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What angels, then, are we to believe in this matter of blessed and
eternal life?, those who wish to be worshipped with religious rites
and observances, and require that men sacrifice to them; or those who
say that all this worship is due to one God, the Creator, and teach
us to render it with true piety to Him, by the vision of whom they are
themselves already blessed, and in whom they promise that we shall be
so? For that vision of God is the beauty of a vision so great, and
is so infinitely desirable, that Plotinus does not hesitate to say
that he who enjoys all other blessings in abundance, and has not this,
is supremely miserable. Since, therefore, miracles are wrought by
some angels to induce us to worship this God, by others, to induce us
to worship themselves; and since the former forbid us to worship
these, while the latter dare not forbid us to worship God, which are
we to listen to? Let the Platonists reply, or any philosophers, or
the theurgists, or rather, periurgists,, for this name is good
enough for those who practise such arts. In short, let all men
answer, if, at least, there survives in them any spark of that
natural perception which, as rational beings, they possess when
created, let them, I say, tell us whether we should sacrifice to the
gods or angels who order us to sacrifice to them, or to that One to
whom we are ordered to sacrifice by those who forbid us to worship
either themselves or these others. If neither the one party nor the
other had wrought miracles, but had merely uttered commands, the one
to sacrifice to themselves, the other forbidding that, and ordering us
to sacrifice to God, a godly mind would have been at no loss to
discern which command proceeded from proud arrogance, and which from
true religion. I will say more. If miracles had been wrought only by
those who demand sacrifice for themselves, while those who forbade
this, and enjoined sacrificing to the one God only, thought fit
entirely to forego the use of visible miracles, the authority of the
latter was to be preferred by all who would use, not their eyes only,
but their reason. But since God, for the sake of commending to us
the oracles of His truth, has, by means of these immortal
messengers, who proclaim His majesty and not their own pride, wrought
miracles of surpassing grandeur, certainty, and distinctness, in
order that the weak among the godly might not be drawn away to false
religion by those who require us to sacrifice to them and endeavor to
convince us by stupendous appeals to our senses, who is so utterly
unreasonable as not to choose and follow the truth, when he finds that
it is heralded by even more striking evidences than falsehood?
As for those miracles which history ascribes to the gods of the
heathen, I do not refer to those prodigies which at intervals happen
from some unknown physical causes, and which are arranged and appointed
by Divine Providence, such as monstrous births, and unusual
meteorological phenomena, whether startling only, or also injurious,
and which are said to be brought about and removed by communication with
demons, and by their most deceitful craft, but I refer to these
prodigies which manifestly enough are wrought by their power and force,
as, that the household gods which Æneas carried from Troy in his
flight moved from place to place; that Tarquin cut a whetstone with a
razor; that the Epidaurian serpent attached himself as a companion to
Æsculapius on his voyage to Rome; that the ship in which the image of
the Phrygian mother stood, and which could not be moved by a host of
men and oxen, was moved by one weak woman, who attached her girdle to
the vessel and drew it, as proof of her chastity; that a vestal,
whose virginity was questioned, removed the suspicion by carrying from
the Tiber a sieve full of water without any of it dropping: these,
then, and the like, are by no means to be compared for greatness and
virtue to those which, we read, were wrought among God's people.
How much less can we compare those marvels, which even the laws of
heathen nations prohibit and punish, I mean the magical and theurgic
marvels, of which the great part are merely illusions practised upon
the senses, as the drawing down of the moon, "that," as Lucan
says, "it may shed a stronger influence on the plants?" And if some
of these do seem to equal those which are wrought by the godly, the end
for which they are wrought distinguishes the two, and shows that ours
are incomparably the more excellent. For those miracles commend the
worship of a plurality of gods, who deserve worship the less the more
they demand it; but these of ours commend the worship of the one God,
who, both by the testimony of His own Scriptures, and by the
eventual abolition of sacrifices, proves that He needs no such
offerings. If, therefore, any angels demand sacrifice for
themselves, we must prefer those who demand it, not for themselves,
but for God, the Creator of all, whom they serve. For thus they
prove how sincerely they love us, since they wish by sacrifice to
subject us, not to themselves, but to Him by the contemplation of
whom they themselves are blessed, and to bring us to Him from whom
they themselves have never strayed. If, on the other hand, any
angels wish us to sacrifice, not to one, but to many, not, indeed,
to themselves, but to the gods whose angels they are, we must in this
case also prefer those who are the angels of the one God of gods, and
who so bid us to worship Him as to preclude our worshipping any other.
But, further, if it be the case, as their pride and deceitfulness
rather indicate, that they are neither good angels nor the angels of
good gods, but wicked demons, who wish sacrifice to be paid, not to
the one only and supreme God, but to themselves, what better
protection against them can we choose than that of the one God whom the
good angels serve, the angels who bid us sacrifice, not to
themselves, but to Him whose sacrifice we our selves ought to be?
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