialtes, Mars, mighty in war, was condemned to a temporary exile and bore the iron bonds of chains. Jupiter bewails his son Sarpedon dead at Troy, and Neptune does not receive from a proud king the wage for the walls he built. Apollo pastures the herds of another king, and to the all-seeing Sun another announces the deaths of his slaughtered oxen. Sparta buries the Castores; Hercules burns upon Oeta, and Aesculapius is elsewhere blasted by a thunderbolt. Vulcan, cast down by his father, breaks his foot; Liber, fleeing Lycurgus, dies. Venus, caught in adultery, is exposed, and after marriage with a god she pursues the bed of the man Anchises.

Saturn, fearing for his kingdom, devours his sons, and fleeing his son hides as a fugitive in Italy. For love of Catamitus, Juno is scorned; the Moon descends to Endymion; and Jupiter, bringing aid to the Trojans against the will of his wife and daughter, is deceived and sleeps. O shameful confession! O worship to be lamented! O pitiable condition of harsh servitude! To the worship of these gods a sacrilegious tyrants' rule has dragged holy men and those who believe with a mind devoted to God; and, that one crime might be added to another, death was decreed for the unwilling. Transfer rather the temples to the theater, that on the stages the secrets of these religions may be handed down, and — that wickedness may omit nothing — make actors into priests.

A more fitting place for these religions could not be found: there let the vile throng sing of the loves of the gods; there let their falls and deaths be danced; there, in the temples of the gods, let both adultery and crime be the better taught by impious and criminal masters to a lost mind. Learn also, most holy emperors, whence the deity venerated at Alexandria took its beginning, so that, our common frailty being uncovered, the discourse may recall the beginning of our mortality to the origin of the truth. When in Egypt, the crops withering, a malicious famine... the youth Joseph, born of the seed of a religious patriarch, by interpreting the king's dream revealed all that was threatening.

Joseph was the son of Jacob, who, on account of his chastity sent into prison, was after the interpretation of the dream delivered and made a sharer in the kingdom. He related that with the fruits of seven years gathered and stored, the providence of his divine mind would mitigate the want of the next seven years. To him, after his death, the Egyptians, by the ancestral institution of their nation, built temples; and that posterity might learn the grace of his just dispensation, that very modius by which he had distributed grain to the hungry was set upon his head. He received also a name, that he might be worshipped more reverently, from the first author of his line: for because he had been the great-grandson of Sarah — from whom at ninety years old, by the indulgence of God, Abraham had received a daughter — he was called Serapis in the Greek tongue, that is, 'the child of Sarah' (Sárras paîs).

But this was against Joseph's will — nay, when he was dead: for a religious soul, dedicated to the supreme God, could not have been brought to such a crime as himself to furnish, out of his own name, the allurements of error to superstitious men — especially since he knew that it was in God's most holy laws that no man should either venerate or worship any such thing. He is worshipped in Egypt, here he is adored, his image a throng of temple-keepers guards; and in memory of antiquity an erring people, with contentious zeal, still today keeps the order of rites established in honor of a most upright and most prudent man. But in that very image, as in the rest, from constant sacrifices the unclean spirits of demons are gathered.

For the victims and the gore poured out from the constant slaughter of cattle effect nothing, except that the substance of the demons — who are begotten by the procreation of the devil — may be nourished from that blood. For that this is so, Porphyry, defender of images, enemy of God, foe of truth, master of wicked arts, has betrayed to us by manifest proofs. For in the books which he entitles 'On the Philosophy Derived from Oracles,' while proclaiming his deity's majesty, he confessed to its weakness. For in the first parts of his books — that is, in the very auspices, as it were — placed, he said: 'Serapis, being summoned and brought within the body of a man, answered such things.' Let lost men now tell me:

Who is the more powerful — he who calls and commands and shuts in, or he who is called and obeys and, when he has come into the body of the man who receives him, is shut in by the power of the one commanding? We give thanks, Porphyry, to your books: you have betrayed to us the substance of your gods; we have learned through you to what extent your gods are slaves to commanding men. Your Serapis is called by a man and comes, and when he has come he is at once shut in at command, and the necessity of speaking is, perhaps, imposed on him against his will. Thus among us, when your gods have begun to harm men, the lashes of religious speech chastise them.

Thus, set within the bodies of men, your gods are tortured by the word of God with the fire of spiritual flames; and those who among us are worshipped as gods, among us, subject to human command, endure the healing remedies of religious faith and the torments of the grace of Christ, resisting yet suffering, and, conquered, are subjugated by avenging penalties. I shall strive also to explain who the Penates are, lest anything seem to have been passed over by me. Those who think life is nothing but the license of eating and drinking have bent these to be their gods, out of the lowliness of their own desire, consecrating under this name, for the welfare of men, the nourishments of the body which are procured from daily feasts.

Because by the feasting of the body the body's weakness is restored, they sanctioned that nourishments alone are god, not knowing the truth of the divine oracle. For when the Lord Jesus Christ, solicitous for our salvation, was contending with the devil in a struggle of his divine majesty, that he might free from his jaws the man whom he bore, he shook him with this reply. For when the devil said to him, 'If you are the Son of God, make these stones become bread,' the Lord answered him and said, 'Man lives not by bread alone, but by every word of God.' Not knowing, therefore, the substance of the human race, they consecrated their daily feasts under this name; for everything that men feed upon is called penus.

Hence too the larder (cella penaria), hence too the gods Penates, were composed by abject and prostrate men out of a wretched thought. But learn what Vesta is, lest you suppose it something ancient or discovered with the utmost awe of religion. It is the domestic fire which serves the daily uses on the hearths; wherefore let it have cooks, not wretched maiden priestesses, who, despising the very ashes of that fire, are either compelled to sin with a prostituted body, or, persevering in virginity, lose the honorable dignity of a glorious name. Hear also what the deity Palladium is: it is an image made from the bones of Pelops; this Abaris the Scythian is reported to have made. Now consider what sort of thing it is, that a barbarian Scythian consecrated.

Is there anything among the Scythians composed by human reason — could that savage race of men, ever raging with cruel and inhuman atrocity, find anything right in establishing religions? This image Abaris sold to the Trojans, promising vain things to foolish men. A god was being sold, that he might profit the buyer, and the buyer suppliantly adored whatever he had a little before seen put up at auction. The substance of the image itself is from the bones of Pelops. If, Abaris, you compel wretched men to venerate human bones, gather at least the relics of a purer and chaster man; let the merit you draw from a man's virtues accrue to the idol you make. Pelops was in the favor of a lover and long endured the losses of prostituted modesty.

But not even when grown was he without crime: he slew by the treachery of a betrayer the man whose daughter he was seeking; he assailed the very betrayer himself with perjuries, and, that he might not pay the promised rewards, he hurled this same man down sheer precipices. Behold him whose bones were chosen that he might become a god to preserve cities and kingdoms! But he never preserved anything, nor profited, and he saw what awaited him from the misfortunes of the cities in which he was: Troy was burned by the Greeks, Rome by the Gauls, and from both conflagrations the Palladium was preserved — but preserved not by its own virtues, but by human protection; for from both places men rescued it, and it was carried off lest it should blaze in a human fire.

For so great a deity human protections were necessary, and it sought human aid lest it should burn. The Palladium was deferred from the fire, not delivered from it: the sentence stands, the penalty remains, the fire impends, the fire presses on, which it will not be able to escape. Already the heavenly flame is in travail, already the coming of divine retribution is shown forth, already the destruction of the coming ruin is announced: in this conflagration the Palladium will not be able to find hiding-places. That fire searches out hidden things, seeks the concealed, and whatever has destroyed erring men by vain persuasions, it embraces with the swift devastation of its flames. 'For there comes,' he says, 'the day of the Lord like a burning oven.' You have heard what comes: there is nothing that, gathered from you, can be stored in the Lord's granaries.

You will burn like stubble, whose empty worthlessness is kept for ashes and cinders, by which the rapacious fire, the violence of its blast compelling, is fed. This is your end and finish, this is the penalty which God has decreed for those who deceive men: that he should burn with perpetual flames who, against the will of God, has either deceived or destroyed wretched man. I wish, indeed, to inquire diligently of which Minerva they would have this be the emblem: for it is agreed that there were several Minervas, nor does anyone dissent on this point. Let us therefore state the peculiar character, institution, art, and purpose of each, so that from all these it may be found of which Minerva's name the Palladium was consecrated. Antiquity, as we read, hands down that there were five Minervas.

One is the daughter of Vulcan, who founded Athens, whom a rustic throng accompanied from rural places to the order of urban life. There was another in Egypt, daughter of Nilus the king, mistress of the weaving art. A third was begotten of Saturn her father, but they record that she was a virago: for she never kept herself within the modesty of the female sex, but always pursued arms and the din of battles and the bloody zeal of wars. The fourth was the daughter of Jupiter the Cretan king, who brought Liber, slain, to her father. The fifth sprang from Pallas her father and a Titaness mother, who, called by her father's name, was named Pallas by men.

She, by the impulse of a parricidal madness of frenzy and of insane rashness, slaughtered her father Pallas with a cruel death; and not content with her father's mere death — that she might the longer enjoy her own evils and triumph the more cruelly over her father's death — she was adorned with the spoils of his body, that she might publish the crime of parricide by a cruel display. Hers is the Palladium — O abomination! — consecrated in her name; this is the Pallas who is worshipped, this is she who is preserved by pontifical law; and she, whose crime ought to have been more severely condemned, has her image suppliantly adored. Apply fire, increase the flames, that by your daily sacrifices she may learn to burn.

For what else does a parricide deserve than that, by a perpetual imitation of flames, she should daily, before God's sentence, be consumed with avenging flames? These, most sacred emperors, are to be called tombs, not temples; they are rather to be called the pyres of wretched men: for in honor of lost men the pitiable servitude of men makes shrines in place of sepulchres.

Here the ashes of cremated bodies are kept; here the cinders of the dead are buried under an impious rite, so that the misfortunes of bitter deaths are renewed each day by the blood of victims, so that the mournful outcome of lamentation, renewed, is reborn in yearly griefs, so that a fresher wailing stirs up tears that had been lulled to rest, so that the wretched mind of men learns both to revere and to commit parricides, incests, and slaughters according to the rite of these sacred ceremonies.

These things must be cut off, most sacred emperors, utterly destroyed and corrected by the most severe laws of your edicts, lest the deadly error of this presumption defile the Roman world any longer, lest the wickedness of this pestilent custom grow strong, lest whatever strives to destroy man from God hold dominion any longer upon the earth. Some are unwilling and resist and with eager desire long for their own ruin; but come to the aid of the wretched, set free those who are perishing: for this the most high God has entrusted to you the empire, that through you the wound of this plague may be healed. We know the peril of their crime, the penalties of their error are well known; but it is better that you free them against their will than that you grant ruin to those who desire it.

Things contrary please the sick, and when an adverse condition has taken possession of a man's body, things perverse, against their own welfare, are demanded by those who suffer. The mind, seized by the disease of its weakness, ever desires the increase of its ailments, and spurning the remedies of the physicians, holds them in contempt; it rejects the remedy of medicine and with headlong passion hastens to its own destruction. Then, if the evil of the disease has grown more violent, greater remedies are sought, and for the man's welfare medicine, anxious, more forcefully arrays itself: harsh foods and bitter drinks are forced upon the unwilling, and, if the evil has grown strong, both fire and iron are applied.

Thus a man, when his health has been recovered and his welfare restored to him, confesses, by the judgment of a steadfast mind, that whatever he unwillingly endured through the disease of his ailing body was all done for his own benefit. Receive now, most sacred princes, also the names of these gods, by what reasoning they were composed.

This light, which by God's command, when the darkness has been put to flight, gives day to men, which through the span of twelve hours directs the order of its course, they chose to call Sol (the Sun) — not because it is alone (solus), as some hold, for there too are the heaven and the moon and very many other stars which we see, of which some shine in one continuous series, joined together in perpetual coherence, while others, scattered over the whole sky, measure their wandering courses by their own deviations — but it is called Sol because, when it has risen, while the other stars are darkened, it alone shines. The Moon (Luna) also — this same one is Lucina — took its name from its nocturnal light: this too some chose to call Diana, because, shining for men through the night, it makes almost a second day.

They chose to call the sea Neptune, from swimmers (nantes), from swimming (natando); and from this which they freely did, shaping the substance of the name, they call every earthly power and nature Dis Pater (Father Dis), because such is the nature of the earth, that all things both fall back into it and again, sprung from it, go forth — a thing which displayed the opulence and riches of the earth. They wish to call the substance of crops Proserpina, because crops, when they have begun to be sown, profit (prosunt) men. The earth itself they name Ceres, borrowing this name from the bearing (gerendis) of fruits. From the chances of wars Mars (Mavors) took his name, as though he overturns (vertat) great things (magna). Minerva likewise is a name of war, as though she either lessens (minuat) or threatens (minetur). The comeliness (venustas) of men is called Venus.

The name of Apollo they fashioned from human misfortunes, in the Greek tongue, as though he either loses or destroys all things committed to him. Some also call the sun Apollo, because, daily set in its setting, it loses (perdat) the brightness of its light: for the Greeks call 'to destroy' apollyein. You see how a turbulent error has contrived your lying and fictitious gods, so that by old wives' superstitions both the forms and the names of the gods have been handed down to you. But truth has uncovered all these things, and the reasoning of a sound mind has discovered them, so that, when all has been investigated and uncovered which sacrilegious error had hidden, truth might shine in life.

For all these things, since they had been ill-composed, were at first a terror to mortals; then, when the novelty had been consumed, as among men recovering from a long illness, a certain contempt was born out of wonder. Thus little by little the mind, which had been struck dumb, dared diligently to inquire, and at once it sent its keen intelligence into the secrets of these feigned and empty superstitions. Then, the reckoning of hidden things being gathered by reason from constant examinations, it came to the causes, so that the human race first learned, then despised, and thirdly rejected the pitiable fictions of profane religions. It now pleases me to explain by what signs or by what symbols the pitiable crowd of men recognizes itself in these very superstitions.

For they have their own signs, their own responses, which in the assemblies of these sacrileges the teaching of the devil handed down to them. In a certain temple, in order that a man about to enter may be admitted into the inner parts, he says: 'I have eaten from the drum, I have drunk from the cymbal, and I have learned thoroughly the secrets of the religion' — which in the Greek tongue is said: 'ek tympanou bebroka, ek kymbalou pepoka, gegona mystes Attis.' Wickedly, wretched man, do you confess the crime you have committed: you have drained the pestilent venom of poison, and at the prompting of an unspeakable madness you have licked the deadly cup: death and punishment always follow that food; this which you proclaim that you have drunk binds the vein of life unto death, defiles the seat of the soul, and throws it into confusion by the unbroken succession of evils.

There is another food, which bestows welfare and life; there is another food, which both commends a man to the most high God and restores him; there is another food, which relieves the languishing, recalls the wandering, raises up the fallen, which bestows upon the dying the insignia of eternal immortality. Seek the bread of Christ, the cup of Christ, that, earthly frailty being despised, the substance of man may be nourished with immortal food. But what is this bread or what is the cup which Wisdom proclaims with a great voice in the books of Solomon? For it says: 'Come, eat of my loaves and drink the wine which I have mingled.' And Melchizedek, king of Salem and priest of the most high God, offered to Abraham, on his return, the grace of blessing with bread and wine.

Isaac too, when he had blessed Jacob, when Esau humbly demanded this same blessing from his father, the father answered him: 'I have made him,' he said, 'your lord, and all his brethren I have made his servants; with corn and wine I have confirmed him.' Then Esau bewailed his misfortunes with wretched lamentation, because he had lost the grace of the corn and the wine, that is, of future felicity. And that this divine bread is granted by God to consecrated men, the Holy Spirit says through Isaiah: 'Thus says the Lord: behold, those who serve me shall eat, but you shall hunger:'

'behold, those who serve me shall rejoice, but you shall be confounded; you the Lord shall slay.' Not only is this bread denied by the most high God to the sacrilegious and impious, but a penalty also is promised and the destruction of bitter death is decreed, so that to their hungering throats may be brought the outcome of divine retribution. There follow, too, on this same theme, the venerable responses of the thirty-third psalm; for through David the Holy Spirit says: 'Taste and see that the Lord is sweet.' Sweet is the heavenly food, sweet is the food of God: nor does it have in it the sad torment of wretched hunger, and it shuts out the venom of the poison proceeding from the marrow of men. And that these things are so, the following responses of the oracle declare; for it says:

'Fear the Lord, you his saints, for there is no want to those who fear him. The rich have been in want and have hungered, but those who seek the Lord shall not be deprived of any good thing.' You who thus walk robed in the temple, who shine in purple, whose head is pressed with either gold or laurel, foul destitution pursues your error, and the burdensome weight of poverty hangs over your neck. That poor man whom you despise is bountiful and rich; Abraham prepares a seat for him in his bosom. Then you, through the intervening spaces of the flames, to soothe the wounds of your conscience, will beg from him a thin little drop of trickling water, and Lazarus, though willing, will neither be able to give nor to obtain for you the relief of your pain. For the merits of each are weighed with equal grace:

to that one life is granted on account of the evils of this world, to you on account of the goods of this world the perpetual punishment of torments is decreed. But that it might be learned more plainly who that bread was, through which the destructions of wretched death are overcome, the Lord himself marked it out with his holy and venerable mouth, lest through diverse interpretations the hopes of men should be deceived by perverse readings. For he says in the Gospel according to John: 'I am the bread of life: he who comes to me shall not hunger, he who believes in me shall never thirst.' Likewise in what follows he signifies this same thing in a similar manner; for he says: 'If anyone thirsts, let him come and drink who believes in me.' And again he himself, that he might hand over to believers the substance of his majesty, says:

'Unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you shall not have life in you.' Therefore let there be nothing for you with the food of the drum, O wretched mortals: seek the grace of the saving food and drink the immortal cup. Christ recalls you by his banquets to the light, and quickens your limbs heavy with grievous poison and your numbed members. With heavenly food renew the lost man, that whatever in you is dead may be reborn by divine benefits. You have learned what it befits you to do; choose what you will: from there death is born, from here immortal life is given. *** Hail, bridegroom; hail, new light. Why, ruinous persuasion, do you thus hurl wretched man over the precipices? Why do you promise him the insignia of a false hope?

There is no light in you, nor is there any who deserves to be heard as bridegroom: there is one light, there is one bridegroom: the grace of these names Christ has received. You cannot transfer to yourself the glory of another's felicity, nor can you be adorned with the splendor of the heavenly light. You have been cast into darkness and squalor: there are filth, squalor, gloom, darkness, and the horror of perpetual night holds dominion. If you wish that at least a thin splendor of light may shine for you, lift up your face and open your downcast eyes, and forsaking these things betake yourself to him who said: 'I am the light of the world,' by whose divine precepts it is contained that in this earthly converse our work should shine through each single day: