Augustine: DE CIVITATE DEI

[I] Omnium certa sententia est, qui ratione quoquo modo uti possunt, beatos esse omnes homines uelle. Qui autem sint uel unde fiant dum mortalium quaerit infirmitas, multae magnaeque controuersiae concitatae sunt, in quibus philosophi sua studia et otia contriuerunt, quas in medium adducere atque discutere et longum est et non necessarium. Si enim recolit qui haec legit, quid in libro egerimus octauo in eligendis philosophis, cum quibus haec de beata uita, quae post mortem futura est, quaestio tractaretur, utrum ad eam uni Deo uero, qui etiam effector est deorum, an plurimis diis religione sacrisque seruiendo peruenire possimus: non etiam hic eadem repeti expectat, praesertim cum possit relegendo, si forte oblitus est, adminiculare memoriam.

[1] It is the certain judgment of all who can in any way use reason, that all men wish to be blessed. But while the infirmity of mortals inquires what they are or whence they come to be, many and great controversies have been stirred up, in which the philosophers have worn away their pursuits and leisures, which to bring into the midst and to discuss is both lengthy and not necessary. For if the reader recalls what we did in Book 8 in selecting the philosophers with whom this question concerning the blessed life, which is to be after death, was treated—whether we can attain to it by serving with religion and sacred rites the one true God, who is also the maker of the gods, or by serving many gods—he does not here also expect the same things to be repeated, especially since by re-reading, if perchance he has forgotten, he can support his memory.

Elegimus enim Platonicos omnium philosophorum merito nobilissimos, propterea quia sapere potuerunt licet inmortalem ac rationalem uel intellectualem hominis animam nisi participato lumine illius Dei, a quo et ipsa et mundus factus est, beatam esse non posse; ita illud, quod omnes homines appetunt, id est uitam beatam, quemquam isti assecuturum negant, qui non illi uni optimo, quod est incommutabilis Deus, puritate casti amoris adhaeserit. Sed quia ipsi quoque siue cedentes uanitati errorique populorum siue, ut ait apostolus, euanescentes in cogitationibus suis multos deos colendos ita putauerunt uel putari uoluerunt, ut quidam eorum etiam daemonibus diuinos honores sacrorum et sacrificiorum deferendos esse censerent, quibus iam non parua ex parte respondimus: nunc uidendum ac disserendum est, quantum Deus donat, inmortales ac beati in caelestibus sedibus dominationibus, principatibus potestatibus constituti, quos isti deos et ex quibus quosdam uel bonos daemones uel nobiscum angelos nominant, quo modo credendi sint uelle a nobis religionem pietatemque seruari; hoc est, ut apertius dicam, utrum etiam sibi an tantum Deo suo, qui etiam noster est, placeat eis ut sacra faciamus et sacrificemus, uel aliqua nostra seu nos ipsos religionis ritibus consecremus.

For we chose the Platonists, by the merit of all philosophers the most noble, because they were able to be wise that the immortal and rational or intellectual soul of man cannot be blessed unless by participation in the light of that God by whom both it and the world were made; thus they deny that anyone of those men will attain that which all men desire, that is, the blessed life, who has not adhered to that one Best, who is the immutable God, with the purity of chaste love. But because they themselves also, whether yielding to the vanity and error of the peoples or, as the apostle says, becoming vain in their cogitations, thought or wished it to be thought that many gods are to be worshiped—so that some of them even judged that divine honors of sacred rites and sacrifices should be offered to daemons—of which we have already in no small part made reply: now it must be considered and discussed, as much as God grants, concerning immortals and blessed beings established in the heavenly seats of Dominations, Principalities, Powers, whom those men call gods, and among whom they name certain ones either good daemons or angels together with us, in what manner they are to be believed to will that religion and piety be observed by us; that is, to speak more openly, whether it pleases them that we also perform sacred rites and sacrifice to themselves, or only to their God, who is also ours, or that we consecrate any of our things or our very selves by the rites of religion.

Hic est enim diuinitati uel, si expressius dicendum est, deitati debitus cultus, propter quem uno uerbo significandum, quoniam mihi satis idoneum non occurrit Latinum, Graeco ubi necesse est insinuo quid uelim dicere. *Latrei/an quippe nostri, ubicumque sanctarum scripturarum positum est, interpretati sunt seruitutem. Sed ea seruitus, quae debetur hominibus, secundum quam praecipit apostolus seruos dominis suis subditos esse debere, alio nomine Graece nuncupari solet; *latrei/a uero secundum consuetudinem, qua locuti sunt qui nobis diuina eloquia condiderunt, aut semper aut tam frequenter ut paene semper ea dicitur seruitus, quae pertinet ad colendum Deum.

For this is the cult owed to divinity, or, if it must be said more expressly, to deity, for the sake of signifying which by a single word—since no sufficiently apt Latin term occurs to me—I insinuate by a Greek one, where needful, what I wish to say. For our people, wherever it is set in the holy scriptures, have interpreted *Latrei/an as servitude. But that servitude which is owed to human beings, according to which the apostle commands slaves to be subject to their masters, is wont in Greek to be called by another name; whereas *latrei/a, according to the consuetude in which those spoke who composed for us the divine oracles, either always, or so frequently that almost always, is said of that servitude which pertains to the cult of God.

Proinde si tantummodo cultus ipse dicatur, non soli Deo deberi uidetur. Dicimur enim colere etiam homines, quos honorifica uel recordatione uel praesentia frequentamus. Nec solum ea, quibus nos religiosa humilitate subicimus, sed quaedam etiam, quae subiecta sunt nobis, perhibentur coli.

Accordingly, if only the word cult itself be spoken of, it does not seem to be owed to God alone. For we are said to cultivate even human beings, whom we frequent with honorable remembrance or with our presence. And not only those things to which we subject ourselves with religious humility, but even certain things that are subject to us are maintained to be “cultivated.”

Nam ex hoc uerbo et agricolae et coloni et incolae uocantur, et ipsos deos non ob aliud appellant caelicolas, nisi quod caelum colant, non utique uenerando, sed inhabitando, tamquam caeli quosdam colonos; non sicut appellantur coloni, qui condicionem debent genitali solo, propter agriculturam sub dominio possessorum, sed, sicut ait quidam Latini eloquii magnus auctor:

For from this word both agriculturalists and colonists and inhabitants are so called, and they even call the gods by no other name than “heaven‑dwellers” because they “cultivate” heaven—not, to be sure, by venerating, but by inhabiting it, as certain colonists of heaven; not as those are called colonists who owe their condition to their native soil, on account of agriculture under the dominion of possessors, but, as a certain great author of Latin eloquence says:

Vrbs antiqua fuit, Tyrii tenuere coloni.

There was an ancient city, Tyrian colonists held it.

Ab incolendo enim colonos uocauit, non ab agricultura. Hinc et ciuitates a maioribus ciuitatibus uelut populorum examinibus conditae coloniae nuncupantur. Ac per hoc cultum quidem non deberi nisi Deo propria quadam notione uerbi huius omnino uerissimum est; sed quia et aliarum rerum dicitur cultus, ideo Latine uno uerbo significari cultus Deo debitus non potest.

For he called them colonists from inhabiting, not from agriculture. Hence also cities founded from larger cities, as if by swarms of peoples, are named colonies. And accordingly, that cult is owed to none save God, in a certain proper notion of this word, is altogether most true; but because the cult of other things is also spoken of, therefore in Latin the cult owed to God cannot be signified by a single word.

Nam et ipsa religio quamuis distinctius non quemlibet, sed Dei cultum significare uideatur (unde isto nomine interpretati sunt nostri eam, quae Graece *thrhskei/a dicitur): tamen quia Latina loquendi consuetudine, non inperitorum, uerum etiam doctissimorum, et cognationibus humanis atque adfinitatibus et quibusque necessitudinibus dicitur exhibenda religio, non eo uocabulo uitatur ambiguum, cum de cultu deitatis uertitur quaestio, ut fidenter dicere ualeamus religionem non esse nisi cultum Dei, quoniam uidetur hoc uerbum a significanda obseruantia propinquitatis humanae insolenter auferri. Pietas quoque proprie Dei cultus intellegi solet, quam Graeci *eusebeian uocant. Haec tamen et erga parentes officiose haberi dicitur.

For even religion itself, although more distinctly it seems to signify, not just anyone’s, but the cult of God (whence our people under this name have interpreted that which in Greek is called *thrhskei/a): nevertheless, because in the Latin usage of speech, not of the unskilled, but even of the most learned, religion is said to be exhibited toward human consanguinities and affinities and whatever necessitudes, the ambiguity is not avoided by that vocable, when the question is turned to the cult of the Deity, with the result that we cannot confidently say that religion is nothing other than the cult of God, since this word seems insolently to be taken away from signifying the observance of human propinquity. Piety too is properly wont to be understood as the cult of God, which the Greeks call *eusebeian. Nevertheless, this also is said to be held dutifully toward parents.

More autem uulgi hoc nomen etiam in operibus misericordiae frequentatur; quod ideo arbitror euenisse, quia haec fieri praecipue mandat Deus eaque sibi uel pro sacrificiis uel prae sacrificiis placere testatur. Ex qua loquendi consuetudine factum est, ut et Deus ipse dicatur pius; quem sane Graeci nullo suo sermonis usu *eu)sebh=n uocant, quamuis *eu)se/beian, pro misericordia illorum etiam uulgus usurpet. Vnde in quibusdam scripturarum locis, ut distinctio certior appareret, non *eu)se/beian, quod ex bono cultu, sed *theose/beian, quod ex Dei cultu compositum resonat, dicere maluerunt.

Moreover, by the usage of the vulgar, this name is also made frequent in works of mercy; which I think has happened for this reason, because God especially commands these things to be done and testifies that they please Him either in place of sacrifices or rather than sacrifices. From which manner of speaking it has come to pass that even God Himself is said to be pious; whom indeed the Greeks do not, by any usage of their speech, call *eu)sebh=n, although even their common folk use *eu)se/beian for mercy. Whence in certain places of the Scriptures, that the distinction might appear more certain, they preferred to say not *eu)se/beian, which sounds as if composed from good cult, but *theose/beian, which resonates as composed from the cult of God.

Vtrumlibet autem horum nos uno uerbo enuntiare non possumus. Quae itaque *latrei/a Graece nuncupatur et Latine interpretatur seruitus, sed ea qua colimus Deum; uel quae *thrhskei/a Graece, Latine autem religio dicitur, sed ea quae nobis est erga Deum; uel quam illi *theose/beian, nos uero non uno uerbo exprimere, sed Dei cultum possumus appellare: hanc ei tantum Deo deberi dicimus, qui uerus est Deus facitque suos cultores deos. Quicumque igitur sunt in caelestibus habitationibus inmortales et beati, si nos non amant nec beatos esse nos uolunt, colendi utique non sunt.

However, we cannot express either of these by a single word. Therefore, that which in Greek is called *latrei/a and in Latin is interpreted as service, but that by which we worship God; or that which in Greek is *thrhskei/a, but in Latin is called religion, namely that which we have toward God; or what they call *theose/beian, which we indeed cannot express by a single word but can term the cult of God: this we say is owed only to Him, God, who is the true God and makes his worshipers gods. Therefore whoever are in the heavenly habitations, immortal and blessed, if they do not love us nor wish us to be blessed, assuredly are not to be worshiped.

Si autem amant et beatos uolunt, profecto inde uolunt, unde et ipsi sunt; an aliunde ipsi beati, aliunde nos?

If, however, they love and want us to be blessed, surely they will it from that same source from which they themselves are blessed; or are they themselves blessed from one source, and we from another?

[II] Sed non est nobis ullus cum his excellentioribus philosophis in hac quaestione conflictus. Viderunt enim suisque litteris multis modis copiosissime mandauerunt hinc illos, unde et nos, fieri beatos, obiecto quodam lumine intellegibili, quod Deus est illis et aliud est quam illi, a quo inlustrantur, ut clareant atque eius participatione perfecti beatique subsistant. Saepe multumque Plotinus asserit sensum Platonis explanans, ne illam quidem, quam credunt esse uniuersitatis animam, aliunde beatam esse quam nostram, idque esse lumen quod ipsa non est, sed a quo creata est et quo intellegibiliter inluminante intellegibiliter lucet.

[2] But we have no conflict with those more excellent philosophers in this question. For they saw, and have most copiously in many ways consigned to their writings, that those (from there) and we (from here) alike become blessed by a certain intelligible light set before us, which is God for them and is other than they, by whom they are illumined, so that they may shine, and by participation in him subsist perfected and blessed. Plotinus very often asserts, expounding the sense of Plato, that not even that which they believe to be the soul of the universe is blessed from any other source than our own, and that this is a light which it itself is not, but by which it was created, and by whose intelligible illuminating it shines intelligibly.

Dat etiam similitudinem ad illa incorporea de his caelestibus conspicuis amplisque corporibus, tamquam ille sit sol et ipsa sit luna. Lunam quippe solis obiectu inluminari putant. Dicit ergo ille magnus Platonicus animam rationalem, siue potius intellectualis dicenda sit, ex quo genere etiam inmortalium beatorumque animas esse intellegit, quos in caelestibus sedibus habitare non dubitat, non habere supra se naturam nisi Dei, qui fabricatus est mundum, a quo et ipsa facta est; nec aliunde illis supernis praeberi uitam beatam et lumen intellegentiae ueritatis, quam unde praebetur et nobis, consonans euangelio, ubi legitur: Fuit homo missus a Deo, cui nomen erat Iohannes; hic uenit in testimonium, ut testimonium perhiberet de lumine, ut omnes crederent per eum.

He also gives a likeness to those incorporeal things from these celestial, conspicuous, and ample bodies, as though He were the sun and she were the moon. For they think the moon is illuminated by the sun’s radiance cast upon it. Therefore that great Platonist says that the rational soul—or rather it should be called intellectual, from which genus he understands there to be also the souls of the immortal and blessed, whom he does not doubt dwell in celestial seats—has above itself no nature except that of God, who fabricated the world, by whom she herself also was made; and that neither from anywhere else is the beatific life and the light of the intelligence of truth supplied to those supernal ones than from whence it is supplied also to us, consonant with the gospel, where it is read: There was a man sent from God, whose name was John; this one came for testimony, that he might bear testimony concerning the light, that all might believe through him.

Non erat ille lumen, sed ut testimonium perhiberet de lumine. Erat lumen uerum, quod inluminat omnem hominem uenientem in hunc mundum. In qua differentia satis ostenditur animam rationalem uel intellectualem, qualis erat in Iohanne, sibi lumen esse non posse, sed alterius ueri luminis participatione lucere.

He was not the light, but in order that he might bear testimony about the light. There was the true light, which illuminates every human coming into this world. In which distinction it is sufficiently shown that the rational or intellectual soul, such as was in John, cannot be a light to itself, but shines by the participation of another true light.

Hoc et ipse Iohannes fatetur, ubi ei perhibens testimonium dicit: Nos omnes de plenitudine eius accepimus.

This John himself also confesses, when, bearing testimony to him, he says: We all have received from his plenitude.

[III] Quae cum ita sint, si Platonici uel quicumque alii ista senserunt cognoscentes Deum sicut Deum glorificarent et gratias agerent nec euanescerent in cogitationibus suis nec populorum erroribus partim auctores fierent, partim resistere non auderent: profecto confiterentur et illis inmortalibus ac beatis et nobis mortalibus ac miseris, ut inmortales ac beati esse possimus, unum Deum deorum colendum, qui et noster est et illorum.

[3] Since these things are so, if the Platonists, or whoever else, having perceived these things, were to glorify God as God and give thanks, and were not to evanesce in their cogitations, nor, in the errors of the peoples, partly become authors, partly not dare to resist: surely they would confess, both for those immortals and blessed and for us mortals and wretched, in order that we might be able to be immortal and blessed, that one God of gods is to be worshiped, who is both ours and theirs.

Huic nos seruitutem, quae *latrei/a Graece dicitur, siue in quibusque sacramentis siue in nobis ipsis debemus. Huius enim templum simul omnes et singuli templa sumus, quia et omnium concordiam et singulos inhabitare dignatur; non in omnibus quam in singulis maior, quoniam nec mole distenditur nec partitione minuitur. Cum ad illum sursum est, eius est altare cor nostrum; eius Vnigenito eum sacerdote placamus; ei cruentas uictimas caedimus, quando usque ad sanguinem pro eius ueritate certamus; eum suauissimo adolemus incenso, cum in eius conspectu pio sanctoque amore flagramus; ei dona eius in nobis nosque ipsos uouemus et reddimus; ei beneficiorum eius sollemnitatibus festis et diebus statutis dicamus sacramusque memoriam, ne uolumine temporum ingrata subrepat obliuio; ei sacrificamus hostiam humilitatis et laudis in ara cordis igne feruidam caritatis.

To Him we owe servitude, which in Greek is called *latrei/a*, whether in whatever sacraments or in our very selves. For His temple we all together and each individual are temples, because He deigns to inhabit both the concord of all and individuals; not greater in all than in individuals, since He is neither distended by mass nor diminished by partition. When it is upward to Him on high, our heart is His altar; by His Only-begotten as priest we propitiate Him; to Him we hew bloody victims, when we contend even unto blood for His truth; to Him we burn the most sweet incense, when in His sight we blaze with pious and holy love; to Him we vow and render His gifts in us and our own very selves; to Him, by the solemnities of His benefactions on feast-days and on appointed days, let us declare and consecrate remembrance, lest by the volume of times ungrateful oblivion creep in; to Him we sacrifice the host of humility and of praise on the altar of the heart, made fervid by the fire of charity.

Ad hunc uidendum, sicut uideri poterit, eique cohaerendum ab omni peccatorum et cupiditatum malarum labe mundamur et eius nomine consecramur. Ipse enim fons nostrae beatitudinis, ipse omnis appetitionis est finis. Hunc eligentes uel potius religentes (amiseramus enim neglegentes) — hunc ergo religentes, unde et religio dicta perhibetur, ad eum dilectione tendimus, ut perueniendo quiescamus, ideo beati, quia illo fine perfecti.

To see this One, so far as he can be seen, and to cohere to him, we are cleansed from every stain of sins and of evil desires, and we are consecrated in his name. For he himself is the fount of our beatitude, he himself is the end of every appetite. Choosing him, or rather re-ligating ourselves to him (for by being negligent we had lost him)— therefore re-ligating, whence “religion” is reported to be named— we stretch toward him by love, so that by arriving we may rest, blessed for this reason, because by that end we are perfected.

Bonum enim nostrum, de cuius fine inter philosophos magna contentio est, nullum est aliud quam illi cohaerere, cuius unius anima intellectualis incorporeo, si dici potest, amplexu ueris impletur fecundaturque uirtutibus. Hoc bonum diligere in toto corde, in tota anima et in tota uirtute praecipimur; ad hoc bonum debemus et a quibus diligimur duci, et quos diligimus ducere. Sic complentur duo illa praecepta in quibus tota lex pendet et prophetae: Diliges Dominum Deum tuum in toto corde tuo et in tota anima tua et in tota mente tua, et: Diliges proximum tuum tamquam te ipsum.

For our good, about the end of which there is great contention among philosophers, is nothing other than to cohere to Him, by whose alone incorporeal (if it can be said) embrace the intellectual soul is filled with truths and is made fruitful with virtues. We are enjoined to love this good with the whole heart, with the whole soul, and with the whole strength; to this good we ought both to be led by those by whom we are loved, and to lead those whom we love. Thus those two precepts are fulfilled on which the whole law and the prophets hang: You shall love the Lord your God with your whole heart and with your whole soul and with your whole mind, and: You shall love your neighbor as yourself.

Vt enim homo se diligere nosset, constitutus est ei finis, quo referret omnia quae ageret, ut beatus esset; non enim qui se diligit aliud uult esse quam beatus. Hic autem finis est adhaerere Deo. Iam igitur scienti diligere se ipsum, cum mandatur de proximo diligendo sicut se ipsum, quid aliud mandatur, nisi ut ei, quantum potest, commendet diligendum Deum?

For in order that man might know how to love himself, an end was appointed for him, to which he might refer all the things he did, so that he might be blessed; for he who loves himself does not will to be anything other than blessed. But this end is to adhere to God. Therefore, already to the one who knows how to love himself, when it is commanded about loving the neighbor as oneself, what else is commanded, except that he, as much as he can, commend loving God to him?

Hic est Dei cultus, haec uera religio, haec recta pietas, haec tantum Deo debita seruitus. Quaecumque igitur inmortalis potestas quantalibet uirtute praedita si nos diligit sicut se ipsam, ei uult esse subditos, ut beati simus, cui et ipsa subdita beata est. Si ergo non colit Deum, misera est, quia priuatur Deo; si autem colit Deum, non uult se coli pro Deo.

This is the cult of God, this the true religion, this the right piety, this the servitude owed only to God. Whatever immortal power, therefore, endowed with however great a virtue, if it loves us as itself, wishes us to be subject to Him, that we may be blessed, to whom it too, being subject, is blessed. If therefore it does not worship God, it is wretched, because it is deprived of God; but if it worships God, it does not wish itself to be worshiped in place of God.

Illi enim potius diuinae sententiae suffragatur et dilectionis uiribus fauet, qua scriptum est: Sacrificans diis eradicabitur, nisi Domino soli.

For it rather gives its suffrage to the divine sentence and favors the forces of dilection, wherein it is written: “He who sacrifices to gods shall be eradicated, unless to the Lord alone.”

[IV] Nam, ut alia nunc taceam, quae pertinent ad religionis obsequium, quo colitur Deus, sacrificium certe nullus hominum est qui audeat dicere deberi nisi deo. Multa denique de cultu diuino usurpata sunt, quae honoribus deferrentur humanis, siue humilitate nimia siue adulatione pestifera; ita tamen, ut, quibus ea deferrentur, homines haberentur, qui dicuntur colendi et uenerandi, si autem multum eis additur,

[4] For, to keep silent now about other things which pertain to the observance of religion, whereby God is cultivated, certainly there is no one among humans who would dare to say that sacrifice is owed except to God. Many, finally, things from the divine cult have been usurped to be offered to human honors, whether through excessive humility or pestiferous adulation; yet in such a way that those to whom they are offered are held to be human beings, who are said to be to-be-cultivated and to-be-venerated, but if much is added to them,

[V] Quis autem ita desipiat, ut existimet aliquibus usibus Dei esse necessaria, quae in sacrificiis offeruntur? Quod cum multis locis diuina scriptura testetur, ne longum faciamus, breue illud de psalmo commemorare suffecerit: Dixi Domino, Dominus meus es tu, quoniam bonorum meorum non eges. Non solum igitur pecore uel qualibet alia re corruptibili atque terrena, sed ne ipsa quidem iustitia hominis Deus egere credendus est, totumque quod recte colitur Deus homini prodesse, non Deo.

[5] Who, moreover, is so foolish as to think that the things which are offered in sacrifices are necessary for God’s uses? Since divine Scripture bears witness to this in many places, lest we make it long, it will suffice to recall that brief thing from the Psalm: I said to the Lord, You are my Lord, because you have no need of my goods. Not only, therefore, with livestock or with any other corruptible and earthly thing, but God is not to be believed to need even the very justice of man; and the whole of that whereby God is rightly worshiped profits the human being, not God.

Neque enim fonti se quisquam dixerit consuluisse, si biberit; aut luci, si uiderit. Nec quod ab antiquis patribus alia sacrificia facta sunt in uictimis pecorum, quae nunc Dei populus legit, non facit, aliud intellegendum est, nisi rebus illis eas res fuisse significatas, quae aguntur in nobis, ad hoc ut inhaereamus Deo et ad eundem finem proximo consulamus. Sacrificium ergo uisibile inuisibilis sacrificii sacramentum id est sacrum signum est.

For neither will anyone say that he has provided for the benefit of the fount if he has drunk; or for the grove, if he has looked upon it. Nor does the fact that by the ancient fathers other sacrifices were made in victims of cattle, which the people of God now read, cause anything else to be understood, except that by those things were signified those realities which are enacted in us, to this end: that we may cleave to God, and for the same end provide for our neighbor. Therefore the visible sacrifice is the sacrament—that is, the sacred sign—of the invisible sacrifice.

Vnde ille paenitens apud prophetam uel ipse propheta quaerens Deum peccatis suis habere propitium: Si uoluisses, inquit, sacrificium, dedissem utique; holocaustis non delectaberis. Sacrificium Deo spiritus contritus; cor contritum et humiliatum Deus non spernet. Intueamur quem ad modum, ubi Deum dixit nolle sacrificium, ibi Deum ostendit uelle sacrificium.

Whence that penitent in the prophet, or the prophet himself, seeking to have God propitious for his sins: “If you had willed a sacrifice, I would indeed have given it; with holocausts you will not take delight. The sacrifice to God is a contrite spirit; a contrite and humbled heart God will not spurn.” Let us observe in what manner, where he said that God does not will a sacrifice, there he shows that God does will a sacrifice.

Non uult ergo sacrificium trucidati pecoris, et uult sacrificium contriti cordis. Illo igitur quod eum nolle dixit, hoc significatur, quod eum uelle subiecit. Sic itaque illa Deum nolle dixit, quo modo ab stultis ea uelle creditur, uelut suae gratia uoluptatis.

Therefore he does not will the sacrifice of slaughtered cattle, and he does will the sacrifice of a contrite heart. By that, then, in which he said that he does not will it, this is signified: that which he subjoined, that he does will. Thus accordingly he said that God does not will those things in the way in which, by fools, they are believed that he wills them, as if for the sake of his own pleasure.

Nam si ea sacrificia quae uult (quorum hoc unum est: cor contritum et humiliatum dolore paenitendi) nollet eis sacrificiis significari, quae uelut sibi delectabilia desiderare putatus est: non utique de his offerendis in lege uetere praecepisset. Et ideo mutanda erant oportuno certoque iam tempore, ne ipsi Deo desiderabilia uel certe in nobis acceptabilia, ac non potius quae his significata sunt crederentur. Hinc et alio loco psalmi alterius: Si esuriero, inquit, non dicam tibi; meus est enim orbis terrae et plenitudo eius.

For if those sacrifices which He wills (of which this one is: a heart contrite and humbled by the sorrow of repenting) He did not will to be signified by those sacrifices which He was thought to desire as though delectable to Himself, surely He would not have given command in the old Law that these be offered. And therefore they had to be changed at a time now opportune and certain, lest these themselves be believed to be desirable to God—or at least acceptable in us—and not rather the things that are signified by them. Hence also in another place of another psalm: “If I shall hunger,” he says, “I will not tell you; for mine is the world and its fullness.”

Numquid manducabo carnes taurorum aut sanguinem hircorum potabo? tamquam diceret: Vtique si mihi essent necessaria, non a te peterem, quae habeo in potestate. Deinde subiungens quid illa significent: Immola, inquit, Deo sacrificium laudis et redde Altissimo uota tua et inuoca me in die tribulationis, et eximam te et glorificabis me. Item apud alium prophetam: In quo, inquit, adprehendam Dominum, assumam Deum meum excelsum?

Shall I eat the flesh of bulls or drink the blood of goats? as if he were saying: Surely, if these were necessary to me, I would not ask them from you, which I have in my power. Then adding what those things signify: 'Immolate to God a sacrifice of praise and render your vows to the Most High and call upon me in the day of tribulation, and I will deliver you and you will glorify me.' Likewise with another prophet: 'With what,' he says, 'shall I apprehend the Lord, shall I take up my God Most High?'

Si adprehendam illum in holocaustis, in uitulis anniculis? Si acceptauerit Dominus in milibus arielum aut in denis milibus hircorum pinguium? Si dedero primogenita mea inpietatis, fructum uentris mei pro peccato animae meae?

Shall I apprehend him with holocausts, with yearling calves? Will the Lord accept in thousands of rams or in tens of thousands of fat he-goats? Shall I give my firstborn for my impiety, the fruit of my womb for the sin of my soul?

Si adnuntiatum est tibi, homo, bonum? Aut quid Dominus exquirat a te nisi facere iudicium et diligere misericordiam et paratum esse ire cum Domino Deo tuo? Et in huius prophetae uerbis utrumque distinctum est satisque declaratum illa sacrificia per se ipsa non requirere Deum, quibus significantur haec sacrificia, quae requirit Deus.

Has it been announced to you, O man, what is good? Or what does the Lord require of you except to do judgment and to love mercy and to be prepared to go with the Lord your God? And in the words of this prophet both are distinguished and sufficiently declared: that those sacrifices, in and of themselves, God does not require; by which are signified these sacrifices which God does require.

In epistula, quae inscribitur ad Hebraeos: Bene facere, inquit, et communicatores esse nolite obliuisci; talibus enim sacrificiis placetur Deo. Ac per hoc ubi scriptum est: Misericordiam uolo quam sacrificium nihil aliud quam sacrificium sacrificio praelatum oportet intellegi; quoniam illud, quod ab omnibus appellatur sacrificium, signum est ueri sacrificii. Porro autem misericordia uerum sacrificium est; unde dictum est, quod paulo ante commemoraui: Talibus enim sacrificiis placetur Deo.

In the epistle which is inscribed to the Hebrews: To do good, he says, and to be fellow-communicators do not forget; for by such sacrifices God is propitiated. And through this, where it is written: I desire mercy rather than sacrifice, nothing other than sacrifice preferred to sacrifice ought to be understood; since that which by all is called sacrifice is a sign of the true sacrifice. Moreover, mercy is the true sacrifice; whence it was said, which I a little before commemorated: For by such sacrifices God is propitiated.

Quaecumque igitur in ministerio tabernaculi siue templi multis modis de sacrificiis leguntur diuinitus esse praecepta, ad dilectionem Dei et proximi significando referuntur. In his enim duobus praeceptis, ut scriptum est, tota lex pendet et prophetae.

Whatever things, therefore, in the ministry of the tabernacle or of the temple are read to have been divinely commanded in many ways concerning sacrifices, are referred, by signifying, to the dilection of God and of neighbor. For on these two precepts, as it is written, the whole Law and the Prophets hang.

[VI] Proinde uerum sacrificium est omne opus, quo agitur, ut sancta societate inhaereamus Deo, relatum scilicet ad illum finem boni, quo ueraciter beati esse possimus. Vnde et ipsa misericordia, qua homini subuenitur, si non propter Deum fit, non est sacrificium. Etsi enim ab homine fit uel offertur, tamen sacrificium res diuina est, ita ut hoc quoque uocabulo id Latini ueteres appellauerint.

[6] Accordingly, true sacrifice is every work by which it is brought about that we adhere to God in holy society, referred, namely, to that end of the good by which we can be truly blessed. Whence even mercy itself, by which a human is succored, if it is not done on account of God, is not sacrifice. For although it is done or offered by a human, nevertheless sacrifice is a divine thing, such that the ancient Latins have also designated it by this very appellation.

Vnde ipse homo Dei nomine consecratus et Deo uotus, in quantum mundo moritur ut Deo uiuat, sacrificium est. Nam et hoc ad misericordiam pertinet, quam quisque in se ipsum facit. Propterea scriptum est: Miserere animae tuae placens Deo.

Hence the man himself, consecrated by the name of God and vowed to God, insofar as he dies to the world that he may live to God, is a sacrifice. For this too pertains to mercy, which each one does unto himself. Therefore it is written: Have mercy on your soul, pleasing God.

Corpus etiam nostrum cum temperantia castigamus, si hoc, quem ad modum debemus, propter Deum facimus, ut non exhibeamus membra nostra arma iniquitatis peccato, sed arma iustitiae Deo, sacrificium est. Ad quod exhortans apostolus ait: Obsecro itaque uos, fratres, per miserationem Dei, ut exhibeatis corpora uestra hostiam uiuam, sanctam, Deo placentem, rationabile obsequium uestrum. Si ergo corpus, quo inferiore tamquam famulo uel tamquam instrumento utitur anima, cum eius bonus et rectus usus ad Deum refertur, sacrificium est: quanto magis anima ipsa cum se refert ad Deum, ut igne amoris eius accensa formam concupiscentiae saecularis amittat eique tamquam incommutabili formae subdita reformetur, hinc ei placens, quod ex eius pulchritudine acceperit, fit sacrificium!

Our body also we chastise with temperance, if we do this, as we ought, on account of God, that we may not present our members as arms of iniquity to sin, but as arms of justice to God—this is a sacrifice. Exhorting to this, the apostle says: I beseech you, brothers, by the mercy of God, to present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, pleasing to God, your rational service. If therefore the body, which the soul uses as the inferior, as a servant or as an instrument, when its good and right use is referred to God, is a sacrifice: how much more the soul itself, when it refers itself to God, so that, kindled by the fire of his love, it may lose the form of secular concupiscence and, subjected to the inchangeable form, be re-formed—thus, being pleasing to him because of what it has received from his beauty—becomes a sacrifice!

Quod idem apostolus consequenter adiungens: Et nolite, inquit, conformari huic saeculo; sed reformamini in nouitate mentis uestrae ad probandum uos quae sit uoluntas Dei, quod bonum et bene placitum et perfectum. Cum igitur uera sacrificia opera sint misericordiae siue in nos ipsos siue in proximos, quae referuntur ad Deum; opera uero misericordiae non ob aliud fiant, nisi ut a miseria liberemur ac per hoc ut beati simus (quod non fit nisi bono illo, de quo dictum est: Mihi autem adhaerere Deo bonum est): profecto efficitur, ut tota ipsa redempta ciuitas, hoc est congregatio societasque sanctorum, uniuersale sacrificium offeratur Deo per sacerdotem magnum, qui etiam se ipsum obtulit in passione pro nobis, ut tanti capitis corpus essemus, secundum formam serui. Hanc enim obtulit, in hac oblatus est, quia secundum hanc mediator est, in hac sacerdos, in hac sacrificium est.

Which the same apostle consequently subjoining: And do not, he says, be conformed to this age; but be re-formed in the newness of your mind, to the proving by you what is the will of God, what is good and well-pleasing and perfect. Since therefore the true sacrifices are works of mercy either toward ourselves or toward our neighbors, which are referred unto God; and the works of mercy are done for no other cause, except that we may be freed from misery and through this be blessed (which does not come to be except by that good of which it was said: But for me, to adhere to God is good): it is indeed brought to pass that the whole redeemed city itself, that is, the congregation and society of the saints, be offered as a universal sacrifice to God through the great priest, who also offered himself in the Passion for us, that we might be the body of so great a head, according to the form of a servant. For this he offered, in this he was offered, because according to this he is mediator; in this he is priest; in this he is sacrifice.

Cum itaque nos hortatus esset apostolus, ut exhibeamus corpora nostra hostiam uiuam, sanctam, Deo placentem, rationabile obsequium nostrum, et non conformemur huic saeculo, sed reformemur in nouitate mentis nostrae: ad probandum quae sit uoluntas Dei, quod bonum et bene placitum et perfectum, quod totum sacrificium nos ipsi sumus: Dico enim, inquit, per gratiam Dei, quae data est mihi, omnibus, qui sunt in uobis, non plus sapere, quam oportet sapere, sed sapere ad temperantiam; sicut unicuique Deus partitus est mensuram fidei. Sicut enim in uno corpore multa membra habemus, omnia autem membra non eosdem actus habent r ita multi unum corpus sumus in Christo; singuli autem alter alterius membra, habentes dona diuersa secundum gratiam, quae data est nobis. Hoc est sacrificium Christianorum: multi unum corpus in Christo.

Accordingly, when the apostle had exhorted us to present our bodies a living sacrifice, holy, pleasing to God, our rational service, and not to be conformed to this age, but to be reformed in the newness of our mind, to prove what is the will of God, what is good and well-pleasing and perfect—that we ourselves are the whole sacrifice—“For I say,” he says, “through the grace of God which is given to me, to all who are among you, not to be wise beyond what it behooves to be wise, but to be wise unto temperance; as to each God has apportioned a measure of faith. For just as in one body we have many members, yet all the members do not have the same acts, thus we, many, are one body in Christ; and individually, members one of another, having diverse gifts according to the grace which has been given to us.” This is the sacrifice of Christians: many, one body in Christ.

Quod etiam sacramento altaris fidelibus noto frequentat ecclesia, ubi ei demonstratur, quod in ea re, quam offert, ipsa offeratur.

Which the Church also frequents in the sacrament of the altar, known to the faithful, where it is demonstrated to her that in that thing which she offers, she herself is offered.

[VII] Merito illi in caelestibus sedibus constituti inmortales et beati, qui creatoris sui participatione congaudent, cuius aeternitate firmi, cuius ueritate certi, cuius munere sancti sunt, quoniam nos mortales et miseros, ut inmortales beatique simus, misericorditer diligunt, nolunt nos sibi sacrificari, sed ei, cuius et ipsi nobiscum sacrificium se esse nouerunt. Cum ipsis enim sumus una ciuitas Dei, cui dicitur in psalmo: Gloriosissima dicta sunt de te, ciuitas Dei; cuius pars in nobis peregrinatur, pars in illis opitulatur. De illa quippe superna ciuitate, ubi Dei uoluntas intellegibilis atque incommutabilis lex est, de illa superna quodam modo curia (geritur namque ibi cura de nobis) ad nos ministrata per angelos sancta illa scriptura descendit, ubi legitur: Sacrificans diis eradicabitur, nisi Domino soli.

[7] Rightly are those set in the heavenly seats immortal and blessed, who rejoice together by participation of their Creator—by whose eternity they are firm, by whose truth they are certain, by whose gift they are holy—since they mercifully love us mortals and wretched, that we may be immortal and blessed; they do not will that we be sacrificing to themselves, but to Him, of whom they themselves know that they, together with us, are a sacrifice. For with them we are one City of God, to which it is said in the psalm: “Most glorious things are spoken of you, City of God;” of which a part is on pilgrimage in us, a part renders help in them. From that heavenly City, indeed, where the will of God is the intelligible and incommutable law, from that heavenly court, as it were (for care for us is there conducted), that holy Scripture, ministered to us through angels, has descended, where it is read: “The one sacrificing to gods shall be eradicated, unless to the Lord alone.”

Huic scripturae, huic legi, praeceptis talibus tanta sunt adtestata miracula, ut satis appareat, cui nos sacrificari uelint inmortales ac beati, qui hoc nobis uolunt esse quod sibi.

To this scripture, to this law, so great miracles have been attested for such precepts, that it is sufficiently apparent to whom the immortals and blessed would have us sacrifice, who want us to be what they are.

[VIII] Nam nimis uetera si commemorem, longius quam sat est reuoluere uidebor, quae miracula facta sint adtestantia promissis Dei, quibus ante annorum milia praedixit Abrahae, quod in semine eius omnes gentes benedictionem fuerant habiturae. Quis enim non miretur eidem Abrahae filium peperisse coniugem sterilem eo tempore senectutis, quo parere nec fecunda iam posset, atque in eiusdem Abrahae sacrificio flammam caelitus factam inter diuisas uictimas cucurrisse, eidemque Abrahae praedictum ab angelis caeleste incendium Sodomorum, quos angelos hominibus similes hospitio susceperat et per eos de prole uentura Dei promissa tenuerat, ipsoque inminente iam incendio miram de Sodomis per eosdem angelos liberationem Loth filii fratris eius, cuius uxor in uia retro respiciens atque in salem repente conuersa magno admonuit sacramento neminem in uia liberationis suae praeterita desiderare debere? Illa uero quae et quanta sunt, quae iam per Moysen pro populo Dei de iugo seruitutis eruendo in Aegypto mirabiliter gesta sunt, ubi magi Pharaonis, hoc est regis Aegypti, qui populum illum dominatione deprimebat, ad hoc facere quaedam mira permissi sunt, ut mirabilius uincerentur!

[8] For if I should commemorate things too ancient, I shall seem to unroll further than is enough what miracles were done attesting to the promises of God, by which, thousands of years beforehand, He predicted to Abraham that in his seed all nations were going to have blessing. For who would not marvel that to that same Abraham his wife, sterile, bore a son at that time of old age when even a fertile woman could no longer give birth; and that, in the sacrifice of that same Abraham, a flame made from heaven ran between the divided victims; and that to that same Abraham there was foretold by angels the heavenly conflagration of Sodom—the very angels whom, like unto men, he had received with hospitality, and through whom he had held God’s promises concerning the progeny to come—and that, with the very conflagration now impending, there was through those same angels a wondrous deliverance from Sodom of Lot, his brother’s son, whose wife, looking back on the way and suddenly turned into salt, by a great sacrament admonished that no one on the way of his liberation ought to desire the things past? But what and how great are those things which were already wondrously done through Moses for the people of God, in drawing them out from the yoke of servitude in Egypt, where the magi of Pharaoh, that is, the king of Egypt, who was oppressing that people by domination, were permitted to do certain marvels to this end, that they might be conquered the more marvelously!

Illi enim faciebant ueneficiis et incantationibus magicis, quibus sunt mali angeli, hoc est daemones, dediti; Moyses autem tanto potentius, quanto iustius, nomine Dei, qui fecit caelum et terram, seruientibus angelis eos facile superauit. Denique in tertia plaga deficientibus magis decem plagae per Moysen magna mysteriorum dispositione completae sunt, quibus ad Dei populum dimittendum Pharaonis et Aegyptiorum dura corda cesserunt. Moxque paenituit, et cum abscedentes Hebraeos consequi conarentur, illis diuiso mari per siccum transeuntibus unda hinc atque hinc in sese redeunte cooperti et oppressi sunt.

For they were doing things by venefices and magical incantations, to which evil angels, that is, demons, are devoted; but Moses, by so much the more powerfully as the more justly, in the name of God, who made heaven and earth, with the angels serving him, easily overmatched them. Finally, with the magi failing at the third plague, the ten plagues were completed through Moses with a great disposition of mysteries, by which the hard hearts of Pharaoh and of the Egyptians yielded to the dismissing of the people of God. And soon it repented him; and when they were trying to overtake the departing Hebrews, while for them the sea was divided and they were passing through on dry ground, as the wave from this side and that returned into itself, they were covered and crushed.

Quid de illis miraculis dicam, quae, cum in deserto idem populus ductaretur, stupenda diuinitate crebuerunt: aquas, quae bibi non poterant misso in eas, sicut Deus praeceperat, ligno amaritudine caruisse sitientesque satiasse; manna esurientibus uenisse de caelo et, cum esset colligentibus constituta mensura, quidquid amplius quisque collegerat, exortis uermibus putruisse, ante diem uero sabbati duplum collectum, quia sabbato colligere non licebat, nulla putredine uiolatum; desiderantibus carne uesci, quae tanto populo nulla sufficere posse uidebatur, uolatilibus castra completa et cupiditatis ardorem fastidio satietatis extinctum; obuios hostes transtitumque prohibentes atque proeliantes orante Moyse manibusque eius in figuram crucis extentis nullo Hebraeorum cadente prostratos; seditiosos in populo Dei ac sese ab ordinata diuinitus societate diuidentes ad exemplum uisibile inuisibilis poenae uiuos terra dehiscente submersos; uirga percussam petram tantae multitudini abundantia fluenta fudisse; serpentum morsus mortiferos, poenam iustissimam peccatorum, in ligno exaltato atque prospecto aeneo serpente sanatos, ut et populo subueniretur adflicto, et mors morte destructa uelut crucifixae mortis similitudine signaretur? Quem sane serpentem propter facti memoriam reseruatum cum postea populus errans tamquam idolum colere coepisset, Ezechias rex religiosa potestate Deo seruiens cum magna pietatis laude contriuit.

What shall I say of those miracles which, when that same people was being led in the desert, multiplied with stupendous divinity: that waters, which could not be drunk, when a piece of wood was sent into them as God had commanded, lost their bitterness and satisfied the thirsty; that manna came from heaven for the hungry, and, since a measure had been fixed for those gathering, whatever each one had gathered beyond it, with worms arising, putrefied, but what was collected as a double portion before the day of the Sabbath—because it was not permitted to gather on the Sabbath—was violated by no putrescence; that, when they desired to eat flesh, which seemed able to suffice for no people so great, the camp was filled with birds, and the ardor of cupidity was extinguished by the distaste of satiety; that enemies who met them, prohibiting the passage and fighting, were prostrated while Moses prayed, and his hands, extended in the figure of the cross, ensured that none of the Hebrews fell; that the seditious in the people of God, separating themselves from the society ordained by divinity, were sunk alive as the earth gaped, as a visible exemplar of an invisible punishment; that the rock, struck by the rod, poured forth streams in abundance for so great a multitude; that the deadly bites of serpents—the most just penalty of sinners—were healed by a bronze serpent lifted up on wood and looked upon, so that both help might be brought to the afflicted people and death, destroyed by death, might be signified, as it were, by the likeness of crucified death? Which serpent indeed, preserved for the memory of the deed, when later the erring people began to worship as an idol, Hezekiah the king, serving God with religious authority, crushed with great praise for his piety.

[IX] Haec et alia multa huiusce modi, quae omnia commemorare nimis longum est, fiebant ad commendandum unius Dei ueri cultum et multorum falsorumque prohibendum. Fiebant autem simplici fide atque fiducia pietatis, non incantationibus et carminibus nefariae curiositatis arte compositis, quam uel magian uel detestabiliore nomine goetian uel honorabiliore theurgian uocant, qui quasi conantur ista discernere et inlicitis artibus deditos alios damnabiles, quos et maleficos uulgus appellat (hos enim ad goetian pertinere dicunt), alios autem laudabiles uideri uolunt, quibus theurgian deputant; cum sint utrique ritibus fallacibus daemonum obstricti sub nominibus angelorum.

[9] These and many other things of this kind, which it would be too long to recount all of them, were being done to commend the cult of the one true God and to prohibit the cults of many and false ones. They were being done, moreover, by simple faith and the trust of piety, not by incantations and songs composed by the art of nefarious curiosity, which they call either magia, or by the more detestable name goetia, or by the more honorable theurgy—those who, as it were, try to discern these things and wish that those devoted to illicit arts be seen as some damnable (whom the common crowd also calls malefics—these, indeed, they say pertain to goetia), but others praiseworthy, to whom they assign theurgy; whereas both are bound to the deceitful rites of demons under the names of angels.

Nam et Porphyrius quandam quasi purgationem animae per theurgian, cunctanter tamen et pudibunda quodam modo disputatione promittit; reuersionem uero ad Deum hanc artem praestare cuiquam negat; ut uideas eum inter uitium sacrilegae curiositatis et philosophiae professionem sententiis alternantibus fluctuare. Nunc enim hanc artem tamquam fallacem et in ipsa actione periculosam et legibus prohibitam cauendam monet; nunc autem uelut eius laudatoribus cedens utilem dicit esse mundandae parti animae, non quidem intellectuali, qua rerum intellegibilium percipitur ueritas, nullas habentium similitudines corporum; sed spiritali, qua corporalium rerum capiuntur imagines. Hanc enim dicit per quasdam consecrationes theurgicas, quas teletas uocant, idoneam fieri atque aptam susceptioni spirituum et angelorum et ad uidendos deos.

For Porphyry too promises a kind of quasi-purgation of the soul through theurgy, yet with a hesitant and in a certain way shamefaced disputation; but he denies that this art affords to anyone a reversion to God; so that you may see him, with alternating judgments, wavering between the vice of sacrilegious curiosity and the profession of philosophy. For now he warns that this art, as deceitful and dangerous in its very operation and forbidden by the laws, must be avoided; now, however, as though yielding to its eulogists, he says it is useful for cleansing a part of the soul—not indeed the intellectual part, by which the truth of intelligible things, which have no likenesses of bodies, is perceived, but the spiritual part, by which the images of bodily things are taken in. For he says that this part, through certain theurgic consecrations, which they call teletae, is made suitable and apt for the reception of spirits and angels and for seeing the gods.

Ex quibus tamen theurgicis teletis fatetur intellectuali animae nihil purgationis accedere, quod eam faciat idoneam ad uidendum Deum suum et perspicienda ea, quae uere sunt. Ex quo intellegi potest, qualium deorum uel qualem uisionem fieri dicat theurgicis consecrationibus, in qua non ea uidentur, quae uere sunt. Denique animam rationalem siue, quod magis amat dicere, intellectualem, in sua posse dicit euadere, etiamsi quod eius spiritale est nulla theurgica fuerit arte purgatum; porro autem a theurgo spiritalem purgari hactenus, ut non ex hoc ad inmortalitatem aeternitatemque perueniat.

From these theurgic teletae, however, he confesses that nothing of purgation accrues to the intellectual soul that would make it fit for seeing its God and for clearly perceiving the things that truly are. Whence it can be understood of what sort of gods, or what kind of vision, he says is produced by theurgic consecrations—a vision in which the things that truly are are not seen. Finally, he says that the rational soul—or, as he prefers to say, the intellectual—can come into its own power even if that which in it is spiritual has been purified by no theurgic art; moreover, that the spiritual [part] is purified by the theurgist only to this extent: that it does not, from this, attain to immortality and eternity.

Quamquam itaque discernat a daemonibus angelos, aeria loca esse daemonum, aetheria uel empyria disserens angelorum, et admoneat utendum alicuius daemonis amicitia, quo subuectante uel paululum a terra possit eleuari quisque post mortem, aliam uero uiam esse perhibeat ad angelorum superna consortia: cauendam tamen daemonum societatem expressa quodam modo confessione testatur, ubi dicit animam post mortem luendo poenas cultum daemonum a quibus circumueniebatur horrescere; ipsamque theurgian, quam uelut conciliatricem angelorum deorumque commendat, apud tales agere potestates negare non potuit, quae uel ipsae inuideant purgationi animae, uel artibus seruiant inuidorum, querelam de hac re Chaldaei nescio cuius expromens: "Conqueritur, inquit, uir in Chaldaea bonus, purgandae animae magno in molimine frustratos sibi esse successus, cum uir ad eadem potens tactus inuidia adiuratas sacris precibus potentias alligasset, ne postulata concederent. Ergo et ligauit ille, inquit, et iste non soluit." Quo indicio dixit apparere theurgian esse tam boni conficiendi quam mali et apud deos et apud homines disciplinam; pati etiam deos et ad illas perturbationes passionesque deduci, quas communiter daemonibus et hominibus Apuleius adtribuit; deos tamen ab eis aetheriae sedis altitudine separans et Platonis asserens in illa discretione sententiam.

Although, therefore, he distinguishes angels from demons, arguing that the airy places are the demons’ and the aetherial or empyrial those of the angels, and admonishes that one should make use of the friendship of some demon, by whose uplift someone, after death, might be able to be raised even a little from the earth, while he avers that there is, however, a different way to the supernal consortium of angels: nevertheless he attests by a kind of explicit confession that the society of demons is to be avoided, where he says that the soul, after death, by paying penalties, shudders at the cult of the demons by whom it had been circumvented; and he could not deny that the very theurgy which he commends as a conciliatrix of angels and gods operates among such potencies as either themselves envy the purgation of the soul, or serve the arts of the envious, bringing forth the complaint about this matter of I-know-not-what Chaldaean: “A good man in Chaldaea,” he says, “complains that, in the great endeavor of purging the soul, the successes have been thwarted for him, since a man powerful for the same things, touched by envy, had bound the potencies adjured by sacred prayers, so that they would not grant the things requested. Therefore both that man bound,” he says, “and this one did not loose.” By which indication he said it appears that theurgy is a discipline for effecting both good and evil, both among the gods and among men; that the gods also suffer and are led down to those perturbations and passions which Apuleius attributes in common to demons and men; yet separating the gods from them by the height of the aetherial seat and asserting Plato’s opinion in that distinction.

[X] Ecce nunc alius Platonicus, quem doctiorem ferunt, Porphyrius, per nescio quam theurgicam disciplinam etiam ipsos deos obstrictos passionibus et perturbationibus dicit, quoniam sacris precibus adiurari tenerique potuerunt, ne praestarent animae purgationem, et ita terreri ab eo, qui imperabat malum, ut ab alio, qui poscebat bonum, per eandem artem theurgicam solui illo timore non possent et ad dandum beneficium liberari. Quis non uideat haec omnia fallacium daemonum esse commenta, nisi eorum miserrimus seruus et a gratia ueri liberatoris alienus? Nam si haec apud deos agerentur bonos, plus ibi utique ualeret beneficus purgator animae quam maleuolus inpeditor.

[10] Behold now another Platonist, whom they hold to be more learned, Porphyry, through I-know-not-what theurgic discipline says that even the gods themselves are bound to passions and perturbations, since by sacred prayers they could be adjured and held, lest they should grant the purification of the soul; and so to be terrified by him who was commanding evil, that by another who was asking for good, through the same theurgic art they could not be loosed from that fear and be freed to bestow the benefaction. Who does not see that all these are contrivances of deceitful daemons, unless he be their most wretched servant and alien from the grace of the true liberator? For if these things were transacted among good gods, surely there the beneficent purifier of the soul would prevail more than the malevolent hinderer.

Aut si diis iustis homo, pro quo agebatur, purgatione uidebatur indignus, non utique ab inuido territi nec, sicut ipse dicit, per metum ualentioris numinis inpediti, sed iudicio libero id negare debuerunt. Mirum est autem, quod benignus ille Chaldaeus, qui theurgicis sacris animam purgare cupiebat, non inuenit aliquem superiorem deum, qui uel plus terreret atque ad bene faciendum cogeret territos deos, uel ab eis terrentem compesceret, ut libere bene facerent; si tamen theurgo bono sacra defuerunt, quibus ipsos deos, quos inuocabat animae purgatores, prius ab illa timoris peste purgaret. Quid enim causae est, cur deus potentior adhiberi possit a quo terreantur, nec possit a quo purgentur?

Or if to just gods the man on whose behalf the action was being carried on seemed unworthy of purgation, they ought not to have been terrified by an envious one nor, as he himself says, impeded by fear of a stronger numen, but by free judgment to have denied it. It is a wonder, moreover, that that benign Chaldaean, who desired to purge the soul by theurgic rites, did not find some superior god who either would terrify more and compel the terrified gods to do good, or would restrain the one terrifying them from them, so that they might freely do good; if, however, the sacred rites failed the good theurgist, by which he might first purge those very gods, whom he invoked as purgators of the soul, from that plague of fear. For what cause is there why a more powerful god can be employed by whom they may be terrified, and cannot be employed by whom they may be purified?

An inuenitur deus qui exaudiat inuidum et timorem diis incutiat ne bene faciant; nec inuenitur deus qui exaudiat beneuolum et timorem diis auferat ut bene faciant? O theurgia praeclara, o animae praedicanda purgatio, ubi plus imperat inmunda inuidentia, quam inpetrat pura beneficientia! Immo uero malignorum spirituum cauenda et detestanda fallacia, et salutaris audienda doctrina.

Is there found a god who hears the envious man and instills fear in the gods lest they do good; and is there not found a god who hears the benevolent man and takes away fear from the gods so that they may do good? O illustrious theurgy, O purgation of the soul to be proclaimed, where unclean envy commands more than pure beneficence obtains! Nay rather, the fallacy of malignant spirits is to be shunned and detested, and the salutary doctrine is to be heeded.

Quod enim qui has sordidas purgationes sacrilegis ritibus operantur quasdam mirabiliter pulchras, sicut iste commemorat, uel angelorum imagines uel deorum tamquam purgato spiritu uident (si tamen uel tale aliquid uident), illud est, quod apostolus dicit: Quoniam satanas transfigurat se uelut angelum lucis. Eius enim sunt illa phantasmata, qui miseras animas multorum falsorumque deorum fallacibus sacris cupiens inretire et a uero ueri Dei cultu, quo solo mundantur et sanantur, auertere, sicut de Proteo dictum est,

Now as for the fact that those who perform these sordid purgations by sacrilegious rites behold, as this man recounts, certain wondrously beautiful images either of angels or of gods, as though with a purified spirit (if indeed they see anything of the sort at all), that is what the Apostle says: Because Satan transfigures himself as an angel of light. For those phantasms are his, he who, desiring to ensnare wretched souls by the fallacious rites of many false gods and to turn them away from the true worship of the true God, by which alone they are cleansed and healed, as has been said of Proteus,

formas se uertit in omnes,

he turns himself into all forms,

hostiliter insequens, fallaciter subueniens, utrobique nocens.

hostilely pursuing, fallaciously succoring, harmful in both respects.

[XI] Melius sapuit iste Porphyrius, cum ad Anebontem scripsit Aegyptium, ubi consulenti similis et quaerenti et prodit artes sacrilegas et euertit. Et ibi quidem omnes daemones reprobat, quos dicit ob inprudentiam trahere humidum uaporem et ideo non in aethere, sed in aere esse sub luna atque in ipso lunae globo; uerum tamen non audet omnes fallacias et malitias et ineptias, quibus merito mouetur, omnibus daemonibus dare. Quosdam namque benignos daemones more appellat aliorum, cum omnes generaliter inprudentes esse fateatur.

[11] That Porphyry showed better sense, when he wrote to Anebo the Egyptian, where, like one consulting and inquiring, he both betrays the sacrilegious arts and overturns them. And there indeed he reproves all the daemons, whom he says, on account of imprudence, draw in a humid vapor, and therefore are not in the aether, but in the air beneath the moon and on the very globe of the moon; yet he does not dare to assign all the fallacies and malices and ineptitudes, by which he is rightly moved, to all daemons. For he calls certain “benign daemons” according to the custom of others, though he confesses that all in general are imprudent.

Miratur autem quod non solum dii alliciantur uictimis, sed etiam compellantur atque cogantur facere quod homines uolunt; et si corpore et incorporalitate dii a daemonibus distinguuntur, quo modo deos esse existimandum sit solem et lunam et uisibilia cetera in caelo, quae corpora esse non dubitat; et si dii sunt, quo modo alii benefici, alii malefici esse dicantur; et quo modo incorporalibus, cum sint corporei, coniungantur. Quaerit etiam ueluti dubitans, utrum in diuinantibus et quaedam mira facientibus animae sint passiones an aliqui spiritus extrinsecus ueniant, per quos haec ualeant; et potius uenire extrinsecus conicit, eo quod lapidibus et herbis adhibitis et alligent quosdam, et aperiant clausa ostia, uel aliquid eius modi mirabiliter operentur. Vnde dicit alios opinari esse quoddam genus, cui exaudire sit proprium, natura fallax, omniforme, multimodum, simulans deos et daemones et animas defunctorum, et hoc esse quod efficiat haec omnia quae uidentur bona esse uel praua; ceterum circa ea, quae uere bona sunt, nihil opitulari, immo uero ista nec nosse, sed et male conciliare et insimulare atque inpedire nonnumquam uirtutis sedulos sectatores, et plenum esse temeritatis et fastus, gaudere nidoribus, adulationibus capi, et cetera, quae de hoc genere fallacium malignorumque spirituum, qui extrinsecus in animam ueniunt humanosque sensus sopitos uigilantesue deludunt, non tamquam sibi persuasa confirmat, sed tam tenuiter suspicatur aut dubitat, ut haec alios asserat opinari.

He is astonished, moreover, that not only are the gods enticed by victims, but even compelled and forced to do what men wish; and, if by corporeity and incorporeality the gods are distinguished from daemons, in what way the sun and the moon and the other visible things in heaven—which he does not doubt to be bodies—are to be thought gods; and if they are gods, how some are said to be beneficent, others maleficent; and how, being corporeal, they are joined to incorporeals. He also inquires, as if doubting, whether in diviners and in those doing certain marvellous things there are passions of souls, or whether some spirits come from without, through whom they are able to accomplish these; and he conjectures rather that they come from without, because, when stones and herbs are applied, they also bind certain persons, and open shut doors, or work something of that sort wondrously. Whence he says that others opine there is a certain genus, for which to hearken is proper, by nature fallacious, all-formed, many-moded, counterfeiting gods and daemons and the souls of the deceased, and that this is what effects all these things which seem to be good or depraved; but as to those things which are truly good, to give no help at all—nay indeed not even to know them—but also to counsel ill and to accuse and sometimes to hinder the zealous followers of virtue, and to be full of temerity and arrogance, to rejoice in the reek of roast-offerings, to be captured by flatteries, and the rest—things which about this kind of fallacious and malign spirits, who come from without into the soul and delude human senses asleep or awake—he does not affirm as persuaded to himself, but so thinly suspects or doubts them, that he asserts these things to be the opinion of others.

Difficile quippe fuit tanto philosopho cunctam diabolicam societatem uel nosse uel fidenter arguere, quam quaelibet anicula Christiana nec cunctatur esse, et liberrime detestatur. Nisi forte iste et ipsum, ad quem scribit, Anebontem tamquam talium sacrorum praeclarissimum antistitem et alios talium operum tamquam diuinorum et ad deos colendos pertinentium admiratores uerecundatur offendere.

Indeed, it was difficult for so great a philosopher either to know or confidently arraign the whole diabolical society, which any Christian little old woman neither hesitates to acknowledge to be, and most freely detests. Unless perhaps this man is bashful to offend even Anebontes himself, the one to whom he writes, as the most illustrious prelate of such sacred rites, and others who are admirers of such works as though divine and pertaining to the cult of the gods.

Sequitur tamen et ea uelut inquirendo commemorat, quae sobrie considerata tribui non possunt nisi malignis et fallacibus potestatibus. Quaerit enim cur tamquam melioribus inuocatis quasi peioribus imperetur, ut iniusta praecepta hominis exsequantur; cur adtrectatum re Veneria non exaudiant inprecantem, cum ipsi ad incestos quosque concubitus quoslibet ducere non morentur; cur animantibus suos antistites oportere abstinere denuntient, ne uaporibus profecto corporeis polluantur, ipsi uero et aliis uaporibus inliciantur et nidoribus hostiarum, cumque a cadaueris contactu prohibeatur inspector, plerumque illa cadaueribus celebrentur; quid sit, quod non daemoni uel alicui animae defuncti, sed ipsi soli et lunae aut cuicumque caelestium homo uitio cuilibet obnoxius intendit minas eosque territat falso, ut eis extorqueat ueritatem. Nam et caelum se conlidere comminatur et cetera similia homini inpossibilia, ut illi dii tamquam insipientissimi pueri falsis et ridiculis comminationibus territi quod imperatur efficiant.

He follows up, nevertheless, and also, as though inquiring, commemorates those things which, when soberly considered, cannot be attributed except to malignant and fallacious powers. For he asks why, when the better are invoked, as it were command is exercised over the worse, so that they execute a man’s unjust precepts; why, when the matter of Venus has been handled, they do not hear the one imprecating, whereas they themselves do not hesitate to lead men to whatever incestuous couplings; why they denounce that their own priests ought to abstain from living creatures, lest they be polluted by assuredly corporeal vapors, yet they themselves are allured by other vapors and by the reek of victims; and, although the inspector is forbidden contact with a corpse, for the most part those rites are celebrated with corpses; what it means that, not to a demon nor to some soul of the deceased, but to the sun and the moon themselves, or to any of the celestials, a man liable to any vice directs threats and frightens them falsely, so as to extort the truth from them. For he even threatens that he will collide the sky itself and other similar things impossible for a man, so that those gods, like the most insensate boys, terrified by false and ridiculous threats, accomplish what is commanded.

Dicit etiam scripsisse Chaeremonem quendam, talium sacrorum uel potius sacrilegiorum peritum, ea, quae apud Aegyptios sunt celebrata rumoribus uel de Iside uel de Osiri marito eius, maximam uim habere cogendi deos, ut faciant imperata, quando ille, qui carminibus cogit, ea se prodere uel euertere comminatur, ubi se etiam Osiridis membra dissipaturum terribiliter dicit, si facere iussa neglexerint. Haec atque huius modi uana et insana hominem diis minari, nec quibuslibet, sed ipsis caelestibus et siderea luce fulgentibus, nec sine effectu, sed uiolenta potestate cogentem atque his terroribus ad facienda quae uoluerit perducentem, merito Porphyrius admiratur; immo uero sub specie mirantis et causas rerum talium requirentis dat intellegi illo s haec agere spiritus, quorum genus superius sub aliorum opinatione descripsit, non, ut ipse posuit, natura, sed uitio fallaces, qui simulant deos et animas defunctorum, daemones autem non, ut ait ipse, simulant, sed plane sunt. Et quod ei uidetur herbis et lapidibus et animantibus et sonis certis quibusdam ac uocibus et figurationibus atque figmentis, quibusdam etiam obseruatis in caeli conuersione motibus siderum fabricari in terra ab hominibus potestates idoneas uariis effectibus exsequendis, totum hoc ad eosdem ipsos daemones pertinet ludificatores animarum sibimet subditarum et uoluptaria sibi ludibria de hominum erroribus exhibentes.

He also says that a certain Chaeremon, skilled in such sacred rites—or rather sacrileges—wrote that those things which among the Egyptians are celebrated in reports either about Isis or about Osiris her husband have the greatest force for compelling the gods to do what is commanded, when he who compels by incantations threatens that he will betray or overturn these things, where he even says, with terror, that he will scatter the limbs of Osiris, if they should neglect to do the orders. These and things of this sort—vain and insane—that a man threatens the gods, and not just any, but the very celestials shining with sidereal light, and not without effect, but by violent power compelling and by these terrors leading them to do what he will—Porphyry admires, and with reason; nay rather, under the guise of marveling and of inquiring the causes of such things, he gives it to be understood that those spirits do these things, whose kind he described above under the opinion of others, deceitful not by nature, as he himself posited, but by vice, who simulate gods and the souls of the dead—demons, however, not, as he says, do they simulate, but plainly they are. And as for what seems to him, that by herbs and stones and living creatures and by certain fixed sounds and voices and by figurations and contrivances, and by certain motions of the stars observed in the revolution of the heaven, there are fabricated on earth by men powers suitable for executing various effects—this whole matter pertains to those same demons themselves, mockers of the souls subjected to them, exhibiting to themselves voluptuary mockeries from the errors of men.

Aut ergo re uera dubitans et inquirens ista Porphyrius ea tamen commemorat, quibus conuincantur et redarguantur, nec ad eas potestates, quae nobis ad beatam uitam capessendam fauent, sed ad deceptores daemones pertinere monstrentur; aut, ut meliora de philosopho suspicemur, eo modo uoluit hominem Aegyptium talibus erroribus deditum et aliqua magna se scire opinantem non superba quasi auctoritate doctoris offendere, nec aperte aduersantis altercatione turbare, sed quasi quaerentis et discere cupientis humilitate ad ea cogitanda conuertere et quam sint contemnenda uel etiam deuitanda monstrare. Denique prope ad epistulae finem petit se ab eo doceri, quae sit ad beatitudinem uia ex Aegyptia sapientia. Ceterum illos, quibus conuersatio cum diis ad hoc esset, ut ob inueniendum fugitiuum uel praedium comparandum, aut propter nuptias uel mercaturam uel quid huius modi mentem diuinam inquietarent, frustra eos uideri dicit coluisse sapientiam; illa etiam ipsa numina, cum quibus conuersarentur, etsi de ceteris rebus uera praedicerent, tamen quoniam de beatitudine nihil cautum nec satis idoneum monerent, nec deos illos esse nec benignos daemones, sed aut illum, qui dicitur fallax, aut humanum omne commentum.

Either, then, truly doubting and inquiring into these matters Porphyry nevertheless recounts those points by which they are convicted and refuted, and are shown not to pertain to those powers that favor us for seizing a blessed life, but to deceiver demons; or else, that we may suspect better things of the philosopher, he wished in that way not to offend the Egyptian man, given over to such errors and thinking himself to know some great things, by the proud as-it-were authority of a teacher, nor to trouble him with the altercation of one openly opposing, but, with the humility of one as if seeking and eager to learn, to turn him to consider these things and to show how they are to be despised or even avoided. Finally, near the end of the epistle he asks to be taught by him what the way to beatitude is from Egyptian wisdom. Moreover, as for those whose intercourse with the gods was to this end—that for finding a fugitive or purchasing an estate, or on account of marriages or commerce or anything of this sort they might disquiet the divine mind—he says they seem to have cultivated wisdom in vain; and those very numina with whom they conversed, even if they foretold truths about other matters, nevertheless, since concerning beatitude they provided no security and gave no sufficiently suitable admonition, are neither gods nor benign demons, but either that one who is called the Deceiver, or every human contrivance.

[XII] Verum quia tanta et talia geruntur his artibus, ut uniuersum modum humanae facultatis excedant: quid restat, nisi ut ea, quae mirifice tamquam diuinitus praedici uel fieri uidentur nec tamen ad unius Dei cultum referuntur, cui simpliciter inhaerere fatentibus quoque Platonicis et per multa testantibus solum beatificum bonum est, malignorum daemonum ludibria et seductoria inpedimenta, quae uera pietate cauenda sunt, prudenter intellegantur? Porro autem quaecumque miracula siue per angelos siue quocumque modo ita diuinitus fiunt, ut Dei unius, in quo solo beata uita est, cultum religionemque commendent, ea uere ab eis uel per eos, qui nos secundum ueritatem pietatemque diligunt, fieri ipso Deo in.illis operante credendum est. Neque enim audiendi sunt, qui Deum inuisibilem uisibilia miracula operari negant, cum ipse etiam secundum ipsos fecerit mundum, quem certe uisibilem negare non possunt.

[12] But since such great and suchlike things are wrought by these arts, that they exceed the whole measure of human faculty: what remains, except that those things which wondrously seem to be foretold or to be done as though by divinity, and yet are not referred to the cult of the one God—to whom to adhere simply, as even the Platonists confess and attest in many places, is the only beatific good—be prudently understood as the mockeries of malignant demons and seductive impediments, which are to be avoided by true piety? Moreover, whatever miracles, whether through angels or in whatever way, are thus divinely done so as to commend the cult and religion of the one God, in whom alone the blessed life is, these are truly to be believed to be done by them or through them who love us according to truth and piety, with God Himself working in them. For we are not to heed those who deny that the invisible God works visible miracles, since He Himself, even according to them, made the world, which assuredly they cannot deny to be visible.

Quidquid igitur mirabile fit in hoc mundo, profecto minus est quam totus hic mundus, id est caelum et terra et omnia quae in eis sunt, quae certe Deus fecit. Sicut autem ipse qui fecit, ita modus quo fecit occultus est et inconprehensibilis homini. Quamuis itaque miracula uisibilium naturarum uidendi assiduitate uiluerint, tamen, cum ea sapienter intuemur, inusitatissimis rarissimisque maiora sunt.

Whatever, therefore, marvelous thing is done in this world is assuredly less than this whole world, that is, the heaven and the earth and all things that are in them, which God certainly made. And just as he who made it, so the mode by which he made it is hidden and incomprehensible to man. Although, therefore, the miracles of visible natures have been cheapened by the assiduity of seeing, nevertheless, when we contemplate them wisely, they are greater than the most unusual and the rarest.

Nam et omni miraculo, quod fit per hominem, maius miraculum est homo. Quapropter Deus, qui fecit uisibilia caelum et terram, non dedignatur facere uisibilia miracula in caelo uel terra, quibus ad se inuisibilem colendum excitet animam adhuc uisibilibus deditam; ubi uero et quando faciat, incommutabile consilium penes ipsum est, in cuius dispositione iam tempora facta sunt quaecumque futura sunt. Nam temporalia mouens temporaliter non mouetur, nec aliter nouit facienda quam facta, nec aliter inuocantes exaudit quam inuocaturos uidet.

For indeed, than every miracle which is done through a man, man himself is the greater miracle. Wherefore God, who made the visible heaven and earth, does not disdain to make visible miracles in heaven or on earth, by which he arouses to himself—the Invisible—to be worshiped, the soul still given over to visibles; but where and when he may do them, the unchangeable counsel is with himself, in whose disposition the times have already been made of whatever things are to be. For, moving temporal things temporally, he is not moved; nor does he know things-to-be-done otherwise than as done; nor does he hearken to those invoking otherwise than as he sees them about to invoke.

Nam et cum exaudiunt angeli eius, ipse in eis exaudit, tamquam in uero nec manu facto templo suo, sicut in hominibus sanctis suis, eiusque temporaliter fiunt iussa aeterna eius lege conspecta.

For also when his angels hearken, he himself in them hearkens, as in his true temple not made by hand, just as in his holy men; and his commands are done temporally, his eternal law being in view.

[XIII] Nec mouere debet, quod, cum sit inuisibilis, saepe uisibiliter patribus apparuisse memoratur. Sicut enim sonus, quo auditur sententia in silentio intellegentiae constituta, non est hoc quod ipsa: ita et species, qua uisus est Deus in natura inuisibili constitutus, non erat quod ipse. Verum tamen ipse in eadem specie corporali uidebatur, sicut illa sententia ipsa in sono uocis auditur; nec illi ignorabant inuisibilem Deum in specie corporali, quod ipse non erat, se uidere.

[13] Nor ought it to move us, that, although He is invisible, He is often remembered to have appeared visibly to the fathers. For just as the sound by which a sentence, established in the silence of intelligence, is heard is not the same as the sentence itself: so also the appearance in which God was seen, He being constituted in invisible nature, was not what He Himself was. Nevertheless, He Himself was seen in that same corporeal species, just as that very sentence is heard in the sound of the voice; nor were they unaware that they were seeing the invisible God in a corporeal species, which He Himself was not.

Nam et loquebatur cum loquente Moyses et ei tamen dicebat.: Si inueni gratiam ante te, ostende mihi temet ipsum, scienter ut uideam te. Cum igitur oporteret Dei legem in edictis angelorum terribiliter dari, non uni homini paucisue sapientibus, sed uniuersae genti et populo ingenti: coram eodem populo magna facta sunt in monte, ubi lex per unum dabatur, conspiciente multitudine metuenda et tremenda quae fiebant. Non enim populus Israel sic Moysi credidit, quem ad modum suo Lycurgo Lacedaemonii, quod a Ioue seu Apolline leges, quas condidit, accepisset. Cum enim lex dabatur populo, qua coli unus iubebatur Deus, in conspectu ipsius populi, quantum sufficere diuina prouidentia iudicabat, mirabilibus rerum signis et motibus apparebat ad eandem legem dandam creatori seruire creaturam.

For Moses also was speaking with the One speaking, and yet he said to him: If I have found grace before you, show me yourself, that I may see you knowingly. Since, therefore, it was fitting that the law of God be given terribly in the edicts of angels, not to one man or to a few wise men, but to an entire nation and a vast people: before that same people great things were done on the mountain, where the law was being given through one, the multitude beholding the things that were being done, fearful and dreadful. For the people of Israel did not believe Moses in the way the Lacedaemonians believed their own Lycurgus, that he had received the laws which he framed from Jupiter or Apollo. For when the law was being given to the people, by which one God was commanded to be worshiped, in the sight of that very people, so far as divine providence judged sufficient, by marvelous signs and motions of things it was made apparent that the creature was serving the Creator for the giving of that same law.

[XIV] Sicut autem unius hominis, ita humani generis, quod ad Dei populum pertinet, recta eruditio per quosdam articulos temporum tamquam aetatum profecit accessibus, ut a temporalibus ad aeterna capienda et a uisibilibus ad inuisibilia surgeretur; ita sane ut etiam illo tempore, quo uisibilia promittebantur diuinitus praemia, unus tamen colendus commendaretur Deus, ne mens humana uel pro ipsis terrenis uitae transitoriae beneficiis cuiquam nisi uero animae creatori et domino subderetur. Omnia quippe, quae praestare hominibus uel angeli uel homines possunt, in unius esse Omnipotentis potestate quisquis diffitetur, insanit. De prouidentia certe Plotinus Platonicus disputat eamque a summo Deo, cuius est intellegibilis atque ineffabilis pulchritudo, usque ad haec terrena et ima pertingere flosculorum atque foliorum pulchritudine conprobat; quae omnia quasi abiecta et uelocissime pereuntia decentissimos formarum suarum numeros habere non posse confirmat, nisi inde formentur, ubi forma intellegibilis et incommutabilis simul habens omnia perseuerat.

[14] Just as the right instruction of one man, so also that of the human race, in what pertains to the people of God, has progressed through certain joints of the times, as it were of ages, by accessions, so that from temporal things one might rise to grasp eternal things, and from visible things to invisible; yet assuredly in such a way that even at that time when visible rewards were divinely promised, one God nevertheless was commended as the one to be worshiped, lest the human mind, even for the very earthly benefits of the transitory life, should be subjected to any save the true creator and lord of the soul. For whoever denies that all things which either angels or men can bestow upon human beings are in the power of the One Omnipotent is insane. Concerning Providence, to be sure, Plotinus the Platonist argues, and he proves it to reach from the highest God—whose beauty is intelligible and ineffable—down even to these earthly and lowest things, by the beauty of little blossoms and leaves; and he confirms that all these things, as though abject and most swiftly perishing, could not have the most seemly numbers of their forms, unless they are formed from there, where the intelligible and immutable Form, at once having all things, perseveres.

Hoc Dominus Iesus ibi ostendit, ubi ait: Considerate lilia agri, non laborant neque neunt. Dico autem uobis, quia nec Salomon in tota gloria sua sic amictus est, sicut unum ex eis. Quod si faenum agri, quod hodie est et cras in clibanum mittitur, Deus sic uestit: quanto magos uos, modicae fidei?

This the Lord Jesus shows there, where he says: Consider the lilies of the field; they do not labor nor do they spin. But I say to you, that not even Solomon in all his glory was clothed thus, like one of them. But if the grass of the field, which today is and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, God thus clothes, how much more you, O you of little faith?

Optime igitur anima humana adhuc terrenis desideriis infirma ea ipsa, quae temporaliter exoptat bona infima atque terrena uitae huic transitoriae necessaria et prae illius uitae sempiternis beneficiis contemnenda, non tamen nisi ab uno Deo expectare consuescit, ut ab illius cultu etiam in istorum desiderio non recedat, ad quem contemptu eorum et ab eis auersione perueniat.

Therefore, most fittingly, the human soul, still infirm with earthly desires, is accustomed to expect from no one except the one God those very things which it temporally longs for—the lowest goods and earthly things necessary to this transitory life and to be contemned in comparison with the sempiternal benefits of that life—so that it does not withdraw from his worship even in the desire of these things, and may come to him by contempt of them and by aversion from them.

[XV] Sic itaque diuinae prouidentiae placuit ordinare temporum cursum, ut, quem ad modum dixi et in actibus apostolorum legitur, lex in edictis angelorum daretur de unius ueri Dei cultu, in quibus et persona ipsius Dei, non quidem per suam substantiam, quae semper corruptibilibus oculis inuisibilis permanet, sed certis indiciis per subiectam creatori creaturam uisibiliter appareret et syllabatim per transitorias temporum morulas humanae linguae uocibus loqueretur, qui in sua natura non corporaliter, sed spiritaliter, non sensibiliter, sed intellegibiliter, non temporaliter, sed, ut ita dicam, aeternaliter nec incipit loqui nec desinit; quod apud illum sincerius audiunt, non corporis aure, sed mentis, ministri eius et nuntii, qui eius ueritate incommutabili perfruuntur inmortaliter beati; et quod faciendum modis ineffabilibus audiunt et usque in ista uisibilia atque sensibilia perducendum, incunctanter atque indifficulter efficiunt. Haec autem lex distributione temporum data est, quae prius haberet, ut dictum est, promissa terrena, quibus tamen significarentur aeterna, quae uisibilibus sacramentis celebrarent multi, intellegerent pauci. Vnius tamen Dei cultus apertissima illic et uocum et rerum omnium contestatione praecipitur, non unius de turba, sed qui fecit caelum et terram et omnem animam et omnem spiritum, qui non est quod ipse.

[15] Thus, then, it pleased the divine providence to ordain the course of the times, that, as I said and as is read in the Acts of the Apostles, the law should be given in the edicts of angels concerning the worship of the one true God, in which the person of God Himself should appear visibly—not indeed by His own substance, which remains always invisible to corruptible eyes—but by certain signs through the creature subjected to the Creator, and should speak syllable by syllable, by the voices of the human tongue, through the passing pauses of times, He who in His own nature speaks not corporally but spiritually, not sensibly but intelligibly, not temporally but, so to speak, eternally, neither begins to speak nor ceases; which, with Him, His ministers and messengers hear more purely, not with the ear of the body but of the mind, who, immortally blessed, enjoy His unchangeable truth; and what they hear must be done, by ineffable modes, and must be brought even to these visible and sensible things, they accomplish unhesitatingly and without difficulty. Moreover, this law was given by a distribution of times, which should first have, as has been said, earthly promises, by which nevertheless the eternal things were signified—things which many would celebrate by visible sacraments, but few would understand. Yet the worship of the one God is there enjoined with the most open attestation of both words and of all things—not of one out of the crowd, but of Him who made heaven and earth and every soul and every spirit, which is not what He Himself is.

Ille enim fecit, haec facta sunt, atque ut sint et bene se habeant, eius indigent, a quo facta sunt.

For he made it; these things have been made, and, in order that they may be and be well, they have need of him by whom they were made.

[XVI] Quibus igitur angelis de beata et sempiterna uita credendum esse censemus? Vtrum eis, qui se religionis ritibus coli uolunt sibi sacra et sacrificia flagitantes a mortalibus exhiberi, an eis, qui hunc omnem cultum uni Deo creatori omnium deberi dicunt eique reddendum uera pietate praecipiunt, cuius et ipsi contemplatione beati sunt et nos futuros esse promittunt? Illa namque uisio Dei tantae pulchritudinis uisio est et tanto amore dignissima, ut sine hac quibuslibet aliis bouis praeditum atque abundantem non dubitet Plotinus infelicissimum dicere.

[16] To which angels, then, do we judge that credence ought to be given regarding the blessed and sempiternal life? Whether to those who wish themselves to be cultivated by the rites of religion, demanding that sacra and sacrifices be presented to themselves by mortals; or to those who say that this whole cult is owed to the one God, the creator of all things, and prescribe that it be rendered to him with true piety—by the contemplation of whom they themselves are blessed and promise that we shall be as well? For that vision of God is a vision of such beauty and most worthy of so great love, that, without it, one endowed and abounding with any other goods Plotinus does not hesitate to call most unfortunate.

Cum ergo ad hunc unum quidam angeli, quidam uero ad se ipsos latria colendos signis mirabilibus excitent, et hoc ita, ut illi istos coli prohibeant, isti autem illum prohibere non audeant: quibus potius sit credendum, respondeant Platonici, respondeant quicumque philosophi, respondeant theurgi uel potius periurgi; hoc enim sunt omnes illae artes uocabulo digniores; postremo respondeant homines, si ullus naturae suae sensus, quod rationales creati sunt, ex aliqua parte uiuit in eis; respondeant, inquam, eisne sacrificandum sit diis uel angelis, qui sibi sacrificari iubent, an illi uni, cui iubent hi qui et sibi et istis prohibent? Si nec isti nec illi ulla miracula facerent, sed tantum praeciperent, alii quidem ut sibi sacrificaretur, alii uero id uetarent, sed uni tantum iuberent Deo: satis deberet pietas ipsa discernere, quid horum de fastu superbiae, quid de uera religione descenderet. Plus etiam dicam: si tantum hi mirabilibus factis humanas animas permouerent, qui sacrificia sibi expetunt, illi autem, qui hoc prohibent et uni tantum Deo sacrificari iubent, nequaquam ista uisibilia miracula facere dignarentur: profecto non sensu corporis, sed ratione mentis praeponenda eorum esset auctoritas.

Since, then, certain angels stir people by marvelous signs to pay latria to this One, while certain others stir them to pay it to themselves—and in such a way that the former forbid that these be worshiped, whereas the latter do not dare to forbid that He be worshiped—to whom should credence rather be given? Let the Platonists answer, let whatever philosophers answer, let the theurgists—or rather the periurgists—answer; for by this name all those arts are more worthily entitled. Finally, let human beings answer, if any sense of their nature—that they were created rational—lives in them at all. Let them answer, I say: ought sacrifice to be offered to the gods or angels who command that sacrifice be offered to themselves, or to that One to whom those bid it be offered who forbid it to be offered either to themselves or to those others? If neither these nor those were doing any miracles, but only giving commands—some indeed that sacrifice be offered to themselves, others forbidding this but ordering that it be offered to God alone—piety itself ought sufficiently to discern what of these descends from the ostentation of pride and what from true religion. I will say more: if only those were to move human souls by marvelous deeds who demand sacrifices for themselves, while those who forbid this and command that sacrifice be offered to God alone did not deign to do these visible miracles, assuredly their authority should be preferred not by the sense of the body but by the reason of the mind.

Cum uero Deus id egerit ad commendanda eloquia ueritatis suae, ut per istos inmortales nuntios non sui fastum, sed maiestatem illius praedicantes faceret maiora, certiora, clariora, miracula ne infirmis piis illi, qui sacrificia sibi expetunt, falsam religionem facilius persuaderent, eo quod sensibus eorum quaedam stupenda monstrarent: quem tandem ita desipere libeat, ut non uera eligat quae sectetur, ubi et ampliora inuenit quae miretur?

But indeed, since God has done this for the commendation of the utterances of His truth—that through those immortal messengers, proclaiming not their own fastus but His majesty, He should perform greater, more certain, clearer miracles—lest those who demand sacrifices for themselves should more easily persuade a false religion to the pious who are infirm, for the reason that they display to their senses certain astounding things: who, then, would wish to be so witless as not to choose the true things to follow, where he also finds ampler things to marvel at?

Illa quippe miracula deorum gentilium, quae commendat historia (non ea dico, quae interuallis temporum occultis ipsius mundi causis, uerum tamen sub diuina prouidentia constitutis et ordinatis monstrosa contingunt; quales sunt inusitati partus animalium et caelo terraque rerum insolita facies, siue tantum terrens siue etiam nocens, quae procurari atque mitigari daemonicis ritibus fallacissima eorum astutia perhibentur; sed ea dico, quae ui ac potestate eorum fieri satis euidenter apparet, ut est quod effigies deorum Penatium, quas de Troia Aeneas fugiens aduexit, de loco in locum migrasse referuntur; quod cotem Tarquinius nouacula secuit; quod Epidaurius serpens Aesculapio nauiganti Romam comes adhaesit; quod nauem, qua simulacrum matris Phrygiae uehebatur, tantis hominum boumque conatibus inmobilem redditam una muliercula zona alligatam ad suae pudicitiae testimonium mouit et traxit; quod uirgo Vestalis, de cuius corruptione quaestio uertebatur, aqua inpleto cribro de Tiberi neque perfluente abstulit controuersiam) — haec ergo atque huius modi nequaquam illis, quae in populo Dei facta legimus, uirtute ac magnitudine conferenda sunt; quanto minus ea, quae illorum quoque populorum, qui tales deos coluerunt, legibus iudicata sunt prohibenda atque plectenda, magica scilicet uel theurgica! quorum pleraque specie tenus mortalium sensus imaginaria ludificatione decipiunt, quale est lunam deponere, "donec suppositas, ut ait Lucanus, propior despumet in herbas"; quaedam uero etsi nonnullis piorum factis uideantur opere coaequari, finis ipse, quo discernuntur, incomparabiliter haec nostra ostendit excellere. Illis enim multi tanto minus sacrificiis colendi sunt, quanto magis haec expetunt; his uero unus commendatur Deus, qui se nullis talibus indigere et scripturarum suarum testificatione et eorundem postea sacrificiorum remotione demonstrat.

For those miracles of the gentile gods which history commends (I do not mean those which, at intervals of times, occur monstrously from the occult causes of the world itself—yet established and ordered under divine providence—such as unusual births of animals and the unheard-of appearances of things in sky and earth, whether only terrifying or even harmful, which are reported, by their most fallacious astuteness, to be warded off and mitigated by daemonic rites; but I mean those which quite evidently appear to be done by their force and power, as is that the effigies of the Penate gods, which Aeneas, fleeing from Troy, brought over, are reported to have migrated from place to place; that Tarquinius cut a whetstone with a razor; that the Epidaurian serpent clung as a companion to Aesculapius as he sailed to Rome; that the ship in which the simulacrum of the Phrygian Mother was being carried, having been rendered immovable by such great efforts of men and oxen, a single little woman, with her girdle tied to it as a testimony of her chastity, moved and dragged; that a Vestal virgin, about whose corruption a trial was underway, with a sieve filled with water from the Tiber, the water not flowing through, removed the dispute) — these therefore and their likes are by no means to be compared, in virtue and magnitude, with those which we read were done among the people of God; how much less are those things to be compared which, even by the laws of those peoples who worshiped such gods, have been judged to be prohibited and punished, namely magical or theurgic! Most of these deceive the senses of mortals in mere appearance by imaginary mockery—such as “to bring down the moon, until, as Lucan says, drawing nearer she foams upon the herbs laid beneath”; while some, even if they seem in their operation to be equalled to certain deeds of the pious, the end itself, by which they are distinguished, shows incomparably that ours excel. For as to those, many are so much the less to be worshiped with sacrifices the more they crave these things; but as to these, one God is commended, who shows, both by the attestation of his own scriptures and by the subsequent removal of those same sacrifices, that he has need of no such things.

Si ergo angeli sibi expetunt sacrificium, praeponendi eis sunt, qui non sibi, sed Deo creatori omnium, cui seruiunt. Hinc enim ostendunt quam sincero amore nos diligant, quando per sacrificium non sibi, sed ei nos subdere uolunt, cuius et ipsi contemplatione beati sunt, et ad eum nos peruenire, a quo ipsi non recesserunt. Si autem angeli, qui non uni sed plurimis sacrificia fieri uolunt, non sibi, sed eis diis uolunt, quorum deorum angeli sunt: etiam sic eis praeponendi sunt illi, qui unius Dei deorum angeli sunt, cui sacrificari sic iubent, ut alicui alteri uetent, cum eorum nullus huic uetet, cui uni isti sacrificari iubent.

If, therefore, angels seek sacrifice for themselves, those are to be preferred to them who seek it not for themselves, but for God the creator of all, whom they serve. For by this they show how with sincere love they cherish us, when by sacrifice they wish to subject us not to themselves, but to him, by whose contemplation they themselves are blessed, and that we should come to him, from whom they themselves have not withdrawn. But if there are angels who wish sacrifices to be made not to one but to many, not to themselves but to those gods of whom they are angels, even so those are to be preferred to them who are angels of the one God of gods, for whom they so command that sacrifice be offered as to forbid it to be offered to any other—since none of those forbids it to this one, to whom alone these command sacrifice to be offered.

Porro si, quod magis indicat eorum superba fallacia, nec boni nec bonorum deorum angeli sunt, sed daemones mali, qui non unum solum ac summum Deum, sed se ipsos sacrificiis coli uolunt: quod maius quam unius Dei contra eos eligendum est praesidium, cui seruiunt angeli boni, qui non sibi, sed illi iubent ut sacrificio seruiamus, cuius nos ipsi sacrificium esse debemus?

Moreover, if—as their proud fallacy more indicates—they are neither good nor angels of good gods, but evil daemons, who will that not the one only and highest God, but themselves, be worshiped with sacrifices: what greater defense than that of the one God ought to be chosen against them, whom the good angels serve, who bid that we serve by sacrifice not them but Him, of whom we ourselves ought to be the sacrifice?

[XVII] Proinde lex Dei, quae in edictis data est angelorum, in qua unus Deus deorum religione sacrorum iussus est coli, alii uero quilibet prohibiti, in arca erat posita, quae arca testimonii nuncupata est. Quo nomine satis significatur non Deum, qui per illa omnia colebatur, circumcludi solere uel contineri loco, cum responsa eius et quaedam humanis sensibus darentur signa ex illius arcae loco, sed uoluntatis eius hinc testimonia perhiberi; quod etiam ipsa lex erat in tabulis conscripta lapideis et in arca, ut dixi, posita, quam tempore peregrinationis in heremo cum tabernaculo, quod similiter appellatum est tabernaculum testimonii, cum debita sacerdotes ueneratione portabant; signumque erat, quod per diem nubes apparebat, quae sicut ignis nocte fulgebat; quae nubes cum moueretur, castra mouebantur, et ubi staret, castra ponebantur. Reddita sunt autem illi legi magni miraculi testimonia praeter ista, quae dixi, et praeter uoces, quae ex illius arcae loco edebantur.

[17] Accordingly the law of God, which was given in edicts by angels, in which the one God of gods was commanded to be worshiped by the religion of sacred rites, while any others whatsoever were forbidden, was placed in the ark, which ark was named the Ark of Testimony. By which name it is sufficiently signified that not God, who was worshiped through all those things, is wont to be shut in or contained by a place—although his responses and certain signs perceptible to human senses were given from the place of that ark—but that from here testimonies of his will are borne; for the law itself too was written on stone tablets and placed in the ark, as I said, which, in the time of the pilgrimage in the wilderness, along with the tabernacle—which likewise was called the Tabernacle of Testimony—the priests carried with due veneration; and there was a sign, that by day a cloud appeared, which by night shone like fire; and when that cloud moved, the camp was moved, and where it stood, the camp was pitched. Moreover, attestations of great miracle were rendered to that law besides these which I have said, and besides the voices which were emitted from the place of that ark.

Nam cum terram promissionis intrantibus eadem arca transiret, Iordanes fluuius ex parte superiore subsistens et ex inferiore decurrens et ipsi et populo siccum praebuit transeundi locum. Deinde ciuitatis, quae prima hostilis occurrit more gentium deos plurimos colens, septiens eadem arca circumacta muri repente ceciderunt, nulla manu oppugnati, nullo ariete percussi. Post haec etiam cum iam in terra promissionis essent et eadem arca propter eorum peccata fuisset ab hostibus capta, hi, qui ceperant, in templo eam dei sui, quem prae ceteris colebant, honorifice conlocarunt abeuntesque clauserunt, apertoque postridie simulacrum, cui supplicabant, inuenerunt conlapsum deformiterque confractum.

For when, as they were entering the land of promise, that same ark was crossing, the river Jordan, standing still from the upper part and running down from the lower, provided both for it and for the people a dry place to cross. Then, of the city which first met them as hostile, worshiping many gods after the manner of the nations, when the same ark had been led around seven times, the walls suddenly fell, assaulted by no hand, struck by no battering-ram. After these things, also, when they were already in the land of promise and the same ark, on account of their sins, had been captured by enemies, those who had taken it placed it with honor in the temple of their god, whom above the rest they worshiped, and, departing, they closed it; and on the next day, the doors having been opened, they found the idol to which they were supplicating collapsed and hideously broken.

Deinde ipsi prodigiis acti deformiusque puniti arcam diuini testimonii populo, unde ceperant, reddiderunt. Ipsa autem redditio qualis fuit! Inposuerunt eam plaustro eique iuuencas, a quibus uitulos sugentes abstraxerant, subiunxerunt et eas quo uellent ire siuerunt, etiam hic uim diuinam explorare cupientes.

Then they themselves, driven by prodigies and punished more shamefully, returned the ark of divine testimony to the people from whom they had taken it. But what was the restitution itself! They placed it on a wagon and yoked to it heifers, from whom they had drawn away their sucking calves, and they allowed them to go where they wished, wishing even here to explore the divine force.

At illae sine duce homine atque rectore ad Hebraeos uiam pertinaciter gradientes nec reuocatae mugitibus esurientium filiorum magnum sacramentum suis cultoribus reportarunt. Haec atque huius modi Deo parua sunt, sed magna terrendis salubriter erudiendisque mortalibus. Si enim philosophi praecipueque Platonici rectius ceteris sapuisse laudantur, sicut paulo ante commemoraui, quod diuinam prouidentiam haec quoque rerum infima atque terrena administrare docuerunt numerosarum testimonio pulchritudinum, quae non solum in corporibus animalium, uerum in herbis etiam faenoque gignuntur: quanto euidentius haec adtestantur diuinitati, quae ad horam praedicationis eius fiunt, ubi ea religio commendatur, quae omnibus caelestibus, terrestribus, infernis sacrificari uetat, uni Deo tantum iubens, qui solus diligens et dilectus beatos facit eorumque sacrificiorum tempora imperata praefiniens eaque per meliorem sacerdotem in melius mutanda praedicens non ista se appetere, sed per haec alia potiora significare testatur, non ut ipse his honoribus sublimetur, sed ut nos ad eum colendum eique cohaerendum igne amoris eius accensi, quod nobis, non illi, bonum est, excitemur.

But those, without a human leader and director, persistingly stepping the way to the Hebrews and not recalled by the lowings of their hungry sons, brought back to their worshipers a great sacrament. These things and the like are small to God, but great for terrifying and wholesomely instructing mortals. For if the philosophers, and especially the Platonists, are praised as having been wiser than the rest, as I shortly before recalled, in that they taught that divine providence administers even these lowest and earthly things, by the testimony of numerous beauties which are generated not only in the bodies of animals but also in herbs and even in hay: how much more evidently do these attest to divinity which are done for the hour of his preaching, where that religion is commended which forbids that sacrifice be offered to all heavenly, earthly, and infernal beings, bidding it to the one God alone, who alone, loving and loved, makes men blessed, and, predefining the appointed times of those sacrifices and foretelling that these are to be changed for the better through a better priest, testifies that he does not desire these things, but that through these he signifies other, better things—not that he himself is exalted by these honors, but that we may be stirred up to worship him and to cohere to him, kindled by the fire of his love, which is a good for us, not for him.

[XVIII] An dicet aliquis ista falsa esse miracula nec fuisse facta, sed mendaciter scripta? Quisquis hoc dicit, si de his rebus negat omnino ullis litteris esse credendum, potest etiam dicere nec deos ullos curare mortalia. Non enim se aliter colendos esse persuaserunt nisi mirabilium operum effectibus, quorum et historia gentium testis est, quarum dii se ostentare mirabiles potius quam utiles ostendere potuerunt.

[18] Or will someone say that these miracles are false and were not done, but were written mendaciously? Whoever says this—if, concerning these matters, he denies that any writings at all are to be believed—can also say that no gods care for mortal affairs. For they did not persuade that they were to be worshiped otherwise than by the effects of marvelous works, of which the history of the nations is also witness, the gods of which were able to display themselves as marvelous rather than to show themselves as useful.

Vnde hoc opere nostro, cuius hunc iam decimum librum habemus in manibus, non eos suscepimus refellendos, qui uel ullam esse uim diuinam negant uel humana non curare contendunt, sed eos, qui nostro Deo conditori sanctae et gloriosissimae ciuitatis deos suos praeferunt, nescientes eum ipsum esse etiam mundi huius uisibilis et mutabilis inuisibilem et incommutabilem conditorem et uitae beatae non de his, quae condidit, sed de se ipso uerissimum largitorem. Eius enim propheta ueracissimus ait: Mihi autem adhaerere Deo bonum est. De fine boni namque inter philosophos quaeritur, ad quod adipiscendum omnia officia referenda sunt.

Whence, in this our work, of which we now have this tenth book in our hands, we have not undertaken to refute those who either deny that there is any divine force or contend that it does not care for human things, but rather those who prefer their gods to our God, the Founder of the holy and most glorious City, not knowing that He Himself is also the invisible and immutable Creator of this visible and mutable world, and the most truthful Bestower of the blessed life, not from the things which He created, but from Himself. For his most truthful prophet says: But as for me, to adhere to God is good. For among the philosophers inquiry is made about the end of the good, to the attaining of which all duties are to be referred.

Nec dixit iste: Mihi autem diuitiis abundare bonum est, aut insigniri purpura et sceptro uel diademate excellere, aut, quod nonnulli etiam philosophorum dicere non erubuerunt: Mihi uoluptas corporis bonum est; aut quod melius uelut meliores dicere uisi sunt: Mihi uirtus animi mei bonum est; sed: Mihi, inquit, adhaerere Deo bonum est. Hoc eum docuerat, cui uni tantummodo sacrificandum sancti quoque angeli eius miraculorum etiam contestatione monuerunt. Vnde et ipse sacrificium eius factus erat, cuius igne intellegibili correptus ardebat, et in eius ineffabilem incorporeumque complexum sancto desiderio ferebatur.

Nor did he say: But for me to abound in riches is the good, or to be distinguished with purple and to excel by scepter or diadem, or, what some even of the philosophers were not ashamed to say: For me the pleasure of the body is the good; or what the better sort seemed to say as better: For me the virtue of my mind is the good; but: For me, he says, to adhere to God is the good. This had been taught him by Him to whom alone sacrifice is to be offered, as even his holy angels have warned by the attestation of miracles. Whence he himself had been made his sacrifice, and, seized by his intelligible fire, he burned, and was borne by holy desire into his ineffable and incorporeal embrace.

Porro autem si multorum deorum cultores (qualescumque deos suos esse arbitrentur) ab eis facta esse miracula uel ciuilium rerum historiae uel libris magicis siue, quod honestius putant, theurgicis credunt: quid causae est, cur illis litteris nolint credere ista facta esse, quibus tanto maior debetur fides, quanto super omnes est magnus, cui uni soli sacrificandum esse praecipiunt?

Moreover, if the worshipers of many gods (whatever they suppose their gods to be) believe from either the histories of civil affairs or from magical books or, what they think more respectable, theurgic ones, that miracles were done by them: what cause is there why they are unwilling to believe from those writings—writings to which so much the greater faith is owed, in proportion as He is great above all, who is prescribed as the only one to whom sacrifice is to be offered—that these things were done?

[XIX] Qui autem putant haec uisibilia sacrificia diis aliis congruere, illi uero tamquam inuisibili inuisibilia et maiora maiori meliorique meliora, qualia sunt purae mentis et bonae uoluntatis officia: profecto nesciunt haec ita signa esse illorum, sicut uerba sonantia signa sunt rerum. Quocirca sicut orantes atque laudantes ad eum dirigimus significantes uoces, cui res ipsas in corde quas significamus offerimus: ita sacrificantes non alteri uisibile sacrificium offerendum esse nouerim usquam illi, cuius in cordibus nostris inuisibile sacrificium nos ipsi esse debemus. Tunc nobis fauent nobisque congaudent atque ad hoc ipsum nos pro suis uiribus adiuuant angeli quique uirtutesque superiores et ipsa bonitate ac pietate potentiores.

[19] But those who think that these visible sacrifices are congruent to other gods, but to Him, as if invisible, invisible things, and to the greater a greater and to the better better things—such as the offices of a pure mind and a good will—surely do not know that these are signs of those, just as sounding words are signs of things. Wherefore, just as when praying and praising we direct signifying voices to Him, to whom we offer in the heart the very things which we signify: so, when sacrificing, I know that a visible sacrifice is not to be offered anywhere to another, but only to Him, whose invisible sacrifice we ourselves ought to be in our hearts. Then the angels and the higher powers, more potent by goodness itself and by piety, show favor to us and rejoice with us, and to this very end help us according to their strengths.

Si autem illis haec exhibere uoluerimus, non libenter accipiunt, et cum ad homines ita mittuntur, ut eorum praesentia sentiatur, apertissime uetant. Sunt exempla in litteris sanctis. Putauerunt quidam deferendum angelis honorem uel adorando uel sacrificando, qui debetur Deo, et eorum sunt admonitione prohibiti iussique hoc ei deferre, cui uni fas esse nouerunt.

But if we should wish to present these things to them, they do not receive them gladly; and when they are sent to humans in such a way that their presence is perceived, they most openly forbid it. There are examples in the sacred writings. Certain persons thought that the honor ought to be deferred to angels, either by adoring or by sacrificing, which is owed to God; and by their admonition they were prohibited and commanded to defer this to him to whom alone they knew it to be right (fas).

Imitati sunt angelos sanctos etiam sancti homines Dei. Nam Paulus et Barnabas in Lycaonia facto quodam miraculo sanitatis putati sunt dii, eisque Lycaonii uictimas immolare uoluerunt; quod a se humili pietate remouentes eis in quem crederent adnuntiauerunt Deum. Nec ob aliud fallaces illi superbe sibi hoc exigunt, nisi quia uero Deo deberi sciunt.

Even the holy men of God have imitated the holy angels. For Paul and Barnabas in Lycaonia, when a certain miracle of healing had been done, were thought to be gods, and the Lycaonians wished to immolate victims to them; but, removing this from themselves with humble piety, they announced to them the God in whom they should believe. Nor for any other reason do those deceitful ones arrogantly exact this for themselves, except because they know it is owed to the true God.

Non enim re uera, ut ait Porphyrius et nonnulli putant, cadauerinis nidoribus, sed diuinis honoribus gaudent. Copiam uero nidorum magnam habent undique, et si amplius uellent, ipsi sibi poterant exhibere. Qui ergo diuinitatem sibi arrogant spiritus, non cuiuslibet corporis fumo, sed supplicantis animo delectantur, cui decepto subiectoque dominentur, intercludentes iter ad Deum uerum, ne sit homo illius sacrificium, dum sacrificatur cuipiam praeter illum.

For in truth, as Porphyry says and some suppose, they rejoice not in cadaverous fumes, but in divine honors. A great abundance indeed of fumes they have on every side, and if they wanted more, they themselves could furnish them for themselves. Those spirits, therefore, who arrogate divinity to themselves are delighted not by the smoke of any body, but by the mind of the supplicant, whom, once deceived and subjected, they may dominate, intercluding the way to the true God, lest the man be God’s sacrifice, while sacrifice is being offered to someone other than Him.

[XX] Vnde uerus ille mediator, in quantum formam serui accipiens mediator effectus est Dei et hominum, homo Christus Iesus, cum in forma Dei sacrificium cum Patre sumat, cum quo et unus Deus est, tamen in forma serui sacrificium maluit esse quam sumere, ne uel hac occasione quisquam existimaret cuilibet sacrificandum esse creaturae. Per hoc et sacerdos est, ipse offerens, ipse et oblatio. Cuius rei sacramentum cotidianum esse uoluit ecclesiae sacrificium, quae cum ipsius capitis corpus sit, se ipsam per ipsum discit offerre.

[20] Whence that true mediator, inasmuch as by taking the form of a servant he was made mediator of God and men, the man Christ Jesus, while in the form of God he takes sacrifice with the Father, with whom he is also one God, nevertheless in the form of a servant preferred to be a sacrifice rather than to take one, lest even on this occasion anyone should think that sacrifice ought to be offered to any creature. Through this he is also priest, himself the offerer, himself also the oblation. The sacrament of this thing he willed to be the quotidian sacrifice of the Church, which, since it is the body of its Head, learns to offer itself through him.

Huius ueri sacrificii multiplicia uariaque signa erant sacrificia prisca sanctorum, cum hoc unum per multa figuraretur, tamquam uerbis multis res una diceretur, ut sine fastidio multum commendaretur. Huic summo ueroque sacrificio cuncta sacrificia falsa cesserunt.

Of this true sacrifice the ancient sacrifices of the saints were multiple and various signs, since this one thing was prefigured through many, as though with many words one thing were spoken, so that, without weariness, it might be greatly commended. To this supreme and true sacrifice all false sacrifices have yielded.

[XXI] Moderatis autem praefinitisque temporibus etiam potestas permissa daemonibus, ut hominibus quos possident excitatis inimicitias aduersus Dei ciuitatem tyrannice exerceant sibique sacrificia non solum ab offerentibus sumant et a uolentibus expetant, uerum etiam ab inuitis persequendo uiolenter extorqueant, non solum perniciosa non est, sed etiam utilis inuenitur ecclesiae, ut martyrum numerus impleatur; quos ciuitas Dei tanto clariores et honoratiores ciues habet, quanto fortius aduersus impietatis peccatum et usque ad sanguinem certant. Hos multo elegantius, si ecclesiastica loquendi consuetudo pateretur, nostros heroas uocaremus. Hoc enim nomen a Iunone dicitur tractum, quod Graece Iuno *(/Hra appellatur, et ideo nescio quis filius eius secundum Graecorum fabulas Heros fuerit nuncupatus, hoc uidelicet ueluti mysticum significante fabula, quod aer Iunoni deputetur, ubi uolunt cum daemonibus heroas habitare, quo nomine appellant alicuius meriti animas defunctorum.

[21] But at moderated and pre-defined times even power was permitted to the demons, so that, by stirring up in the men whom they possess hostilities against the City of God, they might tyrannically exercise them, and might take for themselves sacrifices not only from those who offer and seek them from the willing, but also by persecuting might violently extort them from the unwilling; this is found not only not pernicious, but even useful to the Church, in order that the number of martyrs may be fulfilled; whom the City of God has as citizens so much the more illustrious and more honorable, the more bravely they contend against the sin of impiety, even unto blood. These we would much more elegantly, if the ecclesiastical custom of speaking allowed, call our heroes. For this name is said to be drawn from Juno, since in Greek Juno is called Hera, and therefore some son of hers, according to the fables of the Greeks, was named Heros—the fable, namely, as it were mystically signifying this: that the air is assigned to Juno, where they wish the heroes to dwell with the demons, by which name they call the souls of the deceased of some merit.

Sed a contrario martyres nostri heroes nuncuparentur, si, ut dixi, usus ecclesiastici sermonis admitteret, non quo eis esset cum daemonibus in aere societas, sed quod eosdem daemones, id est aerias uincerent potestates et in eis ipsam, quid quid putatur significare, Iunonem, quae non usquequaque inconuenienter a poetis inducitur inimica uirtutibus et caelum petentibus uiris fortibus inuida. Sed rursus ei succumbit infeliciter ceditque Vergilius, ut, cum apud eum illa dicat:

But on the contrary our martyrs would be called heroes, if, as I said, the usage of ecclesiastical speech admitted it—not that there were for them a fellowship with demons in the air, but that they conquer those same demons, that is, the aerial powers, and in them Juno herself, whatever she is thought to signify, who is not altogether inappropriately presented by the poets as an enemy to virtues and envious of brave men seeking heaven. But again Virgil unhappily succumbs to her and yields, so that, when with him she says:

Vincor ab Aenea,

I am vanquished by Aeneas,

ipsum Aenean admoneat Helenus quasi consilio religioso et dicat:

that Helenus should admonish Aeneas himself, as if with religious counsel, and should say:

Iunoni cane uota libens, dominamque potentem
Supplicibus supera donis.

Sing your vows willingly to Juno, and the potent mistress
win over with suppliant gifts.

Ex qua opinione Porphyrius, quamuis non ex sua sententia, sed ex aliorum, dicit bonum deum uel genium non uenire in hominem, nisi malus fuerit ante placatus; tamquam fortiora sint apud eos numina mala quam bona, quando quidem mala inpediunt adiutoria bonorum, nisi eis placata dent locum, malisque nolentibus bona prodesse non possunt; nocere autem mala possunt, non sibi ualentibus resistere bonis. Non est ista uerae ueraciterque sanctae religionis uia; non sic Iunonem, hoc est aerias potestates piorum uirtutibus inuidentes, nostri martyres uincunt. Non omnino, si dici usitate posset, heroes nostri supplicibus donis, sed uirtutibus diuinis Heran superant.

From this opinion Porphyry, although not from his own judgment but from that of others, says that a good god or genius does not come into a man unless an evil one has first been placated; as though among them the evil numina were stronger than the good, since indeed the evils impede the assistances of the good, unless, when placated, they give them room, and with the evil unwilling the good cannot profit; but the evil can harm, the good not being strong enough to resist them. This is not the way of a true and truthfully holy religion; not thus do our martyrs conquer Juno, that is, the airy powers envying the virtues of the pious. By no means, if it could be said in customary usage, do our heroes overcome Hera with suppliant gifts, but by divine virtues.

Commodius quippe Scipio Africanus est cognominatus, quod uirtute Africam uicerit, quam si hostes donis placasset, ut parcerent.

Indeed, Scipio Africanus was more fittingly surnamed thus, because by virtue he conquered Africa, than if he had appeased the enemies with gifts, so that they might spare.

[XXII] Vera pietate homines Dei aeriam potestatem inimicam contrariamque pietati exorcizando eiciunt, non placando, omnesque temptationes aduersitatis eius uincunt orando non ipsam, sed Deum suum aduersus ipsam. Non enim aliquem uincit aut subiugat nisi societate peccati. In eius ergo nomine uincitur, qui hominem adsumpsit egitque sine peccato, ut in ipso sacerdote ac sacrificio fieret remissio peccatorum, id est per mediatorem Dei et hominum, hominem Christum Iesum, per quem facta peccatorum purgatione reconciliamur Deo.

[22] By true piety the men of God cast out the aerial power inimical and contrary to piety by exorcizing, not by placating; and they conquer all the temptations of its hostility by praying not to it, but to their God against it. For it conquers or subjugates no one except by a partnership (complicity) of sin. Therefore it is conquered in the name of him who assumed manhood and lived without sin, so that in himself, both priest and sacrifice, there might be made the remission of sins—that is, through the mediator of God and men, the man Christ Jesus—through whom, the purgation of sins having been effected, we are reconciled to God.

Non enim nisi peccatis homines separantur a Deo, quorum in hac uita non fit nostra uirtute, sed diuina miseratione purgatio, per indulgentiam illius, non per nostram potentiam; quia et ipsa quantulacumque uirtus, quae dicitur nostra, illius est nobis bonitate concessa. Multum autem nobis in hac carne tribueremus, nisi usque ad eius depositionem sub uenia uiueremus. Propterea ergo nobis per Mediatorem praestita est gratia, ut polluti carne peccati carnis peccati similitudine mundaremur.

For men are not separated from God except by sins, the purgation of which in this life is wrought not by our virtue but by divine miseration, by His indulgence, not by our power; since even that, however small, virtue which is called ours is granted to us by His goodness. Moreover, we would attribute much to ourselves in this flesh, did we not live under pardon until its deposition. Therefore grace has been bestowed upon us through the Mediator, that, polluted by the flesh of sin, we might be cleansed by the likeness of the flesh of sin.

Hac Dei gratia, qua in nos ostendit magnam misericordiam suam, et in hac uita per fidem regimur, et post hanc uitam per ipsam speciem incommutabilis ueritatis ad perfectionem plenissimam perducemur.

By this grace of God, by which he has shown toward us his great mercy, both in this life we are governed through faith, and after this life we shall be led, by the very vision of immutable truth, to most complete perfection.

[XXIII] Dicit etiam Porphyrius diuinis oraculis fuisse responsum nos non purgari lunae teletis atque solis, ut hinc ostenderetur nullorum deorum teletis hominem posse purgari. Cuius enim teletae purgant, si lunae solisque non purgant, quos inter caelestes deos praecipuos habent? Denique eodem dicit oraculo expressum principia posse purgare, ne forte, cum dictum esset non purgare teletas solis et lunae, alicuius alterius dei de turba ualere ad purgandum teletae crederentur.

[23] Porphyry also says that by divine oracles there was an answer that we are not purged by the rites of the Moon and of the Sun, so that from this it might be shown that by the rites of no gods can a human be purged. For whose rites do purge, if those of the Moon and the Sun do not purge—whom they hold among the celestial gods as principal? Finally, he says that in the same oracle it was expressed that the first principles are able to purge, lest, when it had been said that the rites of the Sun and Moon do not purge, the rites of some other god from the throng should be believed to avail for purging.

Quae autem dicat esse principia tamquam Platonicus, nouimus. Dicit enim Deum Patrem et Deum Filium, quem Graece appellat paternum intellectum uel paternam mentem; de Spiritu autem sancto aut nihil aut non aperte aliquid dicit; quamuis quem alium dicat horum medium, non intellego. Si enim tertiam, sicut Plotinus, ubi de tribus principalibus substantiis disputat, animae naturam etiam iste uellet intellegi, non utique diceret horum medium, id est Patris et Filii medium.

But what he says are the principles, as a Platonist, we know. For he says God the Father and God the Son, whom in Greek he calls the paternal intellect or the paternal mind; but about the Holy Spirit he says either nothing or not anything openly; although what other he says to be the middle of these, I do not understand. For if, as Plotinus, where he disputes about the three principal substances, he too wished the nature of soul to be understood as the third, he would not, to be sure, say the middle of these, that is, the middle of the Father and the Son.

Postponit quippe Plotinus animae naturam paterno intelleui; iste autem cum dicit medium, non postponit, sed interponit. Et nimirum hoc dixit, ut potuit siue ut uoluit, quod nos sanctum Spiritum, nec Patris tantum nec Filii tantum, sed utriusque Spiritum dicimus. Liberis enim uerbis loquuntur philosophi, nec in rebus ad intellegendum difficillimis offensionem religiosarum aurium pertimescunt.

For Plotinus, indeed, postposes the nature of the soul to the paternal intellect; but this man, when he says “the middle,” does not postpose, but interpose. And clearly he said this, as he could or as he willed, namely what we call the Holy Spirit, not of the Father only nor of the Son only, but the Spirit of both. For philosophers speak with free words, and in matters most difficult for understanding they do not dread the offense of religious ears.

Nobis autem ad certam regulam loqui fas est, ne uerborum licentia etiam de rebus, quae his significantur, impiam gignat opinionem.

But for us it is lawful to speak according to a fixed rule, lest the license of words also generate an impious opinion about the things that are signified by them.

[XXIV] Nos itaque ita non dicimus duo uel tria principia, cum de Deo loquimur, sicut nec duos deos uel tres nobis licitum est dicere, quamuis de unoquoque loquentes, uel de Patre uel de Filio uel de Spiritu sancto, etiam singulum quemque Deum esse fateamur, nec dicamus tamen quod haeretici Sabelliani, eundem esse Patrem, qui est et Filius, et eundem Spiritum sanctum, qui est et Pater et Filius, sed Patrem esse Filii Patrem, et Filium Patris Filium, et Patris et Filii Spiritum sanctum nec Patrem esse nec Filium. Verum itaque dictum est non purgari hominem nisi principio, quamuis pluraliter apud eos sint dicta principia.

[24] Therefore we do not thus say two or three principles when we speak about God, just as it is not permitted to us to say two gods or three; although, when speaking of each, whether of the Father or of the Son or of the Holy Spirit, we also confess that each single one is God, yet we do not say what the heretical Sabellians say, that the Father is the same as the Son, and that the Holy Spirit is the same as the Father and the Son; but that the Father is the Father of the Son, and the Son the Son of the Father, and that the Holy Spirit of the Father and of the Son is neither Father nor Son. Therefore it has been said truly that a man is not purged except by the principle, although among them the principles were spoken in the plural.

XXIV. Sed subditus Porphyrius inuidis potestatibus, de quibus et erubescebat, et eas libere redarguere formidabat, noluit intellegere Dominum Christum esse principium, cuius incarnatione purgamur. Eum quippe in ipsa carne contempsit, quam propter sacrificium nostrae purgationis adsumpsit, magnum scilicet sacramentum ea superbia non intellegens, quam sua ille humilitate deiecit uerus benignusque Mediator, in ea se ostendens mortalitate mortalibus, quam maligni fallacesque mediatores non habendo se superbius extulerunt miserisque hominibus adiutorium deceptorium uelut inmortales mortalibus promiserunt.

24. But Porphyry, being subject to envious powers, of which he was both ashamed and feared to refute them freely, was unwilling to understand that the Lord Christ is the principle, by whose incarnation we are cleansed. For he despised him in the very flesh which he assumed for the sacrifice of our purgation, not understanding the great sacrament, in that pride which the true and kindly Mediator cast down by his own humility, showing himself to mortals in that mortality, which the malign and fallacious mediators, by not having, exalted themselves the more proudly, and, as though immortals to mortals, promised a delusive help to wretched men.

Bonus itaque uerusque Mediator ostendit peccatum esse malum, non carnis substantiam uel naturam, quae cum anima hominis et suscipi sine peccato potuit et haberi, et morte deponi et in melius resurrectione mutari; nec ipsam mortem, quamuis esset poena peccati, quam tamen pro nobis sine peccato ipse persoluit, peccando esse uitandam, sed potius, si facultas datur, pro iustitia perferendam. Ideo enim soluere potuit moriendo peccata, quia et mortuus est, et non pro peccato. Hunc ille Platonicus non cognouit esse principium; nam cognosceret purgatorium.

Therefore the good and true Mediator showed that sin is the evil, not the substance or nature of the flesh, which, along with the soul of man, both could be assumed without sin and possessed, and be laid aside by death and changed for the better by resurrection; nor is death itself, although it was the penalty of sin, which nevertheless he himself paid for us without sin, to be avoided by sinning, but rather, if the opportunity is given, to be endured for justice. For this reason he was able by dying to loose sins, because he both died, and not on account of sin. That Platonist did not know him to be the principle; for he would have known purgatory.

Neque enim caro principium est aut anima humana, sed Verbum per quod facta sunt omnia. Non ergo caro per se ipsa mundat, sed per Verbum a quo suscepta est, cum Verbum caro factum est et habitauit in nobis. Nam de carne sua manducanda mystice loquens, cum hi qui non intellexerunt offensi recederent dicentes: Durus est hic sermo, quis eum potest audire?

For neither is flesh the beginning nor the human soul, but the Word through which all things were made. Therefore the flesh does not cleanse by itself, but through the Word by whom it was assumed, when the Word was made flesh and dwelt among us. For, speaking mystically about his flesh to be eaten, when those who did not understand, offended, were withdrawing, they said: This saying is hard; who can hear it?

respondit manentibus ceteris: Spiritus est qui uiuificat, caro autem non prodest quicquam. Principium ergo suscepta anima et carne et animam credentium mundat et carnem. Ideo quaerentibus Iudaeis quis esset respondit se esse principium.

he replied, with the rest remaining: The Spirit is the one who vivifies, but the flesh profits nothing. Therefore the Beginning, having assumed soul and flesh, cleanses both the soul and the flesh of believers. Hence, when the Jews were asking who he was, he replied that he was the Beginning.

Quod utique carnales, infirmi, peccatis obnoxii et ignorantiae tenebris obuoluti nequaquam percipere possemus, nisi ab eo mundaremur atque sanaremur per hoc quod eramus et non eramus. Eramus enim homines, sed iusti non eramus; in illius autem incarnatione natura humana erat, sed iusta, non peccatrix erat. Haec est mediatio, qua manus lapsis iacentibusque porrecta est; hoc est semen dispositum per angelos, in quorum edictis et lex dabatur, qua et unus Deus coli iubebatur et hic Mediator uenturus promittebatur.

Which, assuredly, we carnal, infirm, liable to sins and wrapped in the shadows of ignorance, could by no means perceive, unless we were cleansed and healed by him through that which we were and were not. For we were human beings, but we were not just; whereas in his incarnation human nature existed, yet just, not sinful. This is the mediation, whereby a hand was stretched forth to the fallen and those lying prostrate; this is the seed disposed through angels, in whose edicts even the law was given, by which both the one God was commanded to be worshiped and this Mediator that was to come was promised.

[XXV] Huius sacramenti fide etiam iusti antiqui mundari pie uiuendo potuerunt, non solum antequam lex populo Hebraeo daretur (neque enim eis praedicator Deus uel angeli defuerunt), sed ipsius quoque legis temporibus, quamuis in figuris rerum spiritalium habere uideretur promissa carnalia, propter quod uetus dicitur testamentum. Nam et prophetae tunc erant, per quos, sicut per angelos, eadem promissio praedicata est, et ex illorum numero erat, cuius tam magnam diuinamque sententiam de boni humani fine paulo ante commemoraui: Mihi autem adhaerere Deo bonum est. In quo plane psalmo duorum testamentorum, quae dicuntur uetus et nouum, satis est declarata distinctio.

[25] By the faith of this sacrament even the ancient just were able to be cleansed by living piously, not only before the law was given to the Hebrew people (for neither God nor the angels were lacking to them as preachers), but also in the times of the law itself, although, in the figures of spiritual things, it seemed to have carnal promises, on account of which it is called the Old Testament. For there were prophets then as well, through whom, as through the angels, the same promise was preached; and of their number was he, whose so great and divine judgment concerning the end of human good I a little before recalled: But as for me, to adhere to God is good. In which psalm plainly the distinction of the two testaments, which are called the Old and the New, is sufficiently declared.

Propter carnales enim terrenasque promissiones, cum eas impiis abundare perspiceret, dicit pedes suos paene fuisse commotos et effusos in lapsum propemodum gressus suos, tamquam frustra Deo ipse seruisset, cum ea felicitate, quam de illo expectabat, contemptores eius florere perspiceret; seque in rei huius inquisitione laborasse, uolentem cur ita esset adprehendere, donec intraret in sanctuarium Dei et intellegeret in nouissima eorum, qui felices uidebantur erranti. Tunc eos intellexit in eo, quod se extulerunt, sicut dicit, fuisse deiectos et defecisse ac perisse propter iniquitates suas; totumque illud culmen temporalis felicitatis ita eis factum tamquam somnium euigilantis, qui se repente inuenit suis quae somniabat fallacibus gaudiis destitutum. Et quoniam in hac terra uel in ciuitate terrena magni sibi uidebantur: Domine, inquit, in ciuitate tua imaginem eorum ad nihilum rediges.

On account of carnal and terrestrial promises, when he observed them to abound for the impious, he says his feet had almost been moved and his steps well-nigh poured out into a lapse, as though he had served God in vain, when he saw the despisers of Him flourish with that felicity which he expected from Him; and that he had labored in the inquisition of this matter, wishing to apprehend why it was so, until he entered into the sanctuary of God and understood concerning their last things, of those who seemed happy to one going astray. Then he understood them—to wit, that in this, because they exalted themselves, as he says, they had been cast down, and had failed and perished on account of their iniquities; and that whole summit of temporal felicity had thus become to them as the dream of one awaking, who suddenly finds himself bereft of the fallacious joys which he was dreaming. And since on this earth, or in the earthly city, they seemed great to themselves: “Lord,” he says, “in your city you will reduce their image to nothing.”

Quid huic tamen utile fuerit etiam ipsa terrena non nisi ab uno uero Deo quaerere, in cuius potestate sunt omnia, satis ostendit ubi ait: Velut pecus factus sum apud te, et ego semper tecum. Velut pecus dixit utique "non intellegens." "Ea quippe a te desiderare debui, quae mihi cum impiis non possunt esse communia, quibus eos cum abundare cernerem, putaui me incassum tibi seruisse, quando et illi haec haberent, qui tibi seruire noluissent. Tamen ego semper tecum, quia etiam in talium rerum desiderio deos alios non quaesiui." Ac per hoc sequitur: Tenuisti manum dexterae meae, in uoluntate tua deduxisti me, et cum gloria adsumpsisti me; tamquam ad sinistram cuncta illa pertineant, quae abundare apud impios cum uidisset paene conlapsus est.

What, however, was useful for him was even this: to seek even the earthly things only from the one true God, in whose power all things are; he shows this sufficiently where he says: "Like a beast have I been made before you, and I am always with you." He said "like a beast," to wit, "not understanding." "For I ought to desire from you those things which cannot be common to me with the impious; when I observed them abounding in these, I thought I had served you in vain, since even those had these who were unwilling to serve you. Yet I am always with you, because even in the desire of such things I did not seek other gods." And therefore it follows: "You have held my right hand, you have led me in your will, and with glory you have taken me up"; as though to the left belong all those things at whose abounding among the impious he, when he saw it, almost collapsed.

Quid enim mihi est, inquit, in caelo, et a te quid uolui super terram? Reprehendit se ipsum iusteque sibi displicuit, quia, cum tam magnum bonum haberet in caelo (quod post intellexit), rem transitoriam, fragilem et quodam modo luteam felicitatem a suo Deo quaesiuit in terra. Defecit, inquit, cor meum et caro mea, Deus cordis mei, defectu utique bono ab inferioribus ad superna; unde in alio psalmo dicitur: Desiderat et deficit anima mea in atria Domini; item in alio: Defecit in salutare tuum anima mea.

“For what, indeed, is there for me in heaven,” he says, “and from you what have I willed upon the earth?” He reproved himself and justly was displeased with himself, because, while he had so great a good in heaven (which afterward he understood), he asked from his God on earth a transient, fragile, and in a certain way clayey felicity. “My heart has failed and my flesh,” he says, “O God of my heart,” by a good defection, of course, from lower things to higher; whence in another psalm it is said: “My soul desires and fails for the courts of the Lord;” likewise in another: “My soul has failed for your salvation.”

Tamen cum de utroque dixisset, id est de corde et carne deficiente, non subiecit: Deus cordis et carnis meae, sed Deus cordis mei. Per cor quippe caro mundatur. Vnde dicit Dominus: Mundate, quae intus sunt, et quae foris sunt munda erunt.

Nevertheless, when he had spoken of both, that is, of the heart and the flesh failing, he did not subjoin: “God of my heart and my flesh,” but “God of my heart.” For through the heart, indeed, the flesh is cleansed. Whence the Lord says: “Cleanse the things which are within, and the things which are without will be clean.”

Partem deinde suam dicit ipsum Deum, non aliquid ab eo, sed ipsum. Deus, inquit, cordis mei, et pars mea Deus in saecula; quod inter multa, qu ab hominibus eliguntur, ipse illi placuerit eligendus. Quia ecce, inquit, qui longe se faciunt a te, peribunt.

Then he says that his part is God himself, not something from him, but himself. “God,” he says, “of my heart, and my part is God unto the ages”; that, among the many things which are chosen by men, He Himself should be the one it pleased him to choose. “For behold,” he says, “those who make themselves far from you shall perish.”

perdidisti omnem, qui fornicatur abs te, hoc est, qui multorum deorum uult esse prostibulum. Vnde sequitur illud, propter quod et cetera de eodem psalmo dicenda uisa sunt: Mihi autem adhaerere Deo bonum est, non longe ire, non per plurima fornicari. Adhaerere autem Deo tunc perfectum erit, cum totum, quod liberandum est, fuerit liberatum.

you have destroyed everyone who fornicates away from you, that is, who wants to be the prostitute of many gods. Whence there follows that statement, for the sake of which the rest also from the same psalm seemed to be said: But as for me, to adhere to God is good, not to go far, not to fornicate through many things. But to adhere to God will then be perfected, when the whole, which is to be liberated, shall have been liberated.

Nunc uero fit illud, quod sequitur: Ponere in Deo spem meam. Spes enim quae uidetur, non est spes; quod enim uidet quis, quid et sperat? ait apostolus.

Now indeed that which follows comes to pass: to place my hope in God. For hope which is seen is not hope; for what a person sees, why also does he hope for it? says the apostle.

Si autem quod non uidemus speramus, per patientiam expectamus. In hac autem spe nunc constituti agamus quod sequitur, et simus nos quoque pro modulo nostro angeli Dei, id est nuntii eius, adnuntiantes eius uoluntatem et gloriam gratiamque laudantes. Vnde cum dixisset: Ponere in Deo spem meam, ut adnuntiem, inquit, omnes laudes tuas in portis filiae Sion.

But if we hope for what we do not see, through patience we await it. But established now in this hope, let us do what follows, and let us also, according to our measure, be angels of God, that is, his messengers, announcing his will and praising his glory and grace. Whence, when he had said: “To place my hope in God,” “that I may announce,” he says, “all your praises in the gates of the daughter of Zion.”

Haec est gloriosissima ciuitas Dei; haec unum Deum nouit et colit; hanc angeli sancti adnuntiauerunt, qui nos ad eius societatem inuitauerunt ciuesque suos in illa esse uoluerunt; quibus non placet ut eos colamus tamquam nostros deos, sed cum eis et illorum et nostrum Deum; nec eis sacrificemus, sed cum ipsis sacrificium simus Deo. Nullo itaque dubitante, qui haec deposita maligna obstinatione considerat, omnes inmortales beati, qui nobis non inuident (neque enim si inuiderent, essent beati), sed potius nos diligunt, ut et nos cum ipsis beati simus, plus nobis fauent, plus adiuuant, quando unum Deum cum illis colimus, Patrem et Filium et Spiritum sanctum, quam si eos ipsos per sacrificia coleremus.

This is the most glorious City of God; this one knows and worships one God; this the holy angels have announced, who have invited us to its society and have willed that we be citizens with them in it; it does not please them that we should worship them as our gods, but that together with them we should worship both their God and ours; nor that we should sacrifice to them, but that together with them we should be a sacrifice to God. Therefore, with no one doubting—whoever considers these things with malignant obstinacy laid aside—all the immortal blessed, who do not envy us (for neither, if they envied, would they be blessed), but rather love us, that we too may be blessed with them, favor us more, help us more, when we worship one God with them, the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, than if we were to worship them themselves by sacrifices.

[XXVI] Nescio quo modo, quantum mihi uidetur, amicis suis theurgis erubescebat Porphyrius. Nam ista utcumque sapiebat, sed contra multorum deorum cultum non libere defendebat. Et angelos quippe alios esse dixit, qui deorsum descendentes hominibus theurgicis diuina pronuntient; alios autem, qui in terris ea, quae Patris sunt, et altitudinem eius profunditatemque declarent.

[26] Somehow or other, as it seems to me, Porphyry was ashamed before his theurgist friends. For he had some savor of these matters, but he did not freely make a defense against the cult of many gods. And indeed he said that there are some angels who, descending downward, pronounce divine things to theurgic men; but others, who on earth declare the things that are of the Father, and his height and depth.

Num igitur hos angelos, quorum ministerium est declarare uoluntatem Patris, credendum est uelle nos subdi nisi ei, cuius nobis adnuntiant uoluntatem? Vnde optime admonet etiam ipse Platonicus imitandos eos potius quam inuocandos. Non itaque debemus metuere, ne inmortales et beatos uni Deo subditos non eis sacrificando offendamus.

Therefore, is it to be believed that these angels, whose ministry is to declare the will of the Father, would wish us to be subjected to any save Him whose will they announce to us? Whence the Platonist himself very rightly admonishes that they are to be imitated rather than invoked. We ought not, therefore, fear lest we offend the immortals and the blessed, subject to the one God, by not sacrificing to them.

Quod enim non nisi uni uero Deo deberi sciunt, cui et ipsi adhaerendo beati sunt, procul dubio neque per ullam significantem figuram, neque per ipsam rem, quae sacramentis significatur, sibi exhiberi uolunt. Daemonum est haec arrogantia superborum atque miserorum, a quibus longe diuersa est pietas subditorum Deo nec aliunde quam illi cohaerendo beatorum. Ad quod bonum percipiendum etiam nobis sincera benignitate oportet ut faueant, neque sibi arrogent quo eis subiciamur, sed eum adnuntient sub quo eis in pace sociemur.

For that which they know to be owed to none save the one true God, to whom even they themselves by adhering are blessed, they without doubt do not wish to be offered to them either through any signifying figure, or through the very thing which is signified by the sacraments. This is the arrogance of demons—proud and wretched—from whom the piety of those subject to God, and blessed from no other source than by cohering to Him, is far different. For the attaining of that good they ought also to favor us with sincere benignity, and not arrogate to themselves that we be subjected to them, but announce Him under whom we may be associated with them in peace.

Quid adhuc trepidas, o philosophe, aduersus potestates et ueris uirtutibus et ueri Dei muneribus inuidas habere liberam uocem? Iam distinxisti angelos, qui Patris adnuntiant uoluntatem, ab eis angelis, qui ad theurgos homines nescio qua deducti arte descendunt. Quid adhuc eos honoras, ut dicas pronuntiare diuina?

Why do you still tremble, O philosopher, to have a free voice against the powers, begrudging to the true virtues and to the gifts of the true God? Already you have distinguished the angels who announce the Father’s will from those angels who descend to the theurgist men, drawn down by I-know-not-what art. Why do you still honor them, so as to say that they proclaim divine things?

Quae tandem diuina pronuntiant, qui non uoluntatem Patris adnuntiant? Nempe illi sunt, quos sacris precibus inuidus alligauit, ne praestarent animae purgationem, nec a bono, ut dicis, purgare cupiente ab illis uinculis solui et suae potestati reddi potuerunt. Adhuc dubitas haec maligna esse daemonia, uel te fingis fortasse nescire, dum non uis theurgos offendere, a quibus curiositate deceptus ista perniciosa et insana pro magno beneficio didicisti?

What, then, divine things do they pronounce, who do not announce the will of the Father? Surely they are those whom an envious man bound with sacred prayers, lest they should render a purgation of the soul; nor could they, even with the Good, as you say, desiring to purify, be loosed from those bonds and be restored to their own power. Do you still doubt that these are malignant daemons, or do you perhaps pretend not to know, while you are unwilling to offend the theurgists, by whom, deceived by curiosity, you learned these pernicious and insane things as a great benefit?

Audes istam inuidam non potentiam, sed pestilentiam, et non dicam dominam, sed, quod tu fateris, ancillam potius inuidorum isto aere transcenso leuare in caelum et inter deos uestros etiam sidereos conlocare, uel ipsa quoque sidera his opprobriis infamare?

Do you dare to lift that envious thing—not a power but a pestilence—and I will not say a mistress, but, as you confess, rather a handmaid of the envious, into heaven, that air having been crossed, and to place it among your gods, even the sidereal ones, or to defame the stars themselves with these opprobriums?

[XXVII] Quanto humanius et tolerabilius consectaneus tuus Platonicus Apuleius errauit, qui tantummodo daemones a luna et infra ordinatos agitari morbis passionum mentisque turbelis honorans eos quidem, sed uolens nolensque confessus est; deos tamen caeli superiores ad aetheria spatia pertinentes, siue uisibiles, quos conspicuos lucere cernebat, solem ac lunam et cetera ibidem lumina, siue inuisibiles, quos putabat, ab omni labe istarum perturbationum quanta potuit disputatione secreuit! Tu autem hoc didicisti non a Platone, sed a Chaldaeis magistris, ut in aetherias uel empyrias mundi sublimitates et firmamenta caelestia extolleres uitia humana, ut possent dii uestri theurgis pronuntiare diuina; quibus diuinis te tamen per intellectualem uitam facis altiorem, ut tibi uidelicet tamquam philosopho theurgicae artis purgationes nequaquam necessariae uideantur; sed aliis eas tamen inportas, ut hanc ueluti mercedem reddas magistris tuis, quod eos, qui philosophari non possunt, ad ista seducis, quae tibi tamquam superiorum capaci esse inutilia confiteris; ut uidelicet quicumque a philosophiae uirtute remoti sunt, quae ardua nimis atque paucorum est, te auctore theurgos homines, a quibus non quidem in anima intellectuali, uerum saltem in anima spiritali purgentur, inquirant, et quoniam istorum, quos philosophari piget, incomparabiliter maior est multitudo, plures ad secretos et inlicitos magistros tuos, quam ad scholas Platonicas uenire cogantur. Hoc enim tibi inmundissimi daemones, deos aetherios se esse fingentes, quorum praedicator et angelus factus es, promiserunt, quod in anima spiritali theurgica arte purgati ad Patrem quidem non redeunt, sed super aerias plagas inter deos aetherios habitabunt.

[27] How much more humanely and tolerably did your fellow, the Platonic Apuleius, err, who only confessed—willingly or unwillingly—while honoring them, that the daemons arranged from the moon downward are agitated by the diseases of the passions and by mental turmoils; yet he separated, by as much disputation as he could, the gods of the higher heaven, pertaining to the aetherial spaces—whether visible, which he saw to shine conspicuously, the sun and the moon and the other lights there, or invisible, as he supposed—from every stain of these perturbations! But you learned this not from Plato, but from Chaldaean masters: that you might exalt human vices into the aetherial or empyreal summits of the world and the celestial firmaments, so that your gods could pronounce divine things to the theurgists; yet you make yourself higher than those divinities by the intellectual life, so that to you, as a philosopher, the purgations of the theurgic art seem by no means necessary; but you nonetheless impose them on others, so that you may render this as it were a wage to your masters—namely, that you seduce those who cannot philosophize to these things which you confess to be useless to you as one capable of higher things; to wit, that whoever are removed from the virtue of philosophy, which is too arduous and of the few, at your prompting may seek theurgist men, by whom they may be purified not indeed in the intellectual soul, but at least in the spiritual soul; and since the multitude of those who shirk philosophizing is incomparably greater, more are driven to come to your secret and illicit masters than to the Platonic schools. For this the most unclean daemons, pretending to be aetherial gods—of whom you have become the herald and angel—have promised you: that, having been purified in the spiritual soul by the theurgic art, they do not return to the Father, but will dwell above the airy tracts among the aetherial gods.

Non audit ista hominum multitudo, propter quos a daemonum dominatu liberandos Christus aduenit. In illo enim habent misericordissimam purgationem et mentis et spiritus et corporis sui. Propterea quippe totum hominem sine peccato ille suscepit, ut totum, quo constat homo, a peccatorum peste sanaret.

This multitude of human beings does not hear these things, for whose being freed from the dominion of demons Christ came. For in him they have the most merciful purgation of their mind and spirit and body. Indeed for this very reason he assumed the whole man without sin, in order that the whole, of which man consists, he might heal from the pestilence of sins.

Quem tu quoque utinam cognouisses eique te potius quam uel tuae uirtuti, quae humana, fragilis et infirma est, uel perniciosissimae curiositati sanandum tutius commisisses. Non enim te decepisset, quem uestra, ut tu ipse scribis, oracula sanctum inmortalemque confessa sunt; de quo etiam poeta nobilissimus poetice quidem, quia in alterius adumbrata persona, ueraciter tamen, si ad ipsum referas, dixit:

Whom you too would that you had known, and to him you had more safely entrusted yourself to be healed, rather than either to your virtue, which is human, fragile and infirm, or to most pernicious curiosity. For he would not have deceived you, whom your oracles, as you yourself write, have confessed to be holy and immortal; about whom also a most noble poet said—poetically indeed, because in the shadowed person of another, yet veraciously, if you refer it to him—:

Te duce, si qua manent sceleris uestigia nostri,

With you as leader, if any vestiges of our crime remain,

Inrita perpetua soluent formidine terras. Ea quippe dixit, quae etiam multum proficientium in uirtute iustitiae possunt propter huius uitae infirmitatem, etsi non scelera, scelerum tamen manere uestigia, quae non nisi ab illo saluatore sanantur, de quo iste uersus expressus est. Nam utique non hoc a se ipso se dixisse Vergilius in eclogae ipsius quarto ferme uersu indicat, ubi ait:

Made null, they will set the lands free from perpetual dread. For indeed he said things which even in those making great progress in the virtue of justice can, on account of the infirmity of this life, even if not crimes, yet have traces of crimes remain—traces which are healed by none save by that Savior of whom this verse has been expressed. For surely Vergilius indicates that he did not say this from himself in about the fourth verse of that eclogue, where he says:

Vltima Cumaei uenit iam carminis aetas; unde hoc a Cumaea Sibylla dictum esse incunctanter apparet. Theurgi uero illi uel potius daemones deorum speciem figurasque fingentes inquinant potius quam purgant humanum spiritum falsitate phantasmatum et deceptoria uanarum ludificatione formarum. Quo modo enim purgent hominis spiritum, qui inmundum habent proprium?

The last age of the Cumaean song has now come; whence it appears unhesitatingly that this was said by the Cumaean Sibyl. But those theurgists—or rather, daemons—fashioning the semblance and figures of gods, pollute rather than purge the human spirit by the falsity of phantasms and by the deceptory ludification of empty forms. For how, indeed, can they purge a man’s spirit, who have uncleanness as their own?

Alioquin nullo modo carminibus inuidi hominis ligarentur ipsumque inane beneficium, quod praestaturi uidebantur, aut metu premerent aut simili inuidentia denegarent. Sufficit quod purgatione theurgica neque intellectualem animam, hoc est mentem nostram, dicis posse purgari, et ipsam spiritalem, id est nostrae animae partem mente inferiorem, quam tali arte purgari posse asseris, inmortalem tamen aeternamque non posse hac arte fieri confiteris. Christus autem uitam promittit aeternam; unde ad eum mundus uobis quidem stomachantibus, mirantibus tamen stupentibusque concurrit.

Otherwise, in no way would they be bound by the charms of an envious man, and the empty beneficence itself, which they seemed about to bestow, they would either press down with fear or deny with similar envy. It suffices that by the theurgic purgation you say that neither the intellectual soul, that is, our mind, can be purged, and that even the spiritual one, that is, the part of our soul inferior to the mind—which you assert can be purged by such an art—you confess nevertheless cannot by this art be made immortal and eternal. But Christ promises eternal life; wherefore to him the world rushes together, you indeed chafing, yet marveling and astonished.

Quid prodest quia negare non potuisti errare homines theurgica disciplina et quam plurimos fallere per caecam insipientemque sententiam atque esse certissimum errorem agendo et supplicando ad principes angelosque decurrere, et rursum, quasi ne operam perdidisse uidearis ista discendo, mittis homines ad theurgos, ut per eos anima spiritalis purgetur illorum, qui non secundum intellectualem animam uiuunt?

What does it profit, since you could not deny that humans err by the theurgic discipline and that very many are deceived through a blind and insipient opinion, and that it is the most certain error to have recourse, by acting and supplicating, to princes and angels; and again, as though you might not seem to have lost your labor by learning these things, you dispatch men to the theurgists, so that through them the spiritual soul of those who do not live according to the intellectual soul may be purged?

[XXVIII] Mittis ergo homines in errorem certissimum, neque hoc tantum malum te pudet, cum uirtutis et sapientiae profitearis amatorem; quam si uere ac fideliter amasses, Christum Dei uirtutem et Dei sapientiam cognouisses nec ab eius saluberrima humilitate tumore inflatus uanae scientiae resiluisses. Confiteris tamen etiam spiritalem animam sine theurgicis artibus et sine teletis, quibus frustra discendis elaborasti, posse continentiae uirtute purgari. Aliquando etiam dicis, quod teletae non post mortem eleuant animam, ut iam nec eidem ipsi, quam spiritalem uocas, aliquid post huius uitae finem prodesse uideantur; et tamen uersas haec multis modis et repetis, ad nihil aliud, quantum existimo, nisi ut talium quoque rerum quasi peritus appareas et placeas inlicitarum artium curiosis,uel ad eas facias ipse curiosos.

[28] You therefore send men into the most certain error, nor are you ashamed of this so great an evil, though you profess yourself a lover of virtue and wisdom; which, if you had truly and faithfully loved, you would have recognized Christ, the Power of God and the Wisdom of God, and you would not have recoiled from his most health-giving humility, puffed up by the swelling of vain science. Yet you confess that even the spiritual soul can be purged by the virtue of continence without the theurgic arts and without teletae, in the learning of which you toiled in vain. At times you even say that the teletae do not raise the soul after death, so that they now seem to profit not even that very one which you call spiritual with anything after the end of this life; and yet you turn these things over in many ways and repeat them, to nothing else, as I suppose, except that you may appear as if an expert also in such matters and may please the curious of illicit arts, or even make men themselves curious about them.

Sed bene, quod metuendam dicis hanc artem uel legum periculis uel ipsius actionis. Atque utinam hoc saltem abs te miseri audiant et inde, ne illic absorbeantur, abscedant aut eo penitus non accedant. Ignorantiam certe et propter eam multa uitia per nullas teletas purgari dicis, sed per solum *patriko\n *nou=n, id est paternam mentem siue intellectum, qui paternae est conscius uoluntatis.

But it is well that you say this art is to be dreaded either for the perils of the laws or of the practice itself. And would that at least the wretched hear this from you, and from there, lest they be swallowed up there, withdraw, or do not approach it at all. You say, to be sure, that ignorance and, on account of it, many vices are purged by no teletae, but by the sole *patriko\n *nou=n, that is, the paternal mind or intellect, which is conscious of the paternal will.

Hunc autem Christum esse non credis; contemnis enim eum propter corpus ex femina acceptum et propter crucis opprobrium, excelsam uidelicet sapientiam spretis atque abiectis infimis idoneus de superioribus carpere. At ille implet, quod prophetae sancti de illo ueraciter praedixerunt: Perdam sapientiam sapientium et prudentiam prudentium reprobabo. Non enim suam in eis perdit et reprobat, quam ipse donauit, sed quam sibi arrogant, qui non habent ipsius.

But you do not believe this to be the Christ; for you contemn him on account of the body received from a woman and on account of the opprobrium of the cross, as one, forsooth, fit to pluck lofty wisdom from the higher things, the lowest being scorned and cast aside. But he fulfills what the holy prophets truly foretold about him: I will destroy the wisdom of the wise, and the prudence of the prudent I will reprobate. For he does not destroy and reprobate in them his own, which he himself granted, but that which they arrogate to themselves, who do not have his.

Vnde commemorato isto prophetico testimonio sequitur et dicit apostolus: Vbi sapiens? ubi scriba? ubi conquisitor huius saeculi?

Whence, with this prophetic testimony commemorated, it follows and the apostle says: Where is the wise man? where the scribe? where the inquisitor of this age?

Nonne stultam fecit Deus sapientiam huius mundi? Nam quoniam in Dei sapientia non cognouit mundus per sapientiam Deum, placuit Deo per stultitiam praedicationis saluos facere credentes. Quoniam quidem Iudaei signa petunt et Graeci sapientiam quaerunt; nos autem, inquit, praedicamus Christum crucifixum, Iudaeis quidem scandalum, gentibus autem stultitiam, ipsis uero uocatis Iudaeis et Graecis Christum Dei uirtutem et Dei sapientiam; quoniam stultum Dei sapientius est hominibus, et infirmum Dei fortius est hominibus.

Has not God made foolish the wisdom of this world? For since, in God’s wisdom, the world did not know God through wisdom, it pleased God through the foolishness of preaching to save those who believe. Since indeed Jews seek signs and Greeks seek wisdom; but we, he says, preach Christ crucified, to Jews indeed a scandal, but to the nations/Gentiles foolishness; yet to those who are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God; because the foolish thing of God is wiser than men, and the weak thing of God is stronger than men.

Hoc quasi stultum et infirmum tamquam sua uirtute sapientes fortesque contemnunt. Sed haec est gratia, quae sanat infirmos, non superbe iactantes falsam beatitudinem suam, sed humiliter potius ueram miseriam confitentes.

This, as though foolish and infirm, the wise and the strong, as by their own virtue, contemn. But this is grace, which heals the infirm—not those proudly vaunting their false beatitude, but rather those humbly confessing their true misery.

[XXIX] Praedicas Patrem et eius Filium, quem uocas paternum intellectum seu mentem, et horum medium, quem putamus te dicere Spiritum sanctum, et more uestro appellas tres deos. Vbi, etsi uerbis in disciplinatis utimini, uidetis tamen qualitercumque et quasi per quaedam tenuis imaginationis umbracula, quo nitendum sit; sed incarnationem incommutabilis Filii Dei, qua saluamur, ut ad illa, quae credimus uel ex quantulacumque parte intellegimus, uenire possimus, non uultis agnoscere. Itaque uidetis utcumque, etsi de longinquo, etsi acie caligante, patriam in qua manendum est, sed uiam qua eundum est non tenetis.

[29] You preach the Father and his Son, whom you call the paternal intellect or mind, and the middle between these, whom we suppose you to say is the Holy Spirit, and in your custom you call them three gods. Where, although you use undisciplined words, you nevertheless see somehow, and as if through certain little shadowings of a tenuous imagination, whither one ought to strive; but the incarnation of the unchangeable Son of God, by which we are saved—so that we may be able to come to those things which we believe or understand in however small a part—you do not wish to acknowledge. And so you see, in some fashion, even from afar, even with the eyesight clouded, the fatherland in which one is to abide, but you do not hold the way by which one must go.

Confiteris tamen gratiam, quando quidem ad Deum per uirtutem intellegentiae peruenire paucis dicis esse concessum. Non enim dicis: Paucis placuit, uel: Pauci uoluerunt; sed cum dicis esse concessum, procul dubio Dei gratiam, non hominis sufficientiam confiteris. Vteris etiam hoc uerbo apertius, ubi Platonis sententiam sequens nec ipse dubitas in hac uita hominem nullo modo ad perfectionem sapientiae peruenire, secundum intellectum tamen uiuentibus omne quod deest prouidentia Dei et gratia post hanc uitam posse compleri.

You do, however, confess grace, since you say that to arrive at God through the virtue of intelligence has been conceded to a few. For you do not say: “It pleased a few,” or: “A few were willing”; but when you say “has been conceded,” beyond doubt you confess the grace of God, not human sufficiency. You also employ this word more openly where, following Plato’s opinion, you yourself do not doubt that in this life a human being by no means attains to the perfection of sapience; yet for those living according to the intellect, everything that is lacking can, after this life, be completed by the providence of God and by grace.

O si cognouisses Dei gratiam per Iesum Christum dominum nostrum ipsamque eius incarnationem, qua hominis animam corpusque suscepit, summum esse exemplum gratiae uidere potuisses. Sed quid faciam? Scio me frustra loqui mortuo, sed quantum ad te adtinet; quantum autem ad eos, qui te magnipendunt et te uel qualicumque amore sapientiae uel curiositate artium, quas non debuisti discere, diligunt, quos potius in tua compellatione alloquor, fortasse non frustra.

O if you had known the grace of God through Jesus Christ our Lord, and his very incarnation, by which he took up the soul and body of a man, you could have seen it to be the highest example of grace. But what am I to do? I know I am speaking in vain to a dead man, so far as it pertains to you; but as for those who hold you in high esteem and love you either with whatever love of wisdom or with a curiosity for the arts which you ought not to have learned—whom rather I address in addressing you—perhaps not in vain.

Gratia Dei non potuit gratius commendari, quam ut ipse unicus Dei Filius in se incommutabiliter manens indueretur hominem et spiritum dilectionis suae daret hominibus homine medio, qua ad illum ab hominibus ueniretur, qui tam longe erat inmortalis a mortalibus incommutabilis a commutabilibus, iustus ab impiis beatus a miseris. Et quia naturaliter indidit nobis, ut beati inmortalesque esse cupiamus, manens beatus suscipiensque mortalem, ut nobis tribueret quod amamus, perpetiendo docuit contemnere quod timemus.

The grace of God could not have been more graciously commended than that the only-begotten Son of God, remaining in himself unchangeably, should be clothed with man, and should give the spirit of his love to human beings through a man as mediator, whereby there might be a coming to him from human beings—he who was so far: immortal from mortals, immutable from mutables, just from the impious, blessed from the wretched. And because he has naturally implanted in us that we desire to be blessed and immortal, he, remaining blessed and taking up the mortal, in order to bestow on us what we love, by suffering taught us to contemn what we fear.

Sed huic ueritati ut possetis adquiescere, humilitate opus erat, quae ceruici uestrae difficillime persuaderi potest. Quid enim incredibile dicitur, praesertim uobis qui talia sapitis, quibus ad hoc credendum uos ipsos admonere debeatis; quid, inquam, uobis incredibile dicitur, cum dicitur Deus adsumpsisse humanam animam et corpus? Vos certe tantum tribuitis animae intellectuali, quae anima utique humana est, ut eam consubstantialem paternae illi menti, quem Dei Filium confitemini, fieri posse dicatis.

But that you might be able to acquiesce in this truth, humility was needed, which can most difficultly be persuaded to your neck. For what is said to be incredible, especially to you who are wise in such things, by which you ought to admonish yourselves for believing this; what, I say, is said to you to be incredible, when it is said that God has assumed a human soul and body? You certainly attribute so much to the intellectual soul—which soul is, of course, human—that you say it can be made consubstantial with that paternal Mind, whom you confess to be the Son of God.

Quid ergo incredibile est, si aliqua una intellectualis anima modo quodam ineffabili et singulari pro multorum salute suscepta est? Corpus uero animae cohaerere, ut homo totus et plenus sit, natura ipsa nostra teste cognoscimus. Quod nisi usitatissimum esset, hoc profecto esset incredibilius; facilius quippe in fidem recipiendum est, etsi humanum diuino, etsi mutabile incommutabili, tamen spiritum spiritui, aut ut uerbis utar, quae in usu habetis, incorporeum incorporeo, quam corpus incorporeo cohaerere.

What, then, is incredible, if some one intellectual soul, in a certain ineffable and singular manner, has been assumed for the salvation of many? But that a body cohere with a soul, so that the man be whole and complete, we know with nature itself as our witness. And if this were not most customary, this would assuredly be more incredible; for it is more readily to be received into belief that—even if the human to the divine, even if the mutable to the immutable—nevertheless spirit to spirit, or, to use the terms you have in use, the incorporeal to the incorporeal, rather than that a body cohere to the incorporeal.

An forte uos offendit inusitatus corporis partus ex uirgine? Neque hoc debet offendere, immo potius ad pietatem suscipiendam debet adducere, quod mirabilis mirabiliter natus est. An uero quod ipsum corpus morte depositum et in melius resurrectione mutatum iam incorruptibile neque mortale in superna subuexit, hoc fortasse credere recusatis intuentes Porphyrium in his ipsis libris, ex quibus multa posui, quos de regressu animae scripsit, tam crebro praecipere omne corpus esse fugiendum, ut anima possit beata permanere cum Deo?

Or perhaps an unusual birth of a body from a virgin offends you? Nor ought this to offend; rather it ought to lead you to the undertaking of piety, that the marvelous was marvelously born. Or indeed, that the very body, laid aside by death and changed for the better by resurrection—now incorruptible and not mortal—was borne up to the supernal heights, do you perhaps refuse to believe, looking to Porphyry in these very books, from which I have set down many things, which he wrote on the regress of the soul, so frequently prescribing that every body is to be fled, so that the soul may be able to remain blessed with God?

Sed ipse potius ista sentiens corrigendus fuit, praesertim cum de anima mundi huius uisibilis et tam ingentis corporeae molis cum illo tam incredibilia sapiatis. Platone quippe auctore animal esse dicitis mundum et animal beatissimum, quod uultis esse etiam sempiternum. Quo modo ergo nec umquam soluetur a corpore, nec umquam carebit beatitudine, si, ut beata sit anima, corpus est omne fugiendum?

But he himself rather, entertaining those views, ought to have been corrected, especially since, concerning the soul of this visible world and the so huge corporeal mass, you, together with him, are wise in such incredible things. For with Plato as author, you say the world is an animal, and a most blessed animal, which you wish to be even sempiternal. How then will it neither ever be loosed from a body nor ever lack beatitude, if, in order that the soul may be blessed, every body is to be fled?

Solem quoque istum et cetera sidera non solum in libris uestris corpora esse fatemini, quod uobiscum omnes homines et conspicere non cunctantur et dicere; uerum etiam altiore, ut putatis, peritia haec esse animalia beatissima perhibetis et cum his corporibus sempiterna. Quid ergo est, quod, cum uobis fides Christiana suadetur, tunc obliuiscimini, aut ignorare uos fingitis, quid disputare aut docere soleatis? Quid causae est, cur propter opiniones uestras, quas uos ipsi oppugnatis, Christiani esse nolitis, nisi quia Christus humiliter uenit et uos superbi estis?

Solemnly, you also confess in your books that this sun and the other stars are bodies, which all human beings, along with you, do not hesitate both to behold and to say; but even further, by a higher, as you suppose, expertise, you assert that these are most blessed animals, and sempiternal together with these bodies. What then is the matter, that when the Christian faith is urged upon you, then you forget, or feign not to know, what you are wont to dispute or to teach? What is the cause why, on account of your opinions—which you yourselves assail—you are unwilling to be Christians, unless it be that Christ came humbly and you are proud?

Qualia sanctorum corpora in resurrectione futura sint, potest aliquanto scrupulosius inter Christianarum scripturarum doctissimos disputari; futura tamen sempiterna minime dubitamus, et talia futura, quale sua resurrectione Christus demonstrauit exemplum. Sed qualiacumque sint, cum incorruptibilia prorsus et inmortalia nihiloque animae contemplationem, qua in Deo figitur, inpedientia praedicentur uosque etiam dicatis esse in caelestibus inmortalia corpora inmortaliter beatorum: quid est quod, ut beati simus, omne corpus fugiendum esse opinamini, ut fidem Christianam quasi rationabiliter fugere uideamini, nisi quia illud est, quod iterum dico: Christus est humilis, uos superbi? An forte corrigi pudet?

What sort of bodies the saints will have in the resurrection can be discussed somewhat more scrupulously among the most learned in the Christian Scriptures; yet that they will be sempiternal we by no means doubt, and that they will be such as Christ by his own resurrection showed as an example. But whatever they may be, since they are proclaimed to be utterly incorruptible and immortal, and in no way hindering the contemplation of the soul, whereby it is fixed in God, and since you also say that in the heavens there are immortal bodies of the immortally blessed: what is this, that, in order that we may be blessed, you suppose every body must be fled, so that you may seem to flee the Christian faith as if rationally, unless because it is that which I say again: Christ is humble, you are proud? Or perhaps you are ashamed to be corrected?

Et hoc uitium non nisi superborum est. Pudet uidelicet doctos homines ex discipulis Platonis fieri discipulos Christi, qui piscatorem suo spiritu docuit sapere ac dicere: In principio erat Verbum, et Verbum erat apud Deum, et Deus erat Verbum. Hoc erat in principio apud Deum.

And this vice belongs to none but the proud. It shames, forsooth, learned men to become disciples of Christ from being disciples of Plato—He who by his Spirit taught a fisherman to be wise and to speak: In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. This was in the beginning with God.

Omnia per ipsum facta sunt, et sine ipso factum est nihil, quod factum est. In ipso uita erat, et uita erat lux hominum, et lux in tenebris lucet, et tenebrae eam non conprehenderunt. Quod initium sancti euangelii, cui nomen est secundum Iohannem, quidam Platonicus, sicut a sancto sene Simpliciano, qui postea Mediolanensi ecclesiae praesedit episcopus, solebamus audire, aureis litteris conscribendum et per omnes ecclesias in locis eminentissimis proponendum esse dicebat.

All things were made through him, and without him nothing was made that was made. In him was life, and the life was the light of men, and the light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not comprehend it. Which beginning of the holy Gospel, which is named according to John, a certain Platonist—as we were accustomed to hear from the holy old man Simplicianus, who afterwards presided as bishop over the Milanese Church—said ought to be inscribed with golden letters and set forth in the most eminent places throughout all the churches.

Sed ideo uiluit superbis Deus ille magister, quia Verbum caro factum est et habitauit in nobis; ut parum sit miseris quod aegrotant, nisi se etiam in ipsa aegritudine extollant et de medicina, qua sanari poterant, erubescant. Non enim hoc faciunt ut erigantur, sed ut cadendo grauius affligantur.

But for this reason that God, the teacher, was held cheap by the proud: because the Word was made flesh and dwelt among us; so that it is too little for the wretched that they are ailing, unless they also in that very sickness extol themselves and are ashamed of the medicine by which they could be healed. For they do not do this that they may be raised up, but that by falling they may be more grievously afflicted.

[XXX] Si post Platonem aliquid emendare existimatur indignum, cur ipse Porphyrius nonnulla et non parua emendauit? Nam Platonem animas hominum post mortem reuolui usque ad corpora bestiarum scripsisse certissimum est. Hanc sententiam Porphyrii doctor tenuit et Plotinus; Porphyrio tamen iure displicuit.

[30] If after Plato it is thought unworthy to emend anything, why did Porphyry himself emend certain things—and not small ones? For it is most certain that Plato wrote that the souls of men, after death, are revolved back even into the bodies of beasts. This opinion Porphyry’s teacher held—Plotinus; yet it rightly displeased Porphyry.

In hominum sane non sua quae dimiserant, sed alia noua corpora redire humanas animas arbitratus est. Puduit scilicet illud credere, ne mater fortasse filium in mulam reuoluta uectaret; et non puduit hoc credere, ubi reuoluta mater in puellam filio forsitan nuberet. Quanto creditur honestius, quod sancti et ueraces angeli docuerunt, quod prophetae Dei spiritu acti locuti sunt, quod ipse quem uenturum Saluatorem praemissi nuntii praedixerunt, quod missi apostoli qui orbem terrarum euangelio repleuerunt, — quanto, inquam, honestius creditur reuerti animas semel ad corpora propria quam reuerti totiens ad diuersa!

Indeed he supposed that human souls return not to their own bodies which they had dismissed, but to other new bodies of men. He was ashamed, forsooth, to believe that, lest perhaps a mother, turned back into a she‑mule, would carry her son as rider; and he was not ashamed to believe this, where the mother, turned back into a girl, might perhaps marry her son. How much more honorably is it believed, what holy and veracious angels taught, what the prophets, moved by the Spirit of God, spoke, what He himself—whom the forerunning heralds foretold would come as Savior—[taught], what the sent apostles who filled the orb of the lands with the evangel [proclaimed] — how much, I say, more honorably is it believed that souls return once to their own bodies than that they return so often to diverse ones!

Verum tamen, ut dixi, ex magna parte correctus est in hac opinione Porphyrius, ut saltem in solos homines humanas animas praecipitari posse sentiret, beluinos autem carceres euertere minime dubitaret. Dicit etiam ad hoc Deum animam mundo dedisse, ut materiae cognoscens mala ad Patrem recurreret nec aliquando iam talium polluta contagione teneretur. Vbi etsi aliquid inconuenienter sapit (magis enim data est corpori, ut bona faceret; non enim mala disceret, si non faceret), in eo tamen aliorum Platonicorum opinionem et non in re parua emendauit, quod mundatam ab omnibus malis animam et cum Patre constitutam numquam iam mala mundi huius passuram esse confessus est.

Yet, however, as I said, Porphyry was for the most part corrected in this opinion, so that at least he felt that human souls could be precipitated into humans alone, but would by no means hesitate to overturn bestial prisons. He also says to this end that God gave the soul to the world, so that, recognizing the evils of matter, it might return to the Father and no longer ever be held, polluted by the contagion of such things. Where, although he savors something incongruent (for it was rather given to the body in order that it might do good; for it would not learn evils if it did not do them), yet in this he amended the opinion of the other Platonists, and not in a small matter, in that he confessed that a soul cleansed from all evils and established with the Father would never again undergo the evils of this world.

Qua sententia profecto abstulit, quod esse Platonicum maxime perhibetur, ut mortuos ex uiuis, ita uiuos ex mortuis semper fieri; falsumque esse ostendit, quod Platonice uidetur dixisse Vergilius, in campos Elysios purgatas animas missas (quo nomine tamquam per fabulam uidentur significari gaudia beatorum) ad fluuium Letheum euocari, hoc est ad obliuionem praeteritorum:

By which opinion assuredly he removed what is held to be most Platonic: that, just as the dead come from the living, so the living from the dead are always being made; and he showed to be false what Vergil seems to have said in Platonic fashion, that the purged souls, sent into the Elysian fields (by which name, as though by a fable, the joys of the blessed seem to be signified), are summoned to the Lethean river, that is, to the oblivion of things past:

Scilicet inmemores supera ut conuexa reuisant

Of course unmindful so that they may revisit the upper convexities

Rursus et incipiant in corpora uelle reuerti. Merito displicuit hoc Porphyrio quoniam re uera credere stultum est ex illa uita, quae beatissima esse non poterit nisi de sua fuerit aeternitate certissima, desiderare animas corruptibilium corporum labem et inde ad ista remeare, tamquam hoc agat summa purgatio, ut inquinatio requiratur. Si enim quod perfecte mundantur hoc efficit, ut omnium obliuiscantur malorum, malorum autem obliuio facit corporum desiderium, ubi rursus implicentur malis: profecto erit infelicitatis causa summa felicitas et stultitiae causa perfectio sapientiae et inmunditiae causa summa mundatio.

Again, too, that they begin to will to return into bodies. Rightly did this displease Porphyry, since in truth it is foolish to believe that from that life, which cannot be most blessed unless it be most certain of its eternity, souls should desire the taint of corruptible bodies and from there re-return to these things, as though the highest purgation should do this, that defilement be required. For if the fact that they are perfectly cleansed brings it about that they forget all evils, but the oblivion of evils produces the desire of bodies, wherein they are again entangled in evils: surely the highest felicity will be the cause of infelicity, the perfection of wisdom the cause of stupidity, and the highest cleansing the cause of uncleanness.

Nec ueritate ibi beata erit anima, quamdiucumque erit, ubi oportet fallatur, ut beata sit. Non enim beata erit nisi secura; ut autem secura sit, falso putabit semper se beatam fore, quoniam aliquando erit et misera. Cui ergo gaudendi causa falsitas erit, quo modo de ueritate gaudebit?

Nor by truth will the soul there be blessed, for however long it shall be, where it must be deceived in order that it be blessed. For it will not be blessed unless it is secure; but in order to be secure, it will falsely suppose that it will be blessed forever, since at some time it will also be miserable. For one to whom falsity will be the cause of rejoicing, how will he rejoice in truth?

Vidit hoc Porphyrius purgatamque animam ob hoc reuerti dixit ad Patrem, ne aliquando iam malorum polluta contagione teneatur. Falso igitur a quibusdam est Platonicis creditus quasi necessarius orbis ille ab eisdem abeundi et ad eadem reuertendi. Quod etiamsi uerum esset, quid hoc scire prodesset, nisi forte inde se nobis auderent praeferre Platonici, quia id nos in hac uita iam nesciremus, quod ipsi in alia meliore uita purgatissimi et sapientissimi fuerant nescituri et falsum credendo beati futuri?

Porphyry saw this, and said that for this reason the purged soul returns to the Father, lest it should ever be held, polluted by the contagion of evils. Therefore that necessary cycle of departing and returning to the same things has been falsely believed by certain Platonists. Which even if it were true, what would it profit to know this, unless perhaps from it the Platonists would dare to prefer themselves to us, because we in this life would not now know that which they themselves, in another better life—most purged and most wise—would be going not to know, and, by believing what is false, would be going to be blessed?

Quod si absurdissimum et stultissimum est dicere, Porphyrii profecto est praeferenda sententia his, qui animarum circulos alternante semper beatitate et miseria suspicati sunt. Quod si ita est, ecce Platonicus in melius a Platone dissentit; ecce uidit, quod ille non uidit, nec post talem ac tantum magistrum refugit correctionem, sed homini praeposuit ueritatem.

But if it is most absurd and most foolish to say so, Porphyry’s opinion is assuredly to be preferred to those who have suspected circles of souls with beatitude and misery ever alternating. And if this is so, behold, a Platonist dissents from Plato for the better; behold, he saw what that one did not see, nor after such and so great a master does he shrink from correction, but he preferred truth to the man.

[XXXI] Cur ergo non potius diuinitati credimus de his rebus, quas humano ingenio peruestigare non possumus, quae animam quoque ipsam non Deo coaeternam, sed creatam dicit esse, quae non erat? Vt enim hoc Platonici nollent credere, hanc utique causam idoneam sibi uidebantur adferre, quia, nisi quod semper ante fuisset, sempiternum deinceps esse non posset; quamquam et de mundo et de his, quos in mundo deos a Deo factos scribit Plato, apertissime dicat eos esse coepisse et habere initium, finem tamen non habituros, sed per conditoris potentissimam uoluntatem in aeternum mansuros esse perhibeat. Verum id quo modo intellegant inuenerunt, non esse hoc uidelicet temporis, sed substitutionis initium.

[31] Why then do we not rather believe the divinity about those matters which we cannot thoroughly investigate by human ingenuity, which says that the soul itself too is not coeternal with God, but was created, which did not exist? For, as the Platonists were unwilling to believe this, they seemed to themselves to bring forward this as an adequate cause: that, unless something had always existed before, it could not thereafter be sempiternal; although both concerning the world and concerning those whom Plato writes to be gods made by God in the world, he most openly says that they began to be and have a beginning, yet that they will not have an end, but bears witness that through the most powerful will of the Founder they will remain into eternity. But they found how to understand that: namely, that this is not a beginning of time, but of substitution.

"Sicut enim, inquiunt, si pes ex aeternitate semper fuisset in puluere, semper ei subesset uestigium, quod tamen uestigium a calcante factum nemo dubitaret, nec alterum altero prius esset, quamuis alterum ab altero factum esset: sic, inquiunt, et mundus atque in illo dii creati et semper fuerunt semper existente qui fecit, et tamen facti sunt." Numquid ergo, si anima semper fuit, etiam miseria eius semper fuisse dicenda est? Porro si aliquid in illa, quod ex aeterno non fuit, esse coepit ex tempore, cur non fieri potuerit, ut ipsa esset ex tempore quae antea non fuisset? Deinde beatitudo quoque eius post experimentum malorum firmior et sine fine mansura, sicut iste confitetur, procul dubio coepit ex tempore, et tamen semper erit, cum ante non fuerit.

"As, they say, if a foot from eternity had always been in the dust, there would always be beneath it a footprint (vestige), which footprint, however, no one would doubt was made by the one treading, nor would the one be prior to the other, although the one was made by the other: so, they say, both the world and in it the gods created have always existed, with the One who made them always existing, and yet they were made." Surely then, if the soul has always existed, is its misery also to be said to have always existed? Furthermore, if something in it which was not from eternity began to be in time, why could it not have happened that it itself should be in time, which previously had not been? Next, its beatitude too, after the experiment/experience of evils, stronger and destined to remain without end, as he admits, without doubt began in time, and yet it will be forever, though before it was not.

Illa igitur omnis argumentatio dissoluta est, qua putatur nihil esse posse sine fine temporis, nisi quod initium non habet temporis. Inuenta est enim animae beatitudo, quae cum initium temporis habuerit, finem temporis non habebit. Quapropter diuinae auctoritati humana cedat infirmitas, eisque beatis et inmortalibus de uera religione credamus, qui sibi honorem non expetunt, quem Deo suo, qui etiam noster est, deberi sciunt, nec iubent, ut sacrificium faciamus, nisi ei tantum, cuius et nos cum illis, ut saepe dixi et saepe dicendum est, sacrificium esse debemus, per eum sacerdotem offerendi, qui in homine, quem suscepit, secundum quem et sacerdos esse uoluit, etiam usque ad mortem sacrificium pro nobis dignatus est fieri.

Therefore that whole argumentation is dissolved, whereby it is thought that nothing can be without an end of time except what has no beginning of time. For the beatitude of the soul has been found, which, though it has had a beginning of time, will not have an end of time. Wherefore let human infirmity yield to divine authority, and let us believe those blessed and immortal ones concerning true religion, who do not seek honor for themselves, which they know to be owed to their God, who is also ours, nor do they command that we make a sacrifice, except to him only, whose sacrifice we too, together with them, as I have often said and as it must often be said, ought to be—of offering through that priest who, in the man whom he assumed, according to whom also he willed to be a priest, deigned even unto death to be made a sacrifice for us.

[XXXII] Haec est religio, quae uniuersalem continet uiam animae liberandae, quoniam nulla nisi hac liberari potest. Haec est enim quodam modo regalis uia, quae una ducit ad regnum, non temporali fastigio nutabundum, sed aeternitatis firmitate securum. Cum autem dicit Porphyrius in primo iuxta finem de regressu animae libro nondum receptum in unam quandam sectam, quod uniuersalem contineat uiam animae liberandae, uel a philosophia uerissima aliqua uel ab Indorum moribus ac disciplina, aut inductione Chaldaeorum aut alia qualibet uia, nondumque in suam notitiam eandem uiam historiali cognitione perlatam: procul dubio confitetur esse aliquam, sed nondum in suam uenisse notitiam.

[32] This is the religion which contains the universal way of the soul to be liberated, since by no other than this can it be liberated. For this is, in a certain manner, the royal way, which alone leads to the kingdom—not wobbling on a temporal pinnacle, but secure by the firmness of eternity. But when Porphyry says in the first book, near the end, of On the Return of the Soul, that that which contains the universal way of the soul to be liberated has not yet been received into some single sect—whether from some most true philosophy or from the customs and discipline of the Indians, or by the induction of the Chaldaeans, or by any other way—and that the same way has not yet been brought into his own knowledge by historical cognition: without doubt he confesses that there is some such [way], but that it has not yet come into his knowledge.

Ita ei non sufficiebat quidquid de anima liberanda studiosissime didicerat sibique uel potius aliis nosse ac tenere uidebatur. Sentiebat enim adhuc sibi deesse aliquam praestantissimam auctoritatem, quam de re tanta sequi oporteret. Cum autem dicit uel a philosophia uerissima aliqua nondum in suam notitiam peruenisse sectam, quae uniuersalem contineat uiam animae liberandae: satis, quantum arbitror, ostendit uel eam philosophiam, in qua ipse philosophatus est, non esse uerissimam, uel ea non contineri talem uiam.

Thus for him whatever he had most studiously learned about the soul to be liberated did not suffice, and he seemed to himself—or rather to others—to know and hold it. For he felt that there still was lacking to him some most outstanding authority, which in a matter so great it was proper to follow. But when he says that, either from some most true philosophy, there had not yet come into his knowledge a sect which contains the universal way of liberating the soul: he sufficiently, as I judge, shows either that the philosophy in which he himself philosophized is not the most true, or that such a way is not contained in it.

Et quo modo iam potest esse uerissima, qua non continetur haec uia? Nam quae alia uia est uniuersalis animae liberandae, nisi qua uniuersae animae liberantur ac per hoc sine illa nulla anima liberatur? Cum autem addit et dicit: "Vel ab Indorum moribus ac disciplina, uel ab inductione Chaldaeorum uel alia qualibet uia", manifestissima uoce testatur neque illis quae ab Indis neque illis quae a Chaldaeis didicerat hanc uniuersalem uiam liberandae animae contineri; et utique se a Chaldaeis oracula diuina sumpsisse, quorum adsiduam commemorationem facit, tacere non potuit.

And how can it already be most true, in which this way is not contained? For what other way is there that is universal for the soul to be liberated, except that by which all souls are liberated, and by this very fact without it no soul is liberated? But when he adds and says: "Either from the customs and disciplina of the Indians, or from the induction of the Chaldaeans, or by any other way," with a most manifest voice he testifies that neither in those things which he had learned from the Indians nor in those which he had learned from the Chaldaeans is this universal way of liberating the soul contained; and surely that he had taken divine oracles from the Chaldaeans, of whom he makes assiduous commemoration, he could not keep silent.

Quam uult ergo intellegi animae liberandae uniuersalem uiam nondum receptam uel ex aliqua uerissima philosophia uel ex earum gentium doctrinis, quae magnae uelut in diuinis rebus habebantur, quia pius apud eas curiositas ualuit quorumque angelorum cognoscendorum et colendorum, nondumque in suam notitiam historiali cognitione perlatam? Quaenam ista est uniuersalis uia, nisi quae non suae cuique genti propria, sed uniuersis gentibus quae communis esset diuinitus inpertita est? Quam certe iste homo non mediocri ingenio praeditus esse non dubitat.

What then does he wish to be understood by a universal way for the soul to be liberated, as not yet received either from some most veracious philosophy or from the doctrines of those nations which were held, as it were, great in divine matters, because among them a pious curiosity prevailed for the knowing and worshiping of whatever angels—and as not yet conveyed into his own notice by historical cognition? What is that universal way, unless it is that which is not proper to each one’s own nation, but has been divinely imparted as common to all nations? Which assuredly this man, endowed with no mediocre genius, does not doubt to exist.

Prouidentiam quippe diuinam sine ista uniuersali uia liberandae animae genus humanum relinquere potuisse non credit. Neque enim ait non esse, sed hoc tantum bonum tantumque adiutorium nondum receptum, nondum in suam notitiam esse perlatum; nec mirum. Tunc enim Porphyrius erat in rebus humanis, quando ista liberandae animae uniuersalis uia, quae non est alia quam religio Christiana, oppugnari permittebatur ab idolorum daemonumque cultoribus regibusque terrenis, propter asserendum et consecrandum martyrum numerum, hoc est testium ueritatis, per quos ostenderetur omnia corporalia mala pro fide pietatis et commendatione ueritatis esse toleranda.

Indeed, he does not believe that divine providence could have left the human race without that universal way for liberating the soul. For neither does he say that it does not exist, but only that this so-great good and so-great aid had not yet been received, had not yet been conveyed into his own knowledge; nor is that a marvel. For Porphyry was then in human affairs, when that universal way of the soul’s liberation, which is none other than the Christian religion, was permitted to be assailed by the worshipers of idols and of demons and by earthly kings, for the asserting and the consecrating of the number of martyrs, that is, witnesses of truth, through whom it might be shown that all corporeal evils are to be endured for the faith of piety and the commendation of truth.

Videbat ergo ista Porphyrius et per huius modi persecutiones cito istam uiam perituram et propterea non esse ipsam liberandae animae uniuersalem putabat, non intellegens hoc, quod eum mouebat et quod in eius electione perpeti metuebat, ad eius confirmationem robustioremque commendationem potius pertinere.

Porphyry therefore saw these things, and, through persecutions of this kind, thought that this way would quickly perish and therefore was not itself the universal way for the soul to be liberated, not understanding that this very thing which moved him, and which he feared to endure in its being chosen, pertained rather to its confirmation and more robust commendation.

Haec est igitur animae liberandae uniuersalis uia, id est uniuersis gentibus diuina miseratione concessa, cuius profecto notitia ad quoscumque iam uenit et ad quoscumque uentura est, nec debuit nec debebit ei dici: Quare modo? et: Quare sero? quoniam mittentis consilium non est humano ingenio penetrabile.

This, therefore, is the universal way of liberating the soul, that is, granted by divine commiseration to all nations; whose knowledge indeed, to whomever it has already come and to whomever it is going to come, neither ought it to have been said nor ought it to be said: “Why now?” and: “Why late?” since the counsel of the Sender is not penetrable to human ingenuity.

Quod sensit etiam iste, cum dixit, nondum receptum hoc donum Dei et nondum in suam notitiam fuisse perlatum. Neque enim propterea uerum non esse iudicauit, quia nondum in fidem suam receptum fuerat uel in notitiam nondum peruenerat. Haec est, inquam, liberandorum credentium uniuersalis uia, de qua fidelis Abraham diuinum accepit oraculum: In semine tuo benedicentur omnes gentes.

Which this man too perceived, when he said that this gift of God had not yet been received and had not yet been borne into his knowledge. For he did not therefore judge it not to be true, because it had not yet been received into his faith or had not yet come into his knowledge. This is, I say, the universal way for the deliverance of believers, concerning which faithful Abraham received the divine oracle: In your seed all nations shall be blessed.

Qui fuit quidem gente Chaldaeus, sed ut talia promissa perciperet et ex illo propagaretur semen dispositum per angelos in manu Mediatoris, in quo esset ista liberandae animae uniuersalis uia, hoc est omnibus gentibus data, iussus est discedere de terra sua et de cognatione sua et de domo patris sui. Tunc ipse primitus a Chaldaeorum superstitionibus liberatus unum uerum Deum sequendo coluit, cui haec promittenti fideliter credidit. Haec est uniuersalis uia, de qua in sancta prophetia dictum est: Deus misereatur nostri et benedicat nos f inluminet uultum suum super nos, ut cognoscamus in terra uiam tuam, in omnibus gentibus salutare tuum.

Who indeed was by race a Chaldaean, but in order that he might receive such promises and that from him the seed might be propagated, disposed through the angels in the hand of the Mediator, in whom there would be that universal way for the soul to be freed, that is, given to all nations, he was commanded to depart from his own land and from his kindred and from the house of his father. Then he himself, first freed from the superstitions of the Chaldaeans, by following worshiped the one true God, to whom, as He promised these things, he faithfully believed. This is the universal way, of which it is said in holy prophecy: May God be merciful to us and bless us f may He illuminate His face upon us, that we may know on earth Your way, among all nations Your salvation.

Vnde tanto post ex Abrahae semine carne suscepta de se ipso ait ipse Saluator: Ego sum uia, ueritas et uita. Haec est uniuersalis uia, de qua tanto ante prophetatum est: Erit in nouissimis diebus manifestus mons Domini, paratus in cacumine montium et extolletur super colles, et uenient ad eum uniuersae gentes et ingredientur nationes multae et dicent: Venite, ascendamus in montem Domini et in domum Dei Iacob; et adnuntiabit nobis uiam suam, et ingrediemur in ea. Ex Sion enim prodiet lex et uerbum Domini ab Hierusalem. Via ergo ista non est unius gentis, sed uniuersarum gentium; et lex uerbumque Domini non in Sion et Hierusalem remansit, sed inde processit, ut se per uniuersa diffunderet.

Whence, so much later, when from Abraham’s seed flesh had been assumed, the Savior himself said of himself: I am the way, the truth, and the life. This is the universal way, about which it was so long before prophesied: In the last days the mountain of the Lord shall be made manifest, prepared on the summit of the mountains, and it shall be lifted up above the hills, and all nations will come to it, and many nations will enter and say: Come, let us ascend to the mountain of the Lord and to the house of the God of Jacob; and he will announce to us his way, and we will enter in it. For from Zion the law shall go forth, and the word of the Lord from Jerusalem. Therefore this way is not of one nation, but of all nations; and the law and the word of the Lord did not remain in Zion and Jerusalem, but from there went forth, so that it might diffuse itself through the whole world.

Vnde ipse Mediator post resurrectionem suam discipulis trepidantibus ait: Oportebat impleri quae scripta sunt in lege et prophetis et psalmis de me. Tunc aperuit illis sensum, ut intellegerent scripturas, et dixit eis, quia oportebat Christum pati et resurgere a mortuis tertio die et praedicari in nomine eius paenitentiam et remissionem peccatorum per omnes gentes incipientibus ab Hierusalem. Haec est igitur uniuersalis animae liberandae uia, quam sancti angeli sanctique prophetae prius in paucis hominibus ubi potuerunt Dei gratiam reperientibus et maxime in Hebraea gente, cuius erat ipsa quodam modo sacrata res publica in prophetationem et praenuntiationem ciuitatis Dei ex omnibus gentibus congregandae, et tabernaculo et templo et sacerdotio et sacrificiis significauerunt et eloquiis quibusdam manifestis, plerisque mysticis praedixerunt; praesens autem in carne ipse Mediator et beati eius apostoli iam testamenti noui gratiam reuelantes apertius indicarunt, quae aliquanto occultius superioribus sunt significata temporibus, pro aetatum generis humani distributione, sicut eam Deo sapienti placuit ordinare, mirabilium operum diuinorum, quorum superius pauca iam posui, contestantibus signis. Non enim apparuerunt tantummodo uisiones angelicae et caelestium ministrorum sola uerba sonuerunt, uerum etiam hominibus Dei uerbo simplicis pieitatis agentibus spiritus inmundi de hominum corporibus ac sensibus pulsi sunt, uitia corporis languoresque sanati, fera animalia terrarum et aquarum, uolatilia caeli, ligna, elementa, sidera diuina iussa fecerunt, inferna cesserunt, mortui reuixerunt; exceptis ipsius Saluatoris propriis singularibusque miraculis, maxime natiuitatis et resurrectionis, quorum in uno maternae uirginitatis tantummodo sacramentum, in altero autem etiam eorum, qui in fine resurrecturi sunt, demonstrauit exemplum.

Whence the Mediator himself, after his resurrection, said to the trembling disciples: It was necessary that the things written in the Law and the Prophets and the Psalms about me be fulfilled. Then he opened their mind, that they might understand the Scriptures, and said to them that it was necessary for the Christ to suffer and to rise from the dead on the third day, and that repentance and remission of sins be preached in his name through all the nations, beginning from Jerusalem. This therefore is the universal way for freeing the soul, which the holy angels and holy prophets formerly, among a few humans who, where they could, were finding the grace of God, and especially in the Hebrew nation—whose commonwealth itself was in a certain manner consecrated for the prophesying and fore-announcing of the City of God to be gathered from all the nations—both signified by the tabernacle and the temple and the priesthood and the sacrifices, and foretold by certain utterances manifest, but for the most part mystic; but when present in the flesh the Mediator himself and his blessed apostles, now revealing the grace of the New Testament, indicated it more openly—things which had been signified somewhat more hiddenly in earlier times, according to the distribution of the ages of the human race, as it pleased the wise God to order it—with signs bearing witness of the marvelous works of God, of which I have already set down a few above. For not only did angelic visions appear and the mere words of heavenly ministers sound, but also, with the men of God acting by the word of simple piety, unclean spirits were driven from the bodies and senses of men, defects of the body and illnesses were healed, the wild animals of lands and waters, the birds of heaven, trees, the elements, the stars obeyed the divine commands, the underworld yielded, the dead came back to life; excepting the Savior’s own proper and singular miracles, especially of the Nativity and of the Resurrection, of which in the one he showed only the sacrament of maternal virginity, but in the other also the exemplar of those who are to rise at the end.

Haec uia totum hominem mundat et inmortalitati mortalem ex omnibus quibus constat partibus praeparat. Vt enim non alia purgatio ei parti quaereretur, quam uocat intellectualem Porphyrius, alia ei, quam uocat spiritalem, aliaque ipsi corpori: propterea totum suscepit ueracissimus potentissimusque mundator atque saluator. Praeter hanc uiam, quae, partim cum haec futura praenuntiantur, partim cum facta nuntiantur, numquam generi humano defuit, nemo liberatus est, nemo liberatur, nemo liberabitur.

This way cleanses the whole human being and prepares the mortal for immortality, in all the parts of which he consists. For, in order that there not be sought one purgation for that part which Porphyry calls intellectual, another for that which he calls spiritual, and another for the body itself, for this reason the most truthful and most powerful cleanser and savior took on the whole man. Apart from this way—which, partly when these things are foretold as to be, partly when, once done, they are announced—has never been lacking to the human race, no one has been freed, no one is freed, no one will be freed.

Quod autem Porphyrius uniuersalem uiam animae liberandae nondum in suam notitiam historiali cognitione dicit esse perlatam: quid hac historia uel inlustrius inueniri potest, quae uniuersum orbem tanto apice auctoritatis obtinuit, uel fidelius, in qua ita narrantur praeterita, ut futura etiam praedicantur, quorum multa uidemus impleta, ex quibus ea quae restant sine dubio speremus implenda? Non enim potest Porphyrius uel quicumque Platonici etiam in hac uia quasi terrenarum rerum et ad uitam istam mortalem pertinentium diuinationem praedictionemque contemnere, quod merito in aliis uaticinantibus et quorumlibet modorum uel artium diuinationibus faciunt. Negant enim haec uel magnorum hominum uel magni esse pendenda, et recte.

But as for Porphyry’s saying that the universal way for the soul to be liberated has not yet been conveyed into his knowledge by historical cognition: what history can be found more illustrious than this, which has obtained the whole world with so great a pinnacle of authority, or more faithful, in which things past are thus narrated that things future also are predicated—many of which we see fulfilled, from which we may without doubt hope that the things which remain will be fulfilled? For neither can Porphyry nor any Platonists despise, in this way, the divination and prediction as though of earthly matters and pertaining to this mortal life—which they rightly do in the case of other vaticinators and of divinations of whatever modes or arts. For they deny that these are to be weighed either as belonging to great men or as great, and rightly.

Nam uel inferiorum fiunt praesensione causarum, sicut arte medicinae quibusdam antecedentibus signis plurima euentura ualetudini praeuidentur; uel inmundi daemones sua disposita facta praenuntiant, quorum ius et in mentibus atque cupiditatibus iniquorum ad quaeque congruentia facta ducendis quodam modo sibi uindicant, et in materia infima fragilitatis humanae. Non talia sancti homines in ista uniuersali animarum liberandarum uia gradientes tamquam magna prophetare curarunt, quamuis et ista eos non fugerint et ab eis saepe praedicta sint ad eorum fidem faciendam, quae mortalium sensibus non poterant intimari nec ad experimentum celeri facilitate perduci. Sed alia erant uere magna atque diuina, quae quantum dabatur cognita Dei uoluntate futura nuntiabant.

For either they come about by a prescience of causes of lower things, just as by the art of medicine from certain antecedent signs very many events concerning one’s state of health are foreseen; or unclean demons pre-announce their arranged deeds, whose right they in some manner claim for themselves both over the minds and the cupidities of the unjust, for leading to whatever congruent deeds, and over the lowest material of human fragility. Not such things did holy men, walking in this universal way of souls to be freed, care to prophesy as if great, although these too did not escape them and were often predicted by them to produce faith in those to whom things could not be intimated to the senses of mortals nor brought to a test with speedy facility. But there were other things truly great and divine, which, so far as it was given, with the will of God known, they announced as future.

Christus quippe in carne uenturus et quae in illo tam clara perfecta sunt atque in eius nomine impleta, paenitentia hominum et ad Deum conuersio uoluntatum, remissio peccatorum, gratia iustitiae, fides piorum et per uniuersum orbem in ueram diuinitatem multitudo credentium, culturae simulacrorum daemonumque subuersio et a temptationibus exercitatio, proficientium purgatio et liberatio ab omni malo, iudicii dies, resurrectio mortuorum, societatis impiorum aeterna damnatio regnumque aeternum gloriosissimae ciuitatis Dei conspectu eius inmortaliter perfruentis in huius uiae scripturis praedicta atque promissa sunt; quorum tam multa impleta conspicimus, ut recta pietate futura esse cetera confidamus. Huius uiae rectitudinem usque ad Deum uidendum eique in aeternum cohaerendum in sanctarum scripturarum qua praedicatur atque adseritur ueritate quicumque non credunt et ob hoc nec intellegunt, oppugnare possunt, sed expugnare non possunt.

Indeed Christ to come in the flesh, and the things so clearly perfected in him and fulfilled in his name—the repentance of human beings and the conversion of wills to God, the remission of sins, the grace of justice, the faith of the pious and, through the whole world, the multitude of those believing in the true divinity, the overthrow of the worship of images and of demons, and training by temptations, the purification of those making progress and deliverance from every evil, the day of judgment, the resurrection of the dead, the eternal damnation of the society of the impious, and the eternal kingdom of the most glorious City of God, immortally enjoying the sight of him—have been foretold and promised in the scriptures of this way; of which so many we behold fulfilled that with right piety we are confident that the rest will come to pass. The rectitude of this way, unto seeing God and being joined to him forever—whoever do not believe, and on this account do not understand, the truth of the Holy Scriptures in which it is preached and asserted—can assail, but they cannot take by storm.

Quapropter in decem istis libris, etsi minus quam nonnullorum de nobis expectabat intentio, tamen quorundam studio, quantum uerus Deus et Dominus adiuuare dignatus est, satisfecimus refutando contradictiones impiorum, qui conditori sanctae ciuitatis, de qua disputare instituimus, deos suos praeferunt. Quorum decem librorum quinque superiores aduersus eos conscripti sunt, qui propter bona uitae huius deos colendos putant; quinque autem posteriores aduersus eos, qui cultum deorum propter uitam, quae post mortem futura est, seruandum existimant. Deinceps itaque, ut in primo libro polliciti sumus, de duarum ciuitatum, quas in hoc saeculo perplexas diximus inuicemque permixtas, exortu et procursu et debitis finibus quod dicendum arbitror, quantum diuinitus adiuuabor expediam.

Wherefore in these ten books, although less than the intention of some expected from us, yet to the zeal of certain persons, in so far as the true God and Lord deigned to aid, we have given satisfaction by refuting the contradictions of the impious, who prefer their own gods to the Founder of the holy City, about which we undertook to dispute. Of which ten books the five former were composed against those who think that the gods are to be worshiped on account of the goods of this life; but the five latter against those who suppose that the worship of the gods must be maintained for the life which is to be after death. Thereafter, therefore, as we promised in the first book, concerning the two cities, which we said in this age are entangled with one another and mutually intermixed, I will unfold their origin and course and due ends—what I judge ought to be said—insofar as I shall be divinely aided.