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For in his book called ek logiwn filosofias, in which he collects and
comments upon the responses which he pretends were uttered by the gods
concerning divine things, he says, I give his own words as they have
been translated from the Greek: "To one who inquired what god he
should propitiate in order to recall his wife from Christianity,
Apollo replied in the following verses." Then the following words
are given as those of Apollo: "You will probably find it easier to
write lasting characters on the water, or lightly fly like a bird
through the air, than to restore right feeling in your impious wife
once she has polluted herself. Let her remain as she pleases in her
foolish deception, and sing false laments to her dead God, who was
condemned by right-minded judges, and perished ignominiously by a
violent death." Then after these verses of Apollo (which we have
given in a Latin version that does not preserve the metrical form),
he goes on to say: "In these verses Apollo exposed the incurable
corruption of the Christians, saying that the Jews, rather than the
Christians, recognized God." See how he misrepresents Christ,
giving the Jews the preference to the Christians in the recognition of
God. This was his explanation of Apollo's verses, in which he says
that Christ was put to death by right-minded or just judges, in other
words, that He deserved to die. I leave the responsibility of this
oracle regarding Christ on the lying interpreter of Apollo, or on
this philosopher who believed it or possibly himself invented it; as to
its agreement with Porphyry's opinions or with other oracles, we
shall in a little have something to say. In this passage, however,
he says that the Jews, as the interpreters of God, judged justly in
pronouncing Christ to be worthy of the most shameful death. He should
have listened, then, to this God of the Jews to whom he bears this
testimony, when that God says, "He that sacrificeth to any other
god save to the Lord alone shall be utterly destroyed." But let us
come to still plainer expressions, and hear how great a God Porphyry
thinks the God of the Jews is. Apollo, he says, when asked whether
word, i.e., reason, or law is the better thing, replied in the
following verses. Then he gives the verses of Apollo, from which I
select the following as sufficient: "God, the Generator, and the
King prior to all things, before whom heaven and earth, and the sea,
and the hidden places of hell tremble, and the deities themselves are
afraid, for their law is the Father whom the holy Hebrews honor."
In this oracle of his god Apollo, Porphyry avowed that the God of
the Hebrews is so great that the deities themselves are afraid before
Him. I am surprised, therefore, that when God said, He that
sacrificeth to other gods shall be utterly destroyed, Porphyry himself
was not afraid lest he should be destroyed for sacrificing to other
gods.
This philosopher, however, has also some good to say of Christ,
oblivious, as it were, of that contumely of his of which we have just
been speaking; or as if his gods spoke evil of Christ only while
asleep, and recognized Him to be good, and gave Him His deserved
praise, when they awoke. For, as if he were about to proclaim some
marvellous thing passing belief, he says, "What we are going to say
will certainly take some by surprise. For the gods have declared that
Christ was very pious, and has become immortal, and that they cherish
his memory: that the Christians, however, are polluted,
contaminated, and involved in error. And many other such things,"
he says, "do the gods say against the Christians." Then he gives
specimens of the accusations made, as he says, by the gods against
them, and then goes on: "But to some who asked Hecate whether
Christ were a God, she replied, You know the condition of the
disembodied immortal soul, and that if it has been severed from wisdom
it always errs. The soul you refer to is that of a man foremost in
piety: they worship it because they mistake the truth." To this
so-called oracular response he adds the following words of his own:
"Of this very pious man, then, Hecate said that the soul, like the
souls of other good men, was after death dowered with immortality, and
that the Christians through ignorance worship it. And to those who
ask why he was condemned to die, the oracle of the goddess replied,
The body, indeed, is always exposed to torments, but the souls of
the pious abide in heaven. And the soul you inquire about has been the
fatal cause of error to other souls which were not fated to receive the
gifts of the gods, and to have the knowledge of immortal Jove. Such
souls are therefore hated by the gods; for they who were fated not to
receive the gifts of the gods, and not to know God, were fated to be
involved in error by means of him you speak of. He himself, however,
was good, and heaven has been opened to him as to other good men. You
are not, then, to speak evil of him, but to pity the folly of men:
and through him men's danger is imminent."
Who is so foolish as not to see that these oracles were either composed
by a clever man with a strong animus against the Christians, or were
uttered as responses by impure demons with a similar design, that is to
say, in order that their praise of Christ may win credence for their
vituperation of Christians; and that thus they may, if possible,
close the way of eternal salvation, which is identical with
Christianity? For they believe that they are by no means
counterworking their own hurtful craft by promoting belief in Christ,
so long as their calumniation of Christians is also accepted; for they
thus secure that even the man who thinks well of Christ declines to
become a Christian, and is therefore not delivered from their own rule
by the Christ he praises. Besides, their praise of Christ is so
contrived that whosoever believes in Him as thus represented will not
be a true Christian but a Photinian heretic, recognizing only the
humanity, and not also the divinity of Christ, and will thus be
precluded from salvation and from deliverance out of the meshes of these
devilish lies. For our part, we are no better pleased with Hecate's
praises of Christ than with Apollo's calumniation of Him. Apollo
says that Christ was put to death by right-minded judges, implying
that He was unrighteous. Hecate says that He was a most pious man,
but no more. The intention of both is the same, to prevent men from
becoming Christians, because if this be secured, men shall never be
rescued from their power. But it is incumbent on our philosopher, or
rather on those who believe in these pretended oracles against the
Christians, first of all, if they can, to bring Apollo and Hecate
to the same mind regarding Christ, so that either both may condemn or
both praise Him. And even if they succeeded in this, we for our part
would notwithstanding repudiate the testimony of demons, whether
favorable or adverse to Christ. But when our adversaries find a god
and goddess of their own at variance about Christ the one praising,
the other vituperating Him, they can certainly give no credence, if
they have any judgment, to mere men who blaspheme the Christians.
When Porphyry or Hecate praises Christ, and adds that He gave
Himself to the Christians as a fatal gift, that they might be
involved in error, he exposes, as he thinks, the causes of this
error. But before I cite his words to that purpose, I would ask,
If Christ did thus give Himself to the Christians to involve them in
error, did He do so willingly, or against His will? If willingly,
how is He righteous? If against His will, how is He blessed?
However, let us hear the causes of this error. "There are," he
says," in a certain place very small earthly spirits, subject to the
power of evil demons. The wise men of the Hebrews, among whom was
this Jesus, as you have heard from the oracles of Apollo cited
above, turned religious persons from these very wicked demons and minor
spirits, and taught them rather to worship the celestial gods, and
especially to adore God the Father. This," he said, "the gods
enjoin; and we have already shown how they admonish the soul to turn to
God, and command it to worship Him. But the ignorant and the
ungodly, who are not destined to receive favors from the gods, nor to
know the immortal Jupiter, not listening to the gods and their
messages, have turned away from all gods, and have not only refused to
hate, but have venerated the prohibited demons. Professing to worship
God, they refuse to do those things by which alone God is
worshipped. For God, indeed, being the Father of all, is in need
of nothing; but for us it is good to adore Him by means of justice,
chastity, and other virtues, and thus to make life itself a prayer to
Him, by inquiring into and imitating His nature. For inquiry,"
says he, "purifies and imitation deifies us, by moving us nearer to
Him." He is right in so far as he proclaims God the Father, and
the conduct by which we should worship Him. Of such precepts the
prophetic books of the Hebrews are full, when they praise or blame the
life of the saints. But in speaking of the Christians he is in
error, and caluminates them as much as is desired by the demons whom he
takes for gods, as if it were difficult for any man to recollect the
disgraceful and shameful actions which used to be done in the theatres
and temples to please the gods, and to compare with these things what
is heard in our churches, and what is offered to the true God, and
from this comparison to conclude where character is edified, and where
it is ruined. But who but a diabolical spirit has told or suggested to
this man so manifest and vain a lie, as that the Christians reverenced
rather than hated the demons, whose worship the Hebrews prohibited?
But that God, whom the Hebrew sages worshipped, forbids sacrifice
to be offered even to the holy angels of heaven and divine powers, whom
we, in this our pilgrimage, venerate and love as our most blessed
fellow-citizens. For in the law which God gave to His Hebrew
people He utters this menace, as in a voice of thunder: "He that
sacrificeth unto any god, save unto the Lord only, he shall be
utterly destroyed." And that no one might suppose that this
prohibition extends only to the very wicked demons and earthly spirits,
whom this philosopher calls very small and inferior, for even these are
in the Scripture called gods, not of the Hebrews, but of the
nations, as the Septuagint translators have shown in the psalm where
it is said, "For all the gods of the nations are demons,", that no
one might suppose, I say, that sacrifice to these demons was
prohibited, but that sacrifice might be offered to all or some of the
celestials, it was immediately added, "save unto the Lord alone."
The God of the Hebrews, then, to whom this renowned philosopher
bears this signal testimony, gave to His Hebrew people a law,
composed in the Hebrew language, and not obscure and unknown, but
published now in every nation, and in this law it is written, "He
that sacrificeth unto any god, save unto the Lord alone, he shall be
utterly destroyed." What need is there to seek further proofs in the
law or the prophets of this same thing?
Seek, we need not say, for the passages are neither few nor difficult
to find; but what need to collect and apply to my argument the proofs
which are thickly sown and obvious, and by which it appears clear as
day that sacrifice may be paid to none but the supreme and true God?
Here is one brief but decided, even menacing, and certainly true
utterance of that God whom the wisest of our adversaries so highly
extol. Let this be listened to, feared, fulfilled, that there may
be no disobedient soul cut off. "He that sacrifices," He says,
not because He needs anything, but because it behoves us to be His
possession. Hence the Psalmist in the Hebrew Scriptures sings,
"I have said to the Lord, Thou art my God, for Thou needest not
my good." For we ourselves, who are His own city, are His most
noble and worthy sacrifice, and it is this mystery we celebrate in our
sacrifices, which are well known to the faithful, as we have explained
in the preceding books. For through the prophets the oracles of God
declared that the sacrifices which the Jews offered as a shadow of that
which was to be would cease, and that the nations, from the rising to
the setting of the sun, would offer one sacrifice. From these
oracles, which we now see accomplished, we have made such selections
as seemed suitable to our purpose in this work. And therefore, where
there is not this righteousness whereby the one supreme God rules the
obedient city according to His grace, so that it sacrifices to none
but Him, and whereby, in all the citizens of this obedient city, the
soul consequently rules the body and reason the vices in the rightful
order, so that, as the individual just man, so also the community and
people of the just, live by faith, which works by love, that love
whereby man loves God as He ought to be loved, and his neighbor as
himself, there, I say, there is not an assemblage associated by a
common acknowledgment of right, and by a community of interests. But
if there is not this, there is not a people, if our definition be
true, and therefore there is no republic; for where there is no people
there can be no republic.
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