recoil from the communion of the holy ones; but having the grace of Him that gave it, having also God’s own power from the Word of the Father, he might rejoice and have fellow- ship with the Deity, living the life of im- mortality unharmed and truly blessed. For having nothing to hinder his knowledge of the Deity, he ever beholds, by his purity, the Image of the Father, God the Word, after Whose image he himself is made. He is awe- struck as he contemplates that Providence® which through the Word extends to the uni- verse, being raised above the things of sense and every bodily appearance, but cleaving to the divine and thought-perceived things in the heavens by the power of his mind. 3. For when the mind of men does not hold con- verse with bodies, nor has mingled with it from without aught of their lust, but is wholly above them, dwelling with itself as it was made to begin with, then, transcending the things of sense and all things human, it is raised up on high; and seeing the Word, it sees in Him also the Father of the Word, taking pleasure in con- templating Him, and gaining renewal by its desire toward Him; 4. exactly as the first of men created, the one who was named Adam in Hebrew, is described in the Holy Scriptures as having at the beginning had his mind to God-ward in a freedom unembarrassed by shame, and as associating with the holy ones in that contemplation of things perceived by the mind which he enjoyed in the place where he was—the place which the holy Moses called in figure a Garden. So purity of soul is suffi- cient of itself to reflect God, as the Lord also says, ‘‘ Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God.”
§ 3. Zhe decline of man from the above condition, owing to his absorption tn material things. Thus then, as we have said, the Creator fashioned the race of men, and thus meant it to 6 See Orig. c. Cels. vii. 42 sqg. de Princ. L a; 7 Restored in Christ, see? 34. ae 8 Chk. Hg. 15, Afol. ug. passim, Orat, iil. 37.
5 remain. But men, making light of better things, and holding back from apprehending them, began to seek in preference things nearer to themselves. 2. But nearer to themselves were the body and its senses; so that while removing their mind from the things perceived by thought, they began to regard themselves; and so doing, and holding to the body and the other things of sense, and deceived as it were in their own surroundings, they fell into lust of themselves, preferring what was their own to the contem- plation of what belonged toGod. Having then made themselves at home in these things, and not being willing to leave what was so near to them, they entangled their soul with bodily pleasures, vexed and turbid with all kind of lusts, while they wholly forgot the power they originally had from God. 3. But the truth of this one may see from the man who was first made, according to what the holy Scriptures tell us of him. For he also, as long as he kept his mind to God, and the contemplation of God, turned away from the contemplation of the body. But when, by counsel of the serpent, he departed from the consideration of God, and began to regard himself, then they not only fell to bodily lust, but knew that they were naked, and knowing, were ashamed. But they knew that they were naked, not so much of clothing as that they were become stripped of the contemplation of divine things, and had transferred their understanding to the con- traries. For having departed from the consideration of the one and the true, namely, God, and from desire of Him, they had thence- forward embarked in divers lusts and in those of the several bodily senses. 4. Next, as is apt to happen, having formed a desire for each and sundry, they began to be habituated to these desires, so that they were even afraid to leave them: whence the soul became subject to cowardice and alarms, and pleasures and thoughts of mortality. For not being willing to leave her lusts, she fears death and her separ- ation from the body. But again, from lusting, and not meeting with gratification, she learned to commit murder and wrong. We are then led naturally to shew, as best we can, how she does this.
§ 4. The gradual abasement of the Soul from Truth to Falsehood by the abuse of her free- dom of Choice.
Having departed from the contemplation of the things of thought, and using to the full the several activities of the body, and being pleased with the contemplation of the body, and seeing that pleasure is good for her, she was misled and abused the name of good, and thought that pleasure was the very es- 6 CONTRA sence of good: just as though a man out of _his' mind and asking for a sword to use against all he met, were to think that soundness of mind. 2. But having fallen in love with pleasure, she began to work it out in various ‘ways. For being by nature mobile, even though she have turned away from what is good, yet she does not lose her mobility. She moves then, no longer according to virtue or so as to see ‘God, but imagining false things, she makes a novel use of her power, abusing it as a means to the pleasures she has devised, since she is after all made with power over herself.. 3. For she is able, as on the one hand to incline to ‘what is good, so on the other to reject it; but in rejecting the good she of course entertains the thought of what is opposed to it, for she cannot at all cease from movement, being, as I said be- fore, mobile by nature. And knowing her own power over herself, she sees that she is able to use the members of her body in either direction, both toward what is, or toward what is not. 4. But good is, while evil is not; by what is, then, I mean what is good, inasmuch as it has its pattern in God Who is. But by what is not I mean what is evil, in so far as it consists in a false imagination in the thoughts of men. For though the body has eyes so as to see Creation, and by its entirely harmonious construction to recognise the Creator; and ears to listen to the divine oracles and the laws of God; and hands both to perform works of necessity and to raise to God in prayer; yet the soul, departing from the contemplation of what is good and from moving in its sphere, wanders away and moves toward its contraries. 5. Then seeing, as I said before, and abusing her power, she has per- ceived that she can move the members of the body also in an opposite way: and so, instead of beholding the Creation, she turns the eye to lusts, shewing that she has this power too; and thinking that by the mere fact of moving she is maintaining her own dignity, and is doing no sin in doing as she pleases; not knowing that she is made not merely to move, but to move in the right direction. For this is why an apostolic utterance assures us “ All things are lawful, but not all things are expedient 9.”
§ 5. Evil, then, consists essentially in the choice of what ts lower in preference to what ts higher.
But the audacity of men, having regard not to what is expedient and becoming, but to what is possible for it, began to do the contrary; whence, moving their hands to the contrary, it made them commit murder, and led away their hearing to disobedience, and their other members to adultery instead of to lawful pro- GENTES.
GENTES.
creation; and the tongue, instead of right speaking, to slander and insult and perjury; the hands again, to stealing and striking fellow- men; and the sense of smell to many sorts of lascivious odours; the feet, to be swift to shed blood, and the belly to drunkenness and insatiable gluttony’. 2. All of which things are a vice and sin of the soul: neither is there any cause of them at all, but only the rejection of better things. For just as if a charioteer?, having mounted his chariot on the race-course, were to pay no attention to the goal, toward which he should be driving, but, ignoring this, simply were to drive the horse as he could, or in other words as he would, and often drive against those he met, and often down steep places, rushing wherever he im- pelled himself by the speed of the team, think- ing that thus running he has not missed the goal,—for he regards the running only, and does not see that he has passed wide of the goal;—so the soul too, turning from the way toward God, and driving the members of the body beyond what is proper, or rather, driven herself along with them by her own doing, sins and makes mischief for herself, not seeing that she has strayed from the way, and has swerved from the goal of truth, to which the Christ- bearing man, the blessed Paul, was looking when he said, ‘‘I press on toward the goal unto the prize of the high calling of Christ Jesus 3:” so that the holy man, making the good his mark, never did what was evil.
§ 6. False views of the nature of evil: vtz., that evil ts something in the nature of things, and has substantive existence. (a) Heathen thinkers: (evil resides in matter). Thetr refu- tation. (b) Heretical teachers: (Dualism). Refutation from Scripture.
Now certain of the Greeks, having erred from the right way, and not having known Christ, have ascribed to evil a substantive and independent existence. In this they make a double mistake: either in denying the Creator to be maker of all things, if evil had an inde- pendent subsistence and being of its own; or again, if they mean that He is maker of all things, they will of necessity admit Him to be maker of evil also. For evil, according to them, is included among existing things. 2. But this must appear paradoxical and impossible. For evil does not come from good, nor is it in, or the result of, good, since in that case it would not be good, being mixed in its nature or a cause of evil. 3. But the sectaries, who have fallen away from the teaching of the © Rom. iii. to foll.
3 Phil. iii, 14.
AGAINST THE HEATHEN. 7 Church, and made shipwreck concerning the Faith4, they also wrongly think that evil has a substantive existence. But they arbitrarily imagine another god besides the true One, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, and that he is the unmade producer of evil and the head of wickedness, who is also artificer of Creation. But these men one can easily refute, not only from the divine Scriptures, but also from the human understanding itself, the very source of these their insane imaginations. 4. To begin with, our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ says in His own gospels confirming the words of Moses: “The Lord God is one;” and “I thank thee, Father, Lord of heaven and earths.”
unlike. Accordingly that which divides them will evidently be of a third nature, and itself God. But of what nature could this third something be? good or evil? It will be im- possible to determine, for it cannot be of the nature of both. 3. This conceit of theirs, then, being evidently rotten, the truth of the Church’s theology must be manifest: that evil has not from the beginning been with God or in God, nor has any substantive existence; but that men, in default of the vision of good, began to devise and imagine for themselves what was not, after their own pleasure. 4. For as if a man, when the sun is shining, and the whole earth illumined by his light, were to shut fast But if God is one, and at the same time Lord|his eyes and imagine darkness where no dark- of heaven and earth, how could there be|ness exists, and then walk wandering as if in another God beside Him? or what room will| darkness, often falling and going down steep there be fer the God whom they suppose, if the | places, thinking it was dark and not light,—for, one true God fills all things in the compass of | imagining that he sees, he does not see at all; heaven and earth? or how could there be|—so, too, the soul of man, shutting fast her another creator of that, whereof, according to|eyes, by which she is able to see God, has the Saviour’s utterance, the God and Father of | imagined evil for herself, and moving therein, Christ is Himself Lord. 5. Unless indeed|knows not that, thinking she is doing some- they would say that it were, so to speak, in|thing, she is doing nothing. For she is imag- an equipoise, and the evil god capable of|ining what is not, nor.is»she abiding in her getting the better of the good God. But if| original nature; but what she is is evidently the they say this, see to what a pitch of impiety | product of her own disorder. 5. For she is they descend. For when powers are equal, the | made to see God, and to be enlightened by superior and better cannot be discovered. For| Him; but of her own accord in God’s stead if the one exist even if the other will it not, |she has sought corruptible things and darkness, both are equally strong and equally weak:|as the Spirit says somewhere in writing, “God equally, because the very existence of either is} made man upright, but they have sought out a defeat of the other’s will: weak, because what |many inventions®.” Thus it has been then happens is counter to their wills: for while the | that men from the first discovered and contrived good God exists in spite of the evil one, the|and imagined evil for themselves. But it is evil god exists equally in spite of the good. now time to say how they came down to the : t madness of idolatry, that you may know that $7. Refutation of dualism from reason. Impos-|\the invention of idols is wholly due, not to sibility of two Gods. The truth as to evil 15} good but to evil, But what has its origin in that which the Church teaches: that tt origin-| evi] can never be pronounced good in any ates, and resides, in the perverted choice of the point,—being evil altogether. darkened soul. More especially, they are exposed to the following reply. If visible things are the work of the evil god, what is the work of § 8. The origin of idolatry ts similar. The soul, materialised by forgetting God, and engrossed in earthly things, makes them into gods. The the good God? for nothing is to be seen except the work of the Artificer. Or what evidence is there that the good God exists race of men descends into a hopeless depth of delusion and superstition. Now the soul of mankind, not satisfied with at all, if there are no works of His by| the devising of evil, began by degrees to venture which He may be known? for by his works | upon what is worse still. For having experience the artificer is known. 2. Or how could| of diversities of pleasures, and girt about with two principles exist, contrary one to another:| oblivion of things divine; being pleased more- or what is it that divides them, for them to|over and having in view the passions of the exist apart? For it is impossible for them to|body, and nothing but things present and exist together, because they are mutually de-| opinions about them, ceased to think that any- structive. But neither can the one be included | thing existed beyond what is seen, or that any- in the other, their nature being unmixed and| thing was good save things temporal and bodily; 8 CONTRA GENTES.
so turning away and forgetting that she was in the image of the good God, she no longer, by the power which is in her, sees God the Word after whose likeness she is made; but having departed from herself, imagines and feigns what isnot. 2. For hiding, by the complications of bodily lusts, the mirror which, as it were, is in her, by which alone she had the power of seeing the Image of the Father, she no longer sees what a soul ought to behold, but is carried about by everything, and only sees the things which come under the senses. Hence, weighted with all fleshly desire, and distracted among the impressions of these things, she imagines that the God Whom her understanding has forgotten is to be found in bodily and sensible things, giving; to things seen the name of God, and glorifying only those things which she desires and which are pleasant to her eyes. 3. Accord- ingly, evil is the cause which brings idolatry in its train; for men, having learned to contrive evil, which is no reality in itself, in like manner feigned: for themselves as gods beings that had no real existence. Just, then, as though a man had plunged into the deep, and no longer saw the light, nor what appears by light, because his eyes are turned downwards, and the water is all above him; and, perceiving only the things in the deep, thinks that nothing exists beside them, but that the things he sees are the only true realities; so the men of former time, having lost their reason, and plunged into the lusts and imaginations of carnal things, and forgotten the knowledge and glory of God, their reasoning being dull, or rather following unreason, made gods for themselves of things seen, glorifying the creature rather than the Creator7, and deifying the works rather than the Master, God, their Cause and Artificer. 4. But just as, ac- cording to the above simile, men who plunge into the deep, the deeper they go down, ad- vance into darker and deeper places, so it is with mankind. For they did not keep to idolatry in a simple form, nor did they abide in that with which they began; but the longer they went on in their first condition, the more new superstitions they invented: and, not satiated with the first evils, they again filled themselves with others, advancing further in utter shameful- ness, and surpassing themselves in impiety. But to this the divine Scripture testifies when it says, “When the wicked cometh unto the depth of evils, he despiseth 8,” $9. The various developments of idolatry: worship Of the heavenly bodies, the elements, natural objects, fabulous creatures, personified lusts, men living and dead. The case of Antinous, and of the deified Emperors. i For now the understanding of mankind Jew,’ is a rich mine of illustration, leaped asunder from God; and going lower in their ideas and imaginations, they gave the honour due to God first to the heaven and the sun and moon and the stars, thinking them to be not only gods, but also the causes of the other gods lower than themselves?. Then, going yet lower in their dark imaginations, they gave the name of gods to the upper zther and the air and the things in the air. Next, advancing further in evil, they came to celebrate as gods the elements and the principles of which bodies are composed, heat and cold and dryness and wetness. 2. But just as they who have fallen flat crcep in the slime like land-snails, so the most impious of mankind, having fallen lower and lower from the idea of God, then set up as gods men, and the forms of men, some still living, others even after their death. More- over, counselling and imagining worse things still, they transferred the divine and super- natural name of God at last even to stones and stocks, and creeping things both of land and water, and irrational wild beasts, awarding to them every divine honour, and turning from the true and only real God, the Father of Christ. 3. Butwould that even there the audacity of these foolish men had stopped short, and that they had not gone further yet in impious self-confusion. For to such a depth have some fallen in their understanding, to such darkness of mind, that they have even devised for themselves, and made gods of things that have no existence at all, nor any place among things created. For mixing up the rational with the irrational, and combining things unlike in nature, they worship the result as gods, such as the dog-headed and snake-headed and ass-headed gods among the Egyptians, and the ram-headed Ammon among the Libyans. While others, dividing apart the portions of men’s bodies, head, shoulder, hand, and foot, have set up each as gods and deified them, as though their religion were not satisfied with the whole body in its integrity. 4. But others, straining impiety to the utmost, have deified the motive of the invention of these things and of their own wickedness, namely, pleasure and lust, and worship them, such as their Eros, and the Aphrodite at Paphos. While some of them, as if vying with them in depravation, have ventured to erect into gods their rulers or even their sons, either out of honour for their princes, or from fear of their tyranny, such as the Cretan Zeus, of such renown among them, and the Arcadian Hermes; and among the Indians Dionysus, among the Egyp- tians Isis and Osiris and Horus, and in our own 9 For the following chapters Déllinger, ‘The Gentile and the i i i ‘he recently published ‘Manual of the History of Religions,’ by Prof. Chantepie de Ja Saussaye (Eng. ‘Tra. pub, by Longmans), summarises the best results of recent research.
AGAINST FHESHEATHEN.
9 time Antinous, favourite of Hadrian, Emperor of the Romans, whom, although men know he was a mere man, and not a respectable man, but on the contrary, full of licentiousness, yet they worship for fear of him that enjoined it. For Hadrian having come to sojourn in the land of Egypt, when Antinous the minister of his pleasure died, ordered him to be worshipped; being indeed himself in love with the youth even atter his death, but for all that offering a con- vincing exposure of himself, and a proof against all idolatry, that it was discovered among men for no other reason than by reason of the lust of them that imagined it. According as thewisdom, of God testifies beforehand when it says, “ The devising of idols was the beginning of fornica- tion.” 5. And do not wonder, nor think what we are saying hard to believe, inasmuch as it is not long since, even if it be not still the case, that the Roman Senate vote to those emperors who have ever ruled them from the beginning, either all of them, or such as they wish and decide, a place among the gods, and decree them to be worshipped?. For those to whom they are hostile, they treat as enemies and call men, admitting their real nature, while those who are popular with them they order to be worshipped on account of their virtue, as though they had it in their own power to make gods, though they are themselves men, and do not profess to be other than mortal. 6. Whereas if they are to make gods, they ought to be themselves gods; for that which makes must needs be better than that which it makes, and he that judges is of necessity in authority over him that is judged, while he that gives, at any rate that which he has, confers a favour, just as, of course, every king, in giving as a favour what he has to give, is greater and in a higher posi- tion than those who receive. If then they decree whomsoever they please to be gods, they ought first to be gods themselves. But the strange thing is this, that they themselves, by dying as men, expose the falsehood of their own vote concerning those deified by them.
§ $10. Similar human origin of the Greek gods, by decree of Theseus. The process by which mortals become deified.
But this custom is not a new one, nor did it begin from the Roman Senate: on the contrary, it had existed previously from of old, and was formerly practised for the devising of idols. For the gods renowned from of old among the Greeks, Zeus, Poseidon, Apollo, Hepheestus, Hermes, and, among females, Hera and Demeter and Athena and Artemis, were de- creed the title of gods by the order of Theseus, i Wisd. xiv. 12.; 2 Constantine was the last Emperor officially deified (D.C.B., I. 649), but even Theodosius is raised to heaven by the courtly Clau- dian Cari. de 111 Cons. Honor. 163 sqq.; cf. Gwatkin, p. 54, note.
of whom Greek history tells us 3; and so the men who pass such decrees die like men and are mourned for, while those in whose favour they are passed are worshipped as _ gods. What a height of inconsistency and madness! knowing who passed the decree, they pay greater honour to those who are the subjects of it. 2. And would that their idolatrous mad- ness had stopped short at males, and that they had not brought down the title of deity to females. For even women, whom it is not safe to admit to deliberation about public affairs, they worship and serve with the honour due to God, such as those enjoined by Theseus as above stated, and among the Egyptians ¢ Isis and the Maid and the Younger one5, and among others Aphrodite. For the names of the others I do not consider it modest even to mention, full as they are of all kind of gro- tesqueness. 3. For many, not only in ancient times but in our own also, having lost their beloved ones, brothers and kinsfolk and wives; and many women who had lost their husbands, all of whom nature proved to be mortal men, made representations of them and devised sacrifices, and consecrated them; while later ages, moved by the figure and the brilliancy of the artist, worshipped them as_ gods, thus fallmg into inconsistency with nature ©. For whereas their parents had mourned for them, not regarding them as gods (for had they known them to be gods they would not have lamented them as if they had perished; for this was why they represented them in an image, namely, because they not only did not think them gods, but did not believe them to exist at all, and in order that the sight of their form in the image might con- sole them for their being no more), yet the foolish people pray to them as gods and invest them with the honour of the true God. 4. For example, in Egypt, even to this day, the death- dirge is celebrated for Osiris and Horus and Typho and the others. And the caldrons7? at Dodona, and the Corybantes in Crete, prove that Zeus is no god but a man, and a man born of a cannibal father. And, strange to say, even Plato, the sage admired among the Greeks, with all his vaunted understanding about God, goes down with Socrates to 3 This is probably a reference to the tepa avaypapy of Eu- hemerus, which Christian apologists commonly took as genuine history: see § 12, note 1.
4 Cf. de la Saussaye,? 51. Isis, as goddess of the earth, cor- responded to Demeter; as goddess of the dead, to the Képy (Persephone).
5 The Newrépa is a puzzle. The most likely suggestion is that of Montfaucon, who refers it to Cleopatra, who véa "Iovs éxpywarece (Plut. Vzt. Anton.). He cites also a coin of M. Antony, on which Cleopatra is figured as 6éa vewrépa. Several such are given by Vaillant, de Numism. Cleopatr. 189. She was not the first of her name to adopt this style, see Head Hist. Num. pp. 716, 717. The text might be rendered ‘Isis, do¢# the Maid and the Younger.’ © Cf. Wisd. xiv. 12 sqq., quoted below.
7 Cf. Greg. Naz. Or. v. 32, p. 168 c, and Dict. Gs and R 10 CONTRA GENTES.
Peirzeus* to worship Artemis, a figment of /man’s art.
S11. Zhe deeds of heathen deities, and particu- larly of Zeus.
But of these and such like inventions of idolatrous madness, Scripture taught us before- hand long ago, when it said9, “‘ The devising of idols was the beginning of fornication, and the invention of them, the corruption of life. For neither were they from the beginning, neither shall they be for ever. For the vain- glory of men they entered into the world, and therefore shall they come shortly to an end. For a father afflicted with untimely mourning when he hath made an image of his child soon taken away, now honoured him as a god which was then a dead man, and de- livered to those that were under him ceremo- nies and sacrifices. Thus in process of time an ungodly custom grown strong was kept as a law. And graven images were worshipped by the commands of kings. Whom men could not honour in presence because they dwelt afar off, they took the counterfeit of his visage from afar, and made an express image of the king whom they honoured, to the end that by this their forwardness they might flatter him that was absent as if he were present. Also the singular diligence of the artificer did help to set forward the ignorant to more superstition: for he, peradventure, willing to please one in authority, forced all his skill to make the resemblance of the best fashion: and so the multitude, allured by the grace of the work, took him now for a god, which a little before was but honoured as a man: and this was an occasion to deceive the world, for men serving either calamity or tyranny, did ascribe unto stones and stocks the incommunicable Name.” 2. The begin- ning and devising of the invention of idols having been, as Scripture witnesses, of such sort, it is now time to shew thee the refutation of it by proofs derived not so much from with- out as from these men’s own opinions about the idols. For to begin at the lowest point, if one were to take the actions of them they call gods, one would find that they were not only no gods, but had been even of men the most contemptible. For what a thing it is to see the loves and licentious actions of Zeus in the poets! What a thing to hear of him, on the one hand carrying off Ganymede and committing stealthy adulteries, on the other in panic and alarm lest the walls of the Trojans should be destroyed against his intentions! What a thing to see him in grief at the death of his son & Plat. Rep. I. ad init. 9 Wisd. xiv, 12 sqq.
Sarpedon, and wishing to succour him without being able to do so, and, when plotted against by the other so-called gods, namely, Athena and Hera and Poseidon, succoured by Thetis, a woman, and by Aégaeon of the hundred hands, and overcome by pleasures, a slave to women, and for their sakes running adventures in dis- guises consisting of brute beasts and creeping things and birds; and again, in hiding on account of his father’s designs upon him, or Cronos bound by him, or him again mutilating his father! Why, is it fitting to regard as a god one who has perpetrated such deeds, and who stands accused of things which not even the public laws of the Romans allow those to do who are merely men?
§ 12. Other shameful actions ascribed to heathen deities. All prove that they are but men of former times, and not even good men.