16 CONTRA GENTES.
but rather of earthly bodies. 3. For while God is incorporeal and toet rane and immortal, needing nothing for any purpose, these are both corruptible, and are shapes of bodies, and need bodily ministrations, as we said before '.
For often we see images which have grown old renewed, and those which time, or rain, or some or other of the animals of the earth have spoiled, restored. In which connexion one must con- demn their folly, in that they proclaim as gods things of which they themselves are the makers, and themselves ask salvation of objects which they themselves adorn with their arts to pre- serve them from corruption, and beg that their own wants may be supplied by beings which they well know need attention from them- selves, and are not ashamed to call lords of heaven and all the earth creatures whom they shut up in small chambers.
§ 23. Zhe variety of idolatrous cults proves that they are false.
But not only from these considerations may one appreciate their godlessness, but also from their discordant opinions about the idols them- selves. For if they be gods according to their assertion and their speculations, to which of them is one to give allegiance, and which of them is one to judge to be the higher, so as either to worship God with confidence, or as they say to recognise the Deity by them without ambiguity? For not the same beings are called gods among all; on the contrary, for every nation almost there is a separate god imagined. And there are cases of a single district and a single town being at internal discord about the superstition of their idols. 2. The Phceni- cians, for example, do not know those who are called gods among the Egyptians, nor do the Egyptians worship the same idols as the Phoenicians have. And while the Scythians reject the gods of the Persians, the Persians reject those of the Syrians. But the Pelasgians also repudiate the gods in Thrace, while the Thracians know not those of Thebes. The Indians moreover differ from the Arabs, the Arabs from the Ethiopians, and the Ethiopians from the Arabs in their idols. And the Syrians worship not the idols of the Cilicians, while the Cappadocian nation call gods beings different from these. And while the Bithynians have adopted others, the Armenians have imagined others again. And what need is there for me to multiply examples? The men on the con- tinent worship other gods than the islanders, while these latter serve other gods than those of the main lands. 3. And, in general, every city and village, not knowing the gods of its x Supra xiii. 3.
neighbours, prefers its own, and deems that these alone are gods. For concerning the abominations in Egypt there is no need even to speak, as they are before the eyes of all: how the cities have religions which are opposite and incompatible, and neighbours always make a point of worshipping the opposite of those next to them?: so much so that the crocodile, prayed to by some, is held in abomination by their neighbours, while the lion, worshipped as a god by others, their neighbours, so far from worshipping, slay, if they find it, as a wild beast; and the fish, consecrated by some people, is used as food in another place. And thus arise fights and riots and frequent occasions of blood- shed, and every indulgence of the passions among them. 4. And strange to say, accord- ing to the statement of historians, the very Pelasgians, who learned from the Egyptians the names of the gods, do not know the gods of Egypt, but worship others instead. And, speaking generally, all the nations that are in- fatuated with idols have different opinions and religions, and consistency is not to be met with in any one case. Nor is this surprising. 5. For having fallen from the contemplation of the one God, they have come down to many and diverse objects; and having turned from’ the Word of the Father, Christ the Saviour of all, they naturally have their understandin g wander. ing in many directions. And just as men who have turned from the sun and are come into dark places go round by many pathless ways, and see not those who are present, while they imagine those to be there who are not, and seeing see not; so they that have turned from God and whose soul is darkened, have their mind in a roving state, and like men who are drunk and cannot see, imagine what is not true.
The so-called gods of one place are used as victims in another.
This, then, is no slight proof of their real godlessness. For, the gods for every city and country being many and various, and the one destroying the god of the other, the whole of them are destroyed by all. For those who are considered gods by some are offered as sacri- fices and drink-offerings to the so-called gods of others, and the victims of some are con- versely the gods of others. So the Egyptians serve the ox, and Apis, a calf, and others sacri- 2 Hdt. ii. 695 cf. Juv. Sat. xv. 36, ‘numina vicinorum Odit uterque locus.’
This is one of the few places where Athanasius has any Egyptian ‘local colour’ (cf. supra g and xo). M. Fialon is certainly too imaginative (p, 86, contradicted p. 283), when he sees in the contra Gentes an appreciation of the higher religious principles which the modern science (‘toute Francaise ’) of Egyptology has enabled us ae read behind the grotesque features of popular Egyptian poly eism, AGAINST PEE? HEATHEN.
fice these animals to Zeus. For even if they do not sacrifice the very animals the others have consecrated, yet by sacrificing their fellows they seem to offer the same. The Libyans have for god a sheep which they call Ammon, and in other nations this animal is slain as a victim to many gods. 2. The Indians worship Diony- sus, using the name as a symbol for wine, and others pour out wine as an offering to the other gods. Others honour rivers and springs, and above all the Egyptians pay especial honour to water, calling them gods. And yet others, and even the Egyptians who worship the waters, use them to wash off the dirt from others and from themselves, and ignominiously throw away what is used. While nearly the whole of the Egyp- tian system of idols consists of what are victims to the gods of other nations, so that they are scorned even by those others for deifying what are not gods, bui, both with others and even among themselves, propitiatory offerings and victims.
§ 25. Auman sacrifice. Its absurdity. Its prevalence. Its calamitous results.
But some have been led by this time to such a pitch of irreligion and folly as to slay and to offer in sacrifice to their false gods even actual men, whose figures and forms the gods are. Nor do they see, wretched men, that the victims they are slaying are the patterns of the gods they make and worship, and to whom they are offering the men. For they are offering, one may say, equals to equals, or rather, the higher to the lower; for they are offering living crea- tures to dead, and rational beings to things without motion. 2. For the Scythians who are called Taurians offer in sacrifice to their Virgin, as they call her, survivors from wrecks, and such Greeks as they catch, going thus far in impiety against men of their own race, and thus ex- posing the savagery of their gods, in that those whom Providence has rescued from danger and from the sea, they slay, almost fighting against Providence; because they frustrate the kindness of Providence by their own brutal character. But others, when they are returned victorious from war, thereupon dividing their prisoners into hundreds, and taking a man from each, sacrifice to Ares the man they have picked out from each hundred. 3. Noris it only Scythians who commit these abominations on account of the ferocity natural to them as barbarians: on the contrary, this deed is a special result of the wickedness connected with idols and false gods. For the Egyptians used formerly to offer victims of this kind to Hera, and the Phoenicians and Cretans used to propitiate Cronos in their sacri- fices of children. And even the ancient Romans used to worship Jupiter Latiarius, as he was VOL. IV.
17 called, with human sacrifices, and some in one way, some in another, but all * without exception committed and incurred the pollution: they incurred it by the mere perpetration of the murderous deeds, while they polluted their own temples by filling them with the smoke of such sacrifices. 4. This then was the ready source of numerous evils to mankind. For seeing that their false gods were pleased with these things, they forthwith imitated their gods with like misdoings, thinking that the imitation of su- perior beings, as they considered them, was a credit to themselves. Hence mankind was thinned by murders of grown men and children, and by licence of all kinds. For nearly every city is full of licentiousness of all kinds, the result of the savage character of its gods; nor is there one of sober life in the idols’ temples? save only he whose licentiousness is witnessed to by them all 3.
§ 26. Zhe moral corruptions of Paganism all admittedly originated with the gods.
Women, for example, used to sit out in old days in the temples of Phcenicia, consecrating to the gods there the hire of their bodies, thinking they propitiated their goddess by for- nication, and that they would procure her favour by this. While men, denying their nature, and no longer wishing to be males, put on the guise of women, under the idea that they are thus gratifying and honouring the Mother of their so-called gods. But all live along with the basest, and vie with the worst among them- selves, and as Paul said, the holy minister of Christ 4: ‘For their women changed the natural use into that which is against nature: and like- wise also the men, leaving the natural use of the woman, burned in their lust one toward another, men with men working unseemliness.” 2. But acting in this and in like ways, they admit and prove that the life of their so-called gods was of the same kind. For from Zeus they have learned corruption of youth and adul- tery, from Aphrodite fornication, from Rhea licentiousness, from Ares murders, and from other gods other like things, which the laws punish and from which every sober man turns away. Does it then remain fit to consider them gods who do such things, instead of reckon- ing them, for the licentiousness of their ways, more irrational than the brutes? Is it fit to consider their worshippers human beings, inx On human sacrifice see Saussaye, § 17, and Robertson Smith, Religion of the Sentites, pp. 343 S9Y-s especially p. 347, note 1, for references to examples near the time of this treatise.
2 Reading etéwAecors e conj. Marr. k:: 3 i.e. among the licentious worshippers the lifeless image 1s the only one free from vice, although the worshippers credit him with divine attributes, and therefore, according to their super- stition, with a licentious life.
18 CONTRA stead of pitying them as more irrational than the brutes, and more soul-less than inanimate things? For had they considered the intel- lectual part of their soul they would not have plunged headlong into these things, nor have denied the true God, the Father of Christ.
824. The refutation of popular Paganism being taken as conclusive, we come to the higher form of nature-worship. How Nature witnesses to God by the mutual dependence of all her parts, which forbid us to think of any one of them as the supreme God. This shewn at length.
But perhaps those who have advanced _ be- yond these things, and who stand in awe of Creation, being put to shame by these expo- sures of abominations, will join in repudiating what is readily condemned and refuted on all hands, but will think that they have a well- grounded and unanswerable opinion, namely, the worship of the universe and of the parts of the universe. 2. For they will boast that they worship and serve, not mere stocks and stones and forms of men and irrational birds and creeping things and beasts, but the sun and moon and all the heavenly universe, and the earth again, and the entire realm of water: and they will say that none can shew that these at any rate are not of divine nature, since it is evident to all, that they lack neither life nor reason, but transcend even the nature of mankind, inasmuch as the one inhabit the heavens, the other the earth. 3. It is worth while then to look into and examine these points also; for here, too, our argument will find that its proof against them holds true. But before we look, or begin our demonstration, it suffices that Creation almost raises its voice against them, and points to God as its Maker and Artificer, Who reigns over Creation and over all things, even the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ; Whom the would-be philosophers turn from to worship and deify the Creation which proceeded from Him, which yet itself worships and confesses the Lord Whom they deny on its account.
4. For if men are thus awestruck at the parts of Creation and think that they are gods, they might well be rebuked by the mutual depend- ence of those parts; which moreover makes known, and witnesses to, the Father of the Word, Who is the Lord and Maker of these parts also, by the unbroken law of their obedi- ence to Him, as the divine law also says: ‘* The heavens declare the glory of God, and the firmament sheweth His handiworks.” 5. But the proof of all this is not obscure, but is clear enough in all conscience to those the eyes of whose understanding are not wholly disabled SS. leak, GENTES.
For if a man take the parts of Creation separ- ately, and consider each by itself,—as for ex- ample the sun by itself alone, and the moon apart, and again earth and air, and heat and cold, and the essence of wet and of dry, separat- ing them from their mutual conjunction,—he will certainly find that not one is sufficient for itself, but all are in need of one another’s assistance, and subsist by their mutual help. For the Sun is carried round along with, and is contained in, the whole heaven, and can never go beyond his own orbit, while the moon and other stars testify to the assistance given them by the Sun: while the earth again evidently does not yield her crops without rains, which in their turn would not descend to earth without the. assist- ance of the clouds; but not even would the clouds ever appear of themselves and subsist, without the air. And the air is warmed by the upper air, but illuminated and made bright by the sun, not by itself. 6. And wells, again, and rivers will never exist without the earth; but the earth is not supported upon itself, but is set upon the realm of the waters, while this again is kept in its place, being bound fast at the centre of the universe. And the sea, and the great ocean that flows outside round the whole earth, is moved and borne by winds wherever the force of the winds dashes it. And the winds in their turn originate, not in themselves, but according to those who have written on the subject, in the air, from the burning heat and high temperature of the upper as compared with the lower air, and blow everywhere through the latter. 7. For as to the four elements of which the nature of bodies is composed, heat, that is, and cold, wet and dry, who is so per- verted in his understanding as not to know that these things exist indeed in combination, but if separated and taken alone they tend to destroy even one another according to the prevailing power of the more abundant element? For heat is destroyed by cold if it be present in greater quantity, and cold again is put away by the power of heat, and what is dry, again, is moistened by wet, and the latter dried by the former.
§ 28. But neither can the cosmic organism be God. Lor that would make God consist of dissimilar parts, and subject Him to posstble dissolution.
How then can these things be gods, seeing that they need one another’s assistance? Or how is it proper to ask anything of them when they too ask help for themselves one from another? For if it is an admitted truth about God that He stands in need of nothing, but is self-sufficient and self-contained, and that in Him all things have their being, and that He ;ministers to all rather than they to Him, how AGAINST THE HEATHEN.
is it right to proclaim as gods the sun and moon and other parts of creation, which are of no such kind, but which even stand in need of one another’s help? 2. But, perhaps, if divided and taken by themselves, our opponents them- selves will admit that they are dependent, the demonstration being an ocular one. But they will combine all together, as constituting a single body, and will say that the whole is God. For the whole once put together, they will no longer need external help, but the whole will be suffi- cient for itself and independent in all respects; so at least the would-be philosophers will tell us, only to be refuted here once more. 3. Now this argument, not one whit less than those pre- viously dealt with, will demonstrate their im- piety coupled with great ignorance. For if the combination of the parts makes up the whole, and the whole is combined out of the parts, then the whole consists of the parts, and each of them is a portion of the whole. But this is very far removed from the conception of God. For God is a whole and not a number of parts, and does not consist of diverse ele- ments, but is Himself the Maker of the system of the universe. For see what impiety they utter against the Deity when they say this. For if He consists of parts, certainly it will follow that He is unlike Himself, and made up of unlike parts. For if He is sun, He is not moon, and if He is moon, He is not earth, and if He is earth, He cannot be sea: and so on, taking the parts one by one, one may discover the absurdity of this theory of theirs. 4. But the following point, drawn from the observation of our human body, is enough to refute them. For just as the eye is not the sense of hearing, nor is the latter a hand: nor is the belly the breast, nor again is the neck a foot, but each of these has its own function, and a single body is composed of these distinct parts,— having its parts combined for use, but destined to be divided in course of time when nature, that brought them together, shall divide them at the will of God, Who so ordered it;—thus (but may He that is above pardon the argu- ment®), if they combine the parts of creation into one body and proclaim it God, it follows, firstly, that He is unlike Himself, as shewn above; secondly, that He is destined to be divided again, in accordance with the natural tendency of the parts to separation.
$29. The balance of powers in Nature shews thal it ts not God, either collectively, or in parts.
And in yet another way one may refute their godlessness by the light of truth. For if God is incorporeal and invisible and intangible by nature, how do they imagine God to be a body, 6 Cf. Orat. i. 25, note 2. Cc 1g and worship with divine honour things which we both see with our eyes and touch with our hands? 2. And again, if what is said of God hold true, namely, that He is almighty, and that while nothing has power over Him, He has power and rule over all, how can they who deify creation fail to see that it does not satisfy this definition of God? For when the sun is under the earth, the earth’s shadow makes his light invisible, while by day the sun hides the moon by the brilliancy of his light. And hail ofttimes injures the fruits of the earth, while fire is put out if an overflow of water take place. And spring makes winter give place, while summer will not suffer spring to outstay its proper limits, and it in its turn is forbidden by autumn to outstep its own season. 3. If then they were gods, they ought not to be de- feated and obscured by one another, but always to co-exist, and to discharge their respective functions simultaneously. Both by night and by day the sun and the moon and the rest of the band of stars ought to shine equally together, and give their light to all, so that all things might be illumined by them. Spring and summer and autumn and winter ought to go on without alteration, and together. The sea ought to mingle with the springs, and fur- nish their drink to man in common. Calms and windy blasts ought to take place at the same time. Fire and water together ought to furnish the same service to man. For no one would take any hurt from them, if they are gods, as our opponents say, and do nothing for hurt, but rather all things for good. 4. But if none of these things are possible, because of their mutual incompatibility, how does it remain possible to give to these things, mutually incom. patible and at strife, and unable to combine, the name of gods, or to worship them with the honours due to God? How could things natur- ally discordant give peace to others for their prayers, and become to them authors of con- cord? It is not then likely that the sun or the moon, or any other part of creation, still less statues in stone, gold, or other material, or the Zeus, Apollo, and the rest, who are the subject of the poet’s fables, are true gods: this our ar- gument has shewn. But some of these are parts of creation, others have no life, others have been mere mortal men. ‘Therefore their wor- ship and deification is no part of religion, but the bringing in of godlessness and of all im- piety, and a sign of a wide departure from the knowledge of the one true God, namely the Father of Christ. 5. Since then this is thus proved, and the idolatry of the Greeks is shewn to be full of all ungodliness, and that its intro- duction has been not for the good, but for the lruin, of human life;—-come now, as our argu- 9 “ 20 CONTRA ment promised at the outset, let us, after having confuted error, travel the way of truth, and behold the Leader and Artificer of the Universe, the Word of the Father, in order that through Him we may apprehend the Father, and that the Greeks may know how far they have separ- | ated themselves from the truth.
EAR ell.
$30. Zhe soul of man, being intellectual, can know God of ttself, if it be true to tts own nature.
The tenets we have been speaking of have been proved to be nothing more than a false guide for life; but the way of truth will aim at reaching the real and true God. But for its knowledge and accurate comprehension, there is need of none other save of ourselves. Neither, as God Himself is above all, is the road to Him afar off or outside ourselves, but it is in us, and it is possible to find it from ourselves, in the first instance, as Moses also taught, when he said7: “The word” of faith “is within thy heart.” Which very thing the Saviour declared and confirmed, when He said: “‘ The kingdom of God is within you®.” 2. For having in our- selves faith, and the kingdom of God, we shall be able quickly to see and perceive the King of the Universe, the saving Word of the Father. And let not the Greeks, who worship idols, make excuses, nor let any one else simply de- ceive himself, professing to have no such road, and therefore finding a pretext for his godless- ness. 3. For we all have set foot upon it, and have it, even if not all are willing to travel by it, but rather to swerve from it and go wrong, because of the pleasures of life which attract them from without. And if one were to ask, what road is this? I say that it is the soul of each one of us, and the intelligence which re- sides there. For by it alone can God be con- templated and perceived. 4. Unless, as they have denied God, the,impious men will re- pudiate having a soul; which indeed is more plausible than the rest of what they say, for it is unlike men possessed of an intellect to deny God, its Maker and Artificer. It is necessary then, for the sake of the simple, to shew briefly that each one of mankind has a soul, and that soul rational; especially as certain of the sec- taries deny this also, thinking that man is nothing more than the visible form of the body. This point once proved, they will be furnished in their own persons with a clearer proof against the idols.
7 Deut. xxx. 14. 8 Luc. xvii. re.
GENTES.
§ 31. Proof of the existence of the rational soul. (1) Difference of man from the brutes. (2) Man’s power of objective thought. Thought ts to sense as the musician to hts instrument. The phenomena of dreams bear this out.
Firstly, then, the rational nature of the soul is strongly confirmed by its difference from 1r- rational creatures. For this is why common use gives them that name, because, namely, the race of mankind is rational. 2. Secondly, it is no ordinary proof, that man alone thinks of things external to himself, and reasons about things not actually present, and exercises reflec- tion, and chooses by judgment the better of alternative reasonings. For the irrational animals see only what is present, and are impelled solely by what meets their eye, even if the conse- quences to them are injurious, while man is not impelled toward what he sees merely, but judges by thought what he sees with his eyes. Often for example his impulses are mastered by reason- ing; and his reasoning is subject to after- reflection. And every one, if he be a friend of truth, perceives that the intelligence of mankind is distinct from the bodily senses. 3. Hence, because it is distinct, it acts as judge of the senses, and while they apprehend their objects, the intelligence distinguishes, recol- lects, and shews ther what is best. For the sole function of the eye is to see, of the ears to hear, of the mouth to taste, of the nostrils to apprehend smells, and of the hands to touch. But what one ought to see and hear, what one ought to touch, taste and smell, is a question beyond the senses, and belonging to the soul and to the intelligence which resides in it. Why, the hand is able to take hold of a sword- blade, and the mouth to taste poison, but neither knows that these are injurious, unless the intellect decide. 4. And the case, to look at it by aid of a simile, is like that of a well-fashioned lyre in the hands of a skilled musician. For as the strings of the lyre have each its proper note, high, low, or intermediate, sharp or otherwise, yet their scale is indistin- guishable and their time not to be recognized, without the artist. For then only is the scale manifest and the time right, when he that is holding the lyre strikes the strings and touches each in tune. In like manner, the senses being disposed in the body like a lyre, when the skilled intelligence presides over them, then too the soul distinguishes and knows what it is doing and how it is acting. 5. But this alone is peculiar to mankind, and this is what is rational in the soul of mankind, by means of which it differs from the brutes, and shews that it is truly distinct from what is to be seen in the body. Often, for example, when the body AGAINST THE HEATHEN.
21 is lying on the earth, man imagines and con-| templates what is in the heavens. Often when the body is quiet 9, and at rest and asleep, man moves inwardly, and beholds what is outside himself, travelling to other countries, walking about, meeting his acquaintances, and often by these means divining and forecasting the ac- tions of the day. But to what can this be due save to the rational soul, in which man thinks of and perceives things beyond himself?
§ 32. (3) Zhe body cannot originate such phe- nomena; and in fact the action of the rational soul is seen tn its over-ruling the instincts of the bodily organs.
We add a further point to complete our demonstration for the benefit of those? who shamelessly take refuge in denial of reason. How is it, that whereas the body is mortal by nature, man reasons on the things of immor- tality, and often, where virtue demands it, courts death? Or how, since the body lasts but for a time, does man imagine of things eternal, so as to despise what lies before him, and desire what is beyond? The body could not have spontaneously such thoughts about itself, nor could it think upon what is external to itself. For it is mortal and lasts but for a time. And it follows that that which thinks what is opposed to the body and against its nature must be distinct in kind. What then can this be, save a rational and immortal soul? For it introduces the echo of higher things, not outside, but within the body, as the musician does in his lyre. 2. Or how again, the eye being naturally constituted to see and the ear to hear, do they turn from some objects and choose others? For who is it that turns away the eye from seeing? Or who shuts off the ear from hearing, its natural function? Or who often hinders the palate, to which it is natural to taste things, from its natural impulse? Or who withholds the hand from its natural ac- tivity of touching something, or turns aside the sense of smell from its normal exercise?? Who is it that thus acts against the natural instincts of the body? Or how does the body, turned from its natural course, turn to the counsels