[XXV] In no way, therefore, is the good will or beneficence of the gods — or rather of the good angels — to be sought through the mediation, as it were, of demons; but through likeness of good will, whereby we are with them and live with them and worship with them the God whom they worship, even though we cannot see them with the eyes of the flesh. But insofar as by unlikeness of will and by the frailty of our weakness we are wretched, so far are we distant from them — by the desert of our life, not by the place of the body. For it is not because we dwell on earth in the condition of the flesh, but if by uncleanness of heart we savour of earthly things, that we are not joined to them. But when we are healed, so as to be such as they are:
we in the meantime draw near to them by faith, if we believe that we are made blessed by him by whom they too were made blessed, they themselves favouring us. [XXVI] It is indeed worth noting how this Egyptian, when he grieved that a time was coming in which those things would be taken away from Egypt which he confesses were instituted by men greatly erring and unbelieving and turned away from the worship of the divine religion, says among other things: "Then this land, the most holy seat of shrines and temples, shall be most full of sepulchres and of the dead"; as though, forsooth, if those things were not taken away, men would not be going to die, or the dead were to be laid anywhere else than in the earth;
and certainly, the more time and days rolled on, the greater would be the number of sepulchres because of the greater number of the dead. But what he seems to grieve at is that the memorials of our martyrs should succeed to their temples and shrines, so that, doubtless, those who read these things with a mind averse and perverse toward us might suppose that the pagans worshipped gods in temples, but that we worship the dead in sepulchres. For impious men stumble, as it were, against mountains in such great blindness, and refuse to see the things that strike their very eyes, that they do not notice that in all the writings of the pagans either no gods at all are found, or scarcely any are found, who were not men, and to whom, once dead, divine honours were paid.
I pass over the fact that Varro says all the dead are reckoned by them to be gods called Manes, and proves it by those rites which are shown to almost all the dead, where he also mentions funeral games, as though this were the greatest sign of divinity, that games are not wont to be celebrated except for divine powers. Hermes himself, of whom we now treat, in that very same book where, as it were, foretelling the future and lamenting, he says: "Then this land, the most holy seat of shrines and temples, shall be most full of sepulchres and of the dead," testifies that the gods of Egypt were dead men. For when he had said that his forefathers, greatly erring concerning the nature of the gods, unbelieving and not attending to the worship and religion of God, had discovered the art by which they might make gods:
"To this invention," he says, "they added a fitting virtue drawn from the nature of the world, and mixing it in, since they could not make souls, they called up the souls of demons or of angels and set them within the holy images and divine mysteries, through which the idols might have power both to do good and to do harm." Then he goes on, as though about to prove this by examples, and says: "For your grandfather, O Asclepius, the first inventor of medicine, to whom a temple was consecrated on the mountain of Libya near the shore of the crocodiles, in which lies his worldly man, that is, his body;
for the rest of him — or rather the whole of him, if the whole man consists in the sense of life — returned better into heaven, still even now furnishing all aids to sick men by his divine power, which he used to bestow by the art of medicine." Behold, he said that a dead man is worshipped as a god in that place where he had his sepulchre, being himself deceived and deceiving, in saying that he returned into heaven. Then, adding another, he says: "Hermes, whose ancestral name is mine — is he not, abiding in his native land that bears his name, aiding and preserving all mortals who come from every quarter?" For this elder Hermes, that is, Mercury, whom he says was his grandfather, is reported to be in Hermopolis, that is, in the city of his own name. Behold, he says that two gods were men, Aesculapius and Mercury.
But concerning Aesculapius both Greeks and Latins hold this same view; as for Mercury, however, many do not think he was mortal, whom yet this man testifies to have been his grandfather. But, it is said, the one is one person, this one another, although they be called by the same name. I do not much contend that the one be one person and this one another; but this one too, like Aesculapius, was a god made from a man, according to the testimony of so great a man among his own people, this Trismegistus, his own grandson. Further he adds and says:
"But as for Isis, the wife of Osiris — how many good things do we know she bestows when propitious, how great the harm she does when angered!" Then, in order to show that the gods whom men make by that art are of this kind (whence he gives to understand that he supposes demons to have arisen from the souls of dead men, whom, through the art which men greatly erring, unbelieving, and irreligious discovered, he says were set into the images — because those who made such gods certainly could not make souls), after he had said of Isis what I recounted, "how great the harm we know she does when angered," he continued and added:
"For earthly and worldly gods are easily provoked to anger, inasmuch as they have been made and composed by men out of both natures." By "both natures" he means out of soul and body, so that the demon serves for the soul, and the image for the body. "Whence it came about," he says, "that these sacred animals were named by the Egyptians, and that throughout their several cities the souls of those whose images were consecrated while they lived are worshipped, so that the cities are inhabited under their laws and are called by their names." Where now is that mournful complaint, as it were, that the land of Egypt, the most holy seat of shrines and temples, was going to be most full of sepulchres and of the dead?
Assuredly the deceiving spirit, at whose prompting Hermes said these things, was through Hermes himself compelled to confess that even then that land was most full of sepulchres and of the dead whom they worshipped as gods. But it was the grief of the demons that spoke through him, they who mourned that their future torments were impending at the memorials of the holy martyrs. For in many such places they are tormented and confess and are cast out from the bodies of the men they possess. [XXVII] Yet we do not establish temples, priesthoods, rites, and sacrifices for these same martyrs, since it is not they, but their God, who is our God.
We do indeed honour their memorials as those of holy men of God, who strove even unto the death of their bodies for the truth, that the true religion might be made known, the false and feigned ones being convicted; a truth which, even if some perceived it before, they suppressed through fear. But who among the faithful ever heard a priest, standing at the altar — even one built over the holy body of a martyr for the honour and worship of God — say in his prayers:
"I offer to thee a sacrifice, O Peter, or Paul, or Cyprian" — when at their memorials the offering is made to God, who made them both men and martyrs and joined them to his holy angels in heavenly honour; so that by that solemnity we may both give thanks to the true God for their victories, and, invoking the same God for aid, may exhort ourselves to the imitation of such crowns and palms, by the renewal of the memory of them? Whatever offices of piety, therefore, are rendered in the places of the martyrs are adornments of their memorials, not sacred rites or sacrifices offered to the dead as to gods.
Whoever, moreover, bring their food-offerings there (which indeed is not done by the better Christians, and in most lands there is no such custom) — yet whoever do this, when they have set them down, they pray and take them away, that they may feed on them, or even distribute some to the needy; and they wish these to be sanctified for themselves through the merits of the martyrs, in the name of the Lord of the martyrs. But that these are not sacrifices offered to the martyrs, he knows who knows the one sacrifice of Christians which is also offered there. We therefore honour our martyrs neither with divine honours nor with human crimes, as those men worship their gods; nor do we offer sacrifices to them, nor turn their disgraces into their sacred rites.
For concerning Isis, the wife of Osiris, the Egyptian goddess, and concerning their parents, who are all recorded to have been kings (parents to whom, when she was sacrificing, she discovered a crop of barley and thereupon showed the ears to her husband the king and to his counsellor Mercury, whence they hold her to be also Ceres) — what and how great evils have been committed to memory, not by the poets, but by their mystic writings, as Alexander writes to his mother Olympias, on the disclosure of the priest Leo — let those read who will or can, and let those who have read call it to mind, and see what men, once dead, or for what deeds of theirs, had sacred rites instituted for them as for gods.
Far be it that, although they hold them to be gods, men should dare in any part to compare them to our holy martyrs, whom we nevertheless do not hold to be gods. For thus we neither appoint priests nor offer sacrifices to our martyrs, because it is incongruous, undue, unlawful, and owed to the one God alone — so that we may not delight them either with their own crimes or with the most shameful games, where either these men celebrate the outrages of their gods, if, when they were men, they committed such things, or the feigned delights of noxious demons, if they were not men. From this class of demons Socrates would not have had a god, if he had a god;
but perhaps those who wished to excel in that same art of making gods foisted such a god upon that man, who was a stranger to that art and innocent of it. Why, then, say more? That these spirits are not to be worshipped for the sake of the blessed life which is to be after death, no one even moderately prudent doubts. But perhaps they will say that all the gods indeed are good, but that of the demons some are evil and some are good, and they will judge that those through whom we may attain to the life eternally blessed are to be worshipped — those whom they suppose to be good. What sort of thing this is must now be considered in the following volume.