Chapter 8: On Traditions and the Ruin of Natural Theology

On traditions: their origin, use, and corruption; the attempt and success of the poets in corrupting natural theology — The dreadful ruin of the human race through ignorance of the true God — Kronos, Chronos, and Noah — The origin of astrology — On lawgivers — Chthonic theology — Philosophers — Natural theology — On superstition — The contempt of all religions among the wise — The total destruction of the theology of the Gentiles.

I. I have set forth how philosophy played its part in corrupting natural theology, or rather how philosophy itself was corrupted. There were also other causes of the total apostasy from all true knowledge of God. It seemed worthwhile to enumerate these briefly here, even though they properly belong to the corruption of religious worship — a subject to be treated afterward in the investigation of the origin of idolatry. And at this point the human race willfully defected from natural theology. For whatever aid God granted to sinners for obtaining knowledge of themselves, of the right, and of the true, all of it the blindness of the human heart twisted to its own destruction.

II. It is established that the knowledge of God which the most ancient mortals possessed was enlarged and accumulated through the traditions of those revelations which some had received from God through their forebears. For when that age was brought to an end by the flood — the common parent and instructor of all having been present for half its duration — no one can doubt that no small measure of knowledge of divine things and of God flowed down from Noah and his sons to their grandchildren and to those born from them. How far the effectiveness of that knowledge extended, while the traditions flowed unmuddied from the source, is not the place here to inquire. III. It is certain that knowledge of many things pertaining to religion flowed down to the human race through traditions from ancient times. Yet the wise themselves confessed that the knowledge of ancient things pertaining to sacred matters was quite obscure and uncertain among the nations. Thus Virgil: —

"Now open Helicon, O goddesses, and move your songs.

For you, O goddesses, remember, and are able to recall; to us scarcely a thin breath of fame drifts down."

Aen. lib. vii. 641, 645, 646. IV. Yet we shall see that they possessed some. "As for whether all the things said so excellently about divine matters among the ancient philosophers were drawn from the writings of the Jews, I myself strongly doubt it." Scaliger. Eusebius does indeed contend that all knowledge of divine matters among the Greeks emanated from the Hebrews. Julius Scaliger also writes, in Exercit. lxi., that Plato scraped together many things from the theology of the Phoenicians which he himself did not understand — whether rightly or wrongly I do not know. That they retained certain things by virtue of the universal tradition, whose fame had spread throughout the world from the very beginning of things, can be unknown to no one who has so much as greeted their writings at the threshold. Let us review a few matters by way of example. Most acknowledged a Creator of all things without bringing forward any arguments to establish belief in Him.

"There was once a time when all things grew together" — ascribed to Linus, the most ancient compiler of songs among the Greeks. Not a single poet fails to celebrate the same origin of all things. Those things which at the beginning

of his work Ovid wrote, boys know well. Horace agrees, Sat. iii. lib. i. 99-104: "When animals crept forth from the primal earth, a mute and brutish herd, for the sake of acorns and dens

they fought with nails and fists, then with clubs, and so on

They fought with weapons that practice had later fashioned; until they found words by which to mark sounds and meanings, and names.

To these Diodorus Siculus (Hist. lib. 1) has genuine parallels, describing in his own manner the origin of the human race. And Juvenal, Sat. vi, 11–13: —

"For then, in a new world and under a fresh sky, men lived differently — those who were born from a cleft oak, or fashioned from clay, had no parents.

And of the same character is Papinius, Thebaid, lib. iv. 275–281: —

"The ancient Arcadians, older than the stars and older than the moon,

you give him your faithful bands; you, who are said to be born from the rigid stock of the forests,

when the earth marveled at and bore the first footprints of feet,

not yet were fields, or houses, or cities,

nor yet any rule for marriages. The oaks and laurels bore

She created raw births, and peoples from the shady

ash-tree, and a green boy fell from the teeming mountain-ash.' V. Concerning the Brahmins, Strabo, Geographica, lib. xv: "that they agree with the Greeks on many points — namely, that the world was generated and is corruptible, and that God, its creator and administrator, pervades the whole of it." He is the authority that Greeks and barbarians alike agree that the world was created by God, from the most ancient tradition. Aristotle disputes this, Topics 19, De Caelo i. 10; but he stands almost alone. It would be easy to show that Hesiod, Orpheus, Apollonius, Aristophanes, Pliny, Diodorus Siculus, Numenius, Anaxagoras, and Megasthenes gave credence to the same tradition. Regarding Plato there is no question. That Thales, Anaximenes, Xenophanes, Parmenides, Democritus, Empedocles, and Metrodorus held that the world had some sort of origin, Eusebius shows in Praeparatio Evangelica, lib. i. cap. vii. The particular traditions — concerning Noah, the flood, and Abraham — of which Philo Byblius, Lucian, Strabo, and others make mention, I pass over. Along with the creation of the world, the belief that judgment would be executed upon men after this life obtained universal currency. Accompanying this persuasion was also the presumption of the immortality of souls, which, although it rests upon reason as well, yet because it has always prevailed chiefly among the common people rather than among the wise, is to be ascribed to tradition alone. Thales of Miletus defined the soul as "always, or self-moving." And of him Diogenes says — that is, he was the first to discourse philosophically on the immortality of the soul. The general consensus attributes that honor to Pherecydes. "One thing," it says in the Metamorphoses, lib., cap. ii., "which the Druids teach flows out to the common people, namely, that souls are eternal." And concerning the same people, Caesar, De Bello Gallico, lib. vi. 14: "Above all they wish to persuade men that souls do not perish." And Valerius, lib. ii. cap. vi. 10: "That ancient custom of the Gauls comes to mind, of whom it is reported by tradition that they were accustomed to lend money to be repaid to them in the world below, because they were persuaded that the souls of men are immortal." As for Plato, no man's house is better known than his own. The Phaedo is witness.

VI. The same persuasion holds even among the most barbarous peoples. Throughout all of America there was scarcely anyone who doubted it before the arrival of Europeans on those shores. Some even received a report of the resurrection. Theopompus, according to the magi, says that men will live again and will be immortal — so Diogenes Laertius, Preface to his Lives. "Theopompus," he says, "asserts, following the opinion of the magi, that men will live again and will be immortal." The great Plato agrees in the Phaedo, cap. xvii.; for he says — that is, "that men do live again, and that the living come into being out of the dead, and that the souls of the dead survive, and that for the good it is better, but for the evil it is worse."

VII. And these peoples, as we have said, believed that some judgment was to come upon men, to be executed according to what they had done in this mortal life that was worthy or unworthy of right reason. Hence the same Plato, Epistle vii: credence must always be given to the ancient and sacred writings (that is, to the most ancient traditions), which declare to us that the soul is immortal, and that it has judges, by whose decrees rewards and the greatest punishments are assigned according to merit, as soon as a man departs from the body — that is, "Always must faith be given to the ancient and sacred discourses, which declare that we have an immortal soul, and that it has judges, by whose decrees rewards and the greatest punishments are assigned according to merit, as soon as one departs from the body."

VIII. This opinion, moreover, prevailed so widely among the majority, and was esteemed of such great moment for restraining the minds of the wicked, that Cato, the wisest of the pagans, did not hesitate, in that very speech in the Senate by which he sought to bring odium upon Caesar, to attribute to Caesar the contrary opinion. For thus he speaks in Sallust, Bellum Catilinae, lib. iii.: "Gaius Caesar argued these points, believing, I suppose, to be false what is reported of the underworld: that the wicked take a different path from the good, and dwell in places gloomy, waste, foul, and dreadful." This opinion was depicted by the most learned of the poets in the Aeneid vi., imitating Homer, Odyssey xi., from which it is well known what the papists have drawn. The common people too were thoroughly imbued with this persuasion. Hence what takes place in the underworld, as is done even now in those places where men worship the Roman pontiff and elsewhere, was thought fit to be depicted by painters: "I myself have often seen many paintings of the torments that occur beneath Acheron." They believed that men could be kept in duty and restrained from crimes by such things. "Above all they think men are stirred to virtue by contempt of the fear of death," Caesar [ibid.] on the Gauls. And Lucan, lib. i. 469:

"Happy in their error are those whom the greatest of fears — the dread of death — does not press; hence the mind of those men is prone to rush upon the sword, and souls are capable of death, and it is cowardice to spare a life that will return." And Appian on the Germans, in his Celtica: "The Germans have the most ferocious customs, distinguished boldness in attacking, the greatest contempt of death, from hope of living again." The Britons had the same mind, since Caesar testifies that the discipline of the Druids had its origin among them. The English report that all the inhabitants of New England, all the Americans, are persuaded that industrious and sober and temperate men, when they die, go to the southern regions of the world, which they believe the good God inhabits, since they feel in the spring the winds blowing from there, driving away the cold and therefore all want; but that all the idle and slothful go to the northern regions or to horrible and dreadful places. Admirably says Seneca: "Then our soul will have cause to congratulate itself, when, sent forth from the darkness in which it wallows, it has not glimpsed bright things with faint sight, but has admitted the full light of day and been restored to heaven; when it has received the place which it occupied by the lot of its birth." These things he says in his own manner, splendidly, elegantly, and magnificently. IX. But since the paths to true happiness were thoroughly unknown, although they ranked the good far above the wicked, yet they assigned to the best an uncertain and almost wretched condition in the underworld, and so they were subject to bondage all their lives through fear of death, as the apostle says (Hebrews 2:15). Thus Achilles, though ruling widely over the dead, laments his lot before Ulysses:

Do not speak smooth words to me of death, glorious Odysseus —

I would rather be a serf working the land in service to another —

Beside a landless man, one with little livelihood, than to rule over all the dead who have perished.

"Do not, I pray, speak to me of death, glorious Ulysses; I would indeed rather be a laborer, and serve for hire under another man who is poor, with too little sustenance for himself, than to rule over all the dead who have departed this life." Hom. Odyss. lib. A, 487-490. X. Now all these things, or some of them, or very many of them, are established to have spread throughout the entire human race from a most ancient tradition. I am aware indeed that among the great majority of the wise there are found those to whom all these things about future judgment and the various — that is, eternal — fates of men were a matter of mockery; nor does Lucretius the Epicurean alone cry out:

"And that fear of Acheron must be driven headlong out of doors, which from its very foundation troubles human life." — Lib. iii. 37, 38.

XI. But Cicero himself also mocks these things: "Tell me," he says, "I pray, do those things terrify you — the three-headed Cerberus in the underworld, the roaring of Cocytus, the crossing of Acheron, Tantalus touching the surface of the water with his chin and yet perishing of thirst? And what of that —

"Sisyphus sweating rolls his stone and strains, yet gains not a whit?" and perhaps too the inexorable judges, Minos and Rhadamanthus, before whom neither L. Crassus nor M. Antonius would defend you; and since the case will be tried before Greek judges, you will not be able to employ Demosthenes: you yourself, on your own behalf, before the great assembly, will have to plead your cause. These things perhaps you fear, and for that reason you consider death to be an everlasting evil. A. Do you think me so deranged as to believe that? M. Do you not believe these things? A. Not at all. M. That is badly said, by Hercules. A. Why? I pray. M. I might be eloquent, if I were to speak against them." — Tuscul. Quest. lib. i. cap. v. If indeed he had attacked only the utterly vain inventions of the poets, he would have acted according to the right rule of reason; but as is plain from the ensuing disputation, he set himself against the whole tradition, and therefore against the truth of the matter itself. And in the vein of the others, Seneca, Trag. Troades, Act 1:

"After death there is nothing, and death itself is nothing, the final boundary of swift space. You ask where you lie after death: where the unborn lie. And greedy Time and Chaos devour us. Death is indivisible, harmful to the body and not sparing the soul."

XII. But let us grant that Cicero wished to argue on both sides in a probable manner, settling nothing; and that Seneca wrote whatever he pleased in the manner of a poet. But Pliny not only rejects that common persuasion of the people, but also attempts to refute it with arguments, lib. vii. cap. lvi.: "For all men," he says, "after the last day, the condition is the same as it was before the first, nor is there any more sensation — whether of body or of soul — after death than before birth. For the same vanity extends itself into the future, and even into the times of death feigns life for itself: in one case giving immortality to the soul, in another transmigration, in another sensation to the shades below, and worshipping the departed spirits, and making a god of one who has already ceased even to be a man. But whether the manner of breathing differs in any way between man and the other animals; or whether many things are not found in life of longer duration, for which no one divines a similar immortality. Moreover, what body does the soul have in itself? What is its matter? Where is thought in it? How does it see, how does it hear, or what does it do? What is its use? Or what good is there without these things? Then what is its abode, and how great is the multitude of so many ages of souls, as it were of shadows? These are the fabrications of a childish delirium, and of a mortality that never ceases to deceive itself." And whatever of this kind was received among men, Strabo most openly calls fables, lib. xv. — speaking of the Brahmans, where he says their text reads: "They also accept fables, just as Plato does, concerning the immortality of the soul and the judgments in the realm of the dead." "They have woven," he says, "fables too, after the manner of Plato, concerning the immortality of the soul and the judgments that stand in the underworld." Without doubt the great majority of the wise thought along with Pliny and Strabo.

XIII. Relying on this persuasion, they encouraged one another to commit every crime. Hence the saying passed into a proverb — "Let us eat and drink, for tomorrow we die" — which the apostle records (1 Corinthians 15:32). Nothing occurs more frequently in the poets. Catull. carm. v.:

"Let us live, my Lesbia, and let us love, and all the rumors of rather stern old men

let us value all at a single penny.

"Suns can set and rise again: for us, when once the brief light has set, there is one perpetual night to be slept through." But Horace, Od. I. iv. 15:—

"Life's brief span forbids us to begin any long-reaching hope. Already night presses upon you, and the fabled Shades, and the narrow house of Pluto: once you have gone there, you will neither cast lots for lordship of the wine by dice, nor gaze with wonder upon tender Lycidas."

And Persius himself, though laughing, Sat. v. 151:— "Indulge your spirit; let us pluck life's sweets; what you have while alive is ours: you will become ashes, and shades, and a tale." The Greeks came close to the words recalled by the apostle. So Strato:—

"And who among us is immortal? For no one has ever yet lived long enough to be fully satisfied with life."

"Drink and be merry, for as for tomorrow, or what the future holds, no one knows." But from that opinion, which the common people had drawn from the most ancient tradition—

—it was never permitted to be removed.

XIV. It would be easy to enumerate the other traditions that also hinted at fragments of divine truth. The benefit of these traditions, I say, was to be used by all men for advancing the remnants of natural light. But it is apparent that those very traditions were corrupted almost from the very first; and so the remedy for the disease itself (and the antidote against eternal death) was turned into deadly poison. For we have shown that this doctrine, handed down by tradition, supplied aids not to be despised to the natural light in seeking God; but when it was at last itself corrupted, it gradually corrupted and overthrew even that remaining light and all the rational perceptions of the human mind concerning God. We will briefly set forth how this came about. XV. It is natural to traditions that they fly here and there through the mouths of men. In that state of affairs which we have described, each person used them according to the measure of which he had become a partaker. Those who first dared to collect the scattered and wandering traditions, to arrange and expound them, were the poets. They first undertook their task by composing melodies in hymns and little songs to capture the ears of men; then they adorned it by writing fables of every kind, crammed full beyond what can be said. The foundation of the whole structure was the traditions. But gradually they most thoroughly corrupted the entire knowledge of God which the mortal race had drawn from the ancient traditions. We speak chiefly of Hellenism; for that manner of apostasy finally reached even to Catholicism. Since, therefore, they either twisted what they had heard into strange and fabulous meanings, or augmented it with clever fictions, or invented other things twinned with what they had heard, or employed ingeniously devised allegories for reading those things which they themselves had received from their ancestors in dim report and understood not at all — they left nothing sound, solid, or true, nothing but what was vain, fictitious, idolatrous, and deadly in the whole of natural religion.

XVI. Indeed, they so thoroughly confounded everything that it is wholly impossible to determine by conjecture what they received, from where, from whom, and by what report, tradition, occasions, or reasons they were led to embrace so many, so very many things. It is apparent that they mingled traditions interpolated with fables, natural and moral theology, the worship of demons, and the worship of dead men. What each person drew from corrupted natural theology, from perverted traditions, from diabolical oracles, from popular usage, or from his own brain — this is utterly impossible to investigate accurately. Indeed, very frequently they presented in the same words, and with the same bundle of fictions, some obscure divine tradition, some outstanding element of natural theology, the most foolish fables, and Satanic worship all at once. The same figure was the Sun, Noah, Saturn, yes even Jupiter, a Planet, a Hero, Heaven, Aether, and Satan himself — as we shall see more fully hereafter.

XVII. Now the human mind, laboring under innate blindness, is greedy for fables and errors, and tenacious of them. After it had been steeped in idolatry and polytheism, the natural light itself, unable to remove these prejudices, utterly succumbed; nor was it ever able to extricate itself from the swamp of fables. This confusion can be set before the eyes by one example. Bacchus is the same as Adonis, Evius, and Sabus — so Plutarch, Sympos. 4, qu. 5; where, having cast aside all concern for truth and candor, he most absurdly undertakes to investigate the origins of the Jewish ceremonies. That the names Iacchus and Bacchus derived from the Hebrew name, Sanfordius plausibly and learnedly conjectures, in book one of his work On the Descent of Christ to the Underworld. I know that many scholars of the origins of idolatry and of the investigation of Hellenism owe a great deal to that excellent and most learned man, and some owe him everything — yet you will rarely find him named by anyone, and never praised by anyone. Now that Adonis derives from the Hebrew Adon no one, I think, will deny; Sabus from the Hebrew Tzabaoth; and Evius seems to express the divine name Ehyeh — from where Plutarch dreams that the Levites among the Jews took their name. But these are names or epithets of the living God. The ancients therefore understood the divine power through those names, which had reached them, though in faint report. Having received them in this way, they assigned other attributes to them. Among these, some were true, but others were false and diabolical. First they referred to Bacchus what they had heard of Noah; and the name of Bacchus is thought by some to be derived from the Hebrew Noah. That Liber (Bacchus) stole Noah's vines and vineyard is not to be doubted. Hence Lactantius: "The lie of the poets is not in the fact, but in the name." See Voss. de Idololatria, lib. 1. cap. xix. and xxv. Thus the true God and Noah (Genesis 9:20) were confounded. Bacchus also is perhaps the Hebrew "son of Cush" — so it pleases Bochart, Geog. lib. i. cap. ii; this is Nimrod. Hence he was called Zagreus, that is, "the mighty hunter," (Genesis 10:9); and Nebrod, as all the Greeks call Nimrod. But Sanfordius shows by very many examples that nearly the entire history of Moses was ascribed to Bacchus, lib. 1. cap. i. sect. 18, 19; after him, and with the same instances, Vossius, lib. 1. cap. xxx.; nor does Bochart think otherwise, lib. i. cap. xviii. Moreover, whatever is said of Bacchus is said in its entirety of Osiris in Egypt, who, having been great among his own people, received after death all the honors of the sun. At length there emerged Bacchus of Thebes, that is, Dionysus, so named from Mount Nysa; and some learned men suspect that Nysa is none other than Sinai, by a transposition of letters. That Arabia was called India by the Greeks could easily be proved by many testimonies. But there is also a Mount Nysa in India beyond the Caucasus, not far from the river Cophen, as Philostratus shows in the Life of Apollonius, lib. ii. cap. iv., and he relates that men planted it with vines in honor of Bacchus, who had there, of course, wrought wondrous deeds. The inhabitants of that region maintained, moreover, that this Bacchus was Assyrian, and that the Theban Bacchus was derived from him. Others say that the city situated at the foot of the mountain is called Nysa, and the mountain itself Meron. So Curtius, lib. viii. cap. x. Now Meron is the Hebrew word for "thigh." Hence the fable of Bacchus sewn into the thigh of Jupiter — unless one suspects a Hebraism, and that "born from the thigh of Jupiter" means nothing other than "to be the son of God," as pleases Heinsius in his Aristarchus. And these things are not unworthy of the mockeries with which Lucian greets them, Dialog. ix.

XVIII. Moreover, Eusebius reports the birth and deeds of Dionysius of Thebes from Diodorus, in the Praeparatio Evangelica, bk. xx, ch. xx. He, having perhaps been the first among Europeans to make certain excursions into the coasts of Asia, among the fabulists of the following century drained all the ancient traditions concerning the Bacchuses mentioned above; and he became, as one man, everything that in reality was no single person; for upon him the myth-makers heaped together virtually all the traditions that had been handed down. Nor did this remarkable confusion stop there. Those who attributed to Bacchus the discovery of the vine and of vineyards — the framers of natural theology contended that by Bacchus was signified only wine, or autumn, or that season of the year in which vines ripen. So Lucretius teaches us, bk. i, 654-658: "Here, if anyone shall decide to call the sea Neptune, and grain Ceres, and chooses to abuse the name of Bacchus rather than to bring forth the proper term for wine, let us grant that he declares this globe of lands to be the Mother of the Gods, so long as he himself is not in reality such." And Athenaeus, Deipnosophistae, bk. i: the fable of Bacchus fleeing to the sea — that is, certain persons think that the preparation of wine, long since known, is signified thereby; because wine is more pleasant when mixed with sea-water. But it is altogether evident that the fable was derived from the history of Moses.

XIX. That they fashioned these things absurdly and ignorantly, Philo Byblius is a witness, in his preface to the history of Sanchuniatho: "But," he says, "the later theologians, having from the beginning rejected those things which truly happened, devised allegories and fables in their place, and, by fabricating an affinity between worldly things, established mysteries." That is: "But the younger theologians, after they had rejected those things which in truth had come to pass from the beginning, devised allegories and fables, and, having contrived a kinship with cosmic things, established mysteries." And indeed he, having determined that all things said about the gods were to be referred to true histories, rejects on one hand that entire natural theology, and on the other hand the fiction of the poets. Moreover, innumerable other examples of this confusion are encountered everywhere. The history of the origin of the world as found in Diodorus Siculus, and especially in Sanchuniatho and that Philo Byblius, demonstrates the same thing: the first chapter of Genesis is transferred into the history of many centuries, attributed to various kings of uncertain identity; Heaven, Earth, Sun, Moon, and he who is said to be Pluto, have their place therein. Even the serpent himself is introduced. When one has been tossed about in these rough passages, anyone can readily conjecture how easily the ancient serpent could impose wicked opinions about God upon the human race, and ungodly forms of his own worship.

XX. Pausanias speaks admirably in his Arcadica: "In all the ancient ages and in the events now grown obsolete, credence in them has been forfeited among the common people through the fault of those who buried the foundations of truth, as it were, beneath fables." That is: "In all ancient ages and in events now long past, the faith due to them has been taken away from the people through the fault of those who buried what was laid upon truth as a foundation beneath fables." They so corrupted and burdened truth itself with lies that they made it incredible. He then shows a little later how this came about: those, he says, who have fabricated fables, upon hearing those who attend with pleasure to such things, themselves immediately add something more; so that it comes about that "those who lend their ears to the monstrous inventions of such fictions themselves soon add something further, with the result that truth, adulterated as if by a flood of lies, utterly loses its authority." XXI. Therefore, by the just judgment of God — who gave over to a reprobate mind those who hold the truth in unrighteousness — it came about that those who did not see fit to retain God in their knowledge were vain in their reasonings; and forthwith a veritable deluge of spiritual abominations, accompanied by all injustice, violence, and impurity, settled upon the whole world. This arose from the cunning of the devil and from the evil disposition of very many. For as polytheism grew stronger, there was nothing so vain, or so worthless, that it was not numbered among the gods. No stone, no piece of wood, no virtue, no vice, no good thing, no evil thing, but was worshipped. All creatures alike were affected by this madness, from the grass of the field to the highest stars of heaven. The apostle teaches us this: "They exchanged," he says, "the glory of the incorruptible God for the likeness of an image of corruptible man, and of birds, and of four-footed beasts, and of reptiles" (Romans 1:23). It is plain that Paul by these words censures idolaters of every kind. Maddened by Hellenism, imagining gods guilty of the lewdness of men, they fashioned images of the divine after the likeness of corruptible man. The worship of birds, four-footed beasts, and reptiles had its origin among the Egyptians. Philo says they fashion and adore as gods "dogs, wolves, lions, crocodiles, and very many other water creatures, land creatures, and winged creatures." And Theophilus of Antioch, in his work To Autolycus, bk. i, says that it is not possible for him to enumerate all the kinds of living creatures worshipped by the Egyptians: creeping things, and birds, and wild beasts, and river-dwelling swimming things. Indeed, among those who are considered to have been the first to apostatize from the true God, He willed that the greatest example of diabolical dominion and tyranny should be displayed. For this reason one may contemplate in passing, as Paul did at Athens, those abominations of theirs — especially since Egyptian superstition by no means confined itself within the borders of Egypt.

"We Romans have received into our temples your Isis and your half-divine dogs," says Lucan, bk. vii. 831.

XXII. I do not know what mysteries Athanasius Kircher lately attempted to draw out of their sacred rites, laboring with great and costly — yet fruitless, not to say ridiculous — effort to teach that those Egyptians alone were wise, whom the rest of the world has until now believed to have been foolish beyond the folly of ordinary humanity. He saw in their hieroglyphics things which, beyond all doubt, they themselves never saw, and which no one who deemed Christian modesty, or the claims of truth, to be of greater account than worldly vanity, would ever see. But —

What God does not allow, life does not overcome. We have shown what Paul determined regarding the manner of worshipping those religions; we have also produced the agreement of Philo the Jew, who spent his life in the capital of Egypt. Josephus likewise dwells at length on reproaching them for the same wickedness, in bk. 1 against Apion. At Exodus 12:12, God threatens "that He will execute judgments against all the gods of the Egyptians." That He gave effect to that threat, whatever it consisted in, Moses records at Numbers 33:4. Among the other cattle, there is no doubt that He slew Apis himself and the other animals that were sacred to the Egyptians. What those who seem to themselves to be wise among the pagans — and seem to us to have been no less insane than the Egyptians — thought of the religious worship of the Egyptians, is well known. The Satirist, Sat. 15. 1-6:

"Who does not know, Volusius of Bithynia, what monstrous things mad Egypt worships? One part adores the crocodile; another trembles before the Ibis, gorged with serpents. The golden image of the sacred long-tailed ape gleams …

… There they venerate the blue-painted gods, here the fish of the river, there whole cities venerate the dog."

Anaxandrides, in Athenaeus, Deipnosophistae, bk. 7, addresses the Egyptians thus: "I cannot join forces with you, nor are our customs in agreement, nor our laws; but they differ very greatly from one another. You prostrate yourself before the ox, but I sacrifice it to the gods; you think the eel the greatest divinity, but we regard it as by far the most excellent dish … You venerate the dog, I beat it." That is: "I cannot make war alongside you, nor are our customs in agreement, nor our laws; but they differ very greatly from one another. You adore the ox, I sacrifice it to the gods; you think the eel to be the greatest divine power; but for us it is a most excellent dish by far … You venerate the dog, I beat it."

And Antiphanes in Lycon:—

And they say the Egyptians are wise, in that they deem the eel equal to the gods; for it is worth far more than the gods.

For the gods we propitiate with prayers and vows alone; but these creatures can scarcely be approached with no fewer than twelve drachmas, or more: so entirely sacred is this beast—

"For the rest, they say the Egyptians are prudent and intelligent, in that they consider the eel equal to the gods; for it is to be honored far more than the gods. We propitiate the gods with prayers alone and vows; but eels can scarcely be worshipped with an expenditure of no fewer than twelve drachmas, or more; so entirely sacred is this beast."

Apollonius reproaches Thespesion, chief of the Gymnosophists, with this disgrace in Philostratus, while treating of statues and images, in De Vita Apollonii, lib. 6. cap. 19. Concerning the gods, he says — first I will ask by what reasoning you have been moved to set before your people for worship such absurd and ridiculous images of the gods, besides a very few: for only very few forms of the gods are visible that bear any trace of wisdom and divinity; but in the remaining temples, the likenesses of irrational and infamous animals are worshipped rather than those of the gods. The reply of Thespesion will not be unwelcome to the reader, if he wishes to consult the cited passage of the author. It is evident, moreover, from Philostratus himself, that the Egyptians were wholly unable to give any account of their mad worship; however much Kircher, after so many centuries had passed, pretends to have discovered in those monstrous images of gods the mysteries of all Christianity. Cicero considered that they had in view one single utility: "The Egyptians," he says, "who are ridiculed, consecrated no animal except for some usefulness they derived from it," lib. 1. De Natura Deorum. But to the Egyptians Gildas, in his customary manner of dramatizing, adds the Britons, in De Excidio Britanniae: "The abominations of Britain," he says, "diabolical as they are, nearly surpassing in number the Egyptian ones, some of which, with their forms still misshapen, standing in the usual manner within or outside the abandoned city walls, we behold with grim countenances." Freed by the grace of Christ, we all stand aghast and utterly detest these monstrous crimes, this tyranny of the ancient serpent; and so justly to be abominated is the impiety of those who, though they wish to be called Christians and to be judged alone worthy of that most holy name, we hold, convicted by their own confessions, to be driven by the same, if not greater, madness. "For more tolerable is the error of those who worship in place of God a golden statue, or a silver one, or an image of some other material, as the Gentiles venerated their own gods, or a red cloth raised on a spear, which is reported of the Lapps, or living animals, as the Egyptians once did, than that of those who worship a piece of bread." These are the words of the Jesuit Coster, Enchiridion, cap. 7. Here, to be sure, if we are human beings at all, if we are endowed with sense and reason, if any credit is to be given to the words of Holy Scripture, we have self-confessed defendants: that such idolatry is found among the sons of the most holy father the pope, the like of which has never been seen or heard of even in the very darkness of paganism. Moreover, since the world was overwhelmed by the multitude of gods, and men did not know whom or what they should worship, it was customary in invocations to use that phrase, "Whoever you are." "Now whoever is God, I worship," Plautus, Rudens 1. 3. And, "We follow you, holy one of the gods, whoever you are," Virgil, Aen. 4. 576.

And in the Capitol a shield was consecrated, upon which was written: "To the Genius of the city of Rome, whether male or female." Hence also that formula for calling the gods forth from places besieged in war, which Macrobius records from the fragments of Sammonicus: "If there is a god or goddess under whose protection this people and city stands, and you especially who have taken upon yourself the protection of this city and people, I pray and worship you, and beg pardon of you, that you would forsake this people and city, leave behind their places, temples, sacred rites, and city; depart from them, cast upon that people and city fear, dread, and forgetfulness; and, coming over to me and mine, let our city, our places, temples, and sacred rites be more acceptable to you; be set over me also, the Roman people, and my soldiers, that we may know and understand; if you do this, I vow that I will build you temples and games."

XXVII. Hence it was believed that before any city was overthrown, the gods had abandoned it. So Virgil, concerning the destruction of Troy:—

"All the gods have departed, leaving their shrines and altars, the gods by whom this empire had stood," — Aen. ii. 351.

XXVIII. For the most ancient records have handed down that the gods were seen carrying their images out of the temples when destruction had already drawn near. And in general terms Aeschylus, Seven Against Thebes, 219:—

AAW oby Seods Tods ras dAovons ToAEws txAcinew AdYyos.

XXIX. This is why the Romans wished it to be kept secret under which god's protection the city of Rome stood, lest the gods, addressed by their proper names, might be exorcised by an enemy. This was guarded by pontifical law. And the pontiffs themselves prayed in this manner: "Jupiter, best and greatest! or by whatever other name you may wish to be called."

XXX. I would wonder beyond measure that these empty fictions ever pleased wise men, and those who desired to live according to reason, were it not permitted by daily examples to see what tyranny vain superstition exercises over the minds of men. So, in a manner not unlike that which we related from Sammonicus, when, a battle having been joined at the shrine of Saint Quentin, the Spanish were compelled to throw down and destroy the temple dedicated to Saint Lawrence, into which the enemy had withdrawn, King Philip bound himself by a vow to the saint that he would compensate for the damage inflicted by erecting another and much larger temple. This was the occasion for the construction of the Escorial buildings dedicated to Lawrence, which an anonymous poet elegantly set forth as follows:

"These richest temples he built for you, O Lawrence; after Philip, in the war at Quintini, had thrown down those that once stood there, because the enclosed enemy had hidden in fear beneath the altars and within the walls, and had in vain invoked your divine power — to which god the king said: 'Here also let it be permitted me to exact punishment, and to bury the hostile nation beneath the sacred ruins, and to violate the altars with blood — to one who will give greater things.'"

XXXI. And clearly in the form of ancient vows, which Papinius celebrates in his Tydeus, Thebaid, lib. ii. 726–734: "If, with the ancestral arms of Parthaon,

I am borne into battle, and if martial Pleuron lies open to me upon my return: then in the midst of the city I will dedicate golden temples to you,

upon the hills, from which it is sweet to look down upon the Ionian storms,

and where the turbid Achelous, raising the sea upon its tawny headland, flows out past the Echinades islands that lie before it.

Here I will depict the battles of the forefathers, and the dread countenances of great-souled kings, and affix their arms to the proud domes."

XXXII. The ignorance of the true God is the fountain and origin of all evils. From this source, those impious and villainous little men set forth for veneration gods who were themselves stupid, foolish, filthy, defiled with robberies, quarrels, wars, adulteries, and unspeakable sins — fit objects of derision and yet offered for imitation. And so the remnants of the natural light were extinguished; nor was any greater care taken of the works of God, which manifest His eternal power and deity. In this way Hellenism finally prevailed — that is, the theology of the Gentiles in its ethnic form. Hence all the gods, greater, middle, and least, came forth. XXXIII. How great a calamity those monstrous creations of the poets inflicted upon the human race — with respect to honorable morals, a tranquil life consonant with reason, civil order, and the threat of eternal punishments — is well known; it will suffice to set forth one or two detestable examples. Saturn, who is Kronos, was among them also Chronos, that is, Time. Thus in natural theology they were confounded together — and Noah also was drawn in from a most corrupted tradition. Time and space are connected through the motion of the heavens. Hence Saturn is called the son of Uranus, that is, of Heaven. So also Noah is reckoned, since all others were destroyed in the universal ruin of the flood. And they fabricated the story that Saturn devoured his own children and then vomited them up again — whether because time in its cycles begets all things, consumes them, reabsorbs them, and casts them forth; or because Noah, having enclosed his sons with him in the ark, restored them as it were to life again for the inhabited world — is uncertain. It is evident that the fable was formed from an exceedingly obscure tradition and an ingenious allegory. And from this source at length, by the aid of Satan, there emerged the horrible madness of idolatry. And to that unspeakable superstition was joined monstrous cruelty. For those foolish little men, having adopted — I know not what — ceremonies as a solace in their misery, were sacrificing their own children to Saturn. Hence arose what was called the Tomb of Children. XXXIV. But this wickedness seems also to be older than all the Greek monstrosities; that it received increase from them, no one doubts. From there it at last became universal. Nor is there any part of Satanic worship in which the human race is found to have conspired more unanimously. Whether the ancient serpent — who was himself one day to be triumphed over on the cross of Christ — intended here to exalt himself magnificently and to triumph over defeated sinners; or whether by this sacrifice he intended to implant prejudices and contempt against the sacrifice of Christ in the minds of men, it is established that he poured out all his venom far and wide in promoting this crime. Let us review some examples. Concerning the Africans the matter is well known: "Children in Africa were openly sacrificed to Saturn right up to the proconsulship of Tiberius," Tertull. Apol. cap. viii. Arnobius records the same. When the Carthaginians had been defeated by Agathocles, king of the Sicilians, thinking that God was angry with them, in order that they might more diligently make expiation, they sacrificed two hundred sons of noblemen to Saturn; Pescennius Festus, cited by Lactantius, is the witness. Pressed by the Roman war, they performed the same rites, and Aspar, the very son of Hannibal himself, was slain. Hence Silius, in book iv of the Punica, introduces Amilce, his wife, lamenting this crime:—

"What piety is this, moreover, to sprinkle the shrines with gore? Alas, the prime cause of crimes for wretched mortals is not to know the nature of God; go, offer your prayers rightly with pious incense, and turn aside these savage rites of slaughter.

God is gentle and akin to man: I pray that this may suffice — to have seen slaughtered bullocks before the altars; or if so great a wickedness remains fixed and settled in the will,

Me, me — I who bore them — consume with your vows; why do you delight to rob the Libyan lands of such character?

Among the Romans it was customary for living men to devote themselves to the gods of the underworld; the history of the Decii is well known: the father devoted himself in like manner in the Gallic war, the son in the Samnite war; whom Juvenal celebrates in Sat. vi. 254:—

"The souls of the Decii were plebeian, plebeian were their names; yet for the sake of whole legions, and for all the allied forces, and all the Latin youth, they sufficed as offerings to the gods of the underworld and to earth their parent; for the Decii were worth more than those who were saved by them."

Arnobius affirms that it was once customary to worship Jupiter Latiaris with homicide. Under the consulship of Cornelius Lentulus and Publius Licinius Crassus, a decree of the senate was passed that no human being should be sacrificed. And Pliny, Nat. Hist. lib. xxx. cap. i, relates that prodigious rites had openly been celebrated up to that time. And so, when the Gauls were attacking, "the elders, who had held the highest offices, gathered in the forum, and there, with the pontiff pronouncing the devotion, consecrated themselves to the gods of the dead," as recorded in Florus, lib. i. 13. Cicero, in his oration Pro Fonteio, x., also relates that the Gauls were accustomed to appease the gods with these abominable victims: "Who does not know," he says, "that they retain to this very day that monstrous and barbarous custom of sacrificing human beings?" Plutarch also notes that a Gaul and a Gallic woman were customarily sacrificed at Rome every year. The Roman emperor Hadrian sacrificed his favorite Antinous to the gods in Egypt. Dio, in Xiphilinus, lib. lxix, says: "Antinous died in Egypt, whether because he fell into the Nile, as Hadrian writes, or because he was sacrificed, which is the truth." And Hadrian made him a god after his sacrifice. Procopius records that the inhabitants of the isle of Thule observed this custom of sacrificing human beings down to his own times. The same practice prevailed among the Britons. When the island of Mona was conquered by Paulinus, "a garrison was placed over the defeated, and the groves sacred to savage superstitions were cut down; for they held it lawful to shed the blood of captives upon the altars and to consult the gods by means of human entrails," as Tacitus says, Annal. lib. xiv. cap. xxx. And Horace, in reference to that place:—

"I shall see the Britons, savage to strangers."

Acron: "The Britons used to slaughter strangers as a sacrificial victim." The gods to whom the Gauls made propitiation with human blood are mentioned by Lucan, i. 444:— "And those who are appeased with fierce blood, to whom cruel

Teutates, and Hesus with his savage altars; and Taranis, no milder than the Scythian face of Diana.

That all of these were gods of the Britons, the most diligent Camden proves in his "Britannia"; and that the Gauls received the whole discipline of the Druids from the Britons, Caesar himself reports, in Bell. Gall. lib. vi. The madness of the Germans was the same. "They celebrate, with a man publicly sacrificed, the dreadful beginnings of their rites," says Tacitus. And again: "Above all gods they worship Mercury, to whom on certain days they hold it lawful to offer human victims as well." De Mor. German. ix. Camerarius reports that marble monuments of this impiety among the Etruscans still survive, and that he himself saw one of them at Perugia: Medit. Histor. lib. i. Concerning the Goths, Jordanes writes: "They always propitiated Mars with most savage worship, for the deaths of captives were his victims." The Greeks, bound by the same crime, report that Erechthonius, the most ancient king of Attica, sacrificed his own two daughters. And Athenaeus, Deipnosoph. lib. xiii, shows that Neanthes of Cyzicus devoted himself; and Epimenides purified the whole land of Attica from certain ancient crimes with human blood — he who was the one who urged the Athenians to erect an altar to the Unknown God. Among the Thebans who were of Tyrian origin, from whom this superstition spread, Menoeceus is celebrated, who devoted himself for the city and killed himself, propitiating the gods of the underworld with his own blood; whose death Papinius Statius gloriously celebrates in Thebaid. lib. x. 756–769: "But pious Menoeceus, in a chosen part of the walls, now consecrated, more majestic in countenance than his accustomed face, as if suddenly sent down to earth from the heavenly vault, stood forth, plainly recognizable with his helmet removed, and looked down upon the battle-lines of men, and with a deep shout turned the field and commanded silence in the war. O gods of arms, and you, O Phoebus, who in so great a death indulge me to die, grant joys to Thebes — what I have covenanted, and what I have lavishly purchased with all my blood; and to the Tyrians restore temples, fields, homes, marriages, children by my death, if I have pleased you as a willing sacrifice." With these words the poet wonderfully depicted the common understanding of the nations concerning expiatory sacrifices; as also afterward in the mother's lament: "Was it to be a lustral offering to savage Thebes, O glorious boy, that I, a lowly mother, nurtured your devoted head?" — 798, 794.

That the Tyrians sacrificed a freeborn boy to Saturn, Curtius shows in lib. iv. cap. iii. That the Egyptians sacrificed living men to their brutish gods is attested by Herodotus and Diodorus Siculus. That Menelaus sacrificed two boys in Egypt, the priests told Herodotus in

Clio, pag. 158. "That the Thracians propitiated the gods with human blood," says Florus, Histor. lib. ii. cap. iv. The Celts, when sacrificing a man, strike him with a sword over a crosswise hurdle, as Diodorus attests, lib. v. The Normans and Danes every year in the month of January sacrificed to their gods ninety-nine men, the same number of horses, along with dogs, as Ditmar attests, lib. x. Concerning the Massilians, Lucan writes in lib. iii. 803–305:

The sacred rites of the gods; altars built for funereal sacrifices: and every tree purified with human blood.

XL. "A certain man was sacrificed in Rhodes on the sixteenth of the Kalends of November to Saturn," says Theodoret, lib. vii. Greecor. Affec. And says Porphyry, de Abstinent. Anim. lib. ii.: "The Phoenicians, in great calamities of wars, or droughts, or pestilences, sacrificed one of their dearest to Saturn, one bound to this by common vote." The same pestilence invaded even the people of God themselves. "They sacrificed their sons and their daughters to demons, and poured out the blood of the innocent — their sons and daughters whom they sacrificed to the idols of Canaan" (Psalm 106:37-38). Whoever desires more may add also what we noted in the little work On Divine Justice, cap. viii. I would show that certain Christians, at least in name, defiled themselves with this crime, were it not a matter of shame.

XLI. Porphyry traces the origin of these sacrifices to Abraham, as Eusebius attests, Preepar. Evangel. lib. i. cap. ix. He says that Abraham was called Saturn; and that his daughter, born of Queen Anobreta, was sacrificed. The shameful distortion of this kind, in investigating the origins of things and nations, is well known to be exposed everywhere by profane writers. Varro is of the opinion that because the human race is the best of all seeds, the ancients devised this kind of sacrifice. The Druids held that the divine power of the immortal gods could not be appeased except by the life of a man given in exchange for the life of a man, as Caesar attests, de Bell. Gall. lib. vii. It is clear that the human race derived the practice of sacrifices for the expiation of sins from an ancient and universal tradition. That the just and supreme God could be appeased by the blood of cattle on account of the sins of men, anxious and doubting minds, agitated by dread and the sense of sin, could never fully persuade themselves: Satan, in his accustomed manner, assails those who are troubled and nearly in despair. He easily persuades men that they have nothing more precious than themselves. Hence the impulse to sacrifice themselves and others. That a conscience, tormented and terrified by the sense of sin and the fear of punishment, was the root of this evil, the prophet shows (Micah 6:7); and, with Satan serving as midwife, this monster was brought to light. They often received no other answer from the oracles — whether fearing some great thing or daring it — than that propitiation must be made with human blood.

That the custom of the Lacedaemonians of scourging themselves in the worship of the gods had no other origin, Apollonius relates in Philostratus, lib. vi. cap. x., saying — that is: "The custom of scourging is preserved in Scythia in honor of Diana, because, as they say, the oracles commanded it; but to resist the gods is a kind of madness, I think." And Pausanias, Boetica: "The Delphic oracle responded to the Megarians that a handsome boy was to be offered to Bacchus." Things like these occur everywhere in the historians; Satanic malice, having progressed thus far, found no further height to which it might ascend.

XLII. But there is no end to this impious heap. It is well known that the adulteries and debaucheries of the filthy gods were also an incitement and a justification to the great majority for perpetrating all manner of impure offenses; to which I will add that example in second place. For after they had fashioned these gods in their own image — that is, liars, perjurers, and defiled in every impurity — they straightway fashioned them likewise as such. "Remove the quarrels, the lies, the battles, the perjuries, the adulteries of the gods, and certain ancient writers who now stride with giant step will be dwarfs"; on these writers, alas, Christian youth is still polluted; and to that Moloch — as Johann Comenius, a learned and pious man, laments — it is sacrificed. I am unwilling, by repetition, to thrust upon chaste ears the most foul crimes that must be forever kept silent by the godly. In order to make plain to what end the devil suggested these things to the minds of wicked men, a few things may be noted: let that word of Mercury concerning Jupiter in Plautus, Prolog. ad Amphitr., suffice: "For I believe you know by now what my father is like; how free he is of these unavenged deeds, and what a great lover he is, whenever something once pleases him." And: "As often as He who leads the clouds and the assembly assumes lesser forms." — Senec. Hippol.

XLII. Ah, how often does wet and soft clay drink in blasphemies of this kind, with the foolish molder applauding! Augustine puts it well: "All the worshipers of such gods, as soon as lust has driven them on, fervently — as Persius says — dipped in poison, look more to what they have done shamefully than to what Plato has taught or Cato has decreed" (de Civitat. Dei, lib. ii. cap. vii.). The reader will find more concerning the most filthy worship of the mother of the gods in that place. What kinds of passions and affections the human race — already of itself too inclined to vices — conceived from the examples of these gods set before it, Terence displays in his Chaerea before the eyes of all, Eunuch., Act i. Sc. 5, 35:

— 'While preparations are being made, the maiden sits in the chamber, gazing up at a certain painted panel, on which there was this picture: how Jupiter once, they say, sent a shower of gold into the lap of Danae. I myself also began to look at this; and because he had long ago played a similar game, my heart rejoiced all the more; that a god had transformed himself into a man, and had come secretly through another's roof tiles through the skylight, having deceived the woman.

But what sort of God? One who shakes the highest temples of heaven with His thunder.

Shall I, a little man, not do this? I indeed did that very thing, and gladly.'"

XLIV. Would that the same ruin were no longer being carried into the minds of youth through indecent paintings and the reading of poets. But this impiety has advanced so far that they openly exhorted one another, by the example of the gods, to perpetrate the most filthy crimes. So Catullus, lxviii. 137–140:

“Let us not be too troublesome in the manner of fools; often even Juno, greatest of heaven’s dwellers, burned with daily anger at her husband’s fault, learning of the many thefts of all-willing Jove.”

XLV. Moreover, it was the custom of very many to worship the gods even by means of the most wicked crimes. That the Babylonians prostituted their own daughters in the temples is reported by Herodot., lib. 1, and Strab. Geog. lib. xvi.

XLVI. Another plague no less deadly, taking its origin from this impiety, lay heavy upon the world. For after that wicked persuasion concerning the gods had prevailed among the common people, all manner of most wicked scoundrels — especially those who served those gods in sacred rites — feigning the names and characters of those gods, committed and practiced innumerable crimes: robberies, adulteries, thefts, acts of brigandage. In the mountains, caves, forests, temples, on the banks of rivers, on the seashores, everything was full of phantoms of this kind. Let the well-known story of the crime perpetrated in the temple of Isis at Rome serve as an example, which Josephus relates, Antiquit. lib. xviii. cap. iv. Mundus, a Roman knight, after he had long attempted in vain to overcome the chastity of Paulina, a most honorable matron, was secretly brought into the temple by the priests under the name of Anubis, and with the consent of the woman’s husband, he violated her. The bastard and illegitimate sons of robbers, thieves, tyrants, and priests were the greater part of the ancient heroes.

XLVII. And the reason for this is given, not ineptly, by the eminent historian, why Romulus did not institute Vestal Virgins: he says — the Greek text at this point being damaged in the source — that is, “He did not institute virgins as priestesses, mindful” (as it seems to me at least) “of his mother’s disgrace, who had lost her virginity in the service of that goddess” (having been violated, namely, by a priest), “nor would he have been able, had he detected any sacred minister of the goddess having violated her chastity, to punish her according to the ancestral laws, on account of the remembrance of his own household’s disgrace,” Dionys. Halicarnass. Histor. lib. ii. cap. 65.

XLVIII. In the same manner, that the Roman priests, as long as the authority of ignorance prevailed everywhere and the papacy held the evangelical truth captive, committed, under disguise, every manner of crime — no one among the papists themselves, unless he is shamelessly brazen, dares to deny. For after they had stupidly and persistently persuaded the blind populace that certain gentle spirits, by no means very hostile to the human race, frequented houses by night and did things too shameful to relate, they themselves, masked under the name of those spirits, truly carried out all those most foul crimes which they wished, most foolishly and ridiculously, to ascribe to those supposedly harmless spirits. Thus our own Chaucer, concerning a certain fraternal convent well-known in his day:—

“For there as wont to walken was an elfe, There walketh now the Limitor himselfe. In every bush, and under every tree, There nis none other incubus but he.”

XLIX. Now that the observance of virtue had been rendered nearly impossible for the Greeks by this impiety — charging Apollonius with it — the Indian philosopher Iarchas affirms, in Philostratus, book iii, ch. vii, of the Life of Apollonius: “But those who are reckoned among you as the wisest do not permit you to be just and good, even if you wished to be.” And he adds the reason, that they held the most wicked of men in the place of gods. Apollonius himself openly confessed the same thing, book v, ch. v: “For the fictions about heroes, which form the whole subject-matter of the poets, corrupt the ears of their hearers; recounting their illicit and abominable loves — such as marriages of brothers and sisters, calumnies against the gods, the devouring of children, mutual and base quarrels, acts of injustice, unrestrained villanies, and the dragging away of those who had done no wrong, and the lover, and the one consumed by jealousy, and the one who strives for riches or for tyranny — after the manner of the unwise.” That is: “The things fabricated about heroes, which form the entire material of the poets, corrupt the ears of those who hear them; recounting their illicit and abominable loves — such as marriages of brothers and sisters, and calumnies against the gods, and the devouring of children, and base and mutual altercations; for when these things are brought forward by the poets as actual deeds, they lead men to love, envy, and desire for riches and power.” For no one can think himself to be sinning while he imitates the gods. Marcus Tullius also repeats the same things in book i of On the Nature of the Gods, ch. xvi: “I have set forth,” he says, “not so much the judgments of philosophers as the dreams of madmen; for those things which the voices of the poets have poured forth are not much more absurd, which, by their very charm, have made their impression — introducing gods inflamed with anger and raging with lust, making us see their wars, battles, combats, wounds; and besides, their feuds, dissensions, discords, births, deaths, complaints, lamentations, lusts poured out in every kind of intemperance, adulteries, chains, intercourse with the human race, and mortals begotten from an immortal.” And what Plato has argued to the same end in the Timaeus, let the reader consult, for it is worth reading.

L. Aligned alongside the poets were the lawgivers and philosophers. It pleased the latter to forge a certain natural theology; which in reality was nothing other than the idolatry of the first apostates in the worship of the works of creation. For with the benefit of the traditions lost — that is, utterly destroyed by the fables of the poets — and with the mind of the common people held captive besides by insurmountable prejudices, neither the one party nor the other was ever able, and they scarcely attempted, to liberate natural theology from the impure and most pernicious fables and idolatrous worship.

LI. In fashioning theology, the lawgivers had scarcely anything else in mind than to regulate religion in such a way that no disturbances or evils might arise from it in the civil state. This is still the opinion of most politicians concerning religion. They therefore found it necessary to inscribe into the tables of the laws all the errors and fables and the entire idolatry with which the poets had infected the peoples — provided only that these did not conflict, as they say, with the public governance of cities or with honorable morals.

LII. It is worth observing Plato himself bowing to the prejudices of the common people. He writes as follows in the Timaeus: "Concerning the other divine beings — those whom we call the lesser gods — to speak of their generation and to comprehend so great a matter in our minds is beyond our faculty and our powers. We must trust those who have previously spoken and who, being themselves the offspring of the gods as they claimed, surely knew their own ancestors. It is impossible to disbelieve the children of the gods, even if they speak without probable signs or necessary proofs; but because they claim to speak of their own kindred and of things known to themselves, we must obey the ancient law and custom and give credence to them. Thus, in accordance with their tradition, let the generation of these gods be accepted." So he writes, mindful, no doubt, of what had befallen his teacher Socrates, who was condemned to death precisely because he refused to hold as gods those whom the city held as gods. He therefore admits the popular gods, though not without an open mockery of the credulity of the common people. He argues similarly in book two of the Republic. Strabo, in Geographica, book i, teaches that the lawgivers had deliberately invented fables for religion in order to restrain the minds of peoples through a certain terror of invisible evils: "Thunderbolt," he says, "and aegis, and trident, and torches, and serpents, and the thyrsus-bearers, and the weapons of the gods — these are myths, and the whole theurgical craft has demonstrated these through bugbears to those who are without understanding." And so it was once done by the priests in the papacy. For after they had, through the grossest ignorance and wicked morals, utterly rooted out all efficacy of the Christian religion from the minds of the common people, they found it necessary to devise purgatory and certain other terrors, in order to keep that people somehow within the bounds of duty. LIII. And this was the most corrupt theology of the Gentiles; concerning the sacred —

CHAP. VIII.] ON CORRUPTION AND LOSS, liii

Seneca: "All these things the wise man will observe as if commanded by the laws, not as if pleasing to the gods." Since, therefore, the common people would not suffer the poetic furies to be taken from them, and were willing to be displaced in their civic standing sooner than in their criminal religious opinions, while the lawgivers found it sufficient to seize all the old fables for their own purposes, the philosophers repudiated this entire mythological theology as a fiction devised for the maintenance of order among men in life. And so the worthless wares were cheapened, and were always held of little account.

LIV. The philosophers appeared more sharp-sighted. They surveyed everything most carefully, investigating the corrupted theology. But, to speak plainly, they were unable to extricate themselves from the corrupted traditions and the monstrous fictions of the poets, except by means of opinions drawn from the pools of atheism. From these there arose a natural theology. That this was the mark of men hardened in the greatest wickedness and unwilling to yield to the truth, Eusebius demonstrates so brilliantly in his books on the Preparation for the Gospel that nothing need be added to them. And so this class of men also "became utterly vain, and their foolish heart was darkened." LV. And by these degrees all knowledge of God was corrupted. Yet among the bad — though not the worst — methods of practicing religion, the common people appear to have retained something beyond which those who lacked any wisdom beyond obscure traditions interlarded with the monstrous fictions of fables knew nothing. Those who aspired to the praise of the most shrewd inquiry and acumen in sacred things were plainly foolish. The old opinion prevailed among the common people concerning some kind of exercise of judgment after this life and a different state of men among the shades below, and the people were never willing to dissent from themselves on this matter. How much weight this persuasion has brought to bear in restraining the wickedness and impiety rampant upon the earth is evident. Even after all that theology of former ages had at last been everywhere among the nations destroyed, those who live outside the knowledge of Christ have some presentiment, I know not what, concerning that judgment and the future state. But the entire philosophical senate almost unanimously laughed at this whole opinion as an idle tale — I know not whether with a sober laughter. LVI. And this was the superstition of the Gentiles. It pleased him to express the term deisidaimonia by that word. The etymology of the word varies. The father of Roman eloquence affirms that superstition was named from those who prayed all day long that their sons might survive them. The comic poets testify that parents were daily urgent in this vow:—

"As you wish your only son to survive safe and sound, and to outlive you." —Plaut., Asinaria, Act I, Sc. i. 6.

"By Castor, a fine boy has been born to Pamphilus; I pray the gods that he may survive." —Terent., Andria, Act III, Sc. ii.

And in the Heautontimorumenos, Act V, Sc. iv. 7: "May you outlive both me and him."

Servius writes that old women, who have survived through a long age, "being addicted to idle things, rave while wishing to appear excessively religious."

Nor does Donatus say otherwise. "The superstitious," he says, "are old men and women who, having survived to a great age, now rave;" from where also "the superstitious are those who fear the gods too much," which is a sign of raving. Hence the Satirist:

"This god-fearing great-aunt, or aunt who fears the divine, lifts the boy from his cradle,

and with her infamous finger wipes his forehead and wet lips,

having first purified them with her ritual spittle.

He purifies them.' —Pers., Sat. ii. 31–34. This custom is retained in the baptism of the papists. Lactantius holds that the "superstitious" are those "who cultivate the memory of deceased ancestors," Instit., lib. ii, cap. xxviii. Also superstitious is one who is divinely inspired and a divine seer — as Plautus says: "This man is indeed superstitious; he speaks true things," in Curculio, Act III. 27. Superstition, however, denotes either a corrupt disposition of the soul regarding divine things, or a vain and foolish worship. On the former sense, Cicero and Plutarch have said a great many things most erroneously — the former scattered throughout his writings, the latter in a particular and elegant treatise on superstition. In the latter sense, Tacitus impiously calls our religion a destructive superstition, Annals, lib. xv.; and Suetonius in his Life of Nero calls Christians "a race of men given to a new and maleficent superstition." Some have even rejected all religion under the name of superstition:

"Empty superstition; virtue alone is the goddess in the breast."

LVII. Would that even today no one who raves in this madness could be found. Yet although the religion of the pagans was nothing other than the most pernicious superstition, they themselves acknowledged the distinction; and they asserted that superstition was necessary on account of the common multitude, who could not be restrained without it. Strabo puts it admirably — writing that myth and the fearful, the monstrous, and the marvelous hold sway over the common crowd; that those who govern cities use these as a preliminary hold upon the minds of the masses, for when they hear accounts of the noble deeds of heroes such as Heracles and Theseus, and of the honors bestowed by the gods, or when they see paintings and images bearing some such story of suffering, they are moved to piety. But when one would call the multitude to virtue through reason, relying on the words and deeds of philosophers, it is not so easy to lead a mass of women and all the common throng to piety, holiness, and faith — it must rather be done through superstition and the fear of the divine (Geographica, lib. i.). Who would not think he was hearing the supreme pontiff speaking from his chair! This vice, however, as the great Plato admirably explains in all things, he says — it is the habit of women especially, and of all those who are in any notable weakness, danger, or serious want, and conversely, when some abundance flows in upon them that seems to be at hand, always to consecrate something and to vow sacrifices and to promise statues to gods and daemons and the children of the gods; and both when apparitions appear to those awake through terrors, and when in their very dreams they recall having seen many things, seeking to bring remedies to each case, they have filled all houses and all villages with altars and shrines, and by these rites have dedicated places as if they were pure (De Legibus, lib. x, sub fin.) — that is: "It is the custom especially of women, and of those who are held by some notable infirmity, or who are in some danger, or who labor under some grievous want, and on the other hand, when some abundance of a thing overflows, as it seems to be present, always to consecrate things and to vow offerings and to promise statues to gods and daemons and the sons of the gods; and then when apparitions appear to those keeping watch because of terrors, and also in their very dreams, calling to mind that they had seen many things, and where they attempt to bring remedies to each, they have filled all homes, all villages with altars and shrines, and in these rites have dedicated places as if purified." In what other words a thorough papist could paint that superstition which flourishes in popery more superstitiously, I truly do not know. So Cicero on religion and superstition, in the second book On Divination, toward the end: "Therefore, as religion ought also to be promoted — that which is joined with the knowledge of nature — so all the roots of superstition must be torn out. For superstition presses hard and urges, and wherever you turn, it pursues you; whether you hear a soothsayer or an omen; whether you sacrifice or look at a bird; whether you see a Chaldean or a haruspex; if lightning flashes, if it thunders, if anything is struck from the sky; if something is born or done that resembles a portent — things of which it is necessary that something nearly always comes to pass — so that one can never rest with a quiet mind." I have cited these things so that we may know that under every profession of whatever religion, superstition is everywhere like to itself. LVIII. Moreover, as to those things pertaining to the religion or superstition of the pagans, many have committed them to memory; what the manner of cultivating religions was according to their understanding, Varro, Cicero, Ovid, Festus Pompeius, Macrobius, Censorinus, Pliny, and most historians explain in the life of Numa. It is certain that some traces of truth lay hidden in the ceremonies as received from the fathers. As for those things which fell from their lips — whether unwillingly, or while engaged in other matters, or while themselves searching for the very truth — we have a sufficiently abundant harvest of testimonies of purer theology in Josephus, Justin Martyr, Clement of Alexandria, Eusebius, Theodoret, Lactantius, Augustine, Steuco of Gubbio, Horneius, Grotius, and countless others among more recent writers. The foolishness, stupidity, impiety, frenzy, and madness of the worship and the whole religion that flourished among them are admirably exposed — after the apostle himself in the first chapter of the Epistle to the Romans — by Tertullian, Eusebius, Augustine, Theodoret, and others; Maimonides, Giraldus, Stucky, Vossius, and Selden, with Hesiod, Cicero, Plutarch, Strabo, Pliny, and Seneca not dissenting, set forth elegantly and lucidly the origin, the practice, and the secrets of idolatry.

LIX. But after religion among the nations had grown into so great a mass of superstition and idolatry, emerging from an infinite heap of fables — such that nothing more foolish, or more abhorrent to all natural theology, could ever have been devised — in the end all the rites and the entire worship of the gods began to cause shame to every person of the greatest wisdom, so that beyond the contemplation of nature and the observance of what is right and honorable, they wished to have nothing more in common with the gods. So concerning Socrates, Cicero says in the Academica Quaestiones, lib. i, §4: "Socrates," he says, "seems to me to have brought philosophy down to common life, so that he might inquire about virtues and vices and about all good and evil things; but heavenly matters he considered either to be far beyond our knowledge, or — even if they were known to the greatest degree — they contribute nothing to living well." And Tacitus, in the Annals, book six, ch. xxii.: "When I hear these and such like things, my judgment remains uncertain whether the affairs of mortals are governed by fate and immutable necessity, or by chance; for you will find the wisest of the ancients, and those who emulate their school, of opposed views; and many have the settled opinion that the gods have no care for the beginnings of our existence, nor for its end, nor indeed for men at all." And Seneca: "We shall worship in such a way that we remember the worship of Him pertains more to custom than to reality." To these correspond those words in which Marcus Tullius closes his most learned books On the Nature of the Gods: "When these things had been said," he writes, "we parted in such a way that to Velleius it seemed that the view of Cotta.

The argument seemed truer, while to me the argument of Balbus seemed more inclined toward the likeness of truth." And thus he had earlier set forth the judgment of his own mind on all divine matters at the beginning of the first book (ch. v.): "We are not," he says, "those to whom nothing seems true; but we are those who say that to all true things certain false things are joined with such great similarity that in them there is no certain mark for judging and assenting."

LX. It pleased Satan that they should thus waver; because he had nothing certain to put in place of the truths he had taken away. Hence when the Athenians consulted the Pythian Apollo as to which religions they should especially observe, the oracle was given that they should follow those which were in the custom of the ancestors — as the same Cicero testifies in De Legibus. And so at last every good and wise person came to agree upon that religion which Lucan ascribes to Cato:—

"This was the unbending school of stern Cato: to keep to the mean, to hold to the limit, to follow nature, and to spend his life for his country; to believe himself born not for himself, but for the whole world. For him a banquet was to have overcome hunger; and great household gods, to have warded off winter with a roof; and costly raiment, to have clothed his limbs above with the rough toga in the Roman manner of the Quirites; and for him the highest use of Venus was offspring. He is a father to the city and a husband to the city; a cultivator of justice, a keeper of rigid honor; good for the common welfare." — Lib. ii, 381–391.

Persius also speaks admirably concerning that state of affairs and that uncertainty by which all were agitated:—

"What does it help to bring our vices into the temples, and to derive blessings from the gods from this wicked flesh? Tell me, pontiffs, what does gold do in a sacred place? Surely the same as what dolls dedicated by a maiden to Venus do. Why do we not offer to the powers above that which the blear-eyed offspring of great Messalla cannot give from a great platter! A well-ordered sense of right and duty in the soul, and the holy retreats of the mind, and a breast steeped in noble honor — these let me offer when I approach the temples, and I will sacrifice with a handful of meal." — Sat. ii. 62, etc.

LXI. At last, weary of the fables, they poured themselves out in contempt of the gods upon whatever occasion presented itself. Let the most pious orator himself serve as an example — Cicero speaking before the pontiffs, in his oration For His House, against Clodius: "You deny," he says, "that what I am accustomed to proclaim about myself is to be endured; and you, a clever man, introduce also an urbane and charming turn of speech: that I am accustomed to say that I am Jupiter, and likewise to assert that Minerva is my sister. I am not so insolent in saying that I am Jupiter as I am unlearned in thinking that Minerva is the sister of Jupiter. But for all that, I claim a virgin sister for myself; you did not allow your sister to remain a virgin. But see to it whether you ought to call yourself Jupiter, since you are able to call the same woman both your sister and your wife." ch. xxxiv. LXII. Also to Antony in his drunkenness, pretending to be Bacchus, the Athenians publicly betrothed their own Minerva with solemn ceremonies — as Dio testifies, Hist. lib. xlviii. Nor, when placed in dangers, was there any expectation of help or aid from those gods. Hence King Porus, when his friends urged him to sacrifice to the river so that it might not bear the Macedonian rafts nor afford Alexander an easy crossing, replied — as the wise Indians report in Philostratus, Vita Apollonii, lib. i, ch. x — "It is not for those who bear arms to supplicate."

LXIII. Those who think Nero deserves to be counted among human beings should see in Suetonius how he treated the gods. Nor without cause did Seneca ascribe to him that utterance which, as the prophet testifies (Isaiah 44), would well suit all idolaters, in the Tragedies, Octavia, Act 2: "Shall I foolishly fear the gods, when I myself make them?"

Nor is it otherwise in the greatest of poets, where Achilles speaks, Il. x. 15, 20:

"But you, Hector — you shall make atonement to all the gods…"

"How shall I repay you, if only I have strength to do so?" "But you, O worst of divine Titans, have done me the greatest wrong; you, wicked one, shall pay me the penalty, if strength be mine." And Propertius:

"Good Sense, if you are any goddess at all, I dedicate myself to your shrines: so many of my prayers had fallen on deaf Jupiter."

LXIV. Tertullian, however, sharply attacks all this impiety in the Apology — that is, after his manner: "The household gods," he says, "whom you call lares, you handle by domestic power — pledging them, selling them, exchanging them — sometimes making Saturn into a cooking-pot, sometimes Minerva into a ladle, according to how worn and battered each has become; each is worshipped only as long as its master has found the domestic necessity more pressing."

LXV. Having set forth the origins and progress of the theology of the Gentiles, its catastrophe must now be briefly treated. For God had determined from the foundations of the world, at an appointed time, to send to them His Son for their revelation and redemption. But He was pleased to conceal this mystery within Himself for a time, even while He had permitted all the nations to walk in their own ways, until, covered over with the thickest darkness and every misery, that saving light —

Would at last shine forth freely. Yet He did not so utterly hide this counsel of His will in the secret treasury of His infinite wisdom that there did not proceed from His supreme mercy toward the human race — and from His most just and most holy wrath toward false, empty, worthless gods and idols — both promises of this grace and terrible threatenings. For: "Jehovah is the true God, the living God, and the everlasting King: at His fury the earth shall tremble, and the nations shall not be able to endure His indignation. Thus," He says, "you shall say to them: The gods that have not made the heavens and the earth shall perish from the earth and from under these heavens," (Jeremiah 10:10, 11). In like manner He threatens to make all the gods of the earth waste away (Zephaniah 2:11). And it is established that God intended these threatenings against those fictitious gods and idols, under whose auspices, and in obedience to whose instigation (that is, yielding to the old serpent in them), the four most famous empires had continually waged war against Him and His people. But all these things have long since come to pass. They have departed from their shrines; their heaven and their sun have collapsed; mountains and islands, together with all worship, stage-apparatus, and worshippers, have been removed from the earth and from the regions under heaven. Indeed, at the very first ray of the rising sun of righteousness, the idolatrous world felt and mourned that it had lost its gods — no, that it recoiled from them in horror:

"The oracles of Delphi fall silent, and the darkness of the future condemns the human race."

Juvenal, Satire 6, 554. Nowhere, however, do the wisest of the Gentiles display greater absurdity than in assigning causes for the cessation of oracles. "It is possible," says Cicero (De Divinat. lib. i. 19), "that that power of the earth which stirred the mind of the Pythia with divine inspiration has vanished with age, just as we see that certain rivers have vanished and dried up, or have been twisted and diverted into another course." Plutarch agrees with him. Nor is there anyone who offers anything better.

Moreover, by sending forth His saving light gradually, God at last so firmly established the ancient oracles that there is no mortal among any of the nations who uses that Gentile theology, or who worships or venerates those ancient idols with their ancient rites. Thus all those things by which, through so many centuries of years and an unspeakable succession of time, the world — lying in wickedness — out of the cunning of Satan and the native blindness of the human mind, vainly, absurdly, and blasphemously defiled, polluted, and rendered useless natural theology, have utterly perished by the sentence of an avenging God.