Epitome of the Divine Institutes

Although the books of the Divine Institutes, which we wrote some time ago to shed light on truth and religion, so instruct and shape the minds of their readers that neither their length breeds weariness nor their fullness burdens, you still wish, brother Pentadius, that an epitome of them be made for you, so, I believe, that I may write something to you and your name may be honored in our work, such as it is. I will do what you ask, although it seems difficult to gather into one what has been unfolded in seven very large volumes. For the whole becomes both less full, when so great a multitude of matters must be squeezed into a narrow space, and less clear by the very brevity, especially since very many arguments and examples, in which the light of the proofs lies, must be passed over, because their abundance is so great that they alone could fill a book. When these are removed, what can seem … , what clear? But I will strive, as far as the matter allows, both to draw together what is spread out and to shorten what is long, yet in such a way that neither substance for fullness nor clarity for understanding may seem lacking in this work, in which truth is to be drawn out into the light.

The first question that arises is whether there is some providence which either made or rules the world. No one doubts that there is, since almost all the philosophers, except the school of Epicurus, have one voice and one opinion: that the world could not have been made without God as its maker, nor continue without a ruler. And so Epicurus is refuted not only by the most learned men but by the testimony and perceptions of all mortals. For who would doubt providence when he sees that the heavens and the earth are so ordered, so tempered, that all things fit most aptly not only for beauty and wonderful adornment but also for the use of human beings and the convenience of other living things? What stands by reason, therefore, cannot have begun without reason.

Since it is certain that there is providence, another question follows: whether God is one or many. This indeed has much ambiguity; for not only individuals disagree among themselves, but peoples and nations too. But whoever follows reason will understand that there can be only one lord and only one father. For if God, who founded all things, is both lord and father, he must be one, so that the same may be the head and the same the source of things. Nor can the sum of things hold together otherwise than if all are referred to one, if one holds the helm, if one guides the reins and rules all the members like one mind. If there are many kings in a swarm of bees, they will perish or be scattered, “while discord comes upon the kings with great commotion”; if there are several leaders in a herd, they will fight until one prevails; if many commanders in an army, neither can the soldier obey, since different things are commanded, nor can unity be kept among the commanders themselves, since each consults his own interest according to his character. So in this commonwealth of the world, unless there had been one governor, who was also the founder, either this whole mass would have been dissolved or it could not have been founded at all. Moreover, among many the whole cannot exist, since each holds his own offices and his own powers. None of them, therefore, could be called almighty, which is the true title of God, since he will be able to do only what is in himself, and will not even dare to touch what is in others. Vulcan will not claim water for himself, nor Neptune fire; nor Ceres skill in the arts, nor Minerva crops; nor Mercury arms, nor Mars the lyre; nor Jupiter medicine, nor Asclepius the thunderbolt: he would more easily be struck by it when thrown by another than hurl it himself. If, then, individual gods cannot do everything, they have less strength, less power; and he must be thought God who can do the whole, rather than one who can do the least part of the whole.

There is therefore one God, perfect, eternal, incorruptible, impassible, subject to the power of nothing, himself possessing all things, ruling all things, whom neither the human mind can estimate by perception nor mortal tongue declare. For he is higher and greater than can be grasped either by human thought or speech. In short, to say nothing of the prophets, the preachers of one God, the poets too and the philosophers and the seers bear witness to the one God. Orpheus speaks of a principal God who founded the heaven and the sun with the other stars, the earth, and the seas. Likewise our Maro calls the highest God now spirit, now mind, and says that it, as though poured into its members, moves the body of the whole world; likewise that God runs through the depths of heaven, the tracts of sea and lands, and that from him all living creatures draw life. Not even Ovid was ignorant that the world was set in order by God: he calls him sometimes the maker of things, sometimes the builder of the world.

But let us come to the philosophers, whose authority is held to be more certain than that of the poets. Plato asserts a monarchy, speaking of one God by whom the world was set in order and perfected with wonderful reason. Aristotle, his pupil, confesses that there is one mind which presides over the world. Antisthenes says that there is one natural God, the governor of the whole universe. It would take long to review what either Thales or Pythagoras and Anaximenes earlier, or afterwards the Stoics, Cleanthes and Chrysippus and Zeno, or among our own writers Seneca, following the Stoics, and Tully himself have proclaimed about the highest God, since all these have both tried to define what God is and affirmed that the world is ruled by him alone and that he is subject to no nature, since all nature has been generated by him. Hermes, who for his virtue and his knowledge of many arts deserved to be named Trismegistus, who surpassed the philosophers both in learning and in antiquity, and who is worshipped among the Egyptians as a god, asserting the majesty of the one God with infinite praises, calls him lord and father, and says that he is without a name, because he needs no proper name, since he is alone; and that he has no parents, because he exists from himself and through himself. The opening of his letter to his son runs thus: “To understand God is difficult, and to speak of him impossible, even for one to whom understanding is possible; for the perfect cannot be comprehended by the imperfect, nor the invisible by the visible.”

It remains to speak of the seers. Varro records that there were ten Sibyls: the first from the Persians, the second the Libyan, the third the Delphic, the fourth the Cimmerian, the fifth the Erythraean, the sixth the Samian, the seventh the Cumaean, the eighth the Hellespontine, the ninth the Phrygian, the tenth the Tiburtine, whose name is Albunea. Of all these, only the Cumaean's three books exist, which contain the fates of the Romans and are kept secret; but of almost all the others single books survive and are commonly held, yet they are titled under one name, “Sibylline,” except that the Erythraean, who is said to have lived in the times of the Trojan war, put her true name in her book; those of the others are mixed together. All these Sibyls I have spoken of, except the Cumaean, whom only the Board of Fifteen may read, testify that there is one God, the chief, the founder, the parent, begotten by none but sprung from himself, who has been from the ages and will be to the ages, and who therefore alone ought to be worshipped, alone feared, alone honored by all living beings. Since I could not shorten their testimonies, I have omitted them; if you want them, you must go back to the books themselves. Now let us pursue the rest.

These many and great testimonies, then, clearly teach that there is one government in the world, one power, whose origin cannot be conceived nor its might described. Foolish, then, are those who think that gods are born of intercourse, since sex itself and the union of bodies were given to mortals by God so that every kind may be preserved through the succession of offspring. But what need have immortals of either sex or succession, whom neither pleasure nor death touches? Those, then, who are thought to be gods, since it is agreed that they were both born like human beings and begot children, were certainly mortal; but they were believed to be gods because, being great and powerful kings, they deserved for the benefits they had conferred on mankind to obtain divine honors after death, and, temples and images being set up, their memory was retained and celebrated as if of immortals.

But although almost all nations are persuaded that there are gods, yet their deeds, which both poets and historians have handed down, declare that they were human beings. Who does not know in what times Hercules lived, since he both sailed among the Argonauts and, after Troy was stormed, killed Laomedon, the father of Priam, for his perjury? From that time a little more than fifteen hundred years are counted. He is not even said to have been honorably born, but begotten in adultery with Alcmena; and he himself, given over to his father's vices, never abstained from women or from males, and he traveled over the whole world not so much for glory as for lust, not so much to kill wild beasts as to beget children. And though he was unconquered, he was nevertheless triumphed over by one woman, Omphale; having handed over to her his club and lion's skin, he himself, dressed in woman's clothing and thrown down at the woman's feet, received wool to spin. The same man later, carried away by a fit of madness, slaughtered his little children and his wife Megara. Finally, having put on the robe of his wife Deianira, when he was dissolving with sores, unable to bear the pain he built himself a pyre on Mount Oeta and burned himself alive on it. So it follows that, even if he could have been believed a god for his valor, for these things he must be believed to have been a man.

Tarquitius records that Aesculapius was born of uncertain parents and for that reason exposed, picked up by hunters, nursed at a dog's teats, and given to Chiron to be trained. He lived at Epidaurus and, as Cicero says, was buried at Cynosura, having been killed by a stroke of lightning. And Apollo his father did not disdain to feed another man's flock in order to get a wife; and having unwittingly killed a beloved boy, he inscribed his groans on a flower. Mars, a most valiant man, was not free from the charge of adultery, since he was bound in chains with the adulteress and made a spectacle. Castor and Pollux carried off other men's brides, not without punishment; Homer testifies, not with poetic but with plain faith, that they were dead and buried. Mercury, who by an illicit union with Venus begot the hermaphrodite, deserved to be a god because he invented the lyre and the wrestling school. Father Liber, having conquered India, when as victor he happened to come to Crete, saw Ariadne on the shore, whom Theseus had both violated and abandoned. Then, inflamed with love, he joined her to himself in marriage and, as the poets say, set her crown among the stars. The Mother herself, after the flight and death of her husband, while she was staying in Phrygia, a widow and an old woman, kept a handsome young man as her favorite, and because he did not keep faith she castrated him and made him effeminate. For this reason she delights even now in Galli as priests.

From what but illicit intercourse did Ceres bear Proserpina? From what but a crime did Latona bear her twins? Venus, exposed to the lusts of gods and men, when she reigned in Cyprus invented the harlot's trade and ordered women to make money by it, so that she alone might not be infamous. Those very virgins, Minerva and Diana, were they chaste? From where, then, did Erichthonius spring? Did Vulcan pour his seed on the earth, and from it a man sprang up like a mushroom? Or why did Diana banish Hippolytus to a secret dwelling, or to a woman, where he might spend his life alone among unknown groves and, his name now changed, be called Virbius? What do these things signify but unchastity, which the poets do not dare to confess?

But Jupiter, the king and father of all these, whom they believe holds supreme power in heaven, what piety did he have, who drove his father Saturn from the kingdom and pursued him in arms as he fled? What self-control, who practised every kind of lust? For the same god disgraced by adultery Alcmena and Leda, the wives of eminent men; the same, captivated by the beauty of a boy, carried him off violently for womanish uses while he was hunting and thinking of manly things. Why should I recount the violation of virgins, whose great multitude is shown by the number of his sons? In the case of Thetis alone, however, he was more restrained. For it had been foretold that the son she would bear would be greater than his father. So he fought against his love, so that no one greater than himself would be born. He knew, then, that he was not of perfect virtue, greatness, and power, since he feared what he himself had done to his father. Why then is he called Best and Greatest, when he both defiled himself with sins, which belongs to the unjust and evil, and feared a greater one, which belongs to the weak and lesser?

But someone will say that these things were invented by the poets. It is not the poet's way to invent so as to make up the whole thing, but to cover over events with a figure and, as it were, with a many-colored veil. Poetic licence has this limit: not to invent the whole, which belongs to a liar and a fool, but to change something with reason. They said that Jupiter turned himself into a golden shower to deceive Danae. What is the golden shower? Surely gold coins, by offering a great quantity of which and pouring them into her lap he corrupted the frailty of a maiden's mind with this payment. So too they speak of an iron shower when they want to signify a multitude of weapons. He carried off Catamitus on an eagle: what is the eagle? A legion, of course, since the figure of this creature is the standard of a legion. He carried Europa across on a bull: what is the bull? Surely a ship, which had a bull depicted as its figurehead. So the daughter of Inachus did not swim across as a cow, but escaped Juno's anger in a ship of that kind, which had the form of a cow. Finally, when she had been carried into Egypt, she became Isis, whose ship is celebrated on a certain day in memory of her flight.

You see, then, that the poets did not make up everything, but prefigured some things, so that while speaking the truth they still added something of divinity to those they called gods, as also concerning their kingdoms. For when they say that Jupiter obtained the kingdom of heaven by lot, they mean either Mount Olympus, on which ancient histories report that Saturn and Jupiter later lived, or the part of the East, which is as it were higher because the light rises there, while the West is as it were lower, and therefore Pluto obtained the lower world; and the sea fell to Neptune because he held the coastland with all the islands. Many things the poets color in this way. Those who do not know this accuse them of lying, but only in word; for in fact they believe them, since they so fashion the images of the gods that, when they make male and female and acknowledge some as spouses, some as parents, some as children, they surely agree with the poets: for these things cannot exist without intercourse and generation.

But let us leave the poets aside: let us come to history, which rests both on the reliability of facts and on the antiquity of times. Euhemerus of Messene was a very ancient writer who collected from the sacred inscriptions of old temples both the origin of Jupiter and his deeds and all his offspring; he likewise traced the parents, homelands, acts, reigns, deaths, and even the tombs of the other gods. Ennius translated this history into Latin; these are his words: “These, as they are written, are the stock and kinship of Jupiter and his brothers: in this manner it has been handed down to us from the sacred writing.” The same Euhemerus, then, records that Jupiter, after he had gone round the world five times and distributed rule to his friends and relatives and made laws and many other good things for mankind, being honored with immortal glory and everlasting memory, ended his life in Crete and departed to the gods; and that his tomb is in Crete, in the town of Cnossus, and on it is written in ancient Greek letters ZAN KRONOU, that is, “Jupiter, son of Saturn.” It is clear, then, from what I have reported, that he was a man and reigned on earth.

Let us go back to earlier times, so that we may find the origin of the whole error. Saturn is said to have been born of Heaven and Earth. This is certainly incredible; but why it is so reported, there is a sure reason, and whoever is ignorant of it rejects it as a fable. That Saturn's father was called Uranus both Hermes testifies and the Sacred History teaches. Trismegistus, when he said that there had been very few men of perfect learning, counted among them his relatives Uranus, Saturn, and Mercury. Euhemerus records that the same Uranus first reigned on earth, in these words: “In the beginning Caelus first held supreme power on earth; he established and prepared that kingdom for himself together with his brothers …” … divinity was attributed through the foolish goodwill and error of men.

I have spoken of the religions common to all nations; I will now speak of the gods whom the Romans have as their own. Who does not know that the wife of Faustulus, the nurse of Romulus and Remus, in whose honor the Larentinalia are dedicated, was a common prostitute? And for that reason she was called Lupa and depicted in the form of a beast. Faula and Flora also were prostitutes, one of whom was the harlot of Hercules, as Verrius records; the other, having acquired great wealth by her body, made the people her heir, and for that reason the Floralia games are celebrated in her honor. Tatius consecrated a woman's image found in the Cloaca Maxima and named it the goddess Cloacina. The Romans, besieged by the Gauls, made artillery out of women's hair, and for that reason set up an altar and temple to Bald Venus; likewise to Jupiter the Baker, because he had warned them in their sleep to make bread from all their grain and throw it on the enemy; when this was done, the Gauls, despairing that the Romans could be subdued by want, withdrew from the siege. Tullus Hostilius made Fear and Pallor gods. Mind too is worshipped; I believe that if they had had it, they would never have thought it should be worshipped. Marcellus devised Honor and Virtue.

But the senate also instituted other invented gods of this kind: Hope, Faith, Concord, Peace, Chastity, Piety; all of which, though they ought to be real in human hearts, they set up false within walls. Yet I would rather these be worshipped, though apart from human beings they have no substance at all, than Robigo, than Fever, which should not be consecrated but cursed; than Fornax with her oven rites; than Stercutus, who first showed how to fatten the earth with dung; than the goddess Muta, who bore the Lares; than Cunina, who presides over infants' cradles; than Caca, who informed Hercules of the theft of the cattle so that he would kill her brother. How many other monstrosities and absurdities there are! It is tedious to speak of them. Yet I do not like to pass over Terminus, since he is said not to have yielded even to Capitoline Jupiter, though he was a shapeless stone. They think he has the guardianship of boundaries, and public supplication is made to him that the Capitol's immovable rock may both preserve and extend the boundaries of the Roman empire.

Faunus first introduced all these absurdities into Latium; he both established bloody rites for his grandfather Saturn, and wished his father Picus to be worshipped as a god, and placed among the gods Fenta Fauna, his wife and sister, and named her the Good Goddess. Then at Rome Numa, who loaded those rustic and rough men with new superstitions, instituted priesthoods and distributed gods to families and clans, so as to call the minds of a fierce people away from their passion for arms. For this reason Lucilius, mocking the folly of those who serve vain superstitions, wrote these verses: “The bogey Lamias, which Fauni and Numa Pompilius set up, these he trembles at, on these he stakes everything. As infant children believe that all bronze statues are alive and are men, so these believe all fictions are true; they believe there is a heart in bronze statues. A painters' gallery: nothing real, all fiction!” Tully also, in On the Nature of the Gods, complains that invented and fictitious gods have been brought in, and that from this false opinions, confused errors, and superstitions almost like old wives' tales have arisen. This judgment ought to be counted the weightier because he discussed these things as both a philosopher and a priest.

We have spoken of the gods; now we will speak of the rites and cults of their sacred things. To Cyprian Jupiter, as Teucer had established, a human victim used to be slain. So too the Taurians sacrificed strangers to Diana; Latiaris Jupiter also was propitiated with human blood. Even before, men of sixty years were thrown from a bridge into the Tiber to Saturn, on the authority of Apollo. And to the same Saturn the Carthaginians not only sacrificed infants, but when conquered by the Sicilians, to make atonement, they sacrificed two hundred sons of nobles. Nor are those more humane which are done even now to the Great Mother and to Bellona, in which the priests make offering not with another's blood but with their own, when, their genitals cut off, they cease to be men yet do not pass over to being women; or, their shoulders slashed, they sprinkle the detestable altars with their own blood. But these are cruel; let us come to the mild ones. The rites of Isis show nothing else than how she lost and found her little son, who is called Osiris. For first the priests and attendants, their whole bodies shaved, beat their breasts, lament, grieve, and search, imitating the mother's feeling; afterwards the boy is found by Cynocephalus. So the mournful rites end in joy. Similar to these is the mystery of Ceres, in which Proserpina is sought through the night with lighted torches, and when she is found the whole rite ends with rejoicing and the tossing of torches. The people of Lampsacus sacrifice an ass to Priapus; for that seemed the more fitting victim, which could equal the god to whom it is sacrificed in the size of its obscene member. Lindos is a town of Rhodes where the rites of Hercules are celebrated with curses. For when Hercules had taken the oxen from a plowman and sacrificed them, the man avenged his injury with abuse; and when this same man was afterwards made priest, it was established that both he and later priests should celebrate the rites with the same curses. The mystery of Cretan Jupiter is how as an infant he was either stolen away from his father or brought up. The she-goat is at hand, at whose teats Amalthea nursed the boy. The same thing is shown by the rites of the Mother of the Gods. For since the Corybantes had then covered the boy's wailing with the clashing of helmets and the beating of shields, now an image of the event is presented in the rites; but instead of helmets cymbals, instead of shields drums are struck, so that Saturn will not hear the boy crying.

These are the mysteries of the gods. Now let us also inquire into the origin of these religions, so as to find out both by whom and in what times they were established. Didymus, in the books entitled Commentary on Pindar, records that Melisseus was king of the Cretans, whose daughters were Amalthea and Melissa, who nursed Jupiter with goat's milk and honey. He, they say, introduced new rites and processions of sacred things and first sacrificed to the gods, that is, to Vesta, who is called Tellus (which is why the poets say, “and Tellus, first of the gods”), and afterwards to the Mother of the Gods. But Euhemerus, in the Sacred History, says that Jupiter himself, after he had taken power, set up shrines to himself in many places. For going round the world, whenever he came to any place, he joined the chiefs of the peoples to himself by friendship and the right of hospitality. So that the memory of this might be kept, he ordered a shrine to be built to himself and annual festivals to be celebrated by his hosts. So he sowed the worship of his name through all lands. When these men lived can easily be gathered. For Thallus writes in his history that Belus, king of the Assyrians, whom the Babylonians worship, and who was the contemporary and friend of Saturn, lived 322 years before the Trojan war; and from the capture of Ilium there are 1,470 years. From this it appears that it is not more than 1,800 years since the human race fell into error by the establishment of new cults of the gods.

Rightly, then, do the poets relate that the golden age, which existed in the reign of Saturn, was changed. For then no gods were worshipped, but they knew one and only God. After they subjected themselves to earthly and frail things, worshipping wood and bronze and stones, the change of the age took place, down to iron. For the knowledge of God being lost, and that one bond of human society being broken, they began to lay waste, plunder, and war against one another. But if they would lift their eyes upward and look to God, who raised them up to see the heavens and himself, they would never make themselves bent and low by venerating earthly things. Lucretius strongly rebukes their folly, saying, “And they make their minds low through fear of the gods, and press them down, bowed to the earth.” Therefore they do not understand how vain it is to fear the things you have made, or to hope for any protection from things which, mute and senseless, neither see nor hear the suppliant. What majesty or divinity, then, can those things have which were in man's power not to be made, or to be made into something else, and which still are so? For they can both be violated and stolen away, unless both law and human guard protect them. Can a man, then, seem in his right mind who slaughters rich victims to such things, consecrates gifts, offers costly garments, as if things without motion could use them? Rightly, then, did Dionysius, the tyrant of Sicily, despoil and mock the gods of Greece when he occupied it as victor; and after the sacrileges he had committed he returned to Sicily with a prosperous voyage and held his kingdom until old age, nor could the violated gods punish him. How much better it is to despise empty things and turn to God, to keep the status you have received from God, to keep your name: for the human being is called anthrōpos because he looks upward. And he looks upward who looks up to the true and living God, who is in heaven, who seeks the maker and parent of his soul not only with sense and mind but with face and eyes lifted up. But he who lays himself beneath earthly and low things certainly prefers to himself what is lower than he. For since he himself is the work of God, while an image is the work of man, a human work cannot be put before a divine one; and as God is the parent of man, so is man of the image. Foolish and mad, then, is he who adores what he himself has made. The author of this detestable and foolish art was Prometheus, son of Iapetus, Jupiter's uncle. For when Jupiter, having first gained supreme power, wished to establish himself as a god and found temples, and was looking for someone who could express the human form, then Prometheus appeared, who shaped the likeness of a man from rich clay so lifelike that the novelty and subtlety of the art was a marvel. Finally both the men of his own time and later the poets reported him as the maker of a true and living man; and we too, whenever we praise skillfully made statues, say that they live and breathe. And this man was the author of clay images. Posterity, following him, both carved them from marble and cast them from bronze; then, in the course of time, ornament was added from gold and ivory, so that not only the likenesses but the very brilliance dazzled human eyes. So, enticed by beauty and forgetful of true majesty, sentient beings thought the senseless, rational beings the irrational, living beings the lifeless, worthy to be worshipped and venerated.

Now let us refute also those who hold the elements of the world as gods, that is, the heaven, the sun and the moon; not knowing their maker, they admire and adore the works themselves. This error belongs not only to the unlearned but also to the philosophers, since the Stoics think that all the heavenly bodies should be counted among the gods, because they have fixed and rational motions by which they most constantly keep the alternations of the seasons that follow one another. There is therefore no voluntary motion in them, since they serve prescribed laws, not by their own perception, but by the workmanship of the supreme founder, who so ordered them that they complete unerring courses and fixed circuits, by which the alternations of day and night, summer and winter, vary. But if they admire their effects, their movements, their brightness, their constancy, their beauty, they ought to have understood how much more beautiful and glorious and powerful than these is God himself, their founder and maker. But they judged divinity by human sight, not knowing that what comes under sight cannot be eternal, nor can what is eternal be grasped by mortal eyes.

One last thing remains: since it often happens, as we read in histories, that the gods seem to have shown their majesty through auguries, dreams, and oracles, and also by the punishment of those who had committed sacrilege, I should show what cause brought this about, so that no one may even now fall into the same snares into which those ancients fell. When God, by the power of his majesty, had founded the world out of nothing and adorned the heaven with lights, and filled the earth and sea with living things, then he formed man from clay after the image of his likeness, breathed into him for life, and placed him in Paradise, which he had planted with every kind of fruit-bearing tree; and he commanded him not to taste of one tree, in which he had placed the knowledge of good and evil, threatening that he would lose life if he did so, but if he kept the command he would remain immortal. Then the serpent, who was one of God's ministers, envying man because he had been made immortal, enticed him by deceit to transgress God's command and law. And in this way he did receive the knowledge of good and evil, but lost the life which God had given him to be everlasting. So he cast the sinner out of the holy place and banished him into this world, to seek his food by labor and to endure hardships and troubles as he deserved; and he surrounded Paradise itself with a rampart of fire, so that no human being might try to creep into that place of everlasting blessedness until the day of judgment. Then death followed man by God's sentence; and yet his life, although it had begun to be temporal, took its limit at a thousand years, and that was the span of human life until the time of the flood. For after the deluge the life of men was gradually shortened and reduced to a hundred and twenty years. But that serpent, who from his deeds received the name devil, that is, accuser or informer, did not cease to persecute the seed of the man whom he had deceived from the beginning. Finally he armed him who was first born in this world, breathing envy into him, for the murder of his brother, so that of the first two men born he might destroy the one and make the other a fratricide. Nor did he rest thereafter from pouring the poison of malice into human hearts in each generation, corrupting and depraving them, overwhelming them finally with such great crimes that an example of righteousness was now rare, and people lived in the manner of beasts. When God saw this, he sent his angels to cultivate human life and protect people from every evil. He gave them a command to keep themselves from earthly things, so that they would not lose their angelic honor by becoming defiled. But that same crafty accuser, while they were living among men, enticed them also to pleasures, so that they defiled themselves with women. Then, condemned by God's sentence and cast down for their sins, they lost both the name and the substance of angels.⁠a So, having become the devil's henchmen, to have some consolation for their own ruin they turned to ruining the men they had come to protect.

These are the demons of whom the poets often speak in their songs, whom Hesiod calls the guardians of men. For by their enticements and deceits they so persuaded men that they believed these same beings to be gods. Finally, Socrates declared that from earliest boyhood he had a demon as guardian and guide of his life, without whose assent and command he could do nothing. They cling, then, to individuals, and under the name of genii or penates occupy houses. Shrines are set up to them, daily libations are poured to them as to the Lares, honor is given them as averters of evils; they from the beginning, to turn men away from the knowledge of the true God, introduced new religions and cults of gods; they taught that the memories of dead kings be consecrated, temples established, images made, not to diminish the honor of God or to increase their own, which they had lost by sinning, but to snatch life from men, to take away the hope of the true light, so that men might not reach the heavenly reward of immortality from which they themselves had fallen. They also handed down astrology and augury and haruspicy; and though these are false in themselves, yet the very authors of evils so govern and regulate them that they are believed to be true. They too invented the illusions of the magic art to deceive the eyes (by their breathing-upon it comes about that what is seems not to be, and what is not seems to be); they invented necromancy, lots and oracles, to mock men's minds with lying divination by ambiguous outcomes. And in temples and at all sacrifices they are present, and by producing certain deceptive wonders to amaze those present, they so deceive men that they believe divinity dwells in statues and images. They also creep into bodies as subtle spirits and stir up diseases in the damaged members, which afterwards, appeased by sacrifices and vows, they relax; they send dreams or outright terrors, so that people may appeal to them, or dreams whose outcome answers to the truth, so as to increase veneration of themselves. Sometimes too they inflict some vengeance on the sacrilegious, so that whoever sees it may become more fearful and religious. So by their frauds they have drawn darkness over the human race, so that, the truth being suppressed, the name of the supreme and only God might pass into oblivion.

But someone will say: Why then does that true God allow these things to happen, and not rather remove or destroy the wicked? And why did he himself make a prince of demons from the beginning, to be one who would corrupt and ruin everything? I will say briefly why he willed him to be such. I ask whether virtue is a good or an evil. It cannot be denied that it is a good. If virtue is a good, then vice, its contrary, is an evil. If vice is evil because it attacks virtue, and virtue is good because it strikes down vice, then virtue cannot exist without vice, and if you take away vice, the merits of virtue will be taken away. For no victory can be won without an enemy. So it comes about that good cannot exist without evil. Chrysippus, a man of keen mind, saw this when discussing providence, and he convicts of folly those who think that good was made by God but deny that evil was. His view is set out by Aulus Gellius in the books of the Attic Nights, speaking thus: “Those who do not think that the world was established for the sake of God and men, nor that human affairs are governed by providence, think they are using a weighty argument when they say: ‘If there were providence, there would be no evils.’ For nothing, they say, fits providence less than that in the world which it is said to have made for the sake of men there should be such a mass of troubles and evils. Against these Chrysippus, discussing it in the fourth book On Providence, says: ‘Nothing is more foolish than those who think that goods could have existed if there were not likewise evils. For since goods are contrary to evils, both must be set against each other and stand supported, as it were, by mutual and opposing pressure: no contrary exists at all without its other contrary. For how could there be a sense of justice unless there were injuries? Or what else is justice but the absence of injustice? How likewise can courage be understood except by setting cowardice beside it? Or self-control except from intemperance? How likewise would there be prudence unless imprudence were its contrary? Therefore,’ he says, ‘why do foolish men not also wish that there should be truth and no falsehood? For in the same way there are goods and evils, happiness and misfortune, pleasure and pain. For one is bound to the other, as Plato says, by opposite ends: if you take away one, you take away both.’” You see, then, what I have often said, that good and evil are so connected that one cannot stand without the other. With the highest wisdom, therefore, God placed the material of virtue in evils; and he made these so as to set up a contest for you, in which he might crown the victors with the reward of immortality.

I have shown, I think, that the cults of the gods are not only impious but also vain: either because they were men whose memory was consecrated after death; or because the images themselves are senseless and deaf, being fashioned from earth, and a human being, who ought to look to heavenly things, should not subject himself to earthly ones; or because the spirits who claim those religions for themselves are unchaste and impure and therefore, condemned by God's sentence, fell to earth, and it is not right to come under the power of those to whom you are superior, if you wish to follow the true God. It remains, since we have spoken of false religion, that we also discuss false wisdom, which the philosophers profess: men endowed indeed with the highest learning and eloquence, but far removed from the truth, because they knew neither God nor the wisdom of God. Although they are subtle and eloquent, yet because their wisdom is human, I will not be afraid to engage with them too, so that it may be clear that falsehood can easily be overcome by truth, and earthly things by heavenly. They define what philosophy is in this way: Philosophy is the love or pursuit of wisdom. If it is the love of wisdom, it is not therefore wisdom itself, since that which loves must be different from that which is loved. If it is the pursuit of wisdom, not even so is philosophy wisdom. For wisdom is the thing itself which is sought, and pursuit is that which seeks. The very definition, then, or the meaning of the name, declares that philosophy is not wisdom itself. I will say that it is not even the pursuit of wisdom, since by it wisdom is not grasped. For who could be said to pursue a thing he can in no way attain? One who pursues medicine or grammar or oratory can be called a student of the art he is learning; one who has learned it is called a physician, a grammarian, an orator. So too the students of wisdom ought to have been called wise once they had learned. But since they are called students of wisdom as long as they live, it is plain that this is not a pursuit, since by it one cannot reach the very thing sought; unless perhaps those who pursue wisdom to the end of life will be wise in the underworld. But every pursuit has an end beneath it. That pursuit is not right, then, which has no end.

Moreover, there are two things that seem to belong to philosophy, knowledge and opinion; if these are taken away, the whole of philosophy collapses. Yet the leaders of the philosophers themselves took both away from philosophy: Socrates removed knowledge, Zeno opinion. Let us see whether rightly. Wisdom is, as Cicero defined it, the knowledge of divine and human things. If this definition is true, wisdom does not belong to man. For which of mortals could claim for himself that he professes to know divine and human things? I leave aside human things: although they are connected with divine ones, yet because they belong to man, let us grant that man can know them. Divine things he certainly cannot know by himself, because he is human; and whoever knows them must be divine and therefore God. But man is neither divine nor God. Man cannot, then, know divine things by himself. So no one is wise except God, or at least the man whom God has taught. But they, since they are neither gods nor taught by God, cannot be wise, that is, knowers of divine and human things. Rightly, then, was knowledge removed by Socrates and the Academics. Opinion too does not befit the wise man: for each person opines what he does not know. And to opine that you know what you do not know is rashness and folly. Rightly, then, was opinion removed by Zeno. If, then, there is no knowledge in man and there ought to be no opinion, philosophy is cut off at the root.

Add to this that it is not uniform, but divided into sects and scattered into many discordant opinions, it has no stability. For since each attacks and strikes down all the others, and there is none of them that is not condemned of folly by the judgment of the rest, the whole body of philosophy is brought to destruction by its discordant members. This is why the Academy arose later. For when the leaders of that sect saw that all philosophy had been overturned by the philosophers fighting one another, they undertook war against all, so as to dissolve everything of everyone, asserting nothing themselves except one thing: that nothing can be known. So, by taking away knowledge, they undermined the old philosophy. But not even they themselves kept the name of philosophers, since they confessed ignorance; for to know nothing belongs not only not to a philosopher but not even to a human being. So it comes about that the philosophers, since they have no defense, destroy one another by mutual wounds, and the whole of philosophy consumes and ends itself with its own weapons. But, it will be said, only natural philosophy totters. What then? Is moral philosophy supported by any firmness? Let us see whether the philosophers agree at least in this part, which concerns the conduct of life.

It is necessary to ask what is the highest good in life, so that all life and our actions may be directed to it. When the highest good of man is asked about, it ought to be defined such that, first, it belongs to man alone; next, that it is proper to the soul; finally, that it is sought by virtue. Let us see, then, whether the highest good which the philosophers determine is such that it touches neither a dumb animal nor the body and cannot be obtained without virtue. Aristippus, founder of the Cyrenaic sect, who judged bodily pleasure to be the highest good, must be driven out of the number of philosophers and the company of men, since he compared himself to a beast. The highest good of Hieronymus is to feel no pain; of Diodorus, to cease feeling pain. But the other animals too flee pain, and when they do not feel pain or cease to feel it, they rejoice. What, then, will be given to man as special, if his highest good is judged to be shared with the beasts? Zeno thought the highest good was to live in agreement with nature. But this definition is general. For all living things live in agreement with nature, and each has its own nature. Epicurus asserted pleasure of the mind. What is pleasure of the mind but joy, in which the mind often grows wanton and relaxes either to play or to laughter? But even animals without speech experience this good, which, when they have eaten their fill of food, give themselves over to joy and playful activity. Dinomachus and Callipho approved honorable pleasure; but either they said the same as Epicurus, so that bodily pleasure is dishonorable, or, if they thought some bodily pleasures shameful and others honorable, then that which is assigned to the body is no longer the highest good. The Peripatetics compound the highest good out of goods of the soul, of the body, and of fortune. The goods of the soul can be approved; but if they need help to complete happiness, they are surely weak. Those of the body and of fortune are not in man's power, and that is no longer the highest good which is assigned either to the body or to things outside, because this twofold good reaches the beasts too, which need to be in good health and not to lack food. The Stoics are believed to have judged somewhat better, who said that the highest good is virtue. But virtue cannot be the highest good, since if it is the endurance of evils and labors, it is not blessed in itself, but it ought to bring about and produce the highest good, because that cannot be reached without difficulty and the greatest labor. But Aristotle wandered far from reason, who joined honor to virtue, as if virtue could ever be separated from honor or joined to baseness. Herillus the Pyrrhonist made knowledge the highest good. This indeed belongs to man and to the soul alone, but it can come about without virtue. For he is not to be thought happy who has learned something by hearing or come to know it by a little reading; nor is it a definition of the highest good, since there can be knowledge of evil things or at least of useless ones. And even if it is of good and useful things, which you have acquired by labor, it is still not the highest good, because knowledge is sought not for its own sake but for something else. For arts are learned so that they may serve us for a living, or for glory, or even for pleasure: none of which can be the highest good. So not even in ethics do the philosophers hold to a rule, since at the very hinge, that is, in the discussion by which life is shaped, they fight among themselves. For their precepts cannot be equal or similar, since some train men for pleasure, others for honor, others for nature, others for knowledge, some for seeking wealth, others for fleeing it, some for feeling no pain, others for enduring evils: in all of which, as I showed above, they turn aside from reason, because they do not know God.

Let us see now what highest good is set before the wise man. That men are born for justice not only the sacred writings teach, but even the philosophers themselves sometimes confess. Cicero says thus: “But of all the things that are discussed by learned men, nothing is truly more excellent than to understand plainly that we are born for justice.” This is most true. For we are not born for crime, since we are a social and communal animal. Wild beasts are born for savagery: for they cannot live otherwise than on prey and blood. Yet the same, even if extreme hunger presses, nevertheless spare animals of their own kind. Birds that must feed on the flesh of others do the same. How much more ought a human being, who is joined to another human being by the fellowship of language and the sharing of feeling, to spare his fellow human and to love him! For this is justice. But since to man alone wisdom has been given, so that he may understand God, and this alone is the difference between man and dumb animals, justice itself is bound by two duties: one it owes to God as to a father, the other to man as to a brother; for we are begotten by the same God. Rightly and properly, then, was it said that wisdom is the knowledge of divine and human things. For we ought to know what we owe to God and what to man: to God, namely, religion, to man, love. But the former belongs to wisdom, the latter to virtue, and justice includes both. If, then, it is certain that man is born for justice, the just man must be subject to evils, so that he may put into use the virtue with which he is endowed; for virtue is the endurance of evils. He will flee pleasures as an evil; he will despise wealth because it is fragile, and if he has it, he will give it away to preserve the wretched; he will not seek honors, because they are brief and perishable; he will do injury to no one; if he suffers it, he will not repay it, and he will not pursue one who plunders his goods. For he will judge it wrong to hurt a human being, and if anyone should arise to compel him to fall away from God, he will refuse neither torments nor death. So it will come about that he must live poor and humble and amid insults or even tortures.

What, then, will be the fruit of justice and virtue, if it has nothing in life but evil? But if virtue, which despises all earthly goods, bears all evils most wisely and undertakes even death for duty, cannot be without reward, what remains but that its reward is immortality alone? For if the happy life belongs to man, as the philosophers hold, who on this point alone do not disagree, then immortality too belongs to him. For that alone is happy which is incorruptible, and that alone incorruptible which is eternal. Immortality, therefore, is the highest good, because it belongs to man, to the soul, and to virtue alone. To this we are directed; to gain this we were born. For this reason God sets virtue and justice before us, so that we may attain that eternal reward by our labors. But of immortality itself we will speak in its proper place. There remains logical philosophy, which contributes nothing to the happy life. For wisdom is not in ornament of speech but in the heart and the mind. But if both physics is superfluous and this logic, and in ethics, which alone is necessary, the philosophers erred, since they could in no way find the highest good, then all philosophy is found to be empty and useless, since it could neither grasp the reason of man nor fulfill his duty and task.

Since I have spoken briefly of philosophy, I will now say a few things also about the philosophers. The teaching of Epicurus is this: first, that there is no providence; and the same man does not deny that there are gods. Both are against reason. But if there are gods, then there is providence. For otherwise God cannot be understood, whose property it is to provide. “He cares for nothing,” he says. Then he cares not only for human but not even for heavenly things. How, then, or on what basis do you assert that he exists? For once divine providence and care were excluded, it followed that you should say there is no God at all. As it is, you have left him in word and removed him in fact. From where, then, is the nature of things, if God cares for nothing? “There are tiny seeds,” he says, “which can be neither seen nor touched, by whose chance meeting all things have arisen and are always arising.” If they are neither seen nor perceived by any part of the body, how could you know that they exist? Then, if they exist, by what mind do they come together to make something? If they are smooth, they cannot cohere; if hooked and angular, then they are divisible; for hooks and angles project and can be cut off. But these things are crazy and useless. What of the fact that the same man makes souls extinguishable? He is refuted not only by all the philosophers and by public conviction, but also by the answers of seers, the songs of the Sibyls, and finally by the divine voices of the prophets themselves, so that it is astonishing that Epicurus alone should have arisen to make the lot of man equal to that of cattle and beasts. What of Pythagoras, who was the first to be named a philosopher, who said that souls are indeed immortal, but that they pass into other bodies, of cattle or birds or beasts? Would it not have been better for them to be extinguished with their bodies than to be condemned in this way to others' bodies? Better not to exist at all than after human form to live as a pig or a dog? And the foolish man, to add credibility to his saying, said that he himself had been Euphorbus in the Trojan war, and after he was killed had passed into other animal forms, and finally had become Pythagoras. O happy man, to whom alone so great a memory was granted! Or rather unhappy, who, transferred into a beast, was not allowed to be ignorant of what he had been! And would that he alone had raved! He also found people to believe him, and not unlearned men, to whom the inheritance of folly passed.

After him Socrates held the first place in philosophy, called most wise even by the oracle, because he confessed that he knew one thing, that he knew nothing. By the authority of this oracle the natural philosophers ought to have held back, so that they would neither seek what they could not know nor think they knew what they did not know. Let us see, however, whether Socrates was most wise, as the Pythian proclaimed. He often used this proverb: that what is above us is nothing to us. Here he already went beyond the limits of his own principle. For he who said that he knew one thing found another thing to say as if he knew it; but in vain. For God, who is certainly above us, must be sought, and religion must be taken up; religion alone distinguishes us from the beasts. Socrates not only rejected it but even mocked it by swearing by a goose and a dog: as if he could not swear by Aesculapius, to whom he had vowed a cock. Look at the sacrifice of a wise man! And because he could not offer it himself, when about to die he begged his friends to fulfill the vow after him, so that, of course, he would not be detained in the underworld as a debtor. He truly both declared that he knew nothing and proved it.

His pupil Plato, whom Tully calls the god of philosophers, who alone of all so philosophized as to come nearer to the truth, nevertheless, because he did not know God, fell into so many errors that no one erred worse; above all, that in his books on the state he wanted all things to be common to all. As to property it is tolerable, although it is unjust; for it ought neither to harm anyone if by his own industry he has more, nor to profit him if by his own fault he has less. But, as I said, it can be borne in some way. Will wives too, will children too be common? There will be no distinction of blood, no certain lineage, no families, no kinships, no relations by marriage, but everything confused and undistinguished as in herds of cattle; there will be no self-control in men, no chastity in women. What conjugal love can there be in either, in whom there is no certain or proper affection? Who will be dutiful to a father, not knowing from whom he was born? Who will love a son whom he will think another's? He even opened the senate-house to women and allowed them military service, magistracies, and commands. How great will be the misfortune of that city in which women will occupy the offices of men! But of this more fully elsewhere. Zeno, the master of the Stoics, who praises virtue, judged that pity, which is the highest virtue, should be cut away as a disease of the soul; yet it is both dear to God and necessary to human beings. For who is there who, when placed in some evil, would not wish to be pitied and not long for the help of those who run to aid him? And they are stirred to bring help only by the feeling of pity. Though he may call it humanity, though he may call it kindness, he changes not the thing but the name. This is the feeling given to man alone, so that we might relieve our weakness by mutual help: whoever takes it away reduces us to the life of beasts. For his saying that all sins are equal comes from the same inhumanity with which he attacks pity as a disease. For whoever makes no difference between offenses either thinks light ones should be subjected to great punishments, which belongs to a cruel judge, or grave ones to small, which belongs to a lax one. Both are harmful to the state: for if the greatest crimes are lightly punished, the boldness of the wicked will grow to greater misdeeds; and if a heavier penalty is inflicted for light offenses, many citizens, since no one can be without fault, will come into danger who, if corrected, could have been better.

These indeed are light, but they arise from the same vanity: Xenophanes said that the orb of the moon was eighteen times larger than this earth of ours, and so that within its hollow another earth is contained, inhabited by men and animals of every kind. Of the antipodes too one can neither hear nor speak without laughing; yet it is asserted as something serious, that we should believe there are men whose footprints are opposite to ours. Anaxagoras raved more tolerably, who said snow was black. Not only the sayings but also the deeds of some are to be laughed at. Democritus abandoned the field left him by his father and let it become public pasture. Diogenes, with his chorus of dogs, who professes that highest and perfect virtue, contempt of all things, preferred to beg his food rather than acquire it by honest labor or have any property. Surely the life of the wise man ought to be an example of living for others. If all imitated the wisdom of these men, how would cities stand? But perhaps the same Cynics could offer an example of modesty, who lay with their wives in public. I do not know what virtue they could defend who took away shame. No better than these was Aristippus, who, I suppose to please his mistress Lais, founded the Cyrenaic school, in which he placed the end of the highest good in bodily pleasure, so that neither sins should lack authority nor vices a doctrine. Or are those braver men rather to be approved who, so as to be said to have despised death, brought a voluntary death on themselves: Zeno, Empedocles, Chrysippus, Cleanthes, Democritus, and Cato, who imitated them; and did they not know that by divine right and law one who kills himself is held guilty of the crime of murder? For God brought us into this dwelling of flesh; he gave us the temporary lodging of the body, that we may inhabit it as long as he wills. It must therefore be held wrong to wish to depart without God's command. No violence, then, is to be done to nature: he knows how to dissolve his own work. If anyone lays impious hands on that work and breaks the bonds of the divine workmanship, he tries to escape God, whose sentence no one, living or dead, will be able to evade. Wicked and impious, then, are those I named above, who even taught what reasons voluntary death ought to have, as if it were too little crime that they became murderers of themselves, unless they also trained others to this wickedness.

Countless are the sayings and deeds of the philosophers by which their folly could be exposed. So, since we cannot enumerate them all, a few will be enough. It is enough to understand that the philosophers are teachers neither of justice, which they do not know, nor of virtue, which they falsely claim. For what can they teach who often confess their own ignorance? I pass over Socrates, whose saying is well known. Anaxagoras declares that all things are surrounded by darkness; Empedocles that the paths of the senses for finding the truth are narrow. Democritus testifies that truth lies sunk in some deep well; and since they find it nowhere, they affirm that no wise man has yet existed. Since, then, there is no human wisdom, as Socrates says in Plato, let us follow the divine, and give thanks to God, who has both revealed and handed it down to us, and let us congratulate ourselves that by heavenly kindness we hold the truth and wisdom which philosophy, sought by so many talents through so many ages, could never find.

Now, since we have refuted false religion, which is in the worship of the gods, and false wisdom, which is in philosophy, let us come to true religion and wisdom. And indeed they must be spoken of together, because they cohere. For to worship God truly is nothing else than wisdom. For that supreme God, the founder of things, who made man as it were his own image, gave reason to him alone of all living things precisely so that he might give him honor as a father and fear as a lord, and by this piety and obedience might merit the reward of immortality. This is the true and divine mystery. But in those others, because they are not true, there is no concord: neither are sacred rites celebrated in philosophy nor is philosophy treated in the rites; and so religion is false because it has no wisdom, and wisdom false because it has no religion. But where both are joined, there truth must be, so that if it is asked what truth itself is, it can rightly be called either wise religion or religious wisdom.

I will now say what wise religion or religious wisdom is. God in the beginning, before he established the world, from the fountain of his eternity and from his divine and everlasting Spirit, himself begot a Son for himself, incorruptible, faithful, answering to his Father's power and majesty. He is the power, he is the reason, he is the Word of God, he is the wisdom. With him as workman, as Hermes says, and as counselor, as the Sibyl says, God devised the splendid and wonderful fabric of this world. Finally, of all the angels whom the same God formed from his spirits, he alone was taken into partnership of the supreme power, he alone was called God. For all things were made through him, and without him nothing. Finally, Plato spoke of a first and a second god not entirely as a philosopher but as a prophet, perhaps following Trismegistus in this. I have added his words translated from the Greek: “The Lord and maker of all things, whom we have thought fit to call God, made a second God, visible and perceptible. I say perceptible, not because he himself receives perception, but because he brings things to perception and sight. When therefore he had made this one, first, alone, and one, he appeared to him most excellent and most full of all good things.” The Erythraean Sibyl also says that God, the leader of all, was made by God; and another that the God, Son of God, is to be known, as the examples I have set out in the books show. The prophets, filled with the divine Spirit, proclaimed him. Of these especially Solomon in the book of Wisdom, and likewise his father, the writer of heavenly hymns, both most famous kings, who preceded the times of the Trojan war by 180 years, testify that he was born of God. His name is known to no one except himself and the Father, as John teaches in the Revelation. Hermes says that his name cannot be uttered by mortal mouth. Yet by men he is called by two names, Jesus, which is Savior, and Christ, which is King: Savior, because he is the healing and salvation of all who through him believe in God; Christ, because he himself will come from heaven at the consummation of this age to judge the world, and, the resurrection of the dead having taken place, to establish for himself an eternal kingdom.

But to prevent any uncertainty in your mind about why we give the name Jesus Christ, who was born of a human being three hundred years ago, to him who was born of God before the world, I will briefly explain the reason to you. The same is Son of God and of man. For he was born twice: first of God in the Spirit before the origin of the world, afterwards in the flesh of a human being in the reign of Augustus. In this there is a splendid and great mystery, in which the salvation of men, the religion of the supreme God, and all truth are contained. For when the wicked and impious worship of the gods first crept in through the snares of demons, then the religion of God remained with the Hebrews alone, who, however, not by any law but by ancestral custom kept the worship handed down to them through the generations, until the time when they went out of Egypt under Moses, the first of all the prophets, through whom the law was imposed on them by God. These, who were afterwards called Jews, served God, then, bound by the bonds of the law. But they too, gradually straying into profane rites, took up foreign gods and, abandoning their ancestral worship, sacrificed to senseless images. Therefore God sent them prophets filled with the divine Spirit, to reproach them for their sins and call them to repentance, to threaten the vengeance that would follow and to announce that, if they persisted in the same offenses, he would send another as giver of a new law, so that, the ungrateful people being removed from the inheritance, he might gather to himself another, more faithful people from foreign nations. But they not only persisted but even killed those very men who were sent. And so he condemned them for these crimes, and did not send prophets any further to the stubborn people, but sent his Son, to call all nations to the grace of God. Yet he did not shut them out from hope of salvation, impious and ungrateful though they were, but sent him to them first of all, so that if perhaps they obeyed, they would not lose what they had received; but if they did not receive their God, then, the heirs being disinherited, the nations would come into adoption. The supreme Father therefore commanded him to descend to earth and put on a human body, so that, subject to the sufferings of the flesh, he might teach virtue and patience not only by words but also by deeds. He was reborn, then, of a virgin without a father, as a man, so that, just as in his first, spiritual birth, created from God alone, he became holy spirit, so in his second, fleshly birth, begotten of a mother alone, he might become holy flesh, so that through him the flesh, which had been subject to sin, might be freed from destruction.

That these things would happen as I have set out, the prophets had foretold. In Solomon it is written thus: “The womb of the virgin was weakened and received offspring, and she was burdened, and the virgin became a mother with great mercy.” In Isaiah thus: “Look, a virgin will receive in her womb and bear a son, and you shall call his name Emmanuel,” which means “God with us.” For he was with us on earth when he put on flesh, and nonetheless he was God in man and man in God. That he was both was foretold beforehand by the prophets. That he was God, Isaiah says thus: “They will worship you and pray in you, for God is in you, and we did not know it, the God of Israel. All who oppose you will be confounded and put to shame, and will fall into confession.” Likewise Jeremiah: “This is our God, and no other shall be counted beside him, who found every way of understanding and gave it to Jacob his servant and to Israel whom he loved. After this he was seen on earth and lived among men.” Likewise that he was man, the same Jeremiah says: “He is also man, and who has known him?” Isaiah too hands it down thus: “And the Lord will send them a man who will save them, and judging he will heal them.” Likewise Moses himself in Numbers: “A star shall rise out of Jacob, and a man shall arise out of Israel.” For this reason, then, although he was God, he took flesh, so that, made mediator between God and man, he might by his teaching lead man to God, death being overcome.

We have spoken of his birth; now let us speak of his power and works. When he did great and wonderful things among men, the Jews, seeing them, thought they were done by magic power, not knowing that all the things done by him had been foretold by the prophets. The sick and those languishing with various kinds of disease he at once strengthened, not by any remedy but by the force and power of his word; he healed the disabled, raised the lame to walk, restored sight to the blind, gave speech to the dumb, gave hearing to the deaf, cleansed the polluted and the stained, restored their own minds to those maddened by the assault of demons, and called back to life and light the dead or those already buried. He also satisfied five thousand people with five loaves and two fish. He walked on the sea. In a storm he commanded the wind to be still, and at once there was calm. All these things we find foretold both in the books of the prophets and in the Sibylline songs. Because of these miracles, when a great multitude flocked to him and believed that he was, as he was, the Son of God and sent by God, the priests and leaders of the Jews, filled with envy and at the same time stirred by anger because he exposed their sins and injustice, came together to kill him. That this would happen Solomon had declared a little more than a thousand years before, in Wisdom, in these words: “Let us lie in wait for the righteous one, because he is unpleasant to us and reproaches us with sins against the law. He professes to have knowledge of God and calls himself the son of God. He has become to us a reproof of our thoughts; he is burdensome to us even to see, because his life is unlike others' and his ways are changed. We are counted by him as triflers; he keeps himself from our ways as from uncleanness, and he prefers the last end of the righteous and boasts that God is his father. Let us see, then, whether his words are true, and test what will happen to him. Let us question him with insult and torment, and learn his reverence and prove his patience. Let us condemn him to a most shameful death. These things they thought, and they erred; for their folly blinded them, and they did not know the mysteries of God.” Forgetful, then, of these writings which they read, they stirred up the people against him as against an impious man, so that they might seize him, bring him to trial, and demand his death with impious cries. And they brought as a charge the very fact that he called himself the Son of God and that he broke the law by healing people on the sabbath, which law he said he did not break but fulfilled. And when Pontius Pilate, who was then sitting as judge as legate in Syria, perceived that that case did not belong to the office of a Roman judge, he sent him to Herod the tetrarch and permitted the Jews to be judges of their own law; and they, having received power for the crime, fastened him to the cross. But first they beat him with scourges and blows, crowned him with thorns, spat in his face, gave him gall and vinegar for food and drink; and amid these things no word of his was heard. Then the executioners, having cast lots for his tunic and cloak, hung him on the gibbet and fastened him there, since on the next day they were going to celebrate the Passover, that is, their festival day. This crime was followed by portents, so that they might understand the wickedness they had committed. For at the very moment when he gave up his spirit there was both a great earthquake and an eclipse of the sun, so that day was turned into night.

All these things the prophets had foretold would happen. Isaiah says thus: “I am not stubborn nor do I speak against: I gave my back to the scourges and my cheeks to blows, and I did not turn away my face from the foulness of spitting.” The same on his silence: “As a sheep he was led to the slaughter, and as a lamb before its shearers is without voice, so he did not open his mouth.” Likewise David in Psalm 34: “Scourges were gathered against me, and they did not know; they were broken up and were not pricked in heart; they tempted me and gnashed their teeth at me.” The same on the food and drink in Psalm 68: “And they gave gall for my food, and in my thirst they gave me vinegar to drink.” Likewise of the cross of Christ: “They dug my hands and my feet; they counted all my bones; and they themselves looked and saw me; they divided my garments among them and cast lots upon my clothing.” Moses in Deuteronomy: “And your life shall be hanging before your eyes, and you shall fear day and night and shall not trust your life.” Likewise in Numbers: “The Lord is not hanged like a man, nor does he suffer threats like a son of man.” Likewise Zechariah: “And they shall look on me, whom they pierced.” Of the darkening of the sun Amos says thus: “In that day, says the Lord, the sun shall set at noon and the day of light shall be darkened; and I will turn your feasts into mourning and your songs into lamentation.” Likewise Jeremiah, of the city of Jerusalem in which he suffered: “And the sun went down on her while it was still midday; she was crushed and cursed; the rest of them I will give to the sword.” Nor were these things said in vain, since after a short time the emperor Vespasian subdued the Jews, laid waste their lands with sword and fire, reduced the besieged by famine, overthrew Jerusalem, led the captives in triumph, and forbade the rest who survived their lands, so that they might never be allowed to return to their native soil. These things were done by God because of that cross of Christ, as Solomon had testified beforehand in their Scriptures, saying: “And Israel shall be for destruction and for a reproach to the people. And this house shall be deserted, and everyone who passes by it will be astonished and say, ‘Why has God done these evils to this land and to this house?’ And they will say, ‘Because they forsook the Lord their God and persecuted their king, most beloved of God, and tortured him in great humiliation; for this reason God has brought these evils upon them.’” For what did they not deserve, who killed the Lord who had come for their salvation?

After this they took the body down from the gibbet and laid it in a tomb. But on the third day, before dawn, an earthquake took place and the stone with which they had closed the tomb was rolled away, and he rose again. In the tomb nothing was found but the wrappings of the body. That he himself would rise on the third day the prophets had long ago foretold. David in Psalm 15: “You will not abandon my soul to the underworld, nor let your holy one see corruption.” Likewise Hosea: “This is my wise son; for this reason he will not now withstand the affliction of his sons; and I will rescue him from the hand of the underworld. Where is your judgment, O death? Where is your sting?” The same again: “He will revive us after two days, on the third day.” Having gone, then, into Galilee after the resurrection, he gathered again his disciples, whom fear had put to flight; and having given the commands he wished to be kept, and having arranged the preaching of the gospel through the whole world, he breathed the Holy Spirit into them and gave them power to do miracles, so that they might work for the salvation of men as much by deeds as by words. And then at last, on the fortieth day, he returned to the Father, taken up in a cloud. The prophet Daniel had shown this long before, saying: “I saw in the vision of the night, and there in the clouds of heaven was one coming like a son of man, and he came to the Ancient of Days. And those who stood by brought him forward; and to him was given kingdom and honor and dominion, and all peoples, tribes, and languages will serve him; and his power is eternal, which will never pass away, and his kingdom will not be destroyed.” Likewise David in Psalm 109: “The Lord said to my Lord: Sit at my right hand, until I make your enemies the footstool of your feet.”

Since, then, he sits at the right hand of God, to trample his enemies who tortured him, when he comes to judge the world, it is plain that no hope is left to the Jews unless, turned to repentance and washed from the blood with which they have defiled themselves, they begin to hope in him whom they killed. So Ezra says thus: “This Passover is our Savior and our refuge. Consider, and let it rise up in your heart, that we must humble him in a sign; and after this we shall hope in him.” That the Jews have been disinherited because they rejected Christ, and that we, who are from the nations, have been adopted in their place, is proved by the Scriptures. Jeremiah says thus: “I have forsaken my house; I have let go my inheritance into the hands of its enemies. My inheritance has become to me like a lion in the forest; it has given its voice against me; therefore I have hated it.” Likewise Malachi: “I have no pleasure in you, says the Lord, and I will not accept a sacrifice from your hands; for from the rising of the sun to its setting my name will be glorified among the nations.” Isaiah too thus: “I come to gather all nations and tongues, and they will come and see my glory.” The same in another place, in the person of the Father to the Son: “I the Lord God have called you in righteousness, and I will hold your hand and strengthen you; I have given you as a covenant of my race, as a light of the nations, to open the eyes of the blind, to bring out the bound from their chains, and those sitting in darkness from the prison house.”

If, then, the Jews have been rejected by God, as the witness of the sacred Scriptures indicates, while the nations, as we see, have been called and freed from the darkness of this worldly life and from the chains of demons, then no other hope is set before man unless he follows the true religion and true wisdom, which is in Christ: whoever does not know him is always a stranger to truth and to God. Let neither Jews nor philosophers flatter themselves about the supreme God: whoever has not acknowledged the Son could not acknowledge the Father either. This is the wisdom and this the mystery of the supreme God: through him God willed to be both known and worshipped. For this reason he sent the prophets beforehand to proclaim his coming, so that when all that had been foretold had been accomplished in him, he might then be believed by men to be both Son of God and God. Yet it must not be thought as though there were two gods. For the Father and the Son are one. For since the Father loves the Son and gives him all things, and the Son faithfully obeys the Father and wills nothing but what the Father wills, so close a bond certainly cannot be torn apart so that they be called two, in whom there is one substance and will and faith. Therefore the Son is through the Father and the Father through the Son. One honor is to be given to both as to one God, and it is to be so divided between the two in worship that the very division is bound by an inseparable joining. He will leave himself neither who separates either the Father from the Son or the Son from the Father.

It remains to answer those also who think it was unfitting and unreasonable that God should be clothed with a mortal body, be subject to men, bear insults, and even suffer tortures and death. I will say what I think and draw together an immense subject in few words as best I can. One who teaches something ought, I think, himself to do what he teaches, so as to compel people to obey. For if he does not do it, he will detract from the credibility of his precepts. Examples, then, are needed so that what is commanded may have firmness; and if anyone is obstinate and says it cannot be done, the teacher may convince him by an actual deed. Teaching cannot be perfect, therefore, when it is handed on in words only, but it is perfect when it is fulfilled in deeds. Christ, therefore, since he was sent to men as a teacher of virtue, certainly ought, so that his teaching might be perfect, both to teach and to do. But if he had not put on a human body, he could not have done what he taught: not to be angry, not to desire riches, not to be inflamed by lust, not to fear pain, to despise death. These certainly belong to virtue, but they cannot be done without flesh. He was embodied, therefore, so that when he taught that the desires of the flesh must be conquered, he himself might do it first, so that no one could plead the frailty of the flesh as an excuse.

I will now speak of the mystery of the cross, so that no one can say: If he had to undergo death, surely not a shameful and disgraceful one, but one that had some honor: I know indeed that many, while they shrink from the name of the cross, flee from the truth, although there is both great reason and power in it. For since he had been sent to open the way to salvation to all the lowliest, he made himself lowly, to set them free. He therefore underwent that kind of death which is usually inflicted on the lowly, so that the opportunity of imitation might be given to all. Moreover, since he was going to rise again, it was not right for any part of his body to be cut off or a bone broken, which happens to those who are beheaded. The cross, therefore, was preferable, which kept the body with its bones whole for the resurrection. To these is added also this, that having undergone suffering and death, he had to be lifted up. So much did the cross exalt him, both in fact and in meaning, that his majesty and power became known to all together with the very suffering. For in stretching out his hands on the gibbet, he surely spread out his wings to the east and the west, under which all nations from both parts of the world might gather to rest. How strong this sign is and what power it has is evident, since the whole troop of demons is expelled and put to flight by this sign. And as he himself before his passion drove out demons by his word and command, so now by the name and sign of his passion the same unclean spirits, when they have crept into human bodies, are driven out, when, wrenched and tortured and confessing themselves demons, they yield to God who scourges them. What then could the Greeks have hoped from their religions and their wisdom, when they see their gods, whom they do not deny to be the same as demons, triumphed over by men through the cross?

There is, then, one hope of life for men, one harbor of salvation, one refuge of freedom: if, casting away the errors by which they were held, they open the eyes of their mind and know God, in whom alone is the dwelling of truth; if they despise earthly things and things fashioned of earth, count as nothing philosophy, which with God is folly, and, taking up true wisdom, that is, religion, become heirs of immortality. But they fight not so much against the truth as against their own salvation, and when they hear these things, they detest them as an unpardonable crime. They do not even allow themselves to hear; they think their ears are violated by sacrilege if they hear; nor do they now refrain from curses, but assail us with as many verbal insults as they can. And if they have gained power, they persecute us as public enemies, indeed, even more than enemies, for whom, when conquered in war, the punishment is either death or slavery, and there is no torture after arms are laid down, although those who wished to do everything have deserved to suffer everything; and even among swords piety has a place. Unheard-of cruelty, when innocence does not deserve even the condition of conquered enemies! What is the cause of such fury? Plainly, because they cannot engage with reason, they press with violence; without examining the case they condemn as most guilty those whose innocence they did not wish to establish. Nor do they think it enough if those whom they irrationally hate die a quick and simple death, but they mangle them with exquisite tortures to satisfy their hatred, which is born not of any sin but of the truth; and the truth is hateful to those who live evilly because they cannot bear that there are some whom their deeds cannot please. These they wish to destroy by every means, so that they may sin freely without a witness.

But they say they do these things to defend their gods. First, if they are gods and have some power and divinity, they need no defense and patronage from man, but surely defend themselves. Or how can man hope for help from them if they cannot even avenge their own injuries? It is foolish and vain, then, to wish to be avengers of the gods, except that from this their lack of trust appears the more. For whoever undertakes the patronage of the god he worships confesses that he is worthless; but if he worships him because he thinks him powerful, he ought not to wish to defend one by whom he himself should be defended. We, then, act rightly. For when these defenders of false gods, rebels against the true God, persecute his name in us, we resist neither in deed nor in word, but gentle, silent, and patient we bear everything that cruelty can contrive against us. For we have confidence in God, from whom we expect vengeance to follow soon. Nor is this confidence empty, since of all who dared this crime we have partly learned and partly seen the wretched ends; and no one got off unpunished for having injured God, but he who would not learn by word who the true God is learned it by his own punishment. I should like to know, when they drive the unwilling to sacrifice, what reason they have with them, or to whom they offer what they do. If to the gods, that is not worship nor an acceptable sacrifice which is done by the unwilling, which is extorted by injury, which is dragged out by pain; but if to those very people whom they compel, it is certainly no benefit which a person would rather die than receive. If what you call me to is good, why do you invite me with evil? Why not with words but with blows? Why not with reason but with tortures of the body? From this it appears that that is evil to which you do not entice the willing but drag the refusing. What folly is it to wish to do good to one who does not wish it? Or if someone, pressed by evils, is driven to flee to death, can you, if you have wrested away the sword or broken the noose or pulled him back from a precipice or poured out the poison, boast that you are the preserver of the man, when the one you think you have saved neither thanks you and thinks you have treated him badly, because you prevented the death he desired, because you did not allow him to reach the end, the rest from his evils? For a benefit ought to be weighed not by the quality of the thing but by the mind of the one who receives it. Why do you count as a benefit what to me is an injury? Do you want me to worship your gods, which I consider deadly to me? If it is good, I do not grudge it; enjoy your good alone. There is no reason for you to wish to help my error, which I have taken up by judgment and will. If it is evil, why do you drag me into partnership in evil? Use your own lot. I prefer to die in good rather than live in evil.

These things can justly be said. But who will listen, when mad and unrestrained men think their domination diminished if anything in human affairs is free? And yet religion is the only thing in which freedom has set its dwelling. For it is above all others a voluntary matter, and no necessity can be imposed on anyone to worship what he does not wish. Someone can perhaps pretend; he cannot will. Finally, when some, from fear of torments or overcome by tortures, have consented to the accursed sacrifices, they never do of their own accord what they did by necessity; but when opportunity is given again and liberty restored, they return to God and appease him with prayers and tears, doing penance not for a will they did not have but for a necessity they endured; and pardon is not refused to those who make satisfaction. What, then, does he gain who defiles the body, when he cannot change the will? But men of empty brain, if they have compelled some brave man to pour a libation to their gods, exult insolently with incredible eagerness and rejoice as if they had sent an enemy under the yoke. But if someone, terrified neither by threats nor by torments, has chosen to put faith before life, against him cruelty exercises its ingenuity and contrives unspeakable and intolerable things. And because they know that death for God is glorious and that this is our victory, if, having overcome the torturers, we lay down our life for faith and religion, they themselves strive to win. They do not inflict death, but devise new and unheard-of tortures, so that the frailty of the flesh may yield to pain; and if it does not yield, they postpone, and apply careful treatment to the wounds, so that, the scars being still raw, repeated tortures may inflict more pain. And while they practise this butchery against the innocent, they think themselves pious and just and religious (for their gods delight in such rites), but call the others impious and desperate. What perversity is this, that the innocent man who is tortured is called desperate and impious, while the executioner is called just and pious?

But they say that those who curse the public religions handed down by their ancestors are rightly and deservedly punished. What? If those ancestors were foolish in taking up vain religions, as we have already shown above, is it forbidden to us to follow what is true and better? Why do we take away our own liberty and, as if bound over, serve others' errors? Let us be allowed to be wise; let us be allowed to seek the truth. But yet, if they wish to defend the religions of their ancestors, why do the Egyptians go unpunished, who worship cattle and beasts of every kind as gods? Why are farces acted about the gods themselves, and whoever mocks them most wittily is honored? Why are philosophers listened to, who either say there are no gods, or, if there are, that they care for nothing and do not regard human affairs, or argue that there is no providence at all ruling the world? But alone of all, those are judged impious who follow God and the truth. Since this is the same as justice and wisdom, they defame it with the charge of impiety or folly, and do not see what it is that deceives them, when they give to evil the name of good and to good the name of evil. Very many of the philosophers, but above all Plato and Aristotle, said much about justice, asserting it and extolling it with the highest praise as the virtue that gives each his own, that keeps equity in all things; and that, while the other virtues are as it were silent and shut up within, justice alone is not concerned only with itself nor hidden, but projects wholly outward and is inclined to doing good, so as to benefit as many as possible; as if justice ought to be only in judges and in those set in some authority, and not in all. And yet there is no human being, not even of the lowest and the beggars, to whom justice cannot belong. But because they did not know what it was, where it came from, and what its function was, they assigned that highest virtue, that is, the common good of all, to a few, and said that it seeks no advantages of its own but is devoted only to others' interests. And not without reason did Carneades arise, a man of the highest talent and acuteness, to refute their speech and to overturn justice, which had no stable foundation; not because he thought justice ought to be censured, but to show that its defenders argued nothing certain, nothing firm, about justice.

For if justice is the worship of the true God (for what is so just in equity, so dutiful in honor, so necessary for salvation, as to acknowledge God as parent, venerate him as lord, and obey his law and precepts?), then the philosophers did not know justice, since they neither acknowledged God himself nor held to his worship and law. And so they could be refuted by Carneades, whose argument was this: that there is no natural law, and so all living things, led by nature itself, defend their own advantage; and therefore justice, if it looks after others' interests and neglects its own, must be called folly. For if all the peoples who hold empire, and the Romans themselves who have possessed the whole world, wished to follow justice and restore to each his own which they had seized by force and arms, they would return to huts and poverty. If they did that, they would have to be judged just, but still foolish, who strive to harm themselves in order to benefit others. Next, if someone finds a man who by mistake is selling gold for brass or silver for lead, and necessity compels him to buy it, will he conceal it and buy it cheap, or rather point it out? If he points it out, he will certainly be called just, because he did not deceive; but also foolish, because he made gain for another and loss for himself. But loss is an easy matter. What then? If his life comes into danger, so that he must either kill or die, what will he do? This can happen: after a shipwreck he may find a weak man clinging to a plank, or fleeing from a defeated army he may find a wounded man on a horse. Will he push the one off the plank or the other off the horse so that he himself can escape? If he wishes to be just, he will not do it; but he will also be judged foolish, who betrays his own life while he spares another's. If he does it, he will seem wise, because he looks after himself, but also wicked, because he does harm.

These arguments are clever indeed, but we can answer them very easily. For it is a change of names that makes it seem so. Justice has the appearance of folly, yet it is not folly; and malice has the appearance of wisdom, yet it is not wisdom. But just as that malice, shrewd and clever in guarding its own interests, is not wisdom but cunning and craft, so justice ought not to be called folly but innocence, because the just man must be wise and the foolish man unjust. For neither reason nor nature itself allows that one who is just should not be wise, since the just man does nothing but what is right and good, and always flees what is wrong and evil. And who can distinguish good and evil, wrong and right, except one who is wise? The fool does evil because he does not know what good and evil are; he sins because he cannot tell right from wrong. Justice, then, cannot belong to the fool, nor wisdom to the unjust. He is not a fool, then, who has not pushed the shipwrecked man off the plank or the wounded man off the horse, because he has refrained from doing harm, which is a sin; and to avoid sin belongs to the wise. But what makes him seem a fool at first sight is that they think the soul is extinguished with the body; and so they refer every advantage to this life. For if there is nothing after death, he certainly acts foolishly who spares another's life at the cost of his own, or who looks to another's gain more than his own. If death destroys the soul, we must take pains to live longer and more comfortably; but if an eternal and blessed life remains after death, the just and wise man will surely despise this bodily life with all the goods of the earth, knowing what reward he will receive from God. Let us therefore hold to innocence, hold to justice, and accept the appearance of folly, so that we may hold true wisdom. And if it seems silly and foolish to men to prefer to be tortured and die rather than pour a libation to the gods and go away unharmed, let us nevertheless strive with all virtue and all patience to show our faithfulness to God. Let not death terrify us nor pain break us, so that vigor of mind and unshaken constancy may be kept. Let them call us fools, so long as they themselves are the greatest fools, blind, dull, and equal to cattle, who do not understand that it is deadly to forsake the living God and prostrate themselves to adore earthly things; who do not know that eternal punishment awaits those who have venerated senseless images, and that those who have not refused torments or death for the worship and honor of the true God will obtain everlasting life. This is the highest faith, this true wisdom, this perfect justice. It is nothing to us what fools judge or what little men think: we must await the judgment of God, so that afterwards we may judge those who have judged us.

I have said what justice is; it follows that I should show what the true sacrifice to God is, what the most just rite of worship, so that no one will think that God desires sacrificial victims, incense, or precious gifts. Since hunger, thirst, cold, and desire for all earthly things are absent from him, he does not use any of the things that are brought to temples and to gods of clay. But just as bodily things are needed for bodily beings, so surely for an incorporeal being an incorporeal sacrifice is necessary. He himself does not need the things which God gave for man's use, since the whole earth is in his power. He does not need a temple, whose dwelling is the world; he does not need an image, who is incomprehensible to eyes and mind; he does not need earthly lamps, who could kindle the sun with the other stars for man's use. What, then, does God desire from man but the worship of the mind, which is pure and holy? For the things made by fingers or outside the man are useless, fragile, and displeasing. This is the true sacrifice: not what is brought out of a chest but out of the heart, not what is offered by the hand but by the mind. That is an acceptable victim which the soul has sacrificed from itself. For what do victims, incense, garments, gold, silver, precious stones contribute if the mind of the worshipper is not pure? Justice alone, then, is what God seeks: in it is the sacrifice, in it the worship of God. Of this I must now speak and teach in what works justice must consist.

That there are two ways of human life was not unknown either to the philosophers or to the poets, but each presented them differently. The philosophers held that one is the way of industry, the other of idleness; but less rightly, in that they referred them only to the advantages of this life. The poets did better, who said that one is the way of the just, the other of the impious; but they err in that they say these ways are not in this life but in the underworld. We speak more rightly, who say that one is the way of life, the other of death, and that these ways are here. But the right-hand way, by which the just walk, leads not to Elysium but to heaven (for they become immortal); the left-hand way leads to Tartarus, for the unjust are consigned to eternal torments. We must therefore keep to the way of justice, which leads to life. The first duty of justice is to acknowledge God and to fear him as Lord and love him as Father. For he who begot us, who animated us with the breath of life, who feeds us, who keeps us safe, has over us not only as a father but also as a lord the right to chastise and the power of life and death; for this reason a twofold honor, that is, love with fear, is owed him by man. The second duty of justice is to acknowledge man as a brother. For if the same God made us and brought all to birth on equal terms for justice and eternal life, we are certainly bound together by a brotherly tie; and whoever does not acknowledge it is unjust. But the origin of this evil, by which the fellowship of men with one another and the bond of kinship has been dissolved, springs from ignorance of the true God. For one who does not know that fountain of goodness can in no way be good. This is why from the time when many gods began to be consecrated and worshipped by men, justice, as the poets say, was put to flight, every covenant was broken, and the fellowship of human law was torn apart. Then each, looking after himself, measured what was right by strength, harmed others, attacked them with frauds, entrapped them with tricks, increased his own advantages by others' losses, spared neither relatives nor children nor parents, mixed cups for murder, beset roads with the sword, infested the seas, loosed the reins to lust wherever frenzy led, and finally had nothing holy that unspeakable desire did not violate. When these things were happening, men then made laws for themselves for the common benefit, so as to make themselves safe for a while from injuries. But fear of the laws did not suppress crimes; it only removed licence. For laws could punish offenses; they could not punish conscience. So the things which before had been done openly began to be done secretly; even the laws were circumvented, since the very guardians of the laws, corrupted by rewards and gifts, sold their judgments either for the release of the wicked or for the ruin of the just. To these were added dissensions and wars and mutual plunderings, and, the laws being crushed, the power of raging was licentiously assumed.

When human affairs were in this state, God, having pity on us, revealed himself to us and showed himself, so that in him we might learn religion, faith, chastity, mercy; so that, casting away the error of our former life, we might know ourselves together with God himself, from whom impiety had separated us; and so that, the Lord himself handing it down, we might receive the divine law which joins human things with heavenly, by which law all the errors in which we had been entangled, with vain and impious superstitions, might be taken away. What we owe to man, then, that same divine law prescribes, which teaches that whatever you do for a man is done for God. But the root of justice and the whole foundation of equity is this: not to do what you would not wish to suffer, but to measure another's mind by your own. If it is bitter to bear an injury, and he who has done it seems unjust, transfer to the other's person what you feel about yourself, and to your own what you judge about the other, and you will understand that you act as unjustly if you harm another as the other does if he harms you. If we turn these things over in our minds, we shall keep innocence, on which justice stands as on its first step. For the first thing is not to harm, the next to help. But just as in uncultivated fields, before you begin to sow, the plowland must be cleared by pulling up the briars and cutting off all the roots of stumps, so vices must first be removed from our souls, and then at last virtues planted, from which, sown by the word of God, the fruits of virtue may spring.

There are three passions, or, so to speak, three Furies, which stir up such great disturbances in human souls and sometimes compel them so to offend that they allow no regard for their reputation or their own danger: anger, which desires revenge; avarice, which longs for wealth; lust, which seeks pleasures. These vices must be resisted before all else; these stumps must be rooted out, so that virtues can be planted. The Stoics think these passions should be cut away, the Peripatetics that they should be moderated; neither rightly, since they can neither be removed entirely, for being implanted by nature they have a definite and great purpose, nor diminished, since if they are evil we must be without them even in moderation, and if good we must use them whole. We, however, say that they are neither to be removed nor diminished. For the things which God has implanted in man with reason are not evil in themselves; but since they are certainly good by nature, being given to protect life, they become evil by being used badly. And just as courage is good if you fight for your country and evil if against it, so the passions, if you apply them to good uses, will be virtues; if to bad, they will be called vices. Anger, then, was given by God for the restraint of sins, that is, for governing the discipline of those under one's authority, so that fear might suppress licence and check boldness; but those who do not know its limits are angry with equals or even superiors: from this people leap to monstrous crimes, to murders, to wars. Desire too was given for wishing for and acquiring the necessities of life; but those who do not know its limits strive insatiably to heap up wealth: from this poisonings, swindles, forged wills, and every kind of fraud have broken out. The passion of lust is implanted and inborn for the begetting of children; but those who do not keep its limits in their mind use it for pleasure alone: from this arise unlawful loves, adulteries and debaucheries, and every corruption. These passions must therefore be brought back within their limits and directed into the right way, in which, even if they are vehement, they cannot incur blame.

Anger must be restrained when we suffer injury, both so that the evil which threatens from strife may be checked and so that we may keep the two greatest virtues, innocence and patience. Avarice must be broken when we have what is enough. For what madness is it to toil at heaping up things which must pass to others by robbery or confiscation or death? Let lust not wander outside the lawful marriage bed, but serve the begetting of children. For excessive appetite for pleasure both breeds danger and begets disgrace and, what is most to be guarded against, acquires eternal death. For nothing is so hateful to God as an unchaste mind and an impure soul. Nor let anyone think that he must abstain only from this pleasure which is taken from union with a woman's body, but also from the other pleasures of the remaining senses, because they too are faulty and it belongs to the same virtue to despise them. The pleasure of the eyes is gained from the beauty of things, of the ears from melodious and sweet sounds, of the nostrils from pleasant smell, of taste from sweet foods; all of which virtue must resist bravely, so that the soul, entangled by these attractions, will not be dragged down from heavenly things to earthly, from eternal to temporal, from immortal life to perpetual punishment. In the pleasures of taste and smell there is this danger, that they can draw one to luxury. For whoever is devoted to them will either have no property or, if he has it, will consume it and afterwards lead a detestable life. And whoever is captivated by hearing (not to speak of songs, which often so soothe the inmost senses as to disturb even the balance of the mind with frenzy) is easily led to impious worship by well-composed speeches, rhythmic poems, or clever disputations. This is why those who are either eloquent themselves or prefer to read eloquent things do not easily believe the heavenly writings, because they seem unpolished: they do not seek what is true but what is pleasing; indeed, those things seem to them most true which flatter the ears. So they reject the truth while they are captivated by sweetness of speech. The pleasure that pertains to sight is manifold. For that which is gained from the beauty of precious things stirs up avarice, which ought to be foreign to the wise and just man; and that which is taken from the beauty of women falls into the other pleasure, of which we have already spoken above.

It remains to speak of the spectacles, which, since they have power to corrupt souls, must be avoided and guarded against by the wise, all the more because they are recorded as invented for celebrating the honors of the gods. For the gladiatorial shows are festivals of Saturn, the stage belongs to Father Liber, and the circus games are thought to be dedicated to Neptune; so that whoever attends the spectacles seems to have left the worship of God and passed over to profane rites. But I prefer to speak of the thing itself rather than its origin. What is so horrible, so hideous, as the slaughter of a human being? For this reason our life is protected by the severest laws; for this reason wars are accursed. Yet custom has found how to commit homicide without war and without laws, and pleasure has claimed this for itself, which crime had claimed. But if to be present at a homicide is to share the guilt of the crime, and the spectator is bound by the same deed as the perpetrator, then in these slaughters of gladiators he who watches is no less drenched in blood than he who does it; nor can he be free of blood who wished it shed, or seem not to have killed who both cheered the killer and demanded a reward for him. What? Is the stage any holier? On it comedy tells stories of seductions and love affairs, tragedy of incests and parricides. The shameless gestures of the actors too, by which they imitate disreputable women, teach the lusts which they express in dancing. For the mime is a school of corruption, in which shameful things are done in representation, so that the real things may be done without shame. Young people watch these things, whose slippery age, which ought to be bridled and guided, is trained by these images to vices and sins. The circus is thought more innocent, but here the madness is greater, since the minds of the spectators are carried away by such frenzy that they often rise up not only to abuse but to brawls, fights, and quarrels. All spectacles, then, must be avoided, so that we may keep a tranquil state of mind; we must renounce harmful pleasures, so that we do not fall into the traps of death, charmed by a destructive sweetness.

Let virtue alone please us, whose reward is immortal when it has conquered pleasure. And once the passions are overcome and pleasures subdued, the task of restraining the rest is easy for one who follows God and the truth. The person who hopes for a blessing from God will never curse; he will not swear falsely, so that he does not mock God; indeed he will not even swear, so that necessity or habit does not eventually lead him into perjury. He will say nothing deceitfully, nothing by pretence; he will neither deny what he has pledged nor promise what he cannot do; he will envy no one, being content with himself and his own, nor will he disparage or wish ill to another toward whom God's benefits are perhaps more inclined. He will not steal nor covet at all anything belonging to another; he will not lend money at interest (for this is to gain profit from others' misfortunes), and yet he will not refuse if necessity compels someone to borrow. Let him not be harsh toward his son or his slave: let him remember that he too has a Father and a Lord. So let him deal with them as he would wish to be dealt with. Let him not accept excessive gifts from those of slender means; for it is not just that the estates of the rich be increased by the losses of the poor. An ancient precept is not to kill; which ought not to be understood as though we were commanded only to keep our hands from homicide, which is punished even by public laws; but with this command interposed it will not be lawful even by a word to bring danger of death, nor to kill or expose an infant, nor to condemn oneself to voluntary death. Likewise not to commit adultery: but by this precept we are forbidden not only to corrupt another's marriage, which is condemned even by the common law of nations, but also to abstain from prostituted bodies. For the law of God is above the laws; it forbids even those things that are held to be permitted, so as to perfect justice. It belongs to the same law not to bear false witness, which itself also extends more widely. For if false witness by a lie harms the one against whom it is spoken and deceives the one before whom it is spoken, then one must never lie, because a lie always either deceives or harms. He is not, then, a just man who lies even harmlessly in idle talk. Nor is it permitted to him to flatter (for flattery is pernicious and deceptive), but everywhere he will guard the truth. Though it may be unpleasant for the present, yet when its fruit and usefulness have appeared, it will produce not hatred, as the poet says, but gratitude.

I have spoken of the things that are forbidden; I will now speak briefly of those that are commanded. Next to innocence is mercy. For the one does no evil, the other does good; the one begins justice, the other completes it. For since human nature is weaker than that of the other animals, which God formed equipped to attack and armed to repel force, he gave us the feeling of mercy, so that we might place all protection of our life in mutual help. For if, fashioned by one God and sprung from one man, we are joined by the right of kinship, we ought therefore to love every human being. And so we must not only not inflict injury, but not even avenge it when inflicted, so that there may be perfect innocence in us; and for this reason God commands us always to pray even for our enemies. We ought, then, to be a social and sharing animal, so as to protect ourselves by giving and receiving help in turn. For our frailty is subject to many mishaps and troubles. Expect that what you see has happened to another can happen to you too: only thus will you be stirred to bring help, if you take on the mind of the one who, placed in evils, implores your help. If anyone lacks food, let us share; if anyone meets us naked, let us clothe him; if anyone suffers injury from one more powerful, let us rescue him. Let our home be open to strangers or to those in need of a roof. Let our defense not be lacking to orphans, nor our protection to widows. To ransom captives from the enemy is a great work of mercy, likewise to visit and comfort the sick and the poor. If the destitute or strangers die, let us not allow them to lie unburied. These are the works, these the duties of mercy; whoever undertakes them will offer a true and acceptable sacrifice to God. This is a more acceptable victim with God, who is appeased not by the blood of cattle but by the piety of man; and God, because he is just, treats him by his own law and his own terms: he has mercy on him whom he sees merciful, and is inexorable to him whom he sees harsh toward those who appeal to him. So, in order that we may be able to do all these things that please God, money must be despised and transferred to heavenly treasuries, where no thief may dig through, no rust consume, no tyrant snatch it away, but it may be kept for us, with God as guardian, for eternal wealth.

Faithfulness too is a great part of justice; and it must be kept above all by us who bear the name of faith, especially in religion, because God comes before man and is greater than he. And if it is glorious to undergo death for friends, for parents, for children, that is, for a human being, and whoever has done this gains lasting memory and praise, how much more for God, who can give eternal life in return for temporal death? So when a necessity of this kind arises, that we are compelled to fall away from God and go over to the rites of the heathen, let no fear, no terror, bend us from guarding the faith handed down to us. Let God be before our eyes, God in our heart, by whose inward help we may overcome the pain of the flesh and the tortures applied to the body. Let us then think of nothing but the rewards of immortal life; so we shall easily bear, even if our limbs must be torn apart or burned, everything that the madness of tyrannical cruelty contrives against us. Finally, let us strive to undergo death itself not unwillingly or fearfully but gladly and undaunted, since we know in what glory with God we shall be, coming to the promises having triumphed over the world, and with what goods, what great blessedness, we shall make up for these brief evils of punishment and the losses of this life. But if the opportunity for this glory is lacking, faithfulness will have its reward even in peace. Let it be kept, then, in all the duties of life; let it be kept in marriage. For it is not enough if you abstain from another's bed or from the brothel. Let one who has a wife seek nothing outside, but, content with her alone, guard the sacred bond of a chaste and inviolate bed. For he is an adulterer before God and unchaste who, casting off the yoke, indulges in foreign pleasure with either a free woman or a slave. But just as the woman is bound by the bonds of chastity not to desire another, so let the man too be held by the same law, since God has joined husband and wife in the union of one body. Therefore he commanded that a wife not be dismissed unless convicted of the crime of adultery, so that the bond of the marriage covenant may never be loosed except what unfaithfulness has broken. This too is added for the perfecting of chastity: that not only the sin be absent but even the thought. For it is plain that the mind is polluted by desire, even if it comes to nothing; and so the just man ought neither to do nor to wish what is otherwise. The conscience, then, must be cleansed, which God sees through, who cannot be deceived. Let the heart be cleansed of every stain, so that it can be the temple of God, which is lit not by the gleam of gold or ivory but by the brightness of faith and chastity.

But all these things are difficult for man, and the condition of frailty does not allow anyone to be without stain. The last remedy, then, is that we flee to repentance, which holds no small place among the virtues, since it is the correction of oneself; so that if perhaps we have slipped in deed or word, we may at once come to our senses, confess that we have done wrong, and ask pardon from God, which in his mercy he will not refuse except to those who persist in error. Great is the help of repentance, great its comfort. It is the healing of wounds and sins; it is the hope, it is the harbor of salvation. Whoever takes it away cuts off for himself the way of life, since no one can be so just that repentance is never necessary for him. But we, even if there is no sin, must still confess to God and pray again and again for our faults, and give thanks even in evils. Let us always pay this homage to the Lord. For humility is dear and lovely to God. Since he accepts a sinner who confesses rather than a proud righteous man, how much more will he accept a righteous man who confesses, and make him exalted in the heavenly kingdom for his humility! These are what the worshipper of God ought to show; these are the victims, this the propitiating sacrifice, this the true worship, when a man brings the pledges of his mind to God's altar. That supreme majesty rejoices in such a worshipper, receives him as a son, and bestows the fitting reward of immortality. Of this I must now speak and refute the belief of those who think that souls are extinguished with bodies. Because they neither knew God nor could see into the secret of the world, they did not even grasp the nature of man and the soul. For how could they see the consequences, who did not hold the sum? Denying, then, that there is any providence, they denied God, who is the source and head of things. It followed that they should say that the things that exist either always existed, or were born of their own accord, or were compacted by the gathering of tiny seeds. What both exists and is subject to sight cannot always have existed; for existence itself cannot be without some beginning. And nothing can be born of its own accord, since there is no nature without one that generates it. And how could there be first seeds, since seeds arise from things and things in turn from seeds? There is, then, no seed that has no origin. So it came about that, since they thought the world was made by no providence, they did not think that man was generated by any reason either; and if no reason was at work in fashioning man, then the soul could not be immortal. Others, on the contrary, thought that there is one God, that the world was made by him and made for the sake of men, and that souls are immortal. But though they thought what is true, they did not see the causes, reasons, or outcomes of this divine work and plan, so as to complete the whole secret of the truth and bring it to a conclusion. But what they could not do, because they did not hold the truth continuously, we must do, who have come to know it by God's announcement.

Let us consider, then, what was the reason for making so great and immense a work. God made the world, as Plato thought, but why he made it he did not show. “Because he is good,” he says, “and grudges nothing, he made things that are good.” Yet we see that in the nature of things there are both goods and evils. Some perverse person, then, like that atheist Theodorus, could answer Plato: “No, because he is evil, he made things that are evil.” How will he refute him? If God made the things that are good, from where then have such great evils broken out, which often even prevail over the goods? “They were contained in matter,” he says. If evils were, then goods also, so that either God made nothing, or, if he made only the goods, the evils, which were not made, are more eternal than the goods, which had a beginning. Those things, then, will have an end which once began, and those will remain which always were. The evils, then, are stronger. But if they cannot be stronger, neither can they be more eternal. Either, then, both always existed and God is idle, or both flowed from one source. For it is more fitting that God made all things rather than nothing. So by Plato's view the same God is both good, because he made goods, and evil, because he made evils. If that cannot be, it is clear that the world was not made by God on the ground that he is good; for it embraces all things, both good and evil. Nor is anything made for its own sake, but for the sake of something else. A house is built not only so that it may be a house, but so that it may receive and protect an inhabitant. Likewise a ship is built not just to look like a ship, but so that people can sail in it. Vessels likewise are made not only to be vessels, but to hold what is needed for use. So God too must have made the world for some use. The Stoics say it was made for the sake of men, and rightly; for men enjoy all the goods that the world contains. But why men themselves were made, or what use that providence which fashioned things has in them, they do not explain. The same Plato affirms that souls are immortal; but why, or how, or when, or through whom they attain immortality, or what that great mystery is at all, why those who will be immortal are first born mortal, and then, having run the course of temporal life and cast off the wrappings of frail bodies, are carried over to that eternal blessedness, he did not grasp. Finally he did not explain either the judgment of God or the distinction between the just and the unjust; but he thought that souls that had plunged themselves into crimes are condemned only so far as to be reborn in cattle, and so pay the penalty of their sins until they return again to human forms; and that this happens forever, with no end of passing over. He brings in some kind of game, like a dream, in which there seems to be no reason, no government of God, and no plan.

I will now say what that sum is which not even those who spoke the truth could connect by bringing causes and reasons together into one. The world was made by God so that men might be born; men are born so that they may acknowledge God as parent, in which is wisdom; they acknowledge him so that they may worship him, in which is justice; they worship so that they may receive the reward of immortality; they receive immortality so that they may serve God forever. Do you see how the first things are connected with the middle and the middle with the last? Let us examine each and see whether reason supports them. God made the world for man's sake. Whoever does not see this is not far from a beast. Who looks up to heaven but man? Who marvels at the sun, the stars, all the works of God, but man? Who tills the earth? Who takes fruit from it? Who sails the sea? Who has fish, birds, and four-footed beasts in his power but man? God made all things, then, for man's sake, since all things have yielded to man's use. The philosophers saw this rightly; but what follows they did not see: that he made man himself for his own sake. For it was consistent, pious, and necessary that, since he had undertaken such great works for man's sake, since he gave him so much honor and so much power that he rules in the world, man too should acknowledge God as the author of such great benefits, who made both him and the world for him, and should give him the worship and honor he is due. Here Plato went astray; here he lost the truth he had first grasped, when he was silent about the worship of that God whom he confessed to be the founder and parent of things, and did not understand that man is bound to God by the bonds of piety, from which religion itself is named, and that this alone is the reason souls become immortal. Yet he perceived that souls are eternal, but he did not come down to that view by steps. For, the middle terms cut off, he fell into the truth rather as over some abrupt precipice and went no further, since he had found the truth by chance, not by reason. God must therefore be worshipped, so that through religion, which is the same as justice, man may receive immortality from God; nor is there any other reward for a pious mind: and since it is invisible, it cannot be rewarded by the invisible God except with an invisible reward.

That souls are eternal can be gathered from very many arguments. Plato says that what is always moved by itself and has no beginning of motion also has no end; and that the soul of man is always moved by itself; and that because it is quick in thinking, skillful in discovering, ready in perceiving, capable of learning, and because it retains the past, grasps the present, foresees the future, and embraces the knowledge of many things and arts, it is immortal, since it has in itself nothing compounded of the stain of earthly weight. Moreover, the eternity of the soul is understood from virtue and pleasure. Pleasure is common to all animals, virtue belongs to man alone: the one is vicious, the other honorable; the one according to nature, the other contrary to nature, unless the soul is immortal. For virtue, for the sake of faith and justice, fears neither poverty nor exile, dreads not prison, shrinks not from pain, refuses not death. Since these things are contrary to nature, either virtue is folly, if it both obstructs advantages and harms life; or, if it is not folly, then the soul is immortal and therefore despises present goods, because there are other, better things which it will obtain after the dissolution of its body. This too is the greatest argument for immortality, that man alone knows God. In dumb animals there is no hint of religion, because they are earthly and bent toward the earth; man stands upright and looks at heaven so that he may seek God. He cannot, then, fail to be immortal who longs for the Immortal; he cannot be dissoluble who shares with God both in face and in mind. Finally, man alone uses the heavenly element, which is fire. For if light is through fire and life through light, it is clear that one who has the use of fire is not mortal, since that is nearest to him and familiar to him without which neither light nor life can exist. But why do we gather by arguments that souls are eternal, when we have divine testimonies? For the sacred writings and the voices of the prophets teach this. If this seems too little to anyone, let him read the songs of the Sibyls and consider the answers of Milesian Apollo too, so that he may understand that Democritus, Epicurus, and Dicaearchus raved, who alone of all mortals denied what is evident. Immortality having been confirmed, it remains to teach by whom, to whom, how, and when it is granted. When the times fixed and established by God have begun to be fulfilled, the destruction and consummation of things must take place, so that the world may be renewed by God. And that time is near, as far as can be gathered from the number of years and from the signs foretold by the prophets. But since the things said about the end of the age and the close of the times are innumerable, those things that are said must be set down bare, since to use testimonies would be endless. If anyone wants them, or believes us too little, let him go to the very sanctuary of the heavenly writings, and, better instructed by their trustworthiness, he will perceive that the philosophers erred, who thought either that this world is eternal or that countless thousands of years have passed since it was set in order. For six thousand years are not yet completed; when this number is fulfilled, then at last all evil will be taken away, so that justice alone may reign. How this will come about I will explain in a few words.

These things are said to be coming not only by the prophets but also by the seers. When the last end of the world begins to draw near, wickedness will grow strong; every kind of vice and fraud will multiply; justice will perish; faithfulness, peace, mercy, shame, and truth will not exist; force and boldness will prevail; no one will have anything except what is won by hand and defended by hand. If there are any good people, they will be treated as captured property and a laughingstock. No one will show a sense of duty to parents, no one will pity infant or old man; greed and lust will corrupt everything. There will be slaughters and bloodshed; there will be wars not only foreign and with neighbors but also civil. Cities will make war on one another; every sex and every age will handle arms. Neither the dignity of empire nor military discipline will be preserved, but plunder and devastation will take place in the manner of brigandage. The kingdom will be multiplied, and ten men will seize the world and divide and devour it; and another, far more powerful and more wicked, will arise, who, having destroyed three, will possess Asia, and, having brought the rest under his power and taken them to himself, will harass the whole earth. He will set up new laws and abolish the old; he will make the state his own; he will change the name and seat of the empire. Then will be an unspeakable and accursed time, in which no one will care to live. Finally things will come to such a state that lamentation will follow the living and congratulation the dead. Cities and towns will perish, now by sword and fire, now by frequent earthquakes, now by flood, now by pestilence and famine. The earth will bear nothing, barren from excessive cold or heat. All water will partly be changed into blood and partly be corrupted into bitterness, so that there will be nothing useful for food or wholesome for drink. To these evils will be added portents from heaven, so that nothing may be lacking to men for fear. Comets will appear often; the sun will be darkened with a perpetual pallor; the moon will be stained with blood and will not repair the loss of her light; all the stars will fall, and the seasons will not keep their order, winter and summer being confused; then too the year and the month and the day will be shortened; and Trismegistus declared that this is the old age and failing of the world. When these things happen, it must be known that the time is at hand when God will return to change the age. Amid these evils an impious king will arise, an enemy not only of the human race but also of God. He will crush, torture, harass, and kill the remnants of that former tyrant. Then there will be unceasing tears and perpetual groans and prayers to God in vain; no rest from fear, nor sleep for quiet. Day will always increase disaster, night fear. So the world will be reduced almost to a desert, at least to a scarcity of men. Then the impious one will persecute righteous men dedicated to God for forty-two months and will order himself to be worshipped as God; for he will say that he is Christ, whose adversary he will be. So that he may be believed, he will receive power to work wonders: that fire may come down from heaven, that the sun may stand still in its course, that the image he has set up may speak. By these portents he will entice many to worship him and receive his mark on hand or forehead. And whoever does not worship him and receive the mark will die by exquisite tortures. So he will destroy about two parts; the third will flee into desert solitudes. But that madman, raging with implacable anger, will bring an army and besiege the mountain to which the righteous have fled. When they see themselves besieged, they will beg for God's help with a loud voice; and he will hear them and send them a deliverer.

Then heaven will be opened in the dead of night, and Christ will descend in great power, and a fiery brightness will go before him and an incalculable host of angels; and all that multitude of the impious will be destroyed, and torrents of blood will run; and the leader himself will escape, and, having often renewed his army, will fight a fourth battle, in which he will be captured with all the other tyrants and handed over to burning. But the prince of demons himself too, the author and contriver of evils, will be bound with chains and given into custody, so that the world may receive peace and the earth, harassed for so many ages, may rest. Peace being established, then, and all evil suppressed, that just and victorious King will hold a great judgment of the living and the dead on the earth; and to the righteous who are living he will hand over all nations in servitude, and the dead he will raise to eternal life; and he himself will reign with them on the earth and will found a holy city; and this kingdom of the righteous will last a thousand years. During the same time the stars will be brighter, the brightness of the sun will be increased, and the moon will suffer no waning. Then a rain of blessing will come down from God morning and evening, and the earth will produce every crop without human labor. Honey will drip from the rocks; fountains of milk and wine will overflow. Beasts, laying aside their ferocity, will grow tame; the wolf will wander harmless among the flocks; the calf will graze with the lion; the dove will gather with the hawk; the serpent will have no venom; no animal will live by blood. For God will supply abundant and innocent food to all. But when the thousand years are completed and the prince of demons is loosed, the nations will rebel against the righteous, and a countless multitude will come to storm the city of the saints. Then will come God's last judgment against the nations. For he will shake the earth from its foundations, and cities will fall, and he will rain fire with brimstone and hail upon the impious, and they will burn and slaughter one another. But the righteous will hide for a little while under the earth until the destruction of the nations is accomplished, and they will come out after the third day and see the plains covered with corpses. Then there will be an earthquake, and the mountains will be split, and the valleys will sink down to a great depth, and into it the bodies of the dead will be heaped, and its name will be called Polyandrium. After this God will renew the world and transform the righteous into the forms of angels, so that, clothed with the garment of immortality, they may serve God forever. And this will be the kingdom of God, which will have no end. Then the impious too will rise again, not to life but to punishment. These too God will raise when the second resurrection takes place, so that, condemned to perpetual torments and handed over to eternal fires, they may pay the punishments deserved for their crimes.

Since, then, all these things are true and certain, foretold by the harmonious proclamation of all the prophets, and since Trismegistus, Hystaspes, and the Sibyls have sung the same things, there can be no doubt that all hope of life and salvation is placed in the religion of God alone. And so, unless a man receives him whom God has sent and will send for deliverance, unless he knows the supreme God through him, unless he keeps his commands and law, he will fall into those punishments of which we have spoken. Therefore frail things must be despised so that we may attain solid ones; earthly things spurned so that we may be honored with heavenly; temporal things fled so that we may come to eternal. Let each train himself for justice, reform himself for self-control, prepare himself for the contest, equip himself for virtue, so that if perhaps the adversary declares war, he may be driven from what is right and good by no force, no terror, no tortures. Let him not prostrate himself before senseless images, but, upright, let him acknowledge the true and only God; let him cast away pleasures, by whose allurements the lofty soul is pressed down to earth; let him keep innocence; let him benefit as many as possible; let him acquire for himself incorruptible treasures by good works, so that with God as judge he may obtain, according to the merits of his virtue, either the crown of faith or the reward of immortality.