Chapter XII.—Argument: Moreover, What Will Happen to the Christians Themselves After Death, May Be Anticipated from the Fact that Even Now They are Destitute of All Means, and are Afflicted with the Heaviest Calamities and Miseries.
“Neither do you at least take experience from things present, how the fruitless expectations of vain promise deceive you. Consider, wretched creatures, (from your lot) while you are yet living, what is threatening you after death. Behold, a portion of you—and, as you declare, the larger and better portion—are in want, are cold, are labouring in hard work and hunger; and God suffers it, He feigns; He either is not willing or not able to assist His people; and thus He is either weak or inequitable. Thou, who dreamest over a posthumous immortality, when thou art shaken by danger, when thou art consumed with fever, when thou art torn with pain, dost thou not then feel thy real condition? Dost thou not then acknowledge thy frailty? Poor wretch, art thou unwillingly convinced of thine infirmity, and wilt not confess it? But I omit matters that are common to all alike. Lo, for you there are threats, punishments, tortures, and crosses; and that no longer as objects of adoration, but as tortures to be undergone; fires also, which you both predict and fear. Where is that God who is able to help you when you come to life again, since he cannot help you while you are in this life? Do not the Romans, without any help from your God, govern, reign, have the enjoyment of the whole world, and have dominion over you? But you in the meantime, in suspense and anxiety, are abstaining from respectable enjoyments. You do not visit exhibitions; you have no concern in public displays; you reject the public banquets, and abhor the sacred contests; the meats previously tasted by, and the drinks made a libation of upon, the altars. Thus you stand in dread of the gods whom you deny. You do not wreath your heads with flowers; you do not grace your bodies with odours; you reserve unguents for funeral rites; you even refuse garlands to your sepulchres—pallid, trembling beings, worthy of the pity even of our gods! Thus, wretched as you are, you neither rise again, nor do you live in the meanwhile. Therefore, if you have any wisdom or modesty, cease from prying into the regions of the sky, and the destinies and secrets of the world: it is sufficient to look before your feet, especially for untaught, uncultivated, boorish, rustic people: they who have no capacity for understanding civil matters, are much more denied the ability to discuss divine.
Argument: Cæcilius at Length Concludes that the New Religion is to Be Repudiated; And that We Must Not Rashly Pronounce Upon Doubtful Matters
Chapter XIII.—Argument: Cæcilius at Length Concludes that the New Religion is to Be Repudiated; And that We Must Not Rashly Pronounce Upon Doubtful Matters.
“However, if you have a desire to philosophize, let any one of you who is sufficiently great, imitate, if he can, Socrates the prince of wisdom. The answer of that man, whenever he was asked about celestial matters, is well known: ‘What is above us is nothing to us.’ Well, therefore, did he deserve from the oracle the testimony of singular wisdom, which oracle he himself had a presentiment of, that he had been preferred to all men for the reason, not that he had discovered all things, but because he had learnt that he knew nothing. And thus the confession of ignorance is the height of wisdom. From this source flowed the safe doubting of Arcesilas, and long after of Carneades, and of very many of the Academics, in questions of the highest moment, in which species of philosophy the unlearned can do much with caution, and the learned can do gloriously. What! is not the hesitation of Simonides the lyric poet to be admired and followed by all? Which Simonides, when he was asked by Hiero the tyrant what, and what like he thought the gods to be, asked first of all for a day to deliberate; then postponed his reply for two days; and then, when pressed, he added only another; and finally, when the tyrant inquired into the causes of such a long delay, he replied that, the longer his research continued, the obscurer the truth became to him. In my opinion also, things which are uncertain ought to be left as they are. Nor, while so many and so great men are deliberating, should we rashly and boldly give an opinion in another direction, lest either a childish superstition should be introduced, or all religion should be overthrown.”
Argument: With Something of the Pride of Self-Satisfaction, Cæcilius Urges Octavius to Reply to His Arguments; And Minucius with Modesty Answers Him, that He Must Not Exult at His Own by No Means Ordinary Eloquence, and at the Harmonious Variety of His Address
Chapter XIV.—Argument: With Something of the Pride of Self-Satisfaction, Cæcilius Urges Octavius to Reply to His Arguments; And Minucius with Modesty Answers Him, that He Must Not Exult at His Own by No Means Ordinary Eloquence, and at the Harmonious Variety of His Address.
Thus far Cæcilius; and smiling cheerfully (for the vehemence of his prolonged discourse had relaxed the ardour of his indignation), he added: “And what does Octavius venture to reply to this, a man of the race of Plautus, who, while he was chief among the millers, was still the lowest of philosophers?” “Restrain,” said I, “your self-approval against him; for it is not worthy of you to exult at the harmony of your discourse, before the subject shall have been more fully argued on both sides; especially since your reasoning is striving after truth, not praise. And in however great a degree your discourse has delighted me by its subtile variety, yet I am very deeply moved, not concerning the present discussion, but concerning the entire kind of disputation—that for the most part the condition of truth should be changed according to the powers of discussion, and even the faculty of perspicuous eloquence. This is very well known to occur by reason of the facility of the hearers, who, being distracted by the allurement of words from attention to things, assent without distinction to everything that is said, and do not separate falsehood from truth; unaware that even in that which is incredible there is often truth, and in verisimilitude falsehood. Therefore the oftener they believe bold assertions, the more frequently they are convinced by those who are more clever, and thus are continually deceived by their temerity. They transfer the blame of the judge to the complaint of uncertainty; so that, everything being condemned, they would rather that all things should be left in suspense, than that they should decide about matters of doubt. Therefore we must take care that we do not in such sort suffer from the hatred at once of all discourses, even as very many of the more simple kind are led to execration and hatred of men in general. For those who are carelessly credulous are deceived by those whom they thought worthy; and by and by, by a kindred error, they begin to suspect every one as wicked, and dread even those whom they might have regarded as excellent. Now therefore we are anxious—because in everything there may be argument on both sides; and on the one hand, the truth is for the most part obscure; and on the other side there is a marvellous subtlety, which sometimes by its abundance of words imitates the confidence of acknowledged proof—as carefully as possible to weigh each particular, that we may, while ready to applaud acuteness, yet elect, approve, and adopt those things which are right.”
Argument: Cæcilius Retorts Upon Minucius, with Some Little Appearance of Being Hurt, that He is Foregoing the Office of a Religious Umpire, When He is Weakening the Force of His Argument. He Says that It Should Be Left to Octavius to Confute All that He Had Advanced
Chapter XV.—Argument: Cæcilius Retorts Upon Minucius, with Some Little Appearance of Being Hurt, that He is Foregoing the Office of a Religious Umpire, When He is Weakening the Force of His Argument. He Says that It Should Be Left to Octavius to Confute All that He Had Advanced.
“You are withdrawing,” says Cæcilius, “from the office of a religious judge; for it is very unfair for you to weaken the force of my pleading by the interpolation of a very important argument, since Octavius has before him each thing that I have said, sound and unimpaired, if he can refute it.” “What you are reproving,” said I, “unless I am mistaken, I have brought forward for the common advantage, so that by a scrupulous examination we might weigh our decision, not by the pompous style of the eloquence, but by the solid character of the matter itself. Nor must our attention, as you complain, be any longer called away, but with absolute silence let us listen to the reply of our friend Januarius, who is now beckoning to us.”
Argument: Octavius Arranges His Reply, and Trusts that He Shall Be Able to Dilute the Bitterness of Reproach with the River of Truthful Words. He Proceeds to Weaken the Individual Arguments of Cæcilius. Nobody Need Complain that the Christians, Unlearned Though They May Be, Dispute About Heavenly Things Because It is Not the Authority of Him Who Argues, But the Truth of the Argument Itself, that Should Be Considered
Chapter XVI.—Argument: Octavius Arranges His Reply, and Trusts that He Shall Be Able to Dilute the Bitterness of Reproach with the River of Truthful Words. He Proceeds to Weaken the Individual Arguments of Cæcilius. Nobody Need Complain that the Christians, Unlearned Though They May Be, Dispute About Heavenly Things Because It is Not the Authority of Him Who Argues, But the Truth of the Argument Itself, that Should Be Considered.
And thus Octavius began: “I will indeed speak as I shall be able to the best of my powers, and you must endeavour with me to dilute the very offensive strain of recriminations in the river of veracious words. Nor will I disguise in the outset, that the opinion of my friend Natalis has swayed to and fro in such an erratic, vague, and slippery manner, that we are compelled to doubt whether your information was confused, or whether it wavered backwards and forwards by mere mistake. For he varied at one time from believing the gods, at another time to being in a state of hesitation on the subject; so that the direct purpose of my reply was established with the greater uncertainty, by reason of the uncertainty of his proposition. But in my friend Natalis—I will not allow, I do not believe in, any chicanery—far from his simplicity is crafty trickery. What then? As he who knows not the right way, when as it happens one road is separated into many, because he knows not the way, remains in anxiety, and dares neither make choice of particular roads, nor try them all; so, if a man has no stedfast judgment of truth, even as his unbelieving suspicion is scattered, so his doubting opinion is unsettled. It is therefore no wonder if Cæcilius in the same way is cast about by the tide, and tossed hither and thither among things contrary and repugnant to one another; but that this may no longer be the case, I will convict and refute all that has been said, however diverse, confirming and approving the truth alone; and for the future he must neither doubt nor waver. And since my brother broke out in such expressions as these, that he was grieved, that he was vexed, that he was indignant, that he regretted that illiterate, poor, unskilled people should dispute about heavenly things; let him know that all men are begotten alike, with a capacity and ability of reasoning and feeling, without preference of age, sex, or dignity. Nor do they obtain wisdom by fortune, but have it implanted by nature; moreover, the very philosophers themselves, or any others who have gone forth unto celebrity as discoverers of arts, before they attained an illustrious name by their mental skill, were esteemed plebeian, untaught, half-naked. Thus it is, that rich men, attached to their means, have been accustomed to gaze more upon their gold than upon heaven, while our sort of people, though poor, have both discovered wisdom, and have delivered their teaching to others; whence it appears that intelligence is not given to wealth, nor is gotten by study, but is begotten with the very formation of the mind. Therefore it is nothing to be angry or to be grieved about, though any one should inquire, should think, should utter his thoughts about divine things; since what is wanted is not the authority of the arguer, but the truth of the argument itself: and even the more unskilled the discourse, the more evident the reasoning, since it is not coloured by the pomp of eloquence and grace; but as it is, it is sustained by the rule of right.
Argument: Man Ought Indeed to Know Himself, But This Knowledge Cannot Be Attained by Him Unless He First of All Acknowledges the Entire Scope of Things, and God Himself. And from the Constitution and Furniture of the World Itself, Every One Endowed with Reason Holds that It Was Established by God, and is Governed and Administered by Him
Chapter XVII.—Argument: Man Ought Indeed to Know Himself, But This Knowledge Cannot Be Attained by Him Unless He First of All Acknowledges the Entire Scope of Things, and God Himself. And from the Constitution and Furniture of the World Itself, Every One Endowed with Reason Holds that It Was Established by God, and is Governed and Administered by Him.
“Neither do I refuse to admit what Cæcilius earnestly endeavoured to maintain among the chief matters, that man ought to know himself, and to look around and see what he is, whence he is, why he is; whether collected together from the elements, or harmoniously formed of atoms, or rather made, formed, and animated by God. And it is this very thing which we cannot seek out and investigate without inquiry into the universe; since things are so coherent, so linked and associated together, that unless you diligently examine into the nature of divinity, you must be ignorant of that of humanity. Nor can you well perform your social duty unless you know that community of the world which is common to all, especially since in this respect we differ from the wild beasts, that while they are prone and tending to the earth, and are born to look upon nothing but their food, we, whose countenance is erect, whose look is turned towards heaven, as is our converse and reason, whereby we recognise, feel, and imitate God, have neither right nor reason to be ignorant of the celestial glory which forms itself into our eyes and senses. For it is as bad as the grossest sacrilege even, to seek on the ground for what you ought to find on high. Wherefore the rather, they who deny that this furniture of the whole world was perfected by the divine reason, and assert that it was heaped together by certain fragments casually adhering to each other, seem to me not to have either mind or sense, or, in fact, even sight itself. For what can possibly be so manifest, so confessed, and so evident, when you lift your eyes up to heaven, and look into the things which are below and around, than that there is some Deity of most excellent intelligence, by whom all nature is inspired, is moved, is nourished, is governed? Behold the heaven itself, how broadly it is expanded, how rapidly it is whirled around, either as it is distinguished in the night by its stars, or as it is lightened in the day by the sun, and you will know at once how the marvellous and divine balance of the Supreme Governor is engaged therein. Look also on the year, how it is made by the circuit of the sun; and look on the month, how the moon drives it around in her increase, her decline, and decay. What shall I say of the recurring changes of darkness and light; how there is thus provided for us an alternate restoration of labour and rest? Truly a more prolix discourse concerning the stars must be left to astronomers, whether as to how they govern the course of navigation, or bring on the season of ploughing or of reaping, each of which things not only needed a Supreme Artist and a perfect intelligence, nor only to create, to construct, and to arrange; but, moreover, they cannot be felt, perceived and understood without the highest intelligence and reason. What! when the order of the seasons and of the harvests is distinguished by stedfast variety, does it not attest its Author and Parent? As well the spring with its flowers, and the summer with its harvests, and the grateful maturity of autumn, and the wintry olive-gathering, are needful; and this order would easily be disturbed unless it were established by the highest intelligence. Now, how great is the providence needed, lest there should be nothing but winter to blast with its frost, or nothing but summer to scorch with its heat, to interpose the moderate temperature of autumn and spring, so that the unseen and harmless transitions of the year returning on its footsteps may glide by! Look attentively at the sea; it is bound by the law of its shore. Wherever there are trees, look how they are animated from the bowels of the earth! Consider the ocean; it ebbs and flows with alternate tides. Look at the fountains, how they gush in perpetual streams! Gaze on the rivers; they always roll on in regular courses. Why should I speak of the aptly ordered peaks of the mountains, the slopes of the hills, the expanses of the plains? Wherefore should I speak of the multiform protection provided by animated creatures against one another?—some armed with horns, some hedged with teeth, and shod with claws, and barbed with stings, or with freedom obtained by swiftness of feet, or by the capacity of soaring furnished by wings? The very beauty of our own figure especially confesses God to be its artificer: our upright stature, our uplooking countenance, our eyes placed at the top, as it were, for outlook; and all the rest of our senses as if arranged in a citadel.
Argument: Moreover, God Not Only Takes Care of the Universal World, But of Its Individual Parts. That by the Decree of the One God All Things are Governed, is Proved by the Illustration of Earthly Empires. But Although He, Being Infinite and Immense--And How Great He Is, is Known to Himself Alone--Cannot Either Be Seen or Named by Us, Yet His Glory is Beheld Most Clearly When the Use of All Titles is Laid Aside
Chapter XVIII.—Argument: Moreover, God Not Only Takes Care of the Universal World, But of Its Individual Parts. That by the Decree of the One God All Things are Governed, is Proved by the Illustration of Earthly Empires. But Although He, Being Infinite and Immense—And How Great He Is, is Known to Himself Alone—Cannot Either Be Seen or Named by Us, Yet His Glory is Beheld Most Clearly When the Use of All Titles is Laid Aside.
“It would be a long matter to go through particular instances. There is no member in man which is not calculated both for the sake of necessity and of ornament; and what is more wonderful still, all have the same form, but each has certain lineaments modified, and thus we are each found to be unlike to one another, while we all appear to be like in general. What is the reason of our being born? what means the desire of begetting? Is it not given by God, and that the breasts should become full of milk as the offspring grows to maturity, and that the tender progeny should grow up by the nourishment afforded by the abundance of the milky moisture? Neither does God have care alone for the universe as a whole, but also for its parts. Britain is deficient in sunshine, but it is refreshed by the warmth of the sea that flows around it. The river Nile tempers the dryness of Egypt; the Euphrates cultivates Mesopotamia; the river Indus makes up for the want of rains, and is said both to sow and to water the East. Now if, on entering any house, you should behold everything refined, well arranged, and adorned, assuredly you would believe that a master presided over it, and that he himself was much better than all those excellent things. So in this house of the world, when you look upon the heaven and the earth, its providence, its ordering, its law, believe that there is a Lord and Parent of the universe far more glorious than the stars themselves, and the parts of the whole world. Unless, perchance—since there is no doubt as to the existence of providence—you think that it is a subject of inquiry, whether the celestial kingdom is governed by the power of one or by the rule of many; and this matter itself does not involve much trouble in opening out, to one who considers earthly empires, for which the examples certainly are taken from heaven. When at any time was there an alliance in royal authority which either began with good faith or ceased without bloodshed? I pass over the Persians who gathered the augury for their chieftainship from the neighing of horses; and I do not quote that absolutely dead fable of the Theban brothers. The story about the twins (Romulus and Remus), in respect of the dominion of shepherds, and of a cottage, is very well known. The wars of the son-in-law and the father-in-law were scattered over the whole world; and the fortune of so great an empire could not receive two rulers. Look at other matters. The bees have one king; the flocks one leader; among the herds there is one ruler. Canst thou believe that in heaven there is a division of the supreme power, and that the whole authority of that true and divine empire is sundered, when it is manifest that God, the Parent of all, has neither beginning nor end—that He who gives birth to all gives perpetuity to Himself—that He who was before the world, was Himself to Himself instead of the world? He orders everything, whatever it is, by a word; arranges it by His wisdom; perfects it by His power. He can neither be seen—He is brighter than light; nor can be grasped—He is purer than touch; nor estimated; He is greater than all perceptions; infinite, immense, and how great is known to Himself alone. But our heart is too limited to understand Him, and therefore we are then worthily estimating Him when we say that He is beyond estimation. I will speak out in what manner I feel. He who thinks that he knows the magnitude of God, is diminishing it; he who desires not to lessen it, knows it not. Neither must you ask a name for God. God is His name. We have need of names when a multitude is to be separated into individuals by the special characteristics of names; to God, who is alone, the name God is the whole. If I were to call Him Father, you would judge Him to be earthly; if a King, you would suspect Him to be carnal; if a Lord, you will certainly understand Him to be mortal. Take away the additions of names, and you will behold His glory. What! is it not true that I have in this matter the consent of all men? I hear the common people, when they lift their hands to heaven, say nothing else but Oh God, and God is great, and God is true, and if God shall permit. Is this the natural discourse of the common people, or is it the prayer of a confessing Christian? And they who speak of Jupiter as the chief, are mistaken in the name indeed, but they are in agreement about the unity of the power.
Argument: Moreover, the Poets Have Called Him the Parent of Gods and Men, the Creator of All Things, and Their Mind and Spirit. And, Besides, Even the More Excellent Philosophers Have Come Almost to the Same Conclusion as the Christians About the Unity of God
Chapter XIX.—Argument: Moreover, the Poets Have Called Him the Parent of Gods and Men, the Creator of All Things, and Their Mind and Spirit. And, Besides, Even the More Excellent Philosophers Have Come Almost to the Same Conclusion as the Christians About the Unity of God.
“I hear the poets also announcing ‘the One Father of gods and men;’ and that such is the mind of mortal men as the Parent of all has appointed His day. What says the Mantuan Maro? Is it not even more plain, more apposite, more true? ‘In the beginning,’ says he, ‘the spirit within nourishes, and the mind infused stirs the heaven and the earth,’ and the other members ‘of the world. Thence arises the race of men and of cattle,’ and every other kind of animal. The same poet in another place calls that mind and spirit God. For these are his words: ‘For that God pervades all the lands, and the tracts of the sea, and the profound heaven, from whom are men and cattle; from whom are rain and fire.’ What else also is God announced to be by us, but mind, and reason, and spirit? Let us review, if it is agreeable, the teaching of philosophers. Although in varied kinds of discourse, yet in these matters you will find them concur and agree in this one opinion. I pass over those untrained and ancient ones who deserved to be called wise men for their sayings. Let Thales the Milesian be the first of all, for he first of all disputed about heavenly things. That same Thales the Milesian said that water was the beginning of things, but that God was that mind which from water formed all things. Ah! a higher and nobler account of water and spirit than to have ever been discovered by man. It was delivered to him by God. You see that the opinion of this original philosopher absolutely agrees with ours. Afterwards Anaximenes, and then Diogenes of Apollonia, decide that the air, infinite and unmeasured, is God. The agreement of these also as to the Divinity is like ours. But the description of Anaxagoras also is, that God is said to be the motion of an infinite mind; and the God of Pythagoras is the soul passing to and fro and intent, throughout the universal nature of things, from whom also the life of all animals is received. It is a known fact, that Xenophanes delivered that God was all infinity with a mind; and Antisthenes, that there are many gods of the people, but that one God of Nature was the chief of all; that Xeuxippus acknowledged as God a natural animal force whereby all things are governed. What says Democritus? Although the first discoverer of atoms, does not he especially speak of nature, which is the basis of forms, and intelligence, as God? Strato also himself says that God is nature. Moreover, Epicurus, the man who feigns either otiose gods or none at all, still places above all, Nature. Aristotle varies, but nevertheless assigns a unity of power: for at one time he says that Mind, at another the World, is God; at another time he sets God above the world. Heraclides of Pontus also ascribes, although in various ways, a divine mind to God. Theophrastus, and Zeno, and Chrysippus, and Cleanthes are indeed themselves of many forms of opinion but they are all brought back to the one fact of the unity of providence. For Cleanthes discoursed of God as of a mind, now of a soul, now of air, but for the most part of reason. Zeno, his master, will have the law of nature and of God, and sometimes the air, and sometimes reason, to be the beginning of all things. Moreover, by interpreting Juno to be the air, Jupiter the heaven, Neptune the sea, Vulcan to be fire, and in like manner by showing the other gods of the common people to be elements, he forcibly denounces and overcomes the public error. Chrysippus says almost the same. He believes that a divine force, a rational nature, and sometimes the world, and a fatal necessity, is God; and he follows the example of Zeno in his physiological interpretation of the poems of Hesiod, of Homer, and of Orpheus. Moreover, the teaching of Diogenes of Babylon is that of expounding and arguing that the birth of Jupiter, and the origin of Minerva, and this kind, are names for other things, not for gods. For Xenophon the Socratic says that the form of the true God cannot be seen, and therefore ought not to be inquired after. Aristo the Stoic says that He cannot at all be comprehended. And both of them were sensible of the majesty of God, while they despaired of understanding Him. Plato has a clearer discourse about God, both in the matters themselves and in the names by which he expresses them; and his discourse would be altogether heavenly, if it were not occasionally fouled by a mixture of merely civil belief. Therefore in his Timæus Plato’s God is by His very name the parent of the world, the artificer of the soul, the fabricator of heavenly and earthly things, whom both to discover he declares is difficult, on account of His excessive and incredible power; and when you have discovered Him, impossible to speak of in public. The same almost are the opinions also which are ours. For we both know and speak of a God who is parent of all, and never speak of Him in public unless we are interrogated.