Works (City of God, On the Trinity, etc.) 8 part 3/4

the force of which, when it reaches into the heavenly bodies, makes those too gods, and through that part of it which permeates into the earth, makes the goddess Tellus; but that which thence permeates into the sea and ocean, is the god Neptune. Let him, therefore, return from this which he supposes to be natural theology — into which, as though for the sake of rest, wearied, he had gone out from these circuitous windings and turnings; let him return, I say, let him return to the civil theology; here I still hold him, meanwhile I deal with this. I do not yet say that, if earth and stones are like our bones and nails, they likewise have no intelligence, just as they lack sensation;

Or, if our bones and nails are said to possess intelligence for the reason that they exist within a man who possesses intelligence, then he who calls these things gods within the world is as foolish as the man who calls the bones and nails within us human beings. But such matters must perhaps be argued with the philosophers; for the present, however, I wish to keep to this man as a political theologian. For it may well be that, although he seems to have wished to lift his head up a little, as it were, into that liberty of natural theology, yet, still turning over this present book and thinking himself engaged within it, he glanced back to it from there and said this for the very purpose that his ancestors, or other states, might not be believed to have worshipped Earth and Neptune in vain. But this is what I say:

if that part of the world-soul which pervades the earth, being one thing just as the earth is one, why did he not also make it one goddess, whom he calls Tellus? But if he did so, where will Orcus be, the brother of Jupiter and Neptune, whom they call Father Dis? Where will his consort Proserpina be, who, according to another opinion set down in these same books, is held to be not the fertility of the earth but its lower part? For if they say that the part of the world-soul, when it pervades the upper part of the earth, makes the god Father Dis, but when it pervades the lower, makes the goddess Proserpina, then what will that Tellus be? For thus the whole of what she herself was has been divided into these two parts and gods, so that one cannot find what the third one, she herself, is, or where she is;

unless someone should say that these gods together, Orcus and Proserpina, are the one goddess Tellus, and that they are not now three, but either one or two; and yet they are called three, are held to be three, are worshipped with their own altars, their own shrines, rites, images, and priests, and through these things also with their own deceiving demons who defile the prostituted soul. Let it further be answered: what part of the earth does the part of the world-soul pervade so as to make the god Tellumo? 'No part,' he says, 'but one and the same earth possesses a twofold power, both masculine, in that it produces seeds, and feminine, in that it receives and nourishes them; hence from the power of the female it was called Tellus, from that of the male, Tellumo.'

Why then do the pontiffs, as he himself indicates, perform the divine rite to four gods by adding two others as well, namely to Tellus, Tellumo, Altor, and Rusor? Of Tellus and Tellumo it has already been spoken. Why to Altor? 'Because,' he says, 'all things that are born are nourished from the earth.' Why to Rusor? 'Because,' he says, 'all things roll back again to the same place.' Therefore the one earth ought, on account of this fourfold power, to have had four surnames, not to have made four gods; just as one Jupiter has so many surnames and one Juno so many surnames, in all of which a manifold power is said to belong to the one god or the one goddess, the multitude of surnames not also producing a multitude of gods.

But surely, just as sometimes even the vilest women grow weary and repent of the very crowds whom they have sought out through lust, so the soul, made vile and prostituted to unclean spirits, sometimes felt both pleasure and afterward disgust at multiplying gods for itself before whom it might prostrate itself to be defiled, as much as it pleased. For even Varro himself, as though ashamed of that very crowd, wishes Tellus to be one goddess. 'The same,' he says, 'they call the Great Mother; because she has a tympanum, it signifies that she is the orb of the earth; because she has towers upon her head, cities; because she is fashioned sitting, that, while all things move around her, she herself does not move. That they made Galli to serve this goddess signifies that those who lack seed ought to follow the earth; for in her indeed all things are found.'

'That they fling themselves about before her,' he says, 'is a precept for those who till the earth, that they should not sit still; for there is always something to be done. The clash of cymbals signifies the sound made by the throwing about of iron tools and of hands, and the clatter of that work in tilling the field; therefore of bronze, because the ancients used to till with bronze before iron was invented. The lion,' he says, 'they attach to her, unbound and tamed, in order to show that no kind of soil is so remote and violently wild that it is not fitting to be subdued and cultivated.' Then he adds and says that Mother Tellus, because they named her by many names and surnames, was reckoned to be several gods. 'Tellus,' he says, 'they think to be Ops, because she is made better by labor (opus); Mother, because she brings forth very much; Great, because she brings forth food;

Proserpina, because the crops creep forth (proserpant) from her; Vesta, because she is clothed with plants. Thus,' he says, 'they refer other goddesses to her, not absurdly.' If, then, she is one goddess—who indeed, when the truth is consulted, is not even a goddess at all—why meanwhile do they proceed to many? Let these many be the divine powers of one being, not so much many goddesses as many names. But the authority of the erring ancestors weighs him down and compels the same Varro to waver after this opinion. For he adds and says: 'The opinion of the ancestors about these goddesses, in that they thought there were several of them, is not at odds with this.' How is it not at odds, when it is a very different thing for one goddess to have many names and for there to be many goddesses?

'But it can happen,' he says, 'that the same thing be both one, and yet in it there be several things.' I grant that in one man there are several things; are there therefore also several men? So in one goddess there are several things; are there therefore also several goddesses? But let them, as they please, divide, fuse, multiply, fold and refold and entangle. These are the illustrious mysteries of Tellus and the Great Mother, whence all things are referred to mortal seeds and the practice of agriculture. Is it, then, that the tympanum, the towers, the Galli, the mad tossing of limbs, the clash of cymbals, the fashioning of lions—things referred to these ends and having this purpose—promise anyone eternal life?

Is it, then, for this reason that the emasculated Galli serve this Great goddess, namely to signify that those who lack seed ought to follow the earth—as though it were not rather that very servitude which makes them lack seed? For do they, by following this goddess, acquire seed when they lack it, or rather, by following this goddess, do they lose the seed they had? Is this to interpret, or to detest? Nor is it noticed how far the malicious demons prevailed, who neither dared promise anything great by these rites, and yet were able to exact things so cruel. If the earth were not a goddess, men would lay hands upon it by their labor, that they might obtain seeds through it, and would not also rage against themselves so as to lose their seed for its sake;

if she were not a goddess, she would become so fertile by others' hands that she would not compel a man to become barren by his own hands. As for the fact that in the rites of Liber an honorable matron used to crown the shameful male member in the sight of a multitude, where, blushing and sweating—if there is any shame at all in men—her husband too perhaps stood by; and that in the celebration of nuptials the new bride was bidden to sit upon the shaft of Priapus: these are far more contemptible and trifling in comparison with this cruelest baseness, or basest cruelty, where by demonic rites both sexes are so mocked that neither is destroyed by its own wound. There the bewitching of the fields is feared; here the amputation of members is not feared.

There the modesty of the new bride is so dishonored that not only her fertility, but not even her virginity is taken away; here manhood is so amputated that the man is neither turned into a woman nor left a man. And that Attis was not mentioned, nor was any interpretation of him sought by this man—Attis, in memory of whose love the Gallus is emasculated. But the learned and wise Greeks by no means kept silent about a reason so holy and illustrious. For on account of the vernal face of the earth, which is more beautiful than at other seasons, Porphyry, a noble philosopher, declared that Attis signifies flowers, and that he was therefore emasculated because the flower falls before the fruit.

Therefore it was not the man himself, or the quasi-man, who was called Attis, but his male organs that they compared to the flower. For those organs fell off while he still lived; nay rather, they did not fall off, nor were they merely plucked, but plainly torn asunder; and when that flower was lost, no fruit afterward followed, but rather barrenness ensued. What then is the remainder of him, and whatever remained after the emasculated one? What is it said to signify? To what is it referred? What interpretation is brought forth from it? Or do they, by laboring at this in vain and finding nothing, persuade us that we should rather believe what rumor spread abroad and committed to writing concerning a castrated man? Deservedly did our Varro turn away from this and was unwilling to say it; for it did not escape so most learned a man.

Likewise concerning the effeminates consecrated to the same Great Mother against all shame of men and women, who even up to yesterday, with dripping hair, faces whitened, limbs languishing, and a womanish gait, went through the streets and lanes of Carthage demanding from the shopkeepers the means whereby to live shamefully—concerning these, Varro was unwilling to say anything, nor do I recall having read of it anywhere. Interpretation failed, reason blushed, speech fell silent. The Great Mother surpassed all the gods her sons, not by the greatness of her divinity, but by the greatness of her crime. To this monstrosity not even the monstrosity of Janus is to be compared. He in his images had only deformity; she in her rites had deformed cruelty; he had members added in stone, she had members destroyed in men.

This disgrace not even the many and so great debaucheries of Jupiter himself surpass. He, amid his corruptions of women, disgraced heaven with the single Ganymede; she, with so many effeminates avowed and public, both defiled the earth and did injury to heaven. Saturn perhaps we might, in this kind of most base cruelty, either compare or prefer to her, he who is said to have castrated his father; but in the rites of Saturn men could be slain by others' hands rather than emasculate themselves by their own. He devoured his sons, as the poets relate, and the natural philosophers interpret this as they please; but as history sets forth, he killed them; yet that the Carthaginians sacrificed their own sons to him, the Romans did not accept.

But indeed this Great Mother of the gods brought castrated men even into Roman temples and preserved this savagery and custom, being believed to aid the strength of the Romans by cutting off the manhood of men. What, compared to this evil, are the thefts of Mercury, the wantonness of Venus, the debaucheries and basenesses of the rest, which we might bring forward from books, were they not daily sung and danced in the theaters? But what are these compared to so great an evil, whose magnitude befitted the Great Mother alone? Especially since those things are said by the poets to be fabricated, as though the poets had also invented this—that these things are pleasing and acceptable to the gods. That they might therefore be sung or written, let it be the boldness or wantonness of the poets;

but that they should be added to divine rites and honors at the command and extortion of these very divine powers—what is this but the crime of the gods, nay rather the confession of the demons and the deception of the wretched? As for that other thing, that the Mother of the gods deserved to be worshipped by the consecration of castrated men, the poets did not fabricate it, but chose rather to shudder at it than to sing of it. Is anyone to be consecrated to these select gods, that after death he may live blessedly, to whom, being consecrated before death, he cannot live honorably, subjected as he is to superstitions so foul and bound to unclean demons? But 'all these things,' he says, 'are referred to the world.' Let him see whether they are not rather referred to the unclean. And what cannot be referred to the world, which is shown to exist in the world?

But we seek that soul which, trusting in true religion, does not adore the world as its god, but praises the world as the work of God for God's sake, and, cleansed from worldly filth, comes pure to God who founded the world. As for those select gods, we see indeed that they became more famously known than the rest, not, however, that their merits might be made illustrious, but that their disgraces might not be concealed; whence it is the more credible that they were men, as not only the poetic writings but also the historical have handed down. For as to what Virgil says:

'First from ethereal Olympus came Saturn, fleeing the arms of Jupiter and an exile from his realms taken away,' and the verses that follow pertaining to this matter—the whole history of this Euhemerus lays open, which Ennius translated into Latin speech; and since those who wrote before us against errors of this kind, whether in Greek or in Latin discourse, set down very much, it did not please me to linger on it. When I consider those very physiologies by which learned and acute men attempt to turn these human affairs into divine, I see nothing but that they could be reduced to temporal and earthly works and to corporeal nature, or even, though invisible, yet mutable nature; which is in no way the true God.

But if at least this were done with significations befitting religiousness, it would indeed be a thing to be grieved over, that the true God is not proclaimed and preached by these; yet it would in some measure be bearable, that things so foul and base were not done nor commanded. But now, when to worship either body or soul in place of the true God—by whom alone, dwelling within the soul, it becomes blessed—is impious, how much more nefarious is it to worship these things in such a way that the body or soul of the worshipper obtains neither salvation nor human dignity! Wherefore, if by temple, priest, and sacrifice, which are owed to the true God, some element of the world or some created spirit be worshipped, even if it be not unclean and evil:

it is not evil for the reason that those things by which He is worshipped are evil, but because those things are of such a kind that by them He alone ought to be worshipped, to whom such worship and service are owed. But if by the stolidity or monstrosity of images, by sacrifices of murders, by the crowning of male shameful parts, by the wage of debaucheries, by the cutting of members, by the amputation of genitals, by the consecration of effeminates, by the festivals of impure and obscene games, anyone should strive to worship the one true God, that is, the creator of every soul and body—he sins not for the reason that the one he worships ought not to be worshipped, but because he worships the one who ought to be worshipped in a manner in which He ought not to be worshipped.

But he who worships both by such things—that is, by base and wicked things—and worships not the true God, that is, the maker of soul and body, but a creature, however not vicious, whether it be soul or body or soul and body together, sins twice against God: both because he worships in place of Him what is not Himself, and because he worships with such things as neither He Himself ought to be worshipped with nor what is not Himself. As for the manner in which these men worshipped—that is, how basely and nefariously—it is plain; but what or whom they worshipped would be obscure, were it not that their own history testifies to those very things which they confess to be foul and base, rendered to divine powers that terribly demand them;

whence, all ambiguities removed, it is established that nefarious demons and most unclean spirits were invited by all this civil theology to inhabit stolid images and, through them, to possess even the foolish hearts of men. What, then, does it avail that Varro, a most learned and acute man, attempts by a seemingly subtle disputation to reduce and refer all these gods to heaven and earth? He cannot; they flow out of his hands, they leap back, they slip and fall down. For, about to speak of the females, that is, the goddesses, he says: 'Since, as I said in the first book concerning places, there are two principles of the gods observed, from heaven and earth, from which the gods are called partly celestial, partly terrestrial:

as in the earlier books we made a beginning from heaven, when we spoke of Janus, whom some said to be heaven, others the world, so concerning the females we make the beginning of our writing from Tellus.' I perceive how great a difficulty so great a genius suffers. For he is led by a certain plausible reasoning: that heaven is that which acts, earth that which is acted upon, and therefore he attributes masculine power to the former, feminine to the latter, and does not consider that He is rather the one who does these things, who made both. Hence he likewise interprets the noble mysteries of the Samothracians in the earlier book, and promises, most religiously as it were, that he will expound in writing and send to them those things which are not even known to their own people.

For he says that he there gathered from many indications that in the images one thing signifies heaven, another earth, another the exemplars of things which Plato calls ideas; he wishes heaven to be understood as Jupiter, earth as Juno, and the ideas as Minerva—heaven as that by which something is made, earth as that from which it is made, the exemplar as that according to which it is made. In which matter I forbear to say that Plato says those ideas have such great power that it is according to them that heaven made not something, but even that heaven itself was made. This I say: that this man in this book of select gods lost that principle of the three gods by which he embraced all things, as it were. For to heaven he attributed the male gods, to earth the females; among whom he placed Minerva, whom he had before placed above heaven itself.

Then the male god Neptune is in the sea, which pertains rather to the earth than to heaven. Finally Dis Pater, who in Greek is called Pluto, being himself also male and a brother of the two, is held to be a terrestrial god, holding the upper earth, and having in the lower his consort Proserpina. In what way, then, do they attempt to refer the gods to heaven, the goddesses to earth? What solid, what constant, what sober, what definite thing does this disputation have? But that Tellus is the beginning of the goddesses, namely the Great Mother, in whose presence the mad baseness of the effeminate and the castrated, cutting and tossing themselves about, resounds. What, then, is the meaning of the saying that Janus is the head of the gods, Tellus the head of the goddesses? Error makes no single head there, nor does frenzy make a sound one here.

Why do they strive in vain to refer these things to the world? For even if they could, no pious man worships the world in place of the true God; and yet the manifest truth convinces them that they cannot do even this. Let them rather refer these things to dead men and to the worst demons, and no question will remain. For all those things which are referred by them, out of the theology of these gods, as it were by physical reasons, to the world—how, without any scruple of sacrilegious opinion, they may rather be attributed to the true God, who made the world, the founder of every soul and every body—let us observe in this way: We worship God, not heaven and earth, of which two parts this world consists;

nor do we worship the soul or souls diffused through whatever living things, but God, who made heaven and earth and all things that are in them; who made every soul, whether living in whatever manner and destitute of sense and reason, or even sentient, or even understanding. And, that I may now begin to run through those works of the one and true God, on account of which these men, while they attempt as it were honorably to interpret the most base and wicked rites, made for themselves many false gods: we worship that God who has established for the natures created by Him the beginnings and ends both of subsisting and of moving; who holds, knows, and disposes the causes of things; who founded the power of seeds;

who gave a rational soul, which is called mind (animus), to whatever living things He willed; who bestowed the faculty and use of speech; who imparted the gift of foretelling the future to whatever spirits He pleased, and through whom He pleases foretells the future Himself, and through whom He pleases drives away sicknesses; who moderates the beginnings, progressions, and ends of wars themselves, when the human race is thus to be amended and chastised; who both created and rules this world's most vehement and most violent fire in proportion to the temperament of the immense nature; who is the creator and governor of all waters; who made the sun, the brightest of corporeal lights, and gave it a power suited to it and motion;

who does not withdraw His dominion and power even from the very regions below; who supplies the seeds and nourishments of mortal creatures, whether dry or liquid, allotted to their fitting natures; who lays the foundation of the earth and makes it fruitful; who lavishes its fruits upon animals and men; who knows and orders causes not only principal but also subsequent; who appointed to the moon its own measure; who provides the celestial and terrestrial ways by changes of place; who granted to human minds, which He created, even the sciences of various arts for the aid of life and nature; who instituted the union of male and female for the aid of propagating offspring;

who granted to the assemblies of men, for their easiest uses, the gift of earthly fire to apply to their hearths and lights. These, to be sure, are the things which Varro, a most acute and learned man, labored to distribute among the select gods through I know not what physical interpretations, whether things he received from elsewhere or things he himself conjectured. But these things the one true God does and performs—yet as God, that is, everywhere whole, enclosed in no places, bound by no bonds, divisible into no parts, mutable in no part, filling heaven and earth with present power, not with needy nature. And so He administers all things which He created in such a way that He also allows them to exert and carry on their own proper motions.

For although they can be nothing without Him, they are not what He is. Moreover, He performs many things also through angels; but He beatifies the angels from none other than Himself. Thus, although for certain causes He sends angels to men, yet He beatifies men not from the angels, but from Himself, just as He does the angels. From this one and true God we hope for eternal life. For we have from Him, besides benefits of this kind which, from that administration of nature of which we have said some things, He lavishes upon good and evil alike, a great token and one proper to the good—a token of His great love.

For although the fact that we exist, that we live, that we behold heaven and earth, that we possess mind and reason by which to seek out Him who created all these things, is such that we can in no way suffice for the giving of thanks:

yet the fact that, when we were burdened and overwhelmed with sins, turned away from the contemplation of His light, and blinded by the love of darkness, that is, of iniquity, He did not utterly forsake us, but sent to us His Word, who is His only Son, that by His being born for us, with flesh assumed, and by His suffering, we might come to know how highly God valued man, and by that singular sacrifice might be cleansed from all sins, and, His love being poured abroad in our hearts by His Spirit, might, all difficulties overcome, come into eternal rest and the ineffable sweetness of His contemplation—what hearts, how many tongues, could contend that they are enough for the giving of thanks to Him?

This mystery of eternal life was, even from the very beginning of the human race, preached through the angels by means of certain signs and sacraments suited to the times, as was fitting. Then the Hebrew people was gathered into one commonwealth, which might enact this sacrament, where, through some who knew and some who did not know, that which is being enacted from the coming of Christ up to now and thenceforth might be foretold as about to come; and afterward that same people was scattered among the nations, on account of the testimony of the Scriptures, in which eternal salvation in Christ was foretold as future.

For all things—not only the prophecies which are in words, nor only the precepts of life which shape morals and piety and are contained in those writings, but also the sacred things, priesthoods, the tabernacle or temple, the altars, sacrifices, ceremonies, feast days, and whatever else pertains to that service which is owed to God and is properly called in Greek latreia—all these things were signified and foretold as those which we believe to have been fulfilled, on account of the eternal life of the faithful in Christ, and which we discern to be fulfilled, and which we are confident will be fulfilled.

Through this one and true religion, therefore, it could be laid open that the gods of the nations are most unclean demons, desiring, under the occasions of departed souls or under the appearance of worldly creatures, to be thought gods, and, as it were, rejoicing with proud impurity in divine honors and in those same wicked and base things, and envying human souls their conversion to the true God. From whose most monstrous and most impious domination man is set free when he believes in Him who furnished, for the rising up, an example of such great humility as was the pride by which those demons fell.

Hence there are not only those of whom we have already said much, and others and yet others like them of the remaining nations and lands, but also these of whom we now treat, as though selected into a senate of gods; yet plainly selected by the nobility of their crimes, not by the dignity of their virtues. Whose rites, while Varro attempts to refer them, as it were, to natural reasons, seeking to make base things honorable, he cannot find how they may square and be in harmony with these, since those are not the actual causes of those rites which he thinks, or rather wishes to be thought.

For if not only these very causes, but also any others whatever of this kind existed, although they pertained in nothing to the true God and to eternal life, which is to be sought in religion, yet by some reason rendered from the nature of things they would somewhat mitigate the offense which some seeming baseness or absurdity, not understood in the rites, had caused; just as he attempted to do in certain fables of the theaters or mysteries of the shrines, where he did not absolve the theaters by the likeness of the shrines, but rather condemned the shrines by the likeness of the theaters; yet he attempted, in whatever way, that a reason rendered as it were of natural causes might soothe the sense offended by horrible things.