Letters & Polemics (CSEL) 3 part 70/87

for it does not use the true goods of the soul, since that is not true wisdom which, in those things that it prudently discerns, bravely performs, temperately restrains, and justly distributes, does not direct its intention to that end where God will be all in all, in certain eternity and perfect peace. CHAPTER XXI. Whether, according to the definitions of Scipio which are in Cicero's dialogue, there ever was a Roman commonwealth. Wherefore now is the place where I may unfold, as briefly and clearly as I can, what in the second book of this work I promised I would demonstrate: that according to the definitions which Scipio uses in Cicero's books On the Commonwealth, there never was a Roman commonwealth.

For he briefly defines a commonwealth (res publica) to be the affair of a people (res populi). If this definition is true, there never was a Roman commonwealth, because there never was an affair of a people, which definition he wished to be that of the commonwealth. For he defined a people to be an assembly of a multitude associated by a consensus of right (law) and a community of interest. But what he means by 'a consensus of right' he explains by argument, thereby showing that a commonwealth cannot be conducted without justice; therefore where there is no true justice, there can be no right either. For what is done by right is assuredly done justly;

but what is done unjustly cannot be done by right. For the unjust ordinances of men are not to be called or thought rights (laws), since even they themselves say that that is right which has flowed from the fountain of justice, and that it is false, which is wont to be said by certain men who do not think rightly, that that is right which is useful to him who has the greater power. Wherefore, where there is no true justice, there cannot be an assembly of men associated by a consensus of right, and therefore neither a people according to that definition of Scipio or Cicero; and if no people, then no affair of a people, but only of some kind of multitude, which is not worthy of the name of a people.

And through this, if a commonwealth is the affair of a people, and there is no people that is not associated by a consensus of right, and there is no right where there is no justice: beyond doubt it is concluded that where there is no justice, there is no commonwealth. Justice, moreover, is that virtue which distributes to each his own. What justice, then, is that of a man, which takes the man himself away from the true God and subjects him to impure demons? Is this to distribute to each his own? Or, if he who takes away an estate from him from whom it was bought, and hands it over to one who has no right in it, is unjust; is he just who takes himself away from the Lord God by whom he was made, and serves malignant spirits?

There is certainly a most keen and most vigorous dispute, in those very books On the Commonwealth, against injustice on behalf of justice. And since, when first the case had been argued for the side of injustice against justice, and it was said that a commonwealth cannot stand and be increased except through injustice, this had been laid down as, so to speak, the most valid point: that it is unjust that men should serve men who dominate them; yet unless an imperial city, to which a great commonwealth belongs, follows this injustice, it cannot rule over provinces:

it was answered on the side of justice that it is therefore just, because servitude is useful to such men, and that it is done for their benefit when it is rightly done — that is, when the license of doing injuries is taken away from the wicked, and the subdued will be better off, because while unsubdued they were worse off; and, that this reasoning might be confirmed, there was subjoined, as it were a noble example taken from nature, and it was said: 'Why then does God command man, the soul the body, reason the lust and the other vicious parts of the soul?' Plainly by this example it is taught well enough that servitude is useful to some, and that to serve God is useful to all.

But the soul that serves God rightly commands the body, and within the soul itself reason, subject to God the Lord, rightly commands the lust and the other vices. Wherefore, where a man does not serve God, what is to be thought to be in him of justice? Since indeed, not serving God, the soul can in no way justly command the body, nor human reason the vices. And if in such a man there is no justice at all, beyond doubt there is none in an assembly of men which consists of such men. Here, then, there is not that consensus of right which makes a multitude of men a people, whose affair is said to be a commonwealth. For what shall I say of interest, by the community of which also an assembly of men, as this very definition holds, is named a people?

For although, if you attend diligently, there is no interest at all of those who live impiously — as does everyone who does not serve God, but serves demons, the more impious the more they wish to be sacrificed to as gods, though they are most unclean spirits — yet I think that what we have said concerning the consensus of right is enough to make it appear that, by this definition, there is no people whose affair is said to be a commonwealth, where there is no justice. For if they say that the Romans served, in their commonwealth, not unclean spirits but good and holy gods: must the same things, which we have already said enough — nay, more than enough — be repeated so many times?

For who has come to this point through the earlier books of this work, who could still doubt that the Romans served evil and impure demons, unless he be either too stupid or most impudently contentious? But, to say nothing of what kind they are whom they worshipped with sacrifices: in the law of the true God it is written: 'He who sacrifices to gods shall be rooted out, save to the Lord alone.' Therefore He who commanded this with so great a threat willed that sacrifice be offered neither to good nor to evil gods. CHAPTER XXII. Whether the God whom the Christians serve is the true God, to whom alone sacrifice ought to be offered. But it may be answered:

'Who is this God, or whence is He proved worthy, to whom the Romans ought to have submitted, so as to worship none of the gods besides Him with sacrifices?' It is a sign of great blindness still to ask who this God is. He is the God whose prophets foretold these things which we behold. He is the God from whom Abraham received the answer: 'In thy seed shall all nations be blessed.' That this is fulfilled in Christ, who according to the flesh sprang from that seed, those very ones who remain enemies of this name, whether they will or no, recognize. He is the God whose divine Spirit spoke through those whose predictions, fulfilled through the Church which we see spread throughout the whole world, I have set down in the earlier books.

He is the God whom Varro, the most learned of the Romans, supposes to be Jupiter, though he knows not what he says; which, however, I thought worth mentioning for this reason, that a man of such great learning could neither think this God to be nothing, nor reckon Him base. For he believed Him to be the one whom he held to be the supreme god. Finally, He is the God whom Porphyry, the most learned of the philosophers, although the most bitter enemy of the Christians, even through the oracles of those whom he thinks gods, confesses to be a great God. CHAPTER XXIII. What Porphyry says were answered by the oracles of the gods concerning Christ. For in the books

which he entitles 'On the Philosophy of Oracles' (ek logion philosophias), in which he sets forth and writes down, as it were divine responses concerning matters pertaining to philosophy — that I may set down his very words, in the manner in which they have been translated from the Greek tongue into Latin: 'To one inquiring,' he says, 'by what god he might, by appeasing him, recall his wife from Christianity, Apollo spoke these things in verses.' Then the words, as if of Apollo, are these: 'You will perhaps be able more easily to write with letters impressed in water, or, spreading light feathers, to fly through the air like a bird, than to recall the mind of your polluted, impious wife.

Let her go on as she will, persevering in her empty deceptions, and lamenting in deceptions, singing of a God who died, whom judges of right judgment condemned to perish, and whom, in his prime, a most shameful death, bound with iron, slew.' Then, after these verses of Apollo, which were translated into Latin without keeping the meter, he subjoined and said: 'In these indeed he revealed the incurable judgment of their opinion, saying that the Jews receive God more than these.' Behold, where, in disparaging Christ, he set the Jews before the Christians, confessing that the Jews receive God. For thus he expounded the verses of Apollo, where he says Christ was slain by judges of right judgment, as though He were deservedly punished by them as they justly judged.

Let me consider what the lying prophet of Apollo said about Christ, and what this man believed — or perhaps that this man himself fabricated that the prophet said what he did not say. How consistent he is with himself, or how he makes even his own oracles agree among themselves, we shall see hereafter; here, however, he says that the Jews, as receivers of God, judged rightly concerning Christ, in that they decreed that He must be tortured with a most shameful death. The God of the Jews, therefore, to whom he bears testimony, ought to have been heard, saying: 'He who sacrifices to gods shall be rooted out, save to the Lord alone.' But let us come to more manifest things, and hear how great a God he says the God of the Jews is. Again, to the things he asked of Apollo — which is better, the word or reason, or the law:

'He answered,' he says, 'saying these things in verses.' And then he subjoins the verses of Apollo, among which are these also, that I may cull from them as much as is enough: 'But unto God, the begetter and the king before all things, before whom heaven and earth and sea and the hidden places of the underworld tremble, and the very divinities shudder; whose law is the Father, whom the very holy Hebrews greatly honor.' By such an oracle of his god Apollo, Porphyry said that the God of the Hebrews is so great that even the divinities themselves shudder at Him. Since, then, this God has said: 'He who sacrifices to gods shall be rooted out,' I wonder that Porphyry himself did not shudder, and did not dread to be rooted out by sacrificing to gods.

This philosopher also says good things about Christ, as though forgetful of that contumely of his, of which we spoke a little before, or as though in dreams his gods had cursed Christ, and on waking had recognized Him to be good and worthily praised Him. Finally, as though about to bring forth something marvelous and incredible: 'Beyond all opinion,' he says, 'it would assuredly seem to some to be what we are about to say. For the gods have pronounced Christ to be most pious and to have been made immortal, and they make mention of Him with good commendation; but the Christians,' he says, 'they declare to be polluted and contaminated and entangled in error, and they use many such blasphemies against them.' Then he subjoins, as it were, oracles of the gods blaspheming the Christians, and after these:

'But concerning Christ,' he says, 'when they asked whether he is God, Hecate replied: As for how the immortal soul advances after the body, you already know; but the soul cut off from wisdom errs forever. That soul belongs to a man most outstanding in piety; men worship it, being themselves estranged from the truth.' Then, after the words of this supposed oracle, weaving in his own remarks, he himself says: 'He therefore called him a most pious man, and said that his soul, like those of other pious men, was after death deemed worthy of immortality, and that the Christians worship it in ignorance.' And to those who asked, he says: 'Why then was he condemned?' the goddess answered by oracle: 'The body indeed is ever exposed to weakening torments; but the soul of the pious is enthroned in a heavenly seat.'

But that soul, he says, gave to other souls, by fate, the lot of being entangled in error—souls to which the fates had not granted to obtain the gifts of the gods nor to possess the knowledge of immortal Jupiter. For this reason, then, they are hateful to the gods: because to those for whom it was not appointed by fate to know God nor to receive gifts from the gods, this soul fatefully gave entanglement in error. But he himself, being pious, ascended into heaven, as the pious do.

'And so you shall not blaspheme this man, but rather pity the madness of men, since from him their peril is for them easy and headlong.' Who is so foolish as not to perceive that these oracles were either fabricated by some cunning man, most hostile to the Christians, or were given as responses by impure demons with a like purpose—namely, that, because they praise Christ, they might thereby be believed to censure the Christians truthfully, and thus, if they could, might block the way of eternal salvation, by which a man becomes Christian? For in their thousandfold cunning of doing harm they perceive that it is no contradiction if they are believed when they praise Christ, provided they are also believed when they revile Christians;

so that the man who has believed both they may make into such a praiser of Christ that he will not wish to be a Christian; and thus, though praised by Christ, Christ would nonetheless not deliver him from the dominion of those demons—especially since they praise Christ in such a way that whoever believes in Him as they proclaim Him will not be a true Christian, but a Photinian heretic, who knows Christ only as man and not also as God, and therefore cannot be saved through Him, nor avoid or loosen the snares of those lying demons. But we, for our part, can neither approve Apollo who reviles Christ nor Hecate who praises Him. For he indeed wants Christ to be believed unjust, since he says Christ was put to death by judges who judged rightly;

the latter calls Him a most pious man, but only a man. Yet the intention of both is one and the same: that men should not be Christians, since, unless they are Christians, they cannot be rescued from the power of these beings. But this philosopher—or rather those who believe such oracles, as it were, against the Christians—let them first, if they can, bring it about that Hecate and Apollo agree among themselves concerning Christ Himself, and either both condemn Him or both join in praising Him. But if they could do this, we would nonetheless shun the deceitful demons, both those who revile and those who praise Christ. But since their god and goddess disagree among themselves about Christ, the one by reviling, the other by praising:

surely, when these beings blaspheme the Christians, men do not believe them, if they themselves judge rightly. To be sure, Porphyry or Hecate, in praising Christ, while saying that He Himself fatefully gave it to the Christians that they should be entangled in error, nevertheless lays open the causes of that same error, as he supposes. Before I set these forth from his own words, I first ask: if Christ fatefully gave the Christians their entanglement in error, did He give it willingly or unwillingly? If willingly, how is He just? If unwillingly, how is He blessed? But let us now hear the causes of this error from him. 'There are,' he says, 'certain earthly spirits, very small, subject in a certain place to the power of evil demons.

From these the wise men of the Hebrews (one of whom was this very Jesus, as you have heard from the divine utterances of Apollo, which were quoted above)—from these worst demons and lesser spirits, then, the Hebrews forbade the religious to seek anything, and forbade them to give heed to them; commanding rather that men should venerate the heavenly gods, and still more venerate God the Father. This, he says, the gods too enjoin, and we have shown in what has gone before how they admonish men to turn their attention to God and command that He be worshipped everywhere.

But the unlearned and those of impious nature, to whom fate truly did not grant to obtain gifts from the gods nor to possess the knowledge of immortal Jupiter, not listening either to the gods or to the divine men, refused indeed all the gods, yet did not hate the forbidden demons but reverenced them. And while pretending to worship God, they do not perform those very things alone by which God is adored. For God indeed, being the Father of all, needs nothing; but it is well for us when we adore Him through justice and chastity and the other virtues, making life itself a prayer to Him by imitating and inquiring after Him. For inquiry purifies,' he says;

imitation deifies, by directing one's disposition toward Him in action.' He has indeed nobly proclaimed God the Father, and stated by what manner of conduct He is to be worshipped—precepts of which the prophetic books of the Hebrews are full, whether the life of the saints is commanded or praised. But concerning the Christians he errs, or slanders, as greatly as the demons wish, whom he supposes to be gods—as though it were difficult for anyone to recall what shameful, what disgraceful things were done in homage to the gods in theatres and temples, and to mark what is read, said, and heard in the churches, or what is offered to the true God, and from this to understand where there is edification, and where there is the ruin of morals.

But who told him, or inspired in him—except a diabolical spirit—so empty and manifest a lie: that the demons whom the Hebrews forbade to be worshipped are reverenced by the Christians rather than hated? But that God whom the wise men of the Hebrews worshipped forbids sacrifice to be offered even to the holy heavenly angels and powers of God—whom we venerate and love as most blessed citizens during this our mortal pilgrimage—thundering in His law, which He gave to His Hebrew people, and saying most threateningly: 'He who sacrifices to gods shall be rooted out.'

And lest anyone should suppose that it was commanded that sacrifice should not be offered to the worst demons and earthly spirits, whom this man calls smallest or lesser (because these too are called gods in the holy Scriptures—not gods of the Hebrews, but of the nations; which the seventy translators clearly stated in the psalm, saying: 'For all the gods of the nations are demons')—lest anyone, then, should suppose that it was forbidden to sacrifice to these demons, but permitted to sacrifice to the heavenly beings, whether to all or to some, He soon added: 'except to the Lord alone,' that is, except to the Lord only; and lest perchance, in His saying 'to the Lord alone,' anyone should believe the Lord to be the sun, to whom he thinks sacrifice should be offered—which that it is not so to be understood is most easily found in the Greek Scriptures.

The God of the Hebrews, therefore, to whom even so great a philosopher as this bears so great a testimony, gave a law to His Hebrew people, written in the Hebrew tongue, not obscure and unknown, but already spread abroad among all nations; in which law it is written: 'He who sacrifices to gods shall be rooted out, except to the Lord only.' What need is there to inquire much into this matter in this his law and his prophets—nay rather, not to inquire (for these things are not abstruse or rare), but to gather things open and frequent and to set them down in this disputation of mine, by which it appears clearer than light that the true and supreme God willed that sacrifice be offered to none at all but to Himself alone?

Behold this one thing, briefly—nay, grandly, threateningly, yet truthfully—spoken by that God whom their most learned men so excellently extol: let it be heard, feared, fulfilled, lest extirpation follow the disobedient. 'He who sacrifices to gods,' He says, 'shall be rooted out, except to the Lord only'—not because He needs anything, but because it is to our advantage that we should be His. For to Him it is sung in the sacred letters of the Hebrews: 'I said to the Lord, You are my God, for You have no need of my goods.' But His most excellent and best sacrifice is we ourselves, that is, His City, the mystery of which we celebrate in our oblations, which are known to the faithful, as we have argued in the preceding books.

For the divine oracles, through the Hebrew prophets, proclaimed that the victims which the Jews offered in the shadow of what was to come would cease, and that the nations from the rising of the sun to its setting would offer one sacrifice—as we now see being done; of which, as far as seemed sufficient, we have brought forward some passages and already sprinkled them upon this work. Wherefore, where this justice is not present—namely, that the one and supreme God should rule, according to His grace, an obedient City, so that it sacrifices to none but Him alone, and that thereby, in all men belonging to that same City and obedient to God, the soul should faithfully rule the body, and reason the vices, in a lawful order;

so that, just as one just man, so a community and people of the just may live by faith, which works through love, by which a man loves God as God ought to be loved, and his neighbour as himself—where, then, this justice is not present, there is assuredly no assembly of men associated by a common agreement of right and by a sharing of advantage. And if this is not present, then certainly there is no people, if this definition of a people is true. Therefore neither is there a commonwealth (res publica), since there is no property of a people (res populi) where there is no people itself. CHAPTER XXIV. By what definition of a people and a commonwealth not only the Romans but also other kingdoms may rightly claim those titles for themselves. But if a people is defined not in this way, but in some other manner, as for instance if it were said:

'A people is an assembly of a rational multitude associated by a concordant communion of the things which it loves'—then surely, in order to see what kind a given people is, one must look at the things it loves. Whatever it may love, if it is an assembly of a multitude, not of beasts but of rational creatures, associated by a concordant communion of the things it loves, it is not absurdly called a people; and it is the better in proportion as it agrees in better things, and the worse in proportion as it agrees in worse things. According to this definition of ours, the Roman people is a people, and its commonwealth is, without doubt, a commonwealth.

But what that people loved in its earliest times and what in its later, and by what morals, coming to most bloody seditions and thence to social and civil wars, it broke and corrupted the very concord which is, in a manner, the welfare of a people—history bears witness; concerning which we have set down much in the preceding books. Yet I would not on that account say either that it is not itself a people, or that its affairs are not a commonwealth, so long as there remains an assembly of a rational multitude of whatever sort, associated by a concordant communion of the things it loves.

But what I have said about this people and this commonwealth, let me be understood to have said and felt also about the Athenians, or any of the Greeks, about the Egyptians, about that earlier Babylon of the Assyrians, when in their commonwealths they held empire, whether small or great, and about any other of whatever other nations. For generally, a city of the impious, which God does not rule when it is obedient to Him, so that it offers sacrifice to none but Himself alone, and so that in it the soul rules the body and reason the vices rightly and faithfully, lacks the truth of justice. CHAPTER XXV. That there cannot be true virtues there, where there is no true religion.

For however praiseworthily the soul may seem to rule the body and reason the vices, if the soul and reason itself do not serve God as God Himself has commanded that He should be served, in no way does it rightly rule the body and the vices. For what kind of mistress over the body and the vices can a mind be that is ignorant of the true God, and not subjected to His command, but prostituted to most vicious, corrupting demons? Accordingly, the virtues which it seems to itself to have, by which it rules the body and the vices, if it refers them to anything to be obtained or held except to God, even these are vices rather than virtues. For although they are by some thought to be true and honourable virtues at the time when they are referred to themselves and not sought for the sake of anything else:

even then they are inflated and proud, and therefore are to be judged not virtues but vices. For just as it is not from the flesh but above the flesh that which makes the flesh live, so it is not from man but above man that which makes man live blessedly; and not man alone, but also any heavenly power and virtue whatsoever. CHAPTER XXVI. Of the peace of a people estranged from God, which the people of God uses for godliness while it is a pilgrim in this world. Wherefore, as the life of the flesh is the soul, so the blessed life of man is God, of whom the sacred letters of the Hebrews say: 'Blessed is the people whose Lord is its God.' Wretched, therefore, is the people estranged from this God.

Yet even it loves a certain peace of its own, not to be disapproved, which indeed it will not have in the end, because it does not use it well before the end. But that it should have this peace meanwhile in this life concerns even us; since, as long as the two cities are mingled together, we too make use of the peace of Babylon, from which the people of God is so delivered by faith that meanwhile it sojourns as a pilgrim there. For this reason the Apostle also admonished the Church to pray for its kings and those in high places, adding and saying:

'That we may lead a quiet and peaceable life in all godliness and charity.' And the prophet Jeremiah, when he foretold captivity to the ancient people of God and by divine command bade them go obediently into Babylonia, serving their God by this very patience, himself also admonished that prayer be made for it, saying: 'For in its peace shall be your peace'—a peace, to be sure, that is meanwhile temporal, which is common to good and bad alike. CHAPTER XXVII. Of the peace of those serving God, whose perfect tranquility cannot be attained in this temporal life. But our own proper peace is here, with God, through faith, and it shall be forever with Him through sight.

But here, whether that common peace or our own proper peace, such is the peace that it is rather a solace of misery than a joy of blessedness. Even our righteousness itself, although it is true on account of the true end of good to which it is referred, is yet so great in this life that it consists rather in the remission of sins than in the perfection of virtues. Witness is the prayer of the whole City of God which is a pilgrim on earth. For through all its members it cries to God: 'Forgive us our debts, as we also forgive our debtors.' And this prayer is not effectual for those whose faith without works is dead; but for those whose faith works through love.

For because reason, though subject to God, does not in this mortal condition and corruptible body, which weighs down the soul, perfectly rule the vices, therefore such a prayer is necessary for the righteous. For assuredly, although it commands, it by no means commands the vices without conflict; and certainly something creeps in, in this state of weakness, even for one who fights well or rules over such enemies when conquered and subjected, whereby, if not by easy action, at least by a slip of the tongue or a fleeting thought, sin is committed. And therefore, as long as the vices are ruled over, peace is not full, because both those that resist are subdued in a perilous battle, and those that are conquered are not yet triumphed over in secure leisure, but are still held down by an anxious command.