[I] It is the settled judgment of all who can in any way use reason, that all men wish to be blessed. But while mortal weakness inquires who are blessed, or whence they become so, many and great controversies have been stirred up, over which the philosophers have worn out their studies and their leisure; to bring these forward and discuss them is both long and unnecessary. For if he who reads these things recalls what we did in the eighth book in choosing philosophers with whom this question of the blessed life which is to come after death might be handled—whether we can attain to it by serving with religion and sacred rites the one true God, who is also the maker of the gods, or many gods:
he does not expect that the same things should be repeated here also, especially since, by re-reading, if perchance he has forgotten, he can assist his memory. For we chose the Platonists, deservedly the most renowned of all philosophers, for this reason: because they were able to be wise enough to perceive that the immortal and rational, or intellectual, soul of man cannot be blessed except by participation in the light of that God by whom both it and the world were made; and thus they deny that anyone can attain that which all men seek, namely the blessed life, who has not adhered, by the purity of a chaste love, to that one supreme Good, which is the unchangeable God.
But because they too, whether yielding to the vanity and error of the peoples, or, as the Apostle says, "becoming vain in their imaginations," supposed—or wished it to be supposed—that many gods were to be worshipped, so that some of them held that even to demons divine honors of sacred rites and sacrifices were to be rendered (to whom we have already in no small measure replied): now it must be seen and discussed, as much as God grants, in what manner the immortal and blessed—established in the heavenly seats, dominions, principalities, powers, whom these men call gods, and some of whom they name either good demons or, with us, angels—are to be believed to wish that religion and piety be preserved by us;
that is, to speak more openly, whether it pleases them that we perform sacred rites and sacrifice to themselves also, or only to their God, who is also ours, or that we consecrate by the rites of religion any things of ours, or our very selves. For this is the worship owed to the divinity, or, if it must be said more expressly, to the deity; for signifying which by a single word—since no sufficiently suitable Latin one occurs to me—I introduce the Greek where necessary, to intimate what I mean to say. For latreia, wherever it is placed in the holy Scriptures, our translators have rendered as "service." But that service which is owed to men, according to which the Apostle enjoins that servants ought to be subject to their masters, is usually called by another name in Greek;
but latreia, according to the custom by which those spoke who composed for us the divine oracles, is always—or so frequently as to be almost always—called that service which pertains to the worship of God. Accordingly, if only "worship" (cultus) itself be spoken of, it does not seem to be owed to God alone. For we are said to "cultivate" (colere) men also, whom we frequent with honorable remembrance or presence. Nor is it only those to whom we subject ourselves with religious humility, but even certain things which are subject to us, that are said to be "cultivated." For from this word are called both husbandmen (agricolae) and settlers (coloni) and inhabitants (incolae), and they call the very gods "heaven-dwellers" (caelicolae) for no other reason than that they cultivate—that is, inhabit—heaven, not indeed by venerating but by dwelling, as though certain settlers of heaven;
not as those are called coloni who owe a condition to their native soil for the sake of agriculture under the dominion of the owners, but as a certain great author of Latin eloquence says: "An ancient city there was; Tyrian settlers held it." For he called them coloni from inhabiting, not from agriculture. Hence also cities founded from greater cities, as it were by swarms of peoples, are called "colonies." And through this it is altogether most true that worship (cultus), by a certain proper notion of this word, is owed to none but God; but because the worship of other things also is spoken of, therefore in Latin the worship owed to God cannot be signified by a single word.
For religion itself too—although it seems more distinctly to signify not any worship whatsoever, but the worship of God (whence by this name our translators rendered that which is called in Greek threskeia)—nevertheless, because by the Latin custom of speaking, not of the unlearned but even of the most learned, religion is said to be exhibited both to human kinships and affinities and to any relationships whatsoever, ambiguity is not avoided by this word when the question turns upon the worship of the deity, so that we might confidently be able to say that religion is nothing but the worship of God, since this word seems to be unusually withdrawn from signifying the observance of human relationship. Piety too is commonly understood, properly speaking, as the worship of God, which the Greeks call eusebeia.
Yet this word is said to be used also of the dutiful conduct shown toward parents. But in the common speech of the people this name is likewise frequently applied to works of mercy; which I judge to have come about because God commands these especially to be done, and testifies that they please Him either in place of sacrifices or above sacrifices. From this habit of speech it has come to pass that God Himself is called 'pious' (pius); though the Greeks, by no usage of their own tongue, call Him eusebes, even while the common people among them employ eusebeia also for mercy. Hence in certain places of the Scriptures, that the distinction might appear more sure, they preferred to say not eusebeia, which sounds as compounded from good worship, but theosebeia, which sounds as compounded from the worship of God.
But neither of these can we express in a single word. Therefore that which in Greek is called latreia and in Latin is rendered 'service'—but that service by which we worship God; or that which in Greek is threskeia, and in Latin is called 'religion'—but that religion which is ours toward God; or that which they call theosebeia, which we cannot express in a single word but can name 'the worship of God': this we declare to be owed to Him alone who is the true God and who makes His worshippers gods. Whatever immortal and blessed beings there are dwelling in the heavenly habitations, if they do not love us nor wish us to be blessed, they are by no means to be worshipped. But if they love us and wish us blessed, surely they wish us blessed from that source whence they too are blessed; or are they blessed from one source and we from another?
[II] But with these more excellent philosophers we have no conflict on this question. For they saw, and in their writings copiously set forth in many ways, that those beings are made blessed from the same source as we, by a certain intelligible light being set before them, which is God for them and is other than they, by whom they are illumined so as to shine and by participation in whom they subsist perfect and blessed. Often and at length Plotinus, expounding the meaning of Plato, asserts that not even that soul which they believe to be the soul of the universe is blessed from any other source than ours, and that this is a light which the soul itself is not, but by which it was created, and by whose intelligible illumination it intelligibly shines.
He also gives a likeness to those incorporeal things drawn from these visible and vast heavenly bodies, as though God were the sun and the soul the moon. For they think the moon is illumined by being set opposite the sun. That great Platonist therefore says that the rational soul—or rather it should be called the intellectual soul, of which kind he understands the souls of the immortal and blessed beings also to be, whom he does not doubt to dwell in the heavenly seats—has above itself no nature save God, who fashioned the world and by whom the soul itself was made; and that a blessed life and the light of the understanding of truth are furnished to those beings on high from no other source than that from which it is furnished also to us; which agrees with the Gospel, where it is read: 'There was a man sent from God, whose name was John;'
'this man came for a witness, that he might bear witness of the Light, that all might believe through him. He was not that Light, but was to bear witness of the Light. That was the true Light, which lighteth every man that cometh into this world.' By which distinction it is sufficiently shown that the rational or intellectual soul, such as was in John, cannot be a light to itself, but shines by participation in another, the true Light. This John himself also confesses, when bearing witness to Him he says: 'Of His fullness have we all received.'
[III] Since these things are so, if the Platonists, or whoever else perceived these truths, had, in knowing God, glorified Him as God and given thanks, and had not become vain in their thoughts, nor in part become authors of the errors of the peoples and in part not dared to resist them: surely they would confess that both for those immortal and blessed beings and for us mortal and wretched ones, in order that we may be able to be immortal and blessed, there is one God of gods to be worshipped, who is both ours and theirs. To Him we owe the service which in Greek is called latreia, whether in any sacraments or in ourselves. For we, all together and each singly, are His temple, since He deigns to inhabit both the concord of all and each single one;
being no greater in all than in each single one, since He is neither extended by mass nor diminished by division. When our heart is lifted up to Him, it is His altar; we appease Him by His Only-begotten as our priest; we slay to Him bloody victims, when we strive even unto blood for His truth; we burn to Him the sweetest incense, when in His sight we are aglow with pious and holy love; we vow and render to Him His gifts in us and our very selves; we dedicate and consecrate to Him the memory of His benefits by solemn feasts and appointed days, lest through the rolling of time ungrateful forgetfulness creep in; we sacrifice to Him upon the altar of the heart the victim of humility and praise, kindled by the fervid fire of charity.
To see Him, so far as He can be seen, and to cleave to Him, we are cleansed from every stain of sins and evil desires, and consecrated in His name. For He Himself is the fountain of our blessedness, He is the end of all our longing. Choosing Him, or rather re-choosing Him (for we had lost Him by neglecting Him)—re-choosing Him therefore, whence 'religion' is said to be named, we tend toward Him by love, that by reaching Him we may rest, blessed for this reason, that we are made perfect by that end. For our good, concerning whose end there is a great contention among the philosophers, is no other than to cleave to Him, by whose incorporeal embrace alone (if it may be so said) the intellectual soul is filled and made fruitful with true virtues.
We are commanded to love this Good with the whole heart, the whole soul, and the whole strength; to this Good we ought both to be led by those from whom we are loved, and to lead those whom we love. Thus are fulfilled those two commandments on which hang all the law and the prophets: 'Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind,' and, 'Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself.' For that a man might know how to love himself, an end was set for him to which he should refer all that he did, that he might be blessed; for no one who loves himself wishes anything other than to be blessed. But this end is to cleave to God.
Now therefore, to one who already knows how to love himself, when it is commanded that he love his neighbor as himself, what else is commanded than that he commend to him, as far as he can, the love of God? This is the worship of God, this is true religion, this is right piety, this is the service owed to God alone. Whatever immortal power therefore, however endowed with virtue, if it loves us as itself, wishes us to be subject to Him, that we may be blessed, to whom it too being subject is blessed. If then it does not worship God, it is wretched, because it is deprived of God; but if it does worship God, it does not wish itself to be worshipped in God's stead. For it rather votes for that divine sentence and favors it with the strength of its love, whereby it is written: 'He that sacrificeth unto the gods shall be rooted out, save unto the Lord alone.'
[IV] For—to be silent now about other things that pertain to the homage of religion by which God is worshipped—there is certainly no man who would dare to say that sacrifice is owed to any but God. Many things indeed borrowed from divine worship have been rendered to human honors, whether through excessive humility or through pestilent flattery; yet in such a way that those to whom these were rendered were held to be men, who are said to be worshipped and venerated, and, if much is added to them, even to be adored: but who has judged that sacrifice should be offered save to Him whom one either knew or supposed or feigned to be a god? How ancient, moreover, is the worship of God in sacrificing, those two brothers Cain and Abel sufficiently indicate, of whom God rejected the sacrifice of the elder and looked upon that of the younger.
[V] But who would be so foolish as to think that the things offered in sacrifices are necessary for any uses of God? Although the divine Scripture testifies to this in many places, yet, that we may not be long, it will suffice to recall that brief word from the Psalm: 'I said unto the Lord, Thou art my Lord, for Thou hast no need of my goods.' Not only, therefore, of cattle or of any other corruptible and earthly thing, but not even of a man's own righteousness is God to be believed to have need, and all worship rightly rendered to God profits man, not God. For no one would say that he had done a service to a fountain if he drank of it, or to the light if he saw by it.
Nor, from the fact that other sacrifices in victims of cattle were offered by the ancient fathers—which the people of God now reads about but does not do—is anything else to be understood, save that by those things were signified these things that are wrought within us, to the end that we may cleave to God and consult our neighbor's welfare toward the same end. A visible sacrifice, therefore, is the sacrament, that is, the sacred sign, of an invisible sacrifice. Whence that penitent in the prophet, or the prophet himself, seeking to have God propitious to his sins, says: 'If Thou hadst desired sacrifice, I would surely have given it; in burnt offerings Thou wilt not delight. A sacrifice to God is a broken spirit; a broken and humbled heart God will not despise.'
Let us consider how, where he said that God does not will sacrifice, there he shows that God does will sacrifice. He wills not, therefore, the sacrifice of a slaughtered beast, and He does will the sacrifice of a contrite heart. By that, then, which he said God does not will, is signified this which he subjoined that God does will. Thus, therefore, he said God wills not those things in the way in which by the foolish they are believed to be willed, as though for the sake of His own pleasure. For if He did not will that those sacrifices which He does will (of which this is one: a contrite and humbled heart in the sorrow of penitence) should be signified by those sacrifices which He was supposed to desire as if delightful to Himself, He would surely not have commanded that these be offered in the old law.
And therefore they had to be changed at a fitting and now certain time, lest they should be believed to be desirable to God Himself, or at any rate acceptable in us, rather than the things which are signified by them. Hence also in another place of another Psalm He says: 'If I were hungry, I would not tell thee; for the whole world is mine and the fullness thereof. Shall I eat the flesh of bulls, or drink the blood of goats?'—as though He said: 'Certainly, if these were necessary to me, I would not seek from thee things which I have in my own power.' Then, adding what those things signify, He says: 'Offer unto God the sacrifice of praise, and pay thy vows unto the Most High, and call upon me in the day of tribulation, and I will deliver thee, and thou shalt glorify me.' Likewise in another prophet:
'Wherewith,' he says, 'shall I lay hold of the Lord, take hold of my God most high? Shall I lay hold of Him in burnt offerings, in yearling calves? Will the Lord be pleased with thousands of rams, or with tens of thousands of fat he-goats? Shall I give my firstborn for my impiety, the fruit of my womb for the sin of my soul? Has it been shown thee, O man, what is good? Or what does the Lord require of thee but to do judgment and to love mercy and to be ready to walk with the Lord thy God?' And in this prophet's words both are distinguished, and it is sufficiently declared that God does not for their own sake require those sacrifices by which are signified these sacrifices which God does require. In the epistle which is inscribed 'To the Hebrews':
'Forget not,' he says, 'to do good and to communicate; for with such sacrifices God is well pleased.' And hence, where it is written: 'I will have mercy rather than sacrifice,' nothing else ought to be understood than that one sacrifice is preferred to another sacrifice; since that which by all is called sacrifice is the sign of the true sacrifice. But mercy is the true sacrifice; whence it was said, which I recalled a little before: 'For with such sacrifices God is well pleased.' Whatever things, therefore, are read in the ministry of the tabernacle or the temple to have been divinely commanded in many ways concerning sacrifices, are referred, by way of signification, to the love of God and neighbor.
For on these two commandments, as it is written, hang all the law and the prophets. [VI] Accordingly, a true sacrifice is every work by which it is brought about that we cleave to God in holy fellowship, referred, that is, to that end of good by which we can be truly blessed. Whence even that mercy itself, by which help is given to a man, if it is not done for God's sake, is not a sacrifice. For although it is done or offered by a man, yet sacrifice is a divine thing, so that the old Latins named it by this very word (sacrificium, 'a making sacred'). Whence man himself, consecrated in the name of God and vowed to God, in so far as he dies to the world that he may live to God, is a sacrifice. For this too pertains to the mercy which each one shows to himself. Therefore it is written:
'Have mercy on thy soul, pleasing God.' Our body also, when we chastise it with temperance, if we do this—in the way we ought—for God's sake, that we may not present our members as weapons of iniquity unto sin, but as weapons of righteousness unto God, is a sacrifice. Exhorting to which the apostle says: 'I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercy of God, that ye present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, well-pleasing to God, your reasonable service.' If, then, the body, which the soul uses as an inferior thing, as a servant or as an instrument, when its good and right use is referred to God, is a sacrifice:
how much more is the soul itself a sacrifice, when it refers itself to God, so that, kindled by the fire of His love, it may lose the form of worldly desire and, subjected to Him as to the unchangeable form, be reformed, being thereby pleasing to Him because it has received from His beauty! This the same apostle consequently adds, saying: 'And be not conformed to this world; but be ye reformed in the newness of your mind, that ye may prove what is the will of God, that which is good and well-pleasing and perfect.' Since, therefore, true sacrifices are works of mercy, whether toward ourselves or toward our neighbors, which are referred to God;
and since works of mercy are done for no other reason than that we may be freed from misery and thereby that we may be blessed (which comes about only by that Good of which it is said: 'But for me it is good to cleave to God'): surely it is brought about that the whole redeemed City itself, that is, the congregation and society of the saints, is offered to God as a universal sacrifice through the great Priest, who also offered Himself in His passion for us, that we might be the body of so great a Head, according to the form of a servant. For it was this form that He offered, in this form that He was offered, because according to it He is Mediator, in it He is Priest, in it He is Sacrifice.
When therefore the apostle had exhorted us that we present our bodies a living sacrifice, holy, well-pleasing to God, our reasonable service, and be not conformed to this world, but be reformed in the newness of our mind, to prove what is the will of God, that which is good and well-pleasing and perfect—which whole sacrifice we ourselves are: 'For I say,' he says, 'through the grace of God which is given to me, to all that are among you, not to be more wise than it behooves to be wise, but to be wise unto sobriety; even as God hath dealt to every one the measure of faith. For as we have many members in one body, but all members have not the same acts: so we, being many, are one body in Christ;'
'and every one members one of another, having diverse gifts according to the grace that is given to us.' This is the sacrifice of Christians: the many, one body in Christ. Which also the Church frequents in that sacrament of the altar well known to the faithful, where it is shown to her that in the very thing which she offers, she herself is offered. [VII] Rightly do those immortal and blessed beings, established in the heavenly seats, who rejoice together in the participation of their Creator—by whose eternity they are made firm, by whose truth they are made certain, by whose gift they are made holy—since they mercifully love us mortal and wretched ones, that we may become immortal and blessed, not wish us to sacrifice to them, but to Him whose sacrifice they too, together with us, have come to know that they themselves are.
For with them we are one City of God, to which it is said in the Psalm: 'Glorious things are spoken of thee, O city of God'; of which one part sojourns as a pilgrim in us, another part gives aid in them. From that heavenly City, indeed, where the will of God is the intelligible and unchangeable law, from that heavenly court, as it were (for there is exercised there a care concerning us), that holy Scripture, ministered to us through angels, descended, where it is read: 'He that sacrificeth unto the gods shall be rooted out, save unto the Lord alone.' To this Scripture, to this law, to such precepts, so great miracles have borne witness, that it sufficiently appears to whom the immortal and blessed beings, who wish us to be that which they themselves are, wish us to sacrifice.
[VIII] For if I should recall things too ancient, I shall seem to be unrolling further back than is enough what miracles were wrought bearing witness to the promises of God, whereby, thousands of years before, He foretold to Abraham that in his seed all the nations were to have a blessing.
For who would not marvel that to this same Abraham a barren wife bore a son at that time of old age when even a fertile woman could no longer bear; and that in the sacrifice of the same Abraham a flame made from heaven ran between the divided victims; and that to this same Abraham the heavenly burning of Sodom was foretold by the angels—those angels whom, in the likeness of men, he had received into hospitality, and through whom he had held the promises of God concerning offspring to come; and that, with the burning now imminent, there was wrought through those same angels a wondrous deliverance of Lot, his brother's son, from Sodom, whose wife, looking back on the way and suddenly turned into salt, admonished by a great sacrament that no one on the way of his deliverance ought to long for the things left behind?
But those things—how great and how many they are—which were already wondrously wrought through Moses on behalf of the people of God, for delivering them from the yoke of slavery in Egypt, where the magicians of Pharaoh, that is, of the king of Egypt, who oppressed that people by his domination, were permitted to do certain marvels, to the end that they might be the more marvelously overcome! For they did their deeds by sorceries and magical incantations, to which the evil angels, that is, the demons, are given over; but Moses, by so much the more powerfully as he was more just, in the name of God who made heaven and earth, with the angels serving him, easily overcame them.
Finally, at the third plague, when the magicians failed, ten plagues were accomplished through Moses with a great disposition of mysteries, whereby the hard hearts of Pharaoh and of the Egyptians yielded to letting the people of God go. And soon he repented, and when, as the Hebrews were departing, they endeavored to pursue them, while those crossed on dry ground through the divided sea, the wave returning upon itself from this side and that covered and overwhelmed them. What shall I say of those miracles which, while that same people was being led through the desert, grew frequent with astounding divine power: that the waters which could not be drunk, when wood was cast into them as God had commanded, were freed from bitterness and satisfied the thirsty;
that manna came from heaven to the hungry, and, when a measure had been fixed for those gathering, whatever anyone had gathered beyond it rotted with worms breeding therein, but on the day before the sabbath a double portion was gathered—because on the sabbath it was not lawful to gather—violated by no putrefaction; that to those desiring to feed on flesh, which seemed as though none could suffice for so great a people, the camp was filled with birds, and the ardor of their craving was extinguished by a loathing of satiety; that the enemies who met them and hindered their passage and gave battle were, while Moses prayed and his hands were stretched out in the figure of the cross, laid low with not one of the Hebrews falling;
that the seditious in the people of God, who divided themselves from the divinely-ordained fellowship, were, as a visible example of an invisible punishment, swallowed up alive by the gaping earth; that the rock struck by the rod poured out abundant streams for so great a multitude; that the deadly bites of the serpents, the most just punishment of sins, were healed by a bronze serpent lifted up on wood and looked upon, so that both the afflicted people might be succored, and death might be signified as destroyed by death, as it were by the likeness of a crucified death? Which serpent, indeed, being kept in memory of the deed, when afterwards the erring people began to worship it as an idol, Hezekiah the king, serving God with religious authority, broke in pieces with great praise for his piety.
[IX] These and many other things of this sort, all of which it is too long to recount, were done to commend the worship of the one true God and to forbid that of the many and false. But they were done by simple faith and the confidence of piety, not by incantations and songs composed by the art of wicked curiosity, which they call either magic, or by the more detestable name goetia, or by the more honorable name theurgy—those who as it were attempt to distinguish these things, and would have some, given over to unlawful arts, seem damnable, whom the common people also call sorcerers (for these, they say, pertain to goetia), but others seem praiseworthy, to whom they impute theurgy; whereas both alike are bound by the deceitful rites of demons under the names of angels.