Against the Pagans 2 part 4/5

Is it not possible that men have arisen thus, and that the authorship of their birth is not to be referred to the supreme God? For what reason do we suppose that great Plato had, that piously, holily wise man, when he removed the fashioning of man from the supreme God and transferred it to certain lesser beings, and when he was unwilling that the souls of the human race should be of the same pure mixture as that of which he had made the soul of this universe—except that he thought the fabric of man unworthy of God, and that the fashioning of a flaccid thing did not befit his greatness and eminence?

Therefore, since these things are so, it is not absurdly nor vainly that we believe the souls of men to be of a middle quality, as being brought forth from things not primal, subject to the law of death, of small and unstable powers: but that they are granted perpetuity, if they bring the hope of so great a gift to God the Sovereign, who alone has the power to bestow such things with corruption excluded. 'But we believe this foolishly.' —What is it to you, if most ineptly, foolishly? Where do we harm you, or what injury do we do or inflict upon you, if we trust that almighty God will have regard for us, when we begin to depart from our bodies and, as it is said, to be delivered from the jaws of Orcus? 'Then,' someone will say, 'can anything come to be without God's will?'

—We must consider carefully and examine with no little care, lest, while we think to honor God by such a question, we slip into the contrary impiety, destroying the eminence of his majesty. 'By what reasoning, by what cause?' —Because if all things are done by his will, and nothing can either come to pass or fall out in the world apart from his nod, it necessarily follows that all evils too are understood to arise by his will. But if, on the other hand, we should wish to say the contrary, rejecting from him the causes of the worst things, holding that he is conscious of no evil and the begetter of none, it will begin to appear either that the worst things come about against his will, or—which would be monstrous to have said—without his knowledge, in his ignorance and unawareness.

But again, if we should wish to say that there are no evils—as we find has been opined and approved by some—all peoples and every nation will cry out against us, displaying to us their torments and the manifold kinds of dangers by which the human race is burned and torn at every single point. Then next they will demand of us: 'Why, if there are no evils, do you abstain from certain deeds and crimes? Why do you not do everything that impatient lust may order and command? Why, finally, do you appoint punishments for the guilty by terrible laws? For what greater stupidity can be found than to contend that there are no evils, and yet to destroy and condemn the wicked as wicked, and those who sin?'

And when, overcome, we shall have agreed that these evils exist, and shall have admitted not vainly that all human affairs teem with them, it will follow that they keep asking: 'Why then does almighty God not take away these evils, but suffers them to exist and to advance through all the ages in stubborn continuance?' —If the understanding of God the King and Sovereign is present with us, and we are unwilling to wander through the impious madnesses of suspicions, we must needs answer that we do not know these things, nor have we ever at any time sought or striven to know things which could be comprehended by no faculties:

and you will hold it better—nay rather, better to remain within the bounds of unknowing and ignorance—than to say that nothing comes about except by God's will, so that it be understood at once both that he gives causes to evils and is the founder of innumerable miseries. 'Whence then,' you will say, 'come all these evils?' 'From the elements,' say the wise, 'and from their inequality': but how it can be that things which have neither sense nor judgment are declared to be malicious and harmful, or whether rather he is not malicious and harmful who took up into the effecting of some work the worst and most injurious things that were to be—that is for those to discern who make the assertion. 'What then of us? whence are we?' —There is no necessity of an answer.

For whether we can say it, or are less able and cannot, both are small matters to us; nor do we count it of great weight either to be ignorant of this or to know it, content to have laid down this one thing alone: that nothing which is harmful and destructive proceeds from God the Sovereign. This we hold, this we know, in this one truth of knowledge and science we take our stand: that nothing is done by him except what is salutary to all, what is sweet, what is most full of love and joy and gladness, what has infinite and incorruptible delights, what each one seeks to attain for himself with all his prayers, and reckons that outside of these lies what is destructive and death-bringing.

As for all the other things which are wont to be dealt with in questions and controversies—from what begetters they arose or by what authors they come to be—we neither contend to know nor care to inquire or trace out: we leave all things to their own causes, and do not judge them to be joined and applied to that which we seek. For what is there that human wits do not dare to undermine and dissolve out of a zeal for contradiction, however pure and clear and fortified with the seal of truth may be that which they strive to weaken? Or what, again, can they not assert with plausible arguments, however plainly false it be, however evident and manifest a lie?

For when someone has persuaded himself that something exists or does not exist, he loves to assert what he opines and to outstrip others in acumen, especially if the matter dealt with is remote and hidden and wrapped in the darkness of nature. Some of the wise reckon the world to be neither born nor destined to perish at any time; some call it immortal, although they write that it was born and begotten; to a third group it has pleased to say that it is both born and begotten and destined to perish by an ordinary necessity. And though of these three opinions one must necessarily be true, yet to all of them there is no lack of arguments by which they may both confirm their own tenets and undermine and shake the doctrines of others.

This same world others hand down and declare to stand composed of four elements, others of two, a third group of single ones; there are those who say that of these it consists of none, but that indivisible bodies are its material and first origin. And though of these one view is true, yet none of them is certain; similarly here too arguments are at hand for all, by which they may both establish that what they say is true and refute the falsehoods set down in the views of others. So too some deny outright that gods exist; others say that they doubt whether they are anywhere; others say that they exist but do not care for human things; nay, others declare that they both take part in the affairs of mortals and administer earthly matters.

Since therefore these things are so, and it cannot be otherwise but that one out of them all is true, yet they all fight with arguments, nor does any of them lack what he may plausibly say, whether when they assert their own positions or when they contradict the opinions of others. In no other nor unlike manner is the condition of souls discussed by them. For this one thinks that they are both perpetual and survive the discharge of mortals; that one does not believe they survive, but that they perish together with the bodies themselves: while another's view is that they suffer nothing immediately, but that after the man is laid in death something is given to them for life, and that they then pass into the law of mortality.

And though all cannot be partakers of the truth, yet they all argue with such strong and most valid proofs that you cannot find out what would seem false to you, although you observe that things quite diverse are said on every side and are dissonant with the contrarieties of the matters. Which surely would not happen, if human curiosity could hold anything certain, or if what seemed discovered were approved by the assent of all others. It is therefore a most empty thing and of superfluous labor, to bring forth something as though you knew it, or to wish to contend that you know what—even if it be true—you can see may be demolished, or to accept as true that which perhaps is not so and is put forth after the manner of those who hallucinate. And rightly is it so.

For we weigh and conjecture divine things not by divine but by human reasonings, and as we suppose a thing to have deserved to be done, so we contend it ought to be. What then? Are we alone ignorant, do we alone not know, who is the founder of souls, who their establisher, what cause fashioned man, whence evils burst forth, or why the supreme King both suffers them to be and to be wrought, and does not drive them from human affairs? Do you then have any of these things ascertained and known? If you are willing to display the boldness of your suspicions, can you explain and set forth whether this world which holds us is unborn or established at some time? If it was established and made, by what kind of work, or for the sake of what thing?

Can you adduce and unfold the reason why it does not remain fixed and immovable, but is always carried round in orbit into motions—whether it turns itself round of its own accord and will, or is spun by the impulses of some power? What is the very place and space in which it is set and rolls—infinite, finite, empty, or solid? Who sustains it, resting on its outermost hinges, or does it rather uphold itself by its own force and suspend itself by an inner spirit?

Can you, when questioned, make plain and show most learnedly what opens snow into feathery flakes; what reason and cause there was that the day did not rise first from the western parts and end its light in the east; how the sun itself by one and the same contact produces things so various—nay, contrary; what the moon is; what the stars are; why the moon does not remain in one appearance, or why these fiery bits have come together throughout the whole body of the world and had to be fixed there; why some of them are small, others fuller and greater, these of dull light, those of sharper and gleaming brightness?

If what you please to know is at hand and the knowledge of things is set in the open, expound to us and tell by what modes and reasons rains come to be, so that in the upper parts and in this middle region of the air water is held suspended—a thing by nature slippery and always so prone to flowing and running down? Expound, I say, and tell what it is that whirls the hail, that makes the rain fall drop by drop, that pours down the showers, that spreads out the feathers and little leaves of snow; whence the wind arises and what it is; why the changes of the seasons were instituted, when one could have been established and there could be one appearance of the sky, so that the integrity of things would lack nothing?

What is the cause, what the reason, that the seas are salt, or that of the earth's waters these are sweet or warm, others bitter or cold? From what kind of matter were the inward parts of human bodies compacted and stabilized, whence were the bones solidified; what made the intestines, what the veins pipe-like and passable for passage? Why, when it would have been more useful to illuminate us with several eyes against the peril of blindness, are we confined to the narrowness of two? For the sake of what thing are the so infinite and innumerable kinds of beasts and serpents formed or brought forth? What do owls, screech-owls, and buzzards do in the world? What the other birds and fowls? What the kinds of ants and worms, born to various decays and destructions?

What of fleas, what of shameless flies, spiders, shrews, mice, leeches, water-spiders? What of thorns, what of brambles, what of wild oats, what of darnel, what of the seeds of herbs or shrubs, whether fragrant to the nostrils or foul in their odors? Nay, if you judge that something can be known, comprehended, or that anything is possible, say what wheat is, and spelt, barley, millet, chickpea, bean, lentil, melon, cumin, leek, garlic, onion. For if they are for your food and are set among the middling kinds of foods, it is not easy or ready to know what each of them is, why they were shaped in such forms, whether there was some necessity that individual things should have no other flavors, other odors, other colors than those they have, or whether they could also have taken others.

Then again, what these very things are — taste, I mean, and the rest — the differences of qualities: from what causes do they derive them? 'From the elements,' you say, 'and from the primary origins of things.' For the elements are bitter or sweet, they have some odor, some color, so that from their combining we may believe that in things being born the qualities are apportioned by which either sweetness arises or offense is produced for the senses.

Since, then, the origins of so many and so great things escape even you yourselves, the causes escape you, the reasons escape you, and you can neither state nor explain what was done, or why, or why it ought not to be — you tear apart and rend our modesty, we who confess that we do not know the things which cannot be known, nor do we care to seek out or investigate those matters which it is most plain cannot be comprehended, however much human conjecture may reach out and strain through a thousand hearts.

And therefore Christ — though you are unwilling, a god; a god, I say, is Christ (for this must often be said, that the hearing of the unbelievers may burst and be shattered) — speaking under the form of a man at the command of God the sovereign, since he knew the nature of mortals to be blind and unable to grasp any truth even of things set before their eyes, [taught us] not to hold as ascertained and known whatever one has persuaded oneself to be so, nor to hesitate over one's own conjectures by sowing and pressing contentious inquiries,

He commanded us to leave all these things aside and set them behind us, and not to cast fruitless thoughts into matters removed far from our knowledge, but, as far as is possible, to set out with our whole mind and soul toward the Lord of all things, to be lifted up from these places, and to carry over to him the yearning stirrings of the heart, to hold perpetual memory of him, and — though he can be shaped by no imagining — yet to fashion for ourselves some faint breaths, as it were, of his contemplation:

For of all the things which the obscurity of august divinity contains, he alone is beyond doubt, he alone is true, and one about whom none but a madman lost in insane despair could waver; whom it is enough to know so that you may know nothing else, and you will have attained true and supreme knowledge, fixed in the knowledge of God the head of all things. 'What good is it to you,' he says, 'to investigate and search out who made man, what is the origin of souls, who devised the causes of evils, whether the sun is larger than the earth or measures but a single foot in breadth, whether the moon shines by another's light or by her own radiance? To know these things is no gain, and to be ignorant of them no loss.'

Leave these matters to God, and grant that he himself knows what a thing is, why and whence, whether it ought to be or not to be, whether something was born from on high or has original beginnings, whether it is fitting to be abolished or preserved, to be burned up, dissolved, or renewed with recovered wholeness. Is it not open to your reason to entangle yourselves in such things and to trouble yourselves over so remote a benefit? Your case stands in the balance — I mean the salvation of your souls; and unless you apply yourselves to the knowledge of God the sovereign, once loosed from bodily chains a savage death awaits you, bringing not sudden extinction but consuming you through a stretch of time by the bitterness of tormenting punishment.

Nor let this creep upon you or flatter you with airy hope — what is said by certain smatterers who arrogate very much to themselves: that they are born of God and not subject to the laws of fate, that if they have lived a more restrained life his court lies open to them, and that after the man's discharge, with none forbidding, they are brought back as it were to their ancestral seat; nor what the Magi promise, that they possess commendatory prayers by which certain powers, once softened, offer easy roads to those striving to fly up to heaven; nor what Etruria promises in the books of Acheron, that by the blood of certain animals given to certain deities souls are made divine and led out from the laws of mortality. These are empty allurements and fomentations of vain wishes. To save

souls, none can save them save God almighty, nor is there besides anyone who could make them long-lived and confer a spirit of perpetuity, except him who alone is immortal and everlasting and bounded by no limitation of time. For since all the gods — whether those that are truly such, or those said to exist by rumor and opinion — are immortal and everlasting by his will and by the gift of his beneficence, how is it possible that others should be able to bestow what they themselves are, when they hold it as another's and lent by the power of a greater? Though Etruria may slay ever so many victims, though the wise may deny themselves all that is human, though the Magi may soften and soothe all the powers:

unless there be granted to souls by the Lord of all things that which reason requires, and that by his command, one will afterward greatly regret having been a mocker, when one begins to draw near to the perception of destruction. 'But if,' they say, 'Christ was sent by God for this, to free unhappy souls from the ruin of destruction, what did the earlier ages deserve, which before his coming were consumed under the condition of mortality?' — For can you know what was done with those souls of the ancient and most ancient mortals, whether they too were succored by some means, provided for and foreseen?

Can you, I say, know that which could be learned only by Christ's teaching — whether the ages are infinite or finite since the human race began to be on earth, when souls were first bound to bodies, who was the author of that binding, nay rather who was the fashioner of man himself, whither the souls of those earlier ones departed, in what parts or regions of the world they were, whether corruptible or the contrary, whether they could have come to the peril of dying, had not Christ the preserver come at the necessary time? Set aside these cares and leave these questions unknown to you: the royal compassion was imparted to them also, and the divine benefits ran equally through all:

they were preserved, they were freed, and they laid aside the lot and condition of mortality. 'By what means, which souls, and when?' — If arrogance, if pride, if haughtiness were absent from you, you could long ago have learned these things with Christ as your teacher. 'But if Christ, as you say, came as the preserver of the human race, why does he not free all with equal munificence?' — Does he not free all equally who calls all equally? Or does he repel or spurn anyone from his sovereign indulgence, who grants uniformly to the high and the low, to slaves, women, and children, the power of coming to him? 'The fountain of life,' he says, 'lies open to all, and no one is forbidden or driven from the right of drinking.'

— If you have such disdain that you spurn the benefit of the gift offered, nay rather if you so prevail in wisdom that you call the things offered by Christ a game and follies, why does he who invites you wait — he whose sole part is this, that he sets forth the fruit of his kindness under the judgment of your own free choice? 'For of the choosing of one's lot of life,' says Plato, 'God is not the cause, nor can another's will rightly be ascribed to anyone, since freedom of will lies placed in the power of the one who has willed.' Must you then be entreated to deign to receive the benefit of salvation from God, and, while you scorn and flee far away, must the grace of divine benevolence be poured into your bosom?

Do you wish to take what is offered and turn it to your own uses? You will have consulted your own good. Do you scorn, despise, and look down on it? You will have deprived yourself of the advantage of the gift. God imposes necessity on none, terrifies none with imperious dread. For our salvation is not a necessity to him, that he should suffer any gain or loss whether he make us gods or permit us to be reduced to nothing by the dissolution of corruption. 'Nay,' he says, 'if God is a powerful and merciful preserver, let him convert our minds and make us believe his promises even against our will.' — That is force, then, not grace, nor the liberality of God the sovereign, but the wrangling of a childish and empty spirit bent on winning.

For what is so unjust as to wrench the wills of the resisting, of the unwilling, into their contrary — to force upon them what they do not want and from which their minds shrink, to harm before you help, and, the former will being taken away, to carry them over into an alien disposition and opinion? You who desire to be turned and to undergo force, so that you may accomplish and seize by compulsion what you do not want — why do you refuse to take up willingly that which, once turned, you desire, and once changed, to accomplish? 'I do not want to,' he says, 'and I have no will for it.' — Why, then, do you accuse God, as though he failed to bring aid to you desiring it — you whose gifts and bounties you not only scorn and flee, but even call empty words and pursue with mocking jests?

'If, then, I shall not be a Christian, shall I not be able to have hope of salvation?' — It is so, as you yourself propose. For the office of giving salvation and of bestowing upon souls what is fitting and necessary to be applied to them, he alone has received, enjoined and handed down from God the Father, the hidden and inner causes being so disposed. For just as certain gods among you have certain guardianships, licenses, and powers, and you do not ask from any of them what is not within his power and license, so it belongs to the sole priesthood of Christ to give salvation to souls and to add to them a spirit of perpetuity.

For if you believe that father Liber can give the vintage but not medicine, that Ceres can give crops, Aesculapius health, Neptune one thing and Juno another, that Fortune, Mercury, and Vulcan are each the givers of certain particular things — then this too you must needs receive from us: that souls can receive the power of life and safety from none save from him whom the supreme King has set over this office and duty. This the almighty Emperor willed to be the way of salvation, this, so to speak, the door of life; through this alone is there entrance to the light, nor is it granted otherwise either to creep in or to break in, all other ways being closed and fortified by an impregnable citadel.

Though therefore you be pure and cleansed from all contamination of vices, though you win over and bend those powers so that they do not close the ways against you as you return to heaven and block your passage, you will by no strivings be able to reach the reward of immortality, unless by Christ's bestowal you receive that which makes immortality itself and are admitted to true life. Now as for what you are wont to cast at us — that our religion is new and born but a few days ago, and that we ought not to have forsaken the ancient, ancestral faith and been carried over into barbarous and foreign rites — this is urged with no reason.

For what if we should wish in this way to lay blame on those earlier and most ancient ages, because, when crops were discovered, they scorned acorns and rejected arbute-berries; because they ceased to be covered with bark and clothed in skins after woven clothing was devised, more convenient in use and comfort; or because, when houses were built and more elegant modes of living established, they did not love the old huts nor prefer to remain under rocks and in caves like wild beasts? It is common to all, and handed down almost from the very cradle, to prefer good to bad, to set the useful before the useless, and to pursue and seek that which has proved more precious and more pleasant, and in it to fix the hope of well-being and of wholesome advantages.

Therefore, when you charge us with turning away from the religion of our forebears, it is fitting that you examine the cause, not the deed; not to object what we have left behind, but rather to consider what we have followed. For if to change one's opinion is any fault or crime, and to migrate from old institutions into other new things and preferences, that accusation regards you also, who have so often changed your life and custom, who have passed into other manners and rites with condemnation of your predecessors. For do you have the people distributed into five classes, as your ancestors of old had them? Do you create magistrates through the people? Do you know what the military, urban, and common assemblies are?

Do you watch the heavens, or by ill-omened announcements render proceedings idle? If you prepare wars, do you display the signal from the citadel? Or do you handle the fetial laws? Do you demand back plundered goods by the formal declaration of war? Or, entering upon the crisis of Mars, do you take your hope of battle and augur from the spear-points? In entering upon offices do you observe the age-laws, in gifts and presents the Cincian laws, in restraining expenses the censorian laws? In your inner shrines and to the heaven-born gods do you keep perpetual hearth-fires burning? Do you make the tables sacred by setting on the salt-cellars and the images of the gods? When you come together in marriage, do you spread the couches with a toga and call upon the guardian spirits of the husbands? Do you stroke the bride's hair with a bachelor's spear? Do you carry the little togas of maidens to Fortuna Virginalis?

Do your matrons work in the halls of their homes, attesting their industry? Do they abstain from draughts of wine? Is it the right of their kinsmen and near relations to kiss them, that they may prove themselves sober and abstemious? On the Alban Mount of old it was permitted to sacrifice no bulls but of snowy whiteness: have you not changed that custom and religion, and by a decree of the Senate sanctioned that reddish ones might be offered? When, in the reigns of Romulus and Pompilius, the entrails were burned to the gods thoroughly cooked and moist, did you not, under king Tullus, begin to offer them half-raw and but lightly warmed, the ancient observance being scorned? Before the coming into Italy