Arnobius: ADVERSVS NATIONES LIBRI VII

1.1. Hoc in loco tribui si ulla facultas posset, vellem cum his omnibus quibus nomen invisum est Christi ab instituta principaliter defensione deverticulo paulisper facto talia verba miscere: 2. ''Si nullam esse ducitis contumeliam respondere aliquid interrogatos, edissertate nobis et dicite: quid rei, quid causae est, quod tam gravibus insectamini Christum bellis, vel | f. 27b | quas eius continetis offensas, ut ad eius nominis mentionem rabidorum pectorum effervescatis ardoribus? 3. Numquid regiam sibi vindicans potestatem terrarum orbem cunctum legionibus infestissimis occupavit et pacatas ab exordio nationes alias delevit ac sustulit alias sibi parere cervicibus compulit subiugatis? 4. numquid ardoribus avaritiae flagrans universas opes illas, quibus se genus humanum studiose contendit impleri, possessionis suae mancipio vindicavit?

1.1. At this point, if any faculty could be granted, I would wish, with all those to whom the name of Christ is hateful, from the defense principally instituted, a little bypath having been made, to mingle such words: 2. ''If you deem it no contumely to answer something when questioned, expound to us and say: what is the matter, what the cause, that you assail Christ with such grievous wars, or | f. 27b | what offenses of his do you contain, that at the mention of his name you effervesce with the ardors of rabid hearts? 3. Has he, vindicating to himself regal power, occupied the whole orb of lands with most pestilent legions and destroyed and removed some nations that were pacified from the beginning, and forced others, with necks subjugated, to obey himself? 4. Has he, blazing with the ardors of avarice, claimed as the mancipium of his possession all those riches with which the human race zealously strives to be filled?

5. numquid libidinum cupiditatibus gestiens pudicitiae repagula vi fregit aut alienis furtim insidiatus est matrimoniis? 6. numquid adrogantiae supercilio tumidus iniurias et contumelias passim sine ullius personae discriminibus inrogavit?''.

5. Did he, exulting in the cupidities of lusts, by force break the barriers of pudicity, or did he stealthily lie in wait for others’ marriages? 6. Did he, swollen with the superciliousness of arrogance, everywhere, without distinctions of any person, inflict injuries and contumelies?''

2.1. ''Et non | f. 28b | in cunctos et lumen praetenderit vitae et periculum ignorationis amoverit?''. 2. - Qui si dignus non esset, cui auscultare deberetis et credere, vel hoc ipso fuerat non aspernandus a vobis, quod salutaria vobis ostenderet, quod vias vobis ad caelum et vota immortalitatis optaret. 3. ''At enim odio dignus est, quod ex orbe religiones expulit, quod ad deorum cultum prohibuit accedi''. 4. - Ergone ille religionis extinctor et impietatis auctor arguitur, qui veram in orbe religionem induxit, qui hominibus caecis et revera in impietate degentibus pietatis aperuit ianuas et cúi se summitterent indicavit? 5. An ulla est religio verior officiosior o potentior iustior, quam deum principem nosse, scire deo principi supplicare, qui bonorum omnium solus caput et fons est, perpetuarum pater fundator et conditor rerum, a quo omnia terrena cuncta que caelestia.

2.1. ''And has he not | f. 28b | also held forth to all the light of life and removed the peril of ignorance?''. 2. - Who, even if he were not worthy—one to whom you ought to listen and to believe—yet for this very reason would not have been to be spurned by you: that he showed you health-giving things, that he desired for you the ways to heaven and the hopes of immortality. 3. ''But indeed he is worthy of hatred, because he expelled religions from the world, because he forbade access to the worship of the gods''. 4. - Therefore is he accused as an extinguisher of religion and an author of impiety, who introduced the true religion into the world, who for men blind and truly living in impiety opened the doors of piety and pointed out to whom they should submit themselves? 5. Or is there any religion more true, more dutiful, or more powerful, more just, than to know the chief God, to know to supplicate the chief God, who alone is the head and fount of all goods, the father, founder, and builder of things everlasting, from whom are all things earthly and all things heavenly.

animantur motu inriganturque vitali, et qui si non esset, nulla profecto res esset quae aliquod nomen substantiamque portaret.

are animated by motion and irrigated with the vital principle, and who, if he did not exist, assuredly there would be no thing that bore any name and substance.

3.1. Nisi forte dubitatis, an sit iste de quo loquimur imperator, et magis esse Apollinem creditis, Dianam Mercurium Martem. 2. Da verum iudicium et haec omnia circumspiciens quae videmus magis an sint dii ceteri dubitabit quam | f. 29 | in deo cunctabitur, quem esse omnes naturaliter scimus, sive cum exclamamus ''o deus'', sive cum illum testem deum constituimus improborum et quasi nos cernat faciem sublevamus ad caelum. 3. ''Sed minoribus supplicare diis homines vetuit''. - Dii enim minores qui sint aut ubi sint scitis?

3.1. Unless perhaps you doubt whether the one of whom we speak is emperor, and you rather believe him to be Apollo, Diana, Mercury, Mars. 2. Give a true judgment, and, surveying all these things that we see, he will more doubt whether the others are gods than | f. 29 | hesitate about God, whom we all naturally know to exist, whether when we exclaim ''o god'', or when we constitute him God as witness of the wicked, and as if he were seeing us we raise our face to heaven. 3. ''But he forbade men to supplicate the lesser gods''. - For the lesser gods—who they are or where they are—do you know?

Perstrinxit vos aliquando suspicio illorum aut mentio, ut merito feratis indigne abrogatos his cultus et honoris inpertitione viduatos? 4. Quod si non mentis elatio et typhus qui appellatur a Graecis obstaret atque officeret vobis, iamdudum scire potuissetis, quid aut quare prohibuerit fieri, intra fines quos stare religionem voluerit veram, quantum vobis periculum nasceretur ex eo quod putaretis obsequio vel ex quibus malis emergeretis, si insidioso renuntiaretis errori.

Has the suspicion of them, or the mention, ever grazed you, so that you rightly bear it indignantly that their cults have been abrogated and they have been widowed of the impartition of honor? 4. But if the puffing-up of mind and the “typhus,” as it is called by the Greeks, did not obstruct and hinder you, you could long since have known what, or why, he has forbidden to be done, within the bounds within which he has willed the true religion to stand, how great a danger would be born for you from that which you deemed obedience, or out of what evils you would emerge, if you renounced the insidious error.

4.1. Verum haec omnia inlustrius commemorabuntur et planius, cum ulterius prorsus fuerimus evecti. Monstrabimus enim Christum non impietatem docuisse nationes, sed ab latronibus pessimis miserorum hominum inprudentiam vindicasse. 2. ''Non credimus, inquitis, vera esse quae dicit''. - Quid enim?

4.1. But all these things will be commemorated more illustriously and more plainly, when we shall have been carried altogether further. For we will show that Christ did not teach impiety to the nations, but rescued the imprudence of wretched men from the worst brigands. 2. ''We do not believe,'' you say, ''that the things he says are true''. - What then?

quae vos negatis vera esse apud vos liquet, cum imminentia et nondum passa nullis possint rationibus refutari? 3. ''Sed et ipse quae pollicetur non probat''. - Ita est: nulla enim, ut dixi, futurorum potest existere comprobatio. 4. Cum ergo haec sit condicio futurorum, ut teneri et comprehendi nullius possint anticipationis attactu, nonne purior ratio est, [et] ex duobus | f. 29b | incertis et in ambigua exspectatione pendentibus id potius credere quod aliquas spes ferat quam omnino quod nullas?

the things which you deny to be true are clear in your case, since things imminent and not yet suffered cannot by any reasons be refuted? 3. ''But he himself does not prove the things he promises''. - So it is: for no comprobation of future things, as I said, can exist. 4. Since therefore this is the condition of future things, that they can be held and comprehended by the touch of no anticipation, is it not the purer reasoning, [and] out of two | f. 29b | things uncertain and hanging in an ambiguous expectation, to believe rather that which bears some hopes than altogether that which bears none?

In illo enim periculi nihil est, quod dicitur imminere cassum <si> fiat et vacuum; in hoc damnum est maximum id est salutis amissio, si cum tempus advenerit aperiatur non fuisse mendacium.

For in the former there is no peril: what is said to impend is hollow, if it come to pass, and empty; in the latter the damage is greatest—that is, the loss of salvation—if, when the time has arrived, it be revealed not to have been a lie.

5.1. Quid dicitis, o nescii, etiam fletu et miseratione dignissimi? Ita non extimescitis, ne forte haec vera sint quae sunt despectui vobis et praebent materiam risus? Nec saltem vobiscum sub obscuris cogitationibus volvitis, ne quod hoc die credere obstinata rennuitis perversitate, redarguat serum tempus et inrevocabilis paenitentia castiget?

5.1. What do you say, O ignorant ones, most worthy even of weeping and commiseration? So you do not dread, lest perhaps these things be true which are for contempt to you and provide matter for laughter? Nor at least do you turn over with yourselves in dark thoughts, lest that which on this day you refuse to believe by obstinate perversity, belated time refute and irrevocable penitence chastise?

2. Nonne vel haec saltem fidem vobis faciunt argumenta credendi, quod iam per omnes terras in tam brevi temporis spatio inmensi nominis huius sacramenta diffusa sunt ; 3. quod nulla iam natio est tam barbari moris et mansuetudinem nesciens, quae non eius amore versa molliverit asperitatem suam et in placidos sensus adsumpta tranquillitate migraverit; 4. quod tam magnis ingeniis praediti oratores grammatici rhetores consulti iuris ac medici, philosophiae etiam secreta rimantes magisteria haec expetunt spretis quibus paulo ante fidebant; 5. quod ab dominis se servi cruciatibus adfici quibus statuerint malunt, solvi coniuges matrimoniis, exheredari a parentibus liberi quam fidem rumpere Christianam et salutaris militiae | f. 30 | sacramenta deponere; 6. quod cum genera poenarum tanta sint a vobis proposita religionis huius sequentibus leges, augeatur res magis et contra omnes minas atque interdicta formidinum animosius populus obnitatur et ad credendi studium prohibitionis ipsius stimulis excitetur? 7. An numquid haec fieri passim et inaniter creditis, fortuitis incursibus adsumi has mentes? itane istud non divinum et sacrum est?

2. Do not at least these arguments for believing produce faith in you, that already through all lands in so brief a span of time the sacraments of this immense Name have been diffused; 3. that there is now no nation of so barbarous a custom and ignorant of gentleness, which has not, turned by love of him, softened its harshness and, tranquility assumed, migrated into placid dispositions; 4. that orators, grammarians, rhetors, jurists and physicians, even probing the secrets of philosophy, seek these magisteria, spurning those which a little before they trusted; 5. that slaves prefer to be subjected to tortures by their masters, whatever they shall have decreed, wives to be loosed from marriages, children to be disinherited by parents, rather than to break the Christian faith and to lay down the sacraments of the salutary militia | f. 30 |; 6. that, although so great kinds of punishments have been proposed by you for those following the laws of this religion, the cause is rather increased, and against all threats and interdictions of terrors the people struggle more boldly, and to the zeal of believing are stirred by the very goads of prohibition? 7. Or do you perchance believe that these things happen everywhere and to no purpose, that these minds are taken up by fortuitous incursions? Is then that not divine and sacred?

8. aut sine deo eorum tantas animorum fieri conversiones, ut, cum carnificis unci aliique innumeri cruciatus quemadmodum diximus inpendeant credituris, velut quadam dulcedine atque | f. 27b | omnium virtutum amore correpti cognitas accipiant rationes atque mundi omnibus rebus praeponant amicitias Christi?

8. or that, without their God, such great conversions of souls take place, that, when the executioner’s hooks and innumerable other torments, as we have said, hang over those about to believe, as if seized by a certain sweetness and | f. 27b | the love of all virtues, they accept the known reasons and prefer the friendship of Christ to all the things of the world?

6.1. Nisi forte obtunsi et fatui videntur hi vobis, qui per orbem iam totum conspirant et coeunt in istius credulitatis adsensum. 2. - Quid ergo? vos soli sapientiae conditi atque intellegentiae vi mera nescio quid aliud videtis et profundum: soli esse nugas intellegitis haec omnia, soli verba et pueriles ineptias ea quae nobis promittimus principali ab rege ventura.

6.1. Unless perhaps these seem to you obtuse and fatuous, those who now throughout the whole orb conspire and come together into the assent of that credulity. 2. - What then? You alone, endowed with wisdom and by the mere force of intelligence, see I-know-not-what other and profound thing: you alone understand that all these things are trifles, you alone that the things which we promise as going to come from the principal King are mere words and puerile ineptitudes.

3. Unde quaeso est vobis tantum sapientiae traditum, unde acuminis et vivacitatis tantum vel ex quibus scientiae disciplinis tantum cordis adsumere, divinationis tantum potuistis hau| f. 28 |rire? 4. Quia per casus et tempora declinare verba scitis et nomina, quia voces barbaras soloecismosque vitare, quia numerosum et structum o compositum que sermonem aut ipsi vos nostis ecferre aut incomptus cum fuerit scire, quia Fornicem Lucilianum et Marsyam Pomponi obsignatum memoria continetis, quia quae sint in litibus constitutiones? quot causarum genera, quot dictionum, quid sit lsgenus, quid species, oppositum a contrario quibus rationibus distinguatur, idcirco vos arbitramini scire, quid sit falsum, quid verum, quid fieri possit aut non possit, quae imorum summorumque natura sit?

3. Whence, I ask, has so much wisdom been handed down to you; whence so much acumen and vivacity; or from what disciplines of science were you able to assume so much heart, to dra| f. 28 |w so much divination? 4. Because you know how to decline words and names through cases and times; because you know how to avoid barbarous voices and solecisms; because you yourselves know how to utter a rhythmical and structured or composite discourse, or, when it has been unkempt, to recognize it; because you retain in memory the Fornix of Lucilius and the Marsyas sealed by Pomponius; because you know what the constitutions are in lawsuits, how many kinds of causes, how many of dictions, what genus is, what species, by what reasons the opposite from the contrary is distinguished—on that account do you imagine you know what is false, what true, what can be done or cannot be done, what the nature of the lowest and the highest things is?

5. Numquam ne illud vulgatum perstrinxit aures vestras, sapientiam hominis stultitiam esse apud deum primum? (cf 1Cor 3,19).

5. Has that commonplace never grazed your ears, that the wisdom of man is foolishness with God to begin with? (cf 1Cor 3,19).

7.1. Atque ipsi penitus perspicitis vos ipsos, si quando de rebus disceptatis obscuris et naturalia pergitis reserare secreta, et ipsa quae dicitis, quae adseveratis, quae capitali plerumque contentione defenditis, nescire vos et unumquemque suspiciones suas < pro > probatis et comprehensis pertinaci obluctatione tutari. 2. Quid enim, si verum perspiciam, etiamsi omnia saecula in rerum investigatione ponantur, scire per nos possumus, quos ita caecos et superbos nescio quae res protulit et concinnavit invidia, ut, cum nihil sciamus omnino, fallamus nos tamen et in opinionem scientiae sub inflati pectoris tumore tollamur? 3. Ut enim divina praeteream et naturali obscuritate res mersas, potest quisquam explicare mortalium, id quod Socrates ille | f. 28b | conprehendere nequit in Phaedro [Pl.Phaedr. 230], homo quid sit aut unde sit, anceps varius mobilis pellax multiplex multiformis, 4. in quos usus prolatus sit, cuius sit excogitatus ingenio, quid in mundo faciat, cur malorum tanta experiatur examina, 5. utrum| f.30 |ne illum tellus uliginis alicuius conversa putore tamquam vermes animaverit, tamquam mures, an fietoris alicuius et fabricatoris manu liniamenta haec eorporis atque oris acceperit formam?

7.1. And you yourselves thoroughly perceive your own selves, whenever, about disputed obscure matters, you proceed to unseal the secrets of nature, that even the very things which you say, which you aver, which you defend for the most part with capital contention, you do not know, and that each one, his suspicions < pro > in place of things proven and comprehended, safeguards with a pertinacious wrestling. 2. For what, if I may see truly, even if all the ages be spent in the investigation of things, can we by ourselves know—we whom some I‑know‑not‑what has brought forth so blind and proud and has contrived with ill‑will—such that, when we know nothing at all, we nevertheless deceive ourselves and are lifted up into the opinion of knowledge under the swelling of an inflated breast? 3. To pass over divine things and matters plunged in natural obscurity, can any mortal explicate that which that Socrates | f. 28b | could not comprehend in the Phaedrus [Pl. Phaedr. 230]: what a human being is or whence he is—ambiguous, various, mobile, wily, manifold, multiform— 4. for what uses he has been brought forth, by whose ingenium he has been devised, what he does in the world, why he undergoes such swarms of evils, 5. whether| f.30 | indeed the earth, turned by the stench of some moisture, has animated him like worms, like mice, or whether by the stench of some [thing] and by a maker’s hand he has received these lineaments of body and of face in form?

6. Potest, inquam, scire in medio haec posita atque in sensibus constituta communibus, quibus causis mergamur in somnos, quibus evigilemus, quibus modis fiant insomnia, quibus visa: 7. immo quod ambigit in Theaeteto Plato [Plat.Theaet. 158 b], vigilemus aliquando an ipsum vigilare quod dicitur somni sit perpetui portio, et quod agere videamur, insomnium; 8. cum videre nos dicimus, radiorum et luminis intentione videamus an rerum imagines advolent et nostris in pupulis sidant; utrum sapor in rebus sit an palati contagionibus fiat quibus ex causis pili nigrorem ingenitum ponant neque omnes pariter sed paulatim adiciendo | f. 30b | canescant; 9. quid sit quod humores universi unum corpus efficiant mixtione, solum oleum respuat immersionem in se pati, sed in suam naturam impenetrabile semper perspicue colligatur; 10. ipse denique animus, qui inmortalis a vobis et deus esse narratur, cur in aegris aeger sit, in infantibus stolidus, in senectute defessus delira effutiat et insana? 11. Quorum infirmitas et inscientia miserabilis hoc magis est, ut cum fieri possit ut veri aliquid aliquando dicamus, et hoc ipsum nobis incertum sit, an veri aliquid dixerimus.

6. Can, I say, one know—these things being set in the midst and established in the common senses—by what causes we are plunged into sleep, by what [causes] we awaken, by what modes dreams come to be, by what visions: 7. nay, that which Plato questions in the Theaetetus [Plat.Theaet. 158 b], whether we ever keep awake, or whether the very “being awake” that is spoken of is a portion of perpetual sleep, and what we seem to do, a dream; 8. when we say that we see, do we see by the intension/aiming of rays and of light, or do the images of things fly toward and settle upon our pupils; whether savor is in things or is made by the contacts/contagions of the palate; by what causes hairs lay aside their inborn blackness and, not all equally but by gradual addition, | f. 30b | grow gray; 9. what it is whereby all fluids by mixture make one body, while oil alone refuses to suffer immersion into itself, but, impenetrable in its own nature, is always clearly gathered to itself; 10. finally, the soul itself, which by you is said to be immortal and a god, why in the sick it is sick, in infants dull, in old age worn out babbles deliriously and insanely? 11. The weakness and pitiable ignorance of which is so much the greater, that although it can happen that we say something true at some time, yet this very thing is uncertain for us, whether we have said anything true.

8.1. Et quoniam ridere nostram fidem consuestis atque ipsam credulitatem facctis iocularibus lancinare, dicite, o festivi et meraco sapientiae tincti et saturi potu, estne operis in vita negotiosum aliquod atque actuosum genus, quod non fide praeeunte suscipiant sumant atque adgrediantur actores? 2. Peregrinamini, navigatis non domum vos credentes peractis negotiationibus remeaturos? Terram ferro scinditis atque oppletis seminum variètate non credentes vos frugem percepturos esse vicibus temporariis?

8.1. And since you are accustomed to laugh at our faith and to lacerate credulity itself with jocular jests, say, O festive ones, tinctured and sated with the unmixed draught of wisdom, is there any business-like and active kind of work in life which the agents do not undertake, assume, and set about with faith going before? 2. You travel abroad, you sail—do you not believe that you will return home when your negotiations have been completed? You cleave the earth with iron and fill it with a variety of seeds, not believing that you will receive the harvest at the seasonal cycles?

3. Coniugalia copulatis consortia non futura esse credentes casta et officiosi foederis in maritos? Liberorum susceptatis prolem non incolumem credentes fore et per gradus aetatis venturam senectutis ad metas? 4. Aegritudines corporum medicorum committitis manibus non credentes morbos posse mitigata asperitate leniri?

3. Do you, when you couple conjugal consortia, not believe that there will be husbands bound by a chaste and dutiful covenant? Do you, taking up the progeny of children, not believe that it will be safe and will, through the gradations of age, come to the goals of old age? 4. Do you commit the ailments of bodies to the hands of physicians, not believing that diseases, their harshness mitigated, can be alleviated?

Bella cum hostibus geritis non victoriam vos credentes | f. 31 | proeliorum successionibus relaturos? 5. Veneramini deos et colitis non credentes illos esse et propitias aures vestris supplicationibus accommodare?

Do you wage wars with enemies, not believing that you will bring back victory | f. 31 | by the successions of battles? 5. Do you venerate the gods and cultivate them, not believing that they exist and that they lend propitious ears to your supplications?

9.1. Quid? illa de rebus ab humana cognitione sepositis, quae conscribitis ipsi, quae lectitatis, oculata vidistis inspectione et manibus tractata tenuistis? nonne vestrum quicumque est huic vel illi credit auctoribus?

9.1. What? those things about matters set apart from human cognition, which you yourselves write down, which you read—did you see with ocular inspection and, handled, hold with your hands? does not each of you believe, in this or that, the authors?

non quod sibi persuaserit quis verum dici ab altero velut quadam fidei astipulatione tutatur? 2. Qui cunctarum <rerum> originem <ignem> esse dicit aut aquam, non Thaleti aut Heraclito credit? qui causam in numeris ponit, non Pythagorae Samio, non Archytae?

not that someone, having persuaded himself that truth is being said by another, safeguards it as if by a certain astipulation of faith? 2. He who says the origin of <things> to be <fire> or water, does he not give credit to Thales or Heraclitus? he who places the cause in numbers, does he not give credit to Pythagoras the Samian, does he not to Archytas?

3. qui animam dividit et incorporales constituit formas, non Platoni Socratico? qui quintum elementum principalibus adplicat causis, non Aristoteli Peripateticorum patri? qui ignem minatur mundo, et venerit cum tempus arsurum, non Panaetio Chrysippo Zenoni?

3. who divides the soul and constitutes incorporeal forms, does he not credit Plato the Socratic? who applies the fifth element to the principal causes, does he not credit Aristotle, father of the Peripatetics? who threatens fire to the world, and that, when the time has come, it will burn, does he not credit Panaetius, Chrysippus, Zeno?

4. qui individuis corporibus mundos semper fabricatur et destruit, non Epicuro Democrito Metrodoro? qui nihil ab homine comprehendi atque omnia caecis obscuritatibus involuta, non Arcesilae, Carneadi, non alicui denique Academiae veteris recentiorisque cultori?

4. he who with indivisible bodies is always fabricating and destroying worlds—does he not belong to Epicurus, Democritus, Metrodorus? he who avers that nothing can be comprehended by man and that all things are wrapped in blind obscurities—does he not to Arcesilaus, to Carneades, or, finally, to some cultivator of the older and the more recent Academy?

10.1. Ipsi demus principes et praedictarum patres sententiarum, nonne ea quae dicunt suis credita suspicionibus dicunt? Vidit enim Heraclitus res ignium conversionibus fieri, concretione aquarum Thales, Pythagoras numeros coire, incorporales | f. 31b | formas Plato, individuorum Democritus concursiones? Aut illi, qui autumant nihil posse omnino conprehendi, an sit verum quod dicunt sciunt, ut ipsum quod definiunt veritatis esse intellegant pronuntiatum?

10.1. Let us ourselves grant them as chiefs and fathers of the aforesaid opinions: do they not say the things they say as things credited to their own suspicions? For Heraclitus saw things come to be by the conversions of fires, Thales by the concretion of waters, Pythagoras that numbers come together, Plato incorporeal | f. 31b | forms, Democritus the concourses of indivisibles. Or do those who affirm that nothing can be comprehended at all know whether what they say is true, so as to understand that the very thing which they define has been pronounced true?

2. Cum igitur comperti nihil habeatis et cogniti omniaque illa quae scribitis et librorum comprehenditis milibus credulitate adseveretis duce, quaenam haec est iudicatio tam iniusta, ut nostram derideatis fidem, quam vos habere conspicitis nostra in credulitate communem? 3. ''Sed sapientibus vos viris omnibusque instructis disciplinarum generibus creditis''. - Nempe illis, qui nihil sciscunt nec pronuntiant unum, qui pro suis sententiis bella cum adversantibus conserunt et pervicacia semper digladiantur hostili, qui cum alter alterius labefactant destruunt convelluntque decreta, cuncta incerta fecerunt nec posse aliquid sciri ex ipsa dissensione monstrarunt.

2. Since, therefore, you have nothing ascertained and nothing known, and all those things which you write and which you comprehend within thousands of books you affirm with credulity as guide, what is this judgment so unjust, that you deride our faith, which you behold yourselves to have in common with us in credulity? 3. ''But you trust wise men and those equipped with all genera of disciplines.'' - Indeed those who inquire into nothing and pronounce not a single thing, who for their opinions wage wars with adversaries and always cross swords with hostile pervicacity, who, since the one undermines, destroys, and tears up the decrees of the other, have made all things uncertain and have demonstrated from the dissension itself that nothing can be known.

11.1. Sed officiant haec nihilque impediant, plurimum quominus eis credere atque auscultare debeatis: et quid est, quod in hac parte aut vos plurimum habeatis aut nos minus? 2. Vos Platoni, vos Cronio, vos Numenio vel cui libuerit creditis: nos credimus et adquiescimus Christo. 3. Iniquitas haec quanta est, ut cum utrique auctoribus stemus sit que nobis et vobis unum et socium credere, vobis velitis dari quod ita ab illis dicatur accipere, nos ea quae proferuntur a Christo | f. 32 audire et spectare nolitis?

11.1. But let these things put up and hinder nothing—least of all your obligation to believe and to hearken to them; and what is there by which, in this matter, either you should have more or we less? 2. You believe Plato, you Cronius, you Numenius, or whomever you please: we believe and acquiesce in Christ. 3. How great is this iniquity, that, since we both stand by authorities and believing is one and common to us and to you, you wish it to be granted to you to accept what is said thus by them, while you are unwilling that we hear and regard the things that are brought forth by Christ | f. 32 to hear and to behold?

4. Atquin si causas causis, partes partibus voluerimus aequare, magis nos valemus ostendere quid in Christo fuerimus secuti quam in philosophis quid vos. 5. Ac nos quidem in illo secuti haec sumus: opera illi magnifica potentissimasque virtutes, quas variis edidit exhibuitque miraculis, quibus quivis posset ad necessitatem credulitatis adduci et iudicare fideliter non esse quae fierent hominis sed divinae alicuius atque incognitae potestatis. 6. Vos in philosophis virtutes secuti quas estis, ut magis vos illis quam nos Christo oportuerit credere?

4. And yet, if we should wish to equal causes with causes, parts with parts, we are more able to show what we have followed in Christ than you what you have (followed) in the philosophers. 5. And indeed in him we have followed these: his magnificent works and most powerful virtues, which he brought forth and displayed by various miracles, by which anyone could be led to the necessity of credulity and judge faithfully that the things being done were not of a man but of some divine and unknown power. 6. What virtues have you followed in the philosophers, such that it should more have behooved you to believe them than us to believe Christ?

Quisquamne illorum aliquando verbo uno potuit aut unius imperii iussione non dicam maris insanias aut tempestatum furores prohibere, compescere, non caecis restituere lumina aut sine luminibus natis dare, non ad vitam revocare defunctos, non annosas dissolvere passiones: sed quod levissimum multo est, fervunculum, scabiem aut inhaerentem spinulam callo una interdictione sanare? 7. Non quo illos negemus aut morum esse integritate laudabiles aut non omni genere studiorum et disciplinarum paratos; nam et verbis eos luculentissimis scimus loqui et compositionibus fluere levigatis, concludere acutissime syllogismos, ordinare sequaciter inductiones, suas reddere definitionibus formulas, partiri, dividere, multa dicere de numerorum generibus, multa de musicis, geometricas res etiam suis scitis et praeceptionibus explicare. 8. Sed quid istud ad causam?

Has any one of those ever, with a single word or by the injunction of a single command—I will not say to prohibit the insanities of the sea or to restrain the furies of storms, not to restore the light to the blind or to grant it to those born without light, not to call back the deceased to life, not to dissolve time-worn afflictions: but, what is by much the lightest, to heal a little boil, a scab, or a little thorn-splinter sticking in a callus, by a single interdiction? 7. Not that we deny them to be praiseworthy for integrity of morals or not prepared in every kind of studies and disciplines; for we know them to speak with most luculent words and to flow with polished compositions, to conclude syllogisms most acutely, to order inductions in a sequacious way, to render to definitions their own formulas, to partition, to divide, to say many things about the kinds of numbers, many about the musical arts, and to explain geometrical matters also by their own knowings and precepts. 8. But what is that to the case?

numquid enthymemata | f. 32b | syllogismi resque aliae similes scire illos veritatem spondent aut ea re digni sunt quibus necessario debeat rebus de obscurissimis credi? Personarum contentio non est eloquentiae viribus set gestorum operum virtute pendenda. Ille <non> est dicendus auctor bonus, qui sermonem candidule prompsit, sed qui quod pollicetur divinorum operum prosequitur sponsione.

Do their knowing of enthymemes | f. 32b | syllogisms, and other similar things guarantee the truth, or for that reason are they worthy that in matters most obscure one must necessarily believe them? The contention of persons is not to be weighed by the forces of eloquence, but by the virtue of deeds accomplished. He is not to be called a good authority, who has neatly brought forth a discourse, but he who follows up what he promises with a pledge of divine works.

12.1. Argumenta vos nobis et suspicionum argutias proferatis: quibus ipse si Christus - cum pace hoc eius et cum venia dixerim - populorum in conventibus uteretur, quis adquiesceret, quis audiret, quis eum promittere aperte aliquid iudicaret, aut quis cassa et nuda iactantem, quamvis esset inprudens et facilitatis stolidae, sequeretur? 2. Virtutes sub oculis positae et inaudita illa vis rerum, vel quae ab ipso fiebant palam vel ab eius praeconibus celebrabantur in orbe toto, ea subdidit adpetitionum flammas et ad unius credulitatis adsensum mente una concurrere gentes et populos fecit et moribus dissimillimas nationes. 3. Enumerari enim possunt atque in usum computationis venire ea quae in India gesta sunt, apud Seras Persas et Medos, in Arabia, Aegypto, in Asia, Syria, apud Galatas Parthos Phrygas, in Achaia Macedonia Epiro, in insulis et provinciis omnibus quas sol oriens atque occidens lustrat, ipsam denique apud dominam Romam, in qua cum homines sint Numae regis artibus atque antiquis superstitionibus occupati, non distulerunt | f. 33 | tamen res patrias linquere et veritati coalescere Christianae.

12.1. You bring forward for us arguments and the subtleties of suspicions: which, if Christ himself—may I say this with his peace and with pardon—were to employ in the assemblies of peoples, who would acquiesce, who would listen, who would judge that he openly promised anything, or who would follow a man vaunting empty and naked things, even though he were imprudent and of stupid credulity? 2. Powers set before the eyes and that unheard-of force of things, whether those which were done openly by himself or those which were celebrated by his heralds throughout the whole world, these set alight the flames of desires and made nations and peoples, with one mind, run together to the assent of a single belief, even nations most dissimilar in customs. 3. For the things that were done in India can be enumerated and brought into the use of computation, among the Seres, Persians, and Medes, in Arabia, Egypt, in Asia, Syria, among the Galatians, Parthians, Phrygians, in Achaia, Macedonia, Epirus, in the islands and in all the provinces which the rising and the setting sun bathes, finally at mistress Rome herself, in which, although men are occupied with the arts of King Numa and with ancient superstitions, they did not delay | f. 33 | nevertheless to leave their ancestral institutions and to coalesce with Christian truth.

4. Viderant enim currum Simonis magi et quadrigas igneas Petri ore difflatas et nominato Christo evanuisse: viderant, inquam, fidentem dis falsis et ab eisdem metuentibus proditum pondere praecipitatum suo cruribus iacuisse praefractis, post deinde perlatum Brundam cruciatibus et pudore defessum ex altissimi culminis se rursum praecipitasse fastigio. 5. Quae omnia vos gesta neque scitis neque scire voluistis neque umquam vobis necessaria iudicastis, ac dum vestris fiditis cordibus et quod typhus est sapientiam vocatis, dedistis circumscriptoribus locum, illis, inquam, noxiis, quorum nomen interest obsolefieri Christianum, superfundendi caligines atque obscurandi res tantas, eripiendae vobis fidei subiciendique contemptus, ut, quia sibi praesentiunt finem pro meritis imminere, vobis quoque immitterent causam, per quam periculum adire possetis et viduari benignitate divina.

4. For they had seen the chariot of Simon the Magus and the fiery quadrigae blown away by Peter’s mouth and, Christ being named, vanish: they had seen, I say, him confiding in false gods and betrayed by those same, in their fear, hurled headlong by his own weight, lying with his legs broken, and afterwards then carried to Brundisium, worn out by torments and by shame, to have hurled himself again headlong from the pinnacle of a most lofty roof-ridge. 5. All which deeds you neither know nor wished to know nor ever judged necessary for yourselves; and while you trust your own hearts and call wisdom what is mere swelling conceit, you have given room to circumventers, to those, I say, noxious men whose interest it is that the Christian name become obsolete, for the pouring-on of mists and the obscuring of such great matters, for the snatching away of your faith and the subjection of you to contempt, so that, because they foresee an end imminent to themselves according to their deserts, they might also inject into you an occasion whereby you could incur danger and be widowed of divine benignity.

13.1. Interea tamen o isti, qui admiramini, qui stupetis doctorum et philosophiae scita, ita non iniustissimum ducitis inequitare, inludere tamquam stulta nobis et bruta dicentibus, cum vel ea vel talia repperiamini et vos dicere quae nobis dici pronuntiari que ridetis? 2. Nec mihi cum his sermo est qui per varia sectarum deverticula dissipati has atque illas partes opinionum diversitate fecerunt: | f. 33b | vos, vos appello qui Mercurium, qui Platonem Pythagoram que sectamini, vosque ceteros, qui estis unius mentis et per easdam vias placitorum inceditis unitate. 3. Audetis ridere nos, quod patrem rerum ac dominum veneramur et colimus quodque illi dedamus et permittamus spes nostras?

13.1. Meanwhile, however, O you who admire, who are stupefied at the dicta of the learned and of philosophy, do you not deem it most unjust thus to ride roughshod, to mock us as though speaking things stupid and brutish, when you are found yourselves also to say these very things or suchlike, which you laugh at as being said and pronounced by us? 2. Nor is my discourse with those who, scattered through the various byways of sects, have made these and those parties by the diversity of opinions: | f. 33b | you, you I address who follow Mercury, who follow Plato and Pythagoras, and you others as well, who are of one mind and walk by the same ways of dogmas in unity. 3. Do you dare to laugh at us, because we venerate and worship the Father and Lord of things, and because we give and permit to Him our hopes?

4. Quid Plato vester in Theaeteto [Plat. Theaet. 173 e], ut eum potissimum nominem, nonne animo fugere suadet e terris et circa illum semper quantum fieri potis est cogitatione ac mente versari?

4. What does your Plato in the Theaetetus [Plat. Theaet. 173 e], that I may name him above all, not urge us to flee in soul from the earth and to revolve around him always, by cogitation and mind, as far as it is possible?

5. Audetis ridere nos, quod mortuorum dicamus resurrectionem futuram, quam quidem nos dicere confitemur sed a vobis aliter quam sentiamus audiri? 6. Quid in Politico idem Plato? [Pl. Polit.

5. Do you dare to laugh at us, because we say that there will be a resurrection of the dead, which indeed we confess we say, but are heard by you otherwise than we mean? 6. What of the same Plato in the Politicus? [Pl. Polit.

270 d] nonne cum mundus occeperit ab occiduis partibus exoriri et in cardinem vergere qui orientis est solis, rursus erupturos homines telluris e gremio scribit senes canos decrepitos et cum anni coeperint accedere longiores per eosdem gradus quibus hodic crescitur ad incunabula infantiae desituros? 7. Audetis ridere nos, quod animarum nostrarum provideamus saluti id est ipsi nobis? quid enim sumus homines nisi animae corporibus clausae?

270 d] does he not write that when the world shall have begun to rise from the occident parts and to incline toward the cardinal point which is the sun’s orient, men—old, hoary, decrepit—will burst forth again from the bosom of the earth, and that when the years begin to draw on longer, by the same steps by which one grows today, they will sink back to the incunabula of infancy? 7. Do you dare to laugh at us, because we provide for the salvation of our souls—that is, for our very selves? for what are we humans if not souls enclosed in bodies?

Vos enim non omnes pro illarum geritis incolumitatibus curas? non quod vitiis omnibus et cupiditatibus abstinetis, metus ille vos habet ne velut trabalibus clavis adfici corporibus haereatis? 8. Quid illi sibi volunt secretarum artium ritus, quibus | f. 34 | adfamini nescio quas potestates, ut sint vobis placidae neque ad sedes remeantibus patrias obstacula impeditionis opponant?

For do not all of you take cares for their safeties? not because you abstain from all vices and cupidities—rather that fear holds you, lest you be fastened to bodies, as if by beam-sized nails? 8. What do those rites of secret arts mean, by which | f. 34 | you address I-know-not-what powers, so that they may be placid to you and may not, for those returning to their fatherland seats, set up obstacles of impediment?

14.1. Audetis ridere nos, cum gehennas dicimus et inextinguibiles quosdam ignes, in quos animas deici ab earum hostibus inimicisque cognovimus? 2. Quid Plato idem vester in eo volumine, quod de animae immortalitate conposuit [Plato, Phaed. 113 d], non Acherontem, non Stygem, non Cocytum fluvios et Pyriphlegethontem nominat, in quibus animas adseverat volvi mergi exuri?

14.1. Do you dare to laugh at us, when we speak of Gehennae and certain inextinguishable fires, into which we have learned that souls are cast down by their enemies and adversaries? 2. What does that same Plato of yours, in that volume which he composed on the immortality of the soul [Plato, Phaed. 113 d], not name Acheron, not Styx, not Cocytus the rivers, and Pyriphlegethon, in which he asserts that souls are rolled, submerged, and burned?

Et homo prudentiae non pravae et examinis iudiciique perpensi rem inenodabilem suscipit, ut cum animas dicat immortales perpetuas et ex corporali soliditate privatas, puniri eas dicat tamen et doloris adficiat sensu. 3. Quis autem hominum non videt quod sit immortale, quod simplex, nullum posse dolorem admittere, quod autem sentiat dolorem, immortalitatem habere non posse? Nec tamen eius auctoritas plurimum a veritate declinat.

And a man of prudence not depraved and of weighed examination and judgment undertakes an inextricable matter, in that, while he says souls are immortal, perpetual, and deprived of corporeal solidity, he nevertheless says they are punished and are affected with a sense of pain. 3. But who of men does not see that what is immortal, what is simple, can admit no pain, and that what feels pain cannot possess immortality? Nor yet does his authority deviate very far from the truth.

Quamvis enim vir lenis et benivolae voluntatis inhumanum esse crediderit capitali animas sententia condemnare, non est tamen absone suspicatus iaci eas in flumina torrentia. flammarum globis et caenosis voraginibus taetra. 4. Iaciuntur enim et ad nihilum redactae interitionis perpetuae frustratione vanescunt.

Although indeed a gentle man and of benevolent will believed it inhuman to condemn souls by a capital sentence, he did not, however, unsuitably suspect that they are cast into torrential rivers, hideous with masses of flames and with muddy chasms. 4. For they are hurled, and reduced to nothing they vanish, in the frustration of perpetual destruction.

5. Sunt enim mediae qualitatis, | f. 34b | sicut Christo auctore compertum est, et interire quae possint deum si ignoraverint, vitae et ab exitio liberari, si ad eius se minas atque indulgentias adplicarint, et quod ignotum est pateat. 6. Haec est hominis mors vera, haec nihil residuum faciens - nam illa quae sub oculis cernitur animarum est a corporibus diiugatio, non finis abolitionis extremus - haec inquam est hominis mors vera, cum animae nescientes deum per longissimi temporis cruciatum consumentur igni fero, in quem illas iacient quidam crudeliter saevi et ante Christum incogniti et ab solo sciente detecti.

5. For they are of a middle quality, | f. 34b | as has been ascertained with Christ as author, and they can perish if they have been ignorant of God, and be liberated to life and from destruction if they shall have attached themselves to his threats and indulgences, and what is unknown may be laid open. 6. This is man’s true death, this leaving nothing remaining - for that which is seen under our eyes is a disjunction of souls from bodies, not the ultimate end of abolition - this, I say, is man’s true death, when souls not knowing God will be consumed by a fierce fire through the torment of a very long time, into which certain men, cruelly savage and unknown before Christ and disclosed by the sole Knower, will cast them.

15.1. Quare nihil est quod nos fallat, nihil quod nobis polliceatur spes cassas, id quod a novis quibusdam dicitur viris et inmoderata sui opinione sublatis, animas immortales esse, domino rerum ac principi gradu proximas dignitatis, genitore illo ac patre prolatas, divinas sapientes doctas neque ulla iam corporis attrectatione contiguas. 2. Quod quia verum et certum est, et a perfecto sumus inemendabili perfectione prolati, inculpabiles et ideo inreprehensibiles vivimus, boni iusti et recti, vitiositatis nullius rei, nulla cupiditas nos vincit, nulla libido dehonestat, virtutum omnium servamus atque integramus tenorem. 3. Et quia uno ex fonte omnium nostrum defluunt animae, idcirco unum conveniensque sentimus, non moribus, non opinionibus discrepamus, idem omnes novimus nec, quot in orbe sunt homines, non sunt sententiae totidem neque infinita varietate | f. 35 | discretae.

15.1. Wherefore there is nothing that deceives us, nothing that promises us empty hopes, that which is said by certain new men, lifted up by an immoderate opinion of themselves: that souls are immortal, next to the lord of things and to the prince in grade of dignity, brought forth from that begetter and father, divine, sapient, learned, and now not contiguous by any handling of the body. 2. And since this is true and certain, and we have been brought forth from the Perfect with unamendable perfection, we live inculpable and therefore irreprehensible, good, just, and straight, of no viciousness in any respect; no cupidity conquers us, no libido dishonors, we preserve and keep intact the tenor of all virtues. 3. And because from one fountain the souls of us all flow down, on that account we think one thing and in concord; we do not differ in morals nor in opinions; we all know the same, nor, as many as there are men in the world, are there just so many judgments, nor separated by infinite variety | f. 35 |.

16.1. Ac dum ad corpora labimur et properamus humana, ex mundanis circulis secuntur nos causae, quibus mali simus et pessimi, cupiditatibus atque iracundia ferveamus, exerceamus in flagitiis vitam et in libidinem publicam venalium corporum prostitutione damnemur. 2. Et quemadmodum se possunt incorporalibus corpora coniungere aut a deo principe res factae ab infirmioribus causis ad vitiorum dehonestamenta traduci? 3. Vultis homines insitum typhum superciliumque deponere, qui deum vobis adsciscitis patrem et cum eo contenditis immortalitatem habere vos unam?

16.1. And while we slip down to bodies and hasten to human ones, from the mundane circles there follow upon us causes whereby we are evil and most evil, we seethe with cupidities and iracundity, we exercise life in flagitious deeds and are condemned into public libido by the prostitution of venal bodies. 2. And how can bodies join themselves to incorporeals, or can things made by God the Prince be transferred by more infirm causes to the dehonestations of vices? 3. Do you wish men to lay aside the implanted typhos and superciliousness, you who ascribe to yourselves God as Father and contend to have one and the same immortality with him?

4. Vultis quaerere pervestigare rimari, quid sitis vos ipsi, cuius sitis, censeamini quo patre, quid in mundo faciatis, quanam ratione nascamini, quo pacto prosiliatis ad vitam? 5. Vultis favore deposito cogitationibus tacitis pervidere animantia nos esse aut consimilia ceteris aut non plurima differitate distantia? 6. Quid est enim, quod nos ab eorum indicet similitudine discrepare?

4. Do you wish to seek, investigate, pry into, what you yourselves are, whose you are, under what father you are to be reckoned, what you do in the world, by what rationale you are born, in what manner you spring forth into life? 5. Do you wish, favor set aside, to perceive clearly, with silent thoughts, that we are animate beings, either very similar to the rest, or not far distant by much difference? 6. For what is there that indicates us to differ from their similitude?

Vel quae in nobis eminentia tanta est, ut animantium numero dedignemur adscribi? 7. Ex ossibus illis fundata sunt corpora et nervorum conligatione devincta: et nobis comparili ratione ex ossibus fundata sunt corpora et nervorum conligatione devincta. 8. Auras accipiunt naribus et per anhelitum reciprocatas reddunt: et nos spiritum consimiliter ducimus et respiramus commeatibus crebris.

Or what so great eminence is there in us, that we disdain to be ascribed to the number of living beings? 7. Their bodies are founded from those bones and bound by a ligature of sinews; and our bodies by a comparable reasoning are founded from bones and bound by a ligature of sinews. 8. They receive the airs with their nostrils and, by panting, render them back reciprocated; and we likewise draw spirit and breathe out with frequent comings-and-goings.

9. Femininis generibus masculinisque distincta sunt: | f. 35b | in totidem et nos sexus nostro sumus ab auctore formati. Edunt per uteros fetus et corporalibus conciliis procreant; et nos corporum coniugationibus nascimur et ex alveis fundimur atque emittimur matrum. 10. Cibo sustentantur et potu et superfluas foeditates inferioribus egerunt abiciuntque posticis: et nos cibo sustentamur et potu et quod natura iam respuit per eosdem effundimus tramites.

9. They are distinguished by feminine and masculine kinds: | f. 35b | into just as many sexes we too have been formed by our Author. They bring forth offspring through wombs and procreate by bodily unions; and we are born by couplings of bodies and are poured out and sent forth from the channels of mothers. 10. They are sustained by food and drink, and they expel superfluous foulnesses by the lower parts and cast them away by the hind parts: and we are sustained by food and drink, and what nature now rejects we pour out through the same passages.

11. Cura illis est omnibus famem prohibere mortiferam et necessario invigilare pro victu: quid aliud nos tantis agimus in occupationibus vitae, nisi ut ea quaeramus quibus famis periculum devitetur et infelix sollicitudo ponatur? 12. Morbos illa et inedias sentiunt et ad ultimum senectute solvuntur: quid enim? nos immunes malis ab his sumus et non eadem ratione morborum incommoditatibus frangimur et senectutis destruimur tabe?

11. Their care is, in all things, to forbid death-bearing hunger and of necessity to keep watch for sustenance: what else do we accomplish in such great occupations of life, except that we seek those things by which the danger of hunger may be avoided and unhappy solicitude may be laid down? 12. They feel diseases and starvations and at the last are dissolved by old age: what then? are we immune from these evils and are we not broken by the incommodities of diseases in the same manner and destroyed by the wasting of old age?

13. Quod si et illud est verum, quod in mysteriis secretioribus dicitur, in pecudes atque alias beluas ireanimas improborum, postquam sunt humanis corporibus seiunctae, manifestius comprobatur vicinos nos esse neque intervallis longioribus disparatos. Siquidem res eadem nobis et illis est una, per quam esse animantia dicimur et motum agitare vitalem.

13. But if also that is true, which in the more secret mysteries is said, that the souls of the wicked go into cattle and other beasts, after they have been separated from human bodies, it is more manifestly confirmed that we are neighbors and not separated by longer intervals. Since indeed the same one thing is for us and for them, through which we are said to be animate beings and to agitate vital motion.

17.1. ''Sed rationales nos sumus et intellegentia vincimus genus omne mutorum''. - Crederem istud verissime dici, si cum ratione et consilio cuncti homines viverent, servarent officiorum tenorem, abstinerent ab inlicitis sese, | f. 36 | negotia turpia non adirent, neque quisquam pravitate consilii atque ignorantiae caecitate contraria sibimet atque inimica deposceret. 2. Vellem tamen scire quaenam sit haec ratio, per quam sumus potiores animalium generibus cunctis. 3. Quia nobis domicilia fecimus, quibus possimus hiemalia frigora et aestatis flagrantias evitare?

17.1. ''But we are rational, and by intelligence we conquer every kind of the mute.'' - I would believe that to be said most truly, if all men lived with reason and counsel, kept the tenor of duties, abstained themselves from illicit things, | f. 36 | did not undertake shameful businesses, and if no one, through the depravity of counsel and the blindness of ignorance, demanded things contrary and inimical to himself. 2. I would wish, however, to know what this reason is, by which we are superior to all the genera of animals. 3. Because we have made domiciles for ourselves, by which we can avoid the wintry colds and the flagrant heats of summer?

4. Quid, animantia cetera huius rei providentiam non habent? Nonne alia cernimus opportunissimis sedibus nidulorum sibi construere mansiones, alia se saxis et rupibus tegere et communire suspensis, excavare alia telluris sola et in fossibilibus foveis tutamina sibimet et cubilia praeparare? 5. Quodsi ministras manus illis etiam donare parens natura voluisset, dubitabile non foret, quin et ipsa construerent moenium alta fastigia et artificiosas excuderent novitates.

4. What? do the other living creatures not have providence for this matter? Do we not see some building for themselves dwellings of nests in the most very suitable seats, others covering and fortifying themselves upon rocks and cliffs in overhanging places, others excavating the floors of the earth and in excavable fosses preparing for themselves protections and lairs? 5. And if parent nature had even wished to bestow ministering hands upon them as well, it would not be doubtful that they too would construct the lofty summits of ramparts and would hammer out artificial novelties.

Tamen in his ipsis quae rostris atque unguibus faciunt, multa inesse conspicimus rationis et sapientiae simulacra, quae homines imitari nulla meditatione possimus, quamvis sint nobis opifices manus atque omni genere perfectionis artifices.

Yet in these very things which they accomplish with beaks and claws, we behold many simulacra of reason and of sapience, which we humans could by no meditation imitate, although we have hands as artificers and artisans of every kind of perfection.

18.1. ''Vestem illa non norunt, sellas naves atque aratra conpingere nec denique superlectilem ceteram quam familiaris usus exposcit''. - Non sunt ista scientiae munera sed pauperrimae necessitatis inventa. Neque cum animis artes caeli ex penetralibus ceciderunt, sed exquisitae et natae sunt in terris hic omnes et cum processu | f. 36b | temporum paulatim meditatione conflatae. 2. Quodsi haberent scientias animae, quas genus et habere divinum atque immortale condignum est, ab initio homines cuncti omnia scirent nec saeculum essct ullum, quod artis esset ignarum alicuius aut rerum experientia non paratum.

18.1. ''They do not know clothing, to piece together saddles, ships, and ploughs, nor finally the rest of the household furnishings which familiar use demands''. - These are not gifts of science but inventions of most beggarly necessity. Nor did the arts fall down with souls from the inner sanctuaries of heaven, but all of them were devised and born here on earth and, with the progress | f. 36b | of time, were gradually conflate by meditation. 2. But if souls had sciences, which it is condign for a divine and immortal race to have, from the beginning all humans would know everything, nor would there be any age that was ignorant of any art or not prepared by experience of things.

- Nunc vero inops vita et multarum indigens rerum fortuita conspiciens quaedam commodule provenire, dum imitatur experitur et temptat, dum labitur reformat immutat, ex adsidua reprehensione parvas et concinnavit scientiolas artium et ad unum exitum temporibus plurimis coemendata perduxit.

- Now indeed, life, poor and in need of many things, observing that certain fortuitous things come about commodiously, while it imitates it makes trial and attempts, while it slips it reforms and changes, from assiduous reprehension it has neatly concinnated little sciences of the arts and, amended through very many times, has brought them to a single issue.

19 Quodsi homines penitus aut ipsos se nossent aut intellectum dei suspicionis alicuius acciperent aura, numquam sibi adsciscerent divinam immortalemque naturam nec existimarent quiddam magnificum se esse, quia sibi craticulas trulleos creterrasque fecerunt, quia subuculas suppara laenas lacernulas trabeas cultros loricas et gladios, quia rastrs securiculas vomerem. 2. Numquam, inquam, crederent typho et adrogantia sublevati prima esse se numina et aequalia principis summitati, quia grammaticam musicam oratoriam pepererunt et geometricas formulas: in quibus artificiis quidnam insit admirabile non videmus, ut ex eorum inventione credatur esse animas potiores et sole et sideribus cunctis, hunc totum, cuius membra sunt | f. 37 | haec, mundum et dignitate et substantia praeterire. 3. Quid enim aliud se spondent vel insinuare posse vel tradere, quam ut regulas nominum differentiasque noscamus, ut intervalla in vocum sonis, ut loquamur suadenter in litibus, ut terrarum continentias metiamur?

19 But if human beings thoroughly either knew themselves or caught, as on a breath, some suspicion of the intellect of God, they would never ascribe to themselves a divine and immortal nature, nor would they think themselves something magnificent because they have made for themselves little grates, trowels, and craters, because they have made undershirts, suppara, cloaks, little lacernae, trabeae, knives, cuirasses, and swords, because (they have made) rakes, little axes, and the ploughshare. 2. Never, I say, lifted up by typhos and arrogance, would they believe themselves to be prime divinities and equal to the Prince’s summit, because they have engendered grammar, music, oratory, and geometric formulas: in which crafts we do not see what there is that is admirable, such that from their invention souls should be believed to be superior both to the sun and to all the stars, to surpass this whole, of which these are the members | f. 37 |, the world, both in dignity and in substance. 3. For what else do they promise that they can insinuate or hand down, than that we may know rules and differences of nouns, that we may know the intervals in the sounds of voices, that we may speak persuasively in lawsuits, that we may measure the continents of the earth?

4. Quae si secum animae divinis ex regionibus adtulissent, ea esset necessarium scire omnis, ea iamdudum in omni orbe tractarent neque ullum hominum repperiretur genus, quod non esset his omnibus aequaliter atque uniformiter eruditum. 5. Nunc vero in mundo quotusquisque est musicus dialecticus et geometres, quotus orator poeta grammaticus? Ex quo apparet, ut saepius dictum est, inventa haec esse locorum necessitate ac temporum neque divinas eruditas advolavisse huc animas, quod neque omnes doctae sint neque discere omnes possint, at sint in his plurimae acuminis obtunsioris et bardi et ad discendi studium plagarum coercitione cogantur.

4. Which things, if souls had brought them with themselves from divine regions, it would be necessary for all to know these, they would long since be handled in the whole orb, nor would any race of men be found, which would not be educated in all these equally and uniformly. 5. Now indeed in the world what proportion is a musician, a dialectician, and a geometer, what proportion an orator, a poet, a grammarian? Whence it appears, as has been said more often, that these are inventions from the necessity of places and times, and that learned divine souls have not flown hither, because not all are learned nor can all learn, but among these there are very many of more blunted acuity and dull-witted, and are driven to the pursuit of learning by the coercion of blows.

6. Quodsi ea quae discimus reminiscentias esse constaret, ut antiquis opinionibus scitum est, conveniebat nos omnes ab una veritate venientes unum nosse unumque reminisci, non habere diversas, non plurimas dissidentisque sententias; nunc vero cum singuli aliud atque aliud adseramus, manifestum et promptum est nihil nos adtulisse de caelo, sed hic nata addiscere o et suspicionibus coalita vindicare.

6. But if it were established that the things which we learn are reminiscences, as by ancient opinions it has been decreed, it was fitting that we all, coming from one truth, should know one thing and remember one thing, not have diverse, not very many and discordant opinions; but now, since individuals assert one thing and another, it is manifest and plain that we have brought nothing from heaven, but that, born here, we learn and vindicate things coalesced from suspicions.

20.1. Et ut vobis clarius manifestiusque monstremus, cuius sit / f. 37b | pretii homo, quem simillimum creditis potentiae superioris existere, concipite animis hanc imaginem vestris et, quod fieri si adgrediamur potest, tamquam si simus adgressi, similitudinis adsumptione teneamus. 2. Sit igitur nobis tellure in effossa locus habitabilis formam cubilis efficiens, tecto et parietibus clausus, non algidus in frigore, non fervoris nimii in calore, sed ita temperatus et medius ut nec frigoris sensum nec ardorem validum perpetiamur aestatis. 3. In hunc sonus omnino nullius incidat vocis, non avis, non bestiae, non tempestatis, non hominis, non denique fragoris alicuius aut concrepantis terribiliter caeli.

20.1. And that we may show you more clearly and more manifestly of what / f. 37b | price man is, whom you believe to exist most similar to the superior potency, conceive in your minds this image, and, since it can be done if we set about it, let us hold, as if we had set about it, by the assumption of a similitude. 2. Let there be for us, then, in earth excavated, a habitable place, producing the form of a chamber, closed with roof and walls, not chilly in cold, not of excessive fervor in heat, but so tempered and middling that we undergo neither a sense of cold nor the strong burning of summer. 3. Into this let the sound of no voice at all fall, not of bird, not of beast, not of storm, not of man, nor finally of any crash or of the sky cracking terribly.

Excogitemus deinde quemadmodum lumen accipiat: non ex inlato igni neque ex sole conspecto sed nothum aliquid fiat, quod imaginem luminis caligine interposita mentiatur; ianua non una sit nec sit introitus rectus, adeatur inflexibus flexuosis nec recludatur aliquando, nisi cum necessaria ratio postularit.

Let us then think out how it might receive light: not from a brought-in fire nor from the sun being beheld, but let some spurious thing be made, which would counterfeit the image of light with murkiness interposed; let the door not be single nor the entrance straight; let it be approached by flexuous inflexions, nor ever be opened, unless necessary reason shall have required it.

21.1. Nunc quoniam imagini praeparavimus sedem, accipiamus deinceps mox aliquem natum et in loci illius hospitium, quod habeat rem nullam et sit inane ac vacuum, Platonica licet aut Pythagorea progenie aut horum alicuius, qui acuminis perhibentur fuisse diuini aut ex deum responsis sapientissimi nuncupati. 2. Quod cum actum fuerit, | f. 38 | nutriri ut debeat sequitur et alimoniis convenientibus educari. Adhibeamus igitur et nutricem, quae semper ad eum nuda, semper silens accedat, verbum nullum faciens nec in sermonis alicuius ora et labra diducat, sed cum mammas dederit et consequentia supplerit officia, datum quieti linquat et ante fores clausas dies noctesque continuet: poscit enim plerumque res, nutricias adesse curas et observari temporarios motus.

21.1. Now, since we have prepared a seat for the image, let us next at once receive someone newborn and into the hospitality of that place, which has no thing and is void and empty—of Platonic or Pythagorean progeny, if you please, or of some one of these who are reported to have had divine acumen or are named most wise from the responses of the gods. 2. When this has been done, | f. 38 | it follows that he ought to be nourished and to be brought up with suitable alimonies. Let us therefore also bring in a nurse, who may always approach him naked, always silent, making no word, nor draw her mouth and lips into the of any speech; but when she has given the breasts and supplied the consequent offices, let her leave him given over to rest and keep vigil before the closed doors days and nights: for the matter for the most part demands that nursing cares be present and that temporary motions be observed.

3. At vero cum coeperit solidioribus cibis infans debere fulciri, nutrice inferantur ab eadem, veste ut diximus posita et tenore reticentiae servato. Ipse autem qui infertur cibus sit unus atque idem semper, nihil materia differens nec per varios redintegratus sapores, sed aut fitilla de milio aut sit panisex farre aut, ut saecula imitemur antiqua, ex cinere caldo glandes aut ex ramis agrestibus baculae. 4. Potio autem vini sit prorsus incognita nec sedandae aliud admoveatur siti quam liquor purus e fontibus caldore ignis intactus et, si fieri potis est, manibus subministratus cavis.

3. But indeed when the infant shall begin to need to be supported by more solid foods, let them be brought in by the same nurse, with her garment, as we said, laid aside, and with the tenor of reticence maintained. But the food that is brought in be one and the same always, differing in no material and not renewed through various flavors, but either a fritter of millet, or bread from spelt, or, to imitate the ancient ages, acorns from warm ash, or little sticks from rustic branches. 4. And let a drink of wine be utterly unknown, nor let anything else be applied for allaying thirst than pure liquid from springs, untouched by the heat of fire and, if it can be done, supplied by hollowed hands.

Fiet enim familiaris e more consuetudo in naturam versa nec adpetitio porrigetur ulterius, esse amplius nesciens quod petatur.

For from usage a familiar custom will be made, turned into nature, and appetite will not be extended further, not knowing that there exists anything more to be sought.

22.1. Quorsum igitur haec spectant? Ut, quoniam creditum est animas divinas a deo immortales esse et ad hominum corpora disciplinis cum omnibus advolare, experiamur ex isto quem hoc genere voluimus educari, capiatne res fidem an sit leviter credita et frustrabili | f. 38b | expectatione praesumpta. 2. Procedat igitur nobis solitudine in operta nutritus quot vultis annos agens, vultis vicenarius, vultis tricenarius, immo cum annos fuerit quadraginta permensus, mortalium conciliis inferatur, et si verum est illum principalis esse substantiae portionem, iam laetae ex fontibus vitae derivatum hic agere, antequam notitiam rei sumat alicuius aut sermone imbuatur humano, det responsum rogatus, quisnam sit ipse aut quo patre, quibus sit in regionibus editus, quo pacto aut quanam ratione nutritus, quid operis aut negotii celebrans ante acti temporis decurrerit aevitatem: 3. ita ille non omni pecore ligno saxo obtunsior atque hebetior stabit, non missus in res novas et numquam sibi ante eognitas ipsum sese est ante omnia nesciturus?

22.1. To what, therefore, do these things point? Since it has been believed that divine souls from God are immortal and fly to the bodies of men together with all disciplines, let us make trial from this one whom we wished to be brought up by this kind, whether the matter takes credence or has been lightly believed and presumed on a frustrable | f. 38b | expectation. 2. Let him then come forth to us, nourished in hidden solitude, passing as many years as you wish—if you wish, twenty years old, if you wish, thirty years old—nay, when he shall have traversed forty years, let him be brought into the councils of mortals; and if it is true that he is a portion of the principal substance, already derived from the fountains of life to live here, before he takes up knowledge of any thing or is imbued with human speech, let him, when asked, give an answer who he himself is and from what father, in what regions he was brought forth, in what way or by what reason he was nourished, what work or business, practicing it, he has run through in the span of time already past of his age: 3. will he not thus stand more blunted and duller than any beast, wood, or stone, and, being sent into new things and never before known to himself, will he not, before all else, be about to be ignorant of himself?

Poteritne, si quaeras, sol quid sit ostendere, terra maria sidera nubes nebula pluviae tonitrua nix grando? poterit arbores scire quid sint, herbae aut gramina, taurus equus aut aries, eamellus elephantus aut milvus?

Will he be able, if you ask, to show what the sun is, the earth, the seas, the stars, the clouds, the mist, the rains, the thunders, the snow, the hail? will he be able to know what trees are, herbs or grasses, a bull, a horse or a ram, a camel, an elephant or a kite?

23.1. Esurienti si dederis uvam mustaceum caepe carduum cucumerem ficum, sciet posse sedari omnibus ex his famem aut quo genere singula esse debeant esui? Ignem si plurimum feceris aut venenatas circumposueris bestias, nonne ibit per medias flammas viperas solifugas, esse noxias nesciens et timere ipsum quid sit ignorans? iam vero si vestem, si superlectilem ponas in medio tam urbanam | f. 39 | quam rusticam, eritne, idem ut possit diseriminare, discernere, cui negotio res quaeque conveniat, cuius muneris adcommodata sint usui?

23.1. If to one hungry you should give a grape, a must-cake, an onion, a cardoon, a cucumber, a fig, will he know that hunger can be allayed by all of these, or by what manner each ought to be for eating? If you should make a very great fire or set venomous beasts around, will he not go through the midst of flames, vipers, solifuges, not knowing that they are noxious and ignorant what fear itself is? Now indeed, if you place in the midst clothing, if furnishings, as well urban | f. 39 | as rustic, will he be, likewise, so as to be able to discriminate, to discern, to what business each thing is suitable, to what office they are accommodated for use?

2. Indicet in quos habitus vestis stragula facta sit, mitra strophium fascia pulvinus mucinnium laena calautica mantele mastruca soccos solea calceos? Quid si adicias quaerere rota quid sit aut tribula, vannus dolium cupa, trapetum vomis aut cribrum, mola buris aut sarculum? quid arquata si sellula, acus strigilis polubrum siliquastrum trulla lancicula candelabrum batioca scopae scyphus saccus?

2. Let him indicate for which outfits a stragular garment (coverlet-cloth) has been made: a mitre, a strophium (breast-band), a fascia (band), a cushion, a mucinnium, a laena (cloak), a calautica, a mantele (towel/napkin), a mastruca (sheepskin cloak), socks (soccos), a sandal (solea), shoes? What if you add to inquire what a wheel is or a tribulum (threshing-sledge), a winnowing-fan (van), a dolium (great jar), a cupa (tub/barrel), a trapetum (olive-mill), a vomer (ploughshare) or a sieve, a millstone (mola), a buris (plough-beam) or a hoe (sarculum)? what if an arched little seat, a needle, a strigil, a wash-basin (polubrum), a siliquastrum, a ladle (trulla), a little dish (lancicula), a candelabrum, a batioca, brooms, a scyphus (cup), a sack?

quid si cithara tibia argentum aes aurum code? radius liber? quid instrumenta si cetera quibus vita succingitur et continetur humana?

What if it be the cithara, the tibia (pipe), silver, bronze, gold, a whetstone? a spoke, a book? what if it be the other instruments by which human life is girded and held together?

3. Ita ut diximus ille non bovis ritu aut asini, porci aut si ullum est animal tardius, conspiciet haec quidem formaturas varias respectans set quae sint singula nesciens et quam in causam possideantur ignorans? Nonne vocem si fuerit necessitate aliqua coactus emittere, ut solemne est mutis, inarticulatum nescio quid ore hiante clamabit?

3. Thus, as we said, he—not in the rite of an ox or an ass, a pig, or, if there is any animal slower—will behold these things, indeed regarding the various formations, yet not knowing what each individual thing is and ignorant for what cause they are possessed? Will he not, if compelled by some necessity to emit a voice, as is customary with the mute, cry out with gaping mouth some I-know-not-what inarticulate?

24.1. Quid in Menone, o Plato [Plato,Men. 82], quaedam rationibus numeri admota ex puerculo sciscitaris et ex eius niteris responsionibus comprobare, quae discamus non discere sed in eorum memoriam quae antiquitus noveramus redire? Qui si tibi vere respondet - non enim nos convenit fidem rebus abiudicare quas dicis - non rerum scientia sed intellegentia ducitur, et ex eo quod aliquos numeros cottidianis habet ex usibus notos fit ut sequatur rogatus et ipsa illum semper | f. 39b | multipilicationis adducat accessio. 2. Quodsi vere confidis immortales huc animas et plenas scientiae pervolare, adulescentulum istum rogare desinito, quem esse conspicis gnarum rerum et humanitatis esse in finibus constitutum: quadragenarium istum ad te voca et ex eo percontare non abstrusum aliquid, non involutum, non de triangulis, non de quadratis, quid sit cubus aut dynamis, sesqueoctavus aut sesquetertius ultimus , sed quod in medio situm est, bis bina, bis terna quam efficiant summulam quaerito.

24.1. What in the Meno, O Plato [Plato,Men. 82], do you inquire by certain reasonings of number applied from a little boy, and strive from his responses to demonstrate that what we learn is not learning but a returning into the memory of those things which we once long ago knew? If he answers you truly—for it is not fitting for us to disallow faith to the matters you state—he is led not by knowledge of things but by intellection; and from the fact that he has certain numbers known from everyday uses it comes about that he follows when questioned, and the very accession of multiplication always leads him on | f. 39b |. 2. But if you truly trust that immortal souls, full of knowledge, fly hither, stop asking that young lad, whom you see to be knowing of things and to be set within the limits of humanity: call to you that man of forty and from him inquire not something abstruse, not something involved, not about triangles, not about squares, what a cube or a dynamis is, the sesquioctave or the sesquitertian the ultimate, but what lies in the middle—ask what little sum twice two, twice three produce.

3. Volumus videre, volumus scire, quid rogatus respondeat, an inquisitam expediat quaestionem. Ita ille sensurus est, quamvis ei pateant aures, an aliquid dicas, an aliquid quaeras, an tibi ab sese responderi aliquid postules? Et non stipes ut aliquis aut Marpesia ut dictum est [Verg.

3. We want to see, we want to know, what he, when asked, might answer, whether he might expedite the inquired question. Thus will he be aware, although his ears stand open to him, whether you say anything, whether you ask anything, whether you demand that anything be answered to you by himself? And is he not a blockhead like some fellow, or Marpesian (stone), as it has been said [Verg.

Aen. 6, 471] rupes stabit elinguis et mutus, hoc ipsum ignorans et nesciens, secum potius an cum altero conloquaris, cum altero sermocineris an secum, oratio sit ista quam promis an sonitus vocis nihil rerum significans sed inani continuatione pertractus?

Aen. 6, 471] a cliff will stand tongueless and mute, ignorant and unaware of this very thing, whether you are conversing with yourself or with another, whether you are holding colloquy with another or with yourself, whether that which you put forth is an oration, or a sound of the voice signifying nothing of things but drawn out in empty continuation?

25.1. Quid dicitis, o viri plus quam satis est vobis ex aliena generositate tribuentes? Haecine est anima docta illa quam dicitis, immortalis perfecta divina, post deum principem rerum et post mentes geminas locum optinens quartum et afluens ex crateribus vivis? 2. Hic est ille pretiosus et rationibus homo augustissimis praeditus, mundus minor qui dicitur et totius in speciem similitudinis fabricatus | f. 40 | atque formatus: nullo melior ut apparuit pecore, obtunsior ligno, saxo, qui nesciat homines et in mutis semper solitudinibus degat, demoretur iners, valeat inaniter , quamvis annis vivat innumeris et numquam nodis corporeis eximatur.

25.1. What do you say, O men who bestow upon yourselves more than is sufficient from another’s nobility? Is this that learned soul which you say is immortal, perfect, divine, holding, after God the prince of things, and after the twin minds, the fourth place, and overflowing from living craters? 2. This is that precious man, endowed with the most august rational principles, the so‑called lesser world and fashioned into the semblance of the whole | f. 40 | and formed: no better, as it has appeared, than any beast, more obtuse than wood, than stone, who should not know men and should always live in mute solitudes, should linger inert, let him avail to no purpose , although he should live for numberless years and never be freed from corporeal knots.

Sed cum scholas attigerit et magistrorum fuerit institutionibus eruditus, efficitur prudens, doctus et quam nuper habuerat imperitiam ponit. 3. Et asellus et bos aeque usu atque adsiduitate cogendi discit arare ac molere, equus iugum subire et agnoscere in curriculo flexiones, camellus sese summittere sive cum sumit onera sive cum ponit, columba manumissa revolare ad dominicas sedes, canis cum invenerit praedam cohibere et continere latratum, verba psittacus et integrare et nomina corvus expromere.

But when he has reached the schools and has been educated by the instructions of teachers, he becomes prudent, learned, and lays aside the inexperience which he had lately possessed. 3. And the donkey and the ox alike, by use and the assiduity of being driven, learn to plow and to grind; the horse to undergo the yoke and to recognize the turns on the racecourse; the camel to lower himself whether when he takes up burdens or when he sets them down; the hand‑tamed dove to fly back to the master’s dwelling; the dog, when it has found prey, to restrain and contain its barking; the parrot to articulate words fully, and the raven to bring forth names.

26.1. Sed ego cum audio nescio quid praestans animam dici, deo vicinum et proximum, scientem huc omnia superioribus adventare de saeculis, nolo illam discere set docere nec ex docta ut dicitur elementariam fieri sed retinentem res suas corporibus semet circumligare terrenis. Nisi enim sese habuerit res ita, discerni qui poterit, utrumne illud quod audit reminiscatur an discat, cum multo facilius credere, discere illam quod nesciat quam oblitam quod paulo ante sciebat. 2. ''Ex oppositu corporis amittit repetentiam priorum'' [Plat.,Phaedr. 248 a-c]. - Et ubi est illud quod dicitur, incorporalis animas substantiam non habere?

26.1. But when I hear the soul being called something outstanding, neighboring and proximate to God, knowing that all things are arriving hither from higher ages, I do not want it to learn but to teach, nor from being learned, as it is said, to become elementary, but, retaining its own things, to bind itself about with earthly bodies. For unless the matter has itself thus, who will be able to discern whether that which he hears he is remembering or learning, since it is much easier to believe that it is learning what it does not know than that, having forgotten, what a little before it knew. 2. ''From the opposition of the body it loses the repetition of former things'' [Plat.,Phaedr. 248 a-c]. — And where is that which is said, that incorporeal souls do not have substance?

Quod enim nullius est corporis, oppositione alterius non inpeditur nec potest aliquid sua de re perdere | f. 40 b | id quod non potest tactum rei oppositae sustinere. Ut enim numerus sine corporibus constitutus, quamvis mille corporibus obruatur, intactus et inviolabilis constat, ita necesse est animas, si sunt ut perhibetur incorporeae, oblivionem priorum nullam pati, quamvis eas solidissimae corporum circumligaverint vinctiones. 3. Quid quod eadem ratio non tantum incorporeas indicat eas non esse, verum etiam privat immortalitate has omnis et ad fines adplicat quibus vita consueta est terminari?

For that which belongs to no body is not impeded by the opposition of another, nor can it lose anything of its own matter—| f. 40 b | seeing that it cannot sustain the touch of an opposed thing. For as number, established without bodies, although it be overwhelmed by a thousand bodies, stands untouched and inviolable, so it is necessary that souls, if they are, as is maintained, incorporeal, suffer no oblivion of former things, although the most solid bindings of bodies have bound them round. 3. What moreover of this, that the same reasoning not only indicates that they are not incorporeal, but even deprives all these of immortality and attaches them to the boundaries at which life is wont to be terminated?

Quicquid enim causa ingruente nonnulla ita mutatur et vertitur ut integritatem suam retinere non possit, id necesse est iudicari natura esse passivum. Quod autem est promptum atque expositum passioni, corruptibile esse ipsa passibilitate interveniente denuntiat.

For whatever, when a cause presses in, is so changed and turned that it cannot retain its integrity, that must be judged to be passive by nature. But that which is prompt and exposed to passion, with passibility itself intervening, declares that it is corruptible.

27.1. Ergo si et animae perdunt omne quod noverant, corporalibus vinculis occupatae, patiantur necesse est aliquid quod eas efficiat oblivionis induere caecitatem. Neque enim nihil omnino perpessae aut integritatem conservantes suam possunt rerum scientiam ponere aut in alios habitus sine sui mutabilitate transire. 2. Atquin nos arbitramur, quod est unum, quod immortale, quod simplex, quacumque in re fuerit, necessario semper suam retinere naturam nec debere aut posse aliquid perpeti, si modo e sse perpetuum cogitat et in finibus propriae immortalitatis haerere.

27.1. Therefore, if even souls lose everything they had known, being occupied by corporeal bonds, it is necessary that they suffer something which makes them don the blindness of oblivion. For neither, having suffered nothing at all nor conserving their integrity, can they lay down the knowledge of things or pass into other dispositions without a mutability of themselves. 2. But yet we judge that that which is one, which is immortal, which is simple, in whatever thing it may be, must necessarily always retain its own nature, nor ought it or be able to suffer anything, provided only that it thinks itself to be perpetual and cleaves to the bounds of its proper immortality.

Omnis enim passio leti atque interitus ianua est, ad mortem ducens via et inevitabilem rebus adferens functionem: quam si sentiunt animae | f. 41 | et tactui eius atque incursionibus cedunt, usu et illis est vita, non mancipio tradita, quamvis aliter quidam inferant et rei tantae fidem suis in argumentationibus ponant.

For every passion is a doorway of death and destruction, a road leading to death and bringing to things an inevitable termination: which, if souls sense it | f. 41 | and yield to its touch and incursions, life is to them in mere usufruct, not conveyed by mancipation, although certain men infer otherwise and place the credence of so great a matter in their own argumentations.

28.1. Ac ne tamen instructi non plenius abeamus [ne videamus] a vobis, quemadmodum dicitis animas, cum terrenis fuerint corporibus involutae, priorum reminiscentiam non habere, cum in ipsis corporibus positae et prope insensibiles eorum commixtione perfectae pertinaciter et fideli teneant ea quae ante annos plures, si velis dicere vel octoginta vel hoc amplius, vel fecerunt vel passae sunt vel locutae sunt vel audierunt. 2. Si enim obstaculo perficitur corporis, ne meminerint eorum quae iamdudum et ante hominem sciebant, magis est ut ea debeant oblivisci quae conclusae in corporibus factitarunt quam quae foris positae, nondum hominibus coniugatae. Quod enim rebus ingressis priorum repetentiam detrahit, et intra se gesta inrecordabili debet obliteratione deperdere.

28.1. And yet, lest we depart not more fully instructed [lest we seem] by you, explain how you say that souls, when they have been involved with earthly bodies, do not have reminiscence of former things, when, placed in those very bodies and made almost insensible by their commixture, they hold pertinaciously and faithfully the things which many years before—if you wish to say even eighty or more than this—they either did or suffered or spoke or heard. 2. For if it is by the obstacle of the body that it is brought about that they do not remember the things which they long ago knew and before being a man, so much the more ought they to forget those things which, enclosed in bodies, they have been doing, rather than those which they did while placed outside, not yet conjoined to human beings. For that which takes away, for things that have entered, the recall of former things ought also to lose, by an unremembering obliteration, the things done within itself.

3. Una enim causa res duas efficere ac sibi contrarias non potest, ut aliorum memorias sopiat, alia patiatur actoris in recordationem venire. Quod si animae quas vocatis membrorum impediuntur obstaculo, quominus artes suas atque antiquas reminiscantur, in corporibus ipsis quemadmodum constitutae meminerunt et sciunt animas se esse et corporalem substantiam non habere, inmortalitatis condicione mactatas, quem tenent in rebus gradum, quo sint | f. 41b | ordine a deo patre discretae, ad infima haec mundi quanam ratione pervenerint, quas ex quibus circulis qualitates, dum in haec loca labuntur, adtraxerint? 4. Quemadmodum, inquam, sciunt doctissimas se fuisse et obstructione corporum amisisse quae noverant?

3. For one cause cannot effect two things that are contrary to itself, so as to lull the memories of some, yet allow those of the agent to come into recollection. But if the souls which you so call are hindered by the obstacle of the members, so that they do not recollect their arts and their ancient skills, how is it that, once set in the bodies themselves, they remember and know that they are souls and that they do not have a corporeal substance, bound under the condition of immortality; what rank they hold among things, by what order they have been | f. 41b | separated from God the Father, by what reasoning they have come down to these lowest things of the world, what qualities from which circles they have drawn along, while they slip down into these places? 4. How, I say, do they know that they were most learned, and that by the obstruction of bodies they have lost the things they knew?

Et hoc ipsum enim nescire debuerant, si aliquid eis labis corporalis invexi sset adiunctio: Nam scire quid fueris et quid hodie non sis, non est signum memoriae perditae sed comprobatio indiciumque servatae.

And they ought to have been ignorant of this very thing as well, if a conjunction had brought in to them any corporeal stain: For to know what you were and what you are not today is not a sign of a memory lost but a proof and an indication of one preserved.

29.1. Quae cum ita se habeant, desinite, quaeso, desinite res parvas atque exigui nominis immanibus pretiis aestimare, desinite hominem proletari cum sit classicis et capite < cum > censeatur adscribere ordinibus primis, cum sit inops, pauper lare et tugurii pauperis nec patriciae claritatis unquam meritus nuncupari. Cum enim vos oporteret veros recti atque integritatis auctores typhum et adrogantiam frangere, quorum alis cuncti extollimur et inanium distendimur vanitate, non tantum ** accidere mala ista censetis, verum, quod gravius multo est, addidistis causas quibus et vitia crescerent et inemendabilis nequitia permaneret. 2. Quis est enim hominum, quamvis ille sit indolis infamia semper atque ignominiosa fugientis, qui cum dici exaudiat viris ab sapientibus maxime, immortalis animas esse nec fatorum esse obnoxias legibus, non in omnia flagitia praeceps se ruat, non securus, intrepidus res obeat atque | f. 42 | adgrediatur inlicitas, non denique omnia suis cupiditatibus largiatur quae libido inpotens iusserit, inpunitatis praeterea etiam libertate munita?

29.1. Since these things are so, cease, I beg, cease to value small matters and of a scanty name at monstrous prices; cease to ascribe a man, proletari though he is, to the first orders, when, although he is assessed among the classes and by the head < cum >, he is needy, poor in hearth and of a poor hovel, and never worthy to be called of patrician renown. For whereas it was fitting for you, true authors of rectitude and integrity, to break swelling pride and arrogance, by whose wings we all are lifted up and are distended with the vanity of empty things, you not only judge that these evils ** accidere mala ista occur, but, what is far graver, you have added causes by which both vices might grow and incorrigible wickedness might remain. 2. For who is there among men, although he be of a disposition always fleeing infamy and disgrace, who, when he hears it said by the very wise that souls are immortal and not subject to the laws of the fates, does not rush headlong into all enormities, does not, secure and intrepid, undertake and | f. 42 | attempt illicit deeds, does not, finally, lavish upon his own desires everything which unrestrained lust shall have ordered, being moreover fortified even with the freedom of impunity?

3. Quid enim prohibebit quominus haec faciat? metus supernae potestatis iudiciumque divinum? et qui poterit territari formidinis alicuius horrore, cui fuerit persuasum tam se esse immortalem quam ipsum deum primum nec ab eo iudicari quicquam de se posse, cum sit una immortalitas in utroque nec in alterius altera condicionis possit aequalitate vexari?

3. For what, indeed, will prohibit him from doing these things? The fear of supernal power and divine judgment? And how could he be terrified by the horror of any fear, to whom it has been persuaded that he is as immortal as God himself the First, and that nothing concerning himself can be judged by Him; since there is one and the same immortality in both, and the one cannot be vexed by the condition of the other on terms of equality?

30.1. ''Sed memoratae apud inferos poenae et suppliciorum generibus multiformes?''. - Et quis erit tam brutus et rerum consequentias nesciens, qui animis incorruptibilibus credat aut tenebras Tartareas posse aliquid nocere aut igneos fluvios aut caenosis gurgitibus paludes aut rotarum volubilium circumactus? 2. Quod enim contiguum non est et ab legibus dissolutionis amotum est, licet omnibus ambiatur flammis torrentium fluminum, volvatur in caeno [non], saxorum imminentinm casibus et immanium montium operiatur ruinis, inlibatum necesse est permaneat et intactum neque ullum sensum mortiferae passionis adsumere. 3. Quid quod ista persuasio non tantum est incitatrix ad vitia libertate ex ipsa peccandi, verum etiam philosophiae ipsius causam tollit et inaniter eam suscipi supervacanei | f. 42 b | operis difficultate declarat.

30.1. ''But the punishments mentioned as being among the dead and the multiform kinds of torments?''. - And who will be so brutish and ignorant of the consequences of things as to believe that for incorruptible souls either the Tartarean darkness can do anything to harm, or fiery rivers, or marshes with muddy whirlpools, or the revolutions of rolling wheels? 2. For that which is not contiguous and is removed from the laws of dissolution, although it be surrounded by all the flames of torrential rivers, be rolled in mud [not], be covered by the fallings of overhanging rocks and by the ruins of enormous mountains, it must necessarily remain unsampled and untouched, nor take on any sense of deadly suffering. 3. What of the fact that this persuasion is not only an inciter to vices by the liberty from the very act of sinning, but also removes the very cause of philosophy and declares that it is undertaken vainly by the difficulty of a supervacaneous | f. 42 b | work.

Nam si verum est, animas nullius esse participes finis et cum omnibus saeculis aevorum perpetuitate procedere, quid periculi res habet contemptis praetermissisque virtutibus, quibus est contractior atque horridior vita, voluptatibus se dare ac per omnia libidinum genera eflrenatum spargere inmensae cupiditatis ardorem? 4. Ne deliciis marceat et corrumpatur mollitudine vitiorum? - Et qua poterit ratione corrumpi id quod immortale, quod semper est et nulli obnoxium passioni?

For if it is true that souls are partakers of no end and proceed with all the ages in the perpetuity of ages, what peril does the matter have, with the virtues despised and passed over—by which life is more constricted and more rough—to give oneself to pleasures and to scatter unbridled through every kind of lust the blaze of immense cupidity? 4. Lest it grow slack with delights and be corrupted by the softness of vices? - And by what reasoning could that be corrupted which is immortal, which always is and is subject to no passion?

Ne sordescat et polluatur actionum turpium foeditate? - Et qui poterit pollui corporalem quod substantiam non habet, aut ubi sedem contaminatio ponere, ubi spatium nullum est in quo nota se possit ipsius contaminationis adfigere? Rursus vero si animae leti adeunt ianuas, Epicuri ut sententia definitur, nec sic causa est conpetens, cur expeti philosophia debeat, etiamsi verum est purgari hac animas atque ab omni puras vitiositate praestari.

Lest it grow sordid and be polluted by the foulness of deeds of turpitude? - And how could that be polluted which does not have corporeal substance, or where could contamination set its seat, where there is no space in which the mark of the contamination itself can affix itself? Again, however, if souls approach the gates of death, as Epicurus’s opinion is defined, neither even thus is there a competent cause why philosophy ought to be sought, even if it is true that by this souls are purged and are presented pure from all viciousness.

5. Nam si communiter obeunt et in ipsis corporibus sensus eis deperit extinguiturque vitalis, non lantum est erroris maximi verum stolidae caecitatis, frenare ingenitos adpetitus, cohibere in angustiis vitam, nihil indulgere naturae, non quod cupidines iusserint atque instigaverint facere, cum nulla te praemia tanti laboris expectent cum dies mortis advenerit et corporalibus fueris vinculis exsolutus.

5. For if they alike go to their end, and in the very bodies their sensation perishes and the vital principle is extinguished, it is not only of the greatest error but of stolid blindness to bridle ingenerate appetites, to confine life in straits, to indulge nature in nothing, not to do what cupidities have ordered and instigated, since no rewards for so great a toil await you when the day of death shall have come, and you will have been released from corporeal bonds.

31.1. Medietas | f. 43 | ergo quaedam et animarum anceps ambigua que natura locum philosophiae peperit et causam cur appeteretur invenit, dum periculum scilicet ex malis iste formidat admissis, alter concipit spes bonas, si nihil sceleris faciat et cum officio vitam iustitiaque traducat. 2. Inde est quod inter doctos viros et ingeniorum excellentia praeditos de animarum qualitate certamen est et eas alii dicunt mortali esse natura nec divinam posse substantiam sustinere, alii vero perpetuas nec in naturam posse degenerare mortalem, quod istud ut fiat, medietatis efficitur lege: quod et illis argumenta sunt praesto, quibus eas passivas atque interibiles invenitur, et his contra non desunt quibus esse divinas immortalesque monstratur.

31.1. Mediacy | f. 43 | therefore, and the two-edged and ambiguous nature of souls has brought forth a place for philosophy and found a cause why it should be sought after, while, to wit, this man dreads peril from evils committed, another conceives good hopes, if he does nothing criminal and conducts his life with duty and with justice. 2. Hence it is that among learned men and those endowed with an excellence of talents there is a contest about the quality of souls, and some say that they are of mortal nature and cannot sustain divine substance, but others [say them to be] perpetual and not able to degenerate into mortal nature; and, in order that this be so, it is brought about by the law of mediacy: for arguments are at hand for those by which they are found to be passible and perishable, and for these conversely there is no lack of arguments by which it is shown that they are divine and immortal.

32.1. Haec cum ita se habeant et cum ab summo traditum teneamus auctore, non esse animas longe ab hiatibus mortis et faucibus constitutas, posse tamen longaevas summi principis munere ac beneficio fieri, si modo illum temptent ac meditentur adgnoscere - eius enim cognitio fermentum quoddam est vitae ac rei dissociabilis glutinum - tum deinde feritate atque inhumanitate depositis resumant ingenia mitiora, ut ad illud quod dabitur esse possint paratae. 2. Quid est quod a vobis tamquam bruti et stolidi iudicemur, si propter hos metus liberatori dedidimus et mancipavimus nos deo? Adversus ictus noxios | f. 43b | et venenatos colubrarum morsus remedia saepe conquirimus et protegimus nos lamminis, Psyllis Marsis vendentibus aliisque institoribus atque planis, ac ne nobis frigora solesque incommodent rapidi, munimenta domorum ac vestium sollicitae praeparamus diligentia cautionis.

32.1. Since these things are so, and since we hold as handed down by the highest Author that souls are not situated far from the gulfs and jaws of death, yet can be made long‑lived by the gift and benefice of the supreme Prince, if only they attempt and practice to acknowledge him—for the cognition of him is, indeed, a certain ferment of life and the glue of a dissociable thing— then thereafter, with ferocity and inhumanity laid aside, let them resume gentler dispositions, so that they may be prepared for that which will be given. 2. What is there for which we should be judged by you as if brutish and stolid, if on account of these fears we have surrendered and mancipated ourselves to the Liberator, to God? Against harmful blows | f. 43b | and the venomous bites of serpents we often seek out remedies and we protect ourselves with laminas, the Psylli and the Marsi and other peddlers and hawkers selling them, and, lest colds and the swift suns inconvenience us, we prepare the defenses of houses and of clothing with a solicitous diligence of caution.

33.1. Mortis nobis cum proponatur metus id est animarum interitus, quid? non ex commodi facimus sensu quo amamus nos omnes, quod eum qui nobis spondet tali a periculo liberaturum retinemus amplectimur animisque ipsis nostris, si modo iusta extat vicissitudo, praeponimus? Vos vestrarum animarum salutem in ipsis vobis reponitis fierique vos deos vestro fiditis intestinoque conatu; at vero nos nobis nihil de nostra infirmitate promittimus naturam intuentes nostram virium esse nullarum et ab suis adfectibus in omni rerum contentione superari.

33.1. When the fear of death is set before us, that is, the destruction of souls, what? Do we not, from a sense of advantage by which we all love ourselves, in that we hold fast and embrace him who promises to free us from such peril, and, if only a just reciprocity exists, prefer him even to our very own souls? You place the safety of your souls in yourselves and trust, by your own inward and internal endeavor, to become gods; but indeed we promise ourselves nothing out of our infirmity, contemplating our nature to be of no powers and to be overcome by its own affections in every contention of things.

2. Vos cum primum soluti membrorum abieritis e nodis, alas vobis adfuturas putatis quibus ad caelum pergere atque ad sidera volare possitis; nos tantam reformidamus audaciam nec in nostra ducimus esse positum potestate res superas petere, cum et hoc ipsum habeamus incertum, an vitam accipere mereamur et ab lege mortalitatis abduci. Vos in aulam dominicam tamquam in propriam sedem remeaturos vos sponte nullo prohibente praesumitis; at vero nos istud rerum sine domino fieri neque speramus posse neque ulli | f. 44 | hominum tantum potestatis attribui licentiaeque censemus.

2. You, when first, loosened from the bonds of your members, you shall have departed from the knots, suppose that wings will be at hand for you by which you might be able to proceed to heaven and fly to the stars; we dread so great audacity and do not deem it to be placed in our power to seek the supernal things, since even this very point we hold as uncertain, whether we deserve to receive life and to be led away from the law of mortality. You presume that you will return into the Lord’s hall as into your own seat, of your own accord, with no one prohibiting; but indeed we neither hope that that thing can come to pass in the realm of things without a master, nor do we judge so much power and license to be attributed to any | f. 44 | of men.

34.1. Cum igitur haec ita sint, quaenam iniustitia tanta est, ut fatui vobis credulitate in ista videamur, cum vos et similia credere et in eadem videamus expectatione versari? Si inrisione existimamur digni, quod spem nobis huiusmodi pollicemur, et vos eadem exspectat inrisio, qui spem vobis immortalitatis adsciscitis. Si tenetis alioqui sequiminique rationem, et nobis aliquam portionem ex ista ratione concedite.

34.1. Since therefore these things are thus, what injustice so great is there, that we seem to you to be fools by a credulity in these matters, since we see you both believe similar things and be occupied in the same expectation? If we are judged worthy of derision because we promise to ourselves a hope of this kind, the same derision awaits you, who adopt to yourselves the hope of immortality. If, at any rate, you hold and follow reason, grant to us also some portion from that reason.

2. Si nobis haec gaudia, hoc est viam fugiendae mortis, Plato Phaedro promisisset aliusve ex hoc choro possetque eam praestare atque ad finem pollicitationes adducere, consentaneum fuerat eius suscipere nos cultus a quo tantum doni expectaremus et muneris. Nunc cum eam Christus non tantum promiserit verum etiam virtutibus tantis manifestaverit posse compleri, quid alienum facimus aut stultitiae crimen quibus rationibus sustinemus, si eius nomini maiestatique substernimur, a quo speramus utrumque, et mortem cruciabilem fugere et vitae aeternitate donari?

2. If Plato in the Phaedrus had promised us these joys, that is, a road for fleeing death, or someone else from this chorus, and were able to furnish it and bring the promises to their completion, it would have been consistent to take up the cult of the one from whom we would expect so great a gift and boon. Now, since Christ has not only promised it but has also made manifest by such great virtues (powers) that it can be fulfilled, what alien thing are we doing, or by what reasons do we sustain the charge of stupidity, if we are laid beneath—subjected—to his name and majesty, from whom we hope for both: to flee an excruciating death and to be endowed with life everlasting?

35.1. ''Sed si animae, inquiunt, mortales et qualitatis sunt mediae, irmmortales quemadmodum fieri mediis ex qualitatibus possunt?''. - Si nos istud nescire dicamus ac tantummodo auditum ex potentiore credidisse, uhi nostra videbitur credulitas lapsa, si omnipotenti credidimus regi nihil esse difficile, nihil arduum, si quod | f. 44b | inpossibile nobis est factu, illi possibile atque ad modum obsecutionis paratum? 2. Est enim quod obstare eius voluntatibus possit, aut quod esse voluerit, non necessario sequitur ut fiat? An numquid nostris ex divisionibus colligemus, quid aut fieri possit aut non possit, nec rationes considerabimus nostras tam esse mortales quam sumus nos ipsi et nullius apud principem nominis?

35.1. “But if souls,” they say, “are mortal and are of a middle quality, how can they become immortal from middle qualities?” — If we were to say that we do not know this and that we have only believed it as heard from one more powerful, where will our credulity seem to have slipped, if we have believed that for an omnipotent king nothing is difficult, nothing arduous, if what | f. 44b | is impossible for us to do is possible for him and made ready according to the mode of compliance? 2. For is there anything that can obstruct his wills, or does it not necessarily follow that what he has willed to be comes to be? Or shall we from our own divisions collect what either can be done or cannot be done, and not consider that our reasonings are as mortal as we ourselves are and of no standing with the Prince?

3. Et tamen, o isti, qui mediae qualitatis animas esse non creditis et in medio limite vitae atque interitus contineri, nonne omnes omnino, quos esse opinatio suspicatur, dii angeli daemones aut nomine quocumque sunt alio, qualitatis et ipsi sunt mediae et in ambiguae sortis condicione nutabiles? [Plat.,Tim. 4] 4. Nam si omnes concedimus, unum esse rerum patrem, immortalem atque ingenitum solum, nihilque omnino ante illum quod alicuius vocaminis fuerit invenitur, sequitur ut hi omnes quos opinatio credidit deos esse mortalium aut ab eo sint geniti aut eo iubente prolati. Si sunt prolati et geniti, et ordinis sunt posterioris et temporis; si ordinis posterioris et temporis, ortus necesse est habeant et exordia nativitatis et vitae: quod autem habet introitum et vitae incipientis exordium, necessario sequitur ut habere debeat et occasum.

3. And yet, O you, who do not believe that souls are of a middle quality and are contained on the middle boundary of life and destruction, are not absolutely all, whom opinion suspects to exist—gods, angels, daemons, or by whatever other name they are—of a middle quality themselves also, and wavering in the condition of an ambiguous lot? [Plat.,Tim. 4] 4. For if we all concede that there is one father of things, immortal and unbegotten alone, and that before him nothing at all is found which bore any appellation, it follows that all these whom opinion has believed to be the gods of mortals are either begotten by him or brought forth at his bidding. If they are brought forth and begotten, they are of a later order and time; if of a later order and time, they must needs have births and commencements of nativity and of life: but that which has an entrance and a beginning of life commencing, it necessarily follows that it must also have an end.

36.1. ''Sed immortales perhibentur dii esse''. - Non ergo natura, sed voluntate dei patris ac munere. Quo igitur pacto immortalitatis largitus est donum dis certa prolatis, et animas hoc pacto dignabitur immortalitate donare, quamvis eas mors saeva posse videatur extinguere et ad nihilum | f. 45 | redactas inremeabili abolitione delere. 2. Plato ille divinus multa de deo digna nec communia sentiens multitudini in eo sermone ac libro cui nomen Timaeus scribitur [Timaeus 41] deos dicit et mundum corruptibilis esse natura neque esse omnino dissolutionis expertes, sed voluntate dei regis ac principis vinctione in perpetua contineri.

36.1. ''But the gods are held to be immortal.'' — Therefore not by nature, but by the will of God the Father and by his munus. In what manner, then, did he bestow the gift of immortality upon gods brought forth on a fixed , and will he in like manner deign to endow souls with immortality, although savage death may seem able to extinguish them and, reduced to nothing, to destroy them by an irremeable abolition | f. 45 |. 2. That divine Plato, thinking many things about God worthy and not common to the multitude, in that discourse and book which is written with the name Timaeus [Timaeus 41], says that the gods and the world are by nature corruptible and are not at all exempt from dissolution, but by the will of God the king and ruler they are held fast in a perpetual bond.

Quod enim recte sit vinctum et nodis perfectissimis conligatum, dei bonitate servari: neque ullo ab alio nisi ab eo qui vinxit et dissolvi, si res poscat, et salutari iussione donari. 3. Ergo si res est ita nec aliud convenit vel existimare vel credere, quid animas admiramini mediae dici qualitatis a nobis, cum numinibus ipsis dicat Plato medias esse naturas, sed continuam et inocciduam vitam principali benivolentia subrogari? 4. Si enim forte nescitis et antea vobis incognitum propter rei novitatem fuit, accipite sero ac discite ab eo qui novit et protulit in medium Christo, non esse animas regis maximi filias nec ab eo quemadmodum dicitur generatas coepisse se nosse atque in sui nominis essentia praedicari, sed alterum quempiam genitorem his esse, dignitatis et potentiae gradibus satis plurimis ab imperatore diiunctum, eius tamen ex aula et eminentium nobilem sublimitate natalium.

For what is rightly bound and con-ligated with most perfect knots is preserved by the goodness of God; nor by any other save by him who bound it can it also be loosed, if the matter require, and be endowed by a salutary injunction. 3. Therefore, if the case is thus and it is not fitting either to think or to believe otherwise, why do you marvel that souls are said by us to be of a middle quality, since Plato says that the numina themselves are middle natures, but that a continuous and un-perishing life is superinduced by princely benevolence? 4. For if perchance you do not know—and it was previously unknown to you on account of the novelty of the matter—receive it at length and learn from him who knows and has brought it into the open by Christ, that souls are not daughters of the greatest King, nor, having been generated by him as it is said, did they begin to know themselves and to be predicated in the essence of his name, but that there is some other begetter for them, separated by very many steps of dignity and power from the Emperor, yet from his court and noble with the loftiness of eminent birth.

37.1. Quodsi essent ut fama est dominicae prolis et potestatis animae generatio principalis, nihil eis ad perfectionem defuisset virtute perfectissima procreatis, unum omnes intellectum habuissent unumque consensum, aulam semper incolerent regiam nec praetermissis beatitudinis sedibus, in quibus augustissimas noverant retinebantque doctrinas, imprudenter adpeterent terrena haec loca, tenebrosis ut corporibus involutae inter pituitas et sanguinem degerent, inter stercoris hos utres et saccati obscenissimas serias. 2. ''Sed habitari oportuit et has partis, et idcirco huc animas tamquam in colonias aliquas deus omnipotens misit''. - Et quid homines prosunt mundo aut ob rei cuius sunt necessarii causam, ut non frustra debuisse credantur parte in hac agere et terreni esse corporis inquilini? Ad consummandam molis huius integritatem partem aliquam conferunt, et nisi fuerint additi, inperfecta et clauda est universitatis haec summa?

37.1. But if, as the report has it, the generation of souls were the principal one, of the Lordly offspring and power, nothing would have been lacking to them for perfection, having been procreated by a most perfect virtue; they would all have had one intellect and one consensus, they would always inhabit the royal court, nor, with the seats of beatitude not passed over, in which they knew and were holding most august doctrines, would they imprudently seek these terrestrial places, that, as though wrapped in tenebrous bodies, they should pass their life among phlegms and blood, among these skins of dung and the sack-like most obscene jars. 2. ''But it was proper that even these parts be inhabited, and therefore the almighty God sent souls hither as if into certain colonies''. - And what do human beings profit the world, or for the cause of what thing are they necessary, so that they are to be believed not to have acted here in vain and to be tenants of an earthly body? Do they contribute some part to consummate the integrity of this mass, and, unless they have been added, is this sum of the universe imperfect and lame?

3. Quid ergo, si homines non sint, ab officiis suis cessabit mundus, vicissitudines suas non peragent sidera, aestates atque hiemes non erunt, ventorum flamina conticescent nec ex coactis et pendentibus nubilis ad terram decident imbres ariditatibus temperamenta laturi? 4. Atquin necesse est cuncta suos ire per cursus nec ab ordinis nati continuatione discedere, etiamsi nomen in mundo nullum hominis audiatur orbisque iste terrarum solitudinis vacuae silentio | f. 46 | conticiscat. Quemadmodum ergo iactatur, habitatorem debuisse regionibus his addi, cum ab homine liqueat nihil ad mundi perfectionem redire omniaque eius studia commoditatem semper spectare privatam nec a finibus propriae utilitatis abscedere?

3. What then, if there are no humans, will the world cease from its duties, will the stars not carry out their vicissitudes, will there be no summers and winters, will the blasts of the winds fall silent and will rains not fall from clouds massed and hanging to the earth, to bring temperings for aridities? 4. But indeed it is necessary that all things go through their own courses and not depart from the continuation of the order of nature, even if no name of man be heard in the world and this orb of lands fall silent with the silence of empty solitude | f. 46 |. How, then, is it bruited about that an inhabitant had to be added to these regions, since it is clear that from man nothing redounds to the perfection of the world and that all his pursuits always look to private convenience and do not depart from the bounds of his own utility?

38.1. Quid enim prodest mundo, ut ab rebus incipiam seriis, maximos reges hic esse? quid tyrannos, quid dominos, quid innumeras alias atque amplissimas potestates? quid rei militaris experientissimos duces, capiendarum urbium peritos, in equestribus proeliis aut in pedestri pugna immobiles atque invictissimos milites?

38.1. What, indeed, does it profit the world, to begin with serious matters, that the greatest kings are here? what of tyrants, what of lords, what of innumerable other and most ample powers? what of the most experienced leaders of military affairs, skilled in the capturing of cities, and soldiers steadfast and most invincible in cavalry battles or in foot combat?

quid oratores grammaticos poetas? quid scriptores dialecticos musicos? 2. quid pantomimos, quid mimulos histriones cantores tuba tibiis calamo que flatantes?

what of orators, grammarians, poets? what of writers, dialecticians, musicians? 2. what of pantomimes, what of mimes, actors, singers, those blowing on the trumpet, on pipes, and on the reed?

quid cursores, quid pugiles, quadrigarios desultores grallatores funiambulos praestigiatores? quid picarios salinatores bolonas unguentarios aurifices aucupes vannorum sirpiarumque vitores? quid fullones lanarios phrygiones cocos panchristarios muliones lenones lanios meretrices?

what of runners, what of pugilists, quadriga-drivers, desultors, stilt-walkers, funambulists, prestidigitators? what of pitch-men, salters, cake-sellers, unguent-sellers, goldsmiths, fowlers, plaiters of winnowing-fans and of wicker-baskets? what of fullers, wool-workers, Phrygian embroiderers, cooks, pastry-makers, muleteers, pimps, butchers, prostitutes?

quid institorum alia genera, quid professorum et artium, quibus enumerandis omnis aetas angusta est, rationibus conferunt et constitutionibus mundi, ut sine hominibus condi non potuisse credatur nec optenturus integritatem sui, nisi ei contentio animalis miseri et supervacui iungeretur?

what of the other kinds of peddlers, what of professors and of arts, for the enumerating of which every age is too narrow, do they contribute to the reasons and constitutions of the world, so that it should be believed that without human beings it could not have been founded nor would it be about to obtain its own integrity, unless there were joined to it the contention of a wretched and superfluous animal?

39.1. Nisi forte rex mundi, is quem temeritatis est maximae humano ex ore depromere, | f. 46b | idcirco ex se genitas huc animas misit, ut quae fuerant apud se deae, corporei tactus et temporariae circumscriptionis expertes, humana inmergerentur in semina, feminarum ex genitalibus prosilirent, ineptissimos ederent continuarentque vagitus, exsugerent fellitantes mammas, proluvie linerent et madidarent se sua, tunc ad silentium pavidae nutricis motibus et crepitaculis adducerentur auditis. 2. Idcirco animas misit, ut quae fuerant simplices et bonitatis nuper innoxiae, simulare in hominibus discerent, dissimulare mentiri circumscribere fallere, adulatoria humilitate captare, mente aliud volvere aliud in facie polliceri, inlaqueare, decipere dolis atque insidiis nescios, per innumeras artes malitiarum venena conquirere et ad usum temporis pellaciae mobilitate formari? 3. Idcirco animas misit, ut in pacata et placida tranquillitate degentes adsumerent ex corporibus causas quibus ferae fierent et immanes, simultates atque inimicitias gererent, consererent inter se bella, expugnarent atque everterent civitates, servitutis opprimerent et manciparent se iugo et ad ultimum fierent alterius altera potestatis natalium condicione mutata?

39.1. Unless perhaps the king of the world—he whom it is of the greatest rashness to draw forth from a human mouth— | f. 46b | for this reason sent hither the souls begotten from himself, that those who had been goddesses with him, inexperienced of bodily touch and of temporary circumscription, should be plunged into human seeds, should leap forth from the genitals of women, should utter and continue the most inept wailings, should suck, lapping, at the breasts, should smear and soak themselves with their own discharge, then be brought to silence by the motions and rattles of a fearful nurse when heard. 2. For this reason he sent souls, that those who had been simple and lately harmless in goodness should learn to simulate among humans, to dissimulate, to lie, to circumscribe, to deceive, to capture by fawning humility, to revolve one thing in mind and promise another in the face, to enmesh, to beguile the unknowing by tricks and ambushes, to procure through innumerable arts the poisons of malices, and to be formed to the use of the time by the mobility of pellacia? 3. For this reason he sent souls, that, living in pacate and placid tranquility, they should take on from bodies the causes by which they would become wild and savage, would wage quarrels and enmities, would stitch together wars among themselves, would storm and overturn cities, would oppress with slavery and be made the chattels of a yoke, and at the last the one should become subject to the other’s power, with the condition of their birth changed?

4. Idcirco animas misit, ut inmemores veritatis effectae et quidnam esset deus oblitae simulacris inertibus supplicarent, ligna aera et lapides divina adloquerentur | f. 47 | ut numina, auxilia poscerent ex caesorum animantium cruore, nullam sui facerent mentionem, quinimmo ex: his aliae ut dubitarent se esse aut ullum esse penitus abnegarent? 5. Idcirco animas misit, ut quae in sedibus propriis mente fuerant una, intellectu et scientia paribus, postquam formas induere mortales, opinionum discriminibus dissiderent, aliud aliis iustum, aliud utile videretur et rectum, de appetendis rebus fugiendisque certarent, malorum ac bonorum alios aliae constituerent fines, veritatem cupientibus noscere rerum opponeretur obscuritas et velut oculorum luminibus viduae nihil certum viderent et per ancipites semitas suspicionum inducerentur errore?

4. For this reason did he send souls, that, made unmindful of truth and forgetful of what God might be, they should supplicate inert simulacra, should address woods, bronzes, and stones as divine, | f. 47 | as numina, should demand aids from the gore of slaughtered living creatures, should make no mention of him—nay rather, that from these some should doubt that they themselves exist, or should utterly deny that there is any at all? 5. For this reason did he send souls, that those which in their own seats had been one in mind, equal in intellect and in science, after they put on mortal forms, should disagree by the discriminations of opinions, one thing should seem to some just, another useful and right, they should contend about things to be sought and to be fled, should establish different bounds of evils and goods, to those desiring to know truth the obscurity of things should be set in opposition, and, as if widowed of the lights of their eyes, they should see nothing certain and be led into error along the doubtful paths of suspicions?

40.1. Idcirco animas misit, ut cum animantia cetera sponte natis alerentur et nulla satione prolatis neque domorum aut vestium tutamina sibi aut velamenta conquirerent, miserabilis istis necessitas adderetur, ut cum impendiis maximis perpetuis que sudoribus domos sibi construerent, membrorum conficerent tegmina, superlectilem variam diurnorum contraherent egestati, inbecillitatis auxilia animalibus mutuarentur a mutis, vim facerent terris, ut non sua sufficerent gramina, sed imperatas extollerent fruges, et cum sanguinem totum in subigenda tellure fudissent, robigine grandine siccitate spem laboris amitterent et ad ultimum vi famis humanis cadaveribus incubarent et ab hominum formis tabifica macie dissociarentur abiunctae? 2. Idcirco animas misit, | f. 47b | ut quae secum commorantes possessionis alicuius nullum umquam habuissent amorem, avarissimae hic fierent et in habendi studium inexaturabili pectoris ardescerent adpetitu, effoderent altos montes et viscera ignota terrarum in materias verterent alieni nominis atque usus, penetrarent abditas discrimine cum capitis nationes et translatis mercibus caritatem semper vilitatemque captarent, exercerent avidum atque iniustissimum faenus et miserorum ex sanguine supputandis augerent insomniam milibus, possessionum semper producerent fines et quamvis provincias totas rus facerent unum, pro arbore una, pro sulco forum litibus tererent, cum amicis et fratribus inexpiabiles susciperent simultates?

40.1. For this reason did he send souls, that while the other living creatures were nourished by things born of their own accord and, brought forth by no sowing, sought neither protections of homes or clothes for themselves nor coverings, a pitiable necessity should be added to these, that with very great expenses and perpetual sweats they should build houses for themselves, fashion coverings for their limbs, gather varied household furnishings for the necessities of daily life, borrow aids for their weakness from mute animals, do violence to the lands, so that their own grasses would not suffice, but they would raise commanded crops; and when they had poured out all their blood in subduing the earth, by rust-blight, hail, and drought they would lose the hope of their labor, and at the last, by the force of famine, they would brood over human cadavers and, severed from the forms of men by consumptive wasting, be disjoined and sundered? 2. For this reason did he send souls, | f. 47b | that those who, dwelling with him, would never have had any love of any possession, should here become most avaricious and should blaze with a zeal of having by an insatiable appetite of the breast, dig out high mountains and turn the unknown bowels of the earth into materials of alien name and use, penetrate hidden nations with peril of life, and, with wares transported, should always angle for dearness and cheapness, practice greedy and most unjust usury and, from the blood of the wretched, increase their insomnia by computing thousands, ever extend the boundaries of estates and, although they make whole provinces into one farm, for a single tree, for a furrow, should wear out the forum with lawsuits, and with friends and brothers take up inexpiable feuds?

41.1. Idcirco animas misit, ut quae dudum fuerant mites et feritatis adfectibus nesciae commoveri, macella sibi et amphitheatra constituerent, loca sanguinis et publicae impietatis, ex quibus in altero mandi homines cernerent et bestiarum laniatibus dissipari, interficere se alios nullius ob meriti causam sed in gratiam voluptatemque sessorum, ipsosque illos dies quibus tantum committeretur nefas in gaudiis communibus ducerent et festa hilaritate sacrarent, at in altero vero animalium miserorum discerperent viscera, alias aliae raperent, ut canibus mos est et vulturiis, portiones, subigerent dentibus et crudelissimo ventri darent, et in tam saevis atque horridis moribus sortem suam flerent quas ab talibus mensis paupertatis | f. 48 | angustiae vindicarent, pro beatis ac felicibus viverent quarum ora et faciem tam crudeles polluerent apparatus? 2. Idcirco animas misit, ut divini ponderis et gravitatis oblitae gemmas lapillos margaritas castitatis dispendio conpararent, innecterent his colla, lannas pertunderent aurium, imminuerent frontes limbis, conspiciendis quaererent corporibus fucos, fuligine oculos obumbrarent, nec in formis erubescerent masculorum calamistris vibrare caesariem, cutem corporis levigare, incedere poplitibus nudis omnique alio cultu vigorem virilitatis et exponere et in habitum feminarum deliciasque molliri?

41.1. Therefore did he send souls, so that those which for a long time had been mild and unacquainted with the affections of ferity to be moved, would set up for themselves butcheries and amphitheaters, places of blood and of public impiety, from which in the one they might behold men to be eaten and to be scattered by the laniations of beasts, men killing one another for no cause of desert but for the favor and pleasure of the spectators, and those very days on which so great a nefarious deed was being committed they would pass in common joys and would hallow with festive cheerfulness, but in the other indeed they would tear to pieces the entrails of wretched animals, one would snatch one share, another another, as is the custom with dogs and vultures, they would subdue with their teeth and give to the most cruel belly, and in such savage and horrid manners they would bewail their lot—those whom the straits of poverty would rescue from such tables would live as blessed and happy, whose mouths and face such cruel preparations would pollute? 2. Therefore did he send souls, so that, forgetful of divine weight and gravity, they might purchase gems, little stones, pearls at the expense of chastity, would fasten necks with these, would pierce the lobes of the ears, would diminish their foreheads with bands, would seek paints for bodies to be gazed upon, would darken their eyes with soot, nor be ashamed in their fashions, being males, to wave their locks with curling-irons, to smooth the skin of the body, to go with knees bare, and by every other cultivation both expose the vigor of manliness and be softened into the habit and delights of women?

42.1. Idcirco animas misit, ut viarum aliae infestarent meatus, aliae circumscriberent nescios, testamenta supponerent falsa, venenatas conficerent potiones, domos ut effringerent noctibus, sollicitarent abigerent praevaricarentur et proderent, saporum fastidia ut excuterent palato, ut in coquendis altilibus pinguitudinem nossent retinere labentem, ut spirulas et botulos facerent, isicia castellamenta lucanica sumi natam cum his carnem et glacialia conditione tucceta? 2. Idcirco animas misit, ut res sancti atque augustissimi nominis symphoniacas agerent et fistulatorias hic artes, ut inflandis bucculas distenderent tibiis, cantionibus ut praeirent obscenis, numerositer et scabillorum concrepationibus sonores, quibus animarum alia lasciviens multitudo incompositos corporum dissolveretur in motus, saltitaret cantaret, orbes saltatorios verteret | f. 48b | et ad ultimum clunibus et coxendicibus sublevatis lumborum crispitudine fluctuaret? 3. Idcirco animas misit, ut in maribus exsoleti, in feminis fierent meretrices sambucistriae psaltriae, venalia ut prosternerent corpora, vilitatem sui populo publicarent, in lupanaribus promptae, in fornicibus obviae, nihil pati rennuentes et ad oris sacri conparatae constuprationem?

42.1. Therefore did he send souls, that some might infest the passages of roads, others hem in the unknowing, to substitute false wills, to concoct poisoned potions, to break open houses by night, to solicit, to drive off, to prevaricate and to betray; that they might shake off fastidiousness of flavors for the palate, that in cooking fat fowl they might know how to retain the slipping greasiness, that they might make little spirals and sausages, forcemeats, “castellations,” Lucanian [sausages], the nata of sumen (sow’s-udder “cream”), and with these meat, and tucceta by an icy kind of curing? 2. Therefore did he send souls, that those forgetful of divine weight and gravity might here perform the arts of “symphony” and of the pipe, that by inflating they might distend their cheeks for the tibiae, that they might lead obscene songs, and rhythmically stir up sounds by the clatterings of scabilla, whereby another lascivious multitude of souls would be dissolved into uncomposed motions of bodies, would dance, would sing, would turn dancing circles | f. 48b | and at the last, with buttocks and haunches lifted, would heave in a ripple of the loins’ crisping? 3. Therefore did he send souls, that among males there might be exsoleti, among females they might become meretrices, sambuca-girls, psaltery-girls, that they might lay down their bodies for sale, make public to the people their own cheapness, ready in brothels, accessible under the arches, refusing to refuse anything they might suffer, and prepared for the defilement of the sacred mouth?

43.1. Quid dicitis, o suboles ac primi progenies numinis? Ergone sapientes illae atque ex causis principalibus proditae genera haec animae turpitudinum criminum malitiarumque noverunt atque ut exercerent, ut gererent, ut percelebrarent haec mala, abire atque habitare iussae sunt has partes et humani corporis circumiectione vestiri? 2. Et mortalium quisquam est rationis alicuius accipiens sensum, qui ordinatum existimet mundum per has esse ac non potius sedem ac domicilium constitutum, in quo omne cotidie perpetraretur nefas, maleficia cuncta confierent, insidiae fraudes doli avaritia rapinae vis scelus audacia obscenitas turpitudo flagitium, mala omnia cetera, quae in orbe homines toto mente noxia pariunt et labem machinantur in mutuam?

43.1. What do you say, O offspring and first progeny of the divinity? Were then those wise ones, and the kinds of souls brought forth from principal causes, acquainted with these turpitudes, crimes, and malices—and that they might exercise them, perform them, and celebrate these evils to the utmost—were they ordered to depart and to inhabit these parts and to be clothed with the envelopment of a human body? 2. And is there any mortal, receiving some sense of reason, who would think the world to be ordered through these things and not rather constituted as a seat and dwelling in which every day every abomination should be perpetrated, all malefic acts be accomplished, ambushes, frauds, wiles, avarice, rapines, force, crime, audacity, obscenity, turpitude, disgrace, all the other evils which men throughout the whole world, with a noxious mind, beget and contrive a stain in mutual harm?

44.1. ''Sed sua, inquitis, voluntate, non regis missione venerunt''. - Et ubi pater omnipotens fuit, ubi regiae sublimitatis auctoritas, ut eas prohiberet abscedere nec in praecipites labi permitteret voluptates? 2. Si enim degeneres futuras locorum immutationibus sciebat - scire autem debuerat causarum ut omnium constitutor - aut extrinsecus aliquid accessurum his esse, | f. 49 / quod eas faceret oblivisci suae dignitatis et decoris - milies ut ignoscat oraverim - universorum non alius quam ipse est causa: siquidem perpessus est evagandi eas habere ius liberum quas retenturas non esse integritatis suae habitum providebat, atque ita perficitur, ut nihil intersit omnino voluntariae venerint an illius obtemperaverint iussioni, cum non prohibendo quod oportuerat prohiberi cessatione crimen fecerit proprium et retentionis dissimulatione permiserit prius.

44.1. ''But, you say, by their own will, not by the king’s commission, they came''. - And where was the omnipotent father, where the authority of regal sublimity, that he might forbid them to depart and not permit them to slip into headlong pleasures? 2. For if he knew that they would be degenerate through changes of places - yet he ought to have known it, as the establisher of the causes of all things - or that something from without would accede to them, | f. 49 / which would make them forget their own dignity and decorum - a thousand times, that he may forgive, I would pray - of all the none other than he himself is the cause: since he allowed them to have a free right of wandering, whom he foresaw would not retain the habit of their integrity; and thus it is brought to completion, that it makes no difference at all whether they came voluntarily or obeyed his command, since by not forbidding, by a cessation, that which ought to have been forbidden, he made the crime his own, and by the dissimulation of restraint he permitted it beforehand.

45.1. Sed procul haec abeat sceleratae opinionis immanitas, ut deus credatur omnipotens, magnarum et invisibilium rerum sator et conditor, procreator, tam mobiles animas genuisse, gravitatis ac ponderis constantiaeque nullius, in vitia labiles, in peccatorum genera universa dcclives, cumque eas tales atque huiusmodi sciret, in corpora ire iussisse, quorum indutae carceribus sub procellis agerent tempestatibusque cotidie fortunae, 2. et modo turpia facerent modo paterentur obscena, naufragiis ruinis incendiorum conflagrationibus ut perirent, pauperies alias, alias ut mendicitas premeret, ut ferarum paterentur aliae laniatus, muscularum aliae ut interirent veneno, claudae ut incederent aliae, ut aliae lumen amitterent, ut articulis sederent aliae colligatis, morbis denique obiectarentur ut cunctis, quos infelix et miseranda mortalitas diversarum sustinet dilaceratione poenarum; tunc deinde oblitae unius esse se fontis, unius genitoris et capitis, germanitatis | f. 49b | convellerent atque abrumperent iura, urbes suas everterent, popularentur hostiliter terras, servos de liberis facerent, insultarent virginibus et matrimoniis alienis, odissent invicem sese, aliorum gaudiis et felicitatibus inviderent, tum deinde se omnes maledicercnt, carperent et saevorum dentium mordacitate laniarent.

45.1. But far be away the monstrosity of a criminal opinion, that God be believed omnipotent, the sower and founder of great and invisible things, the procreator, to have begotten souls so mobile, of no gravity and weight and constancy, sliding into vices, down-inclined to all the genera of sins; and, though he knew them to be such and of this sort, to have ordered them to go into bodies, in the prisons of which, being clothed, they would be driven beneath the storms and the tempests of fortune daily, 2. and now do shameful things, now suffer obscenities; that they should perish by shipwrecks, by ruins, by conflagrations of fires; that poverty should press some, begging others; that some should suffer the manglings of wild beasts, others should perish by the poison of flies; that others should go lame, that others should lose their light, that others should sit with their joints bound; finally, that they should be exposed to all diseases which unhappy and pitiable mortality endures in the rending of diverse punishments; then thereafter, forgetful that they are of one fountain, of one begetter and head, germanity’s | f. 49b | rights they should tear up and break off, that they should overturn their own cities, lay waste lands in hostile fashion, make slaves out of the free, insult virgins and others’ marriages, hate one another mutually, envy the joys and felicities of others, then thereafter all should curse one another, carp, and tear with the mordacity of savage teeth.

46.1. Sed procul haec abeat, ut eadem rursus frequentiusque dicamus, tam immanis et scelerata persuasio, ut ille salus rerum deus, omnium virtutum caput, benignitatis et columen, atque ut eum laudibus extollamus hnmanis, sapientissimus, iustus, perfecta omnia faciens et integritatis suae conservantia mensiones aut aliquid fecerit claudum et quod minus esset a recto, aut ulli rei fuerit miseriarum aut discriminum causa, aut ipsos actus quibus vita transigitur et celebratur humana ordinaverit, iusserit et ab sua fluere constitutione praeceperit. 2. Minora haec illo sunt et magnitudinis eius destruentia potestatem tantumque est longe, istarum auctor rerum esse credatur, ut in sacrilegae crimen inpietatis incurrat quisquis ab eo conceperit hominem esse prognatum, rem infelicem et miseram, qui esse se doleat, qui condicionem suam detestetur et lugeat, qui nulla alia de causa sese intellegat procreatum, quam ne materiam non haberent per quam diffunderent se mala, et essent miseri semper, quorum cruciatibus pasceretur nescio qua vis latens et humanitati adversa crudelitas.

46.1. But far be this away, that we may say the same again and more frequently, so immense and criminal a persuasion, as that that god, the salvation of things, the head of all virtues, the pillar of benignity, and, that we may extol him with human praises, most sapient, just, doing all things perfect and arrangements preserving his own integrity, either has made anything lame and something that was less than straight, or has been for any thing the cause of miseries or crises, or has ordained the very acts by which human life is transacted and celebrated, has commanded them and prescribed that they flow from his own constitution. 2. These things are inferior to him and destructive of the power of his greatness, and so far is it away that he be believed the author of these matters, that into the crime of sacrilegious impiety falls whoever has conceived that man is begotten from him, an unhappy and wretched thing, who is pained that he is, who detests and laments his condition, who understands himself to have been procreated for no other cause than that evils might not lack the material through which they might diffuse themselves, and that there should be the wretched always, by whose torments some I-know-not-what lurking force and a cruelty adverse to humanity might be fed.

47.1. ''Sed si parens et genitor animarum, inquitis, deus non est, quo auctore progenitae | f. 50 | et qua sunt ratione prolatae?''. - Si infucata vultis audire nec ab aliqua vocis ostentatione deducta, item confitemur nos istud ignorare, nescire scientiamque tantae rei non tantum nostram ducimus infirmitatem fragilitatemque transire, verum etiam potestatum quae in mundo sunt omnium et quae numina se esse opinionibus usurpavere mortalium. 2. Sed quas dei negamus, cuius sint debemus ostendere? Minime istud necessario sequitur.

47.1. ''But if, you say, God is not the parent and begetter of souls, by what author were they begotten | f. 50 | and by what rationale were they brought forth?''. - If you wish to hear it unpainted and not led aside by any ostentation of voice, likewise we confess that we do not know that, we do not know; and we judge that the knowledge of so great a matter surpasses not only our weakness and fragility, but even that of all the powers which are in the world and which have usurped, in the opinions of mortals, the claim to be divinities. 2. But since we deny them to be God’s, must we show whose they are? By no means does that necessarily follow.

Non enim si negemus muscas scarabeos et cimices, nitedulas curculiones et tineas omnipotentis esse opus regig, sequaciter postulandum a nobis est, ut quis ea fecerit institueritque dicamus: possumus enim nulla cum reprehensione nescire, quis et illis originem dederit, et optinere non esse deo ab superiore prolata tam supervacua, tam vana, tam ad nullas pertinentia rationes, quinimmo aliquando et noxia et necessariis inportantia laesiones.

For not, if we deny that flies, scarabs and bedbugs, shrew-mice, weevils and moths are the work of the omnipotent king, is it consequently to be demanded of us that we should say who made and established them: for we can, with no reproach, be ignorant who also gave them their origin, and maintain that from God, the higher one, there have not been produced things so superfluous, so vain, so pertaining to no rational considerations, nay rather at times harmful and bringing injuries upon necessary things.

48.1. Sic consimiliter hic quoque, cum animas rennuamus dei esse principis prolem, non continuo sequitur, ut explicare debeamus, quonam parente sint editae et causis cuiusmodi procreatae. Quis enim nos prohibet, aut unde enatae sint prodierintque nescire aut eas non esse dei progeniem scire? 2. ''Quanam, inquitis, ratione, qua via?''. - Quia omni vero verissimum est certoque certissimum, nihil rerum a principe, sicut saepius dictum est, agi fieri statui nisi quod oporteat et conveniat fieri, nisi quod sit plenum et integrum et in suae et integritatis perfectione finitum.

48.1. Thus similarly here too, when we refuse that souls are the progeny of the god who is prince, it does not straightway follow that we must explain from what parent they have been brought forth and by what sorts of causes procreated. For who forbids us either not to know whence they were born and came forth, or to know that they are not the progeny of god? 2. ''By what reasoning, you ask, by what way?''. - Because to every truth the truest, and to what is certain the most certain, is this: that nothing among things is driven, done, or ordained by the prince, as has been said more often, except what ought and befits to be done, except what is full and integral and finished in the perfection of its own and integrity.

Porro autem conspicimus homines, | f. 50b | id est animas ipsas - quid enim sunt homines nisi animae corporibus inligatae? - scaevitate innumerabili vitiorum ipsos se indicare non esse patricii generis, sed ex mediocribus familiis procreatos. 3. Namque alios videmus inmites facinerosos audaces temerarios praecipites caecos fictos dissimulatores mendaces superbos adrogantes avaros cupidos libidinosos inconstantes invalidos et sua ipsos decreta conservare nequeuntes: quod utique non essent, si generositas eos adsereret principalis et ab rerum capite descendentium ducerent honestamenta natalium.

Furthermore we observe men, | f. 50b | that is, the souls themselves—for what are men if not souls bound to bodies?—by an innumerable perversity of vices to indicate of themselves that they are not of patrician lineage, but begotten from middling families. 3. For indeed we see some to be harsh, criminal, audacious, rash, headlong, blind, feigned, dissemblers, lying, proud, arrogant, avaricious, covetous, lustful, inconstant, weak, and unable to keep their own decrees: which assuredly they would not be, if princely nobility were to vindicate them, and, as descending from the head of things, they drew the honors of birth.

49.1. ''Sed et boni, dicetis, sunt in rebus humanis viri, sapientes, iusti, inculpatis atque emendatissimis moribus''. 2. - Nullam referimus quaestionem, an ulli aliquando fuerint tales in quibus omnino nihil ista ipsa quae dicitur desideraret integritas. Sint licet perhonesti fuerintque laudabiles, tenuerint apicem perfectionis summum, nec in aliquo lapsu eorum aliquando claudicaverit vita: sed audire deposcimus quot sint aut fuerint numero, ut ex multitudinis magnitudine metiamur, an oppositio iusta sit facta et an aequalitatis conpensatione librata. 3. Unus duo tres quattuor decem viginti centum, certe numero definiti et nominum forsitan conprehensionibus terminati.

49.1. ''But also good men, you will say, exist in human affairs—wise, just, with inculpate and most emended morals''. 2. - We raise no question whether there have ever been any such, in whom integrity itself, so called, would leave nothing at all to be desired. Let them be, granted, very honorable and have been laudable, let them have held the highest apex of perfection, and let their life at no point have ever limped at any lapse of theirs: but we demand to hear how many they are or have been in number, so that from the magnitude of the multitude we may measure whether the opposition has been made justly and balanced by a compensation of equality. 3. One two three four ten twenty a hundred—certainly defined by number and perhaps terminated by the comprehensions of names.

Set genus humanum non ex bonis pauculis sed ex ceteris omnibus aestimari convenit et ponderari. In toto enim pars est, non totum in parte, et universitas debet adtrahere portiones, non portionibus universitas adplicari. | f. 51 / 4.Quid enim, si hominem dicas captum membrisomnibus et heiulantem ex cruciatibus asperis idcirco esse sanum, quod unius unguiculi nullum perpetiatur dolorem: aut esse auream terram, quod in verrucula collis unius insint exiguae miculae, quibus nascitur colliquefactis aurum et adcuratiore congregatione conquiritur?

But the human race ought to be assessed and weighed not from a few good [people] but from all the rest. For the part is in the whole, not the whole in the part, and the universality ought to draw the portions to itself, not the universality be applied to the portions. | f. 51 / 4. For what, if you should say that a man, seized in all his limbs and wailing from harsh torments, is therefore healthy because the little nail of one finger suffers no pain: or that the earth is golden because on the little wart of a single hill there are tiny specks, from which, when liquefied and by more careful congregation collected, gold is produced and acquired?

Qualitatem materiae universitas elementi probat, non pulvisculi flabiles, nec mare continuo dulce est, si mitioris aquae guttas alicuius adieceris atque inmiseris numeri: consumitur enim minuties ista inmenso; et <non> modo [non] parvi sed esse nullius existimandum est nominis quod per omnia diffusum perit et in magni corporis intercipitur vastitate.

The quality of the matter is proved by the universality of the element, not by wind‑blown little specks of dust; nor is the sea immediately sweet, if you should add and pour in a number of drops of somewhat milder water: for that minuteness is consumed by the immense; and <not> only [not] to be of small account but to be thought to be of no name at all is that which, diffused through all things, perishes and is intercepted in the vastness of the great body.

50.1. Vos humano in genere bonos esse dictitatis viros, qui ut esse credantur, conparatio forsitan efficiat pessimorum. Quinam isti sunt? dicite.

50.1. You keep saying that, in the human race, there are good men—men whom, in order that they may be believed to exist, perhaps comparison with the worst effects. Who are these? say.

Philosophi, credo, qui se esse solos sapientissimos autumant et vi huius nominis supercilium sustulerunt: nempe illi qui cum suis cotidie cupiditatibus pugnant et adfectus ex animis insitos proturbare, pellere pertinaci moliuntur obluctatione virtutum, qui ne in vitia proritari facultatis possint alicuius instinctu, patrimonia et divitias fugiunt et causas sibi auferunt lapsus: quod cum faciunt et curant, apertissime animas esse indicant labiles et infirmitate ad vitia proclives. 2. Nostra autem sententia quod bonum natura est neque emendari neque corrigi se poscit, immo ipsum debet quid sit malum nescire, si generis forma cuiusque in sua cogitat | f. 51b | integritate perstare: neque enim contrarium insitum esse contrario potis est aut <in>inpari paritas aut dulcedo in amaritudine contineri. Qui ergo luctatur animarum ingenitas corrigere pravitates, is apertissime monstrat inperfectum, inprobabilem se esse, quamvis omni conatu et pervicacia contendat.

Philosophers, I believe, who assert that they alone are the most sapient and by the force of this name have lifted the eyebrow: surely those who daily fight with their own cupidities and strive, by a stubborn wrestle of virtues, to drive forth and expel the affections implanted in their souls, who, lest they be precipitated into vices by the instigation of some faculty, flee patrimonies and riches and remove from themselves the causes of a lapse: when they do and take care of this, they indicate most openly that souls are labile and by infirmity proclive to vices. 2. Our sentence, however, is that what is good by nature neither demands to be emended nor corrected; nay rather, it ought not to know what evil is, if the form of each kind intends to persist in its own | f. 51b | integrity: for neither is it possible that the contrary be implanted in the contrary, nor <in>inpari paritas, nor sweetness be contained in bitterness. Therefore he who wrestles to correct the inborn pravities of souls shows most plainly that he himself is imperfect, not-approvable, although he strives with every endeavor and pertinacity.

51.1. Sed risui vobis est nostra responsio, quod cum regias suboles esse animas abnegemus, non referamus contra, ex quibus sint causis atque originibus procreatae. - Quod est enim criminis genus, aut rei esse alicuius ignarum aut ipsum quod nescias sine aliqua profiteri dissimulatione nescire: aut uter magis videtur inrisione esse dignissimus vobis, qui sibi scientiam nullam tenebrosae rei alicuius adsumit, an ille qui retur se ex se apertissime scire id quod humanam transiliat notionem et quod sit caecis obscuritatibus involutum? 2. Si penitus spectetur rei cuiusque natura, in simili et vos estis quam in nobis reprehenditis causa.

51.1. But our response is a laughingstock to you, because, when we deny that souls are royal offspring, we do not, on the other hand, relate from what causes and origins they were procreated. - For what kind of crime is it either to be ignorant of some matter, or to profess without any dissimulation that you do not know the very thing you do not know: or which of the two seems to you more deserving of derision, he who does not assume to himself any knowledge of some tenebrous matter, or he who thinks that he, from himself, knows most plainly that which overleaps human notion and is wrapped in blind obscurities? 2. If the nature of each matter be thoroughly inspected, you too are in a similar case to that which you censure in us.

Non enim quia dicitis ab ipso animas rege descendere ac succedere in hominum formas, exploratum aliquid dicitis et in luce positum manifestissimae veritatis. Conicitis enim, non scitis; suspicamini, non tenetis: nam si scire est illud quod ipse tu videris aut cognoveris animo continere, nihil eorum quae adseritis potestis vos dicere aliquando vidisse, id est, animas sede ab supera et regione descendere. 3. Suspicione ergo utimini, non cognitionis expressae fide.

For not because you say that souls descend from the king himself and succeed into the forms of men, do you speak something explored and set in the light of most manifest truth. You conjecture, indeed, you do not know; you suspect, you do not hold: for if to know is to contain in the mind that which you yourself have seen or recognized, you can say that you have at no time seen any of the things you assert, that is, souls to descend from the upper seat and region. 3. Therefore you make use of suspicion, not the faith of expressed cognition.

Quid est autem suspicio, nisi opinatio rerum | f. 52 | incerta et <in>nihil expositum iaculatio mentis inlata? Ergo qui suspicatur, non tenet nec in lumine positus cognitionis incedit. Quodsi verum et fixum est, apud rectos et sapientissimos iudices et ista vestra qua fiditis pro ignoratione est habenda suspicio.

What, moreover, is suspicion, if not an uncertain opinionation of things | f. 52 | and a casting of the mind brought <in>nothing set forth? Therefore he who suspects does not hold, nor does he proceed set in the light of cognition. But if this is true and fixed, then among upright and most wise judges even this suspicion of yours, in which you trust, is to be held as ignorance.

52.1. Ac ne tamen vobis tantummodo censeatis coniecturis uti ac suspicionibus licere, et nos isdem possumus, quoniam commune est quod interrogatis expromere. ''Unde, inquitis, homines et ipsorum hominum quid aut unde sunt animae?''. - Unde sunt elephanti tauri lscervi muli asini? unde leones equi canes lupi pantherae eorumque quae vivunt quid aut unde sunt animae?

52.1. And lest, however, you suppose that it is permitted to you only to use conjectures and suspicions, we too can use the same, since it is a common thing to express what you interrogate. ''Whence, you say, are men, and of those same men what, or whence, are the souls?''. - Whence are elephants, bulls, stags, mules, asses? whence lions, horses, dogs, wolves, panthers; and of those which live, what, or whence, are the souls?

2. Neque enim fidem res habet, ut Platonico ex illo cratere quem conficit miscetque Timaeus [Plat.Tim. 41 d] aut horum animae venerint aut lucusta mus sorex blatta rana centipeda animata esse credantur et vivere, quidem ex elementis ipsis causa est illis atque origo nascendi, si ad animalia gignenda, quae in singulis his degunt, insunt abditae atque obscurissimae rationes. 3. Nam et videmus alios ex sapientibus dicere, tellurem esse hominum matrem, aquam tum alios, aerium spiritum his alios iungere, solem vero nonnullos esse horum opificem et ex ignibus animatos eius vitali agitatione motari.

2. For the matter does not have credibility, that from that Platonic crater which Timaeus fashions and mixes [Plat.Tim. 41 d] either the souls of these came, or that the locust, mouse, shrew, cockroach, frog, centipede are believed to be ensouled and to live; indeed from the elements themselves there is for them the cause and origin of being born, if, for the begetting of animals which dwell in each of these, there are hidden and most obscure reasons. 3. For we also see some among the wise say that earth is the mother of human beings, others that it is water; others join to these the airy spirit, while some indeed say that the sun is the artificer of these, and that those animated from fires are moved by its vital agitation.

Quid? si et haec non sunt et est aliqua res alia, alia causa, alia ratio, potestas alia denique inauditi nobis atque incogniti nominis, genus quae hominum finxerit et rerum constitutionibus adplicarit? 4. Nonne fieri potis est, ut exorti homines ita sint nec | f. 52b | ad deum primum nativitatis eorum referatur auctoritas?

What? If also these are not so, and there is some other thing, another cause, another ratio, finally another power of a name unheard and unknown to us, which has fashioned the genus of men and has applied it to the constitutions of things? 4. Is it not able to happen, that men, having arisen, are thus, and that the authority of their nativity is not referred back | f. 52b | to the first god?

Quid enim putamus habuisse rationis Platonem illum magnum pie sancte que sapientem, cum hominis fictionem deo removit a maximo et ad minores nescio quos transtulit cumque eiusdem noluit sinceritatis esse mixturas humani animas generis, cuius animam fecerat universitatis istius, quam quod hominis fabricam indignam esse rebatur deo nec rei flaccidae fictionem magnitudini eius et eminentiae convenire? [Plat., Tim. 41 b-c]

What, indeed, do we suppose that Plato, that great man, pious and holy-wise, had of reason, when he removed the fashioning of man from the greatest God and transferred it to I-know-not-what lesser beings, and when he did not wish the souls of the human race to be of the same sincerity of mixture as that of which he had made the soul of this universe, other than that he reckoned the fabric of man unworthy of God, and that the fashioning of a flaccid thing did not befit his magnitude and eminence? [Plat., Tim. 41 b-c]

53.1. Ergo cum haec ita sint, non absone neque inaniter credimus, mediae qualitatis esse animas hominum utpote ab rebus non principalibus editas, iuri subiectas mortis, parvarum et labilium virium: perpetuitate donari, spem muneris tanti deum ad principem conferant, cui soli potestas est talia corruptione exclusa largiri. 2. ''Sed stulte istud credimus''. - Quid ad vos, ineptissime, fatue? Ubi vobis nocemus vel quam vobis facimus aut inrogamus iniuriam, si omnipotentem confidimus deum habiturum esse rationem nostri, cum abire a corporibus coeperimus et ab Orci faucibus quemadmodum dicitur [Liv.

53.1. Therefore, since these things are so, we do not unreasonably nor vainly believe that the souls of men are of a middle quality, inasmuch as brought forth from things not principal, subject to the law of death, of small and labile powers: to be endowed with perpetuity, they bring the hope of so great a gift to God the Princeps, to whom alone is the power to bestow such things with corruption excluded. 2. ''But we foolishly believe that.'' — What is it to you, you most inept one, fool? In what do we harm you, or what wrong do we do or inflict upon you, if we trust that the omnipotent God will have regard for us when we begin to depart from our bodies and from the jaws of Orcus, as it is said [Liv.

IX,6] vindicari?

9,6] to be avenged?

54.1. ''Ergone, inquiet aliquis, sine dei voluntate quicquam potis est fieri?''. - Considerandum est nobis sollicite et cura inspiciendum non parva, ne dum honorare nos deum tali interrogatione censemus, in contrarium labamur nefas maiestatis eius eminentiam destruentes. 2. ''Qua ratione, qua causa?''. - Quoniam si cuncta eius voluntate confiunt nec citra eius nutum | f. 53 | quicquam potest in rebus vel provenire vel cadere, necessario sequitur, mala etiam cuncta voluntate eius intellegantur enasci. 3. Sin autem dicere voluerimus contra, pessimorum ab eo reicientes causas, mali esse conscium generatoremque nullius, incipient evideri aut eo invito res pessimae fieri aut, quod sit immane dixisse, nesciente, ignaro ac nescio.

54.1. ''So then, someone says, is anything able to be done without the will of god?''. - It must be considered by us solicitously and examined with no small care, lest while we suppose we honor god by such a question, we slip into the contrary, committing an impiety and destroying the eminence of his majesty. 2. ''By what rationale, by what cause?''. - Since if all things come to pass by his will and nothing can, without his nod, | f. 53 | either come forth or fall out among things, it follows by necessity, even all evils are to be understood to be born from his will. 3. But if, however, we should wish to say the contrary, rejecting from him the causes of the worst things, that he is conscious of evil and the generator of none, it will begin to appear either that the worst things are done with him unwilling or, which is monstrous to say, with him not knowing, ignorant and unknowing.

Rursus autem si dicere nulla esse voluerimus mala, sicut esse nonnullis opinatum et placitum repperimus, reclamabunt cunctae gentes universaeque nationes, cruciatus nobis ostentantes suos et discriminum species multiformes, quibus puncta per singula genus uritur et laceratur humanum. 4. Tum deinde a nobis exquirent: ''Cur, mala si nulla sunt, ab operibus vos certis et facinoribus abstinetis? cur non omnia facitis quae inpatiens iusserit atque inperaverit libido?

Again, however, if we should be willing to say that there are no evils, as we have found it to have been opined and approved by some, all peoples and the universal nations will protest, displaying to us their own cruciations and the multiform species of dangers, by which, point by point, the human race is scorched and lacerated. 4. Then thereafter they will inquire of us: ''Why, if evils are none, do you abstain from certain works and crimes? why do you not do all the things which an impatient libido has ordered and commanded?''

cur in noxios denique terribilibus poenas constituitis legibus? Nam stoliditas inveniri quae inmanior potest, quam mala esse nulla contendere et tamquam malos perdere et condemnare peccantis?''.

Why, finally, do you establish punishments against the guilty by terrible laws? For what stolidity can be found more monstrous than to contend that evils are none, and, as though they were evil men, to destroy and to condemn sinners?''

55.1. Quae cum esse consenserimus victi et universa his scatere non inaniter adnuerimus humana, consequetur ut rogitent: ''Cur ergo haec mala deus omnipotens non aufert sed esse perpetitur et cum omnibus saeculis pertinaci continuatione procedere?''. 2. - Si intellectus nobis adfuerit dei regis ac principis nec per impias vagari suspicionum voluerimus insanias, respondeamus necesse est, nescire nos ista nec quae nullis possent | f. 53b | facultatibus comprehendi expetisse aliquando aut studuisse cognoscere: meliusque ducetis, quinimmo potius magis inscientiae finibus atque ignorantiae permanere quam nisi dei dicere nihil fieri per voluntatem, ut simul intellegatur et malis eum causas dare et miseriarum esse innumerabilium conditorem. 3. ''Mala ergo, dicetis, unde sunt haec omnia?''. ''Ex elementis'' inquiunt, ''et ex eorum inaequabilitate,'' sapientes: quod fieri qui possit ut quae sensum et iudicium non habent malitiosa esse perhibeantur et noxia aut non ille sit potius malitiosus et noxius, qui res pessimas et nocentissimas futuras in alicuius operis adsumpsit effectum, eorum est qui adserunt pervidere. 4. ''Quid ergo nos?

55.1. When we have agreed, vanquished, that these things are, and have not nodded assent in vain that all human affairs teem with them, it will follow that they ask: ''Why then does the omnipotent God not take away these evils, but allows them to be and to proceed with all the ages in a pertinacious continuation?''. 2. - If an intellect of God the king and prince be present to us, and we should not wish to wander through the impious insanities of suspicions, we must answer that we do not know these things, nor have we ever desired or studied to know those which could by no faculties | f. 53b | be comprehended: and you will deem it better—nay rather much more—to remain within the bounds of nescience and ignorance than to say that nothing is done except by God’s will, so that at the same time it is understood both that he gives causes to evils and that he is the founder of innumerable miseries. 3. ''Evils then, you will say, whence are all these?''. ''From the elements,'' say the ''wise,'' ''and from their inequality'': how it can be that those which do not have sense and judgment are held to be malicious and noxious, or that he is not rather the malicious and noxious one who has assumed the execution of some work with the result that the worst and most noxious things will come to be, is for those who assert that they see through to explain. 4. ''What then of us?

unde?''. - Responsionis necessitas nulla est. Sive enim possumus dicere, sive minus valemus nec possumus, utrumque apud nos parvum est; nec in magnis ponderibus ducimus vel ignorare istud vel scire, unum solum posuisse contenti, nihil a deo principe quod sit nocens atque exitiabile proficisci. Hoc tenemus, hoc novimus, in hac una consistimus cognitionis et scientiae veritate, nihil ab eo fieri nisi quod sit omnibus salutare, quod dulce, quod amoris et gaudii laetitiaeque plenissimum, quod infinitas habeat atque incorruptibiles voluptates, quod sibi quisque contingere votis omnibus expetat, forisque ab his esse exitiabile ac mortiferum ducat.

whence?''. - There is no necessity of a response. For whether we are able to speak, or we are less able and cannot, either is a small matter for us; nor do we reckon it among great weights either to ignore that or to know it, being content to have posited one thing only: that nothing proceeds from God the Prince which is harmful and ruinous. This we hold, this we know, in this one truth of cognition and science we stand fast: that nothing is done by him except what is health-giving to all, what is sweet, what is most full of love and joy and gladness, what has infinite and incorruptible pleasures, what each person with all vows desires to befall himself, and outside these he deems to be destructive and death-bringing.

56.1. Caetera quaecumque sunt alia, quae in quaestionibus adsolent controversiisque versari, quibus genitoribus | f. 54 | orta sint vel quibus auctoribus fiant, neque nosse contendimus neque inquirere aut vestigare curamus: suis omnia relinquimus causis nec ad id quod expetimus esse nobis adiuncta atque adplicata iudicamus. 2. Quid est enim, quod humana ingenia labefactare, dissolvere studio contradictionis non audeant, quamvis illud quod infirmare moliuntur sit purum et liquidum et veritatis obsignatione munitum? Aut quid rursus adserere verisimilibus argumentis non queunt, quamvis sit apertissime falsum, quamvis evidens manifestumque mendacium?

56.1. The rest, whatever other things there are, which are wont to be turned over in questions and controversies, from what progenitors | f. 54 | they have arisen or by what authors they come to be, neither do we strive to know nor do we care to inquire or investigate: we leave all things to their own causes, nor do we judge them to be joined and applied to that which we seek. 2. For what is there that human wits do not dare to undermine and dissolve by a zeal of contradiction, although that which they strive to weaken is pure and limpid and fortified by the sealing of truth? Or what, again, can they not assert with verisimilar arguments, although it is most openly false, although an evident and manifest lie?

Cum enim sibi persuaserit quis, esse aliquid aut non esse, amat quod opinatur adserere et acumine alios anteire, maxime si agatur res submota et abdita et caligine involuta naturae. 3. Mundum quidam ex sapientibus aestimant neque esse natum neque ullo esse in tempore periturum; immortalem nonnulli, quamvis eum conscribant esse gnatum et genitum; tertiis vero conlibitum dicere est, et esse natum et genitum et ordinaria necessitate periturum. Et cum ex istis opinionibus trinis unam esse necesse sit veram, cunctis tamen argumenta non desunt quibus et sua decreta confirment et aliorum subripiant et labefaciant scita.

Since indeed, when someone has persuaded himself that something is or is not, he loves to assert what he opines and to outstrip others by acumen, especially if the matter at issue is withdrawn and hidden and wrapped in the murk of nature. 3. Certain of the sages judge the world neither to have been born nor to be going to perish at any time; some deem it immortal, although they set it down as having been born and begotten; while to a third party it is pleasing to say both that it has been born and begotten and that by ordinary necessity it will perish. And although of these three opinions it must be that one is true, yet arguments are not lacking to all, by which they both confirm their own decrees and filch away and shake the ordinances of others.

4. Eundem hunc alii elementis ex quatuor tradunt et pronuntiant stare, ex geminis alii, ex singulis tertii, sunt qui ex his nullo set individua corpora eius esse materiem et primam originem dicant. Cumque ex his vera sit una sententia, at nulla ex his certa, similiter hic quoque argumenta omnibus praesto sunt, quibus | f. 54b | et ea quaedicunt vera esse constituant et redarguant positas in aliorum sententiis falsitates. 5. Sic et deos nonnulli esse abnegant prorsus dubitare se alii an sint uspiam dicunt; alii vero existere neque humana curare: immo alii perhibent et rebus interesse mortalium et terrenas administrare rationes.

4. This same [world], some hand down and pronounce to stand from four elements, others from twin, others from single ones; there are those who say that from none of these, but that indivisible bodies are its matter and first origin. And although among these one opinion is true, yet none of these is certain, similarly here too arguments are at hand for all, by which | f. 54b | both they establish that the things which they say are true and they refute the falsities set in the sentences of others. 5. Thus also some deny that gods exist; others say that they are utterly in doubt whether they exist anywhere; others indeed that they exist but do not care for human things: nay rather, others aver that they both take part in the affairs of mortals and administer earthly rational arrangements.

57.1. Cum ergo haec ita sint neque aliter fiat, quin sit unum ex omnibus verum, pugnant tamen argumentis omnes, neque singulis deest id quod probabiliter dicant, sive cum suas res adserunt sive cum alienis opinionibus contradicunt. 2. Non alia neque absimili ratione de animarum ab his condicione disseritur. Hic enim eas retur et esse perpetuas et superesse mortalium functioni, superesse ille non credit, sed cum ipsis corporibus interire: alterius vero sententia est nihil eas continuo perpeti, sed post hominem positum aliquid eis ad vitam dari, mortalitatis deinde in iura succedere.

57.1. Since therefore these things are so and it cannot happen otherwise than that one among all is true, yet all contend with arguments, nor does each lack that which they may plausibly say, whether when they assert their own positions or when they contradict the opinions of others. 2. Not in another nor dissimilar manner is the condition of souls discussed by these men. For here one holds them to be perpetual and to survive the function of mortals; that they survive another does not believe, but that they perish together with the bodies themselves: the opinion of another indeed is that they suffer nothing immediately, but that after the man has been laid to rest something is given to them for life, then they come under the rights of mortality.

Et cum omnia nequeant veri esse consortia, ita tamen fortibus et validissimis probationibus omnes agunt, ut repperire non possis quidnam tibi videatur falsum, quamvis ex omni parte diversa dici aspicias et rerum contrarietatibus dissonare. Quod utique non fieret, si certum aliquid tenere curiositas posset humana, vel quod videretur inventum, aliorum omnium comprobaretur adsensu. 3. Inanissima igitur res est et supervacui operis, tamquam scias aliquid promere, aut velle scire contendere quod, etsi sit verum, posse videas destrui, aut acceptare pro vero id quod forsitan non sit et ex more halucinantium | f. 55 | proferatur.

And since not all can be consortia with truth, yet all press their case with strong and most valid proofs, so that you cannot find what might seem false to you, although you see things being said diverse on every side and to be dissonant with the contrarieties of things. Which assuredly would not happen, if human curiosity could hold something certain, or what seemed to have been found would be approved by the assent of all the others. 3. Therefore it is a most inane thing and of superfluous work, as though you knew something to bring forth, or to strive to know that which, even if it is true, you see can be destroyed, or to accept as true that which perhaps is not and, according to the custom of the hallucinating, | f. 55 | is brought forth.

Et merito res ita est. Non enim divina divinis sed rationibus pendimus et coniectamus humanis atque ut fieri meruisse quid remur, ita esse oportere contendimus.

And rightly the matter is thus. For we do not weigh divine things by divine [standards] but by human reasons and conjectures, and just as we suppose that something has merited to come to pass, so we contend that it ought to be.

58.1. Quid ergo? nos soli ignoramus, nescimus, quisnam sit animarum conditor, quisnam constitutor, quae causa hominem finxerit, mala unde proruperint, vel cur ea rex summus et esse patiatur et confici neque ab rebus propellat humanis? Vos enim horum quicquam exploratum habetis et cognitum?

58.1. What then? Are we alone ignorant, do we not know who is the creator of souls, who the establisher, what cause fashioned man, whence evils have burst forth, or why the supreme king both permits them to exist and to be brought to completion and does not drive them away from human affairs? For do you have any of these things explored and known?

2. Si suspicionum exponere volueritis audaciam, potestis explicare ac promere, mundus iste qui nos habet utrumne sit (in>genitus an tempore in aliquo constitutus? Si constitutus et factus est, quonam operis genere aut rei cuius ob causam? 3. Potestis inducere atque expedire rationem, cur non fixus atque immobilis maneat sed orbito semper circumferatur in motus sua ipse sponte et voluntate circumagat an virtutis alicuius inpulsionibus torqueatur?

2. If you should wish to expose the audacity of your suspicions, can you explicate and bring forth whether this world which holds us is unbegotten or constituted at some time? If it is constituted and made, of what kind of work, or for what cause? 3. Can you induce and disentangle the rationale why it does not remain fixed and immobile, but is always carried about in an orbit into motions—does it turn itself of its own accord and will, or is it torqued by the impulsions of some virtue (power)?

locus ipse ac spatium, in quo situs est ac volutatur, quid sit? infinitus, finitus, inanis an solidus? quis eum sustineat extremis cardinibus nitens an ipse se potius vi propria sufferat et spiritu interiore suspendat?

the place itself and the space in which it is situated and is rolled—what is it? infinite or finite, empty or solid? who sustains it, bracing upon the outermost pivots, or does it rather bear itself by its own proper force and hang suspended by an interior spirit?

4. Potestis interrogati planum facere scientissimeque monstrare, quid nivem in plumeas subaperiat crustulass quidnam fuerit rationis et causae, ut non ab occiduis partibus dies primus exsurgeret et lucem in oriente finiret quemadmodum sol ipse uno eodemque contactu tam varias res efficiat, quinimmo contrariass quid sit luna? | f. 55b | quid stellae? cur una specie aut illa non maneat, aut per somne mundi corpus frustilla haec ignea convenerit atque oportuerit figi?

4. Being questioned, can you make it plain and show most scientifically what it is that opens snow into feathery little crustlets? what, pray, was the rationale and cause, that the first day should not rise from the western parts and finish its light in the east? in what manner the sun itself by one and the same contact brings about so many various things, nay, even contraries? what is the moon? | f. 55b | what are the stars? why does it or do they not remain in a single appearance, either this one or that, or whether, through the frame of the world, these little fiery fragments have convened and had to be fixed?

cur alia ex his parva, ampliora et maiora sint alia, obtunsi haec luminis, acutioris illa et fulgidae claritatis?

why are some of these small, others ampler and greater, these of obtuse light, those of more acute and fulgid clarity?

59.1. Si praesto est quod libuerit scire et in aperto rerum est scientia constituta, edissertate nobis et dicite, quibus modis fiant et rationibus pluviae, ut in superis partibus atque in aeris hoc medio suspensa aqua teneatur, natura res labilis et ad fluorem semper decursionemque tam prona? 2. Edissertate, inquam, et dicite, quid sit quod grandinem torqueat, quod guttatim faciat pluviam labi, quod imbres ruat, nivis plumas et foliola dilatarit, ventus unde oriatur et quid sit, cur temporum vicissitudines institutae, cum statui unum posset et una esse species caeli, nihil ut rerum desideraret integritas? 3. quae est causa, quae ratio, ut maria salsa sint aut terrae aquarum hae dulces , aliae sint amarae vel frigidae?

59.1. If what it has pleased to know is at hand and knowledge is established in the open of things, expound to us and say by what modes and reasons rains come to be, how in the upper parts and in this middle of the air water is held suspended, a labile thing by nature and so prone always to flux and downward course? 2. Expound, I say, and tell what it is that wrings hail, that makes rain glide dropwise, that causes downpours to rush, that spreads out the plumes and little leaves of snow, whence wind arises and what it is, why vicissitudes of the seasons have been instituted, when one state could be fixed and there be one appearance of the sky, so that the integrity of things should desire nothing? 3. What is the cause, what the reason, that the seas are salty, or that the waters of the lands are sweet , others are bitter or cold?

quo ex materiae genere humanorum corporum concreta, et stabilita sunt viscera, unde ossa solidata, quid intestina, quid venas fistulatas et conmeabiles fecerit? cur cum esset utilius oculis nos inluminare conpluribus ad periculum caecitatis, duorum sumus angustiis adplicati? 4. beluarum et anguium tam infinita atque innumerabilia genera cuius rei sunt causa vel informata vel prodita?

out of what kind of matter the viscera of human bodies have been concreted and made stable, whence the bones are solidified, what made the intestines, what made the veins as little pipes and conduits for passage? why, since it would have been more useful to illuminate us with several eyes against the peril of blindness, are we constrained to the narrowness of two? 4. of beasts and of serpents, so infinite and innumerable kinds—what is the cause of this matter, whether fashioned or brought forth?

quid in mundo faciunt bubones inmussili buteones? quid alites et volucres ceterae? quid formicarum | f. 56 | et vermium genera in varias labes perniciesque nascentia?

What in the world are eagle-owls and mute buzzards for? What of the winged ones and the other fliers? What of the kinds of ants | f. 56 | and of worms, being born to various blights and destructions?

quid pulices, quid inpudentes muscae, araneae sorices mures scunguisugae tippulae? quid spinae, quid sentes, quid avenae, quid lolium, quid herbarum aut fruticum aut adolentia naribus aut tristia in odoribus semina? 5. Immo si aliquid sciri, comprehendi aut aliquid si posse censetis, quid sit triticum dicite, far hordeum milium cicer faba lenticula melo cuminum porrina ulpicum caepe.

what of fleas, what of impudent flies, spiders shrews mice bloodsuckers craneflies? what of thorns, what of brambles, what of oats, what of darnel, what seeds of herbs or of shrubs either scorching to the nostrils or unpleasant in odors? 5. Nay rather, if you judge that anything can be known, comprehended, or that anything is possible, say what wheat is, spelt barley millet chickpea bean lentil melon cumin leek ulpicum onion.

Non enim, si fructui vobis sunt et ciborum mediis in generibus constituta, expeditum aut promptum est quid sint singula scire, cur talibus figurata sint formis, fuerit necessitas aliqua, ut non alios sapores alios odores alios colores quam quos habent singulae res habere debuerint, an et alios potuerint sumere. 6. Ipsa deinde haec quid sint, sapor dico [id est sapor] et cetera, qualitatum distantias quibus ex rationibus ducunt. ''Ex elementis, inquitis, et ex principalibus originibus rerum''. - Amara sunt enim elementa vel dulcia, odoris sunt alicuius, <alicuius> coloris, ut ex eorum concretione credamus partitas esse in nascentibus qualitates quibus aut suavitas nascitur aut sensibus offensio comparatur.

For even if they are to your profit and are set in the middle genera of foods, it is not unencumbered or ready to know what the individual things are, why they have been figured in such forms, whether there was some necessity that they ought to have had no other savors, other odors, other colors than those which the individual things have, or whether they also could have taken others. 6. Then what these things themselves are—savor, I say [that is, savor], and the rest—the distinctions of the qualities, from what rational accounts they derive them. ''From the elements, you say, and from the principal origins of things.'' - For the elements are bitter or sweet, they are of some odor, of color, so that from their concretion we are to believe that in things being born the qualities have been portioned out, by which either suavity is born or an offense to the senses is provided.

60.1. Cum igitur et vos ipsos tantarum ac tot rerum fugiant origines, fugiant causae, fugiant rationes, neque dicere neque explanare possitis, quid sit factum aut quare, aut cur oportuerit non esse, verecundiam convellitis et dilaceratis nostram, qui quae nequeunt sciri nescire nos confitemur neque ea conquirere | f. 56b | aut investigare curamus quae comprehendi liquidissimum est non posse, quamvis mille per corda suspicio se porrigat atque intendat humana. 2. Et ideo Christus licet [in] vobis invitis deus, deus, inquam, Christus - hoc enim saepe dicendum est, ut infidelium dissiliat et dirumpatur auditus - dei principis iussione loquens sub hominis forma, cum mortalium sciret caecam esse naturam neque ullam posse comprehendere veritatem positarum nec ante oculos rerum, pro comperto habere et cognito quidquid sibi esse suasisset nec pro suis suspicionibus haesitare litigiosas serere atque intendere quaestiones, 3. omnia ista nos linquere et posthabere praecepit neque in res eas quae sint a nostra procul cognitione dimotae infructuosas inmittere cogitationes, sed, quantum fieri potis est, ad dominum rerum tota mente atque animo proficisci, sustolli ab his locis atque in eum traducere suspensas pectoris conversiones, memoriam eius habere perpetuam et licet nulla possit imaginatione formari, auras tamen nescio quas eius sibi contemplationis adfingere: 4. rebus enim ex omnibus, quas augustae continet divinitatis obscuritas, solum esse indubitabilem, solum verum et de quo nullus ambigere nisi amens possit et desperationis insanae, quem satis sit scire ut nihil aliud noveris, sisque veram et maximam scientiam consecutus in dei rerum capitis et cognitione defixus.

60.1. Since therefore even you yourselves are escaped by the origins, the causes, the reasons of so great and so many things, and you are unable either to say or to explain what has been done or why, or why it ought not to have been, you tear away and lacerate our modesty, we who confess that we do not know the things which cannot be known, nor do we care to seek out | f. 56b | or to investigate those things which it is most limpid that they cannot be comprehended, although suspicion stretches itself and extends through a thousand human hearts. 2. And therefore Christ, although God to you unwilling [in], God, I say, Christ — for this must often be said, that the hearing of unbelievers may burst and be rent — speaking by the command of the ruler God under the form of a man, since he knew that the nature of mortals is blind and that it is not at all able to comprehend the truth of things set and placed before the eyes, to hold as ascertained and known whatever one had suggested to himself to be, and, on account of their own suspicions, not to hesitate to sow and to stretch out litigious questions, 3. commanded us to leave and to set aside all these things, and not to send fruitless thoughts into matters which have been removed far from our cognition, but, as far as it can be done, to set out with whole mind and spirit to the lord of things, to be lifted from these places and to transfer into him the suspended turnings of the breast, to have his memory perpetual, and, although he can be formed by no imagination, nevertheless to fashion to oneself I-know-not-what breezes of his contemplation: 4. for among all the things which the obscurity of august divinity contains, this alone is indubitable, this alone true and about which no one can doubt unless he be mad and of insane desperation, namely, that he is — whom it is enough to know, so that you should know nothing else, and you will have attained true and greatest science, fixed in the acknowledgement and cognition of God, the head of things.

61.1. '' Quid est , inquit, vobis investigare, conquirere, quisnam hominem fecerit, animarum origo quae sit, quis malorum | f. 57 | excogitaverit causas, orbe sit sol amplior an pedis unius latitudine metiatur, alieno ex lumine an propriis luceat fulgoribus luna? Quae neque scire compendium neque ignorare detrimentum est ullum. 2. Remittite haec deo atque ipsum scire concedite, quid quare aut unde sit, debuerit esse aut non esse, supernatum sit aliquid an ortus primigenios habeat, aboleri conveniat an reservari, exuri, dissolvi an repetita integritate renovari.

61.1. '' What is it, he says, for you to investigate, to inquire, who indeed made man, what the origin of souls may be, who has excogitated the causes of evils, | f. 57 | whether the sun is larger than the globe or is measured by the breadth of a single foot, whether the moon shines from another’s light or by its own effulgences? Things which it is neither any advantage to know nor any detriment to be ignorant of. 2. Remit these things to God and concede to him himself to know what, why, or whence it is, whether it ought to be or not to be, whether anything is born from above or has primordial births, whether it is fitting to be abolished or to be reserved, to be burned up, to be dissolved, or, integrity restored, to be renewed.

Vestris non est rationibus liberum inplicare vos talibus et tam remota in utilitate curare? 3. Res vestra in ancipiti sita est, salus dico animarum vestrarum, et nisi vos adplicatis dei principis notioni, a corporalibus vinculis exsolutos expectat mors saeva, non repentinam adferens extinctionem sed per tractum temporis cruciabilis poenae acerbitate consumens''.

Is it not free to your reasonings to implicate yourselves in such things and to care about things so remote in utility? 3. Your affair stands on a knife-edge, I mean the salvation of your souls, and unless you apply yourselves to the notion of the princely god, when released from bodily chains a savage death awaits you, not bringing sudden extinction but, over a stretch of time, consuming by the bitterness of an excruciating penalty''.

62.1. Neque illud obrepat aut spe vobis aeria blandiatur, quod ab sciolis nonnullis et plurimum sibi adrogantibus dicitur, deo esse se gnatos nec fati obnoxios legibus, si vitam restrictius egerint, aulam sibi eius patere, ac post hominis functionem prohibente se nullo tamquam in sedem referri patritam; neque quod magi spondent, commendaticias habere se preces quibus emollitae nescio quae potestates vias faciles praebeant ad caelum contendentibus subvolare, neque quod Etruria libris in Acheronticis pollicentur, certorum animalium sanguine numinibus certis dato divinas animas fieri et ab legibus mortalitatis educi. 2. Blandimenta haec cassa sunt et inanium fomenta votorum. Servare | f. 57b | animas alius nisi deus omnipotens non potest, nec praeterea quisquam est qui longaevas facere, perpetuitatis possit et spiritum subrogare, nisi qui immortalis et perpetuus solus est et nullius temporis circumscriptione finitus.

62.1. Nor let this creep in or cajole you with airy hope, which is said by certain sciolists and by those arrogating very much to themselves: that they are begotten of god and not obnoxious to the laws of fate; that, if they have lived more restrictively, his court lies open to them, and that after the function of human life, with no one hindering them, they are carried back, as it were, into an ancestral seat; nor what the magi promise, that they possess commendatory prayers by which certain powers, being mollified, may offer easy ways for those contending to fly up to heaven; nor what in the Etruscan Acherontic books they pledge, that by blood of certain animals given to certain numina souls become divine and are led out from the laws of mortality. 2. These blandishments are void and fomentations of empty wishes. To preserve souls no one except the omnipotent god can, nor moreover is there anyone who can make them long-lived, bestow perpetuity, and subrogate spirit, save he who alone is immortal and perpetual and bounded by no circumscription of time. | f. 57b |

3. Cum enim dii omnes, vel quicumque sunt veri vel qui esse rumore atque opinione dicuntur, immortales et perpetui voluntate eius sint et beneficii munere, qui fieri potis est, ut alii praestare id quod ipsi sunt valeant, cum alienum id habeant et maioris potentia commodatum? 4. Caedant licet hostias quantaslibet Etruria, humana sibi omnia sapientes negent, magi cunctas emolliant et commulceant potestates: nisi ab domino rerum datum fuerit animis id quod ratio postulat idque per mandatum, multum postea paenitebit fuisse inrisui, cum ad sensum coeperit interitionis accedi.

3. For since all the gods, whether those who are true or those who are said to exist by rumor and opinion, are immortal and perpetual by his will and by the gift of beneficence, how can it come to be that others are able to bestow that which they themselves are, since they have it as another’s and on loan by the power of a greater? 4. Let Etruria slaughter however many victims it pleases, let the wise deny to themselves all human things, let the magi soften and soothe all the powers: unless there shall have been given by the lord of things to souls that which reason demands, and that by a mandate, afterwards it will be much regretted to have been a laughingstock, when one begins to come to the sense of interition.

63.1. ''Sed si, inquiunt, Christus in hoc missus a Deo est, ut infelices animas ab interitionis exitio liberaret, quid saecula commeruerunt priora, quae ante ipsius adventum mortalitatis condicione consumpta sunt?''. - Potestis enim scire, quid sit cum eis animis actum priscorum veterrimorum que mortalium, subventum et his an sit ratione aliqua, consultum atque provisum? 2. Potestis, inquam, scire id quod Christo potuit docente cognosci, infinita an finita sint saecula ex quo in terris esse genus hominum coepit, quando primum animae corporibus inligatae, quis auctor vinctionis istius, quinimmo ipsius quisnam hominis fabricator, quo priorum abscesserint animae, quibus in mundi partibus | f. 58 | aut regionibus fuerint, corruptibiles an contra, potuerintne accedere ad periculum moriendi , nisi tempore necessario conservator occurrisset Christus? 3. Exponite has curas et incognitas vobis relinquite quaestiones: miseratio et illis impertita est regia et aequaliter per omnes divina beneficia cucurrerunt: conservatae sunt, liberatae sunt et mortalitatis sortem condicionem que posuerunt.

63.1. ''But if, they say, Christ was sent by God for this, that he might liberate unhappy souls from the issue of annihilation, what did the prior ages deserve, which before his advent were consumed by the condition of mortality?''. - For can you know what was done with those souls of the ancient and very oldest mortals, whether aid too was brought to them by some rational plan, whether they were cared for and provided for? 2. Can you, I say, know that which could be known with Christ teaching: whether the ages since the human race began to be on earth are infinite or finite, when first souls were bound to bodies, who is the author of that binding, nay rather who is the very fabricator of man himself, whither the souls of the former departed, in what parts of the world | f. 58 | or in what regions they were, whether corruptible or the contrary, whether they could have approached the peril of dying , unless at the necessary time the preserver had come to meet them, Christ? 3. Set forth these worries and leave to yourselves the questions unknown: royal compassion was imparted to them also, and divine benefactions ran equally through all: they have been preserved, they have been freed, and they have laid down the lot and condition of mortality.

''Quo genere, quae, quando?''. - Si adrogantia, si typhus, si elatio abesset a vobis, iamdudum haeG scire <Christo> potuistis auctore.

''By what sort, which, when?''. - If arrogance, if typhus (puffed-up conceit), if elation were absent from you, long ago you could have known these things, with Christ as your author.

64.1. ''Sed si generis Christus humani, ut inquitis, conservator advenit, quor omnino non omnes aequali munificentia liberat?''. - Non aequaliter liberat qui aequaliter omnes vocat? aut ab indulgentia principali quemquam repellit aut despuit, qui sublimibus infimis servis feminis pueris uniformiter potestatem veniendi ad se facit? ''Patet, inquit, omnibus fons vitae neque ab iure potandi quisquam prohibetur aut pellitur''. 2. - Si tibi fastidium tantum est, ut oblati respuas beneficium muneris, quinimmo si tantum sapientia praevales, ut ea quae offeruntur a Christo ludum atque ineptias nomines, quid invitans expectat, cuius solae sunt hae partes, ut sub tui iuris arbitrio fructum suae benignitatis exponat?

64.1. ''But if, as you say, Christ has come as conservator of the human race, why, pray, does he not liberate all with equal munificence?''. - Does he not liberate equally who calls all equally? Or does he repel anyone from princely indulgence, or spit him out, he who uniformly grants the power of coming to himself to the high and the low, to slaves, to women, to boys alike? ''The fount of life, he says, lies open to all, and no one is prohibited or driven away from the right of drinking''. 2. - If you have such fastidiousness as to spurn the benefit of the gift offered, nay rather if you so prevail in wisdom as to style the things offered by Christ a game and inanities, what is the inviter to await, whose sole part it is to set forth the fruit of his benignity under the arbitrament of your own jurisdiction?

''Sortem vitae eligendi nulli est, inquit Plato [Plato, rep. 617 e], deus causa, neque alterius voluntas adscribi potest cuiquam recte, cum voluntatis libertas in ipsius sit posita potestate qui voluit''. 3. An numquid orandus es, ut beneficium salutis ab deo digneris accipere, | f. 58b | et tibi aspernanti fugientique longissime infundenda in gremium est divinae benivolentiae gratia? Vis sumere quod offertur atque in tuos usus convertere? consulueris tu tibi.

''For choosing the lot of life, God is the cause for no one, says Plato [Plato, rep. 617 e], nor can another’s will be rightly ascribed to anyone, since the freedom of will is placed in the power of the very one who has willed.'' 3. Or must you be entreated to deign to receive the benefit of salvation from God, | f. 58b | and is the grace of divine benevolence to be poured into the lap for you who spurn and flee far away? Do you wish to take what is offered and convert it to your own uses? You will have consulted for yourself.

4. Aspernaris, contemnis et despicis? tu te muneris commoditate privaveris. Nulli deus infert necessitatem, imperiosa formidine nullum terret.

4. Do you spurn, contemn, and despise? You will have deprived yourself of the benefit of the gift. God inflicts necessity on no one; with imperious fear he frightens no one.

Neque enim necessaria nostra illi salus est, ut conpendii aliquid dispendiive patiatur, si aut deos nos fecerit aut ad nihilum redigi corruptionis dissolutione permiserit.

For neither is our salvation necessary to him, so that he would undergo any compendium or dispendium (gain or loss), whether he should make us gods or permit us to be reduced to nothing by the dissolution of corruption.

65.1. ''Immo, inquit, si deus est potens misericors conservator, convertat nobis mentes et invitos faciat suis pollicitationibus credere''. - Vis ergo est ista, non gratia nec dei liberalitas principis, sed ad vincendi studium puerilis atque animi contentio. 2. Quid est enim tam iniustum, quam repugnantibus, quam invitis extorquere in contrarium voluntates, inculcare quod nolint et quo refugiant animis, prius nocere quam prosis et priore detracto in alienum habitum sententiamque traducere? 3. Tu qui te verti et vim desideras perpeti, ut id quod nolis efficias atque arripias coactus, cur respuis adsumere voluntate id quod versus desideras atque immutatus efficere?

65.1. ''Nay rather,'' he says, ''if God is a powerful, merciful preserver, let him turn our minds and make the unwilling believe his promises.'' - So this is force, not grace nor the princely liberality of God, but a zeal for conquering, a contention of a childish and spirit. 2. For what is so unjust as to wrench into the contrary the wills of those resisting, of the unwilling; to thrust upon them what they do not want and from which their minds flee; to harm before you benefit; and, with what was prior removed, to transfer them into an alien habit and judgment? 3. You who desire to be turned and to endure compulsion, so that, forced, you may effect and seize what you do not want, why do you refuse to assume by will that toward which you desire to be turned and, changed, to accomplish it?

''Nolo, inquit, et voluntatem non habeo''. - Quid ergo criminaris deum tamquam tibi desit opem desideranti ferre? cuius dona et munera non tantum asperneris et fugias, verum inania verba cognomines et iocularibus facetiis prosequaris. 4. ''Christianus ergo ni fuero, spem salutis habere | f. 59 | non potero?''. - Ita est, ut ipse proponis.

''I do not wish it,' he says, 'and I do not have the will'. - Why then do you criminate God as though he lacked to bring aid to you when you desire it? whose gifts and offerings you not only spurn and flee, but even style empty words and pursue with jocular witticisms. 4. ''Therefore, if I shall not be a Christian, I will not be able to have the hope of salvation | f. 59 | ?''. - So it is, as you yourself propose.

Partes enim salutis dandae conferendi que animis quod tribui convenit necessariumque est adplicari, solus ab deo patre iniunctum habet et traditum, ita se habentibus semotis atque interioribus causis. Ut enim dii certi certas apud vos habent tutelas licentias potestates neque eorum ab aliquo id quod eius non sit potestatis ac licentiae postulatis, ita unius pontificium Christi est dare animis salutem et spiritum perpetuitatis adponere. 5. Si enim patrem creditis Liberum dare posse vindemiam, medicinam non posse, si Cererem fruges, si Aesculapium sanitatem, si Neptunum aliud, aliud posse Iunonem, Fortunam Mercurium Vulcanum rerum esse singulos certarum ac singularum datores: et hoc necesse a nobis est ut debeatis accipere, ab nullo animas posse vim vitae atque incolumitatis accipere nisi ab eo quem rex summus huic muneri officioque praefecit.

For the parts of giving salvation and of conferring upon souls that which it is fitting to be granted and is necessary to be applied, the only one has it enjoined and delivered by God the Father, with the underlying and interior causes set aside. For as certain gods among you have certain tutelages, licenses, powers, and you do not ask from any of them that which is not of his power and license, so it is the pontificate of the one Christ to give salvation to souls and to superadd the spirit of perpetuity. 5. If, indeed, you believe Father Liber can give the vintage but cannot give medicine; if Ceres (can give) crops; if Aesculapius health; if Neptune one thing, Juno another; (and) Fortuna, Mercury, Vulcan, each to be givers of specific and several things: so too it is necessary that you accept this from us, that from no one can souls receive the power of life and incolumity except from him whom the supreme king has appointed over this gift and office.

6. Hanc omnipotens imperator esse voluit salutis viam, hanc vitae ut ita dixerim ianuam, per hanc solum est ingressus ad lucem neque alias datum est vel inrepere vel invadere ceteris omnibus clausis atque inexpugnabili arce munitis.

6. This the omnipotent emperor has willed to be the way of salvation, this, so to speak, the door of life; through this alone there is an ingress to the light, nor has it been granted otherwise to either creep in or to invade with all the others closed and fortified by an inexpugnable citadel.

66.1. Licet ergo tu purus et ab omni fueris vitiorum contaminatione purgatus, conciliaveris illas atque inflexeris potestates, ad caelum redeunti vias cludant atque obsaepiant transitum, ad immortalitatis accedere nullis poteris contentionibus praemium, nisi quod ipsam immortalitatem facit Christo adtribuente | f. 59b | perceperis et veram fueris admissus ad vitam. 2. Nam quod nobis obiectare consuestis, novellam esse religionem nostram et ante dies natam propemodum paucos neque nos oportuisse antiquam et patriam linquere et in barbaros ritus peregrinosque traduci, ratione istud intenditur nulla. 3. Quid enim, si hoc modo culpam velimus infligere prioribus illis atque antiquissimis saeculis, quod inventis frugibus glandes spreverint et repudiaverint arbuta, quod corticibus contegi et amiciri desierint pellibus, postquam vestis excogitata est textilis usu et commoditate succinctior, aut quod structis domibus et lautioribus successibus institutis non antiquas adamaverint casulas nec sub rupibus et cavernis praeoptaverint ut beluae permanere?

66.1. Granted, then, that you are pure and have been purged from every contamination of vices, that you have conciliated and bent those powers, lest, for one returning to heaven, they close the ways and fence off the passage, you will by no strivings be able to approach the prize of immortality, unless, Christ granting it | f. 59b |, you have received that which makes immortality itself, and have been admitted to true life. 2. Now as to what you are accustomed to object to us—that our religion is novel and was born almost only a few days ago, and that we ought not to have left the ancient and native [way] and be transferred into barbarous and foreign rites—this is urged with no reason. 3. For what, indeed, if we should wish in this way to inflict blame upon those earlier and most ancient ages, because, once grains had been discovered, they despised acorns and rejected arbutus-berries; because they ceased to be covered and wrapped with bark and with hides after a textile garment, more serviceable and more convenient, was devised; or because, houses having been built and more polished dwellings established, they did not fall in love with the old little huts nor prefer to remain beneath cliffs and in caverns like wild beasts?

4. Commune est omnibus et ab ipsis paene incunabulis traditum, bona malis anteferre, inutilibus utilia praeponere, et quod esse constiterit pretiosius, laetius, id consectari et petere in eoque defigere spem salutis et salutarium commodorum.

4. It is common to all and handed down from almost the very cradle, to prefer good things to bad, to put useful things before useless ones, and that which has been established to be more precious, more gladsome, to pursue and seek that, and in it to fix the hope of salvation and of salutary advantages.

67.1. Itaque cum nobis intenditis aversionem a religione priorum, causam convenit ut inspiciatis, non factum, nec quid reliquerimus opponere, sed secuti quid simus potissimum contueri. Nam si mutare sententiam culpa est ulla vel crimen et a veteribus institutis in alias res novas voluntatesque migrare, criminatio ista et vos spectat, qui totiens vitam consuetudinemque mutastis, qui in mores alios atque alios ritus priorum condemnatione transistis. 2. Numquid | f. 60 | enim quinque in classes habetis populum distributum, vestri olim ut habuere maiores?

67.1. And so, when you direct against us an aversion from the religion of the ancients, it is fitting that you inspect the cause, not the deed, nor to oppose what we have left behind, but to behold most of all what we have followed. For if to change an opinion is any fault or crime, and to migrate from ancestral institutions into other new things and purposes, this accusation concerns you also, you who so often have changed life and custom, who have passed into other manners and other rites by a condemnation of the former. 2. Do you, | f. 60 | indeed have the people distributed into five classes, as once your ancestors had?

numquid magistratus per populum creatis? militaria urbana communia quae sint comitia scitis? servatis de caelo aut otiosas facitis obnuntiationibus actiones?

Do you elect magistrates by the People? Do you know which assemblies are military, which urban, which common? Do you observe the sky, or render proceedings idle by announcements of unfavorable omens?

si paratis bella, signum monstratis ex arce? aut fetialia iura tractatis? per clarigationem repetitis res raptas?

if you prepare wars, do you display the signal from the citadel? or do you handle the fetial rights? do you demand back the things carried off by clarigation?

aut Martium discrimen obeuntes spem proelii sumitis et ex acuminibus auspicatis ? 3. in potestatibus obeundis leges conservatis annarias? in donis, in muneribus Cincias? in cohibendis censorias sumptibus?

or, going to face the Martial crisis, do you take up the hope of battle and auspicate from the spear-points ? 3. in undertaking magistracies do you observe the annary (annual) laws? in gifts, in gratuities, the Cincian laws? in restraining expenditures, the censorial (sumptuary) laws?

in penetralibus et caeligenis perpetuos fovetis focos? sacras facitis mensas salinorum adpositu et simulacris deorum? cum in matrimonia convenitis, toga sternitis lectulos et maritorum genios advocatis?

do you cherish perpetual hearths in the penetralia and for the heaven-born? do you make tables sacred by the placement of salt-cellars and by the simulacra of the gods? when you come together into marriages, do you spread a toga upon the little couches and summon the genii of the husbands?

nubentium crinem caelibari hasta mulcetis? puellarum togulas Fortunam defertis ad Virginalem? matres familias vestrae in atriis operantur domorum industrias testificantes suas?

do you stroke the hair of brides with a celibate spear? do you carry the maidens’ little togas to Virginal Fortune? do your matrons of families work in the atria, bearing witness to their household industries?

potionibus abstinent vini? adfinibus et propinquis osculari eas ius est, ut sobrias comprobent atque abstemias se esse?

Do they abstain from potations of wine? Do affines and relatives have the right to kiss them, so that they may verify that they are sober and abstinent?

68.1. In Albano antiquitus monte nullos alios licebat quam nivei tauros immolare candoris: nonne istum morem religionemque mutastis atque, ut rufulos liceret dari, senatus constitutum sanctione? Cum Romulo Pompilioque regnantibus percocta plane ac madida concremarentur diis exta, nonne rege sub Tullo semicruda coepistis et leviter animata porrigere prisca observatione contempta? 2. Ante adventum in Italiam | f. 60b | Herculis cum ex Apollinis monitu patri Diti ac Saturno humanis capitibus supplicaretur, et hunc similiter morem non fraude callidula et nominum ambiguitate mutastis?

68.1. On the Alban mountain, in ancient times, it was permitted to immolate no others than bulls of snowy whiteness: did you not change that custom and religion, and, so that reddish ones might be allowed to be given, by the sanction of a senatorial decree? When, with Romulus and Pompilius reigning, the entrails, thoroughly cooked outright and sodden, were burned up to the gods, did you not under king Tullus begin to proffer them half-raw and slightly animate, with the ancient observance contemned? 2. Before the advent into Italy | f. 60b | of Hercules, when, by Apollo’s monition, propitiation was made to father Dis and Saturn with human heads, did you not likewise change this custom by a cunning little fraud and an ambiguity of names?

3. Cum igitur et vos ipsi modo illos mores modo alias leges fueritis secuti, multaque vel erroribus cognitis vel animadversione meliorum sint a vobis repudiata, contempta, quid est a nobis factum contra sensum iudiciumque commune, si maiora et certiora delegimus nec sumus nos passi falsorum religionibus attineri?

3. Since therefore you yourselves have at one time followed those mores, at another other laws, and many things, either with the errors recognized or by the observation of better things, have been by you repudiated and contemned, what has been done by us against common sense and judgment, if we have chosen greater and more certain things and have not allowed ourselves to be held by the religions of false things?

69.1. ''Sed novellum nomen est nostrum et ante dies paucos religio est nata quam sequimur.'' - Ut interim concedam id quod nobis obicitur intentionis esse non falsae quid est enim in negotiis hominum, quod vel opera corporis et manibus fiat vel solius animi disciplina et cognitione teneatur, quod non ex aliquo coeperit tempore et in usum exierit experientiamque mor talium? Medicina philosophia musica ceteraeque omnes artes quibus vita est exstructa et expolita communis cum hominibus natae sunt, et non potius nuper, quinimmo paene paulo ante agitari, intellegi celebrari que coeperunt? 2. Antequam Tages Tuscus oras contingeret luminis [Lucret.

69.1. ''But our name is novel, and the religion which we follow was born a few days ago.'' - While for the moment I grant that what is thrown at us is not of a false intention, what is there in human affairs, which either is brought about by the works of the body and hands or is held by the discipline and cognition of the mind alone, that did not begin at some time and go forth into use and the experience of mor tals? Medicine, philosophy, music, and all the other arts by which common life has been constructed and polished were born together with human beings, and did they not rather only recently, nay almost just a little before, begin to be practiced, understood, and celebrated? 2. Before Tages the Tuscan touched the shores of light [Lucret.

I 22], quisquam hominum sciebat aut esse noscendum condiscendunlque curabat, an fulminum casibus aut extorum aliquid significaretur in venis? Quando siderum motus aut ratio coepta est genethliaca sciri? non post Theutin Aegyptium aut post Atlantem, ut quidam ferunt, gestatorem, baiulum, tibi| f.61 |cinem illum ac destinam caeli?

I 22], did anyone among men know, or care that it ought to be known and learned, whether by the falls of thunderbolts or in the veins of entrails anything was signified? When did the motions of the stars or the genethliac method begin to be known? Not until after Theuth the Egyptian, or after Atlas, as some report, the bearer, the porter, tibi| f.61 |cinem that prop and stay of the sky?

70.1. Sed quid ego haec parva? Ipsi dii immortales, quorum modo aditis templa et numina suppliciter adoratis, sicut vestris litteris atque opinionibus traditur, non esse, non sciri ab temporibus coeperunt certis et impositis nominum appellationibus nuncupari? 2. Nam si verum est ex Saturno atque eius uxore Iovem suis cum fratribus procreatum, ante nuptias et partus Opis nusquam fuerat Iuppiter, Iuppiter tam supremus quam Stygius, nusquam sali dominus, nusquam Iuno, quinimmo alius nullus genitoribus duobus exceptis caeli habitabat in sedibus, sed ex eorum concubitu concepti et nati sunt et spiritum hausere vitalem.

70.1. But why do I mention these small matters? The immortal gods themselves, whose temples you now approach and whose divine powers you supplicantly adore, as is handed down by your letters and opinions, did they begin, from fixed times, not to be, not to be known, and to be nuncupated by imposed appellations of names? 2. For if it is true that from Saturn and his wife Jupiter was procreated together with his brothers, before the nuptials and births of Ops, nowhere was there Jupiter—Jupiter as well the Supreme as the Stygian—nowhere the lord of the brine, nowhere Juno; nay rather, no one else, the two parents excepted, inhabited the seats of heaven, but from their coitus they were conceived and born and drew vital breath.

3. Certo ergo a tempore deus esse Iuppiter coepit, certo cultus et sacrificia commereri, certo fratribus in potestatibus anteponi. Rursus vero si Liber Venus Diana Mercurius Apollo Hercules Musae, Tyndaridae Castores ignipotensque Vulcanus Iove patre sunt proditi et genitore Saturnio procreati, ante quam Memoria, quam Alcmena Maia Iuno Latona Leda Dione, tum et Semela Diespitri factae sunt compressionibus fetae, nusquam et hi gentium nec in aliqua parte rerum fuere naturae, sed ex conventu Iovis inseminati et nati sunt et aliquem sensum sui habere coeperunt. 4. Ergo et hi quoque tempore esse coeperunt certo et in numero numinum sacrorum ad caerimonias invocari, quod ipsum similiter dicere translatum in Minervam licebit.

3. Therefore from a certain time Jupiter began to be a god, from a certain [time] to merit worship and sacrifices, from a certain [time] to be set before his brothers in powers. Again, indeed, if Liber, Venus, Diana, Mercury, Apollo, Hercules, the Muses, the Tyndaridae the Castors, and fire-potent Vulcan are reported with Jove as father and with their begetter Saturnian, before Memory, before Alcmena Maia Juno Latona Leda Dione, then also Semele, had been made fecund by the embraces of Diespiter, nowhere did these exist among the nations nor in any part of the things of nature, but from the congress of Jove they were inseminated and born and began to have some perception of themselves. 4. Therefore these too likewise began to exist at a certain time and to be invoked among the number of sacred numina for ceremonies, which same thing it will be permitted similarly to say as transferred to Minerva.

Si enim Iovis, ut adseveratis, ex cerebro sine ullius seminis emicuit iactu, antequam est Diespiter genitus et in utero | f. 61b | matris corporeae formam circumscriptionis accepit, certum est utique Minervam non fuisse neque rerum in numero aut ulla esse in substantia computatam, sed ex capite Iovis enata est et esse res coepit nonnulla in essentia constituta. Habet ergo primigenios ortus, et a certo coepta est tempore dea dici, sacris in aedibus statui et inviolabili religione sanciri. 5. Quod cum ita se habeat, cum de novitate loquimini religionum nostrarum, vestrae vobis in mentem non veniunt, nec curatis inspicere, quando sint exorti dii vestri, quas origines habeant, quas causas, vel ex: quibus proruperint emicuerint que radicibus?

For if Jupiter, as you assert, sprang forth from the brain without any cast of seed, before he was begotten as Diespiter and in the womb | f. 61b | of a corporeal mother received the form of circumscription, it is certainly sure that Minerva did not exist nor was she reckoned in the number of things or as being in any substance, but from the head of Jupiter she was born, and began to be a thing, constituted to some degree in essence. Therefore she has primigenial origins, and from a certain time she began to be called a goddess, to be set up in sacred temples, and to be sanctioned by inviolable religion. 5. Since this is so, when you speak about the novelty of our religions, your own do not come into your mind, nor do you care to inspect when your gods arose, what origins they have, what causes, or from what roots they have burst forth and flashed forth?

Cuius est autem pudoris, quinimmo inverecundiae cuius, quod agere te videas, in eo alterum reprehendere, maledicti et criminis loco dare ea quae in te possint reciprocata vicissitudine retorqueri?

Whose is the sense of modesty, or rather whose of shamelessness, to blame another for that which you see yourself doing, to set as an insult and as a criminal charge those things which can, by a reciprocal turn, be twisted back upon you?

71.1. ''Sed quod agimus nos, novum est, quod autem vos, priscum est et nimiae vetustatis'': - et quid istud aut vos iuvat aut nostram causam rationemque contristat? Nova res est quam gerimus, quandoque et ipsa vetus fiet: vetus quam vos agitis, sed temporibus quibus coepit nova fuit ac repentina. Religionis autem auctoritas non est tempore aestimanda sed numine, nec colere qua die sed quid coeperis, convenit intueri.

71.1. ''But that what we do is new, whereas what you do is pristine and of excessive antiquity'': — and how does that either help you or discredit our cause and rationale? What we are doing is a new thing, and someday it too will become old: what you are doing is old, but at the time when it began it was new and sudden. Moreover, the authority of religion is not to be assessed by time but by the divinity, nor is it fitting to consider on what day you worship but what you have begun.

2. ''Ante trecentos annos religio, inquit, vestra non fuit''. - Et dii vestri non fuerunt ante milia annorum duo. ''Quibus istud rationibus colligi aut quibus supputationibus potest?''. - Non difficilibus, non obscuris, sed quas possit videre qui volet et contrectare, quemadmodum dicitur, manibus. | f. 61b?

2. ''But three hundred years ago, he says, your religion did not exist''. - And your gods did not exist before two thousand years. ''By what reasons can that be gathered, or by what computations?''. - Not difficult, not obscure, but such as anyone who wishes can see and, as is said, handle with his hands. | f. 61b?

| 3. ''Quis Iovem cum fratribus genuit?''. - Genialibus Opis adiunctus Saturnus, ut vos fertis, Caelo atque Hecata procreatus. ''Quis Picum, Fauni patrem atque avum Latini?''. - Saturnus, ut vos idem vestris scriptis atque auctoribus traditis. 4. Ergo si haec ita sunt, sequitur ut Picus et Iuppiter germanitatis sibi sociati sint iure, utpote uno ex sanguine unoque ex semine procreati.

| 3. ''Who begot Jupiter with his brothers?''. - Saturn, joined in nuptial bonds to Ops, as you assert, begotten of Caelus and Hecate. ''Who [begot] Picus, father of Faunus and grandsire of Latinus?''. - Saturn, as you likewise hand down in your own writings and by your authorities. 4. Therefore, if these things are so, it follows that Picus and Jupiter are associated to one another by the right of german kinship, inasmuch as produced from one blood and from one seed.

''Consentaneum est ita esse quod dicitur''. - Ab Iove et Pico quot sunt generis usque ad Latinum gradus? ''Trini, ut indicat series''. - Vultis Faunus, Latinus et Picus annis vixerint vicenis atque centenis? ''Ultra enim negatur posse hominis vita produci''. - Aestimatio iusta et liquida est''. - Trecenti ergo sunt pleni et sexaginta post hos anni?

''It is consistent that what is said is so''. - From Jupiter and Picus, how many steps of lineage are there up to Latinus? ''Three, as the series indicates''. - Do you wish that Faunus, Latinus, and Picus lived for one hundred and twenty years? ''For it is denied that a human life can be prolonged beyond that''. - ''The reckoning is just and clear''. - Therefore, are 360 full years after these?

''Res ita est, ut indicat supputatio''. - Cuius socer Latinus fuit? ''Aeneae''. - <Aeneas>genitor cuius? - ''<Ascanii> Albani oppidi conditoris''. - Quot apud Albam regnatum est annis?

''It is so, as the computation indicates.'' - Whose father-in-law was Latinus? ''Of Aeneas.'' - <Aeneas> father of whom? - ''Of <Ascanius>, founder of the town of Alba.'' - For how many years was it reigned at Alba?

''Quadringentis et prope bis denis''. - Aetatis urbs Roma cuius esse in annalibus indicatur? ''Annos ducit quinquaginta et mille aut non multum ab his minus''. 5. - Ergo ab Iove, qui frater est Pici quique pater est minorum et reliquorum deorum, anni ad haec tempora prope milia duo sunt aut pleni, ut largiamur aetati. Quod cum redargui non possit, non tantum recens nata religio ostenditur quam obitis, set infantes et parvulos esse ipsos adhuc deos, quibus tauros atque alias hostias cum periculo corruptionis suggeritis, quos oportebat adhuc mammis atque stillato lacte nutriri.

''Four hundred and nearly twice ten.'' - Of what age is the city Rome indicated to be in the annals? ''She counts one thousand and fifty years, or not much less than these.'' 5. - Therefore from Jove, who is the brother of Picus and who is the father of the younger and the remaining gods, the years down to these times are nearly two thousand, or full, if we be generous to the age. Since this cannot be refuted, not only is a religion shown to be newly born rather than than the deceased, but the gods themselves are still infants and little children, to whom you supply bulls and other victims with the danger of corruption, whom it would have been fitting still to be nourished at the breasts and with dripped milk.

72.1. ''At religiones vestrae multis annis praecedunt nostram, et eo sunt veriores quod vetustatis auctoritate munitae sunt''. | f. 61? / - Et quid eas prodest annis quam plurimis anteire, cum a certo coeperint tempore, autspatii cuius sunt milia annorum duo saeculorum tantis comparata cum milibus? 2. Ac tamen ne causam tam longa prodere dissimulatione videamur, nisi molestum est, dicite, omnipotens et primus deus novella vobis videtur res esse, et qui eum venerantes colunt, inauditas incognitas repentinas agitare atque inducere religiones? 3. Estne illo antiquius quicquam, aut quod eum praecedat re tempore nomine potest aliquid inveniri?

72.1. ''But your religions precede ours by many years, and are therefore truer because they are fortified by the authority of antiquity''. | f. 61? / - And what does it profit them to have gone before by very many years, since they began at a fixed time, or of a span whose years are thousands, when compared with the thousands of ages? 2. And yet, lest we seem to betray the cause by so long a dissimulation, unless it is troublesome, say: does the omnipotent and first God seem to you a novel thing, and do those who, venerating him, worship, agitate and introduce unheard-of, unknown, sudden religions? 3. Is there anything more ancient than him, or can anything be found which precedes him in reality, in time, in name?

Nonne solus ingenitus, immortalis et perpetuus solus est? quis caput ac fons rerum ests non ipse? cui debet aeternitas hoc ipsum quod nuncupatur aeternitas?

Is not he alone unbegotten, immortal, and perpetual? Who is the head and fount of things, if not he himself? To whom does eternity owe this very thing which is named “eternity”?

non ipsi? infinita ut prodeant saecula, non ex eius perpetuitate perficitur? Indubitabile istud et verum.

Is it not to him himself? That infinite ages should proceed— is it not effected from his perpetuity? This is indubitable and true.

4. Non ergo quod sequimur novum est, sed nos sero addidicimus quidnam sequi oporteat colere aut ubinam conveniret spem salutis adfigere et salutaria subsidia conlocare. Nondum enim adfulserat qui viam monstraret errantibus et caligine in altissima constitutis cognitionis lumen inmitteret et ignorationis discuteret caecitatem.

4. Therefore what we follow is not new, but we learned too late what it was proper to follow and to cultivate, or where it would be fitting to affix the hope of salvation and to collocate the salutary subsidies. For he had not yet shone forth who would show the way to the erring and, for those set in the loftiest gloom, would send in the light of cognition and would dispel the blindness of ignorance.

73.1. Sed causa in huiusmodi vertitur sola? Quid, vos Aegyptiaca numina, quibus Serapis atque Isis est nomen? non post Pisonem et Gabinium consules in numerum vestrorum rettulistis deorum?

73.1. But is a cause of this kind turned upon us alone? What, you Egyptian divinities, whose name is Serapis and Isis? Did you not, after Piso and Gabinius were consuls, enroll them into the number of your gods?

Quid, Phrygiam matrem, cuius esse conditor indicatur vel Midas vel Dardanus, non cum Hannibal Poenus res Italas raperet et terrarum exposceret principatum, et nosse et scire coepistis et memorabili religione sancire? 2. Sacra Cereris matris non quod vobis | f. 62 | incognita essent, adscita paulo ante, obtentum est ut Graeca dicantur novitatem ipsam testificante cognomine? Non doctorum in litteris continetur, Apollinis nomen Pompiliana indigitamenta nescire?

What of the Phrygian Mother, whose founder is indicated to be either Midas or Dardanus—was it not when Hannibal the Punic was plundering Italian affairs and demanding the principate of the lands that you began both to know and to understand her and to sanction her with a memorable religion? 2. As for the rites of Mother Ceres, not because they were unknown to you, but adscited a little before, a pretext was obtained that they be called Greek, the very surname bearing witness to their novelty. Is it not contained in the writings of the learned that the Pompilian indigitamenta do not know the name of Apollo?

Ex quo apparet et liquidum est, et hunc vobis fuisse incognitum, post autem aliquando coepisse esse et notum. 3. Si quis igitur vos interroget, cur eorum numinum quorum modo fecimus mentionem tam sero susceperitis cultum, responsuros vos certum est: aut quia illos nuper deorum esse in numero nesciebamus, aut quia nunc sumus a vatibus moniti, aut quia in rebus asperrimis beneficiis eorum sumus auxiliisque servati. 4. Quodsi hoc a vobis recte existimabitis dici, et ex nostris partibus ratione consimili existimatote esse responsum.

Whence it appears and is clear, both that this one was unknown to you, and that afterwards at some time he began to be known as well. 3. If therefore anyone should question you why you have so late undertaken the cult of those divinities of whom we have just now made mention, it is certain you will reply: either because we did not know until recently that they were in the number of the gods, or because now we have been admonished by seers, or because in the most harsh circumstances we have been saved by their benefits and aids. 4. But if you will judge this to be said rightly on your part, then from our side too reckon the reply to stand by a very similar reasoning.

Religio nostra nunc nata est: nunc enim missus advenit qui eam nobis ostenderet, qui in eius induceret veritatem, qui deus monstraret quid sit, qui ad eius nos cultum ab rebus opinabilibus avocaret.

Our religion has now been born: for now there has arrived one sent to show it to us, to introduce its truth, who, as a god, would demonstrate what it is, who would call us away to its cult from opinable things.

74.1. ''Et quid, inquit, est visum deo regi ac principi, ut ante horas, quemadmodum dicitur, pauculas sospitator ad vos Christus caeli ex arcibus mitteretur?''. - Interrogamus et nos contra: quae causa, quae ratio est, ut non suis aliquando reddantur mensibus tempora, sed serius hiemes, serius aestas atque autumnitas fiant? 2. Cur post messes arefactas atque extincta frumenta nonnumquam decidant pluviae, quas rebus oportuit incolumibus labi et temporis opportunitatibus ministrari? Immo illud exquirimus | f. 62 b | potius, cur, si Herculem oportuit nasci, si Aesculapium Mercurium Liberum aliosque nonnullos, qui et conciliis adiungerentur deorum et mortalibus aliquid utilitatis adferrent, tam sero a Iove sint proditi, ut sola illos posteritas sciret, superiorum vero ignoraret antiquitas?

74.1. ''And what, he says, seemed good to the god, king and prince, that the Savior Christ should be sent to you from the citadels of heaven a few hours, as it is said, before his time?''. - We too ask in turn: what cause, what rationale is there, that times are not at some point restored to their own months, but winters later, summers later, and the autumn-time are made? 2. Why, after the harvests have been dried up and the grain extinguished, do rains sometimes fall, which it was fitting should glide upon things while they were unharmed and be dispensed at the opportunities of the season? Nay rather we inquire | f. 62 b | why, if it was proper that Hercules be born—if Aesculapius, Mercury, Liber, and certain others, who both would be joined to the councils of the gods and would bring some usefulness to mortals—were brought forth by Jove so late that only posterity would know them, while the antiquity of earlier ages would be ignorant?

3. Rationem aliquam fuisse dicetis. Ratio ergo et hic fuit, cur non nuper sed hodie sospitator nostri generis adveniret. ''Quaenam igitur ratio est?''. - Non imus infitias nescire nos.

3. You will say that there was some reason. Therefore reason too was here, why the savior of our race should arrive not recently but today. ''What then is the reason?''. - We do not deny that we do not know.

Neque enim promptum est cuiquam dei mentem videre, aut quibus modis ordinaverit res suas homo animal caecum et ipsum se nesciens ullis potest rationibus consequi: quid oporteat fieri, quando vel quo genere, ipse rerum cunctarum pater, moderator et dominus scit solus. 4. Nec si ego nequivero causas vobis expromere, cur aliquid fiat illo vel hoc modo, continuo sequitur ut infecta fiant quae facta sunt et amittat res fidem quae generibus virtutum tantis et [potestatibus] potestatum indubitabilis esse monstrata est.

For it is not easy for anyone to see the mind of God, nor can man, a blind animal and not knowing even himself, by any reasonings attain by what modes he has ordered his affairs: what ought to be done, when, or by what kind, the father of all things himself, the moderator and lord, alone knows. 4. Nor, if I should be unable to set forth to you the causes why something is done in that way or in this, does it straightway follow that the things which have been done become undone, and that the matter lose credence which has been shown to be indubitable by such kinds of virtues and by the [powers] of authorities.

75.1. Tu opponas et referas: ''Cur tam sero emissus est sospitator?''. - In infinitis, perpetuis saeculiis nihil omnino dicendum est serum. Ubi enim finis et initium nullum est, nihil praematurum est, nihil tardum. Tempus enim a finibus et extremitatibus noscitur, quae habere non potest series et immoderata continuatio saeculorum.

75.1. You may object and reply: ''Why was the savior sent so late?''. - In infinite, perpetual ages nothing at all ought to be called late. For where there is no end and no beginning, nothing is premature, nothing slow. For time is known by boundaries and extremities, which the series and immoderate continuation of ages cannot have.

2. Quid enim si res ipsae, quibus opem conveniebat ferri, oportunitatem istam temporis exigebant? quid si alterius condicionis antiqua, alterius fuere sequentia? quid si priscis aliter subveniri, aliter | f. 63 | debuit posterioribus consuli?

2. For what if the things themselves, to which it was fitting that help be brought, required that very opportunity of time? what if the ancient things were of one condition, the subsequent of another? what if the ancients had to be succored in one way, and | f. 63 | the later ones to be consulted for in another?

3. Nonne litteras auditis commemorantes vestras fuisse homines olim semideos, heroas, cum immanibus corporibus atque vastis? non infantes sub uberibus matrum centenarios legitis edidisse vagitum, quorum ossa variis in regionibus eruta vi? repertoribus fecerunt fidem humanorum reliquias esse membrorum? 4. Potest ergo fieri, ut tum demum emiserit Christum deus omnipotens, deus solus, postquam gens hominum fractior et infirmior coepit nostra esse natura.

3. Do you not hear the letters recounting that your men once were demigods, heroes, with enormous and vast bodies? do you not read that infants, a hundred years old, beneath their mothers’ breasts uttered their wail—whose bones, unearthed in various regions by force, gave the discoverers assurance that they were the relics of human limbs? 4. It can therefore be that only then the omnipotent God, the sole God, sent forth Christ, after the race of men began to be more broken and more infirm in our nature.

Si quod hodie factum est, ante milia fieri potuisset annorum, fecisset istud rex summus, aut si post totidem milia id quod hodie factum est debuisset inpleri, nihil deum cogebat necessarias temporum non expectare mensuras. Rationibus fixis peraguntur res eius et quod semel decretum est fieri nulla potest novitate mutari.

If what has been done today could have been done thousands of years earlier, the supreme king would have done it; or if, after just so many thousands, that which has been done today ought to have been fulfilled, nothing compelled God not to await the necessary measures of times. His affairs are carried through by fixed reasons, and what has once been decreed to be done can be changed by no novelty.

76.1. ''Cur ergo, inquit, si omnipotenti servitis deo et eum habere confiditis salutis atque incolumitatis vestrae curam, cur persecutiones patitur perpeti vos tantas atque omnia genera poenarum et suppliciorum subire?''. 2. - Perquiramus et nos contra, cur et vos, cum tantos et tam innumeros colatis deos cumque illis aedes constituatis sacras, simulacra effingatis ex auro, animantium mactetis greges, acerras omnes thuris plenis coniciatis altaribus, cur non immunes agitis tot discriminibus et procellis, quibus cotidie vos agunt exitiabiles multiplices que fortunae? 3. Cur, inquam, dii vestri cessant a vobis avertere tot morborum et valetudinum | f. 63b | genera, naufragia ruinas incendia pestilentias sterilitatem, amissionem pignorum et proscriptionem bonorum, discordias bella simultates, captivitates urbium et sublatis ingenuitatibus servitutes? 4. Sed et nobis in huiusmodi casibus minime auxiliatur deus.

76.1. ''Why then,'' he says, ''if you serve an omnipotent God and trust that he has care of your salvation and safety, why does he allow you to endure such great persecutions and to undergo all kinds of penalties and punishments?''. 2. - Let us inquire in turn as well why you also, although you worship so many and so innumerable gods and set up for them sacred shrines, fashion simulacra out of gold, slaughter herds of living creatures, and cast upon the altars all the censers filled with frankincense, do not live immune from so many hazards and storms, by which every day destructive and manifold fortunes drive you? 3. Why, I say, do your gods cease to turn away from you so many diseases and ailments | f. 63b | of every kind, shipwrecks, collapses, fires, pestilences, barrenness, the loss of pledges (children) and the proscription of goods, discords, wars, feuds, captivities of cities, and—with freeborn statuses removed—slaveries? 4. But neither does God in the least aid us in cases of this sort.

Prompta et manifesta causa est. Nihil est enim nobis promissum ad hanc vitam nec in carunculae huius folliculo constitutis opis aliquid sponsum est auxiliique decretum; quinimmo edocti sumus minas omnes quaecunque sunt parvi ducere atque aestimare fortunae, ac si quando ingruerit vis quaepiam gravior, quam finem necesse sit consequi, adscribere infortunio voluptatem nec timere nec fugere quo facilius exui corporalibus possimus ex vinculis et tenebrosam evadere caecitatem.

A prompt and manifest cause it is. For nothing has been promised to us for this life, nor, for those established in the follicle of this little piece of flesh, has any help been pledged or any assistance decreed; nay rather we have been taught to reckon and esteem all the threats of Fortune, whatever they are, as of little account, and if ever some heavier force should inrush, whose end must needs be achieved, to ascribe delight to misfortune and neither to fear nor to flee it, so that the more easily we may be stripped from bodily chains and escape the tenebrous blindness.

77.1. Itaque ista quam dicitis persecutionis asperitas liberatio nostra est, non persecutio, nec poenam vexatio inferet sed ad lucem libertatis educet. 2. Ut si aliquis brutus ac stolidus in carcerem hominem datum in egressum quaestionum numquam adficere se praegravibus atque inmanibus existimet poenis nisi in ipsum saeviat carcerem, materiam eius comminuat atque urat tectum, parietem, ianuas partes que alias operis renudet deiciat adfligat, nesciens hoc facto ei cui videatur officere dari ab se lucem et sceleratam eripi caecitatem: itidem et vos flammis exiliis cruciatibus beluis, quibus corpora lancinatis et divexatis nostra, non vitam eripitis nobis, sed pelliculis relevatis | f. 64 | et cutibus nos nescii, et quanto instatis et pergitis in effigies has nostras speciesque saevire, tanto artis et gravibus relevatis nos vinculis et ad lumen efficitis circumcisis nexibus evolare.

77.1. Therefore that harshness of persecution which you speak of is our liberation, not a persecution, nor will vexation inflict a penalty but will lead us out to the light of liberty. 2. Just as if some brute and blockish fellow should think that he never afflicts with very grievous and monstrous penalties a man who has been given into prison to be brought out for examinations, unless he rages against the prison itself—breaks up its material and burns it, strips bare the roof, the wall, the doors, and other parts of the structure, casts them down and smites them—unaware that by this deed he, to whom he seems to be doing harm, gives light and snatches away the criminal blindness: so too you, by flames, exiles, tortures, and beasts, with which you lacerate and harry our bodies, do not tear life from us, but, unwitting, you relieve us of our little skins and hides | f. 64 | and, the more you press on and proceed to rage against these our effigies and appearances, by so much the more you release us from tight and heavy chains and make us, the bonds cut, to fly forth into the light.

78.1. Quare, homines, abstinete quaestionibus vacuis imspedire spes vestras, nec si aliter quam vos putatis aliquid se habet, vestris potius opinionibus credere quam rei debetis augustae. 2. Urgent tempora periculis plena et exitiabiles imminent poenae: confugiamus ad salutarem deum nec rationem muneris exigamus oblati. Cum de animarum agatur salute ac de respectu nostri, aliquid et sine ratione faciendum est, ut Epictetum dixisse adprobat Arrianus [Arrianus: Epict.

78.1. Wherefore, men, abstain from empty inquisitions from impeding your hopes, nor, if something is otherwise than you think, ought you to believe your own opinions rather than the august reality. 2. The times press, full of dangers, and ruinous penalties are impending: let us flee for refuge to the saving God, and let us not demand the rationale of the gift that has been offered. Since it is a matter of the safety of souls and of a regard for us, something must even be done without reason, as Arrianus approves Epictetus to have said [Arrianus: Epict.

fr. Schenkl 7]. 3. Dubitamus, ambigimus nec esse quod dicitur plenum fidei suspicamur: committamus nos deo, nec plus apud nos valeat incredulitas nostra quam illius nominis et potentiae magnitudo, ne dum ipsi nobis argumenta conquirimus quibus esse videatur falsum id quod esse nolimus atque adnitimur verum, obrepat dies extremus et inimicae mortis reperiamur in faucibus.

fr. Schenkl 7]. 3. We doubt, we waver, and we suspect that what is said is not full of faith: let us commit ourselves to God, and let not our incredulity avail more with us than the magnitude of that name and power, lest while we ourselves are hunting up arguments by which that may seem false which we do not wish to be, and we strive against the truth, the last day steal upon us and we be found in the jaws of inimical death.