THE EARLY CHURCH FATHERS WRITINGS - VOLUME 16
Arnobius and Eusebius against the Pagans, and Marcellus of Ancyra
c. AD 300 – 337

SermonIndex · sermonindex.net/books/

Texts are public domain except where marked in Sources and Credits. Modern English versions released under CC BY-SA 4.0.

============================================================

INTRODUCTION TO THIS VOLUME
===========================

HOW THIS BOOK IS ARRANGED

This is the sixteenth volume of a series that gathers the writings of the early Church in
order of date, from the generation after the apostles down to the eighth century. This
volume holds Arnobius and Eusebius against the Pagans, and Marcellus of Ancyra, from the
period about AD 300 – 337.

Within each work the text is divided into chapters and numbered sections, so that any
passage can be found again and cited. The small bold figures in the text are the section
numbers.

THE TRANSLATIONS

The text is in English only. Wherever a modern English version has been prepared for
SermonIndex it is used here; otherwise the book prints an older public-domain translation.
In both cases the wording is the translator’s own: older translations have not been
altered beyond dividing them into sections. The sources for every work are listed at the
back of the book, together with the licence under which each text is released. The modern
English version prepared for SermonIndex is used for Fragments (Marcellus of Ancyra),
Against Marcellus (Eusebius of Caesarea) and On Ecclesiastical Theology (Eusebius of
Caesarea); the other works are printed in older public-domain translations.

IN THIS VOLUME

Arnobius was a teacher of rhetoric at Sicca in North Africa who wrote his seven books
Against the Heathen about AD 300, shortly after becoming a Christian.

Eusebius was bishop of Caesarea in Palestine from about AD 314 until his death about AD
339. He is called the father of church history, and he was a scholar, an apologist and a
biographer of the emperor Constantine.

Marcellus was bishop of Ancyra in Galatia and a defender of the Nicene faith. His own
writings survive only in the quotations of his opponents, above all Eusebius of Caesarea.

Marcellus’s own writings are lost, and the fragments printed here are those preserved in
the quotations of Eusebius and of other writers. Some of the same passages therefore
appear again in Eusebius’s Against Marcellus.

DATES AND AUTHORSHIP

Dates are approximate and are debated by scholars. Each work begins with a short
introduction that states what is known about its author and its date, and what is
uncertain.


AGAINST THE HEATHEN, BOOK 1
===========================

AGAINST THE HEATHEN, BOOK 1 Arnobius of Sicca

d. c. AD 330

North African teacher who wrote against the pagans.

AGAINST THE HEATHEN BOOK 1

1. Since I have found some who deem themselves very wise in their opinions, acting as if
they were inspired, and announcing with all the authority of an oracle, that from the time
when the Christian people began to exist in the world the universe has gone to ruin, that
the human race has been visited with ills of many kinds, that even the very gods,
abandoning their accustomed charge, in virtue of which they were wont in former days to
regard with interest our affairs, have been driven from the regions of earth,-I have
resolved, so far as my capacity and my humble power of language will allow, to oppose
public prejudice, and to refute calumnious accusations; lest, on the one hand, those
persons should imagine that they are declaring some weighty matter, when they are merely
retailing vulgar rumours; and on the other, lest, if we refrain from such a contest, they
should suppose that they have gained a cause, lost by its own inherent demerits, not
abandoned by the silence of its advocates. For I should not deny that that charge is a
most serious one, and that we fully deserve the hatred attaching to public enemies, if it
should appear that to us are attributable causes by reason of which the universe has
deviated from its laws, the gods have been driven far away, and such swarms of miseries
have been inflicted on the generations of men.

2. Let us therefore examine carefully the real significance of that opinion, and what is
the nature of the allegation; and laying aside all desire for wrangling, by which the calm
view of subjects is wont to be dimmed, and even intercepted, let us test, by fairly
balancing the considerations on both sides, whether that which is alleged be true. For it
will assuredly be proved by an array of convincing arguments, not that we are discovered
to be more impious, but that they themselves are convicted of that charge who profess to
be worshippers of the deities, and devotees of an antiquated superstition. And, in the
first place, we ask this of them in friendly and calm language: Since the name of the
Christian religion began to be used on the earth, what phenomenon, unseen before, unheard
of before, what event contrary to the laws established in the beginning, has the so-called
"Nature of Things" felt or suffered? Have these first elements, from which it is agreed
that all things were compacted, been altered into elements of an opposite character? Has
the fabric of this machine and mass of the universe, by which we are all covered, and in
which we are held enclosed, relaxed in any part, or broken up? Has the revolution of the
globe, to which we are accustomed, departing from the rate of its primal motion, begun
either to move too slowly, or to be hurried onward in headlong rotation?

Have the stars begun to rise in the west, and the setting of the constellations to take
place in the east? Has the sun himself, the chief of the heavenly bodies, with whose light
all things are clothed, and by whose heat all things are vivified, blazed forth with
increased vehemence? has he become less warm, and has he altered for the worse into
opposite conditions that well-regulated temperature by which he is wont to act upon the
earth? Has the moon ceased to shape herself anew, and to change into former phases by the
constant recurrence of fresh ones? Has the cold of winter, has the heat of summer, has the
moderate warmth of spring and autumn, been modified by reason of the intermixture of ill-
assorted seasons? Has the winter begun to have long days? has the night begun to recall
the very tardy twilights of summer? Have the winds at all exhausted their violence? Is the
sky not collected into clouds by reason of the blasts having lost their force, and do the
fields when moistened by the showers not prosper? Does the earth refuse to receive the
seed committed to it, or will not the trees assume their foliage? Has the flavour of
excellent fruits altered, or has the vine changed in its juice? Is foul blood pressed
forth from the olive berries, and is oil no longer supplied to the lamp, now extinguished?
Have animals of the land and of the sea no sexual desires, and do they not conceive young?

Do they not guard, according to their own habits and their own instinct, the offspring
generated in their wombs? In fine, do men themselves, whom an active energy with its first
impulses has scattered over habitable lands, not form marriages with due rites? Do they
not beget dear children? do they not attend to public, to individual, and to family
concerns? Do they not apply their talents as each one pleases, to varied occupations, to
different kinds of learning? and do they not reap the fruit of diligent application? Do
those to whom it has been so allotted, not exercise kingly power or military authority?
Are men not every day advanced in posts of honour, in offices of power? Do they not
preside in the discussions of the law courts? Do they not explain the code of law? do they
not expound the principles of equity? All other things with which the life of man is
surrounded, in which it consists, do not all men in their own tribes practise, according
to the established order of their country's manners?

3. Since this is so, and since no strange influence has suddenly manifested itself to
break the continuous course of events by interrupting their succession, what is the ground
of the allegation, that a plague was brought upon the earth after the Christian religion
came into the world, and after it revealed the mysteries of hidden truth? But pestilences,
say my opponents, and droughts, wars, famines, locusts, mice, and hailstones, and other
hurtful things, by which the property of men is assailed, the gods bring upon us, incensed
as they are by your wrong-doings and by your transgressions. If it were not a mark of
stupidity to linger on matters which are already clear, and which require no defence, I
should certainly show, by unfolding the history of past ages, that those ills which you
speak of were not unknown, were not sudden in their visitation; and that the plagues did
not burst upon us, and the affairs of men begin to be attacked by a variety of dangers,
from the time that our sect won the honour of this appellation. For if we are to blame,
and if these plagues have been devised against our sin, whence did antiquity know these
names for misfortunes? Whence did she give a designation to wars? By what conception could
she indicate pestilence and hailstorms, or how could she introduce these terms among her
words, by which speech was rendered plain?

For if these ills are entirely new, and if they derive their origin from recent
transgressions, how could it be that the ancients coined terms for these things, which, on
the one hand, they knew that they themselves had never experienced, and which, on the
other, they had not heard of as occurring in the time of their ancestors? Scarcity of
produce, say my opponents, and short supplies of grain, press more heavily on us. For, I
would ask, were the former generations, even the most ancient, at any period wholly free
from such an inevitable calamity? Do not the very words by which these ills are
characterized bear evidence and proclaim loudly that no mortal ever escaped from them with
entire immunity? But if the matter were difficult of belief, we might urge, on the
testimony of authors, how great nations, and what individual nations, and how often such
nations experienced dreadful famine, and perished by accumulated devastation. Very many
hailstorms fall upon and assail all things. For do we not find it contained and
deliberately stated in ancient literature, that even showers of stones often ruined entire
districts? Violent rains cause the crops to perish, and proclaim barrenness to
countries:-were the ancients, indeed, free from these ills, when we have known of mighty
rivers even being dried up, and the mud of their channels parched? The contagious
influences of pestilence consume the human race:-ransack the records of history written in
various languages, and you will find that all countries have often been desolated and
deprived of their inhabitants.

Every kind of crop is consumed, and devoured by locusts and by mice :-go through your own
annals, and you will be taught by these plagues how often former ages were visited by
them, and how often they were brought to the wretchedness of poverty. Cities shaken by
powerful earthquakes totter to their destruction:-what! did not bygone days witness cities
with their populations engulphed by huge rents of the earth? or did they enjoy a condition
exempt from such disasters? 4. When was the human race destroyed by a flood? was it not
before us? When was the world set on fire, and reduced to coals and ashes? was it not
before us? When were the greatest cities engulphed in the billows of the sea? was it not
before us? When were wars waged with wild beasts, and battles fought with lions? was it
not before us? When was ruin brought on whole communities by poisonous serpents? was it
not before us? For, inasmuch as you are wont to lay to our blame the cause of frequent
wars, the devastation of cities, the irruptions of the Germans and the Scythians, allow
me, with your leave, to say,-In your eagerness to calumniate us, you do not perceive the
real nature of that which is alleged.

5. Did we bring it about, that ten thousand years ago a vast number of men burst forth
from the island which is called the Atlantis of Neptune, as Plato tells us, and utterly
ruined and blotted out countless tribes? Did this form a prejudice against us, that
between the Assyrians and Bactrians, under the leadership of Ninus and Zoroaster of old, a
struggle was maintained not only by the sword and by physical power, but also by
magicians, and by the mysterious learning of the Chaldeans? Is it to be laid to the charge
of our religion, that Helen was carried off under the guidance and at the instigation of
the gods, and that she became a direful destiny to her own and to after times? Was it
because of our name, that that mad-cap Xerxes let the ocean in upon the land, and that he
marched over the sea on foot? Did we produce and stir into action the causes, by reason of
which one youth, starting from Macedonia, subjected the kingdoms and peoples of the East
to captivity and to bondage? Did we, forsooth, urge the deities into frenzy, so that the
Romans lately, like some swollen torrent, overthrew all nations, and swept them beneath
the flood? But if there is no man who would dare to attribute to our times those things
which took place long ago, how can we be the causes of the present misfortunes, when
nothing new is occurring, but all things are old, and were unknown to none of the
ancients?

6. Although you allege that those wars which you speak of were excited through hatred of
our religion, it would not be difficult to prove, that after the name of Christ was heard
in the world, not only were they not increased, but they were even in great measure
diminished by the restraining of furious passions. For since we, a numerous band of men as
we are, have learned from His teaching and His laws that evil ought not to be requited
with evil, that it is better to suffer wrong than to inflict it, that we should rather
shed our own blood than stain our hands and our conscience with that of another, an
ungrateful world is now for a long period enjoying a benefit from Christ, inasmuch as by
His means the rage of savage ferocity has been softened, and has begun to withhold hostile
hands from the blood of a fellow-creature. But if all without exception, who feel that
they are men not in form of body but in power of reason, would lend an ear for a little to
His salutary and peaceful rules, and would not, in the pride and arrogance of
enlightenment, trust to their own senses rather than to His admonitions, the whole world,
having turned the use of steel into more peaceful occupations, would now be living in the
most placid tranquillity, and would unite in blessed harmony, maintaining inviolate the
sanctity of treaties.

7. But if, say my opponents, no damage is done to human affairs by you, whence arise those
evils by which wretched mortals are now oppressed and overwhelmed? You ask of me a decided
statement, which is by no means necessary to this cause. For no immediate and prepared
discussion regarding it has been undertaken by me, for the purpose of showing or proving
from what causes and for what reasons each event took place; but in order to demonstrate
that the reproaches of so grave a charge are far removed from our door. And if I prove
this, if by examples and by powerful arguments the truth of the matter is made clear, I
care not whence these evils come, or from what sources and first beginnings they flow. 8.
And yet, that I may not seem to have no opinion on subjects of this kind, that I may not
appear when asked to have nothing to offer, I may say, What if the primal matter which has
been diffused through the four elements of the universe, contains the causes of all
miseries inherent in its own constitution? What if the movements of the heavenly bodies
produce these evils in certain signs, regions, seasons, and tracts, and impose upon things
placed under them the necessity of various dangers? What if, at stated intervals, changes
take place in the universe, and, as in the tides of the sea, prosperity at one time flows,
at another time ebbs, evils alternating with it? What if those impurities of matter which
we tread trader our feet have this condition imposed upon them, that they give forth the
most noxious exhalations, by means of which this our atmosphere is corrupted, and brings
pestilence on our bodies, and weakens the human race? What if-and this seems nearest the
truth-whatever appears to us adverse, is in reality not an evil to the world itself? And
what if, measuring by our own advantages all things which take place, we blame the results
of nature through ill-formed judgments? Plato, that sublime head and pillar of
philosophers, has declared in his writings, that those cruel floods and those
conflagrations of the I world are a purification of the earth; nor did that wise man dread
to call the overthrow of the human race, its destruction, ruin, and death, a renewal of
things, and to affirm that a youthfulness, as it were, was secured by this renewed
strength.

9. It rains not from heaven, my opponent says, and we are in distress from some
extraordinary deficiency of grain crops. What then, do you demand that the elements should
be the slaves of your wants? and that you may be able to live more softly and more
delicately, ought the compliant seasons to minister to your convenience? What if, in this
way, one who is intent on voyaging complains, that now for a long time there are no winds,
and that the blasts of heaven have for ever lulled? Is it therefore to be said that that
peacefulness of the universe is pernicious, because it interferes with the wishes of
traders? What if one, accustomed to bask himself in the sun, and thus to acquire dryness
of body, similarly complains that by the clouds the pleasure of serene weather is taken
away? Should the clouds, therefore, be said to hang over with an injurious veil, because
idle lust is not permitted to scorch itself in the burning heat, and to devise excuses for
drinking? All these events which are brought to pass, and which happen under this mass of
the universe, are not to be regarded as sent for our petty advantages, but as consistent
with the plans and arrangements of Nature herself.

10. And if anything happens which does not foster ourselves or our affairs with joyous
success, it is not to be set down forthwith as an evil, and as a pernicious thing. The
world rains or does not rain: for itself it rains or does not rain; and, though you
perhaps are ignorant of it, it either diminishes excessive moisture by a burning drought,
or by the outpouring of rain moderates the dryness extending over a very long period. It
raises pestilences, diseases, famines, and other baneful forms of plagues: how can you
tell whether it does not thus remove that which is in excess, and whether, through loss to
themselves, it does not fix a limit to things prone to luxuriance? 11. Would you venture
to say that, in this universe, this thing or the other thing is an evil, whose origin and
cause you are unable to explain and to analyze? And because it interferes with your
lawful, perhaps even your unlawful pleasures, would you say that it is pernicious and
adverse? What, then, because cold is disagreeable to your members, and is wont to chill
the warmth of your blood, ought not winter on that account to exist in the world? And
because you are unable to endure the hottest rays of the sun, is summer to be removed from
the year, and a different course of nature to be instituted under different laws?
Hellebore is poison to men; should it therefore not grow? The wolf lies in wait by the
sheepfolds; is nature at all in fault, because she has produced a beast most dangerous to
sheep? The serpent by his bite takes away life; a reproach, forsooth, to creation, because
it has added to animals monsters so cruel.

12. It is rather presumptuous, when you are not your own master, even when yon are the
property of another, to dictate terms to those more powerful; to wish that that should
happen which you desire, not that which you have found fixed in things by their original
constitution. Wherefore, if you wish that your complaints should have a basis, you must
first inform us whence you are, or who you are; whether the world was created and
fashioned for you, or whether you came into it as sojourners from other regions. And since
it is not in your power to say or to explain for what purpose you live beneath this vault
of heaven, cease to believe that anything belongs to you; since those things which take
place are not brought about in favour of a part, but have regard to the interest of the
whole. 13. Because of the Christians, my opponents say, the gods inflict upon us all
calamities, and ruin is brought on our crops by the heavenly deities. I ask when you say
these things, do you not see that you are accusing us with bare-faced effrontery, with
palpable and clearly proved falsehoods? It is almost three hundred years -something less
or more-since we Christians began to exist, and to be taken account of in the world.
During all these years, have wars been incessant, has there been a yearly failure of the
crops, has there been no peace on earth, has there been no season of cheapness and
abundance of all things? For this must first be proved by him who accuses us, that these
calamities have been endless and incessant, that men have never had a breathing time at
all, and that without any relaxation they have undergone dangers of many forms.

14. And yet do we not see that, in these years and seasons that have intervened, victories
innumerable have been gained from the conquered enemy,-that the boundaries of the empire
have been extended, and that nations whose names we had not previously heard, have been
brought under our power,-that very often there have been the most plentiful yields of
grain, seasons of cheapness, and such abundance of commodities, that all commerce was
paralyzed, being prostrated by the standard of prices? For in what manner could affairs be
carried on, and how could the human race have existed even to this time, had not the
productiveness of nature continued to supply all things which use demanded? 15. Sometimes,
however, there were seasons of scarcity; yet they were relieved by times of plenty. Again,
certain wars were carried on contrary to our wishes. But they were afterwards compensated
by victories and successes. What shall we say, then?-that the gods at one time bore in
mind our acts of wrong-doing, at another time again forgot them? If, when there is a
famine, the gods are said to be enraged at us, it follows that in time of plenty they are
not wroth, and ill-to-be-appeased; and so the matter comes to this, that they both lay
aside and resume anger with sportive whim, and always renew their wrath afresh by the
recollection of the causes of offence.I

16. Yet one cannot discover by any rational process of reasoning, what is the meaning of
these statements. If the gods willed that the Alemanni and the Persians should be overcome
because Christians dwelt among their tribes, how did they grant victory to the Romans when
Christians dwelt among their peoples also? If they willed that mice and locusts should
swarm forth in prodigious numbers in Asia and in Syria because Christians dwelt among
their tribes too, why was there at the same time no such phenomenon in Spain and in Gaul,
although innumerable Christians lived in those provinces also? If among the Gaetuli and
the Tinguitani they sent dryness and aridity on the crops on account of this circumstance,
why did they in that very year give the most bountiful harvest to the Moors and to the
Nomads, when a similar religion had its abode in these regions as well? If in any one
state whatever they have caused many to die with hunger, through disgust at our name, why
have they in the same state made wealthier, ay, very rich, by the high price of corn, not
only men not of our booty, but even Christians themselves? Accordingly, either all should
have had no blessing if we are the cause of the evils, for we are in all nations; or when
you see blessings mixed with misfortunes, cease to attribute to us that which damages your
interests, when we in no respect interfere with your blessings and prosperity.

For if I cause it to be ill with you, why do I not prevent it from being well with you? If
my name is the cause of a great dearth, why am I powerless to prevent the greatest
productiveness? If I am said to bring the ill luck of a wound being received in war, why,
when the enemy are slain, am I not an evil augury; and why am I not set forth against good
hopes, through the ill luck of a bad omen? 17. And yet, O ye great worshippers and priests
of the deities, why, as you assert that those most holy gods are enraged at Christian
communities, do you not likewise perceive, do you not see what base feelings, what
unseemly frenzies, you attribute to your deities? For, to be angry, what else is it than
to be insane, to rave, to be urged to the lust of vengeance, and to revel in the troubles
of another's grief, through the madness of a savage disposition? Your great gods, then,
know, are subject to and feel that which wild beasts, which monstrous brutes experience,
which the deadly plant natrix contains in its poisoned roots. That nature which is
superior to others, and which is based on the firm foundation of unwavering virtue,
experiences, as you allege, the instability which is in man, the faults which are in the
animals of earth. And what therefore follows of necessity, but that from their eyes
flashes dart, flames burst forth, a panting breast emits a hurried breathing from their
mouth, and by reason of their burning words their parched lips become pale?

18. But if this that you say is true,-if it has been tested and thoroughly ascertained
both that the gods boil with rage, and that an impulse of this kind agitates the
divinities with excitement, on the one hand they are not immortal, and on the other they
are not to be reckoned as at all partaking of divinity. For wherever, as the philosophers
hold, there is any agitation, there of necessity passion must exist. Where passion is
situated, it is reasonable that mental excitement follow. Where there is mental
excitement, there grief and sorrow exist. Where grief and sorrow exist, there is already
room for weakening and decay; and if these two harass them, extinction is at hand, viz.
death, which ends all things, and takes away life from every sentient being. 19. Moreover,
in this way you represent them as not only unstable and excitable, but, what all agree is
far removed from the character of deity, as unfair in their dealings, as wrong-doers, and,
in fine, as possessing positively no amount of even moderate fairness. For what is a
greater wrong than to be angry with some, and to injure others, to complain of human
beings, and to ravage the harmless corn crops, to hate the Christian name, and to ruin the
worshippers of Christ with every kind of loss?

20. Do they on this account wreak their wrath on you too, in order that, roused by your
own private wounds, you may rise up for their vengeance? It seems, then, that the gods
seek the help of mortals; and were they not protected by your strenuous advocacy, they are
not able of themselves to repel and to avenge the insults offered them. Nay rather, if it
be true that they burn with anger, give them an opportunity of defending themselves, and
let them put forth and make trial of their innate powers, to take vengeance for their
offended dignity. By heat, by hurtful cold, by noxious winds, by the most occult diseases,
they can slay us, they can consume us, and they can drive us entirely from all intercourse
with men; or if it is impolitic to assail us by violence, let them give forth some token
of their indignation, by which it may be clear to all that we live under heaven subject to
their strong displeasure.

21. To you let them give good health, to us bad, ay, the very worst. Let them water your
farms with seasonable showers; from our little fields let them drive away all those rains
which are gentle. Let them see to it that your sheep are multiplied by a numerous progeny;
on our flocks let them bring luckless barrenness. From your olive-trees and vineyards let
them bring the full harvest; but let them see to it that from not one shoot of ours one
drop be expressed. Finally, and as their worst, let them give orders that in your mouth
the products of the earth retain their natural qualities; but, on the contrary that in
ours the honey become bitter, the flowing oil grow rancid, and that the wine when sipped,
be in the very lips suddenly changed into disappointing vinegar. 22. And since facts
themselves testify that this result never occurs, and since it is plain that to us no less
share of the bounties of life accrues, and to you no greater, what inordinate desire is
there to assert that the gods are unfavourable, nay, inimical to the Christians, who, in
the greatest adversity, just as in prosperity, differ from you in no respect? If you allow
the truth to be told you, and that, too, without reserve, these allegations are but
words,-words, I say; nay, matters believed on calumnious reports not proved by any certain
evidence.

23. But the true gods, and those who are worthy to have and to wear the dignity of this
name, neither conceive anger nor indulge a grudge, nor do they contrive by insidious
devices what may be hurtful to another party. For verily it is profane, and surpasses all
acts of sacrilege, to believe that that wise and most blessed nature is uplifted in mind
if one prostrates himself before it in humble adoration; and if this adoration be not
paid, that it deems itself despised, and regards itself as fallen from the pinnacle of its
glory. It is childish, weak, and petty, and scarcely becoming for those whom the
experience of learned men has for a long time called demigods and heroes, not to be versed
in heavenly things, and, divesting themselves of their own proper state, to be busied with
the coarser matter of earth. 24. These are your ideas, these are your sentiments,
impiously conceived, and more impiously believed. Nay, rather, to speak out more truly,
the augurs, the dream interpreters, the soothsayers, the prophets, and the priestlings,
ever vain, have devised these fables; for they, fearing that their own arts be brought to
nought, and that they may extort but scanty contributions from the devotees, now few and
infrequent, whenever they have found you to be willing that their craft should come into
disrepute, cry aloud, The gods are neglected, and in the temples there is now a very thin
attendance. Former ceremonies are exposed to derision, and the time-honoured rites of
institutions once sacred have sunk before the superstitions of new religions. Justly is
the human race afflicted by so many pressing calamities, justly is it racked by the
hardships of so many toils. And men-a senseless race-being unable, from their inborn
blindness, to see even that which is placed in open light, dare to assert in their frenzy
what you in your sane mind do not blush to believe.

25. And lest any one should suppose that we, through distrust in our reply, invest the
gods with the gifts of serenity, that we assign to them minds free from resentment, and
far removed from all excitement, let us allow, since it is pleasing to you, that they put
forth their passion upon us, that they thirst for our blood, and that now for a long time
they are eager to remove us from the generations of men. But if it is not troublesome to
you, if it is not offensive, if it is a matter of common duty to discuss the points of
this argument not on grounds of partiality, but on those of truth, we demand to hear from
you what is the explanation of this, what the cause, why, on the one hand, the gods
exercise cruelty on us alone, and why, on the other, men barn against us with
exasperation. You follow, our opponents say, profane religious systems, and you practise
rites unheard of throughout the entire world. What do you, O men, endowed with reason,
dare to assert? What do you dare to prate of? What do you try to bring forward in the
recklessness of unguarded speech? To adore God as the highest existence, as the Lord of
all things that be, as occupying the highest place among all exalted ones, to pray to Him
with respectful submission in our distresses, to cling to Him with all our senses, so to
speak, to love Him, to look up to Him with faith,-is this an execrable and unhallowed
religion, full of impiety and of sacrilege, polluting by the superstition of its own
novelty ceremonies instituted of old?

26. Is this, I pray, that daring and heinous iniquity on account of which the mighty
powers of heaven whet against us the stings of passionate indignation, on account of which
you yourselves, whenever the savage desire has seized you, spoil us of our goods, drive us
from the homes of our fathers, inflict upon us capital punishment, torture, mangle, barn
us, and at the last expose us to wild beasts, and give us to be torn by monsters?
Whosoever condemns that in us, or considers that it should be laid against us as a charge,
is he deserving either to be called by the name of man, though he seem so to himself? or
is he to be believed a god, although he declare himself to be so by the mouth of a
thousand prophets? Does Trophonius, or Jupiter of Dodona, pronounce us to be wicked? And
will he himself be called god, and be reckoned among the number of the deities, who either
fixes the charge of impiety on those who serve the King Supreme, or is racked with envy
because His majesty and His worship are preferred to his own?

Is Apollo whether called Delian or Clarian Didymean, Philesian, or Pythian, to be reckoned
divine, who either knows not the Supreme Ruler, or who is not aware that He is entreated
by us in daily prayers? And although he knew not the secrets of our hearts, and though he
did not discover what we hold in our inmost thoughts, yet he might either know by his ear,
or might perceive by the very tone of voice which we use in prayer, that we invoke God
Supreme, and that we beg from Him what we require. 27. This is not the place to examine
all our traducers, who they are, or whence they are, what is their power, what their
knowledge, why they tremble at the mention of Christ, why they regard his disciples as
enemies and as hateful persons; but with regard to ourselves to state expressly to those
who will exercise common reason, in terms applicable to all of us alike,-We Christians are
nothing else than worshippers of the Supreme King and Head, under our Master, Christ. If
you examine carefully, you will find that nothing else is implied in that religion. This
is the sum of all that we do; this is the proposed end and limit of sacred duties. Before
Him we all prostrate ourselves, according to oar custom; Him we adore in joint prayers;
from Him we beg things just and honourable, and worthy of His ear. Not that He needs our
supplications, or loves to see the homage of so many thousands laid at His feet. This is
our benefit, and has a regard to our advantage. For since we are prone to err, and to
yield to various lusts and appetites through the fault of our innate weakness, He allows
Himself at all times to be comprehended in our thoughts, that whilst we entreat Him and
strive to merit His bounties, we may receive a desire for purity, and may free ourselves
from every stain by the removal of all our shortcomings.

28. What say ye, O interpreters of sacred and of divine law? Are they attached to a better
cause who adore the Lares Grundules, the Aii Locutii, and the Limentini, than we who
worship God the Father of all things, and demand of Him protection in danger and distress?
They, too, seem to you wary, wise, most sagacious, and not worthy of any blame, who revere
Fauni and Fatuae, and the genii of states, who worship Pausi and Bellonae:-we are
pronounced dull, doltish, fatuous, stupid, and senseless, who have given ourselves up to
God, at whose nod and pleasure everything which exists has its being, and remains
immoveable by His eternal decree. Do you put forth this opinion? Have you ordained this
law? Do you publish this decree, that he be crowned with the highest honours who shall
worship your slaves? that he merit the extreme penalty of the cross who shall offer
prayers to you yourselves, his masters? In the greatest states, and in the most powerful
nations, sacred rites are performed in the public name to harlots, who in old days earned
the wages of impurity, and prostituted themselves to the lust of all; and yet for this
there are no swellings of indignation on the part of the deities. Temples have been
erected with lofty roofs to cats, to beetles, and to heifers: -the powers of the deities
thus insulted are silent; nor are they affected with any feeling of envy because they see
the sacred attributes of vile animals put in rivalry with them.

Are the deities inimical to us alone? To us are they most unrelenting, because we worship
their Author, by whom, if they do exist, they began to be, and to have the essence of
their power and their majesty, from whom, having obtained their very divinity, so to
speak, they feel that they exist, and realize that they are reckoned among things that be,
at whose will and at whose behest they are able both to perish and be dissolved, and not
to be dissolved and not to perish? For if we all grant that there is only one great Being,
whom in the long lapse of time nought else precedes, it necessarily follows that after Him
all things were generated and put forth, and that they burst into an existence each of its
kind. But if this is unchallenged and sure, you will be compelled as a consequence to
confess, on the one hand, that the deities are created, and on the other, that they derive
the spring of their existence from the great source of things. And if they are created and
brought forth, they are also doubtless liable to annihilation and to dangers; but yet they
are believed to be immortal, ever-existent, and subject to no extinction. This is also a
gift from God their Author, that they have been privileged to remain the same through
countless ages, though by nature they are fleeting, and liable to dissolution.

29. And would that it were allowed me to deliver this argument with the whole world
formed, as it were, into one assembly, and to be placed in the hearing of all the human
race! Are we therefore charged before you with an impious religion? and because we
approach the Head and Pillar of the universe with worshipful service, are we to be
considered-to use the terms employed by you in reproaching us-as persons to be shunned,
and as godless ones? And who would more properly bear the odium of these names than he who
either knows, or inquires after, or believes any other god rather than this of ours? To
Him do we not owe this first, that we exist, that we are said to be men, that, being
either sent forth from Him, or having fallen from Him, we are confined in the darkness of
this body? Does it not come from Him that we walk, that we breathe and live? and by the
very power of living, does He not cause us to exist and to move with the activity of
animated being? From this do not causes emanate, through which our health is sustained by
the bountiful supply of various pleasures? Whose is that world in which you live? or who
hath authorized you to retain its produce and its possession? Who hath given that common
light, enabling us to see distinctly all things lying beneath it, to handle them, and to
examine them? Who has ordained that the fires of the sun should exist for the growth of
things, lest elements pregnant with life should be numbed by settling down in the torpor
of inactivity? When yon believe that the sun is a deity, do you not ask who is his
founder, who has fashioned him? Since the moon is a goddess in your estimation, do you in
like manner care to know who is her author and framer?

30. Does it not occur to you to reflect and to examine in whose domain you live? on whose
property you are? whose is that earth which you till? whose is that air which you inhale,
and return again in breathing? whose fountains do you abundantly enjoy? whose water? who
has regulated the blasts of the wind? who has contrived the watery clouds? who has
discriminated the productive powers of seeds by special characteristics? Does Apollo give
you rain? Does Mercury send yon water from heaven? Has Aesculapius, Hercules, or Diana
devised the plan of showers and of storms? And how can this be, when you give forth that
they were born on earth, and that at a fixed period they received vital perceptions? For
if the world preceded them in the long lapse of time, and if before they were born nature
already experienced rains and storms, those who were born later have no right of rain-
giving, nor can they mix themselves up with those methods which they found to be in
operation here, and to be derived from a greater Author.

31. O greatest, O Supreme Creator of things invisible! O Thou who art Thyself unseen, and
who art incomprehensible! Thou art worthy, Thou art verily worthy-if only mortal tongue
may speak of Thee-that all breathing and intelligent nature should never cease to feel and
to return thanks; that it should throughout the whole of life fall on bended knee, and
offer supplication with never-ceasing prayers. For Thou art the first cause; in Thee
created things exist, and Thou art the space in which rest the foundations of all things,
whatever they be. Thou art illimitable, unbegotten, immortal, enduring for aye, God
Thyself alone, whom no bodily shape may represent, no outline delineate; of virtues
inexpressible, of greatness indefinable; unrestricted as to locality, movement, and
condition, concerning whom nothing can be clearly expressed by the significance of man's
words. That Thou mayest he understood, we must be silent; and that erring conjecture may
track Thee through the shady cloud, no word must be uttered. Grant pardon, O King Supreme,
to those who persecute Thy servants; and in virtue of Thy benign nature, forgive those who
fly from the worship of Thy name and the observance of Thy religion. It is not to be
wondered at if Thou art unknown; it is a cause of greater astonishment if Thou art clearly
comprehended.

But perchance some one dares-for this remains for frantic madness to do-to be uncertain,
and to express doubt whether that God exists or not; whether He is believed in on the
proved truth of reliable evidence, or on the imaginings of empty rumour. For of those who
have given themselves to philosophizing, we have heard that some deny the existence of any
divine power, that others inquire daily whether there be or not; that others construct the
whole fabric of the universe by chance accidents and by random collision, and fashion it
by the concourse of atoms of different shapes; with whom we by no means intend to enter at
this time on a discussion of such perverse convictions. For those who think wisely say,
that to argue against things palpably foolish, is a mark of greater folly. 32. Our
discussion deals with those who, acknowledging that there is a divine race of beings,
doubt about those of greater rank and power, whilst they admit that there are deities
inferior and more humble. What then? Do we strive and toil to obtain such results by
arguments? Far hence be such madness; and, as the phrase is, let the folly, say I, be
averted from us. For it is as dangerous to attempt to prove by arguments that God is the
highest being, as it is to wish to discover by reasoning of this kind that He exists. It
is a matter of indifference whether you deny that He exists, or affirm it and admit it;
since equally culpable are both the assertion of such a thing, and the denial of an
unbelieving opponent.

33. Is there any human being who has not entered on the first day of his life with an idea
of that Great Head? In whom has it not been implanted by nature, on whom has it not been
impressed, aye, stamped almost in his mother's womb even, in whom is there not a native
instinct, that He is King and Lord, the ruler of all things that be? In fine, if the dumb
animals even could stammer forth their thoughts, if they were able to use our languages;
nay, if trees, if the clods of the earth, if stones animated by vital perceptions were
able to produce vocal sounds, and to utter articulate speech, would they not in that case,
with nature as their guide and teacher, in the faith of uncorrupted innocence, both feel
that there is a God, and proclaim that He alone is Lord of all?

34. But in vain, says one, do you assail us with a groundless and calumnious charge, as if
we deny that there is a deity of a higher kind, since Jupiter is by us both called and
esteemed the best and the greatest; and since we have dedicated to him the most sacred
abodes, and have raised huge Capitols. You are endeavouring to connect together things
which are dissimilar, and to force them into one class, thereby introducing confusion. For
by the unanimous judgment of all, and by the common consent of the human race, the
omnipotent God is regarded as having never been born, as having never been brought forth
to new light, and as not having begun to exist at any time or century. For He Himself is
the source of all things, the Father of ages and of seasons. For they do not exist of
themselves, but from His everlasting perpetuity they move on in unbroken and ever endless
flow. Yet Jupiter indeed, as you allege, has both father and mother, grandfathers,
grandmothers, and brothers: now lately conceived in the womb of his mother, being
completely formed and perfected in ten months, he burst with vital sensations into light
unknown to him before. If, then, this is so, how can Jupiter be God supreme, when it is
evident that He is everlasting, and the former is represented by you as having had a natal
day, and as having uttered a mournful cry, through terror at the strange scene?

35. But suppose they be one, as you wish, and not different in any power of deity and in
majesty, do you therefore persecute us with undeserved hatred? Why do you shudder at the
mention of our name as of the worst omen, if we too worship the deity whom you worship? or
why do you contend that the gods are friendly to you, but inimical, aye, most hostile to
us, though our relations to them are the same? For if one religion is common to us and to
you, the anger of the gods is stayed; but if they are hostile to us alone it is plain that
both you and they have no knowledge of God. And that that God is not Jove, is evident by
the very wrath of the deities. 36. But, says my opponent, the deities are not inimical to
you, because you worship the omnipotent God; but because you both allege that one born as
men are, and put to death on the cross, which is a disgraceful punishment even for
worthless men, was God, and because you believe that He still lives, and because you
worship Him in daily supplications. If it is agreeable to you, my friends, state clearly
what deities those are who believe that the worship of Christ by us has a tendency to
injure them? Is it Janus, the founder of the Janiculum, and Saturn, the author of the
Saturnian state? Is it Fauna Fatua, the wife of Faunus, who is called the Good Goddess,
but who is better and more deserving of praise in the drinking of wine? Is it those gods
Indigetes who swim in the river, and live in the channels of the Numicius, in company with
frogs and little fishes? Is it Aesculapius and father Bacchus, the former born of Coronis,
and the other dashed by lightning from his mother's womb? Is it Mercury, son of Maia, and
what is more divine, Maia the beautiful? Is it the bow-bearing deities Diana and Apollo,
who were companions of their mother's wanderings, and who were scarcely safe in floating
islands? Is it Venus, daughter of Dione, paramour of a man of Trojan family, and the
prostituter of her secret charms? Is it Ceres, born in Sicilian territory, and Proserpine,
surprised while gathering flowers?

Is it the Theban or the Phoenician Hercules,-the latter buried in Spanish territory, the
other burned by fire on Mount Oeta? Is it the brothers Castor and Pollux, sons of
Tyndareus,-the one accustomed to tame horses, the other an excellent boxer, and
unconquerable with the untanned gauntlet? Is it the Titans and the Bocchores of the Moors,
and the Syrian deities, the offspring of eggs? Is it Apis, born in the Peloponnese, and in
Egypt called Serapis? Is it Isis, tanned by Ethiopian suns, lamenting her lost son and
husband torn limb from limb? Passing on, we omit the royal offspring of Ops, which your
writers have in their books set forth for your instruction, telling you both who they are,
and of what character. Do these, then, hear with offended ears that Christ is worshipped,
and that He is accepted by us and regarded as a divine person? And being forgetful of the
grade and state in which they recently were, are they unwilling to share with another that
which has been granted to themselves? Is this the justice of the heavenly deities? Is this
the righteous judgment of the gods? Is not this a kind of malice and of greed? is it not a
species of base envy, to wish their own fortunes only to rise,-those of others to be
lowered, and to be trodden down in despised lowliness?

37. We worship one who was born a man. What then? do you worship no one who was born a
man? Do you not worship one and another, aye, deities innumerable? Nay, have you not taken
from the number of mortals all those whom you now have in your temples; and have you not
set them in heaven, and among the constellations? For if, perchance, it has escaped you
that they once partook of human destiny, and of the state common to all men, search the
most ancient literature, and range through the writings of those who, living nearest to
the days of antiquity, set forth all things with undisguised truth and without flattery:
you will learn in detail from what fathers, from what mothers they were each sprung, in
what district they were born, of what tribe; what they made, what they did, what they
endured, how they employed themselves, what fortunes they experienced of an adverse or of
a favourable kind in discharging their functions. But if, while you know that they were
born in the womb, and that they lived on the produce of the earth, you nevertheless
upbraid us with the worship of one born like ourselves, you act with great injustice, in
regarding that as worthy of condemnation in us which you yourselves habitually do; or what
you allow to be lawful for you, you are unwilling to be in like manner lawful for others.

38. But in the meantime let us grant, in sub-mission to your ideas, that Christ was one of
us-similar in mind, soul, body, weakness, and condition; is He not worthy to be called and
to be esteemed God by us, in consideration of His bounties, so numerous as they are? For
if you have placed in the assembly of the gods Liber, because he discovered the use of
wine; Ceres, because she discovered the use of bread; Aesculapius, because he discovered
the use of herbs; Minerva, because she produced the olive; Triptolemus, because he
invented the plough; Hercules, because he overpowered and restrained wild beasts and
robbers, and water-serpents of many heads,-with how great distinctions is He to be
honoured by us, who, by instilling His truth into our hearts, has freed us from great
errors; who, when we were straying everywhere, as if blind and without a guide, withdrew
us from precipitous and devious paths, and set our feet on more smooth places; who has
pointed out what is especially profitable and salutary for the human race; who has shown
us what God is, who He is, how great and how good; who has permitted and taught us to
conceive and to understand, as far as our limited capacity can, His profound and
inexpressible depths; who, in in His great kindness, has caused it to be known by what
founder, by what Creator, this world was established and made; who has explained the
nature of its origin and essential substance, never before imagined in the conceptions of
any;

whence generative warmth is added to the rays of the sun; why the moon, always uninjured
in her motions, is believed to alternate her light and her obscurity from intelligent
causes; what is the origin of animals, what rules regulate seeds; who designed man
himself, who fashioned him, or from what kind of material did He compact the very build of
bodies; what the perceptions are; what the soul, and whether it flew to us of its own
accord, or whether it was generated and brought into existence with our bodies themselves;
whether it sojourns with us, partaking of death, or whether it is gifted with an endless
immortality; what condition awaits us when we shall have separated from our bodies relaxed
in death; whether we shall retain our perceptions, or have no recollection of our former
sensations or of past memories; who has restrained our arrogance, and has caused our
necks, uplifted with pride, to acknowledge the measure of their weakness; who hath shown
that we are creatures imperfectly formed, that we trust in vain expectations, that we
understand nothing thoroughly, that we know nothing, and that we do not see those things
which are placed before our eyes; who has guided us from false superstitions to the true
religion,-a blessing which exceeds and transcends all His other gifts; who has raised our
thoughts to heaven from brutish statues formed of the vilest clay, and has caused us to
hold converse in thanksgiving and prayer with the Lord of the universe.

39. But lately, O blindness, I worshipped images produced from the furnace, gods made on
anvils and by hammers, the bones of elephants, paintings, wreaths on aged trees; whenever
I espied an anointed stone and one bedaubed with olive oil, as if some power resided in it
I worshipped it, I addressed myself to it and begged blessings from a senseless stock. And
these very gods of whose existence I had convinced myself, I treated with gross insults,
when I believed them to be wood, stone, and bones, or imagined that they dwelt in the
substance of such objects. Now, having been led into the paths of truth by so great a
teacher, I know what all these things are, I entertain honourable thoughts concerning
those which are worthy, I offer no insult to any divine name; and what is due to each,
whether inferior or superior, I assign with clearly-defined gradations, and on distinct
authority. Is Christ, then, not to be regarded by us as God? and is He, who in other
respects may be deemed the very greatest, not to be honoured with divine worship, from
whom we have already received while alive so great gifts, and from whom, when the day
comes, we expect greater ones?

40. But He died nailed to the cross. What is that to the argument? For neither does the
kind and disgrace of the death change His words or deeds, nor will the weight of His
teaching appear less; because He freed Himself from the shackles of the body, not by a
natural separation, but departed by reason of violence offered to Him. Pythagoras of Samos
was burned to death in a temple, under an unjust suspicion of aiming at sovereign power.
Did his doctrines lose their peculiar influence, because he breathed forth his life not
willingly, but in consequence of a savage assault? In like manner Socrates, condemned by
the decision of his fellow-citizens, suffered capital punishment: have his discussions on
morals, on virtues, and on duties been rendered vain, because he was unjustly hurried from
life? Others without number, conspicuous by their renown, their merit, and their public
character, have experienced the most cruel forums of death, as Aquilius, Trebonius, and
Regulus: were they on that account adjudged base after death, because they perished not by
the common law of the fates, but after being mangled and tortured in the most cruel kind
of death? No innocent person foully slain is ever disgraced thereby; nor is he stained by
the mark of any baseness, who suffers severe punishment, not from his own deserts, but by
reason of the savage nature of his persecutor.

41. And yet, O ye who laugh because we worship one who died an ignominious death, do not
ye too, by consecrating shrines to him, honour father Liber, who was torn limb from limb
by the Titans? Have you not, after his punishment and his death by lightning, named
Aesculapius, the discoverer of medicines, as the guardian and protector of health, of
strength, and of safety? Do you not invoke the great Hercules himself by offerings, by
victims, and by kindled frankincense, whom you yourselves allege to have been burned alive
after his punishment, and to have been consumed on the fatal pyres? Do you not, with the
unanimous approbation of the Gauls, invoke as a propitious and as a holy god, in the
temples of the Great Mother, that Phrygian Atys who was mangled and deprived of his
virility? Father Romulus himself, who was torn in pieces by the hands of a hundred
senators, do you not call Quirinus Martius, and do you not honour him with priests and
with gorgeous couches, and do you not worship him in most spacious temples; and in
addition to all this, do you not affirm that he has ascended into heaven? Either,
therefore, you too are to be laughed at, who regard as gods men slain by the most cruel
tortures; or if there is a sure ground for your thinking that you should do so, allow us
too to feel assured for what causes and on what grounds we do this.

42. You worship, says my opponent, one who was born a mere human being. Even if that were
true, as has been already said in former passages, yet, in consideration of the many
liberal gifts which He has bestowed on us, He ought to be called and be addressed as God.
But since He is God in reality and without any shadow of doubt, do you think that we will
deny that He is worshipped by us with all the fervour we are capable of, and assumed as
the guardian of our body? Is that Christ of yours a god, then? some raving, wrathful, and
excited man will say. A god, we will reply, and the god of the inner powers; and-what may
still further torture unbelievers with the most bitter pains-He was sent to us by the King
Supreme for a purpose of the very highest moment. My opponent, becoming more mad and more
frantic, will perhaps ask whether the matter can be proved, as we allege. There is no
greater proof than the credibility of the acts done by Him, than the unwonted excellence
of the virtues He exhibited, than the conquest and the abrogation of all those deadly
ordinances which peoples and tribes saw executed in the light of day, with no objecting
voice; and even they whose ancient laws or whose country's laws He shows to be full of
vanity and of the most senseless superstition, (even they) dare not allege these things to
be false.

43. My opponent will perhaps meet me with many other slanderous and childish charges which
are commonly urged. Jesus was a Magian; He effected all these things by secret arts. From
the shrines of the Egyptians He stole the names of angels of might, and the religious
system of a remote country. Why, O witlings, do you speak of things which you have not
examined, and which are unknown to you, prating with the garrulity of a rash tongue? Were,
then, those things which were done, the freaks of demons, and the tricks of magical arts?
Can you specify and point out to me any one of all those magicians who have ever existed
in past ages, that did anything similar, in the thousandth degree, to Christ? Who has done
this without any power of incantations, without the juice of herbs and of grasses, without
any anxious watching of sacrifices, of libations, or of seasons? For we do not press it,
and inquire what they profess to do, nor in what kind of acts all their learning and
experience are wont to be comprised. For who is not aware that these men either study to
know beforehand things impending, which, whether they will or not, come of necessity as
they have been ordained? or to inflict a deadly and wasting disease on whom they choose;
or to sever the affections of relatives; or to open without keys places which are locked;
or to seal the month in silence; or in the chariot race to weaken, urge on, or retard
horses; or to inspire in wives, and in the children of strangers, whether they be males or
females, the flames and mad desires of illicit love? Or if they seem to attempt anything
useful, to be able to do it not by their own power, but by the might of those deities whom
they invoke.

44. And yet it is agreed on that Christ performed all those miracles which He wrought
without any aid from external things, without the observance of any ceremonial, without
any definite mode of procedure, but solely by the inherent might of His authority; and as
was the proper duty of the true God, as was consistent with His nature, as was worthy of
Him, in the generosity of His bounteous power He bestowed nothing hurtful or injurious,
but only that which is helpful, beneficial, and full of blessings good for men. 45. What
do you say again, oh you -? Is He then a man, is He one of us, at whose command, at whose
voice, raised in the utterance of audible and intelligible words, infirmities, diseases,
fevers, and other ailments of the body fled away? Was He one of us, whose presence, whose
very sight, that race of demons which took possession of men was unable to bear, and
terrified by the strange power, fled away? Was He one of us, to whose order the foul
leprosy, at once checked, was obedient, and left sameness of colour to bodies formerly
spotted? Was He one of us, at whose light touch the issues of blood were stanched, and
stopped their excessive flow? Was He one of us, whose hands the waters of the lethargic
dropsy fled from, and that searching fluid avoided; and did the swelling body, assuming a
healthy dryness, find relief? Was He one of us, who bade the lame run? Was it His work,
too, that the maimed stretched forth their hands, and the joints relaxed the rigidity
acquired even at birth; that the paralytic rose to their feet, and persons now carried
home their beds who a little before were borne on the shoulders of others; the blind were
restored to sight, and men born without eyes now looked on the heaven and the day?

46. Was He one of us, I say, who by one act of intervention at once healed a hundred or
more afflicted with various infirmities and diseases; at whose word only the raging and
maddened seas were still, the whirlwinds and tempests were lulled; who walked over the
deepest pools with unwet foot; who trod the ridges of the deep, the very waves being
astonished, and nature coining under bondage; who with live loaves satisfied five thousand
of His followers: and who, lest it might appear to the unbelieving and bard of heart to be
an illusion, filled twelve capacious baskets with the fragments that remained? Was He one
of us, who ordered the breath that had departed to return to the body, persons buried to
come forth from the tomb, and after three days to be loosed from the swathings of the
undertaker? Was He one of us, who saw clearly in the hearts of the silent what each was
pondering, what each had in his secret thoughts? Was He one of us, who, when He uttered a
single word, was thought by nations far removed from one another and of different speech
to be using well-known sounds, and the peculiar language of each? Was He one of us, who,
when He was teaching His followers the duties of a religion that could not be gainsaid,
suddenly filled the whole world, and showed how great He was and who He was, by unveiling
the boundlessness of His authority?

Was He one of us, who, after His body had been laid in the tomb, manifested Himself in
open day to countless numbers of men; who spoke to them, and listened to them; who taught
them, reproved and admonished them; who, lest they should imagine that they were deceived
by unsubstantial fancies, showed Himself once, a second time, aye frequently, in familiar
conversation; who appears even now to righteous men of unpolluted mind who love Him, not
in airy dreams, but in a form of pure simplicity; whose name, when heard, puts to flight
evil spirits, imposes silence on soothsayers, prevents men from consulting the augurs,
causes the efforts of arrogant magicians to be frustrated, not by the dread of His name,
as you allege, but by the free exercise of a greater power? 47. These facts set forth in
sanctuary we have put forward, not on the supposition that the greatness of the agent was
to be seen in these virtues alone. For however great these things be, how excessively
petty and trifling will they be found to be, if it shall be revealed from what realms He
has come, of what God He is the minister! But with regard to the acts which were done by
Him, they were performed, indeed, not that He might boast Himself into empty ostentation,
bat that hardened and unbelieving men might he assured that what was professed was not
deceptive, and that they might now learn to imagine, from the beneficence of His works,
what a true god was. At the same time we wish this also to be known, when, as was said, an
enumeration of His acts has been given in summary, that Christ was able to do not only
those things which He did, but that He could even overcome the decrees of fate. For if, as
is evident, and as is agreed by all, infirmities and bodily sufferings, if deafness,
deformity, and dumbness, if shrivelling of the sinews and the loss of sight happen to us,
and are brought on us by the decrees of fate and if Christ alone has corrected this, has
restored and cared man, it is clearer than the sun himself that He was more powerful than
the fates are when He has loosened and overpowered those things which were bound with
everlasting knots, and fixed by unalterable necessity.

48. But, says some one, you in vain claim so much for Christ, when we now know, and have
in past times known, of other gods both giving remedies to many who were sick, and healing
the diseases and the infirmities of many men. I do not inquire, I do not demand, what god
did so, or at what time; whom he relieved, or what shattered frame he restored to sound
health: this only I long to hear, whether, without the addition of any substance-that is,
of any medical application-he ordered diseases to fly away from men at a touch; whether he
commanded and compelled the cause of ill health to be eradicated, and the bodies of the
weak to return to their natural strength. For it is known that Christ, either by applying
His hand to the parts affected, or by the command of His voice only, opened the ears of
the deaf, drove away blindness from the eyes, gave speech to the dumb, loosened the
rigidity of the joints, gave the power of walking to the shrivelled,-was wont to heal by a
word and by an order, leprosies, agues, dropsies, and all other kinds of ailments, which
some fell power has willed that the bodies of men should endure. What act like these have
all these gods done, by whom you allege that help has been brought to the sick and the
imperilled?

for if they have at any time ordered, as is reported, either that medicine or a special
diet be given to some, or that a draught be drunk off, or that the juices of plants and of
blades be placed on that which causes uneasiness or have ordered that persons should walk,
remain at rest, or abstain from something hurtful,-and that this is no great matter, and
deserves no great admiration, is evident, if you will attentively examine it-a similar
mode of treatment is followed by physicians also, a creature earth-born and not relying on
true science, but founding on a system of conjecture, and wavering in estimating
probabilities. Now there is no special merit in removing by remedies those ailments which
affect men: the healing qualities belong to the drugs-not virtues inherent in him who
applies them; and though it is praiseworthy to know by what medicine or by what method it
may be suitable for persons to be treated, there is room for this credit being assigned to
man, but not to the deity. For it is, at least, no discredit that he should have improved
the health of man by things taken from without: it is a disgrace to a god that he is not
able to effect it of himself, but that he gives soundness and safety only by the aid of
external objects.

49. And since you compare Christ and the other deities as to the blessings of health
bestowed, how many thousands of infirm persons do you wish to be shown to you by us; how
many persons affected with wasting diseases, whom no appliances whatever restored,
although they went as suppliants through all the temples, although they prostrated
themselves before the gods, and swept the very thresholds with their lips-though, as long
as life remained, they wearied with prayers, and importuned with most piteous vows
Aesculapius himself, the health-giver, as they call him? Do we not know that some died of
their ailments? that others grew old by the torturing pain of their diseases? that others
began to live a more abandoned life after they had wasted their days and nights in
incessant prayers, and in expectation of mercy? Of what avail is it, then, to point to one
or another who may have been healed, when so many thousands have been left unaided, and
the shrines are full of all the wretched and the unfortunate? Unless, perchance, you say
that the gods help the good, but that the miseries of the wicked are overlooked. And yet
Christ assisted the good and the bad alike; nor was there any one rejected by Him, who in
adversity sought help against violence and the ills of fortune. For this is the mark of a
true god and of kingly power, to deny his bounty to none, and not to consider who merits
it or who does not;

since natural infirmity and not the choice of his desire, or of his sober judgment, makes
a sinner. To say, moreover, that aid is given by the gods to the deserving when in
distress, is to leave undecided and render doubtful what you assert: so that both he who
has been made whole may seem to have been preserved by chance, and he who is not may
appear to have been unable to banish infirmity, not because of his demerit, but by reason
of a heaven-sent weakness. 50. Moreover, by His own power He not only performed those
miraculous deeds which have been detailed by us in summary, and not as the importance of
the matter demanded; but, what was more sublime, He has permitted many others to attempt
them, and to perform them by the use of His name. For when He foresaw that you were to be
the detractors of His deeds and of His divine work, ill order that no lurking suspicion
might remain of His having lavished these gifts and bounties by magic arts, from the
immense multitude of people, which with admiring wonder strove to gain His favour, He
chose fishermen, artisans, rustics, and unskilled persons of a similar kind, that they
being sent through various nations should perform all those miracles without any deceit
and without any material aids. By a word He assuaged the racking pains of the aching
members; and by a word they checked the writhings of maddening sufferings. By one command
He drove demons from the body, and restored their senses to the lifeless; they, too, by no
different command, restored to health and to soundness of mind those labouring under the
inflictions of these demons. By the application of His hand He removed the marks of
leprosy; they, too, restored to the body its natural skin by a touch not dissimilar. He
ordered the dropsical and swollen flesh to recover its natural dryness;

and His servants in the same manner stayed the wandering waters, and ordered them to glide
through their own channels, avoiding injury to the frame. Sores of immense size, refusing
to admit of healing, He restrained from further feeding on the flesh, by the interposition
of one word; and they in like manner, by restricting its ravages, compelled the obstinate
and merciless cancer to confine itself to a scar. To the lame He gave the power of
walking, to the dark eyes sight, the dead He recalled to life; and not less surely did
they, too, relax the tightened nerves, fill the eyes with light already lost, and order
the dead to return from the tombs, reversing the ceremonies of the funeral rites. Nor was
anything calling forth the bewildered admiration of all done by Him, which He did not
freely allow, to be performed by those humble and rustic men, and which He did not put in
their power.

51. What say ye, O minds incredulous, stubborn, hardened? Did that great Jupiter
Capitolinus of yours give to any human being power of this kind? Did he endow with this
right any priest of a curia, the Pontifex Maximus, nay, even the Dialis, in whose name he
is revealed as the god of life? I shall not say, did he impart power to raise the dead, to
give light to the blind, restore the normal condition of their members to the weakened and
the paralyzed, but did he even enable any one to check a pustule, a hang-nail, a pimple,
either by the word of his mouth or the touch of his hand? Was this, then, a power natural
to man, or could such a right be granted, could such a licence be given by the mouth of
one reared on the vulgar produce of earth; and was it not a divine and sacred gift? or if
the matter admits of any hyperbole, was it not more than divine and sacred? For if you do
that which you are able to do, and what is compatible with your strength and your ability,
there is no ground for the expression of astonishment; for you will have done that which
you were able, and which your power was bound to accomplish, in order that there should be
a perfect correspondence between the deed and the doer. To be able to transfer to a man
your own power, share with the frailest being the ability to perform that which you alone
are able to do, is a proof of power supreme over all, and holding in subjection the causes
of all things, and the natural laws of methods and of means.

52. Come, then, let some Magian Zoroaster arrive from a remote part of the globe, crossing
over the fiery zone, if we believe Hermippus as an authority. Let these join him too-that
Bactrian, whose deeds Ctesias sets forth in the first book of his History; the Armenian,
grandson of Hosthanes; and Pamphilus, the intimate friend of Cyrus; Apollonius, Damigero,
and Dardanus; Velus, Julianus, and Baebulus; and if there be any other one who is supposed
to have especial powers and reputation in such magic arts. Let them grant to one of the
people to adapt the mouths of the dumb for the purposes of speech, to unseal the ears of
the deaf, to give the natural powers of the eye to those born without sight, and to
restore feeling and life to bodies long cold in death. Or if that is too difficult, and if
they cannot impart to others the power to do such acts, let themselves perform them, and
with their own rites. Whatever noxious herbs the earth brings forth from its bosom,
whatever powers those muttered words and accompanying spells contain-these let them add,
we envy them not; those let them collect, we forbid them not. We wish to make trial and to
discover whether they can effect, with the aid of their gods, what has often been
accomplished by unlearned Christians with a word only.

53. Cease in your ignorance to receive such great deeds with abusive language, which will
in no wise injure him who did them, but which will bring danger to yourselves-danger, I
say, by no means small, but one dealing with matters of great, aye, even the greatest
importance, since beyond a doubt the soul is a precious thing, and nothing can be found
dearer to a man than himself. There was nothing magical, as you suppose, nothing human,
delusive, or crafty in Christ; no deceit lurked in Him, although you smile in derision, as
your wont is, and though you split with roars of laughter. He was God on high, God in His
inmost nature, God from unknown realms, and was sent by the Ruler of all as a Saviour God;
whom neither the sun himself, nor any stars, if they have powers of perception, not the
rulers and princes of the world, nor, in fine, the great gods, or those who, reigning
themselves so, terrify the whole human race, were able to know or to guess whence and who
He was-and naturally so. But when, freed from the body, which He carried about as but a
very small part of Himself, He allowed Himself to be seen, and let it be known how great
He was, all the elements of the universe bewildered by the strange events were thrown into
confusion. An earthquake shook the world, the sea was heaved up from its depths, the
heaven was shrouded in darkness, the sun's fiery blaze was checked, and his heat became
moderate; for what else could occur when He was discovered to be God who heretofore was
reckoned one of us?

54. But you do not believe these things; yet those who witnessed their occurrence, and who
saw them done before their eyes-the very best vouchers and the most trustworthy
authorities-both believed them themselves, and transmitted them to us who follow them, to
be believed with no scanty measure of confidence. Who are these? you perhaps ask. Tribes,
peoples, nations, and that incredulous human race; but if the matter were not plain, and,
as the saying is, clearer than day itself, they would never grant their assent with so
ready belief to events of such a kind. But shall we say that the men of that time were
untrustworthy, false, stupid, and brutish to such a degree that they pretended to have
seen what they never had seen, and that they put forth under false evidence, or alleged
with childish asseveration things which never took place, and that when they were able to
live in harmony and to maintain friendly relations with you, they wantonly incurred
hatred, and were held in execration?

55. But if this record of events is false, as you say, how comes it that in so short a
time the whole world has been filled with such a religion? or how could nations dwelling
widely apart, and separated by climate and by the convexities of heaven, unite in one
conclusion? They have been prevailed upon, say my opponents, by mere assertions, been led
into vain hopes; and in their reckless madness have chosen to incur voluntarily the risks
of death, although they had hitherto seen nothing of such a kind as could by its wonderful
and strange character induce them to adopt this manner of worship. Nay, because they saw
all these things to be done by Christ Himself and by His apostles, who being sent
throughout the whole world carried with them the blessings of the Father, which they
dispensed in benefiting as well the minds as the bodies of men; overcome by the force of
the very truth itself they both devoted themselves to God, and reckoned it as but a small
sacrifice to surrender their bodies to you and to give their flesh to be mangled.

56. But our writers, we shall be told, have put forth these statements with false
effrontery; they have extolled small matters to an inordinate degree, and have magnified
trivial affairs with most pretentious boastfulness. And would that all things could have
been reduced to writing,-both those which were done by Himself, and those which were
accomplished by His apostles with equal authority and power. Such an assemblage of
miracles, however, would make you more incredulous; and perhaps you might be able to
discover a passage from which it would seem very probable, both that additions were made
to facts, and that falsehoods were inserted in writings and commentaries. But in nations
which were unknown to the writers, and which themselves knew not the use of letters, all
that was done could not have been embraced in the records or even have reached the ears of
all men; or, if any were committed to written and connected narrative, some insertions and
additions would have been made by the malevolence of the demons and of men like to them,
whose care and study it is to obstruct the progress of this truth: there would have been
some changes and mutilations of words and of syllables, at once to mar the faith of the
cautious and to impair the moral effect of the deeds. But it will never avail them that it
be gathered from written testimony only who and what Christ was; for His cause has been
put on such a basis, that if what we say be admitted to be true, He is by the confession
of all proved to have been God.

57. You do not believe our writings, and we do not believe yours. We devise falsehoods
concerning Christ, you say; and you put forth baseless and false statements concerning
your gods: for no god has descended from heaven, or in his own person and life has
sketched out your system, or in a similar way thrown discredit on our system and our
ceremonies. These were written by men; those, too, were written by men-set forth in human
speech; and whatever you seek to say concerning our writers, remember that about yours,
too, you will find these things said with equal force. What is contained in your writings
you wish to be treated as true; those things, also, which are attested in our books, you
must of necessity confess to be true. You accuse our system of falsehood; we, too, accuse
yours of falsehood. But ours is more ancient, say you, therefore most credible and
trustworthy; as if, indeed, antiquity were not the most fertile source of errors, and did
not herself put forth those things which in discreditable fables have attached the utmost
infamy to the gods. For could not falsehoods have been both spoken and believed ten
thousand years ago, or is it not most probable that that which is near to our own time
should be more credible than that which is separated by a long term of years? For these of
ours are brought forward on the faith of witnesses, those of yours on the ground of
opinions; and it is much more natural that there should be less invention in matters of
recent occurrence, than in those far removed in the darkness of antiquity.

58. But they were written by unlearned and ignorant ripen, and should not therefore be
readily believed. See that this be not rather a stronger reason for believing that they
have not been adulterated by any false statements, but were put forth by men of simple
mind, who knew not how to trick out their tales with meretricious ornaments. But the
language is mean and vulgar. For truth never seeks deceitful polish, nor in that which is
well ascertained and certain does it allow itself to be led away into excessive prolixity.
Syllogisms, enthymemes, definitions, and all those ornaments by which men seek to
establish their statements, aid those groping for the truth, but do not clearly mark its
great features. But he who really knows the subject under discussion, neither defines, nor
deduces, nor seeks the other tricks of words by which an audience is wont to be taken in,
and to be beguiled into a forced assent to a proposition.

59. Your narratives, my opponent says, are overrun with barbarisms and solecisms, and
disfigured by monstrous blunders. A censure, truly, which shows a childish and petty
spirit; for if we allow that it is reasonable, let us cease to use certain kinds of fruit
because they grow with prickles on them, and other growths useless for food, which on the
one hand cannot support us, and yet do not on the other hinder us from enjoying that which
specially excels, and which nature has designed to be most wholesome for us. For how, I
pray you, does it interfere with or retard the comprehension of a statement, whether
anything be pronounced smoothly or with uncouth roughness? whether that have the grave
accent which ought to have the acute, or that have the acute which ought to have the
grave? Or how is the truth of a statement diminished, if an error is made in number or
case, in preposition, participle, or conjunction? Let that pomposity of style and strictly
regulated diction be reserved for public assemblies, for lawsuits, for the forum and the
courts of justice, and by all means be handed over to those who, striving after the
soothing influences of pleasant sensations, bestow all their care upon splendour of
language.

But when we are discussing matters far removed from mere display, we should consider what
is said, not with what charm it is said nor how it tickles the ears, but what benefits it
confers on the hearers, especially since we know that some even who devoted themselves to
philosophy, not only disregarded refinement of style, but also purposely adopted a vulgar
meanness when they might have spoken with greater elegance and richness, lest forsooth
they might impair the stern gravity of speech and revel rather in the pretentious show of
the Sophists. For indeed it evidences a worthless heart to seek enjoyment in matters of
importance; and when you have to deal with those who are sick and diseased, to pour into
their ears dulcet sounds, not to apply a remedy to their wounds. Yet, if you consider the
true state of the case, no language is naturally perfect, and in like manner none is
faulty. For what natural reason is there, or what law written in the constitution of the
world, that paries should be called hic, and sella hoec?-since neither have they sex
distinguished by male and female, nor can the most learned man tell me what hic and hoec
are, or why one of them denotes the male sex while the other is applied to the female.
These conventionalities are man's, and certainly are not indispensable to all persons for
the use of forming their language;

for paries might perhaps have been called hoec, and sella hic, without any fault being
found, if it had been agreed upon at first that they should be so called, and if this
practice had been maintained by following generations in their daily conversation. And
yet, O you who charge our writings with disgraceful blemishes, have you not these
solecisms in those most perfect arid wonderful books of yours? Does not one of you make
the plur. of uter, utria? another utres? Do you not also say Coelus and coelum, filus and
filum, crocus and crocum, fretus and fretum? Also hoc pane and hic panis, hic sanguis and
hoc sanguen? Are not candelabrum and jugulum in like manner written jugulus and
candelaber? For if each noun cannot have more than one gender, and if the same word cannot
be of this gender and of that, for one gender cannot pass into the other, he commits as
great a blunder who utters masculine genders under the laws of feminines, as he who
applies masculine articles to feminine genders. And yet we see you using masculines as
feminines, and feminines as masculines, and those which yon call neuter both in this way
and in that, without any distinction. Either. therefore, it is no blunder to employ them
indifferently, and in that case it is vain for you to say that our works are disfigured
with monstrous solecisms;

or if the way in which each ought to be employed is unalterably fixed, you also are
involved in similar errors, although you have on your side all the Epicadi, Caesellii,
Verrii, Scauri, and Nisi. 60. But, say my opponents, if Christ was God, why did He appear
in human shape, and why was He cut off by death after the manner of men? Could that power
which is invisible, and which has no bodily substance, have come upon earth and adapted
itself to the world and mixed in human society, otherwise than by taking to itself some
covering of a more solid substance, which might bear the gaze of the eyes, and on which
the look of the least observant might fix itself? For what mortal is there who could have
seen Him, who could have distinguished Him, if He had decreed to come upon the earth such
as He is in His own primitive nature, and such as He has chosen to be in His own proper
character and divinity? He took upon Him, therefore, the form of man; and under the guise
of our race He imprisoned His power, so that He could be seen and carefully regarded,
might speak and teach, and without encroaching on the sovereignty and government of the
King Supreme, might carry out all those objects for the accomplishment of which He had
come into the world.

61. What, then, says my opponent, could not the Supreme Ruler have brought about those
things which He had ordained to be done in the world, without feigning Himself a man? If
it were necessary to do as you say, He perhaps would have done so; because it was not
necessary, He acted otherwise. The reasons why He chose to do it in this way, and did not
choose to do it in that, are unknown, being involved in so great obscurity, and
comprehensible by scarcely any; but these you might perhaps have understood if you were
not already prepared not to understand, and were not shaping your course to brave
unbelief, before that was explained to you which you sought to know and to hear. 62. But,
you will say, He was cut off by death as men are. Not Christ Himself; for it is impossible
either that death should befall what is divine, or that that should waste away and
disappear in death which is one in its substance, and not compounded, nor formed by
bringing together any parts. Who, then, you ask, was seen hanging on the cross? Who dead?
The human form, I reply, which He had put on, and which He bore about with Him. It is a
tale passing belief, you say, and wrapt in dark obscurity; if you will, it is not dark,
and is established by a very close analogy. If the Sibyl, when she was uttering and
pouring forth her prophecies and oracular responses, was filled, as you say, with Apollo's
power, had been cut down and slain by impious robbers, would Apollo be said to have been
slain in her? If Bacis, if Helenus, Marcius, and other soothsayers, had been in like
manner robbed of life and light when raving as inspired, would any one say that those who,
speaking by their mouths, declared to inquirers what should be done, had perished
according to the conditions of human life? The death of which you speak was that of the
human body which He had assumed, not His own-of that which was borne, not of the bearer;
and not even this death would He have stooped to suffer, were it not that a matter of such
importance was to be dealt with, and the inscrutable plan of fate brought to light in
hidden mysteries.

63. What are these hidden and unseen mysteries, you will say, which neither men can know,
nor those even who are called gods of the world can in any wise reach by fancy and
conjecture; which none can discover, except those whom Christ Himself has thought fit to
bestow the blessing of so great knowledge upon, and to lead into the secret recesses of
the inner treasury of wisdom? Do you then see that if He had determined that none should
do Him violence, He should have striven to the utmost to keep off from Him His enemies,
even by directing His power against them? Could not He, then, who had restored their sight
to the blind, make His enemies blind if it were necessary? Was it hard or troublesome for
Him to make them weak, who had given strength to the feeble? Did He who bade the lame
walk, not know how to take from them all power to move their limbs, by making their sinews
stiff? Would it have been difficult for Him who drew the dead from their tombs to inflict
death on whom He would? But because reason required that those things which had been
resolved on should be done here also in the world itself, and in no other fashion than was
done, He, with gentleness passing understanding and belief, regarding as but childish
trifles the wrongs which men did Him, submitted to the violence of savage and most
hardened robbers;

nor did He think it worth while to take account of what their daring had aimed at, if He
only showed to His disciples what they were in duty bound to look for from Him. For when
many things about the perils of souls, many evils about their ... on the other hand, the
Introducer, the Master and Teacher directed His laws and ordinances, that they might find
their end in fitting duties; did He not destroy the arrogance of the proud? Did He not
quench the fires of lust? Did He not check the craving of greed? Did He not wrest the
weapons from their hands, and rend from them all the sources of every form of corruption?
To conclude, was He not Himself gentle, peaceful, easily approached, friendly when
addressed? Did He not, grieving at men's miseries, pitying with His unexampled benevolence
all in any wise afflicted with troubles and bodily ills, bring them back and restore them
to soundness?

64. What, then, constrains you, what excites you to revile, to rail at, to hate implacably
Him whom no man can accuse of any crime? Tyrants and your kings, who, putting away all
fear of the gods, plunder and pillage the treasuries of temples; who by proscription,
banishment, and slaughter, strip the state of its nobles? who, with licentious violence,
undermine and wrest away the chastity of matrons and maidens,-these men you name indigites
and divi; and you worship with couches, altars, temples, and other service, and by
celebrating their games and birthdays, those whom it was fitting that you should assail
with keenest hatred. And all those, too, who by writing books assail in many forms with
biting reproaches public manners; who censure, brand, and tear in pieces your luxurious
habits and lives; who carry down to posterity evil reports of their own times in their
enduring writings; who seek to persuade men that the rights of marriage should be held in
common; who lie with boys, beautiful, lustful, naked; who declare that you are beasts,
runaways, exiles, and mad and frantic slaves of the most worthless character,-all these
with wonder and applause you exalt to the stars of heaven, you place in the shrines of
your libraries, you present with chariots and statues, and as much as in you lies, gift
with a kind of immortality, as it were, by the witness which immortal titles bear to them.
Christ alone you would tear in pieces, you would rend asunder, if you could do so to a
god;

nay, Him alone you would, were it allowed, gnaw with bloody months, and break His bones in
pieces, and devour Him like beasts of the field. For what that He has done, tell, I pray
you, for what crime? What has He done to turn aside the course of justice, and rouse you
to hatred made fierce by maddening torments? Is it because He declared that He was sent by
the only true King to be your soul's guardian. and to bring to you the immortality which
you believe that you already possess, relying on the assertions of a few men? But even if
you were assured that He spoke falsely, that He even held out hopes without the slightest
foundation, not even in this case do I see any reason that you should hate and condemn Him
with bitter reproaches. Nay, if yon were kind and gentle in spirit, you ought to esteem
Him even for this alone, that He promised to you things which you might well wish and hope
for; that He was the bearer of good news; that His message was such as to trouble no one's
mind, nay, rather to fill all with less anxious expectation.

65. Oh ungrateful and impious age, prepared for its own destruction by its extraordinary
obstinacy! If there had come to you a physician from lands far distant and unknown to you
before, offering some medicine to keep off from you altogether every kind of disease and
sickness, would you not all eagerly hasten to him? Would you not with every kind of
flattery and honour receive him into your houses, and treat him kindly? Would you not wish
that that kind of medicine should be quite sure, and should be genuine, which promised
that even to the utmost limits of life you should be free from such countless bodily
distresses? And though it were a doubtful matter, you would yet entrust yourselves to him;
nor would you hesitate to drink the unknown draught, indited by the hope of health set
before you and by the love of safety. Christ shone out and appeared to tell us news of the
utmost importance, bringing an omen of prosperity, and a message of safety to those who
believe. What, I pray you, means this cruelty, what such barbarity, nay rather, to speak
more truly, scornful pride, not only to harass the messenger and bearer of so great a gift
with taunting words; but even to assail Him with fierce hostility, and with all the
weapons which can be showered upon Him, and with all modes of destruction? Are His words
displeasing, and are you offended when you hear them? Count them as but a soothsayer's
empty tales.

Does He speak very stupidly, and promise foolish gifts? Laugh with scorn as wise men, and
leave Him in His folly to be tossed about among His errors. What means this fierceness, to
repeat what has been said more than once; what a passion, so murderous? to declare
implacable hostility towards one who has done nothing to deserve it at your hands; to
wish, if it were allowed you, to tear Him limb from limb, who not only did no man any
harm, but with uniform kindness told His enemies what salvation was being brought to them
from God Supreme, what must be done that they might escape destruction and obtain an
immortality which they knew not of? And when the strange and unheard-of things which were
held out staggered the minds of those who heard Him, and made them hesitate to believe,
though master of every power and destroyer of death itself He suffered His human form to
be slain, that from the result they might know that the hopes were safe which they had
long entertained about the soul's salvation, and that in no other way could they avoid the
danger of death.


AGAINST THE HEATHEN, BOOK 2
===========================

AGAINST THE HEATHEN, BOOK 2 Arnobius of Sicca

d. c. AD 330

North African teacher who wrote against the pagans.

AGAINST THE HEATHEN BOOK 2

1. Here, if any means could be found, I should wish to converse thus with all those who
hate the name of Christ, turning aside for a little from the defence primarily set up:-If
you think it no dishonour to answer when asked a question, explain to us and say what is
the cause, what the reason, that you pursue Christ with so bitter hostility? or what
offences you remember which He did, that at the mention of His name you are roused to
bursts of mad and savage fury? Did He ever, in claiming for Himself power as king, fill
the whole world with bands of the fiercest soldiers; and of nations at peace from the
beginning, did He destroy and put an end to some, and compel others to submit to His yoke
and serve Him? Did He ever, excited by grasping avarice, claim as His own by right all
that wealth to have abundance of which men strive eagerly? Did He ever, transported with
lustful passions, break down by force the barriers of purity, or stealthily lie in wait
for other men's wives? Did He ever, puffed up with haughty arrogance, inflict at random
injuries and insults, without any distinction of persons? (B) And He was not worthy that
you should listen to and believe Him, yet He should not have been despised by you even on
this account, that He showed to you things concerning your salvation, that He prepared for
you a path to heaven, and the immortality for which you long; although He neither extended
the light of life to all, nor delivered all from the danger which threatens them through
their ignorance.

2. But indeed, some one will say, He deserved our hatred because He has driven religion
from the world, because He has kept men back from seeking to honour the gods. Is He then
denounced as the destroyer of religion and promoter of impiety, who brought true religion
into the world, who opened the gates of piety to men blind and verily living in impiety,
and pointed out to whom they should bow themselves? Or is there any truer religion-one
more serviceable, powerful, and right-than to have learned to know the supreme God, to
know how to pray to God Supreme, who alone is the source and fountain of all good, the
creator, founder, and framer of all that endures, by whom all things on earth and all in
heaven are quickened, and filled with the stir of life, and without whom there would
assuredly be nothing to bear any name, and have any substance? But perhaps you doubt
whether there is that ruler of whom we speak, and rather incline to believe in the
existence of Apollo, Diana, Mercury, Mars, Give a true judgment; and, looking round on all
these things which we see, any one will rather doubt whether all the other gods exist,
than hesitate with regard to the God whom we all know by nature, whether when we cry out,
O God, or when we make God the witness of wicked deeds, and raise our face to heaven as
though He saw us.

3. But He did not permit men to make supplication to the lesser gods. Do you, then, know
who are, or where are the lesser gods? Has mistrust of them, or the way in which they were
mentioned, ever touched you, so that you are justly indignant that their worship has been
done away with and deprived of all honour? But if haughtiness of mind and arrogance, as it
is called by the Greeks, did not stand in your way and hinder you, you might long ago have
been able to understand what He forbade to be done, or wherefore; within what limits He
would have true religion lie; what danger arose to you from that which you thought
obedience? or from what evils you would escape if you broke away from your dangerous
delusion. 4. But all these things will be more clearly and distinctly noticed when we have
proceeded further. For we shall show that Christ did not teach the nations impiety, but
delivered ignorant and wretched then from those who most wickedly wronged them. We do not
believe, you say, that what He says is true. What, then? Have you no doubt as to the
things which you say are not true, while, as they are only at hand, and not yet disclosed
they can by no means be disproved? But He, too, does not prove what He promises. It is so;
for, as I said, there can be no proof of things still in the future. Since, then, the
nature of the future is such that it cannot be grasped and comprehended by any
anticipation, is it not more rational, of two things uncertain and hanging in doubtful
suspense, rather to believe that which carries with it some hopes, than that which brings
none at all? For in the one case there is no danger, if that which is said to be at hand
should prove vain and groundless; in the other there is the greatest loss, even the loss
of salvation, if, when the time has come, it be shown that there was nothing false in what
was declared.

5. What say you, O ignorant ones, for whom we might well weep and be sad? Are you so void
of fear that these things may be true which are despised by you and turned to ridicule?
and do you not consider with yourselves at least, in your secret thoughts, lest that which
to-day with perverse obstinacy you refuse to believe, time may too late show to be true,
and ceaseless remorse punish you? Do not even these proofs at least give you faith to
believe, viz., that already, in so short and brief a time, the oaths of this vast army
have spread abroad over all the earth? that already there is no nation so rude and fierce
that it has not, changed by His love, subdued its fierceness, and with tranquillity
hitherto unknown, become mild m disposition? that men endowed with so great abilities,
orators, critics, rhetoricians, lawyers, and physicians, those, too, who pry into the
mysteries of philosophy, seek to learn these things, despising those in which but now they
trusted? that slaves choose to be tortured by their masters as they please, wives to be
divorced, children to be disinherited by their parents, rather than be unfaithful to
Christ and cast off the oaths of the warfare of salvation?

that although so terrible punishments have been denounced by you against those who follow
the precepts of this religion, it increases even more, and a great host strives more
boldly against all threats and the terrors which would keep it back, and is roused to
zealous faith by the very attempt to hinder it? Do you indeed believe that these things
happen idly and at random? that these feelings are adopted on being met with by chance? Is
not this, then, sacred and divine? Or do you believe that, without God's grace, their
minds are so changed, that although murderous hooks and other tortures without number
threaten, as we said, those who shall believe, they receive the grounds of faith with
which they have become acquainted, as if carried away (A) by some charm, and by an eager
longing for all the virtues, and prefer the friendship of Christ to all that is in the
world?

6. But perhaps those seem to you weak-minded and silly, who even now are uniting all over
the world, and joining together to assent with that readiness of belief at which you mock.
What then? Do you alone, imbued with the true power of wisdom and understanding, see
something wholly different and profound? Do you alone perceive that all these things are
trifles? you alone, that those things are mere words and childish absurdities which we
declare are about to come to us from the supreme Ruler? Whence, pray, has so much wisdom
been given to you? whence so much subtlety and wit? Or from what scientific training have
you been able to gain so much wisdom, to derive so much foresight? Because you are skilled
in declining verbs and nouns by cases and tenses, and in avoiding barbarous words and
expressions; because you have learned either to express yourselves in harmonious, and
orderly, and fitly-disposed language, or to know when it is rude and unpolished; because
you have stamped on your memory the Fornix of Lucilius, and Marsyas of Pomponius; because
you know what the issues to be proposed in lawsuits are, how many kinds of cases there
are, how many ways of pleading, what the genus is, what the species, by what methods an
opposite is distinguished from a contrary,-do you therefore think that you know what is
false, what true, what can or cannot be done, what is the nature of the lowest and
highest? Have the well-known words never rung in your ears, that the wisdom of man is
foolishness with God?

7. In the first place, you yourselves, too, see clearly that, if you ever discuss obscure
subjects, and seek to lay bare the mysteries of nature, on the one hand you do not know
the very things which you speak of, which you affirm, which you uphold very often with
especial zeal, and that each one defends with obstinate resistance his own suppositions as
though they were proved and ascertained truths. For how can we of ourselves know whether
we perceive the truth, even if all ages be employed in seeking out knowledge-we whom some
envious power brought forth, and formed so ignorant and proud, that, although we know
nothing at all, we yet deceive ourselves, and are uplifted by pride and arrogance so as to
suppose ourselves possessed of knowledge? For, to pass by divine things, and those plunged
in natural obscurity, can any man explain that which in the Phaedrus the well-known
Socrates cannot comprehend-what man is, or whence he is, uncertain, changeable, deceitful,
manifold, of many kinds? for what purposes he was produced? by whose ingenuity he was
devised? what he does in the world? (C) why he undergoes such countless ills? whether the
earth gave life to him as to worms and mice, being affected with decay through the action
of some moisture; or whether he received these outlines of body, and this cast of face,
from the hand of some maker and framer?

Can he, I say, know these things, which lie open to all, and are recognisable by the
senses common to all,-by what causes we are plunged into sleep, by what we awake? in what
ways dreams are produced, in what they are seen? nay rather-as to which Plato in the
Theoetetus is in doubt-whether we are ever awake, or whether that very state which is
called waking is part of an unbroken slumber? and what we seem to do when we say that we
see a dream? whether we see by means of rays of light proceeding towards the object, or
images of the objects fly to and alight on the pupils of our eyes? whether the flavour is
in the things tasted, or arises from their touching the palate? from what causes hairs lay
aside their natural darkness, and do not become gray all at once, but by adding little by
little? why it is that all fluids, on mingling, form one whole; that oil, on the contrary,
does not suffer the others to be poured into it, but is ever brought together clearly into
its own impenetrable substance? finally, why the soul also, which is said by you to be
immortal and divine, is sick in men who are sick, senseless in children, worn out in
doting, silly, and crazy old age?

Now the weakness and wretched ignorance of these theories is greater on this account, that
while it may happen that we at times say something which is true, we cannot be sure even
of this very thing, whether we have spoken the truth at all. 8. And since you have been
wont to laugh at our faith, and with droll jests to pull to pieces our readiness of belief
too, say, O wits, soaked and filled with wisdom's pure drought, is there in life any kind
of business demanding diligence and activity, which the doers undertake, engage in, and
essay, without believing that it can be done? Do you travel about, do you sail on the sea
without believing that you will return home when your business is done? Do you break up
the earth with the plough, and fill it with different kinds of seeds without believing
that you will gather in the fruit with the changes of the seasons? Do you unite with
partners in marriage, without believing that it will be pure, and a union serviceable to
the husband? Do you beget children without believing that they will pass safely through
the different stages of life to the goal of age? Do you commit your sick bodies to the
hands of physicians, without believing that diseases can be relieved by their severity
being lessened? Do you wage wars with your enemies, without believing that you will carry
off the victory by success in battles? Do you worship and serve the gods without believing
that they are, and that they listen graciously to your prayers?

9. What, have you seen with your eyes, and handled with your hands, those things which you
write yourselves, which you read from time to time on subjects placed beyond human
knowledge? Does not each one trust this author or that? That which any one has persuaded
himself is said with truth by another, does he not defend with a kind of assent, as it
were, like that of faith? Does not he who says that fire or water is the origin of all
things, pin his faith to Thales or Heraclitus? he who places the cause of all in numbers,
to Pythagoras of Samos, and to Archytas? he who divides the soul, and sets up bodiless
forms, to Plato, the disciple of Socrates? he who adds a fifth element to the primary
causes, to Aristotle, the father of the Peripatetics? he who threatens the world with
destruction by fire, and says that when the time comes it will be set on fire, to
Panaetius, Chrysippus, Zeno? he who is always fashioning worlds from atoms, and destroying
them, to Epicurus, Democritus, Metrodorus? he who says that nothing is comprehended by
man, and that all things are wrapt in dark obscurity, to Archesilas, to Carneades?-to some
teacher, in fine, of the old and later Academy?

10. Finally, do not even the leaders and founders of the schools already mentioned, say
those very things which they do say through belief in their own ideas? For, did Heraclitus
see things produced by the changes of fires? Thales, by the condensing of water? Did
Pythagoras see them spring from number? Did Plato see the bodiless forms? Democritus, the
meeting together of the atoms? Or do those who assert that nothing at all can be
comprehended by man, know whether what they say is true, so as to understand that the very
proposition which they lay down is a declaration of truth? Since, then, you have
discovered and learned nothing, and are led by credulity to assert all those things which
you write, and comprise in thousands of books; what kind of judgment, pray, is this, so
unjust that you mock at faith in us, while you see that you have it in common with our
readiness of belief? But you say you believe wise men, well versed in all kinds of
learning!-those, forsooth, who know nothing, and agree in nothing which they say; who join
battle with their opponents on behalf of their own opinions, and are always contending
fiercely with obstinate hostility; who, overthrowing, refuting, and bringing to nought the
one the other's doctrines, have made all things doubtful, and have shown from their very
want of agreement that nothing can he known.

11. But, supposing that these things do not at all hinder or prevent your being bound to
believe and hearken to them in great measure; and what reason is there either that you
should have more liberty in this respect, or that we should have less? You believe Plato,
Cronius, Numenius, or any one you please; we believe and confide in Christ. How
unreasonable it is, that when we both abide by teachers, and have one and the same thing,
belief, in common, you should wish it to be granted to you to receive what is so said by
them, but should be unwilling to hear and see what is brought forward by Christ! And yet,
if we chose to compare cause with cause, we are better able to point out what we have
followed in Christ, than you to point out what you have followed in the philosophers. And
we, indeed, have followed in him these things-those glorious works and most potent virtues
which he manifested and displayed in diverse miracles, by which any one might be led to
feel the necessity of believing, and might decide with confidence that they were not such
as might be regarded as man's, but such as showed some divine and unknown power. What
virtues did you follow in the philosophers, that it was more reasonable for you to believe
them than for us to believe Christ?

Was any one of them ever able by one word, or by a single command, I will not say to
restrain, to check the madness of the sea or the fury of the storm; to restore their sight
to the blind, or give it to men blind from their birth; to call the dead back to life; to
put an end to the sufferings of years; but-and this is much easier -to heal by one rebuke
a boil, a scab, or a thorn fixed in the skin? Not that we deny either that they are worthy
of praise for the soundness of their morals, or that they are skilled in all kinds of
studies and learning; for we know that they both speak in the most elegant language, and
that their words flow in polished periods; that they reason in syllogisms with the utmost
acuteness; that they arrange their inferences in due order; that they express, divide,
distinguish principles by definitions; that they say many things about the different kinds
of numbers, many things about music; that by their maxims and precepts they settle the
problems of geometry also. But what has that to do with the case? Do enthymemes,
syllogisms, and other such things, assure us that these men know what is true? or are they
therefore such that credence should necessarily be given to them with regard to very
obscure subjects? A comparison of persons must be decided, not by vigour of eloquence, but
by the excellence of the works which they have done.

He must not be called a good teacher who has expressed himself clearly, but he who
accompanies his promises with the guarantee of divine works. 12. You bring forward
arguments against us, and speculative quibblings, which-may I say this without displeasing
Him-if Christ Himself were to use in the gatherings of the nations, who would assent? who
would listen? who would say that He decided anything clearly? or who, though he were rash
and utterly credulous, would follow Him when pouring forth vain and baseless statements?
His virtues have been made manifest to you, and that unheard-of power over things, whether
that which was openly exercised by Him or that which was used over the whole world by
those who proclaimed Him: it has subdued the fires of passion, and caused races, and
peoples, and nations most diverse in character to hasten with one accord to accept the
same faith. For the deeds can be reckoned up and numbered which have been done in India,
among the Seres, Persians, and Medes; in Arabia, Egypt, in Asia, Syria; among the
Galatians, Parthians, Phrygians; in Achaia, Macedonia, Epirus; in all islands and
provinces on which the rising and setting sun shines; in Rome herself, finally, the
mistress of the world, in which, although men are busied with the practices introduced by
king Numa, and the superstitious observances of antiquity, they have nevertheless hastened
to give up their fathers' mode of life, and attach themselves to Christian truth. For they
had seen the chariot of Simon Magus, and his fiery car, blown into pieces by the mouth of
Peter, and vanish when Christ was named.

They had seen him, I say, trusting in false gods, and abandoned by them in their terror,
borne down headlong by his own weight, lie prostrate with his legs broken; and then, when
he had been carried to Brunda, worn out with anguish and shame, again cast himself down
from the roof of a very lofty house. But all these deeds you neither know nor have wished
to know, nor did you ever consider that they were of the utmost importance to you; and
while you trust your own judgments, and term that wisdom which is overweening conceit, you
have given to deceivers-to those guilty ones, I say, whose interest it is that the
Christian name be degraded-an opportunity of raising clouds of darkness, and concealing
truths of so much importance; of robbing you of faith, and putting scorn in its place, in
order that, as they already feel that an end such as they deserve threatens them, they
might excite in you also a feeling through which you should run into danger, and be
deprived of the divine mercy.

13. Meantime, however, O you who wonder and are astonished at the doctrines of the
learned, and of philosophy, do you not then think it most unjust to scoff, to jeer at us
as though we say foolish and senseless things, when you too are found to say either these
or just such things which you laugh at when said and uttered by us? Nor do I address those
who, scattered through various bypaths of the schools, have formed this and that
insignificant party through diversity of opinion. You, you I address, who zealously follow
Mercury, Plato, and Pythagoras, and the rest of you who are of one mind, and walk in unity
in the same paths of doctrine. Do you dare to laugh at us because we revere and worship
the Creator and Lord of the universe, and because we commit and entrust our hopes to Him?
What does your Plato say in the Theoetetus, to mention him especially? Does he not exhort
the soul to flee from the earth, and, as much as in it lies, to be continually engaged in
thought and meditation about Him? Do you dare to laugh at us, because we say that there
will be a resurrection of the dead? And this indeed we confess that wee say, but maintain
that it is understood by you otherwise than we hold it. What says the same Plato in the
Politicus?

Does he not say that, when the world has begun to rise out of the west and tend towards
the east, men will again burst forth from the bosom of the earth, aged, grey-haired, bowed
down with years; and that when the remoter years begin to draw near, they will gradually
sink down to the cradles of their infancy, through the same steps by which they now grow
to manhood? Do you dare to laugh at us because we see to the salvation of our souls?-that
is, ourselves care for ourselves: for what are we men, but souls shut up in bodies?-You,
indeed, do not take every pains for their safety, in that you do not refrain from all vice
and passion; about this you are anxious, that you may cleave to your bodies as though
inseparably bound to them. -What mean those mystic rites, in which you beseech some
unknown powers to be favourable to you, and not put any hindrance in your way to impede
you when returning to your native seats?

14. Do you dare to laugh at us when we speak of hell, and fires which cannot be quenched,
into which we have learned that souls are cast by their foes and enemies? What, does not
your Plato also, in the book which he wrote on the immortality of the soul, name the
rivers Acheron, Styx, Cocytus, and Pyriphlegethon, and assert that in them souls are
rolled along, engulphed, and burned up? But though a man of no little wisdom, and of
accurate judgment and discernment, he essays a problem which cannot be solved; so that,
while he says that the soul is immortal, everlasting, and without bodily substance, he vet
says that they are punished, and makes them suffer pain. But what man does not see that
that which is immortal, which is simple, cannot be subject to any pain; that that, on the
contrary, cannot be immortal which does suffer pain? And yet his opinion is not very far
from the truth. For although the gentle and kindly disposed man thought it inhuman cruelty
to condemn souls to death, he yet not unreasonably supposed that they are cast into rivers
blazing with masses of flame, and loathsome from their foul abysses. For they are cast in,
and being annihilated, pass away vainly in everlasting destruction. For theirs is an
intermediate state, as has been learned from Christ's teaching;

and they are such that they may on the one hand perish if they have not known God, and on
the other be delivered from death if they have given heed to His threats and proffered
favours. And to make manifest what is unknown, this is man's real death, this which leaves
nothing behind. For that which is seen by the eyes is only a separation of soul from body,
not the last end-annihilation: this, I say, is man's real death, when souls which know not
God shall be consumed in long-protracted torment with raging fire, into which certain
fiercely cruel beings shall cast them, who were unknown before Christ, and brought to
light only by His wisdom. 15. Wherefore there is no reason that that should mislead us,
should hold out vain hopes to us, which is said by some men till now unheard of, and
carried away by an extravagant opinion of themselves, that souls are immortal, next in
point of rank to the God and ruler of the world, descended from that parent and sire,
divine, wise, learned, and not within reach of the body by contact. Now, because this is
true and certain, and because we have been produced by Him who is perfect without flaw, we
live unblameably, I suppose, and therefore without blame; are good, just, and upright, in
nothing depraved; no passion overpowers, no lust degrades us; we maintain vigorousy the
unremitting practice of all the virtues. And because all our souls have one origin, we
therefore think exactly alike; we do not differ in manners, we do not differ in beliefs;
we all know God; and there are not as many opinions as there are men in the world, nor are
these divided in infinite variety.

16. But, they say, while we are moving swiftly down towards our mortal bodies, causes
pursue us from the world's circles, through the working of which we become bad, ay, most
wicked; burn with lust and anger, spend our life in shameful deeds, and are given over to
the lust of all by the prostitution of our bodies for hire. And how can the material unite
with the immaterial? or how can that which God has made, be led by weaker causes to
degrade itself through the practice of vice? Will you lay aside your habitual arrogance, O
men, who claim God as your Father, and maintain that you are immortal, just as He is? Will
you inquire, examine, search what you are yourselves, whose you are, of what parentage you
are supposed to be, what you do in the world, in what way you are born, how you leap to
life? Will you, laying aside all partiality, consider in the silence of your thoughts that
we are creatures either quite like the rest, or separated by no great difference? For what
is there to show that we do not resemble them? or what excellence is in us, such that we
scorn to be ranked as creatures? Their bodies are built up on bones, and bound closely
together by sinews; and our bodies are in like manner built up on bones, and bound closely
together by sinews. They inspire the air through nostrils, and in breathing expire it
again;

and we in like manner drew in the air, and breathed it out with frequent respirations.
They have been arranged in classes, female and male; we, too, have been fashioned by our
Creator into the same sexes. Their young are born from the womb, and are begotten through
union of the sexes; and we are born from sexual embraces, and are brought forth and sent
into life from our mothers' wombs. They are supported by eating and drinking, and get rid
of the filth which remains by the lower parts; and we are supported by eating and
drinking, and that which nature refuses we deal with in the same way. Their care is to
ward off death-bringing famine, and of necessity to be on the watch for food. What else is
our aim in the business of life, which presses so much upon us, but to seek the means by
which the danger of starvation may be avoided, and carking anxiety put away? They are
exposed to disease and hunger, and at last lose their strength by reason of age. What,
then? are we not exposed to these evils, and are we not in like manner weakened by noxious
diseases, destroyed by wasting age?

But if that, too, which is said in the more hidden mysteries is true, that the souls of
wicked men, on leaving their human bodies, pass into cattle and other creatures, it is
even more clearly shown that we are allied to them, and not separated by any great
interval, since it is on the same ground that both we and they are said to be living
creatures, and to act as such. 17. But we have reason, one will say, and excel the whole
race of dumb animals in understanding. I might believe that this was quite true, if all
men lived rationally and wisely, never swerved aside from their duty, abstained from what
is forbidden, and withheld themselves from baseness, and if no one through folly and the
blindness of ignorance demanded what is injurious and dangerous to himself. I should wish,
however, to know what this reason is, through which we are more excellent than all the
tribes of animals. Is it because we have made for ourselves houses, by which we can avoid
the cold of winter and heat of summer? What! do not the other animals show forethought in
this respect? Do we not see some build nests as dwellings for themselves in the most
convenient situations; others shelter and secure themselves in rocks and lofty crags;
others burrow in the ground, and prepare for themselves strongholds and lairs in the pits
which they have dug out? But if nature, which gave them life, had chosen to give to them
also hands to help them, they too would, without doubt, raise lofty buildings and strike
out new works of art. Yet, even in those things which they make with beaks and claws, we
see that there are many appearances of reason and wisdom which we men are unable to copy,
however much we ponder them, although we have hands to serve us dexterously in every kind
of work.

18. They have not learned, I will be told, to make clothing, seats, ships, and ploughs,
nor, in fine, the other furniture which family life requires.These are not the gifts of
science, but the suggestions of most pressing necessity; nor did the arts descend with
men's souls from the inmost heavens, but here on earth have they all been painfully sought
out and brought to light, and gradually acquired in process of time by careful thought.
But if the soul had in itself the knowledge which it is fitting that a race should have
indeed which is divine and immortal, all men would from the first know everything; nor
would there be an age unacquainted with any art, or not furnished with practical
knowledge. But now a life of want and in need of many things, noticing some things happen
accidentally to its advantage, while it imitates, experiments, and tries, while it fails,
remoulds, changes, from continual failure has procured for itself and wrought out some
slight acquaintance with the arts, and brought to one issue the advances of many ages.

19. But if men either knew themselves thoroughly, or had the slightest knowledge of God,
they would never claim as their own a divine and immortal nature; nor would they think
themselves something great because they have made for themselves gridirons, basins, and
bowls, because they have made under-shirts, outer-shirts, cloaks, plaids, robes of state,
knives, cuirasses and swords, mattocks, hatchets, ploughs. Never, I say, carried away by
pride and arrogance, would they believe themselves to be deities of the first rank, and
fellows of the highest in his exaltation, because they had devised the arts of grammar,
music, oratory, and geometry. For we do not see what is so wonderful in these arts, that
because of their discovery the soul should be believed to be above the sun as well as all
the stars, to surpass both in grandeur and essence the whole universe, of which these are
parts. For what else do these assert that they can either declare or teach, than that we
may learn to know the rules and differences of nouns, the intervals in the sounds of
different tones, that we may speak persuasively in lawsuits, that we may measure the
confines of the earth? Now, if the soul had brought these arts with it from the celestial
regions, and it were impossible not to know them, all men would long before this be busied
with them over all the earth, nor would any race of men be found which would not be
equally and similarly instructed in them all.

But now how few musicians, logicians, and geometricians are there in the world! how few
orators, poets, critics! From which it is clear, as has been said pretty frequently, that
these things were discovered under the pressure of time and circumstances, and that the
soul did not fly hither divinely taught, because neither are all learned, nor can all
learn; and there are very many among them somewhat deficient in shrewdness, and stupid,
and they are constrained to apply themselves to learning only by fear of stripes. But if
it were a fact that the things which we learn are but reminiscences -as has been
maintained in the systems of the ancients-as we start from the same truth, we should all
have learned alike, and remember alike-not have diverse, very numerous, and inconsistent
opinions. Now, however, seeing that we each assert different things, it is clear and
manifest that we have brought nothing from heaven, but become acquainted with what has
arisen here, and maintain what has taken firm root in our thoughts.

20. And, that we may show you more clearly and distinctly what is the worth of man, whom
you believe to be very like the higher power, conceive this idea; and because it can be
done if we come into direct contact with it, let us conceive it just as if we came into
contact. Let us then imagine a place dug out in the earth, fit for dwelling in, formed
into a chamber, enclosed by a roof and walls, not cold in winter, not too warm in summer,
but so regulated and equable that we suffer neither cold nor the violent heat of summer.
To this let there not come any sound or cry whatever, of bird, of beast, of storm, of man-
of any noise, in fine, or of the thunder's terrible crash. Let us next devise a way in
which it may be lighted not by the introduction of fire, nor by the sight of the sun, but
let there be some counterfeit to imitate sunlight, darkness being interposed. Let there
not be one door, nor a direct entrance, but let it be approached by tortuous windings, and
let it never be thrown open unless when it is absolutely necessary.

21. Now, as we have prepared a place for our idea, let us next receive some one born to
dwell there, where there is nothing but an empty void, -one of the race of Plato, namely,
or Pythagoras, or some one of those who are regarded as of superhuman wit, or have been
declared most wise by the oracles of the gods.And when this has been done, he must then be
nourished and brought up on suitable food. Let us therefore provide a nurse also, who
shall come to him always naked, ever silent, uttering not a word, and shall not open her
mouth and lips to speak at all, but after suckling him, and doing what else is necessary,
shall leave him fast asleep, and remain day and night before the closed doors; for it is
usually necessary that the nurse's care should be near at hand, and that she should watch
his varying motions. But when the child begins to need to be supported by more substantial
food, let it be borne in by the same nurse, still undressed, and maintaining the same
unbroken silence. Let the food, too, which is carried in be always precisely the same,
with no difference in the material, and without being re-cooked by means of different
flavours; but let it be either pottage of millet, or bread of spelt, or, in imitation of
the ancients, chestnuts roasted in the hot ashes, or berries plucked from forest trees.
Let him moreover, never learn to drink wine, and let nothing else be used to quench his
thirst than pure cold water from the spring, and that if possible raised to his lips in
the hollow of his hands. For habit, growing into second nature, will become familiar from
custom; nor will his desire extend further, not knowing that there is any thing more to be
sought after.

22. To what, then, you ask, do these things tend? We have brought them forward in order
that-as it has been believed that the souls of men are divine, and therefore immortal, and
that they come to their human bodies with all knowledge-we may make trial from this child,
whom we have supposed to be brought up in this way, whether this is credible, or has been
rashly believed and taken for granted, in consequence of deceitful anticipation. Let us
suppose, then, that be grows up, reared in a secluded, lonely spot, spending as many,
years as you choose, twenty or thirty,-nay, let him be brought into the assemblies of men
when he has lived through forty years; and if it is true that he is a part of the divine
essence, and lives here sprung from the fountains of life, before he makes acquaint-ante
with anything, or is made familiar with human speech, let him be questioned and answer who
he is, or from what father in what regions he was born, how or in what way brought up;
with what work or business he has been engaged during the former part of his life. Will he
not, then, stand speechless, with less wit and sense than any beast, block, stone? Will he
not, when brought into contact with strange and previously unknown things, be above all
ignorant of himself? If you ask, will he be able to say what the sun is, the earth, seas,
stars, clouds, mist, showers. thunder, snow. hail? Will he be able to know what trees are,
herbs, or grasses, a bull, a horse, or ram, a camel, elephant, or kite?

23. If you give a grape to him when hungry, a must-cake, an onion, a thistle, a cucumber,
a fig, will he know that his hunger can be appeased by all these, or of what kind each
should be to be fit for eating? If you made a very great fire, or surrounded him with
venomous creatures, will he not go through the midst of flames, vipers, tarantulae,
without knowing that they are dangerous, and ignorant even of fear? But again, if you set
before him garments and furniture, both for city and country life, will he indeed be able
to distinguish for what each is fitted? to discharge what service they are adapted? Will
he declare for what purposes of dress the stragula was made, the coif, zone, fillet,
cushion, handkerchief, cloak, veil, napkin, furs, shoe, sandal, boot? What, if you go on
to ask what a wheel is, or a sledge, a winnowing-fan, jar, tub, an oil-mill, ploughshare,
or sieve, a mill-stone, ploughtail, or light hoe; a carved seat, a needle, a strigil, a
layer, an open seat, a ladle, a platter, a candlestick, a goblet, a broom, a cup, a bag; a
lyre, pipe, silver, brass, gold, a book, a rod, a roll, and the rest of the equipment by
which the life of man is surrounded and maintained? Will he not in such circumstances, as
we said, like an ox or an ass, a pig, or any beast more senseless, look at these indeed,
observing their various shapes, but not knowing what they all are, and ignorant of the
purpose for which they are kept? If he were in any way compelled to utter a sound, would
he not with gaping mouth shout something indistinctly, as the dumb usually do?

24. Why, O Plato, do you in the Meno put to a young slave certain questions relating to
the doctrines of number, and strive to prove by his answers that what we learn we do not
learn, but that we merely call back to memory those things which we knew in former times?
Now, if he answers you correctly,-for it would not be becoming that we should refuse
credit to what you say,-he is led to do so not by his real knowledge, but by his
intelligence; and it results from his having some acquaintance with numbers, through using
them every day, that when questioned he follows your meaning, and that the very process of
multiplication always prompts him. But if you are really assured that the souls of men are
immortal and endowed with knowledge when they fly hither, cease to question that youth
whom you see to be ignorant and accustomed to the ways of men; call to you that man of
forty years, and ask of him, not anything out of the way or obscure about triangles, about
squares, not what a cube is, or a second power, the ratio of nine to eight, or finally, of
four to three; but ask him that with which all are acquainted-what twice two are, or twice
three. We wish to see, we wish to know, what answer he gives when questioned-whether he
solves the desired problem. In such a case will he perceive, although his ears are open,
whether you are saying anything, or asking anything, or requiring some answer from him?
and will he not stand like a stock, or the Marpesian rock, as the saying is, dumb and
speechless, not understanding or knowing even this-whether you are talking with him or
with another, conversing with another or with him; whether that is intelligible speech
which you utter, or merely a cry having no meaning, but drawn out and protracted to no
purpose?

25. What say you, O men, who assign to yourselves too much of an excellence not your own?
Is this the learned soul which you describe, immortal, perfect, divine, holding the fourth
place under God tim Lord of the universe, and under the kindred spirits, and proceeding
from the fountains of life? This is that precious being man, endowed with the loftiest
powers of reason, who is said to be a microcosm, and to be made and formed after the
fashion of the whole universe, superior, as has been seen, to no brute, more senseless
than stock or stone; for he is unacquainted with men, and always lives, loiters idly in
the still deserts although he were rich, lived years without number, and never escaped
from the bonds of the body. But when he goes to school, you say, and is instructed by the
teaching of masters, he is made wise, learned, and lays aside the ignorance which till now
clung to him. And an ass, and an ox as well, if compelled by constant practice, learn to
plough and grind; a horse, to submit to the yoke, and obey the reins in running; a camel,
to kneel down when being either loaded or unloaded; a dove, when set free, to fly back to
its master's house; a dog, on finding game, to check and repress its barking; a parrot,
too, to articulate words; and a crow to utter names.

26. But when I hear the soul spoken of as something extraordinary, as akin and very nigh
to God, and as coming hither knowing all about past times, I would have it teach, not
learn; and not go back to the rudiments, as the saying is, after being advanced in
knowledge, but hold fast the truths it has learned when it enters its earthly body. For
unless it were so, how could it be discerned whether the soul recalls to memory or learns
for the first time that which it hears; seeing that it is much easier to believe that it
learns what it is unacquainted with, than that it has forgot what it knew but a little
before, and that its power of recalling former things is lost through the interposition of
the body? And what becomes of the doctrine that souls, being bodiless, do not have
substance? For that which is not connected with any bodily form is not hampered by the
opposition of another, nor can anything be led to destroy that which cannot be touched by
what is set against it. For as a proportion established in bodies remains unaffected and
secure, though it be lost to sight in a thousand cases; so must souls, if they are not
material, as is asserted, retain their knowledge of the past, however thoroughly they may
have been enclosed in bodies. Moreover, the same reasoning not only shows that they are
not incorporeal, but deprives them of all immortality even, and refers them to the limits
within which life is usually closed. For whatever is led by some inducement to change and
alter itself, so that it cannot retain its natural state, must of necessity be considered
essentially passive. But that which is liable and exposed to suffering, is declared to be
corruptible by that very capacity of suffering.

27. So then, if souls lose all their knowledge on being lettered with the body, they must
experience something of such a nature that it makes them become blindly forgetful. For
they cannot, without becoming subject to anything whatever, either lay aside their
knowledge while they maintain their natural state, or without change in themselves pass
into a different state. Nay, we rather think that what is one, immortal, simple, in
whatever it may be, must always retain its own nature, and that it neither should nor
could be subject to anything, if indeed it purposes to endure and abide within the limits
of true immortality. For all suffering is a passage for death and destruction, a way
leading to the grave, and bringing an end of life which may not be escaped from; and if
souls are liable to it, and yield to its influence and assaults, they indeed have life
given to them only for present use, not as a secured possession, although some come to
other conclusions, and put faith in their own arguments with regard to so important a
matter.

28. And yet, that we may not be as ignorant when we leave you as before, let us hear from
you how you say that the soul, on being enwrapt in an earthly body, has no recollection of
the past; while, after being actually placed in the body itself, and rendered almost
senseless by union with it, it holds tenaciously and faithfully the things which many
years before, eighty if you choose to say so, or even more, it either did, or suffered, or
said, or heard. For if, through being hampered by the body, it does not remember those
things which it knew long ago, and before it came into this world, there is more reason
that it should forget those things which it has done from time to time since being shut up
in the body, than those which it did before entering it, while not yet connected with men.
For the same body which deprives of memory the soul which enters it, should cause what is
done within itself also to be wholly forgotten; for one cause cannot bring about two
results, and these opposed to each other, so as to make some things to be forgotten, and
allow others to be remembered by him who did them.

But if souls, as you call them, are prevented and hindered by their fleshly members from
recalling their former knowledge, how do they remember what has been arranged in these
very bodies, and know that they are spirits, and have no bodily substance, being exalted
by their condition as immortal beings? how do they know what rank they hold in the
universe, in what order they have been set apart from other beings? how they have come to
these, the lowest parts of the universe? what properties they acquired, and from what
circles, in gliding along towards these regions? How, I say, do they know that they were
very learned, and have lost their knowledge by the hindrance which their bodies afford
them? For of this very thing also they should have been ignorant, whether their union with
the body had brought any stain upon them; for to know what you were, and what to-day you
are not, is no sign that you have lost your memory, but a proof and evidence that it is
quite sound.

29. Now, since it is so, cease, I pray you, cease to rate trifling and unimportant things
at immense values. Cease to place man in the upper ranks, since he is of the lowest; and
in the highest orders, seeing that his person only is taken account of, that he is needy,
poverty-stricken in his house and dwelling, and was never entitled to be declared of
illustrious descent. For while, as just men and upholders of righteousness, you should
have subdued pride and arrogance, by the evils of which we are all uplifted and puffed up
with empty vanity; you not only hold that these evils arise naturally, but-and this is
much worse-you have also added causes by which vice should increase, and wickedness remain
incorrigible. For what man is there, although of a disposition which ever shuns what is of
bad repute and shameful, who, when he hears it said by very wise men that the soul is
immortal, and not subject to the decrees of the fates, would not throw himself headlong
into all kinds of vice, and fearlessly engage in and set about unlawful things? who would
not, in short, gratify his desires in all things demanded by his unbridled lust,
strengthened even further by its security and freedom from punishment? For what will
hinder him from doing so? The fear of a power above and divine judgment? And how shall he
be overcome by any fear or dread who has been persuaded that he is immortal, just as the
supreme God Himself, and that no sentence can be pronounced upon him by God, seeing that
there is the same immortality in both, and that the one immortal being cannot be troubled
by the other, which is only its equal?

30. But will he not be terrified by the punishments in Hades, of which we have heard,
assuming also, as they do, many forms of torture? And who will be so senseless and
ignorant of consequences, as to believe that to imperishable spirits either the darkness
of Tartarus, or rivers of fire, or marshes with miry abysses, or wheels sent whirling
through the air, can in any wise do harm? For that which is beyond reach, and not subject
to the laws of destruction, though it be surrounded by all the flames of the raging
streams, be rolled in the mire, overwhelmed by the fall of overhanging rocks and by the
overthrow of huge mountains, must remain safe and untouched without suffering any deadly
harm. Moreover, that conviction not only leads on to wickedness, from the very freedom to
sin which it suggests, but even takes away the ground of philosophy itself, and asserts
that it is vain to undertake its study, because of the difficulty of the work, which leads
to no result. For if it is true that souls know no end, and are ever advancing with all
generations, what danger is there in giving themselves up to the pleasures of sense-
despising and neglecting the virtues by regard to which life is more stinted in its
pleasures, and becomes less attractive-and in letting loose their boundless lust to range
eagerly and unchecked through all kinds of debauchery? Is it the danger of being worn out
by such pleasures, and corrupted by vicious effeminacy? And how can that be corrupted
which is immortal, which always exists, and is subject to no suffering? Is it the danger
of being polluted by foul and base deeds? And how can that be defiled which has no
corporeal substance; or where can corruption seat itself, where there is no place on which
the mark of this very corruption should fasten?

But again, if souls draw near to the gates of death, as is laid down in the doctrine of
Epicurus, in this case, too, there is no sufficient reason why philosophy should be sought
out, even if it is true that by it souls are cleansed and made pure from all uncleanness.
For if they all die, and even in the body the feeling characteristic of life perishes, and
is lost; it is not only a very great mistake, but shows stupid blindness, to curb innate
desires, to restrict your mode of life within narrow limits, not yield to your
inclinations, and do what our passions have demanded and urged, since no rewards await you
for so great toil when the day of death comes, and you shall be freed from the bonds of
the body. 31. A certain neutral character, then, and undecided and doubtful nature of the
soul, has made room for philosophy, and found out a reason for its being sought after:
while, that is, that fellow is full of dread because of evil deeds of which he is guilty;
another conceives great hopes if he shall do no evil, and pass his life in obedience to
duty and justice. Thence it is that among learned men, and men endowed with excellent
abilities, there is strife as to the nature of the soul, and some say that it is subject
to death, and cannot take upon itself the divine substance; while others maintain that it
is immortal, and cannot sink under the power of death. But this is brought about by the
law of the soul's neutral character: because, on the one hand, arguments present
themselves to the one party by which it is found that the soul is capable of suffering,
and perishable; and, on the other hand, are not wanting to their opponents, by which it is
shown that the soul is divine and immortal.

32. Since these things are so, and we have been taught by the greatest teacher that souls
are set not far from the gaping jaws of death; that they can, nevertheless, have their
lives prolonged by the favour and kindness of the Supreme Ruler if only they try and study
to know Him,-for the knowledge of Him is a kind of vital leaven and cement to bind
together that which would otherwise fly apart,-let them, then, laying aside their savage
and barbarous nature, return to gentler ways, that they may be able to be ready for that
which shall be given. What reason is there that we should be considered by you brutish, as
it were, and stupid, if we have yielded and given ourselves up to God our deliverer,
because of these fears? We often seek out remedies for wounds and the poisoned bites of
serpents, and defend ourselves by means of thin plates sold by Psylli or Marsi, and other
hucksters and impostors; and that we may not be inconvenienced by cold or intense heat, we
provide with anxious and careful diligence coverings in houses and clothing.

33. Seeing that the fear of death, that is, the ruin of our souls, menaces us, in what are
we not acting, as we all are wont, from a sense of what will be to our advantage, in that
we hold Him fast who assures us that He will be our deliverer from such danger, embrace
Him, and entrust our souls to His care, if only that interchange is right? You rest the
salvation of your souls on yourselves, and are assured that by your own exertions alone
you become gods; but we, on the contrary hold out no hope to ourselves from our own
weakness, for we see that our nature has no strength, and is overcome by its own passions
in every strife for anything. You think that, as soon as you pass away, freed from the
bonds of your fleshly members, you will find wings with which you may rise to heaven and
soar to the stars. We shun such presumption. and do not think that it is in our power to
reach the abodes above, since we have no certainty as to this even, whether we deserve to
receive life and be freed from the law of death. You suppose that without the aid of
others you will return to the master's palace as if to your own home, no one hindering
you; but we, on the contrary, neither have any expectation that this can be unless by the
will of the Lord of all, nor think that so much power and licence are given to any man.

34. Since this is the case, what, pray, is so unfair as that we should be looked on by you
as silly in that readiness of belief at which you scoff, while we see that you both have
like beliefs, and entertain the same hopes? If we are thought deserving of ridicule
because we hold out to ourselves such a hope, the same ridicule awaits you too, who claim
for yourselves the hope of immortality. If you hold and follow a rational course, grant to
us also a share in it. If Plato in the Phaedrus, or another of this band of philosophers,
had promised these joys to us-that is, a way to escape death, or were able to provide it
and bring us to the end which he had promised, it would have been fitting that we should
seek to honour him from whom we look for so great a gift and favour. Now, since Christ has
not only promised it, but also shown by His virtues, which were so great, that it can be
made good, what strange thing do we do, and on what grounds are we charged with folly, if
we bow down and worship His name and majesty from whom we expect to receive both these
blessings, that we may at once escape a death of suffering, and be enriched with eternal
life?

35. But, say my opponents, if souls are mortal and of neutral character, how can they from
their neutral properties become immortal? If we should say that we do not know this, and
only believe it because said by One mightier than we, when will our readiness of belief
seem mistaken if we believe that to the almighty King nothing is hard, nothing difficult,
and that what is impossible to us is possible to Him and at His command? For is there
anything which may withstand His will, or does it not follow of necessity that what He has
willed must be done? Are we to infer from our distinctions what either can or cannot be
done; and are we not to consider that our reason is as mortal as we ourselves are, and is
of no importance with the Supreme? And yet, O ye who do not believe that the soul is of a
neutral character, and that it is held on the line midway between life and death, are not
all whatever whom fancy supposes to exist, gods, angels, daemons, or whatever else is
their name, themselves too of a neutral character, and liable to change in the uncertainty
of their future? For if we all agree that there is one Father of all, who alone is
immortal and unbegotten, and if nothing at all is found before Him which could be named,
it follows as a consequence that all these whom the imagination of men believes to be
gods, have been either begotten by Him or produced at His bidding. Are they produced and
begotten? they are also later in order and time: if later in order and time, they must
have an origin, and beginning of birth and life; but that which has an entrance into and
beginning of life in its first stages, it of necessity follows, should have an end also.

36. But the gods are said to be immortal. Not by nature, then, but by the good-will and
favour of God their Father. In the same way, then, in which the boon of immortality is
God's gift to these who were assuredly produced, will He deign to confer eternal life upon
souls also, although fell death seems able to cut them off and blot them out of existence
in utter annihilation. The divine Plato, many of whose thoughts are worthy of God, and not
such as the vulgar hold, in that discussion and treatise entitled the Timaeus, says that
the gods and the world are corruptible by nature, and in no wise beyond the reach of
death, but that their being is ever maintained by the will of God, their King and Prince;
for that that even which has been duly clasped and bound together by the surest bands is
preserved only by God's goodness; and that by no other than by Him who bound their
elements together can they both be dissolved if necessary, and have the command given
which preserves their being. If this is the case, then, and it is not fitting to think or
believe otherwise, why do you wonder that we speak of the soul as neutral in its
character, when Plato says that it is so even with the deities, but that their life is
kept up by God's grace, without break or end?

For if by chance you knew it not, and because of its novelty it was unknown to you before,
now, though late, receive and learn from Him who knows and has made it known, Christ, that
souls are not the children of the Supreme Ruler, and did not begin to be self-conscious,
and to be spoken of in their own special character after being created by Him; but that
some other is their parent, far enough removed from the chief in rank and power, of His
court, however, and distinguished by His high and exalted birthright. 37. But if souls
were, as is said, the Lord's children, and begotten by the Supreme Power, nothing would
have been wanting to make them perfect, as they would have been born with the most perfect
excellence: they would all have had one mind, and been of one accord; they would always
dwell in the royal palace; and would not, passing by the seats of bliss in which they had
learned and kept in mind the noblest teachings, rashly seek these regions of earth, that
they might live enclosed in gloomy bodies amid phlegm and blood, among these bags of filth
and most disgusting vessels of urine. But, an opponent will say, it was necessary that
these parts too should be peopled, and therefore Almighty God sent souls hither to form
some colonies, as it were. And of what use are men to the world, and on account of what
are they necessary, so that they may not be believed to have been destined to live here
and be the tenants of an earthly body for no purpose? They have a share, my opponent says,
in perfecting the completeness of this immense mass, and without their addition this whole
universe is incomplete and imperfect. What then? If there were not men, would the world
cease to discharge its functions? would the stars not go through their changes? would
there not be summers and winters? would the blasts of the winds be lulled?

and from the clouds gathered and hanging overhead would not the showers come down upon the
earth to temper droughts? But now all things must go on in their own courses, and not give
up following the arrangement established by nature, even if there should be no name of man
heard in the world, and this earth should be still with the silence of an unpeopled
desert. How then is it alleged that it was necessary that an inhabitant should be given to
these regions, since it is clear that by man comes nothing to aid in perfecting the world,
and that all his exertions regard his private convenience always, and never cease to aim
at his own advantage? 38. For, to begin with what is important, what advantage is it to
the world that the mightiest kings are here? What, that there are tyrants, lords, and
other innumerable and very illustrious powers? What, that there are generals of the
greatest experience in war, skilled in taking cities; soldiers steady and utterly
invincible in battles of cavalry, or in fighting hand to hand on foot? What, that there
are orators, grammarians, poets, writers, logicians, musicians, ballet-dancers, mimics,
actors, singers, trumpeters, flute and reed players? What, that there are runners, boxers,
charioteers, vaulters, walkers on stilts, rope-dancers, jugglers? What, that there are
dealers in salt fish, salters, fishmongers, perfumers, goldsmiths, bird-catchers, weavers
of winnowing fans and baskets of rushes? What, that there are fullers, workers in wool,
embroiderers, cooks, confectioners, dealers in mules, pimps, butchers, harlots? What, that
there are other kinds of dealers? What do the other kinds of professors and arts, for the
enumeration of which all life would be too short, contribute to the plan and constitution
of the world, that we should believe that it could not have been founded without men, and
would not attain its completeness without the addition of a wretched and useless being's
exertion?

39. But perhaps, some one will urge, the Ruler of the world sent hither souls sprung from
Himself for this purpose-a very rash thing for a man to say -that they which had been
divine with Him, not coming into contact with the body and earthly limits, should be
buried in the germs of men, spring from the womb, burst into and keep up the silliest
wailings, draw the breasts in sucking, besmear and bedaub themselves with their own filth,
then be hushed by the swaying of the frightened nurse and by the sound of rattles. Did He
send souls hither for this reason, that they which had been but now sincere and of
blameless virtue should learn as men to feign, to dissemble, to lie, to cheat, to deceive,
to entrap with a flatterer's abjectness; to conceal one thing in the heart, express
another in the countenance; to ensnare, to beguile the ignorant with crafty devices, to
seek out poisons by means of numberless arts suggested by bad feelings, and to be
fashioned with deceitful changeableness to suit circumstances? Was it for this He sent
souls, that, living till then in calm and undisturbed tranquillity, they might find in
their bodies causes by which to become fierce and savage, cherish hatred and enmity, make
war upon each other, subdue and overthrow states; load themselves with, and give
themselves up to the yoke of slavery; and finally, be put the one in the other's power,
having changed the condition in which they were born?

Was it for this He sent souls, that, being made unmindful of the truth, and forgetful of
what God was, they should make supplication to images which cannot move; address as
superhuman deities pieces of wood, brass, and stones; ask aid of them with the blood of
slain animals; make no mention of Himself: nay more, that some of them should doubt their
own existence, or deny altogether that anything exists? Was it for this He sent souls,
that they which in their own abodes had been of one mind, equals in intellect and
knowledge, after that they put on mortal forms, should be divided by differences of
opinion; should have different views as to what is just, useful, and right; should contend
about the objects of desire and aversion; should define the highest good and greatest evil
differently; that, in seeking to know the truth of things, they should be hindered by
their obscurity; and, as if bereft of eyesight, should see nothing clearly, and, wandering
from the truth, should be led through uncertain bypaths of fancy?

40. Was it for this He sent souls hither, that while the other creatures are fed by what
springs up spontaneously, and is produced without being sown, and do not seek for
themselves the protection or covering of houses or garments, they should be under the sad
necessity of building houses for themselves at very great expense and with never-ending
toils, preparing coverings for their limbs, making different kinds of furniture for the
wants of daily life, borrowing help for their weakness from the dumb creatures; using
violence to the earth that it might not give forth its own herbs, but might send up the
fruits required; and when they had put forth all their strength in subduing the earth,
should be compelled to lose the hope with which they had laboured through blight, hail,
drought; and at last forced by hunger to throw themselves on human bodies; and when set
free, to be parted from their human forms by a wasting sickness? Was it for this that they
which, while they abode with Him, had never had any longing for property, should have
become exceedingly covetous, and with insatiable craving be inflamed to an eager desire of
possessing; that they should dig up lofty mountains, and turn the unknown bowels of the
earth into materials, and to purposes of a different kind; should force their way to
remote nations at the risk of life, and, in exchanging goods always catch at a high price
for what they sell, and a low one for what they buy, take interest at greedy and excessive
rates, and add to the number of their sleepless nights spent in reckoning up thousands
wrung from the life-blood of wretched men; should be ever extending the limits of their
possessions, and, though they were to make whole provinces one estate, should weary the
forum with suits for one tree, for one furrow; should hate rancorously their friends and
brethren?

41. Was it for this He sent souls, that they which shortly before had been gentle and
ignorant of what it is to be moved by fierce passions, should build for themselves markets
and amphi-theatres, places of blood and open wickedness, in the one of which they should
see men devoured and torn in pieces by wild beasts, and themselves slay others for no
demerit but to please and gratify the spectators, and should spend those very days on
which such wicked deeds were done in general enjoyment, and keep holiday with festive
gaiety; while in the other, again, they should tear asunder the flesh of wretched animals,
some snatch one part, others another, as dogs and vultures do, should grind them with
their teeth, and give to their utterly insatiable maw, and that, surrounded by faces so
fierce and savage, those should bewail their lot whom the straits of poverty withheld from
such repasts; that their life should be happy and prosperous while such barbarous doings
defiled their mouths and face? Was it for this He sent souls, that, forgetting their
importance and dignity as divine, they should acquire gems, precious stones, pearls, at
the expense of their purity; should entwine their necks with these, pierce the tips of
their ears, bind their foreheads with fillets, seek for cosmetics to deck their bodies,
darken their eyes with henna; nor, though in the forms of men, blush to curl their hair
with crisping-pins, to make the skin of the body smooth, to walk with bare knees, and with
every other kind of wantonness, both to lay aside the strength of their manhood, and to
grow in effeminacy to a woman's habits and luxury?

42. Was it for this He sent souls, that some should infest the highways and roads, others
ensnare the unwary, forge false wills, prepare poisoned draughts; that they should break
open houses by night, tamper with slaves, steal and drive away, not act uprightly, and
betray their trust perfidiously; that they should strike out delicate dainties for the
palate; that in cooking fowls they should know how to catch the fat as it drips; that they
should make cracknels and sausages, force-meats, tit-bits, Lucanian sausages, with these a
sow's udder and iced puddings? Was it for this He sent souls, that beings of a sacred and
august race should here practise singing and piping; that they should swell out their
cheeks in blowing the flute; that they should take the lead in singing impure songs, and
raising the loud din of the castanets, by which another crowd of souls should be led in
their wantonness to abandon themselves to clumsy motions, to dance and sing, form rings of
dancers, and finally, raising their haunches and hips, float along with a tremulous motion
of the loins?

Was it for this He sent souls, that in men they should become impure, in women harlots,
players on the triangle and psaltery; that they should prostitute their bodies for hire,
should abandon themselves to the lust of all, ready in the brothels, to be met with in the
stews, ready to submit to anything, prepared to do violence to their mouth even? 43. What
say you, O offspring and descendants of the Supreme Deity? Did these souls, then, wise,
and sprung from the first causes, become acquainted with such forms of baseness, crime,
and bad feeling? and were they ordered to dwell here, and be clothed with the garment of
the human body, in order that they might engage in, might practise these evil deeds, and
that very frequently? And is there a man with any sense of reason who thinks that the
world was established because of them, and not rather that it was set up as a seat and
home, in which every kind of wickedness should be committed daily, all evil deeds be done,
plots, impostures, frauds, covetousness, robberies, violence, impiety, all that is
presumptuous, indecent, base, disgraceful, and all the other evil deeds which men devise
over all the earth with guilty purpose, and contrive for each other's ruin?

44. But, you say, they came of their own accord not sent by their lord. And where was the
Almighty Creator, where the authority of His royal and exalted place, to prevent their
departure, and not suffer them to fall into dangerous pleasures? For if He knew that by
change of place they would become base-and, as the arranger of all things, He must have
known-or that anything would reach them from without which would make them forget their
greatness and moral dignity,-a thousand times would I beg of Him to pardon my words,-the
cause of all is no other than Himself, since He allowed them to have freedom to wander who
He foresaw would not abide by their state of innocence; and thus it is brought about that
it does not matter whether they came of their own accord, or obeyed His command, since in
not preventing what should have been prevented, by His inaction He made the guilt His own,
and permitted it before it was done by neglecting to withhold them from action.

45. But let this monstrous and impious fancy be put far from us, that Almighty God, the
creator and framer, the author of things great and invisible, should be believed to have
begotten souls so fickle, with no seriousness, firmness, and steadiness, prone to vice,
inclining to all kinds of sins; and while He knew that they were such and of this
character, to have bid them enter into bodies, imprisoned in which, they should live
exposed to the storms and tempests of fortune every day, and now do mean things, now
submit to lewd treatment; that they might perish by shipwreck, accidents, destructive
conflagrations; that poverty might oppress some, beggary, others; that some might be torn
in pieces by wild beasts, others perish by the venom of flies; that some might limp in
walking, others lose their sight, others be stiff with cramped joints; in fine, that they
should be exposed to all the diseases which the wretched and pitiable human race endures
with agony caused by different sufferings; then that, forgetting that they have one
origin, one father and head, they should shake to their foundations and violate the rights
of kinship, should overthrow their cities, lay waste their lands as enemies, enslave the
free, do violence to maidens and to other men's wives, hate each other, envy the joys and
good fortune of others; and further, all malign, carp at, and tear each other to pieces
with fiercely biting teeth.

46. But, to say the same things again and again, let this belief, so monstrous and
impious, be put far from us, that. God, who preserves all things, the origin of the
virtues and chief in benevolence, and, to exalt Him with human praise, most wise, just,
making all things perfect, and that permanently, either made anything which was imperfect
and not quite correct, or was the cause of misery or danger to any being, or arranged,
commanded, and enjoined the very acts in which man's life is passed and employed to flow
from His arrangement. These things are unworthy of Him, and weaken the force of His
greatness; and so far from His being believed to be their author, whoever imagines that
man is sprung from Him is guilty of blasphemous impiety, man, a being miserable and
wretched, who is sorry that he exists, hates and laments his state, and understands that
he was produced for no other reason than lest evils should not have something through
which to spread themselves, and that there might always be wretched ones by whose agonies
some unseen and cruel power, adverse to men, should be gratified.

47. But, you say, if God is not the parent and father of souls, by what sire have they
been begotten, and how have they been produced? If you wish to hear unvarnished statements
not spun out with vain ostentation of words, we, too, admit that we are ignorant of this,
do not know it; and we hold that, to know so great a matter, is not only beyond the reach
of our weakness and frailty, but beyond that also of all the powers which are in the
world, and which have usurped the place of deities in men's belief. But are we bound to
show whose they are, because we deny that they are God's? That by no means follows
necessarily; for if we were to deny that flies, beetles, and bugs, dormice, weevils, and
moths, are made by the Almighty King, we should not be required in consequence to say who
made and formed them; for without incurring any censure, we may not know who, indeed, gave
them being, and yet assert that not by the Supreme Deity were creatures produced so
useless, so needless, so purposeless, nay more, at times even hurtful, and causing
unavoidable injuries.

48. Here, too, in like manner, when we deny that souls are the offspring of God Supreme,
it does not necessarily follow that we are bound to declare from what parent they have
sprung, and by what causes they have been produced. For who prevents us from being either
ignorant of the source from which they issued and came, or aware that they are not God's
descendants? By what method, you say, in what way? Because it is most true and certain
that, as has been pretty frequently said, nothing is effected, made, determined by the
Supreme, except that which it is right and fitting should be done; except that which is
complete and entire, and wholly perfect in its integrity. But further, we see that men,
that is, these very souls-for what are men but souls bound to bodies?-themselves show by
perversely falling into vice, times without number, that they belong to no patrician race,
but have sprung from insignificant families. For we see some harsh, vicious, presumptuous,
rash, reckless, blinded, false, dissemblers, liars, proud, overbearing, covetous, greedy,
lustful, fickle, weak, and unable to observe their own precepts; but they would assuredly
not be so, if their original goodness defended them, and they traced their honourable
descent from the head of the universe.

49. But, you will say, there are good men also in the world,-wise, upright, of faultless
and purest morals. We raise no question as to whether there ever were any such, in whom
this very integrity which is spoken of was in nothing imperfect. Even if they are very
honourable men, and have been worthy of praise, have reached the utmost height of
perfection, and their life has never wavered and sunk into sin, yet we would have you tell
us how many there are, or have been, that we may judge from their number whether a
comparison has been made which is just and evenly balanced. One, two, three, four, ten,
twenty, a hundred, yet are they at least limited in number, and it may be within the reach
of names. But it is fitting that the human race should be rated and weighed, not by a very
few good men, but by all the rest as well. For the part is in the whole, not the whole in
a part; and that which is the whole should draw to it its parts, not the whole be brought
to its parts. For what if you were to say that a man, robbed of the use of all his limbs,
and shrieking in bitter agony, was quite well, because in one little nail he suffered no
pain?

or that the earth is made of gold, because in one hillock there are a few small grains
from which, when dissolved, gold is produced, and wonder excited at it when formed into a
lump? The whole mass shows the nature of an element, not particles fine as air; nor does
the sea become forthwith sweet, if you cast or throw into it a few drops of less bitter
water, for that small quantity is swallowed up in its immense mass; and it must be
esteemed, not merely of little importance, but even of none, because, being scattered
throughout all, it is lost and cut off in the immensity of the vast body of water. 50. You
say that there are good men in the human race; and perhaps, if we compare them with the
very wicked, we may be led to believe that there are. Who are they, pray? Tell us. The
philosophers, I suppose, who assert that they alone are most wise, and who have been
uplifted with pride from the meaning attached to this name, -those, forsooth, who are
striving with their passions every day, and struggling to drive out, to expel deeply-
rooted passions from their minds by the persistent opposition of their better qualities;
who, that it may be impossible for them to be led into wickedness at the suggestion of
some opportunity, shun riches and inheritances, that they may remove from themselves
occasions of stumbling; but in doing this, and being solicitous about it, they show very
clearly that their souls are, through their weakness, ready and prone to fall into vice.
In our opinion, however, that which is good naturally, does not require to be either
corrected or i reproved; nay more, it should not know what evil is, if the nature of each
kind would abide in its own integrity, for neither can two contraries be implanted in each
other, nor can equality be contained in inequality, nor sweetness in bitterness. He, then,
who struggles to amend the inborn depravity of his inclinations, shows most clearly that
he is imperfect, blameable, although he may strive with all zeal and stedfastness.

51. But you laugh at our reply, because, while we deny that souls are of royal descent, we
do not, on the other hand, say in turn from what causes and beginnings they have sprung.
But what kind of crime is it either to be ignorant of anything, or to confess quite openly
that you do not know that of which you are ignorant? or whether does he rather seem to you
most deserving of ridicule who assumes to himself no knowledge of some dark subject; or he
who thinks that he knows most clearly that which transcends human knowledge, and which has
been involved in dark obscurity? If the nature of everything were thoroughly considered,
you too are in a position like that which you censure in our case. For you do not say
anything which has been ascertained and set most clearly in the light of truth, because
you say that souls descend from the Supreme Ruler Himself, and enter into the forms of
men. For you conjecture, do not perceives this; surmise, do not actually know it; for if
to know is to retain in the mind that which you have yourself seen or known, not one of
those things which you affirm can you say that you have ever seen-that is, that souls
descend from the abodes and regions above. You are therefore making use of conjecture, not
trusting clear information. But what is conjecture, except a doubtful imagining of things,
and directing of the mind upon nothing accessible? He, then, who conjectures, does not
comprehend, nor does he walk in the light of knowledge. But if this is true and certain in
the opinion of proper and very wise judges, your conjectures, too, in which you trust,
must be regarded as showing your ignorance.

52. And yet, lest you should suppose that none but yourselves can make use of conjectures
and surmises, we too are able to bring them forward as well, as your question is
appropriate to either side. Whence, you say, are men; and what or whence are the souls of
these men? Whence, we will ask, are elephants, bulls, stags, mules, asses? Whence lions,
horses, dogs, wolves, panthers; and what or whence are the souls of these creatures? For
it is not credible that from that Platonic cup, which Timaeus prepares and mixes, either
their souls came, or that the locust, mouse, shrew, cockroach, frog, centipede, should be
believed to have been quickened and to live, because they have a cause and origin of birth
in the elements themselves, if there are in these secret and very little known means for
producing the creatures which live in each of them. For we see that some of the wise say
that the earth is mother of men, that others join with it water, that others add to these
breath of air, but that some say that the sun is their framer, and that, having been
quickened by his rays, they are filled with the stir of life. What if it is not these, and
is something else another cause another method, another power, in fine, unheard of and
unknown to us by name, which may have fashioned the human race, and connected it with
things as established;

may it not be that men sprang up in this way, and that the cause of their birth does not
go back to the Supreme God? For what reason do we suppose that the great Plato had-a man
reverent and scrupulous in his wisdom-when he withdrew the fashioning of man from the
highest God, and transferred it to some lesser deities. and when he would not have the
souls of men formed of that pure mixture of which he had made the soul of the universe,
except that he thought the forming of man unworthy of God, and the fashioning of a feeble
being not beseeming His greatness and excellence? 53. Since this, then, is the case, we do
nothing out of place or foolish in believing that the souls of men are of a neutral
character, inasmuch as they have been produced by secondary beings, made subject to the
law of death, and are of little strength, and that perishable; and that they are gifted
with immortality, if they rest their hope of so great a gift on God Supreme, who alone has
power to grant such blessings, by putting away corruption. But this, you say, we are
stupid in believing. What is that to you? In so believing, we act most absurdly, sillily.
In what do we injure you, or what wrong do we do or inflict upon you, if we trust that
Almighty God will take care of us when we leave our bodies, and from the jaws of hell, as
is said, deliver us?

54. Can, then, anything be made, some one will say, without God's will? We must consider
carefully, and examine with no little pains, test, while we think that we are honouring
God by such a question, we fall into the opposite sin, doing despite to His supreme
majesty. In what way, on what ground? Because, if all things are brought about by His
will, and nothing in the world can either succeed or fail contrary to His pleasure, it
follows of necessity that it should be understood that all evils, too, arise by His will.
But if, on the contrary, we chose to say that He is privy to and produces no evil, not
referring to Him the causes of very wicked deeds, the worst things will begin to seem to
be done either against His will, or, a monstrous thing to say, while He knows it not, but
is ignorant and unaware of them. But, again, if we choose to say that there are no evils,
as we find some have believed and held, all races will cry out against us and all nations
together, showing us their sufferings, and the various kinds of dangers with which the
human race is every moment distressed and afflicted. Then they will ask of us, Why, if
there are no evils, do you refrain from certain deeds and actions? Why do you not do all
that eager lust has required or demanded? Why, finally, do you establish punishments by
terrible laws for the guilty? For what more monstrous act of folly can be found than to
assert that there are no evils, and at the same time to kill and condemn the erring as
though they were evil?

55. But when, overcome, we agree that there are these things, and expressly allow that all
human affairs are full of them, they will next ask, Why, then, the Almighty God does not
take away these evils, but suffers them to exist and to go on without ceasing through all
the ages? If we have learned of God the Supreme Ruler, and have resolved not to wander in
a maze of impious and mad conjectures, we must answer that we do not know these things,
and have never sought and striven to know things which could be grasped by no powers which
we have, and that we, even thinking it preferable, rather remain in ignorance and want of
knowledge than say that without God nothing is made, so that it should be understood that
by His will He is at once both the source of evil and the occasion of countless miseries.
Whence then, you will say, are all these evils? From the elements, say the wise, and from
their dissimilarity; but how it is possible that things which have not feeling and
judgment should be held to be wicked or criminal; or that he should not rather be wicked
and criminal, who, to bring about some result, took what was afterwards to become very bad
and hurtful, -is for them to consider, who make the assertion. What, then, do we say?
whence?

There is no necessity that we should answer, for whether we are able to say whence evil
springs, or our power fails us, and we are unable, in either case it is a small matter in
our opinion; nor do we hold it of much importance either to know or to be ignorant of it,
being content to have laid down but one thing,-that nothing proceeds from God Supreme
which is hurtful and pernicious. This we are assured of, this we know, on this one truth
of knowledge and science we take our stand,-that nothing is made by Him except that which
is for the well-being of all, which is agreeable, which is very full of love and joy and
gladness, which has unbounded and imperishable pleasures, which every one may ask in all
his prayers to befall him, and think that otherwise life is pernicious and fatal. 56. As
for all the other things which are usually dwelt upon in inquiries and discussions-from
what parents they have sprung, or by whom they are produced-we neither strive to know, nor
care to inquire or examine: we leave all things to their own causes, and do not consider
that they have been connected and associated with that which we desire should befall us.
For what is there which men of ability do not dare to overthrow, to destroy, from love of
contradiction, although that which they attempt to invalidate is unobjectionable and
manifest, and evidently bears the stamp of truth? Or what, again, can they not maintain
with plausible arguments, although it may be very manifestly untrue, although it may be a
plain and evident falsehood? For when a man has persuaded himself that there is or is not
something, he likes to affirm what he thinks, and to show greater subtlety than others,
especially if the subject discussed is out of the ordinary track, and by nature abstruse
and obscure. Some of the wise think that the world was not created, and will never perish;
some that it is immortal, although they say that it was created and made; while a third
party have chosen to say that it both was created and made, and will perish as other
things must. And while of these three opinions one only must be true, they nevertheless
all find arguments by which at once to uphold their own doctrines, and undermine and
overthrow the dogmas of others.

Some teach and declare that this same world is composed of four elements, others of two, a
third party of one; some say that it is composed of none of these, and that atoms are that
from which it is formed, and its primary origin. And since of these opinions only one is
true, but not one of them certain, here too, in like manner, arguments present themselves
to all with which they may both establish the truth of what they say, and show that there
are some things false in the others' opinions. So, too, some utterly deny the existence of
the gods; others say that they are lost in doubt as to whether they exist anywhere;
others, however, say that they do exist, but do not trouble themselves about human things;
nay others maintain that they both take part in the affairs of men, and guide the course
of earthly events.

57. While, then, this is the case, and it cannot but be that only one of all these
opinions is true, they all nevertheless make use of arguments in striving with each
other,-and not one of them is without something plausible to say, whether in affirming his
own views, or objecting to the opinions of others. In exactly the same way is the
condition of souls discussed. For I this one thinks that they both are immortal, and
survive the end of our earthly life; that one believes that they do not survive, but
perish with the bodies themselves: the opinion of another, however, is that they suffer
nothing immediately, but that, after the form of man has been laid aside, they are allowed
to live a little longer, and then come under the power of death. And while all these
opinions cannot be alike true, yet all who hold them so support their case by strong and
very weighty arguments, that you cannot find out anything which seems false to you,
although on every side you see that things are being said altogether at variance with each
other, and inconsistent from their opposition to each other; which assuredly would not
happen, if man s curiosity could reach any certainty, or if that which seemed to one to
have been really discovered, was attested by the approval of all the others. It is
therefore wholly vain, a useless task, to bring forward something as though you knew it,
or to wish to assert that you know that which, although it should be true, you see can be
refuted; or to receive that as true which it may be is not, and is brought forward as if
by men raving. And it is rightly so, for we do not weigh and guess at divine things by
divine, but by human methods; and just as we think that anything should have been made, so
we assert that it must be.

58. What, then, are we alone ignorant? do we alone not know who is the creator, who the
former of souls, what cause fashioned man, whence ills have broken forth, or why the
Supreme Ruler allows them both to exist and be perpetrated, and does not drive them from
the world? have you, indeed, ascertained and learned any of these things with certainty?
If you chose to lay aside audacious conjectures, can you unfold and disclose whether this
world m which we dwell was created or founded at some time? if it was founded and made, by
what kind of work, pray, or for what purpose? Can you bring forward and disclose the
reason why it does not remain fixed and immoveable, but is ever being carried round in a
circular motion? whether it revolves of its own will and choice, or is turned by the
influence of some power? what the place, too, and space is in which it is set and
revolves, boundless, bounded, hollow, or solid? whether it is supported by an axis resting
on sockets at its extremities, or rather itself sustains by its own power, and by the
spirit within it upholds itself? Can you, if asked, make it clear, and show most
skilfully, what opens out the snow into feathery flakes? what was the reason and cause
that day did not, in dawning, arise in the west, and veil its light in the east? how the
sun, too, by one and the same influence, produces results so different, nay, even so
opposite? what the moon is, what the stars? why, on the one hand, it does not remain of
the same shape, or why it was right and necessary that these particles of fire should be
set all over the world? why some of them are small, others large and greater,-these have a
dim light, those a more vivid and shining brightness?

59. If that which it has pleased us to know is within reach, and if such knowledge is open
to all, declare to us, and say how and by what means showers of rain are produced, so that
water is held suspended in the regions above and in mid-air, although by nature it is apt
to glide away, and so ready to flow and run downwards. Explain, I say, and tell what it is
which sends the hail whirling through the air, which makes the rain fall drop by drop,
which has spread out rain and feathery flakes of snow and sheets of lightning; whence the
wind rises, and what it is; why the changes of the seasons were established, when it might
have been ordained that there should be only one, and one kind of climate, so that there
should be nothing wanting to the world's completeness. What is the cause, what the reason,
that the waters of the sea are salt; or that, of those on land, some are sweet, others
bitter or cold? From what kind of material have the inner parts of men's bodies been
formed and built up into firmness? From what have their bones been made solid? what made
the intestines and veins shaped like pipes, and easily passed through? Why, when it would
be better to give us light by several eyes, to guard against the risk of blindness, are we
restricted to two?

For what purpose have so infinite and innumerable kinds of monsters and serpents been I
either formed or brought forth? what purpose do owls serve in the world,-falcons, hawks?
what other birds and winged creatures? what the different kinds of ants and worms
springing up to be a bane and pest in various ways? what fleas, obtrusive flies, spiders,
shrew, and other mice, leeches, water-spinners? what thorns, briers, wild-oats, tares?
what the seeds of herbs or shrubs, either sweet to the nostrils, or disagreeable in smell?
Nay more, if you think that anything can be known or comprehended, say what wheat
is,-spelt, barley, millet, the chick-pea, bean, lentil, melon, cumin, scallion, leek,
onion? For even if they are useful to you, and are ranked among the different kinds of
food, it is not alight or easy thing to know what each is,-why they have been formed with
such shapes; whether there was any necessity that they should not have had other tastes,
smells, and colours than those which each has, or whether they could have taken others
also; further, what these very things are,-taste, I mean, and the rest; and from what
relations they derive their differences of quality. From the elements, you say, and from
the first beginnings of things. Are the elements, then, bitter or sweet? have they any
odour or stench, that we should believe that, from their uniting, qualities were implanted
in their products by which sweetness is produced, or something prepared offensive to the
senses?

60. Seeing, then, that the origin, the cause, the reason of so many and so important
things, escapes you yourselves also, and that you can neither say nor explain what has
been made, nor why and wherefore it should not have been otherwise, do you assail and
attack our timidity, who confess that we do not know that which cannot be known, and who
do not care to seek out and inquire into those things which it is quite clear cannot be
understood, although human conjecture should extend and spread itself through a thousand
hearts? And therefore Christ the divine,-although you are unwilling to allow it,-Christ
the divine, I repeat, for this must be said often, that the ears of unbelievers may burst
and be rent asunder, speaking in the form of man by command of the Supreme God, because He
knew that men are naturally blind, and cannot grasp the truth at all, or regard as sure
and certain what they might have persuaded themselves as to things set before their eyes,
and do not hesitate, for the sake of their conjectures, to raise and bring up questions
that cause much strife,-bade us abandon and disregard all these things of which you speak,
and not waste our thoughts upon things which have been removed far from our knowledge,
but, as much as possible, seek the Lord of the universe with the whole mind and spirit; be
raised above these subjects, and give over to Him our hearts, as yet hesitating whither to
turn; be ever mindful of Him;

and although no imagination can set Him forth as He is, yet form some faint conception of
Him. For Christ said that, of all who are comprehended in the vague notion of what is
sacred and divine, He alone is beyond the reach of doubt, alone true, and one about whom
only a raving and reckless madman can be in doubt; to know whom is enough, although you
have learned nothing besides; and if by knowledge you have indeed been related to God, the
head of the world, you have gained the true and most important knowledge. 61. What
business of yours is it, He says, to examine, to inquire who made man; what is the origin
of souls; who devised the causes of ills; whether the sun is larger than the earth, or
measures only a foot in breadth: whether the moon shines with borrowed light, or from her
own brightness,-things which there is neither profit in knowing, nor loss in not knowing?
Leave these things to God, and allow Him to know what is, wherefore, or whence; whether it
must have been or not; whether something always existed, or whether it was produced at the
first; whether it should be annihilated or preserved, consumed, destroyed, or restored in
fresh vigour. Your reason is not permitted to involve you in such questions, and to be
busied to no purpose about things so much out of reach. Your interests are in
jeopardy,-the salvation, I mean, of your souls; and unless you give yourselves to seek to
know the Supreme God, a cruel death awaits you when freed from the bonds of body, not
bringing sudden annihilation, but destroying by the bitterness of its grievous and long-
protracted punishment.

62. And be not deceived or deluded with vain hopes by that which is said by some ignorant
and most presumptuous pretenders, that they are born of God, and are not subject to the
decrees of fate; that His palace lies open to them if they lead a life of temperance, and
that after death as men, they are restored without hindrance, as if to their father's
abode; nor by that which the Magi assert, that they have intercessory prayers, won over by
which some powers make the way easy to those who are striving to mount to heaven; nor by
that which Etruria holds out in the Acherontic books, that souls become divine, and are
freed from the law of death, if the blood of certain animals is offered to certain
deities. These are empty delusions, and excite vain desires. None but the Almighty God can
preserve souls; nor is there any one besides who can give them length of days, and grant
to them also a spirit which shall never die, except He who alone is immortal and
everlasting, and restricted by no limit of time. For since all the gods, whether those who
are real, or those who are merely said to be from hearsay and conjecture, are immortal and
everlasting by His good-will and free gift, how can it be that others are able to give
that which they themselves have, while they have it as the gift of another, bestowed by a
greater power? Let Etruria sacrifice what victims it may, let the wise deny themselves all
the pleasures of life, let the Magi soften and soothe all lesser powers, yet, unless souls
have received from the Lord of all things that which reason demands, and does so by His
command, it will hereafter deeply repent having made itself a laughing-stock, when it
begins to feel the approach of death.

63. But if, my opponents say, Christ was sent by God for this end, that He might deliver
unhappy souls from ruin and destruction, of what crime were former ages guilty which were
cut off in their mortal state before He came? Can you, then, know what has become of these
souls of men who lived long ago? whether they, too, have not been aided, provided, and
cared for in some way? Can you, I say, know that which could have been learned through
Christ's teaching; whether the ages are unlimited in number or not since the human race
began to be on the earth; when souls were first bound to bodies; who contrived that
binding, nay, rather, who formed man himself; whither the souls of men who lived before us
have gone; in what parts or regions of the world they were; whether they were corruptible
or not; whether they could have encountered the danger of death, if Christ had not come
forward as their preserver at their time of need? Lay aside these cares, and abandon
questions to which you can find no answer. The Lord's compassion has been shown to them,
too, and the divine kindness has been extended to all alike; they have been preserved,
have been delivered, and have laid aside the lot and. condition of mortality. Of what
kind, my opponents ask, what, when? If you were free from presumption, arrogance, and
conceit, you might have learned long ago from this teacher.

64. But, my opponents ask, if Christ came as the Saviour of men, as you say, why does He
not, with uniform benevolence, free all without exception? I reply, does not He free all
alike who invites all alike? or does He thrust back or repel any one from the kindness of
the Supreme who gives to all alike the power of coming to Him,-to men of high rank, to the
meanest slaves, to women, to boys? To all, He says, the fountain of life is open, and no
one is hindered or kept back from drinking. If you are so fastidious as to spurn the
kindly offered gift, nay, more, if your wisdom is so great that you term those things
which are offered by Christ ridiculous and absurd, why should He keep on inviting you,
while His only duty is to make the enjoyment of His bounty depend upon your own free
choice? God, Plato says, does not cause any one to choose his lot in life; nor can
another's choice be rightly attributed to any one, since freedom of choice was put in His
power who made it. Must you be even implored to deign to accept the gift of salvation from
God; and must God's gracious mercy be poured into your bosom while you reject it with
disdain, and flee very far from it? Do you choose to take what is offered, and turn it to
your own advantage? You will in that case have consulted your own interests. Do you reject
with disdain, lightly esteem, and despise it? You will in this case have robbed yourself
of the benefit of the gift. God compels no one, terrifies no one with overpowering fear.
For our salvation is not necessary to Him, so that He would gain anything or suffer any
loss, if He either made us divine, or allowed us to be annihilated and destroyed by
corruption.

65. Nay, my opponent says, if God is powerful, merciful, willing to save us, let Him
change our dispositions, and compel us to trust in His promises. This, then, is violence,
not kindness nor the bounty of the Supreme God, but a childish and vain strife in seeking
to get the mastery. For what is so unjust as to force men who are reluctant and unwilling,
to reverse their inclinations; to impress forcibly on their minds what they are unwilling
to receive, and shrink from; to injure before benefiting, and to bring to another way of
thinking and feeling, by taking away the former? You who wish yourself to be changed, and
to suffer violence, that you may do and may be compelled to take to yourself that which
you do not wish, why do you refuse of your own accord to select that which you wish to do,
when changed and transformed? I am unwilling, He says, and have no wish. What, then, do
you blame God as though He failed you? do you wish Him to bring you help, whose gifts and
bounties you not only reject and shun, but term empty words, and assail with jocose
witticisms? Unless, then, my opponent says, I shall be a Christian, I cannot hope for
salvation. It is just as you yourself say.

For, to bring salvation and impart to souls what should be bestowed and must be added,
Christ alone has had given into His charge and entrusted to Him by God the Father, the
remote and more secret causes being so disposed. For, as with you, certain gods have fixed
offices, privileges, powers, and you do not ask from any of them what is not in his power
and permitted to him, so it is the right of Christ alone to give salvation to souls, and
assign them everlasting life. For if you believe that father Bacchus can give a good
vintage, but cannot give relief from sickness; if you believe that Ceres can give good
crops, Aesculapius health, Neptune one thing, Juno another, that Fortune, Mercury, Vulcan,
are each the giver of a fixed and particular thing,-this, too, you must needs receive from
us, that souls can receive from no one life and salvation, except from Him to whom the
Supreme Ruler gave this charge and duty. The Almighty Master of the world has determined
that this should be the way of salvation,-this the door, so to say, of life; by Him alone
is there access to the light: nor may men either creep in or enter elsewhere, all other
ways being shut up and secured by an impenetrable barrier.

66. So, then, even if you are pure, and have been cleansed from every stain of vice, have
won over and charmed those powers not to shut the ways against you and bar your passage
when returning to heaven, by no efforts will you be able to reach the prize of
immortality, unless by Christ's gift you have perceived what constitutes this very
immortality, and have been allowed to enter on the true life. For as to that with which
you have been in the habit of taunting us, that our religion is new, and arose a few days
ago, almost, and that you could not abandon the ancient faith which you had inherited from
your fathers, and pass over to barbarous and foreign rites, this is urged wholly without
reason. For what if in this way we chose to blame the preceding, even the most ancient
ages, because when they discovered how to raise crops, they despised acorns, and rejected
with scorn the wild strawberry; because they ceased to be covered with the bark of trees
and clad in the hides of wild beasts, after that garments of cloth were devised, more
useful and convenient in wearing; or because, when houses were built, and more comfortable
dwellings erected, they did not cling to their ancient huts, and did not prefer to remain
nuder rocks and caves like the beasts of the field? It is a disposition possessed by all,
and impressed on us almost from our cradles even, to prefer good things to bad, useful to
useless things, and to pursue and seek that with more pleasure which has been generally
regarded as more than usually precious, and to set on that our hopes for prosperity and
favourable circumstances.

67. Therefore, when you urge against us that we turn away from the religion of past ages,
it is fitting that you should examine why it is done, not what is crone, and not set
before you what we have left, but observe especially what we have followed. For if it is a
fault or crime to change an opinion, and pass from ancient customs to new conditions and
desires, this accusation holds against you too, who have so often changed your habits and
mode of life, who have gone over to other customs and ceremonies, so that you are
condemned by past ages as well as we. Do you indeed have the people distributed into five
classes, as your ancestors once had? Do you ever elect magistrates by vote of the people?
Do you know what military, urban, and common comitia are? Do you watch the sky, or put an
end to public business because evil omens are announced? When you are preparing for war,
do you hang out a flag from the citadel, or practise the forms of the Fetiales, solemnly
demanding the return of what has been carried off? or, when encountering the dangers of
war, do you begin to hope also, because of favourable omens from the points of the spears?
In entering on office, do you still observe the laws fixing the proper times? with regard
to gifts and presents to advocates, do you observe the Cincian and the sumptuary laws in
restricting your expenses? Do you maintain fires, ever burning, in gloomy sanctuaries?

Do you consecrate tables by putting on them salt-cellars and images of the gods? When you
marry, do you spread the couch with a toga, and invoke the genii of husbands? do you
arrange the hair of brides with the hasta caelibaris? do you bear the maidens' garments to
the temple of Fortuna Virginalis? Do your matrons work in the halls of your houses,
showing their industry openly do they refrain from drinking wine? are their friends and
relations allowed to kiss them, in order to show that they are sober and temperate? 68. On
the Alban hill, it was not allowed in ancient times to sacrifice any but snow-white bulls:
have you not changed that custom and religious observance, and has it not been enacted by
decree of the senate, that reddish ones may be offered? While during the reigns of Romulus
and Pompilius the inner parts, having been quite thoroughly cooked and softened, were
burnt up in sacrificing to the gods, did you not begin, under king Tullius, to hold them
out half-raw and slightly warm, paying no regard to the former usage? While before the
arrival of Hercules in Italy supplication was made to father Dis and Saturn with the heads
of men by Apollo's advice; have you not, in like manner, changed this custom too, by means
of cunning deceit and ambiguous names? Since, then, yourselves also have followed at one
time these customs, at another different laws, and have repudiated and rejected many
things on either perceiving your mistakes or seeing something better, what have we done
contrary to common sense and the discretion all men have, if we have chosen what is
greater and more certain, and have not suffered ourselves to be held back by unreasoning
respect for impostures?

69. But our name is new, we are told, and the religion which we follow arose but a few
days ago. Granting for the present that what you urge against us is not untrue, what is
there, I would ask, among the affairs of men that is either done by bodily exertion and
manual labour, or attained by the mind's learning and knowledge, which did not begin at
some time, and pass into general use and practice since then? Medicine, philosophy, music,
and all the other arts by which social life has been built up and refined,-were these born
with men, and did they not rather begin to be pursued, understood, and practised lately,
nay, rather, but a short time since? Before the Etruscan Tages saw the light, did any one
know or trouble himself to know and learn what meaning there was in the fall of
thunderbolts, or in the veins of the victims sacrificed? When did the motion of the stars
or the art of calculating nativities begin to be known? Was it not after Theutis the
Egyptian; or after Atlas, as some say, the bearer, supporter, stay, and prop of the skies?

70. But why do I speak of these trivial things? The immortal gods themselves, whose
temples you now enter with reverence, whose deity you suppliantly adore, did they not at
certain times, as is handed down by your writings and traditions, begin to be, to be known
and to be invoked by names and titles which were given to them? For if it is true that
Jupiter with his brothers was born of Saturn and his wife, before Ops was married and bore
children Jupiter had not existed both the Supreme and the Stygian, no, nor the lord of the
sea, nor Juno, nay more, no one inhabited the heavenly seats except the two parents; but
from their union the other gods were conceived and born, and breathed the breath of life.
So, then, at a certain time the god Jupiter began to be, at a certain time to merit
worship and sacrifices, at a certain time to be set above his brothers in power. But,
again, if Liber, Venus, Diana, Mercury, Apollo, Hercules, the Muses, the Tyndarian
brothers, and Vulcan the lord of fire, were begotten by father Jupiter, and born of a
parent sprung from Saturn, before that Memory, Alcmena, Maia, Juno, Latona, Leda, Dione,
and Semele also bore children to Diespiter; these deities, too, were nowhere in the world,
nor in any part of the universe, but by Jupiter's embraces they were begotten and born,
and began to have some sense of their own existence.

So then, these, too, began to be at a certain time, and to be summoned among the gods to
the sacred rites. This we say, in like manner, of Minerva. For if, as you assert, she
burst forth from Jupiter's head ungenerated, before Jupiter was begotten, and received in
his mother's womb the shape and outline of his body, it is quite certain that Minerva did
not exist, and was not reckoned among things or as existing at all; but from Jove's head
she was born, and began to have a real existence. She therefore has an origin at the
first, and began to be called a goddess at a certain time, to be set up in temples, and to
be consecrated by the inviolable obligations of religion. Now as this is the case, when
you talk of the novelty of our religion, does your own not come into your thoughts, and do
you not take care to examine when your gods sprung up,-what origins, what causes they
have, or from what stocks they have burst forth and sprung? But how shameful how shameless
it is to censure that in another which you see that you do yourself,-to take occasion to
revile and accuse others for things which can be retorted upon you in turn!

71. But our rites are new; yours are ancient, and of excessive antiquity, we are told. And
what help does that give you, or how does it damage our cause and argument? The belief
which we hold is new; some day even it, too, will become old: yours is old; but when it
arose, it was new and unheard of. The credibility of a religion, however, must not be
determined by its age, but by its divinity; and you should consider not when, but what you
began to worship. Four hundred years ago, my opponent says, your religion did not exist.
And two thousand years ago, I reply, your gods did not exist. By what reckoning, you ask,
or by what calculations, can that be inferred? They are not difficult, not intricate, but
can be seen by any one who will take them in hand even, as the saying is. Who begot
Jupiter and his brothers? Saturn with Ops, as you relate, sprung from Coelus and Hecate.
Who begot Picus, the father of Faunus and grandfather of Latinus? Saturn, as you again
hand down by your books and teachers? Therefore, if this is the case, Picus and Jupiter
are in consequence united by the bond of kinship, inasmuch as they are sprung from one
stock and race. It is clear, then, that what we say is true. How many steps are there in
coming down from Jupiter and Picus to Latinus? Three, as the line of succession shows.

Will you suppose Faunus, Latinus, and Picus to have each lived a hundred and twenty years,
for beyond this it is that man's life cannot be prolonged? The estimation is well grounded
and clear. There are, then, three hundred and sixty years garter these? It is just as the
calculation shows. Whose father-in-law was Latinus? Aeneas'. Whose father was he? He was
father of the founder of the town Alba. How many years did kings reign in Alba? Four
hundred and twenty almost. Of what age is the city Rome shown to be in the annals? It
reckons ten hundred and fifty years, or not much less. So, then, from Jupiter, who is the
brother of Picus and father of the other and lesser gods, down to the present time, there
are nearly, or to add a little to the time, altogether, two thousand years. Now since this
cannot be contradicted, not only is the religion to which you adhere shown to have sprung
up lately; but it is also shown that the gods themselves, to whom you heap up bulls and
other victims at the risk of bringing on disease, are young and little children, who
should still be fed with their mothers' milk.

72. But your religion precedes ours by many years, and is therefore, you say, truer,
because it has been supported by the authority of antiquity. And of what avail is it that
it should precede ours as many years as you please, since it began at a certain time? or
what are two thousand years, compared with so many thousands of ages? And yet, lest we
should seem to betray our cause by so long neglect, say, if it does not annoy you, does
the Almighty and Supreme God seem to you to be something new; and do those who adore and
worship Him seem to you to support and introduce an unheard-of, unknown, and upstart
religion? Is there anything older than Him? or can anything be found preceding Him in
being, time, name? Is not He alone uncreated, immortal, and everlasting? Who is the head
and fountain of things? is not He? To whom does eternity owe its name? is it not to Him?
Is it not because He is everlasting, that the ages go on without end? This is beyond
doubt, and true: the religion which we follow is not new, then, but we have been late in
learning what we should follow and revere, or where we should both fix our hope of
salvation, and employ the aid given to save us. For He had not yet shone forth who was to
point out the way to those wandering from it, and give the light of knowledge to those who
were lying in the deepest darkness, and dispel the blindness of their ignorance.

73. But are we alone in this position? What! have you not introduced into the number of
your gods the Egyptian deities named Serapis and Isis, since the consulship of Piso and
Gabinius? What! did you not begin both to know and be acquainted with, and to worship with
remarkable honours, the Phrygian mother-who, it is said, was first set up as a goddess by
Midas or Dardanus-when Hannibal, the Carthaginian, was plundering Italy and aiming at the
empire of the world? Are not the sacred rites of mother Ceres, which were adopted but a
little while ago, called Graeca because they were unknown to you, their name bearing
witness to their novelty? Is it not said in the writings of the learned, that the rituals
of Numa Pompilius do not contain the name of Apollo? Now it is clear and manifest from
this, that he, too, was unknown to you. but that at some time afterwards he began to be
known also. If any one, therefore, should ask yon why you have so lately begun to worship
those deities whom we mentioned just now, it is certain that you will reply, either
because we were C lately not aware that they were gods, or because we have now been warned
by the seers, or because, in very trying circumstances, we have been preserved by their
favour and help. But if you think that this is well said by you, you must consider that,
on our part, a similar reply has been made. Our religion has sprung up just now; for now
He has arrived who was sent to declare it to us, to bring us to its truth; to show what
God is; to summon us from mere conjectures, to His worship.

74. And why, my, opponent says, did God, the Ruler and Lord of the universe, determine
that a Saviour, Christ, should be sent to you from the heights of heaven a few hours ago,
as it is said? We ask you too, on the other hand, what cause, what reason is there that
the seasons sometimes do not recur at their own months, but that winter, summer, and
autumn come too late? why, after the crops have been dried up and the corn has perished,
showers sometimes fall which should have dropped on them while yet uninjured, and made
provision for the wants of the time? Nay, this we rather ask, why, if it were fitting that
Hercules should be born, Aesculapius, Mercury, Liber, and some others, that they might be
both added to the assemblies of the gods, and might do men some service,-why they were
produced so late by Jupiter, that only later ages should know them, while the past ages of
those who went before knew them not? You will say that there was some reason. There was
then some reason here also that the Saviour of our race came not lately, but to-day. What,
then, you ask, is the reason? We do not deny that we do not know. For it is not within the
power of any one to see the mind of God, or the way in which He has arranged His plans.
Man, a blind creature, and not knowing himself even, can in no way learn what should
happen, when, or what its nature is: the Father Himself, the Governor and Lord of all,
alone knows. Nor, if I have been unable to disclose to you the causes why something is
done in this way or that, does it straightway follow, that what has been done becomes not
done, and that a thing becomes incredible, which has been shown to be beyond doubt by such
virtues and powers.

75. You may object and rejoin, Why was the Saviour sent forth so late? In unbounded,
eternal ages, we reply, nothing whatever should be spoken of as late. For where there is
no end and no beginning, nothing is too soon, nothing too late. For time is perceived from
its beginnings and endings, which an unbroken line and endless succession of ages cannot
have. For what if the things themselves to which it was necessary to bring help, required
that as a fitting time? For what if the condition of antiquity was different from that of
later times? What if it was necessary to give help to the men of old in one way, to
provide for their descendants in another? Do ye not hear your own writings read, telling
that there were once men who were demi-gods, heroes with immense and huge bodies? Do you
not read that infants on their mothers' breasts shrieked like. Stentors, whose bones, when
dug up in different parts of the earth, have made the discoverers almost doubt that they
were the remains of human limbs? So, then, it may be that Almighty God, the only God, sent
forth Christ then indeed, after that the human race, becoming feebler, weaker, began to be
such as we are. If that which has been done now could have been done thousands of years
ago, the Supreme Ruler would have done it; or if it had been proper, that what has been
done now should be accomplished as many thousands after this, nothing compelled God to
anticipate the necessary lapse of time. His plans are executed in fixed ways; and that
which has been once decided on, can in no wise be changed again.

76. Inasmuch then, you say, as you serve the Almighty God, and trust that He cares for
your safety and salvation, why does He suffer you to be exposed to such storms of
persecution, and to undergo all kinds of punishments and tortures? Let us, too, ask in
reply, why, seeing that you worship so great and so innumerable gods, and build temples to
them, fashion images of gold, sacrifice herds of animals, and all heap up boxfuls of
incense on the already loaded altars, why you live subject to so many dangers and storms
of calamity, with which many fatal misfortunes vex you every day? Why, I say, do your gods
neglect to avert from you so many kinds of disease and sickness, shipwrecks, downfalls,
conflagrations, pestilences, barrenness, loss of children, and confiscation of goods,
discords, wars, enmities, captures of cities, and the slavery of those who are robbed of
their rights of free birth? But, my opponent says, in such mischances we, too, are in no
wise helped by God. The cause is plain and manifest. For no hope has been held out to us
with respect to this life, nor has any help been promised or aid decreed us for what
belongs to the husk of this flesh,-nay, more, we have been taught to esteem and value
lightly all the threats of fortune, whatever they be; and if ever any very grievous
calamity has assailed us, to count as pleasant in that misfortune the end which must
follow, and not to fear or flee from it, that we may be the more easily released from the
bonds of the body, and escape from our darkness and blindness.

77. Therefore that bitterness of persecution of which you speak is our deliverance and not
persecution, and our ill-treatment will not bring evil upon us, but will lead us to the
light of liberty. As if some senseless and stupid fellow were to think that he never
punished a man who had been put into prison with severity and cruelty, unless he were to
rage against the very prison, break its stones in pieces, and burn its roof, its wall, its
doors; and strip, overthrow, and dash to the ground its other parts, not knowing that thus
he was giving light to him whom he seemed to be injuring, and was taking from him the
accursed darkness: in like manner, you too, by the flames, banishments, tortures, and
monsters with which you tear in pieces and rend asunder our bodies, do not rob us of life,
but relieve us of our skins, not knowing that, as far as you assault and seek to rage
against these our shadows and forms, so far you free us from pressing and heavy chains,
and cutting our bonds, make us fly up to the light.

78. Wherefore, O men, refrain from obstructing what you hope for by vain questions; nor
should you, if anything is otherwise than you think, trust your own opinions rather than
that which should be reverenced. The times, full of dangers, urge us, and fatal penalties
threaten us; let us flee for safety to God our Saviour, without demanding the reason of
the offered gift. When that at stake is our souls' salvation and our own interests,
something must be done even without reason, as Arrhianus approves of Epictetus having
said. We doubt, we hesitate, and suspect the credibility of what is said; let us commit
ourselves to God, and let not our incredulity prevail more with us than the greatness of
His name and power, lest, while we are seeking out arguments for ourselves, through which
that may seem false which we do not wish and deny to be true, the last day steal upon us,
and we be found in the jaws of our enemy, death.


AGAINST THE HEATHEN, BOOK 3
===========================

AGAINST THE HEATHEN, BOOK 3 Arnobius of Sicca

d. c. AD 330

North African teacher who wrote against the pagans.

AGAINST THE HEATHEN BOOK 3

1. All these charges, then, which might truly be better termed abuse, have been long
answered with sufficient fulness and accuracy by men of distinction in this respect, and
worthy to have learned the truth; and not one point of any inquiry has been passed over,
without being determined in a thousand ways, and on the strongest grounds. We need not,
therefore, linger further on this part of the case. For neither is the Christian religion
unable to stand though it found no advocates, nor will it be therefore proved true if it
found many to agree with it, and gained weight through its adherents. Its own strength is
sufficient for it, and it rests on the foundations of its own truth, without losing its
power, though there were none to defend it, nay, though all voices assailed and opposed
it, and united with common rancour to destroy all faith in it.

2. Let us now return to the order from which we were a little ago compelled to diverge,
that our defence may not, through its being too long broken off, be said to have given our
detractors cause to triumph in the establishing of their charge. For they propose these
questions: If you are in earnest about religion, why do you not serve and worship the
other gods with us, or share your sacred rites with your fellows, and put the ceremonies
of the different religions on an equality? We may say for the present: In essaying to
approach the divine, the Supreme Deity suffices us,-the Deity, I say, who is supreme, the
Creator and Lord of the universe, who orders and rules all things: in Him we serve all
that requires our service; in Him we worship all that should be adored,-venerate that
which demands the homage of our reverence. For as we lay hold of the source of the divine
itself from which the very divinity of all gods whatever is derived, we think it an idle
task to approach each personally, since we neither know who they are, nor the names by
which they are called; and are further unable to learn, and discover, and establish their
number.

3. And as in the kingdoms of earth we are in no wise constrained expressly to do reverence
to those who form the royal family as well as to the sovereigns, but whatever honour
belongs to them is found to be tacitly implied in the homage offered to the kings
themselves; in just the same way, these gods, whoever they be, for whose existence you
vouch, if they are a royal race, and spring from the Supreme Ruler, even though we do not
expressly do them reverence, yet feel that they are honoured in common with their Lord,
and share in the reverence shown to Him. Now it must be remembered that we have made this
statement, on the hypothesis only that it is clear and undeniable, that besides the Ruler
and Lord Himself, there are still other beings, who, when arranged and disposed in order,
form, as it were, a kind of plebeian mass. But do not seek to point out to us pictures
instead of gods in your temples, and the images which you set up, for you too know, but
are unwilling and refuse to admit, that these are formed of most worthless clay, and are
childish figures made by mechanics. And when we converse with you on religion, we ask you
to prove this, that there are other gods than the one Supreme Deity in nature, power,
name, not as we see them manifested in images, but in such a substance as it might
fittingly be supposed that perfection of so great dignity should reside.

4. But we do not purpose delaying further on this part of the subject, lest we seem
desirous to stir up most violent strife, and engage in agitating contests. Let there be,
as you affirm, that crowd of deities, let there be numberless families of gods; we assent,
agree, and do not examine too closely, nor in any part of the subject do we assail the
doubtful and uncertain positions you hold. This, however, we demand, and ask you to tell
us, whence you have discovered, or how you have learned, whether there are these gods,
whom you believe to be in heaven and serve, or some others unknown by reputation and name?
For it may be that beings exist whom you do not believe to do so; and that those of whose
existence you feel assured, are found nowhere in the universe. For you have at no time
been borne aloft to the stars of heaven, at no time have seen the face and countenance of
each; and then established here the worship of the same gods, whom you remembered to be
there, as having been known and seen by you. But this, too, we again would learn from you,
whether they have received these names by which you call them, or assumed them themselves
on the days of purification. If these are divine and celestial names, who reported them to
you? But if, on the other hand, these names have been applied to them by you, how could
you give names to those whom you never saw, and whose character or circumstances you in no
wise knew?

5. But let it be assumed that there are these gods, as you wish and believe, and are
persuaded; let them be called also by those names by which the common people suppose that
those meaner gods are known. Whence, however, have you learned who make up the list of
gods under these names? have any ever become familiar and known to others with whose names
you were not acquainted? For it cannot be easily known whether their numerous body is
settled and fixed in number; or whether their multitude cannot be summed up and limited by
the numbers of any computation. For let us suppose that you do reverence to a thousand, or
rather five thousand gods; but in the universe it may perhaps be that there are a hundred
thousand; there may be even more than this,-nay, as we said a little before, it may not be
possible to compute the number of the gods, or limit them by a definite number. Either,
then, you are yourselves impious who serve a few gods, but disregard the duties which you
owe to the rest; or if you claim that your ignorance of the rest should be pardoned, you
will procure for us also a similar pardon, if in just the same way we refuse to worship
those of whose existence we are wholly ignorant.

6. And yet let no one think that we are perversely determined not to submit to the other
deities, whoever they are! For we lift up pious minds, and stretch forth our hands in
prayer, and do not refuse to draw near whithersoever you may have summoned us; if only we
learn who those divine beings are whom you press upon us, and with whom it may be right to
share the reverence which we show to the king and prince who is over all. It is Saturn, my
opponent says, and Janus, Minerva, Juno, Apollo, Venus, Triptolemus, Hercules,
Aesculapius, and all the others, to whom the reverence of antiquity dedicated magnificent
temples in almost every city. You might, perhaps, have been able to attract us to the
worship of these deities you mention, had you not been yourselves the first, with foul and
unseemly fancies, to devise such tales about them as not merely to stain their honour,
but, by the natures assigned to them, to prove that they did not exist at all. For, in the
first place, we cannot be led to believe this,-that that immortal and supreme nature has
been divided by sexes, and that there are some male, others female. But this point,
indeed, has been long ago fully treated of by men of ardent genius, both in Latin and
Greek; and Tullius, the most eloquent among the Romans, without dreading the vexatiousness
of a charge of impiety, has above all, with greater piety, declared-boldly, firmly, and
frankly-what he thought of such a fancy; and if you would proceed to receive from him
opinions written with true discernment, instead of merely brilliant sentences, this case
would have been concluded; nor would it require at our weak hands a second pleading, as it
is termed.

7. But why should I say that men seek from him subtleties of expression and splendour of
diction, when I know that there are many who avoid and flee from his books on this
subject, and will not hear his opinions read, overthrowing their prejudices; and when I
hear others muttering angrily, and saying that the senate should decree the destruction of
these writings by which the Christian religion is maintained, and the weight of antiquity
overborne? But, indeed, if you are convinced that anything you say regarding your gods is
beyond doubt, point out Cicero's error, refute, rebut his rash and impious words, and show
that they are so. For when you would carry off writings, and suppress a book given forth
to the public, you are not defending the gods, but dreading the evidence of the truth. 8.
And yet, that no thoughtless person may raise a false accusation against us, as though we
believed God whom we worship to be male,-for this reason, that is, that when we speak of
Him we use a masculine word,-let him understand that it is not sex which is expressed, but
His name, and its meaning according to custom, and the way in which we are in the habit of
using words. For the Deity is not male, but His name is of the masculine gender: but in
your ceremonies you cannot say the same; for in your prayers you have been wont to say
whether thou art god or goddess, and this uncertain description shows, even by their
opposition, that you attribute sex to the gods. We cannot, then, be prevailed on to
believe that the divine is embodied; for bodies must needs be distinguished by difference
of sex, if they are male and female. For who, however mean his capacity, does not know
that the sexes of different gender have been ordained and formed by the Creator of the
creatures of earth, only that, by intercourse and union of bodies, that which is fleeting
and transient may endure being ever renewed and maintained?

9. What, then, shall we say? That gods beget and are begotten? and that therefore they
have received organs of generation, that they might be able to raise up offspring, and
that, as each new race springs up, a substitution, regularly occurring, should make up for
all which had been swept away by the preceding age? If, then, it is so,-that is, if the
gods above beget other gods, and are subject to these conditions of sex, and are immortal,
and are not worn out, by the chills of age,-it follows, as a consequence, that the world
should be full of gods, and that countless heavens could not contain their multitude,
inasmuch as they are both themselves ever begetting, and the countless multitude of their
descendants, always being increased, is augmented by means of their offspring; or if, as
is fitting, the gods are not degraded by being subjected to sexual impulses, what cause or
reason will be pointed out for their being distinguished by those members by which the
sexes are wont to recognise each other at the suggestion of their own desires? For it is
not likely that they have these without a purpose, or that nature had wished in them to
make sport of its own improvidence, in providing them with members for which there would
be no use. For as the hands, feet, eyes, and other members which form our body, have been
arranged for certain uses, each for its own end, so we may well believe that these members
have been provided to discharge their office; or it must be confessed that there is
something without a purpose in the bodies of the gods, which has been made uselessly and
in vain.

10. What say you, ye holy and pure guardians of religion? Have the gods, then, sexes; and
are they disfigured by those parts, the very mention of whose names by modest lips is
disgraceful? What, then, now remains, but to believe that they, as unclean beasts, are
transported with violent passions, rush with maddened desires into mutual embraces, and at
last, with shattered and ruined bodies, are enfeebled by their sensuality? And since some
things are peculiar to the female sex, we must believe that the goddesses, too, submit to
these conditions at the proper time, conceive and become pregnant with loathing, miscarry,
carry the full time, and sometimes are prematurely delivered. O divinity, pure, holy, free
from and unstained by any dishonourable blot! The mind longs and burns to see, in the
great halls and palaces of heaven, gods and goddesses, with bodies uncovered and bare, the
full-breasted Ceres nursing Iacchus, as the muse of Lucretius sings, the Hellespontian
Priapus bearing about among the goddesses, virgin and matron, those parts ever prepared
for encounter. It longs, I say, to see goddesses pregnant, goddesses with child, and, as
they daily increase in size, faltering in their steps, through the irksomeness of the
burden they bear about with them; others, after long delay, bringing to birth, and seeking
the midwife's aid; others, shrieking as they are attacked by keen pangs and grievous
pains, tormented, and, under all these influences, imploring the aid of Juno Lucina. Is it
not much better to abuse, revile, and otherwise insult the gods, than, with pious
pretence, unworthily to entertain such monstrous beliefs about them?

11. And you dare to charge us with offending the gods, although, on examination, it is
found that the ground of offence is most clearly in ourselves, and that it is not
occasioned by the insult which you think . For if the gods are, as you say, moved by
anger, and burn with rage in their minds, why should we not suppose that they take it
amiss, even in the highest degree, that you attribute to them sexes, as dogs and swine
have been created, and that, since this is your belief, they are so represented, and
openly exposed in a disgraceful manner? This, then, being the case, you are the cause of
all troubles-you lead the gods, you rouse them to harass the earth with every ill, and
every day to devise all kinds of fresh misfortunes, that so they may avenge themselves,
being irritated at suffering so many wrongs and insults from you. By your insults and
affronts, I say, partly in the vile stories, partly in the shameful beliefs which your
theologians, your poets, you yourselves too, celebrate in disgraceful ceremonies, you will
find that the affairs of men have been ruined, and that the gods have thrown away the
helm, if indeed it is by their care that the fortunes of men are guided and arranged. For
with us, indeed, they have no reason to be angry, whom they see and perceive neither to
mock, as it is said, nor worship them, and to think, to believe much more worthily than
you with regard to the dignity of their name.

12. Thus far of sex. Now let us come to the appearance and shapes by which yon believe
that the gods above have been represented, with which, indeed, you fashion, and set them
up in their most splendid abodes, your temples. And let no one here bring up against us
Jewish fables and those of the sect of the Sadducees, as though we, too, attribute to the
Deity forms; for this is supposed to be taught in their writings, and asserted as if with
assurance and authority. For these stories either do not concern us, and have nothing at
all in common with us, or if they are shared in by us, as you believe, you must seek out
teachers of greater wisdom, through whom you may be able to learn how best to overcome the
dark and recondite sayings of those writings. Our opinion on the subject is as
follows:-that the whole divine nature, since it neither came into existence at any time,
nor will ever come to an end of life, is devoid of bodily features, and does not have
anything like the forms with which the termination of the several members usually.
completes the union of parts. For whatever is of this character, we think mortal and
perishable; nor do we believe that that can endure for ever which an inevitable end shuts
in, though the boundaries enclosing it be the remotest.

13. But it is not enough that you limit the gods by forms:-you even confine them to the
human figure, and with even less decency enclose them in earthly bodies. What shall we say
then? that the gods have a head modelled with perfect symmetry, bound fast by sinews to
the back and breast, and that, to allow the necessary bending of the neck, it is supported
by combinations of vertebrae, and by an osseous foundation? But if we believe this to be
true, it follows that they have ears also, pierced by crooked windings; rolling eyeballs,
overshadowed by the edges of the eyebrows; a nose, placed as a channel, through which
waste fluids and a current of air might easily pass; teeth to masticate food, of three
kinds, and adapted to three services; hands to do their work, moving easily by means of
joints, fingers, and flexible elbows; feet to support their bodies, regulate their steps,
and prompt the first motions in walking. But if the gods bear these things which are seen,
it is fitting that they should bear those also which the skin conceals under the framework
of the ribs, and the membranes enclosing the viscera; windpipes, stomachs, spleens, lungs,
bladders, livers, the long-entwined intestines, and the veins of purple blood, joined with
the air-passages, coursing through the whole viscera.

14. Are, then, the divine bodies free from these deformities? and since they do not eat
the food of men, are we to believe that, like children, they are toothless, and, having no
internal parts, as if they were inflated bladders, are without strength, owing to the
hollowness of their swollen bodies? Further, if this is the case, you must see whether the
gods are all alike, or are marked by a difference in the contour of their forms. For if
each and all have one and the same likeness of shape, there is nothing ridiculous in
believing that they err, and are deceived in recognising each other. But if, on the other
hand, they are distinguished by their countenances, we should, consequently, understand
that these differences have been implanted for no other reason than that they might
individually be able to recognise themselves by the peculiarites of the different marks.
We should therefore say that some have big heads, prominent brows, broad brows, thick
lips; that others of them have long chins, moles, and high noses; that these have dilated
nostrils, those are snub-nosed; some chubby from a swelling of their jaws or growth of
their cheeks, dwarfed, tall, of middle size, lean, sleek, fat; some with crisped and
curled hair, others shaven, with bald and smooth heads. Now your workshops show and point
out that our opinions are not false, inasmuch as, when you form and fashion gods, you
represent some with long hair, others smooth and bare, as old, as youths, as boys,
swarthy, grey-eyed, yellow, half-naked, bare; or, that cold may not annoy them, covered
with flowing garments thrown over them.

15. Does any man at all possessed of judgment, believe that hairs and down grow on the
bodies of the gods? that among them age is distinguished? and that they go about clad in
dresses and garments of various shapes, and shield themselves from heat and cold? But if
any one believes that, he must receive this also as true, that some gods are fullers, some
barbers; the former to cleanse the sacred garments, the latter to thin their locks when
matted with a thick growth of hair. Is not this really degrading, most impious, and
insulting, to attribute to the gods the features of a frail and perishing animal? to
furnish them with those members which no modest person would dare to recount, and
describe, or represent in his own imagination, without shuddering at the excessive
indecency? Is this the contempt you entertain,-this the proud wisdom with which you spurn
us as ignorant, and think that all knowledge of religion is yours? You mock the mysteries
of the Egyptians, because they ingrafted the forms of dumb animals upon their divine
causes, and because they worship these very images with much incense, and whatever else is
used in such rites: you yourselves adore images of men, as though they were powerful gods,
and are not ashamed to give to these the countenance of an earthly creature, to blame
others for their mistaken folly, and to be detected in a similarly vicious error.

16. But you will, perhaps, say that the gods have indeed other forms, and that you have
given the appearance of men to them merely by way of honour, and for form's sake which is
much more insulting than to have fallen into any error through ignorance. For if you
confessed that you had ascribed to the divine forms that which you had supposed and
believed, your error, originating in prejudice, would not be so blameable. But now, when
you believe one thing and fashion another, you both dishonour those to whom yon ascribe
that which you confess does not belong to them, and show your impiety in adoring that
which you fashion, not that which you think really is, and which is in very truth. If
asses, dogs, pigs, had any human wisdom and skill in contrivance, and wished to do us
honour also by some kind of worship, and to show respect by dedicating statues to us, with
what rage would they inflame us, what a tempest of passion would they excite, if they
determined that our images should bear and assume the fashion of their own bodies? How
would they, I repeat, fill us with rage, and rouse our passions, if the founder of Rome,
Romulus, were to be set up with an ass's face, the revered Pompilius with that of a dog,
if under the image of a pig were written Cato's or Marcus Cicero's name? So, then, do you
think that your stupidity is not laughed at by your deities, if they laugh at all?

or, since you believe that they may be enraged, do you think that they are not roused,
maddened to fury, and that they do not wish to be revenged for so great wrongs and
insults, and to hurl on you the punishments usually dictated by chagrin, and devised by
bitter hatred? How much better it had been to give to them the forms of elephants,
panthers, or tigers, bulls, and horses! For what is there beautiful in man,-what, I pray
you, worthy of admiration, or comely,-unless that which, some poet has maintained, he
possesses in common with the ape? 17. But, they say, if you are not satisfied with our
opinion, do you point out, tell us yourselves, what is the Deity's form. If you wish to
hear the truth, either the Deity has no form; or if He is embodied in one, we indeed know
not what it is. Moreover, we think it no disgrace to be ignorant of that which we never
saw; nor are we therefore prevented from disproving the opinions of others, because on
this we have no opinion of our own to bring forward. For as, if the earth be said to be of
glass, silver, iron, or gathered together and made from brittle clay, we cannot hesitate
to maintain that this is untrue, although we do not know of what it is made; so, when the
form of God is discussed, we show that it is not what you maintain, even if we are still
less able to explain what it is.

18. What, then, some one will say, does the Deity not hear? does He not speak? does He not
see what is put before Him? has He not sight? He may in His own, but not in our way. But
in so great a matter we cannot know the truth at all, or reach it by speculations; for
these are, it is clear, in our case, baseless, deceitful, and like vain dreams. For if we
said that He sees in the same way as ourselves, it follows that it should be understood
that He has eyelids placed as coverings on the pupils of the eyes, that He closes them,
winks, sees by rays or images, or, as is the case in all eyes, can see nothing at all
without the presence of other light. So we must in like manner say of hearing, and form of
speech, and utterance of words. If He hears by means of ears, these, too, we must say, He
has, penetrated by winding paths, through which the sound may steal, bearing the meaning
of the discourse; or if His words are poured forth from a mouth, that He has lips and
teeth, by the contact and various movement of which His tongue utters sounds distinctly.

19. If you are willing to hear our conclusions, then learn that we are so far from
attributing bodily shape to the Deity, that we fear to ascribe to so great a being even
mental graces, and the very excellences by which a few have been allowed with difficulty
to distinguish themselves. For who will say that God is brave, firm, good, wise? who will
say that He has integrity, is temperate, even that He has knowledge, understanding,
forethought? that He directs towards fixed moral ends the actions on which He determines?
These things are good in man; and being opposed to vices, have deserved the great
reputation which they have gained. But who is so foolish, so senseless, as to say that God
is great by merely human excellences? or that He is above all in the greatness of His
name, because He is not disgraced by vice? Whatever you say, whatever in unspoken thought
you imagine concerning God, passes and is corrupted into a human sense, and does not carry
its own meaning, because it is spoken in the words which we use, and which are suited only
to human affairs. There is but one thing man can be assured of regarding God's nature, to
know and perceive that nothing can be revealed in human language concerning God.

20. This, then, this matter of forms and sexes, is the first affront which you, noble
advocates in sooth, and pious writers, offer to your deities. But what is the next, that
you represent to us the gods, some as artificers, some physicians, others working in wool,
as sailors, players on the harp and flute, hunters, shepherds, and, as there was nothing
more, rustics? And that god, he says, is a musician, and this other can divine; for the
other gods cannot, and do not know how to foretell what will come to pass, owing to their
want of skill and ignorance of the future. One is instructed in obstetric arts, another
trained up in the science of medicine. Is each, then, powerful in his own department; and
can they give no assistance, if their aid is asked, in what belongs to another? This one
is eloquent in speech, and ready in linking words together; for the others are stupid, and
can say nothing skilfully, if they must speak.

21. And, I ask, what reason is there, what unavoidable necessity, what occasion for the
gods knowing and being acquainted with these handicrafts as though they were worthless
mechanics? For, are songs sung and music played in heaven, that the nine sisters may
gracefully combine and harmonize pauses and rhythms of tones? Are there on the mountains
of the stars, forests, woods, groves, that Diana may be esteemed very mighty in hunting
expeditions? Are the gods ignorant of the immediate future; and do they live and pass the
time according to the lots assigned them by fate, that the inspired son of Latona may
explain and declare what the morrow or the next hour bears to each? Is he himself inspired
by another god, and is he urged and roused by the power of a greater divinity, so that he
may be rightly said and esteemed to be divinely inspired? Are the gods liable to be seized
by diseases; and is there anything by which they may be wounded and hurt, so that, when
there is occasion, he of Epidaurus may come to their assistance? Do they labour, do they
bring forth, that Juno may soothe, and Lucina abridge the terrible pangs of childbirth? Do
they engage in agriculture, or are they concerned with the duties of war, that Vulcan, the
lord of fire, may form for them swords, or forge their rustic implements? Do they need to
be covered with garments, that the Tritonian maid may, with nice skill, spin, weave cloth
for them, and make them tunics to suit the season, either triple-twilled, or of silken
fabric? Do they make accusations and refute them, that the descendant of Atlas may carry
off the prize for eloquence, attained by assiduous practice?

22. You err, my opponent says, and are deceived; for the gods are not themselves
artificers, but suggest these arts to ingenious men, and teach mortals what they should
know, that their mode of life may be more civilized. But he who gives any instruction to
the ignorant and unwilling, and strives to make him intelligently expert in some kind of
work, must himself first know that which he sets the other to practise. For no one can be
capable of teaching a science without knowing the rules of that which he teaches, and
having grasped its method most thoroughly. The gods are, then, the first artificers;
whether because they inform the minds of men with knowledge, as you say yourselves, or
because, being immortal and unbegotten, they surpass the whole race of earth by their
length of life. This, then, is the question; there being no occasion for these arts among
the gods, neither their necessities nor nature requiring in them any ingenuity or
mechanical skill, why you should say that they are skilled, one in one craft, another in
another, and that individuals are pre-eminently expert in particular departments in which
they are distinguished by acquaintance with the several branches of science?

23. But you will, perhaps, say that the gods are not artificers, but that they preside
over these arts, and have their oversight; nay, that under their care all things have been
placed, which we manage and conduct, and that their providence sees to the happy and
fortunate issue of these. Now this would certainly appear to be said justly, and with some
probability, if all we engage in, all we do, or all we attempt in human affairs, sped as
we wished and purposed. But since every day the reverse is the case, and the results of
actions do not correspond to the purpose of the will, it is trifling to say that we have,
set as guardians over as, gods invented by our superstitious fancy, not grasped with
assured certainty. Portunus gives to the sailor perfect safety in traversing the seas; but
why has the raging sea cast up so many cruelly-shattered wrecks? Consus suggests to our
minds courses safe and serviceable; and why does an unexpected change perpetually issue in
results other than were looked for? Pales and Inuus are set as guardians over the flocks
and herds; why do they, with hurtful laziness, not take care to avert from the herds in
their summer pastures, cruel, infectious, and destructive diseases? The harlot Flora,
venerated in lewd sports, sees well to it that the fields blossom; and why are buds and
tender plants daily nipt and destroyed by most hurtful frost? Juno presides over
childbirth, and aids travailing mothers;

and why are a thousand mothers every day cut off in murderous throes? Fire is under
Vulcan's care, and its source is placed under his control; and why does he, very often,
suffer temples and parts of cities to fall into ashes devoured by flames? The soothsayers
receive the knowledge of their art from the Pythian god; and why does he so often give and
afford answers equivocal, doubtful, steeped in darkness and obscurity? Aesculapius
presides over the duties and arts of medicine; and why cannot men in more kinds of disease
and sickness be restored to health and soundness of body? while, on the contrary, they
become worse under the hands of the physician. Mercury is occupied with combats, and
presides over boxing and wrestling matches; and why does he not make all invincible who
are in his charge? why, when appointed to one office, does he enable some to win the
victory, while he suffers others to be ridiculed for their disgraceful weakness?

24. No one, says my opponent, makes supplication to the tutelar deities, and they
therefore withhold their usual favours and help. Cannot the gods, then, do good, except
they receive incense and consecrated offerings? and do they quit and renounce their posts,
unless they see their altars anointed with the blood of cattle? And vet I thought but now
that the kindness of the gods was of their own free will, and that the unlooked-for gifts
of benevolence flowed unsought from them. Is, then, the King of the universe solicited by
any libation or sacrifice to grant to the races of men all the comforts of life? Does the
Deity not impart the sun's fertilizing warmth, and the season of night, the winds, the
rains, the fruits, to all alike,-the good and the bad, the unjust and the just, the free-
born and the slave, the poor and the rich? For this belongs to the true and mighty God, to
show kindness, unasked, to that which is weary and feeble, and always encompassed by
misery, of many kinds. For to grant your prayers on the offering of sacrifices, is not to
bring help to those who ask it, but to sell the riches of their beneficence. We men
trifle, and are foolish in so great a matter; and, forgetting what God is, and the majesty
of His name, associate with the tutelar deities whatever meanness or baseness our morbid
credulity can invent.

25. Unxia, my opponent says, presides over the anointing of door-posts; Cinxia over the
loosening of the zone; the most venerable Victa and Potua attend to eating and drinking. O
rare and admirable interpretation of the divine powers! would gods not have names if
brides did not besmear their husbands' door-posts with greasy ointment; were it not that
husbands, when now eagerly drawing near, unbind the maiden-girdle; if men did not eat and
drink? Moreover, not satisfied to have subjected and involved the gods in cares so
unseemly, you also ascribe to them dispositions fierce, cruel, savage, ever rejoicing in
the ills and destruction of mankind. 26. We shall not here mention Laverna, goddess of
thieves, the Bellonae, Discordiae, Furiae thieves, and we pass by in utter silence the
unpropitious deities whom you have set up. We shall bring forward Mars himself, and the
fair mother of the Desires; to one of whom you commit wars, to the other love and
passionate desire. My opponent says that Mars has power over wars; whether to quell those
which are raging, or to revive them when interrupted, and kindle them in time of peace?
For if he claims the madness of war, why do wars rage every day? but if he is their
author, we shall then say that the god, to satisfy his own inclination, involves the whole
world in strife; sows the seeds of discord and variance between far-distant peoples;
gathers so many thousand men from different quarters, and speedily heaps up the field with
dead bodies; makes the streams flow with blood, sweeps away the most firmly-founded
empires, lays cities in the dust, robs the free of their liberty, and makes them slaves;
rejoices in civil strife, in the bloody death of brothers who die in conflict, and, in
fine, in the dire, murderous contest of children with their fathers.

27. Now we may apply this very argument to Venus in exactly the same way. For if, as you
maintain and believe, she fills men's minds with lustful thoughts, it must be held in
consequence that any disgrace and misdeed arising from such madness should be ascribed to
the instigation of Venus. Is it, then, under compulsion of the goddess that even the noble
too often betray their own reputation into the hands of worthless harlots; that the firm
bonds of marriage are broken; that near relations burn with incestuous lust; that mothers
have their passions madly kindled towards their children; that fathers turn to themselves
their daughters' desires; that old men, bringing shame upon their grey hairs, sigh with
the ardour of youth for the gratification of filthy desires; that wise and brave men,
losing in effeminacy the strength of their manhood, disregard the biddings of constancy;
that the noose is twisted about their necks; that blazing pyres are ascended; and that in
different places men, leaping voluntarily, cast themselves headlong over very high and
huge precipices?

28. Can any man, who has accepted the first principles even of reason, be found to mar or
dishonour the unchanging nature of Deity with morals so vile? to credit the gods with
natures such as human kindness has often charmed away and moderated in the beasts of the
field? How, I ask, can it be said that the gods are far removed from any feeling of
passion? that they are gentle, lovers of peace, mild? that in the completeness of their
excellence they reach the i height of perfection, and the highest wisdom also? or, why
should we pray them to avert from us misfortunes and calamities, if we find that they are
themselves the authors of all the ills by which we are daily harassed? Call us impious as
much as you please, contemners of religion, or atheists, you will never make us believe in
gods of love and war, that there are gods to sow strife, and to disturb the mind by the
stings of the furies. For either they are gods in very truth, and do not do what you have
related; or if they do the things which you say, they are doubtless no gods at all.

29. We might, however, even yet be able to receive from you these thoughts, most full of
wicked falsehoods, if it were not that you yourselves, in bringing forward many things
about the gods so inconsistent and mutually destructive, compel us to withhold our minds
from assenting. For when you strive individually to excel each other in reputation for
more recondite knowledge, you both overthrow the very gods in whom you believe, and
replace them by others who have clearly no existence; and different men give different
opinions on the same subjects, and you write that those whom general consent has ever
received as single persons are infinite in number. Let us, too, begin duty, then, with
father Janus, whom certain of you have declared to be the world, others the year, some the
sun. But if we are to believe that this is true, it follows as a consequence, that it
should be understood that there never was any Janus, who, they say, being sprung from
Coelus and Hecate, reigned first in Italy, founded the town Janiculum, was the father of
Forts, the son-in-law of Vulturnus, the husband of Juturna; and thus you erase the name of
the god to whom in all prayers you give the first place, and whom you believe to procure
for you a hearing from the gods. But, again, if Janus be the year, neither thus can he be
a god.

For who does not know that the year is a fixed space of time, and that there is nothing
divine in that which is formed by the duration of months and lapse of days? Now this very
argument may, in like manner, be applied to Saturn. For if time is meant under this title,
as the expounders of Grecian ideas think, so that that is regarded as Kronos, which is
chronos, there is no such deity as Saturn. For who is so senseless as to say that time is
a god, when it is but a certain space measured off in the unending succession of eternity?
And thus will be removed from the rank of the immortals that deity too, whom the men of
old declared, and handed down to their posterity, to be born of father Coelus, the
progenitor of the dii magni, the planter of the vine, the bearer of the pruning-knife.

30. But what shall we say of Jove himself, whom the wise have repeatedly asserted to be
the sun, driving a winged chariot, followed by a crowd of deities; some, the ether,
blazing with mighty flames, and wasting fire which cannot be extinguished? Now if this is
clear and certain, there is, then, according to you, no Jupiter at all; who, born of
Saturn his father and Ops his mother, is reported to have been concealed in the Cretan
territory, that he might escape his father's rage. But now, does not a similar mode of
thought remove Juno from the list of gods? For if she is the air, as you have been wont to
jest and say, repeating in reversed order the syllables of the Greek name, there will be
found no sister and spouse of almighty Jupiter, no Fluonia, no Pomona, no Ossipagina, no
Februtis, Populonia, Cinxia, Caprotina; and thus the invention of that name, spread abroad
with a frequent but vain belief, will be found to be wholly useless.

31. Aristotle, a man of most powerful intellect, and distinguished for learning, as
Granius tells, shows by plausible arguments that Minerva is the moon, and proves it by the
authority of learned men. Others have said that this very goddess is the depth of ether,
and utmost height; some have maintained that she is memory, whence her name even, Minerva,
has arisen, as if she were some goddess of memory. But if this is credited, it follows
that there is no daughter of Mens, no daughter of Victory, no discoverer of the Olive,
born from the head of Jupiter, no goddess skilled in the knowledge of the arts, and in
different branches of learning. Neptune, they say, has received his name and title because
he covers the earth with water. If, then, by the use of this name is meant the outspread
water, there is no god Neptune at all; and thus is put away, and removed from us, the full
brother of Pluto and Jupiter, armed with the iron trident, lord of the fish, great and
small, king of the depths of the sea, and shaker of the trembling earth.

32. Mercury, also, has been named as though he were a kind of go-between; and because
conversation passes between two speakers, and is exchanged by them, that which is
expressed by this name has been produced. If this, then, is the case, Mercury is not the
name of a god, but of speech and words exchanged by two persons; and in this way is
blotted out and annihilated the noted Cyllenian bearer of the caduceus, born on the cold
mountain top, contriver of words and names, the god who presides over markets, and over
the exchange of goods and commercial intercourse. Some of you have said that the earth is
the Great Mother, because it provides all things living with food; others declare that the
same earth is Ceres, because it brings forth crops of useful fruits; while some maintain
that it is Vesta, because it alone in the universe is at rest, its other members being, by
their constitution, ever in motion. Now if this is propounded and maintained on sure
grounds, in like manner, on your interpretation, three deities have no existence: neither
Ceres nor Vesta are to be reckoned in the number of the gods; nor, in fine, can the mother
of the gods herself, whom Nigidius thinks to have been married to Saturn, be rightly
declared a goddess, if indeed these are all names of the one earth, and it alone is
signified by these titles.

33. We here leave Vulcan unnoticed, to avoid prolixity; whom you all declare to be fire,
with one consenting voice. We pass by Venus, named because lust assails all, and
Proserpina, named because plants steal gradually forth into the light,-where, again, you
do away with three deities; if indeed the first is the name of an element, and does not
signify a living power; the second, of a desire common to all living creatures; while the
third refers to seeds rising above ground, and the upward movements of growing crops.
What! when you maintain that Bacchus, Apollo, the Sun, are one deity, increased in number
by the use of three names, is not the number of the gods lessened, and their vaunted
reputation overthrown, by your opinions? For if it is true that the sun is also Bacchus
and Apollo, there can consequently be in the universe no Apollo or Bacchus; and thus, by
yourselves, the son of Semele and the Pythian god are blotted out and set aside,-one the
giver of drunken merriment, the other the destroyer of Sminthian mice.

34. Some of your learned men -men, too, who do not chatter merely because their humour
leads them-maintain that Diana, Ceres, Luna, are but one deity in triple union; and that
there are not three distinct persons, as there are three different names; that in all
these Luna is invoked, and that the others are a series of surnames added to her name. But
if this is sure, if this is certain, and the facts of the case show it to be so, again is
Ceres but an empty name, and Diana: and thus the discussion is brought to this issue, that
you lead and advise us to believe that she whom you maintain to be the discoverer of the
earth's fruits has no existence, and Apollo is robbed of his sister, whom once the horned
hunter gazed upon as she washed her limbs from impurity in a pool, and paid the penalty of
his curiosity.

35. Men worthy to be remembered in the study of philosophy, who have been raised by your
praises to its highest place, declare, with commendable earnestness, as their conclusion,
that the whole mass of the world, by whose folds we all are encompassed, covered, and
upheld, is one animal possessed of wisdom and reason; yet if this is a true, sure, and
certain opinion, they also will forthwith cease to be gods whom you set up a little ago in
its parts without change of name. For as one man cannot, while his body remains entire, be
divided into many men; nor can many men, while they continue to be distinct and separate
from each other, be fused into one sentient individual: so, if the world is a single
animal, and moves from the impulse of one mind, neither can it be dispersed in several
deities; nor, if the gods are parts of it, can they be brought together and changed into
one living creature, with unity of feeling throughout all its parts. The moon, the sun,
the earth, the ether, the stars, are members and parts of the world; but if they are parts
and members, they are certainly not themselves living creatures; for in no thing can parts
be the very thing which the whole is, or think and feel for themselves, for this cannot be
effected by their own actions, without the whole creature's joining in; and this being
established and settled, the whole matter comes back to this, that neither Sol, nor Luna,
nor Aether, Tellus, and the rest, are gods. For they are parts of the world, not the
proper names of deities; and thus it is brought about that, by your disturbing and
confusing all divine things, the world is set up as the sole god in the universe, while
all the rest are cast aside, and that as having been set up vainly, uselessly, and without
any reality.

36. If we sought to subvert the belief in your gods in so many ways, by so many arguments,
no one would doubt that, mad with rage and fury, you would demand for us the stake, the
beasts, and swords, with the other kinds of torture by which you usually appease your
thirst in its intense craving for our blood. But while you yourselves put away almost the
whole race of deities with a pretence of cleverness and wisdom, you do not hesitate to
assert that, because of us, men suffer ill at the hands of the gods; although, indeed, if
it is true that they anywhere exist, and burn with anger and rage, there can be no better
reason for their showing anger against you, than that you deny their existence, and say
that they are not found in any part of the universe. 37. We are told by Mnaseas that the
Muses are the daughters of Tellus and Coelus; others declare that they are Jove's by his
wife Memory, or Mens; some relate that they were virgins, others that they were matrons.
For now we wish to touch briefly on the points where you are shown, from the difference of
your opinions, to make different statements about the same thing. Ephorus, then, says that
they are three in number; Mnaseas, whom we mentioned, that they are four; Myrtilus brings
forward seven; Crates asserts that there are eight; finally Hesiod, enriching heaven and
the stars with gods, comes forward with nine names.

If we are not mistaken, such want of agreement marks those who are wholly ignorant of the
truth, and does not spring from the real state of the case. For if their number were
clearly known, the voice of all would be the same, and the agreement of all would tend to
and find issue in the same conclusion. 38. How, then, can you give to religion its whole
power, when you fill into error about the gods themselves? or summon us to their solemn
worship, while you give us no definite information how to conceive of the deities
themselves? For, to take no notice of the other authors, either the first makes away with
and destroys six divine Muses, if they are certainly nine; or the last adds six who have
no existence to the three who alone really are; so that it cannot be known or understood
what should be added, what taken away; and in the performance of religious rites we are in
danger of either worshipping that which does not exist, or passing that by which, it may
be, does exist. Piso believes that the Novensiles are nine gods, set up among the Sabines
at Trebia. Granius thinks that they are the Muses, agreeing with Aelius; Varro teaches
that they are nine, because, in doing anything, that number is always reputed most
powerful and greatest; Cornificius, that they watch over the renewing of things, because,
by their care, all things are afresh renewed in strength, and endure; Manilius, that they
are the nine gods to whom alone Jupiter gave power to wield his thunder. Cincius declares
them to be deities brought from abroad, named from their very newness, because the Romans
were in the habit of sometimes individually introducing into their families the rites of
conquered cities, while some they publicly consecrated; and lest, from their great number,
or in ignorance, any god should be passed by, all alike were briefly and compendiously
invoked under one name-Novensiles.

39. There are some, besides, who assert that those who from being men became gods, are
denoted by this name,-as Hercules, Romulus, Aeculapius, Liber, Aeneas. These are all, as
is clear, different opinions; and it cannot be, in the nature of things, that those who
differ in opinion can be regarded as teachers of one truth. For if Piso's opinion is true,
Aelius and Granius say what is false; if what they say is certain, Varro, with all his
skill, is mistaken, who substitutes things most frivolous and vain for those which really
exist. If they are named Novensiles because their number is nine, Cornificius is shown to
stumble, who, giving them might and power not their own, makes them the divine overseers
of renovation. But if Cornificius is right in his belief, Cincius is found to be not wise,
who connects with the power of the dii Novensiles the gods of conquered cities. But if
they are those whom Cincius asserts them to be, Manilius will be found to speak falsely,
who comprehends those who wield another's thunder under this name. But if that which
Manilius holds is true and certain, they are utterly mistaken who suppose that those
raised to divine honours, and deified mortals, are thus named because of the novelty of
their rank. But if the Novensiles are those who have deserved to be raised to the stars
after passing through the life of men, there are no dii Novensiles at all. For as slaves,
soldiers, masters, are not names of persons comprehended under them, but of officers,
ranks, and duties, so, when we say that Novensiles is the name of gods who by their
virtues have become gods from being men, it is clear and evident that no individual
persons are marked out particularly, but that newness itself is named by the title
Novensiles.

40. Nigidius taught that the dii Penates were Neptune and Apollo, who once, on fixed
terms, girt Ilium with walls. He himself again, in his sixteenth book, following Etruscan
teaching, shows that there are four kinds of Penates; and that one of these pertains to
Jupiter, another to Neptune, the third to the shades below, the fourth to mortal men,
making some unintelligible assertion. Caesius himself, also, following this teaching,
thinks that they are Fortune, and Ceres, the genius Jovialis, and Pales, but not the
female deity commonly received, but some male attendant and steward of Jupiter. Varro
thinks that they are the gods of whom we speak who are within, and in the inmost recesses
of heaven, and that neither their number nor names are known. The Etruscans say that these
are the Consentes and Complices, and name them because they rise and fall together, six of
them being male, and as many female, with unknown names and pitiless dispositions, but
they are considered the counsellors and princes of Jove supreme. There were some, too, who
said that Jupiter, Juno, and Minerva were the dii Penates, without whom we cannot live and
be wise, and by whom we are ruled within in reason, passion, and thought. As you see, even
here, too, nothing is said harmoniously, nothing is settled with the consent of all, nor
is there anything reliable on which the mind can take its stand, drawing by conjecture
very near to the truth. For their opinions are so doubtful, and one supposition so
discredited by another, that there is either no truth in them all, or if it is uttered by
any, it is not recognised amid so many different statements.

41. We can, if it is thought proper, speak briefly of the Lares also, whom the mass think
to be the gods of streets and ways, because the Greeks name streets laurae. In different
parts of his writings, Nigidius speaks of them now as the guardians of houses and
dwellings; now as the Curetes, who are said to have once concealed, by the clashing of
cymbals, the infantile cries of Jupiter; now the five Digiti Samothracii, who, the Greeks
tell us, were named Idoei Dactyli. Varro, with like hesitation, says at one time that they
are the Manes, and therefore the mother of the Lares was named Mania; at another time,
again, he maintains that they are gods of the air, and are termed heroes; at another,
following the opinion of the ancients, he says that the Lares are ghosts, as it were a
kind of tutelary demon, spirits of dead men.

42. It is a vast and endless task to examine each kind separately, and make it evident
even from your religious books that you neither hold nor believe that there is any god
concerning whom you have not brought forward doubtful and inconsistent statements,
expressing a thousand different beliefs. But, to be brief, and avoid prolixity, it is
enough to have said what has been said; it is, further, too troublesome to gather together
many things into one mass, since it is made manifest and evident in different ways that
you waver, and say nothing with certainty of these things which you assert. But you will
perhaps say, Even if we have no personal knowledge of the Lares, Novensiles, Penates,
still the very agreement of our authors proves their existence, and that such a race takes
rank among the celestial gods. And how can it be known whether there is any god, if what
he is shall be wholly unknown? or how can it avail even to ask for benefits, if it is not
settled and determined who should be invoked at each inquiry? For every one who seeks to
obtain an answer from any deity, should of necessity know to whom he makes supplication,
on whom he calls, from whom he asks help for the affairs and occasions of human life;
especially as you yourselves declare that all the gods do not have all power, and that the
wrath and anger of each are appeased by different rites.

43. For if this deity requires a black, that a white skin; if sacrifice must be made to
this one with veiled, to that with uncovered head; this one is consulted about marriages,
the other relieves distresses,-may it not be of some importance whether the one or the
other is Novensills, since ignorance of the facts and confusion of persons displeases the
gods, and leads necessarily to the contraction of guilt? For suppose that I myself, to
avoid some inconvenience and peril, make supplication to any one of these deities, saying,
Be present, be near, divine Penates, thou Apollo, and thou, O Neptune, and in your divine
clemency turn away all these evils, by which I am annoyed, troubled, and tormented: will
there be any hope that I shall receive help from them, if Ceres, Pales, Fortune, or the
genius Jovialis, not Neptune and Apollo, shall be the dii Penates? Or if I invoked the
Curetes instead of the Lares, whom some of your writers maintain to he the Digiti
Samothracii, how shall I enjoy their help and favour, when I have not given them their own
names, and have given to the others names not their own? Thus does our interest demand
that we should rightly know the gods, and not hesitate or doubt about the power, the name
of each; lest, if they be invoked with rites and titles not their own, they have at once
their ears stopped against our prayers, and hold us involved in guilt which may not be
forgiven.

44. Wherefore, if you are assured that in the lofty palaces of heaven there dwells, there
is, that multitude of deities whom you specify, you should make your stand on one
proposition, and not, divided by different and inconsistent opinions, destroy belief in
the very things which you seek to establish. If there is a Janus, let Janus be; if a
Bacchus, let Bacchus be; if a Summanus, let Summanus be: for this is to confide, this to
hold, to be settled in the knowledge of something ascertained, not to say after the manner
of the blind and erring, The Novensiles are the Muses, in truth they are the Trebian gods,
nay, their number is nine, or rather, they are the protectors of cities which have been
overthrown; and bring so important matters into this danger, that while you remove some,
and put others in their place, it may well be doubted of them all if they anywhere exist.


AGAINST THE HEATHEN, BOOK 4
===========================

AGAINST THE HEATHEN, BOOK 4 Arnobius of Sicca

d. c. AD 330

North African teacher who wrote against the pagans.

AGAINST THE HEATHEN BOOK 4

1. We would ask you, and you above all, O Romans, lords and princes of the world, whether
you think that Piety, Concord, Safety, Honour, Virtue, Happiness, and other such names, to
which we see you rear altars and splendid temples, have divine power, and live in heaven?
or, as is usual, have you classed them with the deities merely for form's sake, because we
desire and wish these blessings to fall to our lot? For if, while you think them empty
names without any substance, you yet deify them with divine honours, you will have to
consider whether that is a childish frolic, or tends to bring your deities into contempt,
when you make equal, and add to their number vain and feigned names. But if you have
loaded them with temples and couches, holding with more assurance that these, too, are
deities, we pray you to teach us in our ignorance, by what course, in what way, Victory,
Peace, Equity, and the others mentioned among the gods, can be understood to be gods, to
belong to the assembly of the immortals?

2. For we-but, perhaps, you c rob and deprive us of common-sense-feel and perceive that
none of these has divine power, or possesses a form of its own; but that, on the contrary,
they are the excellence of manhood, the safety of the safe, the honour of the respected,
the victory of the conqueror, the harmony of the allied, the piety of the pious, the
recollection of the observant, the good fortune, indeed, of him who lives happily and
without exciting any ill-feeling. Now it is easy to perceive that, in speaking thus, we
speak most reasonably when we observe the contrary qualities opposed to them, misfortune,
discord, forgetfulness, injustice, impiety, baseness of spirit, and unfortunate weakness
of body. For as these things happen accidentally, and depend on human acts and chance
moods, so their contraries, named after more agreeable qualities, must be found in others;
and from these, originating in this wise, have arisen those invented names.

3. With regard, indeed, to your bringing forward to us other bands of unknown gods, we
cannot determine whether you do that seriously, and from a belief in its certainty; or,
merely playing with empty fictions, abandon yourselves to an unbridled imagination. The
goddess Luperca, you tell us on the authority of Varro, was named because the fierce wolf
spared the exposed children· Was that goddess, then, disclosed, not by her own power, but
by the course of events? and was it only after the wild beast restrained its cruel teeth,
that she both began to be herself and was marked by her name? or if she was already a
goddess long before the birth of Romulus and his brother, show us what was her name and
title. Praestana was named, according to you, because, in throwing the javelin, Quirinus
excelled all in strength; and the goddess Panda, or Pantica, was named because Titus
Tatius was allowed to open up and make passable a road, that he might take the Capitoline.
Before these events, then, had the deities never existed? and if Romulus had not held the
first place in casting the javelin, and if the Sabine king had been unable to take the
Tarpeian rock, would there be no Pantica, no Praestana? And if you say that they existed
before that which gave rise to their name, a question which has been discussed in a
preceding section, tell us also what they were called.

4. Pellonia is a goddess mighty to drive back enemies. Whose enemies, say, if it is
convenient? Opposing armies meet, and fighting together, hand to hand, decide the battle;
and to one this side, to another that, is hostile. Whom, then, will Pellonia turn to
flight, since on both sides there will be fighting? or in favour of whom will she incline,
seeing that she should afford to both sides the might and services of her name? But if she
indeed did so, that is, if she gave her good-will and favour to both sides, she would
destroy the meaning of her name, which was formed with regard to the beating back of one
side. But you will perhaps say, She is goddess of the Romans only, and, being on the side
of the Quirites alone, is ever ready graciously to help them. We wish, indeed, that it
were so, for we like the name; but it is a very doubtful matter. What! do the Romans have
gods to themselves, who do not help other nations? and how can they be gods, if they do
not exercise their divine power impartially towards all nations everywhere? and where, I
pray you, was this goddess Pellonia long ago, when the national honour was brought under
the yoke at the Caudine Forks? when at the Trasimene lake the streams ran with blood? when
the plains of Diomede were heaped up with dead Romans when a thousand other blows were
sustained in countless disastrous battles? Was she snoring and sleeping; or, as the base
often do, had she deserted to the enemies' camp?

5. The sinister deities preside over the regions on the left hand only, and are opposed to
those on the right. But with what reason this is said, or with what meaning, we do not
understand ourselves; and we are sure that you cannot in any degree cause it to be clearly
and generally understood. For in the first place, indeed, the world itself has in itself
neither right nor left neither upper nor under regions, neither fore nor after parts. For
whatever is round, and bounded on every side by the circumference of a solid sphere, has
no beginning, no end; where there is no end and beginning, no part can have its own name
and form the beginning. Therefore, when we say, This is the right, and that the left side,
we do not refer to anything in the world, which is everywhere very much the same, but to
our own place and position, we being so formed that we speak of some things as on our
right hand, of others as on our left; and yet these very things which we name left, and
the others which we name right, have in us no continuance, no fixedness, but take their
forms from our sides, just as chance, and the accident of the moment, may have placed us.
If I look towards the rising sun, the north pole and the north are on my left hand;

and if I turn my face thither, the west will be on my left, for it will be regarded as
behind the sun's back. But, again, if I turn my eyes to the region of the west, the wind
and country of the south are now said to be on my left. And if I am turned to this side by
the necessary business of the moment, the result is, that the east is said to be on the
left, owing to a further change of position, -from which it can be very easily seen that
nothing is either on our right or on our left by nature, but from position, time, and
according as our bodily position with regard to surrounding objects has been taken up. But
in this case, by what means, in what way, will there be gods of the regions of the left,
when it is clear that the same regions are at one time on the right, at another on the
left? or what have the regions of the right done to the immortal gods, to deserve that
they should be without any to care for them, while they have ordained that these should be
fortunate, and ever accompanied by lucky omens?

6. Lateranus, as you say, is the god and genius of hearths, and received this name because
men build that kind of fireplace of unbaked bricks. What then? if hearths were made of
baked clay, or any other material whatever, will they have no genii? and will Lateranus,
whoever he is, abandon his duty as guardian, because the kingdom which he possesses has
not been formed of bricks of clay? And for what purpose, I ask, has that god received the
charge of hearths? He runs about the kitchens of men, examining and discovering with what
kinds of wood the heat in their fires is produced; he gives strength to earthen vessels
that they may not fly in pieces, overcome by the violence of the flames; he sees that the
flavour of unspoilt dainties reaches the taste of the palate with their own pleasantness,
and acts the part of a taster, and tries whether the sauces have been rightly prepared. Is
not this unseemly, nay-to speak with more truth-disgraceful, impious, to introduce some
pretended deities for this only, not to do them reverence with fitting honours, but to
appoint them over base things, and disreputable actions?

7. Does Venus Militaris, also, preside over the evil-doing of camps, and the debaucheries
of young men? Is there one Perfica, also, of the crowd of deities, who causes those base
and filthy delights to reach their end with uninterrupted pleasure? Is there also
Pertunda, who presides over the marriage couch? Is there also Tutunus, on whose huge
members and horrent fascinum you think it auspicious, and desire, that your matrons should
be borne? But if facts themselves have very little effect in suggesting to volt a right
understanding of the truth, are you not able, even from the very names, to understand that
these are the inventions of a most meaningless superstition, and the false gods of fancy?
Puta, you say, presides over the pruning of trees, Peta over prayers; Nemestrinus is the
god of groves; Patellana is a deity, and Patella, of whom the one has been set over things
brought to light, the other over those yet to be disclosed. Nodutis is spoken of as a god,
because he brings that which has been sown to the knots: and she who presides over the
treading out of grain, Noduterensis; the goddess Upibilia delivers from straying from the
right paths; parents bereaved of their children are under the care of Orbona,-those very
near to death, under that of Naenia. Again, Ossilago herself is mentioned as she who gives
firmness and solidity to the bones of young children. Mellonia is a goddess, strong and
powerful in regard to bees, caring for and guarding the sweetness of their honey.

8. Say, I pray you,-that Peta, Puta, Patella may graciously favour you,-if there were no
bees at all on the earth then, or if we men were born without bones, like some worms,
would there be no goddess Mellonia; or would Ossilago, who gives bones their solidity, be
without a name of her own? I ask truly, and eagerly inquire whether you think that gods,
or men, or bees, fruits, twigs, and the rest, are the more ancient in nature, time, long
duration? No man will doubt that you say that the gods precede all things whatever by
countless ages and generations. But if it is so, how, in the nature of things, can it be
that, from things produced afterwards, they received those names which are earlier in
point of time? or that the gods were charged with the care of those things which were not
yet produced, and assigned to be of use to men? Or were the gods long without names; and
was it only after things began to spring up, and be on the earth, that you thought it
right that they should be called by these names and titles? And whence could you have
known what name to give to each, since you were wholly ignorant of their existence; or
that they possessed any fixed powers, seeing that you were equally unaware which of them
had any power, and over what he should be placed to suit his divine might?

9. What then? you say; do you declare that these gods exist nowhere in the world, and have
been created by unreal fancies? Not we alone, but truth itself, and reason, say so, and
that common-sense in which all men share. For who there who believes that there are gods
of gain, and that they preside over the getting of it, seeing that it springs very often
from the basest employments, and is always at the expense of others? Who believes that
Libentina, who that Burnus. is set over those lusts which wisdom bills us avoid, and
which, in a thousand ways, vile and filthy wretches attempt and practise? Who that
Limentinus and Lima have the care of thresholds, and do the duties of their keepers, when
every day we see the thresholds of temples and private houses destroyed and overthrown,
and that the infamous approaches to stews are not without them? Who believes that the Limi
watch over obliquities? who that Saturnus presides over the sown crops? who that Montinus
is the guardian of mountains; Murcia, of the slothful? Who, finally, would believe that
Money is a goddess, whom your writings declare, as though she were the greatest deity, to
give golden rings, the front seats at games and shows, honours in the greatest number, the
dignity of the magistracy, and that which the indolent love most of all,-an undisturbed
ease, by means of riches.

10. But if you urge that bones, different kinds of honey, thresholds, and all the other
things which we have either run over rapidly, or, to avoid prolixity, passed by
altogether, have their own peculiar guardians, we may in like manner introduce a thousand
other gods, who should care for and guard innumerable things. For why should a god have
charge of honey only, and not of gourds, rape, cunila, cress, figs, beets, cabbages? Why
should the bones alone have found protection, and not the nails, hair, and all the other
things which are placed in the hidden parts and members of which we feel ashamed, and are
exposed to very many accidents, and stand more in need of the care and attention of the
gods? Or if you say that these parts, too, act under the care of their own tutelar
deities, there will begin to be as many gods as there are things; nor will the cause be
stated why the divine care does not protect all things, if you say that there are certain
things over which the deities preside, and for which they care.

11. What say you, O fathers of new religions, and powers? Do you cry out, and complain
that these gods are dishonoured by us, and neglected with profane contempt, viz.
Lateranus, the genius of hearths; Limentinus, who presides over thresholds; Pertunda,
Perfica, Noduterensis: and do you say that things have sunk into ruin, and that the world
itself has changed its laws and constitution, because we do not bow humbly in supplication
to Mutunus and Tutunus? But now look and see, lest while you imagine such monstrous
things, and form such conceptions, you may have offended the gods who most assuredly
exist, if only there are any who are worthy to bear and hold that most exalted title; and
it be for no other reason that those evils, of which you speak, rage, and increase by
accessions every day. Why, then, some one of you will perhaps say, do you maintain that it
is not true that these gods exist? And, when invoked by the diviners, do they obey the
call, and come when summoned by their own names, and give answers which may be relied on,
to those who consult them? We can show that what is said is false, either because in the
whole matter there is the greatest room for distrust, or because we, every day, see many
of their predictions either prove untrue or baffled expectation to suit the opposite
issues.

12. But let them be true, as you maintain, yet will you have us also believe that
Mellonia, for example, introduces herself into the entrails, or Limentinus, and that they
set themselves to make known what you seek to learn? Did you ever see their face their
deportment, their countenance? or can even these be seen in lungs or livers? May it not
happen, may it not come to pass, although you craftily conceal it, that the one should
take the other's place, deluding, mocking, deceiving, and presenting the appearance of the
deity invoked? If the magi, who are so much akin to soothsayers, relate that, in their
incantations, pretended gods steal in frequently instead of those invoked; that some of
these, moreover, are spirits of grosser substance, who pretend that they are gods, and
delude the ignorant by their lies and deceit,-why should we not similarly believe that
here, too, others substitute themselves for those who are not, that they may both
strengthen your superstitious beliefs, and rejoice that victims are slain in sacrifice to
them under names not their own?

13. Or, if you refuse to believe this on account of its novelty, how can you know whether
there is not some one, who comes in place of all whom yon invoke, and substituting himself
in all parts of the world, shows to you what appear to be many gods and powers? Who is
that one? some one will ask. We may perhaps, being instructed by truthful authors, be able
to say; but, lest you should be unwilling to believe us, let my opponent ask the
Egyptians, Persians, Indians, Chaldeans, Armenians, and all the others who have seen and
become acquainted with these things in the more recondite arts. Then, indeed, you will
learn who is the one God, or who the very many under Him are, who pretend to be gods, and
make sport of men's ignorance. Even now we are ashamed to come to the point at which not
only boys, young and pert, but grave men also, cannot restrain their laughter, and men who
have been hardened into a strict and stern humour. For while we have all heard it
inculcated and taught by our teachers, that in declining the names of the gods there was
no plural number, because the gods were individuals, and the ownership of each name could
not be common to a great many; you in fogetfulness, and putting away the memory of your
early lessons, both give to several gods the same names, and, although you are elsewhere
more moderate as to their number, have multiplied them, again, by community of names;
which subject, indeed, men of keen discernment and acute intellect have before now treated
both in Latin and Greek. And that might have lessened our labour, if it were not that at
the same time we see that some know nothing of these books; and, also, that the discussion
which we have begun, compels us to bring forward something on these subjects, although it
has been already laid hold of, and related by those writers.

14. Your theologians, then, and authors on unknown antiquity, say that in the universe
there are three Joves, one of whom has Aether for his father; another, Coelus; the third,
Saturn, born and buried in the island of Crete. They speak of five Suns and vie
Mercuries,-of whom, as they relate, the first Sun is called the son of Jupiter, and is
regarded as grandson of Aether; the second is also Jupiter's son, and the mother who bore
him Hyperiona; the third the son of Vulcan, not Vulcan of Lemnos, but the son of the Nile;
the fourth, whom Acantho bore at Rhodes in the heroic age, was the father of Ialysus;
while the fifth is regarded as the son of a Scythian king and subtle Circe. Again, the
first Mercury, who is said to have lusted after Proserpina, is son of Coelus, who is above
all. Under the earth is the second, who boasts that he is Trophonius. The third was born
of Maia, his mother, and the third Jove; the fourth is the offspring of the Nile, whose
name the people of Egypt dread and fear to utter. The fifth is the slayer of Argus, a
fugitive and exile. and the inventor of letters in Egypt. But there are five Minervas
also, they say, just as there are five Suns and Mercuries; the first of whom is no virgin
but the mother of Apollo by Vulcan; the second, the offspring of the Nile, who is asserted
to be the Egyptian Sais; the third is descended from Saturn, and is the one who devised
the use of arms; the fourth is sprung from Jove, and the Messenians name her Coryphasia;
and the fifth is she who slew her lustful father, Pallas.

15. And lest it should seem tedious and prolix to wish to consider each person singly, the
same theologians say that there are four Vulcans and three Dianas, as many Aesculapii and
five Dionysi, six Hercules and four Venuses, threesets of Castors and the same number of
Muses, three winged Cupids, and four named Apollo; whose fathers they mention in like
manner, in like manner their mothers, and the places where they were born, and point out
the origin andfamily of each. But if it is true and certain, and is told in earnest as a
well-known matter, either they are not all gods, inasmuch as there cannot be several under
the same name, as we have been taught; or if there is one of them, he will not be known
and recognised, because he is obscured by the confusion of very similar names. And thus it
results from your own action, however unwilling you may be that it should be so, that
religion is brought into difficulty and confusion, and has no fixed end to which it can
turn itself, without being made the sport of equivocal illusions.

16. For suppose that it had occurred to us, moved either by suitable influence or violent
fear of you, to worship Minerva, for example, with the rights you deem sacred, and the
usual ceremony: if, when we prepare sacrifices, and approach to make the offerings
appointed for her on the flaming altars, all the Minervas shall fly thither, and striving
for the right to that name, each demand that the offerings prepared be given to herself;
what drawn-out animal shall we place among them, or to whom shall we direct the sacred
offices which are our duty? For the first one of whom we spoke will perhaps say: "The name
Minerva is mine, mine the divine majesty, who bore Apollo and Diana, and by the fruit of
my womb enriched heaven with deities, and multiplied the number of the gods. "Nay,
Minerva," the fifth will say, "are you speaking, who, being a wife, and so often a mother,
have lost the sanctity of spotless purity? Do you not see that in all temples the images
of Minervas are those of virgins, and that all artists refrain from giving to them the
figures of matrons? Cease, therefore, to appropriate to yourself a name not rightfully
yours. For that I am Minerva, begotten of father Pallas, the whole band of poets bear
witness, who call me Pallas, the surname being derived from my father. The second will cry
on hearing this: "What say you?

Do you, then, bear the name of Minerva, an impudent parricide, and one defiled by the
pollution of lewd lust, who, decking yourself with rouge and a harlot's arts, roused upon
yourself even your father's passions, full of maddening desires? Go further, then, seek
for yourself another name for this belongs to me, whom the Nile, greatest of rivers, begot
from among his flowing waters, and brought to a maiden's estate from the condensing of
moisture. But if you inquire into the credibility of the matter, I too will bring as
witnesses the Egyptians, in whose language I am called Neith, as Plato's Timaeus attests.
What, then, do we suppose will be the result? Will she indeed cease to say that she is
Minerva, who is named Coryphasia, either to mark her mother, or because she sprung forth
from the top of Jove's head, bearing a shield, and girt with the terror of arms? Or are we
to suppose that she who is third will quietly surrender the name? and not argue and resist
the assumption of the first two with such words as these: "Do you thus dare to assume the
honour of my name, O Sais, sprung from the mud and eddies of a stream, and formed in miry
places? Or do you usurp another's rank, who falsely say that you were born a goddess from
the head of Jupiter, and persuade very silly men that you are reason? Does he conceive and
bring forth children from ms head?

That the arms you bear might be forged and formed, was there even in the hollow of his
head a smith's workshop? were there anvils, hammers, furnaces, bellows, coals, and
pincers? Or if, as you maintain, it is true that you are reason, cease to claim for
yourself the name which is mine; for reason, of which you speak, is not a certain form of
deity, but the understanding of difficult questions. If, then, as we have said, five
Minervas should meet us when we essay to sacrifice, and contending as to whose this name
is, each demand that either fumigations of incense be offered to her, or sacrificial wines
poured out from golden cups; by what arbiter, by what judge, shall we dispose of so great
a dispute? or what examiner will there be, what umpire of so great boldness as to attempt,
with such personages, either to give a just decision, or to declare their causes not
founded on right? Will he not rather go home, and, keeping himself apart from such
matters, think it safer to have nothing to do with them, test he should either make
enemies of the rest, by giving to one what belongs to all, or be charged with folly for
yielding to all what should be the property of one?

17. We may say the very same things of the Mercuries, the Suns,-indeed of all the others
whose numbers you increase and multiply. But it is sufficient to know from one case that
the same principle applies to the rest; and, lest our prolixity should chance to weary our
audience, we shall cease to deal with individuals, lest, while we accuse you of excess, we
also should ourselves be exposed to the charge of excessive loquacity. What do you say,
you who, by the fear of bodily tortures, urge us to worship the gods, and constrain us to
undertake the service of your deities? We can be easily won, if only something befitting
the conception of so great a race be shown to us. Show us Mercury, but only, one; give us
Bacchus, but only one; one Venus, and in like manner one Diana. For you will never make us
believe that there are four Apollos, or three Jupiters, not even if you were to call Jove
himself as witness, or make the Pythian god your authority.

18. But some one on the opposite side says, How do we know whether the theologians have
written what is certain and well known, or set forth a wanton fiction, as they thought and
judged? That has nothing to do with the matter; nor does the reasonableness of your
argument depend upon this,-whether the facts are as the writings of the theologians state,
or are otherwise and markedly different. For to us it is enough to speak of things which
come before the public; and we need not inquire what is true, but only confute and
disprove that which lies open to all, and which men's thoughts have generally received.
But if they are liars, declare yourselves what is the truth, and disclose the unassailable
mystery. And how can it be done when the services of men of letters are set aside? For
what is there which can be said about. the immortal gods that has not reached men's
thoughts from what has been written by men on these subjects? Or can you relate anything
yourselves about their rights and ceremonies, which has not been recorded in books, and
made known by what authors have written? Or if you think these of no importance, let all
the books be destroyed which have been composed about the gods for you by theologians,
pontiffs, and even some devoted to the study of philosophy; nay, let us rather suppose
that from the foundation of the world no man ever wrote anything about the gods: we wish
to find out, and desire to know, whether you can mutter or murmur in mentioning the gods,
or conceive those in thought to whom no idea from any book gave shape in your minds. But
when it is clear that you have been informed of their names and powers by the suggestions
of books, it is unjust to deny the reliableness of these books by whose testimony and
authority you establish what you say.

19. But perhaps these things will turn out to be false, and what you say to be true. By
what proof, by what evidence, will it be shown? For since both parties are men, both those
who have said the one thing and those who have said the other, and on both sides the
discussion was of doubtful matters, it is arrogant to say that that is true which seems so
to you, but that that which offends your feelings manifests wantonness and falsehood. By
the laws of the human race, and the associations of mortality itself, when you read and
hear, That god was born of this father and of that mother, do you not feel in your mind
that something is said which belongs to man, and relates to the meanness of our earthly
race? Or, while you think that it is so, do you conceive no anxiety lest you should in
something offend the gods themselves, whoever they are, because you believe that it is
owing to filthy intercourse ... that they have reached the light they knew not of, thanks
to lewdness? For we, lest any one should chance to think that we are ignorant of, do not
know, what befits the majesty of that name, assuredly think that the gods should not know
birth; or if they are born at all, we hold and esteem that the Lord and Prince of the
universe, by ways which He knew Himself, sent them forth spotless, most pure, undefiled,
ignorant of sexual pollution, and brought to the full perfection of their natures as soon
as they were begotten?

20. But you, on the contrary, forgetting how great their dignity and grandeur are,
associate with them a birth, and impute to them a descent, which men of at all refined
feelings regard as at once execrable and terrible. From Ops, you say, his mother, and from
his father Saturn, Diespiter was born with his brothers. Do the gods, then, have wives;
and, the matches having been previously planned, do they become subject to the bonds of
marriage? Do they take upon themselves the engagements of the bridal couch by
prescription, by the cake of spelt, and by a pretended sale? Have they their mistresses,
their promised wives, their betrothed brides, on settled conditions? And what do we say
about their marriages, too, when indeed you say that some celebrated their nuptials, and
entertained joyous throngs, and that the goddesses sported at these; and that some threw
all things into utter confusion with dissensions because they had no share in singing the
Fescennine verses, and occasioned danger and destruction to the next generation of men?

21. But perhaps this foul pollution may be less apparent in the rest. Did, then, the ruler
of the heavens, the father of gods and men, who, by the motion of his eyebrow, and by his
nod, shakes the whole heavens and makes them tremble,-did he find his origin in man and
woman? And unless both sexes abandoned themselves to degrading pleasures in sensual
embraces, would there be no Jupiter, greatest of all; and even to this time would the
divinities have no king, and heaven stand without its lord? And why do we marvel that you
say Jove sprang from a woman's womb, seeing that your authors relate that he both had a
nurse, and in the next place maintained the life given to him by nourishment drawn from a
foreign breast? What say you, O men? Did, then, shall I repeat, the god who makes the
thunder crash, lightens and hurls the thunderbolt, and draws together terrible clouds,
drink in the streams of the breast, wail as an infant, creep about, and, that he might be
persuaded to cease his crying most foolishly protracted, was he made silent by the noise
of rattles, and put to sleep lying in a very soft cradle, and lulled with broken words? O
devout assertion of the existence of gods, pointing out and declaring the venerable
majesty of their awful grandeur! Is it thus in your opinion, ask, that the exalted powers
of heaven are produced? do your gods come forth to the light by modes of birth such as
these, by which asses, pigs. dogs, by which the whole of this unclean herd of earthly
beasts is conceived and begotten?

22. And, not content to have ascribed these carnal unions to the venerable Saturn, you
affirm that the king of the world himself begot children even more shamefully than he was
himself born and begotten. Of Hyperiona, as his mother, you say, and Jupiter, who wields
the thunderbolt, was born the golden and blazing Sun; of Latona and the same, the Delian
archer, and Diana, who rouses the woods; of Leda and the same, those named in Greek
Dioscori; of Aclmena and the same, the Theban Hercules, whom his club and hide defended;
of him and Semele, Liber, who is named Bromius, and was born a second time from his
father's thigh; of him, again, and Main, Mercury, eloquent in speech, and bearer of the
harmless snakes. Can any greater insult be put upon your Jupiter, or is there anything
else which will destroy and ruin the reputation of the chief of the gods, further than
that you believe him to have been at times overcome by vicious pleasures, and to have
glowed with the passion of a heart roused to lust after women? And what had the Saturnian
king to do with strange nuptials? Did Juno not suffice him; and could he not stay the
force of his desires on the queen of the deities, although so great excellence graced her,
such beauty, majesty of countenance, and snowy and marble whiteness of arms?

Or did he, not content with one wife, taking pleasure in concubines, mistresses, and
courtezans, a lustful god, show his incontinence in all directions, as is the custom with
dissolute youths; and in old age, after intercourse with numberless persons, did he renew
his eagerness for pleasures now losing their zest? What say you, profane ones; or what
vile thoughts do you fashion about your love? Do you not, then, observe do you not see
with what disgrace you brand him? of what wrong-doing you make him the author? or what
stains of vice, how great infamy you heap upon him? 23. Men, though prone to lust, and
inclined, through weakness of character, to yield to the allurements of sensual pleasures,
still punish adultery by the laws, and visit with the penalty of death those whom they
find to have possessed themselves of others rights by forcing the marriage-bed. The
greatest of kings, however, you tell us, did not know how vile, how infamous the person of
the seducer and adulterer was; and he who, as is said, examines our merits and demerits,
did not, owing to the reasonings of his abandoned heart, see what was the fitting course
for him to resolve on. But this misconduct might perhaps be endured, if you were to
conjoin him with persons at least his equals, and if he were made by you the paramour of
the immortal goddesses. But what beauty, what grace was there, I ask you, in human bodies,
which could move, which could turn to it the eyes of Jupiter? Skin, entrails, phlegm, and
all that filthy mass placed under the coverings of the intestines, which not Lynceus only
with his searching gaze can shudder at, but any other also can be made to turn from even
by merely thinking.

24. If you will open your minds' eyes, and see the real truth without gratifying any
private end, you will find that the causes of all the miseries by which, as you say, the
human race has long been afflicted, flow from such beliefs which you held in former times
about your gods; and which you have refused to amend, although the truth was placed before
your eyes. For what about them, pray, have we indeed ever either imagined which was
unbecoming, or put forth in shameful writings that the troubles which assail men and the
loss of the blessings of life should be used to excite a prejudice against us? Do we say
that certain gods were produced from eggs, like storks and pigeons? Do we say that the
radiant Cytherean Venus grew up, having taken form from the sea's foam and the severed
genitals of Coelus? that Saturn was thrown into chains for parricide, and relieved from
their weight only on his own days? that Jupiter was saved from death by the services of
the Curetes? that he drove his father from the seat of power, and by force and fraud
possessed a sovereignty not his own? Do we say that his aged sire, when driven out,
concealed himself in the territories of the Itali, and gave his name as a gift to Latium,
because he had been there protected from his son? Do we say that Jupiter himself
incestuously married his sister?

or, instead of pork, breakfasted in ignorance upon the son of Lycaon, when invited to his
table? that Vulcan, limping on one foot, wrought as a smith in the island of Lemnos? that
Aeculapius was transfixed by a thunderbolt because of his greed and avarice, as the
Boeotian Pindar sings? that Apollo, having become rich, by his ambiguous responses,
deceived the very kings by whose treasures and gifts he had been enriched? Did we declare
that Mercury was a thief? that Laverna is so also, and along with him presides over secret
frauds? Is the writer Myrtilus one of us, who declares that the Muses were the handmaids
of Megalcon, daughter of Macarus? 25. Did we say that Venus was a courtezan, deified by a
Cyprian king named Cinyras? Who reported that the palladium was formed from the remains of
Pelops? Was it not you? Who that Mars was Spartanus? was it not your writer Epicharmus?
Who that he was born within the confines of Thrace? was it not Sophocles the Athenian,
with the assent of all his spectators? Who that he was born in Arcadia? was it not you?
Who that he was kept a prisoner for thirteen months? was it not the son of the river
Meles? Who said that dogs were sacrificed to him by the Carians, asses by the Scythians?
was it not Apollodorus especially, along with the rest? Who that in wronging another's
marriage couch, he was caught entangled in snares? was it not your writings, your
tragedies? Did we ever write that the gods for hire endured slavery, as Hercules at Sardis
for lust and wantonness; as the Delian Apollo, who served Admetus, as Jove's brother, who
served the Trojan Laomedon, whom the Pythian also served, but with his uncle; as Minerva,
who gives light, and trims the lamps to secret lovers? Is not he one of your poets, who re
resented Mars and Venus as wounded by men's hands? Is not Panyassis one of you, who
relates that father Dis and queenly Juno were wounded by Hercules? Do not the writings of
your Polemo say that Pallas was slain, covered with her own blood, overwhelmed by Ornytus?

Does not Sosibius declare that Hercules himself was afflicted by the wound and pain he
suffered at the hands of Hipocoon's children? Is it related at our instance that Jupiter
was committed to the grave in the island of Crete? Do we say that the brothers, who were
united in their cradle, were buried in the territories of Sparta and Lacedaemon? Is the
author of our number, who is termed Patrocles the Thurian in the titles of his writings,
who relates that the tomb and remains of Saturn are found in Sicily? Is Plutarch of
Chaeronea esteemed one of us, who said that Hercules was reduced to ashes on the top of
Mount Oeta, after his loss of strength through epilepsy? 26. But what shall I say of the
desires with which it is written in your books, and contained in your writers, that the
holy immortals lusted after women? For is it by us that the king of the sea is asserted in
the heat of maddened passion to have robbed of their virgin purity Amphitrite, Hippothoe,
Amymone, Menalippe, Alope? that the spotless Apollo, Latona's son, most chaste and pure,
with the passions of a breast not governed by reason, desired Arsinoe, Aethusa, Hypsipyle,
Marpessa, Zeuxippe, and Prothoe, Daphne, and Sterope? Is it shown in our poems that the
aged Saturn, already long covered with grey hair, and now cooled by weight of years, being
taken by his wife in adultery, put on the form of one of the lower animals, and neighing
loudly, escaped in the shape of a beast? Do you not accuse Jupiter himself of having
assumed countless forms, and concealed by mean deceptions the ardour of his wanton lust?
Have we ever written that he obtained his desires by deceit, at one time changing into
gold, at another into a sportive satyr; into a serpent, a bird, a bull; and, to pass
beyond all limits of disgrace, into a little ant, that he might, forsooth, make Clitor's
daughter the mother of Myrmidon, in Thessaly? Who represented him as having watched over
Alcmena for nine nights without ceasing? was it not you?-that he indolently abandoned
himself to his lusts, forsaking his post in heaven? was it not you? And, indeed, you
ascribe to him no mean favours;

since, in your opinion, the god Hercules was born to exceed and surpass in such matters
his father's powers. He in nine nights begot with difficulty one son; but Hercules, a holy
god, in one night taught the fifty daughters of Thestius at once to lay aside their
virginal title, and to bear a mother's burden. Moreover, not content to have ascribed to
the gods love of women, do you also say that they lusted after men? Some one loves Hylas;
another is engaged with Hyacinthus; that one burns with desire for Pelops; this one sighs
more ardently for Chrysippus; Catamitus is carried off to be a favourite and cup-bearer;
and Fabius, that he may be called Jove's darling, is branded on the soft parts, and marked
in the hinder. 27. But among you, is it only the males who lust; and has the female sex
preserved its purity? Is it not proved in your books that Tithonus was loved by Aurora;
that Luna lusted after Endymion; the Nereid after Aeacus; Thetis after Achilles' father;
Proserpina after Adonis; her mother, Ceres, after some rustic Jasion, and afterwards
Vulcan, Phaeton, Mars; Venus herself, the mother of Aeneas, and founder of the Roman
power, to marry Anchises? While, therefore, you accuse, without making any exception, not
one only by name, but the whole of the gods alike, in whose existence you believe, of such
acts of extraordinary shamefulness and baseness, do you dare, without violation of
modesty, to say either that we are impious, or that you are pious, although they receive
from you much greater occasion for offence on account of all the shameful acts which you
heap up to their reproach, than in connection with the service and duties required by
their majesty, honour, and worship? For either all these things are false which you bring
forward about them individually, lessening their credit and reputation; and it is in that
case a matter quite deserving, that the gods should utterly destroy the race of men; or if
they are true and certain, and perceived without any reasons for doubt, it comes to this
issue, that, however unwilling you may be, we believe them to be not of heavenly, but of
earthly birth.

28. For where there are weddings, marriages, births, nurses, arts, and weaknesses; where
there are liberty and slavery; where there are wounds, slaughter, and shedding of blood;
where there are lusts, desires, sensual pleasures; where there is every mental passion
arising from disgusting emotions,-there must of necessity be nothing godlike there; nor
can that cleave to a superior nature which belongs to a fleeting race, and to the frailty
of earth. For who, if only he recognises and perceives what the nature of that power is,
can believe either that a deity had the generative members, and was deprived of them by a
very base operation; or that he at one time cut off the children sprung from himself, and
was punished by suffering imprisonment; or that he, in a way, made civil war upon his
father, and deprived him of the right of governing; or that he, filled with fear of one
younger when overcome, turned to flight, and hid in remote solitudes, like a fugitive and
exile? Who, I say, can believe that the deity reclined at men's tables, was troubled on
account of his avarice, deceived his suppliants by an ambiguous reply, excelled in the
tricks of thieves, committed adultery, acted as a slave, was wounded, and in love, and
submitted to the seduction of impure desires in all the forms of lust? But yet you declare
all these things both were, and are, in your gods; and you pass by no form of vice,
wickedness, error, without bringing it forward, in the wantonness of your fancies, to the
reproach of the gods. You must, therefore, either seek out other gods, to whom all these
reproaches shall not apply, for they are a human and earthly race to whom they apply; or
if there are only these whose names and character you have declared, by your beliefs you
do away with them: for all the things of which you speak relate to men.

29. And here, indeed, we can show that all those whom you represent to us as and call
gods, were but men, by quoting either Euhemerus of Acragas, whose books were translated by
Ennius into Latin that all might be thoroughly acquainted with them; or Nicanor the
Cyprian; or the Pellaean Leon; or Theodorus of Cyrene; or Hippo and Diagoras of Melos; or
a thousand other writers, who have minutely, industriously, and carefully brought secret
things to light with noble candour. We may, I repeat, at pleasure, declare both the acts
of Jupiter, and the wars of Minerva and the virgin Diana; by what stratagems Liber strove
to make himself master of the Indian empire; what was the condition, the duty, the gain of
Venus; to whom the great mother was bound in marriage; what hope, what joy was aroused in
her by the comely Attis; whence came the Egyptian Serapis and Isis, or for what reasons
their very names were formed.

30. But in the discussion which we at present maintain, we do not undertake this trouble
or service, to show and declare who all these were. But this is what we proposed to
ourselves, that as you call us impious and irreligious, and, on the other hand, maintain
that you are pious and serve the gods, we should prove and make manifest that by no men
are they treated with less respect than by you. But if it is proved by the very insults
that it is so, it must, as a consequence, be understood that it is yon who rouse the gods
to fierce and terrible rage, because you either listen to or believe, or yourselves invent
about them, stories so degrading. For it is not he who is anxiously thinking of religious
rites, and slays spotless victims, who gives piles of incense to be burned with fire, not
he must be thought to worship the deities, or alone discharge the duties of religion. True
worship is in the heart, and a belief worthy of the gods; nor does it at all avail to
bring blood and gore, if you believe about them things which are not only far remote from
and unlike their nature, but even to some extent stain and disgrace both their dignity and
virtue.

31. We wish, then, to question you, and invite you to answer a short question, Whether you
think it a greater offence to sacrifice to them being neither wishes nor desires these;
or, with foul beliefs, to hold opinions about them so degrading, that they might rouse any
one's spirit to a mad desire for revenge? If the relative importance of the matters be
weighed, you will find no judge so prejudiced as not to believe it a greater crime to
defame by manifest insults any one's reputation, than to treat it with silent neglect. For
this, perhaps, may be held and believed from deference to reason; but the other course
manifests an impious spirit, and a blindness despaired of in fiction. If in your
ceremonies and rites neglected sacrifices and expiatory offerings may be demanded, guilt
is said to have been contracted; if by a momentary forgetfulness any one has erred either
in speaking or in pouring wine; or again, if at the solemn games and sacred races the
dancer has halted, or the musician suddenly become silent,-you all cry out immediately
that something has been done contrary to the sacredness of the ceremonies; or if the boy
termed patrimus let go the thong in ignorance, or could not hold to the earth: and yet do
you dare to deny that the gods are ever being wronged by you in sins so grievous, while
you confess yourselves that, in less matters, they are often angry, to the national ruin?

32. But all these things, they say, are the fictions of poets, and games arranged for
pleasure. It is not credible, indeed, that men by no means thoughtless, who sought to
trace out the character of the remotest antiquity, either did not insert in their poems
the fables which survived in men's minds and common conversation; or that they would have
assumed to themselves so great licence as to foolishly feign what was almost sheer
madness, and might give them reason to be afraid of the gods, and bring them into danger
with men. But let us grant that the poets are, as yon say, the inventors and authors of
tales so disgraceful; you are not, however, even thus free from the guilt of dishonouring
the gods, who either are remiss in punishing such offences, or have not, by passing laws,
and by severity of punishments, opposed such indiscretion, and determined that no man
should henceforth say that which tended to the dishonour, or was unworthy of the glory of
the gods. For whoever allows the wrongdoer to sin, strengthens his audacity; and it is
more insulting to brand and mark any one with false accusations, than to bring forward and
upbraid their real offences. For to be called what you are, and what you feel yourself to
be, is less offensive, because your resentment is checked by the evidence supplied against
you on privately reviewing your life; but that wounds very keenly which brands the
innocent, and defames a man's honourable name and reputation.

33. Your gods, it is recorded, dine on celestial couches, and in golden chambers, drink,
and are at last soothed by the music of the lyre, and singing. You fit them with ears not
easily wearied; and do not think it unseemly to assign to the gods the pleasures by which
earthly bodies are supported, and which are sought after by ears enervated by the
frivolity of an unmanly spirit. Some of them are brought forward in the character of
lovers, destroyers of purity, to commit shameful and degrading deeds not only with women,
but with men also. You take no care as to what is said about matters of so much
importance, nor do you check, by any fear of chastisement at least, the recklessness of
your wanton literature; others, through madness and frenzy, bereave themselves, and by the
slaughter of their own relatives cover themselves with blood, just as though it were that
of an enemy. You wonder at these loftily expressed impieties; and that which it was
fitting should be subjected to all punishments, you extol with praise that spurs them on,
so as to rouse their recklessness to greater vehemence. They mourn over the wounds of
their bereavement, and with unseemly wailings accuse the cruel fates; you are astonished
at the force of their eloquence, carefully study and commit to memory that which should
have been wholly put away from human society, and are solicitous that it should not perish
through any forgetfulness. They are spoken of as being wounded, maltreated, making war
upon each other with hot and furious contests; you enjoy the description; and, to enable
you to defend so great daring in the writers, pretend that these things are allegories,
and contain the principles of natural science.

34. But why do I complain that you have disregarded the insults offered to the other
deities? That very Jupiter, whose name you should not have spoken without fear and
trembling over your whole body, is described as confessing his faults when overcome by
lust of his wife, and, hardened in shamelessness, making known, as if he were mad and
ignorant, the mistresses he preferred to his spouse, the concubines he preferred to his
wife; you say that those who have uttered so marvellous things are chiefs and kings among
poets endowed with godlike genius, that they are persons most holy; and so utterly have
you lost sight of your duty in the matters of religion which you bring forward, that words
are of more importance, in your opinion, than the profaned majesty of the immortals. So
then, if only you felt any fear of the gods, or believed with confident and unhesitating
assurance that they existed at all, should you not, by bills, by popular votes, by fear of
the senate's decrees, have hindered, prevented, and forbidden any one to speak at random
of the gods otherwise than in a pious manner? Nor have they obtained this honour even at
your hands, that you should repel insults offered to them by the same laws by which you
ward them off from yourselves. They are accused of treason among you who have whispered
any evil about your kings.

To degrade a magistrate, or use insulting language to a senator, you have made by decree a
crime, followed by the severest punishment. To write a satirical poem, by which a slur is
cast upon the reputation and character of another, you determined, by the decrees of the
decemvirs, should not go unpunished; and that no one might assail your ears with too
wanton abuse, you established formulae for severe affronts. With you only the gods are
unhonoured, contemptible, vile; against whom you allow any one liberty to say what he
will, to accuse them of the deeds of baseness which his lust has invented and devised. And
yet you do not blush to raise against us the charge of want of regard for deities so
infamous, although it is much better to disbelieve the existence of the gods than to think
they are such, and of such repute. 35. But is it only poets whom you have thought proper
to allow to invent unseemly tales about the gods, and to turn them shamefully into sport?
What do your pantomimists, the actors, that crowd of mimics and adulterers? Do they not
abuse your gods to make to themselves gain, and do not the others find enticing pleasures
in the wrongs and insults offered to the gods? At the public games, too, the colleges of
all the priests and magistrates take their places, the chief Pontiffs, and the chief
priests of the curiae; the Quindecemviri take their places, crowned with wreaths of
laurel, and the flamines diales with their mitres; the augurs take their places, who
disclose the divine mind and will; and the chaste maidens also, who cherish and guard the
ever-burning fire; the whole people and the senate take their places; the fathers who have
done service as consuls, princes next to the gods, and most worthy of reverence; and,
shameful to say, Venus, the mother of the race of Mars, and parent of the imperial people,
is represented by gestures as in love, and is delineated with shameless mimicry as raving
like a Bacchanal, with all the passions of a vile harlot. The Great Mother, too, adorned
with her sacred fillets, is represented by dancing; and that Pessinuntic Dindymene is, to
the dishonour of her age, represented as with shameful desire using passionate gestures in
the embrace of a herdsman;

and also in the Trachiniae of Sophocles, that son of Jupiter, Hercules, entangled in the
toils of a death-fraught garment, is exhibited uttering piteous cries, overcome by his
violent suffering, and at last wasting away and being consumed, as his intestines soften
and are dissolved. But in these tales even the Supreme Ruler of the heavens Himself is
brought forward, without any reverence for His name and majesty, as acting the part of an
adulterer, and changing His countenance for purposes of seduction, in order that He might
by guile rob of their chastity matrons, who were the wives of others, and putting on the
appearance of their husbands, by assuming the form of another. 36. But this crime is not
enough: the persons of the most sacred gods are mixed up with farces also, and scurrilous
plays. And that the idle onlookers may be excited to laughter and jollity, the deities are
hit at in jocular quips, the spectators shout and rise up, the whole pit resounds with the
clapping of hands and applause. And to the debauched scoffers at the gods gifts and
presents are ordained, ease, freedom from public burdens, exemption and relief, together
with triumphal garlands,-a crime for which no amends can be made by any apologies. And
after this do you dare to wonder whence these ills come with which the human race is
deluged and overwhelmed without any interval, while you daily both repeat and learn by
heart all these things, with which are mixed up libels upon the gods and slanderous
sayings; and when you wish your inactive minds to be occupied with useless dreamings,
demand that days be given to you, and exhibition made without any interval? But if you
felt any real indignation on behalf of your religious beliefs, you should rather long ago
have burned these writings, destroyed those books of yours, and overthrown these theatres,
in which evil reports of your deities are daily made public in shameful tales. For why,
indeed, have our writings deserved to be given to the flames? our meetings to be cruelly
broken up, in which prayer is made to the Supreme God, peace and pardon are asked for all
in authority, for soldiers, kings, friends, enemies, for those still in life, and those
freed from the bondage of the flesh; in which all that is said is such as to make men
humane, gentle, modest, virtuous, chaste, generous in dealing with their substance, and
inseparably united to all embraced in our brotherhood?

37. But this is the state of the case, that as you are exceedingly strong in war and in
military power, you think you excel in knowledge of the truth also, and are pious before
the gods, whose might you have been the first to besmirch with foul imaginings. Here, if
your fierceness allows. and madness suffers, we ask you to answer us this: Whether you
think that anger finds a place in the divine nature, or that the divine blessedness is far
removed from such passions? For if they are subject to passions so furious, and are
excited by feelings of rage as your imaginings suggest.-for you say that they have often
shaken the earth with their roaring, and bringing woful misery on men, corrupted with
pestilential contagion the character of the times, both because their games had been
celebrated with too little care, and because their priests were not received with favour,
and because some small spaces were desecrated, and because their rites were not duly
performed,-it must consequently be understood that they feel no little wrath on account of
the opinions which have been mentioned. But if, as follows of necessity, it is admitted
that all these miseries with which men have long been overwhelmed flow from such fictions,
if the anger of the deities is excited by these causes, you are the occasion of so
terrible misfortunes, because you never cease to jar upon the feelings of the gods, and
excite them to a fierce desire for vengeance.

But if, on the other hand, the gods are not subject to such passions, and do not know at
all what it is to be enraged, then indeed there is no ground for saying that they who know
not what anger is are angry with us, * and they are free from its presence, and the
disorder it causes. For it cannot be, in the nature of things, that what is one should
become two; and that unity, which is naturally uncompounded, should divide and go apart
into separate things.


AGAINST THE HEATHEN, BOOK 5
===========================

AGAINST THE HEATHEN, BOOK 5 Arnobius of Sicca

d. c. AD 330

North African teacher who wrote against the pagans.

AGAINST THE HEATHEN BOOK 5

1. Admitting that all these things which do the immortal gods dishonour, have been put
forth by poets merely in sport, what of those found in grave, serious, and careful
histories, and handed down by you in hidden mysteries? have they been invented by the
licentious fancy of the poets? Now if they seemed to you stories of such absurdity, some
of them you would neither retain in their constant use, nor celebrate as solemn festivals
from year to year, nor would you maintain them among your sacred rites as shadows of real
events. With strict moderation, I shall adduce only one of these stories which are so
numerous; that in which Jupiter himself is brought on the stage as stupid and
inconsiderate, being tricked by the ambiguity of words. In the second hook of Antias-lest
any one should think, perchance, that we are fabricating charges calumniously-the
following story is written:-

The famous king Numa, not knowing how to avert evil portended by thunder, and being eager
to learn, by advice of Egeria concealed beside a fountain twelve chaste youths provided
with chains; so that when Faunus and Martius Picus came to this place to drink,-for hither
they were wont to come to draw water,-they might rush on them, seize and bind them. But,
that this might be done more speedily, the king filled many cups with wine and with mead,
and placed them about the approaches to the fountain, where they would be seen-a crafty
snare for those who should come. They, as was their usual custom, when overcome by thirst,
came to their well-known haunts. But when they had perceived cups with sweetly smelling
liquors, they preferred the new to the old; rushed eagerly upon them; charmed with the
sweetness of the draught, drank too much; and becoming drunk, fell fast asleep. Then the
twelve youths threw themselves upon the sleepers, and cast chains round them, lying soaked
with wine; and they, when roused, immediately taught the king by what methods and
sacrifices Jupiter could be called down to earth. With this knowledge the king performed
the sacred ceremony on the Aventine, drew down Jupiter to the earth, and asked from him
the due Form of expiation. Jupiter having long hesitated, said, "Thou shalt avert what is
portended by thunder with a head. The king answered. "With an onion. Jupiter again, "With
a man's. The king returned, "But with hair. The deity in turn, "With the life.

With a fish," rejoined Pompilius. Then Jupiter, being ensnared by the ambiguous terms
used, uttered these words: "Thou hast overreached me, Numa; for I had determined that
evils portended by thunder should be averted with sacrifices of human heads, not with hair
and an onion. Since, however, your craft has outwitted me, have the mode which you wished;
and always undertake the expiation of thunder-portents with those things which you have
bargained for." 2. What the mind should take up first, what last, or what it should pass
by silently, it is not easy to say, nor is it made clear by any amount of reflection; for
all have been so devised and fitted to be laughed at, that you should strive that they may
be believed to be false-even if they are true-rather than pass current as true, and
suggest as it were something extraordinary, and bring contempt upon deity itself. What,
then, do you say, O you-? Are we to believe that that Faunus and Martius Picus-if they are
of the number of the gods, and of that everlasting and immortal substance-were once
parched with thirst, and sought the gushing fountains, that they might be able to cool
with water their heated veins? Are we to believe that, ensnared by wine, and beguiled by
the sweetness of mead, they dipped so long into the treacherous cups, that they even got
into danger of becoming drunk? Are we to believe that, being fast asleep, and plunged in
the forgetfulness of most profound slumbers, they gave to creatures of earth an
opportunity to bind them? On what parts, then, were those bonds and chains flung? Did they
have any solid substance, or had their hands been formed of hard bones, so that it might
be possible to bind them with halters and hold them fast by tightly drawn knots? For I do
not ask, I do not inquire whether they could have said anything when swaying to and fro in
their drunken maunderings;

or whether, while Jupiter was unwilling, or rather unwitting, any one could have marie
known the way to bring him down to earth. This only do I wish to hear, why, if Faunus and
Picus are of divine origin and power, they did not rather themselves declare to Numa, as
he questioned them, that which he desired to learn from Jove himself at a greater risk? Or
did Jupiter alone have knowledge of this-for from him the thunderbolts fall-how training
in some kind of knowledge should avert impending dangers? Or, while he himself hurls these
fiery bolts, is it the business of others to know in what way it is fitting to allay his
wrath and indignation? For truly it would be most absurd to suppose that he himself
appoints the means by which may be averted that which he has determined should befall men
through the hurling of his thunderbolts. For this is to say, By such ceremonies you will
turn aside my wrath; and if I shall at any time have foreshown by flashes of lightning
that some evil is close at hand, do this and that, so that what I have determined should
be done may be done altogether in vain, and may pass away idly through the force of these
rites.

3. But let us admit that, as is said, Jupiter has himself appointed against himself ways
and means by which his own declared purposes might fittingly be opposed: are we also to
believe that a deity of so great majesty was dragged down to earth, and, standing on a
petty hillock with a mannikin, entered into a wrangling dispute? And what, I ask, was the
charm which forced Jupiter to leave the all-important direction of the universe, and
appear at the bidding of mortals? the sacrificial meal, incense, blood, the scent of
burning laurel-boughs, and muttering of spells? And were all these more powerful than
Jupiter, so that they compelled him to do unwillingly what was enjoined, or to give
himself up of his own accord to their crafty tricks? What! will what follows be believed,
that the son of Saturn had so little foresight, that he either proposed terms by the
ambiguity of which he was himself ensnared, or did not know what was going to happen, how
the craft and cunning of a mortal would overreach him? You shall make expiation, he says,
with a head when thunderbolts have fallen. The phrase is still incomplete, and the meaning
is not fully expressed and defined; for it was necessarily right to know whether Diespiter
ordains that this expiation be effected with the head of a wether, a sow, an ox, or any
other animal. Now, as he had not yet fixed this specifically, and his decision was still
uncertain and not yet determined, how could Numa know that Jupiter would say the head of a
man, so as to anticipate and prevent him, and turn his uncertain and ambiguous words into
"an onion's head? "

4. But you will perhaps say that the king was a diviner. Could he be more so than Jupiter
himself? But for a mortal's anticipating what Jupiter-whom he overreached-was going to
say, could the god not know in what ways a man was preparing to overreach him? Is it not,
then, clear and manifest that these are puerile and fanciful inventions, by which, while a
lively wit is assigned to Numa, the greatest want of foresight is imputed to Jupiter? For
what shows so little foresight as to confess that you have been ensnared by the subtlety
of a man's intellect, and while you are vexed at being deceived, to give way to the wishes
of him who has overcome you, and to lay aside the means which you had proposed? For if
there was reason and some natural fitness that expiatory sacrifice for that which was
struck with lightning should have been made with a man's head, I do not see why the
proposal of an onion's was made by the king; but if it could be performed with an onion
also, there was a greedy lust for human blood. And both parts are made to contradict
themselves: so that, on the one hand, Numa is shown not to have wished to know what he did
wish; and, on the other, Jupiter is shown to have been merciless, because he said that he
wished expiation to be made with the heads of men, which could have been done by Numa with
an onion's head.

5. In Timotheus, who was no mean mythologist, and also in others equally well informed,
the birth of the Great Mother of the gods, and the origin of her rites, are thus detailed,
being de-rived-as he himself writes and suggests-from learned books of antiquities, and
from his acquaintance with the most secret mysteries:-Within the confines of Phrygia, he
says, there is a rock of unheard-of wildness in every respect, the name of which is Agdus,
so named by the natives of that district. Stones taken from it, as Themis by her oracle
had enjoined, Deucalion and Pyrrha threw upon the earth, at that time emptied of men; from
which this Great Mother, too, as she is called, was fashioned along with the others, and
animated by the deity. Her, given over to rest and sleep on the very summit of the rock,
Jupiter assailed with lewdest desires. But when, after long strife, he could no accomplish
what he had proposed to himself, he, baffled, spent his lust on the stone. This the rock
received, and with many groanings Acdestis is born in the tenth month, being named from
his mother rock. In him there had been resistless might, and a fierceness of disposition
beyond control, a lust made furious, and derived from both sexes. He violently plundered
and laid waste; he scattered destruction wherever the ferocity of his disposition had led
him; he regarded not gods nor men, nor did he think anything more powerful than himself;
he contemned earth, heaven, and the stars.

6. Now, when it had been often considered in the councils of the gods, by what means it
might be possible either to weaken or to curb his audacity, Liber, the rest hanging back,
takes upon himself this task. With the strongest wine he drugs a spring much resorted to
by Acdestis where he had been wont to assuage the heat and burning thirst roused in him by
sport and hunting. Hither runs Acdestis to drink when he felt the need; he gulps down the
draught too greedily into his gaping veins. Overcome by what he is quite unaccustomed to,
he is in consequence sent fast asleep. Liber is near the snare which he had set; over his
foot he throws one end of a halter formed of hairs, woven together very skilfully; with
the other end he lays hold of his privy members. When the fumes of the wine passed off,
Acdestis starts up furiously, and his foot dragging the noose, by his own strength he robs
himself of his sex; with the tearing asunder of these parts there is an immense flow of
blood; both are carried off and swallowed up by the earth; from them there suddenly
springs up, covered with fruit, a pomegranate tree, seeing the beauty of which, with
admiration, Nana, daughter of the king or river Sangarius, gathers and places in her bosom
some of the fruit. By this she becomes pregnant; her father shuts her up, supposing that
she had been debauched, and seeks to have her starved to death;

she is kept alive by the mother of the gods with apples, and other food, and brings forth
a child, but Sangarius orders it to be exposed. One Phorbas having found the child, takes
it home, brings it up on goats' milk; and as handsome fellows are so named in Lydia, or
because the Phrygians in their own way of speaking call their goats attagi, it happened in
consequence that the boy obtained the name Attis. Him the mother of the gods loved
exceedingly, because he was of most surpassing beauty; and Acdestis, who was his
companion, as he grew up fondling him, and bound to him by wicked compliance with his lust
in the only way now possible, leading him through the wooded glades, and presenting him
with the spoils of many wild beasts, which the boy Attis at first said boastfully were won
by his own toil and labour. Afterwards, under the influence of wine, he admits that he is
both loved by Acdestis, and honoured by him with the gifts brought from the forest; whence
it is unlawful for those polluted by drinking wine to enter into his sanctuary, because it
discovered his secret.

7. Then Midas, king of Pessinus, wishing to withdraw the youth from so disgraceful an
intimacy, resolves to give him his own daughter in marriage, and caused the gates of the
town to be closed, that no one of evil omen might disturb their marriage joys. But the
mother of the gods, knowing the fate of the youth, and that he would live among men in
safety only so long as he was free from the ties of marriage, that no disaster might
occur, enters the closed city, raising its walls with her head, which began to be crowned
with towers in consequence. Acdestis, bursting with rage because of the boy's being torn
from himself, and brought to seek a wife, fills all the guests with frenzied madness: the
Phrygians shriek aloud, panic-stricken at the appearance of the gods; a daughter of
adulterous Gallus cuts off her breasts; Attis snatches the pipe borne by him who was
goading them to frenzy; and he, too, now filled with furious passion, raving frantically
and tossed about, throws himself down at last, and under a pine tree mutilates himself,
saying, "Take these, Acdestis, for which you have stirred up so great and terribly
perilous commotions. With the streaming blood his life flies; but the Great Mother of the
gods gathers the parts which had been cut off, and throws earth on them, having first
covered them, and wrapped them in the garment of the dead. From the blood which had flowed
springs a flower, the violet, and with this the tree is girt.

Thence the custom began and arose, whereby you even now veil and wreath with flowers the
sacred pine. The virgin who had been the bride, whose name, as Valerius the pontifex
relates, was Ia, veils the breast of the lifeless youth with soft wool, sheds tears with
Acdestis, and slays herself After her death her blood is changed into purple violets. The
mother of the gods sheds tears also, from which springs an almond tree, signifying the
bitterness of death. Then she bears away to her cave the pine tree, beneath which Attis
had unmanned himself; and Acdestis joining in her wailings, she beats and wounds her
breast, pacing round the trunk of the tree now at rest. Jupiter is begged by Acdestis that
Attis may be restored to life: he does not permit it. What, however, fate allowed, he
readily grants, that his body should not decay, that his hairs should always grow, that
the least of his fingers should live, and should be kept ever in motion; content with
which favours, it is said that Acdestis consecrated the body in Pessinus, and honoured it
with yearly rites and priestly services.

8. If some one, despising the deities, and furious with a savagely sacrilegious spirit,
had set himself to blaspheme your gods, would he dare to say against them anything more
severe than this tale relates, which you have reduced to form, as though it were some
wonderful narrative, and have honoured without ceasing, lest the power of time and the
remoteness of antiquity should cause it to be forgotten? For what is there asserted in it,
or what written about the gods, which, if said with regard to a man brought up with bad
habits and a pretty rough training, would not make you liable to be accused of wronging
and insulting him, and expose you to hatred and dislike, accompanied by implacable
resentment? From the stones, you say, which Deucalion and Pyrrha threw, was produced the
mother of the gods. What do you say, O theologians? what, ye priests of the heavenly
powers? Did the mother of the gods, then, not exist at all for the sake of the deluge? and
would there be no cause or beginning of her birth, had not violent storms of rain swept
away the whole race of men? It is through man, then, that she feels herself to exist, and
she owes it to Pyrrha's kindness that she sees herself addressed as a real being; but if
that is indeed true, this too will of necessity not be false, that she was human, not
divine.

For if it is certain that men are sprung originally from the casting of stones, it must be
believed that she too was one of us, since she was produced by means of the same causes.
For it cannot be, for nature would not suffer it, that from one kind of stones, and from
the same mode of throwing them, some should be formed to rank among the immortals, others
with the condition of men. Varro, that famous Roman, distinguished by the diversity of his
learning, and unwearied in his researches into ancient times, in the first of four books
which he has left in writing on the race of the Roman people, shows by careful
calculations, that from the time of the deluge, which we mentioned before, down to the
consulship of Hirtius and Pansa, there are not quite two thousand years; and if he is to
be believed, the Great Mother, too, must be said to have her whole life bounded by the
limits of this number. And thus the matter is brought to this issue, that she who is said
to be parent of all the deities is not their mother, but their daughter; nay, rather a
mere child, a little girl, since we admit that in the never-ending series of ages neither
beginning nor end has been ascribed to the gods.

9. But why do we speak of your having bemired the Great Mother of the gods with the filth
of earth, when you have not been able for but a little time even to keep from speaking
evil of Jupiter himself? While the mother of the gods was then sleeping on the highest
peak of Agdus, her son, you say, tried stealthily to surprise her chastity while she
slept. After robbing of their chastity virgins and matrons without number, did Jupiter
hope to gratify his detestable passion upon his mother? and could he not be turned from
his fierce desire by the horror which nature itself has excited not only in men, but in
some other animals also, and by common feeling? Was he then regardless of piety and
honour, who is chief in the temples? and could he neither reconsider nor perceive how
wicked was his desire, his mind being madly agitated? But, as it is, forgetting his
majesty and dignity, he crept forward to steal those vile pleasures, trembling and quaking
with fear, holding his breath, walking in terror on tiptoe, and, between hope and fear,
touched her secret parts, trying how soundly his mother slept, and what she would suffer.
Oh, shameful representation! oh, disgraceful plight of Jupiter, prepared to attempt a
filthy contest! Did the ruler of the world, then, turn to force, when, in his heedlessness
and haste, he was prevented from stealing on by surprise; and when he was unable to snatch
his pleasure by cunning craft, did he assail his mother with violence, and begin without
any concealment to destroy the chastity which he should have revered? Then, having striven
for a very long time when she is unwilling, did he go off conquered, vanquished, and
overcome? and did his spent lust part him whom piety was unable to hold back from
execrable lust after his mother?

10. But you will perhaps say the human race shuns and execrates such unions; among the
gods there is no incest. And why, then, did his mother resist with the greatest vehemence
her son when he offered her violence? Why did she flee from his embraces, as if she were
avoiding unlawful approaches? For if there was nothing wrong in so doing, she should have
gratified him without any reluctance, just as he eagerly wished to satisfy the cravings of
his lust. And here, indeed, very thrifty men, and frugal even about shameful works, that
that sacred seed may not seem to have been poured forth in vain-the rock, one says, drank
up Jupiter's foul incontinence. What followed next, I ask? Tell. In the very heart of the
rock, and in that flinty hardness, a child was formed and quickened to be the offspring of
great Jupiter. It is not easy to object to conceptions so unnatural and so wonderful. For
as the human race is said by you to have sprung and proceeded from stones, it must be
believed that the stones both had genital parts, and drank in the seed cast on them, and
when their time was full were pregnant, and at last brought forth, travailing in distress
as women do. That impels our curiosity to inquire, since you say that the birth occurred
after ten months, in what womb of the rock was he enclosed at that time? with what food,
with what juices, was he supplied?

or what could he have drawn to support him from the hard stone, as unborn infants usually
receive from their mothers! He had not yet reached the light, my informant says; and
already bellowing and imitating his father's thunderings, he reproduced their sound. And
after it was given him to see the sky and the light of day, attacking all things which lay
in his way, he made havoc of them, and assured himself that he was able to thrust down
from heaven the gods themselves. O cautious and foreseeing mother of the gods, who, that
she might not undergo the ill-will of so arrogant a son, or that his bellowing while still
unborn might not disturb her slumbers or break her repose, withdrew herself, and sent far
from her that most hurtful seed, and gave it to the rough rock. 11. There was doubt in the
councils of the gods how that unyielding and fierce violence was to be subdued; and when
there was no other way, they had recourse to one means, that he should be soaked with much
wine, and bereft of his members, by their being cut off. As if, indeed, those who have
suffered the loss of these parts become less arrogant, and as if we do not daily see those
who have cut them away from themselves become more wanton, and, neglecting all the
restraints of chastity and modesty, throw themselves headlong into filthy vileness, making
known abroad their shameful deeds. I should like, however, to see-were it granted me to be
born at those times-father Liber, who overcame the fierceness of Acdestis, having glided
down from the peaks of heaven after the very venerable meetings of the gods, cropping the
tails of horses, plaiting pliant halters, drugging the waters harmless while pure with
much strong wine, and after that drunkenness sprung from drinking, to have carefully
introduced his hands, handled the members of the sleeper, and directed his care skilfully
to the parts which were to perish, so that the hold of the nooses placed round them might
surround them all.

12. Would any one say this about the gods who had even a very low opinion of them? or, if
they were taken up with such affairs, considerations, cares, would any man of wisdom
either believe that they are gods, or reckon them among men even? Was that Acdestis, pray,
the lopping off of whose lewd members was to give a sense of security to the immortals,
was he one of the creatures of earth, or one of the gods, and possessed of immortality?
For if he was thought to be of our lot and in the condition of men, why did he cause the
deities so much terror? But if he was a god, how could he be deceived, or how could
anything be cut off from a divine body? But we raise no issue on this point: he may have
been of divine birth, or one of us, if you think it more correct to say so. Did a
pomegranate tree, also, spring from the blood which flowed and from the parts which were
cut off? or at the time when that member was concealed in the bosom of the earth, did it
lay hold of the ground with a root, and spring up into a mighty tree, put forth branches
loaded with blossoms, and in a moment bare mellow fruit perfectly and completely ripe? And
because these sprang from red blood, is their colour therefore bright purple, with a dash
of yellow? Say further that they are juicy also, that they have the taste of wine, because
they spring from the blood of one filled with it, and you have finished your story
consistently. O Abdera, Abdera, what occasions for mocking you would give to men, if such
a tale had been devised by you! All fathers relate it, and haughty states peruse it; and
you are considered foolish, and utterly dull and stupid.

13. Through her bosom, we are told, Nana conceived a son by an apple. The opinion is self-
consistent; for where rocks and hard stones bring forth, there apples must have their time
of generating. The Berecyntian goddess fed the imprisoned maiden with nuts and figs, fitly
and rightly; for it was right that she should live on apples who had been made a mother by
an apple. After her offspring was born, it was ordered by Sangarius to be cast far away:
that which he believed to be divinely conceived long before, he would not have called the
offspring of his child. The infant was brought up on he-goats' milk. O story ever opposed
and most inimical to the male sex, in which not only do men lay aside their virile powers,
but beasts even which were males become mothers! He was famous for his beauty, and
distinguished by his remarkable comeliness. It is wonderful enough that the noisome stench
of goats did not cause him to be avoided and fled from. The Great Mother loved him-if as a
grandmother her grandson, there is nothing wrong; but if as the theatres tell, her love is
infamous and disgraceful. Acdestis, too, loved him above all, enriching him with a
hunter's gifts. There could be no danger to his purity from one emasculated, you say; but
it is not easy to guess what Midas dreaded? The Mother entered bearing the very walls.
Here we wondered, indeed, at the might and strength of the deity;

but again we blame her carelessness, because when she remembered the decree of fate, she
heedlessly laid open the city to its enemies. Acdestis cites to fury and madness those
celebrating the nuptial vows. If King Midas had displeased him who was binding the youth
to a wife, of what had Gallus been guilty, and his concubine's daughter, that he should
rob himself of his manhood, she herself of her breasts? "Take and keep these," says he,
"because of which you have excited such commotions to the overwhelming of our minds with
fear. We should none of us yet know what the frenzied Acdestis had desired in his
paramour's body, had not the boy thrown to him, to appease his wrath, the parts cut off.
14. What say you, O races and nations, given up to such beliefs? When these things are
brought forward, are you not ashamed and confounded to say things so indecent? We wish to
hear or learn from you something befitting the gods; but you, on the contrary, bring
forward to us the cutting off of breasts, the lopping off of men's members, ragings,
blood, frenzies, the self-destruction of maidens, and flowers and trees begotten from the
blood of the dead. Say, again, did the mother of the gods, then, with careful diligence
herself gather in her grief the scattered genitals with the shed blood? With her own
sacred, her own divine hands, did she touch and lift up the instruments of a disgraceful
and indecent office? Did she also commit them to the earth to be hid from sight; and lest
in this case they should, being uncovered, be dispersed in the bosom of the earth, did she
indeed wash and anoint them with fragrant gums before wrapping and covering them with his
dress? For whence could the violet's sweet scent have come had not the addition of those
ointments modified the putrefying smell of the member? Pray, when you read such tales, do
you not seem to yourselves to hear either girls at the loom wiling away their tedious
working hours, or old women seeking diversions for credulous children, and to be declaring
manifold fictions under the guise of truth? Acdestis appealed to Jupiter to restore life
to his paramour:

Jupiter would not consent, because he was hindered by the fates more powerful than
himself; and that he might not be in every respect very hard-hearted, he granted one
favour-that the body should not decay through any corruption; that the hair should always
grow; that the least of his fingers alone in his body should live, alone keep always in
motion. Would any one grant this, or support it with an unhesitating assent, that hair
grows on a dead body,-that part perished, and that the rest of his mortal body, free from
the law of corruption, remains even still? 15. We might long ago have urged you to ponder
this, were it not foolish to ask proofs of such things, as well as to say them. But this
story is false, and is wholly untrue. It is no mat ter to us, indeed, because of whom you
maintain that the gods have been driven from the earth, whether it is consistent and rests
on a sure foundation, or is, on the contrary, framed and devised in utter falsehood. For
to us it is enough-who have proposed this day to make it plain-that those deities whom you
bring for ward, if they are anywhere on earth, and glow with the fires of anger, are not
more excited to furious hatred by us than by you; and that that story, has been classed as
an event and committed to writing by you, and is willingly read over by you every day, and
handed down in order for the edifying of later times. Now, if this story is indeed true,
we see that there is no reason in it why the celestial gods should be asserted to he angry
with us, since we have neither declared things so much to their disgrace, nor committed
them to writing at all, nor brought them publicly to light by the celebration of sacred
rites; but if, as you think, it is untrue, and made up of delusive falsehoods, no man can
doubt that you are the cause of offence, who have either allowed certain persons to write
such stories, or have suffered them, when written, to abide in the memory of ages.

16. And yet how can you assert the falsehood of this story, when the very rites which you
celebrate throughout the year testify that you believe these things to be true, and
consider them perfectly trustworthy? For what is the meaning of that pine which on fixed
days you always bring into the sanctuary of the mother of the gods? Is it not in imitation
of that tree, beneath which the raging and ill-fated youth laid hands upon himself, and
which the parent of the gods consecrated to relieve her sorrow? What mean the fleeces of
wool with which you bind and surround the trunk of the tree? Is it not to recall the wools
with which la covered the dying youth, and thought that she could procure some warmth for
his limbs fast stiffening with cold? What mean the branches of the tree girt round and
decked with wreaths of violets? Do they not mark this, how the Mother adorned with early
flowers the pine which indicates and bears witness to the sad mishap? What mean the Galli
with dishevelled hair beating their breasts with their palms? Do they not recall to memory
those lamentations with which the tower-bearing Mother, along with the weeping Acdestis,
wailing aloud, followed the boy? What means the abstinence from eating bread which you
have named castus? Is it not in imitation of the time when the goddess abstained from
Ceres' fruit in her vehement sorrow?

17. Or if the things which we say are not so declare, say yourselves-those effeminate and
delicate men whom we see among you in the sacred rites of this deity-what business, what
care, what concern have they there; and why do they like mourners wound their arms and
breasts, and act as those dolefully circumstanced? What mean the wreaths, what the
violets, what the swathings, the coverings of soft wools? Why, finally, is the very pine,
but a little before swaying to and fro among the shrubs, an utterly inert log, set up in
the temple of the Mother of the gods next, like some propitious and very venerable deity?
For either this is the cause which we have found in your writings and treatises, and in
that case it is clear that you do not celebrate divine rites, but give a representation of
sad events; or if there is any other reason which the darkness of the mystery has withheld
from us, even it also must be involved in the infamy of some shameful deed. For who would
believe that there is any honour in that which the worthless Galli begin, effeminate
debauchees complete?

18. The greatness of the subject, and our duty to those on their defence also, demand that
we should in like manner hunt up the other forms of baseness, whether those which the
histories of antiquity record, or those contained in the sacred mysteries named initia,
and not divulged openly to all, but to the silence of a few; but your innumerable sacred
rites, and the loathsomeness of them all, will not allow us to go through them all bodily:
nay, more, to tell the truth, we turn aside ourselves from some purposely and
intentionally, lest, in striving to unfold all things, we should be defiled by
contamination in the very exposition. Let us pass by Fauna Fatua, therefore, who is called
Bona Dea, whom Sextus Clodius, in his sixth book in Greek on the gods, declares to have
been scourged to death with rods of myrtle, because she drank a whole jar of wine without
her husband's knowledge; and this is a proof, that when women show her divine honour a jar
of wine is placed there, but covered from sight, and that it is not lawful to bring in
twigs of myrtle, as Butas mentions in his Causalia. But let us pass by with similar
neglect the dii conserentes, whom Flaccus and others relate to have buried themselves,
changed in humani penis similitudinem in the cinders Under a pot of exta. And when
Tanaquil, skilled in the arts of Etruria, disturbed these, the gods erected themselves,
and became rigid. She then commanded a captive woman from Corniculum to learn and
understand what was the meaning of this: Ocrisia, a woman of the greatest wisdom divos
inseruisse genitali, explicuisse motus certos. Then the holy and burning deities poured
forth the power of Lucilius, and thus Servius king of Rome was born.

19. We shall pass by the wild Bacchanalia also, which are named in Greek Omophagia, in
which with seeming frenzy and the loss of your senses you twine snakes about you; and, to
show yourselves full of the divinity and majesty of the god, tear in pieces with gory
mouths the flesh of loudly-bleating goats. Those hidden mysteries of Cyprian Venus we pass
by also, whose founder is said to have been King Cinyras, in which being initiated, they
bring stated fees as to a harlot, and carry away phalli, given as signs of the propitious
deity. Let the rites of the Corybantes also be consigned to oblivion, in which is revealed
that sacred mystery, a brother slain by his brothers, parsley sprung from the blood of the
murdered one, that vegetable forbidden to be placed on tables, test the manes of the dead
should be unappeasably offended. But those other Bacchanalia also we refuse to proclaim,
in which there is revealed and taught to the initiated a secret not to be spoken; how
Liber, when taken up with boyish sports, was torn asunder by the Titans; how he was cut up
limb by limb by them also, and thrown into pots that he might be cooked; how Jupiter,
allured by the sweet savour, rushed unbidden to the meal, and discovering what had been
done, overwhelmed the revellers with his terrible thunder, and hurled them to the lowest
part of Tartarus. As evidence and proof of which, the Thracian bard handed down in his
poems the dice, mirror, tops, hoops, and smooth balls, and golden apples taken from the
virgin Hesperides.

20. It was our purpose to leave unnoticed those mysteries also into which Phrygia is
initiated, and all that race, were it not that the name of Jupiter, which has been
introduced by them, would not suffer us to pass cursorily by the wrongs and insults
offered to him; not that we feel any pleasure in discussing mysteries so filthy, but that
it may be made clear to you again and again what wrong you heap upon those whose
guardians, champions, worshippers, you profess to be. Once upon a time, they say,
Diespiter, burning after his mother Ceres with evil passions and forbidden desires, for
she is said by the natives of that district to be Jupiter's mother, and yet not daring to
seek by open force that for which he had conceived a shameless longing, hits upon a clever
trick by which to rob of her chastity his mother, who feared nothing of the sort. Instead
of a god, he becomes a bull; and concealing his purpose and daring under the appearance of
a beast lying in wait, he rushes madly with sudden violence upon her, thoughtless and
unwitting, obtains his incestuous desires; and the fraud being disclosed by his lust,
flies off known and discovered. His mother burns, foams, gasps, boils with fury and
indignation; and being unable to repress the storm and tempest of her wrath, received the
name Brimo thereafter from her ever-raging passion: nor has she any other wish than to
punish as she may her son's audacity.

21. Jupiter is troubled enough, being overwhelmed with fear, and cannot find means to
soothe the rage of his violated mother. He pours forth prayers, and makes supplication;
her ears are closed by grief. The whole order of the gods is sent to seek his pardon; no
one has weight enough to win a hearing. At last, the son seeking how to make satisfaction,
devises this means: Arietem nobilem bene grandibus cum testiculis deligit, exsecat hos
ipse et lanato exuit ex folliculi tegmine. Approaching his mother sadly and with downcast
looks, and as if by his own decision he had condemned himself, he casts and throws these
into her bosom. When she saw what his pledge was, she is somewhat softened, and allows
herself to be recalled to the care of the offspring which she had conceived. After the
tenth month she bears a daughter, of beautiful form, whom later ages have called now
Libera, now Proserpine; whom when Jupiter Verveceus saw to be strong, plump, and blooming,
forgetting what evils and what wickedness, and how great recklessness, he had a little
before fallen into, he returns to his former practices; and because it seemed too wicked
that a father openly be joined as in marriage with his daughter, he passes into the
terrible form of a dragon: he winds his huge coils round the terrified maiden, and under a
fierce appearance sports and caresses her in softest embraces.

She, too, is in consequence filled with the seed of the most powerful Jupiter, but not as
her mother was, for she bore a daughter like herself; but from the maiden was born
something like a bull, to testify to her seduction by Jupiter. If any one asks who
narrates this, then we shall quote the well-known senarian verse of a Tarentine poet which
antiquity sings, saying: "The bull begot a dragon, and the dragon a bull. Lastly, the
sacred rites themselves, and the ceremony of initiation even, named Sebadia, might attest
the truth; for in them a golden snake is let down into the bosom of the initiated, and
taken away again from the lower parts. 22. I do not think it necessary here also with many
words to go through each part, and show how many base and unseemly things there are in
each particular. For what mortal is there, with but little sense even of what becomes a
man, who does not himself see clearly the character of all these things, how wicked they
are, how vile, and what disgrace is brought upon the gods by the very ceremonies of their
mysteries, and by the unseemly origin of their rites? Jupiter, it is said, lusted after
Ceres. Why, I ask, has Jupiter deserved so ill of you, that there is no kind of disgrace,
no infamous adultery, which you do not heap upon his head, as if on some vile and
worthless person? Leda was unfaithful to her nuptial vow; Jupiter is said to be the cause
of the fault. Danae could not keep her virginity; the theft is said to have been
Jupiter's. Europa hastened to the name of woman; he is again declared to have been the
assailant of her chastity. Alcmena, Electra, Latona, Laodamia, a thousand other virgins,
and a thousand matrons, and with them the boy Catamitus, were robbed of their honour and
chastity. It is the same story everywhere-Jupiter. Nor is there any kind of baseness in
which you do not join and associate his name with passionate lusts;

so that the wretched being seems to have been born for no other reason at all except that
he might be a field fertile in crimes, an occasion of evil-speaking, a kind of open place
into which should gather all filthiness from the impurities of the stage. And yet if you
were to say that he had intercourse with strange women, it would indeed be impious, but
the wrong done in slandering him might be bearable. Did he lust after his mother also,
after his daughter too, with furious desires; and could no sacredness in his parent, no
reverence for her, no shrinking even from the child which had sprung from himself,
withhold him from conceiving so detestable a plan? 23. I should wish, therefore, to see
Jupiter, the father of the gods, who ever controls the world and men, adorned with the
horns of an ox, shaking his hairy ears, with his feet contracted into hoofs, chewing green
grass, and having behind him a tail, hams, and ankles smeared over with soft excrement,
and bedaubed with the filth cast forth. I should wish, I say,-for it must be said over and
over again,-to see him who turns the stars in their courses, and who terrifies and
overthrows nations pale with fear, pursuing the flocks of wethers, inspicientem testiculos
aretinos, snatching these away with that severe and divine hand with which he was wont to
launch the gleaming lightnings and to hurl in his rage the thunderbolt. Then, indeed, I
should like to see him ransacking their inmost parts with glowing knife; and all witnesses
being removed, tearing away the membranes circumjectas prolibus, and bringing them to his
mother, still hot with rage, as a kind of fillet to draw forth her pity, with downcast
countenance, pale, wounded, pretending to be in agony; and to make this believed, defiled
with the blood of the rain, and covering his pretended wound with bands of wool and linen.
Is it possible that this can be heard and read in this world, and that those who discuss
these things wish themselves to be thought pious, holy, and defenders of religion?

Is there any greater sacrilege than this, or can any mind be found so imbued with impious
ideas as to believe such stories, or receive them, or hand them down in the most secret
mysteries of the sacred rites? If that Jupiter of whom you speak, whoever he is, really
existed, or was affected by any sense of wrong, would it not be fitting that, roused to
anger, be should remove the earth from under our feet, extinguish the light of the sun and
moon; nay more, that he should throw all things into one mass, as of old? 24. But, my
opponent says, these are not the rites of our state. Who, pray, says this, or who repeats
it? is he Roman, Gaul, Spaniard, African, German, or Sicilian? And what does it avail your
cause if these stories are not yours, while those who compose them are on your side? Or of
what importance is it whether you approve of them or not, since what you yourselves say
are found to be either just as foul, or of even greater baseness? For do you wish that we
should consider the mysteries and those ceremonies which are named by the Greeks
Thesmophoria, in which those holy vigils and solemn watchings were consecrated to the
goddess by the Athenians? Do you wish us, I say, to see what beginnings they have, what
causes, that we may prove that Athens itself also, distinguished in the arts and pursuits
of civilization, says things as insulting to the gods as others, and that stories are
there publicly related under the mask of religion just as disgraceful as are thrown in our
way by the rest of you? Once, they say, when Proserpine, not yet a woman and still a
maiden, was gathering purple flowers in the meadows of Sicily, and when her eagerness to
gather them was leading her hither and thither in all directions, the king of the shades,
springing forth through an opening of unknown depth, seizes and bears away with him the
maiden, and conceals himself again in the bowels of the earth. Now when Ceres did not know
what had happened, and had no idea where in the world her daughter was, she set herself to
seek the lost one all over the world. She snatches up two torches lit at the fires of
Aetna; and giving herself light by means of these, goes on her quest in all parts of the
earth.

25. In her wanderings on that quest, she reaches the confines of Eleusis as well as other
countries -that is the name of a canton in Attica. At that time these parts were inhabited
by aborigines named Baubo, Triptolemus, Eubuleus, Eumolpus, Dysaules: Triptolemus, who
yoked oxen; Dysaules, a keeper of goats; Eubuleus, of swine; Eumolpus, of sheep, from whom
also flows the race of Eumolpidae, and from whom is derived that name famous among the
Athenians, and those who afterwards flourished as caduceatores, hierophants, and criers.
So, then, that Baubo who, we have said, dwelt in the canton of Eleusis, receives
hospitably Ceres, worn out with ills of many kinds, hangs about her with pleasing
attentions, beseeches her not to neglect to refresh her body, brings to quench her thirst
wine thickened with spelt, which the Greeks term cyceon. The goddess in her sorrow turns
away from the kindly offered services, and rejects them; nor does her misfortune suffer
her to remember what the body always requires. Baubo, on the other hand, begs and exhorts
her-as is usual in such calamities-not to despise her humanity; Ceres remains utterly
immoveable, and tenaciously maintains an invincible austerity. But when this was done
several times, and her fixed purpose could not be worn out by any attentions, Baubo
changes her plans, and determines to make merry by strange jests her whom she could not
win by earnestness. That part of the body by which women both bear children and obtain the
name of mothers, this she frees from longer neglect:

she makes it assume a purer appearance, and become smooth like a child, not yet hard and
rough with hair. In this wise she returns to the sorrowing goddess; and while trying the
common expedients by which it is usual to break the force of grief, and moderate it, she
uncovers herself, and baring her groins, displays all the parts which decency hides; and
then the goddess fixes her eyes upon these, and is pleased with the strange form of
consolation. Then becoming more cheerful after laughing, she takes and drinks off the
drought spurned before, and the indecency of a shameless action forced that which Baubo's
modest conduct was long unable to win. 26. If any one perchance thinks that we are
speaking wicked calumnies, let him take the hooks of the Thracian soothsayer, which you
speak of as of divine antiquity; and he will find that we are neither cunningly inventing
anything, nor seeking means to bring the holiness of the gods into ridicule, and doing so:
for we shall bring forward the very verses which the son of Calliope uttered in Greek, and
published abroad in his songs to the human race throughout all ages:- "With these words
she at the same time drew up her garments from the lowest hem, And exposed to view
formatas inguinibus res, Which Baubo grasping with hollow hand, for Their appearance was
infantile, strikes, touches gently. Then the goddess, fixing her orbs of august light,
Being softened, lays aside for a little the sadness of her mind; Thereafter she takes the
cup in her hand, and laughing,

Drinks off the whole draught of cyceon with gladness." What say you, O wise sons of
Erectheus? what, you citizens of Minerva? The mind is eager to know with what words you
will defend what it is so dangerous to maintain, or what arts you have by which to give
safety to personages and causes wounded so mortally. This is no false mistrust, nor are
you assailed with lying accusations: the infamy of your Eleusinia is declared both by
their base beginnings and by the records of ancient literature, by the very signs, in
fine, which you use when questioned in receiving the sacred things,-" I have fasted, and
drunk the draught; I have taken out of the mystic cist, and put into the wicker-basket; I
have received again, and transferred to the little chest." 27. Are then your deities
carried off by force, and do they seize by violence, as their holy and hidden mysteries
relate? do they enter into marriages sought stealthily and by fraud? is their honour
snatched from virgins resisting and unwilling? have they no knowledge of impending injury,
no acquaintance with what has happened to those carried off by force? Are they, when lost,
sought for as men are? and do they traverse the earth's vast extent with lamps and torches
when the sun is shining most brightly? Are they afflicted? are they troubled? do they
assume the squalid garments of mourners, and the signs of misery? and that they may be
able to turn their mind to victuals and the taking of food, is use made not of reason, not
of the right time, not of some weighty words or pressing courtesy, but is a display made
of the shameful and indecent parts of the body? and are those members exposed which the
shame felt by all, and the natural law of modesty, bid us conceal, which it is not
permissible to name among pure ears without permission, and saying, "by your leave? "
What, I ask you, was there in such a sight, what in the privy parts of Baubo, to move to
wonder and laughter a goddess of the same sex, and formed with similar parts? what was
there such that, when presented to the divine eyes and sight, it should at the same time
enable her to forget her miseries, and bring her with sudden cheerfulness to a happier
state of mind? Oh, what have we had it in our power to bring forward with scoffing and
jeering, were it not for respect for the reader, and the dignity of literature!

28. I confess that I have long been hesitating, looking on every side, shuffling, doubling
Tellene perplexities; while I am ashamed to mention those Alimontian mysteries in which
Greece erects phalli in honour of father Bacchus, and the whole district is covered with
images of men's fascina. The meaning of this is obscure perhaps, and it is asked why it is
done. Whoever is ignorant of this, let him learn, and, wondering at what is so important,
ever keep it with reverent care in a pure heart. While Liber, born at Nysa, and son of
Semele, was still among men, the story goes, he wished to become acquainted with the
shades below, and to inquire into what went on in Tartarus; but this wish was hindered by
some difficulties, because, from ignorance of the route, he did not know by what way to go
and proceed. One Prosumnus starts up, a base lover of the god, and a fellow too prone to
wicked lusts, who promises to point out the gate of Dis, and the approaches to Acheron, if
the god will gratify him, and suffer uxorias voluptates ex se carpi. The god, without
reluctance, swears to put himself in his power and at his disposal, but only immediately
on his return from the lower regions, having obtained his wish and desire. Prostmmus
politely tells him the way, and sets him on the very threshold of the lower regions.

In the meantime, while Liber is inspecting and examining carefully Styx, Cerberus, the
Furies, and all other things, the informer passed from the number of the living, and was
buried according to the manner of men. Evius comes up from the lower regions, and learns
that his guide is dead. But that he might fulfil his promise, and free himself from the
obligation of his oath, he goes to the place of the funeral, and -"ficorum ex arbore ramum
validissimum praesecans dolat, runcinat, levigat et humani speciem fabricatur in penis,
figit super aggerem tumuli, et postica ex parte nudatus accedit, subsidit, insidit.
Lascivia deinde surientis assumptâ, huc atque illuc clunes torquet et meditatur ab ligno
pati quod jamdudum in veritate promiserat." 29. Now, to prevent any one from thinking that
we have devised what is so impious, we do not call upon him to believe Heraclitus as a
witness, nor to receive from his account what he felt about such mysteries. Let him ask
the whole of Greece what is the meaning of these phalli which ancient custom erects and
worships throughout the country, throughout the towns: he will find that the causes are
those which we say; or if they are ashamed to declare the truth honestly, of what avail
will it be to obscure, to conceal the cause and origin of the rite, while the accusation
holds good against the very act of worship? What say you, O peoples? what, ye nations
busied with the services of the temples, and given up to them? Is it to these rites you
drive us by flames, banishment, slaughter, and any other kind of punishments, and by fear
of cruel torture? Are these the gods whom you bring to us, whom you thrust and impose upon
us, like whom you would neither wish yourselves to be, nor any one related to you by blood
and friendship? Can you declare to your beardless sons, still wearing the dress of boys,
the agreements which Liber formed with his lovers? Can you urge your daughters-in-law,
nay, even your own wives, to show the modesty of Baubo, and enjoy the chaste pleasures of
Ceres? Do you wish your young men to know, hear, and learn what even Jupiter showed
himself to more matrons than one?

Would you wish your grown-up maidens and still lusty fathers to learn how the same deity
sported with his daughter? Do you wish full brothers, already hot with passion, and
sisters sprung from the same parents, to hear that he again did not spurn the embraces,
the couch of his sister? Should we not then flee far from such gods; and should not our
ears be stopped altogether, that the filthiness of so pure a religion may not creep into
the mind? For what man is there who has been reared with morals so pure, that the example
of the godsdoes not excite him to similar madness? or who can keep back his desires from
his kinsfolk, and those of whom he should stand in awe, when he sees that among the gods
above nothing is held sacred in the confusion caused by their lusts? For when it is
certain that the first and perfect nature has not been able to restrain its passion within
right limits, why should not man give himself up to his desires without distinction, being
both borne on headlong by his innate frailty, and aided by the teaching of the holy
deities?

30. I confess that, in reflecting on such monstrous stories in my own mind, I have long
been accustomed to wonder that you dare to speak of those as atheists, impious,
sacrilegious, who either deny that there are any gods at all, or doubt their existence, or
assert that they were men, and have been numbered among the gods for the sake of some
power and good desert; since, if a true examination be made, it is fitting that none
should be called by such names, more than yourselves, who, under the pretence of showing
them reverence, heap up in so doing more abuse and accusation, than if you had conceived
the idea of doing this openly with avowed abuse. He who doubts the existence of the gods,
or denies it altogether, although he may seem to adopt monstrous opinions from the
audacity of his conjectures, yet refuses to credit what is obscure without insulting any
one; and he who asserts that they were mortals, although he brings them down from the
exalted place of inhabitants of heaven, yet heaps upon them other honours, since he
supposes that they have been raised to the rank of the gods for their services, and from
admiration of their virtues.

31. But you who assert that you are the defenders and propagators of their immortality,
have you passed by, have you left untouched, any one of them, without assailing him with
your abuse? or is there any kind of insult so damnable in the eyes of all, that you have
been afraid to use it upon them, even though hindered by the dignity of their name? Who
declared that the gods loved frail and mortal bodies? was it not you? Who that they
perpetrated those most charming thefts on the couches of others? was it not you? Who that
children had intercourse with their mothers; and on the other hand, fathers with their
virgin daughters? was it not you? Who that pretty boys, and even grown-up men of very fine
appearance, were wrongfully lusted after? was it not you? Who declared that they were
mutilated, debauched, skilled in dissimulation, thieves, held in bonds and chains, finally
assailed with thunderbolts, and wounded, that they died, and even found graves on earth?
was it not you? While, then, so many and grievous charges have been raised by you to the
injury of the gods, do you dare to assert that the gods have been displeased because of
us, while it has long been clear that you are the guilty causes of such anger, and the
occasion of the divine wrath?

32. But you err, says my opponent, and are mistaken, and show, even in criticising these
things, that you are rather ignorant, unlearned, and boorish. For all those stories which
seem to you disgraceful, and tending to the discredit of the gods, contain in them holy
mysteries, theories wonderful and profound, and not such as any one can easily become
acquainted with by force of understanding. For that is not meant and said which has been
written and placed on the surface of the story; but all these things are understood in
allegorical senses, and by means of secret explanations privately supplied. Therefore he
who says Jupiter lay with his mother, does not mean the incestuous or shameful embraces of
Venus, but names Jupiter instead of rain, and Ceres instead of the earth. And he, again,
who says that he dealt lasciviously with his daughter, speaks of no filthy pleasures, but
puts Jupiter for the name of a shower, and by his daughter means the crop sown. So, too,
he who says that Proserpina was carried off by father Dis, does not say, as you suppose,
that the maiden was carried off to gratify the basest desires; but because we cover the
seed with clods, he signifies that the goddess has sunk under the earth, and unites with
Orcus to bring forth fruit. In like manner in the other stories also one thing indeed is
said, but something else is understood; and under a commonplace openness of expression
there lurks a secret doctrine, and a dark profundity of mystery.

33. These are all quirks, as is evident, and quibbles with which they are wont to bolster
up weak cases before a jury; nay, rather, to speak more truly, they are pretences, such as
are used in sophistical reasonings, by which not the truth is sought after, but always the
image, and appearance, and shadow of the truth. For because it is shameful and unbecoming
to receive as true the correct accounts, you have had recourse to this expedient, that one
thing should be substituted for another, and that what was in itself shameful should, in
being explained, be forced into the semblance of decency. But what is it to us whether
other senses and other meanings underlie these vain stories? For we who assert that the
gods are treated by you wickedly and impiously, need only receive what is written, what is
said, and need not care as to what is kept secret, since the insult to the deities
consists not in the idea hidden in its meanings, but in what is signified by the words as
they stand out. And yet, that we may not seem unwilling to examine what you say, we ask
this first of you, if only you will bear with us, from whom have you learned, or by whom
has it been made known, either that these things were written allegorically, or that they
should be understood in the same way? Did the writers summon you to take counsel with
them? or did you lie hid in their bosoms at the time when they put one thing for another,
without regard to truth? Then, if they chose, from religions awe and fear on any account,
to wrap those mysteries in dark obscurity, what audacity it shows in you to wish to
understand what they did not wish, to know yourselves and make all acquainted with that
which they vainly attempted to conceal by words which did not suggest the truth!

34. But, agreeing with you that in all these stories stags are spoken of instead of
Iphigenias, yet, how are you sure, when you either explain or unfold these allegories,
that you give the same explanations or have the same ideas which were entertained by the
writers themselves in the silence of their thoughts, but expressed by words not adapted to
what was meant, but to something else? You say that the falling of rain into the bosom of
the earth was spoken of as the union of Jupiter and Ceres; another may both devise with
greater subtlety, and conjecture with some probability, something else; a third, a fourth
may do the same; and as the characteristics of the minds of the thinkers show themselves,
so each thing may be explained in an infinite number of ways. For since all that allegory,
as it is called, is taken from narratives expressly made obscure, and has no certain limit
within which the meaning of the story, as it is called, should be firmly fixed and
unchangeable, it is open to every one to put the meaning into it which he pleases, and to
assert that that has been adopted to which his thoughts and surmises led him. But this
being the case, how can you obtain certainty from what is doubtful, and attach one sense
only to an expression which you see to be explained in innumerable different ways?

35. Finally, if you think it right, returning to our inquiry, we ask this of you, whether
you think that all stories about the gods, that is, without any exception, have been
written throughout with a double meaning and sense, and in a way admitting of several
interpretations; or that some parts of them are not ambiguous at all, while, on the
contrary, others have many meanings, and are enveloped in the veil of allegory which has
been thrown round them? For if the whole structure and arrangement of the narrative have
been surrounded with a veil of allegory from beginning to end, explain to us, tell us,
what we should put and substitute for each thing which every story says, and to what other
things and meanings we should refer each. For as, to take an example, you wish Jupiter to
be said instead of the rain, Ceres for the earth, and for Libera and father Dis the
sinking and casting of seed into the earth, so you ought to say what we should understand
for the bull, what for the wrath and anger of Ceres; what the word Brimo means; what the
anxious prayer of Jupiter what the gods sent to make intercession for him, but not
listened to; what the castrated ram; what the parts of the castrated ram; what the
satisfaction made with these; what the further dealings with his daughter, still more
unseemly in their lustfulness; so, in the other story also, what the grove and flowers of
Henna are;

what the fire taken from Aetna, and the torches lit with it; what the travelling through
the world with these; what the Attic country, the canton of Eleusin, the but of Baubo, and
her rustic hospitality; what the drought of cyceon means, the refusal of it, the shaving
and disclosure of the privy parts, the shameful charm of the sight, and the forgetfulness
of her bereavement produced by such means. Now, if you point out what should be put in the
place of all these, changing the one for the other, we shall admit your assertion; but if
you can neither present another supposition in each case, nor appeal to the context as a
whole, why do you make that obscure, by means of fair-seeming allegories, which has been
spoken plainly, and disclosed to the understanding of all? 36. But you will perhaps say
that these allegories are not found in the whole body of the story, but that some parts
are written so as to be understood by all, while others have a double meaning, and are
veiled in ambiguity. That is refined subtlety, and can be seen through by the dullest. For
because it is very difficult for you to transpose, reverse, and divert to other meanings
all that has been said, you choose out some things which suit your purpose, and by means
of these you strive to maintain that false and spurious versions were thrown about the
truth which is under them. But yet, supposing that we should grant to you that it is just
as you say, how do you know, or whence do you learn, which part of the story is written
without any double meaning, which, on the other hand, has been covered with jarring and
alien senses? For it may be that what you believe to be so is otherwise, that what you
believe to be otherwise has been produced with different, and even opposite modes of
expression. For where, in a consistent whole, one part is said to be written
allegorically, the other in plain and trustworthy language, while there is no sign in the
thing itself to point out the difference between what is said ambiguously and what is said
simply, that which is simple may as well be thought to have a double meaning, as what has
been written ambiguously be believed to be wrapt in obscurity. But, indeed, we confess
that we do not understand at all by whom this is either done, or can be believed to be
possible.

37. Let us examine, then, what is said in this way. In the grove of Henna, my opponent
says, the maiden Proserpine was once gathering flowers: this is as yet uncorrupted, and
has been told in a straightforward manner, for all know without any doubt what a grove and
flowers are, what Proserpine is, and a maiden. Summanus sprung forth from the earth, borne
along in a four-horse chariot: this, too, is just as simple, for a team of four horses, a
chariot, and Summanus need no interpreter. Suddenly he carried off Proserpine, and bore
her with himself under the earth: the burying of the seed, my opponent says, is meant by
the rape of Proserpine.What has happened, pray, that the story should be suddenly turned
to something else? that Proserpine should be called the seed? that she who was for a long
time held to be a maiden gathering flowers, after that she was taken away and carried off
by violence, should begin to signify the seed sown? Jupiter, my opponent says, having
turned himself into a bull, longed to have intercourse with his mother Ceres: as was
explained before, under these names the earth and falling rain are spoken of I see the law
of allegory expressed in the dark and ambiguous terms. Ceres was enraged and angry, and
received the parts of a ram as the penalty demanded by vengeance: this again I see to be
expressed in common language, for both anger and (testes and) satisfaction are spoken of
in their usual circumstances. What, then, happened here,-that from Jupiter, who was named
for the rain, and Ceres, who was named for the earth, the story passed to the true Jove,
and to a most straightforward account of events?

38. Either, then, they must all have been written and put forward allegorically, and the
whole should be pointed out to us; or nothing has been so written, since what is supposed
to be allegorical does not seem as if it were part of the narrative. These are all written
allegorically, you say. This seems by no means certain. Do you ask for what reason, for
what cause? Because, I answer, all that has taken place and has been set down distinctly
in any book cannot be turned into an allegory, for neither can that be undone which has
been done, nor can the character of an event change into one which is utterly different.
Can the Trojan war be turned into the condemnation of Socrates? or the battle of Cannae
become the cruel proscription of Sulla? A proscription may indeed, as Tullius says in
jest, be spoken of as a battle, and be called that of Cannae; but what has already taken
place, cannot be at the same time a battle and a proscription; for neither, as I have
said, can that which has taken place be anything else than what has taken place; nor can
that pass over into a substance foreign to it which has been fixed down firmly in its own
nature and peculiar condition.

39. Whence, then, do we prove that all these narratives are records of events? From the
solemn rites and mysteries of initiation, it is clear, whether those which are celebrated
at fixed times and on set days, or those which are taught secretly by the heathen without
allowing the observance of their usages to be interrupted. For it is not to be believed
that these have no origin, arc practised without reason or meaning, and have no causes
connected with their first beginnings. That pine which is regularly born into the
sanctuary of the Great Mother, is it not in imitation of that tree beneath which Attis
mutilated and unmanned himself, which also, they relate, the goddess consecrated to
relieve her grief? That erecting of phalli and fascina, which Greece worships and
celebrates in rites every year, does it not recall the deed by which Liber paid his debt?
Of what do those Eleusinian mysteries and secret rites contain a narrative? Is it not of
that wandering in which Ceres, worn out in seeking for her daughter, when she came to the
confines of Attica, brought wheat with her, graced with a hind's skin the family of the
Nebridae and laughed at that most wonderful sight in Baubo's groins? Or if there is
another cause, that is nothing to us, so long as they are all produced by some cause. For
it is not credible that these things were set on foot without being preceded by any
causes, or the inhabitants of Attica must be considered mad to have received a religious
ceremony got up without any reason. But if this is clear and certain, that is, if the
causes and origins of the mysteries are traceable to past events, by no change can they be
turned into the figures of allegory; for that which has been done, which has taken place,
cannot, in the nature of things, be undone.

40. And yet, even if we grant you that this is the case, that is, even if the narratives
give utterance to one thing in words, but mean something else, after the manner of raving
seers, do you not observe in this case, do you not see how dishonouring, how insulting to
the gods, this is which is said to be done? or can any greater wrong be devised than to
term and call the earth and rain, or anything else,-for it does not matter what change is
made in the interpretation,-the intercourse of Jupiter and Ceres? and to signify the
descent of rain from the sky, and the moistening of the earth, by charges against the
gods? Can anything be either thought or believed more impious than that the rape of
Proserpine speaks of seeds buried in the earth, or anything else,-for in like manner it is
of no importance,-and that it speaks of the pursuit of agriculture to the dishonour of
father Dis? Is it not a thousand times more desirable to become mute and speechless, and
to lose that flow of words and noisy and unseemly loquacity, than to call the basest
things by the names of the gods; nay, more, to signify commonplace things by the base
actions of the gods?

41. It was once usual, in speaking allegorically, to conceal under perfectly decent ideas,
and clothe with the respectability of decency, what was base and horrible to speak of
openly; but now venerable things are at your instance; vilely spoken of, and what is quite
pure is related in filthy language, so that that which vice formerly concealed from shame,
is now meanly and basely spoken of, the mode of speech which was fitting being changed. In
speaking of Mars and Venus as having been taken in adultery by Vulcan's art, we speak of
lust, says my opponent, and anger, as restrained by the force and purpose of reason. What,
then, hindered, what prevented you from expressing each thing by the words and terms
proper to it? nay, more, what necessity was there, when you had resolved to declare
something or other, by means of treatises and writings, to resolve that that should not be
the meaning to which you point, and in one narrative to take up at the same time opposite
positions-the eagerness of one wishing to teach, the niggardliness of one reluctant to
make public? Was there no risk in speaking of the gods as unchaste? The mention of lust
and anger, my opponent says, was likely to defile the tongue and mouth with foul
contagion. But, assuredly, if this were done, and the veil of allegorical obscurity were
removed, the matter would be easily understood, and by the same the dignity of the gods
would be maintained unimpaired. But now, indeed, when the restraining of vices is said to
be signified by the binding of Mars and Venus, two most inconsistent things are done at
the very same time; so that, on the one hand, a description of something vile suggests an
honourable meaning, and on the other, the baseness occupies the mind before any regard for
religion can do so.

42. But you will perhaps say, for this only is left which you may think can be brought
forward by you, that the gods do not wish their mysteries to be known by men, and that the
narratives were therefore written with allegorical ambiguity. And whence have you learned
that the gods above do not wish their mysteries to be made public? whence have you become
acquainted with these? or why are you anxious to unravel them by explaining them as
allegories? Lastly, and finally, what do the gods mean, that while they do not wish
honourable, they allow unseemly, even the basest things, to be said about them? When we
name Attis, says my opponent, we mean and speak of the sun; but if Attis is the sun, as
you reckon him and say, who will that Attis be whom your books record and declare to have
been born in Phrygia, to have suffered certain things, to have done certain things also,
whom all the theatres know in the scenic shows, to whom every year we see divine honours
paid expressly by name amongst the other religious ceremonies? Whether was this name made
to pass from the sun to a man, or from a man to the sun? For if that name is derived in
the first instance from the sun, what, pray, has the golden sun done to you, that you
should make that name to belong to him in common with an emasculated person? But if it is
derived from a goat, and is Phrygian, of what has the sire of Phaethon, the father of this
light and brightness, been guilty, that he should seem worthy to be named from a mutilated
man, and should become more venerable when designated by the name of an emasculated body?

43. But what the meaning of this is, is already clear to all. For because you are ashamed
of such writers and histories, and do not see that these things can be got rid of which
have once been committed to writing in filthy language, you strive to make base things
honourable, and by every kind of subtlety you pervert and corrupt the real senses of words
for the sake of spurious interpretations; and, as oft times happens to the sick, whose
senses and understanding have been put to flight by the distempered force of disease, you
toss about confused and uncertain conjectures, and rave in empty fictions. Let it be
granted that the irrigation of the earth was meant by the union of Jupiter and Ceres, the
burying of the seed by the ravishing of Proserpine by father Dis, wines scattered over the
earth by the limbs of Liber torn asunder by the Titans, that the restraining of lust and
rashness has been spoken of as the binding of the adulterous Venus and Mars.

44. But if you come to the conclusion that these fables have been written allegorically,
what is to be done with the rest, which we see cannot be forced into such changes of
sense? For what are we to substitute for the wrigglings into which the lustful heat of
Semele's offspring forced him upon the sepulchral mound? and what for those Ganymedes who
were carried off and set to preside over lustful practices? what for that conversion of an
ant into which Jupiter, the greatest of the gods, contracted the outlines of his huge
body? what for swans and satyrs? what for golden showers, which the same seductive god put
on with perfidious guile, amusing himself by changes of form? :that we may not seem to
speak of Jupiter only, what allegories can there be in the loves of the other deities?
what in their circumstances as hired servants and slaves? what in their bonds,
bereavements, lamentations? what in their agonies, wounds, sepulchres? Now, while in this
you might be held guilty in one respect for writing in such wise about the gods, you have
added to your guilt beyond measure in calling base things by the names of deities, and
again in defaming the gods by giving to them the names of infamous things. But if you
believed without any doubt that they were here close at hand, or anywhere at all, fear
would check you in making mention of them, and your beliefs and unchanged thoughts should
have been exactly as if they were listening to you and heard your words. For among men
devoted to the services of religion, not only the gods themselves, but even the names of
the gods should be reverenced, and there should De quite as much grandeur in their names
as there is in those even who are thought of under these names.

45. Judge fairly, and you are deserving of censure in this, that in your Common
conversation you name Mars when you mean fighting, Neptune when you mean the seas, Ceres
when you mean bread, Minerva when you mean weaving, Venus when you mean filthy lusts. For
what reason is there, that, when things can be classed under their own names, they should
be called by the names of the gods. and that such an insult should be offered to the
deities as not even we men endure, if any one applies and turns our haines to trifling
objects? But language, you say, is contemptible, if defiled with such words. O modesty,
worthy of praise! you blush to name bread and wine, and are not afraid to speak of Venus
instead of carnal intercourse!


AGAINST THE HEATHEN, BOOK 6
===========================

AGAINST THE HEATHEN, BOOK 6 Arnobius of Sicca

d. c. AD 330

North African teacher who wrote against the pagans.

AGAINST THE HEATHEN BOOK 6

1. Having shown briefly how impious and infamous are the opinions which you have formed
about your gods, we have now to speak of their temples, their images also, and sacrifices,
and of the other things which are nailed and closely related to them. For you are here in
the habit of fastening upon us a very serious charge of impiety because we do not rear
temples for the ceremonies of worship, do not set up statues and images of any god, do not
build altars, do not offer the blood of creatures slain in sacrifices, incense, nor
sacrificial meal, and finally, do not bring wine flowing in libations from sacred bowls;
which, indeed, we neglect to build and do, not as though we cherish impious and wicked
dispositions, or have conceived any madly desperate feeling of contempt for the gods, but
because we think and believe that they -if only they are true gods, and are called by this
exalted name -either scorn such honours, if they give way to scorn, or endure them with
anger, if they are roused by feelings of rage.

2. For-that you may learn what are our sentiments and opinions about that race-we think
that they-if only they are true gods. that the same things may be said again till you are
wearied hearing them -should have all the virtues in perfection, should be wise, upright.
venerable,-if only our heaping upon them human honours is not a crime,-strong in
excellences within themselves, and should not give themselves up to external props,
because the completeness of their unbroken bliss is made perfect; should be free from all
agitating and disturbing passions; should not burn with anger, should not he excited by
any desires; should send misfortune to none, should not find a cruel pleasure in the ills
of men; should not terrify by portents, should not show prodigies to cause fear; should
not hold men responsible and liable to be punished for the vows which they owe, nor demand
expiatory sacrifices by threatening omens; should not bring on pestilences and diseases by
corrupting the air, should not burn up the fruits with droughts; should take no part in
the slaughter of war and devastation of cities; should not wish ill to one party, and be
favourable to the success of another; but, as becomes great minds, should weigh all in a
just balance, and show kindness impartially to all. For it belongs to a mortal race and
human weakness to act otherwise; and the maxims and declarations of wise men state
distinctly, that those who are touched by passion live a life of suffering, and are
weakened by grief, and that it cannot be but that those who have been given over to
disquieting feelings, have been bound by the laws of mortality. Now, since this is the
case, how can we be supposed to hold the gods in contempt, who we say are not gods, and
cannot be connected with the powers of heaven, unless they are just and worthy of the
admiration which great minds excite?

3. But, we are told, we rear no temples to them, and do not worship their images; we do
not slay victims in sacrifice, we do not offer incense and libations of wine. And what
greater honour or dignity can we ascribe to them, than that we put them in the same
position as the Head and Lord of the universe, to whom the gods owe it in common with us,
that they are conscious that they exist, and have a living being? For do we honour Him
with shrines, and by building temples? Do we even slay victims to Him? Do we give Him the
other things, to take which and pour them forth in libation shows not a careful regard to
reason, but heed to a practice maintained merely by usage? For it is perfect folly to
measure greater powers by your necessities, and to give the things useful to yourself to
the gods who give all things, and to think this an honour, not an insult. We ask,
therefore, to do what service to the gods, or to meet what want, do you say that temples
have been reared, and think that they should be again built? Do they feel the cold of
winter, or are they scorched by summer suns? Do storms of rain flow over them, or
whirlwinds shake them?

Are they in danger of being exposed to the onset of enemies, or the furious attacks of
wild beasts, so that it is right and becoming to shut them up in places of security, or
guard them by throwing up a rampart of stones? For what are these temples? If you ask
human weakness -something vast and spacious; if you consider the power of the gods-small
caves, as it were, and even, to speak more truly, the narrowest kind of caverns formed and
contrived with sorry, judgment. Now, if you ask to be told who was their first founder and
builder, either Phoroneus or the Egyptian Merops will be mentioned to you, or, as Varro
relates in his treatise "de Admirandis," Aeacus the offspring of Jupiter. Though these,
then, should be built of heaps of marble, or shine resplendent with ceilings fretted with
gold, though precious stones sparkle here, and gleam like stars set at varying intervals,
all these things are made up of earth, and of the lowest dregs of even baser matter. For
not even, if you value these more highly, is it to be believed that the gods take pleasure
in them, or that they do not refuse and scorn to shut themselves up, and be confined
within these barriers. This, my opponent says, is the temple of Mars, this that of Juno
and of Venus, this that of Hercules, of Apollo, of Dis.

What is this but to say this is the house of Mars, this of Juno and Venus, Apollo dwells
here, in this abides Hercules, in that Summanus? Is it not, then, the very greatest
affront to hold the gods kept fast in habitations, to give to them little huts, to build
lockfast places and cells, and to think that the things are necessary to them which are
needed by men, cats, emmets, and lizards, by quaking, timorous, and little mice? 4. But,
says my opponent, it is not for this reason that we assign temples to the gods as though
we wished to ward off from them drenching storms of rain, winds, showers, or the rays of
the sun; but in order that we may be able to see them in person and close at hand, to come
near and address them, and impart to them, when in a measure present, the expressions of
our reverent feelings. For if they are invoked under the open heaven, and the canopy of
ether, they hear nothing, I suppose; and unless prayers are addressed to them near at
hand, they will stand deaf and immoveable as if nothing were said. And yet we think that
every god whatever-if only he has the power of this name-should hear what every one said
from every part of the world, just as if he were present; nay, more, should foresee,
without waiting to be told what every one conceived in his secret and silent thoughts. And
as the stars, the sun, the moon, while they wander above the earth, are steadily and
everywhere in sight of all those who gaze at them without any exception; so, too, it is
fitting that the ears of the gods should be closed against no tongue, and should be ever
within reach, although voices should flow together to them from widely separated regions.
For this it is that belongs specially to the gods,-to fill all things with their power, to
be not partly at any place, but all everywhere, not to go to dine with the Aethiopians,
and return after twelve days to their own dwellings.

5. Now, if this be not the case, all hope of help is taken away, and it will be doubtful
whether you are heard by the gods or not, if ever you perform the sacred rites with due
ceremonies. For, to make it clear, let us suppose that there is a temple of some deity in
the Canary Islands, another of the same deity in remotest Thyle, also among the Seres,
among the tawny Garamantes, and any others who are debarred from knowing each other by
seas, mountains, forests, and the four quarters of the world. If they all at one time beg
of the deity with sacrifices what their wants compel each one to think about, what hope,
pray, will there be to all of obtaining the benefit, if the god does not hear the cry sent
up to him everywhere, and if there shall be any distance to which the words of the
suppliant for help cannot penetrate? For either he will be nowhere present, if he may at
times not be anywhere, or he will be at one place only, since he cannot give his attention
generally, and without making any distinction. And thus it is brought about, that either
the god helps none at all, if being busy with something he has been unable to hasten to
give ear to their cries, or one only goes away with his prayers heard, while the rest have
effected nothing.

6. What can you say as to this, that it is attested by the writings of authors, that many
of these temples which have been raised with golden domes and lofty roofs cover bones and
ashes, and are sepulchres of the dead? Is it not plain and manifest, either that you
worship dead men for immortal gods, or that an inexpiable affront is cast upon the
deities, whose shrines and temples have been built over the tombs of the dead? Antiochus,
in the ninth book of his Histories, relates that Cecrops was buried in the temple of
Minerva, at Athens; again, in the temple of the same goddess, which is in the citadel of
Larissa, it is related and declared that Acrisius was laid, and in the sanctuary of
Polias, Erichthonius; while the brothers Dairas and Immarnachus were buried in the
enclosure of Eleusin, which lies near the city. What say you as to the virgin daughters of
Coleus? are they not said to be buried in the temple of Ceres at Eleusin? and in the
shrine of Diana, which was set up in the temple of the Delian Apollo, are not Hyperoche
and Laodice buried, who are said to have been brought thither from the country of the
Hyperboreans? In the Milesian Didymae, Leandrius says that Cleochus had the last honours
of burial paid to him. Zeno of Myndus openly relates that the monument of Leucophryne is
in the sanctuary of Diana at Maghesia.

Under the altar of Apollo, which is seen in the city of Telmessus, is it not invariably
declared by writings that the prophet Telmessus lies buried? Ptolemaeus, the son of
Agesarchus, in the first book of the History of Philopatar which he published, affirms, on
the authority of literature, that Cinyras, king of Paphos, was interred in the temple of
Venus with all his family, nay, more, with all his stock. It would be an endless and
boundless task to describe in what sanctuaries they all are throughout the world; nor is
anxious care required, although the Egyptians fixed a penalty for any one who should have
revealed the places in which Apis lay hid, as to those Polyandria of Varro, by what
temples they are covered, and what heavy masses they have laid upon them. 7. But why do I
speak of these trifles? What man is there who is ignorant that in the Capitol of the
imperial people is the sepulchre of Tolus Vulcentanus? Who is there, I say, who does not
know that from beneath its foundations there was rolled a man's head, buried for no very
long time before, either by itself without the other parts of the body,-for some relate
this,-or with all its members? Now, if you require this to be made clear by the
testimonies of authors, Sammonicus, Granius, Valerianus, and Fabius will declare to you
whose son Aulus was, of what race and nation, how he was bereft of life and light by the
slave of his brother, of what crime he was guilty against his fellow-citizens, that he was
denied burial in his father land. You will learn also-although they pretend to be
unwilling to make this public-what was done with his head when cut off, or in what place
it was shut up, and the whole affair carefully concealed, in order that the omen which the
gods had attested might stand without interruption, unalterable, and sure. Now, while it
was proper that this story, should be suppressed, and concealed, and forgotten in the
lapse of time, the composition at the name published it, and, by a testimony which could
not be got rid of, caused it to remain in men's minds, together with its causes, so long
as it endured itself; and the state which is greatest of all, and worships all deities,
did not blush in giving a name to the temple, to name it from the head of Olus Capitolium
rather than from the name of Jupiter.

8. we have therefore-as I suppose-shown sufficiently, that to the immortal gods temples
have been either reared in vain, or built in consequence of insulting opinions held to
their dishonour and to the belittling of the power believed to be in their hands. We have
next to say something about statues and images, which you form with much skill, and tend
with religious care,-wherein if there is any credibility, we can by no amount of
consideration settle in our own minds whether you do this in earnest and with a serious
purpose, or amuse yourselves in childish dreams by mocking at these very things. For if
you are assured that the gods exist whom you suppose, and that they live in the highest
regions of heaven, what cause, what reason, is there that those images should be fashioned
by you, when you have true beings to whom you may pour forth prayers, and from whom you
may, ask help in trying circumstances? But if, on the contrary, you do not believe, or, to
speak with moderation, are in doubt, in this case, also, what reason is there, pray, to
fashion and set up images of doubtful beings, and to form with vain imitation what you do
not believe to exist? Do you perchance say, that under these images of deities there is
displayed to you their presence, as it were, and that, because it has not been given you
to see the gods, they are worshipped in this fashion, and the duties owed to them paid? He
who says and asserts this, does not believe that the gods exist; and he is proved not to
put faith in his own religion, to whom it is necessary to see what he may hold, lest that
which being obscure is not seen, may happen to be vain.

9. We worship the gods, you say, by means of images. What then? Without these, do the gods
not know that they are worshipped, and will they not think that any honour is shown to
them by you? Through bypaths, as it were, then, and by assignments to a third party, as
they are called, they receive and accept your services; and before those to whom that
service is owed experience it, you first sacrifice to images, and transmit, as it were,
some remnants to them at the pleasure of others. And what greater wrong, disgrace,
hardship, can be inflicted than to acknowledge one god, and yet make supplication to
something else-to hope for help from a deity, and pray to an image without feeling? Is not
this, I pray you, that which is said in the common proverbs: "to cut down the smith when
you strike at the fuller; " "and when you seek a man's advice, to require of asses and
pigs their opinions as to what should be done? "

10. And whence, finally, do you know whether all these images which you form and put in
the place of the immortal gods reproduce and bear a resemblance to the gods? For it may
happen that in heaven one has a beard who by you is represented with smooth cheeks; that
another is rather advanced in years to whom you give the appearance of a youth; that here
he is fair, with blue eyes, who really has grey ones; that he has distended nostrils whom
you make and form with a high nose. For it is not right to call or name that an image
which does not derive from the face of the original features like it; which can be
recognised to be clear and certain from things which are manifest. For while all we men
see that the sun is perfectly round by our eyesight, which cannot be doubted, you have
given to him the features of a man, and of mortal bodies. The moon is always in motion,
and in its restoration every month puts on thirty faces: with you, as leaders and
designers, that is represented as a woman, and has one countenance, which passes through a
thousand different states, changing each day. We understand that all the winds are only a
flow of air driven and impelled in mundane ways in your hands they take the forms of men
filling with breath twisted trumpets by blasts from out their breasts.

Among the representations of your gods we see that there is the very stern face of a lion
smeared with pure vermilion, and that it is named Frugifer. If all these images are
likenesses of the gods above, there must then be said to dwell in heaven also a god such
as the image which has been made to represent his form and appearance; and, of course, as
here that figure of yours, so there the deity himself is a mere mask and face, without the
rest of the body, growling with fiercely gaping jaws, terrible, red as blood, holding an
apple fast with his teeth, and at times, as dogs do when wearied, putting his tongue out
of his gaping mouth. But if, indeed, this is not the case, as we all think that it is not,
what, pray, is the meaning of so great audacity to fashion to yourself whatever form you
please, and to say that it is an image of a god whom you cannot prove to exist at all?

11. You laugh because in ancient times the Persians worshipped rivers, as is told in the
writings which hand down these things to memory; the Arabians an unshapen stone; the
Scythian nations a sabre; the Thespians a branch instead of Cinxia; the Icarians an unhewn
log instead of Diana; the people of Pessinus a flint instead of the mother of the gods;
the Romans a spear instead of Mars, as the muses of Varro point out; and, before they were
acquainted with the statuary's art, the Samians a plank instead of Juno, as Aethlius
relates: and you do not laugh when, instead of the immortal gods, you make supplication to
little images of men and human forms-nay, you even suppose that these very little images
are gods, and besides these you do not believe that anything has divine power. What say
you, O ye-! Do the gods of heaven have ears, then, and temples, an occiput, spine, loins,
sides, hams, buttocks, houghs, ankles, and the rest of the other members with which we
have been formed, which were also mentioned in the first part of this book a little more
fully, and cited with greater copiousness of language? Would that it were possible to look
into the sentiments and very recesses of your mind, in which yon revolve various and enter
into the most obscure considerations: we should find that you yourselves even feel as we
do, and have no other opinions as to the form of the deities. But what can we do with
obstinate prejudices? what with those who are menacing us with swords, and devising new
punishments against us? In your rage you maintain a bad cause, and that although you are
perfectly aware of it; and that which you have once done without reason, you defend lest
you should seem to have ever been in ignorance; and you think it better not to be
conquered, than to yield and bow to acknowledged truth.

12. From such causes as these this also has followed, with your connivance, that the
wanton fancy of artists has found full scope in representing the bodies of the gods, and
giving forms to them, at which even the sternest might laugh. And so Hammon is even now
formed and represented with a ram's horns; Saturn with his crooked sickle, like some
guardian of the fields, and pruner of too luxuriant branches; the son of Maia with a
broad-brimmed travelling cap, as if he were preparing to take the road, and avoiding the
sun's rays and the dust; Liber with tender limbs, and with a woman's perfectly free and
easily flowing lines of body Venus, naked and unclothed, just as if you said that she
exposed publicly, and sold to all comers, the beauty of her prostituted body; Vulcan with
his cap and hammer, but with his right hand free, and with his dress girt up as a workman
prepares for his work; the Delian god with a plectrum and lyre, gesticulating like a
player on the cithern and an actor about to sing; the king of the sea with his trident,
just as if he had to fight in the gladiatorial contest: nor can any figure of any deity be
found which does not have certain characteristics bestowed on it by the generosity of its
makers.

Lo, if some witty and cunning king were to remove the Sun from his place before the gate
and transfer him to that of Mercury, and again were to carry off Mercury and make him
migrate to the shrine of the Sun.-for both are made beardless by you, and with smooth
faces.-and to give to this one rays of light to place a little cap on the Sun's head, how
will you be able to distinguish between them, whether this is the Sun, or that Mercury,
since dress, not the peculiar appearance of the face, usually points out the gods to you?
Again, if, having transported them in like manner, he were to take away Iris horns from
the unclad Jupiter, and fix them upon the temples of Mars. and to strip Mars of his arms,
and, on the other hand, invest Hammon with them, what distinction can there be between
them, since he who had been Jupiter can be also supposed to be Mars, and he who had been
Mayors can assume the appearance of Jupiter Hammon? To such an extent is there wantonness
in fashioning those images and consecrating names, as if they were peculiar to them;
since, if you take away their dress, the means of recognising each is put an end to, god
may be believed to be god, one may seem to be the other, nay, more, both may be considered
both!

13. But why do I laugh at the sickles and tridents which have been given to the gods? why
at the horns, hammers, and caps, when I know that certain images have the forms of certain
men, and the features of notorious courtesans? For who is there that does not know that
the Athenians formed the Hermae in the likeness of Alcibiades? Who does not know-if he
read Posidippus over again-that Praxiteles, putting forth his utmost skill, fashioned the
face of the Cnidian Venus on the model of the courtesan Gratina, whom the unhappy man
loved desperately? Blot is this the only Venus to whom there has been given beauty taken
from a harlot's face? Phryne. the well-known native of Thespia-as those who have written
on Thespian affairs relate-when she was at the height of her beauty. comeliness, and
youthful vigour, is said to have ben the model of all the Venuses which are held in
esteem, whether throughout the cities of Greece or here, whither has flowed the longing
and eager desire for such figures. All the artists, therefore, who lived at that time, and
to whom truth gave the greatest ability to portray likenesses, vied in transferring with
all painstaking and zeal the outline of a prostitute to the images of the Cytherean. The
beautiful thoughts of the artists were full of fire; and they strove each to excel the
other with emulous rivalry, not that Venus might become more august, but that Phryne might
stand for Venus.

And so it was brought to this, that sacred honours were offered to courtesans instead of
the immortal gods, and an unhappy system of worship was led astray by the making of
statues. That well-known and most distinguished statuary, Phidias, when he had raised the
form of Olympian Jupiter with immense labour and exertion, inscribed on the finger of the
god Pantarces is Beautiful,-this, moreover, was the name of a boy loved by him, and that
with lewd desire,-and was not moved by any fear or religious dread to call the god by the
name of a prostitute; nay, rather, to consecrate the divinity and image of Jupiter to a
debauchee. To such an extent is there wantonness and childish feeling in forming those
little images, adoring them as gods, heaping upon them the divine virtues, when we see
that the artists themselves find amusement in fashioning them, and set them up as
monuments of their own lusts! For what reason is there, if you should inquire, why Phidias
should hesitate to amuse himself, and be wanton when he knew that, but a little before,
the very Jupiter which he had made was gold, stones, and ivory, formless, separated,
confused, and that it was he himself who brought all these together and bound them fast,
that their appearance had been given to them by himself in the imitation of limbs which he
had carved; and, which is more than all, that it was his own free gift, that Jupiter had
been produced and was adored among men?

14. We would here, as if all nations on the earth were present, make one speech, and pour
into the ears of them all, words which should be heard in common: Why, pray, is this, O
men! that of your own accord you cheat and deceive yourselves by voluntary blindness?
Dispel the darkness now, and, returning to the light of the mind, look more closely and
see what that is which is going on, if only you retain your right, and are not beyond the
reach of the reason and prudence given to you. Those images which fill you with terror,
and which you adore prostrate upon the ground in all the temples, are bones, stones,
brass, silver, gold, clay, wood taken from a tree, or glue mixed with gypsum. Having been
heaped together, it may be, from a harlot's gauds or from a woman's ornaments, from
camels' bones or from the tooth of the Indian beast, from cooking-pots and little jars,
from candlesticks and lamps, or from other less cleanly vessels, and having been melted
down, they were cast into these shapes and came out into the forms which you see, baked in
potters' furnaces, produced by anvils and hammers, scraped with the silversmith's, and
filed down with ordinary, files, cleft and hewn with saws, with augers, with axes, dug and
hollowed out by the turning of borers, and smoothed with planes. Is not this, then, an
error? Is it not, to speak accurately, folly to believe that a god which you yourself made
with care, to kneel down trembling in supplication to that which has been formed by you,
and while you know, and are assured that it is the product of the labour of your hands,
-to cast yourself down upon your face, beg aid suppliantly, and, in adversity and time of
distress, ask it to succour you with gracious and divine favour?

15. Lo, if some one were to place before you copper in the lump, and not formed into any
worlds of art, masses of unwrought silver, and gold not fashioned into shape, wood,
stones, and bones, with all the other materials of which statues and images of deities
usually consist,-nay, more, if some one were to place before you the faces of battered
gods, images melted down and broken, and were also to bid you slay victims to the bits and
fragments, and give sacred and divine honours to masses without form,-we ask you to say to
us, whether you would do this, or refuse to obey. Perhaps you will say, why? Because there
is no man so stupidly blind that he will class among the gods silver, copper, gold,
gypsum, ivory, potter's clay, and say that these very things have, and possess in
themselves, divine power. What reason is there, then, that all these bodies should want
the power of deity and the rank of celestials if they remain untouched and unwrought, but
should forthwith become gods, and be classed and numbered among the inhabitants of heaven
if they receive the forms of men, ears, noses, cheeks, lips, eyes, and eyebrows? Does the
fashioning add any newness to these bodies, so that from this addition you are compelled
to believe that something divine and majestic has been united to them? Does it change
copper into gold, or compel worthless earthenware to become silver? Does it cause things
which but a little before were without feeling, to live and breathe?

If they had any natural properties previously, all these they retain when bulk up in the
bodily forms of statues. What stupidity it is-for I refuse to call it blindness-to suppose
that the natures of things are changed by the kind of form into which they are forced, and
that that receives divinity from the appearance given D it, which in its original body has
been inert, and unreasoning, and unmoved by feeling! 16. And so unmindful and forgetful of
what the substance and origin of the images are, you, men, rational beings and endowed
with the gift of wisdom and discretion, sink down before pieces of baked earthenware,
adore plates of copper, beg from the teeth of elephants good health, magistracies,
sovereignties, power, victories, acquisitions, gains, very good harvests, and very rich
vintages; and while it is plain and clear that you are speaking to senseless things, you
think that you are heard, and bring yourselves into disgrace of your own accord, by vainly
and credulously deceiving yourselves. Oh, would that you might enter into some statue!
rather, would that you might separate and break up into parts those Olympian and
Capitoline Jupiters, and behold all those parts alone and by themselves which make up the
whole of their bodies! You would at once see that these gods of yours, to whom the
smoothness of their exterior gives a majestic appearance by its alluring brightness, are
only a framework of flexible plates, particles without shape joined together; that they
are kept from falling into ruin and fear of destruction, by dove-tails and clamps and
brace-irons; and that lead is run into the midst of all the hollows and where the joints
meet, and causes delay useful in preserving them.

You would see, I say, at once that they have faces only without the rest of the head,
imperfect hands without arms, bellies and sides in halves, incomplete feet, and, which is
most ridiculous, that they have been put together without uniformity in the construction
of their bodies, being in one part made of wood, but in the other of stone. Now, indeed,
if these things could not be seen through the skill with which they were kept out of
sight, even those at least which lie open to all should have taught and instructed you
that you are effecting nothing, and giving your services in vain to dead things. For, in
this case, do you not see that these images, which seem to breathe, whose feet and knees
you touch and handle when praying, at times fall into ruins from the constant dropping of
rain, at other times lose the firm union of their parts from their decaying and becoming
rotten, -how they grow black, being fumigated and discoloured by the steam of sacrifices,
and by smoke,-how with continued neglect they lose their position and appearance, and are
eaten away with rust? In this case, I say, do yon not see that newts, shrews, mice, and
cockroaches, which shun the light, build their nests and live under the hollow parts of
these statues?

that they gather carefully into these all kinds of filth, and other things suited to their
wants, hard and half-gnawed bread, bones dragged thither in view of probable scarcity,
rags, down, and pieces of paper to make their nests soft, and keep their young warm? Do
you not see sometimes over the face of an image cobwebs and treacherous nets spun by
spiders, that they may be able to entangle in them buzzing and imprudent flies while on
the wing? Do you not see, finally, that swallows full of filth, flying within the very
domes of the temples, toss themselves about, and bedaub now the very faces, now the mouths
of the deities, the beard, eyes, noses, and all the other parts on which their excrements
fall? Blush, then, even though it is late, and accept true methods and views from dumb
creatures, and let these teach you that there is nothing divine in images, into which they
do not fear or scruple to cast unclean things in obedience to the laws of their being, and
led by their unerring instincts.

17. But you err, says my opponent, and are mistaken, for we do not consider either copper,
or gold and silver, or those other materials of which statues are made, to be in
themselves gods and sacred deities; but in them we worship and venerate those whom their
dedication as sacred introduces and causes to dwell in statues made by workmen. The
reasoning is not vicious nor despicable by which any one-the dull, and also the most
intelligent-can believe that the gods, forsaking their proper seats-that is, heaven-do not
shrink back and avoid entering earthly habitations; nay, more, that impelled by the rite
of dedication, they are joined to images Do your gods, then, dwell in gypsum and in
figures of earthenware? Nay, rather, are the gods the minds, spirits, and souls of figures
of earthenware and of gypsum? and, that the meanest things may be able to become of
greater importance, do they suffer themselves to be shut up and concealed and confined in
an obscure abode? Here, then, in the first place, we wish and ask to be told this by you:
do they do this against their will-that is, do they enter the images as dwellings, dragged
to them by the rite of dedication-or are they ready and willing? and do you not summon
them by any considerations of necessity? Do they do this unwillingly? and how can it be
possible that they should be compelled to submit to any necessity without their dignity
being impaired? With ready assent? And what do the gods seek for in figures of earthenware
that they should prefer these prisons to their starry seats,-that, having been all but
fastened to them, they should ennoble earthenware and the other substances of which images
are made?

18. What then? Do the gods remain always in such substances, and do they not go away to
any place, even though summoned by the most momentous affairs? or do they have free
passage, when they please to go any whither, and to leave their own seats and images? If
they are under the necessity of remaining, what can be more wretched than they, what more
unfortunate than if hooks and leaden bonds hold them fast in this wise on their pedestals?
but if we allow that they prefer these images to heaven and the starry seats, they have
lost their divine power. But if, on the contrary, when they choose, they fly forth, and
are perfectly free to leave the statues empty, the images will then at some time cease to
be gods, and it will be doubtful when sacrifices should be offered,-when it is right and
fitting to withhold them. Oftentimes we see that by artists these images are at one time
made small, and reduced to the size of the hand, at another raised to an immense height,
and built up to a wonderful size. In this way, then, it follows that we should understand
that the gods contract themselves in little statuettes, and are compressed till they
become like a strange body; or, again, that they stretch themselves out to a great length,
and extend to immensity in images of vast bulk. So, then, if this is the case, in sitting
statues also the gods should be said to be seated, and in standing ones to stand, to be
running in those stretching forward to run, to be hurling javelins in those represented as
casting them, to fit and fashion themselves to their countenances, and to make themselves
like the other characteristics of the body formed by the artist.

19. The gods dwell in images-each wholly in one, or divided into parts, and into members?
For neither is it possible that there can be at one time one god in several images, nor,
again, divided into parts by his being cut up. For let us suppose that there are ten
thousand images of Vulcan in the whole world: is it possible at all, as I said, that at
one time one deity can be in all the ten thousand? I do not think so. Do you ask
wherefore? Because things which are naturally single and unique, cannot become many while
the integrity of their simplicity is maintained. And this they are further unable to
become if the gods have the forms of men, as your belief declares; for either a hand
separated from the head, or a foot divided from the body, cannot manifest the perfection
of the whole, or it must be said that parts can be the same as the whole, while the whole
cannot exist unless it has been made by gathering together its parts. Moreover, if the
same deity shall be said to be in all the statues, all reasonableness and soundness is
lost to the truth, if this is assumed that at one tithe one can remain in them all; or
each of the gods must be said to divide himself from himself, so that he is both himself
and another, not separated by any distinction, but himself the same as another. But as
nature rejects and spurns and scorns this, it must either be said and confessed that there
are Vulcans without number, if we decide that he exists and is in all the images; or he
will be in none, because he is prevented by nature from being divided among several.

20. And yet, O you-if it is plain and clear to you that tim gods live. and that the
inhabitants of heaven dwell in the inner parts of the images, why do you guard, protect,
and keep them shut up under the strongest keys, and under fastenings of immense size,
under iron bars, bolts, and other such things, and defend them with a thousand men and a
thousand women to keep guard, lest by chance some thief or nocturnal robber should creep
in? Why do you feed dogs in the capitols? Why do you give food and nourishment to geese?
Rather, if you are assured that the gods are there, and that they do not depart to any
place from their figures and images, leave to them the care of themselves, let their
shrines be always unlocked and open; and if anything is secretly carried off by any one
with reckless fraud, let them show the might of divinity, and subject the sacrilegious
robbers to fitting punishments at the moment of their theft and wicked deed. For it is
unseemly, and subversive of their power and majesty, to entrust the guardianship of the
highest deities to the care of dogs, and when you are seeking for some means of
frightening thieves so as to keep them away, not to beg it from the gods themselves, but
to set and place it in the cackling of geese.

21. They say that Antiochus of Cyzicum took from its shrine a statue of Jupiter made of
gold ten cubits high, and set up in its place one made of copper covered with thin plates
of gold. If the gods are present, and dwell. in their own images, with what business, with
what cares, had Jupiter been entangled that he could not punish the wrong done to himself,
and avenge his being substituted in baser metal? When the famous Dionysius-but it was the
younger -despoiled Jupiter of his golden vestment, and put instead of it one of wool, and,
when mocking him with pleasantries also, he said that that which he was taking away was
cold in the frosts of winter, this warm, that that one was cumbrous in summer, that this,
again, was airy in hot weather,-where was the king of the world that he did not show his
presence by some terrible deed, and recall the jocose buffoon to soberness by bitter
torments? For why should I mention that the dignity of Aesculapius was mocked by him? For
when Dionysius was spoiling him of his very ample beard, which was of great weight and
philosophic thickness, he said that it was not right that a son sprung from Apollo, a
father smooth and beardless, and very like a mere boy, should be formed with such a beard
that it was left uncertain which of them was father, which son, or rather whether they
were of the same race and family. Now, when all these things were being done, and the
robber was speaking with impious mockery, if the deity was concealed in the statue
consecrated to his name and majesty, why did he not punish with just and merited vengeance
the affront of stripping his face of its beard and disfiguring his countenance, and show
by this, both that he was himself present, and that he kept watch over his temples and
images without ceasing?

22. But you will perhaps say that the gods do not trouble themselves about these losses,
and do not think that there is sufficient cause for them to come forth and inflict
punishment upon the offenders for their impious sacrilege. Neither. then. if this is the
case, do they wish to have these images. which they allow to be plucked up and torn away
with impunity; nay, on the contrary, they tell us plainly that they despise these statues,
in which they do not care to show that they were contemned, by taking any revenge.
Philostephanus relates in his Cypriaca, that Pygmalion, king of Cyprus, loved as a woman
an image of Venus, which was held by the Cyprians holy and venerable from ancient times,
his mind, spirit, the light of his reason, and his judgment being darkened; and that he
was wont in his madness, just as if he were dealing with his wife, having raised the deity
to his couch, to be joined with it in embraces and face to face, and to do other vain
things, carried away by a foolishly lustful imagination. Similarly, Posidippus, in the
book which he mentions to have been written about Gnidus and about its affairs, relates
that a young man, of noble birth,-but he conceals his name,-carried away with love of the
Venus because of which Gnidus is famous, joined himself also in amorous lewdness to the
image of the same deity, stretched on the genial couch, and enjoying the pleasures which
ensue. To ask, again, in like manner:

If the powers of the gods above lurk in copper and the other substances of which images
have been formed, where in the world was the one Venus and the other to drive far away
from them the lewd wantonness of the youths, and punish their impious touch with terrible
suffering? Or, as the goddesses are gentle and of calmer dispositions, what would it have
been for them to assuage the furious joys of the wretched men, and to bring back their
insane minds again to their senses? 23. But perhaps, as you say, the goddesses took the
greatest pleasure in these lewd and lustful insults, and did not think that an action
requiring vengeance to be taken, which soothed their minds, and which they knew was
suggested to human desires by themselves. But if the goddesses, the Venuses, being endowed
with rather calm dispositions, considered that favour should be shown to the misfortunes
of the blinded youths; when the greedy flames so often consumed the Capitol, and had
destroyed the Capitoline Jupiter himself with his wife and his daughter, where was the
Thunderer at that time to avert that calamitous fire, and preserve from destruction his
property, and himself, and all his family? Where was the queenly Juno when a violent fire
destroyed her famous shrine, and her priestess Chrysis in Argos? Where the Egyptian
Serapis, when by a similar disaster his temple fell, burned to ashes, with all the
mysteries, and Isis? Where Liber Eleutherius, when his temple fell at Athens? Where Diana,
when hers fell at Ephesus? Where Jupiter of Dodona, when his fell at Dodona? Where,
finally, the prophetic Apollo, when by pirates and sea robbers he was both plundered and
set on fire, so that out of so many pounds of gold, which ages without number had heaped
up, he did not have one scruple even to show to the swallows which built under his caves,
as Varro says in his Saturae Menippeoe?

It would be an endless task to write down what shrines have been destroyed throughout the
whole world by earth quakes and tempests-what have been set on fire by enemies, and by
kings and tyrants-what have been stript bare by the overseers and priests themselves, even
though they have turned suspicion away from them -finally, what have been robbed by
thieves and Canacheni, opening them up, though barred by unknown means; which, indeed,
would remain safe and exposed to no mischances, if the gods were present to defend them,
or had any care for their temples, as is said. But now because they are empty, and
protected by no indwellers, Fortune has power over them, and they are exposed to all
accidents just as much as are all other things which have not life. 24. Here also the
advocates of images are wont to say this also, that the ancients knew well that images
have no divine nature, and that there is no sense in them, but that they formed them
profitably and wisely, for the sake of the unmanageable and ignorant mob, which is the
majority in nations and in states, in order that a kind of appearance, as it were, of
deities being presented to them, from fear they might shake off their rude natures, and,
supposing that they were acting in the presence of the gods, put away their impious deeds,
and, changing their manners, learn to act as men; and that august forms of gold and silver
were sought for them, for no other reason than that some power was believed to reside in
their splendour, such as not only to dazzle the eyes, but even to strike terror into the
mind itself at the majestic beaming lustre. Now this might perhaps seem to be said with
some reason, if, after the temples of the gods were founded, and their images set up,
there were no wicked man in the world, no villany at all, if justice, peace, good faith,
possessed the hearts of men, and no one on earth were called guilty and guiltless, all
being ignorant of wicked deeds.

But now when, on the contrary, all things are full of wicked men, the name of innocence
has almost perished, and every moment, every second, evil deeds, till now unheard of,
spring to light in myriads from the wickedness of wrongdoers, how is it right to say that
images have been set up for the purpose of striking terror into the mob, while, besides
innumerable forms of crime and wickedness, we see that even the temples themselves are
attacked by tyrants, by kings, by robbers, and by nocturnal thieves, and that these very
gods whom antiquity fashioned and consecrated to cause terror, are carried away into the
caves of robbers, in spite even of the terrible splendour of the gold? 25. For what
grandeur-if you look at the truth without any prejudice -is there in these images of which
they speak, that the men of old should have had reason to hope and think that, by
beholding them, the vices of men could be subdued, and their morals and wicked ways
brought under restraint? The reaping-hook, for example, which was assigned to Saturn, was
it to inspire mortals with fear, that they should be willing to live peacefully, and to
abandon their malicious inclinations? Janus, with double face, or that spiked key by which
he has been distinguished; Jupiter, cloaked and bearded, and holding in his right hand a
piece of wood shaped like a thunderbolt; the cestus of Juno, or the maiden lurking under a
soldier's helmet; the mother of the gods, with her timbrel; the Muses, with their pipes
and psalteries; Mercury, the winged slayer of Argus; Aesculapius, with his staff; Ceres,
with huge breasts, or the drinking cup swinging in Liber's right hand; Mulciber, with his
workman s dress; or Fortune, with her horn full of apples, figs, or autumnal fruits;
Diana, with half-covered thighs, or Venus naked, exciting to lustful desire; Anubis, with
his dog's face; or Priapus, of less importance than his own genitals: were these expected
to make men afraid?

26. O dreadful forms of terror and frightful bugbears on account of which the human race
was to be benumbed for ever, to attempt nothing in its utter amazement, and to restrain
itself from every wicked and shameful act-little sickles, keys, caps, pieces of wood,
winged sandals, staves, little timbrels, pipes, psalteries, breasts protruding and of
great size, little drinking cups, pincers, and horns filled with fruit, the naked bodies
of women, and huge veretra openly exposed! Would it not have been better to dance and to
sing, than calling it gravity and pretending to be serious, to relate what is so insipid
and so silly, that images were formed by the ancients to check wrongdoing, and to arouse
the fears of the wicked and impious? Were the men of that age and time, in understanding,
so void of reason and good sense, that they were kept back from wicked actions, just as if
they were little boys, by the preternatural savageness of masks, by grimaces also, and
bugbears? And how has this been so entirely changed, that though there are so many temples
in your states filled with images of all the gods, the multitude of criminals cannot be
resisted even with so many laws and so terrible punishments, and their audacity cannot be
overcome by any means, and wicked deeds, repeated again and again, multiply the more it is
striven by laws and severe judgments to lessen the number of cruel deeds, and to quell
them by the check given by means of punishments?

But if images caused any fear to men, the passing of laws would cease, nor would so many
kinds of tortures be established against the daring of the guilty: now, however, because
it has been proved and established that the supposed terror which is said to flow out from
the images is in reality vain, recourse has been had to the ordinances of laws, by which
there might be a dread of punishment which should be most certain fixed in men's minds
also, and a condemnation settled; to which these very images also owe it that they yet
stand safe, and secured by some respect being yielded to them.


AGAINST THE HEATHEN, BOOK 7
===========================

AGAINST THE HEATHEN, BOOK 7 Arnobius of Sicca

d. c. AD 330

North African teacher who wrote against the pagans.

AGAINST THE HEATHEN BOOK 7

1. Since it has been sufficiently shown, as far as there has been opportunity, how vain it
is to forth images, the course of our argument requires that we should next speak as
briefly as possible, and without any periphrasis, about sacrifices, about the slaughter
and immolation of victims, about pure wine, about incense, and about all the other things
which are provided on such occasions. For with respect to this you have been in the habit
of exciting against us the most violent ill-will, of calling us atheists, and inflicting
upon us the punishment of death, even by savagely tearing us to pieces with wild beasts,
on the ground that we pay very little respect to the gods; which, indeed, we admit that we
do, not from contempt or scorn of the divine, but because we think that such powers
require nothing of the kind, and are not possessed by desires for such things.

What, then, some one will say, do you think that no sacrifices at all should be offered?
To answer you not with our own, but with your Varro's opinion-none. Why so? Because, he
says, the true gods neither wish nor demand these; while those which are made of copper,
earthenware, gypsum, or marble, care much less for these things, for they have no feeling;
and you are not blamed if you do not offer them, nor do you win favour if you do. No
sounder opinion can be found, none truer, and one which any one may adopt, although he may
be stupid and very hard to convince. For who is so obtuse as either to slay victims in
sacrifice to those who have no sense, or to think that they should be given to those who
are removed far from them in their nature and blessed state? 2. Who are the true gods? you
say. To answer you in common and simple language, we do not know; for how can we know who
those are whom we have never seen? We have been accustomed to hear from you that an
infinite number are gods, and are reckoned among the deities; but if these exist anywhere,
and are true gods, as Terentius believes, it follows as a consequence, that they
correspond to their name; that is, that they are such as we all see that they should be,
and that they are worthy to be called by this name; nay, more,-to make an end without many
words,-that they are such as is the Lord of the universe, and the King omnipotent Himself,
whom we have knowledge and understanding enough to speak of as the true God when we are
led to mention His name. For one god differs from another in nothing as respects his
divinity; nor can that which is one in kind be less or more in its parts while its own
qualities remain unchanged. Now, as this is certain, it follows that they should never
have been begotten, but should be immortal, seeking nothing from without, and not drawing
any earthly pleasures from the resources of matter.

3. So, then, if these things are so. we desire to learn this, first. from you-what is the
cause, what the reason, that you offer them sacrifices; and then, what gain comes to the
gods themselves from this, and remains to their advantage. For whatever is done should
have a cause, and should not be disjoined from reason, so as to be lost among useless
works, and tossed about among vain and idle uncertainties. Do the gods of heaven live on
these sacrifices, and must materials be supplied to maintain the union of their parts? And
what man is there so ignorant or what a god is, certainly, as to think that they are
maintained by any kind of nourishment, and that it is the food given to them which causes
them to live and endure throughout their endless immortality? For whatever is upheld by
causes and things external to itself, must be mortal and on the way to destruction, when
anything on which it lives begins to be wanting. Again, it is impossible to suppose that
any one believes this, because we see that of these things which are brought to their
altars, nothing is added to and reaches the substance of the deities; for either incense
is given, and is lost melting on the coals, or the life only of the victim is offered to
the gods, and its blood is licked up by dogs;

or if any flesh is placed upon the altars, it is set on fire in like manner, and is
destroyed, and falls into ashes,-unless perchance the god seizes upon the souls of the
victims, or snuffs up eagerly the fumes and smoke which rise from the blazing altars, and
feeds upon the odours which the burning flesh gives forth, still wet with blood, and damp
with its former juices. But if a god, as is said, has no body, and cannot be touched at
all, how is it possible that that which has no body should be nourished by things
pertaining to the body,-that what is mortal should support what is immortal, and assist
and give vitality to that which it cannot touch? This reason for sacrifices is not valid,
therefore, as it seems; nor can it be said by any one that sacrifices are kept up for this
reason, that the deities are nourished by them, and supported by feeding on them.

4. If perchance it is not this, are victims not slain in sacrifice to the gods, and cast
upon their flaming altars to give them some pleasure and delight? And can any man persuade
himself that the gods become mild as they are exhilarated by pleasures, that they long for
sensual enjoyment, and, like some base creatures, are affected by agreeable sensations,
and charmed and tickled for the moment by a pleasantness which soon passes away? For that
which is overcome by pleasure must be harassed by its opposite, sorrow; nor can that be
free from the anxiety of grief, which trembles with joy, and is elated capriciously with
gladness. But the gods should be free from both passions, if we would have them to be
everlasting, and freed from the weakness of mortals. Moreover, every pleasure is, as it
were, a kind of flattery of the body, and is addressed to the five well-known senses; but
if the gods above feel it, they must partake also of those bodies through which there is a
way to the senses, and a door by which to receive pleasures. Lastly, what pleasure is it
to take delight in the slaughter of harmless creatures, to have the ears ringing often
with their piteous bellowings, to see rivers of blood, the life fleeing away with the
blood, and the secret parts having been laid open, not only the intestines to protrude
with the excrements, but also the heart still bounding with the life left in it, and the
trembling, palpitating veins in the viscera?

We half-savage men, nay rather,-to say with more candour what it is truer and more candid
to say,-we savages, whom unhappy necessity and bad habit have trained to take these as
food, are sometimes moved with pity for them; we ourselves accuse and condemn ourselves
when the thing is seen and looked into thoroughly, because, neglecting the law which is
binding on men, we have broken through the bonds which naturally united us at the
beginning. Will any one believe that the gods, who are kind, beneficent, gentle, are
delighted and filled with joy by the slaughter of cattle, if ever they fall and expire
pitiably before their altars? And there is no cause, then, for pleasure in sacrifices, as
we see, nor is there a reason why they should be offered, since there is no pleasure
afforded by them; and if perchance there is some, it has been shown that it cannot in any
way belong to the gods.

5. We have next to examine the argument which we bear continually coming from the lips of
the common people, and find embedded in popular conviction, that sacrifices are offered to
the gods of heaven for this purpose, that they may lay aside their anger and passions, and
may be restored to a calm and placid tranquillity, the indignation of their fiery spirits
being assuaged. And if we remember the definition which we should always bear steadily in
mind, that all agitating feelings are unknown to the gods, the consequence is, a belief
that the gods are never angry; nay, rather, that no passion is further from them than that
which, approaching most nearly to the spirit of wild beasts and savage creatures, agitates
those who suffer it with tempestuous feelings, and brings them into danger of destruction.
For whatever is harassed by any kind of disturbance, is, it is clear, capable of
suffering, and frail; that which has been subjected to suffering and frailty must be
mortal; but anger harasses and destroys those who are subject to it: therefore that should
be called mortal which has been made subject to the emotions of anger. But yet we know
that the gods should be never-dying, and should possess an immortal nature; and if this is
clear and certain, anger has been separated far from them and from their state. On no
ground, then, is it fitting to wish to appease that in the gods above which you see cannot
suit their blessed state.

6. But let us allow, as you wish, that the gods are accustomed to such disturbance, and
that sacrifices are offered and sacred solemnities performed to calm it, when, then, is it
fitting that these offices should be made use of, or at what time should they be
given?-before they are angry and roused, or when they have been moved and displeased even?
If we must meet them with sacrifices before their anger is roused, lest they become
enraged, you are bringing forward wild beasts to us, not gods, to which it is customary to
toss food, upon which they may rage madly, and turn their desire to do harm, lest, having
been roused, they should rage and burst the barriers of their dens. But if these
sacrifices are offered to satisfy the gods when already fired and burning with rage, I do
not inquire, I do not consider, whether that happy and sublime greatness of spirit which
belongs to the deities is disturbed by the offences of little men, and wounded if a
creature, blind and ever treading among clouds of ignorance, has committed any
blunder,-said anything by which their dignity is impaired.

7. But neither do I demand that this should be said, or that I should be told what causes
the gods have for their anger against men, that having taken offence they must be soothed.
I do ask, however, Did they ever ordain any laws for mortals? and was it ever settled by
them what it was fitting for them to do, or what it was not? what they should pursue, what
avoid; or even by what means they wished themselves to be worshipped, so that they might
pursue with the vengeance of their wrath what was done otherwise than they had commanded,
and might be disposed, if treated contemptuously, to avenge themselves on the presumptuous
and transgressors? As I think, nothing was ever either settled or ordained by them, since
neither have they been seen, nor has it been possible for it to be discerned very clearly
whether there are any. What justice is there, then, in the gods of heaven being angry for
any reason with those to whom they have neither deigned at any time to show that they
existed, nor given nor imposed any laws which they wished to be honoured by them and
perfectly observed?

8. But this, as I said, I do not mention, but allow it to pass away in silence. This one
thing I ask, above all, What reason is there if I kill a pig, that a god changes his state
of mind, and lays aside his angry feelings and frenzy; that if I consume a pullet, a calf
under his eyes and on his altars, he forgets the wrong which I did to him, and abandons
completely all sense of displeasure? What passes from this act to modify his resentment?
Or of what service is a goose, a goat, or a peacock, that from its blood relief is brought
to the angry god? Do the gods, then, make insulting them a matter of payment? and as
little boys, to induce them to give up their fits of passion and desist from their
wailings, get little sparrows, dolls, ponies, puppets, with which they may be able to
divert themselves, do the immortal gods in such wise receive these gifts from you, that
for them they may lay aside their resentment, and be reconciled to those who offended
them? And yet I thought that the gods-if only it is right to believe that they are really
moved by anger-lay aside their anger and resentment, and forgive the sins of the guilty,
without any price or reward. For this belongs specially to deities, to be generous in
forgiving, and to seek no return for their gifts. But if this cannot be, it would be much
wiser that they should continue obstinately offended, than that they should be softened by
being corrupted with bribes. For the multitude increases of those who sin, when there is
hope given of paying for their sin; and there is little hesitation to do wrong, when the
favour of those who pardon offences may be bought.

9. So, if some ox, or any animal you please, which is slain to mitigate and appease the
fury of the deities, were to take a man's voice and speak these words: "Is this, then, O
Jupiter, or whatever god thou art, humane or right, or should it he considered at all
just, that when another has sinned I should be killed, and that you should allow
satisfaction to be made to you with my blood, although I never did you wrong, never
wittingly or unwittingly did violence to your divinity and majesty, being, as thou
knowest, a dumb creature, not departing from the simplicity of my nature, nor inclined to
be fickle in my manners? Did I ever celebrate your games with too little reverence and
care? did I drag forward a dancer so that thy deity was offended? did I swear falsely by
thee? did I sacrilegiously steal your property and plunder your temples? did I uproot the
most sacred groves, or pollute and profane some hallowed places by rounding private
houses? What, then, is the reason that the crime of another is atoned for with my blood,
and that my life and innocence are made to pay for wickedness with which I have nothing to
do? Is it because I am a base creature, and am not possessed of reason and wisdom, as
these declare who call themselves men, and by their ferocity make themselves beasts? Did
not the same nature both beget and form me from the same beginnings?

Is it not one breath of life which sways both them and me? Do I not respire and see, and
am I not affected by the other senses just as they are? They have livers, lungs, hearts,
intestines, bellies; and do not I have as many members? They love their young, and come
together to beget children; and do not I both take care to procure offspring, and delight
in it when it has been begotten? But they have reason, and utter articulate sounds; and
how do they know whether I do what I do for my own reasons, and whether that sound which I
give forth is my kind of words, and is understood by us alone? Ask piety whether it is
more just that I should be slain, that I should be killed, or that man should be pardoned
and be safe from punishment for what he has done? Who formed iron into a sword? was it not
man? Who brought disaster upon races; who imposed slavery upon nations? was it not man?
Who mixed deadly draughts, and gave them to his parents, brothers, wives, friends? was it
not man? Who found out or devised so many forms of wickedness, that they can hardly be
related in ten thousand chronicles of years, or even of days? was it not man? Is not this,
then, cruel, monstrous, and savage?

Does it not seem to you, O Jupiter, unjust and barbarous that I should be killed, that I
should be slain, that you may be soothed, and the guilty find impunity? " It has been
established that sacrifices are offered in vain for this purpose then, viz., that the
angry deities may be soothed; since reason has taught us that the gods are not angry at
any time, and that they do not wish one thing to be destroyed, to be slain for another, or
offences against themselves to be annulled by the blood of an innocent creature. 10. But
perhaps some one will say, We give to the gods sacrifices and other gifts, that, being
made willing in a measure to grant our prayers, they may give us prosperity and avert from
us evil, cause us to live always happily, drive away grief truly, and any evils which
threaten us from accidental circumstances. This point demands great care; nor is it usual
either to hear or to believe what is so easily said. For the whole company of the learned
will straightway swoop upon us, who, asserting and proving that whatever happens, happens
according to the decrees of fate, snatch out of our hands that opinion, and assert that we
are putting our trust in vain beliefs. Whatever, they will say, has been done in the
world, is being done, and shall be done, has been settled and fixed in time past, and has
causes which cannot be moved, by means of which events have been linked together, and form
an unassailable chain of unalterable necessity between the past and the future. If it has
been determined and fixed what evil or good should befall each person, it is already
certain; but if this is certain and fixed, there is no room for all the help given by the
gods, their hatred, and favours.

For they are just as unable to do for you that which cannot be done, as to prevent that
from being done which must happen, except that they will be able, if they choose, to
depreciate somewhat powerfully that belief which you entertain, so that they say that even
the gods themselves are worshipped by you in vain, and that the supplications with which
you address them are superfluous. For as they are unable to turn aside the course of
events, and change what has been appointed by fate, what reason, what cause, is there to
wish to weary and deafen the ears of those in whose help you cannot trust at your utmost
need? 11. Lastly, if the gods drive away sorrow and grief, if they bestow joy and
pleasure, how are there in the world so many and so wretched men, whence come so many
unhappy ones, who lead a life of tears in the meanest condition? Why are not those free
from calamity who every moment, every instant, load and heap up the altars with
sacrifices? Do we not see that some of them, say the learned, are the seats of diseases,
the light of their eves quenched, and their ears stopped, that they cannot move with their
feet, that they live mere trunks without the use of their hands, that they are swallowed
up, overwhelmed, and destroyed by conflagrations, shipwrecks, and disasters; that, having
been stripped of immense fortunes, they support themselves by labouring for hire, and beg
for alms at last; treat they are exiled, proscribed, always in the midst of sorrow,
overcome by the loss of children, and harassed by other misfortunes, the kinds and forms
of which no enumeration can comprehend? But assuredly this would not occur if the gods,
who had been laid under obligation, were able to ward off, to turn aside, those evils from
those who merited this favour. But now, because in these mishaps there is no room for the
interference of the gods, but all things are brought about by inevitable necessity, the
appointed course of events goes on and accomplishes that which has been once determined.

12. Or the gods of heaven should be said to be ungrateful if, while they have power to
prevent it, they suffer an unhappy race to be involved in so many hardships and disasters.
But perhaps they may say something of importance in answer to this, and not such as should
be received by deceitful, fickle, and scornful ears. This point, however, because it would
require too tedious and prolix discussion, we hurry past unexplained and untouched,
content to have stated this alone, that you give to your gods dishonourable reputations if
you assert that on no other condition do they bestow blessings and turn away what is
injurious, except they have been first bought over with the blood of she-goats and sheep,
and with the other things which are put upon their altars. For it is not fitting, in the
first place, that the power of the deities and the surpassing eminence of the celestials
should be believed to keep their favours on sale, first to receive a price, and then to
bestow them; and then, which is much more unseemly, that they aid no one unless they
receive their demands, and that they suffer the most wretched to undergo whatever perils
may befall them, while they could ward these off, and come to their aid.

If of two who are sacrificing, one is a scoundrel, and rich, the other of small fortune,
but worthy of praise for his integrity and goodness,-if the former should slay a hundred
oxen, and as many ewes with their lambkins, the poor man burn a little incense, and a
small piece of some odorous substance,-will it not follow that it should be believed that,
if only the deities bestow nothing except when rewards are first offered, they will give
their favour to the rich man, turn their eyes away from the poor, whose gifts were
restricted not by his spirit, but by the scantiness of his means? For where the giver is
venal and mercenary, there it must needs be that favour is granted according to the
greatness of the gift by which it is purchased, and that a favourable decision is given to
him from whom far the greater reward and bribe, though this be shameful, flows to him who
gives it. What if two nations, on the other hand, arrayed against each other in war,
enriched the altars of the gods with equal sacrifices, and were to demand that their power
and help should be given to them, the one against the other: must it not, again, be
believed that, if they are persuaded to be of service by rewards, they are at a loss
between both sides, are struck motionless, and do not perceive what to do, since they
understand that their favour has been pledged by the acceptance of the sacrifices?

For either they will give assistance to this side and to that, which is impossible, for in
that case they will fight themselves against themselves, strive against their own favour
and wishes; or they will do nothing to aid either nation after the price of their aid has
been paid and received, which is very wicked. All this infamy, therefore, should be
removed far from the gods; nor should it be said at all that they are won over by rewards
and payments to confer blessings, and remove what is disagreeable, if only they are true
gods, and worthy to be ranked under this name. For either whatever happens, happens
inevitably, and there is no place in the gods for ambition and favour; or if fate is
excluded and got rid of, it does not belong to the celestial dignity to sell the boon of
its services, and the conferring of its bounties.

13. We have shown sufficiently, as I suppose, that victims, and the things which go along
with them, are offered in vain to the immortal gods, because they are neither nourished by
them, nor feel any pleasure, nor lay aside their anger and resentment, so as either to
give good fortune, or to drive away and avert the opposite. We have now to examine that
point also which has been usually asserted by some, and applied to forms of ceremony. For
they say that these sacred rites were instituted to do honour to the gods of heaven, and
that these things which they do, they do to show them honour, and to magnify the powers of
the deities by them. What if they were to say, in like manner, that they keep awake and
sleep, walk about, stand still, write something, and read, to give honour to the gods, and
make them more glorious in majesty? For what substance is there added to them from the
blood of cattle, and from the other things which are prepared in sacrificing? what power
is given and added to them? For all honour, which is said to be offered by any one, and to
be yielded to reverence for a greater being, is of a kind having reference to the other;
and consists of two parts, of the concession of the giver, and the increase of honour of
the receiver. As, if any one, on seeing a man famed for his very great power and
authority, were to make way for him, to stand up, to uncover his head, and leap down from
his carriage, then, bending forward to salute him with slavish servility and trembling
agitation, I see what is aimed at in showing such respect: by the bowing down of the one,
very great honour is given to the other, and he is made to appear great whom the respect
of an inferior exalts and places above his own rank.

14. But all this conceding and ascribing of honour about which we are speaking are met
with among men alone, whom their natural weakness and love of standing above their fellows
teach to delight in arrogance, and in being preferred above others. But, I ask, where is
there room for honour among the gods, or what greater exaltation is found to be given to
them by piling up sacrifices? Do they become more venerable, more powerful, when cattle
are sacrificed to them? is there anything added to them from this? or do they begin to be
more truly gods, their divinity being increased? And yet I consider it almost an insult,
nay, an insult altogether, when it is said that a god is honoured by a man, and exalted by
the offering of some gift. For if honour increases and augments the grandeur of him to
whom it is given, it follows that a deity becomes greater by means of the man from whom he
has received the gift, and the honour conferred on him; and thus the matter is brought to
this issue, that the god who is exalted by human honours is the inferior, while, on the
other hand, the man who increases the power of a deity is his superior.

15. What then! some one will say, do you think that no honour should be given to the gods
at all? If you propose to us gods such as they should be if they do exist, and such as we
feel that we all mean when we mention that name, how can we but give them even the
greatest honour, since we have been taught by the commands which have especial power over
us, to pay honour to all men even, of whatever rank, of whatever condition they may be?
What, pray, you ask, is this very great honour? One much more in accordance with duty than
is paid by you, and directed to a more powerful race, we reply. Tell, us, you say, in the
first place, what is an opinion worthy of the gods, right and honourable, and not
blameworthy from its being made unseemly by something infamous? We reply, one such that
yon believe that they neither have any likeness to man, nor look for anything which is
outside of them and comes from without; then-and this has been said pretty frequently-that
they do not burn with the fires of anger, that they do not give themselves up passionately
to sensual pleasure, that they are not bribed to be of service, that they are not tempted
to injure our enemies, that they do not sell their kindness and favour, that they do not
rejoice in having honour heaped on them, that they are not indignant and vexed if it is
not given;

but-and this belongs to the divine-that by their own power they know themselves, and that
they do not rate themselves by the obsequiousness of others. And yet, that we may see the
nature of what is said, what kind of honour is this, to bind a wether, a ram, a bull
before the face of a god, and slay them in his sight? What kind of honour is it to invite
a god to a banquet of blood, which you see him take and share in with dogs? What kind of
honour is it, having set on fire piles of wood, to hide the heavens with smoke, and darken
with gloomy blackness the images of the gods? But if it seems good to you that these
actions should be considered in themselves, not judged of according to your prejudices,
you will find that those altars of which you speak, and even those beautiful ones which
you dedicate to the superior gods, are places for burning the unhappy race of animals
funeral pyres, and mounds built for a most unseemly office, and formed to be filled with
corruption.

16. What say you, O you-! is that foul smell, then, which is given forth and emitted by
burning hides, by bones, by bristles, by the fleeces of lambs, and the feathers of
fowls,-is that a favour and an honour to the deity? and are the deities honoured by this,
to whose temples, when yon arrange to go, you come cleansed from all pollution, washed,
and perfectly pure? And what can be more polluted than these, more unhappy, more debased,
than if their senses are naturally such that they are fond of what is so cruel, and take
delight in foul smells which, when inhaled with the breath, even those who sacrifice
cannot bear, and certainly not a delicate nose? But if you think that the gods of heaven
de honoured by the blood of living creatures being offered to them, why do you not
sacrifice to them both mules, and elephants, and asses? why not dogs also, bears, and
foxes, camels, and hyaenas, and lions? And as birds also are counted victims by you, why
do you not sacrifice vultures, eagles, storks, falcons, hawks, ravens, sparrow-hawks,
owls, and, along with them, salamanders, water-snakes, vipers, tarantulae? For indeed
there is both blood in these, and they are in like manner moved by the breath of life.
What is there more artistic in the former kind of sacrifices, or less ingenious in the
latter, that these do not add to and increase the grandeur of the gods?

Because, says my opponent, it is right to honour the gods of heaven with those things by
which we are ourselves nourished and sustained, and live; which also they have, in their
divine benevolence, deigned to give to us for food. But the same gods have given to you
both cumin, cress, turnips, onions, parsley, esculent thistles, radishes, gourds, rue,
mint, basil, flea-bane, and chives, and commanded them to be used by you as part of your
food; why, then, do you not put these too upon the altars, and scatter wild-marjoram, with
which oxen are fed, over them all, and mix amongst them onions with their pungent flavour?
17. Lo, if dogs-for a case must be imagined, in order that things may be seen more
clearly-if dogs, I say, and asses, and along with them water-wagtails, if the twittering
swallows, and pigs also, having acquired some of the feelings of men, were to think and
suppose that you were gods, and to propose to offer sacrifices in your honour, not of
other things and substances, but of those with which they are wont to be nourished and
supported, according to their natural inclination,-we ask you to say whether you would
consider this an honour, or rather a most outrageous affront, when the swallows slew and
consecrated flies to you, the water-wagtails ants; when the asses put hay upon your
altars, and poured out libations of chaff; when the dogs placed bones, and burned human
excrements at your shrines; when, lastly, the pigs poured out before you a horrid mess,
taken from their frightful hog-pools and filthy maws? Would you not in this case, then, be
inflamed with rage that your greatness was treated with contumely, and account it an
atrocious wrong that you were greeted with filth? But, you reply, you honour the gods with
the carcasses of bulls, and by slaying other living creatures. And in what respect does
this differ from that, since these sacrifices, also, if they are not yet, will
nevertheless soon be, dung, and will become rotten after a very short time has passed?

Finally, cease to place fire upon your altars, then indeed you will see that consecrated
flesh of bulls, with which you magnify the honour of the gods, swelling and heaving with
worms, tainting and corrupting the atmosphere, and infecting the neighbouring districts
with unwholesome smells. Now, if the gods were to enjoin you to turn these things to your
own account, to make your meals from them in the usual way; you would flee to a distance,
and, execrating the smell, would beg pardon from the gods, and bind yourselves by oath
never again to offer such sacrifices to them. Is not this conduct of yours mockery, then?
is it not to confess, to make known that you do not know what a deity is, nor to what
power the meaning and title of this name should be given and applied? Do you give new
dignity to the gods by new kinds of food? do you honour them with savours and juices, and
because those things which nourish you are pleasing and grateful to you? do you believe
that the gods also flock up to enjoy their pleasant taste, and, just as barking dogs, lay
aside their fierceness for mouthfuls, and pretty often fawn upon those who hold these out?

18. And as we are now speaking of the animals sacrificed, what cause, what reason is
there, that while the immortal gods-for, so far as we are concerned, they may all be gods
who are believed to be so-are of one mind, or should be of one nature, kind, and
character, all are not appeased with all the victims, but certain deities with certain
animals, according to the sacrificial laws? For what cause is there, to repeat the same
question, that that deity should be honoured with bulls, another with kids or sheep, this
one with sucking pigs, the other with unshorn lambs, this one with virgin heifers, that
one with horned goats, this with barren cows, but that with teeming swine, this with
white, that with dusky victims, one with female, the other, on the contrary, with male
animals? For if victims are slain in sacrifice to the gods, to do them honour and show
reverence for them, what does it matter, or what difference is there with the life of what
animal this debt is paid, their anger and resentment put away? Or is the blood of one
victim less grateful and pleasing to one god, while the other's fills him with pleasure
and joy? or, as is usually done, does that deity abstain from the flesh of goats because
of some reverential and religious scruple, another turn with disgust from pork, while to
this mutton stinks? and does this one avoid tough ox-beef that he may not overtax his weak
stomach, and choose tender sucklings that he may digest them more speedily?

19. But you err, says my opponent, and fall into mistakes; for in sacrificing female
victims to the female deities, males to the male deities, there is a hidden and very
secret reason, and one beyond the reach of the mass. I do not inquire, I do not demand,
what the sacrificial laws teach or contain; but if reason has demonstrated, and truth
declared, that among the gods there is no difference of species, and that they are not
distinguished by any sexes, must not all these reasonings be set at nought, and be proved,
the opinions of wise men, who cannot restrain their laughter when they hear distinctions
of sex attributed to the immortal gods: I ask of each man whether he himself believes in
his own mind, and persuades himself that the race of the gods is so distinguished that
they are male and female, and have been formed with members arranged suitably for the
begetting of young?

But if the laws of the sacrifices enjoin that like sexes should be sacrificed to like,
that is, female victims to the female gods, male victims, on the contrary, to the male
gods, what relation is there in the colours, so that it is right and fitting that to these
white, to those dark, even the blackest victims are slain? Because, says my opponent, to
the gods above, and those who have power to give favourable omens, the cheerful colour is
acceptable and propitious from the pleasant appearance of pure white; while, on the
contrary, to the sinister deities, and those who inhabit the infernal seats, a dusky
colour is more pleasing, and one tinged with gloomy hues. But if, again, the reasoning
holds good, that the infernal regions are an utterly vain and empty name, and that
underneath the earth there are no Plutonian realms and abodes, this, too, must nullify
your ideas about black cattle and gods under the ground. Because, if there are no infernal
regions, of necessity there are no dii Manium also. For how is it possible that, while
there are no regions, there should be said to be any who inhabit them?

20. But let us agree, as you wish, that there are both infernal regions and Manes, and
that some gods or other dwell in these by no means favourable to men, and presiding over
misfortunes; and what cause, what reason is there, that black victims, even of the darkest
hue, should be brought to their altars? Because dark things suit dark, and gloomy things
are pleasing to similar beings. What then? Do you not see-that we, too, may joke with you
stupidly, and just as you do yourselves -that the flesh of the victims is not black, nor
their bones, teeth, fat, the bowels, with the brains, and the soft marrow in the bones?
But the fleeces are jet-black, and the bristles of the creatures are jet-black. Do you,
then, sacrifice to the gods only wool and little bristles torn from the victims? Do you
leave the wretched creatures, despoiled it may be, and shorn, to draw the breath of
heaven, and rest in perfect innocence upon their feeding-grounds? But if yon think that
those things are pleasing to the infernal gods which are black and of a gloomy colour, why
do you not take care that all the other things which it is customary to place upon their
sacrifices should be black, and smoked, and horrible in colour? Dye the incense if it is
offered, the salted grits, and all the libations without exception. Into the milk, oil,
blood, pour soot and ashes, that this may lose its purple hue, that the others may become
ghastly. But if you have no scruple in introducing some things which are white and retain
their brightness, you yourselves do away with your own religious scruples and reasonings,
while you do not maintain any single and universal rule in performing the sacred rites.

21. But this, too, it is fitting that we should here learn from you: If a goat be slain to
Jupiter, which is usually sacrificed to father Liber and Mercury, or if the barren heifer
be sacrificed to Unxia, which you give to Proserpine, by what usage and rule is it
determined what crime there is in this, what wickedness or guilt has been contracted,
since it makes no difference to the worship offered to the deity what animal it is with
whose head the honour is paid which you owe? It is not lawful, says my opponent, that
these things should be confounded, and it is no small crime to throw the ceremonies of the
rites and the mode of expiation into confusion. Explain the reason, I beg. Because it is
right to consecrate victims of a certain kind to certain deities, and that certain forms
of supplication should be also adopted. And what, again, is the reason that it is right to
consecrate victims of a certain kind to certain deities, and that certain forms of
supplication should he also adopted, for this very rightfulness should have its own cause,
and spring, be derived from certain reasons? Are you going to speak about antiquity and
custom? If so, you relate to me merely the opinions of men, and the inventions of a blind
creature:

but I, when I request a reason to be brought forward to me, wish to hear either that
something has fallen from heaven, or, which the subject rather requires, what relation
Jupiter has to a bull's blood that it should be offered in sacrifice to him, not to
Mercury or Liber. Or what are the natural properties of a goat, that they again should be
suited to these gods, should not be adapted to the sacrifices of Jupiter? Has a partition
of the animals been made amongst the gods? Has some contract been made and agreed to, so
that it is fitting that this one should hold himself back from the victim which belongs to
that, that the other should cease to claim as his own the blood which belongs to another?
Or, as envious boys, are they unwilling to allow others to have a share in enjoying the
cattle presented to them? or, as is reported to be done by races which differ greatly in
manners, are the same things which by one party are considered fit for eating, rejected as
food by others?

22. If, then, these things are vain, and are not supported by any reason, the very
offering of sacrifices also is idle. For how can that which follows have a suitable cause,
when that very first statement from which the second flows is found to be utterly idle and
vain, and established on no solid basis? To mother Earth, they say, is sacrificed a
teeming and pregnant sow; but to the virgin Minerva is slain a virgin calf, never forced
by the goad to attempt any labour. But yet we think that neither should a virgin have been
sacrificed to a virgin, that the virginity might not be violated in the brute, for which
the goddess is especially esteemed; nor should gravid and pregnant victims have been
sacrificed to the Earth from respect for its fruitfulness, which we all desire and wish to
go on always in irrepressible fertility. For if because the Tritonian goddess is a virgin
it is therefore fitting that virgin victims be sacrificed to her, and if because the Earth
is a mother she is in like manner to be entertained with gravid swine, then also Apollo
should be honoured by the sacrifice of musicians because he is a musician; Aesculapius,
because he is a physician, by the sacrifice of physicians; and because he is an artificer,
Vulcan by the sacrifice of artificers; and because Mercury is eloquent, sacrifice should
be made to him with the eloquent and most fluent. Bat if it is madness to say this, or, to
speak with moderation, nonsense, that shows much greater madness to slaughter pregnant
swine to the Earth because she is even more prolific; pure and virgin heifers to Minerva
because she is pure, of unviolated virginity.

23. For as to that which we hear said by you, that some of the gods are good, that others,
on the contrary, are bad, and rather inclined to indulge in wanton mischief, and that the
usual rites are paid to the one party that they may show layout, but to the others that
they may not do you harm,-with what reason this is said, we confess that we cannot
understand. For to say that the gods are most benevolent, and have gentle dispositions, is
not only pious and religious, but also true; but that they are evil and sinister, should
by no means be listened to, inasmuch as that divine power has been far removed and
separated from the disposition which does harm. But whatever can occasion calamity, it
must first be seen what it is, and then it should be removed very far from the name of
deity.

Then, supposing that we should agree with you that the gods promote good fortune and
calamity, not even in this case is there any reason why you should allure some of them to
grant you prosperity, and, on the other hand, coax others with sacrifices and rewards not
to do you harm. First, because the good gods cannot act badly, even if they have been
worshipped with no honour.-for whatever is mild and placid by nature, is separated widely
from the practice and devising of mischief; while the bad knows not to restrain his
ferocity, although he should be enticed to do so with a thousand flocks and a thousand
altars. For neither can bitterness change itself into sweetness, dryness into moisture,
the heat of fire into cold, or what is contrary to anything take and change into its own
nature that which is its opposite. So that, if you should stroke a viper with your hand,
or caress a poisonous scorpion, the former will attack you with its fangs, the latter,
drawing itself together, will fix its sting in you; and your caressing will be of no
avail, since both creatures are excited to do mischief, not by the stings of rage, but by
a certain peculiarity of their nature.

It is thus of no avail to wish to deserve well of the sinister deities by means of
sacrifices, since, whether you do this, or on the contrary do not, they follow their own
nature, and by inborn laws and a kind of necessity are led to those things, to do which
they were made. Moreover, in this way both kinds of gods cease to possess their own
powers, and to retain their own characters. For if the good are worshipped that they may
be favourable, and supplication is made in the same way to the others, on the contrary,
that they may not be injurious, it follows that it should be understood that the
propitious deities will show no favour if they receive no gifts, and become bad instead of
good; while, on the contrary, the bad, if they receive offerings, will lay aside their
mischievous disposition, and become thereafter good: and thus it is brought to this issue,
that neither are these propitious, nor are those sinister: or, which is impossible, both
are propitious, and both again sinister.

24. Be it so; let it be conceded that these most unfortunate cattle are not sacrificed in
the temples of the gods without some religious obligation, and that what has been dome in
accordance with usage and custom possesses some rational ground: but if it seems a great
and grand thing to slay bulls to the gods, and to burn in sacrifice the flesh of animals
whole and entire, what is the meaning of these relics connected with the arts of the Magi
which the pontifical mysteries have restored to a place among the secret laws of the
sacred rites, and have mixed up with religious affairs? What, I say, is the meaning of
these things, apexaones, hircioe, silicernia, longavi, which are names and kinds of
sausages, some stuffed with goats' blood, others with minced liver? What is the meaning of
toe-doe, uoenioe, offoe, not those used by the common people, but those named and called
offoe penitoe?-of which the first is fat cut into very small pieces, as dainties are; that
which has been placed second is the extension of the gut by which the excrements are given
off after being drained of all their nourishing juices; while the offa penita is a beast's
tail cut off with a morsel of flesh. What is the meaning of polimina, omenta, palasea, or,
as some call it, plasea?-of which that named omentum is a certain part enclosed by the
reservoirs of the belly are kept within bounds; the plasea is an ox's tail besmeared with
flour and blood;

the polimina, again, are those parts which we with more decency call proles,-by the
vulgar, however, they are usually termed testes. What is the meaning of fitilla, frumen,
africia, gratilla, catumeum, cumspolium, cubula?-of which the first two are names of
species of pottage, but differing in kind and quality; while the series of names which
follows denotes consecrated cakes, for they are not shaped in one and the same way. For we
do not choose to mention the caro strebula which is taken from the haunches of bulls, the
roasted pieces of meat which are spitted, the intestines first heated, and baked on
glowing coals, nor, finally, the pickles which are made by mixing four kinds of fruit. In
like manner, we do not choose to mention the fendicoe, which also are the hiroe, which the
language of the mob, when it speaks, usually terms ilia; nor, in the same way, the
oerumnaoe, which are the first part of the gullet, where ruminating animals are accustomed
to send down their food and bring it back again; nor the magmenta, augmina, and thousand
other kinds of sausages or pottages which you have given unintelligible names to, and have
caused to be more revered by common people.

25. For if whatever is done by men, and especially in religion, should have its
causes,-and nothing should be done without a reason in all that men do and perform,-tell
us and say what is the cause. what the reason, that these things also are given to the
gods and burned upon their sacred altars? For here we delay, constrained most urgently to
wait for this cause, we pause, we stand fast, desiring to learn what a god has to do with
pottage, with cakes, with different kinds of stuffing prepared in manifold ways, and with
different ingredients? Are the deities affected by splendid dinners or luncheons, so that
it is fitting to devise for them feasts without number? Are they troubled by the loathings
of their stomachs, and is variety of flavours sought for to get rid of their aversion, so
that there is set before them meat at one thee roasted, at another raw, and at another
half cooked and half raw? But if the gods like to receive all these parts which you term
proesicioe, and if these gratify them with any sense of pleasure or delight, what
prevents, what hinders you from laying all these upon their altars at once with the whole
animals? What cause, what reason is there that the haunch-piece by itself, the gullet, the
tail, and the tail-piece separately, the entrails only, and the membrane alone, should be
brought to do them honour? Are the gods of heaven moved by various condiments?

After stuffing themselves with sumptuous and ample dinners, do they, as is usually done,
take these little bits as sweet dainties, not to appease their hunger, but to rouse their
wearied palates, and excite in themselves a perfectly voracious appetite? O wonderful
greatness of the gods, comprehended by no men, understood by no creatures! if indeed their
favours are bought with the testicles and gullets of beasts, and if they do not lay aside
their auger and resentment, unless they see the entrails prepared and offoe bought and
burned upon their altars. 26. We have now to say a few words about incense and wine, for
these, too, are connected and mixed up with your ceremonies, and are used largely in your
religious acts. And, first, with respect to that very incense which you use, we ask this
of you particularly, whence or at what thee you have been able to become acquainted with
it, and to know it, so that you have just reason to think that it is either worthy to be
given to the gods, or most agreeable to their desires. For it is almost a novelty; and
there is no endless succession of years since it began to be known in these parts, and won
its way into the shrines of the gods. For neither in the heroic ages, as it is believed
and declared, was it known what incense was, as is proved by the ancient writers, in whose
books is found no mention of it; nor was Etruria, the parent and mother of superstition,
acquainted with its fame and renown, as the rites of the chapels prove; nor was it used by
any one in offering sacrifice during the four hundred years in which Alba flourished; nor
did even Romulus or Numa, who was skilful in devising new ceremonies, know either of its
existence or growth, as the sacred grits show with which it was customary that the usual
sacrifices should be performed. Whence, therefore, did its use begin to be adopted?

or what desire of novelty assailed the old and ancient custom, so that that which was not
needed for so many ages took the first place in the ceremonies? For if without incense the
performance of a religious service is imperfect, and if a quantity of it is necessary to
make the celestials gentle and propitious to men, the ancients fell into sin, nay rather,
their whole life was full of guilt, for they carelessly neglected to offer that which was
most fitted to give pleasure to the gods. But if in ancient times neither men nor gods
sought for this incense, it is proved that to-day also that is offered uselessly and in
vain which antiquity did not believe necessary, but modern times desired without any
reason. 27. Finally, that we may always abide by the rule and definition by which it has
been shown and determined that whatever is done by man must have its causes, we will hold
it fast here also, so as to demand of you what is the cause, what the reason, that incense
is put on the altars before the very images of the deities, and that, from its being
burned, they are supposed to become friendly and gentle. What do they acquire from this
being done, or what reaches their minds, so that we should be fight in judging that these
things are well expended, and are not consumed uselessly and in vain? For as you should
show why you give incense to the gods, so, too, it follows that you should manifest that
the gods have some reason for not rejecting it with disdain, nay more, for desiring it so
fondly. We honour the gods with this, some one will perhaps say. But we are not inquiring
what your feeling is, but the gods'; nor do we ask what is done by you, but how much they
value what is done to purchase their favour. But yet, O piety, what or how great is this
honour which is caused by the odour of a fire, and produced from the gum of a tree?

For, lest you should happen not to know what this incense is, or what is its origin, it is
a gum flowing from the bark of trees, just as from the almond-tree, the cherry-tree,
solidifying as it exudes in drops. Does this, then, honour and magnify the celestial
dignities? or, if their displeasure has been at any thee excited, is it melted away before
the smoke of incense, and lulled to sleep, their anger being moderated? Why, then, do you
not burn indiscriminately the juice of any tree whatever, without making any distinction?
For if the deities are honoured by this, and are not displeased that Panchaean gums are
burned to them, what does it matter from what the smoke proceeds on your sacred altars, or
from what kind of gum the clouds of fumigation arise? 28. Will any one say that incense is
given to the celestials, for this reason, that it has a sweet smell, and imparts a
pleasant sensation to the nose, while the rest are disagreeable, and have been set aside
because of their offensiveness? Do the gods, then, have nostrils with which to breathe? do
they inhale and respire currents of air so that the qualities of different smells can
penetrate them? But if we allow that this is the case, we make them subject to the
conditions of humanity, and shut them out from the limits of deity; for whatever breathes
and draws in draughts of air, to be sent back in the same way, must be mortal, because it
is sustained by feeding on the atmosphere. But whatever is sustained by feeding on the
atmosphere, if you take away the means by which communication is kept up, its life must be
crushed out, and its vital principle must be destroyed and lost. So then, if the gods also
breathe and inhale odours enwrapt in the air that accompanies them, it is not untrue to
say that they live upon what is received from others, and that they might perish if their
air-holes were blocked up. And whence, lastly, do you know whether, if they are charmed by
the sweetness of smells, the same things are pleasant to them which are pleasant to you,
and charm and affect your different natures with a similar feeling?

May it not be possible that the things which give pleasure to you, seem, on the contrary,
harsh and disagreeable to them? For since the opinions of the gods are not the same, and
their substance not one, by what methods can it be brought about that that which is unlike
in quality should have the same feeling and perception as to that which touches it. Do we
not every day see that, even among the creatures sprung from the earth, the same things
are either bitter or sweet to different species, that to some things are fatal which are
not pernicious to others, so that the same things which charm some with their delightful
odours, give forth exhalations deadly to the bodies of others? But the cause of this is
not in the things which cannot be at one and the same thee deadly and wholesome, sweet and
bitter; but just as each one has been formed to receive impressions from what is external,
so he is affected: his condition is not caused by the influences of the things, but
springs from the nature of his own senses, and connection with the external. But all this
is set far from the gods, and is separated from them by no small interval.

For if it is true, as is believed by the wise, that they are incorporeal, and not
supported by any excellence of bodily strength, an odour is of no effect upon them, nor
can reeking fumes move them by their senses, not even if you were to set on fire a
thousand pounds of the finest incense, and the whole sky were clouded with the darkness of
the abundant vapours. For that which does not have bodily strength and corporeal
substance, cannot be touched by corporeal substance; but an odour is corporeal, as is
shown by the nose when touched by one: therefore it cannot, according to reason, be felt
by a deity, who has no body, and is without any feeling and thought. 29. Wine is used
along with incense; and of this, in like manner, we ask an explanation why it is poured
upon it when burning. For if a reason is not shown for doing this, and its cause is not
set forth, this action of yours must not now be attributed to a ridiculous error, but, to
speak more plainly, to madness, foolishness, blindness. For, as has been already said
pretty frequently, everything which is done should have its cause manifest, and not
involved in any dark obscurity. If, therefore, you have confidence in what is done,
disclose, point out why that liquor is offered; that is, why wine is poured on the altars.
For do the bodies of the deities feel parching thirst, and is it necessary that their
dryness be tempered by some moisture? Are they accustomed, as men are, to combine eating
and drinking? In like manner, also, after the solid food of cakes and pottages, and
victims slain in honour of them, do they drench themselves, and make themselves merry with
very frequent cups of wine, that their food may be more easily softened, and thoroughly
digested? Give, I beg, to the immortal gods to drink; bring forth goblets, bowls, ladles,
and cups; and as they stuff themselves with bulls, and luxurious feasts, and rich
food,-lest some piece of flesh hastily gulped down should stick in passing through the
stomach, run up, hasten, give pure wine to Jupiter, the most excellent, the supreme, lest
he be choked. He desires to break wind, and is unable; and unless that hindrance passes
away and is dissolved, there is very great danger that his breathing will be stopped and
interrupted, and heaven be left desolate without its rulers.

30. But, says my opponent, you are insulting us without reason, for we do not pour forth
wine to the gods of heaven for these reasons, as if we supposed that they either thirsted,
or drank, or were made glad by tasting its sweetness. It is given to them to do them
honour; that their eminence may become more exalted, more illustrious, we pour libations
on their altars, and with the half-extinguished embers we raise sweet smells, which show
our reverence. And what greater insult can be inflicted upon the gods than if you believe
that they become propitious on receiving wine, or, if you suppose that great honour is
done to them, if you only throw and drop on the live coals a few drops of wine? We are not
speaking to men void of reason, or not possessed of common understanding: in you, too,
there is wisdom, there is perception, and in your hearts you know, by your own judgment,
that we are speaking truly. But what can we do with those who are utterly unwilling to
consider things as they are, to converse themselves with themselves? For you do what you
see to be done, not that which you are assured should be done, inasmuch as with you a
custom without reason prevails, more than a perception of the nature of circumstances
based on a careful examination of the truth. For what has a god to do with wine?

or what or how great is the power in it, that, on its being poured out, his eminence
becomes greater, and his dignity is supposed to be honoured? What, I say, has a god to do
with wine, which is most closely connected with the pursuits of Venus, which weakens the
strength of all virtues, and is hostile to the decency of modesty and chastity,-which has
often excited men's minds, and urged them to madness and frenzy, and compelled the gods to
destroy their own authority by raving and foul language? Is not this, then, impious, and
perfectly sacrilegious, to give that as an honour which, if you take too eagerly, you know
not what you are doing, you are ignorant of what you are saying, and at last are reviled,
and become infamous as a drunkard, a luxurious and abandoned fellow? 31. It is worth while
to bring forward the words themselves also, which, when wine is offered, it is customary
to use and make supplication with: "Let the deity be worshipped with this wine which we
bring. The words "which we bring," says Trebatius, are added for this purpose, and put
forth for this reason, that all the wine whatever which has been laid up in closets and
storerooms, from which was taken that which is poured out, may not begin to be sacred, and
be reft from the use of men. This word, then, being added, that alone will be sacred which
is brought to the place, and the rest will not be consecrated. What kind of honour, then,
is this, in which there is imposed on the deity a condition, as it were, not to ask more
than has been given? or what is the greed of the god, who, if he were not verbally
interdicted, would extend his desires too far, and rob his suppliant of his stores? "Let
the deity be worshipped with this wine which we bring: "this is a wrong, not an honour.
For what if the deity shall wish for more, and shall not be content with what is brought!
Must he not be said to be signally wronged who is compelled to receive honour
conditionally?

For if all wine in cellars whatever must become consecrated were a limitation not added,
it is manifest both that the god is insulted to whom a limit is prescribed against his
wishes, and that in sacrificing you yourselves violate the obligations of the sacred
rites, who do not give as much wine as you see the god wishes to be given to himself. "Let
the deity be worshipped with this wine which we bring: "what is this but saying, "Be
worshipped as much as I choose; receive as much dignity as I prescribe, as much honour as
I decide and determine by a strict engagement that you should bare? "O sublimity of the
gods, excelling in power, which thou shouldst venerate and worship with all ceremonial
observances, but on which the worshipper imposes conditions, which he adores with
stipulations and contracts, which, through fear of one word, is kept from excessive desire
of wine!

32. But let there be, as you wish, honour in wine and in incense, let the auger and
displeasure of the deities be appeased by the immolation and slaughter of victims: are the
gods moved by garlands also, wreaths and flowers, by the jingling of brass also, and the
shaking of cymbals, by timbrels also, and also by symphonious pipes? What effect has the
clattering of castanets, that when the deities have heard them, they think that honour has
been shown to them, and lay aside their fiery spirit of resentment in forgetfulness? Or,
as little boys are frightened into giving over their silly wailings by hearing the sound
of rattles, are the almighty deities also soothed in the same way by the whistling of
pipes? and do they become mild, is their indignation softened, at the musical sound of
cymbals? What is the meaning of those calls which you sing in the morning, joining your
voices to the music of the pipe? Do the gods of heaven fall asleep, so that they should
return to their posts? What is the meaning of those slumbers to which you commend them
with auspicious salutations that they may be in good health? Are they awakened from sleep;
and that they may be able to be overcome by it, must soothing lullabies be heard? The
purification, says my opponent, of the mother of the gods is to-day. Do the gods, then,
become dirty;

and to get rid of the filth, do those who wash them need water, and even some cinders to
rub them with? The feast of Jupiter is to-morrow. Jupiter, I suppose, dines, and must be
satiated with great banquets, and long filled with eager cravings for food by fasting, and
hungry after the usual interval. The vintage festival of Aesculapius is being celebrated.
The gods, then, cultivate vineyards, and, having collected gatherers, press the wine for
their own uses. The lectisternium of Ceres will be on the next Ides, for the gods have
couches; and that they may be able to lie on softer cushions, the pillows are shaken up
when they have been pressed down. It is the birthday of Tellus; for the gods are born, and
have festal days on which it has been settled that they began to breathe. 33. But the
games which you celebrate, called Floralia and Megalensia, and all the rest which you wish
to be sacred, and to be considered religious duties, what reason have they, what cause,
that it was necessary that they should be instituted and founded and designated by the
names of deities? The gods are honoured by these, says thy opponent; and if they have any
recollection of offences committed by men, they lay it aside, get rid of it, and show
themselves gracious to us again, their friendship being renewed. And what is the cause,
again, that they are made quite calm and gentle, if absurd things are done, and idle
fellows sport before the eyes of the multitude? Does Jupiter lay aside his resentment if
the Amphitryon of Plautus is acted and declaimed? or if Europa, Leda, Ganymede, or Danae
is represented by dancing does he restrain his passionate impulses? Is the Great Mother
rendered more calm, more gentle, if she beholds the old story of Attis furbished up by the
players? Will Venus forget her displeasure if she sees mimics act the part of Adonis also
in a ballet? Does the anger of Aleides die away if the tragedy of Sophocles named
Trachinioe, or the Hercules of Euripides, is acted? or does Flora think that honour is
shown to her if at her games she sees that shameful actions are done, and the stews
abandoned for the theatres?

Is not this, then, to lessen the dignity of the gods, to dedicate and consecrate to them
the basest things which a rigidly virtuous mind will turn from with disgust, the
performers of which your law has decided to be dishonoured and to be considered infamous?
The gods, forsooth, delight in mimics; and that surpassing excellence which has not been
comprehended by any bureau faculty, opens its ears most willingly to hear these plays,
with most of which they know they are mixed up to be turned to derision; they are
delighted, as it is, with the shaved heads of the fools, by the sound of flaps, and by the
noise of applause, by shameful actions and words, by huge red fascina. But further, if
they see men weakening themselves to the effeminacy of women, some vociferating uselessly,
others running about without cause, others, while their friendship is unbroken, bruising
and maiming each with the bloody cestus, these contending in speaking without drawing
breath, swelling out their cheeks with wind, and shouting out noisily empty vows, do they
lift up their hands to heaven in their admiration, start up moved by such wonders, burst
into exclamations, again become gracious to men? If these things cause the gods to forget
their resentment, if they derive the highest pleasure from comedies, Atellane farces, and
pantomimes, why do you delay, why do you hesitate, to say that the gods themselves also
play, act lasciviously, dance, compose obscene songs, and undulate with trembling
haunches?

For what difference is there, or what does it matter, whether they do these things
themselves, or are pleased and delighted to see them done by others? 34. Whence,
therefore, have these vicious opinions flowed, or from what causes have they sprung? From
this it is clear, in great measure, that men are unable to know what God is, what is His
essence, nature, substance, quality; whether He has a form, or is limited by no bodily
outline, does anything or not, is ever watchful, or is at times sunk in slumbers, runs,
sits, walks, or is free from such motions and inactivity. Being, as I have said, unable to
know all these things, or to discern them by any power of reason, they fell into these
fanciful beliefs, so that they fashioned gods after themselves, and gave to these such a
nature as they have themselves, in actions, circumstances, and desires. But if they were
to perceive that they are worthless creatures, and that there is no great difference
between themselves and a little ant, they would cease, indeed, to think that they have
anything in common with the gods of heaven, and would confine their unassuming
insignificance within its proper limits. But now, because they see that they themselves
have faces, eyes, heads, cheeks, ears, noses, and all the other parts of our limbs and
muscles, they think that the gods also have been formed in the same way, that the divine
nature is embodied in a human frame;

and because they perceive that they themselves rejoice and are glad, and again are made
sad by what is too disagreeable, they think that the deities also on joyous occasions are
glad, and on less pleasant ones become dejected. They see that they are affected by the
games, and think that the minds of the celestials are soothed by enjoying games; and
because they have pleasure in refreshing themselves with warm baths, they think that the
cleanness produced by bathing is pleasing to the gods above. We men gather our vintages,
and they think and believe that the gods gather and bring in their grapes; we have
birthdays, and they affirm that the powers of heaven have birthdays. But if they could
ascribe to the gods ill-health, sickness, and bodily disease, they would not hesitate to
say that they were splenetic, blear-eyed, and ruptured, because they are themselves both
splenetic, and often blear-eyed, and weighed down by huge hernice.

35. Come now: as the discussion has been prolonged and led to these points, let us,
bringing forward what each has to say, decide by a brief comparison whether your ideas of
the gods above are the better, or our thoughts preferable, and much more honourable and
just, and such as to give and assign its own dignity to the divine nature. And, first, you
declare that the gods, whom you either think or believe to exist, of whom you have set up
images and statues in all the temples, were born and produced from the germs of males and
females, under the necessary condition of sexual embraces. But we, on the contrary, if
they are indeed true gods, and have the authority, power, dignity of this name, consider
that they must either be unbegotten, for it is pious to believe this, or, if they have a
beginning in birth, it belongs to the supreme God to know by what methods He made them, or
how many ages there are since He granted to them to enter upon the eternal being of His
own divine nature. You consider that the deities have sexes, and that some of them are
male, others female; we utterly deny that the powers of heaven have been distinguished by
sexes, since this distinction has been given to the creatures of earth which the Author of
the universe willed should embrace and generate, to provide, by their carnal desires, one
generation of offspring after another.

You think that they are like men, and have been fashioned with the countenances of
mortals; we think that the images of them are wide of the mark, as form belongs to a
mortal body; and if they have any, we swear with the utmost earnestness and confidence
that no man can comprehend it. By you they are said to have each his trade, like artisans;
we laugh when we hear you say such things, as we hold and think that professions are not
necessary to gods, and it is certain and evident that these have been provided to assist
poverty. 36. You say that some of them cause dissensions, that there are others who
inflict pestilences, others who excite love and madness, others, even, who preside over
wars, and are delighted by the shedding of blood; but we, indeed, on the contrary, judge
that these things are remote from the dispositions of the deities; or if there are any who
inflict and bring these ills on miserable mortals, we maintain that they are far from the
nature of the gods, and should not be spoken of under this name. You judge that the
deities are angry and perturbed, and given over and subject to the other mental
affections; we think that such emotions are alien from them, for these suit savage beings,
and those who die as mortals. You think that they rejoice, are made glad, and are
reconciled to men, their offended feelings being soothed by the blood of beasts and the
slaughter of victims; we hold that there is in the celestials no love of blood, and that
they are not so stern as to lay aside their resentment only when glutted with the
slaughter of animals. You think that, by wine and incense, honour is given to the gods,
and their dignity increased; we judge it marvellous and monstrous that any man thinks that
the deity either becomes more venerable by reason of smoke, or thinks himself supplicated
by men with sufficient awe and respect when they offer a few drops of wine.

You are persuaded that, by the crash of cymbals and the sound of pipes, by horse-races and
theatrical plays, the gods are both delighted and affected, and that their resentful
feelings conceived before are mollified by the satisfaction which these things give; we
hold it to be out of place, nay more, we judge it incredible, that those who have
surpassed by a thousand degrees every kind of excellence in the height of their
perfection, should be pleased and delighted with those things which a wise man laughs at,
and which do not seem to have any charm except to little children, coarsely and vulgarly
educated. 37. Since these things are so, and since there is so great difference between
our opinions and yours, where are we, on the one hand, impious, or you pious, since the
decision as to piety and impiety must be founded on the opinions of the two parties? For
he who makes himself an image which he may worship for a god, or slaughters an innocent
beast, and burns it on consecrated altars, must not be held to be devoted to religion.
Opinion constitutes religion, and a right way of thinking about the gods, so that you do
not think that they desire anything contrary to what becomes their exalted position, which
is manifest. For since we see all the things which are offered to them consumed here under
our eyes, what else can be said to reach them from us than opinions worthy of the gods,
and most appropriate to their name? These are the surest gifts, these true sacrifices; for
gruel, incense, and flesh feed the devouring flames, and agree very well with the
parentalia of the dead.

38. If the immortal gods cannot be angry, says my opponent, and their nature is not
agitated or troubled by any passions, what do the histories, the annals mean, in which we
find it written that the gods, moved by some annoyances, occasioned pestilences,
sterility, failure of crops, and other dangers, to states and nations; and that they
again, being appeased and satisfied by means of sacrifices, laid aside their burning
anger, and changed the state of the atmosphere and times into a happier one? What is the
meaning of the earth's roarings, the earthquakes, which we have been told occurred because
the games had been celebrated carelessly, and their nature and circumstances had not been
attended to, and yet, on their being celebrated afresh, and repeated with assiduous care,
the terrors of the gods were stilled, and they were recalled to care and friendship for
men? How often, after that-in obedience to the commands of the seers and the responses of
the diviners-sacrifice has been offered, and certain gods have been summoned from nations
dwelling beyond the sea, and shrines erected to them, and certain images and statues set
on loftier pillars, have fears of impending dangers been diverted, and the most
troublesome enemies beaten, and the republic extended both by repeated joyous victories.
and by gaining possession of several provinces! Now, certainly this would not happen if
the gods despised sacrifices, games, and other acts of worship, and did not consider
themselves honoured by expiratory offerings. If, then, all the rage and indignation of the
deities are cooled when these things are offered, and those things become favourable which
seemed fraught with terrors, it is dear that all these things are not done without the
gods wishing them, and that it is vain, and shows utter ignorance, to blame us for giving
them.

39. We have come, then, in speaking, to the very point of the case, to that on which the
question hinges, to the real and most intimate part of the discussion. which it is fitting
that, laying aside superstitious dread, and putting away partiality, we should examine
whether these are or whether they are something far different, and should be separated
from the notion of this name and power. For we do not deny that all these things are to be
found in the writings of the annalists which have been brought forward by you in
opposition; for we ourselves also, according to the measure and capacity of our abilities,
have read, and know, that it has been recorded that once at the ludi circenses, celebrated
in honour of Jupiter the supreme, a master dragged across the middle of the arena, and
afterwards, according to custom, punished with the cross, a very worthless slave whom he
had beaten with rods. Then, when the games were ended, and the races not long finished, a
pestilence began to distress the state; and when each day brought fresh ill worse than
what was before, and the people were perishing in crowds, in a dream Jupiter said to a
certain rustic, obscure from the lowliness of his lot, that he should go to the consuls,
point out that the dancer had displeased him, that it might be better for the state if the
respect due to the games were paid to them, and they were again celebrated afresh with
assiduous care.

And when he had utterly neglected to do this, either because he supposed it was an empty
dream, and would find no credence with those to whom he should tell it, or because,
remembering his natural insignificance, he avoided and dreaded approaching those who were
so powerful, Jupiter was rendered hostile to the lingerer, and imposed as punishment an
him the death of his sons. Afterwards, when he threatened the man himself with death
unless he went to announce his disapproval of the dancer,-overcome by fear of dying, since
he was already himself also burning with the fever of the plague, having been infected, he
was carried to the senate-house, as his neighbours wished, and, when his vision had been
declared, the contagious fever passed away. The repetition of the games being then
decreed, great care was, on the one hand, given to the shows, and its former good health
was restored to the people.

40. But neither shall we deny that we know this as well, that once on a time, when the
state and republic were in difficulties, caused either by a terrible plague continually
infecting the people and carrying them off, or by enemies powerful, and at that time
almost threatening to rob it of its liberty because of their success in: battle,-by order
and advice of the seers, certain gods were summoned from among nations dwelling beyond the
sea, and honoured with magnificent temples; and that the violence of the plague abated,
and very frequent triumphs were gained, the power of the enemy being broken, and the
territory of the empire was increased, and provinces without number fell under your sway.
But neither does this escape our knowledge, that we have seen it asserted that, when the
Capitol was struck by a thunderbolt, and many other things in it, the image of Jupiter
also, which stood on a lofty pillar, was hurled from its place. Thereafter a response was
given by the soothsayers, that cruel and very sad mischances were portended from fire and
slaughter, from the destruction of the laws, and the overthrow of justice, especially,
however, from enemies themselves belonging to the nation, and from an impious band of
conspirators; but that these things could not be averted, nay, that the accursed designs
could not be revealed, unless Jupiter were again set up firmly on a higher pillar, turned
towards the east, and facing the rays of the rising sun. Their words were trustworthy,
for, when the pillar was raised, and the statue turned towards the sun, the secrets were
revealed, and the offences made known were punished.

41. All these things which have been mentioned, have indeed a miraculous
appearance,-rather, they are believed to have it,-if they come to men's ears just as they
have been brought forward; and we do not deny that there is in them something which, being
placed in the fore front, as the saying is, may stun the ears, and deceive by its
resemblance to truth. But if you will look closely at what was done, the personages and
their pleasures, you will find that there is nothing worthy of the gods, and, as has
already been said often, nothing worthy to be referred to the splendour and majesty of
this race. For, first, who is there who will believe that he was a god who was pleased
with horses running to no purpose, and considered it most delightful that he should be
summoned by such sports? Rather, who is there who will agree that that was Jupiter-whom
you call the supreme god, and the creator of all things which are-who set out from heaven
to behold geldings vieing with each other in speed, and running the seven rounds of the
course; and that, although he had himself determined that they should not be equally
nimble, he nevertheless rejoiced to see them pass each other, and be passed, some in their
haste falling forward upon their heads, and overturned upon their backs along with their
chariots, others dragged along and lamed, their legs being broken;

and that he considered as the highest pleasures fooleries mixed with trifles and
cruelties, which any man, even thought fond of pleasure, and not trained to strive after
seriousness and dignity, would consider childish, and spurn as ridiculous? Who is there, I
say, who will believe-to repeat this word assiduously-that he was divine who, being
irritated because a slave was led across the circus, about to suffer and be punished as he
deserved, was inflamed with anger, anal prepared himself to take vengeance? For if the
slave was guilty, and deserved to be punished with that chastisement, why should Jupiter
have been moved with any indignation when nothing was being done unjustly, nay, when a
guilty fellow was being punished, as was right? But if he was free from guilt, and not
worthy of punishment at all, Jupiter himself was the cause of the dancer's vitiating the
games, for when he might have helped him, he did him no service-nay, sought both to allow
what he disapproved, and to exact from others the penalty for what he had permitted. And
why, then, did he complain and declare that he was wronged in the case of that dancer
because he was led through the midst of the circus to suffer the cross, with his back torn
by rods and scourges?

42. And what pollution or abomination could have flowed from this, either to make the
circus less pure, or to defile Jupiter, seeing that in a few moments, in a few seconds, he
beheld so many thousands throughout the world perish by different kinds of death, and with
various forms of torture? He was led across, says my opponent, before the games began to
be celebrated. If from a sacrilegious spirit and contempt for religion, we have reason to
excuse Jupiter for being indignant that he was contemned, and that more anxious care was
not given to his games. But if from mistake or accident that secret fault was not observed
and known, would it not have beer right and befitting Jupiter to pardon human failings,
and grant forgiveness to the blindness of ignorance? But it was necessary that it should
be punished. And after this, will any one believe that he was a god who avenged and
punished neglect of a childish show by the destruction of a state? that he had any
seriousness and dignity, or any steady constancy, who, that he might speedily enjoy
pleasure afresh, turned the air men breathed into a baneful poison, and ordered the
destruction of mortals by plague and pestilence?

If the magistrate who presided over the ganges was too careless in learning who on that
day had been led across the circus, and blame was therefore contracted, what had the
unhappy people done that they should in their own persons suffer the penalty of another's
offences, and should be forced to hurry out of life by contagious pestilences? Nay, what
had the women, whose weakness did not allow them to take part in public business, the
grown-up maidens, the little boys, finally the young children, yet dependent for food on
their nurses,-what had these done that they should be assailed with equal, with the same
severity, and that before they tasted the joy of life they should feel the bitterness of
death? 43. If Jupiter sought to have his games celebrated, and that afresh, with greater
care; if he honestly sought to restore the people to health, and that the evil which he
had caused should go no further and not be increased, would it not have been better that
he should come to the consul himself, to some one of the public priests, the pontifex
maximus, or to his own flamen Dialis, and in a vision reveal to him the defect in the
games occasioned by the dancer, and the cause of the sadness of the times? What reason had
there been that he should choose, to announce his wishes and procure the satisfaction
desired, a man accustomed to live in the country, unknown from the obscurity of his name,
not acquainted with city matters, and perhaps not knowing what a dancer is? And if he
indeed knew, as he must have known if he was a diviner, that this fellow would refuse to
obey, would it not have been more natural and befitting a god, to change the man's mind,
and constrain him to be willing to obey, than to try more cruel methods, and vent his rage
indiscriminately, without any reason, as robbers do?

For if the old rustic, not being quick in l entering upon anything, delayed in doing what
was commanded, being kept back by stronger motives, of what had his unhappy children been
guilty, that Jupiter's anger and indignation should he turned upon them, and that they
should pay for another's offences by being robbed of their lives? And can any man believe
that he is a god who is so unjust, so impious, and who does not observe even the laws of
men, among whom it would be held a great crime to punish one for another, and to avenge
one man's offences upon others? But, I am told, he caused the man himself to be seized by
the cruel pestilence. Would it not then have been better, nay rather, juster, if it seemed
that this should be done, that dread of punishment should be first excited by the father,
who had been the cause of such passion by his disobedient delay, than to do violence to
the children, and to consume and destroy innocent persons to make him sorrowful? What,
pray, was the meaning of this fierceness, this cruelty, which was so great that, his
offspring being dead, it afterwards terrified the father by his own danger! But if he had
chosen to do this long before, that is, in the first place, not only would not the
innocent brothers have been cut off, but the indignant purpose of the deity also would
have been known.

But certainly, it will be said, when he had done his duty by announcing the vision, the
disease immediately left him, and the man was forthwith restored to health. And what is
there to admire in this if he removed the evil which he had himself breathed into the man,
and vaunted himself with false pretence? But if you weigh the circumstances thoroughly,
there was greater cruelty than kindness in his deliverance, for Jupiter did not preserve
him to the joys of life who was miserable and wishing to perish after his children, but to
learn his solitariness and the agonies of bereavement. 44. In like manner we might go
through the other narratives, and show that in these also, and in expositions of these,
something far different from what the gods should be is said and declared about them, as
in this very story which I shall next relate, one or two only being added to it, that
disgust may not be produced by excess. After certain gods were brought from among nations
dwelling beyond the sea, you say, and after temples were built to them, after their altars
were heaped with sacrifices, the plague-stricken people grew strong and recovered, and the
pestilence fled before the soundness of health which arose. What gods, say, I beseech?
Aesculapius, you say, the god of health, from Epidaurus, and now settled in the island in
the middle of the Tiber. If we were disposed to be very scrupulous in dealing with your
assertions, we might prove by your own authority that he was by no means divine who had
been conceived and born from a woman's womb, who bad by yearly stages reached that term of
life at which, as is related in your books, a thunderbolt drove him at once from life and
light. But we leave this question: let the son of Coronis be, as you wish, one of the
immortals, and possessed of the everlasting blessedness of heaven. From Epidaurus,
however, what was brought except an enormous serpent? If we trust the annals, and ascribe
to them well-ascertained truth, nothing else, as it has been recorded. What shall we say
then?

That Aesculapius, whom you extol, an excellent, a venerable god, the giver of health, the
averter, preventer, destroyer of sickness, is contained within the form and outline of a
serpent, crawling along the earth as worms are wont to do, which spring from mud; he rubs
the ground with his chin and breast, dragging himself in sinuous coils; and that he may be
able to go forward, he draws on the last part of his body by the efforts of the first. 45.
And as we read that he used food also, by which bodily existence is kept up, he has a
large gullet, that he may gulp down the food sought for with gaping mouth; he has a belly
to receive it, and a place where he may digest the flesh which he has eaten and devoured,
that blood may be given to his body, and his strength recruited; he has also a draught, by
which the filth is got rid of, freeing his body from a disagreeable burden. Whenever he
changes his place, and prepares to pass from one region to another, he does not as a god
fly secretly through the stars of heaven, and stand in a moment where something requires
his presence, but, just as a dull animal of earth, he seeks a conveyance on which he may
be borne; he avoids the waves of the sea; and that he may be safe and sound, he goes on
board ship along with men; and that god of the common safety trusts himself to weak planks
and to sheets of wood joined together. We do not think that you can prove and show that
that serpent was Aesculapius, unless you choose to bring forward this pretext, that you
should say that the god changed himself into a snake, in order that he might be able to
deceive men as to himself, who he was, or to see what men were.

But if you say this, the inconsistency of your own statements will show how weak and
feeble such a defence is. For if the god shunned being seen by men, he should not have
chosen to be seen in the form of a serpent, since in any form whatever he was not to be
other than himself, but always himself. But if, on the other hand, he had been intent on
allowing himself to be seen-he should not have refused to allow men's eyes to look on him
-why did he not show himself such as he knew that he was in his own divine power? For this
was preferable, and much better, and more befitting his august majesty, than to become a
beast, and be changed into the likeness of a terrible animal, and afford room for
objections, which cannot be decided, as to whether he was a true god, or something
different and far removed from the exalted nature of deity.

46. But, says my opponent, if he was not a god, why, after he left the ship, and crawled
to the island in the Tiber, did he immediately become invisible, and cease to be seen as
before? Can we indeed know whether there was anything in the way under cover of which he
hid himself, or any opening in the earth? Do you declare, say yourselves, what that was,
or to what race of beings it should be referred, if your service of certain personages is
in itself certain. Since the case is thus, and the discussion deals with your deity, and
your religion also, it is your part to teach, and yours to show what that was, rather than
to wish to hear our opinions and to await our decisions. For we, indeed, what else can we
say than that which took place and was seen, which has been handed down in all the
narratives, and has been observed by means of the eyes? This, however, undoubtedly we say
was a colubra of very powerful frame and immense length, or, if the name is despicable, we
say it was a snake, we call it a serpent, or any other name which usage has afforded to
us, or the development of language devised. For if it crawled as a serpent, not supporting
itself and walking on feet, but resting upon its belly and breast; if, being made of
fleshly substance, it lay stretched out in slippery length;

if it had a head and tail, a back covered with scales, diversified by spots of various
colours; if it had a mouth bristling with fangs, and ready to bite, what else can we say
than that it was of earthly origin, although of immense and excessive size, although it
exceeded in length of body and greatness of might that which was slain by Regulus by the
assault of his army? But if we think otherwise, we subvert and overthrow the truth. It is
yours, then, to explain what that was, or what was its origin, its name, and nature. For
how could it have been a god, seeing that it had those things which we have mentioned,
which gods should not have if they intend to be gods, and to possess this exalted title?
After it crawled to the island in the Tiber, forthwith it was nowhere to be seen, by which
it is shown that it was a deity. Can we, then, know whether there was there anything in
the way under cover of which it hid itself, or some opening in the earth, or some caverns
and vaults, caused by huge masses being heaped up irregularly, into which it hurried,
evading the gaze of the beholders? For what if it leaped across the river? what if it swam
across it? what if it hid itself in the dense forests?

It is weak reasoning from this, to suppose that that serpent was a god because with all
speed it withdrew itself from the eyes of the beholders, since, by the same reasoning, it
can be proved, on the other hand, that it was not a god. 47. But if that snake was not a
present deity, says my opponent, why, after its arrival, was the violence of the plague
overcome, and health restored to the Roman people? We, too, on the other hand, bring
forward the question, If, according to the books of the fates and the responses of the
seers, the god Aesculapius was ordered to be invited to the city, that he might cause it
to be safe and sound from the contagion of the plague and of pestilential diseases, and
came without spurning the proposal contemptuously, as you say, changed into the form of
serpents,-why has the Roman state been so often afflicted with such disasters, so often at
one time and another torn, harassed, and diminished by thousands, through the destruction
of its citizens times without number? For since the god is said to have been summoned for
this purpose, that he might drive away utterly all the causes by which pestilence was
excited, it followed that the state should be safe, and should be always maintained free
from pestilential blasts, and unharmed. But yet we see, as was said before, that it has
over and over again had seasons made mournful by these diseases, and that the manly vigour
of its people has been shattered and weakened by no slight losses. Where, then, was
Aesculapius? where that deliverer promised by venerable oracles? Why, after temples were
built, and shrines reared to him, did he allow a state deserving his favour to be any
longer plague-stricken, when he had been summoned for this purpose, that he should cure
the diseases which were raging, and not allow anything of the sort which might be dreaded
to steal on them afterwards?

48. But some one will perhaps say that the care of such a god has been denied to later and
following ages, because the ways in which men now live are impious and objectionable; that
it brought help to our ancestors, on the contrary, because they were blameless and
guiltless. Now this might perhaps have been listened to, and said with some
reasonableness, either if in ancient times all were good without exception, or if later
times produced only wicked people, and no others. But since this is the case that in great
peoples, in nations, nay, in all cities even, men have been of mixed natures, wishes, man-
nets, and the good and bad have been able to exist at the same time in former ages, as
well as in modern times, it is rather stupid to say that mortals of a later day have not
obtained the aid of the deities on account of their wickedness. For if on account of the
wicked of later generations the good men of modern times have not been protected, on
account of the ancient evil-doers also the good of former times should in like manner not
have gained the favour of the deities. But if on account of the good of ancient times the
wicked of ancient times were preserved also, the following age, too, should have been
protected, although it was faulty, on account of the good of later times. So, then, either
that snake gained the reputation of being a deliverer while he had been of no service at
all, through his being brought to the city when the violence of the disease was already
weakened and impaired, or the hymns of the fates must be said to have been far from giving
true indications, since the remedy given by them is found to have been useful, not to all
in succession, but to one age only.

49. But the Great Mother, also, says my opponent, being summoned from Phrygian Pessinus in
precisely the same way by command of the seers, was a cause of safety and great joy to the
people. For, on the one hand, a long-powerful enemy was thrust out from the position he
had gained in Italy; and, on the other, its ancient glory was restored to the city by
glorious and illustrious victories, and the boundaries of the empire were extended far and
wide, and their rights as freemen were torn from races, states, peoples without number,
and the yoke of slavery imposed on them, and many other things acComplished at home and
abroad established the renown and dignity of the race with irresistible power. If the
histories tell the truth, and do not insert what is false in their accounts of events,
nothing else truly is said to have been brought from Phrygia, sent by King Attalus, than a
stone, not large, which could be carried in a man's hand without any pressure-of a dusky
and black colour-not smooth, but having little corners standing out, and which to-day we
all see put in that image instead of a face, rough and unhewn, giving to the figure a
countenance by no means lifelike.

50. What shall we say then? Was Hannibal, that famous Carthaginian, an enemy strong and
powerful, before whom the fortunes of Rome trembled in doubt and uncertainty, and its
greatness shook-was he driven from Italy by a stone? was he subdued by a stone? was he
made fearful, and timid, and unlike himself by a stone? And with regard to Rome's again
springing to the height of power and royal supremacy, was nothing done by wisdom, nothing
by the strength of men; and, in returning to its former eminence, was no assistance given
by so many and so great leaders by their military skill, or by their acquaintance with
affairs? Did the stone give strength to some, feebleness to others? Did it hurl these down
from success, raise the fortunes of others which seemed hopelessly overthrown? And what
man will believe that a stone taken from the earth, having no feeling, of sooty colour and
dark body, was the mother of the gods? or who, again, would listen to this,-for this is
the only alternative,-that the power of any deity dwelt in pieces of flint, within its
mass, and hidden in its veins? And how was the victory procured if there was no deity in
the Pessinuntine stone? We may say, by the zeal and valour of the soldiers, by practice,
time, wisdom, reason; we may say, by fate also, and the alternating fickleness of fortune.

But if the state of affairs was improved, and success and victory were regained, by the
stone's assistance, where was the Phrygian mother at the time when the commonwealth was
bowed down by the slaughter of so many and so great armies, and was in danger of utter
ruin? Why did she not thrust herself before the threatening, the strong enemy? Why did she
not crush and repel assaults so terrible before these awful blows fell, by which all the
blood was shed, and the life even failed, the vitals being almost exhausted? She had not
been brought yet, says my opponent, nor asked to show favour. Be it so; but a kind helper
never requires to be asked, always offering assistance of his own accord. She was not
able, you say, to expel the enemy and put him to flight, while still separated from Italy
by much sea and land. But to a deity, if really one, nothing whatever is remote, to whom
the earth is a point, and by whose nod all things have been established.

51. But suppose that the deity was present in that very stone, as you demand should be
believed: and what mortal is there, although he may be credulous and very ready to listen
to any fictions you please, who would consider that she either was a goddess at that time,
or should be now so spoken of and named, who at one time desires these things, at another
requires those, abandons and despises her worshippers, leaves the humbler provinces, and
allies herself with more powerful and richer peoples, truly loves warfare, and wishes to
be in the midst of battles, slaughter, death, and blood? If it is characteristic of the
gods-if only they are true gods, and those who it is fitting should be named according to
the meaning of this word and the power of divinity-to do nothing wickedly, nothing
unjustly, to show themselves equally gracious to all men without any partiality, would any
man believe that she was of divine origin, or showed kindness worthy of the gods, who,
mixing herself up with the dissensions of men, destroyed the power of some, gave and
showed favour to others, bereft some of their liberty, raised others to the height of
power,-who, that one state might be pre-eminent, having been born to be the bane of the
human race, subjugated the guiltless world?


AGAINST THE HEATHEN, APPENDIX
=============================

AGAINST THE HEATHEN, APPENDIX Arnobius of Sicca

d. c. AD 330

North African teacher who wrote against the pagans.

AGAINST THE HEATHEN APPENDIX

1 We do not deny that all these things which have been brought forward by you in
opposition are contained in the writings of the annalists. For we have ourselves also,
according to the measure and capacity of our powers, read these same things, and know that
they have been alleged; but the whole discussion hinges upon this: whether these are gods
who you assert are furious when displeased, and are soothed by games and sacrifices, or
are something far different, and should be separated from the notion even of this, and
from its power. For who, in the first place, thinks or believes that those are gods who
are lost in joyful pleasure at theatrical shows and ballets, at horses running to no
purpose; who set out from heaven to behold silly and insipid acting, and grieve that they
are injured, and that the honours due to them are withheld if the pantomimist halts for a
little, or the player, being wearied, rests a little; who declare that the dancer has
displeased them if some guilty fellow passes through the middle of the circus to suffer
the penalty and punishment of his deeds? All which things, if they be sifted thoroughly
and without any partiality, will be found to be alien not only to the gods, but to any man
of refinement, even if he has not been trained to the utmost gravity and self-control.

2 For, in the first place, who is there who would suppose that those had been, or believe
that they are, gods, who have a nature which tends to mischief and fury, and lay these
aside again, being moved by a cup of blood and fumigation with incense; who spend days of
festivity, and find the liveliest pleasure in theatrical shows and ballets; who set out
from heaven to see geldings running in vain, and without any reason, and rejoice that some
of them pass the rest, that others are passed, rush on, leaning forward, and, with their
heads towards the ground, are overturned on their backs with the chariots to which they
are yoked, are dragged along crippled, and limp with broken legs; who declare that the
dancer has displeased them if some wicked fellow passes through the middle of the circus
to suffer the punishment and penalty of his deeds; who grieve that they are injured, and
that the honours due to them are withheld if the pantomimist halts for a little, the
player, being wearied, rests a little, that puer matrimus happens to fall, stumbling
through some unsteadiness? Now, if all these things are considered thoroughly and without
any partiality, they are found to be perfectly alien not only to the character of the
gods, but to that of any man of common sense, even although he has not been trained to
zealous pursuit of truth by becoming acquainted with what is rational.


AGAINST HIEROCLES
=================

AGAINST HIEROCLES Eusebius of Caesarea

c. AD 260–339

Bishop of Caesarea and the first church historian.

ENGLISH TRANSLATION

1 THE TREATISE OF EUSEBIUS, THE SON OF PAMPHILUS, AGAINST THE LIFE OF APOLLONIUS OF TYANA
WRITTEN BY PHILOSTRATUS, OCCASIONED BY THE PARALLEL DRAWN BY HIEROCLES BETWEEN HIM AND
CHRIST. Translated by F.C. Conybeare (1912). Transcribed from the Loeb Philostratus, vol.
2, pp. 484-605 I 2 So then, my dear friend, you find worthy of no little admiration the
parallel which, embellished with many marvels, this author has drawn between the man of
Tyana and our own Saviour and teacher. For already against the rest of the contents of the
"Lover of Truth " (Philalethes), for so he has thought fit to entitle his work against us,
it would be useless to take my stand at present; because they are not his own, but have
been pilfered in the most shameless manner, not only I may say in respect of their ideas,
but even of their words and syllables, from other authorities. Not but what these parts
also of his treatise call for their refutation in due season; but to all intents and
purposes they have, even in advance of any special work that might be written in answer to
them, been upset and exposed beforehand in a work which in as many as eight books Origen
composed against the book which Celsus wrote and--even more boastfully than the " Lover of
Truth,"--entitled " True Reason. The work of Celsus is there subjected to an examination
in an exhaustive manner and on the scale above mentioned by the author in question, who in
his comprehensive survey of all that anyone has said or will ever say on the same topic.,
has forestalled any solution of your difficulties which I could offer.

3 To this work of Origen I must refer those who in good faith and with genuine "love of
truth " desire accurately to understand my own position. I will therefore ask you for the
present to confine your attention to the comparison of Jesus Christ with Apollonius which
is found in this treatise called the " Lover of Truth," without insisting on the necessity
of our meeting the rest of his arguments, for these are pilfered from other people. We may
reasonably confine our attention for the present to the history of Apollonius, because
Hierocles, of all the writers who have ever attacked us, stands alone in selecting
Apollonius, as he has recently done, for the purposes of comparison and contrast with our
Saviour. 4 II 5 I NEED not say with what admiring approval he attributes his thaumaturgic
feats not to the tricks of wizardry, but to a divine and mysterious wisdom; and he
believes they were truly what he supposes them to have been, though he advances no proof
of this contention. Listen then to his very words: " In their anxiety to exalt Jesus, they
run up and down prating of how he made the blind to see and worked certain other miracles
of the kind. Then after an interval he adds as follows: "Let us note however how much
better and more sensible is the view which we take of such matters, and explain the
conception which we entertain of men gifted with remarkable powers. And thereupon after
passing heedlessly by Aristeas of Proconnesus and Pythagoras as somewhat too old, he
continues thus: "But in the time of our own ancestors, during the reign of Nero, there
flourished Apollonius of Tyana, who from mere boyhood when he became the priest in Aegae
of Cilicia of Asclepius, the lover of mankind, worked any number of miracles, of which I
will omit the greater number, and only mention a few. Then he begins at the beginning and
enumerates the" wonders worked by Apollonius, after which he continues in the following
words: " What then is my reason for mentioning these facts? It was in order that you may
be able to contrast our own accurate and well-established judgment on each point, with the
easy credulity of the Christians.

6 For whereas we reckon him who wrought such feats not a god, but only a man pleasing to
the gods, they on the strength of a few miracles proclaim their Jesus a god. To this he
adds after a little more the following remark: " And this point is also worth noticing,
that whereas the tales of Jesus have been vamped up by Peter and Paul and a few others of
the kind,--men who were liars and devoid of education and wizards, --the history of
Apollonius was written by Maximus of Aegae, and by Damis the philosopher who lived
constantly with him. and by Philostratus of Athens, men of the highest education, who out
of respect for the truth and their love of mankind determined to give the publicity they
deserved to the actions of a man at once noble and a friend of the gods. These are the
very words used by Hierocles in his treatise against us which he has entitled " Lover of
Truth."

7 III Now Damis who spent -so much of his time with Apollonius was a native of Assyria,
where for the first time, on his own soil, he came into contact with of him; and he wrote
an account of his intercourse with the person in question from that time onwards. Maximus
however wrote quite a short account of a portion only of his career. Philostratus,
however, the Athenian, tells us that he collected all the accounts that he found in
circulation, using both the book of Maximus and that of Damis himself and of other
authors; so he compiled the most complete history of any of this person's life, beginning
with his birth and ending with his death. IV 8 IF then we may be permitted to contrast the
reckless and easy credulity which he goes out of his way to accuse us of, with the
accurate and well-founded judgment on particular points of the Lover of Truth, let us ask
at once, not which of them was the more divine nor in what capacity one worked more
wondrous and numerous miracles than the other; nor let us lay stress on the point that our
Saviour and Lord Jesus Christ was the only man of whom it was prophesied, thanks to their
divine inspiration, by Hebrew sages who lived far back thousands of years ago, that he
should once come among mankind; nor on the fact that he converted to his own scheme of
divine teaching so many people; nor that he formed a group of genuine and really sincere
disciples, of whom almost without exaggeration it can be said that they were prepared to
lay down their lives for his teaching at a moment's call; nor that he alone established a
school of sober and chaste living which has survived him all along; nor that by his
peculiar divinity and virtue he saved the whole inhabited world, and still rallies to his
divine teaching races from all sides by tens of thousands;

9 nor that he is the only example of a teacher who, after being treated as an enemy for so
many years, I might almost say, by all men, subjects and rulers alike, has at last
triumphed and shown himself far mightier, thanks to his divine and mysterious power, than
the infidels who persecuted him so bitterly, those who in their time rebelled against his
divine teaching being now easily won over by him, while the divine doctrine which he
firmly laid down and handed on has come to prevail for ages without end all over the
inhabited world; nor that even now he displays the virtue of his godlike might in the
expulsion, by the mere invocation of his mysterious name, of sundry troublesome and evil
demons which beset men's bodies and souls, as from our own experience we know to be the
case. To look for such results in the case of Apollonius, or even to ask about them, is
absurd. So we will merely examine the work of Philostratus, and by close scrutiny of it
show that Apollonius was not fit to be classed, I will not say, among philosophers, but
even among men of integrity and good sense, much less to be compared with our Saviour
Christ, so far as we can depend on the work of a writer who, though according to the "
Lover of Truth," he was highly educated, was in any case no respecter of truth. For such
is his description of Philostratus the Athenian among others.

10 In this way we shall easily appreciate the value of the rest of the authorities, who
though, according to him, they were most highly educated, yet never by actual sifting of
the facts, established them with any accuracy in the case of Apollonius. For when we have
thoroughly examined these facts, we shall no doubt obtain a clear demonstration of the
solidity and, as he imagines to himself, of the accuracy in detail of the condemnation
which the " Lover of Truth," who has at the same time taken possession of the supreme
courts all over the province, passes on Christians, and at the same time of what they are
pleased to call our reckless and facile credulity, for we are accounted by them to be mere
foolish and deluded mortals. 11 V ANOTHER controversialist, by way of beginning the
affray, would without demur abuse and malign the man against whom he directed his
arguments, on the ground that he was his enemy and adversary; I, however, my friend, used
to regard the man of Tyana as having been, humanly speaking, a kind of sage, and I am
still freely disposed to adhere to this opinion; and I would like to set before you, if
you ask it, my own personal opinion of him. If anyone wishes to class him with any
philosopher you like, and to forget all the legends about him and not bore me with them, I
am quite agreeable. Not so if anyone ventures, whether he be Damis the Assyrian, or
Philostratus, or any other compiler or chronicler, to overleap the bounds of humanity and
transcend philosophy, and while repelling the charge of wizardry in word, yet to bind it
in act rather than in name upon the man, using the mask of Pythagorean discipline to
disguise what he really was. For in that case his reputation for us as a philosopher will
be gone, and we shall have an ass instead concealed in a lion's skin; and we shall detect
in him a sophist in the truest sense, cadging for alms among the cities, and a wizard, if
there ever was one, instead of a philosopher.

12 VI 13 Do you ask me what I mean and what are my reasons for speaking thus? I will tell
you. There are bounds of nature which prescribe and circumscribe the existence of the
universe in respect of its beginnings and of its continuance and of its end, being limits
and rules imposed on everything. By these this entire mechanism and edifice of the whole
universe is constantly being brought to perfection; and they are arranged by unbreakable
laws and indissoluble bonds, and they guard and observe the all-wise will of a Providence
which dispenses and disposes all things. Now no one can change or alter the place and
order of anything that has been once arranged; and if anyone is so venturesome as to wish
to transcend his limits, he is restrained from transgressing divine law by the rule and
decree of nature. So it is that the fish that lives in the waters is unable in defiance of
nature to change on to dry land and live there; and on the other hand the creature bred on
dry land will not plunge into the waters, and embrace there any permanent repose or abode;
nor by any huge leap can any tenant of earth raise himself aloft into the air, from a
desire to soar about with the eagles;

14 and in turn, although of course the latter can alight upon the earth, by depressing and
lowering their faculty of flight, and by relaxing the working of their wings, and
renouncing the privilege of nature,--for this too is determined by the divine laws, namely
that beings able to soar aloft are able to descend from on high,--yet the converse is not
possible, so that the lowly habitant of earth should ever raise himself into the welkin.
In this way then the mortal race of men, while provided with soul and body, is yet
circumscribed by divine bounds. Consequently he can never traverse the air with his body,
however much he scorns to linger upon the paths of earth, without instantly paying the
penalty of his folly; nor by spiritual exaltation can he in his thinking attain to the
unattainable, without falling back into the disease of melancholy. 15 It is wisest then
for him, on the one hand to transport his body along the ground with the feet given him
for the purpose, and on the other hand to sustain his soul with education and philosophy.
But he may well pray that some one may come to help him from aloft from the paths of
heaven, and reveal himself to him as a teacher of the salvation that is there. For the
following is a valid example to use as it is right for the physician to visit the sick,
and for the teacher to accommodate himself to the, pupil who is entering upon his studies,
and for a superior to quit his heights and condescend to the lowly, yet the converse is
not right or possible. It follows then that there is no reason to prevent a divine nature,
being beneficent and inclined to save and take providential care of things to come, from
associating itself with men, for this is allowed also by the rule of divine providence;
for according to Plato God was good, and no good being can ever feel any jealousy of any
thing. It follows that the controller of this universe, being good, will not care for our
bodies alone, but much more for our souls, upon which he has conferred the privilege of
immortality and free-will.

16 On these then, as lord of the entire economy and of gifts of grace his bestowal of
which will benefit our nature, he will, they being able to appreciate his bounty, bestow
plenteously an illumination as it were of the light which streams from him, and will
despatch the most intimate of his own messengers from time to time, for the salvation and
succour of men here below. Of these messengers anyone so favoured by fortune, having
cleansed his understanding and dissipated the mist of mortality, may well be described as
truly divine, and as carrying in his soul the image of some great god. Surely so great a
personality will stir up the entire human race, and illuminate the world of mankind more
brightly than the sun, and will leave the effects of his eternal divinity for the
contemplation of future ages, in no less a degree affording an example of the divine and
inspired nature than creations of artists made of lifeless matter. To this extent then
human nature can participate in the super-human; but otherwise it cannot lawfully
transcend its bounds, nor with its wingless body emulate the bird, nor being a man must
one meddle with what appertains to demons.

17 VII IN what light then, this being so, do you envisage for us Apollonius, my good
compiler? If as a divine being and superior to a philosopher, in a word as one superhuman
in his nature, I would ask you to keep to this point of view throughout your history, and
to point me out effects wrought by his divinity enduring to this day. For surely it is an
absurdity that the works of carpenters and builders should last on ever so long after the
craftsmen are dead, and raise as it were an immortal monument to the memory of their
constructive ability; and yet that a human character claimed to be divine should, after
shedding its glory upon mankind, finish in darkness its shortlived career, instead of
displaying for ever its power and excellence. Instead of being so niggardly liberal to
some one individual like Damis and to a few other short-lived men, it should surely make
its coming among us the occasion of blessings, conferred on myriads not only of his
contemporaries, but also of his posterity. This I ween is how the sages of old raised up
earnest bands of disciples, who continued their tradition of moral excellence, sowing in
men's hearts a spirit truly immortal of progress and reform. If on the other hand you
attribute to this man a mortal nature, take care lest by endowing him with gifts which
transcend mortality, you convict yourself of fallacy and miscalculation.

18 VIII 19 BUT enough of this. His hero is introduced to us as a divine man, who assumes
from birth the guise and personality of a demon of the sea. For he says that to his mother
when she was about to bear her child, there appeared the figure of a demon of the sea,
namely Proteus, who in the story of Homer ever changes his form. But she, in no way
frightened, asked him what she would bring to birth; and he replied: " Myself. Then she
asked: " And who are you? " " Proteus," he replied, " of Egypt. And then he writes about a
certain meadow and about swans, that assisted the lady to bear her child, though without
telling us whence he derived this particular; for assuredly he does not attribute this
story to Damis the Assyrian writer. But a little further on in the same history he
represents Apollonius as using, in token of his being of a divine nature these very words
to Damis himself: " I myself, my companion, understand all languages though I have learned
none. And again he says to him: " Do not be surprised, for I know what men are thinking
about, even when they are silent. And again in the temple of Asclepius he was much
honoured by the god, and is said to have possessed a certain natural gift of prescience,
which he did not acquire by learning, from very childhood.

20 We learn, in a word, that he was born superior to mankind in general, and so he is
described from the first moment of his birth throughout his history. Anyhow on one
occasion after he had loosed himself from his bonds, his historian adds the remark: " Then
Damis declares he for the first time clearly understood the nature of Apollonius, that it
was divine and superior to humanity. For without offering any sacrifice,--for how could he
offer one in the prison?--and without offering any prayer, without a single word, he just
laughed at his fetters. And at the end of the book we learn that his grave was nowhere to
be found on earth; but thai he went to heaven in his physical body accompanied by hymns
and dances. Naturally if he was so great as he is described in the above, he may be said
"to have wooed philosophy in a more divine manner than Pythagoras, or Empedocles, or
Plato. For these reasons we must surely class the man among the gods.

21 IX WELL, we will not grudge him his natural and self-taught gift of understanding all
languages. But if he possessed it, why was he taken to a school-master, and if he had
never learnt any language whatever, why does his historian malign him and declare that,
not by nature, but by dint of close study and application, he acquired the Attic dialect?
For he tells us outright " that as he advanced in youth he displayed a knowledge of
letters and great power of memory, and force of application, and that he spoke the Attic
dialect." We also learn that "when he reached his fourteenth year his father took him to
Tarsus, to Euthydemus of Phoenicia, who was a good rhetor, and gave him his education,
while. Apollonius clung to his teacher." We further learn that " he had as fellow-students
members of the school of Plato and of Chrysippus and members of the Peripatetic set. That
he also diligently listened to the doctrines of Epicurus, because he did not despise even
them, though he grasped the teachings of Pythagoras with a certain indescribable wisdom."
So varied was the education of one who had never learnt any language, and who by his
divine power anticipated " the thoughts of men even when they are silent."

22 X AND after an interval our author again expresses his admiration at the ease with
which Apollonius understood the language of animals, and he goes on to tell us the
following: " And moreover he acquired of an understanding of the language of animals; and
he learnt this, too, in the course of his travels through Arabia, where the inhabitants
best know this language and practise it. For the Arabians have a way of understanding
without difficulty swans and other birds when they presage the future in the same way as
oracles. And they get to understand the dumb animals by eating, so they say, some of them
the heart and others the liver of dragons." In this instance, then, it seems anyhow to
have been the case that the Pythagorean who abstained from animal food and could not even
bring himself to sacrifice to the gods, devoured the heart and liver of dragons, in order
to participate in a form of wisdom that was in vogue among the Arabs. After learning under
such masters, how could he attain to their accomplishments otherwise than by imitating
their example? We must therefore add to the teachers whom we have already enumerated the
sages of Arabia who taught him his knowledge of augury; and this no doubt inspired him
subsequently to foretell what the sparrow meant when he called his fellows to a meal, and
so to impress the bystanders with the idea that he had worked a mighty miracle. Arid in
the same way when he saw the freshly-slain lioness with her eight whelps by the side of
the road which led into Assyria, he immediately conjectured from what he saw the length of
their future stay in Persia, and made a prophecy thereof.

23 XI 24 AND in just keeping with his visits to the Arabians were the studies he undertook
among the Persians also, according to the account given by the same author. For after
forbidding Damis, so we are told, to go to the magi, though Damis was his only pupil and
companion, he went alone to school with them at midday and about midnight; alone in order
not to have as his companion in the study of magic one who was clearly without a taste for
such things. And again when he came to converse with Vardan the Babylonian king, it is
related that he addressed him as follows: "My system of wisdom is that of Pythagoras, a
man of Samos, who taught me to worship the gods in this way and to recognize them, whether
they are seen or unseen, and to be regular in converse with the gods. Who can possibly
allow this to be true of him, seeing that Pythagoras himself has left no scripture of the
kind, nor any secret writings, such that we can even suspect him to have had such
resources at his disposal? As for his teacher of the Pythagorean philosophy, it is
testified that he was in no way better than the Epicureans by Philostratus himself, who
speaks of him as follows: "He had as a teacher of the system of Pythagoras not a very good
man, nor one who put his philosophy into practice; for he was the slave of his belly and
his desires and modelled his life on that of Epicurus.

25 And this man was Euxenus of Heraclea in Pontus. But he had a good acquaintance with the
tenets of Pythagoras, just as birds have of what they learn to say from men. What
ridiculous nonsense to pretend that Apollonius can have derived from this man, his gift of
conversing with the gods. But let us for the moment admit that there were other expounders
of the system from whom he may have learned, although the author anyhow gives no hint of
any such thing. Still we must ask: was there then ever any one of these teachers that
professed either to know himself, by having learnt from Pythagoras personally, or to teach
others., how to recognize and frequent in their conversations gods, whether seen or
unseen? Why, even the famous Plato, although more than anyone else he shared in the
philosophy of Pythagoras, and Archytas too, and Philolaus the one man who has handed down
to us in writing the conversations of Pythagoras, and any others who were disciples of the
philosopher and have handed down to his posterity his opinions and tenets in writing, --
none of these ever boasted of any such form of wisdom. It follows then that he learnt
these things not from Pythagoras, but from other sources;

26 and with a wilful affectation of solemnity he only labels himself with the
philosopher's name But admitting, though it is against all probability, that he is not
lying, but telling the truth, we are still at a loss to know, how he can pretend to have
acquired this lore from the Samian himself above mentioned, inasmuch as the latter
deceased some thousand years before him. Therefore we must reckon among the Arabians this
teacher also who communicated to him a knowledge of the gods of so mysterious character as
he imagines this to be. If then he was of a divine nature, it follows that the story of
his teachers is a pure fiction. On the other hand if the story was true, then the legend
was false, and the allegation in the book that he was divine is devoid of all truth. 27
XII 28 I HAVE no wish to enquire curiously about the ghost of Proteus, or to ask for
confirmation of it, nor to demand proof of his ridiculous story that swans surrounded his
mother and assisted her to bring him into the world; equally little do I ask him to
produce evidence of his fairy-tale about the thunderbolt; for as I said before he cannot
anyhow claim the authority of Damis for these particulars, inasmuch as the latter joined
him much later on in the city of Nineveh of Assyria. I am however quite ready to accept
all that is probable and has an air of truth about it, even though such details may be
somewhat exaggerated and highly-coloured out of compliment to a good man; for I could
still bring myself to accept them, as long as they are not bewilderingly wonderful and
full of nonsense. I do not therefore mind the author telling us that Apollonius was of an
ancient family and lineally descended from the first settlers, and was rich, if it were
so, beyond all other people of that region: and that when he was young he not only had the
distinguished teachers mentioned, but, if he likes, I will allow that he became himself
their teacher and master in learning.

29 I grant too, in addition, that he was skilful in ordinary matters, and so was able by
giving the best of advice to rid of his malady one who had come to the temple of Asclepius
in order to be healed.' For we read that he suggested to a man afflicted with dropsy a
regime of abstinence well suited to cure his disease, and in that way restored him to
health: and so far we must needs commend the youthful Apollonius for his good sense. On
another occasion he very properly excluded from the temple a man who was notorious for his
wickedness, although he was prepared to offer the most expensive sacrifices, for he
represents the man in question as the richest and most distinguished of all the people of
his region. Nor would anyone object to his being classed among the temperate, inasmuch as
he repelled with insults a lover who designed to corrupt his youth, and also, as the
narrative informs us, kept himself throughout pure of intercourse with women.

30 We can also believe the story of his keeping silence for five years in the spirit of
Pythagoras; and the way moreover in which he accomplished this vow of silence was
praiseworthy. All this and the like is merely human, and in no way incongruous with
philosophy or with truth, and I can therefore accept it, because I set a very high value
upon candour and love of truth. Nevertheless to suppose that he was a being of superhuman
nature, and then to contradict this supposition at a moment's warning, and to forget it
almost as soon as it is made--this I regard as reprehensible and calculated to fasten a
suspicion not only on the author, but yet more on the subject of his memoir. XIII 31 THESE
particulars we have taken from the first book of Philostratus; and let us now go on to
consider the contents of the second. The story takes him on his travels and brings him
from Persia to India. He next shows a want of good taste by relating, as if it were a
miracle, how Apollonius and his companions saw some sort of demon, to which he gives the
name of Empusa, along the road, and of how they drove it away by dint of abuse and bad
words. And we learn that when some animals were offered them for food, he told Damis that
he was quite willing to allow him and his companions to eat the flesh, for as far as he
could see their abstinence from meat had in no way advanced their moral development,
though in his own case it was imposed by the philosophic profession he had made in
childhood. And yet is it not incredible to anyone that he should not have hindered Damis,
as his best friend., and as the only disciple and follower of his life, that he had, and
the only one whom he was trying to convert to his philosophy, that he should not, I
repeat, have tried to hinder him from consuming the flesh of living animals, that being an
unholy food according to Pythagoras, and that instead of doing so, he should tell him for
reasons inexplicable to me that it will do no good to himself, and admit that he saw no
moral advantage in them produced by such abstinence?

32 XIV IN the next place I would have you notice what sort of samples of truth are set
before us by this Philostratus to whose truthfulness Hierocles the self-styled Lover of
Truth bears witness. For we are told that when Apollonius was among the Indians, he
employed an interpreter, and through him held the conversation with Phraotes, for that was
the name of the king of the Indians. Thus he, who just before, according to Philostratus,
had an understanding of all languages, now on the contrary, according to the same witness,
is in need of an interpreter. And again, he who read the thoughts of men, and almost like
their god Apollo " Understood the dumb and heard him who spake not" has to ask, by means
of an interpreter, what was the king's way of life, and he asks him to supply him with a
guide on his journey to the Brahmans. And after an interval the other, who is king of the
Indians, and a barbarian to boot, gets rid of the interpreter, and addresses Apollonius in
Greek; and speaking in that language details to him his education and his wealth of
learning. But Apollonius none the less neglected on this occasion to display, as he should
have done, his own perfect acquaintance with their tongue.

33 XV ON the contrary he is astonished to find the Indian talking Greek, as Philostratus
consistently, it would seem, with himself, tells us in his book. For how could he be
astonished thereat, unless he had regarded him as a barbarian? And in spite of his having
admired him for what he was, he could never have expected him to talk Greek. In the
sequel, as if he were astonished at some exhibition of the miraculous and were still
unable to explain it, Apollonius says: " Tell me, O king, how you came to have such
facility in the Greek tongue? And where did you get hereabouts the philosophy you possess?
For I do not think that you can say you owe it to teachers anyhow, for it is not likely
that the Indians have any teachers of this." Such are the wonderful utterances to which
one, whose prescience included everything, gives vent; and the king answers them by saying
that he had had teachers, and he tells him who they were, and relates all the particulars
of his own history on his father's side.

34 Next we are told that the Indian had to judge between certain parties about a treasure
which had been hunted up in a field, the question at issue being whether this field ought
to be assigned to the seller or buyer of the place. Our supreme philosopher and darling of
heaven is asked his opinion, and awards it to the purchaser, assigning his reason in these
words: "That the gods would never have deprived the one of the land, if he had not been a
bad man; nor would ever have given the other riches under the soil, unless he had been
better than the seller." We must conclude then, if we are to believe him, that men who are
comfortably off and richer than their neighbours, are to be esteemed thrice happy and
beloved of the gods, even though they should be the most shameless and abandoned of
mankind; on the other hand only the poorest, say, even a Socrates, or a Diogenes, or the
famous Pythagoras himself, or any other of the most temperate and fairest-minded of men,
are to be esteemed ill-starred wretches. For if one follows the reasoning here used, one
must allow that on its showing the gods would never have deprived the poor, that is to
say, the very men who excel others, if judged by the standard of philosophy, even of a
bare living and of the necessities of life, unless they had been utterly vile in
character, and at the same time they have endowed those who are abandoned in their
character with a plenty even of things that were not necessary to them, unless they proved
themselves better than the others just mentioned; from which the absurdity of the
conclusion is manifest to everyone.

35 XVI AFTER setting before you these incidents out of the second book, let us pass on to
the third, and consider the stories told of the far-famed Brahmans. For here we shall have
to admit that the tales of Thule, and any other miraculous legends ever invented by any
story-tellers, turn out to be by comparison with these quite reliable and perfectly true.
It is anyhow worth our while to examine these, because this self-styled lover of truth has
not scrupled to fasten on ourselves a charge of reckless credulity and levity of
character, while claiming for himself and for those like him an accurate judgment, well
based on an understanding of the fact. Note then the sort of miracles on which he prides
himself, when he prefers Philostratus to our own divine evangelists, on the ground that he
was not only a most highly educated man, but most attentive to the truth.

36 XVII 37 To begin with then, on the way to the Brahmans, Philostratus introduces us to a
lady who met Apollonius, and who, from her head down to her loins, was wholly white in
colour, while the rest of her person was black. The mountains again, as they went forward
on the road to the Brahmans, were planted with pepper trees, and the apes cultivated the
same; and then there were certain dragons of extraordinary size, from whose heads were
thrown off sparks of fire, and if you slew one of them, he: says that you found marvellous
stones upon the head rivalling the gem of Gyges, as mentioned in Plato. And all this was
before they reached the hill on which the Brahmans lived. And when they reached this, we
read that they saw there a well of sandarac, full of wonderful water, and hard by a crater
of fire, from which there arose a lead-coloured flame; and there were two jars there of
black stone, the one of which contained rain, and the other winds, from which the Brahmans
supply such people of the country as they are pleased to favour. Besides this they found
among them images of Athene Polias and of Apollo Pythius, and of Dionysus of the Lake and
of certain other Hellenic gods. And the master of them all was named Iarchas, and they saw
him sitting on a very lofty throne in a state of pomp that was far from philosophic, but
rather appropriate to a satrap.

38 And this throne was made of black bronze and was decorated with golden images, such as
we might of course expect philosophers to fabricate when they take to working like base
mechanics at forge and steel, even if they do not like conjurers make their handiwork to
move by itself. But the thrones upon which the rest of them, who were inferior teachers to
him, were sitting, were, he says, of bronze, but not incised and not so high. For I
suppose they could not help bestowing upon the teacher of so divine a philosophy the
privilege of having images and gold on his throne, just as if he were a tyrant. 39 XVIII
40 AND we are told that Iarchas, the moment he saw Apollonius, addressed him by name in
the Greek tongue, and asked him for the letter which he brought from Phraotes, for he had
already received this by dint of his foreknowledge; and by way of parading the inspired
character of his prescience, he told him before he set eyes on the epistle, that it was
one letter short, namely of a delta; and he began at once in a vulgar manner in that very
first interview, like a man who has got wealth for the first time and does not know how to
use it, to show off his superiority as a seer, by running off the names of Apollonius'
father and mother, and telling him all about his family and upbringing and education, and
about his periodical voyages abroad, and about his journey thither to himself, and about
what he had done himself or said to his companions on the road. And next this wonderful
author tells us that the " Brahmans, after anointing themselves together with Apollonius
with an amber-like drug, took a bath, and then standing round as if in chorus, struck the
earth with their staves, and the earth arched itself up and elevated them some two cubits
into the air, so that they stood there levitated up in the air itself for some
considerable length of time. And he relates that they drew down fire from the sun without
any effort on their part and whenever they chose.

41 And the miracle-monger adds another marvel to these, when he tells that there were four
tripods like those of Pytho which wheeled themselves forth, moving of their own accord;
and he goes so far as to compare these to the tripods in Homer, and he says that there
were set upon them cup-bearers to serve in the banquet, four in number and made of bronze.
And in addition he tells us that the earth too strewed grass beneath them of her own
accord and unasked. And of these tripods two, he says, ran with wine, and of the other
two, the one supplied hot water and the other cold. And the cup-bearers of bronze drew for
the guests in due mixture both the wine and the water, and pushed round the cups in a
circle, just as they are handed round in a symposium. 42 XIX SUCH are the stories which
Hierocles, who has been entrusted to administer the supreme courts of justice all over the
province, finds true and reliable after due enquiry, at the same time that he condemns us
for our excessive credulity and frivolity; and after himself believing such things when he
finds them in Philostratus, he proceeds to brag about himself and says (I quote his very
words): " Let us anyhow observe how much better and more cautiously we accept such things,
and what opinion we hold of men gifted with such powers and virtues." XX

43 IT was after such a symposium, according to the same Philostratus, that a king who was
sojourning in India is introduced to drink with the philosophers; and we hear that he took
occasion to insult philosophy with drunken jests, and that he got so tipsy in their
presence as to hurl defiance at the Sun and brag about himself. All this we learn, and
that Apollonius once more, by means of an interpreter, learned his history from him and
conversed in turn with him, Iarchas interpreting between them. Surely it may well excite
our wonder that so insolent a fellow and so great a buffoon was allowed to get drunk and
show off his tipsy wit among such great philosophers, when he was unworthy even to be
present at a meeting of philosophers, much less at the hearth of men who were equal to
gods? But what possesses me to call them the peers of gods and chaff them about their
dignity? Why, when Apollonius asked them whom they considered themselves to be, " Gods,"
answered Iarchas; who, I suppose in his quality as god, as little as could be in the style
of philosopher, save the mark, nay, surely betraying an equally scant respect for the
dignity of the god whom he professed himself to be, set the example of drinking to his
fellow-banqueters by stooping down over the bowl, which, as our author is careful to tell
us, supplied plenty of drink for all of them, and refreshed itself, as do holy and
mysterious wells for those who fill their pitchers from them.

44 XXI AFTER this there was general conversation and some serious discussion among the
philosophers, in the course of which Iarchas explained that his own soul had once been in
the body of another man who was a king, and that in that state he had performed this and
that exploit; while Apollonius told them that he had once been the pilot of a ship in
Egypt, and had accomplished all sorts of exploits which he enumerated to them. Then they
put questions to each other, and received answers, which in the name of wisdom have scant
title to be recorded at all. Thus we learn that Apollonius asked if they had any golden
water among them. What a clever and marvellous question! And he also asked about men who
live underground, and about others called pigmies, and shadow-footed men, and he asked if
they had among them a four-footed animal called a martichora, which has a head like that
of a man, but rivals a lion in size, while from its tail projects hairs like thorns a
cubit long, which it is accustomed to shoot out like arrows at those who hunt it. Such
then were the questions which Apollonius put to the sages, and Iarchas instructed him
about the pigmies, and told him that they were indeed people dwelling underground, but
spent their lives on the other side of the river Ganges; but as to the other things which
he asked about, Iarchas said that they never had existed at all.

45 XXII AFTER that Philostratus described a wool which the earth grew for them to supply
material for their dress, from which we must infer that these philosophers plied the loom
and occupied themselves with spinning wool in order to make their raiment, for we do not
hear of any woman being smuggled into their community; but perhaps he means that by a
miracle the wool grew of its own initiative into their sacred garments. And we hear that
each of them carried a staff and a ring which was imbued with mysterious power. There
follow a series of miraculous performances on the part of the Brahman,--how for example he
recalled to his senses by means of a letter one who was possessed with a demon, how by
stroking a man who was lame he healed his dislocated hip, how he vouchsafed to restore a
man's hand that was withered, and to a blind man gave sight. Our blessings on an author
who saves us so much trouble. Can we doubt that these stories are true, when his very
insistence on the truth of his earlier tales, I refer to those of lightning and wind kept
in jars, and of tripods of stone walking about of their own accord and of cupbearers of
bronze passing round the cups in a circle, fully betrays and exposes the mythical
character of everything else which he has to tell us. Philostratus moreover declares that
Damis related how carefully Apollonius excluded himself from being present at the
philosophical sessions which he held with larchas; and he says that Apollonius was given
by the latter seven rings which were called after the stars, and that he wore these one by
one upon the days respectively called by their names.

46 Though we learn this much on this occasion from a gentleman who is esteemed by the
Lover of Truth to have had a respect for facts, further on in his book, as if by way of
condemning the wizardry of the Brahmans, and as if he was anxious to acquit Apollonius of
the charge of having dabbled therein, he adds the following remark, which I repeat
textually: " But when he saw among the Indians the tripods and the cup-bearers and the
other figures which I have said entered of their own accord, he did not either ask how
they were contrived, or desire to learn; but although he praised them, he disclaimed any
wish to imitate them." And how, my good fellow, did he disclaim any wish of the kind? Is
this the man who was careful to exclude Damis from the philosophical seances he held with
them, and who thought it his duty to conceal from his only companion all that he had done
in those seances? And how could he have disclaimed any wish to imitate them when he
accepted the seven rings named after the stars, and held it needful to wear these all
through the rest of his life upon the days severally named after them, and that although,
as you say yourself, they had a secret power in them. Even if we grant that he did not
aspire to imitate these inventions, it is clear that his disclaimer was not due to their
being uncanny. How then could he praise things which he disdained to imitate? If he
praised them, as being divinely operated, why did he not imitate things so praiseworthy?
To crown all, on his return after he had stayed with them, we learn that he arrived with
his companions at the country of the Oritae, where he found the rocks and the sand and the
dust which the rivers bring down to the sea, all alike made of bronze.

47 XXIII 48 ALL this is contained in the third book of Philostratus, and let us now pass
on to those which follow. We learn that when he had returned from the country of the
Indians to the land of Hellas, the gods themselves proclaimed him to be the companion of
the gods, inasmuch as they sent on to him the sick to be healed. And, indeed, as if his
visit to the Arabs and to the Magi and to the Indians had turned him into some miraculous
and divine being, our author, now that he has got him home again, plunges straight into a
lengthy description of his miracles. And yet one might fairly argue that if he had been of
a diviner than merely human nature, then he ought long before, and not only now, after
entering into relation with other teachers, to have begun his career of wonder-working;
and it was superfluous for him to take so much trouble to acquire the multifarious lore of
Arabs and of Magi and of Indians., if he was really what the initial assumption made by
Philostratus assumes him to have been. But anyhow, according to this truth-loving author,
we have now got him back again., ready to show off the wisdom which he has acquired from
so great masters; and as one fresh from Arabia and equipped with the science of augury in
vogue among the inhabitants of that country, he begins by interpreting to the bystanders
what the sparrow wanted and intended when it summoned its fellows to their dinner. Next he
has a presentiment of the plague in Ephesus, and warns the citizens of what is coming. And
he himself sets before us in his Apology to Domitian the explanation of this presentiment.
For when the latter asked him what was his prediction, he answered: " Because, my prince,
I use a very light diet, I was the first to scent the danger."

49 And then he relates a third miracle of him, which was nothing less than that of his
averting the plague. Although the author has been careful not to include this story in the
final counts retained against Apollonius, probably because it was impossible for him to
rebut a charge founded upon it by any defence which he could offer, we nevertheless will,
if you will allow us, publish the story and give it full publicity, because our doing so
will render needless any further criticism of it. For if anybody feels the shadow of doubt
about the matter, the very manner in which the story is told will convince him that fraud
and make-believe was in this case everything, and that if ever anything reeked of wizardry
this did. For he pretends that the plague was seen in the form of an aged man, a beggar
and dressed in rags; who, when Apollonius ordered the mob to stone him, began by shooting
fire from his eyes, but afterwards, when he had been overwhelmed by the stones thrown at
him, he appeared as a dog all crushed and vomiting foam, as mad dogs do. And he writes
that Apollonius mentioned this episode also in the defence he addressed to the autocrat
Domitian, as follows: " For the form of the plague--and it resembled an aged beggar--was
both seen by me, and when I saw it I overcame it, not by staying the course of the
disease, but by utterly destroying it.

50 Who, I would ask, after reading this would not laugh heartily at the miracle-mongering
of this thaumaturge? For we learn that the nature of the plague was a living creature and
as such exposed at once to the eyes of the bystanders and to the showers of stones they
hurled at it, and that it was crushed by men, and vomited foam, when all the time a plague
is nothing in the world but a corruption and vitiation of the atmosphere, the
circumambient air being changed into a morbid condition composed of noxious and evil
exhalations, as medical theory teaches us. And on other grounds, too, this story of the
phantom plague can be exploded; for the story tells us that it only afflicted the city of
Ephesus, and did not visit the neighbouring populations; and how could this not have been
the case, if the surrounding atmosphere had undergone vitiation? for the infection could
not have been confined to one spot, nor have beset the air of Ephesus alone.

51 XXIV 52 THE fourth wonder which he relates is how the soul of Achilles appeared close
by his own sepulchre, dressed the first time in a tunic, and five cubits high, and
subsequently growing till it was twelve cubits in stature, and accusing the Thessalians
for not continuing according to custom to offer him the due funeral rites, and furthermore
still nursing wrath against the Trojans for the wrongs which they had committed against
him, and bidding Apollonius ask him questions on five topics, such as he himself might
desire to learn about, and the Fates permit him to know of. We next learn that the
omniscient one, who boasted of his prescience of future events, was still ignorant of
whether Achilles had been buried, and of whether the Muses and Nereids had bestowed their
dirges upon him. And accordingly he asked Achilles about these matters, and enquires most
earnestly whether Polyxena had been slain over his tomb, and whether Helen had really come
to Troy, --questions surely of a most solemn kind, and such as to stimulate others to lead
the philosophical life of the hero, besides being in themselves of much importance.
Thereupon he falls to wondering if there had ever been among the Hellenes so many heroes
all at one time, and whether Palamedes had ever reached Troy. Surely it was disgraceful in
the extreme that one who was the companion of gods, whether seen or unseen, should know so
little of such matters as to need to ask questions again and again about them?

53 Unless, indeed, because in this scene he is introduced as associating with the dead,
the author intentionally gives a frigid turn to his questions, in order to avert the
suspicion of his having irreligiously pryed into the secrets of magic. For we may notice
he represents him as arguing in his Apology that there was no colour of necromancy in the
manner in which the spectre appeared to him, and says: " For without digging any trench
like Odysseus, and without tempting the souls of the dead with the blood of lambs, I
managed to converse with Achilles, merely by using the prayers which the Indians declare
we ought to make use of in addressing heroes. This is how Apollonius now brags to his
companion, although our author testifies that he had learned nothing from the Indians nor
felt attracted by their wisdom. 54 XXV 55 WHAT then is the reason, my good fellow,
supposing that there was no devilish curiosity here at work, why he would not allow Damis,
whom you admit to have been his sole and genuine companion, to share with him in this
marvellous vision and interview? And why, too, was he not able to do all this by daytime,
instead of doing it in the dead of night and alone? Why, too, did the mere cry of the
cocks drive away the soul of the hero? For he says, " It vanished with a mild flash of
lightning, for indeed the cocks were already beginning to crow." I cannot but think that
evil demons would have found such an hour seasonable and appropriate for their devilish
interviews, rather than the soul of a hero which, having been freed from the crass matter
of the body, must necessarily be good and unsullied. In any case the demon conjured up on
this occasion is represented as of a malignant and envious disposition, both rancorous and
mean in humour. For how else can we characterise one who drove away Antisthenes, a poor
youth so serious that he was endeavouring to become a follower of the philosopher
Apollonius? For Achilles insists that he shall not initiate him in his philosophy, and he
adds the reason: " For," says he, " he is too much of a descendant of Priam, and the
praise of Hector is never out of his mouth." And how could he be other than rancorous and
mean; if he was wrath with the Thessalians for not sacrificing to him, and still refused
to be reconciled to the Trojans, because thousands of years before they had sinned against
him, and that although the latter were continually sacrificing and pouring out libations
to him? The only exception is that he ordered Apollonius to restore the tomb of Palamedes,
which together with his statue had fallen into decay.

56 XXVI 57 THE fifth and sixth miracles however in this book do not stand in need of much
argument and discussion, so thoroughly do they prove our writer's easy credulity. For
Apollonius, as they say, drives out one demon with the help of another. The first of the
demons is expelled from an incorrigible youth, while the second disguises itself by
assuming the form of a woman: and the latter our clever author calls by no other names
than those of Empusa and Lamia. As for the damsel whom he is said subsequently to have
brought back again to life in Rome after she had died, the story clearly impressed
Philostratus himself as being extremely incredible, and we may safely reject it. Anyhow he
hesitates and doubts, whether after all a spark of life might have not lingered on in the
girl unnoticed by her attendants. For he says that according to report "it was raining at
the time, and a vapour exhaled from the face of the girl. Anyhow if such a miracle had
really been wrought in Rome itself, it could not have escaped the notice first of the
emperor and after him of his subordinate magistrates, and least of all of the philosopher
Euphrates who at the time was in the country and was staying in Rome, who indeed, as we
learn later on, is related to have launched against Apollonius the accusation of being no
other than a wizard.

58 It would certainly too, had it actually occurred, have been included by the accuser
among the other charges levelled against him. Well, just these and no more are the more
particular and special achievements of Apollonius, although there are a myriad other cases
in the book in which his sooth-sayings and prophecies are set down to his gift of
foreknowledge; and we learn that at Athens, when he desired to be initiated in the
Eleusinian mysteries, the priest there would not admit him, and declared that he would
never initiate a wizard nor throw open the Eleusinian mysteries to a man who was addicted
to impure rites. We also hear about a lewd fellow who went begging about Rome, rehearsing
the songs of Nero on his lyre for pay; and we are told that this most philosophic of
teachers out of fear of Nero ordered his companions to bestow alms on him in recognition
of his clever accomplishments.

59 XXVII 60 SUCH are the contents of the fourth book, and in the fifth book of his
history, after a few remarks about his gift of prescience, our author is so lost in
admiration as to add the following remark, which I repeat textually. " That then he was
enabled to make such forecasts by some divine impulse, and that it is no sound inference
to suppose, as some people do, that Apollonius was a wizard, is clear from what I have
said. But let us consider the following facts: wizards, whom for my part I reckon to be
the most unfortunate of mankind, claim to alter the course of destiny, either by
tormenting the ghosts whom they encounter, or by means of barbaric sacrifices, or by means
of certain incantations or anointings. But Apollonius himself submitted to the decrees of
the Fates, and foretold that they must needs come to pass; and his foreknowledge was not
due to wizardry, but derived from what the gods revealed to him. And when among the
Indians he beheld their tripods, and their dumb waiters and other automata which I
described as entering the room of their own accord, he neither asked how they were
contrived, nor wished to learn. He only praised them, but did not aspire to imitate them.
Such a passage as the above clearly exhibits in the light of wizards the famous
philosophers of India.

61 For notice that when he is arguing about wizards, he mentions them too and says that
their marvels were cleverly contrived indeed, but that his hero held himself carefully
aloof from such their contrivances, on the ground that they were not moral. If therefore
we find Apollonius calling these Indians gods, and enrolling himself as their disciple, we
have no alternative but to bring him also under the imputation under which his teachers
lay. And accordingly he is introduced as saying among the so-called Naked sages of the
Egyptians, the following,--I quote his very words: " It is then not unreasonable on my
part, I think, to have yielded myself to a philosophy so highly elaborated, to a
philosophy which, if I may use a metaphor from the stage, the Indians mount, as it
deserved to be mounted, upon a lofty and divine mechanism before they wheel it out upon
the stage. And that I was right to admire them, and that I am right in considering them
wise and blessed, it is now time to learn. And after a little he says: " For they are not
only gods, but are adorned with all the gifts of the Pythian prophetess. And he is
introduced to Domitian with these words on his lips: " What war have you with Iarchas or
with Phraotes, both of them Indians, whom I consider to be the only men that are really
gods and that deserve this ... appellation?

62 " And there are other passages also in which this history of Philostratus recognises
the persons above mentioned as gods and teachers of the sage, and admits him to have
accepted rings from them, but now he forgets all about it, and does not see that in
maligning the teachers, he maligns the disciple. 63 XXVIII AND a little lower down in the
book he brings a flute-player upon the stage, and he relates at length how Apollonius
delivered himself with great gravity of long essays upon the different modes maker of
playing the flute, as if it were the most important and clever of the sciences. And he
relates how the Emperor Vespasian offered him prayers just as if he were a god, for we
learn that Vespasian said in a tone of prayer: "Do thou make me Emperor," whereupon
Apollonius answered: " I have made you so." What else can anyone do but loathe this
utterance for its boastfulness, so nearly does it approach downright madness, for one who
was the pilot of a ship in Egypt to boast of being himself a god already and a maker of
kings? For Apollonius himself has informed us a little before in the course of his
conversation with the Indian that his soul had previously been that of a pilot.

64 XXIX 65 AND to the same Emperor, when the latter asks him to notify to him those whom
he most approved of among philosophers as advisers and counsellors of his policy,
Apollonius replies in these words: " ' These gentlemen here are also good advisers in such
matters,' and he pointed to Dion and to Euphrates, because he had not yet quarrelled with
the latter. And again, he said, " My sovereign, Euphrates and Dion have long been known to
you and they are at your door, and are much concerned for your welfare. Summon them also
therefore to your conference, for they are both of them wise. Whereupon Vespasian
answered: " I throw my doors open wide to wise men. What can we think of the prescience of
our hero? On this occasion Euphrates is both good and wise, because he has not yet
quarrelled with him; but when he has,--and before long he is going to,--then see how the
same person writes to the Emperor Domitian: " And yet if you want to know how much a
philosopher may attain by flattery of the mighty you have only to look at the case of
Euphrates. For in his case why do I speak of wealth from that source? Why, he has perfect
fountains of wealth, and already at the banks he discusses prices as a merchant might or a
huckster, or a tax-gatherer or a low money-changer; for all these roles are his if there
is anything to buy or sell.

66 And he clings like a limpet to the doors of the mighty, and you see him standing at
them more regularly than any doorkeeper would do; indeed he is often caught by the
doorkeepers, just as greedy dogs might be. But he never yet bestowed a farthing on a
philosopher, but he walls up all his wealth within his house; only supporting this
Egyptian out of other people's money, and sharpening his tongue against me, when it ought
to be cut out. However I will leave Euphrates to yourself: for unless you approve of
flatterers, you will find the fellow worse than I represent him. Surely one who first
bears witness to Vespasian the father that Euphrates is a wise and good man, and then
inveighs against him in this style to his son, is openly convicted of praising and blaming
the same person. Was it then the case that this man, who was endowed with knowledge of the
future, did not know what the character of Euphrates was, nor what it was going to be? For
it is not now the first time, but already in the case of Vespasian himself he is inclined
to accuse him of being the worst of characters. How then is it that he recommended such a
person to the sovereign so warmly, that in consequence of his recommendation the latter
threw open wide the doors of his palace to him?

67 Why, is it not clear to a blind man, as they say, that in the matter of foreknowledge
the fellow is traduced by his own historian; though on other ground he might be regarded
as an honest man, if we could suppose that originally, and before he learned by
experience, he wished to gain access to the palace as freely for his friends, Euphrates
included, as for himself, but was afterwards moved by his quarrel to use such language of
him. I have no wish in thus arguing to accuse Apollonius of having falsely blamed
Euphrates, who was the most distinguished philosopher of all the men of his age, so much
so that his praises are still on the lips of students of philosophy. Not but what anyone
who was minded to do so could take this as a palmary example of slander and back-biting
and use it against Apollonius. For if Euphrates be really by their admission a leader in
all philosophy, it is open to us to accuse his rival of censoriousness, when he attacks
him for his monstrous conduct; and to suppose that the latter contracted his evil
reputation because he was thus attacked by him for pursuing,-- that was the accusation,--a
life so little satisfactory to a philosopher.

68 XXX IN the sixth book our story-teller resumes his tale of miracles; for he brings his
hero, together with his companions, on camel-back to see those whom he the calls the Naked
philosophers of Egypt. Here then at the bidding of one of these sages an elm-tree, we are
told, spoke to Apollonius in an articulate but feminine voice, and this is the sort of
thing which the Lover of Truth expects us to believe. Then he has a story of pigmies who
live on the other side of their country and of man-eaters and of shadow-footed men and of
a satyr whom Apollonius made drunk. From these sages Apollonius is brought back again to
Hellas, where he renews his interviews and his prophesies to Titus. Then we hear about a
youth who was bitten by a mad dog. He is rescued from his distress by Apollonius, who
forthwith proceeds to divine whose soul it was that the dog had inside him; and we learn
that it was that of Amasis, a former king of Egypt, for the sage's humanity extended to
dogs.

69 XXXI 70 THESE then are the achievements which preceded his accusation, and it behoves
us to notice throughout the treatise that, even if we admit the author to tell the truth
in his stories of miracles, he yet clearly shows that they were severally performed by
Apollonius with the co-operation of a demon. For his presentiment of the plague, though it
might not seem to be magical and uncanny, if he owed it, as he himself said, to the
lightness and purity of his diet, yet might quite as well have been a premonition imparted
to him in intercourse with a demon. For though the other stories of his having grasped and
foretold the future by virtue of his prescience can be refuted by a thousand arguments
which Philostratus' own text supplies, nevertheless, if we allow this particular story to
be true, I should certainly say that his apprehension of futurity was anyhow in some
cases, though it was not so in all, due to some uncanny contrivance of a demon that was
his familiar. This is clearly proved by the fact that he did not retain his gift of
foreknowledge uniformly and in all cases; but was at fault in most cases, and had through
ignorance to make enquiries, as he would not have needed to do, if he had been endowed
with divine power and virtue. And the very cessation of the plague, according to the
particular turn which was given to the drama, has already been shown to have been a
delusion and nothing more.

71 Moreover, the soul of Achilles should not have been lingering about his own monument,
quitting the Islands of the Blest and the places of repose, as people would probably say.
In this case too it was surely a demon that appeared to Apollonius and in whose presence
he found himself? Then again the licentious youth was clearly the victim of an indwelling
demon; and both it and the Empusa and the Lamia which is said to have played off its mad
pranks on Menippus, were probably driven out by him with the help of a more important
demon; the same is true also of the youth who had been driven out of his mind by the mad
dog; and the frenzied dog itself was restored to its senses by the same method. You must
then, as I said, regard the whole series of miracles wrought by him, as having been
accomplished through a ministry of demons; for the resuscitation of the girl must be
divested of any miraculous character, if she was really alive all the time and still bore
in herself a vital spark, as the author says, and if a vapour rose over her face. For it
is impossible, as I said before, that such a miracle should have been passed over in
silence in Rome itself, if it happened when the sovereign was close by.

72 XXXII THERE are a thousand other examples then which we may select from the same books
where the narrative refutes itself by its very incongruities, so enabling us to detect its
mythical and miracle-mongering character. At the same time we need not devote too much
attention and study to the gentleman's career, seeing that those of our contemporaries
among whom his memory survives at all, are so far from classing him among divine and
extraordinary and wonderful beings, that they do not even rank him among philosophers.
This being so, let us be content with the remarks we have made, and proceed to consider
the seventh book of his history. XXXIII HERE then we find him categorically accused of
being a wizard. Next we find Demetrius the philosopher trying to dissuade him from going
on to Rome, and Apollonius rejects his advice in words which are full of vulgar effrontery
and fulsome praise of himself. They are as follows: " But I know most human affairs,
seeing that I know everything; at the same time I reserve my knowledge partly for good
men, partly for the wise, partly for myself, partly for the gods." And yet the man who in
these words brags about his omniscience, before he goes much further is accused by the
text itself of an ignorance in certain matters. Next Apollonius disguises Damis, for the
latter conceals the fact of his being a philosopher because he is afraid of death. Listen
then to the words in which our author apologises for him: " This was the reason then of
Damis' putting off his Pythagorean dress. For he says that it was not cowardice that led
him to make the change, nor regret at having worn it; but he did it because the device
recommended itself as suggested by the expedience of the moment."

73 XXXIV After this Philostratus sets forth four counts of the indictment which he
imagines it will be easy for his hero to defend himself from, and he admits that he has
collected these out of a great many others. Of these the first was: What induced him to
wear a different robe from everybody else? and the second: Why was it that men esteemed
him to be a god? the third, How had he managed to predict the plague to the Ephesians? and
last of all: In whose behoof had he gone to a certain field and cut up the Arcadian boy?
To meet these then he alleges Apollonius to have written an apology. But first of all he
relates how he was cast into prison, and the miracle which he wrought there. For we hear
that Damis was extremely downcast at the misfortunes which he imagined had befallen his
teacher; whereupon Apollonius showed him his leg released without effort from the chain.
Then having thus alleviated his follower's grief, he put his foot back again into its
former condition and habit. After that he was brought to trial before the Emperor
Domitian, and we read that he was acquitted on the charges, and that after being so
acquitted he, wiih curious inopportuneness, as it seems to me, cried out in the court
exactly as follows: " Accord me too, if you will, an opportunity to speak; but if not,
then send someone to take my body, for my soul you cannot take. Nay you cannot even take
my body,' for thou shalt not slay me, since I tell thee I am not mortal.'" And then after
this famous utterance, we are told that he vanished from the court, and this is the
conclusion of the whole drama.

74 XXXV 75 Now in regard to the miracle in the prison, which it seems was an illusion,
imposed on the eyes of Damis by the familiar demon, our author adds the following remark;
" Damis says that it was then for the first time that he truly understood the nature of
Apollonius, to wit that it was divine and superhuman; for without offering any sacrifice,
---and how indeed in prison could he have offered one?--and without a single prayer,
without even a word, he quietly laughed at the fetters, and then inserting his leg in them
afresh, he comported himself like any other prisoner. I should be the last to accuse his
pupil of being a dull-witted man, because, after being with him all his life, and
witnessing him work miracles by means of certain uncanny agencies, he failed to regard him
as in any way superior to the rest of mortal men; but now after such a display of
thaumaturgic energy as the above, he is still ignorant of his true character; and taking
him to be a mere man he is full of anxiety (as in that case he might well be), and full of
apprehension in his behalf, lest any affliction should come upon him against his own wish
and will.

76 But if indeed it was now for the first time, after having passed so long a time with
him, that he realised that he was indeed divine, and superior to the rest of the human
race, then it behoves us to scrutinize the reason which our author alleges for his doing
so, in these words: " For without any sacrifice, and without a single prayer, and without
uttering a single mysterious word " he saw that he had wrought this miracle. It follows
that the fellow's earlier feats were accomplished by the help of some uncanny trick, and
that is why, as he says, Damis was not astounded at these things, nor filled with wonder
by them. Naturally, then he now for the first time experienced these feelings, because he
felt that his master had accomplished something which was quite unusual and contrary to
his habitual performances. In reference however to the phantom chains shown to Damis and
to his departure from the law-courts, I will quote the words which Apollonius himself
addresses to Domitian. For when the monarch ordered him to be thrown into chains,
Apollonius, with perfect consistency, argued as follows: " If you think me a wizard, how
will you bind me? And if you bind me, how can you say that I am a wizard. Surely one may
invert this argument and use it against him somewhat as follows, keeping to his own
premisses: If you are not a wizard, then how was your leg liberated from the chains?

77 and if it was liberated, then how are you not a wizard? And if, because he submits to
the chains, he is not a wizard, then if he does not submit to them, he is a wizard by his
own admission. And again if, because he submitted to be brought to trial, he was not a
wizard, he was yet clearly revealed as such when he ran off and eluded the court and
retinue of the Emperor, I mean of course the bodyguard that stood round him. Now I believe
that our author is aware of this, and endeavours to gloze over the fact, when he pretends
that this miracle was exhibited without sacrifice or any sort of incantation by some
ineffable and superhuman power. 78 XXXVI MOREOVER we have not got to go far, before a
fresh test of his character is supplied to us; for presently a messenger presents himself
and says: " O Apollonius, the Emperor releases you from these chains, and permits you to
reside in the jail where prisoners are not bound "; whereupon Apollonius, who is superior
to mankind and has foreknowledge of what is coming, and according to the poet " Hath
understanding of the dumb and heareth him who speaks not" is so overjoyed., as well he
might be, at the news, that he suddenly drops out of his gift of foreknowledge, and asks
outright: " Who then will get me out of this place? " and the messenger replied: " I
myself, so follow me." XXXVII NEXT this most divine of men composes in the most careful of
manners an harangue in defence of himself, quite unaware that after all his composition
would prove a mere waste of effort. For he imagines that the Emperor will listen to his
defence of his case, and on that assumption he arranges his apology along extremely
plausible lines; but the latter, by refusing to wait, renders all his trouble useless and
unnecessary. I would ask you then to listen to the following, for what he says is a
refutation of himself: "But inasmuch as he had composed an oration which he meant to
deliver in defence of himself by the clock, only the tyrant confined him to the questions
which I have enumerated, I have determined to publish this oration also." Note then how
utterly at fault this entirely divinest of beings was about the future, if he took so much
trouble and care to proportion the length of his apology to the time allowed him by the
water-clock.

79 XXXVIII 80 BUT we must not omit to pass in review the defence which he so vainly
composed, for it contains among many examples of the arrogance with which he addressed
Domitian, the following utterance, to wit, when he says " as Vespasian made you Emperor,
so I made him. Heavens, what braggadocio! No ordinary person anyhow, nor any real
philosopher either, transcending the rest of mankind, could indulge in such high-faluting
bombast without exposing himself in the eyes of sensible men to a charge of being mad.
Next in trying to rid himself of the suspicion which weighed upon him, he holds the
following language concerning magicians and wizards; " But I call wizards men of false
wisdom, for with them the unreal is made real, and the real becomes incredible. One may
learn then from the whole treatise and from the particular episodes set forth therein,
whether we ought to rank him among divine and philosophic men or among wizards. We have
only to observe what he himself has said about wizards and falsely wise men together with
what is published in his own history.

81 For when oak trees and elms talk in articulate and feminine tones, and tripods move of
their own accord, and waiters of copper serve at table, and jars are filled with showers
and with winds, and water of sandarac and all the other things of the kind are introduced
among those whom he accounted gods and also did not hesitate to entitle his teachers, of
whom else are all these things characteristic, except of people who can exhibit "the
unreal as real and the real as incredible "? In himself calling the latter wizards, he
shows that they are people whose wisdom is false. Is it then on the strength of these
things that this divine man, endowed with all virtue and the darling of the gods, is to
bind on his brow the prize of wisdom, and to be accounted truly more divine than
Pythagoras and his successors, and to be considered far more blessed than he; is he not
rather to be found guilty of false wisdom and carry off the first prize for wretches?

82 XXXIX 83 IN the same book we are told that he had reasoned in Ionia about the power of
the Fates, and had taught that the threads they spin are so immutable that, if they decree
a kingdom to another which already belongs to some one, then, even if that other were
slain by the possessor for fear lest he should ever have it taken away by him, the latter
would yet be raised from the dead and live again in fulfilment of the decrees of the
Fates; and he continues in these very words: "He who is destined to become a carpenter,
will become one, even though his hands have been cut off; and he who has been predestined
to carry off the prize for running in the Olympic games, will never fail to win, even
though he break his leg; and the man to whom the Fates have decreed that he shall be an
eminent archer, will not miss the mark, even though he lose his eyesight. And then by way
of flattering the sovereign he adds the following: " And in drawing my examples from
royalty, I had reference, I admit, to the Acrisii and to the house of Laius, and to
Astyages, the Mede, and to many other monarchs who thought that their power was well
established, and of whom some were supposed to have slain their own children and others
their descendants, yet were deprived by them of their thrones, when they grew up and
issued forth against them out of obscurity in accordance with destiny.

84 Well, if I were inclined to flattery I should have said that I had your own history in
my mind, when you were blockaded by Vitellius, and the temple of Jupiter was burnt on the
brow of the hill, overlooking the city. And Vitellius declared that his own fortune was
assured, so long as you did not escape him, although you were at the time quite a
stripling, and not the man you are now. And yet because the Fates had decreed otherwise,
he perished with all his counsels, while you are now in possession of his throne. However,
since I abhor the forced concords of flattery, for it seems to me that they are everything
that is out of time and out of tune, let me at once cut this string out of my lyre, and
request you to consider that on that occasion I had not your fortunes in my mind. In this
passage, a treatise written ostensibly in the interest of truth draws a picture of a man
who was at once a flatterer and a liar, and anything rather than a philosopher; for after
inveighing so bitterly on the earlier occasion against Domitian, he now flatters him,
generous fellow that he is, and pretends that the doctrines he mooted in Ionia about the
Fates and Necessity, so far from being directed against him rather told in his favour.

85 Take then your history, my author, and regaining your sobriety after, your fit of
drunkenness, read out loud and in a truth-loving tone the passages you wrote on a former
occasion, without concealing anything; read how when he was staying in Ephesus he did his
best "to alienate his friends from Domitian, and encouraged them to espouse the cause of
the safety of all, and as it occurred to him that intercourse with them by letter was
dangerous to them, he would take now one and now another of the most discreet of his own
companions aside and say to them: ' I have a most important secret business to entrust to
yourselves, so you must betake yourself to Rome to such and such persons, and converse
with them !' " And of how " he delivered a discourse on the subject of the Fates and
Necessity. and argued that not even tyrants can overpower the decrees of the Fates. And
how "directing the attention of his audience to a brazen statue of Domitian which stood
close by that of the Meles, he said: ' Thou fool, how much art thou mistaken in thy views
of Necessity and of the Fates.

86 For even if thou shouldst slay the man who is fated to be despot after thyself, he
shall come to life again.' " The man then who, after holding such language as this,
proceeds to flatter the tyrant, and cynically pretends that none of this language was
directed against him, how can we judge him other than capable of all villainy and
meanness; unless indeed you assume that the authors who have handed down to us these
details of him were lying fellows who meant to accuse their hero and not true historians?
But in that case what becomes, to use the language of the Lover of Truth, of those who "
were historians at once most highly educated and respectful of the truth, namely Damis the
philosopher who even lived with the man in question and Philostratus the Athenian? For
these are the authors who lay these facts before us, and they are clearly convicted by the
light of truth, since they thus contradict themselves, of being vapouring braggarts and
nothing else, convicted by their inconsistencies of being downright liars, men devoid of
education and charlatans.

87 XL 88 THE story proceeds to tell us that after all this, Apollonius, liberated from the
court, made up his mind to descend into the cave of Trophonius in Lebadea; but the people
there would not allow him to do so, because they too regarded him as a wizard. Surely it
is legitimate in us to be puzzled, when one compares what one reads at the beginning of
the book of Philostratus, I mean the passage where he owns that he is puzzled at people
having regarded his hero as a wizard, and expresses his surprise at the circumstance,
remarking withal, that "although Empedocles and Pythagoras and Democritus had consorted
with the same Magi without ever stooping to the magic art, and Plato had derived much from
the priests and prophets in Egypt, and had mingled their ideas with his own discourses,
without ever being held by anyone to be a magician, yet men so far had failed to recognise
his hero as one inspired by the purest wisdom, but had long since accounted him a magician
and still did so, because he had consorted with the Magi of Babylon and the Brahmans of
India, and the Naked sages of Egypt. What answer then can we make to him, except this?--
My good fellow, what was your hero up to in this line, for him alone to have been regarded
both long ago and now as a wizard in contrast with these great men;

89 who though, as you admit, they had made trial of the same teachers as he, yet were
eminent both in the age in which they nourished, and also bequeathed to posterity in their
philosophy a gift of such excellence that its praises are still sung. Is such a contrast
possible, unless he was caught by men of good sense meddling with things that were
unlawful? There are still among our contemporaries those who say that they have found
superstitious devices dedicated in the name of this man; though I admit I have no wish to
pay attention to them. However as regards his death, although Philostratus follows in his
book the accounts of earlier writers, he declares that he knows nothing of the truth; for
he says that people in Ephesus related that Apollonius died there, while others said that
he died in Lindus after entering the temple of Athene, and others in Crete; and after
shedding so much doubt on the manner of his end, he yet inclines to believe that he went
to heaven body and all. For he says that after he had run into the temple, the gates were
closed and a strange hymn of maidens was heard to issue from the building, and the words
of their song were: " Come, come, to heaven, come. But he says that he had never come
across any sepulchre or "cenotaph of his hero, although he had visited the greater part of
the whole earth;

90 but what he would like us to believe is that his hero never encountered death at all,
for on a former occasion when he is canvassing the manner in which he died, he adds the
proviso: " If he did die. But in a later passage he declares in so many words that he went
to heaven. This is why he avows, no less in the exordium of his book than throughout it,
that it was by reason of his being such as he was that he wooed philosophy in a diviner
manner than Pythagoras and Empedocles. 91 XLI 92 ALTHOUGH then the limits of our discourse
are reached in the above, I would yet, if you will allow me, raise a few points in
connexion with the Fates and with destiny, in order to ascertain what aim his work has in
view, when throughout its argument it sets itself to demolish our responsibility, and to
substitute for it necessity, and destiny and the Fates. For in this way we shall finally
and completely refute the tenets professed by the author and prove their falsity. If then,
according to the views of true philosophy, every soul is immortal, for that which is
perpetually moving is immortal, whereas that which moves another, and is itself moved by
others, in admitting a cessation of its own movement, admits a cessation of life; and if
responsibility depends on personal choice, and God is not responsible, then what reason is
there for concluding that the nature, which is ever in movement, is actuated against its
will, and not rather in accordance with its own choice and ' decision; for otherwise it
would resemble a lifeless body in being moved by some outside agency, and would be as it
were a puppet pulled by strings hither and thither. The nature which ever moves itself
would, on such ail hypothesis, effect nothing of its own initiative and movement, nor
could it refer to itself the responsibility of its actions. In such a case, when it
reasoned of truth it would surely not be worthy of praise;

93 nor on the other hand be blameworthy, because it was filled with vice and wickedness?
Why then, I would ask you, my good fellow, do you revile Euphrates and find fault with
him, if it is not of his own initiative, but by the force of destiny, that he devoted
himself to gain, as you pretend, and neglected the philosophical ideal? And why do you
insult wizards, by calling them false sophists, if they are dragged down by the Fates, as
you believe, to their miserable life? And why do you keep in your vocabulary at all such a
word as vice, when any evil man is unjustly condemned by you, since it is by necessity
that he fulfils his destined term? And again on what principle do you solemnly enroll
yourself a disciple of the wonderful teacher Pythagoras, and insist on praising one who,
instead of being a lover of philosophy, was a mere toy in the hands of the Fates? And as
for Phraotes and Iarchas, the philosophers of the Indians, what have they done to win from
you the reputation of being gods, unless the glory they acquired by their culture and
virtue was their own? And in the same way with regard to Nero and Domitian, why do you not
saddle upon the Fates and on Necessity the responsibility for their unbridled insolence,
and acquit them of all responsibility and blame?

94 But if as you say a man who is destined to be a runner, or an archer or a carpenter,
cannot avoid being so, surely also if it has been destined that a man should be a wizard,
and that being his character, a magician or a murderer and a wicked man and a reprobate,
come what will, he must of necessity end by being such a person. Why then do you go
wandering about, preaching the virtues to those who are incapable of reform? Why do you
blame those who are the monsters they are, not of their own choice, but by predestination?
And why too, if it was decreed by fate that you yourself being of a divine nature should
transcend the glory of kings, did you visit schools of teachers and philosophers, and
trouble yourself about Arabians and about the Magi of Babylon, and the wise men of India?
For in any case surely, even without your holding communications with them, the decrees of
the Fates were bound to be fulfilled in your case.

95 And why do you vainly cast before those whom you consider to be gods, your honey-cake
and your frankincense, and putting on the cloak of religion encourage your companions to
be diligent at their prayers? And what do you yourself in your prayers ask of the gods,
inasmuch as you admit that they too are subject to Destiny? Nay you ought to make a clean
sweep of all the other gods, and sacrifice to Necessity alone and to the Fates, and pay
your respects rather to Destiny than to Zeus himself. In that case no doubt you would have
no gods left; and rightly too, seeing that they are not even able to help mankind. And
again, if it were decreed by fate that the citizens of Ephesus should be afflicted with
pestilence, why did you sanction the opposite and so try to thwart destiny? Nay, why did
you dare to transcend destiny, and as it were raise a trophy over her? And again in the
case of the maiden raised to life, the thread of Clotho had reached its limit, and that
being so why did you, when she was dead, bind a fresh thread on the spindle, by coming
forward yourself in the role of the saviour of her life?

96 But perhaps you will say the Fates drove you also on to these courses. Yet you cannot
say that they did so out of respect to your merits; far from it, seeing that before you
passed into this body of yours, you were yourself, by your own account, a sea-faring man
who spent his life upon the waves, and that of necessity, for even this could not have
been otherwise. There is therefore nothing remarkable about your earliest birth, or your
upbringing, or your education in the circle of arts, or in your wise self-discipline in
the prime of your life, or of your training . in philosophy; for it was after all some
necessity of . the Fates that led you to Babylon, and you were as it were driven on to
associate with the sages of India; and it was not your own will and choice, nor a love of
philosophy either, but Fate that led you in her noose to the Naked sages of the Egyptians,
and to Gadeira and to the pillars of Hercules; and it was she who forced you to wander
about the eastern and western oceans, and along with her spindles whirled you idly around.
But if anyone admits, as they must, that his endowment with wisdom was due to these
causes, then it was destiny that was responsible for them;

97 and we must no longer reckon your hero among those who are fond of learning, nor can we
with any pretence of reason admire a philosophy which was provided, not intentionally, but
by necessity, for him. And we shall have to class on one and the same level, according to
him, Pythagoras himself with any pretentious and abject slave, and Socrates himself, who
died in behalf of philosophy with those who accused him and clamoured for his death.
Diogenes, too, with the golden youth of Athens; and, to sum up, the wisest man will not
differ from the most imprudent, nor the unjustest from the justest, nor the most abandoned
from the most temperate, nor the worst of cowards from the greatest of heroes; for they
have all been demonstrated to be playthings of destiny and of the Fates. 98 XLII 99
HOWEVER, the herald of truth will raise his voice against such arguments, and say: O ye
men, mortal and perishable race, whither are you drifting, after drinking the unmixed cup
of ignorance? Be done with it at last, wake up and be sober; and, raising the eyes of your
intelligence, gaze upon the august countenance of truth. It is not lawful for truth to be
in conflict and contradiction with herself; nor that of two pronounced opposites there
should exist but one and the same ground and cause. The universe is ordered by the divine
laws of the providence of God that controls all things, and the peculiar nature of man's
soul renders him master of himself and judge, ruler and lord of himself; and it teaches
him through the laws of nature, and the tenets of philosophy, that of things which exist
some are within our own control, but others not; and within our control is everything
which comes into being in accordance with our will and choice and action, and these are
naturally free, unhindered and unimpeded. But such things as are not in our control are
weak and servile, restrained and alien to ourselves; for example, our bodily processes and
external objects which are both lifeless and destitute of reason, and in their manner of
existence wholly foreign to the proper nature of a reasonable living creature. As for
things which are in our control, each one of us possesses in the will itself alternative
impulses of virtue and vice;

100 and while the principle which controls the universe and governs it executes its rounds
in direct accordance with nature, it is at the same time always accompanied by a justice
which punishes infractions of the divine law; but for the motives on which we act the
responsibility lies not with destiny nor fate, nor with necessity. It lies with him who
makes the choice, and God is not to be blamed. If therefore anyone is so foolhardy as to
controvert the fact of our responsibility, let him be duly exposed; and let him openly
proclaim that lie is an atheist, seeing that he does not recognise either providence or
God or anything else except the Fates and necessity. And let him bare-headed enumerate the
consequences of these doctrines, let him cease to call anyone wise or foolish, just or
unjust, virtuous or vicious, or charlatan; let him deny that anyone is divine in our
humanity, that there is any philosophy, any education, in a word any art of any kind, or
science, let him not call anyone else by nature good or evil, but admit that everything
whatever is whirled round in an eddy of necessity by the spindles of the Fates. Let such a
person then be registered as an atheist and impious man in the tribunal of the pious and
of philosophers.

101 And if anyone under the cloak of other opinions undertakes to entertain ideas of
Providence and of the gods, yet , in addition to these champions the cause of Destiny and
Fate, so upholding conflicting and opposed opinions, let him be classed among the
senseless and condemned to pay the penalty of his folly. This then is so. But if after
this there still remain those who are disposed to register this man's name in the schools
of philosophers, it shall be said that, even if they succeed in clearing him from the
filth thrown by others, nay in disentangling him from the pinchbeck properties in which
the author of this book has wheeled him in upon the stage, we shall raise no objection to
their doing so. At the same time if anyone ventures to overpass the limits of truth and
tries to deify him as no other philosopher has been deified, he will at the best, though
unawares, be rubbing into him the accusation of wizardry; for this work of pretentious
sophistry can only serve, in my opinion, to convict him, and lay him open in the eyes of
all men of sense to this terrible accusation.


AGAINST HIEROCLES
=================

AGAINST HIEROCLES continued

PREFACE

1 Eusebius of Caesarea: Against Hierocles - Preface to the Online Edition The text online
is the translation of F.C. Conybeare, from the Loeb edition of 1912. It is to be found in
volume 2 of Philostratus, Life of Apollonius of Tyana, as an appendix, pp.404-605. The
novel of Philostratus came into prominence in the early years of the fourth century when
Hierocles, governor of Alexandria and then Bithynia, wrote a work 'to the Christians', as
if to a friend, called Philalethes (Lover of Truth - λογος φιλαληθης προς τους
χριστιανους). In this he proposed to set the semi-mythical Apollonius up as a superior
rival to Christ; a tactic drearily familiar from polemic of all kinds down the years
since. Hierocles then persuaded the emperor Diocletian to order the extermination of the
Christians, and himself carried out bestial cruelties against them (see Lactantius, De
Mort. Pers. 16, and Eusebius, Mart. Pal. 5).

2 Eusebius' response discusses the novel of Philostratus in detail. The work seems to have
been written between 311-313, or even earlier. However Eusebius nowhere refers to it in
his subsequent writings. The work is referred to by Photius in his Bibliotheca in the 9th
century as codex 39. The work is preserved the famous 'Arethas' codex, held at the
Bibliothèque Nationale in Paris, where it has the shelfmark Codex Parisinus Graecus 451
(A). This manuscript was copied at the request of Archbishop Arethas of Caesarea in 914,
and was designed as a collection of apologetic works from earliest times down to Eusebius.
(See MSS of Eusebius PE for details). It is often the only manuscript for many of the
second century apologists, although it does not contain Justin, Theophilus, the letter to
Diognetus or Hermias. Also present in Codex Marcianus Graecus 343 (s.XI), a copy of the
text in A.

3 Roger Pearse 19th July 2002.


FRAGMENTS OF MARCELLUS OF ANCYRA
================================

FRAGMENTS OF MARCELLUS OF ANCYRA c. AD 335

Marcellus, bishop of Ancyra, defended the Nicene teaching that the Son is one with the
Father, but his critics said that he made the Son no more than a temporary expression of
the Father. His own book is lost; these are the fragments of it that survive as quotations
in Eusebius of Caesarea’s two books against him and in other writers. The Greek is rough
in places because the digital text is uncorrected.

FRAGMENT 1

That no name given to anyone on earth has become greater than Jesus is shown by the
Gospel, where the angel said to Mariam: “Do not be afraid, for you have found grace with
God. And look, you will conceive in the womb and bear a son, and you will call his name
Jesus. He will be great, and will be called Son of the Most High.” It is also clear from
the prophecy of Zechariah, which long ago prophesied about this name. For he says: “The
Lord showed me Jesus the great priest, standing before the face of the angel of the Lord,
and the devil stood at his right hand to oppose him. And the Lord said to the devil: May
the Lord rebuke you, he who chose Jerusalem.” When did he rebuke him? When he joined the
man he loved to his own Word. “He who chose Jerusalem,” it says, meaning of course this
Jerusalem of ours, about which the apostle says: “But our Jerusalem is above; for she
serves with her children.” For at that time, being in that great Jerusalem, that is, in
our church, he rebuked the devil according to the prophecy, saying, “Get behind me, Satan,
for you are an offense [to me].” This, then, is the great priest, of whom the Jesus of
that time preserved a type. For that man could not have been called a great priest, though
he became glorious in everyone’s eyes, unless Moses had first been named great. (Moses was
not yet great, because he was called “servant” of God, [and was named “god” by God
himself].) If anyone thinks Jesus was called great because he was thought worthy to bring
the people into the holy land and did many other marvelous things, let him know from this
too that the greatness spoken of in the case of Jesus was not distinguished so much by a
deed of that typical kind. It was distinguished by the fact that he was about, a little
later, to bring his own people into this great Jerusalem.

FRAGMENT 2

So the apostle says that he is firstborn not only of the “new creation” but also firstborn
“from the dead,” and, it seems to me, for no other reason than this: that through his
being firstborn “of the dead” we might be able to understand how he is also called
“firstborn of all creation.” For our Lord Jesus Christ was not the first to rise from the
dead. The man raised through the prophet Elisha rose earlier. Lazarus also rose before his
resurrection. And at the time of the passion many bodies of those who had fallen asleep
rose.

FRAGMENT 3

Now let us examine one statement from what Asterius wrote. He said: “For the Father is
one, who begot from himself the only-begotten Word and firstborn of all creation.” He has
joined both terms together, “only-begotten” and “firstborn,” though there is a great
contradiction between these names, as even the very slow can easily see. For clearly the
only-begotten, if he is truly only-begotten, can no longer be firstborn; and the
firstborn, as firstborn, cannot be only-begotten.

FRAGMENT 4

So if he himself is “firstborn of all creation,” and “in him all things were created,” we
should recognize that the apostle is here speaking of his dispensation in the flesh.

FRAGMENT 5

He was therefore named “firstborn of all creation” because of his birth in the flesh, not
because of the first creation, as they themselves suppose.

FRAGMENT 6

So this most holy Word was not called “firstborn of all creation” before he became man.
(How could the one who always is be firstborn of anything?) Rather, it is the first “new
man,” in whom God willed “to sum up all things,” whom the divine Scriptures call
“firstborn of all creation.”

FRAGMENT 7

You hear how it turns out that not only these things, but also the things that already
existed “in the heavens and on the earth,” were “created in him” according to the new
creation.

FRAGMENT 8

And let Asterius not think it unbelievable that a body younger than [the Word] should
[have come to] such great antiquity. Let him consider that, although human flesh is in
fact younger, the Word who deigned to take it up through a pure virgin, and united his own
self to it, made the man created in himself the “firstborn of all creation.” And he also
wills that this man be the beginning of all things, not only those on earth but also those
in heaven.

FRAGMENT 9

So this chapter of Proverbs, where it says “The Lord created me,” is not meant to describe
the beginning of our Savior’s deity, as they think, but the second dispensation, the one
in the flesh. That is why it fittingly speaks of the creation of human flesh.

FRAGMENT 10

So the “creating” refers to his work as a man. That is why Scripture says, “He created me
as the beginning of his ways, for his works.” “He created me” — that is, through the
virgin Mary, through whom God had chosen to unite human flesh to his own Word.

FRAGMENT 11

Since this is so, the next step is to think carefully about this saying from Proverbs: “He
created me as the beginning of his ways, for his works.” For the Lord God truly created,
making what did not exist. The flesh that the Word took on was not in existence; it was
something that did not exist, and he “created it as the beginning of his ways.”

FRAGMENT 12

So it is fitting that, when the old things had passed away and new things were about to
come through the newness of our Savior, our Lord Christ cried out through the prophet,
“The Lord created me as the beginning of his ways.”

FRAGMENT 13

For he has become for us, who are about to live righteously, the way of godliness, the
beginning of all the ways that follow.

FRAGMENT 14

He rightly called our Lord and Savior “the beginning of ways” because he also became the
beginning of the other ways we have, which come after the first way. I mean the teachings
handed down through the holy apostles, who proclaimed this new mystery to us, as the
prophecy says, “with a high proclamation.”

FRAGMENT 15

“He created me,” it says, “as the beginning of his ways, for his works.” What works does
it mean? The ones the Savior speaks of: “My Father is still working until now, and I am
working.” And again he says, “I have finished the work that you gave me.”

FRAGMENT 16

For before the facts proved it, who would have believed that the Word of God, born through
a virgin, would take up our flesh and show in it all the fullness of deity bodily?

FRAGMENT 17

“Before the age he founded me.” He calls this a foundation: the plan of his life in the
flesh, which was determined beforehand. So the apostle says, “For no one can lay any other
foundation than the one that is laid, which is Jesus Christ.” Here he mentions one age,
from which he says the things concerning Christ were founded, although many ages had
already gone by. David likewise said, “the one who exists before the ages.”

FRAGMENT 18

Asterius said that the Word came into being before the ages, but the very text proves him
wrong. So he misses the point and also the wording. For if Proverbs says, “Before the age
he founded me,” how can he say that the Word came into being before the ages? To be
founded before the age is one thing, and to have come into being before the ages is
another.

FRAGMENT 19

Just as almighty God long ago determined the church beforehand, so he determined
beforehand the plan of Christ in the flesh. Through Christ he determined beforehand to
call the race of the godly “to adoption as sons,” having first laid the foundation in his
own mind. For this reason the apostle, by the Holy Spirit, speaks plainly about the Son
who was determined beforehand, saying: [text corrupt; the quotation is missing].

FRAGMENT 20

So even if this new mystery appeared at the very end of the times, it was nevertheless
determined beforehand before this age. Therefore the prophet rightly said, “Before the age
he founded me.” He means the flesh, because of its fellowship with his own true Son, the
Word.

FRAGMENT 21

Then it says, “In the beginning, before he made the earth.” What earth is this, if not our
flesh, which after the disobedience became earth again? For it says, “You are earth, and
to earth you will return.” This flesh had to receive healing, by somehow sharing in the
Holy [text breaks off].

FRAGMENT 22

Then it says, “Before he made the depths.” Here the prophet, speaking in the manner of a
proverb, means the hearts of the saints, which hold the gift of the Spirit in their own
depths.

FRAGMENT 23

What then is this next saying: “Before the springs of the waters came forth”? He says
these are the holy apostles. The book of Exodus shows us this mystery, since it long ago
foretold the types of the apostles. For since the apostles were twelve in number, it
mentions twelve springs.

FRAGMENT 24

So it is fitting that the Lord did not speak about his birth in the flesh when he said
through the prophet Solomon, “Before the springs of the waters came forth.”

FRAGMENT 25

For this is how the Savior spoke to the holy springs: “Go and make disciples of all the
nations.”

FRAGMENT 26

It is clear from every side that the prophet figuratively named the holy apostles
“springs.”

FRAGMENT 27

So then, since we have spoken about the points that came earlier, it follows that we
should fill in what remains. What remains is the part about the mountains and hills. For
he says, “Before the mountains were settled, and before all the hills, he begets me.” By
mountains and hills he means the apostles and the successors of the apostles. In this
figurative way he points to their righteous way of life, which sets them apart from other
people.

FRAGMENT 28

For this reason, then, it seems good to me to go through now what I have not yet covered.
Most of what he wrote has already become clear to us from what has been said. He says,
“From the womb, before the morning star, I begot you.” He supposed that if the preposition
“from” were stolen away, the text would fall in with the opinion of the heresy. So he
removed the most important part of the syllable, and wanted to indicate his ancient
[begetting again].

FRAGMENT 29

How then do these men, who are “full of deceit and trickery,” to use the apostle’s words,
carry this saying over to what they suppose was his first creation? And this when David
had spoken plainly about his birth according to the flesh!

FRAGMENT 30

For there was darkness before, because of ignorance of true godliness, and the day was
about to appear (“I am the day,” he says). So it is fitting that he names the star “the
dawn-bearer.”

FRAGMENT 31

Therefore, since the prophet David fittingly named the star that signals the day “the
dawn-bearer,” it is no longer right to ask who this dawn-bearer is. It was the star that
appeared at that time, the one that brought and showed the day to the [Magi]. So it is
plain that the words “Before the morning star I begot you” were spoken by the almighty
Master about the Word who was born through the virgin together with human flesh. The
gospel too makes this clear: first our Master was born through the virgin, and afterward
the star appeared that showed the day.

FRAGMENT 32

For from the divine sayings, how will they be able to show us that there is one unbegotten
and one begotten in the way they themselves believe he was begotten? Neither prophets nor
evangelists nor apostles ever said this.

FRAGMENT 33

Now the holy apostle John, [the Lord’s] disciple, became a true witness to the Word’s
eternity when he spoke of it, saying, “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was
with God, and the Word was God.” Here he mentions no begetting of the Word at all. Instead
he uses three testimonies in a row, and so confirmed that the Word was in the beginning.

FRAGMENT 34

I will remind you of what he himself wrote, siding with what Eusebius wrote badly, so that
you may know that he clearly departs from his earlier promise. For he wrote in these very
words: “The main point of the letter is to refer the begetting of the Son to the Father’s
will, and not to present God’s begetting as a [passion]. This is what the wisest of the
Fathers declared in their own writings, guarding against the impiety of the heretics.
These heretics falsely claimed that God’s begetting of children is bodily and subject to
passion, and they laid down as doctrine that there were emissions.”

FRAGMENT 35

So Asterius, wanting to defend Eusebius, who wrote badly, mentioned the nature of the
Father and the nature of the unbegotten, and so became his own accuser. For it would have
been much better to leave the depth of Eusebius’s thought, as he himself wrote it, lying
unexamined in its brevity, than to use this kind of interpretation and bring the
craftiness of the writing into the light.

FRAGMENT 36

To say that he was begotten before the ages seems to be a consistent statement. For an
offspring is what comes forth from the father who sent it forth. But the other point has
not been taken up by him soundly or piously. For to say that the one who came forth from
him is not the Word, and that this is the true manner of begetting, but simply and only a
Son, usually gives hearers an impression of a human form.

FRAGMENT 37

Paulinus did not write this to remind us of the gospel’s teaching. He admitted that some
are moved in this direction by themselves, while others have been led this way by reading
the men mentioned above. Then at the end, adding what was like a crowning flourish to his
proof, he put his signature to sayings of Origen in his own letter, as if Origen could
persuade better than the evangelists and apostles. These are the sayings: “It is time to
take up again the subject of Father, Son and Holy Spirit, and to go through a few of the
things that were left out then. Concerning the Father: being indivisible and without
parts, he becomes Father of the Son, not by projecting him, as some suppose. For if the
Son is a projection of the Father and an offspring from him, like the offspring of living
creatures, then the one who projects and the one projected must be a body.”

FRAGMENT 38

Origen wrote these things. He did not want to learn from the holy prophets and apostles
about the eternity of the Word. He gave himself over to his own speculation, and he
presumes in vain to tell a second account of the Word.

FRAGMENT 39

It is plain that Origen, in writing such things, was using doctrines of his own, because
he often overturns his own statements. So it is fitting to recall what he says about God
in another passage. He writes as follows: “God did not begin to be Father after being held
back, as human beings who become fathers are, because they are not yet able to be fathers.
For if God is always perfect, and he has the power to be a Father, and it is good that he
be the Father of such a Son, why does he put it off and deprive himself of what is good?
And, so to speak, why is he not Father from the time he is able to be?” And the same must
be said about the Holy Spirit. So when Origen wrote this too, how is it that the blessed
Paulinus, following him, thought it not safe to conceal it, and yet used it against his
opponents to support his own opinions, when I would say that not even Origen himself could
give an account of them?

FRAGMENT 40

Paulinus, this man’s father, is persuaded by these sayings and does not hesitate to say
and write the same things. Sometimes he calls Christ a second god, and says he became god
in a more human way. Sometimes he declares him to be a created thing. That this is so, he
once said to us as well, when he passed through Ancyra: that Christ was a created thing.

FRAGMENT 41

And for this reason he does not call himself Son of God, but everywhere calls himself Son
of Man. By such a confession he means to bring it about that the human being, through
fellowship with him, becomes by adoption a son of God. And after the end of his work he is
again united with God as the Word. So he fulfills what the apostle said beforehand: “Then
he himself will be subjected to the one who subjected all things to him, so that God may
be all in all.” For at that time he will be what he was before.

FRAGMENT 42

For the Word “was in the beginning,” being nothing other than Word. But the human being
who was united to the Word, who did not exist before, became a human being, as John
teaches us when he says, “And the Word became flesh.” For this reason, then, Scripture
appears to mention the Word alone. Whether the divine Scripture mentions the name Jesus or
Christ, it seems to be naming the Word of God as he is with human flesh. But if someone
claims he can show the name Christ or Jesus used of the Word alone even before the new
covenant, he will find it said prophetically, as is clear from this: “The kings of the
earth stood by,” it says, “and the rulers were gathered together against the Lord and
against his Christ.”

FRAGMENT 43

So it is clear from every side that no other name fits the eternity of the Word except the
one that the most holy disciple and apostle of God, John, gave at the beginning of the
Gospel. After the taking up of the flesh he is proclaimed as Christ and Jesus, and as
life, way, day, resurrection, door, bread, and whatever else the divine Scriptures may
call him. Yet this does not mean we should be ignorant of his first name, that he was
Word. For this reason the most holy evangelist and disciple of the Lord, fully alert in
the Spirit, recalled the beginning from above and nothing more recent. He said, “In the
beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” He did this to
show that any name that is new and more recent came to him from the new and recent
dispensation in the flesh.

FRAGMENT 44

Sabellius also slipped away from the right faith, and he knew neither God nor God’s holy
Word accurately. For whoever has not known the Word has not known the Father either. For
“no one knows the Father,” he says, “except the Son,” that is, the Word; for it is the
Word who gives the knowledge of the Father through himself. So too, speaking to those Jews
who at that time thought they knew God while rejecting his Word, through whom alone God is
known, he said, “No one fully knows the Father except the Son, and anyone to whom the Son
wishes to reveal him.” Since it was impossible to know God in any other way, he teaches
that people know him through his own Word. So that man also went astray, because he did
not accurately know the Father and the Father’s Word.

FRAGMENT 45

So let him learn too that the Word of God has come, not a word named so only in a loose
sense, as they themselves say, but one who is truly the Word.

FRAGMENT 46

He was not named Word in a loose sense (though those who teach otherwise and lie should
burst with rage), but he is Word in the proper and true sense.

FRAGMENT 47

***** But those who teach them seem ashamed to mention the Word, whom all the divine
Scriptures proclaim in this way. David says of him, “By the word of the Lord the heavens
were [established],” and again the same writer says, “He sent out his word and healed
them.” Solomon says, “Evil people will seek me, and they will not find me. For they hated
wisdom, and they did not choose the word of the Lord.” Isaiah said, “For out of Zion will
go forth a law, and the word of the Lord out of Jerusalem.” And again Jeremiah says, “The
wise were put to shame, and were terrified and were caught, because they rejected the word
of the Lord.” The prophet Hosea also said, “They hated the one who reproves in the gates,
and they detested a holy word.” Micah likewise, also mentioning the Word, said, “Out of
Zion will go forth a law, and the word of the Lord from Jerusalem.”

FRAGMENT 48

So before he came down and was born through the virgin, he was only Word. For what else
was it that, before taking human flesh, came down “in the last days,” as he himself has
written, and was born of the virgin? It was nothing other than the Word.

FRAGMENT 49

It is reasonable, then, that before the coming down he was what we have often said: Word.
But after the coming down and the taking of flesh he received various titles, since “the
Word became flesh.”

FRAGMENT 50

For what else was the hidden mystery but the mystery concerning the Word? This mystery was
so hidden “in God” before that no one of the earlier people clearly knew the things
concerning the Word, but now we enjoy the riches “of the glory” and the hidden mystery.

FRAGMENT 51

But John, the holy apostle and disciple of the Lord, teaches clearly and explicitly at the
beginning of the Gospel, as of something previously unknown among people, and names him
the Word of the Almighty. He said this: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was
with God, and the Word was God.” He uses more than one testimony to show the eternity of
the Word.

FRAGMENT 52

By saying “In the beginning was the Word,” he shows that the Word was in the Father in
power. For God is the beginning of everything that has come into being, “from whom are all
things.” By saying “and the Word was with God,” he shows that the Word was with God in
active operation. For “all things came into being through him, and apart from him not one
thing came into being.” By saying that the Word was God, he shows that the Godhead is not
divided, since the Word is in the Father and the Father is in the Word. For he says, “The
Father is in me, and I in the Father.”

FRAGMENT 53

[How great], then, is the harmony of the Holy Spirit, who through many different persons
bears witness to the eternity of the Word! And for this reason John begins from the
eternity of the Word, saying, “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God,
and the Word was God.” By using three testimonies in succession he means to show the
eternity of the Word.

FRAGMENT 54

What, then, was this that came down, before he became man? It was, he says, surely Spirit.
For if anyone wanted to say anything other than this, the angel who spoke to the virgin
would not agree with him: “The Holy Spirit will come upon you.” And if he says it was
Spirit, let him hear the Savior saying, “God is Spirit.”

FRAGMENT 55

But it seems the Father is in the Word, even if Asterius and those who think as he does do
not agree. This is what the inspired prophet Isaiah holds, who says by the Holy Spirit:
“And they will worship you, and they will pray to you, because God is in you, and there is
no other besides you. For you are God.” You see how he pulls up by the root the crafty
mischief of those who teach something different.

FRAGMENT 56

Here too the prophet speaks in the same way about the Word, who took on our flesh.

FRAGMENT 57

A spirit could never be a maker of shadow. That God himself is spirit, the Savior said:
“God is spirit.” And that God is light, he himself teaches us when he says, “I am the
light.”

FRAGMENT 58

For who among the holy angels or righteous men was trustworthy enough to cancel the
penalty that had been fixed against him from the person of God, if not the Word himself,
who was present with him and formed with him? To him the Father said, “Let us make man in
our image and likeness.” There was no other God able to form together with him. For he
says, “I am God, the first, and I am after these things, and apart from me there is no
other God.” So there was no younger god, and no other god “after these things” who was
able to work together with God. But suppose someone used a small, human example like our
own, to examine the divine work as in a picture. Take a skilled sculptor who wants to
shape a statue. First he considers its patterns and features within himself. Then he
thinks out how broad and how long it should be to look right, and he examines the
proportion of the whole in each individual part. He prepares the suitable bronze, sketches
the coming statue in his mind beforehand, and thinks he sees it with the mind. He is aware
that his word works along with him, the word by which he reasons and by which he is
accustomed to do everything. For nothing happens without a word. When he begins this work
on material things, he urges himself on as though he were another person, saying, “Come,
let us make, let us shape a statue.” In the same way God, the Master of all, when he made
the living statue from the earth, urged on not someone else but his own Word, saying, “Let
us make man.” Yet this was not in the same manner as the other things, for the whole
creation came into being by the Word.

FRAGMENT 59

For God did not need preparation as a final step, such as material or anything else of a
human kind, for the construction. He needed only this preparation in his own mind. Since,
then, it was impossible for God to think out the construction of heaven apart from the
Word and the wisdom that belongs to the Word, it is fitting that he said, “When he
prepared heaven, I was present with him.”

FRAGMENT 60

For before the world existed, the Word was in the Father. But when almighty God set out to
make everything in the heavens and on the earth, the coming into being of the world needed
an active working. For this reason, since there was nothing else but God (for it is agreed
that all things were made by him), then the Word came forth and became the maker of the
world. He had already been preparing it beforehand inside, in thought. The prophet Solomon
teaches us this when he says, “When he prepared heaven, I was present with him,” and “When
he set the springs of what is under heaven on a firm footing, when he made the foundations
of the earth strong, I was beside him, fitting things together. I was the one in whom he
delighted.” For the Father naturally rejoiced, making all things with wisdom and power
through the Word.

FRAGMENT 61

For just as everything that has come into being was made by the Father through the Word,
so also what is spoken by the Father is made known through the Word. For this reason the
most holy Moses here names the Word an angel: he appeared for no other purpose than to
announce to Moses the things he knew would benefit the sons of Israel. And he knew it
would benefit them to think that he is God. So he said to him, “I am the One who is,” in
order to teach that there is no other God apart from himself. This is easy, I think, for
those who think soundly to grasp even from a small and humble example like our own. For no
one can separate a man’s word from him in power and substance. The word is one and the
same with the man, and it is separated from him by nothing else than the activity of the
action.

FRAGMENT 62

Here the Father says to Moses, “I am the One who is,” and he plainly says it through the
Word. Wherever the Father speaks, he is clearly seen speaking through the Word. We can see
this from our own case too, if we may compare small things with great and divine ones. We
also say and do everything we wish, as far as we are able, by means of our own word.

FRAGMENT 63

Whom, then, does Asterius suppose is the one who says “I am the One who is”: the Son or
the Father? For he looked to the human flesh that the Word of God took up, and because of
it he formed his picture in this way. He said there are two hypostases, one of the Father
and one of the Son. In this way he separates the Son of God from the Father, just as
someone might separate a son of man from his natural father.

FRAGMENT 64

If, then, he says that the Father, separating himself from the Son, said this to Moses, he
will be admitting that the Son is not God. For how can anyone who says “I am the One who
is” avoid agreeing that he calls himself “the One who is” in contrast to what is not? But
if he claims that it is the Son, divided off in hypostasis, who says “I am the One who
is,” then the very same thing will be thought to be said about the Father. Each of these
positions is impious.

FRAGMENT 65

So I will begin with the letter he wrote, and answer each of the points that were not
rightly written. He wrote that we should believe in God the Father almighty, and in his
only-begotten Son, God, our Lord Jesus Christ, and in the Holy Spirit. And he says he
learned this pattern of godliness from the divine Scriptures. When he says this, I welcome
his words wholeheartedly, for this is the common pattern of godliness for all of us: to
believe in the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. But when he misses the mark about the
divine power, and in a rather human way, by some artful speculation, calls the Father
“Father” and the Son “Son,” I can no longer praise such speculation as safe. For through
such speculation the heresy they are now devising grows. I think it is easy to show this
plainly from his own words. For he said that one must hold that the Father is truly
Father, the Son truly Son, and the Holy Spirit likewise.

FRAGMENT 66

For it is impossible for three hypostases to be united in a unity, unless the Trinity
first has its beginning from a unity. The holy Paul said that those things are summed up
in a unity which differ from God in nothing as to oneness. For the Word and the Spirit
differ from God only in oneness.

FRAGMENT 67

Consider, then, whether the Word is seen to have come out from the Father himself and to
have come to us. As Asterius also confessed, the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father. And
again the Savior says about the Spirit that he will not speak from himself, but will speak
whatever he hears, and will announce to you the things that are coming. “That one will
glorify me, because he will take from what is mine and will announce it to you.” Is it not
clear and plain here, in a mystery beyond words, that the unity is seen being extended
into a Trinity, yet in no way allowing itself to be divided? For if the Word proceeds from
the Father, and the Spirit too is confessed to proceed from the Father, and again the
Savior says about the Spirit, “That one will take from what is mine and will announce it
to you,” is it not obvious that some hidden mystery is being uncovered? For how could he
say about the Spirit at one time that he proceeds from the Father, and at another, “That
one will take from what is mine and will announce it to you,” and again, after breathing
on the disciples, say, “Receive the Holy Spirit,” unless the indivisible unity is extended
into a Trinity? For if the Spirit proceeds from the Father, how does the Son promise that
he will receive this service from him? If they were two separate persons, as Asterius
said, then one of two things must follow. Either the Spirit, proceeding from the Father,
does not need the service of the Son (for everything that proceeds from the Father must be
perfect, needing no help from another). Or, if he receives from the Son and serves out
grace from the Son’s power, he no longer proceeds from the Father.

FRAGMENT 68

But if the Gospel says that he breathed on the disciples and said, “Receive the Holy
Spirit,” it is clear that the Spirit came forth from the Word. How then, if the Spirit
proceeded from the Word, does the same Spirit again proceed from the Father?

FRAGMENT 69

So he did not speak rightly or fittingly when he said that there are three hypostases, and
he said it not once only but a second time as well.

FRAGMENT 70

We know that the economy in the flesh differs in the case of the man, but we believe that
the eternity in the Spirit is united to the Father.

FRAGMENT 71

If the Spirit alone were the subject of inquiry, the Word would naturally appear to be one
and the same with God. But if the addition of the flesh in the case of the Savior is also
considered, the Godhead seems to be extended only in activity. So it is natural that it is
truly an undivided monad.

FRAGMENT 72

Asterius declared that the Father and the Son are one and the same only in this respect,
that they agree in everything. For he spoke thus: “And because of the exact agreement in
all words and works, ‘I and the Father are one.’”

FRAGMENT 73

If then he himself says, “I came forth from the Father and have come,” and again, “The
word which you hear is not mine, but the Father’s who sent me,” and “All that the Father
has is mine,” it is clear that he was naturally also saying, “The Father is in me and I in
the Father.” The point is that the Word who says this is in God, and the Father is in the
Word, because the Word is the power of the Father. For a trustworthy witness has called
him “the power of God and the wisdom of God.” So the Savior does not say “I and the Father
are one” because of exact agreement in all words and works, as Asterius said. He says it
because it is impossible for God’s Word to be separated from God, or for God to be
separated from his own Word. Now if Asterius thinks the Savior said this because of
agreement in everything, and does not want to learn the truth by attending to the second
economy, then we must remind him how at times a lack of agreement can be seen, at least in
outward appearance. The written words teach us this. What agreement was there at the time
of the passion, when he said, “Father, if it is possible, let this cup pass,” and then
added, “Yet not as I will, but as you will”? To say “let this cup pass” was first of all
not the mark of one who agrees. And what follows seems to have nothing to do with
agreement either, for he says, “Not my will, but yours, Father, be done.” You hear how the
text shows, in outward appearance, a lack of agreement: one willing, the other [not
willing]. That the Father willed is clear from the fact that what he willed came about.
That the Son did not will it is clear from the fact that he asks to be spared. And again
he says, “I do not seek my own will, but the will of the Father who sent me.” How then can
Asterius say that the Savior said “I and the Father are one” because of agreement in
everything?

FRAGMENT 74

74a How can the Son have agreement with the Father, or the Father with the Son, when the
Son says, “All that the Father has is mine”? To say “All that the Father has is mine” is
plainly the Son claiming more than the Father. For that reason he passed over saying “All
that the Father has is shared,” and said instead, “All that the Father has is mine.” Yet
it is not the way of someone who is merely in agreement to speak like this; he would say,
“All that the Father has is common property.” After all, the Acts of the Apostles praises
the agreement of those who were then coming to the faith, and says that “all things were
common to them.” If that is what we ought to think of human beings who are able to agree,
how much more should the Father and the Son have shared everything, if they were divided
into two [subsistences]! But as it stands, in saying “All that the Father has is mine,”
the Son appears to have more than the Father. And in claiming that he is not even master
of his own word, but that the Father is master of this too, since he says, “The word which
you hear is not mine, but the Father’s who sent me,” he shows the Father taking away what
belongs to the Son. On Asterius’s view, then, both statements appear to be inconsistent.
For someone who agrees with another ought not to snatch away what belongs to the other,
but ought to count what belongs to each as shared. So when we look at the human flesh, we
might find the Savior saying “I and the Father are one” in the way Asterius has written.
But the Savior did not say “I and the Father are one” because of exact agreement in all
words and works, as Asterius has written.

74b For if that were so, he would surely have said, “I and the Father agree with each
other in everything.” But as it is, he said, “I and the Father are one.” So if there was
some disagreement in those matters (the Master must speak the truth), then the Savior must
have known exactly that whenever he says “I and the Father are one,” he is not saying it
with a view to the man whom he took up, but with a view to the Word who came forth from
the Father. For if any disagreement seems to exist, it must be attributed to the weakness
of the flesh, which the Word did not have before but took up. But if unity is spoken of,
this is seen to belong to the Word. This is why he said, rightly, not only “I and the
Father are one,” but also, “I have been with you so long, Philip, and you say, ‘Show me
the Father.’” Clearly he meant that this is not seen with these eyes, but with the eyes of
the mind, which can see what belongs to the mind. For both the Father and his Word are
invisible to the eyes of the flesh. So he did not say this to Philip because of agreement
in everything.

FRAGMENT 75

For he himself confesses it when he says, “The Father is in me, and I am in the Father.”
That he did not say this carelessly or without purpose is clear from another saying of the
apostle. The one who said, “One Lord, one faith, one baptism,” also said, “One God and
Father, who is over all and through all and in all.” You see that here too he does not
depart from agreement, and here too the same thing holds. For having said “one Lord,” he
then said “one God,” so that when he mentions the one Lord he includes the Father, and
when he speaks of the Father he testifies that the Word of God is not outside him.

FRAGMENT 76

76a And if you also want to hear another prophecy from the same prophet confirming that
God is one for us, he says: “I am God, the first, and I am for the things that are
coming.” The word “I” points to one person, and the two expressions together signify for
us one person. For after saying “I,” he adds “am,” so that through the two parts of
speech, the pronoun and the verb, the oneness of the Godhead is attested. If more
testimony is needed, I will again bring the same prophet alongside him, saying: “I am
first, and I am after these things, and apart from me there is no God.” If Asterius
supposes that the Son of the Father is divided from him in substance, as a son of man is,
because he is offended by the human flesh which the Son took on for our sake, let him show
us who it is that says these things. For here too the statement belongs to one person.
Who, then, is the one who says, “There is no God apart from me”? Let him also listen to
another prophecy that says, “There is no righteous one and savior apart from me.” If he
thinks there are two gods, he must admit that the other is neither righteous nor a savior.
But if he is neither righteous nor a savior, how can he still be God? For [the one
speaking] declares himself to be righteous and a savior. And again he says: “Before me no
other came to be, and after me there will be none. I am God, and there will be no savior
besides me.” And if he wishes to hear yet another prophetic saying, perhaps spoken against
him and those who hold the same view of the Godhead as he does, let him listen to Isaiah
himself saying: “Repent, you who are going astray; turn back in your heart, and remember
the former things from of old, for I am God, and there is none besides me.”

76b He did not say, “I am God,” but “I am *the* God,” so that by adding the article he
might show plainly that he is God. And what of the prophet Hosea? Does he not bear the
same witness, saying: “I brought you up out of Egypt, and you shall know no God besides
me, and there is no savior except me”? And again Malachi says: “Did not one God create
you? Is there not one Father of you all?” But Asterius will perhaps say that David said
nothing about this, even though David, next to Moses, is the oldest of the prophets, and
that for this reason he is in doubt whether we should think there are two gods divided in
substance, or not. So that he may not say this, I think it fitting to show that David also
says the same as the holy men already mentioned. He says: “Listen, my people, and I will
speak to you; Israel, and I will testify to you. If you will listen to me, there shall be
no new god in you, and you shall not worship a foreign god. For I am the Lord your God.”
The one who points to himself and says “I am” – is it not clear that he is saying that
there is only one God, that is, himself?

FRAGMENT 77

What then? If we do not attend to the Spirit and suppose that the unity is not divided in
power, will we not be sinning, when the word teaches us plainly: “You shall worship the
Lord your God, and serve him alone”? The Gospel according to Mark proclaims the same
thing. A scribe came to him and asked which was the first of the commandments, and he
answered him: “The first of all is: Hear, Israel, the Lord our God is one Lord; and you
shall love the Lord your God with all your soul and with all your strength. This is the
first, and the second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself. There is no
other commandment greater than these.” And the scribe said to him: “Well said, Teacher;
you have said truly that God is one, and there is no other besides him.” Now the scribe,
who seemed to have learned reverence for God from the law, is shown praising the Savior’s
saying, “Hear, Israel, the Lord your God is one,” and confirming as it were with an oath
that it was well spoken. For he says, “You have spoken truly that God is one and there is
no other besides him.” But those who boast that they know the mysteries of the new
covenant want to invent a second God, separated from the Father in substance and in power.

FRAGMENT 78

That the divine Scripture knows how to call the single One “Lord” and “God” has already
become clear from what was said above, where God spoke to his servant Moses: “And God said
again to Moses: Thus you shall say to the sons of Israel: The Lord, the God of your
fathers, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob, has sent me to you.”
You see how, showing us one person here, he calls that same one both Lord and God. Again,
in the same way, Scripture says: “And the Lord spoke all these words, saying: I am the
Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery. You
shall have no other gods besides me.” You hear how, by the pronoun, he declares that there
is only one God. And a little later you hear him say, “I am the Lord your God,” calling
himself both Lord and God. What do we learn from another passage? “And you shall know
today, and you shall not be turned aside in your mind, that the Lord your God, he is God
in heaven above and on the earth below, and there is none besides him.” And again in the
same Deuteronomy it says: “Hear, Israel: the Lord our God is one Lord; and you shall love
the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.” And
again in the same book: “See, see that I am, and there is no god besides me. I will kill
and I will make alive; I will strike and I will heal.” How then did Asterius, who
professes to approach the holy Scriptures simply and with fear, fail to notice this
passage, which says, “The Lord your God, he is God in heaven above and on the earth below,
and there is no other besides him,” and that “he is one” and “besides him there is no
other”?

FRAGMENT 79

How then will the holy prophet Jeremiah not plainly refute him for teaching something
different? For prophesying to us about the Savior, he spoke thus: “This is our God; no
other will be reckoned alongside him. He found out every way of knowledge, and gave it to
Jacob his servant and to Israel whom he loved. After this he appeared on earth, and lived
among human beings.”

FRAGMENT 80

So even if someone says that there is a first God and a second, as Narcissus wrote in
these very words (for he does not allow that the one who said, “Let us make man in our
image and likeness”...), we have heard in part, from the Lord himself bearing witness and
from the holy Scriptures, that he and his Father are two. If then Narcissus wants on this
ground to divide the Word from the Father in power, let him know that the prophet who
wrote it down, as though God had said, “Let us make man in our image and likeness,”
himself wrote, “And God made man.”

FRAGMENT 81

I came across a letter of Narcissus, who presides over Neronias, which he wrote to a
certain Chrestus, Euphronius and Eusebius. In it, the bishop Hosius had asked him whether
he would say, as Eusebius of Palestine says, that there are two substances. From what he
wrote, I learned that he answered that he believes there are three substances.

FRAGMENT 82

He dared to divide the Word of God and to name the Word another God, standing apart from
the Father in substance and power. How far into blasphemy he has fallen, one can easily
learn from the very words he wrote. He wrote in these very words: “Surely the image and
the one whose image it is are not thought of as one and the same; rather there are two
substances, two things, and two powers, as there are also that many names.”

FRAGMENT 83

The apostle writes such things about the faith of the Galatians. But Eusebius twists the
apostle’s meaning, the reason for which the apostle said what he did, namely, “My
children, with whom I am again in labor until Christ is formed in you.” He attacked the
Galatians as though they did not hold a right opinion about God. For the apostle was truly
in a sharp and bitter labor, because he knew that the Galatians did not think about
godliness as that man does, nor speak of two substances, two things, two powers and two
gods.

FRAGMENT 84

Eusebius of Caesarea wrote in the same way. He holds the same opinion about gods as
Paulinus and those outside the church. For he wrote not as though there were only one God,
but as though the only true God were one among several. Having learned this from him,
Paulinus, the father of Asterius, also supposed that there were younger gods.

FRAGMENT 85

How, then, have these men not turned onto the same wretched road as those outside the
church, when they set out to teach and write the same things? Eusebius has spoken like
Valentinus and Hermes, and Narcissus like Marcion and Plato.

FRAGMENT 86

But Asterius abandoned the true knowledge, and even now he has offered us a contrived
speculation. Since he cannot build his own purpose from the divine Scriptures, he runs
back to the “wisest” fathers, as he thinks them, and speaks of what the wisest of the
fathers declared in their own writings. Asterius says that his fathers made a declaration
and wrote a doctrine about God out of their own choice. For the word “doctrine” belongs to
human counsel and opinion. That this is so, the medical profession with its “doctrines”
bears sufficient witness to us, and so do the so-called “doctrines” of the philosophers.
And that even now the decrees of the senate are called “doctrines of the senate,” I think
no one is unaware.

FRAGMENT 87

For he wished to speak in defense of Eusebius, who wrote the letter badly. First, he said,
Eusebius did not compose the letter by setting out the doctrine in the manner of a
teacher, for the writing was not directed to the church or to the uninformed, but to the
blessed Paulinus. He called him “blessed” for this reason, that Paulinus held the same
opinion as Asterius. Since, then, we have learned who Asterius’s wisest fathers are, I
think it follows that we should also name the man who became the teacher of Paulinus and
of the others. For from the letter of Paulinus, the one who was his teacher too would
become plain to us.

FRAGMENT 88

And yet, if one must tell the truth about Origen, it is right to say this: he had only
just withdrawn from the studies of philosophy and chosen to engage with the divine words
before he had an exact grasp of the Scriptures. Because of the great ambition of his
outside education, he began to write sooner than he should have, and he was led astray by
the arguments of philosophy, and because of them he wrote some things badly. This is
clear. For while he still had the doctrines of Plato in mind, and Plato’s differences of
first principles, he wrote a book “On First Principles,” and gave that title to the work.
The greatest proof of this is that he took neither the opening of his words nor the title
of his book from anywhere else, but from words spoken by Plato. For he began to write like
this: “Those who have believed and been persuaded.” You would find this saying worded
exactly so in Plato’s Gorgias.

FRAGMENT 89

I ask those of the saints who read this, since they have truly received what are, as it
were, the seeds and beginnings of this exposition, to add more proofs to what has been
said, so that the purposes of those who pervert the faith may be exposed still more. For
truly “they have forsaken” God who begot them, “and dug cisterns for themselves.”

FRAGMENT 90

I think it follows that I should say a few words about the image. For Asterius wrote: “The
one begotten from him is another, ‘who is the image of the invisible God.’” Asterius
mentions the image of the invisible God for this reason: to teach that God differs from
the Word as much as a man is thought to differ from his own image.

FRAGMENT 91

For this reason he reasonably adds, “who is the image of the invisible God.” When did he
become an image? Was it when he took up the molded creature, made “according to the image
and likeness”? For before that, as I have often said, he was nothing other than Word.

FRAGMENT 92

It is therefore plain that before he took up our body, the Word, in himself, was not the
image of the invisible God. For an image must be seen, so that through the image what
until then was not seen can be seen.

FRAGMENT 93

How then did Asterius write that the Word of God is the image of the invisible God? For
images show the things they are images of, even when those things are absent, so that the
absent one seems to appear through them. But if God is invisible and it follows that the
Word is invisible too, how can the Word, in himself, be the image of the invisible God,
when he himself is invisible? For it is impossible for what is not visible ever to be made
manifest through what is invisible.

FRAGMENT 94

So it is clear from every side that the holy apostle called the flesh which the Word took
on “the image of the invisible God,” so that through what is visible the invisible might
also be seen. “He is,” says the apostle, “the image of the invisible God.” Plainly he
means now, when the Word has taken the flesh that was made in the image of God, and has
become the true image of the invisible God. For if we have been counted worthy to know the
Word of God through this image, we ought to believe the Word himself when he speaks
through the image: “I and the Father are one.” For no one can know either the Word or the
Father of the Word apart from this image.

FRAGMENT 95

So too the apostle says, as we said a little earlier, “He emptied himself, taking the form
of a servant.” By the form of a servant he means for us the human flesh, which our Lord
and God shaped by his own wisdom when he said, “Let us make man in our image and
likeness.” He rightly calls human flesh an image, for he knew precisely that it would be,
a little later, the image of his own Word.

FRAGMENT 96

What, then, will he say to this? I do not think he has anything to say about it. Nor do I
think he would confess openly and plainly, even to others, what he keeps hidden in his own
mind, as one can plainly learn from what he has written. For he says that the Father who
begot his only-begotten Word, the firstborn of all creation, is one being and the Son
another: alone begot alone, perfect begot perfect, king begot king, Lord begot Lord, God
begot God, the unvarying image of his being, will, glory and power. These very words
clearly expose his worthless opinion about the Godhead. For how can the one who was
begotten as Lord and God, as he himself said earlier, be the image of God? An image of God
is one thing, and God is another. So if he is an image, he is not Lord or God, but the
image of the Lord and God. But if he is truly Lord and God, then the Lord and God can no
longer be the image of the Lord and God.

FRAGMENT 97

So by his own account he does not want him to be any of the things he listed before, for
he says he is the image of all of them. Then if he is the image of the being, he cannot be
being itself. If he is the image of the will, he cannot be will itself. If he is the image
of the power, he is no longer power. And if he is the image of the glory, he is no longer
glory. For an image is not an image of itself, but of something other than itself.

FRAGMENT 98

For look: what grieves us about Asterius is not so much that he was led to write such
things, but that some of those who are thought to preside over the church have forgotten
the apostolic tradition. They have preferred things from outside the divine writings, and
have dared to write and teach things that are no less bound up with the error of those
already mentioned.

FRAGMENT 99

They should have cried out the opposite to the Lord, with tears and mourning: “We have
sinned, we have acted impiously, we have broken the law, and we have done evil in your
sight; and now that we have repented, we ask to receive your kindness.” This was fitting
for him, and it was to his advantage to say it, because of God’s measureless goodness and
kindness. And yet it would have followed that God, who cares for us with both kindness and
justice, would reply: “If an enemy had reproached me, I would have borne it, and if one
who hates me had spoken boastfully against me, I would have hidden from him. But you, a
man of like soul, my leader and my familiar friend, you who shared sweet food with me, we
walked together in the house of God in harmony.” For we know from his own saying that he
is with us, his servants: “Look,” he said, “I will be with you all the days” of your life
“until the end of the age.” Then, following on from this, he would surely have added the
words that come next after the earlier ones: “Let death come upon them, and let them go
down alive into Hades, for wickedness is in their hearts.” For Scripture says that those
who are in ignorance of the truth about godliness are swallowed up by Hades as dead men;
for they were dead, even while they seemed to be alive.

FRAGMENT 100

For they want the Savior to be a mere man. This is clear from the way Eusebius cunningly
bent the apostle’s words to suit his own purpose. As though bringing to birth, after long
labor pains, some enormous blasphemy, he “poured out from his own treasure,” as the
Savior’s saying puts it, “the evil.” Wanting to show that the Savior is only a man, and as
if uncovering for us a great secret mystery of the apostle, he spoke as follows: “That is
why the divine apostle, handing down to us the hidden and mystical teaching about God,
cries out and shouts, ‘There is one God,’ and then, after ‘one God,’ he says, ‘one
mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus.’” So if he says that Christ is a man,
fixing his attention only on his incarnate dispensation in the flesh, then he must also
agree that no one has any hope in him. For the prophet Jeremiah said, “Cursed is the man
who puts his hope in man.”

FRAGMENT 101

But the man I mentioned gave little thought to the holy prophets. He explains what he
calls a secret and hidden teaching of the apostle about God, and says, “There is one God,
and one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus.” And even though he boasts
loudly of his memory of the Scriptures, he never considered that the most holy apostle who
wrote this also wrote that other passage: “who, being in the form of God, did not regard
being equal with God as something to be seized, but emptied himself, taking the form of a
servant, being born in the likeness of man, and found in appearance as a man.” Do you see
how the holy apostle, as if he had foreseen by the Spirit the mischief of these men, wrote
in another place “as a man” and “born in the likeness of man,” so as to put an end to this
great blasphemy of theirs?

FRAGMENT 102

How then can Eusebius, who pays no attention to these words, want the Savior to be only a
man? He does not dare to say this openly, but he wants it, and he is convicted by his own
statements.

FRAGMENT 103

For before the whole creation there was, as one would expect, a kind of stillness, since
the Word was in God. For if Asterius believes that God is the maker of all things, it is
clear that he will agree with us that God always exists and never received a beginning of
his being, while created things have been made by him and made out of things that did not
exist. For I do not suppose he believes, with the one who says so, that some things are
also uncreated; rather, he is thoroughly persuaded that heaven and earth and everything in
the heavens and on the earth were made by God. If then he believes this, he must also
agree that apart from God nothing else existed. So the Word, being in the Father, had his
own glory.

FRAGMENT 104

Asterius calls the authority given to him “glory,” and not only glory but glory “before
the world.” He does not realize that when the world had not yet come to be, nothing else
existed except God alone.

FRAGMENT 105

For the man received not only authority over things on earth but also over things in
heaven, and reasonably so. For if, when he became “man” and “mediator between God and
men,” “all things were created” for him then, as the apostle said, “both those in heaven
and those on earth,” it follows that we should know precisely that authority was given to
him not only over things on earth but also over things in heaven.

FRAGMENT 106

For if the holy Gospel speaks of some glory given to him by the Father, it is evident that
the man received it through the Word. For having become “mediator between God and men,” as
the holy apostle says, he glorified godly human beings with the glory given to him by the
Father.

FRAGMENT 107

And he thought it worthy that the man who had fallen through disobedience be joined,
through the virgin, to his own Word. For what other glory among men could be greater than
this glory? Having said, “I glorified you,” he adds, “and I will glorify you again.” In
his surpassing love for humanity, he would in the second glory, after the resurrection of
the flesh, set free the man who had formerly been mortal, making him immortal, and would
glorify him with such glory that he would be released not only from his former slavery but
also be counted worthy of a glory above man.

FRAGMENT 108

So that, as I said, he might prepare the man who was first deceived by the devil to defeat
the devil himself in turn. For this reason he took up the man, so that he might
consequently make him receive the first share of the authority.

FRAGMENT 109

For this is the beloved, the man united to the Word, about whom the evangelist said, “This
is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased.”

FRAGMENT 110

The Word of the invisible God was going to be born of a virgin and take up human flesh.
Through that flesh he would overcome the devil, who had earlier gained mastery over man.
He would do this so that he might make man not only incorruptible and immortal, but also a
sharer of God’s throne in the heavens.

FRAGMENT 111

So the one who came down and took flesh from the virgin was established as king over the
church. Clearly this was so that through the Word man, who had earlier fallen from the
kingdom of heaven, might be able to obtain the kingdom. God wished this man, who had
earlier been cast out of the kingdom because of disobedience, to become lord and god, and
so he worked out this plan. The most holy prophet David therefore says prophetically, “The
Lord has reigned; let the earth rejoice.”

FRAGMENT 112

For this reason, as though our Master Christ had received the beginning of his kingdom at
some point in time, the prophecy says, “But I was established as king by him.”

FRAGMENT 113

For this is why he will reign, having come to be in human flesh. And once man, who was
earlier deceived, has been made king through the Word, he will “destroy every rule and
power and authority” of the devil. For he says, “He must reign until he puts the enemies
under his feet.” The holy apostle says that this is the end of the kingdom of our Master
Christ: that all things be subjected under his feet.

FRAGMENT 114

Here the apostle reveals to us a very great mystery. He says that there will be an end to
Christ’s kingdom. And the end comes then, when everything has been subjected under his
feet.

FRAGMENT 115

In our earlier statements we said that our Master Christ has had a beginning of his
kingdom, and we used proofs from the divine Scriptures. There is one passage that says,
“But I was established as king by him on Zion, his holy mountain.” Another says, “The Lord
has reigned; let the peoples be angry,” and again, “The Lord has reigned; let the earth
rejoice.” In short, there is an abundance of countless passages to testify that man
received the beginning of a kingdom through the Word. If, then, he received the beginning
of a kingdom not many more than four hundred years ago, it is no surprise that the apostle
says the one who obtained this kingdom so short a time ago will hand over the kingdom.
Clearly he will hand it over to God, who, as the Scripture says, established him as king.

FRAGMENT 116

So it is clear that, by activity alone, because of the flesh, he has been separated from
the Father until the coming time of judgment appears. Then those who pierced him, in
accordance with the prophecy, will see the one they pierced, and the rest will follow
accordingly. For when at the time of the end all things are about to be subjected to
Christ, as the apostle said, then “he himself will be subjected to the one who subjected
all things to him.” What, then, are we to learn about the human flesh, which the Word took
up for our sake not quite four hundred years ago? Does the Word keep it also in the ages
to come, or only until the time of judgment? For what the prophet said must be confirmed
in fact. For he says, “They will look on the one whom they pierced.” And clearly what they
pierced was flesh.

FRAGMENT 117

117a For the Savior did not take on our flesh so that the Word might gain something. He
took it so that the flesh, through its fellowship with the Word, might receive
immortality. This is clear from the Savior’s own declaration. Speaking of the flesh he had
when he talked with the disciples, he says: “Does this offend you? Then what if you see
the Son of Man going up to where he was before? The Spirit gives life; the flesh is of no
benefit.” If, then, he admits that the flesh is of no benefit to him, how can it be right
that this flesh, which is from the earth and benefits nothing, should remain with the Word
in the ages to come, as though it were useful to him? For this is why, it seems to me, the
Almighty God, the Master, says to him: “Sit at my right hand until I make your enemies a
footstool for your feet.” God appears to separate him only in activity, because of the
human flesh. He sets what looks like a fixed time for his sitting at the right hand, and
so says to him, “until I make your enemies a footstool for your feet.” The holy apostle
explains this prophetic saying of David more clearly for us, speaking somewhat like this:
“For he must reign until he has put his enemies under his feet.” So his saving work as a
man, and his kingdom as a man, appear to have a limit. For the apostle’s words, “until he
has put his enemies under his feet,” mean nothing else. So when he has his enemies as a
footstool for his feet, he no longer needs this partial kingdom, since he is king over
all. For he reigns together with “God and Father,” whose Word he was and is.

117b For the Word did not take up the beginning of a kingdom for himself, by himself.
Rather, the man who was deceived by the devil became king through the power of the Word,
so that, having become king, he might defeat the devil who had deceived him before. This
is why the Acts of the Apostles also teaches about this man, whom the Word of God took up,
and who, having been taken up, sits at the Father’s right hand. It says: “whom heaven must
receive until the times of restoration.” These words too, as if setting a boundary and a
deadline, say how long the saving work as a man is to remain united to the Word. For what
else does “until the times of restoration” mean, if not that it points us to the coming
age, in which all things must reach complete restoration? Now Paul said that at the time
of the restoration of all things, creation itself will be changed from slavery to freedom.
For he says: “that the creation itself will be set free from slavery to decay into the
freedom of the glory of the children of God.” If that is so, how could the form of a
slave, which the Word took up, being a slave’s form, still remain with the Word? So the
inspired Paul has said clearly and plainly that this saving work of the Word in the flesh,
done for our sake, took place within a short span of the ages past and the ages to come,
and that it has an end just as it had a beginning. He says: “Then comes the end, when he
hands over the kingdom to God and Father.”

FRAGMENT 118

He touched the human body, and showing it to those who were watching, he said: “Does this
offend you? Then what if you see the Son of Man going up to where he was before? The
Spirit gives life; the flesh is of no benefit.”

FRAGMENT 119

So he took up human flesh not for his own sake but for ours. And if it is clear that he
took it up for our sake, and everything that concerns us will reach its end by his care
and working at the time of the judgment, then there will no longer be any need even for
this partial kingdom.

FRAGMENT 120

Suppose someone says that human flesh is worthy of the Word because he made it immortal
through the resurrection. Let him know that not everything that is immortal is worthy of
God. For God is greater even than immortality itself, since by his own will he can make
even things that do not exist immortal. And it is also clear that not everything immortal
is worthy to be united to God, because the rulers, the authorities and the angels are
immortal, and yet they make no difference to the oneness of God.

FRAGMENT 121

Suppose someone asks about this flesh, which became immortal in the Word. What do we say
to him? We say that we think it unsafe to lay down doctrine about things we have not
learned exactly from the divine Scriptures. How could those who overturn the teachings of
others do this safely? But to those who want to learn from us the exact account of this
matter, we will say the following. We trust the holy apostle, and so we know that we
should look at hidden mysteries as he himself said: “For now we see,” he says, “through a
mirror, in a riddle, but then face to face. Now I know in part, but then I shall fully
know, just as I was also fully known.” So do not ask me about things I have not clearly
learned from the divine Scripture. For this reason I will not be able to speak clearly
about that divine flesh which shared in the divine Word. But as things stand, I believe
the divine Scriptures: there is one God, and his Word proceeded from the Father so that
“all things” might come to be “through him.” After the time of judgment, the setting right
of all things, and the destruction of every opposing power, “then he himself will be
subjected” to the one who “subjected all things to him,” to “God and Father.” In this way
the Word will be in God just as he was before the world existed. For before anything else
existed there was God alone, and all things were to come into being through the Word. So
this Word, who belongs to the Father, proceeded with active power.

FRAGMENT 122

This is the one of whom Paul said, “the Son of God, appointed beforehand.”

FRAGMENT 123

For this reason the most holy prophet Solomon said, “to receive the turnings of words,”
and again, “the sayings of the wise and riddles.”

FRAGMENT 124

For this reason it seems to me that this very wise prophet also spoke the first words of
the prophecy in the manner of proverbs.

FRAGMENT 125

125a For I think it is not out of place at this point to remind you briefly of some
proverbs from outside our Scriptures. Take this one: “EITHER DEAD OR TEACHING LETTERS.”
From the surface of the words, someone might suppose it was said against those who teach
letters, since another of their writers also said, “You were teaching letters, while I was
attending school.” But those who wrote the commentaries said it is not so. They say that
when the Sicilians had beaten the Athenians in war, they spared only those who claimed to
have education, and they took these as teachers for their children. All the others they
killed. Some of these Athenians escaped and returned home, and when the Athenians
questioned them about certain matters that concerned them, they said, “Either dead or
teaching letters.” And what of “THE GOAT—THE KNIFE”? One might suppose it was said [so
that what is said about it comes first], surely because the goat being sacrificed looks at
the knife, and that this is why the proverb was spoken. But the ancients did not say that.
If it were so, it would not be a proverb at all, since it would follow that one could
understand it from the plain appearance. They say instead that it is said of those who
bring evils on themselves. For they say that Medea, after killing her children in Corinth,
hid the knife there. The Corinthians, following an oracle given to them, were offering a
black goat, and they had no knife. The goat, scraping with its foot, uncovered Medea’s
knife, and was sacrificed with it. And what does “ENOUGH OF OAK” mean? Someone asks,
because one cannot know this proverb offhand. The ancients, they said, ate acorns before
grain was cultivated. When grain was later discovered, as they supposed, they turned their
minds to it and rejoiced in the change. They said “Enough of oak” [the text here is
corrupt], and they said this was the proverb. Again, there is another proverb, spoken by
very many of their wise men in very many different books. What those who undertook to
explain proverbs have written about it must be mentioned here. * * * But I do this in
order to refute Asterius. He knew exactly, from his outside learning, what is special
about the proverb, yet here he pretended ignorance, so that by using the proverbial saying
he might seem to build up his own purpose persuasively.

125b But there is also “the craft of Glaucus.” The outside scholars who mention this
proverb explained it in different ways. One of them said that a certain Glaucus had become
skilled in some craft [† very marvelous †], and that he perished at sea together with it,
before anyone had learned it from him. Another, who testifies to Glaucus’s supreme skill
in music, says that he made four bronze discs which, when struck, produced a tuneful
harmony of notes, and that this is where the proverb comes from. Another says that among
the offerings of Alyattes there was a wonderful mixing bowl with its stand, the work of
Glaucus of Chios. Another says that Glaucus himself dedicated a bronze tripod at Delphi,
made in such a way that when it was struck [† thickly †], the feet it stands on, the
[part] fitted around it, the rim on the cauldron, and the rods set across the middle all
sounded with the voice of a lyre. And again, [the text here is uncertain: “summer”] the
proverb is said to come from a certain Glaucus who was thought to have done something
extraordinary. You see how the difficulty of the proverb is shown by this very thing:
those who wanted to explain it could not settle on one interpretation. So hard to track
down is the meaning of a proverb, even among outsiders. That is why one of their scholars
collected the proverbs spoken by many people in many forms and wrote six books on them,
two in verse and four in prose. And the outsiders called these “proverbs” for no other
reason, I think, than this: they came across the Proverbs of the very wise Solomon and saw
from them that nothing said there can be clearly understood at first glance. They wanted
to imitate the prophetic writing, so they wrote in the same manner. Then, unable to think
of any more fitting name, they called these also “proverbs.”

FRAGMENT 126

So this is the meaning of “The Lord created me as the beginning of his ways for his
works.”

FRAGMENT 127

He said that the Word of God prepared human flesh to become immortal through the
resurrection. Having bound it around himself like a crown of victory, he sits at the right
hand of the Father.

FRAGMENT 128

[He] composed one [. . .] treatise, [and did] this so that [they] might know God. [The
Greek here is broken and uncertain.]

FRAGMENT 129

129a To my most blessed fellow minister Julius, Marcellus sends greetings in Christ. Some
men were earlier condemned for not believing rightly, and I refuted them at the council
held at Nicaea. These men have now dared to write against me to your Godliness, as though
I did not think rightly or in agreement with the church. They are eager to shift their own
charge onto me. For this reason I thought it necessary to come to Rome and remind you to
summon those who wrote against me. They would then come and be refuted by me on both
counts: first, that what they have written against me is false; and second, that even now
they persist in their former error and have dared terrible things against the churches of
God and against us who lead them. Since they were unwilling to come, even though you sent
presbyters to them, and even though I have spent a year and three full months in Rome, I
thought it necessary, now that I am about to leave, to give you my faith in writing, set
down in my own hand with all truthfulness. It is the faith I learned and was taught from
the divine Scriptures. I also thought it necessary to remind you of the wrong things they
say, so that you may know the arguments they use to deceive their hearers and hide the
truth. For they say that the Son, our Lord Jesus Christ, is not the proper and true Word
of almighty God, but that there is another Word of his, and another wisdom and power. They
say that this one came into being through him and was called Word, wisdom and power.
Because they think this, they say he is another hypostasis, standing apart from the
Father. Furthermore, by what they write they declare that the Father existed before the
Son, and that he is not truly Son [the Greek here is broken]. And even if they say “from
God,” they say it in the same sense in which all things are from God.

129b They also dare to say that “there was once a time when he was not,” and that he is a
created thing and a made thing, separating him from the Father. I am convinced that those
who say such things are strangers to the catholic church. But I follow the divine
Scriptures, and I believe that there is one God, and that his only-begotten Son is the
Word, who always exists together with the Father and has never had a beginning of his
being. He is truly from God. He was not created and not made, but always is, always
reigning together with God and Father, and of his kingdom, according to the testimony of
the apostle, “there will be no end.” This is the Son, this is the power, this is the
wisdom. This is the true Word that belongs to God, our Lord Jesus Christ, the indivisible
power of God, through whom everything that has come into being came into being. So the
Gospel testifies when it says: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God,
and the Word was God. All things came into being through him, and apart from him not one
thing came into being.” This is the Word about whom Luke the evangelist also testifies,
saying: “just as those who from the beginning were eyewitnesses and servants of the Word
handed them down to us.” About him David also said: “My heart has poured out a good word.”
So also our Lord Jesus Christ teaches us through the Gospel, saying: “I came out from the
Father and have come.” In “the last days” he came down for our salvation, was born of the
virgin Mary, and took on the man. So I believe in God almighty; and in Christ Jesus his
only-begotten Son, our Lord, who was born of the Holy Spirit and Mary the virgin, who was
crucified under Pontius Pilate and buried, and on the third day rose from the dead, went
up into the heavens and sits at the right hand of the Father, from where he is coming to
judge the living and the dead; and in the Holy Spirit, the holy church, the forgiveness of
sins, the resurrection of the flesh, and eternal life.

129c We have learned from the divine Scriptures that the Godhead of the Father and of the
Son is indivisible. For if someone separates the Son, that is, the Word, from almighty
God, he must either suppose that there are two Gods (which is held to be foreign to divine
teaching), or confess that the Word is not God (which also is plainly foreign to the right
faith, since the evangelist says, “and the Word was God”). But I have learned with
precision that the Son is indivisible and inseparable from the Father, as his power. For
the Savior himself, our Lord Jesus Christ, says: “The Father is in me, and I am in the
Father,” and “I and the Father are one,” and “Whoever has seen me has seen the Father.”
This is the faith I received from the divine Scriptures and was taught by my godly
forefathers. I preach it in the church of God, and I have now written it to you, keeping a
copy of it with myself. And I ask you to copy the text of this into your letter to the
bishops, so that none of those who do not know us accurately may be deceived by paying
attention to what those men have written. Farewell.


AGAINST MARCELLUS (BOOK 1 – BOOK 2)
===================================

AGAINST MARCELLUS Eusebius of Caesarea

c. AD 336–337

Two books by Eusebius, bishop of Caesarea, against Marcellus, bishop of Ancyra. Marcellus
had defended the Nicene faith against the followers of Arius, but Eusebius believed his
teaching confused the Father and the Son. A council at Constantinople deposed Marcellus in
AD 336, and Eusebius wrote this book soon after. It is a main source for the arguments of
the years after Nicaea, and it quotes long passages of Marcellus’s lost book. The author
and the date are secure; the sections are those of Klostermann’s edition.

BOOK 1

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Book 1. [1] What led Marcellus to write this work. [2] That he did not even know the
divine Scriptures accurately. [3] Marcellus on the proverbs of the Greeks. [4] That he
slandered the church’s teaching and its leaders.

CHAPTER 1

1 The occasion of his book was hatred of his brothers, and the cause of that hatred was
jealousy and envy. These have thrown countless others down into the worst of evils.
Jealousy and envy, after all, produced the murder of a brother from the very beginning.
Starting from this, the man wrote this one book, and would that he never had. Right from
the start, at the very hearth, he set out to make war on God’s holy ministers. He gave up
speaking and writing against the great, thick crowd of heretics who were ravaging his own
country. That was exactly what he ought to have done, if he had any power of saving
speech. Like a good shepherd he should have driven off the enemies of God’s church in the
nation of the Galatians as if they were wolves and wild beasts. 2 Instead he overlooked
his own land, as if it were a wasteland full of poisonous creeping things. He boiled over
for no reason and to no purpose, and let loose his anger on God’s ministers. These were no
ordinary men. By God’s grace they are distinguished before everyone for their way of life
and their philosophic conduct. He attacked not only the living but also those who have
fallen asleep in Christ. Among these he chose above all those whose fame, for their virtue
in godliness and their practice of the divine words, is sung, one might say, through the
whole inhabited world. He did not speak ill of these men once only, but often and in
various ways, pouring out slanders and false accusations against them without restraint.

3 He has even used curses against them, as women do in a quarrel, abusing and calling down
curses on men who had done him no wrong. That is why his writing ran on beyond what was
fitting, to a long and immoderate length, so that this one work came to nearly ten
thousand lines. 4 It is no surprise, then, that he sharpened a slanderous tongue against
God’s holy ministers and practiced irreverence and fearlessness on them first. Then he
went on and advanced to the very summit of everything, and subjected the only-begotten and
beloved Son of God to godless blasphemies of the same kind. It is better to hear these a
little later from his own mouth than from mine. 5 I will quote his words, and for the
moment I will stop there. I will not add long arguments to oppose and overturn them. The
men he blasphemed are not unknown or obscure; they are known to everyone even if I say
nothing.

6 Nor is the blasphemy against God’s Christ doubtful or obscure, so as to need great and
more reasoned effort to refute it. To all who share in the church’s grace, small and great
alike, the empty talk of this strange theologian is plain as soon as it is spoken. So I
will use only brief marginal notes. I will give the discussion body by arranging it in
connected order, and I will merely point out how irrational the quoted statements are. 7
But before I come to his words, I must advise those who read the man’s book, especially if
any of them are Galatians, not to forget the divine voice of the apostle Paul. Writing to
the Galatians themselves, he urged them not to be removed “from the one who called” them
“in the grace of Christ to another gospel.” For “there is not another,” as he himself
said, “except that there are some who are troubling” them “and wanting to pervert the
gospel of Christ.”

8 They must also give careful attention to the other saying, in which that great apostle,
including himself in the charge, added these words to shame those who were trying to twist
the men away: “But even if we, or an angel from heaven, should preach to you a gospel
other than what we preached to you, let him be accursed.” 9 He repeated this and said it a
second time: “As we have said before, so I say again now: if anyone preaches to you a
gospel other than what you received, let him be accursed.” What was this, beyond which no
other gospel could be preached? Surely it was exactly what the Savior is recorded to have
said when he handed it on to his disciples: “Go and make disciples of all the nations,
baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.”

10 For this grace, the knowledge of the holy Trinity, he alone has given us, through the
mystical new birth. Neither Moses nor any of the prophets served the earlier people with
it. It was fitting that the Son of God alone should announce the Father’s grace to all
people, since “the law was given through Moses,” but grace and truth came through Jesus
Christ alone, as through the “only-begotten Son.” 11 So it was natural that Moses, like a
tutor, handed over to the earlier people, who were still infants, “the elements of the
beginning of the oracles of God.” He kept them from the error of many gods and proclaimed
that they should know one God only. But the saving grace gives us a knowledge that is
above the world and like that of angels. It openly uncovered the mystery that had long
been kept silent for the earlier people. It proclaims that the very God who is over all
things, whom the men of old knew, is at the same time God and Father of the only-begotten
Son. And through the Son it supplies the power of the Holy Spirit to those who are worthy.

12 From this source, in a way, the church of God has received the holy, blessed and
mystical Trinity of Father, Son and Holy Spirit, for the hope of salvation through the new
birth in Christ, and she guards it. This was the gospel which it is not lawful to exchange
for another gospel, “which is not another.” The great apostle still bears witness to this
today to the Galatians, crying out in his letter to them, “Even if we or an angel from
heaven preach to you anything beyond what you received, let him be accursed.” He is, as
one would expect, giving a firm instruction to keep far away from bishops, rulers and
teachers too, if any of them twists the true word of the faith. 13 And who was this, if
not the one who teaches us to know God as Father, hands down the knowledge of the Son of
God, and urges us to eagerly share in the Holy Spirit? These are the marks of Christians
alone. In this way the holy church of God marks herself off from the Jewish way.

14 For as the Jew rejected the error of many gods and Greek religion by confessing one
God, so the church’s distinctive knowledge of the Son brought something better and
greater. She teaches us to know the same God as Father of an only-begotten Son, a Son who
is truly a son, living and subsisting. For the only-begotten of God himself taught,
saying, “As the Father has life in himself, so he gave the Son also to have life in
himself.” 15 The purpose is that the Father may be truly Father (not called so in word
only, nor holding a false title, but in truth and in fact the Father of an only-begotten
Son), and that the Son may be truly Son. But consider the man who supposes that the Son is
a bare word. He testifies that the Son is only a word, and he often says that he was
nothing other than a word, remaining within the Father while he was at rest, and active
when he made the creation. In this he is like our own word, which is at rest in those who
are silent and active in those who speak. Clearly such a man runs along with a Jewish and
merely human way of thinking, and he denies the one who is truly the Son of God.

16 For if someone asked a Jew whether God has a word, he would certainly say yes. Every
Jew would admit that God has a word, and indeed many words. But if he were asked whether
God has a son, he would no longer admit it. 17 Now suppose it is not a Jew but one of the
bishops who introduces this opinion. He grants only a word united to God, and says this
word is eternal and unbegotten, and one and the same with God. He says that God is called
by different names, Father and Son, but is one in essence and substance. Would he not
plainly be putting on the mask of Sabellius, and be a stranger to the knowledge and grace
that are in Christ? For the rule of the church would not allow them to inquire, doubt or
ask whether the only-begotten Son of God existed and pre-existed. It teaches, with a
confession that is agreed and beyond doubt, and with great confidence and boldness, that
we confess God as the Father of the only-begotten Son. It teaches us not to think the
Father is the Son, or the Son the Father. We are to worship the Father as unbegotten,
eternal, without beginning, first and alone. We are to believe that the Son was begotten
from the Father and subsists, and that he alone is the only-begotten Son. And we are to
recognize him as God, since he is truly Son of God.

18 Suppose, then, that someone is found who contradicts these teachings and defines the
Word of God as being like the word in human beings. How would he not be exposed? He
neither understands nor reasons that nothing mortal or merely human should be attributed
to the God who is above all things, nor anything at all that comes up in our own thinking.
This holds even if the divine Scriptures, guiding their readers like small children, speak
of him in rather human terms and attach to him hands, feet, eyes, voices, words, a mouth,
a face, and countless other things of this kind. These ought to be carried over into
thoughts worthy of God, picturing nothing mortal or human in God. For the Savior himself
taught: “God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship him in spirit and in
truth.” 19 But if God is spirit, it is clear that he is divine spirit, greater than every
perceptible and composite body. So he has no perceptible word, sounded out by a tongue and
heard through speech by mortal ears. Nor does he have a tongue, a voice, a face, or
anything else that could be compared with mortal and human reasoning.

20 The divine apostle taught that the things “which eye has not seen, nor ear heard, nor
have they entered the human heart” are the things “which God has prepared for those who
love him.” If so, then God himself, the giver of these unspeakable things, must be more
unspeakable than all of them. It would then be far truer to say, in speaking of God, that
no eye has seen, no ear has heard, and the knowledge of grasping him has not “entered the
human heart.” 21 The same must be said about the begetting of the Son. And for these
matters the Savior himself would be a trustworthy teacher of sacred mysteries for us, when
he says something like this: “All things have been handed over to me by my Father, and no
one fully knows the Son except the Father, nor does anyone fully know the Father except
the Son.”

22 Suppose, then, that someone speaks against these things. He does not dare to say that
the Son, to whom the Father handed over all things, has a real existence of his own. He
defines him only as a word like the word in human beings. At one time, he says, this Word
rests quietly in God, like a person among us who is silent. At another time it is active,
much like a person among us who speaks aloud. Then, he says, at a certain time, not even
four hundred years ago (I do not know how), this Word took on flesh and through it carried
out the saving plan in human form. Only then, he says, did he become Son of God, and take
the name Jesus Christ, and was proclaimed king and “image of the invisible God” and
“firstborn of all creation,” though he had not been these things before. And after so
absurd a claim, he does not even give Christ, from the time he supposes, life and a
kingdom without limit and without end. Instead he brings him to an end that is not good,
and not what those will receive who are counted worthy through him of the promises the
Savior himself made, when he promised eternal life, incorruption, immortality, and the
kingdom of heaven to those who love him.

23 For at that time, according to the hope we expect from these promises, he would say
that the blessings of the kingdom will last forever for all others, but that Christ alone
will suffer the total loss of all these things. His kingdom will cease. The flesh he took
on will be left empty. The Word who existed beforehand in God will be separated from the
body (even if that body is immortal and incorruptible) and joined to God, so that he
becomes again one and the same with God, as he was before. What greater extreme of
ungodliness could be left to such a man? 24 For this reason the apostle’s pointed
testimony is necessary against such people, when he said: “Even if an angel from heaven
proclaims a gospel contrary to what you received, let him be accursed.” I am moved to
wonder as I consider the apostle’s thinking. It is as though he foresaw the future and
spoke with precision to the Galatians themselves about the doctrine of the Savior. Right
at the beginning of his letter to them he writes in a more striking way than was his
custom: “Paul, an apostle, not from human beings nor through a human being, but through
Jesus Christ.”

25 You would not find him writing this way to other churches. The reason, presumably, is
that none of the others he wrote to were in the same state of faith. He brought his
correction to the Galatians because they supposed Christ was a mere man, and so at the
very start of the letter he taught them that Christ is not a man. Going on, he told the
same people, “The gospel that was preached to you by me is not according to man; I neither
received it from a man nor was I taught it, but it came through a revelation of Jesus
Christ.” By these words he again shows that Jesus Christ was not a man. 26 But if he was
not a man, what was he? Going on, Paul made this plain again when he said, “But when God,
who set me apart from my mother’s womb, was pleased to reveal his Son in me.” You see how
clearly he proclaimed the Savior to be the Son of God, and therefore God.

27 And that he knew him to be God’s Son before his coming in the flesh, Paul shows most
plainly by adding in the same letter to the Galatians, “But when the fullness of time
came, God sent out his Son, born of a woman.” So the Father sent him not as one who became
a Son only now. He was already Son and already existed before he was born of a woman. In
this way the one who had long been Son of God also became a son of man, by being “born of
a woman.” 28 The apostle also teaches that he became mediator of the law of Moses, and he
defines what this mediation means when he says, “What then? The law was added for the sake
of transgressions, until the seed should come to whom the promise was made, and it was
ordained through angels by the hand of a mediator. But a mediator is not of one, and God
is one.” You hear how in these words the apostle taught the Galatians that from that time
there was one God, and one mediator between God and angels.

29 He made the same point elsewhere when he said, “For there is one God, and one mediator
between God and men, the man Christ Jesus.” But when he named him “mediator between God
and men,” he rightly called him a man, because of his becoming man. When he brought him in
as mediator not between God and men but between God and angels, he no longer called him a
man. He says only “mediator,” when he says the law was ordained “through angels by the
hand of a mediator.” 30 Paul also had to make clear the meaning of the word “mediator” by
drawing a distinction, when he said, “But a mediator is not of one, and God is one.” So
God cannot be the mediator, for whose mediator would he be? Nor can the mediator himself
be God, for “a mediator is not of one.” 31 He therefore stands in the middle of two. Which
two, Paul makes clear by naming angels and God. The Son of God stands between these, and
Paul says he received the law from the Father with his own hand, and ordained it “through
angels” for the first people. So from that time the Son was mediator of God and angels,
before he became “mediator of God and men.”

32 And he was not so as a bare word of God, without a substance of his own and one and the
same as God, for then he could not be a mediator. He was and existed beforehand as “the
only-begotten Son, full of grace and truth.” He was acting as mediator for the Father, who
gave the law to men “through angels.” In teaching this from the beginning to those who
knew nothing of the Son’s divinity, the apostle sealed it by saying, “But a mediator is
not of one.” For it is not in the nature of things for a mediator to be defined in
relation to one party. 33 So he is not mediator of one but of necessity stands between
two, and he is neither of the two between whom he stands. We must therefore not think that
he is the God over all, nor one of the angels, but between them and mediator when he
mediates for the Father and the angels. Likewise, when he becomes “mediator of God and
men,” though he stands between both orders, he is neither of those whose mediator he is.
He is not himself the one and only God, nor is he a man in the same way as the rest of
men.

34 What then is he, if none of these, but the only-begotten Son of God, who has now become
mediator of men and God, and long ago, in the time of Moses, was mediator of God and
angels? It is in this way, writing to them, that the great apostle hands it down when he
says, “The law was ordained through angels by the hand of a mediator.” 35 “But a mediator
is not a mediator of one, whereas God is one.” So “God is one,” and there is “one
mediator” between God and all created things. He did not begin this saving work of
mediation only now. He was already mediator before his appearing as God among men, as the
argument has shown. 36 These points have been set out briefly, using only the letter to
the Galatians. That saving faith gives the mystical new birth “into the name of the Father
and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.” Besides the divine writings, God’s catholic
Church, from one end of the earth to the other, seals the witness of the divine Scriptures
with unwritten tradition. So it is now time to examine the words of Marcellus and to give
the proofs of what we promised, so that no one will think the man is being slandered by
us.

37 My aim is to set out what was said in a short space. So I will not quote all the man’s
words, but only those that hold his argument together. Most of the rest I will pass over
as superfluous, since they run along the same lines. But before proving what I have said,
I think I must first show readers that he did not even handle the plain wording of the
divine Scriptures with accuracy. Then those who do not yet know him will see what kind of
man he is, who was led on to the boldness of his claims.

CHAPTER 2

1 Take this first example. The prophet Zechariah lived at the time of the return from
Babylon, and he mentions Jesus the high priest, that is, the son of Josedek, who led the
returning exiles together with Zerubbabel. This noble and admirable writer did not know
this. He sets down Zechariah’s passage in which Jesus is mentioned, but he shoots far wide
of the history and supposes that Zechariah is speaking about Jesus, the successor of
Moses. 2 Again, the apostle wrote in the letter to the Galatians: “But the Jerusalem above
is free, which is our mother.” Marcellus either missed this, or did not understand it, or
else deliberately twists the statement. He writes: “But our Jerusalem is above; for this
one is in slavery with her children.” 3 And once more, our Savior said to Peter: “Get
behind me, Satan, you are a stumbling block to me, because you do not think the things of
God but the things of men.” Marcellus did not understand how the statement was made to the
apostle, or why, and says these words were spoken to the devil. He puts all these mistakes
together in one passage, writing word for word as follows: “That no name among those named
on earth has become greater than Jesus, the Gospel bears witness, where the angel said to
Mary, ‘Do not be afraid, for you have found favor with God. And behold, you will conceive
in the womb and bear a son, and you will call his name Jesus.

4 He will be great, and will be called Son of the Most High.’ It is also clear from the
prophecy of Zechariah, which long ago prophesied about this name. For he says, ‘The Lord
showed me Jesus the great priest, standing before the angel of the Lord. And the devil
stood at his right hand to oppose him. And the Lord said to the devil: May the Lord rebuke
you, he who has chosen Jerusalem.’ 5 For when did he rebuke him? When he joined to his own
Word the man whom he loved. ‘He who has chosen Jerusalem,’ he says, clearly meaning this
Jerusalem of ours, about which the apostle says, ‘But our Jerusalem is above; for this one
is in slavery with her children.’ 6 For at that time, when he was in that great Jerusalem,
that is, in our Church, he rebuked the devil according to the prophecy, saying, ‘Go away
from me, Satan, for you are a stumbling block to me.’ This, then, is the great priest, of
whom the Jesus of that time preserved a type.

7 For it was not possible for that man to be called a great priest, although he had become
glorious among all, unless Moses had first been called great. For Moses was not yet great,
because he was called a servant of God, and was called by God himself a god to Pharaoh.” 8
But suppose someone thinks Jesus was called “great” because he was counted worthy to bring
the people into the holy land and did many other wonderful things. Let him know from this
that the greatness spoken of in Jesus did not lie so much in the thing he prefigured. It
lay in what was to come a little later: that he would bring his own people into this great
Jerusalem. You see how much he did not know, having wandered away from the history, and
how he could not give proper attention to the Jesus indicated by the prophet Zechariah.

9 For the one was the son of Josedek, of the tribe of Levi, who had taken up the high
priesthood from the line of Aaron. For that reason he was also styled a great priest, as
the prophet teaches when he says, “And the Lord showed me Jesus the priest, the great
one.” 10 But the successor of Moses, who led the people into the land of promise and did
many other wonderful things, was the son of Nave [Nun], of the tribe of Ephraim, which had
nothing in common with the priesthood. So how could a man who has gone so far astray from
the plain wording, and who does not know the bare history, be fit to teach the highest
theology? In the case of Peter also, one ought likewise to examine how the words “Get
behind me” were said to him, 11 and what the name “Satan” means, and why he also called
him a “stumbling block,” and how, at almost one and the same time, both “Blessed are you,
Simon bar Jonah” and “Get behind me, Satan” were said to him,

12 and what is the meaning of “going behind” the Saviour. (He himself made this clear
right away by adding next, “If anyone wishes to come after me, let him deny himself and
take up his cross and follow me.” Peter himself did this in deed a little later, when he
was perfected by martyrdom.) 13 One ought also to ask for what reasons he pronounced Peter
blessed and for what reasons he rebuked him. But Marcellus paid attention to none of this,
and declared, contrary to Scripture, that these words were spoken to the devil. 14 Was
this, then, the only thing he did not know? Going on further, he mentions the resurrection
of our Saviour. Then he wants to show that even before him, in the prophetic times,
someone is recorded as having been raised from the dead. Here again he stumbles, saying
first that the prophet Elisha raised someone from the dead. He did not know that even
before Elisha, the great Elijah raised the widow’s son who had died, as one can learn from
the third book of Kingdoms.

15 That he did not know this is evident from the way he writes the following (no. 2): “The
apostle says, then, that he is firstborn not only of the ‘new creation’ but also firstborn
‘from the dead.’ In my opinion this is for no other reason than that, through the
firstborn ‘of the dead,’ it might be possible to understand how he is also called
‘firstborn of all creation.’ For our Lord Jesus Christ was not the first to rise from the
dead. The man raised through the prophet Elisha rose earlier, and Lazarus rose before his
resurrection, and at the time of the passion ‘many bodies of those who had fallen asleep’
were raised.” 16 Marcellus also seems to me to have stated this without proper
consideration, I mean that “many bodies of the holy ones who had fallen asleep” were
raised before him. For he did not pay attention to the whole text of the Gospel, which
teaches that the bodies of the saints were raised “after his [resurrection].”

17 You would also find him going wrong in his setting out of the apostle’s statement. For
the divine apostle, writing to the Romans, says this: “set apart for the gospel of God,
which he promised beforehand through his prophets in holy writings, concerning his Son,
who came from the seed of David according to the flesh, who was appointed Son of God in
power according to the Spirit of holiness.” 18 But he, I do not know with what intention,
twists the apostle’s wording here too. In place of “appointed” he makes it “predestined,”
so that he may be like those who are predestined “according to foreknowledge.” 19 He says,
then, word for word (no. 16): “Just as the almighty God long ago predestined the church,
so also he predestined the economy of Christ according to the flesh, through whom he
predestined to call the race of the godly ‘to adoption as sons,’ having first laid its
foundation in his own mind. For this reason the apostle, with the Holy Spirit, plainly
speaks beforehand of ‘the predestined Son of God.’” And again he says in another place
(no. 109): “This is the one about whom Paul said, ‘the predestined Son of God.’”

20 Here too he corrupted not only the apostle’s wording but its very sense, by adding the
preposition “before.” He does the same thing with the psalm, which says “from the womb,
before the morning star, I begot you.” There again he uses an addition that is nowhere
found in the text, so that he can find fault with the man who does not speak as he does.
21 Listen, then, to how he writes: “For this reason it seems to me good now to go through
matters I have not yet discussed.” 22 Most of what he has written has already become clear
from what we have said. “From the womb,” he says, “before the morning star I begot you
out.” He supposed that the stolen preposition “out” would surely agree with the view of
his heresy. So he removed the most important part of the syllable, because he wanted to
indicate the Son’s ancient regeneration. And since he argued strongly on these points,
blaming the man who had written correctly for his own mistake, though he himself had said
nothing of the kind, he hands readers the same testimony of the reading.

23 Going on, the same man again brings in the Savior saying “I am the day,” and he speaks
somewhat like this: “For since there was darkness before, because of ignorance of true
religion, and the day was about to appear (‘For I am,’ he says, ‘the day’), he reasonably
calls the star the morning star.” 24 And in another place he says: “Since after the taking
up of the flesh he is proclaimed as Christ and Jesus, and as life and way and day.” And
going on again he sets down the apostle’s words: “But our Jerusalem is above.” 25 Why
should I go on at length, when anyone who wishes can gather similar things from the whole
treatise, from what has been said, and see the man’s recklessness? From this recklessness
you will hear him often call Solomon a prophet and call the Proverbs prophecies. 26 For
example, where he says: “For this reason the most holy prophet Solomon said, ‘to receive
the turns of words,’ and again, ‘the sayings of the wise and riddles,’” he calls the
proverb prophecy. And again: “Therefore this very wise prophet seems to me to have spoken
the first words of the prophecy in proverbs.”

27 And, as I said, he does this a second and a third time, and many times, not knowing
that “there are distributions of gifts,” even if it is “the same Spirit,” and that,
according to the apostle, to one “is given a word of wisdom,” “to another a word of
knowledge according to the same Spirit, to another faith in the same Spirit, to others
prophecies.” So Solomon is attested as having received the gift of wisdom. 28 For, as the
Scripture says, “the Lord gave Solomon wisdom,” “and he was made wiser than all men.” But
he neither lived a prophet’s life, nor does he show in his own words the mark of prophecy,
which is recognized by “Thus says the Lord” and similar phrases. 29 But Marcellus, seeing
none of this, calls him a prophet, as though doing the man a favor. He does not understand
that the prophets “went about in sheepskins, in goatskins, destitute, afflicted, ill-
treated.” He also says that his Proverbs are a prophecy, though the divine Scripture
nowhere teaches this. The wisest man himself, with the divine Spirit, gave this book the
name PROVERBS, the second ECCLESIASTES, and the third SONG OF SONGS.

30 He did not give these titles without God, or by merely human reasoning. Yet Marcellus
tries to explain even this God-inspired writing of his by Greek examples. He has not
listened to the apostle Paul, who says: “We received not the spirit of the world but the
Spirit that is from God, so that we may know the things freely given to us by God. These
things we also speak, not in words taught by human wisdom, but in words taught by the Holy
Spirit, comparing spiritual things with spiritual. But the natural man does not receive
the things of the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him. And he cannot know them,
because they are spiritually discerned.” Ignorant of this as well, the noble fellow tries
to set before us the meaning of the divine Proverbs from Greek reading, writing in these
very words as follows:

CHAPTER 3

1 “For it is not out of place, I think, to remind you briefly at this point of some
proverbs from outside the Scriptures. ‘EITHER HE IS DEAD, OR HE TEACHES LETTERS.’ At first
sight of the wording, someone might take this proverb to be said against those who teach
letters, since another of their writers also said, ‘You were teaching letters, and I was
attending.’ But those who wrote the commentaries said it is not so. They say that when the
Sicilians defeated the Athenians in war, they spared only those who claimed to have
education, and put them to work teaching their children, while they killed all the others.
Some of these men escaped and came back, and when the Athenians asked them about certain
people they cared about, they reportedly answered, ‘EITHER HE IS DEAD, OR HE TEACHES
LETTERS.’” 2 “And what about ‘THE GOAT—THE KNIFE’? Let me first set down what is said
about it. Someone might suppose the proverb was said simply because the goat that is
sacrificed looks to the knife. But the ancients did not say that. If that were the
meaning, it would not be a proverb at all, since this would be the natural thing to think
from the surface of the words. They say instead that it is said of people who bring evils
upon themselves. For they say that Medea, after killing her children in Corinth, hid the
knife there. The Corinthians, following an oracle given to them, were offering a black
goat in sacrifice to the dead but could not find a knife. The goat, scratching with its
foot, uncovered Medea’s knife, and was sacrificed with it.”

3 “And what does ‘ENOUGH OF THE OAK’ mean? Someone asks, for it is not possible to know
the proverb from the obvious sense. The ancients, as they said, lived on acorns before the
cultivation of grain. When this other fruit was discovered later, as they supposed, they
turned their attention to it and rejoiced in the change, and said ‘ENOUGH OF THE OAK.’ And
they said this was the proverb.” 4 Again, there is another proverb, spoken by very many of
their wise men in very many different books. It is necessary at this point to recall what
those who undertook to explain proverbs have written about it, * * * but in order that we
may expose Asterius, who from this outside learning knew precisely what is distinctive
about the proverb, yet at this point pretended ignorance, so that by using the proverbial
saying he might seem to make his own purpose convincing. It is ‘THE ART OF GLAUCUS.’ The
wise men outside the faith who mentioned this proverb explained it in different ways.

5 One of them said that a certain Glaucus had become skilled in some art [† most wonderful
of many †], and that he perished at sea together with it, before anyone had yet learned it
from him. Another, testifying to Glaucus’s supreme experience in music, says that he made
four bronze disks which produced a tuneful harmony of notes when struck, and that the
proverb arose from this. 6 Another of them says that among the offerings dedicated at the
Alyattic treasures there stands a wonderful mixing-bowl and stand, the work of Glaucus of
Chios. Another says that Glaucus himself dedicated a bronze tripod at Delphi, and made it
so that [† when struck heavily †], the feet on which it stands, the part set above them,
the rim around the cauldron, and the rods set through the middle all sounded with the
voice of a lyre. And yet another says the proverb comes from a certain Glaucus who was
thought to have achieved something extraordinary.

7 You see how the difficulty of the proverb is shown by this very fact, that those who
wanted to explain it did not settle on the same interpretation. So hard to discover is the
meaning of the proverb, even among outsiders. This is why one of their wise men collected
the proverbs spoken by many people in different ways and wrote six books on them, two in
verse and four in prose. 8 These outsiders called them proverbs, I think, for no other
reason than this: they came across the Proverbs of the very wise Solomon and learned from
them that nothing said in them can be clearly understood from the surface. Wanting to
imitate the prophetic writing, they wrote in the same manner. Then, being unable to think
of any more fitting name than that one, they named these collections proverbs too. 9 By
such comparisons Marcellus tries to teach the church of God to understand the God-inspired
Scriptures. I have set out this whole long, chattering excess of words because I wanted to
show the folly of the man’s great and ill-timed ambition: he is eager to show off with
Greek writings, while forgetting the divine ones.

10 He would never have fallen into such foolish talk if he had remembered the apostolic
commands. There the apostle urges us to speak “the things freely given to us by God” not
in words taught by human wisdom, but in words taught by the Spirit, “interpreting
spiritual things to spiritual people.” 11 Nor did he understand how it was said, “The
natural man does not receive the things of the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to
him, and he cannot know them, because they are spiritually discerned.” Because he did not
understand this, he supposed that the wise men of the Greeks had knowledge of the wisdom
God gave to Solomon, and that, having learned it, they eagerly imitated the prophetic
writing, as he puts it. 12 How could they have understood the things of God and imitated
them, when they were natural men who did not know how to interpret “spiritual things to
spiritual people”? The divine apostle declared that the natural man does not receive the
things of the Spirit of God. The same apostle said that the natural man cannot know
spiritual things, “because they are spiritually discerned.” Yet this noble fellow
contradicts the apostle and says that the makers of the Greek proverbs wrote in the same
manner as Solomon.

13 Here are his exact words: “since they came upon the Proverbs of the most wise Solomon,
and saw from them that nothing said in them can be clearly learned from the surface, they
too, wishing to imitate the prophetic writing, wrote in the same manner as he did.” But
consider from his own quotations, in another way, how far he has missed the truth in
saying that the Greeks wrote in the same manner as Solomon. 14 Solomon was moved by a
wisdom given by God. He dedicated his whole writing to the message of true religion, for
the benefit and salvation of souls. To train the minds of his readers, he used dark
problems, twists of speech, and sayings put forward in riddles. He himself testifies to
this at the beginning of the book, saying: “For by hearing these things the wise man will
become wiser, and the man of understanding will gain guidance, and will understand a
parable, the dark sayings, the words of the wise, and riddles.”

15 And again: “to receive the twists of words.” It is easy to learn from the contents of
the book that this is how things stand. These sayings cannot be understood in any other
way than by passing from the surface wording to the meaning perceived through it. For
example: “The leech had three daughters, loved with devotion, and these three did not
satisfy her. And the fourth was not content to say, ‘Enough.’” 16 Another example: “Wisdom
built herself a house and set up seven pillars. She slaughtered her own sacrifices and
mixed her wine in a mixing bowl.” And there are many other sayings like these. They cannot
be understood otherwise, whether on the surface or from some historical story, but only by
treating the wording as metaphor and turning it around. The Greek proverbs he cited,
however, took their origins from certain stories. 17 For example, the saying “Either he
has died or he is teaching letters” was spoken, they say, because of a certain story.
Another saying, “The goat [and] the knife,” was spoken because of a different event that
gave rise to such an action. The same goes for “Enough of the oak,” which arose because
people who once ate acorns stopped that kind of food. And if a certain Glaucus, skilled in
some craft, was remembered in different ways by later people who disagreed in their
accounts of him, what has that to do with the God-inspired Proverbs? They do not, like the
Greek proverbs, get their solution from some story. So Marcellus, in ignorance and without
experience of the study of the divine Scriptures, and in opposition to the apostle, has
declared that the wise men of the Greeks came upon Solomon’s Proverbs, learned from them,
imitated the prophetic writing, and wrote in the same manner as he did.

18 I have said all this to show that the man has not read the divine Scriptures in the way
he should. Now it is time to examine his unsound view of the faith. Holding opinions
contrary to the teaching of the Church, he slandered both the Church and its leaders.

CHAPTER 4

1 First I will set out the passages in which he tries to speak against what was written
rightly and in line with the Church, slandering those who wrote it, and all but taking up
an all-out fight against everyone. At one moment he directs his objection against
Asterius, at another against the great Eusebius. 2 Then he turns against the man of God,
the truly thrice-blessed Paulinus. He was honored with the office of presbyter in the
church of the Antiochenes, and then served with distinction as bishop of the church of the
Tyrians. He shone so brightly in the episcopate that the church of the Antiochenes claimed
him as its own good. 3 Yet this man, who lived a blessed life and has long since fallen
asleep in blessed rest, and who causes him no trouble at all, this marvelous writer mocks.
From him he moves on to wage war against Origen, who also finished his life long ago. Then
he marches against Narcissus, and goes after the other Eusebius. Together he rejects all
the fathers of the Church, pleased with no one at all except himself alone.

4 He writes, then, speaking ill of them all by name, in this way (Nr. 59): “So I will
begin from the letter he wrote, and answer each of the things that were not rightly
written. He has written that he believes in God the Father Almighty, and in his Son, the
only-begotten God, our Lord Jesus Christ, and in the Holy Spirit; and he says he has
learned this way of true religion from the divine Scriptures.” 5 When he says this, I
fully accept what is said. For this is the common way of true religion for all of us: to
believe in the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. But when he fails to grasp the divine
power, and in a rather human way, through some clever speculation, says that the Father is
“Father” and the Son is “Son,” it is no longer safe to praise such speculation.

6 For through such speculation, it happens that the heresy now being devised by them
grows. I think this is easy to show plainly from his own words. For he said that one must
hold that the Father is truly Father, and the Son truly Son, and the Holy Spirit likewise.
7 This is what Marcellus said against Asterius, because he was not pleased that one must
confess that the Father is truly Father, the Son truly Son, and the Holy Spirit likewise.
For this reason he goes on at greater length to try to overturn the teaching on these
matters. For he is willing to confess Christ only as a bare word, like the human word, and
not as a Son truly living and subsisting. 8 And since he said that this heresy is only now
being devised, I must show that as he goes on he mentions Origen, who lived long ago, as
agreeing with those whom he now slanders. But I myself have read very many church writings
of men older than Origen, and various letters of bishops and councils written long ago.
These show that the stamp of the faith is one and the same.

9 So he was wrong to slander them by saying that this heresy is only now being devised by
those he attacks. Then, after going on a little further, he speaks ill not only of
Asterius but also of the great Eusebius, whose bishopric many notable provinces and cities
claimed for themselves. He does it in this way (Nr. 29): “I will remind you of what he
himself has written in supporting the things wrongly written by Eusebius, so that you may
know that he plainly departs from his earlier profession.” 10 “For he has written in these
very words: ‘The main point of the letter is to trace the generation of the Son back to
the Father’s will, and not to declare that the begetting of God is a passion. This is what
the wisest of the fathers declared in their own writings, guarding against the impiety of
the heretics, who falsely claimed that God’s begetting of children was bodily and subject
to passion, teaching doctrines of emissions.’”

11 And against these words he goes on to make a long reply. After it he adds, saying (Nr.
30): “So Asterius, wishing to defend Eusebius, who had written badly, and mentioning the
nature of the Father and the nature of the unbegotten, became his own accuser. For it
would have been much better to leave untouched the depth of Eusebius’ meaning, as he
himself wrote it, set down in brief form, than to use such speculation and bring the
craftiness of the letter into the light.” 12 And after other things he adds (Nr. 3): “Now
let us examine one saying among those written by Asterius. For he said: ‘The Father is
one, who begat from himself the only-begotten Word and firstborn of all creation.’ He has
joined both together, ‘only-begotten’ and ‘firstborn,’ though there is great contradiction
between these names, as even the very slow can easily see.” 13 “For it is clear that the
only-begotten, if he is really only-begotten, can no longer be firstborn, and the
firstborn, as firstborn, cannot be only-begotten.” And in these things too he blames
Asterius for nothing. For the expressions were not his own but those of the divine
Scripture, which sometimes calls the Son of God the only-begotten Son, and sometimes the
firstborn of all creation.

14 Again he joins these remarks to the others, saying (Nr. 76): “But he has put aside the
true knowledge, and even now has shown us a contrived way of looking at things. For since
he cannot establish his own purpose from the divine Scriptures, he runs back to the wisest
fathers, as he thinks, saying: ‘what the wisest of the fathers declared in their own
writings.’” 15 Marcellus says that Asterius’s fathers “made a pronouncement,” and that
they wrote a “dogma” about God out of their own choice. For the word “dogma” belongs to
human counsel and opinion. 16 That this is so, the dogmatic art of the physicians gives us
ample witness, and so do the so-called “dogmas” of the philosophers. I think no one is
unaware that what seemed good to the senate is still called a “dogma of the senate.”
Marcellus was led to say this, forgetting the apostolic word about the Savior, “having
abolished the law of commandments by dogmas.” He even finds fault with the duty of
following the fathers, although the divine Scripture says, “Ask your father and he will
tell you,

17 your elders, and they will tell you,” and “Do not move the eternal boundaries which
your fathers set.” Then he is indignant that Asterius called Paulinus “blessed,” and,
speaking ill of Eusebius again at the same time, he writes thus (Nr. 77): “For Eusebius
wished to defend the one who wrote the letter badly. First, he composed the letter without
setting out the doctrine in the manner of a teacher, he said. For the writing was not
addressed to the church or to those who were ignorant, but to the blessed Paulinus. He
called him blessed for this reason, that he held the same opinion as Asterius. Therefore,
since we have learned who Asterius’s wisest fathers are, I think it follows that we should
also name the one who became the teacher of Paulinus and the others. 18 For from the
letter of Paulinus, the man who became his teacher too would become quite clear to us.”
After saying some things in between, he again slanders the same man, as though he had
wrongly welcomed Origen, saying (Nr. 32): “Paulinus did not write this to remind them of
the gospel teaching. He admitted that some are moved in this way of themselves, while
others have been led in this way by the readings of the men mentioned earlier.”

19 Then at the end, as though adding a crowning flourish to his proof, he appended to his
own letter some sayings of Origen, as if Origen could persuade more than the evangelists
and apostles. These are the sayings: “It is time to take up again the subject of the
Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit, and to go through a few of the points left out at
that time. Concerning the Father: being indivisible and without parts, he becomes Father
of the Son, not by projecting him, as some suppose. 20 For if the Son is a projection of
the Father and an offspring from him, like the offspring of animals, then the one who
projects and the one who is projected must be bodies.” 21 Then, after setting out these
words of Origen, he goes on to say (Nr. 32): “Origen wrote these things, not wishing to
learn about the eternity of the Word from the holy prophets and apostles, but having given
himself over to it, he rashly dares to narrate in vain a second hypothesis about the
Word.” Yet Marcellus argues against these words, which Origen said correctly, that one
must not suppose the begetting of the Son’s divinity to be bodily and subject to passion.
He objects most of all because Origen gave the Son a distinct subsistence [hypostasis].
And again, speaking ill of Origen and contradicting what he had written correctly, he adds
in these words (Nr. 32): “That Origen used his own dogmas when he wrote such things is
clear from the fact that he often overturns his own statements. In another passage, at any
rate, it is fitting to recall what he says about God. He writes thus:

22 ‘For God did not begin to be Father because he was prevented, as human beings who
become fathers are, by not yet being able to be fathers. For if God is always perfect, and
the power to be Father is present in him, and it is good for him to be the Father of such
a Son, why does he put it off and deprive himself of the good? And, so to speak, from the
time he was able to be Father, why does he not become Father?’ The same must be said also
about the Holy Spirit.” 23 Origen wrote this too. So how did the blessed Paulinus, in
Marcellus’s view, think it dangerous to hide this passage, yet use it against his
opponents to support his own opinions, when I would say not even Origen himself could have
given an account of them? In these words Marcellus falsely claimed that Origen
contradicted himself. He could not grasp that the first passage showed the Father to be
without body and without passion, while the second showed that the Son was begotten not in
time but before all ages.

24 Again, after other remarks, he writes this about Origen (Nr. 78): “And yet, if the
truth must be told about Origen, it is right to say this: he had only just left the
studies of philosophy, and chose to occupy himself with the divine words before he had an
exact grasp of the Scriptures. Because of the great weight and ambition of his outside
education, he began to write sooner than he should have. He was led astray by the
arguments of philosophy, and because of them he wrote some things badly. This is plain,
for he was still mindful of the teachings of Plato, 25 and of the difference of first
principles in Plato. He wrote a book ON FIRST PRINCIPLES and gave his work that title. The
strongest proof of this is that he took the beginning of his words, and the title of the
book, from nowhere else than from the words spoken by Plato. For he begins his writing
like this:

26 ‘Those who have believed and been persuaded.’ You would find this saying worded just so
in Plato’s Gorgias.” But even if that were so, it would bring no charge against Origen for
saying, “Those who have believed and been persuaded,” and for joining to it, next, that
grace and truth came “through Jesus Christ,” and that Christ is the truth, according to
what he himself said: “I am the truth.” For what fellowship could Plato ever have with
these things? 27 No book of Plato’s ON FIRST PRINCIPLES is mentioned anywhere. Nor did
Origen hold the same opinion about first principles as Plato. He knew only one first
principle, unbegotten and without beginning and beyond all things, and that this is the
Father of one only-begotten Son, through whom all things came to be. 28 Marcellus, who
falsely accused Origen in these matters too, adds after other remarks (Nr. 15): “Asterius
said that the Word came to be before the ages, but the very text proves him a liar. So he
has missed not only the matter but the letter as well. For if Proverbs says, ‘Before the
age he founded me,’ how could he say that he came to be before the ages? For to be founded
before the age is one thing, and to come to be before the ages is another.”

29 After saying this, and adding further remarks to overturn the claim that the Son came
to be before the ages, he adds these very words (Nr. 79): “I ask those of the saints who
read this, since they have truly received something like seeds and beginnings of this
interpretation, to add more proofs to what has been said, so that the intentions of those
who twist the faith may be exposed still more. For they have truly abandoned God who begot
them, and have dug for themselves broken cisterns.” 30 Having abused them with such words,
he next tries to show that the Son is not even the image of God. He says (Nr. 80): “I
think it fitting to say a few words about the image also. For Asterius wrote: ‘The one
begotten from him is another, “who is the image of the invisible God.”’ Asterius mentions
the image of the invisible God in order to teach that God differs from the Word as much as
a man is thought to differ from his own image.”

31 And after some remarks in between, he continues (Nr. 82): “So it is plain that before
taking up our body, the Word by himself was not the image of the invisible God. For an
image must be seen, so that through the image what was until then unseen can be seen.” And
he adds (Nr. 82): “So how could Asterius write that the Word of God is the image of the
invisible God? For images show the things they are images of, even when those things are
absent, so that the absent one seems to appear through them. 32 But if God is invisible
and it follows that the Word is invisible too, how can the Word by himself be the image of
the invisible God, when he himself is invisible?” And going on, he abuses him again,
saying (Nr. 24): “So how is it that these men, ‘full of deceit and villainy,’ to speak as
the apostle does, transfer the text to what they suppose was his first creation, when
David has spoken plainly about his coming to be according to the flesh?”

33 In the middle of these remarks he stretches out a long speech and then adds (Nr. 85):
“What will he say to this? I do not think he has anything to say about it. For I do not
think he would confess, clearly and without disguise, even to others, what he hides in his
own mind, as can plainly be learned from what he has written. For the Father is one, he
says, and he begat from himself the only-begotten Word, the firstborn of all creation:
alone, the only one; perfect, the perfect one; king, a king; lord, a lord; God, God; the
unchanging image of his being, will, glory and power.” These words plainly expose his
worthless opinion about the Godhead. 34 For how can the one who was begotten, who is Lord
and [the] God, as he himself said earlier, be the image of God? An image of God is one
thing, and God is another. So if he is an image, he is not Lord or God, but the image of
the Lord and God. But if he is truly Lord and God, then the Lord and [the] God can no
longer be the image of the Lord and God.

35 He has said this with great blindness. He did not consider that a living son can also
be called the image of his own father, whenever he is most like his father. Scripture
teaches this when it says: “Adam lived two hundred and thirty years, and he begat a son
according to his own form and according to his own image, and he named him Seth.” 36 The
apostle also teaches about the divinity of the Son when he says: “who, existing in the
form of God, did not regard being equal with God as something to be seized, but emptied
himself.” And again: “who is the radiance of the glory and the exact imprint of the
being.” And elsewhere it is said: “For he is a radiance of everlasting light, a spotless
mirror of the working of God, and an image of his goodness.” 37 Again the apostle says:
“having put off the old man, and put on the new, which is being renewed to full knowledge
according to the image of the one who created him.” It is clear that he is teaching that
the flesh is not what is meant by the image of God.

38 Then Marcellus turns again to the bishops and writes as follows (Nr. 87): “Look, what
Asterius wrote does not grieve us so much, though he was led to write such things. What
grieves us is that some of those who seem to preside over the church have forgotten the
apostolic tradition and preferred the things outside the divine writings. They have dared
to write and teach things that are no less caught up in the error of those mentioned
before.” 39 And after other things he adds (Nr. 71): “I came across a letter of Narcissus,
who presides over Neronias. He wrote it to a certain Chrestus, Euphronius and Eusebius. In
it, Bishop Hosius asked him whether he said the same as Eusebius of Palestine, who says
there are two beings [ousiai]. From what Narcissus wrote, I learned that he answered that
he believes there are three beings.” Having said this, he moves from Narcissus to
Eusebius, accusing him because he confesses that the Word of God is God.

40 He writes this about him as well (Nr. 72): “He has dared to divide the Word of God and
to name the Word another God, set apart from the Father in being and in power. How far
into blasphemy he has fallen can be easily learned from the very words he wrote.” 41 He
wrote, in these very words: “Surely the image and that of which it is the image are not
thought of as one and the same, but as two beings, two things and two powers, as there are
also so many names.” And to slander him, as if he did it well, Marcellus adds (Nr. 75):
“How then did these men not turn onto the same utterly bad road as those outside, and set
out to teach and write the same things? Eusebius speaks like Valentinus and Hermas, and
Narcissus like Marcion and Plato.” 42 Then he strings together a long, chattering, endless
discourse. He claims that he learned by hearsay that Eusebius had once conversed with
someone while staying in Laodicea, and so he writes about things he did not know, having
learned them only by hearsay. He adds (Nr. 88): “They ought rather to cry out the opposite
to the Lord with tears and mourning: ‘We have sinned, we have been ungodly, we have acted
lawlessly,’ and ‘we have done evil in your sight,’ and now that we have repented we ask to
obtain your kindness.”

43 These were the words that suited him, and it was fitting for him to speak them, given
God’s measureless kindness and love for mankind. Yet it would have followed that God, who
cares with both love and justice, would answer in these words: “If an enemy had reproached
me, I would have borne it; and if the one who hates me had spoken boastfully against me, I
would have hidden from him. But you, a man of like soul with me, my leader and my familiar
friend, you who together with me took pleasant food, we walked in the house of God in
harmony.” 44 For we know from his own saying that he is present with us who serve him:
“Behold,” he said, “I will be with you all the days” of your life “until the end of the
age.” Then, quite consistently, he would also have added the words that follow upon the
earlier ones: “Let death come upon them, and let them go down alive into Hades, for
wickedness is in their hearts.” For Scripture says that those who are in the darkness of
ungodliness are swallowed up by Hades as dead men; they were in fact dead, even though
they seemed to be alive.

45 Then, next after this, he again accuses Eusebius of having, when passing through
Ancyra, spoken in the church about matters which, Marcellus says, he knew only by hearsay.
Angry over this, he writes the following: “But the apostle writes such things about the
faith of the Galatians. Eusebius, however, twists the apostolic meaning, for the reason
for which the apostle said, ‘My children, with whom I am again in labor until Christ is
formed in you,’ and he has attacked the Galatians as though they did not hold a right
opinion about God.” 46 For the apostle was truly in labor, with a sharp and bitter pain,
because he knew that the Galatians did not hold the same opinion about godliness as that
man does, nor speak of two substances, two things, two powers and two gods. But observe
how bitterly he abuses a man who, as he himself writes, said nothing more than the
apostolic saying. And now he admits that Eusebius speaks of two gods, as if I were
declaring the Son of God to be God together with the Father. But going on in what follows,
as if he had forgotten what he accused me of here, he tries to slander the same man by
saying that he calls Christ a mere man.

47 Next, after what has been set out, he attaches a great deal of long-winded nonsense,
stringing together things that are and things that are not, almost like those who said,
“Our lips are our own; who is lord over us?” 48 By this it is shown, as I said at the
beginning of the treatise, that he pounced on the writing out of excessive hatred and
hostility toward his brothers. Moving on from this, he again makes a tragic show of
Asterius, drawing out a long account about him: how he travels abroad, and where, and
when, and to whom. Leaving that too, he turns once more to the man of God Paulinus,
writing in these very words: 49 “Paulinus, the father of this man, was persuaded by these
sayings and does not hesitate to say and write the same things. Sometimes he calls Christ
a second god, and says that he became god in a more human way; at other times he defines
him as a created thing. That this is so, he once said to us, when he passed through
Ancyra, that Christ is a created thing.”

50 And again, telling a story, he says that he talked with Paulinus. Then he slanders the
blessed man as having spoken of many gods. Leaving Paulinus, he turns again to Eusebius,
saying: “So too Eusebius of Caesarea has written, holding himself the same opinion about
gods as Paulinus and those outside the faith.” 51 For he wrote, not as if there were only
one God, but as if there were one who is the only true God. Learning this from him,
Paulinus, the father of Asterius, supposed that there were younger gods. In these words he
also accuses us of bringing in opinions of gods, while he himself denies the divinity of
the Son. And having set down Eusebius’s wording, he fails to understand that the voice
teaching that the Father is the only true God was not Eusebius’s own, 52 but that of our
Savior, who said, “that they may know you, the only true God.” And after other matters he
adds, saying: “For from where will they be able to show us, from the divine sayings, that
one is unbegotten and one is begotten in the way that they themselves have believed he was
begotten, when neither prophets nor evangelists nor apostles have said this?”

53 Then, as though he had entered himself in the games to fight against everyone at once,
he moves on to Narcissus and says: “So even if someone says that, arguing that there is a
first god and a second, as Narcissus has written in these very words,” 54 (For the one who
says, “Let us make man in our image and likeness,” does not allow it.) That he himself and
his Father are two, we have heard in part from the Lord himself and from the holy
Scriptures, who bear witness to it. If, then, Narcissus wished on this account to divide
the Word from the Father in power, let him know that the prophet who wrote that God said,
“Let us make man in our image and likeness,” himself wrote, “And God made man.” 55 Then,
moving on from Narcissus to Asterius, he writes these things: “Asterius declared that the
Father and the Son are one and the same only in this respect, that they agree in
everything. For he said it this way: ‘Because of their exact agreement in all words and
works, “I and the Father are one.”’” And again he attacks Eusebius, saying: “For they want
the Saviour to be a man. This is clear from the way Eusebius craftily twisted the words of
the apostle to suit his own purpose.”

56 He speaks as if he wished to bring to birth, from some old labor pain, the greatest
blasphemy. In the words of the Saviour, he “brought forth from his own treasure” what is
“evil.” 57 Wishing to show that the Saviour is only a man, and as if he were uncovering
for us some great secret mystery of the apostle, he spoke as follows: “Therefore the
divine apostle, handing down to us the secret and mystical teaching about God, most
plainly cries out and shouts, ‘One God’; then after the one God he says, ‘one mediator
between God and men, the man Christ Jesus.’” 58 If, then, he says that Christ is a man,
looking only at his dispensation in the flesh, he must surely agree with this too: that
one should not place hope in him. For the prophet Jeremiah said, “Cursed is the man who
has his hope in man.”

59 You see how wickedness is blind. For at one time he himself bore witness against the
man who confesses the Son as God, and blamed him for this, saying he brought in the Word
of God as God subsisting in being and power. Now he slanders the same man as saying that
Christ is a mere man. He plainly lies both in what he has already said and in what he adds
next about him, saying again: “But the man mentioned above, paying little attention to the
holy prophets, and sounding forth as if he were revealing some secret and hidden teaching
about God from the apostle, said, ‘One God, and one mediator between God and men, the man
Christ Jesus.’” 60 The man who wrote this, boasting loudly of remembering the Scriptures,
did not consider that the most holy apostle who wrote this also wrote that other saying:
“Who, being in the form of God, did not consider it robbery to be equal with God, but
emptied himself, taking the form of a servant, becoming in the likeness of man, and being
found in appearance as a man.”

61 You see how the holy apostle, as though he had foreseen by the Spirit the wickedness of
these men, wrote elsewhere “as a man” and “becoming in the likeness of man,” to put a stop
to such great blasphemy of theirs. And after other things he slanders the same man in this
way: “How then, since Eusebius does not attend to these things, does he want the Saviour
to be only a man?” 62 He does not dare to say this openly, but he wants it, and he is
refuted by his own words. And the man who said these things also blamed the same Eusebius
for proclaiming the Son as God, writing thus: “For having dared to divide the Word of God,
and having named the Word another God, standing apart from the Father in being and power,
into what great blasphemy he has fallen.” 63 Marcellus has set out so many such charges,
and many more besides, not only against the bishops but against the sound faith of the
Church. It would be clear what his own purpose was. That the man cared nothing for the
truth, you could learn by reading the bishops’ letters themselves. There you will find him
cutting off the limbs from the whole body of the meaning of their words, hiding the whole
connected argument, and seizing on little phrases, from which he makes his accusation
dishonestly.

64 For example, he openly slanders Eusebius as having said that Christ is a mere man,
because in his letter he quoted the apostolic saying in which the apostle himself said,
“For there is one God, and one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus.” 65 So
Marcellus attacked this apostolic saying as though it were Eusebius’s own. In his great
wisdom he did not see that he was really attacking the apostle. But he passed over in
silence Eusebius’s own words in that same letter, and those in his other writings on the
divine Scriptures, which have been circulated everywhere. By his silence he hid whatever
he could not slander. 66 One could find him doing the same thing with the other writings
he has attacked. To keep this work in proportion, I will leave these to those who want to
examine them closely. I am eager now to expose Marcellus’s own strange teaching about the
Son of God, so that everyone may see plainly what he himself thought about the Son of God.

BOOK 2

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Book 2. 1. How Marcellus held that the Son of God neither exists nor existed before his
birth from the virgin. 2. What Marcellus thought about the Word in God. 3. What Marcellus
thought about the flesh which the Word took up. 4. What kind of end Marcellus brings upon
the kingdom of Christ and upon the flesh he took up.

CHAPTER 1

1 Now that I have set out what he slandered, the time calls me to bring into the light the
faith of the Galatian, or rather his unbelief toward the Son of God. For a long time this
false teaching lay hidden in the man. I must go briefly around the pretext of his letter
and strip it bare. I must show everyone, through the testimony of his own words, what sort
of man was leading the church of Christ. He held that the Son of God neither is, nor was
before, nor ever at all existed as a Son to God before he was born through the virgin. He
says there is only a Word, of one nature with God, eternally with him and united to him,
just as the word in a man would be. 2 For he himself uses this example. He says there is a
Word within God himself, at one time at rest, at another time active in expressing
something. This Word comes forth only as an activity of the Father, just as we, when we
give a command, act by saying and speaking something. But it is plain to everyone that
nobody could call the expressive and active word a Son in this sense. Yet having granted
this about God, I do not know how he says that this Word, which has no real existence,
took flesh and was active in it.

3 He says that only then did he become Christ and Jesus and King and image of God and
Beloved and glorified Son, and indeed firstborn of all creation. Though he did not exist
before, he then came to be, even though he had no real existence. And here is the strange
part of the account: all this begins less than four hundred years ago, and again all of it
will suddenly cease after the time of judgment. The Word will be united with God, so that
he is nothing other than God. But the flesh he took up will be left abandoned by the Word.
So at that time neither the Son of God will exist, nor the Son of Man whom he took up. 4
He brings it to this end as though he were deaf. He does not hear the angel Gabriel, who
plainly and explicitly announced to the Mother of God the one who would be born of her and
who would come “from the seed of David according to the flesh.” The angel said, “Behold,
you will conceive in the womb and bear a son, and you will call his name Jesus. He will be
great and will be called Son of the Most High, and the Lord God will give him the throne
of David his father, and he will reign over the house of Jacob forever, and of his kingdom
there will be no end.” Nor does he understand the words of the great prophet Daniel, who
confirms these very things when he spoke beforehand in the Holy Spirit: “And behold, with
the clouds of heaven one like a son of man was coming, and he reached the Ancient of Days,
and was brought before him.

5 And to him was given the rule and the honor and the kingdom, and all peoples, tribes and
tongues will serve him. His authority is an everlasting authority which will not pass
away, and his kingdom will not be destroyed.” But Isaiah did not persuade him either, who
likewise prophesies here about the endless kingdom of the Son of Man: “For a child has
been born to us, a son has also been given to us, 6 “...whose rule is upon his shoulder.
His name is called Messenger of Great Counsel, Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Ruler,
Prince of Peace, Father of the age to come. For I will bring peace and health to him.” 7
“Great is his dominion, and of his peace there will be no end, upon the throne of David
and over his kingdom, to set it right and to uphold it with judgment and with
righteousness, from now and forever.”

8 In agreement with these words was what Gabriel announced to the virgin, saying that the
one born of her would reign “forever” and that there would be no end “of his kingdom.” Yet
Marcellus dared to write against all of this. You can learn how from his own words, in
which he denied both the divinity and the humanity of the Son of God, in a way more novel
than any godless heresy. 9 Among those who hold other doctrines, some said that the Son of
God did not exist beforehand or pre-exist. They supposed him to be a man like the rest,
who was honored from being a man by adoption as a son. Yet even they, having granted this,
acknowledged that he has an immortal and unending honor, glory and eternal kingdom.
Others, denying that the man is the Son of God, asserted that God was pre-existent. But
those outside the church went in their error only that far. This man, however, who led the
church of God for so many years, [does away with] the existence of the Son of God. He
served at the church’s altar, and presumably believes that he himself will obtain eternal
and immortal life, yet he robs the High Priest of it.

10 But we have, as the apostle says, “a great high priest who has passed through the
heavens, Jesus the Son of God.” Marcellus does not dare to say that he pre-existed or
existed beforehand. Nor will he say that he will continue to exist, or be with God’s
saints according to that very promise of the kingdom of heaven. For at that time, when all
the saints will share in the kingdom of God in incorruptible and immortal bodies, he
deprives Christ alone, and the flesh he took on, of it. 11 And he does not shudder to
declare that the Founder of the resurrection, the cause of eternal life for all, will fall
away not only from the kingdom but even from life itself. It is as if someone gave eyes
but took away the light that supplies their radiance. Neither Gabriel, so great an angel
of God, nor the great prophet Daniel, of whom it was said, “Are you wiser than Daniel?”,
nor the great Isaiah, nor the rest of the company of the prophets, persuaded the man not
to write or think such things.

12 Not even the Jews themselves did so. Among them the Christ, whom they still await and
are accustomed to call the Anointed, is expected to have an ageless and deathless kingdom.
Yet this man has become worse even than these, daring to be impious about both the
beginning and the end of the Son of God. Not even the divine apostle moved him to stop
such impiety, though he said plainly, “The saying is trustworthy: if we died with him, we
will also live with him; if we endure, we will also reign with him.” He said that we will
be heirs of God, though not apart from Christ. For he says, “heirs 13 of God, and fellow
heirs with Christ, if indeed we suffer with him so that we may also be glorified with
him.” And again he says, “But if we died with Christ, we believe that we will also live
with him, knowing that Christ, raised from the dead, no longer dies; death no longer rules
over him.”

14 And again: “But the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.” So eternal
life will be provided for us in no other way than “in Christ Jesus our Lord.” Our hope is
not simply to live, but to be glorified with him, to inherit with him and to reign with
him. For everything will be ours from sharing in him. 15 The same apostle teaches this
when he says, “God is faithful, through whom you were called into fellowship with his Son
Jesus Christ our Lord.” And he shows what this fellowship is when he says, “He raised us
up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, so that in the
coming ages he might show the surpassing riches of his grace in kindness toward us in
Christ Jesus.” 16 The same apostle also taught this about the Savior, saying, “But he,
because he remains forever, holds his priesthood permanently. Therefore he is also able to
save completely those who come to God through him, since he always lives to intercede for
them.”

17 Not only that, but he also said that Melchizedek remains a priest “continually,”
because he has been made like “the Son of God.” Shortly I will set out how Marcellus dared
to write the opposite of all this. For now, let us first look at what he thought about the
Son of God not existing at all, not even having a real subsistence.


AGAINST MARCELLUS (BOOK 2, CHAPTERS 2–4)
========================================

AGAINST MARCELLUS continued

CHAPTER 2

1 He attacks those who say that the Son of God is truly a Son, living and subsisting. He
makes his own view plain, writing in these very words (No. 42): “So before he came down
and was born through the virgin, he was only Word. For what else was it that came down ‘in
the last of the days,’ as he himself wrote, and was born of the virgin, before he took on
human flesh? It was nothing other than Word.” 2 Then, going on, he calls him eternal,
defining him in this way as unbegotten. He writes (No. 48): “Do you hear, then, the
agreement of the Holy Spirit, who through many different persons bears witness to the
eternity of the Word?” 3 “And for this reason he begins from the eternity of the Word,
saying, ‘In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.’
By using three testimonies in a row he wants to show the eternity of the Word.” And after
other things he adds (No. 81): “For before, as I have often said, he was nothing other
than Word.”

4 He adds that he was not even “the image of the invisible God,” saying (No. 82): “It is
therefore clear that before he took up our body, the Word by himself was not the image of
the invisible God.” And again, after other things, he goes on (No. 49): “What, then, was
this that came down before he became man? Surely, he says, Spirit. For if anyone wanted to
say anything other than this, the angel who spoke to the virgin would not allow it: ‘The
Holy Spirit will come upon you.’ And if he says it was Spirit, hear the Savior saying,
‘God is Spirit.’” 5 Here the Savior has plainly said of the Father, “God is Spirit,” and
so Marcellus is refuted, since he said that the Father himself became man. But he strives
still harder, writing as follows (No. 39): “So let him learn that the Word of God has
come, not a Word named loosely, as they say, but one who is truly Word.”

6 And again he adds this to what he has said (No. 62): “For if the examination concerned
the Spirit alone, he would reasonably appear to be one and the same as God. But if the
addition of the flesh in the Savior is examined, the Godhead seems to be extended only in
activity. So reasonably it is truly an undivided monad.” 7 He builds up this point still
more by what he writes in the following passages (No. 31): “To say that he was begotten
before the ages seems consistent. For the offspring is what comes forth from the Father
who sent it out. But the other point has not been taken up by him in a sound or reverent
way.” 8 “For to say that the one who came forth from him is not Word, and that this is the
true manner of the begetting, but is simply Son only, usually gives those who hear it an
impression of a human appearance.” In these words he openly denied the Son. He brings in a
bare Word, like some commander of what is to be done, as is clear from what he adds (No.
41): “whom all the divine Scriptures proclaim in this way.”

9 “For David says about him, ‘By the word of the Lord the heavens were made firm.’ And the
same again: ‘He sent out his word and healed them.’ Solomon says, ‘The wicked will seek me
and will not find me. For they hated wisdom, and did not choose the word of the Lord.’ And
Isaiah said, ‘For out of Zion will go forth a law, and the word of the Lord from
Jerusalem.’” 10 “And again Jeremiah says, ‘The wise were put to shame, and were terrified
and were caught, because they rejected the word of the Lord.’ And the prophet Hosea said,
‘They hated the one who reproved in the gates, and they abhorred the holy word.’ Micah
likewise, also mentioning the Word, said, ‘Out of Zion will go forth a law, and the word
of the Lord from Jerusalem.’” 11 After collecting so many sayings about the commanding
Word, Marcellus says that the God Word who was “in the beginning with God” is also of this
kind. So he goes on to say (Fr. 46): “The holy apostle and disciple of the Lord, John,
teaches clearly and explicitly at the beginning of the gospel, as of something previously
unknown among men. He names him the Word of the Almighty. This is how he spoke: ‘In the
beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.’ By using more
than one testimony he shows the eternity of the Word.”

12 Marcellus adds to this and says next (Fr. 47): “By saying ‘In the beginning was the
Word,’ John shows that the Word was in the Father in power (for God is the beginning of
all things that have come to be, ‘from whom are all things’). By saying ‘and the Word was
with God,’ he shows that the Word was with God in active operation (for ‘all things came
to be through him, and apart from him not one thing came to be’), 13 and by saying that
the Word was God, he shows that the Godhead is not divided, since the Word is in him and
he is in the Word. For he says, ‘The Father is in me, and I am in the Father.’” Marcellus
adds still more to this, laying bare his own thought in what he says next (Fr. 28): “So
the holy apostle and disciple of the Lord, John, when he spoke of the Word’s eternity,
proved a true witness to the Word, saying, ‘In the beginning was the Word, and the Word
was with God, and the Word was God.’

14 Here he makes no mention of any begetting of the Word. By using three testimonies one
after another, he confirmed that the Word was in the beginning.” And he adds to this,
saying (Fr. 61): “We know that the dispensation in the flesh is different with regard to
the man, but we have believed that the eternity according to the Spirit is united with the
Father.” 15 Going on after this, he says next (Fr. 64): “If then he himself says, ‘I came
out from the Father and have come,’ and again, ‘The word which you hear is not mine, but
the Father’s who sent me,’ and ‘All that the Father has is mine,’ it is clear that he also
said, with good reason, ‘The Father is in me and I am in the Father.’ The meaning is that
the Word who says this is in God, and the Father is in the Word, because the Word is the
power of the Father.

16 For a trustworthy witness has called him ‘the power of God and the wisdom of God.’ So
the Savior does not say ‘I and the Father are one’ because of an exact agreement in all
words and works, as Asterius said. He says it because it is impossible for the Word of
God, or for God, to be divided from his own Word. Asterius thinks the Savior said this
because of agreement in everything. If he refuses to look at the second dispensation and
so learn the truth, then we must remind him how, in what appears on the surface, one can
sometimes see disagreement. 17 For that is what the written words teach us. What agreement
is there at the time of the passion, when he says, ‘Father, if it is possible, let this
cup pass,’ and then adds, ‘Yet not as I wish, but as you wish’? First of all, to say ‘Let
this cup pass’ is not what someone in agreement would say. And what is added does not seem
to belong to agreement either, for he says, ‘Not mine, but let yours be done, Father—your
will.’

18 You hear how the letter shows disagreement in appearance, with one willing and the
other not willing. For it is clear that the Father willed it, from the fact that what he
willed came about. And it is clear that the Son did not will it, from the fact that he
asks to be spared. And again he says, ‘I do not seek my own will, but the will of the
Father who sent me.’” 19 How then, he says, did the Savior say “I and the Father are one”
because of their agreement in everything? And after a little he adds (no. 65): How can the
Son have agreement with the Father, or the Father with the Son, when the Son says “All
that the Father has is mine”? For to say “All that the Father has is mine” would plainly
be the act of a Son who takes more than his share from the Father.

20 For on that view, passing over the words “all that the Father has is common,” he said
instead “all that the Father has is mine.” Yet that is not how one who agrees would speak.
He would say: all that the Father has is common. For the Acts of the Apostles praises the
agreement of those who then came to the faith, and says “all things were common to them.”
If one must hold that among men, who are able to agree, all things are common, how much
more should the Father and the Son share a common life, if they are divided into two
hypostases? But as it is, in saying “All that the Father has is mine,” the Son appears to
take more than his share from the Father. And in claiming that he is not even master of
his own word, but that the Father is master of this too

21 (for “the word that you hear,” he says, “is not mine but the Father’s who sent me”), he
shows the Father taking away the Son’s own things. So on Asterius’s notion, both
statements appear to be inconsistent with each other. 22 For one who agrees ought not to
snatch away what rightly belongs to the other, since that would be grasping. He ought to
regard what belongs to each as common. So when we look at the human flesh, we will not
find the Savior saying “I and the Father are one” in the way Asterius has written. The
Savior did not say “I and the Father are one” because of an exact agreement in all words
and deeds, as Asterius wrote. 23 For if that were so, he would surely have said: “I and
the Father agree with each other in everything.” But as it is, he said “I and the Father
are one.” So if there was some disagreement in those matters, and the Master must speak
the truth, we must understand exactly this: whenever the Savior says “I and the Father are
one,” he is not saying it with a view to the man whom he took up, but to the Word who came
forth from the Father.

24 For if there seems to be any disagreement, it must be referred to the weakness of the
flesh, which the Word took up although he had not had it before. But if oneness is spoken
of, this clearly belongs to the Word. 25 So it was fitting that he said not only “I and
the Father are one,” but also this: “I have been with you so long, Philip, and you say,
‘Show me the Father.’” He plainly meant that the Father is seen not with these eyes but
with those that can see things of the mind. For both the Father and his Word are invisible
to the eyes of the flesh. So he did not say this to Philip because of an agreement in
everything. 26 After saying so much, he takes up the argument again from the beginning and
lays down his teaching this way (no. 92): Before all creation there was a kind of
stillness, as is likely, since the Word was in God. For if Asterius believes that God is
the maker of all things, clearly he will agree with us that God has always existed and
never received a beginning of being, while created things were made by him, and made out
of nothing. For I do not think he agrees with anyone who says that some other things are
also unbegotten. I think he is firmly persuaded that heaven and earth and everything in
heaven and on earth were made by God.

27 If then he believes this, he must also agree that apart from God there was nothing
else. So the Word, being in the Father, had his own glory. 28 After saying this, he adds,
after other remarks (no. 93): Asterius calls the authority given to him “glory,” and not
only glory but “glory before the world.” He does not consider that when the world had not
yet come to be, there was nothing else besides God alone. 29 Having said this, Marcellus
openly denied the Son through these words. Then, to persuade us exactly what kind of Word
of God he had in mind, he makes his meaning clearer by comparing the Word to our own
speech. He writes this (Nr. 55): “For just as everything that has come into being has come
into being from the Father through the Word, so also the things said by the Father are
expressed through the Word. For this reason the most holy Moses calls the Word an angel
here: he appeared for no other purpose than to announce to Moses the things he knew would
benefit the sons of Israel. And he knew that it would benefit them to believe that there
is one God.”

30 “Therefore he also said to him, ‘I am the one who is,’ so that he would teach that
there is no other god besides himself. And this, I think, is easy for sensible people to
understand even from a small and lowly example taken from our own lives.” 31 “For no one
can separate a man’s word from him in power or in substance. In a man the word is one and
the same thing as the man himself, and it is distinguished from him by nothing else except
the active working of the deed.” Then he expands still further, making his thought plain
in the words that follow (Nr. 53): “God did not need some other preparation for the
construction, such as material or anything else of a human sort, but only this preparation
that was in his own mind.” 32 “Since, then, it was impossible for God to plan the
construction of heaven apart from the Word and the wisdom that belongs to the Word, it was
fitting that he said, ‘When he prepared the heaven, I was present with him.’” Again he
adds a comparison of God’s Word to the human word, to show that it has no substance of its
own. He writes here as follows (Nr. 56): “Here the Father says to Moses, ‘I am the one who
is,’ and he clearly says it through the Word.”

33 “For everything the Father says, he is plainly seen to say everywhere through the Word.
This is clear from ourselves too, as far as small things can be compared with great and
divine things. For we also do everything we wish to say or do, as far as we are able, by
means of our own word.” 34 Then, after saying some things in between, he adds (Nr. 68):
“How then did Asterius, who pretends to follow the holy Scriptures simply and with fear,
fail to know this passage, which says, ‘The Lord your God, he is God in heaven above and
on earth beneath, and there is no other besides him,’ and that ‘he is one’ and that
besides him there is no other?” 35 Going on, he again insists, saying (Nr. 40): “He is not
called Word by misuse of the term—even if those who teach otherwise burst with their
lies—but he is Word properly and truly. And he adds (Nr. 45): “For what else was the
hidden mystery but the mystery concerning the Word? This mystery was so hidden ‘in God’
before that none of the earlier people clearly knew the things concerning the Word, but
now we enjoy the wealth ‘of the glory’ and the hidden mystery.”

36 After this he again uses a human illustration, writing in this way (Nr. 52): “For who,
whether of the holy angels or of righteous men, was trustworthy enough to cancel the
punishment decreed against him on behalf of God, 37 if not the Word himself, who was
present and formed together with him, to whom the Father said, ‘Let us make man in our
image and likeness’? There was no other God who could help to form him. For he says, ‘I am
God, the first, and I am after these things, and besides me there is no other God.’ So
there was no younger god, nor any other who, being God ‘after these things,’ was able to
work together with God.” 38 But suppose someone uses a small, human example, like our own,
to examine God’s work as if in a picture. Take a skilled sculptor who wants to make a
statue. First he looks within himself at its outlines and features. Then he works out how
wide and how long it should be to look right, and he checks the proportion of the whole
against each individual part. He prepares suitable bronze, sketches the coming statue
beforehand in his own mind, and imagines he sees it with the mind’s eye. He is also aware
that reason is working with him. By reason he calculates, and by reason he is accustomed
to do everything, since nothing done without reason is beautiful. As he begins this work
on material things, he urges himself on as if speaking to another: “Come, let us make it;
come, let us shape a statue.” In the same way God, the Master of all, when he makes the
living statue from the earth, urges on no one else but his own Word, saying, “Let us make
man.” This was not the same way he made the other things, for the whole creation came to
be by the Word.

39 And after other things he adds to this (Nr. 108): “But now I believe the divine
Scriptures, that there is one God. And his Word [God] came forth from the Father so that
‘all things’ might come to be ‘through him.’ But after the time of judgment, the setting
right of all things, and the removal of every opposing power, ‘then he himself will be
made subject to the one who made all things subject to him,’ ‘to God and Father.’ In this
way the Word will be in God, just as he was before the world existed. For when nothing
existed before except God alone, and all things were going to come to be through the Word,
the Word came forth in active power, this Word who belongs to the Father.” 40 And again he
states the same thought more plainly, saying (Nr. 54): “For before the world existed, the
Word was in the Father. But when the almighty God purposed to make everything in heaven
and on earth, the making of the world needed an active power. For this reason, since
nothing else existed except God (for all things are agreed to have been made by him), the
Word then came forth and became the maker of the world. He had earlier prepared it
inwardly, in thought.”

41 And once more, after all this, he adds (Nr. 34): “And for this reason he does not call
himself Son of God, but everywhere calls himself Son of Man, so that by such a confession
he might bring it about that man, through his fellowship with him, becomes a son of God by
adoption. Then, after the end of the work, he would again be united with God as the Word,
fulfilling what the apostle said earlier: ‘Then he himself will be made subject to the one
who made all things subject to him, so that God may be all in all.’ For at that time he
will be what he was before.” Through all these statements Marcellus, with head uncovered,
has openly renounced the Son of God. 42 For if God and the Word within him were one and
the same, then no one could ever be his own father, any more than his own son, being one
and alone. But God was one and alone, and the same as his own Word. So it is plain that he
was not a father when he had no son, and not a son when he had no father existing.

43 So from what has been set out, we have seen what this man laid out: that the Son of God
neither exists nor pre-existed, but that a bare word was inside God himself, at one time
resting and at another working with active power. He set these same points before us again
and again in different ways in his writing, and piled up a great heap of needless words in
the book. But we are content with the refutations he supplies against himself from the
words he quoted, and we will not even think the absurdity of this Jewish doctrine worth an
answer. 44 From here let us move on to what the same man said about the flesh, which he
says the Word in God took up by activity alone. Let us see how he transfers to the flesh
the teaching about God that Scripture gives concerning the only-begotten Son of God. He
denies the Son who truly pre-existed, yet speaks of the flesh as God, though a little
later this irreverent man declared that this flesh would be left empty of the Word.

CHAPTER 3

1 “For the Word ‘was in the beginning,’” being nothing other than Word. But the man who
was united to the Word, who did not exist before, became man, as John teaches us when he
says, “and the Word became flesh.” For this reason, then, Scripture appears to mention the
Word alone. Whenever divine Scripture mentions the name of Jesus or of Christ, it appears
to be naming the Word of God as he exists with human flesh. And if anyone claims he can
point out the name of Christ or Jesus applied to the Word alone even before the new
covenant, he will find that it was said prophetically, as is clear from this: “The kings
of the earth stood by, and the rulers were gathered together against the Lord and against
his Christ.” 2 And after other things he adds: “So it is reasonable that before the
descent he was, as we have often said, Word. But after the descent and the taking up of
flesh he received various titles, because ‘the Word became flesh.’” Notice how by this
Marcellus does not want the name of Jesus and Christ, and the other titles, to be applied
to the Word, but to the flesh which he took up. This observation is necessary, so that
when Marcellus in turn throws off the flesh, he may be convicted of blaspheming against
the very Christ of God. Then, going on after the passages quoted above, he writes the
following about the body of the Savior:

3 “And let Asterius not think it unbelievable that the body, though younger than he, could
attain such antiquity. Let him consider this: even if human flesh is in fact younger,
still the Word, who deigned to take it from a pure virgin and united his own to it, not
only made the man created in himself ‘firstborn of all creation,’ but also wants him to be
the beginning of all things, not only of those on earth but also of those in the heavens.”
4 After saying this, and after other remarks, he applies to the flesh the apostle’s words,
in which the apostle speaks of the Son of God in the highest terms: “who is the image of
the invisible God, firstborn of all creation; because in him all things in heaven and on
earth were created, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities; all things have
been created through him and for him; and he is before all things, and in him all things
hold together.” He is not ashamed to take such words of the apostle as being about the
flesh. Going on, Marcellus himself writes this about it: “If, then, the Savior confesses
that the flesh is of no benefit, how can it be that flesh which is from the earth and of
no benefit should be with the Word in the ages to come, as though profitable to him?”

5 And again, about the same flesh, he adds: “How, then, could the form of a slave, which
the Word took up, being the form of a slave, be with the Word?” Yet the man who said such
things about the flesh now calls it “the image of God” and “firstborn of all creation,”
and says that it existed before all things, and that “all things in heaven and on earth,
thrones, dominions, rulers, authorities, were created in it.” 6 He writes as follows:
“Therefore, if he himself is ‘firstborn of all creation,’ and ‘in him all things were
created,’ we should know that the apostle is now speaking of his economy in the flesh.”
And he confirms his statement by adding next: “So he was named ‘firstborn of all creation’
because of his birth in the flesh, not, as they suppose, because of the first creation.” 7
And he adds: “So this most holy Word was not called ‘firstborn of all creation’ before the
incarnation (for how could the one who always is be the firstborn of anything?). Rather,
it is the first ‘new man,’ in whom God willed ‘to sum up all things,’ that the divine
Scriptures call ‘firstborn of all creation.’” And again he adds: “You hear how it happens
that not only these things, but also the things that already existed, ‘in heaven and on
earth, were created in him,’ in the new creation.”

8 So much for the passages in which Marcellus says he was named “firstborn of all
creation” because of the flesh. Now see how he also applies the words “The Lord created me
as the beginning of his ways for his works” to the flesh. He pays no attention to the
divine Scripture, which speaks in the person of Wisdom in the Proverbs in this way: “I,
Wisdom, made counsel my dwelling, and I called on knowledge and understanding. Through me
kings reign, and rulers write down righteousness.” 9 Wisdom goes on to say right after
this: “I walk in the ways of righteousness, and I move about among the paths of justice,
so that I may give a possession to those who love me, and fill their treasuries with good
things. If I report to you what happens day by day, I will remember to count what comes
from eternity. 10 The Lord created me as the beginning of his ways for his works. Before
the age he founded me. In the beginning, before he made the earth,” and what follows.
Marcellus did not want to fix his mind on these words. He had only one aim, which was to
avoid confessing the Son of God. So he applies this plain statement about the divine
nature to the flesh. He turned aside from the straight road and invented a trackless path
for himself. His words are these:

11 “So this passage of the Proverbs, when it says ‘The Lord created me,’ does not mean to
set out the beginning of our Savior’s divinity, as these people suppose. It means the
second arrangement, the one in the flesh. For this reason it fittingly speaks of the
creation of human flesh.” 12 And he continues: “So the creation belongs to his work as a
man. That is why it says, ‘The Lord created me as the beginning of his ways for his
works.’ It means: he created me through the virgin Mary, through whom God chose beforehand
to unite human flesh to his own Word.” 13 After some other remarks he adds: “This being
so, it follows that we should consider in our minds this passage, spoken in a proverb:
‘The Lord created me as the beginning of his ways for his works.’ For our Master God truly
created, making what did not exist. For the flesh which the Word took up was not in
existence; he created it when it did not exist.” And he adds again: “This, then, is what
‘The Lord created me as the beginning of his ways for his works’ means.”

14 He goes on: “‘Before the age he founded me.’ He calls this a foundation, meaning the
arrangement in the flesh that had been appointed beforehand. So the apostle also says,
‘For no one can lay any other foundation than the one that is laid, which is Jesus
Christ.’ He mentions only one age here, from which he said the things of Christ were
founded.” 15 And again he confirms the same wording, saying: “The prophet rightly said,
‘Before the age he founded me.’ He plainly means the flesh, because of its fellowship with
his true Son, the Word.” Then he adds: “Next he says, ‘In the beginning, before he made
the earth.’ What earth is this, if not our flesh, which became earth again after the
disobedience? For it says, ‘You are earth, and to earth you will return.’ This flesh had
to receive healing, since in some way it had come into fellowship with the holy Word.”

16 But see how Marcellus contradicts himself here. In one place he said that the flesh is
“the beginning of his ways” that God created, and again he said that the same flesh is the
“foundation.” Then he adds “before he made the earth,” and explains that the earth too is
the flesh. He does not see that it makes no sense to say that the flesh was created before
the flesh, and then, after the creation of the flesh, to call it flesh again. 17 On top of
this, he goes on to say: “Then it says, ‘Before he made the depths.’ Here the prophet
means, in a proverbial way, that the depths are the hearts of the saints, which hold the
gift of the Spirit in their own depth.” 18 Notice in this too what he does. He took “The
Lord created me” to be said about the flesh. Then, hemmed in by the Scripture that says
“before he made the depths,” he explains the depths as the hearts of the saints. But he
does not see that the hearts of the saints, that is, of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, of
Moses, Elijah and Melchizedek, and of the other prophets, existed before the Savior’s
flesh.

19 How, then, is it possible to apply the words “before He made the abysses” to the flesh?
And after some other remarks Marcellus again goes on to say (Nr. 20): “What, then, is this
heading too: ‘before the springs of the waters came forth’? He says it means the holy
apostles.” The Scripture of Exodus sets this mystery before us, announcing the types of
the apostles long ago; for since the apostles were twelve in number, it mentions twelve
springs. 20 And he goes on to repeat the same thing, writing as follows (Nr. 20): “So it
was reasonable that the Master, speaking through the prophet Solomon, said ‘before the
springs of the waters came forth’ concerning his birth according to the flesh.” 21 Then,
after going through some other matters in order, he continues (Nr. 22): “Since, then, we
have spoken about the things that came first, it follows that we should fill in what is
left. What is left is the part about the mountains and hills. For he says, ‘before the
mountains were set firm, and before all the hills, he begets me.’ By mountains and hills
he means the apostles and the successors of the apostles, so as to indicate, in figurative
language, their righteous way of life as set against other people.”

22 After setting out interpretations of this kind, he turns again to the words of the
apostle, and speaks the opposite of what the apostle says. For the apostle taught that the
Son of God existed beforehand and is “firstborn of all creation.” With a loud voice he
testified that “all things” were created “through him and in him,” and that he is “before
all things.” But Marcellus drags this teaching down to the flesh, and a little later
denies even this. 23 He says this (Nr. 43): “For this reason he fittingly adds, ‘who is
the image of the invisible God.’ When did he become an image? Or when he took up the
creature formed ‘according to image and likeness’? For before that, as I have often said,
he was nothing other than Word.” And he persists, making the same point more plainly in
these words (Nr. 82): “So it is clear that before he took up our body, the Word by himself
was not the image of the invisible God. For an image must be seen, so that through the
image what until then was not seen can be seen.”

24 And again he adds (Nr. 82): “How then did Asterius write that the Word of God is the
image of the invisible God? For images show the things they are images of even when those
things are absent, so that the absent one seems to appear through them. But if God is
invisible and it follows that the Word is invisible too, how can the Word by himself be
the image of the invisible God, when he himself is invisible? For it is impossible for
what is not visible ever to be made visible through something invisible.” 25 Here too
Marcellus fails to see that if we grant that the flesh is the image of God, it is time to
say that the flesh of all people, and the faces of their bodies, are images of God. On his
view the Savior would then have had nothing exceptional. Yet Marcellus seems to forget
what he wrote afterward about the flesh. He called it “the form of a servant,” drawing on
the apostle’s wording, and said that for this very reason, because it is “the form of a
servant,” it cannot be united with the Word.

26 He even said outright (Nr. 104): “How can it be that what is from the earth and is of
no benefit in the ages to come is united with the Word?” Yet at the present point he
insists that the flesh is the image of the invisible God, and declares emphatically (Nr.
82) that before the taking up of our body his Word was not the image of the invisible God.
27 And again, after the passages already set out, he goes on to say (Nr. 83): “So it is
clear from every side that the holy apostle called the flesh that was added to the Word
the image of the invisible God, so that through what is visible the invisible might also
appear. The apostle says, ‘He is the image of the invisible God.’ That is, now, when he
has taken up the flesh made according to the image of God, he has become the true image of
the invisible God.”

28 “For if we were counted worthy to know the Word of God through this image, we ought to
believe the Word himself when he speaks through the image: ‘I and the Father are one.’ For
no one can know either the Word or the Father of the Word apart from this image.” 29 And
again he adds (Fr. 84): “So the apostle also says, as we said a little earlier, ‘he
emptied himself, taking the form of a servant.’ By ‘the form of a servant’ he means human
flesh for us. Our Lord God shaped that flesh by his own wisdom when he said, ‘Let us make
man in our image and likeness.’ He rightly calls human flesh an image, for he knew exactly
that it would, a little later, be the image of his own Word.” 30 After this he tries to
argue that the words “From the womb before the morning star I begat you” were also said
about the flesh. He writes as follows (Fr. 26): “For this reason, then, since the star
that marks the day was fittingly called the morning star by the prophet David, it is no
longer right to ask who the morning star is. For it was the star that appeared at that
time, the one that brought and announced the day to the magi.”

31 “It is therefore clear that the words ‘Before the morning star I begat you’ were spoken
by the almighty Lord about the Word who was born of the virgin together with human flesh.
The gospel also shows this plainly: our Lord was born of the virgin first, and afterward
the star appeared that pointed out the day.” 32 Going on after this, he adds again (Fr.
94): “For man received authority not only over things on earth but also over things in
heaven, and rightly so. For if, when he also became ‘man’ and ‘mediator between God and
men,’ ‘all things were created for him,’ as the apostle said, ‘both those in heaven and
those on earth,’ then it follows that we should know exactly that authority was given to
him not only over things on earth but also over things in heaven.” And again, after other
things, he adds (Fr. 95): “For if the holy gospel speaks of a certain glory given to him
by the Father, man evidently received this glory through the Word. For having become, in
the words of the holy apostle, ‘mediator between God and men,’ he glorified God-fearing
men with the glory the Father had given him.”

33 And again he adds these things (Fr. 96): “He also deemed man, who had fallen through
disobedience, worthy to be joined through the virgin to his own Word. For what other glory
among men could be greater than this glory? After saying ‘I glorified you,’ he adds, ‘and
I will glorify you again.’ In his surpassing love for mankind, by this second glory after
the resurrection of the flesh, he would make the man who was formerly mortal immortal. He
would glorify him with such glory that man would not only be freed from his former slavery
but would also be counted worthy of a glory beyond man.” 34 And again he adds (Fr. 97):
“So that, as I said, he might prepare man, who was first deceived by the devil, to defeat
the devil himself in turn. For this reason he took up man, so that he might in due order
prepare him to receive the firstfruits of authority.” And he adds further (Fr. 97,
continued): “For this is the beloved, the man united to the Word, about whom the
evangelist said, ‘This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased.’”

35 And again he adds (Fr. 98): “The Word of the invisible God was going to be born of a
virgin and take up human flesh. Through that flesh he would fight and defeat the devil,
who had earlier overpowered man. He would then prepare man to become not only
incorruptible and immortal but also enthroned with God in heaven.” 36 It is necessary to
keep all this in mind because of what Marcellus himself is going to bring forward against
the flesh that the Word of God took up. For as though he had forgotten everything he had
set out, he brings the Savior’s body to an end that is neither good nor godly. On top of
all this, as if his earlier points were already established, he tries to show that the
words “The Lord reigned; let the earth rejoice” also refer to the flesh. 37 He puts it
this way (Fr. 99): “The one, then, who came down and took on flesh through the virgin was
appointed king over the church. This was clearly so that through the Word the man who had
earlier fallen from the kingdom of heaven might be able to obtain the kingdom. God,
wishing this man, who had earlier fallen from the kingdom through disobedience, to become
lord and god, brought about this plan. So the most holy prophet David says prophetically,
‘The Lord reigned; let the earth rejoice.’”

38 And after other things he adds: “This is why the prophecy, speaking as though our Lord
Christ took the beginning of his kingdom at some point in time, says, ‘But I was appointed
king by him.’” And again he adds: “For this reason he will also reign. Having come to be
in human flesh, and having been established as king through the Word, the man who was
deceived at first will abolish ‘all rule and power and authority’ of the devil.” 39
Marcellus said all this about the Savior’s flesh, and much more besides. He said that the
flesh is “the image of the invisible God” and “the firstborn of all creation,” and the
king, and Jesus, and the Christ, and the beloved, and everything else he listed. He
declared that the Word was called all these things because of the flesh. It is now time to
look at the kind of end he gives that flesh.

CHAPTER 4

1 “For this reason he will reign, having come to be in human flesh. And having been
established as king through the Word, the man who was deceived at first will abolish ‘all
rule and power and authority’ of the devil. For he must reign,” he says, “until he puts
his enemies under his feet.” So the holy apostle says this is the end of the kingdom of
our Lord Christ: that all things be subjected under his feet. And a little later Marcellus
adds: “Here the apostle reveals to us a very great mystery. He says that there will be an
end of Christ’s kingdom, and that the end comes when all things have been subjected under
his feet.” 2 And working out the same argument still further, he writes as follows: “In
our earlier statements we said that our Lord Christ has had a beginning of his kingdom,
and we used proofs from the divine Scriptures. One is the passage that says, ‘But I was
appointed king by him on Zion, his holy mountain.’

3 “Another says, ‘The Lord has reigned; let the peoples be angry.’ And again, ‘The Lord
has reigned; let the earth rejoice.’ In short, there is an abundance of countless passages
we could use as testimony to show that the man received the beginning of his kingdom
through the Word. If he received the beginning of his kingdom not more than four hundred
years ago, it is no surprise that the apostle says that the one who obtained this kingdom
so short a time ago will hand the kingdom over. He means that he will hand it over to God,
who, as the Scripture says, appointed him king.” 4 And after other things he writes: “So
it appears that, by activity alone, and because of the flesh, he has been separated from
the Father until the coming time of judgment appears. Then those who pierced him will, as
the prophecy says, have seen the one they pierced, and so the rest will follow in order.”

5 “For when all things are about to be subjected to Christ at the time of the end, as the
apostle said, then ‘he himself will be subjected to the one who subjected all things to
him.’ What then do we learn about the human flesh that the Word took on for our sake less
than four hundred years ago? Will the Word have it in the ages to come, or only until the
time of judgment? For what the prophet said must be confirmed in fact. ‘For they will
look,’ he says, ‘on the one whom they pierced.’ And clearly what they pierced was the
flesh.” 6 And a little later he adds: “That the Word did not take on our flesh for his own
benefit, but so that the flesh might obtain immortality through its fellowship with the
Word, is clear from the Savior’s own declaration. For concerning the flesh which he had
when he spoke with his disciples, he says, ‘Does this offend you? What if you see the Son
of Man going up to where he was before? The Spirit gives life; the flesh profits nothing.’
If he himself admits that the flesh profits him nothing, how can it be right that this
flesh, which is from the earth and profits nothing, should be with the Word in the ages to
come, as though it were of use to him?”

7 “For this, it seems to me, is also why the almighty Master says to him, ‘Sit at my right
hand until I put your enemies as a footstool for your feet.’ He appears to be separating
him by activity alone, on account of the human flesh. And as though he were fixing a set
time for the sitting at his right hand, he says to him, ‘until I put your enemies as a
footstool for your feet.’” 8 The holy apostle explained this prophetic saying of David
more plainly for us, speaking somewhat like this: “For he must reign until he puts his
enemies under his feet.” So his dispensation and kingdom as a man seem to have a limit.
For David means nothing other than what the apostle said: “until he puts his enemies under
his feet.” 9 So when he has his enemies as a footstool under his feet, he no longer needs
this partial kingdom, since he is king over all things without exception. For he reigns
together with “God and Father,” whose Word he was and is.

10 For the Word himself did not receive the beginning of a kingdom on his own account. It
was the man who had been deceived by the devil who became king through the power of the
Word, so that, having become king, he might defeat the devil who had deceived him before.
For this reason the Acts of the Apostles also teach about this man, whom the Word of God
took up and, having taken him up, sits at the right hand of the Father. They put it like
this: “whom heaven must receive until the times of restoration.” These words too set a
kind of limit and appointed time, within which the union of the Word with the dispensation
as a man is fitting. 11 For what else does “until the times of restoration” mean, but to
point us to the age to come, in which all things must receive their perfect restoration?
Now Paul said that at the time of the restoration of all things even creation itself will
be changed from slavery to freedom. For he says, “that creation itself will be set free
from the slavery of corruption into the freedom of the glory of the children of God.”

12 How then could the form of a slave, which the Word took up, being the form of a slave,
still be able to be with the Word? It is plainly and expressly the case that the
dispensation of the Word in the flesh, for our sake, has taken place within a short time,
between the ages past and the ages to come. And the inspired Paul has said that it will
have an end, just as it had a beginning, speaking somewhat like this: “Then comes the end,
when he hands over the kingdom to God and Father.” 13 After other things, Marcellus adds
to these (Fr. 106): “Therefore he took up human flesh not for his own sake but for ours.
But if it is clear that he took it up for our sake, and everything that concerns us will
reach its end at the time of judgment through his providence and working, then there will
no longer be any need even of this partial kingdom.” After saying this, Marcellus became
aware that he had fallen into something absurd, and so he adds to what he had said (Fr.
107): “But if someone says that human flesh is worthy of the Word because he made it
immortal through the resurrection, let him know that not everything that is immortal is
worthy of God.”

14 “For God is greater even than immortality itself, since by his own will he can make
even things that do not exist immortal. And it is clear that not everything immortal is
worthy to be united with God, from the fact that rulers, authorities and angels, though
immortal, make no difference to the unity of God.” 15 After saying this, Marcellus saw
that he had thrown himself into a pit of absurdity, as it were, and he tries to take it
back, in a way confessing that he knew nothing of what he was saying. So he goes on to say
(Fr. 108): “But if someone asks about this flesh that has become immortal in the Word,
what do we say to him? That we think it unsafe to lay down doctrine about things we have
not learned exactly from the divine Scriptures.” 16 For how could those who overturn the
doctrines of others do this?

17 “But to those who want to learn from us the exact account of this matter, we will say
that, trusting the holy apostle, we know that we should look at hidden mysteries as he
himself said: ‘For now we see,’ he says, ‘through a mirror in a riddle, but then face to
face. Now I know in part, but then I will know fully, just as I also was fully known.’ So
do not ask me about things I have not clearly learned from divine Scripture.” 18 “For this
reason, then, I will not be able to speak clearly about that divine flesh which shared in
the divine Word. But as it is, I believe the divine Scriptures: there is one God, and his
Word came forth from the Father so that ‘all things’ might come to be ‘through him.’ Then,
after the time of judgment, and the setting right of all things, and the destruction of
every opposing power, ‘then he himself will be subjected to the one who subjected all
things to him,’ ‘to God and Father,’ so that the Word may be in God in the same way as he
was before.”

19 This is the kind of end this remarkable writer brings upon the flesh of our Savior,
having forgotten what he had said about it earlier. 20 Then the man who has declared so
plainly that the Savior’s body will be left empty of the Word after the time of judgment
puts on an air of reverence. He says he does not know how to answer if someone asks him
about the flesh, and that he would say to the questioner, “Do not ask me about what I have
not learned.” 21 But any ordinary person could say to him: “Why then, man, are you making
a fool of yourself? Why do you push yourself over a cliff, laying down in writing
definitions about matters you have not learned? Why do you not guard what you received
from the fathers and teachers of the Church? Instead you openly innovate, bringing into
life a new and strange perversion. You give the kingdom of Christ a temporary and recent
beginning and assign it an end. You deny the truly only-begotten Son of God and suppose in
his place a bare Word with no being and no substance of its own, which you say is not
other than God but one and the same with him. And anyone who denied the Son of God would
say just this, and naturally so!

22 “For a Word that has no substance of its own is not a son, just as the word in a man
could never be called the son of that man, since it exists in the speaker only as an
activity. Yet you say, turning everything upside down, that this Word became Son of God
from the Father less than four hundred years ago, through taking up the flesh. You say he
was named Jesus and Christ, was called ‘image of the invisible God’ and ‘firstborn of all
creation,’ and then became king as well. You say he began all of this from the time just
mentioned, and that at the time of the consummation all of it will be brought to a sudden
end. 23 “Where, then, did you learn these things? Who was your teacher in them? Which
bishop? What councils? What writing of churchmen? And how would the Savior’s immortal body
fit into your scheme? For when you admit that it is immortal and call it divine, you must
surely suppose it also to be incorruptible and indissoluble. A body of such a nature
plainly remains standing, and indissoluble. But you took the Word away from it and joined
him to God.

24 “So then the body alone, without the Word, will stand on in immortal and incorruptible
speechlessness and motionlessness? And how will the Word himself go back into God and be
joined to him again after the separation from the flesh? Was he not in God when he was
with the flesh? But he was in him always, being coeternal and one and the same with God.
How then was he in the body? If he lived in it as a soul does, then he will exist with a
substance of his own, separate from the Father, living and subsisting in the flesh he took
up. 25 “What, then, prevented him from being confessed as a living Son of God even before
the world was established? But perhaps he will say that the Word was in the body by
activity alone and not by a substantial existence. For he says that, being with the flesh
only by active working (moving it and doing everything that is recorded in the Gospels),
he was joined to God in substance, as being God’s Word, inseparable from him and
undivided.

26 “If he says this, let him answer when we ask: did the Word’s activity reach only this
flesh, and not other men, God’s saints, as well? And does not the same Word also work in
all the rest of the things he made? Yet we have learned that ‘by the word of the Lord the
heavens were made firm’ and that ‘all things came to be through him, and apart from him
not one thing came to be.’ So he works in all things.” 27 We know from the divine
Scriptures that “the word of the Lord came to Hosea, the son of Beeri,” and “the word of
the Lord came to Isaiah, the son of Amos,” and “the word of the Lord which came to
Jeremiah.” In the case of each prophet it was the same Word of God who was at work. Then
did all those men share the same rank as the only-begotten Son of God, and did the Savior
have nothing more than they had, if he was moved only by an activity of the Word who was
joined to God?

28 But Marcellus does not even allow Christ to receive what the prophets receive. They
will obtain eternal life, immortal and unending, and they will live through all the ages
in the announced kingdom of heaven, enjoying good things “which eye has not seen, and ear
has not heard, and which have [not] entered the human heart.” But the Christ of God, the
common Savior of all, “the firstborn from the dead,” the hope of the resurrection of the
saints, will on Marcellus’s account be left alone at that time. His kingdom will come to
an end, and the life-giving flesh will be left deserted and without the Word. So according
to Marcellus’s teaching he neither existed beforehand as Son of God nor lasts forever. 29
It was only to be expected, then, that these views stirred the truly God-loving and
thrice-blessed emperor against the man, even though Marcellus had flattered him endlessly
and had gone through many praises of the emperor in his writing. These same views also
forced the holy council to publicly condemn the man by a written document against him,
even though it was unwilling. That council had gathered in the imperial city from various
provinces: Pontus and Cappadocia, Asia and Phrygia and Bithynia, Thrace and the regions
beyond. These same views have also compelled us to undertake the present examination. In
doing so we stand with what the holy council decided, and we also do what is sufficient
for our fellow ministers who ordered us to do this.

30 I consider this writing especially necessary because of those who think the man was
wronged. For I must heal the suspicion of our brothers by making plain his unbelief toward
the Son of God. For a long time it had lain hidden in him, but now it has been exposed by
his own book. He brought it of his own accord, when no one had called for it, and put it
into the emperor’s hands, asking him to examine what was written in it. He perhaps hoped
that, because of the praises he had given the emperor, he would himself win special favor
with the emperor, while the bishops he had slandered would be handed over to punishment.
31 But the outcome did not match his hopes. For the judge of these matters was God, and
Christ Jesus himself, whom the author sets aside. He saw the man’s hidden things, and
brought it about that, with no one forcing him, he became his own accuser and his own
refutation. So the man who prided himself on his book went to the emperor, and the emperor
handed over the examination of what was written to the council. The holy council of God
rejected the book, and rightly so, because it confesses neither a godly beginning nor a
godly end for the Son of God.


ON ECCLESIASTICAL THEOLOGY (BOOK 1)
===================================

ON ECCLESIASTICAL THEOLOGY Eusebius of Caesarea

c. AD 337–339

A second work by Eusebius of Caesarea against Marcellus of Ancyra, in three books, written
after the first and meant to set out ‘the church’s theology’ against what Eusebius took to
be Marcellus’s errors about the Father, the Son and the Spirit. Eusebius defends the Son
as a distinct, eternal person begotten of the Father, and again quotes Marcellus at
length. The sections are those of Klostermann’s edition.

BOOK 1

TABLE OF CONTENTS

The first book contains the following. 1. Marcellus slandered Sabellius for nothing, since
he holds the same opinions as Sabellius. 2. The grace of Christ gave to the church of God,
as a special gift, the knowledge of the Father and the Son. 3. Those who hold other
doctrines have erred in many different ways in their teaching about the Son. 4. Those who
do not confess that the Son of God has a real existence call themselves Christians for
nothing. 5. How Marcellus denied the Son of God by imitating the heresy of Sabellius. 6.
What the church of God believes. 7. How the other teachers have fallen in different ways
from the true theology of the Son. 8. A statement of the sound and churchly right belief.
9. The Son was not brought into being in the same way as the many created things. 10.
Because he alone was begotten of the Father, he alone is rightly called both God and only-
begotten Son. 11. How the church knows one God, though it accepts that the Son is God from
God. 12. His begetting from the Father cannot be spoken of. 13. The Son’s oversight is
necessary and saving for all. 14. The church was right to reject Marcellus, who thought
the same things as Sabellius. 15. With what words Marcellus attacked Sabellius, pretending
not to think the same as he did. 16. How he is caught, by his own words, holding the same
views as Sabellius. 17. How he denied, with head uncovered, the real existence of the Son.
18. How he said that before the incarnation the Son was nothing other than a word only,
like the word in human beings. 19. How the divine Scriptures, even before the incarnation,
called the Son of God not only Word but countless other names as well. 20. Quotations and
partial explanations of the proofs from divine Scripture, in thirty chapters in all.

PREFACE

Pref. I thought that the quotations from Marcellus’s own words, which I gathered in the
earlier books, were enough to refute him. They contain such a plain and unshakable denial
of the Son of God that, even without any reply, those raised in the church of God should
avoid what he says in them. 2 But I considered that some might be swept away from the
church’s theology by the great number of quotations he used to support what he thought
would help his case. So I decided to bring out the refutation of these too, here and now.
Then everyone may learn that not one passage of the God-inspired Scripture gave him
testimony in agreement with his denial of the Son of God. All of them speak plainly
against him, correcting without distortion his wrong interpretations of the divine
Scriptures. Alongside the exposure of these errors I will set out the theology of our
Savior. I have nothing newer to say, and no clever discovery of my own. I put forward the
uncorrupted teaching of the church of God, which she received from the beginning from
those who saw and heard the Word himself, and which she keeps.

CHAPTER 1

1 Before examining these matters, I found that in the middle of his work he attacks
Sabellius. I was astonished at the man’s foolishness. He did not hold back from speaking
evil of the one he ought to have praised above all, since Sabellius shares his opinion and
his mind. So I did not think I should pass over this in silence, but should give a
refutation of this point also in the present book. To slander God’s servants, even if it
brought blame on himself, brought good repute to those freed from fellowship with him, 2
and still there was some plausibility in appearing to disparage what he did not hold dear.
But to attack himself unawares by speaking ill of one who thinks as he does seems to me to
show shamelessness and also dullness. That this is so, he himself provides the proof. He
brings in God as “son-father,” as Sabellius did, if not in plain words then in truth, by
destroying the real existence of the Son and defining God as one, and by calling this one
both his own Father and again his own Son. For he granted that there is a Word in God,

3 and he defined this Word as one and the same with God, and said that God is called the
Father of this Word. He said that the Word is God’s Son, though not truly a Son with a
substantial existence, but properly and truly a Word. At any rate he stresses that it is
not Word in a loose sense, but properly and truly Word, and nothing other than Word. 4 But
if the Word was nothing other than a word, then clearly he was not properly or truly a Son
either, and was called so only in sound and in name, by misuse of the term. And by saying
that the Word, who became flesh and was born of the virgin, is one and the same as God, he
made him out to be God the Father himself. This is exactly what Sabellius declared long
ago, and the church of God rejected it and counted him among the godless heretics.

CHAPTER 2

The confession of one God, set against the polytheistic error of the Greeks, was first
handed down by the children of the Jews. But to know this same God also as Father of an
only-begotten Son is a special privilege which saving grace has given to the church. The
church knows Jesus Christ alone as Son, and no one else. It does not know him as Son by
the birth of the flesh which he took up, for it has been taught to call that the form of a
servant and the son of man. It knows him as Son by his begetting from God the Father
himself before all ages, a begetting unknown to all. By it the fullness of the Father’s
divinity established him as Son, himself God. He did not draw in a Godhead that was his
own possession and cut off from the Father, nor one that was unoriginate and unbegotten,
nor one brought in from somewhere else and foreign to the Father. Rather he is filled from
the Father’s own sharing of it, poured out upon him as from a spring. For the great
apostle taught that “all the fullness” of the Father’s “divinity” dwells in him alone.
This is why one God is proclaimed to the church of God, “and there is no other besides
him.” And there is one only-begotten Son of God, the image of the Father’s divinity, and
for that reason God.

CHAPTER 3

Many people could not grasp this teaching about God, and they devised various byways of
error. Some granted that the Son is God but denied the man whom he took up. Others
supposed him to be a mere man and failed to recognize the God in him. Others, fearing that
they would seem to introduce a second God, declared that Father and Son are one and the
same. The church of God turned away from these and prides itself on the gospel
proclamation of the truth. It boasts of having one God over all. It also acknowledges one
only-begotten Son, God from God, Jesus Christ. It confesses that this same Savior became
also a son of man. He was the Son of God before he became man, and he became this, what he
was not, because of the unspeakable excess of the Father’s love for humanity.

CHAPTER 4

This is what the word of truth proclaims on behalf of the church. But why do those who
deny the Son of God, and say that there is one God and nothing else, trouble the church
for nothing, when they ought to be keeping company with the synagogues of the Jews? And
why do they run themselves through with blasphemous words, slandering the one God with two
titles, if they suppose the Father and the Son to be the same? For whose Father is he, if
no Son exists? Whose Son will he be, if the one who begot him does not exist beforehand?
And if God is one, then surely this same one will be the one who was made flesh, suffered,
and lived out a mortal life among men.

CHAPTER 5

1 Sabellius said these things, and the church of God drove him far away, since he dared to
say godless and impious things. Marcellus tries to bring them back again, using a cover
that is not persuasive. He rightly defines God as one, but then he says that this God has
the Word united and joined to himself within him. After that he calls one part of the one
God Father and another part Son, as though there were in him some double and composite
being. 2 And in choosing between evils, how much better than he is the man who does not
divide the unoriginate, unbegotten, divine power, but confesses, in plain words, that it
is the same! And how much better than both is the Jew. He does not divide the one God into
Father and Son, as Marcellus does, nor does he bring in the same person as son-father, as
Sabellius does. He worships God, and he knows and expects God’s Christ, who was proclaimed
through the prophets as one who would come. Since they did not receive him when he came,
they have paid the penalty for their unbelief in him, and they will pay it still.

CHAPTER 6

1 Those who are able to pray their way to faith in the One who has come will recognize
three things. First, the one “from the seed of David” and of the holy virgin. Second, the
Son of God who dwelt in him, who existed beforehand and has a real, substantial existence
of his own. Third, the God who is this Son’s Father, by whom the Son himself continually
confesses that he was sent. So, as the apostle says, “for us there is one God, the Father,
from whom are all things, and one Lord, Jesus Christ, through whom are all things.” That
is the pre-existent only-begotten Son of God. And the third is the son of man according to
the flesh, whom the Son of God took up for our sake. 2 But the body he took up was not the
same as the Son of God who took it up. Nor could the Son of God himself be considered one
and the same as the one who begot him. There are three things, then, set before us. Those
who grant two of them but remove the third would have to be rejected by the church.

CHAPTER 7

1 Some godless people among the heterodox rejected the Saviour’s flesh. They said he was
seen on earth only in a seeming appearance, and so they were the first to miss the mark of
the truth. Others accepted the economy of the incarnation but denied the pre-existent Son
of God, and, as I said, they devised for themselves all sorts of wrong turns. Some said he
was a mere man, in no way above the common nature of all, except for a superiority in
virtue. Others taught that the God of the universe himself dwelt in the body, and said
that he was called his own Son because of the economy he underwent as a man. These people
grant two things, God and man, and deprive themselves of the third. They deny the Saviour
himself, the only-begotten Son of God. 2 Sabellius long ago, and Marcellus now, were
carried away by the thinking of these people. Like the unbelieving Jews, they insisted
that they knew well enough the God over all, and they also agreed on the second, the flesh
from the holy virgin. But the third, the very heart of salvation for all of us, the Son of
God, who is light and truth, they pushed aside. In denying the Son, they have at the same
time fallen away from the light of truth.

3 So you will hear them confessing one God and honouring the Saviour’s flesh. But as for
the Son of God who dwelt in the flesh, they accept him with their voice and lips, while in
practice they reject him. For we ought to look for a Son of God who truly lives and has
his own existence. He is neither the same as the body he took up, nor the same as God the
Father. Nobody could call the God beyond the universe a “Son” and still be godly. For
whose son would he be, when he is clothed in a deity without beginning and unbegotten? And
whoever says that the only-begotten Son of God is himself the Father will not escape the
penalty that falls on blasphemers.

CHAPTER 8

1 For this reason the church of God lays out the straight, royal road, and has rejected
the other detours. To her own nurslings she hands down the knowledge that comes from
divine grace. In the very mystery of the new birth she teaches them to confess faith in
one God, Father Almighty. She gives them the means to know this theology as complete,
exact and whole. It hands down one God, and so marks itself off from the Greek error of
many gods. It knows him as Father, and so separates itself from Jewish teaching. It
confesses him as Almighty, and so turns away from the impiety of the godless heterodox. 2
None of the heterodox, at any rate, would say that the Father of Christ is himself the God
Almighty. In the same way, no Jew would confess that God is Father, since he does not know
the only-begotten Son. And no Greek would say that he knows only one God. So the church
cleanses away the error of all these and proclaims the one God. She teaches that he is
both Father and Almighty. He is Father of one alone, Christ, and God, Creator and Lord of
all the rest. In the same way she hands down Jesus Christ as the only-begotten Son of God,
begotten from the Father before all ages. He is not the same as the Father, but exists and
lives in himself, and is truly a Son who is with the Father. He is God from God, light
from light, life from life. He was begotten from the Father for the salvation of all, in
ways that cannot be spoken or told, and are altogether unknown and beyond our grasp. His
existence is not like that of other begotten things, and he does not live a life like
those who came into being through him. He alone was brought forth from the Father himself,
and he is life itself.

3 It was fitting for the God over all to bring forth this only-begotten offspring before
every created thing and before all ages. He was to be like a foundation and an unbreakable
base for everything that would come into being through him. So before everything that was
to exist, God begot the Son. He is like a ray of light, a spring of life, and a treasure-
house of good things, “in whom are all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge, hidden,” as
the divine apostle says. 4 The Father, who alone is good, gave existence to a Son with all
these good things. The Son is life itself, who gives life to all things. He is light
itself, “the true light,” who enlightens every intelligent and rational being. He is the
Word himself and Wisdom itself, who brings all things into being and governs them wisely
and rationally. For this reason he alone, and no one else, is called the only-begotten Son
of God, and is so.

CHAPTER 9

1 So it is reasonable to find fault with those who have dared to call him a creature, one
who came into being out of nothing like the other creatures. For how could he still be a
son? How could he be the only-begotten of God if he is credited with the same nature as
the other creatures? On that view he would be their brother rather than the Son of God. He
would be one among the many created things, since he would share with them, just as they
do, in a creation out of nothing. 2 But the divine oracles do not teach this about him.
When Scripture teaches about the existence of created things, it testifies without
exception that all things came into being through him. “All things came into being through
him, and apart from him not one thing came into being.” And “in him were created all
things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible.” And “all things have been created
through him and for him; and he is before all things, and in him all things hold
together.” So the apostolic teachings say.

3 But when Scripture brings in the doctrine of his divinity, it sets him apart from all
the rest. It knows him as Lord, Master, Maker, God and Savior of all. It declares him
alone, and no one else, to be the only-begotten Son of God. It calls him alone Wisdom,
Word, Life and Light. It calls him the image “of the invisible God” and “the radiance of
eternal light.” And it teaches us to hold countless other things about him of the same
kind. All of these point to the special relation of the Father’s divinity to him alone, as
to an only-begotten Son. 4 That is why the Father’s voice proclaimed him alone as the
beloved Son at the streams of the Jordan, testifying with a great cry: “This is my beloved
Son, in whom I am well pleased.” And the Father repeated the testimony at the
transfiguration on the mountain, sealing the same word.

5 So the God of all himself gave him this testimony. The evangelist plainly teaches that
he is the only-begotten Son when he says, “No one has ever seen God; the only-begotten Son
(or “only-begotten God”), who is in the bosom of the Father, he has made him known.” And
the Savior himself, in his teachings about himself, sealed the same things when he said,
“For God so loved the world that he gave his only-begotten Son, so that everyone who
believes in him may have eternal life.” 6 After these words, whoever defines the Son as
something that came into being out of nothing, a creature brought forth from what did not
exist, does not notice that he is granting him only the name. He denies that he is truly a
Son. For one who has come into being out of nothing could not truly be a son of God, just
as no other created thing could.

CHAPTER 10

1 But the one who is truly the Son of God has been brought forth from God himself, as from
a Father. So it is reasonable that he should be called the Father’s only-begotten and
beloved. In this way he would also be God. For what could God’s offspring be other than
what is like the one who begot it? A king founds a city but does not beget a city, and he
is said to beget a son but not to found one. A craftsman is the maker, but not the father,
of what he makes. And he could not be called the maker of a son who was born from him. In
the same way the God of all is reasonably called the Father of the Son, and the Creator
and Maker of the world. 2 If someone finds it said just once somewhere in Scripture, “The
Lord created me as the beginning of his ways for his works,” he must look at the meaning
of the saying, which I will set out a little later. He must not, as Marcellus does, shake
the most authoritative doctrine of the Church because of a single expression. For
Marcellus too heard it said only once that the Son is “Word,” and so he fell upon the
human aspect and rejected the Son’s real existence.

3 The Son is attested as Son both by himself and by the Father. How, then, is it holy to
compare him with the rest of the things that have come into being? And how will he be
“only-begotten” if he is counted together with the multitude of created things? Indeed,
the very title “Son” shows his natural relation to the Father. In the same way, the name
“only-begotten” touches on his kind, on the begetting itself, and on his being alone, so
that nothing else shares in his sonship. But these people seem to have suffered the same
thing as Marcellus. 4 Marcellus, out of fear of speaking of two Gods, put forward a denial
of the Son and rejected his separate existence. These others grant two separate
existences, one unbegotten and the other created out of nothing, and yet they claim to
hold one God. But for them the Son will no longer be the only-begotten, nor Lord, nor God.
He shares nothing in the Father’s deity, and is put on a level with the other created
things, in that he came into existence out of nothing. But the Church does not teach this.

5 The Church proclaims the Son of God as God and Lord, and teaches that he is truly Son
and God. He is not like the many who are called sons and gods by courtesy, of whom it is
said, “I said, you are gods, and all of you are sons of the Most High.” Rather, he alone,
begotten from the Father himself, “existed in the form of God,” and was “the image of the
invisible God and firstborn of all creation.” Therefore the Church has learned to honor,
revere and worship him alone, as her Lord, Savior and God.

CHAPTER 11

1 But if it frightens them that they might seem to be proclaiming two Gods, let them know
this. Even though we confess the Son as God, there is only one God, the one who alone is
without beginning and unbegotten, who possesses deity as his own, and who has been the
cause to the Son himself of his being and of his being what he is. The Son himself
confesses that he lives because of him, saying plainly, “As the living Father sent me, and
I live because of the Father,” and, “For just as the Father has life in himself, so he
gave the Son also to have life in himself.” 2 This is why the Son teaches that the Father
is God both of us and of himself, where he says, “I am going up to my Father and your
Father, and my God and your God.” The great apostle likewise teaches that God is the head
of the Son, and the Son the head of the Church. In one place he says, “The head of Christ
is God,” and in another he says of the Son, “And he gave him as head over all things to
the Church, which is his body.”

3 So the Son is the leader and head of the Church, and the Father is his head. Thus there
is one God, the Father of the only-begotten Son, and there is one head even of Christ
himself. Since there is one source and one head, how could there be two Gods, and not
rather that one alone? He ascribes to himself no one higher and no other cause of himself.
He possesses deity as his own, without beginning and unbegotten, with the authority of a
sole ruler. He has shared his own deity and life with the Son. Through the Son he
established all things. He sends him, gives him orders and commands, and teaches him. He
hands everything over to him, glorifies him, exalts him highly, and has shown him to be
king of all. He hands all judgment over to him. He wishes us also to obey him. He commands
him to hold the throne at the right hand of his majesty, speaking to him and saying,

4 “Sit at my right hand.” For all these reasons he is God even of the Son himself. In
obedience to him, his only-begotten child “emptied himself, humbled himself, took the form
of a slave, and became obedient to the point of death.” The Son prays to him, obeys his
command, and gives him thanks. He teaches us to regard him as “the only true God,” and
confesses that he is greater than himself. And besides all this, he wants all of us to
know that he is also his own God. 5 The Son honors his own Father in this way, and the
Father honors him in return. He has shown him to be Lord, Savior and God over all, and a
sharer of his throne in his kingdom. The church of God has been taught these things. She
knows him as her own God, Lord and Savior, and as the only-begotten Son of the God who is
over all. She does not think it right to proclaim any other created being as God. She
knows as God only the one whom the Father alone begot out of himself,

6 just as the Son himself declared through Solomon when he said, “Before the mountains
were settled, before all the hills, he begets me.” Here, I think, the mountains and hills
are a veiled way of speaking about the divine powers that are above the world.

CHAPTER 12

1 But suppose someone gets curious and asks how God could beget, or how the one who is
beyond all things could be a Father. The one who said, “Do not seek what is deeper than
you, and do not investigate what is higher than you. Think about what has been commanded
you, for you have no need of hidden things,” will silence the boldness of that question.
Paul also said, “O the depth of the riches and wisdom and knowledge of God! How
unsearchable are his judgments and how untraceable his ways!” Let that persuade anyone
daring to go further not to attempt what cannot be reached. Or let him first tell us,
about the things he says came to be out of nothing, how and in what manner they came into
existence, when before that they were in no way at all. 2 For God did not take material
already lying to hand and build the universe with his hands, as the craftsmen among us do.
What is by nature impossible, at least for human beings (I mean bringing into being out of
what is not something that did not exist at all), was possible for him. He became the
Maker of all things, not in a human way, but by words that we cannot speak or describe. In
the same way, and much more so, the begetting of his only-begotten Son must be
unsearchable and untraceable. It is so not for us alone, as someone might say, but for all
the powers that are higher than we are.

3 Things far lower in nature, which stand below and very far from the ineffable divine
being, how could they reach an understanding that is beyond them and the highest of all?
And how could things that once did not exist, and were brought by him out of nothing into
being, have knowledge of their first coming to be, when he who brought them forward was
the cause of their existence? Are we, who were born only yesterday, clothed in “skin and
flesh,” fitted together with “bones and sinews,” and who do not even know our own affairs,
to make a harmless inquiry into things that cannot be spoken, meddling in how the Father
begot the Son? That countless things right at our feet escape our knowledge will be clear
from what follows. 4 Who could say how the soul is shut up in the body, how it goes out,
how it was admitted in the first place, what its appearance is, what its shape, what its
form, what its essence? And I am not yet speaking of prying into the matter of demons, or
the essence of angels, or of rulers and thrones and lordships, or of authorities and
world-rulers.

5 If we are at a loss over all these things, why must we search out knowledge of the
divine being who has no beginning and was never begotten? Why ask about what cannot be
reached, how God came to be the Father of an only-begotten Son? As if the Father’s own
voice were not enough for us as a witness to the beloved Son, whom he proclaimed when he
said, “This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased; listen to him.” 6 If he commands
us to listen to him, then let us obey this royal law and listen to the beloved Son. What
he wants us to know about himself he will make clear when he says, “For God so loved the
world that he gave his only-begotten Son, so that everyone who believes in him may have
eternal life.” We must believe him, then, so that we may obtain eternal life. For he says,
“The one who believes in him has eternal life.”

7 It is not the one who knows how he was begotten of the Father who has eternal life. No
one could have a share in it on that basis, if it has been said that “no one knew the
Father except the Son, and no one knew the Son except” the Father alone, who begot him. So
the faith is enough for our salvation, the faith that lets us know God as Father almighty,
and lets us write down his only-begotten Son as Savior. Among other things, he handed down
this teaching: “What has been born of the flesh is flesh, and what has been born of the
Spirit is spirit.” And “God is spirit.” 8 It follows that we should understand that what
has been born of God would be God. And just as the God who is beyond all things is
separated and set apart in his nature from earthly flesh, so we must understand that the
manner in which the Father begot the Son is just as far removed from the birth of bodies.
He did not bring him forth by sending out anything from himself, nor by being changed, nor
by being moved by any passion, nor by undergoing anything at all that we know from
experience. In none of these ways did he give him existence.

9 For God was not a body, so that one could think of an outflow, a diminishing, a
stretching out, a change, a turning, a flowing, a part, or a passion in him. Free of all
these things, he gave existence to the Son by a begetting that cannot be spoken or
reasoned out by us, and is even beyond searching out and tracing by any created nature.
The sun also begets its radiance, and the Son too is called “the radiance of eternal
light” and “the radiance of the glory.” But this is not to be taken according to the
visible picture of light. For beyond every example, the Father gave him existence by
inexpressible and incomprehensible means, and gave him as one and only-begotten. 10 Let
every mouth be shut of those ungodly and godless men who are sick with the error of many
gods. They have dragged the special and unique begetting of the only-begotten Son down
into a crowd, and have spoken of a father “of men and gods.” They mix men together with
gods, and in the same breath bring in one and the same father for them, of the same
nature. These men, by the working of demons, uttered this ungodly and godless word. They
supposed gods who share the nature and the passions of the mortal, suffering and sinful
race of men, and they supposed a common father of them all, surely made like his children.
But the herald of the church proclaims to everyone one only-begotten Son of the one God.
The Father gave him existence for the salvation and care of all created things.

CHAPTER 13

1 The nature of created things has many differences. It includes bodies and bodiless
beings, living and lifeless things, rational and irrational, mortal and immortal. It could
not come near the God who is over all and above all, or share in the brilliant rays of his
divinity, because of the great distance between it and what is greater. In the weakness of
its nature it would have slipped far away, even to the farthest distance, if it had not
found a helper in a divine Savior. So it was fitting that the Father’s love for mankind
set his only-begotten Son over all things. He passes through all things, oversees them
all, and waters them with the supplies that come from him. 2 The Father who begot him has
shown that he alone is shepherd and savior, caretaker and guardian, physician and helmsman
of all things together, in heaven and on earth. To him alone the Father handed the tiller
for the holding together and governing of the whole. This the Son himself teaches when he
says, “All things have been handed over to me by my Father,” and again, “For the Father
loves the Son, and has given all things into his hand.”

3 Like a wise helmsman, he has received his allotted charge from the Father. He has taken
his place over the whole world, and looks up to his Father, and steers the whole, guiding
and carrying it. He overlooks not even the smallest thing that needs his provision, and
does not look down on the least of them. For this reason he is present to all, giving each
what suits it. Like a physician, he supplies for the care of the whole what is fitting for
its salvation. 4 So it is only natural that he did not look down on life as a human being
either. Long before, he gave his help to men who loved God from the beginning of the age.
Here he appeared in human form to the forefathers of the Hebrews. There he laid down
fitting laws for their descendants. And later he issued oracles through the prophets to
all who came after, announcing that his appearing as God would one day shine out on all
people.

5 As that time went by, he fulfilled in deed the outcomes of the old oracles. Then at last
he came and mingled with mortal life, living among men. The only-begotten Son of God was
himself present as in a divine image, in the instrument of his body, and he dwelt with the
human race through teachings and healings, 6 and through the unspeakable instructions of
divine wisdom. He even went with them as far as the gates of death, by the surpassing love
for mankind of the Father’s will, so that he might count those here below worthy of his
grace and draw them up into the life that is with him. So “God was in Christ reconciling
the world to himself.” He underwent the economy of the flesh, though he went before it and
existed before it, honored with the divinity of the Father’s glory. He did not count
“being equal to God” as “something to be seized.” Instead he emptied himself, “took the
form of a servant and humbled himself, becoming obedient” to the Father “to the point of
death.” The purpose was this: “just as” death, through one man who sinned, gained mastery
over the whole human race, so eternal life, through “his grace,” might reign over those
who [believe] in him and who through him are made known to God, his Father.

CHAPTER 14

1 The church, then, proclaims these things, and so she rightly rejected Sabellius as one
who had stamped a counterfeit coin, the denial of the Son of God, even though he, like
Marcellus, said he knew one God and that besides him there is none. The first heralds of
our Savior himself also gave the name Ebionites to certain people. In the Hebrew tongue it
means “poor,” a name for their poverty of mind. They said they knew one God and did not
deny the Savior’s body, but they did not know the divinity of the Son. 2 The man of
Samosata also, although he taught that Jesus Christ belongs to God and, like Marcellus,
confessed one God over all, was declared a stranger to the church of God by the fathers of
the church. The reason was that he did not confess Christ to be Son of God and God before
his birth in the flesh. This man, then, was driven far from Christ’s church as one who was
impious toward Christ.

3 Sabellius was impious toward the Father himself, whom he dared to call Son, and so he
suffered the same penalty as the godless heretics. Marcellus suspected that he would
suffer the same, so he devised a newer contrivance for his error. He defined God and the
Word within him as one, yet he granted him two titles, Father and Son. But he was not
hidden, and he did not escape. Late though it was, he was caught in his own nets. 4 Even
before he was caught, however, he was struck by his conscience and set out to blaspheme
Sabellius, to throw off the suspicion.

CHAPTER 15

1 Listen to how he slandered the man, mentioning him by name, as he writes about him in
these very words: “Sabellius too slipped from the right faith, and knew neither God
accurately nor his holy Word. For whoever has not known the Word has failed to know the
Father also. ‘No one knows the Father,’ it says, ‘except the Son,’ that is, the Word, for
the Word through himself provides the knowledge of the Father. So too he said to those of
the Jews at that time who thought they knew God but rejected his Word, through whom alone
God is known: ‘No one knows the Father except the Son and the one to whom the Son reveals
him.’ For since it was impossible to know God in any other way, he teaches that people
know him through his own Word. So that man also went wrong, because he did not accurately
know the Father and his Word.”

2 Marcellus wrote this, clearing himself of the suspicion of Sabellianizing, but only in
voice and word. In his thinking, and in his agreement with the man, he is caught pierced
by the same arrows as Sabellius. I [wish], and would have prayed, that he had not fallen
into the same ones. As it is, he appears to err worse than Sabellius. For Sabellius, when
he stumbled, perhaps did so in ignorance. But the man who admits that Sabellius went
wrong, and then pushes himself over the plain cliff of the same impiety, could not deserve
any pardon. But let us look carefully at what has been said.

CHAPTER 16

1 First, Marcellus said that neither Sabellius nor the Jews knew God, because they did not
know the Word. We need to look at what kind of “Word” he has in mind. If he means the
only-begotten Son of God, who has real existence and is alive, then he himself did not
know him either. Our Savior spoke of the Son in various ways. He often called himself the
only-begotten Son, and never once called himself “Word.” Throughout all the Gospels he
taught that he is the Son of God. For this he even blessed Peter, who said, “You are the
Christ, the Son of the living God,” and he testified that Peter’s knowledge came by the
Father’s revelation, saying, “Blessed are you, Simon bar Jonah, because flesh and blood
did not reveal it to you, but my Father who is in heaven.” Yet this remarkable man, as
though his ears were stopped up, writes these words exactly: “And for this reason he does
not call himself Son of God. Rather he everywhere calls himself Son of man, so that by
this confession he might bring it about that man, through fellowship with him, becomes by
adoption a son of God.”

2 You see how he does not dare to confess him as Son of God, so as not to fall away from
the doctrine of Sabellius. He calls him Son of man, because of the flesh he took on. And
throughout his whole book he keeps naming him “Word,” stressing continually that he was
nothing other than a word. 3 Even in the passages where he finds fault with Sabellius, he
sets out the Savior’s own words, in which he said, “No one knew the Father except the Son,
and anyone to whom the Son reveals him.” 4 But, as though correcting those words, he again
names “Word” in place of “Son,” saying: “For he says, ‘No one knows the Father except the
Son,’ that is, the Word.” And he adds: “For the Word, through himself, provides the
knowledge of the Father.” And he adds further: “It was impossible to know God in any other
way than through his own Word.” Again he puts “Word” in place of “Son” and calls it God’s
“own Word.” In these very few phrases he mentions “Word” many times and “Son” not even
once. He even alters the Savior’s own saying.

5 In place of “the Son” he inserts: “that is, the Word,” as if the term “Son” did not fit
better with the title “Father.” So the Savior naturally and fittingly joined the name of
the Son to that of the Father, whereas this man, who refuses to say “Son,” keeps repeating
“Word” over and over. He accuses Sabellius of denying the Son, yet does the very same
thing himself, imagining that by slandering Sabellius he can turn aside the suspicion of
false teaching. Now if he blames Sabellius for denying the Son of God, he ought first to
have blamed himself. But if he blames him because Sabellius did not know the “Word” as
Marcellus defines it, then he was wrong to make that charge. 6 For neither Sabellius nor
the Jews themselves, who deny the Christ of God, failed to know what Marcellus says is the
Word in God, through whom God spoke to Moses and the prophets. Everyone would say that
they know this precisely, not only among the Jews but among the Greeks too. For who would
not agree that God is rational, just as he is wise and good and powerful? Sabellius would
not deny that he knows this. But he did not confess that there is also a Son of God,
living and subsisting, who exists and existed before the flesh. Because of this agreement
with Marcellus, he was cast out of the church of God, just as Marcellus was.

7 How Marcellus held the same views as Sabellius will be clear from the places where he
declared that God and his Word are one and the same. Sometimes he said so in these very
words:

CHAPTER 17

1 “If the examination were of the Spirit alone, the Word would naturally appear to be one
and the same as God.” At other times he compares the Word of God to the human word,
adding: “The word in a man is one and the same as the man, set apart from him by nothing
else but the activity of action.” For this reason he sometimes declared that before the
world was established there was nothing other than God. And again he said in these very
words: “When the world had not yet come into being, there was nothing other than God
alone.” 2 At other times he compared the Word of God to our own spoken word. He wrote
this: “Just as everything that has come into being has come into being through the Word by
the Father, so also the things spoken by the Father are made known through the Word.” Here
he calls him a “spoken word.” Then, going on, he shows that the Word is inseparable from
the Father in subsistence, and is one and the same with him, saying something like this:
“I think this is easy for people of sound mind to grasp, even from a small and lowly
example taken from ourselves.”

3 “For no one can separate a person’s word from that person in power and subsistence. The
word is one and the same with the man, and it is distinguished from him by nothing else
except the activity of the action.” Again he uses the same illustration where he says:
“For everything the Father says, he is plainly seen to say everywhere through the Word.
This is clear even from ourselves, comparing small things with great and divine ones: we
too, as far as we are able, say and do everything we wish by means of our own word.” 4 One
should think of these words as no more Marcellus’s than Sabellius’s. Unless, perhaps,
Marcellus is mocking Sabellius for this: that Sabellius did not shamelessly dare to call
the “spoken word” in God (as Marcellus supposes it to be) a Son. For Sabellius was not so
devoid of reason as to give God, who is over all, a word just as human beings have one,
nor was he so foolish as to call a word that has no real existence the Son of God. So
Sabellius spoke of one God and denied the Son,

5 and, following the position he had laid down, said that Father and Son are the same.
Marcellus likewise grants that God and the Word in him are one and the same. Yet he claims
that Sabellius erred in vain, and does not admit that he himself has erred too. 6 For
either Marcellus ought to have accepted Sabellius, or he ought to blame himself as well
and, in blaming Sabellius, turn away from the same bad doctrine he holds. He should not,
like a sculptor, suppose that God speaks to his own thought and reasoning and urges
himself on, saying, “Come, let us make, come, let us mould a statue.” (For this is how
Marcellus said God spoke the words “Let us make man.”) 7 Nor should he suppose in God at
one time an inward word, as in a man, and at another time a spoken word, like the uttered
word in us. It would have been more tolerable to hear this from Sabellius, or from one of
the Jews who openly deny the Son of God, than from a Christian.

8 But Marcellus, as though priding himself on Jewish teaching, brings into the church of
Christ this impious and godless doctrine, that the Son of God does not exist. Throughout
the whole of the book he labored over, he argues that before the world came to be there
was nothing else but God alone, in order to shut the door against the Son. And he even
boasts that he knows one God, 9 as if we did not say this too! We have received that the
Son of God is truly a Son. We have learned from him to acknowledge one God, who is both
God and Father of the only-begotten Son, whose own Son he truly is, begotten from him
before all ages. The Son was called not only “Word” before the taking up of flesh, as this
noble fellow insists, but also countless other things. In this too Marcellus misrepresents
the divine Scripture, when he maintains that before his coming in the flesh the Son was
called nothing other than “Word.”

CHAPTER 18

1 Listen, then, to how he insists on this, writing in these very words (Nr. 37): “So it is
clear from every side that no other name fits the eternity of the Word except the one that
John, God’s most holy disciple and apostle, used at the beginning of the Gospel. After the
taking up of the flesh he is proclaimed as Christ and Jesus, as life, way, day,
resurrection, door, bread, and whatever else the divine Scriptures may call him. But this
does not mean we should be ignorant of the first name, that he was Word. For this reason
the most holy evangelist and disciple of the Lord, fully alert in the Spirit, recalled the
origin from above and nothing more recent. He said, ‘In the beginning was the Word, and
the Word was with God, and the Word was God,’ in order to show that if any name is new and
more recent, it came from the new and recent dispensation in the flesh.”

2 And he goes on to add (Nr. 42): “Therefore before he came down and was born through the
virgin, he was only Word. For what else was he before taking human flesh, he who came down
‘in the last days,’ as he himself wrote, and who was born of the holy virgin? Nothing
other than Word.” And again he adds (Nr. 43 = 81): “For earlier, as I have often said, he
was nothing other than Word.” 3 And once more he adds, saying (Nr. 36): “For the Word was
‘in the beginning,’ being nothing other than Word. But the man who was united to the Word,
not having existed before, became man, as John teaches us: ‘And the Word became flesh.’
For this reason, then, John evidently mentions only the Word.” 4 “For whether divine
Scripture mentions the name of Jesus or of Christ, it evidently names the Word of God as
he is together with human flesh. And if anyone claims he can show the name of Christ or
Jesus applied to the Word alone even before the new covenant, he will find it was said
prophetically.” And after other remarks he continues (Nr. 44): “So it is reasonable that
before the descent he was what we have often said, Word. But after the descent and the
taking up of the flesh he received various titles.” These are the passages by which
Marcellus is caught denying the Son of God who is, who lives and who is truly Son, and
bringing in a bare Word.

5 It has also been shown from the words of his quoted earlier what kind of Word he
supposed him to be. He used the human word as his example, and said that the Word is one
and the same as God. Having laid down this starting point, he went on, consistently with
the premise he had given himself, to slander the God-inspired Scripture and to give
distorted interpretations of it.

CHAPTER 19

1 It seemed good to me to examine a few of these briefly for now. I want to show those who
do not know, first, that no Scripture agrees with him in his innovating and turning aside
from the sound faith. On the contrary, all of Scripture speaks against him and bears
witness against the interpretations he has wrongly adopted. This ought especially to be
shown to those who honor the man, lest any of them, through inexperience of the divine
readings, suppose that he has hit the mark of the truth. 2 This, then, is the first thing
to examine, which he was also the first to dare to declare: that before he was born
through the virgin, the Son of God was not called by any name other than Word. For he says
that before the coming in the flesh he was nothing but Word, and was not named otherwise
except prophetically. He says that he was, and was named, Word and nothing else, and that
only after the coming in the flesh did he receive various titles.


ON ECCLESIASTICAL THEOLOGY (BOOK 1 – BOOK 2)
============================================

ON ECCLESIASTICAL THEOLOGY continued

CHAPTER 20

1 So the first thing to show is that he made this statement in ignorance, without
knowledge of the divine Scriptures. First (a), the divine evangelist John himself, who
called him Word, did not wait long but immediately, right alongside, named him God,
saying, “and the Word was God.” He could have said, “and the Word was of God,” but he did
not say this, so that no one would say he was like the word among human beings. Instead he
calls him God, and so shows the surpassing greatness of the dignity befitting God that
belongs to him. 2 Second (b), moving on to another thought in praise of him, John named
him Light, and by this very name showed that he existed before the taking up of the body,
3 In that passage he says about the Baptist: “That man was not the light, but came to bear
witness about the light, which enlightens every man coming into the world. He was in the
world, and the world came to be through him, and the world did not know him. He came to
his own things, and his own people did not receive him.”

4 Do you see how in these words he called him not only “Word,” as Marcellus thought, but
also God and light? He taught that he existed before, and that the world came to be
through him. Just as he had said earlier that all things came to be through God the Word,
and that “without him” nothing came to be, so he says the same of the light: “the world,”
he says, “came to be through him.” 5 So the light and God the Word are one and the same.
When he says at one time that the world, and at another that all things, came to be
through him, he shows the Son’s role as God’s servant in the work. The evangelist could
have said, “All things were made by him,” and again, “the world was made by him.” He did
not say “by him” but “through him,” so as to refer us to the Father’s authority as the
maker of all things.

6 But he also says, “the world did not know him.” Yet all human beings acknowledge the God
over all by their natural understanding. The children of the Jews acknowledge him first of
all, being led by the hand from the writings of the prophets, as Marcellus himself showed
as he went on. 7 So the one whom “the world did not know” was someone other than the God
over all: God and Word, who both was and was called light. This is not a light perceived
by the senses, and does not shine on the eyes of flesh as the sun does. If it did, the
nature of irrational animals would share in it too. As it is, he teaches what kind of
light it was, saying, “It was the light that enlightens every man coming into the world.”
So this rational light belonged to human beings alone. 8 For this reason he made the souls
that were created “in his image and likeness” intelligent and rational, by a power that is
intelligent and rational. Just as this light was not perceived by the senses, so neither
was the One who is beyond all things, God himself. For “God is light, and in him is no
darkness at all.” And indeed the Father was light that cannot be approached, as the divine
apostle teaches when he says, “dwelling in unapproachable light, whom no one has seen or
can see.”

9 But the other “was in the world,” “enlightening every man coming into the world.” The
world, he says, came to be through this light, that is, through the Son, while the greater
One, the Father, is the one by whom the whole is held together. So these are three fitting
and reverent titles of the powers of the Son of God, which the theologian of Scripture
took up together at the start: the Word, God, and the light. 10 Next, the same writer adds
a fourth, calling him “only-begotten,” where he says: “And the Word became flesh and dwelt
among us, and we beheld his glory, glory as of an only-begotten from a father, full of
grace and truth.” So he was already called God’s only-begotten before he took flesh. For
even if, as he says, “the Word became flesh” for our sake, still it was to us that he
deigned to show his own divinity. We were not looking at the flesh (for that was “the form
of a servant”), but at his glory, which is seen with a pure mind apart from the body. “We
beheld his glory”: an unspeakable glory, beyond all mortal reckoning, such as one might
imagine to be the “glory” of the “only-begotten” Son of God.

11 This glory was “from the Father.” Do you see that he did not say, “and we beheld his
glory, glory as of a word,” although he had just said, “the Word became flesh”? He said
this to teach what kind of Word the Father had caused to exist: not a mere spoken word.
(For how could such a thing have become flesh?) So he had to call him “only-begotten.” 12
He also teaches that this is his glory, by which he is understood to be God’s only-
begotten Son. And he says that the glory belonged to him from no other source than from
the Father. For he did not have the glory as something unbegotten, or without beginning,
or owned by himself, but as received from the Father. He himself made this clear when he
said, “Father, glorify me with the glory which I had with you before the world was.”

13 The Father answers him, saying, “I have glorified it, and I will glorify it again.” The
same evangelist establishes the Son’s own distinct existence still more strongly when he
adds: “John bears witness about him and has cried out, saying: This was the one who comes
after me, who has come to be before me, because he was first, before me. For from his
fullness we have all received.” 14 But although John cries out that the Savior “was first”
before him, the new Sabellius does not hear it. Yet John the Baptist came before the
Savior in his birth according to the flesh. How, then, is it testified that the Savior was
before him? For in the birth according to the flesh, the Savior was not before John. 15 So
it was in respect of being the only-begotten of God that he was “first,” before John, and
“has come to be before” him. Can these words be applied to the Father and God of the
universe? Or to a Word with no being and no substance of its own in God, who is simply the
same as God? And how could the words “has come to be before me” be said of a word that has
no real existence? Who would be so mad as to suppose that John the Baptist said of the God
of the universe, “has come to be before me” and “he was first, before me”?

16 So these words show that the one spoken of as God existed before John’s birth and came
to be before him. He is established not only as Word, but also as God, light and only-
begotten, existing and named as such before his coming in the flesh. 5. Where the
evangelist got this knowledge, he himself shows by saying next: “The only-begotten Son,
who is in the bosom of the Father, he has explained him.” You see from whom he learned his
theology: from the Son. 17 For he says it was not Moses, nor any of the prophets after
Moses, nor any of the angels or higher powers, but “the only-begotten Son himself” who
explained this. So the invisible God did not give the explanation; the only-begotten Son,
having become visible, gave men the explanation concerning the Father. Clearly, then, he
is other than the invisible God. And he also existed beforehand, not in the Father’s mind,
as Marcellus supposed, but in his bosom. Just as the Savior has promised that we shall
rest in the bosoms of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, so the Son was “in the bosom of the
Father.” He was not one and the same with the Father, since neither shall we be the same
as the holy fathers.

18 But note, besides, that once John has named him Word, called the same one God, named
him light, called him only-begotten and confessed him Son of God, he no longer calls him
Word. From then on he records the Savior himself as not calling himself Word, but Son,
only-begotten, light, life, truth and countless other things. We can hear him teaching
somewhere in these terms: “For God so loved the world that he gave his only-begotten Son,
so that everyone who believes in him should not perish.” And again: “For God did not send
the Son into the world 19 to judge the world.” And again: “But whoever does not believe
has already been judged, because he has not believed in the name of the only-begotten Son
of God.” Here again God was the one giving and “sending the Son as savior of the world,”
while the Son was the one sent, clearly other than the one who sends. For this reason, it
seems to me, our Savior himself said the following words, which were recorded against
Marcellus himself and against those who begrudge the Son his nature: “Is it not written in
the law that I said, ‘You are gods’?

20 If he called those men gods to whom the word of God came, and the Scripture cannot be
set aside, do you say of the one whom the Father sanctified and sent into the world, ‘You
blaspheme,’ because I said, ‘I am the Son of God’?” You hear how often the Savior himself
named himself not Word but Son, and called himself only-begotten. 21 You also hear how he
taught that he had been sent, and had been sanctified by the Father before he was sent.
And he puts to shame those who hesitate to confess him Son of God, by teaching from the
divine Scripture that men who were mortal by nature were called not only sons of God but
even gods. So it should not be thought blasphemy to confess as both Son of God and God
“the one whom the Father sanctified and sent into the world.” 22 So what should become of
the man who, after so many such sayings, dared to say that he is Word and nothing else?
Marcellus has said in so many words (no. 34), “and for this reason he does not call
himself Son of God, but everywhere calls himself Son of Man, so that through such a
confession he might bring it about that man, by fellowship with him, becomes by adoption a
son of God.” After saying this, I do not know with what eyes Marcellus could look these
testimonies in the face, or with what lips he could speak against so many of them.

23 The Saviour also showed that he is light, in agreement with what has already been set
out about light. He says, “I am the light of the world.” And again, “I am the light, and
the truth, and the life.” And once more, “The light has come into the world, and people
loved the darkness more than the light.” 24 And if anyone asks where he has come from, the
one who said, “He who comes from above is above all,” and “He who comes from heaven
testifies to what he has seen and heard,” will answer. Who was “the one who comes from
heaven”? Surely not the flesh which the Saviour took up? Not at all. Plainly it was he
himself, the light and the Word and God and the only-begotten and the Son, being all these
things himself. So “what he has seen and heard,” it says, “he testifies.” Therefore he
both saw and heard before he came to earth.

25 Whom did he see, if not the Father? Whom did he hear, if not the Father? And he taught
that he is not a mere spoken word that signifies something, but truly a living Son with
his own real existence, since he says, “The Father loves the Son, and has given all things
into his hand. Whoever believes in the Son has eternal life.” Let us believe, then, that
because he loves “the Son, the Father has given all things into his hand.” 26 We must pay
careful attention to the word “all.” It takes in the existence of everything that has come
into being. Through it one can see the greatness of the power of the Son of God, by
considering how great and what kind of hand it was that received from the Father the
existence of all things. 27 For if the whole heaven and world is great, and the realms
beyond what is seen are far better and more excellent, made up of bodiless, incorruptible,
rational and divine powers, and everything else that escapes our mind and is unknown to
our understanding, then the one hand of the only-begotten Son of God, which grasps all of
these together, shows the excellence of his immeasurable power.

28 The Son himself shows this again in another saying: “All things have been handed over
to me by my Father.” Then, as if we were at a loss to know who and how great the one is
who received so great a trust, he says: do not search, and do not ask. For it is not in
the nature of things for him to be known by human beings. Even for higher and more divine
powers, an exact grasp of the Son of God is not possible. 29 So after saying, “All things
have been handed over to me by my Father,” he added, “and no one knows the Son except the
Father.” Let every unspeakable account of the Son of God therefore be silent. Let the
knowledge of his begetting from the Father be left to the Father alone. Let no one go
further in his inquiry into his unspeakable nature and being. Let his own teaching about
himself alone be made firm for us by the grace of faith, since it plainly teaches that all
things have been handed over to him by the Father.

30 So God gave and handed over for the sake of improvement and benefit, making the
handover as to a saviour, a physician and a steersman of the whole. The Son received, and
like a faithful keeper of a deposit he held what was given. He did this not as a word
without being or substance, but as truly the only-begotten Son, beloved of the Father. 31
7. Further, he also called himself the bread of life, saying, “I am the bread of life,”
and “I am the living bread that came down from heaven.” And he made very plain how he was
living, setting it out in these words: “As the living Father sent me, and I live because
of the Father, 32 “…and the one who eats me, he too will live because of me.” He taught
the same thing elsewhere when he said, “For just as the Father has life in himself, so he
has given the Son also to have life in himself.” So he was the bread of life, and he
existed in heaven, watering and feeding the angelic powers by the power of his divinity.
He was all this before he came to earth. He was a Son having life “in himself,” just as
the Father has life “in himself.”

33 For what is special and peculiar to the unbegotten, divine life of the Father is this:
because of it, he alone is said to “have immortality,” according to the divine apostle.
The Son would also have it alone, as the image of the Father, who is such in this respect
too. Yet he has the life described, not as without beginning, not as unbegotten, and not
as his own acquisition, as the Father has it, but as one who received it from the Father.
34 For he says, “he gave the Son also to have life in himself, just as the Father has life
in himself.” So the one gave and the other received. And he alone has received this
privilege: he does not have to obtain life from somewhere outside himself, as the other
living things do, but has it welling up in himself, in the way the Father has it in
himself. Therefore everything that shares in life lives by the supply of the Son. He alone
has life welling up in himself, because the Father gave him this gift, so that those who
were going to be made alive through him might enjoy it.

35 This is what he himself teaches when he says, “Just as the living Father sent me, and I
live because of the Father, so the one who eats me, he too will live because of me. This
is the bread that came down from heaven.” You see how, even while he was in heaven, he was
the bread of life. That is why it is said somewhere, “Man ate the bread of angels.” So
even before he was sent by the Father, he was in heaven and lived because of the Father.
36 He was not a spoken word that merely signifies, nor one and the same thing as God. He
was a subsisting being who had a life of his own, which the Father had given him. 37 Going
on, he set out the superiority of the Father’s glory and said, “As the Father taught me,
so I speak these things. And the one who sent me is with me. He has not left me alone,
because I always do the things that please him.” Notice carefully that it says “always.”

38 For he says: it is not only now, when I am speaking with people on earth through flesh,
that I do what pleases the Father, but always. He also testifies that he speaks what he
has learned from the Father as from a teacher. So he gives the Father the title of
teacher, and he is clearly someone other than the Father, since everyone who is taught by
someone is different from the one who teaches. 39 But if the Word was in God, and is
called rational (“logical”) only because he signifies the thoughts of the Father, how
could he be his own teacher? How, if he is inseparable from God, could he say that he had
been sent? How, if he is one and the same as God, could he testify that he does what
pleases him? And if Marcellus replies to this that the Word spoke these words while in the
flesh, what shall we say to that, given that he refuses to confess that he is a Son, and
says he is only a Word?

40 How was he in the flesh when he said these things? Was he living and subsisting, and
existing apart from the Father? Then who was the Father at that time, if he did not have
his own Word in himself but subsisted without a Word? Suppose the Word dwelt in the flesh
while he spent time on earth. If he was apart from the Father, living and subsisting and
moving the flesh as a soul does, then he was clearly different from the Father, and again
there were two subsistences, himself and the Father. 41 Then all of Marcellus’s labor is
shown to be futile, since he defines the Word who became flesh as a living, substantial
and subsisting Word. But suppose the Word who dwelt in the body was not apart from God,
but was so united and joined to God as to be one and the same with him. Then Marcellus
will necessarily have to grant one of these: either that the Father himself was in the
flesh, or that the Son was subsisting by himself and working in the body, or that he was
the soul of a man, or, if none of these, that the flesh moved by itself, though it was
without soul and without reason.

42 If Marcellus says it was the Father, then in his view the Father is the one who was
born, who suffered, and who endured every work that belongs to human experience. When
Sabellius said this, the church of God charged him with impiety. But if it is not
permitted to say that the Father became man, then those who are taught by Christ must
confess that it was the Son, since he is the one who teaches this. 43 But if Marcellus
denies that this one has a real existence, it is time for him to suppose that Christ was a
mere man, made up of body and soul, differing in nothing from the common nature of human
beings. But this doctrine too has been driven out of the church. In former times the
Ebionites held it, and more recently the man from Samosata and those called Paulinians
after him, and they suffered the penalty of an evil name.

44 What then is left after this, except to bring in the flesh alone, with no one dwelling
in it, moving like the automata of conjurers? And how could the flesh, the body by itself,
without someone working in it, say, “As he taught me, so I speak”? How could the flesh
say, “I always do what pleases him”? How could the flesh say that it had been sent by the
Father? Is it holy to call God the Father of the flesh, or rather the Father of the one
who dwells and works in it? Who then was this? Was it the word in God, who is himself God
according to Sabellius? Or was it, as it is holy and true to say, the living and
subsisting only-begotten Son of God? 45 But if Marcellus says neither of these, he will
necessarily be forced to accept a human soul, and for him Christ will be a mere man. Then
he is no longer a Sabellian, but our new writer will be a Paulinian. But suppose he says
that the word in God, being nothing other than a word, one that signifies or one that
acts, dwelt in the flesh.

46 How then could this word say that it lives a life of its own, apart from the Father?
How could it have been sent, if it was always joined and united to God? How could it say
that the Father is its teacher? How could it say of itself, “I always do what pleases the
Father”? For these are plainly the voices of a Son who subsists and lives. And all through
the Gospel, the one who prays to the Father, who glorifies the Father, who asks to be
glorified by the Father, what else does he show except that he himself has real existence?
He shows it most of all when he says, “The testimony of two people is true. 47 I am the
one who testifies about myself, and the Father who sent me testifies about me.” Through
all these passages the Savior himself has shown that he lives, and yet he never once
called himself “Word.” He called himself Son, light, only-begotten, bread of life,
anything rather than Word.

48 He teaches that he has a word, saying, “If anyone loves me, he will keep my word,” but
he does not say that he himself is the Word. How then, after all this, is the man not
ashamed who declares that he is only Word and nothing else? Listen to how he wrote: (no.
37) “So it is clear from every side that no other name fits the eternity of the Word
except the one the most holy disciple and apostle of God, John, spoke at the beginning of
the Gospel.” 49 And again (no. 37): “to show that if any name is new and recent, it came
to him from the new and recent economy in the flesh.” 50 And again (no. 42): “Therefore
before he came down and was born through the virgin, he was only Word. For what else was
he before taking human flesh, he who came down ‘in the last days,’ as he himself wrote,
and was born of the virgin? He was nothing other than Word.”

51 This much one can say and declare against Marcellus because he does not confess the Son
of God. The evangelist would cry out loudly to him: “What are you saying, man? I did not
call him only Word, but also God, and ‘the light that enlightens every person coming into
the world,’ and the only-begotten Son, the one ‘in the bosom of the Father.’” 52 So let no
one slander the theologian. Let him listen carefully to what kind of Word he laid down,
since right beside it he joined the words “and the Word was God” and added “all things
were made through him.” But the Savior of all himself is not called Word even once. He is
called Son of God, only-begotten, light, life, truth, anything rather than Word. 53 8. But
if Marcellus says that these things were spoken from the New Testament, the answer is that
“In the beginning was the Word” also comes from no other place than the New Testament. So
the Gospel is one and the same, and the same evangelist who called him “Word” also wrote
down everything else about him.

54 9. The divine apostle Paul also says, “For us there is one God, the Father, from whom
are all things, and one Lord, Jesus Christ, through whom are all things.” It is clear that
he means the Son of God who existed before his coming in the flesh, the one “through whom
all things” came to be. Paul does not call him “Word” but “Lord Jesus” and “Christ.” Yet
if, as Marcellus holds, God and the Word within him were one and the same, it would have
been enough for the apostle to say, “For us there is one God, the Father, 55 from whom are
all things.” The thought would have been complete, and the statement sufficient in itself,
introducing God as the maker of the universe. But even a Jew could say that. The herald of
the church teaches us, in addition to the first point, not to be ignorant of the second as
well.

56 What is this second point? “And one Lord, Jesus Christ.” So he adds the second article
in order, saying “for us” (for even if not for all, he means, yet for us) “one Lord, Jesus
Christ.” And why this one is also “one Lord for us” after the one God, he shows by adding,
“through whom are all things.” For since “all things came to be through him,” it is
reasonable that we who know this believe him to be Lord of the universe, after the God who
is over all. 57 That he was not speaking of the flesh, but of God the Word, is clear from
his adding “through whom are all things.” For he says, “For us there is one God, the
Father, from whom are all things, and one Lord, Jesus Christ, through whom are all
things.” The same thing is said of the light and of the Word who existed beforehand. So
Jesus Christ himself was the light and the Word, “through whom all things” came to be, and
not the flesh. For he would never have said “through whom are all things” of the flesh, in
such a disconnected way.

58 10. The same Paul also knows how to call the Son of God, who existed before the flesh,
“Christ.” In the same way he calls him a rock, in what he writes about those who lived
with Moses in the wilderness: “For they drank from a spiritual rock that followed them,
and the rock was Christ.” And he seals the same point after other things, saying, “Let us
not put Christ to the test, as some of them tested him and were destroyed by the
serpents.” 59 He confirms this still further when he says, “By faith Moses, when he had
grown great, refused to be called the son of Pharaoh’s daughter, considering the reproach
of Christ greater wealth than the treasures of Egypt.” And he establishes it most clearly
of all in the words, “Let this mind be in you which was also in Christ Jesus, who,
existing in the form of God, did not consider being equal with God something to be
grasped, but emptied himself, taking the form of a slave, and being found in appearance as
a man.”

60 You see that before he emptied himself and took the form of a slave, he was, he already
existed, and he was “in the form of God.” And who was this? No one other than Jesus
Christ. So Jesus Christ was himself God the Word, even before he took flesh. 61 For we
must listen carefully to the divine apostle when he says, “Let this mind be in you which
was also in Christ Jesus,” and then makes clear who this Jesus Christ was, by adding,
“who, existing in the form of God, did not consider being equal with God something to be
grasped, but emptied himself, taking the form of a slave.” 62 Can the saying here be taken
to refer to the flesh? Does it fit to say “who” and “existing” of the flesh? Surely it was
not flesh that “emptied itself, taking the form of a slave”? That would be ridiculous. So
let us examine how it is said: “who, existing in the form of God, did not consider being
equal with God something to be grasped, but emptied himself.” Now if he were a Word with
no existence of his own, never standing apart from God but being within him, at one time
in rest and silence, at another in activity,

63 And how could this “Word” have been “in the form of God,” if he were himself God only
in potential? How could he “not consider it robbery to be equal with God,” if he were
himself God? And how could he “humble himself, becoming obedient” to the Father? For one
to obey another points to two persons. 64 Marcellus has used the human word as his
illustration, so we should ask whether it makes sense to say this of a human word: “who,
being in the form of a man, did not consider it robbery to be equal to a man, but emptied
himself by becoming obedient to the man.” How could the word that is naturally part of a
man do this, when it is one and the same thing as the man? So he who was “in the form of
God” will not be a bare, non-subsisting word. He is truly the only-begotten Son of God,
who “did not consider it robbery to be equal to God, but emptied himself, taking the form
of a servant.” The divine apostle also called him Jesus Christ, knowing exactly that he
existed before the flesh.

65 11. Besides this, the same apostle called him the mediator of God. He said that the
giving of the law through Moses was placed in his hand, in the words: “The law was
ordained through angels, in the hand of a mediator. But a mediator is not of one, but God
is one.” You hear how he refers to God in his own right and names the angels, and brings
in the mediator between them, saying, “A mediator is not of one.” So even before he became
man, in the days of Moses, he was acting as mediator in the giving of the law. 66 12. The
same apostle also calls him high priest, saying: “Having then a great high priest who has
passed through the heavens, Jesus the Son of God.” 67 13. Moreover, the apostle knows him
as the radiance of glory, the exact imprint of God, and as Son and heir, when he says: “At
the end of these days he spoke to us in a Son, whom he appointed heir of all things,
through whom he also made the ages; who, being the radiance of his glory and the exact
imprint of his substance.” Here too, just as it was said above of the Word, “all things
came to be through him,” and of the light, “he was in the world, and the world came to be
through him,” and of Jesus Christ, “for us there is one Lord, Jesus Christ,

68 through whom are all things,” notice how in the same way it is said of the same one,
“through whom he also made the ages.” 14. It is worth paying attention here to how he is
named “radiance.” I think the word points to the Son’s begetting from the Father. The Son
is often named, and God has been called Father. So that we would not fall into thinking of
this in the manner of the begetting of living creatures, the apostle uses an image more
fitting for God. 69 He says of the Father, “dwelling in unapproachable light,” and he
defines the Son as the radiance of the Father’s light. So the radiance is the offspring of
the first light, brought into being not in the way mortal creatures are begotten, but
according to the example given. It is fitting, then, that he also calls him the image “of
the invisible God,” because he is “in the form of God,” and because he is the “radiance”
and the “exact imprint of his substance.”

70 For this is why, writing about him, he said: “He is the image of the invisible God, the
firstborn of all creation, because in him all things were created, in heaven and on earth,
visible and invisible, whether thrones or lordships or rulers or authorities. All things
have been created through him and for him. He is before all things, and in him all things
hold together.” 71 These things are said about the divinity of the Son of God, even if
Marcellus does not think so. The divine apostle would not have said so much about the
flesh. That would be foolish and unthinkable, and the sense of the wording would also be
incoherent. For how would it fit to say of the flesh “who is the image,” when, if it were
about the flesh, he would have had to say “which is the image”? 72 15. In another place
the same apostle again called him the image of God, saying: “And even if our gospel is
veiled, it is veiled among those who are perishing, among whom the god of this age has
blinded the minds of the unbelievers, so that the light of the gospel of the glory of
Christ, who is the image of God, should not shine in their hearts.”

73 Here we should also notice that the divine apostle gave a defining statement about
Christ when he called him the image of God. He did this so that no one would suppose there
are two Gods, but one God over all. For if “there is one God, and there is no other
besides him,” then the one who is made known through the Son, as through an image, must be
that same God. 74 That is why the Son is also God: the Father’s form is impressed in him,
as in an image. The divine apostle shows this when he says at one time, “who, existing in
the form of God,” and at another defines him as “the image of God.” So, along with his
other titles, the Son was, and was called, “the image of God” before his coming in the
flesh. These few texts, out of countless ones, I have gathered from the New Testament, to
keep my discourse in proportion.

75 16. The prophets of God who lived long ago also honored the same Son with various
titles of divinity. One of them called him the Spirit of God. He said, “A rod will come
out of the root of Jesse, and a flower will rise from the root, and the Spirit of God will
rest on him, the spirit of wisdom and understanding,” and so on. By these words he plainly
pointed to the one “of the seed of David according to the flesh” and to God the Word who
dwelt in him. So the divine apostle sometimes said, “The Lord is the Spirit,” and
sometimes, “Christ is the power of God and the wisdom of God.” Another prophet likewise
calls him Spirit, saying, “The Spirit [before] our face, Christ the Lord.” And in the
Gospel it is plainly said of him, “Behold my servant whom I have chosen, my beloved, in
whom my soul is well pleased. I have put my Spirit on him; he will bring forth judgment to
the nations.”

76 17. Another of the prophets called him life and light, when he addressed God and said,
“For with you is the fountain of life; in your light we shall see light.” For who was the
fountain of life and the light that is with God, if not the one who says in the Gospels,
“I am the light of the world,” and “I am the way, and the truth, and the life”? That is
why the prophet again prays to God and says, “Send out your light and your truth; they
will lead me.” 18. Zerubbabel also proclaimed him as truth and was thought worthy of the
prize of victory. For when he stood before the king of the Persians, it is recorded that
he said, “And truth remains and is strong forever, 77 and lives and prevails forever and
ever. With it there is no respect of persons, but it does what is just and keeps away from
all that is unjust and evil.” To this he adds, “And to it belong the strength, the
kingdom, the authority and the majesty of all ages.” By saying that truth lives, conquers
and prevails, he most forcefully showed that it has a real substance of its own. In
keeping with this, the Savior himself, by naming himself the truth, put his seal on
Zerubbabel’s testimony.

78 19. He also named him a river, the one who said, “The rushing streams of the river make
glad the city of God.” 79 20. And the one who said, “The mountain which God was pleased to
dwell in,” has already called him a mountain. This is why in Daniel a stone was cut “from
a mountain” “without hands,” and again the same stone was seen set back on a high
mountain. The mountain signifies his preexistent divinity, and the stone his humanity. 80
21. They also called him righteousness, as the one who said, “Who has raised up
righteousness from the east?” 22. And they called him the sun of righteousness, as the one
who said, “For those who fear me the sun of righteousness will rise, and healing is in its
wings.” And another says, “The sun will set upon the prophets” “who lead my people
astray.” For these words could not apply to the visible sun, nor even to the Word in the
flesh.

81 23. Solomon also names him wisdom in Proverbs, saying, “Wisdom built herself a house
and set up seven pillars,” and so on. And that wisdom existed before the world, living and
subsisting, he himself taught, speaking in her person with these words: “I, wisdom, have
made counsel my dwelling, and I have called on knowledge and thought.” Then he goes on to
say, “Through me [kings] reign, and rulers write righteousness; through me the great are
made great, and tyrants hold power through me.” 82 24. Solomon also called him the tree of
life, and Lord, when he said: “She is a tree of life to all who hold fast to her, and to
those who lean on her as on the Lord she is secure.” 83 25. David, the father of Solomon,
in the Psalms also named him both Lord and priest. At one time he says, “The Lord said to
my Lord: Sit at my right hand.” At another he says, “The Lord has sworn and will not
change his mind: you are a priest forever, after the order of Melchizedek.”

84 26. The same David also knew how to confess him as God, saying: “Your throne, O God, is
forever and ever; the scepter of your kingdom is a scepter of uprightness. You have loved
righteousness and hated lawlessness; therefore God, your God, has anointed you with the
oil of gladness beyond your companions.” For who else could this be, a God anointed here
by God, but the very one who was proclaimed Christ because of the Father’s anointing? 85
27. This same one was also the beloved of God, as the heading of the psalm shows when it
says, “A song for the beloved.” 86 28. Isaiah called him the arm, saying: “The Lord will
uncover his holy arm before all the nations.” 29. David likewise knew him as both
righteousness and salvation, and so he said: “The Lord has made known his salvation;
before the nations he has uncovered his righteousness.”

87 And again: “Proclaim his salvation from day to day.” And again: “Who will give the
salvation of Israel out of Zion?” And: “Show us your mercy, Lord, and grant us your
salvation.” 30. But why should I go through them one by one, when the lover of learning
can gather such things from the whole of God-inspired Scripture? There it is clear that
God’s people, enlightened by the divine Spirit, had knowledge of the only-begotten Son of
God. That knowledge was then unspoken, and it was hidden from the crowds of the Jewish
people. So they spoke of him in various ways, under veiled titles. For the grace of the
proclamation of the theology concerning him was being kept for his coming. His church
throughout the whole world has received it as a mystery once hidden and passed over in
silence, and she is proud of it. 88 The divine apostle teaches this as well when he says:
“according to the stewardship of God given to me for you, to fulfill the word of God, the
mystery hidden from the ages and from the generations — but now revealed to his saints, to
whom God willed to make known what is the riches of the glory of this mystery among the
nations, which is Christ in you, the hope of glory.” You see how the Son of God was a
mystery hidden before, but now revealed.

89 For this reason God’s prophets spoke of him as God in a hidden way by the prophetic
Spirit, while the multitude of the Jewish nation remained ignorant of the hidden mystery.
So they were taught to know one God, because they were constantly being dragged off into
the error of many gods. But they did not know that God is the Father of an only-begotten
Son. For this mystery was being kept for the church from the nations, 90 given to her as a
special favor. For in him, as the apostle says, “are hidden all the treasures of wisdom
and knowledge.” But through all these passages the Word of God, who was “in the beginning
with God,” has been shown to be not only called Word, as Marcellus supposes. He is also
Son and only-begotten, light and bread, Jesus and Christ and Lord, high priest, radiance,
exact imprint, image, firstborn of all creation, fountain of life, truth, river,
righteousness, sun of righteousness, wisdom, tree of life, Lord and God, beloved, priest,
arm, righteousness and salvation. And he was named all these things while existing before
the flesh, as the Scriptures I have set out have shown.

91 For what reason, then, does Marcellus pass over all these and stop at “Word” alone? He
does not move on to the other titles, but says only that he is God’s Word, a Word that
signifies: at one time resting quietly in God, at another speaking or acting by activity
alone. Is it because he is plainly a Sabellian, and does not believe in the Son of God,
nor recognize the mystery that existed long before but has been revealed only to the
church of Christ through his grace? 92 But suppose Marcellus says that the hidden mystery
was this: that God has a word within himself and uses a word. For that is what he thinks,
writing in this way (no. 45): “What else was the hidden mystery but the matter of the
Word? This mystery was hidden in God so completely in earlier times that no one of the
former people clearly knew what concerned the Word.” If he says this, let him learn that
every Jew who has not come to know the Christ of God would also agree that God has a word
and is not without reason.

93 Sabellius himself would say this too, and so would every Greek and barbarian who holds
that God exists, without any dispute. For the moment he says “God,” he also thinks of him
as wise, rational, powerful, just and good. What kind of mystery, then, was hidden, if
everyone agrees to it? Who would not say that wisdom, power, life, light, truth,
righteousness, word, and everything fine and good are in God? Or rather, that he himself
is all these things, and anything higher and better than these which we do not know? For
self-taught nature forces every human being to confess these things about God. From this
we are also taught that the Son is all these things, 94 since he is the only-begotten Son
and heir of the Father and has everything the Father has. That is why he is said to be in
the form of God and the image of God, according to the divine apostle, who says, “who,
being in the form of God, did not consider it robbery to be equal with God,” and again,
“who is the image of God.”

95 So the mystery “hidden from the ages and from the generations” was not this, that God
is rational. Nor was this “now revealed,” since all people know it by natural
understanding. But if someone asks what it was, the apostle answers. He says, “But now it
has been revealed to his saints, to whom God willed to make known what is the wealth of
the glory of this mystery among the nations, which is Christ in you.” 96 So the mystery
was Christ, and clearly the Son of God. For this reason the prophets of God earlier
honored him in a hidden way with various titles. They concealed what could not yet be
spoken, and kept its disclosure to all in reserve for his grace. So when Marcellus, after
so many witnesses from the Scriptures, insists that the Word who was “in the beginning,”
before taking flesh, was nothing other than a word and was called by no other name, and
that he received various titles only when “the Word became flesh,” being nothing but a
word before that, how would he not be exposed as ignorant and without understanding of the
divine writings? But now that this point is settled, let us next look at the new
Sabellius, as though he had come back to life.

BOOK 2

TABLE OF CONTENTS

The second book of the work on the church’s theology contains the following. 1. How
Marcellus revived the teaching of Sabellius. 2. How he is also shown to be judaizing in
his teaching. 3. How he defined the Word of God, being in God, as without beginning and
unbegotten. 4. How he said that the Word and God are one and the same. 5. That in saying
these things he denied the Son. 6. How the church speaks of the Son as God. 7. How the
church proclaims the monarchy of the Father. 8. By what words Marcellus denied the Son of
God. 9. A refutation of the man’s false teaching. 10. That he did not rightly understand
the words “In the beginning was the Word.” 11. That he said at one time that the Word of
God is spoken, and at another that he is internal, like the word in human beings. 12. That
the evangelist did not set out his theology of the Word in the way Marcellus supposed. 13.
In how many ways the meaning of the term “word” is understood. 14. How the gospel’s
teaching about the Word ought to be explained. 15. Quotations of Marcellus’s own words, in
which he plainly denied the Son of God by saying that he is a spoken word and an internal
word. 16. A refutation of the man’s false teaching. 17. An explanation of the true meaning
of “the Word.” 18. Why the evangelist called the Son “the Word” at the start of his
writing. 19. How Marcellus, appealing to the Old Testament scriptures about one God,
denied the Son of God just as the Jews did. 20. Why Moses and the prophets did not hand
down to the Jews the theology of the Son in plain terms. 21. That it was the Son of God
who spoke to Moses and to Abraham. 22. That in the prophets also the Father was made known
as God through the Son. 23. That the church does not proclaim two Gods. 24. How Marcellus
likened the only-begotten Word to the words of God that give commands about things to be
done. 25. How he contradicted himself in his own writings.

CHAPTER 1

1 After the testimonies from the divine Scriptures that I have set out, which show that
the Son of God was not named only “Word” before his coming in the flesh (as Marcellus
supposed) but had countless other names too, let us now look at the phantom of Sabellius,
as if it had popped up out of the earth. For he dared to say that the God over all, the
Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, was born of the holy virgin and himself suffered. He
wrote it this way (Fr. 49): “What was it, then, that came down before he became man?
Surely it was, he says, the Spirit. For if anyone wished to say something other than this,
the angel who said to the virgin, ‘The Holy Spirit will come upon you,’ will not allow
it.” But if he says it was Spirit, let him listen to the Savior saying, “God is Spirit.”

2 By these words he said that the God of the universe, of whom our Savior and Lord taught,
“God is Spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth,” was the
Spirit who came upon the virgin. This is simply Sabellius made new again. 3 He goes on.
Jeremiah the prophet had spoken plainly about the Savior’s becoming man: “After this he
was seen on the earth and lived among human beings.” Marcellus refers that saying to the
Father, in these very words (Fr. 50): “But the Father seems to be in the Word, even if
Asterius and those who think the same as he does do not think so.” 4 He does the same with
the Savior’s suffering. He sets down from Jeremiah’s Lamentations, “The breath of our
face, the Lord’s anointed [Christ the Lord], was taken in their destructions,” and adds
(Fr. 51): “Here too the prophet speaks in the same way about the Word who took our flesh.”
And he goes on to say (Fr. 51): “A spirit could never be the maker of a shadow. And that
God himself is Spirit, the Savior said: ‘God is Spirit.’ And that God is light, he himself
teaches us when he says, ‘I am the light.’” Do you see how he carries over what was said
about the Savior to the deity of the Father?

5 And again he does away with the real existence of the Son, declaring outright that
before the creation of things that have come to be there was nothing else except God
alone. He writes this, word for word: “Asterius calls the authority given to him ‘glory,’
and not only glory but ‘glory before the world,’ not realizing that when the world had not
yet come to be, there was nothing else except God alone.” And again he confirms the same
thing, saying: “Heaven and earth and everything in the heavens and on the earth have been
made by God. If, then, he believes this, he must also agree to this, that there was
nothing else except God.”

CHAPTER 2

1 You see that he is flatly denying, like a Jew, the only-begotten Son of God, “through
whom all things” came to be. For if nothing else existed except God before the world came
into being, then the Son did not exist. And how then did “all things come to be through
him, and without him not one thing came to be”? So the Jew, who denies the Christ of God,
knows of nothing before the world came into being except God alone, and Marcellus bears
witness with him. But the church of Christ boldly and proudly says: “For us there is one
God, the Father, from whom are all things, and one Lord, Jesus Christ, 2 through whom are
all things.” And when it says “through whom are all things,” it knows him to be before all
things. So the man who says that before the world came into being there was nothing else
except God alone is lying against the truth. For along with the one God, his only-begotten
Son also existed before the world was established, and was with the Father. This is what
the one who said it also taught the church: “At the end of these days he spoke to us in a
Son, whom he appointed heir of all things, through whom he also made the ages.”

3 And in Proverbs, through Solomon, the Son himself teaches about himself, saying: “When
he was preparing the heaven, I was present with him.” Moreover, he himself “was the light
that enlightens every person coming into the world,” since “he was in the world, and the
world came to be through him.” But if “the world came to be through him,” it is clear that
he existed before the world. 4 So God was not alone before the world was established; his
only-begotten Son was with him. The Father looked on him and rejoiced, as the Son teaches,
being himself the wisdom, when he says in Proverbs: “I was the one in whom he delighted
day by day.” And the Son himself, gazing on the Father’s thoughts, was filled with
gladness. This is why he says: “And I was glad before him at every time.” These are the
devout and divine mysteries which the church of Christ has received and guards. But the
man who says that “when the world had not yet come to be, there was nothing else except
God alone”

5 shows himself to be one of two things: either a Jew or a Sabellian. For if he flatly
denies the Son and brings in God alone, he will be a Jew, denying the Christ. Or if he
accepts the title “Son” only as a word, while claiming that the one God is himself both
Son and Father together, he will be reviving Sabellius. For if nothing else existed before
the world except God, then either he himself will be both Father and Son, or he will have
no Son at all.

CHAPTER 3

1 But Marcellus seems to say that the Son is the Word within God himself, by which he is
understood to be rational. The result is that God is his own Father, and in turn his own
Son. Listen, then, to his own words, in which he writes in this way: “For before all
creation there was a kind of stillness, as one would expect, 2 since the Word was in God.
For if Asterius believes that God is the maker of all things, it is clear that he too will
agree with us that the one always exists, never having received a beginning of being,
while the others have been made by him, and made out of things that did not exist.” You
see how, having established God as without beginning, he said that the Word, being in him,
was in stillness before creation. And going on, he adds next: “If, then, he believes this,
he must also agree to this, that there was nothing else except God.” So the Word, being in
the Father, had his own glory.

3 From this, naturally, Marcellus says that the Word is eternal, that is, unbegotten,
writing as follows: “Do you hear, then, the agreement of the Holy Spirit, who through many
different persons bears witness to the eternity of the Word?” And again: “And for this
reason John begins from the eternity of the Word, saying, ‘In the beginning was the Word,
and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.’” By using three testimonies in a row he
wants to show the eternity of the Word. 4 And how he claimed that the Word is united to
God and was begotten together with him, you can hear from his words, which run something
like this: “We know that the economy according to the flesh differs by being a matter of
the man, but we believe that the eternity according to the Spirit is united to the
Father.”

CHAPTER 4

1 In this way, then, having granted that the Word is in God, he goes on to declare that
the Word is one and the same with him, writing word for word as follows: “For if the
examination were of the Spirit alone, the Word would reasonably appear to be one and the
same with God. But if the addition according to the flesh in the Savior is examined, the
Godhead seems to be expanded only in activity. So reasonably it is truly an undivided
monad.” 2 And again, going on, he says: “It is not, then, because of an exact agreement in
all words and works, as Asterius said, that the Savior says, ‘I and the Father are one,’
but because it is impossible for the Word of God to be separated from God, or God from his
own Word.” Now if God and the Word in him were one and the same, as Marcellus thinks, then
the one who was born of the holy Virgin, became flesh, became man, suffered the things
written, and died for our sins was himself the God over all. This is exactly what
Sabellius dared to say, and the church of God counted him among the godless and
blasphemers.

CHAPTER 5

But suppose Marcellus says that the Word of God is the one who became flesh. Yet he
defined him as inseparable from God, giving an undivided monad and one hypostasis of God
and of the Word in him, so that, according to him, the one who became man is nothing other
than the God over all. But if it is an undivided monad, and God and the Word in him are
one and the same, whom could one call Father and whom Son, when the underlying subject is
one? In this way Marcellus, by bringing in one and the same person as “Son-Father,” was
reviving Sabellius.

CHAPTER 6

1 The church of God, however, also recognizes the undivided monad, confessing one origin,
the one, unbegotten and unoriginate God. And it proclaims as Savior the only-begotten Son
begotten from him, truly existing, living and subsisting. He is not without origin and not
unbegotten, so that it may not set up two origins and two gods; rather he was begotten
from the Father himself and has the one who begat him as his origin. 2 For this reason the
church has received the teaching to believe in one God, Father Almighty, and in our Lord
Jesus Christ, the only-begotten Son of God. This holy and mystical faith gives the new
birth in Christ to those who are enlightened through it. But Marcellus says that the monad
is expanded in activity. That has a place with bodies, but not with the incorporeal,
unspeakable and inexpressible being. 3 For God is not expanded by acting, nor contracted
by not acting. He does not act at all as human beings do, nor is he moved as human beings
are. Being an undivided monad, God begot his only-begotten Son from himself, without being
divided and without undergoing any change, turning, flux or suffering.

4 For when he commands, directs or gives law, he does not do these things as human beings
do, speaking with tongue and lips. Nor, when he looks upon the ordering of the whole, does
he gaze with eyes as we do. For with his unspeakable, divine power he has already
anticipated “the things that are not” and sees them as though they already exist and stand
firm. 5 Nor, when he makes and creates, does God take material that already lies before
him and build with hands and fingers, as the craftsmen among us do. Again, by an
inexpressible and incomprehensible power he gave existence to the whole substance of all
created things, out of things that did not exist. If, then, he made everything by means
that we cannot express or reason out, why should we be anxious that we might be saying
that some suffering happened to him in the begetting of the Son, as happens with mortal
creatures? He brought the Son into being above all things and before all things, not in
any way known to mortal nature, but in a manner known to himself alone.

CHAPTER 7

1 But you are afraid, man, that by confessing two hypostases you will bring in two first
principles and fall away from the divine monarchy? Then learn this. There is one God,
without beginning and unbegotten, and the Son has been begotten from him. So there will be
one first principle, one monarchy and one kingdom, since the Son himself also ascribes to
his Father the place of first principle. For “the head of Christ is God,” according to the
apostle. 2 But are you anxious that whoever confesses two hypostases, of Father and Son,
must accept two Gods? Know this too: the one who grants two hypostases, of Father and Son,
is not forced to speak of two fathers or two sons. He will grant that one is the Father
and the other the Son. In the same way, then, the one who posits the two hypostases is not
forced to grant two Gods.

3 For we do not define the two as equal in honor, nor both as without beginning and
unbegotten. We say that one is unbegotten and without beginning, and the other is begotten
and has the Father as his beginning. For this reason the Son himself also teaches that his
Father is his own God, where he says, “I am going up to my Father and your Father, and my
God and your God.” 4 So God, who is Father, is shown to be God even of the Son himself. 5
For this reason the church proclaims one God, who is also God of the Son. But the Son,
when he is himself compared with the Father, will no longer be God of the Father himself.
He is the only-begotten and beloved Son, “the image of the invisible God” and the
“radiance” of the Father’s glory. He reveres, worships and glorifies his own Father,
claiming him as God, even his own God. It is written that he prays to him, gives thanks to
him, and becomes “obedient to the point of death” to him.

6 He confesses that he lives “because of the Father,” that he can do nothing without the
Father, and that he does not do his own will but the Father’s. He says in these very
words: “I have come down from heaven, not to do my own will, but the will of him who sent
me.” And again: “I cannot do anything from myself. As I hear, I judge, and my judgment is
just, because I do not seek my own will but the will of him who sent me.” And that the one
who sent him was other than himself, he shows by saying next: “If I bear witness about
myself, my witness is not true. 7 There is another who bears witness about me.” Then,
after mentioning the Baptist, he teaches that the Father is his witness, saying, “And the
Father who sent me, he himself has borne witness about me.” And he adds, “If you loved me,
you would have rejoiced that I am going to the Father, because my Father is greater than
I.”

8 By all these words he shows himself to be other than the Father. He also shows the
Father’s surpassing glory, by saying that the Father has sent, while he himself has been
sent and has come down from heaven “not to do his own will but the will of” the one who
sent him. And what could Marcellus say to this, when he hears these things taught by the
one who came down from heaven? Surely he will not claim that even now it is the Savior’s
flesh that says these things, for the flesh did not come down from heaven. 9 Whom, then,
will he say it was who came down from heaven and taught these things? God himself, or the
Word joined to him? But if he says it was the Father, he exposes himself openly as
Sabellius, and the Savior himself will refute him as a liar when he says, “I have come
down from heaven, not to do my own will, but the will of him who sent me,”

10 and “I can do nothing of myself; as I hear, I judge,” and “I do not seek my own will
but the will of the one who sent me,” and “My Father is greater than I.” To think that the
Father says these things would be the height of madness. 11 But suppose he says that what
has been set before us is spoken by the Word that is naturally joined to God, his very
thought, by which God reasons and thinks inwardly within himself. Then how could God’s
inner reflection, the thought within him, have come down from heaven? How could it, having
become in the flesh that it took up, go through these words? And how could the Word within
God say that he has come down “not to do his own will, but the will of the one who sent”
him? 12 In these words the Son of God shows his reverence toward the Father. But when he
stands at the head of all created things, which came into being through him, as the
Savior, Lord and Creator of them all (“for all things came into being through him, and
without him not one thing came into being”), then he may rightly be proclaimed God,
Master, Savior and King.

13 For this reason his church has been taught to revere him, worship him and honor him as
God, having learned to do this from him. 14 The Savior himself says, “For the Father
judges no one, but has given all judgment to the Son, so that all may honor the Son just
as they honor the Father.” He plainly commands that he be honored, not in the way the
prophets are, nor angels, nor their various powers, but in a way like the Father himself.
For the Father himself willed this: “He has given all judgment to the Son, so that all may
honor him just as they honor the Father.” 15 Thomas called Didymus knew these things
exactly, since he belonged to the company of the twelve disciples. In brilliant words he
acknowledged him as both God and Lord, saying, “My Lord and my God.” So it is right that
we too worship only the Son, and no one else, with divine honor, just as we honor the
Father. And in this the Father is honored through the Son.

16 He teaches this very thing when he says, “The one who honors the Son honors the Father
who sent him.” When we honor an image of a king that has been sent out, we honor the king
himself, who is the original of the image. In the same way the Father is honored through
the Son, just as he is also seen through him. 17 “For the one who has seen” the Son “has
seen the Father.” He sees the unbegotten Godhead, as in an image and a mirror, stamped
with its likeness in the Son. “For he is the radiance of eternal light, and a spotless
mirror of the working of God, and an image of his goodness.” The Son received all these
things from the Father, and has his glory from him and from the Godhead, as a true and
only-begotten Son. But the Father has received nothing from anyone. He is himself the
beginning, the source and the root of all good things, and so he may rightly be proclaimed
the one and only God.

CHAPTER 8

1 But Marcellus, who knows nothing of this, does not want the Son to have been truly
begotten from the Father, as a living Son with his own real existence. Instead he says
that he came forth from God as a word, one that signifies or commands something. Hear him
say this openly in these words (Nr. 31): “To say that he was begotten before the ages
seems to be consistent. For what comes forth from a father who sends it out becomes his
offspring. But the other point he has not taken up soundly or reverently. For to say that
the one who came forth from him is not a word, and that this is the true manner of
begetting, but that he is truly a Son only, tends to give those who hear the impression of
a human appearance.” 2 Then, to show that the Word was not begotten from the Father
either, he says word for word (Nr. 28): “So the holy apostle and disciple of the Lord,
John, when he spoke of his eternity, became a true witness to the Word, saying, ‘In the
beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God,’ making no
mention here of any begetting of the Word.” In this way he denies the Son of God. He used
to say that the Word in God is at one time inside God, at another time proceeds from God,
and at yet another time will run back up to God and be in him,

3 as it was before. Listen to how he says this, in these words (Nr. 108): “But now I
believe the divine Scriptures, that God is one. His Word came forth from the Father so
that all things might come to be through him. But after the time of judgment, and the
setting right of all things, and the destruction of every opposing power, ‘then he himself
will be subjected to the one who subjected all things to him,’ ‘to God and Father,’ so
that in this way the Word may be in God just as he was before, before the world existed.
For when nothing existed before except God alone, and all things were going to come to be
through the Word, the Word came forth with active power, being the Word of the Father.” 4
And again he sets out the same thought more plainly, writing as follows (Nr. 54): “For
before the world existed, the Word was in the Father. But when almighty God purposed to
make everything in heaven and on earth, the coming-to-be of the world needed an active
power. And for this reason, since nothing else existed except God (for it is agreed that
all things were made by him), the Word then came forth and became the maker of the world.
He had earlier been preparing it within, in thought.”

5 And once more, after all this, he adds (Nr. 34): “And for this reason he does not call
himself Son of God, but everywhere calls himself Son of man, so that by this confession he
might bring it about that man, through fellowship with him, becomes by adoption a son of
God. And after the end of his work he is united again with God, as Word, fulfilling what
the apostle said: ‘Then he himself will be subjected to the one who subjected all things
to him, so that God may be all in all.’ For at that time he will be what he was before.”
After saying all this about the Word who is in God, according to whom we understand him to
be rational, Marcellus has fallen into terrible difficulty. He has dared to say that the
Word who is in God once came to be outside God, and again, after the time of judgment,
will be inside him, so that he is united with him in God as he was before.

CHAPTER 9

1 So it is time for us to put our questions to him and have him answer. What, then, are we
to think about the time in between, when the Word of God was outside God? How did he come
forth? And in what condition was God, if he did not have his own Word in himself? For if
the Word will be in God at the consummation of all things, as he was before the time of
the consummation, how will he be the Word who came forth from God? If he came to be,
subsisting in himself, as one distinct from God, then Marcellus’s labor is in vain. But
if, even after coming forth from God, like the spoken word in us he remained inseparable
from the Father, then he was always and continually in God, even when he was at work. 2
Why, then, does he send it off to the time of judgment, saying that only then will he be
united to God and will be as he was before? For if he will then be as he was before, then
the Word who came forth from God will not be what he was earlier. God himself will also be
unlike himself. Long ago he had the Word in himself, and at the consummation of all things
he will take him back and then become as he was before; but in the time between he would
have been in an unlike state. And the Word likewise, having come to be outside God, will
not be before the consummation of all things what he was before.

3 What account could be more impious than this? For the words “was,” “will be,” “came to
be at one time,” and “is again going to be” all indicate change in time. They are foreign
to an essence that is timeless, without beginning, unbegotten and unchanging. Of that
essence it is fitting to think only of being: that it always exists without variation, in
the same way and in the same manner. It is not diminished, not contracted, not stretched
out, not spread abroad. It has no outside and inside to itself. It does not become one
thing at one time and another at another. It is not one thing first and then something
else, and then restored again to its former state. 4 These are the things Marcellus dared
to suppose. He says that God existed long ago, and he pictures a kind of stillness
belonging to God alone. In this he follows the founder of those godless heresies, who set
out his godless teachings by saying, “There was God, and silence.” After the silence and
stillness, he says, the Word of God came forth at the beginning of the making of the
world, in effective activity. So the Word was no longer what he had been before, resting
quietly in a silent God, but was now active, having come forth from God. And how, then,
did he come forth?

5 Surely by the uttering of an articulate voice, with God sounding out and speaking just
as men do. At any rate, this is what he thought when he wrote as follows (Fr. 55): “For
just as all things that have come to be were made by the Father through the Word, so also
the things spoken by the Father are made known through the Word.” 6 And again (Fr. 56):
“For everything the Father says, he is seen to say everywhere through the Word. This is
clear from ourselves too, comparing small things with great and divine ones: we also do
everything we wish, as far as we are able, to say or to do, by means of our own word.” 7
If, then, the Word came forth from the Father in this way, in effective activity, where
did Marcellus get the idea of fixing the time of the end as the limit of the Word’s
activity? For he says the Word will be in God at that time just as he was before, and
before he had him resting quietly in a silent God. So there will be a kind of stillness
after the end as well, since the Word will be about to do nothing. But before the creation
of created things, he says, nothing existed except God, and since nothing existed, it was
natural that he should picture stillness for himself.

8 At the time of the end, however, the prophet Daniel foretells that there will be tens of
thousands before the throne of God. He says, “A thousand thousands served him, and ten
thousand times ten thousand stood before him.” 9 All the sons of the age to come will be
there then, too: the blessed souls of patriarchs, prophets and apostles, the holy spirits
of martyrs, and all the sheep of our Savior, who will be set at his right hand and will
hear, “Come, you blessed of my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the
foundation of the world.” 10 Since so many will exist then and will live an immortal life
after the time of judgment, why will the Word of God not be active then too? Where did
Marcellus get the notion to declare that God will no longer speak to the saints at that
time, nor make use of his active Word, but will be as he was before, evidently silent and
at rest within himself? He often gave this impression by saying that the Word will be then
just as he was before; and before, as he himself said, he was in stillness.

11 So God will fall silent then. Before that he speaks and uses his Word as active, but
then, in the very kingdom of heaven that was promised, he deprives his saints of his own
Word and of the wisdom in him. You see over what a cliff he has gone, having taken no
one’s hand to guide him, and not the divine Scriptures either. All of this, at any rate,
he put together for himself from a single phrase that he had not understood. 12 For when
he turned to his proofs from the new covenant, he was hard pressed on every side. He found
only one expression that fit his bad doctrine, and as if he had come upon a lucky find, he
clung to that alone. Even this was not spoken in the person of our Savior but in the
person of the evangelist, who gave him that name, saying, “In the beginning was the Word,
and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” Starting from there, he took him to be
nothing other than a word like the one we know in ourselves, and so he denied the Son.

CHAPTER 10

1 Yet the great and divine evangelist did not call him only “Word,” as we have often said,
but also God, light, Son and only-begotten. And the evangelist records that the Savior
himself never calls himself “Word” anywhere in Scripture. Throughout the whole Gospel he
calls himself life, light, only-begotten and Son of God, truth, resurrection, bread of
life, vine, shepherd, and countless other things, as has already been shown. 2 Why, then,
with so many titles before him, does he not stop at the mere word for any of the others,
and instead examine the meaning of what is said, yet for “Word” alone insist that the Son
is called this in the strict sense, as though he were nothing other than a word? He writes
in these very words (Nr. 40): “not called Word by misuse of the term, though the false
teachers of other doctrines burst with rage, but being Word properly and truly.”

3 And again (Nr. 39): “Let him learn, then, that the Word of God has come, not as one
named Word by misuse of the term, as they say, [but] as one who is truly Word.” And once
more (Nr. 43 = 81): “Formerly, as I have often said, he was nothing other than Word.” And
again (Nr. 42): “Before he came down and was born through the virgin, he was Word only.”
For what else was he, before taking on human flesh, the one who came down “in the last
days,” as Marcellus himself wrote, and was born of the virgin? He was nothing other than
Word. To Marcellus, as he says these things, it would be fair to put this question: And
where, my good man, do we get 4 “nothing other” and “only,” which you add? We know exactly
what is written: “In the beginning was the Word.” And not only that, but also “and the
Word was God,” and “it was the light that enlightens every human being,” and “he was the
only-begotten Son,” and all the other titles that have been collected. But that he was
Word only, and nothing other than Word, no one could show to have been said.

5 So where does this bold addition come from? For why should someone not rather say that
he is Son only and nothing other than Son? Why not God and nothing other than God? Why not
light of the world and nothing other than that? Why not life and nothing else? And the
same question could most justly be put about similar titles. 6 But just as anyone who said
this would be proved wrong (for he is all these things together, being one Son of God, and
anything higher than these, counted worthy of each different title according to each
conception of the divine powers in him), 7 so too in the case of “Word,” whoever says that
he is Word only and nothing else could rightly be said to err. Only the evangelist John
called him Word, and not that alone but other names too. The Savior himself declared
himself light, truth, life, only-begotten Son, and the rest, but never Word. How is it not
absurd, then, that for the names he gave himself, Marcellus does not say that he is one of
these and nothing else, yet for the evangelist’s word about him, which called him Word, he
insists that he was nothing other than Word?

8 But, he says (Nr. 40), “properly and truly being Word.” Why not also properly and truly
being God? For it was not one man who called him Word and another who called him God. One
and the same evangelist taught that he is both God and Word, saying “and the Word was
God,” and the same man also named him light. Why then is he not properly and truly only-
begotten Son, and all the other things that the Master and Savior himself testified about
himself through the evangelist? But Marcellus passes over everything else and says that he
is properly and truly Word alone. He adds that he was only Word, and from this he falls
into a likeness with the human word.

CHAPTER 11

1 When he hears him called light, he does not fall into thinking of bodily light, nor does
he say that he is like the sun’s brightness. But when it comes to “Word,” he presents him
as a spoken expression, like the human one. So he says that the Word at one time rests
quietly in God, and at another time goes forth from God, becoming inside him and outside
him, by likeness to the word among us, which is called the inward word and also the word
uttered aloud through the voice. 2 He says in these very words: “Everything the Father
says, he is seen to say everywhere through the Word. This is clear from ourselves too, as
far as small things can be compared with great and divine ones: for we also do everything
we wish to say and do, as far as we are able, by means of our own word.” And again he
says: “Before the whole work of creation there was, as one would expect, a kind of
stillness, since the Word was in God.” Then he adds: “For since nothing existed before
except God alone, and since all things were going to come into being through the Word, the
Word came forth with active power.”

3 After saying so much about the Word, listen to how he tries to explain the voice of the
Gospel. He writes: “The holy apostle and disciple of the Lord, John, at the beginning of
the Gospel teaches clearly and explicitly what had been unknown among men before. Calling
him the Word of the Almighty, he said: ‘In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was
with God, and the Word was God.’” By using more than one testimony, he shows the eternity
of the Word. 4 And again he says: “By using three testimonies in succession, he wants to
show the eternity of the Word.” And he adds once more: “So that by saying ‘In the
beginning was the Word’ he might show that the Word was in the Father in power (for God is
the beginning of everything that has come to be, ‘from whom are all things’), and by
saying ‘and the Word was with God’

5 he might show that the Word was with God in active operation (‘for all things came into
being through him, and without him not one thing came into being’), and by saying that the
Word was God he might show that he does not divide the Godhead, since the Word is in God
and God is in the Word. For he says, ‘The Father is in me, and I in the Father.’” By all
this Marcellus does away with the real existence of the only-begotten Son of God, and
calls the divine evangelist to witness for his own false teaching, as though the
evangelist knew nothing other than a Word, sometimes active and at other times resting in
God, and nothing other than God himself.

CHAPTER 12

1 Yet the great evangelist, who is also the theologian, mentions the Word three times in
the same passage, and not once did he call him “the Word of God.” For he did not say, “In
the beginning was the Word of God,” but without qualification, “In the beginning was the
Word,” leaving us to ask what kind of Word he was. And again he said, “And the Word was
with God,” though he could have said, “And the Word of God was in God.” Nor did he say,
“And the Word was of God,” so that we would not suppose him to be some activity of God,
one that signifies something or produces something. 2 Marcellus, however, supposing that
he is the eternal Word of God, that is, unbegotten, has often defined him so. He does not
see that if he says the Word is something other than God, there will be two eternal things
(the Word and God), and there will no longer be one first principle. But if he says that
the eternal is one, defining God and the Word as the same, he will confess Sabellius
openly, bringing in, as Sabellius did, the one who is Son-Father.

3 So on his view the Father will be the one who was begotten and who suffered. He himself
will be the one who prays to himself, and who says he has been sent by himself and calls
himself his own Son and only-begotten, not speaking truly but lying in irony. What other
account could be more impious than this? But come, let us see what kind of Word the
evangelist proclaims to us when he says, “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was
with God, and the Word was God.”

CHAPTER 13

1 Now the word “logos,” when it is spoken in the Greek language, offers many meanings for
reflection. First, the logos is what is laid down in the rational soul, by which we are
able to reason. Second, besides this, there is another, which signifies something through
the tongue and articulate voice. And in a third way, there is the one set down by the
writer in writing. 2 Fourth, we are also accustomed to call “word” (logos) the seed-like
or plant-like principle. By it, things that have not yet come into being lie hidden in the
seeds as a potential, and are on the point of coming out into the light in actual fact.
Fifth, besides these, people also use “word” in another way for the knowledge of some art
or science, the grasp of all such matters of study, as in medicine, architecture or
geometry.


ON ECCLESIASTICAL THEOLOGY (BOOK 2 – BOOK 3)
============================================

ON ECCLESIASTICAL THEOLOGY continued

CHAPTER 14

1 So the word “Word” suggests several different senses. The evangelist said without
qualification, “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was
God.” We should therefore pay close attention and learn that here the evangelist hands
down a kind of “word” unlike anything we already know. He says “Word” without
qualification, but then adds the strangeness and surprising character of its own special
power in the words “and the Word was God.” 2 It is as if he were saying: do not suppose
that this Word is one of those things that exist only in relation to something else, like
the word in the soul, or the word heard through the voice, or the word in bodily seeds, or
the word that lies in mathematical studies. All of these exist in relation to something
else, and are understood to rest in another substance that exists before them. But God the
Word does not need some other prior thing in which to come to be and so exist. He is
living and subsisting by himself, since he is God. For “the Word was God.”

3 And when you hear that he is God, he says, do not suppose that he too is without
beginning and unbegotten, as his Father is. Learn instead that “in the beginning was” this
God the Word. What kind of beginning he has, the evangelist makes clear next. He does not
say “and the Word was the God,” adding the article, so as not to mark him out as the God
over all. Nor does he say “in God,” so as not to lower him to a human likeness. He says,
“and the Word was with God.” 4 For if he had said “and the Word was in God,” he would have
been treating the Word as something that happens to belong to a underlying subject, giving
one thing in another. He would then be bringing in a God who is composite, supposing a
substance without a word, with the word as something added to the substance.

5 Marcellus thought this, and so he brings the Father and the Son together into one,
calling the substance the Father and the Word in him the Son. He did not reckon that
anyone who grants this is supposing God to be without a Word. Such a person would fall
into a godless and impious teaching, accepting a God without reason, who has a word as
something added in him but is not himself Word. 6 What is required is to confess that the
One beyond all things is a single divine being: unspeakable, good, simple, uncompounded,
of one form. He is himself God, himself mind, himself Word, himself wisdom, himself light,
himself life, himself the beautiful, himself the good, and whatever better thing anyone
could imagine beyond these. Rather, he is above all mind and beyond all thought and
reflection. 7 And his only-begotten Son, as the image of the Father sprung from him, is in
every way and in all respects most like the one who begot him. He too is God, mind, Word,
wisdom, life and light, and the image of the beautiful and good itself. He is not himself
the Father but the Father’s only-begotten Son. He is not himself the unbegotten and
beginningless one, but the one sprung from him, who names the one who begot him as his
beginning.

8 But if Marcellus objects to this and says that God and the Word in him are the same,
defining God as uncompounded and simple, then it is time for him to confess neither Father
nor Son. He would plainly be putting forward the Jew’s position, or bringing in Sabellius,
who says that the Father and the Son are the same. So according to him, “In the beginning
was the Word” would be equal to “In the beginning was God,” and “the Word was with God”
would be equal to “God was with God.” 9 The third phrase would likewise be the same as
“and the Word was God,” and all this would be not only incoherent but utterly absurd. And
how could “all things were made through him” have any place if there is only one
underlying subject? For the evangelist does not say that all things came into being by him
or out of him, but “through him.” The preposition “through” indicates service, as the same
evangelist shows when he goes on to say, “The law was given through Moses; grace and truth
came through Jesus Christ.” The law was not of human origin, and it did not belong to
Moses himself; it came from God, and Moses is described as the servant and minister of its
being delivered to men. That is why it is said, “The law was given through Moses.” In the
same way “grace came through Jesus Christ,” since the Father brought it about through
Christ.

10 So also “all things were made through him” is said in the same way: one made them, and
the other served in the making. The result is that anyone who says this must look for some
other maker of the universe, one who brought all things into being through the one called
God. And who could that be? He could not say. 11 Since this is so, we must acknowledge
that the one called God by the evangelist is not the God over all, not the Father himself,
but the Father’s only-begotten Son. He is not an attribute of the Father, nor something
existing in him as in an underlying subject, nor one and the same thing as God. He is
truly a Son, living and with a real existence of his own, who was in the beginning, and
was with God, and was God, and through whom he creates all things.

12 So anyone who restated the passage more clearly would rightly say, in place of “In the
beginning was the Word,” “In the beginning was the Son”; in place of “and the Word was
with God,” “and the Son was with the Father”; and in place of “and the Word was God,” “and
the Son was God.” In this way the next statement also fits: “All things were made through
him, and without him not one thing was made.” 13 So it is fitting that the divine
evangelist said “in the beginning” of him, giving him a beginning. He plainly means his
begetting from the Father, for everything begotten from someone has the one who begot it
as its beginning. Yet he did not go on in the same way to say “and the Word was in God,”
but “the Word was with God.” He teaches that the one who was begotten, and who has the
Father as his beginning, is not somewhere far from the Father, nor cut off and standing at
a distance from him, but is present with him and is together with him.

14 This is also what he taught in Proverbs. First he said, “Before all the hills he begets
me,” and then he added, “When he was preparing the heaven, I was present with him.” So the
Word, clearly the only-begotten Son, was with his own Father, God, always and at all
times, being with him and present beside him. 15 This is what the evangelist showed when
he said, “And the Word was with God.” But since we also needed to know what dignity he
had, he necessarily added, “and the Word was God.” For how could the one begotten from the
one and only unbegotten God fail to be God? If, according to the Savior’s teaching, “what
is born of the flesh is flesh, and what is born of the Spirit is spirit,” then it follows
that what is born of God must be God. Therefore “the Word was God.” 16 He is God, the
maker and creator of all things. The evangelist showed this too, when he next added, “All
things were made through him.” The law, which was a tutor, delivered through Moses,
introduced God as the maker of the universe in the account of creation. It taught the
first elements and introductions to reverence for God, saying, “In the beginning God made
the heaven and the earth,” and what follows.

17 By these words it urged the people of the Jews, whom it was training like a tutor, to
believe that the world was created, so that they would not worship the creation instead of
the Creator. 18 But Moses did not go on to teach those under him how God made all things,
or through whom. That was left to “grace and truth through Jesus Christ.” It announced the
mystery that Moses had kept silent about, and it began a newer and more hidden teaching in
the church of God. It cried out plainly, for all to hear: “In the beginning was the Word,
and the Word was with God, and the Word was God,” and “All things were made through him,
19 and apart from him not one thing was made.” To these it added: “What has come into
being in him was life, and the life was the light of men, and the light shines in the
darkness,” and what follows. By these words it teaches about the Son of God, the special
qualities of the divine light and of the life in him, and how everything Moses spoke of,
and everything beyond it, came into being through him. But Marcellus knows none of this.
At one time he is caught Judaizing, at another Sabellianizing.

20 Like the Jew, he says that before the world was established there was nothing but God
alone. Yet the church confesses that before the world was established there were the
Father and the Son. Like Sabellius, he declares that Son and Father are one and the same,
and at one time he presents him as the word within, at another as the word spoken. 21 For
even if he pretends not to accept these terms, it is still clear from his saying that at
one time the Word is inside God, and at another comes forth from him in effective action,
and from the fact that he likens him to the human word. But the divine evangelist did not
set forth the Word he speaks of as God in any of these ways. He taught us to think of the
only-begotten Son of God as he deserves. He is Word, because by the Word God established
all things, and apart from the Word nothing that exists came to be. He is God and only-
begotten, because he alone was truly Son of the God over all: a genuine Son in reality and
beloved, made like his own Father in every respect.

22 So too he was truly light, because he shines the light of mind and reason into souls
made in his image. For this reason the evangelist does not say he is the light of all
things, but only of men. For he said, “There was the light that enlightens every man
coming into the world.” In the same way he was truly life, because he supplies the stream
of life that comes from him to all who live. And for each way of thinking about the divine
powers in him, you would find titles of his that are true and that express them. For in
every respect the Son of God was truth, as he shows himself when he says, “I am the
truth.”

CHAPTER 15

1 But the new writer neither understands nor knows these things, nor does he know that he
is ignorant of them, though he boasts of knowing how they came to be. Come, then, let us
take up his words again and hear how he likens him to the human word, both the one in the
mind and the one spoken. This is how he writes: “This, I think, is easy for sensible
people to grasp even from a small and humble example taken from ourselves. For no one can
separate a man’s word from him in power and substance. The word is one and the same with
the man, and is separated from him by nothing else but the activity of the action.” 2 In
these words he has used the spoken word as an image. But he uses the inner word where he
says this: “For God needed no other preparation for the construction, such as matter or
anything else of human kind, but only this preparation in his own mind. Since it was
impossible for God to think out the construction of heaven without the Word and the wisdom
that goes with the Word, it was natural for him to say, ‘When he prepared the heaven, I
was present with him.’”

3 Then, going on, he presents the Word of God as inner at the same time, writing thus:
“For who among the holy angels or righteous men was so trustworthy as to release the
penalty that had been set on man from the face of God, if not the Word himself, who was
present with him and formed with him, to whom the Father said, ‘Let us make man’?” 4 Next
he makes clear what kind of “word” he has in mind, when he says: “But suppose someone used
a small, human example like ourselves and examined the divine action through a kind of
picture. Take a skilled sculptor who wants to form a statue. First he studies its outlines
and features within himself. Then he considers how wide and how long it should be to look
fitting, and he works out the proportion of the whole in each separate part. He prepares
the suitable bronze and sketches the coming statue in his own mind, so that he thinks he
sees it with the mind. He knows that the word works together with him, the word by which
he reasons and by which he is accustomed to do everything (for nothing done without reason
is beautiful). Then, as he begins this visible work, he urges himself on as if he were
speaking to someone else: ‘Come, let us make, come, let us form a statue.’ In the same way
God, the Master of all, when he made the living statue from the earth, urged on no one
else but his own Word, saying, ‘Let us make man.’” Through these words he plainly
attributes to God both an inward word, by which one reasons things through, and a spoken
word, by which one converses. He assumes that the word in God is of the same kind as the
word in us.

CHAPTER 16

1 All this amounts to a denial of the Son of God, and there is no need to work over it
further. But I think it fitting to ask this much. If God were one and nothing else,
neither Father nor Son, why did the Scripture falsely use such names? Why does Marcellus
himself pretend, calling him not “Son” but “Word,” and then “Son”? And since he has used
as his example the word that is in human beings, we must say that not every man has a son,
though every man is rational and has within himself the word that is natural to him. 2 So
a son is something other than the word. If, then, Marcellus says that God has a word
within himself and nothing else, the word by which he thought and by which he spoke to
himself when he said, “Let us make man,” why does he pointlessly use the name “Son”? Why
does he put on a show for the church? Why does he pretend to believe in the Son of God
when he does not believe, disguising himself by calling the word in God “Son”? His own
example clearly teaches that the word planted in a soul is very far from a son, who is
begotten from someone, who has his own existence, and who lives and acts in his own right.

3 But he will probably reply: “It was not I but the divine evangelist who called him
‘Word,’ so it follows that you should agree with him.” Yes, I say so too.

CHAPTER 17

1 Yet I think we should understand the term in no other way than by learning again from
the evangelist himself, who teaches what sort of word he meant. He shows plainly what sort
of being this was by adding next: “and the Word was God.” He could have said, “and the
Word was the God,” with the article added, if he thought that the Father and the Son were
one and the same, and that the Word himself was the God over all. But he did not write the
Scripture that way. 2 For if he were making the Scripture agree with Marcellus’s thought,
he would have had to say either “the Word was God’s” or “the Word was the God,” with the
article added. As it stands, he shows that the Word himself is God, just like the God with
whom he was. For after first saying, “and the Word was with God,” he adds, “and the Word
was God.” He all but teaches us outright, first, to regard as God the one who is beyond
all things, the Father of the Word himself, with whom the Word was. Then, after him, we
are not to be ignorant that his Word, the only-begotten Son, was not himself the God over
all, but that he too was God.

3 For the word “and” joins the Son’s deity to the Father. That is why he says, “and the
Word was God”: so that we may see the God over all, with whom the Word was. Hear also that
the Word himself is God, as the image of God. He is an image not as in lifeless material,
but as in a living Son, made exactly like the original deity of the Father. 4 Marcellus
thought it right to compare God’s Word with the human word. But if he was going to use the
human word as an image, he should have used this comparison more fully, and it would have
served him far better. He should have said that the father of the word in us is the mind,
which is something other than the word. No one among men has ever known what the mind is
in its essence, or what kind of thing it is. Like a king seated within his own private
chambers, it deliberates in secret about what must be done. But the word that comes from
it, born as it were out of the father’s innermost recesses, becomes known to everyone
outside.

5 Then people receive benefit from the word, but the unseen and invisible mind, the father
of the word, no one has ever seen. 6 In the same way, or rather beyond every image and
example, the perfect Word of God, the King of all, is not made up of syllables, verbs and
nouns like the spoken word of men. He is the only-begotten Son of God, living and having
real existence. He proceeds from the Father’s deity and kingship, and he waters the whole
world with the supplies that come from him. He pours out, as into pools, a share of life,
reason, wisdom, light and every good thing to all created beings. But the Father and God
of all is beyond everything, beyond the grasp and the reach of all, like the unseen and
invisible mind. This is why he is also said to be “dwelling in unapproachable light.” 7 So
the Father is unapproachable and beyond the reach of all. The Son is nearer to all, since
he steers all things by the Father’s nod. This is why the words “he was in the world, and
the world came to be through him” are said not of the Father but of the Son. The Father
was beyond the universe and above all things, “dwelling in unapproachable light.” The Son
extends through all things and in all things with caring providence. So the comparison
with the human word holds only in this respect. Now that we have shown this, one of the
lovers of learning may well ask:

CHAPTER 18

1 Why did the evangelist, at the beginning of his writing, call the only-begotten Son of
God “the Word”? To him we will answer: because of the prophecies about him that had long
been hidden. For it is said of each prophet, for example, “the word of the Lord which came
to Isaiah,” and “the beginning of the word of the Lord in Hosea,” and “the word of the
Lord which came to Joel,” and “the word of the Lord came to Jonah,” 2 and likewise “to
Micah,” and in a similar way for the rest of the prophets the word “came” was attached to
each one. The divine Scripture was marking out, precisely and of necessity, that the Word
was not in any of the prophets, but came to each one separately. He approached each
according to what that person’s capacity could receive, and supplied from himself the
Spirit that suited each soul. Now the evangelist was about to announce the good news of
the Word’s work in a way the mind can grasp. He teaches that the Word did not come to some
other person as he did to the ancients, but that he himself took flesh and became man.
Then, since he was going to proclaim the Word’s saving arrival among men for all, he says
next, “And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us.” Of necessity he runs back to the
beginning, to show who and what kind of being the Word was, who had become flesh only
yesterday and the day before.

3 He speaks of him as God, announcing together the knowledge of him and his appearing
among men as God. Then, as though the ancients had already learned from the divine
readings about the Word who came to each prophet, he himself proclaims the Word’s more
divine and distinctive beginning, which no prophet ever showed to men so openly and
uncovered. 4 So with a loud voice he handed on to all this hidden and secret mystery about
the Word, and cried out: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and
the Word was God. All things came to be through him, and apart from him not one thing came
to be.” 5 For he says: If you were trained by the earlier divine Scriptures and learned
long ago that the word of the Lord came to this prophet, and likewise came to another, and
again to another, yet now it is necessary to announce to all, not how he came, but how he
was in the beginning. It is necessary to announce that “he was God,” and that “all things
came to be through him,” and that this same God the Word, “through whom are all things,”
by the Father’s love for mankind “became flesh and dwelt among us.”

6 John, the great disciple and apostle of Christ, proclaimed this good news. He was
teaching all people the new and fresh mysteries of the Savior. He did not mean that God
was “rational,” or that God reasoned with himself and talked things over with himself when
he said, “Let us make man,” or that God made use of words that give orders for things to
be done. Anyone who denies the Son of God would say such things. 7 Marcellus does just
this. As if to a hideout, he runs to the old Scripture and tries to collect the commands
given to the Jewish people, who were still like infants, not to worship idols but to know
and revere one God only. There his teaching about the one God found its opening. It was
handed down usefully and at the right time to Jews who were prone to idolatry. Having fled
there, and having fenced himself in, as in a stronghold, with the hardness of heart of the
Jews, he put forward a denial of the Son of God.

CHAPTER 19

1 Listen, then, to the words he uses. He writes as follows, word for word: “Whom, then,
does Asterius suppose is the one who says, ‘I am the one who is’? The Son or the Father?
For he said that there are two hypostases, looking to the human flesh which the Word of
God took up and imagining things this way because of it, and he said they belong to a
Father and a Son. In this way he separates the Son of God from the Father, as someone
might separate a son of man from his natural father.” 2 He goes on to add: “If, then, he
will say that it was the Father, separating himself from the Son, who said these things to
Moses, he will be admitting that the Son is not God. For how is it possible for the one
who says, ‘I am the one who is,’ not to agree that he says he is ‘the one who is’ in
contrast to what is not? But if he claims that it is the Son, a separate hypostasis, who
says this, ‘I am the one who is,’ the same thing will in turn be thought to be said about
the Father. Each of these is impious.”

3 And again, trying to show that the Father and the Son are one, he writes this: “For he
himself confesses, saying, ‘The Father is in me and I am in the Father.’ That he did not
say this casually or without purpose is clear also from another apostolic saying. For the
one who said, ‘one Lord, one faith, one baptism,’ also said, ‘one God and Father, who is
over all and through all and in all.’ You see that here too he does not depart from
agreement, but the same thing holds. For having said ‘one Lord,’ he then said ‘one God,’
so that whenever he mentions the one Lord he includes the Father, and whenever he speaks
about the Father he testifies that the Word of God is not outside him.” 4 After saying
this, Marcellus goes on to collect many more passages from the Old Testament to prove that
God has no Son.

5 Claiming, then, that God is an undivided monad, he set out that the same one is Father
and the same one is Son. He writes in this way: “What then? If we did not pay attention to
the Spirit and hold that the monad is undivided in power, would we not be sinning, when
the Word clearly teaches us, ‘You shall worship the Lord your God and serve him alone’?” 6
He proclaims the same thing through the Gospel according to Mark as well. A certain scribe
came up to him and asked which was the first of the commandments, and he answered him:
“The first of all is: Hear, Israel, the Lord our God is one Lord, and you shall love the
Lord your God with all your soul and with all your strength. This is the first. And the
second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself.

7 There is no other commandment greater than these.” And the scribe said to him, “Well
said, Teacher; you have said truly that God is one and there is no other besides him.” 8
But the scribe, who seemed to have learned the worship of God through the law, is shown
praising the Savior’s saying, “Hear, Israel,” which says “the Lord your God is one,” and
confirming as with an oath that it was well said. For he says, “You have said truly that
God is one and there is no other besides him.” Yet these men, who boast that they know the
mysteries of the New Testament, want to invent a second God, separated from the Father in
hypostasis and power. 9 To these things he adds, to prove that God is one and that there
is no Son (no. 68): “That Scripture knows how to call the unity [monad] Lord and God has
already become clear from what was said before, where God said to his servant Moses: ‘And
God said again to Moses: Thus you shall say to the sons of Israel: The Lord, the God of
your fathers, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob, has sent me to
you.’ You see how, showing us one person here, he calls the same one Lord and God.”

10 Again, in the same way, Scripture says: “And the Lord spoke all these words, saying: I
am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of
slavery. You shall have no other gods besides me.” You hear how, by the pronoun, he shows
that there is only one God. 11 And again a little later he says, “I am the Lord your God,”
declaring himself to be Lord and God. And what do we learn from another passage? “And you
shall know today,” it says, “and not be turned aside in your mind, that the Lord your God,
he is God in heaven [above] and on the earth below, and there is none besides him.” And
again in the same Deuteronomy it says: “Hear, Israel: the Lord our God is one Lord; and
you shall love the Lord your God with your whole heart and your whole soul and your whole
mind.”

12 And again in the same book: “See, see that I am, and there is no God besides me; I will
kill and I will make alive; I will strike and I will heal.” How then did Asterius, who
pretends to follow the holy Scriptures simply and with fear, not recognize this passage,
which says, “The Lord your God, he is God in heaven [above] and on the earth below, and
there is no one else besides him,” and that “he is one,” and that besides him there is no
other? 13 And after other remarks he adds to these things again, saying (no. 68): “How
then will the holy prophet Jeremiah not plainly refute him for teaching something
different? For prophesying to us about the Savior he spoke thus: ‘This is our God; no
other will be reckoned alongside him. He found out every way of knowledge, and gave it to
Jacob his servant and to Israel whom he loved. After this he appeared on the earth and
lived among men.’”

14 And again he adds, saying (no. 50): “But it appears that the Father is in the Word,
even if it does not seem so to Asterius and those who think the same as he does. For this
is what seems right to the divinely inspired prophet Isaiah, who says through the Holy
Spirit: ‘And they will worship you, and in you they will pray; for in you is God, and
there is no other besides you. For you are God.’ Do you see how he overturns by the roots
the crafty mischief of those who teach something different?” 15 And again he continues
(no. 67): “And if you also want to hear another prophecy of the same prophet confirming
that God is one for us: ‘I am God,’ he says, ‘the first, and for the things to come I am.’
For the word ‘I’ points to one person. The two expressions signify one person for us. For
having said ‘I,’ he adds also ‘am,’ so that through the two parts of speech, pronoun and
verb, the unity [monad] of the Godhead is attested.”

16 “And if he should need another testimony, I will again offer him the same prophet,
saying: ‘I am the first and I am after these things. And besides me there is no God.’ If
Asterius supposes that the Son is divided from the Father in substance [hypostasis], like
a son of man, he is being offended by the human flesh which he took on for our sake. Let
him show us who it is that says these things;” 17 “for here too the statement is that of
one person. Who then is the one who says, ‘There is no God besides me’? Let him also
listen to another prophecy that says, ‘There is no righteous one and savior besides me.’
If he thinks there are two gods, he must confess that the other is not righteous and not a
savior. But if he is neither righteous nor a savior, how can he still be God? For the text
declares that there is one righteous one and savior. And again it says: ‘Before me there
was no other, and after me there will be none; I am God, and there will be no one saving
apart from me.’”

18 If he also wants to hear another prophetic saying, perhaps one spoken against him and
against those who think the same way about the Godhead, let him listen to Isaiah himself,
who says: “Repent, you who go astray; turn back in your heart, and remember the former
things from of old, for I am God, and there is none besides me.” 19 He did not say “I am
God” without the article, so that by adding the article (“the God”) he might show plainly
that he is the one God. And what of the prophet Hosea? Does he not give the same witness,
saying, “I brought you up out of Egypt,” and “You shall know no God besides me, and there
is no savior except me”? And again Malachi says, “Has not one God 20 created you?” he
says. “Do you not all have one Father?” But perhaps Asterius will say that David said
nothing about this, even though he is older than the other prophets except Moses, and that
therefore he is unsure whether we ought to think there are two gods divided in substance,
or not. So that he may not say this, I think it fitting to show him that David too says
the same things as the holy men already mentioned: “Hear, my people, and I will speak to
you; Israel, and I will testify against you. If you listen to me, there shall be no new
god among you, and you shall not worship a foreign god.

21 For I am the Lord your God.” The one who points to himself and says “I am” — is it not
clear that he is saying there is only one God, that is, himself?

CHAPTER 20

1 Marcellus piled up all these texts, and still more than these, to deny the Son of God.
In his ignorance he did not consider that this kind of teaching was given to them because
of the hardness of heart of the Jewish people. For it was not possible for the Holy
Spirit, speaking through God’s prophets, to hand over the full word of true godliness to
people whose minds were not yet mature. 2 So it was that he gave them laws to perform
sacrifices, bodily circumcision, the keeping of the Sabbath, abstinence from certain
foods, purifications of the body, and bodily blessings. He also gave them the promise of a
land flowing with “milk and honey,” but not the promise of the kingdom of heaven. Our
Savior and Lord was asked how it was that, when Moses commanded that anyone who wished
should give a certificate of divorce and send his wife away, he himself gave the opposite
command. He gave a general principle in reply, saying, “Moses wrote this for your hardness
of heart, but from the beginning it was not so.”

3 He would therefore have said the same thing if someone had asked why Moses and the
prophets after him, while urging the worship of one God, did not teach the people the
knowledge of the Son. Those who were constantly being led away by the error of many gods
were not able to receive the grace of the gospel. So, because of their hardness of heart,
they framed their teaching about the one God. For the time being they were training them
like children, turning them away from supposing there were many gods and leading them
toward the introduction of the one. 4 Moses handed down an incomplete teaching to the
people of his day because their understanding was incomplete. So he made no mention at all
of the creation of angels in his account of the making of the world. Yet the prophets
after him mentioned not only angels but also divine powers, holy spirits, and God’s
servants above the heavens. Daniel teaches about them when he says, “A thousand thousands
served him, and ten thousand times ten thousand stood before him.”

5 But Moses passed over all of these in silence. He was not ignorant of them, since he had
already received exact knowledge of everything by the divine Spirit. Still, he made no
mention of them in the account of creation as things made by God. 6 One could give no
other reason for this than the hardness of heart of the people, just as the Savior himself
taught. You can also learn from the readings of the New Testament that there are countless
other things in the constitution of the universe that are not found at all in the writing
of Moses. He did not mention rulers, authorities, world-rulers, or the spiritual forces
“of wickedness,” against which the divine apostle says our wrestling is set. 7 What then?
Since the teaching about these things cannot be clearly found in Moses or in the other
prophets, are we to disbelieve the apostle? Or, when the same apostle again mentions the
order of the higher beings, saying that Christ sits “at the right hand” of God “far above
every rule and authority and power and lordship, and every name that is named, not only in
this age but also in the age to come,”

8 And again, when Paul names thrones, lordships, rulers and authorities, saying, “For in
him all things were created, in the heavens and on the earth, the visible and the
invisible, whether thrones or lordships or rulers or authorities,” should we not accept
this teaching just because neither Moses nor the other prophets spoke of these things
beforehand? Or shall we say the same about these things too: that the “stiff-necked,
uncircumcised in heart and ears” were not able to be trusted with teaching about them? The
prophets of God did not reveal to such people even the Jerusalem above. Paul made the
teaching about it plain to the church of Christ and cried out, “But the Jerusalem above is
free, and she is our mother,” and, “You have come to Mount Zion and to the city of the
living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, and to myriads of angels, to the festal gathering and
church of the firstborn, who are enrolled in heaven.”

9 Let Marcellus answer this, if he is able to bring forward the teaching on these matters
from the ancient writings. 10 But if he cannot find it, let him give the reason why the
prophets of God kept silent about all these things, and about countless other things like
them. The same apostle prayed to God about such things on our behalf, “that we may be
strong enough to grasp, together with all the saints, what is the breadth and length and
depth and height, and to know the love of God that surpasses knowledge.” 11 Our Saviour
himself also revealed a great many mysteries to his disciples about the kingdom of heaven,
about the end of all things, and about the promises. Sometimes he did this through
parables and sometimes in secret teaching. To them he said, “To you it has been given to
know the mysteries of God.” One could not find the like of these things in Moses or in the
other prophets.

12 What then? Since these things were not handed over to the people of the Jews, but were
kept for the church of Christ until the right time, should we on that account reject the
grace given to us? Or should we give greater thanks to the one who counted us worthy of
such knowledge? In the same way, then, it is right to receive the teachings about the Son
from his own new covenant. We should not be at all surprised if the men of God did not
uncover the knowledge of him to a hard-hearted people, but kept the teaching about him in
store for the fitting time. 13 For at that time it did not seem suitable to hand over the
mystery of the Father and the Son to men who were being dragged down into the error of
many gods. For the same reason the prophets did not uncover the teaching about the lower
powers to them, so that they would not fall, on that pretext, into Greek polytheism. The
Greeks had invented for themselves a god who was “father of men and gods.”

14 So the Word, to hold them back from such error, proclaimed the one God. Yet he did not
deny that this same God is Father. He taught them to worship the true God and urged them
to know no one besides him, but he did not deny that he is Father. And if he called him
Lord and God and righteous and Saviour, he did not thereby rule out thinking of him as
Father of his only-begotten and beloved Son. So whether it is the Father or the Son who
says “I am the one who is,” 15 the word would be true either way. For the Father could be
“the one who is,” since he alone is “over all, and through all, and in all, God,” as the
divine apostle taught. And the Son also would speak truly in being called “the one who
is,” since he is the only Son, the only-begotten, of the One who is. Moreover, being the
image of the invisible God, he is his image in this respect: that he alone was himself
“the one who is.” For this reason he too may be called “the one who is,” since he, like
the Father, is proclaimed both God and Lord throughout all of God-inspired Scripture.

CHAPTER 21

1 This can also be learned from the word spoken to Moses. For Scripture says, “God spoke
to Moses and said to him: I am the Lord; and I appeared to Abraham and to Isaac and to
Jacob, being their God.” You see how he said that he had appeared to the fathers. And when
he appeared, Scripture again bears witness, saying, “The Lord God appeared to Abraham at
the oak of Mamre, as he was sitting at the door of his tent.” How did he appear, if not in
human form? And whom ought we to believe this was, if not the Son of God? The Son himself
made this plain in the Gospels when he said to the Jews, “Abraham your father rejoiced
that he might see my day, and he saw it and was glad.” 2 When they marveled at the saying,
he added, “Before Abraham was, I am,” showing most plainly that he existed before. What,
then, does the word establish, if not that it was the Son of God himself who spoke to
Moses and said, “I am the one who is”? For he himself taught that he had appeared to
Abraham. And how he was himself “the one who is” has already been explained.

3 The great apostle Paul also knows that the Son of God became the mediator of the law
given through Moses, where he teaches, “The law was ordained through angels, by the hand
of a mediator. But a mediator is not of one.” So the one who spoke to Moses was the
mediator, acting as mediator for the salvation of human beings from that time on, before
he took flesh. 4 The same apostle showed that this mediator is Jesus Christ, when he said,
“One God, and one mediator between God and human beings, the man Christ Jesus.” So whether
the words “I am the one who is” are spoken to Moses in the Son’s own person, or whether it
was the Father who uttered this voice through him, the statement is true either way. 5 Let
Marcellus, then, not be at a loss, as though he were using an inescapable argument, as he
thinks, when he says (no. 57): “Whom, then, does Asterius suppose to be the one who says
‘I am the one who is’—the Son or the Father?” Then he goes on to conclude that if the
Father is the one who is, the Son will no longer be God. (No. 58) “For the one who is says
that he is so in contrast to what is not. But if Asterius should claim that the Son, as a
separate subsistence, is the one who says ‘I am the one who is,’ the same thing will in
turn be thought to be said of the Father. And either of these is impious.”

6 In saying this, Marcellus himself has fallen into both absurdities: he lays down that
the one who is, is one, and denies the other. And whom he himself takes this one to be, he
could hardly tell. For if he grants it to the Father, he will deny the Son; or if he
accepts only the Son, he will reject the Father. More truly, he will be shown to know
neither Father nor Son, since he grants only one and removes the other from the scene. And
even if he hears God saying, “I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of
Egypt, out of the house of slavery. 7 You shall have no other gods besides me,” here again
let him not be troubled in his soul, but let him also hear the words joined to it. For
after saying, “You shall have no other gods besides me,” he added, “You shall not make for
yourself an idol, nor a likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or on the earth
beneath, or in the waters under the earth. You shall not bow down to them nor serve them;
for I am the Lord your God, a jealous Lord.”

8 You see how he was warning them not to be swept away into the polytheistic error of the
nations, but to know him alone as God and Lord. And who was this? It was the Son, who has
the image of the Father in himself, giving these commands by the Father’s authority to
people sick with idolatry. For just as “all things came to be through him,” the Father
having established through the Savior the substance of everything that has come to be, so
it was the Father himself who handed down to human beings the knowledge of himself and
reverence for him, through the mediator, the Son. 9 The apostle also taught this in these
very words when writing to the Galatians, where he said, “The law was ordained through
angels, by the hand of a mediator. But a mediator is not of one, but God is one.” 10 Even
when he says, “See, see that I am he, and there is no God except me,” it was again the
Father speaking, as through an image and mediator, that is, through the Son. Consider
Isaiah the prophet. He says, “I begot sons and raised them high,” and again, “Israel did
not know me, and the people did not understand me,” and again, “I gave orders to all the
stars, and with my hand I made the heaven firm,” and much else of this kind. We do not say
that Isaiah himself speaks these words. We say that God, who speaks in him, speaks through
him. Would it not be just as fitting, then, in the case of the only-begotten Son of God,
that the Father should give this testimony through him to people who needed such commands?
These people were idolaters, as the same Scripture teaches when it says, “And the Lord
said: Where are their gods, in whom they trusted? You ate the fat of their sacrifices and
drank the wine of their drink offerings. Let them rise up and help you, and let them be
your shelter.” For it is with these words that the saying is joined: “See, see that I am
he, and there is no God except me.”

CHAPTER 22

1 GREEK: (translate) Even if he cries out ten thousand times through the prophet, “There
is no God except me,” and “There is no righteous one and savior except me,” and “You shall
know no God except me, and there is no savior apart from me,” and whatever else of this
kind is found in the other prophets, it was still God who, from that very time, was
“reconciling the world to himself in Christ.” And it was the Father himself who spoke
these things to people through the only-begotten Son, as through an interpreter. The Son
himself also handed this on in the Gospels, teaching that we should know only one God,
when he said, “And this is eternal life, that they know you, the only true God, and Jesus
Christ whom you sent.” 2 So the true God himself is the one and only God, and there is no
other besides him. At that time he gave these commands to the idolatrous Jewish nation,
not only through the prophets but through his own Son. Take Isaiah (or rather God through
him). He said, “There is no God except me. Who is like me?” and then, “You are my
witnesses whether there is a God except me.” He went on to add, “And they did not exist
then. Those who mold and those who carve are all worthless, doing what pleases
themselves.”

3 Throughout the whole of his prophecy you would find the lifeless idols being cut down.
In each of the prophets likewise you will find the one God proclaimed to turn people away
from the error of many gods. This is also our own custom. In our discussions with
superstitious pagans, we keep the teaching about Christ for a suitable time. Meanwhile we
bring them proofs against the error of idolatry, and we establish by demonstrative
arguments that there is one God. 4 So let Marcellus learn, if he has grown old in the
oversight of Christ’s church and still has not learned it: the knowledge of the hidden
mystery concerning the Son of God was in no way suited to the ancient people, who were
prone to slip into idolatry. Only for his own church was “the mystery hidden from the ages
and from the generations” kept in store through his grace. In that mystery was contained
the teaching about the holy Trinity of Father, Son and Holy Spirit.

5 But Marcellus has gathered together just the sort of arguments that a Jewish teacher
might offer when speaking about circumcision in a Jewish synagogue. He sets these before
Christ’s disciples and prides himself on it. He does not realize that a Jew according to
the flesh could say even more than he does. He boasts of these things, yet he is not
ashamed to twist the true teachings about our Savior.

CHAPTER 23

1 Right away, then, Marcellus fails to understand the words of the divine apostle, who in
the passages I have set out taught in various ways that the Son is the image of God. From
them he ought to have understood that the church of God does not proclaim two gods. For,
as I have often said, she introduces neither two unbegotten beings nor two without
beginning, nor two substances set over against each other on equal footing, and therefore
not two gods. She teaches that there is one source and one God, who is himself the Father
of the only-begotten and beloved Son. In the same way she teaches one image “of the
invisible God,” and that this image is the same as his only-begotten and beloved Son. The
apostle, speaking of the Father in theological terms, says, “the blessed and only
Sovereign,” and again, “who alone has immortality, 2 dwelling in unapproachable light,”
and again, “to the King of the ages, the incorruptible, invisible, only God,” and again,
“to the only wise God, through Jesus Christ, be glory for ever. Amen.” Even if still more
is said in praise of the one God over all, we must understand that the only-begotten Son
of God is the image of all of these things. He is not an image in lifeless matter, but one
formed in a living Son. And even if the Savior himself teaches that the Father is the only
true God, saying “that they may know you, the only true God,” we must not shrink from
confessing that the Son too is true God, since he possesses this as an image does. The
word “only” is added for the Father alone, as the archetype of the image, and so it fits
him.

3 The inspired Paul taught most clearly that the Son is the image and radiance of the
Father and “in the form” of God, as has been shown in the earlier passages. Now when there
is one Father who exists and one Son born from the Father, no one in his right mind would
say that there are two fathers or two sons. In the same way, when one king rules and his
image is carried about everywhere on earth, no sensible person would say there are two
rulers, but one, who is honored also through the image. In the same way (as I have often
said), the church of God, having received the teaching to worship one God, continues to
worship that same God also through the Son, as through an image. 4 Marcellus did not
understand this, and declared that the image “of the invisible God” is the flesh of the
Savior, which the apostle called “the form of a servant.” He did not reckon that all human
beings also are formed in the likeness of the Savior’s flesh. So he insists that the body
the Savior took up is the image of the unbegotten, ineffable, fatherly Godhead, but he
denies that the only-begotten Son of God, through whom all things came into being (“for
all things came to be through him, and without him not one thing came to be”), is the
image of God. He says in so many words (no. 82): “It is therefore plain that before the
taking up of our body the Word, considered in himself, was not the image of the invisible
God.” You see how great a distortion he has made of the apostle’s interpretation.

5 Yet John the evangelist proclaimed the mystery that had been known in hidden form to
Moses and the other prophets, and uncovered it, crying out with a loud voice, “In the
beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. 6 All things came
to be through him.” He also bore witness that “there was the light that enlightens every
person coming into the world. He was in the world, and the world came to be through him,
and the world did not know him.” And he set forth the Sonship clearly, in saying of the
Father, “No one has ever seen God,” but of the Son, “The only-begotten Son, who is in the
bosom of the Father, he has declared him,”

CHAPTER 24

1 This admirable teacher of the words of Christ gathers the commandments of God and the
sayings that direct what we are to do from the divine Scripture, and on that basis he
defines the Word “in the beginning” as something of that kind. Listen to how he tries to
establish this. He writes as follows (no. 41): * * * * * “But those who teach them seem
ashamed to mention the Word, whom all the divine Scriptures proclaim in this way. David
says of him, ‘By the word of the Lord the heavens were made firm,’ and again the same
David says, ‘He sent out his word and healed them.’ Solomon says, ‘Evil men will seek me
and will not find me, for they hated wisdom and did not choose the word of the Lord.’
Isaiah says, ‘Out of Zion will go forth the law, and the word of the Lord from Jerusalem.’
And again Jeremiah says, ‘The wise were put to shame and terrified and were caught,
because they rejected the word of the Lord.’”

2 The prophet Hosea also said, “They hated the one who reproved in the gates, and they
detested a holy word.” Micah likewise, mentioning the word himself, said, “Out of Zion
will go forth the law, and the word of the Lord from Jerusalem.” Marcellus gathers these
passages and others like them, and thinks that by them he strengthens his own opinion. 3
But notice how he has thrown together in a muddle the testimonies from divine Scripture:
the word of God that is sent out, the word that saves and heals, and the word that
commands what is to be done. For what kind of word does “They hated the one who reproved
in the gates, and detested a holy word” suggest, if not a word that commands holy and
righteous actions? He is willing to confess anything rather than the Son of God, as though
he were ashamed to mention the Son. We know that the Son of God is Son in the truest sense
and truly the only-begotten of God. And we know precisely that he is Word, not like the
word found in human beings, but as it is fitting to understand a Word of God: living,
subsisting, and a Son. But the man who brings in a Word that merely signifies and commands
what is to be done was naturally reluctant to confess the Son, whom in fact he was denying
by his deed.

CHAPTER 25

1 Then he also fails to notice that he is contradicting himself. In other places he
insists that none of the earlier people knew anything about the Word, because it was a
hidden mystery. He writes in these very words (no. 45): “For what other hidden mystery was
there than the one concerning the Word? This mystery was formerly so hidden in God that no
one of the earlier people clearly knew the things concerning the Word, but we now enjoy
the riches of the glory and of the hidden mystery.” And again he adds (no. 46): “But the
holy apostle and disciple of the Lord, John, teaching clearly and explicitly at the
beginning of the Gospel, as of something formerly unknown among men, and naming him the
Word of the Almighty, spoke in this way: ‘In the beginning was the Word.’” In these
passages, then, he determines that the hidden mystery is that God has a Word. But in the
prophetic sayings I just quoted, he maintains that all the divine Scriptures proclaim the
things concerning him, and he collects a great many testimonies about the Word of God.

2 So the Word was not unknown to the earlier people, for they all knew such sayings,
carrying the prophetic oracles on their lips and in their memory. Yet this “Christian”
holds up to us the scribe of the Jews. He does not listen to the Savior saying, “Woe to
you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites.” He admires the scribe for confirming with an oath
that “God is one, and there is none besides him,” not realizing that “the demons also
believe and shudder.” 3 Observe how he gathers from the prophetic Scriptures themselves
the passages about the word that teaches what is to be done. The children of the Jews
would admit that they know such a word, since they received it before us. Not even
Sabellius himself was ignorant of such a word. 4 How then, in attacking the Jews and
Sabellius, did he say that they did not know the Word, in the statements of his that I
have quoted? And since he declared in the earlier passages that no one could know God or
recognize his Word unless he had received the image of the invisible God, namely the
flesh, as he himself said,

5 (For he insisted that God and his Word are known only through the image, and he said
that the image is the flesh.) We must therefore remind him, from what has been set out
above, that all the Jews, even without the coming in the flesh, knew exactly the word of
God and the words in the prophetic writings that command holy works. They had studied
these from their earliest years, and they confessed God as maker and creator of all
things. The scribe is an example: he confirmed this with an oath. 6 So much, then, for the
proof that the man is a Sabellian. Now it is time to turn to the twisted interpretations
he has made of the divine Scriptures. Then everyone who honors the man may learn that he
has strayed not only from the right faith but also from a sound reading and understanding
of the God-inspired Scriptures.

BOOK 3

TABLE OF CONTENTS

1a Chapters of Book 3. 1. How Marcellus dared to interpret the divine Scriptures in a
twisted way. 2. How the words “The Lord created me as the beginning of his ways,” and the
verses joined to them, are to be understood, and how Marcellus transferred the same words
to the Savior’s flesh. 3. A refutation of what he wrongly said on these passages, and a
sound interpretation of them. 4. How Marcellus, not understanding the Scriptures, defined
the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit as one hypostasis. 5. How the Savior taught about
the Holy Spirit. 6. How the church hands down what we are to believe about the Father, the
Son and the Holy Spirit. 7. How Marcellus insisted that the flesh is the image of the
invisible God. 8. How he declared that the flesh of the Savior is of no benefit. 9. How he
dared to say that at the end of all things the flesh of the Savior will be left behind,
abandoned by the Word. 10. What the divine Scriptures teach about the flesh of the Savior,
and how Marcellus thought the opposite. 11. How, failing to understand the Gospel saying,
he claimed that the Savior’s flesh causes offense and is of no benefit.

1b 12. An interpretation of the Gospel wording. 13. How he insisted that Christ’s kingdom
received its beginning four hundred years ago and will have its end at the consummation,
twisting the interpretations of the divine Scriptures. 14. Explanations of the sound
meaning of the readings. 15. How it is said that all things will be subjected to the Son,
and he himself to the Father. 16. How the apostle’s words “Then God will be all in all”
are to be taken. 17. How the divine Scriptures present the endless kingdom of our Savior,
and how Marcellus bluntly declared that his kingdom will come to an end. 18. How in the
Son’s kingdom all who are counted worthy of the blessedness of that time will become one.
19. That, just as the Father and the Son are said to be one, so too will all the saints
be. 20. That as the Father is in the Son and the Son in the Father, so he will be in all
the saints. 21. How the words “The one who has seen me has seen the Father” must be
understood.

CHAPTER 1

1 The great evangelist John, then, proclaimed the theology of our Savior in the way I have
described. How Marcellus rejected it and ran aground on Jewish unbelief has been shown by
what has been said. But you may learn from many other passages of his accounts, and from
this one in particular, how he twisted the agreed and clear teachings about our Savior. In
Solomon’s Proverbs, Wisdom is brought in speaking in person about herself, and she says:
“I, Wisdom, have made counsel my dwelling, 2 and I called on knowledge and understanding.
The fear of the Lord hates evil, insolence and arrogance and the ways of the wicked; and I
hated the twisted ways of evil men. Counsel and security are mine; I am understanding, and
strength is mine. 3 Through me kings reign, and rulers write down justice. Through me the
great are made great, and tyrants hold power over the earth. I love those who love me, and
those who seek me will find me. Wealth and glory belong to me, and the possession of many
things, and righteousness.

4 It is better to harvest me than gold and precious stone, and my produce is better than
choice silver. I walk in the ways of righteousness, and I move about in the midst of the
paths of justice, so that I may give a possession to those who love me and fill their
treasuries with good things. If I report to you the things that happen day by day, I will
remember to number the things from eternity. 5 “The Lord created me as the beginning of
his ways, for his works. Before the age he founded me, in the beginning, before he made
the earth, before he made the depths, before the springs of water came forth, before the
mountains were set in place, and before all the hills, he begets me. The Lord made lands,
uninhabited regions, and the inhabited heights of the world under heaven. When he was
preparing the heaven, I was present with him. When he marked out his own throne upon the
winds, when he made the clouds above strong, when he set the springs under heaven on a
firm footing, and when he made the foundations of the earth strong, I was beside him,
fitting things together. I was the one in whom he delighted daily, and I rejoiced in his
presence at all times. He rejoiced when he had finished the inhabited world, and he
rejoiced over the sons of men.”

CHAPTER 2

1 This is what Wisdom says about herself in Proverbs. I quoted the passage in full, on
purpose and out of necessity, to show that there is one person [whom Marcellus transferred
to the flesh of the Savior; the Greek here is corrupt] who says all this, and that there
is no change of speaker anywhere in between. So Wisdom is shown teaching these things
about herself. And here the first thing to notice is that she is named simply “Wisdom.”
For she says, “I, Wisdom, made my dwelling in counsel.” It does not say “the wisdom of
God.” It is the same as in the evangelist, where “In the beginning was the Word” is
written without qualification, and again “the Word was with God.” It is not said “the Word
of God,” so that no one would think he is spoken of as something relative to another, or
as a mere attribute in God, but as one who truly exists and lives. That is why John adds,
“and the Word was God,” and does not say, “and the Word was God’s.” It is the same with
Wisdom.

2 For God the Word and Wisdom were one and the same. That is why in Proverbs he is named
without qualification, both in the passages quoted above and in others that speak this
way: “Blessed is the man who found wisdom”; “God founded the earth by wisdom”; “Say that
wisdom is your sister”; “Proclaim wisdom, so that understanding may follow you”; and “For
wisdom is better than costly stones.” 3 And also: “Wisdom built a house for herself and
set up seven pillars,” and everything else of this kind in the same book. In none of these
is she called “the wisdom of God.” She is called simply “Wisdom,” so that we would not
think of her as some [attribute] belonging to God, as knowledge belongs to a knowledgeable
man. She is Wisdom who truly exists and lives, the same as the Son of God. 4 Suppose
someone takes the wisdom spoken of here to be a wise disposition in God, the way we think
of God as wise. Let him listen to what the Scripture says: “Say that wisdom is your
sister.” Who would be so mad as to suppose that the God over all, and the wise disposition
within him, is called a sister of those among men who do what is right?

5 But if you take the saying to refer to the Christ of God, nothing stands in the way of
the sense, since “Christ is the power of God and the wisdom of God,” and since out of his
surpassing love for humanity he does not refuse kinship with us. But suppose God and the
Wisdom brought in by Proverbs were one and the same, so that she was a wise disposition
thought of as in him, in the sense that God is wise. What would have prevented “God” from
being written in place of “Wisdom”? Then “Wisdom built a house for herself and set up
seven pillars,” and what goes with it, would have been said in the sense of “God built a
house for himself,” and so on. And again, 6 “Say that wisdom is your sister” would have
been said in the sense of “Say that God is your brother.” But you see how such a phrase
strikes the ear, because it has no harmony.

7 But if you take the words to refer to the Son (for he himself was the [abundance; the
Greek is uncertain]), everything will flow smoothly for you, and no impious thought stands
in the way. The apostle Paul bears witness with this, for he plainly called our Savior and
Lord Jesus Christ “Wisdom” when he said, “Christ is the power of God and the wisdom of
God.” 8 GREEK: With all this established, it follows, along with everything set out above,
that the words “The Lord created me as the beginning of his ways for his works” were
spoken in the person of the Son himself. If he says he was created, he does not mean that
he came into being out of nothing, nor that he, like the other created things, came to be
out of what did not exist, as some have wrongly supposed. He means that he already had
real existence and life, and went before the whole world’s formation and existed before
it. He was appointed by the Lord, his own Father, to rule over all things, and “created”
is used here in place of “appointed” or “established.”

9 GREEK: Indeed, the apostle explicitly calls the rulers and governors among men a
“creation” when he says, “Submit to every human creation for the Lord’s sake, whether to a
king as supreme, or to governors as sent through him.” 10 GREEK: The prophet also says,
“Prepare to call upon your God, Israel. For behold, he who strengthens the thunder and
creates the spirit and announces his Christ to men,” and also, “Let this be written for
another generation, and a people being created will praise the Lord.” In these, “creating”
is not used of something brought into being out of non-existence. For God did not create
the Spirit at the time when he proclaimed his Christ to all men through him, since there
is nothing “new under the sun.” 11 GREEK: Rather, the Spirit already existed and was there
beforehand, but was sent at the time when the apostles were gathered together. Then, like
thunder, “there came a sound from heaven, as of a violent rushing wind,” and they were
filled with “the Holy Spirit,” and so they proclaimed the Christ of God to all men, in
agreement with the prophecy that says, “For behold, he who strengthens the thunder and
creates the spirit and announces his Christ to men.” Here “creating” is said in place of
“sending down” or “appointing,” while the thunder in another way points to the preaching
of the Gospel. And the man who says, “Create in me a clean heart, O God,” did not say this
as one who had no heart. He prayed that his mind might be made clean.

12 GREEK: In the same way it is said, “that he might create the two into one new man,”
meaning “bring together.” Consider whether the same applies to “Put on the new man,
created according to God,” and to “If anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation,” and to
whatever else of this kind one may find by searching the God-inspired Scripture. So do not
be surprised if, in a figurative sense, in “The Lord created me as the beginning of his
ways,” the word “created” is used in place of “established” or “appointed to rule.” In the
Gospels too our Saviour says, “I confess to you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, that
you hid these things from the wise and understanding, and revealed them to infants.” We do
not say that the Saviour is speaking here of confessing sins (as it is said elsewhere,
“Confess your sins to one another”), but of thanksgiving for the infants. “Confess” is
used in place of “I thank you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth.”

13 GREEK: With leisure to search, one could find countless expressions used figuratively
throughout the divine Scripture. Others carry several meanings, and others are applied by
the same name to different things. To go through these would take long and does not suit
the present occasion. 14 GREEK: So here too, “The Lord created me as the beginning of his
ways for his works” is said in place of “appointed me to rule over his works.” This is why
it is not simply said, “He created me,” but with the addition, “as the beginning of his
ways for his works.” 15 GREEK: The Hebrew wording shows this especially. If anyone
examines carefully the true sense of the God-inspired Scripture, he will find that the
Hebrew reading does not contain “he created me.” For this reason none of the other
translators has used this word either. Aquila, for example, says, “The Lord acquired me as
the chief of his ways.” Symmachus says, “The Lord acquired me as the beginning of his
ways,” and Theodotion, “The Lord acquired me as the beginning of his way.”

16 And the translation makes sense. For he himself was the “head” of the existence and the
salvation of all created things, visible and invisible. The Father begot him as the only-
begotten Son, and having begotten him, appointed him Savior of the whole. In him and
through him the Father sums up the ordering of the universe. So the divine apostle taught
when he said that all things are “summed up in Christ, the things in the heavens and the
things on the earth.” The point is not only that all things came into being through him,
passing from non-existence into existence. He also takes on the care of governing the
whole, since he is Word and Wisdom and Life, and the fullness of everything fine and good.
Through him, then, all things are steered and kept safe. 17 He himself shows this through
the sayings set out above, where he said: “Through me kings reign, and rulers write
righteousness; through me the great are made great, and tyrants hold power over the
earth.”

18 So the whole universe is governed by the unspeakable reasonings of the universal wisdom
and providence of the Son of God. He taught this through the passages quoted above. He
urged people to hold fast to him, saying, “I love those who love me, and those who seek me
will find me.” He also turned them away from the opposite road by what he added: “But I
hated the twisted ways of evil men.” 19 Having laid out these things and others like them,
the Son of God (for he himself was the Wisdom) next hands over the hidden knowledge of
himself to those who have already been helped by these words. He says: “If I declare to
you the things that happen day by day, I will remember to number the things from
eternity.” 20 He means: if I were to teach what I do on each single day, I would have to
recall my works from the beginning of the whole age. I would have to show that the Father
who begot me set me over the universe for this purpose, to lead his ways and the works he
made through me. So he rightly goes on to say, “The Lord created me as the beginning of
his ways for his works,” or “The Lord acquired me,” according to the rendering given
above.

21 For the great possession of God was the only-begotten Son. In one respect, he was
begotten from God, being his Son. In another respect, he has been established as a common
benefit and savior for all. He both is and is named the greatest and most precious
possession of the Father. For nothing else could be a more precious possession for a
father than a son. So too the first-formed Adam, when he acquired the first son born among
men, said of him, “I have acquired a man through God.” The Hebrew word has “kanithi” where
the Greek has “I acquired.” 22 The word “acquired” is pronounced “kana” among the Hebrews.
So it is said of Abraham, “the field which Abraham acquired,” where the Hebrew has “kana.”
The same word stands in Hebrew in “The Lord created me as the beginning of his ways for
his works.” For here too the word “kana” stands, and all the translators agree in
rendering it “acquired.”

23 But the word “created” is absent in the Hebrew; it does not stand in the passage before
us. There is a very great difference between “created” and “acquired.” In the commoner
sense, creation means passing from non-existence into existence. But acquisition means the
special closeness of something already existing to the one who acquires it. 24 So when the
Son of God says, “The Lord acquired me as the beginning of his ways for his works,” he
shows at once his prior existence and his special closeness to the Father. He also shows
the usefulness and necessity of his own providence and management over the Father’s works.
25 That is why he goes on: “Before the age he established me; in the beginning, before he
made the earth, before the springs of the waters came forth, before the mountains were
settled, before all the hills he begets me.” Through all of this he shows how useful and
necessary he is for everyone. He teaches, as he had to, that he was and pre-existed, that
he existed before the whole world and led the way. Consider Moses. In his account of the
making of the world he made no mention of the powers above the world, which are invisible,
because those he was training were still immature. He described only the construction of
the visible world. At the start he named four elements: heaven, earth, abyss and water. Of
two of these he said they were made by God (“In the beginning,” he says, “God made the
heaven and the earth”). But he did not say the same of the water and the abyss, that these
too were created. He said simply, “And darkness was over the abyss, and the Spirit of God
was moving over the water.” So the Son of God, in the passage before us, teaches about
these as well, as he had to: that they were created, that he himself was before all
things, and that through him all things were made.

26 That is why he says: “Before the age he established me; in the beginning, before he
made the earth, and before he made the abysses, before the springs of the waters came
forth.” He mentions three of these, earth, abyss and water. The fourth he brings in last,
keeping the better one for the end, heaven. So he adds next: “When he was preparing the
heaven, I was present with him.” 27 The divine Scripture has made these things plain, and
we have given a brief, summary account of them. Now let us hear how Marcellus, bringing
his mind down to the ground, insists that all of this was said about the flesh which the
Saviour took up. He writes, word for word, as follows: 28 “This being so, it follows that
we should think carefully about this proverbial saying: ‘The Lord created me as the
beginning of his ways.’ For our Master and God truly created, having made what did not
exist. The flesh which the Word took up was not in existence; it was not in existence when
he created it.” And he adds: “So even if this new mystery appeared only in the last times,
it was foreordained before this age. The prophet naturally said, ‘Before the age he
established me,’ meaning, of course, the flesh.”

29 And again he goes on: “Then he says, ‘In the beginning, before he made the earth.’ What
earth is this, if not our flesh, which became earth again after the disobedience? For it
says, ‘You are earth, and to earth you will return.’” You see how far he has missed the
mark. He has turned aside from the straight road and has imagined for himself a rough,
hard path, one with no way out. 30 See how he was driven to say anything at all, however
shameless and brazen, rather than admit that the Son of God is Wisdom. 31 He does refer
the words “The Lord created me as the beginning of his ways for his works” to the person
of the Saviour, admitting that he is the one speaking these things in Proverbs. His own
words are these: “So it is fitting, now that the old things have passed away and all
things are about to become new through the newness of our Saviour, that our Master Christ
cried out through the prophet, ‘The Lord created me as the beginning of his ways.’”

32 But having said this, he turns his mind to the flesh of our Saviour, and goes on: “For
our Master and God truly created, having made what did not exist. The flesh which the Word
took up was not in existence; it was not in existence when he ‘created it as the beginning
of his ways.’” The noble fellow does not see that it is one single utterance, from one
single person, that says “I, Wisdom, dwelt in counsel” and “The Lord created me.” So if
one of these is referred to the flesh, the other must be too. And then it will be Wisdom
who says both. 33 But if, as Marcellus has it, the flesh is the one who says “The Lord
created me as the beginning of his ways,” then the flesh would be Wisdom. And the flesh
would be the one saying “Through me kings reign” and “Through me the great are made
great.” How could the flesh say “I will remember to count the things from eternity,” when
the author adds to these words “The Lord created me as the beginning of his ways”? And
Marcellus himself shows what the ways are, when he goes on to say (Nr. 12): “For this one
has become for us, who intend to live rightly, the way of godliness, the beginning of all
the ways that come after.”

34 And he adds (Nr. 12): “He rightly called our Lord and Savior the ‘beginning of ways,’
because after the first way he also became the beginning of the other ways we have
received.” By these he means the traditions handed down through the holy apostles, who, as
the prophecy says, proclaimed to us this new mystery “with a lofty proclamation.” So says
Marcellus.


ON ECCLESIASTICAL THEOLOGY (BOOK 3, CHAPTERS 3–20)
==================================================

ON ECCLESIASTICAL THEOLOGY continued

CHAPTER 3

1 If Marcellus did not accept the writings of Moses and the prophets after Moses, his
interpretation might have some plausible ground. But since he is not one of those who
reject the Old Testament, why in the world did he name the apostles and their teachings as
“ways,” and pay no attention to the prophets of God, who wrote countless things about the
ways of God? First, Moses wrote and said: “You shall walk by the king’s road,” and
“Behold, I have set before your face the way of life and the way of death.” 2 David
likewise says: “The Lord knows the way of the righteous, and the way of the ungodly will
perish.” Jeremiah says: “Stand in the ways and ask for the eternal paths of the Lord, and
see what the good way is, and walk in it.” And you will find that each of the prophets
mentions the ways of God in one manner or another.

3 Now, if our Savior and Lord Jesus Christ [of God] teaches that he himself is the
beginning of the ways of God, saying “The Lord created me as the beginning of his ways for
his works” (and so he is surely older than Moses, the prophets, and those still earlier
who lived according to the ways of God), then the flesh which he took up was not earlier
than all of those. So the saying has been wrongly understood as referring to the flesh. 4
So the Savior did not say this on account of the flesh. He said it because he pre-exists
and leads the way for all the ways of God, in which all the God-loving men of old have
walked. 5 The divine apostle says: “O the depth of the riches and wisdom and knowledge of
God! How unsearchable are his judgments, and how untraceable his ways!” By this he points
to certain other ways: the ways of God’s providence over all things, by which, through an
inexpressible judgment and reasons beyond grasp, he steers the whole universe by divine
power. It follows that the one who said “The Lord created me as the beginning of his ways
for his works” is also the beginning of these ways. But Marcellus, who did not understand
the ways of God, declared the flesh of our Savior to be their beginning.

6 He also explains the words “for his works,” saying (Nr. 13): “‘He created me,’ it says,
‘as the beginning of his ways for his works.’ And what works does it mean? Those about
which the Savior says, ‘My Father is working until now, and I am working,’ and again, ‘I
have finished the work which you gave me.’” 7 Then, as though making clear the sense of
what was said, he adds (Nr. 13): “Before the facts were shown, who would have believed
that the Word of God, born of a virgin, would take up our flesh and display in it the
whole Godhead bodily?” And as though he had given the full sense, he concludes (Nr. 13):
“So this is what is meant by ‘The Lord created me as the beginning of his ways for his
works.’” 8 He wrote these things because he could not lift the eyes of his mind “on high”
and say, like the prophet, “For I will look at the heavens, the works of your fingers, the
moon and the stars, which you established.” Nor did he remember the prophetic saying:
“They do not look at the works of the Lord, and they do not consider the works of his
hands.”

9 If he had paid attention to these things, he would have known that the one who says
these words existed, and pre-existed, before heaven and earth and before the whole world.
He existed before not only the visible works of God but also the intelligible ones, those
that subsist in the bodiless powers above the world. But he moves on to the words “before
the age he founded me,” and again he brings the flesh into the middle, saying (Nr. 14)
that he names this a “foundation,” meaning the economy in the flesh, which was
foreordained. 10 So also the apostle says, “For no one can lay any other foundation than
the one that is laid, which is Jesus Christ.” And Marcellus adds (Nr. 14): “Here he
mentions one age, from which he said the things concerning Christ were founded, although
many ages had passed, as David said, ‘the one who exists before the ages.’”

11 Next he moves on to the words “in the beginning, before he made the earth,” and again
says that the earth is the flesh. He writes as follows (Nr. 18): “What earth is this, if
not clearly our flesh, which became earth again after the disobedience? For it says, ‘You
are earth, and to earth you will return.’ For this needed to receive healing.” He says
this, this wisest of men, without remembering that a little earlier he had said that the
flesh was created as “the beginning of his ways” before the earth was made. 12 But if he
really meant the flesh by “earth,” how is he not forced to admit that the one who says he
existed before the earth was made existed before the flesh? For he says, “Before the age
he founded me, in the beginning, before he made the earth.” Therefore the one who says
this existed before the flesh was made.

13 And even if the text did not mention many ages but only one, the one the Savior also
mentioned when he said, “The sons of this age marry and are given in marriage,” even so it
is not the flesh our Savior took on that existed before the present age. It is the one
himself, who teaches these things through Solomon. You see what a rough place he has
fallen into, having turned aside from the straight and royal road. 14 Besides what has
been said, he adds this as well (Nr. 19): “‘Before he made the depths,’ it says. Here the
prophet says, in a figurative way, that the depths are the hearts of the saints, which
have in their own deep places the gift of the Spirit.” And he does not understand that
before our Savior’s coming in the flesh, God’s holy prophets shared in the same Spirit,
Moses and those older than Moses. So if these were the depths, that is, the hearts of the
saints, then the one who says “before he made the depths” must necessarily be older than
all of them.

15 How then could these words be referred to the Savior’s flesh? Indeed, if he had had any
knowledge of the divine Scriptures, he would not so easily have declared that the depths
are the hearts of the saints. He would have noticed that “darkness was over the deep,”
according to Moses’ testimony, and that much has been said about the depths in the divine
Scripture, and it is hard to interpret. For the apostle says, “Do not say, ‘Who will go up
into heaven?’ 16 that is, to bring Christ down; or ‘Who will go down into the deep?’ that
is, to bring Christ up from the dead.” In these words he seems to have called the regions
of Hades “the deep.” The Lord himself made this clearer still in his answer to Job,
saying, “Have you come to the spring of the sea, and walked in the tracks of the deep? Are
the gates of death opened to you in fear, and did the gatekeepers of Hades cower when they
saw you?”

17 There are also the evil powers in the deep, about whom it is said, “Praise him from the
earth, you dragons and all the depths.” And there is the darkness over the deep, about
which Moses said, “and darkness was over the deep.” If Marcellus had learned all this, had
he read the divine Scriptures with real effort and not carelessly, he would not have dared
to call the hearts of the saints “the depths.” 18 He would also have understood how it is
said, “Deep calls to deep at the sound of your waterfalls,” and again, “The depths were
troubled, a multitude of the sound of water,” and again, “The deep is like a garment, his
covering.” 19 He would have worked out these passages and others like them carefully, if
he had cared at all about understanding them. As it is, he casually and carelessly
declares that the abysses are the hearts of the saints. Even so, he did not see that the
one who said “before he made the abysses” was teaching that he existed before the saints
and God-loving men who have lived since the beginning of the age. So on every count these
words cannot be fitted to the flesh of the Savior.

20 Then he moves on to another saying from the same Scripture, and he explains this one in
the same way. He says: (No. 20) “What, then, is this next point: ‘before the springs of
the waters came forth’? He says that it means the holy apostles. The Scripture of Exodus
sets this mystery before us, announcing the types of the apostles long ago, 21 for since
the apostles were twelve in number, it mentions twelve springs.” In saying this he does
not realize that Israel also had twelve tribes and twelve patriarchs of those tribes, and
that there is one book of the twelve prophets. There are also twelve hours of the day and
twelve months in the whole year. 22 Why then should the number twelve belong to the
apostles more than to all those, if it was the number itself that gave him the reason for
this interpretation of the saying? He ought to have seen that the prophets of God also, in
that they shared the same Holy Spirit, were not strangers to the springs. That is why it
is said of them in the Psalms: “In the congregations bless God the Lord, from the springs
of Israel.”

23 So it is necessary to confess that the Son of God, who says “before the springs of the
waters came forth,” existed even before those springs. But listen to how Marcellus
explains it. He says (No. 20): “It was fitting, then, that the Master, speaking of his
birth according to the flesh through the prophet Solomon, said, ‘before the springs of the
waters came forth.’” 24 And he adds (No. 20): “For so the Savior said to the holy springs,
‘Go and make disciples of all the nations.’” Then, as though gathering up his argument, he
attaches the conclusion to his own account, saying (No. 21): “It is clear from every side
that the holy apostles were named springs by the prophet in a figurative sense.” So he
wants the apostles to be the springs, but the prophets do not please him. 25 Why? Is it
not because he could not place the Savior’s flesh before them? Yet the Son of God, who
teaches these things about himself in Proverbs, existed even before the natural springs
that can be perceived by the senses, which Moses also mentioned in his account of the
making of the world when he said, “A spring went up out of the earth and watered the whole
face of the earth,” and again, “A river goes out of Eden to water the garden.” And the one
who speaks to Job also mentions springs of the sea when he says, “Have you come to the
spring of the sea, and walked in the tracks of the abyss?”

26 Scripture also teaches that there are some waters above the heavens, when it says,
“Praise him, you heavens of the heavens, and you waters above the heavens.” So it follows
that we should understand there are springs of those waters too, whatever their nature may
be, so that the one who says he existed “before the springs of the waters came forth” may
be shown to be older than those as well. 27 But Marcellus gives none of this any thought
and is unwilling to take any trouble. He stays with the same interpretations, since even
when he quotes the words (No. 22), “Before the mountains were settled,” and “before all
the hills he begets me,” he says that the mountains and hills are the apostles and the
successors of the apostles. By this, in the manner of a proverb, he means to show how
righteous their way of life was compared with other people.

28 By his account, then, the same people were the springs, the same were the mountains,
and the same were the hills. But just as it is not natural to say that springs and
mountains are the same thing when we look at them as they are (for springs of water have
nothing in common in quality with the height of mountains), so too in things understood
allegorically in the mind, one must show a difference between the springs, the mountains
and the hills as they are understood in the interpretation. But he knows nothing that has
been properly tested. He confuses everything through carelessness, and declares that
springs of waters, mountains and hills are the same people. He says that all these are the
apostles, and he does not explain how they differ. 29 Then why did he not likewise call
the people who were made perfect in righteousness and godliness before the Savior’s flesh
“mountains and hills”? The only reason would be that he could not have the Savior’s flesh
come into being before them. So applying these words to the Savior’s flesh is forced and
strained. And how could “he begets me” fit the flesh? For he said that he was begotten
before the springs, before the mountains and before the hills, when he said: “The Lord
created me as the beginning of his ways for his works; before the age he established me.”

30 If, then, the flesh were saying these things, as Marcellus thinks, how could the flesh
say, “Before all the hills he begets me”? Suppose the flesh did exist before the apostles.
But how does the flesh claim to have been begotten by God? Marcellus evidently thought
that the flesh was created, having not existed before. 31 For he said (Nr. 10): “Our
Master, God, truly created, making what did not exist. For the flesh which the Word took
up was not already existing; he created it when it did not exist.” So we understand that
it was created. But how could it be said that it was also begotten by God? Our Savior
says, “What is born of the flesh is flesh,” and the apostle says, “born of a woman, born
under the law.” 32 How, then, could the flesh say of the God of all, “Before all the hills
he begets me”? I think it is plain to everyone that this interpretation is forced. But one
could say without any strain, and without any allegorical method at all, that these words
are true of the Son of God. He existed before the earth, and was there before the physical
springs of water came forth, before the deeps, as they are literally called, and before
the shape of the earth was set in the heights of the mountains and hills. For “all things
came into being through him, and apart from him not one thing came into being.”

33 Suppose someone asks why he did not teach that he existed before the heavens, or before
the divine powers and spirits above the world, in the heavens or beyond them. The answer
is that the Word did not mention these for the time being, because through Proverbs he was
giving a kind of elementary training to those who were still infants in their souls. 34
This is clear from the way it says at one time, “Listen, son, to your father’s
instruction, and do not reject your mother’s rules,” and at another, “Son, pay attention
to my laws, and bend your ear to my words,” and again, “Son, do not make light of the
Lord’s discipline, and do not lose heart when you are rebuked by him,” and, “Son, 35 if
you are good to yourself, you will be good to your neighbors; but if you turn out bad, you
alone will draw up the evils.” You could gather countless similar sayings of your own from
the book of Proverbs. In them the Word clearly speaks to people who are infants in their
souls.

36 In the same way Moses, as a teacher of those whose minds were immature, spoke of heaven
and earth and the making of visible things. But he did not mention the creation of angels,
or of divine powers, or of holy spirits, because his pupils could not yet take in teaching
about them. 37 So it is reasonable that the Word in Proverbs also taught such people by
starting from the mountains, hills and springs on the earth, as things better known to
them. He began, as it were, from a lower step, so that he could lead his pupils by the
hand to higher things, and prepare them to move on from the smaller things to the more
divine. 38 That is so if one looks no further than the wording. But if someone wants to
understand these things at a deeper level, he will not apply them to the apostles any more
than to all the righteous and God-loving men who have ever lived. He will go on from there
to the divine and angelic powers, saying that by “mountains” and “hills” the text hints at
the different ranks of angels, archangels and divine spirits, thrones, lordships, rulers
and authorities.

39 For the divine apostle taught that all these things too were created “through him and
for him,” and that he is “before all” of them. He was probably starting from this passage,
because in it the Son of God is the speaker of the words, “Before the mountains were
settled, before all the hills he begets me.” The other things, then, he said were settled,
but he said that he alone was begotten before the establishing of the things mentioned. 40
The same apostle also knows the heavenly Jerusalem, and the heavenly mountain on which he
says it stands. He says: “You have come to Mount Zion and to the city of the living God,
to the heavenly Jerusalem, and to myriads of angels, to the festal gathering and assembly
of the firstborn who are enrolled in heaven.” The only-begotten Son of God existed before
all these things. So in the Proverbs he was hinting, in a hidden way, at the account of
his own ineffable begetting.

41 That he meant us to understand these things becomes clear from what he joins on next:
“When he was preparing the heaven, I was present with him.” Here the noble interpreter of
the Scriptures was shut out and stopped. He went no further, because he could not make the
sequence agree with the explanation he had given about the Savior’s flesh. 42 For he had
spoken of the flesh again and again, and declared that everything was said about the
flesh. He got as far as the mountains and hills, saying these were the apostles. But what
follows these words he deliberately passed over in silence, no longer daring to go further
in the text. 43 So here he halts his argument. But after saying a great deal in between,
he abandons the interpretation about the flesh and acknowledges that it is the Word of God
who speaks these words. He says in these very words (Nr. 54): “For before the world
existed, the Word was in the Father. But when God the Almighty purposed to make everything
in heaven and on earth, the coming-to-be of the world needed an active, working power. And
so, since nothing else existed except God (for it is agreed that all things were made by
him), then the Word came forth and became the maker of the world. Even before this he had
been preparing it inwardly, in thought, as the prophet Solomon teaches us when he says,
‘When he was preparing the heaven, I was present with him,’ and ‘as he set the springs
under heaven on a sure footing, when he made the foundations of the earth strong, I was
beside him, fitting things together;

44 I was the one in whom he delighted.’” For the Father naturally delighted as he made all
things with wisdom and power through the Word. That is Marcellus. If he has at last, and
barely, admitted that these words are spoken in the person of the Word, he must accept
that the whole connected sense of the passages before us refers to that same Word of God.
45 For the one who said, “When he was preparing the heaven, I was present with him,” is
the very one who said, “The Lord created me as the beginning of his ways for his works.”
We were shown at the outset that it is one and the same person who runs through all the
passages before us. So the very one who said, “The Lord created me as the beginning of his
ways for his works,” went on to say, “Before the age he established me,” and “In the
beginning, before he made the earth,” and “Before the mountains were settled, and before
all the hills, he begets me.”

46 And the same speaker also joined on, “When he was preparing the heaven, I was present
with him,” and what follows it. Now if it was the Word who said these things, how could he
be inside God, coeternal with God and one and the same with him, and yet say that he had
been created and begotten? For, as I said, it was shown that the person who runs through
all the passages before us is one and the same. 47 But if he did at last admit, though
late, that these words were spoken in the person of the Word who is in God, then his
explanation about the Savior’s flesh has been forced aside. All of that is shown to be
stale, empty and pointless. But suppose it was the Savior’s flesh that said, “The Lord
created me as the beginning of his ways for his works,” according to the interpretation he
gave. Suppose the flesh “was established before the age and in the beginning, before he
made the earth” (the earth meaning the flesh, as he thought, because it was said, “You are
earth, and to earth you will return”). And suppose it was the flesh that said, “Before he
made the depths, before the springs of water came forth, before the mountains were
settled, and before all the hills, he begets me” (because, as the wisest of men supposed,
the flesh was begotten before the choosing of the apostles). Then it follows that “When he
was preparing the heaven, I was present with him” is also spoken in the person of the
flesh.

48 But no one in his right mind could ever agree with that interpretation. The word of
truth will cry out loudly against him and show who it really was that spoke all this. 49
That the only-begotten Son, begotten from God, was a distinct one, living and subsisting,
and existing even before the formation of all created things, the text itself shows by
what it adds next: “When he prepared the heaven, I was present with him.” For he was with
him and present with him before the heaven came into being, and before the things beyond
heaven and everything in heaven. This is what the text hinted at when it said, “When he
prepared the heaven, I was present with him.” 50 How did God “prepare” it, if not by
laying down the law and the pattern, before it came into being, for how it must be formed?
The Father laid out the pattern and made the preparation. He was considering how so great
a heaven should be formed: how large it needed to be, what shape, and how many measures
and parts. He was thinking of the things that were to be contained inside it, the things
that would be outside it, and the things that would run their course within it. The Son,
for his part, fixed his gaze on the Father’s thoughts and alone looked closely into the
depths within him. He then went forward into the works, serving the Father’s wishes.

51 So it is said somewhere: “Praise the Lord from the heavens; praise him in the highest
places. 52 Praise him, all his angels; praise him, all his powers. Praise him, sun and
moon; praise him, all the stars and the light. Praise him, heaven of heavens, and the
waters above the heavens. Let them praise the name of the Lord, for he spoke and they came
to be; he commanded and they were created.” 53 But even before heaven came into being, and
the things beyond heaven and all that is in heaven (for by naming one thing the text
includes everything), the Son of God existed. He was present with the Father and with him
while the Father was still planning the formation of all these things. That is why he
says, “When he prepared the heaven, I was present with him.” Then, like a good painter, he
took the original patterns from the Father’s thoughts and carried them over into the
substance of the works. He shaped them and gave them being, just as he saw them already
existing in the Father’s mind.

54 He himself would be a trustworthy witness of this, teaching in the Gospels as follows:
“Truly, truly, I say to you, the Son can do nothing of himself unless he sees the Father
doing it; for whatever that one does, the Son likewise does these things. 55 For the
Father loves the Son and shows him everything that he himself does.” Here someone might
reasonably ask how the Son does again what the Father has already done. But he himself
resolved the question by saying, “For whatever the Father does, the Son likewise does
these things.” 56 So the things done by the Son are likenesses of original works that
existed beforehand in the Father’s hidden thoughts. The Son, looking intently at these in
the Father’s mind, made copies of what he saw. That he looked into the Father’s depths was
an act of the Father’s love, as he makes clear when he goes on to say, “For the Father
loves the Son and shows him everything that he himself does.” So the Father showed his own
hidden things, and the Son, contemplating them, gave real existence through his works to
the works of the Father’s will. In this way, being with the Father and present with him as
he prepared the heaven and what is in it, he taught this when he said, “When he prepared
the heaven, I was present with him.”

57 The Father rejoiced even before the world came into being, looking at his own only-
begotten Son and seeing himself in him as in an image in a mirror. That is why Wisdom
says, “I was the one in whom he rejoiced every day.” The Son too was filled with gladness,
delighting in the sight of the Father. He teaches this himself when he says, “I was glad
before him at every time, when he was glad, having completed the inhabited world,” 58
where “the inhabited world” is understood as the full completion of all created things. As
they were brought from non-being into being through the Son, the God of all rejoiced.
This, then, is the true account, set out briefly and in summary from the divine Scripture.
But the one who drives the passage from above down to the flesh of our Savior has run his
understanding aground, twisting and misinterpreting the true meaning of the God-inspired
Scripture.

59 Moreover, when he turns to the Word, he says that it is the Word within the Father, as
in his reasoning and thought, who prepared the heaven. 60 At any rate, he said in these
very words: “Before the making of the world, the Word was in the Father. But when the
almighty God set out to make everything in heaven and on earth, the creation of the world
needed an active power at work. For this reason, since nothing else existed except God
(for all things are agreed to have been made by him), the Word then came forth and became
the maker of the world. Even before this he had been preparing it inwardly, in thought, as
the prophet Solomon teaches us when he says, ‘When he was preparing the heaven, I was
present with him.’” 61 In these words it is right to look at how he deliberately turns a
deaf ear. He does not listen to “I was present with him,” which plainly means the presence
of the Son together with the Father. Instead he declares, against the Scripture, that
nothing else existed except God before created things came to be. He did not shudder to
utter this saying, which denies the Son. Nor was he put to shame before the divine
Scripture, which testifies that before the creation of heaven the Son alone was present
together with the Father. For it says, “When he was preparing the heaven, I was present
with him.”

62 The word “with,” added to “be present,” shows presence in the same place along with
another. So the Son teaches that he was not simply present, but was present together with
the Father. And the Father did not simply rejoice; he rejoiced in addition at the presence
of the Son. That is why the Son says, “I was the one in whom he rejoiced day by day.” 63
And how could it fit a Word with no real existence of his own, but who is only in God
himself and active only by way of signifying, that this Word should also be “glad before
the Father”? Being glad, and “before him,” plainly set forth his distinct existence. But
Marcellus takes no account of any of this. He sets aside the Son, and says that the Word,
being inside God, sometimes goes forth in active power and sometimes is inside him and not
active. He does not see that to say something is inside and outside God supposes something
composite and a bodily condition. It is not right to admit that of the unbegotten and
bodiless nature.

64 And how, when the Word came forth, did he become the maker of the world? Was it by
tongue and voice, with God surely using speech as well? And to whom would he have spoken,
if no one else was with him? To whom would he have talked, if no one was present? Or did
he talk to himself, using voice and speech, so that the Word came forth from him in that
way? 65 And why could he not have established, by active power, what he wished while the
Word was inside him? Among men, most craftsmen finish their works even in silence, and
above all when no one is with them while they work. So what stopped God from establishing
all things in some such way, having the Word in himself? But Marcellus even supposes the
picture of a sculptor talking to himself and saying to himself: “Come, let us make, let us
shape a statue.” In the same way, he says, the Master of all, God, said to himself, “Let
us make man.” As has already been shown many times in the earlier sections, I think his
denial of the Son of God has been laid bare by them.

66 For to say that God talks to himself, having his own Word inside him, would belong to
some Jewish way of thinking. But to say that he is himself the Father of the Word within
him, and that the Word within him is his Son, was the mark of Sabellius’s false teaching.

CHAPTER 4

1 So again, to say that the three are one, the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, is
also Sabellius’s teaching. Marcellus himself declared this too, writing somewhere as
follows: “For it is impossible for three hypostases to be united in a monad, unless the
triad first has its beginning from a monad. For the holy Paul said that those things are
summed up in a monad. They differ in nothing from God in unity, for the Word and the
Spirit differ from God in unity alone.” 2 Next he tries to establish this point, going on
to say (Nr. 60): “If then the Word is shown to have come out from the Father himself and
to have come to us, and the Holy Spirit, as Asterius also admitted, proceeds from the
Father, and again the Savior says about the Spirit, ‘He will not speak from himself, but
whatever he hears he will speak, and he will announce to you the things that are coming.
He will glorify me, because he will take from what is mine and announce it to you,’ is not
the monad shown here, not plainly and openly but in an unspeakable way, expanding into a
triad and yet in no way willing to be divided?”

3 “For if the Word proceeds from the Father, and the Spirit too is acknowledged to proceed
from the Father, and again the Savior says of the Spirit, ‘He will take from what is mine
and announce it to you,’ is it not perfectly clear that some hidden mystery is being
uncovered? For how could he say about the Spirit at one time that he proceeds from the
Father, and at another time, ‘He will take from what is mine and announce it to you,’ and
again, after breathing on the disciples, say, ‘Receive the Holy Spirit,’ unless the monad,
being undivided, expands into a triad?” 4 “For how, if the Spirit proceeds from the
Father, does he promise that the Spirit will receive this service from the Son? If they
were two persons divided from each other, as Asterius said, then one of two things is
necessary. Either the Spirit, proceeding from the Father, does not need service from the
Son (for everything that proceeds from the Father must be perfect, in no way needing help
from another), or, if he receives from the Son and administers grace out of the Son’s
power, he no longer proceeds from the Father.”

5 And after other remarks he adds (Nr. 60): “But if the Gospel says that he breathed on
the disciples and said, ‘Receive the Holy Spirit,’ it is clear that the Spirit came out
from the Word. How then, if the Spirit came forth from the Word, does the same Spirit
again proceed from the Father?” And after other remarks he adds (Nr. 60): “So he did not
speak rightly or fittingly when he said there are three hypostases, and he said it not
once but twice.” By these arguments and others like them, this very wise man tries to
establish that the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit are one and the same, with three
names laid down for a single hypostasis. 6 For he did not grasp, in these passages, how
the Son is said to proceed from the Father and the Holy Spirit likewise. Nor has he been
able to understand how the Savior said of the Holy Spirit, “He will take from what is mine
and announce it to you,” or how he breathed on his disciples and said, “Receive the Holy
Spirit.” This will be easy to resolve for those who look at it reverently, if one reasons
as follows. The Son was always with the Father and present with him, somewhere within the
inner sanctuary, so to speak, the untrodden places of the Father’s kingdom. Then, when he
was sent out by the Father for the salvation of the human race, he said that he had come
out from the Father. He made this clear elsewhere too, through a parable, speaking about
himself: “The sower went out to sow.”

7 For where did he go out from, if not from the innermost palace of the Father’s divinity?
By the same reasoning the Holy Spirit, who always stands beside the throne of God (for
“ten thousand times ten thousand” stand beside him, according to Daniel), was also sent
out. Sometimes he was sent in the form of a dove upon the Son of Man, and sometimes upon
each of the prophets and apostles. 8 This is why it is said that he too proceeds from the
Father. And why are you surprised? Even of the devil it is said, “And the devil went out
from the Lord,” and a second time it is said, “But the devil went out from the Lord.” You
could find the same in the case of Ahab, where Scripture goes on: “And an evil spirit came
out and stood before the Lord and said, ‘I will deceive him.’”

9 But those are opposing spirits, and this is not the time to inquire into how or in what
sense that was said of them. The only-begotten Son of God teaches that he himself has come
out from the Father because he is always with him. The same is true of the Holy Spirit,
who likewise is other than the Son. The Savior himself shows this plainly when he says,
“He will receive from what is mine and will announce it to you.” This is a direct proof
that the Son and the Holy Spirit are not one and the same. For what receives something
from another is understood to be different from the one who gives.

CHAPTER 5

1 That the Holy Spirit is other than the Son, our Savior and Lord himself [taught]
explicitly, in several ways, and in the plainest words. He said to his disciples, “If you
love me, you will keep my commandments. And I will ask the Father, and he will give you
another Paraclete, to be with you forever, the Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot
receive.” You see how he says that the Paraclete Spirit is other, and different from
himself. And if he breathed on the disciples and said, “Receive the Holy Spirit,” we must
not overlook that the breathing was in some way a cleansing of the apostles’ souls, making
them fit to receive the Holy Spirit. 2 For it does not say that he breathed into their
face, nor that he breathed the breath of life, nor the Holy Spirit, as it is written of
Adam that “God breathed into his face the breath of life.” Rather, it says first that he
breathed, and then that he said, “Receive the Holy Spirit.” And the fact that he gives the
Spirit again shows that he is other than what is given.

3 For the giver and the gift would not be the same. The one who supplied it was the
Savior, what was given was the Holy Spirit, and the recipients were the apostles. The
breathing, as I said, was either a cleansing of the apostles or a means of bringing about
the imparting of the Holy Spirit, since it can be understood either way. 4 In any case,
these words show that the Holy Spirit is other than himself. The same is shown by what
follows, where it is again recorded that he said, “If anyone loves me, he will keep my
word, and my Father will love him, and we will come to him and make our dwelling with
him.” 5 He goes on: “I have spoken these things to you while staying with you. But the
Paraclete, the Holy Spirit, whom my Father will send in my name, he will teach you all
things and remind you of everything I said to you.” You hear how he uses the plural in “we
will come and make our dwelling with him,” speaking of himself and the Father. And when he
speaks about the Holy Spirit, he speaks as of another: “he will teach you all things.”

6 The words “I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Paraclete to be with you
forever, the Spirit of truth” are of the same kind. So the Paraclete, about whom he was
teaching so much, was other than himself. It was fitting, then, that he added again: “I
have spoken these things to you while staying with you. But the Paraclete, the Holy
Spirit, whom my Father will send in my name, he will teach you all things and remind you
of everything I said.” 7 For he says, in effect: “For the present I have spoken these
things to you, but the Spirit of truth, whom my Father will also send, will teach you
everything that you have not yet learned because you cannot yet bear it.” 8 “But when he
comes” (I mean the Paraclete), he will complete the teaching, and also bring back to your
memory what I am now saying. And again he adds: “When the Paraclete comes, whom I will
send to you from the Father, the Spirit of truth, who proceeds from the Father, he will
bear witness about me.” By all these words he clearly shows that the one sent by him, who
is to bear witness about him, is other than himself.

9 He develops the point still further by adding: “But I tell you the truth: it is to your
advantage that I go away. For if I do not go away, the Paraclete will not come to you; but
if I go, I will send him to you.” In speaking of his going away, he was indicating his
passion and his ascent to the Father after it. 10 Who, then, is so foolish that after so
many statements he would say that the one speaking these words and the one he was speaking
about are one and the same? For he hears him clearly distinguishing, saying that he is
telling them the truth, and showing what that truth is: that if he himself does not go
away, the Holy Spirit will never come. 11 Sometimes he says that the Father will send the
Holy Spirit, and sometimes that he himself will. But he is not teaching contradictory
things. For everything that the Son “sees the Father doing,” “the Son does likewise,” and
“as he hears, he judges.” So by the Father’s judgment, when the Father also wishes it,
then the Son, and [text uncertain: through him] the Savior, sends to his disciples the
Spirit of truth, the Comforter. He sends him to encourage them and console them in what
they suffered from those who drove them out as they preached the gospel.

12 He sends him not only to encourage them but also to teach them the whole truth of the
new covenant. They could not bear to be taught it by the Savior when he spoke with them,
because they were still held in bondage to the Jewish way of life. 13 He fulfilled these
things in deeds after his resurrection from the dead. After it he said to Mary, “Do not
touch me, for I have not yet ascended to my Father.” After this, having now gone up to the
Father, he appeared to the disciples. The Holy Spirit had been sent, was with him, and
stood ready for the service to which he was appointed. That is why he now allowed himself
to be touched. 14 For then “he breathed on them,” and then he gave them a part of the gift
of the Holy Spirit, the part that brings about the forgiveness of sins. For “there are
distributions of gifts.” He gave them a portion of these at that time, while he was with
them and present among them. Afterward he filled them with a greater and more perfect
power. Concerning this he said to them in the Acts of the Apostles, “You will receive
power from on high when the Holy Spirit comes upon you.” At that time he also promised
that they would be baptized in the Holy Spirit. This too was fulfilled after his
ascension, on the day of Pentecost, when the Holy Spirit was sent to them in accordance
with his words.

15 The matters at this passage need more thorough work and clarification, but now is not
the time to go through them with exact examination, since that is not our present aim.
What we had to show is that the Comforter Spirit is other than the Son. This has been
demonstrated in various ways through what the Savior himself taught, and among other
places in these words: “I still have many things to say to you, but you cannot bear them
now. But when he comes, the Spirit of truth, he will tell you the whole truth. 16 For he
will not speak from himself, but whatever he hears, and he will announce to you the things
that are coming. He will glorify me, because he will take from what is mine and announce
it to you.” In these words he again promises that his disciples will learn from the Holy
Spirit what he himself has not taught. He speaks as of another when he says “when he
comes,” and “he will not speak from himself,” and “he will glorify me,” and “he will take
from what is mine.” To suppose that the Savior is saying all this about himself is a
terrible and hard-to-cure silliness.

17 No, through these words the Savior himself clearly taught that the Holy Spirit is other
than himself. The Spirit surpasses all in honor, glory and precedence, and is greater and
higher than every intellectual and rational being. This is why he is included with the
holy and thrice-blessed Trinity. 18 Yet he is [text uncertain: subordinate] to the Son.
The Savior shows this by saying, “For he will not speak from himself, but whatever he
hears he will speak.” From whom he will hear, he makes plain by saying, “He will take from
what is mine and announce it to you.” By “what is mine” he clearly means his treasury, for
in him “are all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge, hidden.” 19 The Son, as the only-
begotten Son, receives from the Father and hears from the Father. The Holy Spirit,
however, is supplied through him. That is why he says, “He will take from what is mine and
declare it to you.” Now the God who is over all is also called Spirit, as the Savior
himself taught when he said, “God is Spirit, and those who worship him must worship him in
spirit and truth.” He will truly be holy of holies himself, and “resting among the holy
ones.” But the Son of God is also Spirit, and he himself is likewise a Spirit, holy of
holies, if indeed he is the image of the invisible God.

20 That is why it is said of him, “The Lord is the Spirit,” and “The Spirit before our
face is Christ the Lord.” 21 But the Holy Spirit is other than the Father and the Son. To
show what is distinctive about him, the Savior called him the Paraclete. By the title
“Paraclete” he marks off the Spirit from what is merely a shared name, since the angelic
powers might also be called spirits: it is said of God, “who makes his angels spirits.”
But none of these can be put on the same level as the Spirit the Paraclete. For this
reason he alone is included with the holy and thrice-blessed Trinity. 22 The Savior
commanded his apostles to hand on the mystery of his new birth to all who believe in him
from the nations in no other way than by baptizing “them in the name of the Father and of
the Son and of the Holy Spirit.” The Father is the one who has authority and bestows the
grace. The Son serves in this grace, for “grace and truth came through Jesus Christ.” The
Holy Spirit, that is, the Paraclete, is himself the one who is supplied, according to the
distributions of gifts in him: “To one is given through the Spirit a word of wisdom, to
another a word of knowledge according to the same Spirit, to another faith in the same
Spirit,” and the other gifts listed alongside these in the same way.

CHAPTER 6

1 The Holy Spirit by nature dwells only among the holy. He is supplied through the Son to
those whom the Father judges fit. It is his work to make holy all those to whom he gives a
share of one or more of the gifts that are in him. So it is with the prophets, the
apostles and every soul that loves God, and probably also the higher, divine powers, who
share in the holiness that comes from him. But the Son alone is honored with the Father’s
divinity. He is the maker and creator of all created things, visible and invisible, and
indeed of the very existence of the Spirit the Paraclete. For all things “came into being
through him, 2 and apart from him not one thing came into being,” and “in him all things
were created, in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible.” But the God beyond all
things, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, is an unspeakable good, greater than every
reckoning, thought, word and imagining. He is the leader and ruler together of all things,
whatever they are and of whatever kind, and also of the Holy Spirit himself and of the
only-begotten Son. It is fitting, then, that he alone is called by the apostle the God
“over all and through all and in all,” where he says, “One Lord, one faith, one baptism;
one God and Father of all, who is over all and through all and in all.”

3 He alone may be called “the one God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ,” while the Son
is “the only-begotten God, who is in the bosom of the Father.” The Spirit the Paraclete is
neither God nor Son, since he did not receive his origin from the Father in the same way
as the Son. He is one of the things that came into being through the Son, because “all
things came into being through him, and apart from him not one thing came into being.” 4
This, then, is roughly how the mysteries are handed down to the holy and catholic church
through the divine words. But Marcellus confuses everything. At one time he plunges into
the whole depth of Sabellius. At another he tries to revive the heresy of Paul of
Samosata. At another he is plainly shown to be a Jew. For he introduces one hypostasis
with three persons, just as it has three names, saying that God, the Word within him, and
the Holy Spirit are the same.

5 Then Marcellus moves on from there to the apostolic teaching about Christ, and again he
uses twisted interpretations. The divine apostle speaks plainly of the Son of God as God,
and says: “He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation, because in
him all things were created, in the heavens and on the earth, visible and invisible,
whether thrones or lordships or rulers or authorities. All things were created through him
and for him. He is before all things, and in him all things hold together.”

CHAPTER 7

1 This remarkable man then throws himself down upon the flesh and declares that the flesh
itself is the image of the invisible God. He does not hear that the words “who is the
image” are expressed in a masculine form. For he somehow fits the word “who” to the flesh,
and says that the flesh is what is meant, as though it were “the image of the invisible
God.” And again he says that “he is before all things” was spoken about the flesh, and he
is not ashamed to take the word “he” as referring to the flesh. 2 He also says that the
one called “firstborn of all creation” is so called because of the flesh. He persists
without hesitation in speaking of the flesh when he says that “the things in the heavens
and on the earth” were created, “both the visible and the invisible.” He does not shrink
from saying that thrones and lordships and rulers and authorities were counted worthy of
the creation in Christ through the savior’s flesh. I have already set out Marcellus’s
words on these matters in the preceding writing. To spare the proportions of my argument,
I will be content with the testimony of those very words. I do not think I need a longer
demonstration that this explanation of the apostle’s wording is twisted and forced, since
the shamelessness of the interpretation is plain to everyone.

CHAPTER 8

Yet after saying so much about the savior’s flesh, he does not even keep it safe for us. I
wish he had at least kept a godly way of thinking about it! As it is, after everything he
has said about it, he declares that at the completion of the ages the flesh is left
behind, abandoned by the Word. He writes this: “If, then, he confesses that the flesh is
of no benefit to him, how is it possible that what is from the earth and is of no benefit
should also be with the Word in the ages to come, as though it were useful to him?”

CHAPTER 9

And he says the same thing a second time in another place: “If, then, Paul said that at
the time of the restoration of all things the creation itself will be changed from slavery
into freedom (for he says, ‘that the creation itself will be set free from the slavery of
corruption into the freedom of the glory of the children of God’), how could it still be
possible for the form of a slave, which the Word took up, being the form of a slave, to be
with the Word [because of itself]?”

CHAPTER 10

1 You see what words he has dared to utter against the flesh of our savior. He has not
considered that, even before the ascension into heaven, while the flesh was still on earth
before the passion, it was glorified in this way on the mountain. He showed to only three
of his chosen disciples an image of his kingdom, so that his face shone like lightning and
flashes of light blazed out. 2 (For the divine Scripture says, “His face became like the
sun, and his garments white as light.”) But Marcellus also did not understand what kind of
body of glory the divine apostle was speaking of, or that he was teaching that our bodies
too will be conformed to that body, when he said, “who will transform the body of our
humiliation to be conformed to the body of his glory.” Nor did he understand how the
mortal is to be swallowed up by life, as the apostle wrote when he said, “in which we do
not wish to be unclothed, [but to be clothed over], so that the mortal may be swallowed up
by life.” In his ignorance of these things, he insists that the Word will become one and
the same with God as he was before, but what will ever become of the flesh left behind by
the Word, I do not know.

3 Listen then to how he says this: “And if someone should ask about this flesh which has
become immortal in the Word, what do we say to him? That we do not think it safe to lay
down doctrine about matters we have not learned precisely from the divine Scriptures. For
how is it possible to do this for those who also overturn the doctrines of others?” 4 But
we will say to those who want to learn from us the exact account of this matter: we obey
the holy apostle, and we know that we should look at hidden mysteries as he himself said.
“For now we see,” he says, “through a mirror, [in] a riddle, but then face to face,” and
so on. So do not ask me about things I have not clearly learned from the divine Scripture.
For that reason I will not be able to speak clearly about that divine flesh which shared
in the Word. Then he who confesses that he can say nothing admits also that he has learned
nothing from Scripture.

5 Such are the statements he made about the flesh. He did not take them from Scripture, he
did not receive them from others, and he did not learn them from the church. He fashioned
them for himself and devised, out of his own reasoning, a strange offspring foreign to the
truth. He did not even bear in mind the Scripture that says, “Do not add to his words,
lest he reprove you and you be found a liar,” and “Woe to those who prophesy from their
own heart.” 6 See, then, what great impiety he has fallen into. He threw the whole
theology of the pre-existent only-begotten Son onto the flesh, and in so many words
proclaimed it a crown of victory. For he said (no. 114) that the Word of God prepared
human flesh to become immortal through the resurrection, and, as though he had put on a
crown of victory, sits at the right hand of the Father. Yet this same man says that the
flesh will be left desolate and orphaned at the end of all things. He unites the Word with
God, but separates the flesh from the activity of the Word, and leaves it, I do not know
how, immortal and incorruptible, yet lifeless and without any activity from the Word.

7 And again he tries to support this from the divine readings, which he has not
understood. For our Savior spoke to those who did not understand his teachings about his
flesh and blood: “Does this offend you? What if you see the Son of Man going up where he
was before? It is the Spirit who gives life; the flesh is of no use at all. The words that
I have spoken to you are spirit and are life.”

CHAPTER 11

Without giving thought to the meaning of the saying, he supposed that the Savior was
rejecting the flesh he had taken from the holy virgin. Then from this he tries to
establish that after the consummation of all things the Word who is in God will leave the
flesh desolate, without his own activity. At any rate he says in these very words (no.
104): “For concerning the flesh with which he lived among the disciples, he speaks like
this: ‘Does this offend you? What if you see the Son of Man going away where he was
before? The Spirit gives life; the flesh is of no use at all.’” If, then, he admits that
the flesh is of no use to him, how is it possible that flesh which is from the earth and
of no use should also, in the ages to come, be with the Word as though it were profitable
to him? You see how great a distortion of the gospel saying he has used, because he did
not understand the saving word of the Word: how it was said, and for what reason.

CHAPTER 12

1 But you, take up the Gospel writing and see how the whole teaching of our Savior was not
about the flesh he had taken, but about the mystical body and blood. For he had fed the
crowds with the five loaves, and this gave those who saw it a great wonder. But most of
the Jews made light of what had happened and said to him, “What sign then do you do, so
that we may see and believe?” Then they brought up the manna in the wilderness, saying,
“Our fathers ate the manna in the wilderness, as it is written: ‘He gave them bread from
heaven to eat.’” 2 To this the Savior answered, “Amen, amen, I say to you, it was not
Moses who gave you the bread from heaven, but my Father gives you the true bread from
heaven.” Then he adds, “I am the bread of life,” and again, “I am the bread that came down
from heaven,” and once more, “The bread that I will give is my body.” And again he adds,
“Amen, amen, I say to you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood,
you have no life in yourselves.”

3 “Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up on
the last day. For my flesh is true food, and my blood is true drink. 4 Whoever eats my
flesh and drinks my blood remains in me, and I in him.” While he was going through these
and similar things in a more mystical way, some of his disciples said, “This is a hard
saying. Who can listen to it?” The Savior answered them: “Does this offend you? What if
you see the Son of Man going up to where he was before? 5 It is the Spirit who gives life;
the flesh is of no help at all. The words that I have spoken to you are spirit and are
life.” By these words he was teaching them to hear in a spiritual way what had been said
about his flesh and blood. “Do not suppose,” he says, “that I mean the flesh I wear, as
though it had to be eaten. Do not imagine that I am commanding you to drink physical blood
perceived by the senses. Know well that ‘the words I have spoken to you are spirit and
life.’ So the words and sayings themselves are the flesh and the blood. Whoever shares in
them continually, nourished as it were by heavenly bread, will share in heavenly life.”

6 “So do not let this offend you,” he says, “what I have said about eating my flesh and
drinking my blood. Do not let the surface hearing of what I said about flesh and blood
trouble you. For when these things are heard in a physical way, they ‘are of no help at
all.’ But it is the Spirit who gives life to those who are able to hear spiritually.” 7
But the new interpreter of the Gospel teachings understood none of this. Listen to how he
writes, in these very words (Fr. 105): “After he touched the human body and showed it to
those who saw it, he said, ‘Does this offend you? What if you see the Son of Man going up
to where he was before? The Spirit gives life; the flesh is of no help at all.’” 8 One
could say to him: “And where, my good man, did you get this addition, which is not found
in the Gospel text? You invent on your own that the Savior touched the human body and
showed it to those who saw it before saying, ‘Does this offend you?’ You make it up
yourself and dare to add it from yourself.” Having taken this bold step on his own, he
thinks he can establish from it that the Savior’s flesh will be left without any share in
the Word’s activity. He says (Fr. 104): “If, then, he confesses that the flesh is of no
help to him, how can it be that the flesh, which is from the earth and is of no help,
should also in the ages to come be with the Word as though it were beneficial to him?” In
this ignorant and unlearned way, then, he set out to misinterpret the Gospel’s statement.
And he likewise gave twisted interpretations of the apostles’ words.

CHAPTER 13

1 For example, in the Acts of the Apostles Peter said of our Savior, “whom heaven must
receive until the times of restoration.” Marcellus did not grasp the meaning of this
saying. From it he tries to put a limit on the kingdom of Christ, claiming that a boundary
and a fixed deadline for his kingdom is indicated by the words “until the times of
restoration.” 2 He says the same thing is confirmed by the Psalm that says, “Sit at my
right hand until I put your enemies as a footstool for your feet,” and that Paul the
apostle said this too: “For he must reign until he puts his enemies under his feet.” For
he assumed that “until” and “up to” indicate a limited period of time. Listen, then, to
how he writes, word for word (Fr. 104): “For this reason, it seems to me, God the
Almighty, the Master, says to him, ‘Sit at my right hand until I put your enemies as a
footstool for your feet.’ Because of the human flesh, he seems to separate him only in
activity, and as though setting a fixed time for his sitting at the right hand, he says to
him, ‘until I put your enemies as a footstool for your feet.’”

3 The sacred apostle explained this prophetic saying of David more plainly for us, saying
something like this: “For he must reign until he puts his enemies as a footstool under his
feet.” So, Marcellus thinks, his dispensation as man, and his kingdom, has some limit. And
after other remarks he adds (no. 104): “And for this reason the Acts of the Apostles teach
about this man, whom the Word of God took up and, having taken him up, sits at the right
hand of the Father. They say: ‘whom heaven must receive until the times of restoration.’
These words too set a kind of limit and fixed term.” 4 After other remarks he adds to
these words (no. 104): “How, then, could the form of a servant, which the Word took up,
being the form of a servant, still be with the Word [through him]? Clearly and explicitly,
the divine Paul has said that the dispensation of the Word in the flesh, which took place
for our sake, happened within a short time between the ages past and the ages to come, and
that it has an end just as it has a beginning. He said it in this way: ‘Then comes the
end, when he hands over the kingdom to God, even the Father.’”

CHAPTER 14

1 Through all this Marcellus has failed to understand the “body of the glory” of the Son,
and he denies that the Son’s kingdom has no end. He has not noticed that Scripture has a
peculiar habit of its own in how it uses the word “until.” So, for example, the Savior
said to his disciples, “Look, I am with you all the days until the end of the age.” He is
not denying that he will be with them after the end as well. He is teaching that now,
until the end, he will be with them, watching over and guarding all who are his disciples,
and that after the end he will be with them in a better way, making them sharers in his
kingdom. 2 So in the same way, “Sit at my right hand until I put your enemies as a
footstool under your feet,” and “whom heaven must receive until the times of restoration,”
are not said as though he will no longer be there afterward. They are said because at the
time of the end he is going to rise from the Father’s throne and make a second descent
from heaven. The apostle teaches about this when he says: “The Lord himself will come down
from heaven with a command, with the voice of an archangel and with the trumpet of God,
and the dead in Christ will rise first. Then we who are alive, who are left, will be
caught up together with them in clouds to meet the Lord in the air. And so we will always
be with the Lord.” The Savior, then, must remain in heaven and sit at the Father’s right
hand “until the end.” But at the very end of the whole order of things he will make his
glorious second appearing and take his holy ones to himself, to be with him always. This
is not for a limited time but for endless ages, for Paul says, “so we will always be with
the Lord.”

3 So the saints, who will be with him always, will enjoy his kingdom in the kingdom of the
heavens that has been proclaimed. But our fine fellow does not understand this. The divine
apostle said of our Savior, “For he must reign until he puts his enemies under his feet.
The last enemy to be destroyed is death,” and again, “But when all things are subjected to
him, 4 then the Son himself will also be subjected to the one who subjected all things to
him, so that God may be all in all.” Marcellus follows his usual approach here and
misinterprets these words as well. I do not know how he takes the Son’s being subjected to
the Father to mean the Word’s being united with God. But when was the Word ever not united
with him, if he was indeed the Word, existing eternally in God? How then can he say that
“then” he will be subjected “to God and the Father”?

CHAPTER 15

1 We must also notice that the apostle said all things will be subjected to the Son
himself, and he teaches that by the same subjection the Son will also be subjected to the
Father. He says, “But when all things are subjected to him, then the Son himself will also
be subjected to the one who subjected all things to him, 2 GREEK: He does not hear “so
that God may be all in all” in this way. For the apostle does not say that God will be
“all” in the Son, but “in all.” That phrase would more likely suggest a kind of joining
and union of all things, if God is going to be all in all. Yet Marcellus explains the
Son’s subjection as a union of the Word, who will become one and the same with the Father,
as he was before, according to what he himself said.

3 If, then, he defines subjection to the Father as union, it would follow that the
subjection of all things to the Son also means the same union with him. The Son would then
no longer exist by himself, nor would the multitudes of the saved who are to be subjected
to him live a life of their own. Instead there would be a kind of smearing together and
confusion of the whole, with the Son and all the rest becoming one and the same, and not
only that, but with God himself as well. 4 For if all things are united to the Son by
being subjected, and the Son is united to the Father by being subjected, see what follows
from his argument. 5 But just as the apostle did not mean union when he said that “all
things” will be subjected to the Son, but rather obedience from freely chosen purpose, and
the glory and honor that all things will give him as Savior and King of the universe, so
also the Son’s being subjected to the Father would signify nothing other than glory,
honor, reverence, majesty and freely given obedience. He too will render these to God and
Father, once he has made all people worthy of the Father’s divinity.

6 For in the meantime, since they are not yet worthy of it, he has gone ahead as a common
Savior of all. He reigns with a kingdom that corrects the imperfect and heals those who
need healing, bringing the enemies of the kingdom under his feet. The Psalm declares this
when it says, “The Lord said to my Lord: Sit at my right hand until I make your enemies a
footstool for your feet.” 7 But when he puts his enemies under his feet, and establishes
those worthy of his kingdom in unending life, then death, the enemy of all, will be
destroyed last. For no one will be dying any longer, since those worthy of the kingdom
will then be living in eternal life. It is reasonable that death will be idle, having no
one left to put to death. 8 When these things have been so prepared, all the saints will
be subjected to the Son of God in a subjection that brings salvation. They will live
eternally, since he is life; they will become wise, since he is wisdom; and they will be
made rational, since he is Word. In the same way they will also become anointed ones,
anointed with the Spirit of his fragrance. They will be shown to be lights of the new age,
supplied with their lights from him. They will be sons of God, adorned with the Spirit of
adoption. Those who are subjected to him will share in his other powers too, so that they
become righteous from his righteousness and holy from his holiness. And since “the Word
was God,” he will not begrudge them even divinity.

9 So the apostle will be proved right, who foretold that the saints would be “heirs of God
and joint heirs with Christ.” Indeed they will also have heavenly bodies, like the sun,
the moon and the stars, and in this too they will share in his glory. 10 The same apostle
showed this when he said, “from whom we also await a Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ, who
will transform the body of our humiliation to be like the body of his glory, according to
the working of his power to subject all things to himself.” You see how by his power to
subject all things to himself he will also transform our body to be like the body of his
glory, and so bring our own to that state. 11 But if our body will be shaped like the body
of his glory, how much more will the body of his glory share in his kingdom! And if our
body will be swallowed up by life, as the apostle testified when he said, “in which we do
not wish to be unclothed but clothed over, so that what is mortal may be swallowed up by
life,” how much more will his own body, since it served his divinity, be swallowed up, not
by life alone as ours is, but also by his divinity! So let no one ask, or be perplexed
within himself, about what we ought to think concerning the Savior’s body. He hears Paul
say plainly that “what is mortal” must be “swallowed up by life,” and that our body will
be shaped like “the body of the glory of Christ, according to the working of his power to
subject all things to himself.”

12 So then, he will subject all things to himself. And we must understand the subjection
that brings salvation to be of this kind, in which “the Son himself will also be subjected
to the one who subjected all things to him.” He will make a subjection that cannot be
spoken or described, one that suits him alone. At that time he will gather all who are
under him around himself like a chorus, and “he will bring to God and Father the glory,
the honor, the reverence and the majesty,” offering them to him as the cause of all good
things.

CHAPTER 16

1 Then the apostolic teaching will also reach its conclusion, when it says, “so that God
may be all in all.” We will understand this from another promise, in which God himself
says, “I will dwell in them and walk among them, and I will be their God, and they will be
my people.” But now, in the present age, the promise goes forward only partially and only
to a few who are worthy, as in “we know in part, and we prophesy in part.” After the
consummation of all things, when the new age has come, he will no longer dwell in a few,
but in all who are then worthy of the kingdom of the heavens. 2 So it will be “all in all”
in this way: he will be “dwelling in them and walking among them,” and will be “their
God.” He will not think it beneath him that they be his people, and he will make them all
his own. He will be in them in the same way that he is said to be in the Son himself, as
the Son teaches when he says, “The Father is in me and I in the Father.” And he will be
“all” in them by giving himself to all, to the degree that each one’s capacity can share
in his divinity. The thrice-blessed hope and the endless, imperishable life will be
established in this end. In it God will be “all in all,” filling everyone with the
radiance of his divinity, a light beyond words. The Son will rejoice and exult in his
accomplishment. He will set around himself, like a crown, those whom he has made worthy of
blessedness, and under the Father’s oversight he will carry out a kingdom that never grows
old and never ends. Then the sayings about him will be fulfilled, among them what the
angel Gabriel said to the all-holy virgin about the one who would be born of her: that “he
will reign for ever, and of his kingdom there will be no end.”

3 So the Son of God, reigning then, will hand over to his Father all those who are ruled
by him. He will not cease from his kingdom or withdraw from it. For the divine apostle did
not say that he will cease from the kingdom. Otherwise he would have written the opposite
of what Gabriel declared to the virgin, that he will reign for ever and that there will be
“no end” of his kingdom. Rather, the apostle said that he will hand over “the kingdom,”
that is, those who are ruled by him, “to God and Father.” 4 For when all have been brought
to perfection under him, he will hand them over to the Father, glad, as it were, at his
accomplishment, as one who has received a deposit entrusted to him. This is what he
teaches when he says, “All things have been handed over to me by my Father.” So, as a good
guardian, he will bring the deposit safe and strong in every way and hand it over to God.
Like a high priest, he will present to him all who are consecrated under him, clothed in
white and shining like lightning, as it were in the most brilliant robes, with the
imperishable bodies of the resurrection. In this way they will not only enjoy the kingdom
under him, but will also be filled with the unspeakable good things of the Father.

5 For in this way, according to the apostle, “God will be all in all,” when the Son brings
those he has ruled to him, so that this whole result comes about, I mean that the Father
is “all in all.” As the Father was before in the Son, according to the words “the Father
is in me and I am in the Father,” so then he will also be in all who have been brought to
perfection under the Son. 6 For the apostle did not say that the Son would cease from his
kingdom and God would reign instead. He said that the Son would hand over “the kingdom to
God and the Father,” showing that the trust committed to him is kept safe and is
sufficient for the worship and priestly service of the Father. And God will be “all in
all,” dwelling and walking “in them” as God and becoming everything to them. To some he
will be master, to others king, to others something else. But to all together he will be
God, becoming everything to them by the divine excellences and powers that are in him.

7 This is the end of the thrice-blessed hope that the great apostle described when he
said, “that God may be all in all.” He will be all things in all, in proportion to the
capacity of each, supplying to all the different aspects of his Godhead. But for his only-
begotten Son alone he will keep the choice and fatherly glory, honor and kingdom, which is
shared with none of the rest.

CHAPTER 17

1 17. If these things need to be sealed with a prophetic seal, then to confirm what has
been said I will use the prophetic Spirit as witness, speaking these very things through
the prophet Ezekiel in words like these: “Thus says the Lord, the Lord: Behold, I will
seek out my sheep and visit them. As a shepherd seeks his flock on a day when there is
darkness and cloud among sheep that have been scattered, so I will seek out my sheep.” And
after other things: “And I will save my sheep, and they shall no more be plunder. And I
will judge between ram and ram. 2 And I will raise up over them a shepherd, and he will
shepherd them: my servant David. And he will be their shepherd. And I, the Lord, will be
God to them, and David will be a ruler in their midst. I the Lord have spoken, and I will
make a covenant with David.” And after other things he repeats the same prophecy, saying:
“And I will rescue them from all their lawless deeds in which they sinned, and I will
cleanse them, and they will be my people, and I will be God to them. And my servant David
will be ruler in their midst, and he will be shepherd of them all.”

3 And again he adds: “And David my servant will be their ruler forever.” Notice in all
this that God is said to be not shepherd or ruler but God to those who are counted worthy
of the blessed end. But David is prophesied to become ruler and shepherd of these same
people. Here “David” is a veiled way of speaking of Christ, because Christ came “from his
seed.” 4 This is clear from the fact that David had died long before the time when these
words were spoken. The prophet Daniel prophesies the same things more plainly, naming
Christ the Son of God “son of man” in plain terms, just as the writing of the holy Gospels
is accustomed to call him. He speaks in this way: “I was watching in a vision of the
night, and behold, with the clouds of heaven one like a son of man was coming, and he
reached the Ancient of Days, and was brought before him. And to him were given rule and
honor and kingdom, and all peoples, tribes and tongues will serve him.

5 His authority is an everlasting authority which will not pass away, and his kingdom will
not be destroyed.” You see that here too the prophet shows that the imperishable, ageless
and endless kingdom belongs not to the Word who is in God but to the Son of man. And he
teaches clearly that the one who receives the imperishable kingdom from the Ancient of
Days, that is, from the Father himself, is someone other than the Ancient of Days, namely
the Son of man. 6 But Marcellus lays it down that the Father and the Son are one and the
same, a single hypostasis lying beneath two names. He even dares to put a limit on
Christ’s kingdom. He shamelessly declares that Christ’s kingdom will come to an end after
the time of judgment, and he writes as follows (no. 101): “Here the apostle uncovers a
very great mystery for us, when he says that there will be an end of Christ’s kingdom;

7 and the end will be then, when everything has been put in subjection under his feet.” He
then develops the argument somewhat like this (no. 102): “In the sayings we gave earlier
we said that our Lord Christ had a beginning of his kingdom, using proofs from the divine
Scriptures.” And he adds (no. 102): “In fact, anyone well supplied could show, from
countless sayings as testimony, that the man received the beginning of a kingdom through
the Word. 8 If, then, he received the beginning of a kingdom not more than four hundred
years ago in all, it is nothing strange that the apostle says that the one who obtained
this kingdom such a short time before will hand the kingdom over to God.” 9 And after
other remarks he adds (no. 103): “What, then, are we to learn about the human flesh which
the Word took up for our sake less than four hundred years ago? Will the Word have it in
the ages to come as well, or only until the time of judgment?” Such were the things
Marcellus dared to say. But the prophets of God, who define Christ’s kingdom as without
end, say that after the time of judgment he will take hold of the beginning of the new
age. Look how the prophet Ezekiel sets up a judgment of God’s sheep, and after their
judgment places David over them as shepherd, and foretells that the same man will be their
ruler.

10 And Daniel, having said beforehand, “I kept watching until thrones were set, and the
Ancient of Days sat down; his clothing was white as snow, and the hair of his head like
pure wool; his throne was a flame of fire, its wheels burning fire. A river of fire was
flowing before him; thousands upon thousands served him, and ten thousand times ten
thousand stood before him; the court sat, and books were opened” — after seeing these
things first, he next sees the Son of Man on the clouds of heaven coming to the Ancient of
Days and receiving the imperishable kingdom. So then, at that time too he will have a
beginning of reigning over those worthy of blessedness, in a way surpassing and better
than now. 11 The Gospel bears witness to this, where the Savior himself puts his seal on
the prophetic words, handing on to his disciples the teaching about the end of the age,
saying: “When the Son of Man comes in his glory, and all the angels with him, then he will
sit on the throne of his glory; and all the nations will be gathered before him, and he
will separate them from one another, as the shepherd separates the sheep from the goats,
and he will set the sheep on his right and the goats on his left. Then the king will say
to those on his right: Come, you blessed of my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for
you from the foundation of the world.” Observe how these words agree with what was said in
the prophecy about the judgment of sheep and rams, and how the Son of Man is introduced as
king after the judgment of the sheep, while his Father is God.

12 For he himself taught this when he said, “Then the king will say to those on his right,
Come, you blessed of my Father,” in keeping with the David named in the prophecy. The
prophecy teaches that he will be shepherd and ruler of the sheep, intending to shepherd
and rule God’s flock under God’s oversight. 13 We must also give attention to this: what
the apostle said in the words “when he abolishes all rule and all authority and power” the
prophecy hinted at when it said, “And I will destroy the evil beasts from the earth.” 14
For what could the beasts be, which in earlier times troubled the sheep, other than the
opposing powers? When these have been removed and the new age, made fresh and cleansed of
all evil, comes, it will have the Son of Man as king. Or, according to the prophecy, which
speaks in a hidden way, it will have David as shepherd and ruler, because the Son of Man
came “from the seed” of David. But God is not said to be acquired as its shepherd or
ruler. It will have God himself as God, in a way higher than the thought of a shepherd,
ruler and king. In the splendor of his divine power he will lead not only the sheep but
the shepherd himself. For he says, “My servant David will be a shepherd to them, and I the
Lord will be God to them.” He calls David a servant because of the fact that our Savior
and Lord, “from the seed of David,” took “the form of a servant.”

CHAPTER 18

1 And this was the thrice-blessed end. Our Savior guarantees the promised kingdom of the
heavens to those worthy of it. Then the God over all and his Father, the highest good of
all, will give himself to those who are ruled by the Son, becoming “all in all.” Our
Savior and Lord himself set this forth again when he sent up his great prayer on behalf of
his disciples “to God and Father.” In it he asks, “That they all may be one, just as you,
Father, are in me and I in you, that they also may be one in us, so that the world may
believe that you sent me. 2 And I have given them the glory which you gave me, that they
may be one just as we are one: I in them and you in me, that they may be made perfect into
one, so that the world may know that you sent me and loved them just as you loved me.

3 Father, I want those whom you have given me to be with me where I am, so that they may
see my glory which you have given me.” This is the great intercession of our Savior for
us: that we may be with him wherever he is, and see his glory, and that we may be loved as
his Father loved him. Whatever the Father gave him, may he give the same to us, and the
glory he gave him, may he give the same to us. So he makes us all one, so that we are no
longer many but all of us one, united with his divinity and the glory of his kingdom. This
is not by the blending together of one substance, but by the perfecting of virtue to its
highest point. 4 For this is what he taught when he said, “that they may be made perfect.”
In this way, made perfect by him in wisdom, understanding, righteousness, godliness and
every virtue, we shall be joined to the unspeakable light of the Father’s divinity. We too
shall become lights through our union with him. We shall be made sons of God by sharing in
fellowship with his only-begotten, through participation in the radiant flashes of his
divinity.

CHAPTER 19

1 And in this way indeed we shall all become one with the Father and the Son. For just as
he said that he and the Father are one, saying, “I and the Father are one,” so he prays
that all of us, by imitating him, may share in that same unity. It is not as Marcellus
says, that the Word is united to God and joined to him in substance. It is as the truth
itself testified, the Savior saying, “The glory which you gave me I have given them, that
they may be one just as we are one: I in them and you in me, that they may be made perfect
into one.” For in this way the apostolic saying will then reach its goal, which said,
“that God may be all in all.” 2 Marcellus, and those who are Sabellians in the same way as
he, are accustomed to use three sayings when they try to show that the Father and the Son
are one. Sometimes they keep repeating “I and the Father are one,” sometimes “The Father
is in me and I in the Father,” and “The one who has seen me has seen the Father.” In
answer to “I and the Father are one,” we must bring in the passages set out above, in
which he prays further for his disciples, that they too may all obtain the same union. For
he says, “that they may be one just as we are one.”

3 “I in them and you in me, so that they may be made perfect into one.” As for the words
“The Father is in me and I in the Father,” we will set beside them his own saying, where
he prays on their behalf: “As you, Father, are in me and I in you, so that they also may
be in us, and I have given them the glory that you gave me.” By these words he plainly
shows that the Father is in him in just the way he wants the Father to be in us. This does
not mean that he and the Father are one in a single subsistence. It means that the Father
shared his own glory with him, and that he in turn, imitating the Father, shares what is
his with his own. 4 That is why he says, “And I have given them the glory that you gave
me, so that they may be one as we are one.” “As you, Father, are in me and I in you, so
that they also may be in us.” So the Father and the Son are one in this way: they share a
common glory. The Son shares that glory with his disciples, and he asked that they too be
granted the same unity.

CHAPTER 20

1 And again, in the same way the Father was in him and he was in the Father. The divine
apostle teaches the same about all who are worthy of the heavenly kingdom when he says,
“Then God will be all in all.” So too it is said, “I will dwell in them and walk among
them.” And we too “live and move and exist in him.” All of this is said about us, who each
exist and live in our own subsistence and have nothing in common with the Father’s
divinity. 2 Why, then, should anyone be surprised if similar words are used of the Son?
They do not abolish his own subsistence, nor teach that he is himself both Father and Son.
They show the special and distinguished honor the Father gives him, and the glory of the
sharing that belongs to the only-begotten and divine Son.


ON ECCLESIASTICAL THEOLOGY (BOOK 3, CHAPTER 21)
===============================================

ON ECCLESIASTICAL THEOLOGY continued

CHAPTER 21

1 In the same way, then, “the one who has seen” him “has seen the Father.” This is because
he alone, and no one else, is “the image of the invisible God,” “the radiance of his glory
and the exact imprint of his subsistence,” and exists “in the form of God,” according to
the apostolic teachings. Consider someone who looks at a royal portrait made as an exact
likeness. By tracing the outlines of the features in the painting, he forms a picture of
the king in his mind. In the same way, but far beyond any description and beyond every
comparison, there is the person whose mind is clear, whose soul is cleansed, and whose
eyes are enlightened by the Holy Spirit. He fixes his gaze on the greatness of the power
of the only-begotten Son and Lord. He understands how “in him dwells all the fullness of
the Father’s divinity,” and how “all things came to be through him” and “in him all things
were created, in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible.” He reasons that the Father
begat only him as the only-begotten Son, made like him in every respect. That person will
in power see the Father himself through the Son, as the Father is contemplated by those
whose minds have been purified. Of them it is said, “Blessed are the pure in heart, for
they will see God.”

2 Since my aim is brevity, let this much be worked out here in summary. The matters in
this passage need a very full treatment. Anyone who cares to grasp them accurately should
give his mind to the readings from the Gospels and the apostles and, at leisure, gather
the whole sense from them. As for the countless other things heaped together without order
in Marcellus’s treatise, many of them said against the intention of Scripture, others
forced and keeping no consistency, I consider that his refutation has already been made
plain to sensible people by what we have examined. I will therefore be content with these
points.


SOURCES AND CREDITS
===================

Where each text comes from, and the licence under which it may be reused.

AGAINST THE HEATHEN, BOOK 1 English translation: an older public-domain translation as
collected in the Writings-Database (HistoricalChristianFaith), mostly from the Ante-
Nicene, Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers and similar nineteenth-century editions.
SermonIndex has only divided it into chapters and short sections; the wording is the
translator’s own. No Greek or Latin text is shown beside it yet, and no modern English
version has been made. Licence: Public domain.

AGAINST THE HEATHEN, BOOK 2 English translation: an older public-domain translation as
collected in the Writings-Database (HistoricalChristianFaith), mostly from the Ante-
Nicene, Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers and similar nineteenth-century editions.
SermonIndex has only divided it into chapters and short sections; the wording is the
translator’s own. No Greek or Latin text is shown beside it yet, and no modern English
version has been made. Licence: Public domain.

AGAINST THE HEATHEN, BOOK 3 English translation: an older public-domain translation as
collected in the Writings-Database (HistoricalChristianFaith), mostly from the Ante-
Nicene, Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers and similar nineteenth-century editions.
SermonIndex has only divided it into chapters and short sections; the wording is the
translator’s own. No Greek or Latin text is shown beside it yet, and no modern English
version has been made. Licence: Public domain.

AGAINST THE HEATHEN, BOOK 4 English translation: an older public-domain translation as
collected in the Writings-Database (HistoricalChristianFaith), mostly from the Ante-
Nicene, Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers and similar nineteenth-century editions.
SermonIndex has only divided it into chapters and short sections; the wording is the
translator’s own. No Greek or Latin text is shown beside it yet, and no modern English
version has been made. Licence: Public domain.

AGAINST THE HEATHEN, BOOK 5 English translation: an older public-domain translation as
collected in the Writings-Database (HistoricalChristianFaith), mostly from the Ante-
Nicene, Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers and similar nineteenth-century editions.
SermonIndex has only divided it into chapters and short sections; the wording is the
translator’s own. No Greek or Latin text is shown beside it yet, and no modern English
version has been made. Licence: Public domain.

AGAINST THE HEATHEN, BOOK 6 English translation: an older public-domain translation as
collected in the Writings-Database (HistoricalChristianFaith), mostly from the Ante-
Nicene, Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers and similar nineteenth-century editions.
SermonIndex has only divided it into chapters and short sections; the wording is the
translator’s own. No Greek or Latin text is shown beside it yet, and no modern English
version has been made. Licence: Public domain.

AGAINST THE HEATHEN, BOOK 7 English translation: an older public-domain translation as
collected in the Writings-Database (HistoricalChristianFaith), mostly from the Ante-
Nicene, Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers and similar nineteenth-century editions.
SermonIndex has only divided it into chapters and short sections; the wording is the
translator’s own. No Greek or Latin text is shown beside it yet, and no modern English
version has been made. Licence: Public domain.

AGAINST THE HEATHEN, APPENDIX English translation: an older public-domain translation as
collected in the Writings-Database (HistoricalChristianFaith), mostly from the Ante-
Nicene, Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers and similar nineteenth-century editions.
SermonIndex has only divided it into chapters and short sections; the wording is the
translator’s own. No Greek or Latin text is shown beside it yet, and no modern English
version has been made. Licence: Public domain.

AGAINST HIEROCLES English translation: an older public-domain translation as collected in
the Writings-Database (HistoricalChristianFaith), mostly from the Ante-Nicene, Nicene and
Post-Nicene Fathers and similar nineteenth-century editions. SermonIndex has only divided
it into chapters and short sections; the wording is the translator’s own. No Greek or
Latin text is shown beside it yet, and no modern English version has been made. Licence:
Public domain.

FRAGMENTS OF MARCELLUS OF ANCYRA Greek text: Erich Klostermann’s edition (Eusebius Werke,
Leipzig: J. C. Hinrichs, 1906), digitised by Open Greek and Latin and the First Thousand
Years of Greek project (CC BY-SA 4.0). The English is a new translation made by
SermonIndex with AI directly from the Greek, as a first reading version; it has not been
checked line by line by a person and may contain mistakes. No older English translation
was used. Where the digital Greek is flagged as damaged, the English is a best reading.
Released under CC BY-SA 4.0. Licence: CC BY-SA 4.0.

AGAINST MARCELLUS Greek text: Erich Klostermann’s edition (Eusebius Werke, Leipzig: J. C.
Hinrichs, 1906), digitised by Open Greek and Latin and the First Thousand Years of Greek
project (CC BY-SA 4.0). The English is a new translation made by SermonIndex with AI
directly from the Greek, as a first reading version; it has not been checked line by line
by a person and may contain mistakes. No older English translation was used. Where the
digital Greek is flagged as damaged, the English is a best reading. Released under CC BY-
SA 4.0. Licence: CC BY-SA 4.0.

ON ECCLESIASTICAL THEOLOGY Greek text: Erich Klostermann’s edition (Eusebius Werke,
Leipzig: J. C. Hinrichs, 1906), digitised by Open Greek and Latin and the First Thousand
Years of Greek project (CC BY-SA 4.0). The English is a new translation made by
SermonIndex with AI directly from the Greek, as a first reading version; it has not been
checked line by line by a person and may contain mistakes. No older English translation
was used. Where the digital Greek is flagged as damaged, the English is a best reading.
Released under CC BY-SA 4.0. Licence: CC BY-SA 4.0.