Exhortation to the Greeks

^A with the powers of music: one truly has baited the fish, another has walled in Thebes with music. Another Thracian artist (for this fable is told among the nations) soothed the wild beasts with song alone, and even transplanted beech trees from their own homes to strange lands. I could recount another fable for you, and another singer like those, Eunomus the Locrian and the Pythian cicada. For in a festival of all Greece which had gathered at Pytho because of the dead dragon, Eunomus sang an epitaph for the serpent—whether the song was a hymn or a lament for the snake, I cannot say. But there was a contest, and Eunomus played the cithara in the heat of the day, when the cicadas under the leaves were singing in the mountains, warmed by the sun. And they were ^B singing, not to the dead dragon, but to the all-wise God, a song subject to no laws, better than the melodies of Eunomus. A string of the Locrian breaks, and the cicada flies onto the yoke; it chirped as if upon a branch.

CONCERNING THE ORDER AND TITLES OF THE WORKS

Then in the third place he sets down the *Stromateis*, which in eight books bring the struggle against the Greeks and the heresies. He calls it

refutative

exhortatory

Exhortatory

Refutation

purification

instruction

contemplative

contemplation

The Orphic cithara

alike;

(56) Of Arion, apart from the authors cited by Hervetus, cf. Aelian, *Hist. anim.*, b. II, cap. 6; b. VI, cap. 15; b. XII, cap. 45. Greg. Nazianz., *Carmine Nicobuli ad Filium*. Among the Latins, Pliny, *Nat. Hist.* b. VIII, c. 9; Solinus, cap. 12, H. et R.; Plutarch, *Symposio septem Sapientum*. SYLBURG.

(57) Of the one who walled in Thebes, see Pausanias in *Boeoticis*, Horace *Ars Poetica*, v. 394; of the same, b. III, Od. 14; Solinus, ^C cap. 43; Plutarch, *De musica*; Propertius, I, III, eleg. 2; Plato, in *De legibus*.

(58) The Thracian sophist. Orpheus, whose whole fable exists in Ovid's *Metamorphoses*. See also Pausanias, *Boeot*. Likewise Gregory Nazianz., *Carm. ad Vitalium*, and *ad Nemesium*. Yet the same Gregory also allegorically transfers this fable of Orpheus and Amphion to eloquence, in *Carmine Nicobuli ad filium*, with these words: ^D [Greek verse follows].

(59) Of Eunomus the Locrian. Antigonus narrates this in his *Collection of Marvels*, at the beginning. SYLBURG.—Of the Locrian cicadas, Aelian *De animalibus*, b. V, cap. 9. See the proverb *Acanthia cicada*. COLLECT. Cf. also Conon's *Fifth Narrative*.

(40) Epita- phium erpetou. Epitaph for the serpent, singing... (41) Draconti to nekro. To the dead dragon. Pythiko add ms. Nov., of interpretation, as it seems, in place.

^A fitting it to the instrument; and the singer ^B, having tuned himself to the grasshopper’s song, made up for the missing string. Therefore the grasshopper is led by the song of Eunomus, as the myth wills it, having erected a bronze image of Eunomus at Pytho, along with the very lyre and his rival in the contest for the Locrian; but the creature flies up of its own will, and sings of its own will. And yet it seemed to the Greeks that he had become a master of music. How then have you come to trust in empty myths, supposing that animals are charmed by music? But the bright face of truth alone, it seems, appears to you to be painted on, and has fallen under eyes ^C of unbelief. But Cithaeron, and Helicon, and the Odrysian mountains, and the initiatory rites of the Thracians—the mysteries of delusion—have been worshipped and celebrated in song. For my part, even if they are myths, I am distressed at so many calamities being portrayed as tragedies; but for you, they have even become records of evils, dramas. But let us indeed shut up those dramas, and the poets who celebrate the Lenaia—who are already thoroughly drunken—having wreathed them with ivy, raving in Bacchic fashion, together with the satyrs themselves, and the frenzied troop of Bacchanals, and the rest of the chorus of demons, in Helicon and Cithaeron, which have grown old. Let us bring down ^D truth from heaven, together with the clearest wisdom, to the holy mountain of God and the holy prophetic choir. And may she, shining forth with light as clear as possible, illuminate on all sides those who are rolling in darkness, and may she deliver men from delusion, holding out the supreme right hand—understanding—for salvation. And let those who have looked up and raised their heads leave behind Helicon and Cithaeron, and dwell in Sion: For out of Sion shall go forth the law, and the word of the Lord from Jerusalem; the heavenly Word, the true athlete, crowned on the theater of the whole world. And my Eunomus sings, not the law of Terpander, nor...

that of Capito, nor the Phrygian, nor the Lydian, nor the Doric, but the eternal ^A song of the new harmony, the name-bearer of God, the new song, the Levitical,

All-Curing, and free from wrath, and cause of oblivion of all evils.

Yet a sweet and truly potent medicine for the spirits of men is mixed with this song. For to me that Thracian Orpheus, and the Theban, and the Methymnaean, seem to be certain men—but not men ^B—impostors, who under the pretext of music corrupted human life, and through a certain ingenious sorcery, goaded by a demonic frenzy, by celebrating offenses and deifying sorrows, were the first to lead men astray to idols; and indeed, they used stones and wood—that is to say, statues and paintings—as foundations for establishing impurity among the nations, binding that truly beautiful liberty of those living under heaven with their songs and incantations to extreme slavery. But my singer is not of this kind; he has not come to dissolve the bitter slavery of the tyrannizing demons for a short time, but as the one who brings us to the gentle and benevolent yoke of piety, he calls back to the heavens those who had been cast down to the earth. ^C He alone, in any case, of all who have ever existed, tamed the most savage wild beasts, men.

The birds are those who are light among them; the reptiles, the deceivers; the lions, the irascible; the swine, those given over to pleasure; and, finally, the wolves, ^A those who are rapacious. Stones and wood are the foolish, though a man who has been baptized in ignorance is found to be even more insensate than these stones. Let the prophetic voice be brought to us as a witness, concordant with the truth, which pities those who are worn down by ignorance and folly: *For God is able* (62) *from these stones to raise up children to Abraham*. He, having taken pity on the great ignorance and the hardness of heart of those who had turned to stone regarding the truth, raised up a seed of piety, perceptive of virtue, from those stones—that is, from the nations who had believed in stones. Then again, he has called certain poisonous and treacherous hypocrites, who were lurking in the guise of righteousness, a *brood of vipers* in some place; yet, if any of these serpents should willingly repent and follow the Word, he becomes a man of God. ^B He also figuratively describes other wolves disguised in sheep’s skins, hinting at those who are rapacious in the form of men. And so, did not the celestial song transform all these most savage beasts (63) and such stones into gentle men? For *we were once also ourselves foolish, disobedient, deceived, serving various pleasures and desires, passing our days in malice and envy, hateful, hating one another*, as the apostolic writing says. *But when the kindness and love for mankind of our Savior God appeared, he saved us, not by works of righteousness which we ourselves did, but according to his mercy*. Look at how much power this new song has; it has fashioned men out of stones, and men out of wild beasts. ^C And those who were otherwise as if dead (64), being devoid of that which is truly life, having merely become hearers of the song, have come back to life. This it is that has also ordered the whole universe harmoniously, and has strained the dissonance of the elements into an order of concord (65), so that the entire world might become a harmony for Him; both leaving the sea loosened, yet forbidding it to encroach upon the land. But he firmly established the earth, which was being carried about, and fixed the sea as a boundary for it. And moreover, he softened the impetus of fire with air, blending a Dorian harmony, as it were, with the Lydian; ^D and he tamed the harsh coldness of the air by the interweaving of fire, blending these, the lowest notes of the whole, melodiously. And indeed, the undefiled song, the support of the universe and the harmony of all things, stretched from the center to the extremities, and from the extremities to the center, attuned this whole, not according to the Thracian music, which is similar to Tubal (68), but according to the ancestral song of the…

^A will of God, which David emulated.

The Song Derived from the God-inspired David

Do you, therefore, approach and partake of this grace. And do not think my song is new, like a vessel or a house; for it was before the morning star, ^A *and in the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God* (Joan. I, 1). Error is old, but truth appears new. Whether, therefore, the mythical goats teach that the Phrygians are the most ancient, or the poets who describe them as born before the moon teach us about the Arcadians, or, finally, the Egyptians, who dream that this land of theirs is the mother of gods and men—yet none of these boasts of having been before the world. But we were before the foundation of the world, having pre-existed in God himself, in a certain sense, because of our future production. We are the rational creatures of the divine Word; through whom we are said to be the first, because *in the beginning was the Word*. This indeed, in so far as it existed of old before the foundations of the world were laid, was the divine beginning of all things, and even now is; but in so far as, in the latest times, it willed to be called by that venerable and long-since holy name of Christ, is it ^B called a new song by me. This Word, then, Christ, was not only the cause of our existence of old (for he was then in God), but he also gave us well-being; and now he has appeared to men, who alone is both, God and man, the author of all our good things; from whom, being taught to live well, we are sent forward into eternal life. For, according to that inspired Apostle of the Lord: *The grace of God our Saviour has appeared to all men, instructing us that, denying ungodliness and worldly desires, we should live soberly, and justly, and godly in this present world, looking for the blessed hope and the appearance of the glory of the great God and our Saviour Jesus Christ* (Tit. II, 11-13). This is the new song, the appearance which now shines forth in us of the Word who was in the beginning and pre-existed. The pre-existing Saviour has recently appeared; he who is in the being has appeared, because the Word, who was with God, appeared as a Teacher, by whom all things were created; the Word, who in the beginning bestowed life as Creator, taught us to live well, appearing as a Teacher, that he might afterwards, as God, grant us ^C ever-living life. And he did not pity us in our error for the first time now, but from above, from the beginning; but now, already perishing, he has appeared and saved us. For the wicked and creeping beast, enchanting, enslaving, and still even now tormenting men—so it seems to me—punishing them barbarically, is said to bind the captives to dead bodies, until it ^D

^A causes them also to putrefy. That wicked tyrant, then, and serpent, having bound those whom he was able to win over from their very birth with stones, and wood, and statues, and suchlike idols, by the miserable bond of superstition—this is what is meant—leads them down to the grave alive and buries them with them, until they likewise perish with them. For this reason—for it is one and the same deceiver—he led Eve astray of old, and now he is also leading the rest of mankind down to death. But there is one helper and defender for us, the Lord, who foretold salvation from the beginning through the prophets, and now clearly invites us to attain it. Let us therefore flee, in obedience to the apostolic command, ^B from the "prince of the power of the air, of the spirit that is now working in the sons of disobedience," and let us run for refuge to the Savior Lord, who both now and always urges us toward salvation through wonders and signs in Egypt and in the desert, and through the bush, and the cloud that followed the Hebrews like a handmaid by the grace of his philanthropy. By this fear, he urged on those of hard heart; but now, through Moses the all-wise, and Isaiah the lover of truth, and the whole prophetic choir, he turns those who have ears to hear toward the Word in a more rational manner. And there are times when he reproaches; there are times when he threatens; at others he mourns for men. He sings to others, like a good physician, treating bodily infirmities; some he plasters, others he softens, others he drenches; others he cuts with the knife, others he cauterizes, and at times he even amputates, if by any means he may heal the man, even if only in part or limb. ^C The Savior is indeed manifold and various in his ways for the salvation of men; when he threatens, he is admonishing; when he reproaches, he is turning us back; when he mourns, he is having mercy; when he sings, he is inviting; he speaks through the bush, because they were in need of signs and wonders. And he strikes fear into men with fire, kindling the flame from the pillar, a sign at once of grace and of terror: to those who obey, the light; to those who disobey, the fire. But since the flesh is more precious than the pillar and the bush, the prophets speak after these things. It is the Lord himself speaking in Isaiah; it is he himself in Elijah; he himself in the mouth of the prophets. But if you do not believe the prophets, and you deem them, the men themselves and the fire, a mere myth, the Lord himself will speak to you, he who "being in the form of God, thought it not robbery to be equal with God," but the all-merciful God ^D emptied himself, desiring to save man. And now the Word himself speaks to you clearly, pleading against your unbelief; yes, I say, the Word of God, having become man, that you too may learn from a man when it is that a man becomes God. Is it not then absurd, O friends, that God should always be urging us toward virtue, while we shrink from the benefit and postpone our salvation? For is not John also calling us to salvation

and does he not become a rousing voice? Let us ask him, therefore, "Who art thou, from among men?" He will not say he is Elijah, he will deny he is Christ; but he will confess he is a voice crying in the wilderness. Who, then, is John? That we may grasp it in a figure, we may say: he is the rousing voice of the Word, crying in the wilderness. What do you cry, O voice? Tell us also: "Make straight the paths of the Lord." John is the forerunner, and the voice is the forerunner of the Word, a voice of consolation preparing for salvation, a voice urging us toward the inheritance of the heavens; because of it, the barren one and the desert are no longer unfruitful. This gestation of mine was foretold by the voice of an angel; that, too, was a forerunner of the Lord, bringing good news to the barren woman, just as John did to the desert. ^B Because of this voice of the Word, therefore, the barren woman bears children, and the desert brings forth fruit. The two voices—the angel's and John's—that were forerunners of the Lord hint to me of the salvation laid up for us, so that, when this Word has appeared, we may carry off the fruit of true child-bearing, namely, eternal life.

Scripture, therefore, bringing both voices to the same conclusion, explains the whole matter: "Rejoice, O barren one who does not bear; break forth into a cry, you who do not travail; for the children of the desolate one are more numerous than those of her who has a husband" (Isai. LIV, 1). The angel brought us the good news of the husband; John urged us to perceive the husbandman, to seek out the husband. For one and the same is he—the husband of the barren woman and the husbandman of the wilderness, who filled both the barren woman and the desert with divine power. For since the noble woman had many children, but was childless because of disobedience, she who had been mother of many from of old, the Hebrew wife, the barren one receives the husband, and the desert receives the husbandman; then the one receives fruit, the other receives believers; and both are mothers, thanks to the Word. But for the unbelieving, even now, both the barren woman and the desert remain.

John, the herald of the Word, exhorted in this way, that we might be ready for the coming of God the Christ; and this is what the silence of Zacharias hinted at, as it awaited the fruit who was the forerunner of Christ, so that the light of truth, the Word, might release the mystical silence of the prophetic riddles, having become the Gospel. ^C But if you desire to see the true God, partake of those cleansings that are worthy of God; not of laurel leaves, not of certain fillets adorned with wool and purple; ^D but adorn your character with justice, and bind about you the leaves of temperance, and investigate the truth.

The Admonition to the Greeks

^A but having girded oneself, and having donned the petals of temperance, inquire zealously into Christ. For "I am the door," He says somewhere, which he who wishes to understand must learn from the will of God, so that He may suddenly open unto us the doors of the heavens; for indeed the doors of the Word are reasonable, opened by the key of faith. No man has known God, save the Son, and he to whomsoever the Son shall reveal him. And I know that He who opens the door, which was heretofore shut, afterwards reveals the things within, and shows what it was not possible to know before, unless to those journeying through Christ, by whom alone God is beheld. ^B Therefore, do not curiously investigate godless adyta, nor the mouths of chasms, ^C full of impostures and prodigies, nor the Thesprotian cauldron, nor the Cirrhaean tripod, nor the Dodonaean bronze; for the hollow oak and the sand ^D are nothing but devices of error, adorned with empty babble. It is not right, moreover, to desire a reward for one who is being enrolled among men.

CHAPTER II.

Do not, therefore, curiously explore the wicked and impious adyta, nor the yawning deeps of caves, full of impostures and phantasms, nor the Thesprotian cauldron, nor the Cirrhaean tripod, nor the Dodonaean bronze; for the hollow oak—and the sand ^B [is but a vanity]—has been honored, and the oracle there, together with that oak, is withered away, destroyed by myths. ^{C D}

^A The Castalian spring, and the other spring at Colophon, have surely been silenced, and the other prophetic waters have likewise died; and indeed, though late, those things, once empty of inflation, have been refuted, having rotted away together with their own myths. Tell us also of the other divination—or rather, madness—those useless oracles: the Clarian, the Pythian, the Didymean, the Amphiaraus, the Apollo, the Amphilochus; and if you wish, include the prodigy-seers and the augurs, and along with them the interpreters of dreams. Bring with you also, alongside the Pythian, those who practice divination by flour and barley, and the ventriloquists still honored by the multitude; ^B and indeed, let the inner sanctuaries of the Egyptians and the necromancy of the Etruscans be consigned to darkness. These are, in truth, the maddened sophistries of unbelieving men. The accomplices of this witchcraft are goats trained for divination, and crows, which have been taught by men to caw for men. But what if I were to enumerate the mysteries to you? I shall not "dance them out" ^C as they say Alcibiades did, but I will expose, very thoroughly, in the light of the word of truth, the witchcraft hidden within them and the [sophistries of the unbelieving].

^A What if I should also unfold for you your so-called gods, whose mysteries resemble the spectacles of this life for those who are spectators of the truth? The Bacchi perform the orgies of the raging Dionysus, ^B celebrating the madness of those who eat raw flesh, performing the distribution of the parts of the slaughtered victims—crowned with serpents, and crying out with vast howls to "Eva," that very woman through whom error first gained its entry. And since the serpent is, as it were, a certain mark of the Bacchic orgies, consecrated with secret rite, then indeed, if I should accurately ^C interpret the mysteries—for at the accurate pronunciation of the Hebrews, the name Eva, when aspirated, is interpreted as the female serpent—Deo and Cora also became a mystical drama; and Eleusis holds torches for their wandering, their capture, and their mourning. And it seems to me that the orgies and the mysteries must be derived etymologically, some from the ^D anger (orge) of Deo, which occurred toward Zeus, and others from the defilement (mysos) which befell Dionysus; if indeed it is also from...

^A a certain Myuntes, an Attic who, Apollodorus says, perished in the hunt, that your mysteries are celebrated with sepulchral honor. But there is also another way, ^B for you to understand "muthiria" (myths), by the transposition of letters, as "mysteria" (mysteries); for they hunt, if any others do, and those myths of this kind—among the Thracians the most barbarous, among the Phrygians the most senseless, and among the Greeks the most superstitious. May he perish, then, who first introduced this deception to men! Whether it was Dardanus, who taught the mysteries of the Mother of the gods; or Eetion, who devised the orgies and rites of the Samothracians; or that Phrygian Midas, who, having learned the artifice from Odrysus, afterward spread the ingenious deception among his subjects. For the Cyprian islander Cinyras would never have persuaded me, who dared to bring the lewd orgies regarding Aphrodite from the night into the day, being ambitious to deify a city harlot. ^C Others say that Melampus, the son of Amythaon, brought the festivals of Deo from Egypt to Greece, a mourning of which you sing. These I would call the authors of evil, the fathers of ungodly myths and destructive superstition, who sowed the seeds of evil and corruption into life through these mysteries. But now—and it is time—I will expose your very orgies, full of deception and humbug; and if you have been initiated, you will rather laugh at these myths of yours, which you honor. I will speak openly ^D of the hidden things, not ashamed to tell of what you are not ashamed to worship. The one born of foam, then, and born of Cyprus, the friend of Cinyras—I mean Aphrodite, the lover of genitals—because she appeared from the genitals, from those members of Uranus that were cut off, the lewd ones, those after the

^A cutting—the sea, having been violated. As she is a fruit worthy of the lewd parts for you in her mysteries, there is given to those being initiated into this sea-born pleasure, as a memorial of the origin of the seed, a lump of salt and a phallus. A coin 45 the initiates offer to her, as lovers to a courtesan 44. But the mysteries of Deo, and the lascivious unions of Zeus with his mother Demeter, and the wrath—I do not know whether to call it mother or wife, that of Deo, for which sake she is said to be called Brimo—the supplications of Zeus, and the drink of gall, and the pullings of hearts, and the unspeakable rites: these things the Phrygians celebrate for Attis, and Cybele 46, and the Corybantes. And they have noised it abroad that Zeus, having torn off the testicles of the ram, threw them into the lap of Deo, feigning—in order to pay off the false reputation of the violent union—that he had, as it were, castrated himself. The symbols of this initiation, if set forth in abundance, I know will move you to laughter, even if you are not moved to laugh 47, because of the proofs: "I have eaten from the drum, I have drunk from the cymbal; I have carried the sacred vessel, I have crept into the bridal chamber." Are these symbols not an outrage? Are the mysteries not a mockery? But what if I were to add the rest? Demeter is pregnant, and the Maiden is reared; and this same Zeus, the one who begot her 52, unites again with Persephone, his own daughter, after her mother Deo 53, forgetting his former pollution. Zeus is both father and seducer of the Maiden; and he unites with her, having become a serpent—a fact proven by the evidence. The symbol, then, of the mysteries of the Sabazians for those being initiated is the one ^C

^A that represents a god penetrating the bosom: and this god is the serpent, which is drawn through the bosom of those being initiated in solemn rite, a manifest proof of the unbridled lust of Zeus. Pherephatta also brings forth, but the offspring is of taurine form; for, as an idolatrous poet has sung:

... The bull ^B Begat the dragon, and the dragon the bull; The herdsman in the mountain, the hidden goad.

The "herdsman," I suppose, names the goad a whip, which men seized with Bacchic frenzy carry about with certain wands. ^C Shall I also tell you of the flowers gathered by Pherephatta, and her basket, and the rape carried out by Aidoneus, and the chasm of the earth, and the swine of Eubouleus, which are said to have been swallowed up along with the two goddesses? This is the reason why, in the Thesmophoria, they cast swine into the pits, in the Megarian tongue. This myth the women in various cities celebrate with a solemn festival, the Thesmophoria, the Scirrhophoria, in many ways acting out the tragic rape of Pherephatta. For the mysteries of Dionysus are utterly inhuman; for he, while still a boy, with the Curetes dancing in arms around him, having been ^D deceived by the Titans with childish baubles, these very Titans tore him to pieces while he was still an infant.

^A As the poet of this rite, the Thracian Orpheus, says: *A top, and a wheel, and wanton playthings, And the fair golden apples from the clear-voiced Hesperides.*

And it would not be useless, I think, for the judgment and perception of all, to set forth here the useless symbols of this secret rite: the knucklebone, the ball, the top, the mirrors, the tuft of wool. Now, Athena snatched away the heart of Dionysus, and was called Pallas from the *pallein* (the throbbing or beating) of the heart. The Titans, however, who had torn him to pieces, set a cauldron upon a tripod, and, having cast in the limbs of Dionysus, they boiled them first; afterward, they pierced them with skewers and held them over Vulcan. But Jupiter, appearing later—if he was a god—perhaps having smelled the odor of the roasting flesh, which your gods confess to be the portion which they themselves have received, ^B punishes the Titans with a thunderbolt, and entrusts the limbs of Dionysus to his son Apollo to bury. And he, not disobeying Zeus, carries them to Mount Parnassus and deposits the mangled corpse. But if you wish to contemplate the orgies of the Corybantes, these same ones, having killed their third brother, covered the head of the corpse with a purple cloth, and, having performed funeral rites, they buried it, carrying it upon a brazen shield, under the foothills of Olympus. And these are the mysteries, in a word, the murders and the tombs.

^A And the priests of these, whom they call Anactoteles 71 (those whose concern it is to invoke), also add prodigies to the calamity, forbidding celery to be placed upon the table. 79 For they think that the celery has grown from the blood of the Corybantic murder that flowed down. And just as surely the Thesmophoriazusae are careful not to eat the grains of a pomegranate, thinking that the pomegranates have sprouted from the drops of Dionysus’ blood which fell upon the ground. And calling the Corybants by the name of Cabiri, they herald a 75 Cabiric end. For those two fratricides, having taken up the chest in which the privy parts of Dionysus were stored, brought it down into Tyrrhenia, merchants of glorious merchandise; and there, being exiles, they resided 74, ^B and imparted that most precious instruction of piety, the privy parts and the chest, to the Tyrrhenians to worship. For which reason it is not without plausibility that some wish Dionysus to be called "Attis," 75 as being bereft of his privy parts. And what is to be wondered at if the barbarian Tyrrhenians are initiated into such disgraceful 76 sufferings, when even the Athenians and the rest of Greece, I am ashamed even to mention it, are full of shame concerning the mythology of Deo? For Deo, wandering as she searched for her daughter, the Kore, around Eleusis (and this is a place in 78 Attica), becomes weary and sits 79 sorrowful on a well. This is forbidden to those being initiated even now, so that those who have been perfected may not seem 80 to imitate the mourning goddess. ^C And at that time the earth-born ruled Eleusis; their names were Baubo , and Dysaules, and Triptolemus; and furthermore Eumolpus and Eubouleus. The swine-herd Eubouleus...

and the shepherd Eumolpus, and Triptolemus the neatherd, from whom flourished at Athens the house of the Eumolpidae, and that sacred race of the Kerykes ^B, the hierophants. And indeed (for I will not refrain from mentioning it), Baubo, having entertained Demeter, offered her a potion; but as she refused to take it and would not drink (for she was in mourning), Baubo, being much grieved, acting as if she had been neglected, bared her private parts and displayed them to the goddess. Demeter was delighted at the sight; and at last she received the drink, pleased by the spectacle. These are the secret mysteries of the Athenians; these too are what Orpheus records. I will cite to you the very verses of Orpheus, that you may have the mystagogue himself ^C as a witness to this shamelessness.

She spoke, and lifted her robes, and showed All the shape of her body; and the child Iacchus was there, Who with his hand, laughing, threw himself underneath the robes of Baubo. When the goddess smiled, and smiled in her heart, She received the bright vessel in which the *kykeon* was.

^D [alt-version omitted]

Pausanias ^C remembers this, mentioned in part in his *Attica* (p. 56) and in part in his *Corinth* (p. 57). For when Eumolpus had died, a younger herald was left of the children, whom the heralds themselves say was the son of Aglaurus, daughter of Cecrops, and Hermes, and not of Eumolpus. They name him the hierophant, and Pluto the torch-bearer, and Theodorus the herald, while the others are the associates, the initiates, and the epoptae, in violation of the laws and the customs established by the Eumolpidae, the Kerykes, and the priests from Eleusis.

For in truth, since I will not refrain from mentioning it, Orpheus taught you to practice and sing the poems, and the same [taught you] to be initiated. The boy Iacchus was a young child, and he reveals the mysterious significance. He points out everything; for the *kykeon* is in it, which is the drink in the mixture containing cheese and barley meal. *Kykeon*, a potion composed of many herbs, wine and honey.

There is no critic, whether skilled or unskilled, from the common people or the nobility, who has not labored over this passage. And first of all the eminent man Paulus Leopardus, after having long turned himself every way, being in no way ambitious, at last says that these mystical matters seem to him, no less than these very rites that the Thracian seer here handed down, to be obscure and involved. For why does no one, not even Arnobius himself, who rendered these verses into Latin, or perhaps some poet who had translated the Orphic works into Latin, mention Iacchus? He remembers his age, he remembers his shame, which Arnobius himself attributes to Baubo. For behold for you the verses:

So she spoke, and at once she pulled up her garment from below, And exposed to his eyes the parts formed by the groin. Which Baubo, shaking with her hollow hand—for it had a childish Face—claps and handles them in a friendly way. Then the goddess, fastening the orbs of her august light, Softened her mind a little and put away her sorrows.

^A Thus she spoke, and set aside her veils, and showed all those parts of the body which are not seemly to reveal; and it was a child, Iacchus, that she clasped and handled in a playful way, beneath the folds of Baubo's garment. Then the goddess, when she smiled—smiled in her heart—received the variegated vessel, in which the mixed potion, the *cyceon*, lay.

When Baubo had entertained Deo, she reaches the *cyceon* out to her. But she refusing to take or drink it (for she was in mourning), Baubo, who was in great pain, as if she were being treated with contempt, pulls up her clothes and displays the parts to the goddess. And Deo, the goddess, is delighted at the sight; and with difficulty, at last, receives the drink, having been gladdened.

On the Symbol of the Eleusinian Mysteries

^A Arnobius gives a paraphrase rather than a strict translation. And yet, behold, there is nothing about Iacchus. That whole drama, foul and mysterious, is enacted by Baubo and Ceres. There is nowhere the slightest mention of Iacchus. What shall I say of the verses? Arnobius himself, a little before, pursues the smallest things with his own words, one by one, and he does not so much expound the Orphic verses as dilate upon them. He returns to the grieving goddess, he says, and among those common things, by which it is customary to break and soften sorrows, he reveals himself: and he shows all those places of shame by uncovering the groin. And the goddess fixes her eyes upon the pubic region, and feeds upon a kind of unheard-of consolation. Then, having become more cheerful through laughter, she takes the potion which she had spurned and drinks it: and what the modesty of Baubo could not long express, the obscenity of the disgraceful act extorted. ^C But why do I speak of Arnobius? Clement himself interprets the whole story, and, as if in strict prose, sets forth the Orphic verses. Did Clement himself, therefore, make mention of Iacchus? Nothing of the sort. He says, *at the sight*. Nowhere here is there an Iacchus, nowhere is he called a boy, nowhere does he move his hand wantonly. Clearly, religious men have corrupted this verse, and, I believe, they were ashamed of the words; which were nevertheless modest, if one compares them with those of Arnobius. Nay, with a preface of honor, they are brought forth by the poet, who was appointed over shameful—and, as he says, disgraceful—sacred rites. There is no foulness in the words, but in the sacred act of Baubo, there is the utmost and most extreme indecency, which, had not those most holy men wished it to be understood, Arnobius never would have exposed the whole shameful act and the obscenity of the matter with so many words. ^D Without doubt, the Greek poet had written in this way, and so Arnobius reads it:

As she spoke she set aside her veils, she showed all Those parts of the body not seemly to reveal, the childish flower; She clasped and handled him in a playful way, beneath her folds, Baubo. Then the goddess smiled, smiled in her heart, She received the variegated vessel, in which the mixed potion lay.

For in the first verse we have followed Eusebius, in whom it is read thus, which even Sylburgius did not omit. For to pull back, even when stated absolutely, is always foul for women. In the second verse, he has used an elegant and modest ellipsis. For when they were relating something with a preface of honor, they used these words: thus Dionysius of Halicarnassus called human remains "a filth not fit to be mentioned." Thus Orpheus, quite elegantly and modestly (for this is what must be understood), called that part—not the obscene part through which, to speak without any reproach with Arnobius, one is wont to procreate female offspring and acquire the name of the race—but that shameless form which Baubo had devised to elicit laughter. Arnobius calls them "things fashioned in the groin." Both understand the same thing. [alt-version omitted] 88 The symbol of the Eleusinian mysteries 89. Arnobius seems to have translated it thus: "In short, the symbols which, when asked..."

those initiated in the sacred rites reply: I have fasted, I have drunk the spiced drink (cyceon), I have taken from the basket; having wrought, I have placed into the wicker bin, and from the wicker bin into the basket." Excellent sights, and worthy of a god! And the mysteries are indeed worthy of the night, and of fire, and of the great-hearted—or rather, the empty-headed—people of the Erechthidae ^A, and of the other Greeks as well, who await after death things they do not even hope for! To them ^B Heraclitus the Ephesian prophesies—to the night-walkers, the magi, the bacchants, the maenads, the initiates—to these he threatens what follows after death; to these he prophesies fire. For the mysteries usually accounted for among men are celebrated unholily ^C. Therefore, their law and belief are empty; and the dragon's mysteries are a deception, observing as they do those truly uninitiated initiations, and approaching the unhallowed rites with a counterfeit piety. What, then, are these mystic baskets? For it is necessary to strip bare their holy and unspeakable things. Are they not sesame cakes ^D, and pyramids, and balls of wool, and cakes with many navels, and grains of salt, and a serpent, the

ORGION (or holy rite) ...

of Dionysus Bassareus? And besides these, are there not pomegranates, and heart-shaped cakes, and rods, and ivy? And to these, cakes and poppies? These are their holy things. And furthermore, the secret ^B symbols of Themis: oregano, a lamp, a sword, a woman's comb; which is, to speak elegantly and mystically, a woman's privy part. O the manifest shamelessness! Long ago, night was the cloak of pleasure for men who were self-restrained—a silent night (2). But now, for those being initiated, the holy night of licentiousness is a night of speech; and the fire—the torchlight—exposes the passions (3). Extinguish the fire, O hierophant! Be ashamed, torchbearer, of your lights! The mysteries are exposed to the night, and let what belongs to the darkness be honored in darkness; do not uncover the *orgia* with light (4). The fire (5) does not pretend; it is ordered to expose and to punish. These are the mysteries of the atheists. And I rightly call these men atheists, who have ignored God who is truly Being, but shamelessly worship a child torn apart by Titans, and a wailing woman, and parts of the body which are truly unspeakable because of shame; being involved in a double atheism (6): first, in that they do not know God, not recognizing Him who is truly God; and second and additionally, by this new error, they regard those who do not exist as existing, and name as gods those who are not truly existing—or rather, not even existing at all, but who have only attained the name (7). For this reason ^C the Apostle also rebukes us, saying: "And you were strangers to the covenants of promise, having no hope, and without God in the world." Great and many good things befall the king of the Scythians—whoever this Anacharsis may have been!—who shot down his own citizen because he was mimicking the initiation of the Mother of the Gods, performed among the Cyzicenians, beating a drum and making a cymbal resound like a vagrant mendicant hanging around his neck (8), as he held him to be unmanly and ^D acting in a womanish way. ... Two evils my people have done; they have forsaken me, the fountain of living water, and have dug for themselves broken cisterns.

^A Well may it go with that Scythian king, by whatever name he was called, who shot to death with arrows a countryman of his own, who was imitating in Scythia the rites of the Mother of the gods, which were performed by the Cyzicenes, for he was beating a drum and making a sound with a cymbal hanging from his neck like some *menagyrtes*, for he was corrupting the Scythians with Greek effeminacy and introducing unmanly arts among them. I marvel, therefore—and I cannot remain silent—that they have called those men atheists who lived with sobriety and wisdom and had discerned more sharply than the rest of mankind the error regarding these gods: I mean Euhemeros of Agrigentum, and Nicanor of Cyprus, and Diagoras, and Hippon of Melos, and that man from Cyrene in addition to these, whose name was Theodorus, and many others who, even if they did not perceive the Truth itself, yet suspected the error; which is no small spark—or seed—of right judgment for Truth ^B to spring up from. 10 Even those who by their way of life were Christians, though they were thought to be atheists—as, for example, were Socrates and Heraclitus among the Greeks, and others like them. 11 But, for the sake of these men, 12—for one must in no way hide it—it occurs to me to wonder by what manner they who had lived soberly and had discerned more keenly than the rest of men the error regarding these gods, have been branded as atheists; even if they did not comprehend the Truth itself, they at least suspected the error: which is no small spark 13 of right judgment unto Truth. 14 Of whom, one... ^{C D} [index: entries preserved]

gave command to the Egyptians: "If you deem them gods, do not mourn or lament them; but if you do mourn them, no longer think them to be gods." And another, having taken a Hercules made of wood (for it chanced, as is likely, that he was cooking something at home), said, "Come now, Hercules, it is high time for you, just as you formerly served Eurystheus, to serve us also in this thirteenth labor, and prepare this for Diagoras," and he placed him into the fire as a log. Impiety and superstition are clearly the extremes of ignorance; one must strive to remain outside of both. Do you not see the hierophant of truth, Moses, commanding that a man with crushed testicles or one who has been castrated ^C, and furthermore one born of a harlot, shall not enter the assembly? By the former he signifies the atheistic way of life, deprived of divine and generative power; while by the latter, the third, he points to him who, in place of the one true God, ascribes to himself many false gods, just as the one born of a harlot, through ignorance of his true father, ascribes to himself many fathers. Now there was formerly an ancient and native communion of men with God, which, though obscured for a long time by ignorance, suddenly burst forth, as it were, from the darkness and shone out; as that which was said by someone:

"Do you see this sublime, this infinite aether, And that which holds the earth in its moist arms?" ^D

And that:

"O vehicle of earth, having your seat upon the earth, Whoever you may be, hard to discern."

And all other such things as the sons of poets sing.

^A But erroneous and misguided opinions, ^B truly destructive, have caused man, that heavenly plant born for the contemplation of heaven, to turn aside from his celestial life and have prostrated him upon the earth, persuading him to cling to earthly creatures. For some, deceived by the contemplation of the heavens and taking only their eyes as their counselors, upon seeing the motions of the stars, were straightway seized with admiration and deified them, calling the stars gods from their running (“thein”); and they worshipped the sun, as do the Indians, and the moon, as do the Phrygians. Others, because they sustained their life with the fertile fruits of earthly plants, called the grain Ceres, as do the Athenians, and the vine Bacchus, as do the Thebans. Others, stung by the conscience of their own wickedness, attributed divinity to their punishments and calamities. And hence the poets of the stage have invented the Furies and the Eumenides, and other expiatory gods, the avengers and punishers of evils. Nor have there been wanting philosophers who, following the example of the poets, have fashioned images of your passions, such as Fear, Love, Joy, and Hope; just as that ancient Epimenides set up altars to Contumely and Impudence at Athens. Others, again, arise from the very things themselves, are fashioned with a bodily shape, and are referred to the gods: such as those goddesses of the Athenians, Justice, and Clotho, and Lachesis, and Atropos, and Fate, and Auxo, and Thallo. To these I would add a sixth method of introducing these frauds and increasing the number of gods, according to which they number the twelve gods; to whom are also to be referred those whose lineage Hesiod sang in his Theogony, and whatever Homer discoursed concerning the gods. There still remains a last one (for there are altogether seven methods) which has flowed from the divine benefits bestowed upon men. For when they perceive God, from whom good things are dispensed to them— ^C And regarding the saying that God might be so called from being everywhere and running around, Clement, in *Stromateis* IV, page 555, wishes it to be said of the immutable course of the good, by which good things always flow. Compare Theophilus of Antioch, not far from the beginning of Book I of his *Ad Autolycum*.

[Regarding 26] They attribute retributions to the gods, worshipping even the calamities themselves. Not badly.

[Regarding 27] They are accounted “prostropaioi” (turning away), or the same as those who are the “palamnaioi” (murderous) or “alastores” (avenging). Suidas: a murderer, or one bound by a sin. And Zeus “Palamnaios” is he who punishes such people; and “Prostropaios” is he who turns the pollution upon them. Palamnaios, Palamnaios, Prostropaios.

[Regarding 28] That there was a site not only for an altar, Cicero mentions in *De legibus* II: “That vicious thing at Athens, which, after the crime of Cylon was expiated, at the persuasion of Epimenides of Crete, they made a temple of Contumely and Impudence.” But indeed, as Pausanias reports in his *Attica*, “There are stones of silver, upon which those who are defendants in the Areopagite court stand—and also the accusers—the one they call Contumely, the other Impudence.” In which place, for “innocence,” mistakenly substituted, the words of Cicero and Clement make it manifest.

not understanding God, they invented certain saviors—the Dioscuri, and Hercules who averts evil, and Esculapius the physician. These are indeed the slippery and pernicious departures from the truth, which drag man down from heaven and push him into the abyss. But I wish to show you clearly ^A who and what the gods themselves are, so that you may at last cease from your error and return again to heaven. For we also were once "children of wrath" (29), just like the others; but God, who is rich in mercy, out of the great love with which He loved us, even when we were already dead through our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ. For the Word lives, and having been buried with Christ, is raised up together with God. But those who are still unbelieving are called children of wrath, as those who are being nourished for the wrath of God. But we are no longer the fledglings of wrath, we who have been torn away from error and are flying toward the truth. Therefore, we who were once sons of lawlessness have now, through the philanthropy of the Word, become sons of God; and your own poet, Empedocles of Agrigentum, assails you:

Therefore, afflicted by troublesome vices, You will never relieve your soul of bitter sorrows.

For most of the things related about your gods are fables and inventions; and as for those which are assumed to have really happened, these are recorded regarding men who were shameful and who lived licentiously. ^B

With pride you wander, and having left the straight Path, you have departed into that which is covered with thorns And briers. Why do you wander? Cease, foolish mortals, Leave behind the darkness of night, and touch the light. ^C

^A

The prophetic and poetic Sibyl enjoins these things upon us; and the truth also enjoins them, stripping the crowd of gods of those astonishing and terrifying masks, and refuting the exaltations by citing the synonymies of names. For example, there are those who record three Jupiters: one of Aether, in Arcadia; and the other two as sons of Saturn, one of whom was in Crete, and the other again in Arcadia. ^B And there are those who posit five Minervas: the first, the Athenian daughter of Vulcan; the second, the Egyptian, daughter of the Nile; the third, the daughter of Saturn, to whom the invention of the art of war is attributed; the fourth, the daughter of Jupiter, whom the Messenians have called Coryphasia from her mother; and above all, the daughter of Pallas and the Titaness Oceanus; who, having impiously slaughtered her own father, adorned herself with his skin as if it were a sheepskin.

Indeed, Aristotle also lists the Apollos: the first, [the son] of Vulcan and Minerva (here Minerva is no longer a virgin); the second, in Crete, [the son] of Corybas; the third, [the son] of Jupiter; and the fourth, the Arcadian, [the son] of Silenus (this one is called Nomios among the Arcadians); in addition to these, he recounts the Libyan, [the son] of Ammon; and Didymus the grammarian adds a sixth to these, the one born of Magnes. ^C But even now, how many Apollos do we have? They are numberless, mortal, and are certain mercenary men, who are called similar to those mentioned before. Why should I tell you of the many Asclepiuses, or the Mercuries who are enumerated, or the Vulcans who are spoken of in myths? Would I not seem superfluous, overwhelming your ears with this multitude of names? But their homelands, and their arts, and their lives, and furthermore, their tombs, prove that they were human. Mars, at any rate, who is held in such high honor by the poets:

"Mars, Mars, bane of mortals, blood-stained, stormer of walls." ^D

Against the Greeks

(34) The five Minervas: Petrus Victorius expounds on this more broadly from Cicero, *Var. lect.*, lib. 11, cap. 15. SYLBURG. — Julius Firmicus, *De errore prof. relig.*: Antiquity hands down to us who read that there were five Minervas. One is the daughter of Vulcan who founded Athens, whom a rustic crowd accompanied from country places to the order of urban society. There was another in Egypt, daughter of King Nile, mistress of the weaving art. The third, truly, was born to Saturn as father. But they record that this woman was a man-slayer; for she never maintained the modesty of the female sex, but was always occupied with arms, the noise of battles, and the bloody pursuits of wars. The fourth was the daughter of the Cretan king Jupiter, who gave birth to a child after her father was killed. The fifth, [the daughter] of Pallas, etc., which will follow presently.

(36) Coryphasia: See Petrus Victorius, lib. 11, cap. 15, who brings forward the passage of Pausanias from the Messeniaca, which is in agreement with Clement. But as to the fact that the fifth Minerva clothed herself in her father’s skin as if it were an aegis, Julius Firmicus, cap. *De errore prof. relig.*: The fifth Minerva was born of Pallas as father and a Titaness as mother; she, being named after her father, is called Pallas by men. This parricidal madness, at the prompting of fury and insane rashness, slaughtered her father Pallas with a cruel death. And not content with the simple death of her father, in order that she might enjoy her evils longer, and that she might triumph more cruelly over the death of her father, she adorned herself with the spoils of his body. Cicero, *De nat.*: The fifth is that of Pallas, who is said to have killed her father when he was attempting to violate her virginity, to whom they ascribe winged sandals. Isacius Tzetzes, in *Lycophronem*: Pallas, who was her own father, being winged, she killed him, as he was using violence against her, and she wrapped herself in his skin as an aegis, and fitted his wings to her own feet. COLLECT.

^A That fickle and hostile one, as Epicharmus says, was a Spartan; but Sophocles knows him to be a Thracian; and others, an Arcadian. And Homer states that he was bound for thirteen months:

And Mars sustained it, when Otus and the courageous Ephialtes, Sons of Aloeus, bound him in a mighty bond; In a bronze jar he was bound for thirteen months.

The Carians do well, who sacrifice dogs to him! And let not the Scythians ^B cease from sacrificing asses, as Apollodorus says, and Callimachus: Phoebus is invoked by the sacrifices of asses among the Hyperboreans. The same writer says elsewhere: Fat sacrifices of asses delight Phoebus.

And Vulcan, whom Jupiter hurled from Olympus, from the divine threshold, when he fell into Lemnos, worked in bronze, being maimed in his feet, … and his slender shanks were frail.

You have also a physician, not a bronze-worker only, among the gods. And the physician was greedy; Aesculapius was his name. Let your own poet, the Boeotian Pindar, be witness for you: For it turned even him with great ^C gain… ^D [index: entries preserved]

Appearing in his hands, to bring a man Back from the dead and capture him. The son of Cronus therefore, having cast ^A The lightning bolt with both his hands, took away The breath from his breast, And quickly the burning thunderbolt brought death.

And Euripides:

He therefore lies struck by lightning in the territory of Cynosura. But Philochorus says ^B that Neptune is worshipped as a physician in Teno, and that Saturn is established in Sicily, and was buried there. Patrocles the Thurian, and the younger Sophocles in three tragedies, give an account regarding the Dioscuri; and these Dioscuri were mortal men, if Homer is to be considered worthy of belief: ...For the life-giving earth already held them, In Lacedaemon, there in their dear fatherland.

Let him also come forward who wrote the Cypriac ^C poems: Castor indeed is mortal, and death is fated for him: But Pollux is immortal, Scion of Ares.

This he indeed imagined in a poetic manner; but Homer is more trustworthy than him, speaking about both the Dioscuri; and furthermore, he proves even Hercules to be a phantom: For [he saw] the phantom of Hercules, who knew of great deeds. ^D

So Homer himself knows Hercules to be a mortal man. And the philosopher Hieronymus...

describing his physical condition, relates that he was small, with bristling hair, and firm of muscle. Dicaearchus, however, says he was square-built, muscular, dark, with an aquiline nose, blue-grey eyes, and thick hair. And this man, indeed, after he had lived fifty-two years, ended his life, having been cremated on the pyre at Oeta. ^A Now, as for the Muses, whom Alcander says are the daughters of Jupiter and Mnemosyne, the rest of the poets and chroniclers deify and worship them; and indeed, even entire cities have temples dedicated to these very Muses; yet Megaclo, the daughter of Macar, bought these women, who were actually slave-girls. This Macar was king of the Lesbians and was constantly at odds with his wife. Megaclo grieved intensely on her mother’s account: and what was she to do? So, she bought these women as slave-girls—they being many in number—and called them "Mysae" according to the Aeolian dialect ^B. She taught them how to sing and to play the cithara, accompanying the old stories with music. These women, playing the cithara constantly and singing beautifully, would soothe Macar and calm his anger. In memory of which benefaction, Megaclo, to show gratitude on her mother’s behalf, dedicated bronze statues to them and ordered that they be honored in all the temples. And such are the Muses; this story is told by Myrsilus the Lesbian. Hear, then, of the loves of your gods, and the paradoxical mythologies regarding their incontinence, and their wounds, and bonds, and laughter, and battles; and furthermore, their slaveries, and ^C banquets; and their embraces, and tears, and passions, and shameless pleasures. Call for me Neptune and the whole chorus which has been corrupted by him: Amphitrite, Amymone, Alope, Melanippe, Alcyone, Hippothoe, Chione, and the other thousands; and though they were so many, the lust of your Neptune was not yet sated. Call for me also Apollo; he is Phoebus, and a chaste prophet, and a good counselor. But Sterope does not say these things, nor Aethusa, nor Arsinoe, nor Zeuxippe, nor Prothoe, nor Marpissa, ^D nor even Hypsipyle. For Daphne alone escaped both the prophet and his violation. Let Jupiter himself also come forward, above all the rest,

^A in your estimation the father of men and gods, who was so prone to lust that he desired all women, and satisfied his desire on all of them. He was filled with women, no less than the he-goat of Thmuis ^B is with goats. And as for you, Homer, I admire your poems:

He spoke, and the son of Cronus nodded with his dark brows; The ambrosial locks of the king waved From his immortal head, and he made great Olympus tremble.

You paint a venerable Zeus, Homer, and attribute to him a respected nod. But if you were only to display the cestus, man, the god himself is convicted and his hair is disgraced. To what degree of wantonness did that Zeus proceed, who spent so many nights in pleasure with Alcmena? For those nine nights were not long to the intemperate one; indeed, his whole life was but a short span for his lust, so that he might sow for us a god to avert evil. Hercules was the son of Zeus, truly the son of Zeus, born from that long night: he who completed those twelve labors only after a long time, but defiled the fifty daughters of Thespius in one single night, having become at once an adulterer and the bridegroom of so many virgins; it is not without cause, therefore, that the poets call him "wretched" and "wicked." It would be long and superfluous to recount all his adulteries and the defilement of boys. For the gods who are among you did not even abstain from boys; one of them ^C pursuing Hylas, another Hyacinthus, another Pelops, another Chrysippus, another Ganymede. Let your women bow down to these.

^A Let your wives pray that their husbands may be of such a character, and so temperate, that they may be like the gods, and pursue the same things. Let your sons be accustomed to revere such beings, so that, by taking the gods as an execrable example of fornication, they may grow up to be men. But perhaps only the male gods among them are carried away by sexual desire: ^B yet the goddesses, according to Homer, remained at home in modesty, the goddesses blushing for decency’s sake to see Venus caught in adultery. But they live even more licentiously, and surrender themselves to adulteries: Aurora with Tithonus, Luna with Endymion, Nereis with Aeacus, Thetis with Peleus; and Ceres with Iasion, and Proserpina with Adonis. And Venus, having suffered disgrace on account of Mars, went over to Cinyras, and married Anchises; and she lay in wait for Phaethon, and loved Adonis; and she contended with the ox-eyed goddess; and when, for the sake of the apple, the goddesses had put off their garments, they yielded themselves to the shepherd to judge which of them was beautiful. ^C Come now, let us briefly survey your contests, and abolish these funeral assemblies—the Isthmian, Nemean, Pythian, and, in addition to these, the Olympian. At Pytho, for instance, the Pythian dragon is worshipped, and the assembly of the serpent is proclaimed by the name of the Pythia. At the Isthmus, however, the sea cast up a miserable and discarded corpse, and the Isthmian games lament Melicertes. In the Nemean games, similarly, when another boy, Ar che-

^Achemera was buried, his funeral games were called Nemea. Pisa, too, among you, O entire race of the Greeks, is the burial mound of the Phrygian charioteer; and as for Olympia, that tribute to the dead Pelops, Zeus of Phidias lays claim to it. It is reasonable, therefore, to think that your mysteries, just like your oracles, were funeral games established for the sake of the dead: and both of these have become public rites. ^B Now, the mysteries at Agra, as well as those celebrated in the Attic village of Alimus, are restricted to Athens. But the contests and the phalli, which are consecrated to Bacchus, are a degradation of life and are an almost universal shame and scandal to the world. For Bacchus, burning with the desire to descend into the underworld, did not know the way; a certain Prosymnus promises to show it to him, but ^C not without a reward. That reward was in truth hardly honorable, yet honorable enough for Bacchus. It was of a venereal nature, the favor which Bacchus was asked to grant. Therefore, as the request was not repugnant to the god, it was immediately set forth: and he promised upon oath that, if he should return, he would do what he desired. Having learned the way, he went and returned again; but he did not find Prosymnus, for he was dead. Bacchus, wishing to discharge his debt to his lover, rushed to his monument and performed the act. Cutting a branch of a fig tree, as it happened, he shaped it like a virile member, and sitting upon the branch, he fulfilled his promise to the dead man. As a memorial of this passion, phalli are set up in the cities in honor of Bacchus. For were they not conducting a procession for Bacchus and singing a song ^D of the most shameless kind in praise of the pudenda, it would be all over, says Heraclitus. This is the same as Pluto and Bacchus, for whose sake they rave and celebrate the Bacchic rites; not so much, I think, through intoxication of the body, as through the shameful hierophancy of debauchery. It is logical, therefore, that such are your gods, who have been slaves to their own passions. But also beneath what is called the servile yoke—that of the Helots, as they are called among the Lacedaemonians—Apollo entered into servitude to Admetus in Pherae, Heracles to Omphale in Sardis; and Poseidon and Apollo served Laomedon, just like a worthless servant, not even being able, it seems, to obtain their freedom.

^A At that time, they even rebuilt the walls of Ilium for the Phrygian. And Homer is not ashamed to show Athena holding a golden lamp in her hands as she leads the way for Odysseus. And we have read of Aphrodite, like some shameless little handmaid, setting a footstool for Helen before the adulterer, in order to lure her into intercourse. For Panyasis, in addition to these, reports that many other gods served men, writing as follows:

Ceres endured, and the glorious ^B Miphæstus endured, Poseidon endured, and Apollo of the silver bow endured, To serve a mortal man for a year; And the fierce Mars also endured, compelled by his father,

and what follows thereafter. It is therefore logical that I should now show you that these gods of yours, who languish with love and are tormented by ^C perturbations of soul, are subject to all the other passions which men are accustomed to suffer; for they had a mortal body. And Homer indicates this quite clearly when he introduces Aphrodite crying out grievously on account of wounds, and relates that Mars himself, the god of war, was wounded in the flank by Diomedes. Polemo, moreover, relates that Athena too was wounded by Ornytus. Furthermore, Homer says that Pluto was shot with an arrow by Heracles: and Panyasis relates the same concerning the Elean Augeas; indeed, the same Panyasis reports that even Hera, the goddess of marriage, was wounded by this same Heracles in sandy Pylos. And Sosibius relates that even the hand of Heracles himself was wounded by the sons of Hippocoon. Now if there are wounds, there is also blood; for the *ichor* of the poets is more repulsive even than blood, as *ichor* is understood to be putrid blood. It is necessary, therefore, to introduce cures and nourishment for them, of which they are in need. ^D Hence their tables, and drinking bouts, and laughter, and sexual intercourse—things that men would not use for procreation, nor would they be needing sleep, if they were immortal, and lacking nothing, and exempt from old age. And Zeus himself partook of a human table among the Ethiopians, but in an inhuman and impious manner when he was entertained by Lycaon the Arcadian. For he was gorged on human flesh, though unwittingly; for God perceived that Lycaon the Arcadian, his host, had slaughtered his own son,

(whose name was Nyctimus) and set it before him to eat. This is that famous ^A Jupiter, the fatidical, the hospitable, the protector of suppliants, the merciful, the panomphaean, the avenger of crimes; or rather, he is unjust, lawless, flagitious, impious, inhuman, a ravisher, a seducer, an adulterer, a lecher. But perhaps he was like that only at the time when he was a man. Now, however, it seems to me that your fables themselves have grown old: Jupiter is no longer a dragon, nor a swan, nor an eagle, nor a lecherous man; the god no longer flies, he does not practice pederasty, he does not love, he does not use force, although there are still many beautiful women, more comely than Leda and more vigorous than Semele; and many young men who, in the beauty of their form and the elegance of their manners, surpass the Phrygian cowherd. Where then is that eagle now? where tell me, is the swan? where, moreover, is Jupiter himself? He has grown old along with his wings: for we do not read that he has repented of his amours or learned temperance. But this fable is finally exposed: Leda is dead, the swan is dead, the eagle is dead. Seek your Jove; do not search the heavens, but the earth. The Cretan Callimachus will show you, in his Hymns, with whom he is buried:

... For the Cretans fashioned a tomb, O King, for you.

For Jupiter is dead, lest you be troubled, just as Leda, as the swan, as the eagle, as the man given to love, as the dragon. Nay, even those who are imbued with this depraved superstition seem at last to have detected their own errors concerning the gods, albeit unwillingly and almost ^B reluctantly:

For you are not from an ancient oak, nor from a rock, But you are of the race of men.

Yet straightway they will be found to be oaks themselves; and as for the rest, ^C indeed they fashioned a tomb for you, O King; but you did not die, for you are everlasting. But still, tell me your race, whence you are, for you are not from an ancient oak. ^D Now, when men led a nomadic life and lived in the mountains, and believed in the hollows of oaks and rocks, exposing their newborn, their dearest ones, out of poverty, hence the rumor spread from those who found the abandoned infants, that men were born of oaks and stones.

^A Staphylus records that a certain Agamemnon is honored as Zeus in Sparta. Phanocles, in his *Amores* (or *The Beautiful*), records that Agamemnon, the king of the Greeks, founded a temple of Aphrodite Argynnis in memory of his beloved Argynnus. The Arcadians honor Artemis, who is called 'Aπαγχoμένῃ (the Strangled One), as Callimachus says in his *Aetia*; and another Artemis is honored as Condylitis in Methymna. There is also, as Sosibius says, a temple of another Artemis, Podagra, in Laconia. Polemon knows of a statue of Apollo Chias ("the gaping one"), and another of Apollo Opsophagus ("the eater of dainties"), which is honored in Elis. There, the Eleans offer sacrifices to Zeus Apomuios ("the averter of flies"); the Romans likewise offer sacrifices to Hercules Apomuios, as well as to Fever and Fear, whom they also enroll among the companions of Hercules. I pass over the Argives, who worship Aphrodite the Grave-Robber; ^B (the Argives and the Spartans also worship Artemis Chelytis, since they call coughing "chelyttein"). Do you think to ask where these things have been copied for you? They are brought together from the citations you yourselves provide; you do not even seem to recognize your own writers, whom I call as witnesses to convict you of your unbelief; you have filled your whole, truly unlivable life, O miserable ones, with godless mockery. Is not Zeus bald in Argos, and another avenger in Cyprus?

My bedfellow, lord of a slave-girl bride,

Zeus will be called by the deceitful Spartans.

^A And do the Syracusans not offer sacrifices to Aphrodite Peribasia, and to Callipyga, whom the poet Nicander has somewhere called "fat-rumped"? I pass over in silence Dionysus the "choiropsales" (sower of sow-parts), whom the Sicyonians worship, having appointed him over the female organs, the steward of shame, and the honored author of insolence. Such are their gods for them; and such are they themselves, playing among the gods, or rather mocking and insulting even themselves. And how much better are the Egyptians, who, village by village and city by city, have honored the irrational animals, than the Greeks, who worship such gods! For the former, even if they are beasts, are at least not adulterous, not lecherous, and do not hunt after pleasure against nature at all. But as for the others, why is there need to speak any further, ^B since it has been sufficiently demonstrated? But yet, the Egyptians, whom I just now mentioned, are scattered according to the various religious observances of their localities. The Syenites worship the fish called the *phagrus*; those who inhabit Elephantine, another fish, the *maotes*; the Oxyrhynchites likewise worship the fish named after their own region. Furthermore, the Heracleopolitans worship the ichneumon; the Saïtes and Thebans, the sheep; the Lycopolitans, the wolf; the Cynopolitans, the dog; the Memphites, Apis; and the Mendesians, the goat. But you, who are in all things better than the Egyptians (I hesitate to say worse!), who are laughing daily at the Egyptians, do you ^C not cease, showing yourselves to be such as they are concerning irrational animals? For the Thessalians among you have honored the storks because of their familiarity, and the Thebans the weasels because of the birth of Heracles. Why do you not also deem these things sacred? Even those inhabiting Elephantine worship those they call the *maotae*. For because they worship the Oxyrhynchus fish, they fear lest the hook might be stained if an Oxyrhynchus fell upon it, and the Syenites fear for the *phagrus*. As for those who worship Apis among the Egyptians and the Mendesian goat—and the Thebans also, although they are Greeks, as I hear, worship the weasel—

^A do you not daily treat them as a laughingstock, seeing as you are yourselves caught up in such brute animals? For among you, the Thessalians have worshipped storks, because it was a custom received from their ancestors. The Thebans, moreover, adore weasels, because a weasel once assisted Hercules at his birth. What then? Are not the Thessalians said to render divine worship to ants, because they have learned from fables that Zeus, having taken the form of an ant, consorted with Eurymedusa, the daughter of Cletor, and begat Myrmidon? Polemo, however, relates that those who inhabit the Troad venerate the local mice, which they call *Sminthoi*, because they gnawed through the bowstrings of their enemies; and that for this reason they bestowed upon Apollo the name *Sminthios*. Heraclides also, in his book *On the Building of Temples* in Acarnania, writes that on the promontory of Actium, where the temple of the Actian Apollo is situated, an ox is sacrificed to flies before the other sacrifices. Nor, indeed, will I forget the Samians, from whom, as Euphorion relates, a sheep is worshipped; nor those who inhabit Phoenicia on the side of the Syrians, ^B some of whom worship the doves and others the fish, with just as much intensity as the Eleans worship Zeus. Very well then, since those whom you worship are not gods, it seems to me that we should examine them again to see if they are indeed demons—enrolled, according to your own statement, in this second rank. For if these demons are gluttonous ^C and filthy, it is quite possible to discover even in the open, city by city, these local demons who are reaping honors for themselves: among the Cythnians, Menedemus; among the Tinians, Callistagoras; among the earth-born, ^D and indeed the Delphians worship the wolf, and the Eleans worship Anius, and the Delians worship Anius.

ythnians, Menedemus; among the Tinians, Callistagoras; among the Delians, Anius; among the Laconians, Astrabacus ^A. A certain hero is also honored at Phalerum at the ship's stern, and the Pythia commanded the Plataeans to offer sacrifice to Androcrates, and Democrates, and Cyclaeus, and Leucon, while the Median wars were at their height. One might find very many other demons, if one were able to discern even a little:

For thrice ten thousand upon the earth that feeds the many Are the deathless demons, guardians of mortal men.

Who these guardians are, O Boeotian, do not be grudging to tell ^B. It is clear that these are they, and those more honored than they, the great demons: Apollo, Artemis, Leto, Demeter, Kore, Pluto, Heracles, and Zeus himself. But they do not watch us to prevent us from running away, O Ascræan; but perhaps so that we might not sin, being themselves strangers to sin. Here the proverb may fittingly be applied:

A father unreformed reforms his son.

But if indeed these are guardians, they do not act out of any benevolence toward us, but rather, intent upon your destruction, they cling to life like parasites, enticed by the smoke. The demons themselves confess their own gluttony, when they say:

Of libation and savor; for this honor we have obtained.

And what other voice would the Egyptian gods, if they could speak—such as cats and weasels and creatures of that ilk—utter, if not this poetic voice brought forth by Homer, by which they confess that the savor and culinary service are most dear to them? Such, then, are your demons, and your gods, and if any are called demigods, like mules; for you are not at all lacking in names when you devise these impious inventions ^C.

CHAPTER III

He touches upon the cruelty and savagery of the sacrifices slaughtered to the gods.

Now, however, let us add this to what has been said above, how these demons, who are intent on matter, are gluttonous, craving the savor and the blood of the victims. For all the gods of the nations are gluttonous demons, wallowing in the sacrifices, the blood, and the odors rising from the sacrifices. Being nourished by the fumes from the sacrifices, and by the emanations from the blood and the burnt offerings, their bodies are those of beings who love pleasure. ^D

^A Your gods, then, are humanity-hating demons, who not only rejoice in the madness of men but further find enjoyment in the slaughter of human beings. For they procure for themselves, as pretexts for pleasure, the armed contentions in the stadiums and the countless [(46)] rivalries in wars, so that they may have their fill of human slaughter without restraint [(47)]. And now, having settled throughout cities and nations like plagues, they have demanded cruel drink offerings. Aristomenes the Messenian, for instance, slaughtered three hundred men to Zeus of Ithome [(48)], thinking that he was offering up such hecatombs and in such a manner; among these was Theopompus, the king of the Lacedaemonians [(49)], a noble victim indeed. The people called the Tauri, who dwell around the Tauric Chersonese, whatever strangers are caught among them—those who have been driven there by sea [(50)]—they sacrifice immediately to the Tauric Artemis; Euripides [(51)] speaks of these sacrifices on the stage. Monimus [(52)] records in his *Collection of Marvels* that in Pella of Thessalia a man of Achaean origin was sacrificed to Peleus and Chiron. For the Lyctians [(53)], who are a Cretan nation, as Anticlides [(54)] declares in his *Returns*, are accustomed to slaughter men to Zeus; and Dosidas says that the Lesbians offer a similar sacrifice to Dionysus. The Phocaeans [(55)]—for I will not pass them by either [(56)], as they are of this same kind—are recorded by Pythocles in the third book of his *On Concord* as burning a man alive to the Tauric Artemis [(57)]. Erechtheus [(58)] the Attic and Marius the Roman sacrificed their own daughters; the former to Persephone, as Demaratus relates in the first book of his *Dramatic Tales* [(59)]; the latter to the ^{B C D}

^A Averruncian gods, as Dorotheus records in the fourth book of his *Italian History*. What humane and compassionate demons these appear to be! But why are the superstitious ^B not similarly impious? The one sort are celebrated as saviors, while the others beg for salvation from those who plot against their salvation; thus, thinking to perform a holy sacrifice to them, they have unwittingly slaughtered human beings. For it is not the place that makes the murder a holy sacrifice, nor even if one were to slaughter a man in a supposed holy place to Artemis and Zeus, rather than in anger and greed—or to other similar ^C demons—on altars or in the streets, calling it a holy sacrifice; rather, such a sacrifice is murder and man-slaughter. Why then, O men, wisest of all animals, do we flee from wild beasts—and if we happen ^D upon untamed creatures, say a bear or a lion, we turn away,

As when someone seeing a serpent in the mountain brakes Starts back, and trembling seizes his limbs, and he withdraws—

yet you, who perceive and understand that these destructive and baneful demons are plotting against men, burning with hatred for them, and contriving nothing but their ruin and destruction, do not turn away, nor avert yourselves from them? For how could it be that those who are evil should either speak the truth or benefit anyone? Immediately, therefore, I have it in my power to point out to you more excellent beings than these local gods of yours, the demons.

^A I mean a human being, in contrast to Apollo the diviner: Cyrus and Solon. Your Phoebus is a lover of glory, but not a lover of mankind. He betrayed Croesus, his friend, and forgetting his bribe—so ambitious of glory was he—he led Croesus across the Halys to the pyre. In such a way do the demons you love lead you to the fire. ^B But you, O man, who are more philanthropic and truthful than Apollo, have pity on the one bound upon the pyre. And you, O Solon, interpret the truth; and you, O Cyrus, command the pyre to be extinguished. Learn wisdom, O Croesus, at the very last, admonished by your own suffering; ungrateful is he whom you worship; he takes his bribe and, having had his fill of gold, he lies. O Solon, consider the end once more; it is not the demon, but the human being who speaks to you. Solon does not prophesy in riddles; you will find this true. You, O Barbarian, will prove this oracle alone to be true upon the pyre.

Whence I am led to wonder by what delusions those first men were carried away, who, being deceived, proclaimed superstition to mankind, legislating the worship of wicked demons. Whether it was that Phoroneus, ^C or Merops, or some other, who first raised temples and altars to them, and are even fabled to have been the first to offer sacrifices to them. For even in later times men invented gods for themselves to worship; indeed, this Eros here, said to be among the most ancient of the gods, no one honored before a youth named Charmus, who, after reaching an attractive adolescent, set up an altar to him in the Academy, as his desire was fulfilled more gracefully; and they have called the obscenity of this disease "Eros," deifying unbridled lust. The Athenians, too, did not even know who Pan was before Philippides ^D told them. Naturally, therefore, superstition, having taken its beginning from somewhere, became a fountainhead of senseless wickedness; and then, not being checked but arriving at an increase, it became what we turn away from and what you do not forsake.

^A And, having flowed forth in great measure, it became the architect of many demons—sacrificing hecatombs, celebrating festivals, erecting statues, and building temples; and I shall not keep silent even about these, but will refute them as well. For while they are euphemistically termed temples, they have become tombs, that is, they are tombs called temples. But you, ^B even now, would do well to be ashamed to honor tombs, casting off such superstition. In the temple of Athena at Larissa, which is visited upon the summit of the Acropolis, is the tomb of Acrisius; and in Athens, upon the Acropolis, is that of Cecrops, as Antiochus says in the ninth book of his *Histories*. What then of Erichthonius? Is he not buried in the temple of the Polias? And is not Immarus, the son of Eumolpus and Dairas, in the precinct of the Eleusinion built beneath the Acropolis? And were not the daughters of Celeus consigned to burial in Eleusis? ^C Why then should I recount to you the women of the Hyperboreans? Hyperoche and Laodice they are called; they are buried in the Artemision in Delos, which is located in the temple of Apollo of Delos. Leandrius says that Clearchus was buried in Miletus in the Didymaeum. It is not right to pass over the monument of Leucophryne here, following Zeno the Myndian; she is buried in the temple of Artemis in Magnesia. Nor, indeed, the altar of Apollo in ^D Telmessus, which they relate to be the monument and tomb of the seer Telmessus. Ptolemy, the son of

^A Agesarchus, in the first volume of his writings concerning Philopator, relates that Cinyras and the descendants of Cinyras were buried in Paphos within the temple of Aphrodite. But indeed, if I were to set out to recount the tombs you worship, even all time would not suffice for me; but if some shame for these daring acts does not come over you, you walk about as dead men indeed, having fully trusted in the dead. ^B "O wretched ones, what evil are you suffering? By night your heads are covered with [caligine...]

CHAPTER IV.

How absurd and shameful are the idols with which they worship their gods.

^C But if, in addition to these things, I were to set before your eyes the idols themselves to examine, you would, upon reflection, truly find the custom to be nonsense—men turning themselves towards the works of human hands that have no sensation. Long ago, the Scythians worshipped the *akinakes*; the Arabs, a stone; the Persians worshipped the river; and those of other peoples, even more ancient, set up prominent logs, and columns made of stone; which indeed were called *xoana* (wooden images), because they were carved from wood. Indeed, in Icaros, the statue of Artemis was an unworked piece of wood; and the statue of Hera of Cithaeron at Thespiae was a hewn trunk; and that of the Samian Hera, as Aethlius says, was— ^D [original-script column: see facsimile]

^A in the time of Procles, a statue-like figure. When ^B then the making of images began to resemble men, they earned the name *brete* (from *brotoi*, mortals). Moreover, we learn from Varro that the ancient Romans worshipped a spear as a likeness of Mars, since the craftsmen were as yet unskilled in this base art of fashioning human forms; but when art flourished, error increased. So then, that you have made statues into human likenesses out of stones and woods—to sum it up—out of any material, and that you wrap your impiety in their forms, masking the truth, is already evident; yet since the subject seems to require some proof, it must not be passed over. That Phidias fashioned the Olympian Zeus and the Athena Poliouchos out of gold and ivory is clear to everyone; and we know from the Samian records of Olympius that the statue of Hera in Samos was made with the chisel of Euclides. Therefore, do not doubt if, of the two statues of the goddesses called the Venerable at Athens, Scopas made them out of the so-called lychnite stone, and Calos—whom Polemo, in the fourth book of his work addressed to Timaeus, claims to have made the middle one of the three—also made others. Nor [need you doubt] about the statues of Zeus and Apollo in Patara of Lycia, which Phidias again fashioned, just as the lions that are placed with them were also his work. And if, as some say, it was the skill of Bryaxis, I do not disagree; you have this sculptor as well: you may ascribe it to whichever of the two you wish. Furthermore, according to Philochorus, there are statues of Poseidon and Amphitrite, worshipped in Tenos, which are the work of Telesius the Athenian, and are nine cubits high. For Demetrius, in the second book of his *Argolica*, records the material of the statue of Hera at Tiryns as pear-wood, and names Argus as the creator. Many, perhaps, would wonder if they learned that the Palladium, ^C which is called the *Diopetes* (fallen from heaven), ^D

^A because it is said to have fallen from the heavens, was—as Diomedes and Ulysses are reported to have stolen it from Troy and deposited it with Demophon—in fact made from the bones of Pelops, just as the Olympian Zeus was made from the bones of an Indian beast. ^B Yet I can cite Dionysius in the fifth part of his *Cycle* as the authority for this. Apellas, in his *Delphica*, says that there were two Palladia, and that both were crafted by men. However, so that no one may suppose that I have passed over this through ignorance, I will add this further: the statue of Dionysus Morychus, which is in Athens, was made of the stone called Phelles, and was the work of Simon, the son of Eupalamus, as we know from a certain letter of Polemon. Moreover, there were two other sculptors, from Crete if my memory does not deceive me, named Scyles and Dipoenus; these men crafted the statues of the Dioscuri at Argos, the statue of Heracles at Tiryns, and the wooden image of Artemis of Munychia at Sicyon. ^C But why do I dwell on these things, when I can show you that great demon himself, the Egyptian Serapis, whom we know all men honor and worship with a singular devotion above all others, and yet they do not fear to deny that he was made by human hands? For some report that this image was a statue of Pluto, which the people of Sinope sent as a gift to Ptolemy Philadelphus, the king of the Egyptians, because he had won their immense gratitude by sending them grain from Egypt when they were laboring under starvation; and that he, upon receiving the statue, set it up on the promontory which they now call Rhacotis, ^D where the temple of Serapis is also honored; and it is adjacent to the places where they now—but enough of this. It is a foolish and misguided opinion regarding these statues; for, rather, one ought to condemn the makers of the statues, having received a worthy reward for their wickedness.

I see you, wretched one, a second time burned, With the hands of Alacis, and with the remnants Of Tantalus’ hearth-fire, the charred embers of the child Consumed by the flame.

^A Blistichis, [Ptolemy’s] concubine, having died in Canopus, Ptolemy transported her and buried her beneath the aforementioned shrine. Others say that Sarapis is a Pontic statue, which was brought to Alexandria with great festive pomp. Isidorus alone says that the statue was brought from the Seleucids who are in the neighborhood of Antioch, when they were in the midst of a famine and were fed by Ptolemy. But Athenodorus, son of Sandon, wishing to make Sarapis ancient, fell, I know not how, into a trap; for in attempting to prove that he was a created statue, he says that Sesostris, the Egyptian king, having conquered most of the nations of the Greeks, returned to Egypt and brought back skilled craftsmen. He says that he ordered Osirin, his own ancestor, to be depicted at great expense; and that Bryaxis the sculptor, not the Athenian, but another of the same name as that Bryaxis, fashioned him, having made use of a mixed and varied material for his creation. ^B For he had filings of gold and of silver, and of bronze, and of iron, and of lead, and finally of tin; and there was no lack at all of Egyptian stones, fragments of sapphire and of hematite, and of emerald, and even of topaz. Having polished all these and mixed them together, he stained them with a dark blue color—which is the reason why the color of the statue tends toward black—and having kneaded the whole mass with the pigment that remained from the funeral of Osiris and Apis, he fashioned Sarapis. The very name of the god hints at both the communion of the funeral and the creation from the tomb, having been formed from Osiris and Apis into Osirapis.

^C Another new god has been consecrated in Egypt, and is honored by the Romans almost even among the Greeks, namely Antinous, a favorite, who was the most beautiful of all. He, [Hadrian] deified him, just as Zeus did with Ganymede; for desire, when not restrained by any fear, cannot easily keep within bounds. And so, the sacred nights of Antinous are today celebrated by men with divine worship, though the lover who kept watch with him knew well the shame of those nights. Why do you tell me of a god, one honored for prostitution? Why did you also ordain that he be bewailed as a son? Why, moreover, do you recount his beauty? Beauty marred by abuse is shameful. Do not play the tyrant, man, over beauty, nor treat it with violence.

Keep the original intact, so that I may recognize your beauty, in that you have kept the image pure; then I shall worship the true beauty, which is the archetype ^A of all that is beautiful. But now, it is the tomb [(56)] of the beloved; it is the temple of Antinous, and a city. For just as, I think, temples are admired, so too are tombs—pyramids and Mausolea [(37)], and labyrinths—which are other temples of the dead, just as those others are tombs of the gods. And I will set before you the prophetess Sibyl as a teacher: ^B "No falsehood [(58)] of Phoebus who utters oracles, whom Men called a god, but they have lied about the seer, But [the oracles] of the great God, whom the hands of no Men have fashioned, Similar to mute idols and polished stones." Truly, she predicts the ruin of the temple, signifying that the temple of the Ephesian Artemis shall be swallowed up by chasms and earthquakes, speaking thus: "Ephesus, lying by the ^C shores, shall moan in grief, And seeking the temple that no longer dwells there." And she says that the temple of Isis and Sarapis in Egypt shall be brought down and burned: "Isis, thrice-wretched goddess, you shall remain by current Of the Nile, alone, raving, speechless, upon the sands of Acheron." Then she adds: "And you, Sarapis, sitting upon many shapeless stones, You shall lie, a very great ruin in wretched Egypt." If you do not heed the prophetess, at least listen to your own Ephesian philosopher, Heraclitus, who reproaches ^D the insensibility of the statues; for they pray to these statues, as if one were conversing with walls. For are they not monstrous, those who supplicate stones, and then even set them up before their gates as if they were alive and active? Regarding Hermes...

they make him as a god, along with Aguieus, ^A guardian of the gates, and set them before their doors. If they treat them with contempt because they lack sense, why do they adore them as gods? But if they suppose them to be participants in sense, why do they station them as gatekeepers? The Romans, moreover, having attributed their greatest successes to Fortune, and believing her to be a most powerful goddess, set her up in a latrine, consecrating the sewer itself—a temple not unworthy of such a deity. But for the stone, the wood, and the rich gold, there is no concern, nor for the savor, nor blood, nor smoke, by which they are blackened while being fumigated for the sake of honor; indeed, they have no sense of honor or contempt. Such images are viler than any animal. And how, since they lack sense, they began to be treated with divine honors, often makes me wonder, and I feel pity for those who have fallen into this error, as being utterly wretched in their madness. ^B For if certain animals do not possess all the senses, like worms and caterpillars, and those which by the condition of their nature appear imperfect from their first birth, like moles and the shrew-mouse—which Nicander calls blind and deaf—yet they greatly surpass these signs and images, which are completely stupid: for they are endowed with at least one sense—that of hearing, or of touch, or that which corresponds to smell or taste—whereas the images are devoid of every perception whatsoever. There are many animals that have neither sight, nor hearing, nor voice, such as the species of oysters; yet they live, and grow, and are even affected by the moon. ^C But the images do absolutely nothing, attempt nothing, feel nothing; but they are tied, and fastened with nails, and fixed, and melted down, filed, sawed, scraped, and chiseled. The statuaries indeed disgrace the dumb earth, displacing it from its own nature by their craft, and persuading men to worship ^D that which is not a god. For the makers of gods do not worship gods and demons—according to my sense of the matter—but they worship earth and art, which is what the images are. For the image is in truth dead matter, fashioned by the hand of a craftsman. As for us, the object of our worship is not an object of sensible matter, but an intelligible image—the image that is intelligible, not sensible, is God, the only truly existing God.

of sensible matter—but of sensible things; for the image, God, the only truly God, is intelligible. And yet, conversely, in these very circumstances, the superstitious, those worshippers of stones, having learned by experience not to worship insensible matter, are overcome by the very need for it and perish from superstition. Although they despise the statues, yet wishing not to appear to despise them entirely, they are refuted by the very gods to whom the statues are attributed. ^A For Dionysius the tyrant, the younger, having stripped the golden garment from Zeus in Sicily, ordered a woolen cloak to be put upon him, wittily saying that this was better than gold, and lighter for the summer and warmer for the winter. ^B And Antiochus the Cyzicene, being in want of money, ordered the golden statue of Zeus—which was fifteen cubits in size—to be melted down, and a statue similar to it of another, baser material, gilded with leaves, to be set up in its place. Moreover, swallows ^C and most of the birds fly down and ease their bowels upon the statues themselves, paying no heed to Olympian Zeus, or Epidaurian Asclepius, or even Athena Polias, or the Egyptian Sarapis; from them, even, you have not yet learned the insensibility of the statues. But there are some evildoers or enemies who have attacked them, who out of greed have plundered the temples and despoiled the votive offerings, or even melted down the statues themselves. And if some Cambyses or Darius, or some other madman, has attempted such things, and if someone were to kill the Egyptian Apis, I smile, indeed, that he killed their god, but I am indignant if he committed the act for the sake of ^D gain. Therefore, I will define this as an act of wickedness and a work of greed, not as a proof of the inertness of the idols. Yet, fire and earthquakes are not greedy, nor do they fear or feel awe—not of the demons, not of the statues.

^A nor any more than the pebbles heaped up on the seashores by the waves. I know of a fire that is inquisitive and a remedy for superstition. If you wish to cease from your madness, the fire will bring you the light. This fire burned the temple in Argos, together with the priestess Chryside, as well as the temple of Artemis in Ephesus—the second one after the time of the Amazons—and it has ravaged the Capitol in Rome ^B many times over. Nor did it refrain from the shrine of Serapis in the city of the Alexandrians; for in Athens, it destroyed the temple of Dionysus of Eleutherae, and the temple of Apollo at Delphi was first shattered by a storm, and then a wise fire consumed it utterly. This is the prelude I show you, of what the fire promises. Do the makers of statues not shame you, the more sensible ones, into despising matter? The Athenian Phidias, after inscribing on the finger of the Olympian Zeus, "PANTARCES IS BEAUTIFUL"—for it was not Zeus that was beautiful to him, but his beloved—did not Praxiteles, as Posidippus explains in his work *On Cnidus*, in fashioning the statue of Aphrodite for the Cnidians, make it similar in form to his own mistress, so that the wretched men might worship the mistress of Praxiteles? ^C When Phryne, the Thespian courtesan, was in her prime, all the painters imitated the beauty of Phryne for their images of Aphrodite, just as the stonemasons used to model their Mercuries in Athens on Alcibiades. It remains for your judgment to complete the work, if you wish to worship courtesans as well. It is from this, I imagine, that those ancient kings were moved to despise these myths, and quite openly—because there is no risk from men—proclaimed themselves gods; teaching that they, too, had been immortalized by glory ^D — Keryx from Aeolus, Zeus from...

his wife Alcyone, as she in turn called Hera from her husband. The fourth Ptolemy, likewise, was called Dionysus, as was Mithridates the Pontic. Alexander also wished to be thought the son of Ammon, and to be represented by sculptors with horns, disfiguring the beauty of a human being with a horn. And it was not only kings, but private citizens as well, who honored themselves with divine designations, as did Menecrates the physician, who let himself be called Zeus. What need is there to speak of ^B Alexarchus? He was a grammarian by profession, as Aristus of Salamis records, and he transformed himself into the sun. Why bother even mentioning Nicagoras? He was a Zelite by birth, and flourished in the time of Alexander. Nicagoras was called Hermes, and he used the clothing of Hermes, as he himself testifies. Indeed, entire nations and the most populous cities, indulging in flattery, turn the myths about the gods into a mockery, as men make themselves equal to the gods; puffed up by vain glory, they decree for themselves excessive honors. For at one time, the Macedonians decreed that Philip, the son of Amyntas of Pella—he who had a broken collarbone ^C and a crippled leg, and who had lost an eye—should be worshiped in the Cynosarges. And again, they proclaimed Demetrios a god, and wherever he dismounted from his horse to enter Athens, they set up a shrine to the "Descendant" Demetrios; altars were everywhere, and a marriage to Athena was even prepared for him by the Athenians. But he scorned the goddess, for he was unable to marry her statue, and instead, while keeping the courtesan Lamia, he would go up to the Acropolis and defile the chamber of Athena, displaying the habits of his new courtesan before the ancient Virgin. ^D Alcyone, however, was married to Ceyx, the son of the Morning Star-bringer. These perished on account of their pride; for he called his wife Hera, and she called her husband Zeus. But Zeus turned them into birds; he made her a sea-mew and him a diver.

^A Nemesis, therefore, should not be angry with Hippon, who immortalizes his own death; for this Hippon ordered the following elegiac couplet to be inscribed upon his tomb:

This is the tomb of Hippon, whom Fate Made equal to the immortal gods in death.

Well done, Hippon! You show us the error of mankind. And if they do not believe you while you live, let them at least become your disciples when you are dead. This is the oracle of Hippon—let us reflect upon it. Those who are worshipped among you ^B were once human beings, and then they died; but myth—and time—has honored them. For it is a common way of things that present matters are held in contempt through familiarity, while past events, being removed from immediate scrutiny by the obscurity of time, are honored by fiction; and so the former are disbelieved, while the latter are even held in admiration. Thus it is that those who died long ago, selling themselves through the long passage of time, are considered by posterity to be gods. Your own mysteries provide proof of this, your solemn assemblies, your chains, and your wounds, and the weeping of gods:

Alas! that Sarpedon, dearest of men, Is fated to be vanquished by Patroclus, son of Menoetius.

^C The will of Zeus is overcome, and Zeus himself weeps, vanquished on account of Sarpedon. You yourselves, therefore, correctly call them idols and demons, since even Homer, having improperly honored Athena herself and the other gods, called them demons:

She went up to Olympus, To the house of Zeus who holds the aegis, and the other demons.

How, then, can idols and ^D demons still be considered in the number of the gods—spirits truly filthy and abominable, which everyone confesses to be earthly and muddy, weighed down by their own heaviness, and lingering around the monuments and tombs of the dead? In which places they also appear as shadowy, spectral phantoms. These, then, are your gods, the idols—they are heavy, my friend, and one must think of them as burdensome, earthly, and visible. The soul that possesses such things is weighed down and pulled back again into the visible region out of fear of the invisible and of Hades, as is said, wandering around monuments and tombs; around which, indeed, certain shadowy phantoms of souls have been seen, such as are provided by those souls which have not been purely released, but still share in the visible; and for this reason they are seen.

^A And in addition to these, those lame and wrinkled ones, squinting-eyed, the Litai (Prayers), or rather the daughters of Thersites than of Zeus. ^B Whence it seems to me that Bion wittily said: "How can men justly ask of Zeus for healthy children, when he could not provide even for himself?" Woe for this godlessness! You bury, as far as lies in your power, the incorruptible essence; and that holy and unstained thing you have covered over with burials, having despoiled of his divinity that which is the truly existing essence. Why then have you bestowed the honors of God upon those who are not gods? Why, having abandoned heaven, have you honored the earth? For what else are gold, or silver, or adamant, or iron, or bronze, or ivory, or precious stones, if not earth and things from the earth? And are not all these things that you see offspring of one mother, the earth? Why then, O foolish and empty-minded men (for I will repeat this again), having blasphemed the supercelestial realm, have you dragged piety down to the ground, fashioning for yourselves chthonic gods? And by pursuing these created things before the unbegotten God, have you fallen into a deeper abyss? ^C The Parian stone is beautiful, but not yet Poseidon; the ivory is beautiful, but not yet Olympian. Matter always falls short of art; but God is ever in need of nothing. Art has come forth and has been clothed in form; matter and the richness of its substance are useful for gain, but it is only through the form that it becomes an object of veneration. Your statue is gold, it is wood, it is stone, it is earth, if you consider its origin, having received its form from the craftsman. But I have been taught to tread upon the earth, not to worship it; for it is not right for me to entrust the hopes of my soul to soulless things. We must go, then, as near as possible to the statues, as to that which is ^D our own. Whatever is base, and dragged down to the earth by the weight of sins, and unable even to breathe, is carried here and rolls around, some of it towards monuments—where the phantoms of shadowy souls have been seen—and some of it wandering aimlessly about the earth entirely. In what way must one consider the spirits to be—to name them thus—bound to the aeons, whether by some incantations or through their own malice, to buildings and places? For the Prayers are indeed the daughters of great Zeus, 89 / Lame, and wrinkled, and with squinting eyes.

But the error is exposed by the very sight of them; for the character of the demons is very clearly revealed by the forms of the statues. If, then, anyone were to go about looking at the paintings and statues, he would immediately recognize your gods by their shameful shapes: Dionysus by his robe; Hephaestus by his art; Demeter by her sorrow; Ino by her headband; Poseidon by his trident; Zeus by the swan; while the pyre reveals Heracles; and if one sees a naked woman carved, he understands it to be the golden Aphrodite. Thus that Cyprian, the famous Pygmalion, fell in love with an ivory statue; the statue was Aphrodite and it was naked. The Cyprian was overcome by the shape and came together with the statue, and Philostephanus records this. ^B There is another Aphrodite in Cnidus, which was a stone and was beautiful; another man fell in love with this one, and had intercourse with the stone. Posidippus records this, the former in his work on Cyprus, the latter in his work on Cnidus. So great was the power of the art to deceive, that it became a precipice for amorous men. Creative art is indeed active, but it is not able to deceive a rational being, nor those who have lived their lives according to reason. For in painting, through the likeness of shading, doves have flown to [painted] doves, and horses have neighed to well-painted horses. They say that a maiden fell in love with an image, and a youth with a beautiful statue in Cnidus. But the eyes of the beholders were deceived by the art; for no man of sound mind would have been joined in union with a god, nor would he have been buried with a corpse, nor would he have fallen in love with a demon or a stone. But you are deceived by art with a different sorcery, if not by leading you to fall in love, then at least to honor and worship the statues ^C and the paintings. And the writing is similar. Let the art be praised, but let it not deceive man as if it were the truth. The horse stands motionless, the dove is still, the wing is inactive. But the cow of Daedalus, made of wood, ^D

captured the wild bull, and forced that beast, deceived by the artifice, to enter into an insane love for a woman. To such a pitch of madness have the arts, with their wicked contrivances, stirred the minds of foolish lovers. Yet men are wont to admire apes, and those who tend and nourish them, because neither waxen nor earthen images, even if dressed in the finery of maidens, ever deceive them. Will you, then, be worse than apes, by clinging to images of stone, and wood, and gold, and ivory, and to paintings? ^A Truly, the workers of such ruinous mockeries are the stone-cutters and statuaries, and furthermore the painters and craftsmen, and the poets, by whom a huge inundation of this kind is introduced: in the mountains, Satyrs and Pans; in the woods, the Nymphs, the Oreades, and the Hamadryades; moreover, in the waters, rivers, and fountains, the Naiades; and in the sea, the Nereides. And the magi even boast of the demons as ministers of their own impiety, having registered them as servants to themselves, forced and made slaves by their incantations. Furthermore, the marriages, the child-births, the deliveries of the gods that are recounted, their adulteries that are sung, their feasts that are dramatized, and their laughter ^B brought in out of place—these compel me to cry out, even if I wish to be silent: Woe for the godlessness! You have turned heaven into a stage, and the Divine has become for you a drama, and you have ridiculed the holy using the masks of demons, turning true religion into a satire of superstition. ^C But he who played the lyre began to sing beautifully: Sing to us, Homer, the beautiful song: Of the love of Ares and fair-crowned Aphrodite, How they first mingled in the house of Hephaestus By stealth; and he gave many gifts, and defiled the bed and [couch Of King Hephaestus. Cease, Homer, the song; it is not beautiful; it teaches adultery; and it is a religion for us to refuse even to pollute our ears with it. For we, we are they who carry about the image of God in this living and moving statue, man—the image that dwells with us, ^D counsels us, converses with us, shares our hearth, and is sympathetic and beyond sympathetic. * * * Unquenchable laughter arose among the blessed gods, As they saw Hephaestus bustling through the halls.

^A We have become an offering to God for Christ’s sake; we are the chosen race, the royal priesthood, the holy nation, the peculiar people; those who once were not a people, but are now the people of God; those who, according to John, are not from below, but have learned everything from Him who came from above; those who have discerned the dispensation of God, who have trained themselves to walk in newness of life. But the many do not think these things; rather, having cast off shame and fear, they write the passions of the demons in their own homes. ^B By means of certain paintings hanging on high—which you treat with heed, having devoted yourselves to licentiousness—they have adorned their bedchambers, deeming debauchery to be piety; and lying upon their couches, even during their very acts of intimacy, they gaze upon that Aphrodite, the naked one, bound in the embrace; and upon the bird that circled Leda, a bird of lust, welcoming the depiction of that female desire, they seal it into their rings, using a signet appropriate to the debauchery of Zeus. These are for you the archetypes of pleasure; these are the theologies of your insolence; these are the teachings of the gods who fornicate along with you; for as the Athenian orator says, each man believes what he wishes. What, then, are your other images? Certain Paniskoi, ^C and naked girls, and drunken Satyrs, and phalluses made manifest, which are laid bare in the paintings and are convicted by such incontinency. Yet, even now, publicly witnessing the whole list of forms of debauchery, you are not ashamed; rather, you guard them even more, hung up as they are, just as, indeed, having shamelessly consecrated the statues of your gods at home like pillars, you record upon them the postures of Philaenis just as readily as the labors of Hercules. Of these things, we proclaim that not only their use, but even the sight and the very hearing of them, must be utterly obliterated and cast out from memory. ^D Your ears have become harlots, your eyes have become adulterous, and, what is more, even before the act of physical union, your very visions have committed adultery. O you who have violated the human being! And the divine nature of the creature convicts you. Having offered up the first fruits, you remain faithless in all things, so that you may live in passion, and you believe in the idols, seeking out their incontinence, yet you are faithless to the...

^A God, not bringing temperance; and you have hated the better things, and honored the worse; having become spectators of virtue, but athletes of vice. Blessed, then, are those alone, so to speak, all together, that come after, according to the Sibyl ^B:

They will deny all temples, And altars, the vain foundations of stone, And images of stone, and hand-wrought statues, Defiled by the blood of living things, and by the sacrifices Of four-footed beasts, and two-footed, and birds, and the slaughter of wild beasts.

For it is clearly forbidden to you, openly, to fashion a deceptive art. For you shall make no likeness, says the Prophet, of anything that is in heaven, or that is on the earth beneath. For could we still suppose the Ceres of Praxiteles, and the Maiden, and the mystical Iacchus, to be gods, or the arts of Lysippus, or the hands of Apelles, which have clothed the form of divine glory with matter? But you, indeed, ^C strive in every way that the statue may be made as beautiful as possible; but you do not care that you yourselves might not be made like to the statues through your insensibility. Very clearly, therefore, and briefly, does the prophetic word refute the custom: "That all the gods of the nations are demons' idols; but God made the heavens and the things in the [sky]." ^D

^A Some people, wandering from this point—I know not how—worship divine workmanship, but not God himself: the sun, and the moon, and the other choir of stars, absurdly assuming them to be gods, though they are the instruments of time. For "by his word they were established, and all their power by the spirit of his mouth." But while human skill produces houses, and ships, and cities, and paintings, how might I tell all that God produces? Behold the whole world: it is his work; and heaven, and sun, and angels, and men are the works of his fingers. How great is the power of God! His mere will is the creation of the world. For God alone created, since he alone is truly God. He creates by simply willing, and his desire is immediately followed by the existence of the thing. Here the chorus of philosophers is led astray, who very beautifully indeed admit that man was made for the contemplation of heaven, yet they worship the things that appear in heaven and are grasped by the sight. For even if the works in heaven are not human, they were at least created for the sake of humans. And let no one among you worship the sun, but let him desire the maker of the sun; and let him not deify the world, but seek after the creator of the world. Therefore, as it seems, divine wisdom alone remains as a refuge for the one who is about to arrive at the gates of salvation; hence, as if from some sacred asylum, the person who strives for salvation becomes no longer subject to being led away by any of the demons. ^B Let us now run through, if you would, the opinions of the philosophers ^C regarding God.

Chapter V. He reviews the opinions of the philosophers concerning God.

Why, if it is pleasing to you, let us review the opinions of the philosophers...

regarding the gods, if perhaps we might discover that even philosophy itself, for the sake of vain glory, has turned matter into idols; or if, while it deemed certain demons worthy of the name of gods, we can show in passing that it was dreaming the truth.

Thus, they left behind elements as principles, singing their praises: Thales the Milesian, water; and Anaximenes, also a Milesian, air—which Diogenes of Apollonia later followed. Parmenides the Eleatic introduced fire and earth as gods; though he supposed only one of the two, fire, to be god—as did Hippasus of Metapontum ^A and Heraclitus the Ephesian. For Empedocles of Acragas, falling into a multitude, besides these four elements, enumerates Strife and Friendship.

These men, then, are godless, having worshipped matter with a certain unwise wisdom; for while they did not honor stones and wood, they deified the earth, the mother of these things; and while they did not fashion images of Poseidon, they worshipped water itself. ^B For what is Poseidon prior to the liquid substance, named from drinking? Just as, indeed, the warlike Ares is named from *arsis* (lifting) and *anaeresis* (destruction). And it seems to many, especially those who stake their swords in the ground, that they are sacrificing to Ares. Such is the custom of the Scythians, as Eudoxus says in the second book of his *Periodus*. ^{C D}

^A The Sauromatae, a Scythian tribe, as Icesius says in his work *On Mysteries*, worship a scimitar. This is a practice similar to that of the followers of Heraclitus, who, in worshiping fire as the primordial principle, have also fallen into this error—calling this fire by the name of Hephaestus. The Magi of the Persians, as well as many of those who inhabit Asia, and furthermore the Macedonians, as Diogenes says in his first book of *Persica*, have held fire in honor. Why should I enumerate the Sauromatae, whom Nymphodorus in his *Barbarian Customs* reports to venerate fire; or the Persians, and the Medes, and the Magi? Dinon says that these perform sacrifices in the open air, regarding only fire and water as images of the gods. I have not concealed their ignorance; for even if they think they are keeping themselves most especially from error, they have instead slipped into another ^B delusion. They have not imagined the images of the gods to be wood and stone, as the Greeks do, nor ibis and ichneumons, as the Egyptians do, but rather fire and water, like the philosophers. Yet, after many long cycles of years, Berosus in the third book of his *Chaldaica* shows that they came to worship human-shaped statues; a custom introduced by Artaxerxes, the son of Darius and father of Ochus, who was the first to set up the statue of Venus Tanais in Babylon, and he showed the Persians, and the Bactrians, and those in Damascus and Sardis, that it was to be worshiped by his own example. Since, therefore, the philosophers agree—and the teachers of their own ^C doctrines, the Persians or the Sauromatae or the Magi, from whom they have learned their godlessness regarding the holy principles—while they are ignorant of the Ruler of all, the Creator of these very principles, the Unbeginning God; but rather, as the Apostle says, "to these weak and beggarly elements," they offer their service. ^D Regarding the other philosophers, all those who declare the [index: entries preserved]

^A elements exceeded, they have investigated something higher and more superabundant. Some of them celebrated the infinite, among whom was Anaximander the Milesian, and Anaxagoras of Clazomenae; both of these, indeed, set the Mind over the infinite. The Milesian Leucippus and Metrodorus of Chios also left behind, as it seems, two principles: the full and the void. Democritus of Abdera, having taken these two, added the images; for Alcmaeon the Crotoniate thought the stars were gods, being ensouled (I shall not pass over, either, their shamelessness). Xenocrates—this man was a Chalcedonian—hints at seven gods in the planets, and an eighth, the world, which consists of all of them together. Nor shall I pass over those from the Stoa, who say that the divine ^B extends through all matter, even the most base; they utterly shame philosophy. And I do not think it difficult, now that I am here, to mention also those from the Peripatetic school. Their founder, not having perceived the Father of all, thinks that what is called the Supreme is the soul of the universe—that is, he thinks the soul of the world is the first Mind set over things. Leucippus, Democritus, Demetrius, Metrodorus, Epicurus [taught that] atoms are infinite in multitude, and the void is infinite in magnitude. [We are] through the incidence of images, according to the appearances of these images. ^{C D}

^A For he himself, in setting limits to providence as far as the moon itself, and then regarding the world as God, falls into contradiction by dogmatizing that something which is devoid of God is God. And that Eresian, Theophrastus, the pupil of Aristotle, at one time thinks of the heaven, and at another of the spirit, as God. For I will willingly forget Epicurus alone, who thinks not even that God cares [for anything], being impious in all things. For what of Heraclides Ponticus? There is nowhere he does not also drag himself off to the images of Democritus, while supposing He is God, yet he is entangled in his own [contradictions]. ^B And such a throng flows in upon me, as it were introducing some ghost of strange demons; it is an absurd shadow-painting of myth-makers, for the sake of old women’s tales. So far are we from permitting such speeches to be heard by men, that we are not even accustomed to soothe wailing infants, as the saying goes, with fables, lest we chance to rear up impiety with them—that [impiety] which is proclaimed by those self-styled wise men, who, while they are in truth more ignorant than infants, yet seem to themselves to be wise. For why, I pray you by the truth, do you render those who have trusted in you prone to corruption and destruction, which is truly grave and little honorable? Why do you fill life with images, when you fashion as gods either the winds, or the air, fire, or earth, or stones, or wood, or iron, or this very world; or, by the aid of this astrology, which is bandied about by the vulgar—or rather, by your meteorological babbling, which you falsely name astronomy—turning your discourse toward celestial bodies, you lie that the wandering stars are gods to men who are themselves truly wandering? ^C But I desire the Lord of spirits, the Lord of fire, the maker of the world, and He who gave its light to the sun: I seek God, not the works of God. Whom of you shall I take as an assistant in this search? Plato, indeed, if it seems good to you, we do not altogether reject. By what arguments, then, O Plato, shall we search out God? For the father and creator of this universe is difficult to find, and when found, it is impossible to declare him to all in words. Why, then, I beseech you?

CHAPTER VI.

^A Indeed, it is simply impossible to declare him. But why, I ask you? Euge, O Plato, you have touched upon the truth; yet do not weary of the labor, but take up the search for the Good along with me. For upon the whole human race, and especially upon those who have spent their time in the study of letters, a certain divine seed has been instilled, by which they are compelled, even if unwilling and reluctant, to confess that there is one God, without destruction and without generation, ^B who himself exists forever in his own proper and peculiar watch-tower, somewhere high up above the back of the heavens. But tell me, what kind of God must we conceive?

“He who sees all things, but is not himself seen,” says Euripides. And hence Menander seems to me to have erred, when he says: ^C “O Sun, for thee it behoves one first of the gods to worship, by whose benefit we behold the other gods.” For the sun will never show the true God, nor indeed does sound reason, which is the sun of the soul, through which alone, when it has risen within in the depths of the mind, the very eye of the intellect is illuminated. Whence, not without reason, Democritus says that among learned men few are they who have lifted up their hands to that place which we Greeks now call the air, declaring that all things are Zeus; and he knows all things, and gives and takes away, and he is king of all. In this way also Plato, ^D contemplating God, hints at the king of all: “Around the king of all are all things, and he is the cause of all good things.” Who, then, is the king of all? God, the standard and measure of the truth of existing things. Just as, therefore, things measured are grasped by the measure, so also by the conception of God is truth measured and grasped. And the most holy Moses says: “There shall not be in your bag a weight and a weight, a great or a small; but a true weight, and a just one.”

^A For unjust and unequal idols are hidden at home in the purse, or, so to speak, in a filthy soul; but the only just measure, the only truly existing God, being always equal and remaining the same in the same state, measures ^B all things and weighs them as if by the balance of justice, encompassing and sustaining the nature of all things without inclination. Therefore God, as stated also in the ancient word, having the beginning, and the end, and the middle of all beings, accomplishes an upright course, proceeding according to nature; and justice always attends Him, the punisher of those who depart from the divine law. Whence, O Plato, do you hint at the truth? Whence does that abundant supply of words divine the worship of God for you? “The races of the barbarians,” he says, “are wiser than these.” I know your teachers, even if you wish to conceal them: you learn geometry from the Egyptians, astronomy from the Babylonians, and you receive healthy incantations from the Thracians. The Assyrians also taught you many things; but whatever laws are in accordance with reason, and that opinion concerning God, were supplied to you by the Hebrews: Who, never led astray by vain errors, loathe the works of men, From ivory and silver, and gold, and bronze, And images of dead men, made of stone and wood, Which others, a most vain crowd, revere. But rather they lift pure hands to heaven, In the morning, when they rise from their bed, they cleanse their bodies With water, and worship Him alone who governs all things, The Immortal. ^C And do not, O philosophy, exert yourself to bring forward only this Plato, but many others as well, who, apart from the one true God, deem no one worthy of the name of God, being inspired by His own Spirit, if anywhere they might lay hold of the truth. For Antisthenes, indeed, did not devise this as a Cynic dogma, but being a pupil of Socrates, to whom he gave his attention, he was taught that God is like to no one; wherefore no one can learn Him from an image. And Xenophon ^D the Athenian explicitly also

COHORTATIO AD GENTES

^A be known by anyone. Furthermore, Xenophon the Athenian revealed some part of the truth quite freely and openly in his writings, about to bear witness to the very same thing as Socrates, had he not feared the poison of Socrates; yet he hints at it nonetheless: He who shakes all things, and also calms them, he says, it is certain that he is great and powerful: but of what form he is, it is not clear. And not even the sun itself, although it seems to diffuse light in every direction, allows itself to be seen with impunity: for if anyone should attempt to gaze upon it impudently, he loses his sight. From where, therefore, did the son of Gryllus learn these things? Could it be from the prophetess of the Hebrews, who prophesies thus?

What flesh will be able to behold the heavenly and true [God], Who, devoid of human lot, is God on the summit of heaven? Mortals cannot see the opposing rays of the sun, Nor the flashing light.

^B Cleanthes of Assos, the Stoic philosopher, who exhibits not a poetic theogony, but true theology, did not hide from us in the least what he thought about God:

You ask me what is good, now hear: What is ordered, whole, holy, pious, Self-possessed, useful, decent, convenient, Serious, and severe, and which always confers, Greater than fear, and pain, and trouble, Healthy, pleasant, safe, friendly, Honored, consistent with itself, clear, Modest, diligent, gentle, powerful, Peregrine, ignorant of stain, and always remaining.

^A Illiberal is every man who keeps his gaze fixed on opinion, As if he would obtain some good from it.

In these words, I believe, he clearly teaches what manner of being God is, and how common opinion and worldly custom enslave those who choose to follow them rather than to seek God. Nor should Pythagoras be passed over, whose words are these: ^B "God is indeed one; yet he is not (as some suppose) outside this ordering of things, but in it, whole in the whole circle, the overseer of all generation, the tempering of all things, being always the author of his own compositions and of all works, the luminary of heaven, and father of all, the mind and life of the whole orb, the motion of all things." And these things, which were written by them through the inspiration of God, and selected by us, shall suffice for the knowledge of God to all those who are not altogether dull and unteachable in discerning the truth.

CHAPTER VII.

That the poets also bear witness to the truth.

Let there also come to us (for we shall not be satisfied with philosophy alone) that very poetry which, though deeply addicted to falsehood, will yet with difficulty and at length bear witness to the truth, or rather will confess to God its own digression into fables. Let there come forward, then, from the poets, whoever wishes to be first. Aratus, therefore, considers that the power of God pervades all things: ^C

"...that all things may be firm, Him they always propitiate as first and last. Hail, Father, great wonder, great boon to mankind."

In like manner also the Ascraean Hesiod signifies God:

* For he alone of all is king and lord, And of the immortals, no other possesses this realm.

Furthermore, they uncover the truth even on the stage. For there, ^D

^A when one has looked up to the ether and into the heaven, consider this to be God, says Euripides; and Sophilus' son, Sophocles:

Truly there is one, one God alone, Who fashioned heaven and the wide earth, And the sea's azure swell, and the strength of the winds. But we mortals, wandering through love of much gain, Have set up, as a solace for our ills, Images of gods ^B made of stone, or of wood, or of bronze, Or wrought of gold, or ivory forms, And by dedicating to these the blood of victims and empty festivals, We deem that we are religious.

Thus, indeed, and in a way that was already fraught with danger, he introduced the truth to the spectators on the stage. ^B But the Thracian hierophant and poet at the same time, Orpheus, the son of Oeagrus, after the revelation of his mysteries and after the theology of idols, introduces a palinode of truth, singing, though it were late, yet nevertheless a truly sacred discourse:

I shall speak to those for whom it is lawful; ^C close the doors, you profane! All of you together; but do you listen, off-spring of the light-bearing Moon, Musaeus, for I shall speak the truth; and do not let the things which appeared Before in your breast deprive you of the light of a dear life. But looking to the divine Word, attend to this, Directing the intellectual vessel of your heart, and step well Upon the path, and look only to the King of the world, The immortal...

God, he clearly adds: ^A * For from one being he is born, born of one are all things: He himself revolves within them; and no mortal Beholds him, but he himself beholds all. Thus indeed, Orpheus, having wandered for a long time, at last understood. But you, O mortal endowed with varied counsel, do not delay any longer, But turn back and make God propitious to you. For if the Greeks, having received certain sparks, as it were, of the divine Word, have uttered some small portion of the truth, they bear witness indeed that its power is not hidden, but they convict themselves of weakness, because they have not reached the end. For I think it is manifest to everyone that those who do or say anything without the Word of truth are like those who attempt to walk without feet. But may the reproaches of your gods, which poets, compelled by the truth, lash out at and censure, at least urge you toward salvation. For Menander the comic poet, in the play which is called *The Charioteer*, says: For me, he says, no god can please ^B who walks With an old woman, nor who crawls into houses By the protection of a tablet. For such are those who beg for alms for the Mother of the gods, to whom Antisthenes is said to have replied not inappropriately: "I do not feed the mother of the gods, whom the gods feed." The same comic poet, finding the practice of his contemporaries difficult to bear, in the play he entitled *The Priestess*, speaks quite acutely and prudently these words, by which he refutes the impious arrogance of their error: ...for if he drags God ^C ...if he drags God On a tablet; for the righteous God must Remain at home, saving those who are established. With these words Menander censured the priests of Cybele, who used to go around the cities with an old woman who carried the image of Cybele, begging for alms for the Goddess. ^D

^A And the man who leads them about with jingling cymbals, to wherever he pleases—he who does this is greater than God. But these are contrivances of audacity and means of livelihood, discovered for men.

And not only Menander, but Homer, and Euripides, and many other poets, rebuke your gods and are not in the least afraid to tear them apart with insults. For they call Minerva a "dog-fly," and Vulcan "lame." And Helena speaks thus to Venus:

"Do not return again on your feet to Olympus." ^B

And concerning Bacchus, Homer writes openly and plainly:

"Who once drove the nurses of frenzied Bacchus Down through Zeus-tended Nysa; and they all together Cast their wands to the ground, under the man-slaying Lycurgus."

Euripides shows himself worthy indeed of the Socratic school, looking toward the truth and despising his spectators. For at one moment he rebukes Apollo:

"…Who inhabits the central ^C seat of the earth, And doles out to mortals most certain oracles."

"Obeying him, I killed the one who bore me! Consider him unholy, and kill him! He committed the sin, not I, Being ignorant of what is honorable and just."

At another, he introduces the frenzied and drunken Hercules, who is elsewhere insatiable; for how could he not be, who, when entertained as a guest, would eat green figs after meat, barking out absurd things, ^D such that even a barbarian might take note? And already, in the play which is entitled *Ion*, he rolls the gods into the theater with bare head:

"How then is it just that you, who have written laws for mortals, Should yourselves be guilty of injustice? But if—though it will not happen—I shall use the argument: If you were to pay the penalty to men for your violent marriages, You, and Neptune, and Zeus who rules over the sky, You would empty your temples by paying for your injustice."

CHAPTER VIII. That the true doctrine concerning God is to be sought from the Prophets.

Furthermore, it is now time, since the other matters have been advanced by us in order... (the rest of the page consists of editorial notes).

prophets. For upon their responses, which show us the rationale of worshipping God most manifestly, the truth is founded. The divine Scriptures and wise instructions lead to salvation by a short path: they are devoid of cosmetics, of outward verbal ornamentation, of blandishments, and of allurements, and they rouse man who is quite stifled by vices, while teaching him to despise the uncertain events of this life, and by one and the same voice they heal diverse affections, exhorting us from dangerous deceit, and clearly urging us to attain that salvation which is placed before our eyes. Therefore, let the prophetess Sibyl first chant for us the saving song:

^B Everywhere it shines clear, and wanders with no error: Believe in the light, and leave behind the darkness of night: The pleasant day of the Sun is present, the renowned lamp shines: Therefore come, and let wisdom flourish in your souls: One is God, who shakes down the rain-bearing East winds, Lightning, plagues, and famine, and all sad things, And ice, and snows. What need is there, that I should tell you each one? He is the Prince of heaven, the Lord of the earth, He truly is;

^B Wherein she has most divinely likened deceit to darkness, and the knowledge of God to the sun and light; and by setting them both in comparison, she teaches us which of them must be chosen. For falsehood is not dissipated by the mere statement of the truth, but is rejected and put to flight by the exercise of the truth. But the most wise prophet Jeremiah, or rather the Holy Spirit in him, shows God: "I am a God," he says, "drawing near, and not a God far off. If a man does anything in secret, shall I not see him? Do I not fill heaven and earth?" says the Lord. ^C And again, through Isaiah: "Who," he says, "shall measure the heaven with a span, and the whole earth with his palm?" Consider the greatness of God, and be amazed. Let us worship Him, of whom the prophet says: "From thy face the mountains shall melt, as wax melts from the face of fire." "This," he says, "is God, whose throne is heaven, but the earth is the footstool of his feet." If He should open the heaven, trembling will seize thee. Do you wish to hear also what this prophet says concerning idols? "They shall be brought forth before the sun, and their carcasses shall be food for the birds of heaven and the beasts of the earth; and they shall rot away from ^D

^A the sun and the moon, which they themselves loved and which they themselves served; and their city shall be burned with fire. He says that the elements and the world will also perish with them: "The earth," he says, "shall grow old, and the heaven shall pass away; but the word of the Lord abideth for ever."

What then, when God wills to reveal Himself again through Moses? "See, see that I am He, and there is no God ^B besides me. I will kill, and I will make to live; I will strike, and I will heal, and there is none who shall deliver out of my hands." But do you also wish to hear another oracle? You have the entire prophetic choir, the fellow-initiates of Moses. What does the Holy Spirit say to them through Hosea—I will not shrink from declaring it: "Behold, I am He who establishes the thunder, and creates the spirit; whose hands have founded the host of heaven." And again through Isaiah—for I will mention this saying to you also: "I am, I am," says the Lord, "who speak righteousness and declare truth. Assemble yourselves and come; take counsel together, you who are saved from the nations. They have no knowledge who lift up the wood, the carving of them; and pray to gods ^C who will not save them."

Then, a little further down: "I am," He says, "God, and there is no righteous one and savior besides me; there is none except me. Turn to me, and you shall be saved, you who are from the ends of the earth. I am God, and there is no other; by myself I swear." And He is angry with the idolaters, saying: "To whom have you likened the Lord, or with what likeness have you made Him like? Did a craftsman make an image? Or did a goldsmith, having melted gold, overlay it with gold?" and the things that follow from this. Therefore, do not hereafter devote yourselves to the worship of idols, but now at least beware of these threats; for the carved images and the things made by hands shall cry out ^D—or rather, those who have placed their trust in them; for the material is without sense. Furthermore, the Lord says, He "will shake the inhabited cities, and shall take the whole world in His hand, as a nest."

What then shall I announce to you of the mysteries and the sayings of Wisdom from the very wise child of the Hebrews? "The Lord created me as the beginning of His ways for His works." And, "The Lord gives wisdom, and from..."

His face come knowledge and understanding." How long, O sluggard, will you lie down? When will you be roused from sleep? ^B But if you are diligent, your harvest will come to you like a spring, the paternal Word, the good lamp, the Lord who brings forth light, faith for all, and salvation. For the Lord who made the earth in His power, as Jeremiah says, established the world in His wisdom. For Wisdom, which is His Word, lifts us up to the truth—we who had fallen down before idols; and this is the first resurrection from the fall. Whence, turning us away from all idol-worship, the divine one cries out beautifully: "Hear, O Israel: The Lord your God, the Lord is one; and the Lord your God you shall worship, and Him only shall you serve." Now then, understand, O men, being admonished by that blessed psalmist, David: "Take hold of instruction, lest the Lord be angry, and you perish from the righteous way, when His wrath is quickly kindled; blessed are all those who trust in Him." And now, the Lord, embracing us with singular mercy, gives us a saving song, like a rhythmic call to battle: "O sons of men, how long will you be heavy-hearted? Why do you love vanity, and seek after lies?" What then is this vanity, and what is this lie? The holy Apostle of the Lord, blaming the Greeks, will explain it to you: "Because when they knew God, they did not glorify Him as God, nor were thankful, but became vain in their imaginations, and changed the glory of the incorruptible God into an image made like corruptible man, and worshiped the creature rather than the Creator." Since, therefore, this God is He who in the beginning made heaven and earth, and you, not having known God, ^C deem the heaven worthy of divine worship and honor, what excuse shall defend you from the charge of impiety? Listen again to the prophet saying: "The sun shall fail, and the heaven shall be darkened; but the Almighty shall shine forever, and the powers of the heavens shall be shaken, and the heavens shall be rolled up like a parchment, being stretched out and folded" (for these are the words of the prophets), "and the earth shall flee from the face of the Lord."

CHAPTER IX

I could also bring before you other almost innumerable Scriptures, of which not one iota shall pass away without having been fulfilled. For the mouth of the Lord is the Holy Spirit. ^D And I could bring before you myriads of Scriptures, from which not one iota shall pass away that has not been fulfilled; for the mouth of the Lord is the Holy Spirit.

^A And these things He has spoken. "Do not, therefore," He says, "my son, slight the discipline of the Lord, nor faint when you are reproved by Him." O the surpassing love of humanity! Not as a teacher behaves toward students, nor as a master toward servants, nor as God toward men, but as a father does He most mildly admonish his sons. ^B Furthermore, Moses indeed confesses that he is frightened and trembling when he hears concerning the Word; but you, hearing the divine Word, do you not fear? Are you not anxious? Are you not at the same time reverent, and do you not hasten to learn—that is, hasten toward salvation—fearing the wrath, loving the grace, and zealous for the hope, so that you may avoid the judgment? Come, come, my youth—for unless you again become as little children and are reborn, as Scripture says, you shall by no means receive the truly existing Father, nor shall you ever enter into the kingdom of heaven. For how is the stranger permitted to enter? But when, I think, he is registered, and becomes a citizen, and receives the father, then he will be in the things of the father; then he will be deemed worthy to inherit; then he will share in the paternal kingdom with the legitimate, beloved Son. For this is the primogenital ^C Church, fashioned out of many good children; these are the first-born, those written in the heavens and keeping festival together with so many myriads of angels. But we are the first-born children, the foster-children of God, the genuine friends of the First-born, who were the first of all men to understand God, the first to be torn away from sins, the first to be separated from the devil. But now, some are so much the more godless, by how much more God is philanthropic; for while He desires us to become sons out of servants, they are puffed up even to become sons. O the great madness! Are you ashamed of the Lord? He promises freedom; but you flee into slavery. He grants salvation; ^D but you rush toward your own destruction. He bestows eternal life; but you await the punishment, and you look toward the fire which the Lord has prepared for the devil and his angels. For this reason the blessed Apostle...

^A says: "I testify in the Lord, that you no longer walk as the Gentiles walk in the vanity of their mind, having the understanding darkened, and being alienated from the life of God through the ignorance that is in them, because of the hardening of their heart; who, having become past feeling, have given themselves over unto lasciviousness, to work all uncleanness and greediness." Since such a witness convicts the folly of men and calls upon God, what else remains for the unbelieving but judgment and condemnation? Nor does the Lord truly abandon his care for them, but persists in constantly exhorting, terrifying, impelling, exciting, and admonishing them; and those who have been entangled in errors He rouses, awakening them from the midst of their darkness. "Awake," He says, "you who sleep, and arise from the dead, and Christ the Lord shall shine upon you," that Sun of resurrection, who was begotten before the morning star, and who has granted life by His own rays. ^B Let no one, therefore, despise the Word, lest he be found, unawares, to have despised himself. For the Scripture says somewhere: "Today if you will hear His voice, do not harden your hearts, as in the provocation, in the day of temptation in the wilderness, where your fathers tempted me in probation." And what is that probation? If you wish to learn, the Holy Spirit will explain to you: "And they saw My works for forty years. Therefore I was provoked with that generation, and I said: 'They always err in their heart; but they have not known My ways.' So I swore in My wrath, they shall not enter into My rest." Behold the threats! Behold the exhortation! Behold the punishment! Why, then, do we still make a gracious and beneficent God angry with us? Why do we not open our ears to the Word, and receive God as a guest into ^C our pure and undefiled souls? For the promise of His grace will truly be a source of benefit, if we hear His voice today; but that "today" increases day by day, as long as it is called "today." For the present day and the time of learning endure even unto the final consummation of all things. Thenceforth that true "today," which is the never-failing day of God, extends through all ages. Wherefore let us always obey the voice of the divine Word: for "today" is an image of the eternal age ^D; and the day is a symbol of the light.

but the light of men is the ^A Word, by whose aid we see God. Rightly, therefore, shall grace abound for those who have believed and have been obedient; but for the disobedient and those who wander in their hearts, and have not known the ways of the Lord—which John commanded to be made straight and prepared—the Lord is indignant and threatens them. And indeed, the end of this threat was signified in an enigmatic way to those ancient wanderers among the Hebrews; for they are said not to have entered into the rest because of their unbelief, until, having followed the successor of Moses, they should at last learn late by experience that they could not be saved in any other way than by believing in Jesus. But the Lord, since He is a lover of mankind, calls all men to the knowledge of the truth, He who sends the Paraclete. What then is this knowledge? It is piety toward God. And piety ^B is profitable for all things, according to Paul, having the promise of the life which now is and of that which is to come. At what price, O men, would you confess you would buy eternal salvation, if it were for sale? Not even if one were to measure out the entire Pactolus, that mythical stream of gold, would he count out a price worthy of salvation. Do not, therefore, grow faint; it is possible for you, if you wish, to purchase this most precious salvation with your own treasures—with love and the faith of life—which is a price worthy of account. God willingly accepts this price; for "we have trusted in the living God, who is the Savior of all men, especially of those who believe." But others, clinging to the world like seaweed to sea-cliffs, disregard immortality; just as that Ithacan elder ^C burned with desire not for the truth, nor for his fatherland in heaven, nor for the light which truly exists, but for the smoke. But piety, as it assimilates man to God as far as possible, ascribes as teacher to him God, who alone is able to make man, in a manner worthy of Him, like unto God. And the Apostle, knowing this doctrine to be truly divine, says: "But as for you, O Timothy, from childhood you have known the sacred writings, which are able to make you wise unto salvation through faith which is in Christ"; for the writings are truly sacred that make holy ^D and deify—from which writings and sacred syllables

^A the same Apostle calls them divinely inspired, as being useful for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness, that the man of God may be perfect, thoroughly furnished unto all good works. No one indeed would be as much moved by the exhortations of other holy men as by the Lord Himself, the lover of mankind. For He has no other work, nor does He pursue any goal, but that men should be saved and safe. Wherefore He urges and impels them to salvation, crying: "The kingdom of heaven is at hand." By this voice He renders those men attentive to Himself who were somewhat timid. The Apostle of the Lord likewise, exhorting the Macedonians, becomes an interpreter of the divine voice. "The Lord," he says, "is at hand; take heed that we be not found empty." But are you so empty of fear, or rather so incredulous, that you do not trust even the Lord Himself, much less Paul—and this when he ^B implores you on behalf of Christ—so as to taste and see that Christ is God? Faith will lead you in, experience will teach you, and Scripture will instruct you, saying: "Come, you children, listen to me; I will teach you the fear of the Lord." Then, as if to those already imbued with faith, he briefly adds: "What man is he that desires life, and loves to see good days?" We, you will say, are the worshippers of the Good, the zealots of good things. Listen, therefore, you who are far off; listen, you who are near; the Word is hidden from no one; He is a common light, He shines out to all men; there is no Cimmerian in the Word. Let us hasten to salvation, to rebirth, being gathered into one love ^C, the many, according to the unity of the Monadic essence; let us hasten, performing good works, to pursue unity, seeking the good Monad. For the union of many, receiving divine harmony from polyphony and dispersion, becomes one concord, following the one choir-leader and teacher, the Word, and resting upon the truth itself. And the Father, God Himself, welcomes this true voice, being the first to harvest it from His own children. ^D

CHAPTER X.

But, you say, it is not reasonable to overthrow the customs handed down to us by our ancestors. And why, then, do we not use that first nourishment, milk, to which our nurses accustomed us from birth? Why do we increase or decrease the patrimony, instead of strictly preserving the same amount as we received it? And why do we no longer regurgitate into our fathers' bosoms, or perform those other things that we used to do when we were infants being reared at our mothers' breasts, which made people laugh? But we correct and improve ourselves, even if we have not had good tutors. And if, in our emotions, there are digressions—even though they are harmful and dangerous—they are nevertheless sweet and somehow slip in? Yet in our life, why do we not leave behind the evil, irrational, and godless custom, even if our fathers are angered, and why do we not turn toward the truth and seek the truly existing Father, casting off custom as if it were a deadly poison? ^B For this very thing is the finest of all tasks to demonstrate to you: that it is because of madness and this thrice-wretched custom that piety has been hated; for such a great good—a good greater than which nothing has ever been bestowed by God upon the human race—would never have been hated, had you not been snatched away by custom, and then, having stopped up your ears, like stubborn horses having bitten the bit, fled from the arguments, desiring to cast off us who are the charioteers of your life, ^C and, carried by folly toward the precipices of destruction, considered the holy Word of God to be accursed. Therefore, as Sophocles says, the rewards of your choice follow you:

*Mind vacant, ears useless, thoughts vain.*

And you do not know that this is truer than everything, that

^D *No good greater than this has come, or shall ever come, to the mortal race, bestowed by the gods.*

^A Those who are good and god-fearing will obtain the good reward, while those who are the opposite, the wicked, will obtain the punishment due to them. Indeed, punishment hangs over the very prince of wickedness; the prophet Zechariah threatens him: *The Lord who chosen Jerusalem rebuke you; is not this a firebrand plucked from the fire?* What then is this desire for a voluntary death that has settled in the minds of men? Why have they taken refuge in this deadly firebrand, with which it is inevitable that they will be burned, when it was in their power to live uprightly, according to God and not according to custom? For God bestows life, but an evil custom brings with it, after the departure from this life, a vain repentance together with punishment. *A fool, having suffered, has learned* that superstition brings destruction and ruin, while piety brings salvation.

^B Let one of you look at those who serve idols, and notice how they are defiled, disfigured by filthy and torn garments, completely abstaining from baths, having become quite savage with nails growing to an immense length, and many even having castrated themselves—by their very deeds showing that the temples of the idols are merely tombs or prisons. They seem to me to be mourning the gods, not worshipping them, having suffered things that are worthy of pity rather than piety. And seeing these things, are you still blind, and will you not look up to the Master of all things and the Lord of all? Will you not take refuge by escaping from these prisons here and flee to the mercy sent down from heaven? For God, out of his great love for humanity, sustains man, flying down like a mother bird to ^C a chick falling from the nest. And if some crawling beast should gape at the chick, the mother flies around, lamenting her dear children; but God the Father seeks his own creature, heals the fall, drives away the beast, and taking back the chick, urges it to fly back to the nest. Furthermore, dogs, when they have strayed, are accustomed to track and seek out their master with a keen sense of smell. And horses, even having thrown off their rider, have obeyed their master at a single whistle. *But the ox knew his owner, and the ass his master's manger; but Israel did not know me.* What then does the Lord do? He does not harbor malice; he still shows mercy, because he asks for repentance. I wish to ask you: does it not seem absurd to you, since you are a creature, ^D that you should...

^A have received your soul from God and be entirely His, yet serve another master? And furthermore, that you should revere a tyrant instead of a King, and the wicked instead of the Good? For who, I ask by the truth, if he be in his right mind, would abandon the Good to consort with evil? Who is there who, fleeing God, lives among demons? Who is there who, having the power to be a son of God, chooses instead to be a slave? Or who, having the power to be a citizen of heaven, pursues Hades—when he might cultivate paradise, roam the heavens, and partake of the vital, untainted fountain, following in the footsteps ^B of that luminous cloud, as Elijah did, beholding the saving rain? But others, like worms in marshes and mire, wallowing in the currents of pleasure, feed on senseless and foolish delights, being swinish men. For some, as it is said, take pleasure in mud rather than pure water; and, according to Democritus, they rave over filth. Let us not, then, let us not be enslaved, nor become like swine, but as genuine children of light, let us look up and gaze toward the light, lest the Lord expose us as bastards, just as the sun does to the eagles. Let us repent, therefore, and pass from ignorance to knowledge, from folly to prudence, from intemperance to temperance, from injustice to justice, from impiety to God. ^C It is a glorious risk to desert to God. And there are many other good things for those who love justice to enjoy, we who pursue eternal salvation, and especially those which God Himself hints at, speaking through Isaiah: "There is an inheritance for those who serve the Lord." Truly a beautiful and desirable inheritance, not gold, not silver, not clothing, into which the moth or the earthly thief makes his way, eyeing that lowly wealth, but rather that treasure of salvation to which we must hasten, having become lovers of the Word. Hence, ^D our noble works depart with us from here, and are joined to the wing of truth. This inheritance the eternal covenant of God hands over to us, bestowing the eternal gift; and the most loving

Father, who is truly Father and loves us more intensely, never ceases to exhort, to warn, to correct, and to cherish. For He does not cease to save; rather, He gives the best counsel: "Become righteous," says the Lord. "You who are thirsty, go to the water; and whoever has no money, go, and buy, and drink without money." He invites us to the washing, to salvation, to illumination, ^A crying out almost openly: "I give to you, O child, the earth and the sea and the heaven; and whatever is created in them, I bestow as a gift upon you. Only, O child, thirst for the Father; God will be shown to you without price; truth is not sold. He gives you also the winged creatures, the swimming creatures, and those that are upon the earth. These things the Father has created for your grateful and mindful enjoyment; which indeed a bastard, who is a child of perdition and has chosen to serve mammon, will buy with money; but to you, He entrusts your own things, as to a legitimate son—to you who love the Father, for whose sake He still works, and to whom alone He promises, saying: 'And the earth shall be extended ^B for security; for it is not established for corruption; for all the earth is mine; but it shall be yours, if you receive God.' Whence the Scripture rightly brings good tidings to those who have believed: 'But the saints of the Lord shall inherit the glory of God and His power.' What glory, tell me, O blessed one? That which eye has not seen, nor ear heard, nor has it entered into the heart of man; and they shall rejoice in the kingdom of their Lord for ever. Amen. You have, O men, the divine promise of grace; you have also heard the other threat of punishment; by which the Lord saves, ^C instructing man through fear and grace. Why do we delay? Why do we not escape punishment? Why do we not receive the gift? Why do we not choose the better things—God instead of the evil one—and prefer wisdom to the worship of idols, and exchange death for life? 'Behold,' He says, 'I have set before your face death and life.' The Lord is testing you, to see if you will choose life. He counsels you as a Father, to be persuaded by God. For if you listen to me, ^D [original-script column: see facsimile]

and if you wish, you shall eat the good things of the earth. The result of obedience is grace. But if you do not obey me, and wish it not, the sword and fire shall devour you; the result ^B of disobedience is judgment. For the mouth of the Lord has spoken these things: the law of truth, the Word of the Lord. Do you wish that I become a good counselor for you? Nevertheless, do you listen; I, if it is possible, will demonstrate. You ought, O men, while considering this very good, to have brought forward an innate and worthy witness, faith, which of itself and from its own nature chooses obviously the best, instead of seeking whether one must follow after or labor for it. For indeed if one had to get drunk, let us say, one would have to hesitate; yet you, before you have examined, get drunk; and if one ought to do an injury, you do not busy yourselves with many questions, but quickly perform the injury. Only, therefore, if one must worship God, you ask, and if one must follow this wise one, namely God and Christ; and this you deem worthy of counsel and consideration, not having even understood what is appropriate to God, or what it is. Believe us even as you do drunkenness, so that you may become sober; believe us even as you do injury, so that you may live. And if you also wish to be persuaded, having suspected the evident faith of the virtues, come, I will produce for you in abundance the persuasion regarding the Word. But you—for ancestral customs still distract you, having previously taken hold of you away from the truth—you might by now listen to how the following matters stand; and let no shame for this name seize you beforehand, which is also a great bane to men, turning them aside from salvation. ^C Having therefore stripped ourselves clearly in the stadium of truth, let us contend earnestly, with the holy Word acting as judge, and the Master of all acting as the giver of the prize. For not a small prize is set before you: immortality. Do not therefore be anxious any longer, nor heed if some marketplace rabble speak against you, these atheist dancers of superstition, pushed by folly and madness into that very abyss, makers of idols, and worshippers of stones. For these have dared to deify men, enrolling ^D Alexander the Macedonian as the thirteenth.

CONHORTATION TO THE GENTILES

210 A prefer, and for death do we compare life? Behold, he says, before your face I have set death and life. The Lord tempts you, that you may choose life. He exhorts, as a father, and persuades you to obey God. For if, he says, you hear me and are willing, you shall eat the good things of the earth: this he establishes as the grace of obedience. But if you do not obey me, nor are willing, the sword and fire shall devour you: he pronounces this judgment against contumacy. For the mouth of the Lord has spoken these things: the law of truth, the Word of the Lord. Does it please you that I set forth counsel in a way that is most expedient for you? Do you, therefore, attend; but I, clearly, to the best of my strength, will set it forth. You ought indeed, O men, when you were thinking about what is good, to have used an innate and sufficient witness, faith, which of itself and by its own nature chooses at once that which is most excellent; and not to have sought or labored so long as to whether it must be pursued. For no one of you doubts, for example, whether one ought to get drunk; but, before you consider, you get drunk. Nor are you very anxious whether it is permissible to do an injury; but you do that, which you can, as quickly as possible. In this only do you hesitate: whether God is to be worshipped? And whether this wise one, namely God and Christ, is to be followed? These you do not deem worthy of your consultation and deliberation, not even thinking what is appropriate and decent for God. Believe us at least, just as you are accustomed to drunkenness, that you may become sober. Believe us at least, just as you are accustomed to injury, that we may obtain life. But if, having recognized the manifest faith of the virtues, you are willing to obey, I will bring to you in abundance those things which, by the Word, have been supplied to elicit your consent. You, however (for ancestral customs have so preoccupied you that they have entirely turned you away up to this point from the study of the truth), now at length turn your minds to those things that follow. And let no shame of this name deter you beforehand, which is accustomed to lead men away from salvation, and to bring upon them the greatest harm. Wherefore, stripping ourselves openly of our garments, in the stadium of truth...

let us contend lawfully, with the holy Word as judge, and the Lord of the whole universe as the instructor of the contest. For no light reward, immortality, is set before us. ^A Do not be concerned, therefore, if certain men of the dregs of the populace, who perform the impious dances of superstition, who are cast headlong into the very abyss by their madness and insanity, who are fabricators of idols and worshippers of stones, speak contentiously against you. For these are the ones who dared to class men among the gods; who used to count Alexander of Macedon, whom Babylon showed to be dead, as the thirteenth god. ^B Accordingly, I cannot help but look up to and admire that divine Sophist whose name was Theocritus. For he, upon the death of Alexander, mocking the vain opinions about the gods which had taken root in the minds of men, said to his fellow citizens: "Be of good courage, sirs, as long as you see the gods dying before men." But he who worships visible gods and this confused crowd of such created things, is far more wretched than even those demons themselves. For God is by no means unjust, like the demons; but, as far as possible, He is most just, and there is nothing more like Him than that one among us who is most just.

"Begone from the ways, all you tribe of laborers, Who worship with winnowing-fans the terrible-eyed Daughter of Zeus, the working goddess, O fools,"

you who pay divine honors to stones fashioned by your own hands. Let your Phidias, then, and Polycletus come forward, and Praxiteles too, and Apelles, and in short all those who practice the mechanical arts, earth-born laborers of the earth. ^C "For then," as some prophecy says, "things here below will fare wretchedly, whenever they put their trust in statues." Let those base and sordid craftsmen come forward—for I shall not cease to call them such. ^D For no one of them has created an animate image, nor has he softened flesh out of earth. Who has formed the marrow? Or who has solidified the bones? Who has stretched the nerves? Who has fanned the veins into being? Who has poured blood into them? Or who has stretched skin around them? Where, moreover, could any of them make eyes that see? Who has breathed in a soul? Who has granted justice? Who has promised immortality? Only the Creator of all, the master-craftsman Father, has fashioned such a living statue—us, humanity. But your Olympian god, an image of an image, falling very far short of the truth, is a deaf work of Attic hands. For the image of God is His Word; and the genuine Son of the Mind, the divine Word, is the archetypal light.

^B But the image of the Word is man. For there is in man a true mind, which is said to have been made for this very reason according to the image and likeness of God, being conformed to the divine Word through the understanding in the heart, and thus being rational; whereas the statues made by men, which represent the form of man, are but earthly images of that visible, earth-born being, and appear to be a molding that falls far short of the truth. It seems to me, therefore, that human life is nothing but full of madness, setting itself with such great eagerness upon material things. Yet the habit of doing so is permitted by empty glory, which has tasted for you of slavery and senseless busy-bodiedness, while the ignorance of those things that are lawful and those that are unlawful—a trick of deceit ^C already fashioned to be the cause of deadly plagues and hateful idols for the race of men—has devised many forms of demons, and has imprinted on those who follow it the mark of long-lasting death. Take, therefore, the rational water, wash yourselves, you who are defiled, sprinkle yourselves from that habit with the true drops; it is necessary for you to be clean in order to ascend into the heavens. You are a man, seek the most common thing: Him who created you. You are a son, recognize what is most proper: your Father. But do you still remain in your sins, clinging to pleasures? To whom shall the Lord say, "The kingdom of the heavens is yours"? It is yours, if you wish it, you who have directed your inclination toward God; it is yours, if you wish only to believe, and to follow the shortness of the proclamation; to which the Ninevites, having listened, ^D exchanged the destruction that was expected for the excellent salvation through genuine repentance. How then, one says, shall I ascend into the heavens? The Lord is the Way; narrow indeed, but from the heavens; narrow, but leading upward to the heavens; narrow, despised on earth, but worshipped in the heavens. If, then, one is unlearned in the Word, ignorance serves as an excuse for his error; but he who has had it cast into his ears, and has had it in his soul by his own judgment—

^A if he be wise, such understanding will be to his detriment, because he has used his discernment as a witness against himself, not having chosen the best way. For man is by nature otherwise constituted; ^B he is naturally bound to God. Just as we do not force a horse to plow, nor a bull to hunt, but we drive each of these animals according to the purpose for which it was created; so, truly, we urge the man who has turned his gaze toward the contemplation of heaven—truly a heavenly plant—to the knowledge of God, having discerned what is his own and what is unique and characteristic in him beyond all other animals; we counsel him to prepare for himself a sufficient provision for eternity, which is godliness. ^C Do you practice agriculture? We say, cultivate your fields, but know God while you farm. Are you a lover of seafaring? Sail, but invoke the heavenly pilot. Has knowledge found you serving as a soldier? Hear the general who commands only what is just. ^D Just as those who are heavy with wine and drunkenness, wake up, and having opened your eyes a little, consider what the stones you worship really want, and why you spend in vain your wealth on material things. You pour out your riches and your life into ignorance, just as you pour your very existence into death; and you find this alone to be the end of your vain hope. You are not even able to pity yourselves, nor are you fit to be persuaded by those who pity you for your error; but, enslaved by evil habit, by which you are held fast, you persist by your own choice, until your very last breath, rushing headlong into ruin: "For the light is come into the world, and men loved darkness rather than the light"—even though it were possible to wipe away the things that stand in the way of salvation, and to shake off pride, wealth, and fear, by repeating this poetic line:

Whither then do I bear these many riches; and whither do I myself wander?

^A Proinde, if you are resolved, having cast off these empty imaginings, to renounce habit itself, say to this vain opinion:

Farewell, lying dreams, for you were nothing at all. ^B For why, O men, do you suppose that there is a Typhon, or a Hermes, or an Andocides, or an Amyetus? Is it not manifest to everyone that these are stones, just as Hermes himself is? And as the halo is not a god, nor is the rainbow, but certain affections of the air and clouds; and just as the day is not a god, nor the month, nor the year, nor the time that is made up of these, so too neither is the sun nor the moon, by which each of the aforementioned things is measured. Who, being in his right mind, would suppose that judgment, and punishment, and justice, and retribution are gods? ^B Nor are the Furies, nor the Fates, nor Necessity gods, since neither civic life, nor glory, nor Wealth—whom painters also depict as blind—are deities. And if you deify Modesty, and Love, and Aphrodite, then Infamy, and Lust, and Beauty, and Intercourse ought consistently to follow them. And so, Sleep and Death would not reasonably ^C be deemed by you twin gods, being as they are simply affections that happen naturally to living creatures; nor, likewise, would you justly call the Keres, or Necessity, or the Fates, goddesses. But if Strife and Battle are not gods, then neither are Ares, nor Enyo. Furthermore, if lightning, and thunderbolts, and rains are not gods, how are Fire and Water gods? How then, too, are the shooting stars and comets, which arise from an affection of the air? But let him who calls Fortune a god also call Action a god. If then not one of these is considered to be a god, nor indeed those shaped and insensible handiworks, and yet a certain apprehension of Divine ^C power is manifest among us, there is nothing left but to acknowledge this: that He who alone truly exists is indeed and remains the only truly existing God. But senseless men resemble those who have drunk mandrake or some other drug. May God grant you to sober up at last from this sleep and to understand God; and not to imagine that gold, or stone, or wood, or action, or passion, or disease, or fear is a god. For there are truly thirty thousand, in very truth, upon ^D

^A the earth who nourish nothing, demons, not indeed immortal, nor yet mortal; for they have not partaken of sensation, nor consequently of death. But being of stone and wood, they are held by men as masters, insulting and violating life by long custom. “The earth is the Lord’s,” He says, “and the fullness thereof.” Why, therefore, when you enjoy the goods of the Lord, do you endure to be ignorant of the Master? “Leave my earth,” the Lord will say to you; “do not touch the water which I cause to gush forth; do not partake of the fruits which I cultivate.” Render, O man, the nourishment to God. Recognize your Master. You are the proper handiwork of God. But how, justly, could that which is His own become another’s? For that which has been alienated, being bereft of its kinship, is also stripped of the truth. For do you not, after the manner of Niobe, or rather—that I may speak to you more mystically—after the manner of the Hebrew woman, whom the ancients called the wife of Lot, turn yourselves toward senselessness? We have received this woman as having been turned to stone because of her love for Sodom; for the Sodomites are those who are godless, and those who turn themselves toward impiety, and are hard-hearted and foolish. Believe that these words are being spoken to you from God: Do not suppose ^B that stones, and wood, and birds, and serpents are sacred things, and that men are not; but, on the contrary, consider men to be truly sacred, and beasts and stones to be what they are. For some wretched and miserable men think that God speaks through a raven or a jackdaw, but is silent through a human being; and they have honored the raven as a messenger of God, but they persecute the man of God, who does not croak, nor cluck, but—alas!—speaks rationally, and exhorts humanely. They attempt to slaughter him inhumanly, though he calls them to justice, not awaiting the grace from above, nor fearing the punishment. For they do not believe in God, nor do they learn His power; of Him whose philanthropy is ineffable, the hatred of evil is incomprehensible. For while anger nourishes the punishment for sin, philanthropy does well toward repentance. But most piteous is it to be stripped of the aid from God. The deprivation of sight ^C and of hearing is more grievous than the other greedinesses of the evil one; for the former are taken away from the heavenly vision, but the latter are deprived of divine instruction. But you, being maimed in respect to the truth, and blind in mind, and deaf in understanding, do you not grieve? Do you not show indignation? Do you not long to see heaven, and the Maker of heaven

and Father, and seek to hear and learn of Him, joining your own purpose to salvation? For nothing stands in the way of one who hastens toward the knowledge of God—neither lack of children, nor poverty, nor obscurity, nor destitution. Nor does anyone who has obtained the truly true wisdom desire to exchange it for bronze or iron; for this has surely been preferred above all things. Christ is everywhere providing salvation; for he who is a zealot of the righteous man, as a lover of the self-sufficient One, has few needs, having stored up his blessed treasure in no other place but in himself and in God, where there is no moth, nor thief, nor pirate, but the eternal Giver of good things. ^A Are you then, with good reason, likened to those serpents whose ears are shut against the charmers? For their spirit, the Scripture says, is according to the likeness of the serpent, like the deaf asp that stops its ears, which will not listen to the voice of the enchanters. But as for you, be charmed by holiness, and receive the gentle and our ^B Word, and spit out the deadly venom, so that it may be granted to you to cast off destruction, just as it is for them to cast off old age. Listen to me, and do not strip off your ears, nor stop up your hearing, but cast what is said into your mind. Good is the medicine of immortality; make the crawling paths of the serpents stand still at last. For the enemies of the Lord, the Scripture says, shall lick the dust. Lift yourselves up from the earth to the ether, look up to heaven, marvel, and cease lying in wait for the heel of the righteous, and hindering the path of ^C truth. Become wise and guileless (for the Lord will perhaps grant you a wing of simplicity; for He has determined to give wings to those born of earth), so that, leaving the holes of the earth, you may dwell in the heavens. Only let us repent with our whole heart, so that we may be able to contain God with our whole heart. Hope in Him, it says, all the congregation of the people; pour out before Him all your hearts. ^D You have not desired, nor have you sought to hear and learn of the Maker and Father of all, joining your purpose to salvation; for nothing stands in the way ^A of one who is in haste toward the knowledge of God—neither childlessness, nor poverty, nor lack of reputation, nor destitution. Nor does anyone, having turned away from the truly true wisdom, desire to exchange it for brass ^B or iron; for this has been better chosen than all else. Christ is Savior everywhere. For he who is a zealot of the righteous man, as he is a lover of the In-Need-of-Nothing, is himself one who has few needs, having stored up his blessed treasure in no other than Himself and in God, where there is neither moth, nor thief, nor pirate, but the eternal Giver of blessings. Deservedly, therefore, have you been likened to those serpents that close their ears against the charmers. For their spirit, the Scripture says, is according to the likeness of the serpent, as of the deaf asp that stops its ears, and which will not heed the voice of those who chant. But you, allow yourselves to be enchanted by holiness, and receive our gentle Word, and spit out the lethal venom, so that it might be granted to you to cast off destruction, as it is allowed to them to shed their old age. Listen to me, and do not block your ears, nor stop up your hearing; but impress upon your minds what is said. Immortality is an eminent medicine. Do no longer, like...

^A serpents, crawl upon the ground; for the enemies of the Lord lick the dust, the Scripture says. Lift up your eyes from the earth to the ether, look up to the sky, be filled with wonder, and cease from lying in wait for the heel of the righteous and from obstructing the way of truth. Be prudent and harmless; perhaps the Lord will indeed give you the wing of simplicity (for He has determined to provide those born of the earth with wings), so that, escaping from these lurking places, you may inhabit the heavens. Let us only repent with our whole heart, so that our entire heart may be able to receive the Lord. Hope in Him, it says, every assembly of the people; pour out before Him all your hearts, He says to those who are new to impiety; He has mercy, and fills them with justice. Believe, O man, in a man and in God. Believe, O man, in the living God who suffered and is worshipped. Believe, you slaves, in the dead One; believe in Him, all you men, who alone is God among all men. Believe, and receive as your reward salvation. Seek God, and your soul shall live. He who seeks God is concerned for his own salvation. Have you found God? You possess life. Let us seek, therefore, that we may also live. The reward of the finding is life with God. Let all those who seek Thee exult and rejoice in Thee; and let them say continually, Let God be magnified. The finest hymn to God ^B is the immortal man, who is instructed in justice, and has the oracles of truth inscribed in his soul. For where else, if not in the wise soul, is justice to be inscribed? Where is charity? Where is modesty? Where is gentleness? These, I think, those who have sealed the divine scriptures upon their soul ought to consider as an excellent starting point of wisdom for those who have been nourished for any part of life, and to consider the same as a calm harbor of salvation; through whom indeed, good fathers happen to be those who have fled to the Father; good children, those who have known the Son; good husbands, those who are mindful of the Bridegroom; and good masters of servants, those who have been liberated from the extreme servitude. O, the animals are more blessed than men who are led by this error! For they are indeed in ignorance just like you, but they do not at all bely the truth. There are no tribes of flatterers among them; fish are not superstitious; birds do not practice idolatry. Alone, it is awestruck by the heavens, since it is not able to understand God, being excluded from the Word. Are you not then ashamed, having made yourselves more irrational than irrational creatures, who have spent so many ^C ages in godlessness? You have become children, then lads, then youths, then men; but you have never become good. But even if you respect old age, being at the sunset of life; show wisdom even at the end of life; acknowledge God; seeing that the end is for you the

beginning of salvation. You have grown old in the worship of demons; come, young people, to the worship of God. God counts you in the number of innocent children. ^A Let the Athenian, then, follow the laws of Solon; the Argive, those of Phoroneus; and the Spartan, those of Lycurgus. But if you enroll yourself as belonging to God, heaven is your fatherland, and God is your legislator. What, then, are these laws? “You shall not murder, you shall not commit adultery, you shall not corrupt boys, you shall not steal, you shall not bear false witness; you shall love the Lord your God.” And there are also the supplements to these, logical laws and holy words, inscribed upon the very hearts: “You shall love your neighbor as yourself,” and, “To him who strikes you on the cheek, offer the other,” and, “You shall not covet; for by desire alone you have committed adultery.” How much better, then, is it for men—rather than attaining their desires—to not even ^B wish to desire that which one ought not? But you cannot endure to bear the austerity of salvation. Just as we take delight in sweeter foods, preferring them because of the allure of their innate pleasure—yet those things that are bitter, which prick the sense, heal and restore us; and the austerity of medicines strengthens those who have a weak stomach—so also habit delights and tickles; but this habit pushes one into the abyss, while the truth leads one up to heaven. It is at first rough, but a good nurse of youth; and this inner chamber of women is solemn, the council of elders is wise; it is not difficult to approach, nor impossible to attain, but is very near, in our own houses. This is what the all-wise Moses enigmatically hints at, dwelling in the three parts that pertain to us: in hands, ^C and in mouth, and in heart. This is a genuine symbol of the truth being fulfilled in these three: in counsel, and in action, and in word. Do not fear this, nor let the fact that you imagine these many pleasant things prevent you from attaining wisdom; you will voluntarily cast off the trifles of habit, just as children, when they have become men, have cast off their toys. For the divine power, having shone upon the earth, filled everything with the seed of salvation. ^D

^B For the Lord could not have accomplished so great a work in so short a time without divine care—He who is looked upon with contempt but worshipped in deed; the purifier, and savior, and propitiator; the divine Word, truly the most manifest God, who was made equal to the Master of all: because He was His Son, and the Word was in God. He was not disbelieved when first He was preached, nor was He unknown when He took on the human mask and, fashioned in flesh, played the saving drama of humanity; for He was a genuine champion, and a fellow-combatant for His own creation. And having been diffused most swiftly to all men, rising even faster than the sun from the very will of the Father, He most easily shone the light of God upon us. Whence He was Himself, and who He was, He demonstrated and showed forth through the things He taught, presenting Himself as the mediator, and peacemaker, and our Savior, the Word, the life-giving, peaceful fountain, poured out over the whole face of the earth; through whom, so to speak, the universe has now become a sea of good things.

CHAPTER XI. How great are the benefits of God conferred upon men through the coming of Christ.

Jam vero, nisi molestum fuerit, ab ipso capite repetens, intuere divinum beneficium. ^C But come, if you will, behold the divine benefit from the beginning. The first man, when he dwelt in paradise, played in freedom, because he was a little child of God. But when he succumbed to pleasure—for the serpent is allegorized as pleasure, crawling upon its belly, an earthly wickedness, destined to be fed by fire—the child was led astray by desires, becoming a man through disobedience; and by disobeying the Father, he shamed God. So powerful was pleasure. Man, who had been free because of his simplicity, was found bound by sins. The Lord desired to release him from these bonds; and having been bound in flesh—O divine mystery!—by this flesh He conquered the serpent, and subdued the tyrant, which is death: ^D and, what was most contrary to expectation, that man, who had been led astray by the allurements of pleasure and bound by corruption, He showed to be set free with outstretched hands. O mystical miracle! The Lord indeed bowed down, but man rose up; and He who is truly the most manifest God, the most manifest wisdom and goodness of God, toward God. For complex and manifold is the movement of pleasure, just as it is of the serpent.

^A Since he who had been bound, with hands unbound, showed himself released. O marvelous mystery! The Lord submitted, but man arose; and he who fell from Paradise receives a greater reward of obedience, heaven itself. Wherefore, as it seems to me, since the Word himself has come to us from heaven, we no longer need to frequent the schools of men, nor to visit Athens and the rest of Greece, or even Ionia, for the sake of studies. For if we make use of this teacher, who has filled all things with holy virtues, with creation, salvation, beneficence, legislation, prophecy, and teaching, the teacher now instructs in all things, and the whole world has already become Athens and Greece to the Word. For you who have believed in poetic fable, which records that Minos the Cretan was the familiar intimate of Zeus, ^B will you not believe us, who have become disciples of God and have laid hold of the true wisdom, which the greatest of the philosophers only hinted at, but which the disciples of Christ have both comprehended and proclaimed? And indeed, Christ is all, so to speak; he is not divided: neither barbarian, nor Jew, nor Greek; neither male, nor female; but a new man, transformed by the holy Spirit of God. Furthermore, other counsels and precepts are trivial and concern particular matters: for instance, whether one should take a wife, whether one should enter politics, whether children should be begotten; but the exhortation which persuades us to piety alone is general, and it alone pertains to the whole conduct of life, at every time and in every circumstance, stretching toward the most sovereign end, which is life, ^C namely, godliness, in which alone it is necessary to live, that we may live forever. Philosophy, moreover, is, as the elders say, a long-lived counsel of wisdom, betrothing an eternal love; but the commandment of the Lord is clear-shining, enlightening the eyes. Receive Christ, receive sight, receive thy light, “That thou mayest well know both God and man.” The Word is sweet, who has enlightened us, more to be desired than gold and precious stone, more than honey and the honeycomb. For how is he not to be desired, who has caused the mind buried in darkness to see, and has whetted the light-bearing eyes of the soul? As ^D well as to know God and man. [alt-version omitted]

BOOK II. CHAPTER IV.

^A “And confess to him,” he says, “in the songs of the lips; for in his command all good pleasure comes to pass, and there is no deficiency in his salvation.” But among the ancient Greeks also, during drinking parties and the refreshing wine-cups, according to the likeness of Hebrew psalms, a song called the *skolion* was sung, all common folk proclaiming the pæan with one voice, and sometimes also in turn circling the toasts of the song; but the more musical among them sang also to the lyre. But let erotic songs be far away; let the songs be hymns to God. “Let them praise,” he says, “his name in a choir; in timbrel and psaltery let them chant to him.” And what is the choir that chants? The Spirit himself will tell you: “His praise is in the Church of the saints; let them exult because of their king.” And he adds again: “For the Lord is well pleased in his people.” ^B For we must admit harmonious and modest melodies; we must drive away as far as possible from our vigorous mind those really effeminate melodies, which, by the wanton artifice of their vocal flourishes, lead into effeminacy and scurrility. But austere and sober melodies bid farewell to the insolence of drunkenness. We must therefore leave the chromatic harmonies to wanton revels in wine, and to music that is flower-bearing and harlot-like.

CHAPTER V. On Laughter.

We must banish from our republic imitators of ridiculous, or rather laughable, passions. For since all words flow from the mind and character, it is not possible to utter ridiculous words that do not proceed from a ridiculous character. ^C For the saying, “There is no good tree producing rotten fruit, nor again a rotten tree producing good fruit,” must be applied here also; for speech is the fruit of the mind. If, therefore, those who move laughter must be driven out from our republic, it should be far from us ourselves.

Thus the apostle peacefully marshals us. These are our invulnerable weapons; equipped with these, let us draw up our battle line against the wicked one. Let us extinguish the flaming arrows of the evil one with the watery points that have been steeped by the Word, repaying benefits with thanksgivings, and honoring God with the divine Word. “For while you are still speaking,” He says, “I will say, ‘Behold, I am here.’” O the holiness and blessedness of this power, through which God is a fellow citizen with men! It is better, therefore, and more excellent to be at once an imitator and a worshiper of the best of existing Beings. For one will not be able to imitate God except by the means through which one will piously worship Him, nor again to worship and revere Him except by imitating Him. For the heavenly and truly divine love is produced in men in this way, whenever the truly beautiful, being rekindled by the divine Word, is able to shine forth in the very soul itself. And the greatest thing, at the same time as one truly wishes to be saved, runs in concert, with intention and life, so to speak, yoked together.

^A And let the rays of knowledge arise, revealing and making to shine the man hidden within—that disciple of light, that acquaintance and co-heir of Christ; especially when the most precious and most venerable name of the good Father comes into the knowledge of the pious and good child, commanding what is gentle, and enjoining upon the child what is salvific. He who obeys Him excels in all things, follows God, obeys the Father, and having known Him when he was wandering, has loved God, has loved his neighbor, has fulfilled the commandment, seeks the prize, and demands the promise. For it is the constant purpose of God to save the flock of mankind; for this reason the good God sent the good Shepherd. ^B And the Word, having unfolded the truth, has shown to men the height of salvation, so that they might be saved by repentance, or, if they refuse to obey, be judged; this is the proclamation of righteousness—to those who obey, the Gospel; to those who disobey, a tribunal. But if the loud-sounding trumpet, once it has blared, has gathered soldiers and declared war, shall Christ not be able to gather His own peaceful soldiers, having breathed a peaceful melody to the ends of the earth? He has indeed gathered, O man, a bloodless army, by blood and by the Word; and He has entrusted the kingdom of heaven to them. The trumpet of Christ is His Gospel; He has sounded the trumpet, and we have heard. Let us be armed peacefully, having put on the breastplate of righteousness, having taken up the shield of faith, and having donned the helmet of salvation; and let us sharpen the sword of the Spirit, which is the Word of God. ^C Thus does the Apostle align us peacefully; these are our impenetrable weapons. Equipped with these, let us draw up our battle line against the wicked one; let us quench the flaming darts of the wicked one with water-bearing points, steeped by the Word, repaying benefits with grateful praises, and honoring God through the divine Word. For "while you are yet speaking," He will say, "Behold, I am here." O that holy and blessed power, through which God holds converse with men! It is therefore better and superior to become at once an imitator and a worshiper of the most excellent and preeminent nature. For it is not possible to imitate God in any other way than by worshiping Him holily, nor to worship and venerate Him, except by imitating Him. Therefore the heavenly and truly divine love is reconciled to men when true beauty has shone forth in the soul itself, ^D awakened by the divine Word. And what is the greatest thing, at the same time as one truly wishes to be saved, runs in concert, with intention and life, so to speak, yoked together.

^A Therefore, this sole exhortation of the truth is likened to the most faithful of friends, remaining until the final breath, becoming a good escort for the soul, whole and complete [(49)], to those who rise up to heaven [(50)]. Why, then, do I exhort you? I am eager for you to be saved; this is what Christ wishes; in one word, He bestows upon you life. And who is this? Learn briefly: He is the Word of truth, the Word of incorruption [(51)], He who regenerates man, leading him up to the truth, the goad of salvation, He who drives away corruption, who puts death to flight, who has built a temple in men, that He might establish God in men. Purify the temple, and leave your pleasures and your slothfulness [(52)], like a fleeting flower, to the wind and the fire; but cultivate the fruits of temperance prudently, and dedicate yourself to God, as first-fruits, that it may be not only the work of God, but also the grace of God; for it is fitting that both should appear—that one who is known to Christ [(53)] and worthy of a kingdom should appear, and should be deemed worthy of the kingdom.

Chapter XII.

^B Let us flee, therefore, from habit, let us flee from it as from a dangerous promontory, or the threats of Charybdis, or the mythical Sirens; it chokes man, it turns him away from the truth, it leads him off from life; habit is a snare, habit is an abyss, habit is a pit, habit is a sieve [(54)], habit is evil.

"Keep the ship far from that smoke [(55)] and from the wave..."

^C Let us flee, O shipmates, let us flee this wave [(56)]; it belches forth fire; it is a wicked island [(57)], piled high with masts and corpses; and on it a beautiful harlot sings—Pleasure—delighting in public [(58)], common music:

"Come hither [(59)], renowned Ulysses, great glory of the Achaeans, Bring the ship to land, that you may hear a more divine voice [(60)]."

She praises you, O sailor, and calls you renowned, and the harlot seeks to usurp for herself the glory of the Greeks; leave her...

to feed upon the corpses, for the heavenly Spirit brings you aid: pass by the pleasure that seduces.

Do not let the woman, adorned in her finery ^A, lead you astray, with her fawning chatter, as she seeks your dwelling. Sail past the song; it brings death. If you will but desire it, you have conquered destruction; and being bound to the wood, you shall be set free from all corruption. The Word of God shall guide you, and the Holy Spirit shall bring you into the harbors of the heavens. Then shall you behold my God, and you shall be initiated into those sacred mysteries, and you shall enjoy those things hidden in the heavens, which have been kept for me, which neither ear has heard, nor have they entered into the heart of any man.

"But I seem to see two suns ^B, And dual Thebes,"

as someone once said, driven to fury by idols, intoxicated with pure ignorance. But I would pity him in his madness, and I could not allow myself to refrain from exhorting one so deranged to a sober salvation. For the Lord embraces the repentance of a sinner, but by no means his death. Come, O madman, do not lean upon the thyrsus, nor be crowned with ivy; cast away your headband, cast away your fawnskin, return to a sound mind. I will show you the Word, and the mysteries of the Word, explaining them according to the image of your own affairs. This is the mountain beloved by God, which by no means, like Cithaeron, has provided material for tragedies, but is a mountain sober and consecrated to the actions of truth, ^C shaded with chaste woods. And those who revel upon it are not the sisters of the lightning-struck Semele, the Maenads, initiated into impure dismemberings; rather, they are the daughters of God, the beautiful lambs, who celebrate the venerable orgies of the Word, establishing a sober choir. The choir is made up of men excelling in justice. The song is a hymn to the King of the universe. The maidens sing, the angels praise, the prophets speak; the sound of music is sent forth, and they pursue the thiasus in their course; those who have been called hasten, longing to receive the Father. Come, you too, O old man, leaving Thebes behind, and having cast off divination and Bacchic insanity, allow yourself to be led to the truth. Behold, I offer you the wood to lean upon; hasten, Tiresias ^D, trust, and you shall see. Christ shines upon you more brightly than the sun; through Him, the eyes of the blind are opened. The night shall flee from you, the fire shall be afraid, death shall depart; you shall see...

[…]. ^A be, you will receive your sight. Christ, by whom the sight of the blind is restored, shines more brightly than the sun. The night shall flee from you, the fire shall be afraid, death shall depart. You who cannot see Thebes, O old man, shall see the heavens. O truly holy mysteries! O pure light! Being led by torches, I behold the heavens and God. I become holy, being initiated. The Lord himself is the interpreter of the sacred rites, who seals the initiate, ^B shedding light upon him; and He commends to the Father him who has believed, to be preserved for the ages. These are the bacchanalia of my mysteries. If you wish, be initiated yourself, and you shall dance with the angels around the Unbegotten and Imperishable and only truly existing God, with the Word of God joining us in the hymn. This eternal Jesus, the one great High Priest of the one God and same Father, prays for men and exhorts men. ^C Listen! You myriad tribes, or rather, as many of you as are endowed with reason among men, both barbarians and Greeks; I summon the whole race of men, whose creator I am by the will of the Father. Come to me, that you may be ranked under the one God and the one Word of God; and do not only excel the irrational animals by reason, but from all mortal men I alone offer you the fruit of immortality. For I want, I want to bestow this grace upon you, granting the benefit in its entirety, namely, immortality. And I bestow upon you the Word, that is, the knowledge of God; I bestow upon myself in my entirety. This is who I am, this is what God wills, this is the symphony, this is the harmony of the Father, this is the Son, this is Christ, this is the Word of God, the arm of the Lord, the power of the universe, the will of the Father. Of these things, there were of old images, though not all were resemblances; I wish to correct you according to the archetype, so that you may become like me. I will anoint you with the ^D ointment of faith, by which you shall cast off corruption; and I will display the naked form of righteousness, by which you shall ascend to God. Come to me, all you who are weary and heavy-laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me, for I am meek and lowly in heart; and you shall find rest for your souls; for my yoke is easy, and my burden is light. Let us hasten, let us run, O you who love God and

exhortation to the Gentiles.

let us who are truly like images of God, let us hasten, let us run, let us take up His yoke, let us accept 77 the incorruptible, beautiful charioteer of men, Christ. Let us love 78 the foal; He brought the beast of burden along with the old one; and having yoked the pair of men to God, 79 He directs the chariot toward immortality, hastening to fulfill clearly what He formerly signified toward Jerusalem, but is now driving into the heavens. Most beautiful is the sight for the Father, the eternal, triumphant Son. Let us, therefore, be ambitious for noble things, and let us become men who are loved by God, and let us acquire the greatest of those things that are free from passion: God and life. For the Word is our helper; let us trust in Him, and let us not have such a desire for silver and gold, or for glory 80, as we have for the Word of Truth Himself. For it is not even pleasing to God Himself if we deem those things that are of the greatest value to be of the least, while we count folly, and ignorance, and sloth, and the manifest outrages of idolatry, and utter impiety, 81 of greater value. For it is not without reason that the children of the philosophers 82 think that all things that foolish men do are wicked and impious, and, sketching out that ignorance itself as a form of madness 83, they admit that the mass of men are nothing else than mad. The Word will say that there is no room for doubt 84 as to which of the two is better: to be sober or to be mad. But we must, clutching the truth firmly and keeping a sober mind, follow God with all our might; and as things really are, we must believe that all things are His. Furthermore, having learned that we are His *most beautiful of possessions*, we must entrust ourselves to God, loving the Lord God, and considering this to be the task of our entire life. For if the things of friends are common, and the man who is loved by God is a friend 85 to God—for he is a friend indeed, with the Word mediating—then all things become

the possession of a man, because all things are God’s. And all things are common to both friends, God and man. It is time, therefore, for us to call only the pious Christian rich, and temperate, and noble; ^B and in this respect, we believe and affirm him to be the image of God, along with the likeness, having become just and holy with wisdom through Christ Jesus, and already to such an extent like unto God. The prophet does not hide the grace, saying: "I have said, ye are gods, and all of you are sons of the Most High" (Ps. LXXXI, 6). For us, indeed, us He has adopted, and He wishes to be called Father of us alone, not of the disobedient. For this is how the situation is for us who are the followers of Christ: As are the intentions, such also are the words; and as are the words, such also are the deeds; and as are the works, such is the life. The ^C whole life of those who have known Christ is good. Enough, I think, of words, even if I have gone on longer out of love for mankind, pouring out what I had from God, as if exhorting toward the greatest of all good things—salvation. For For concerning a life having no end at all, even the words, ever enlightening, do not wish to cease. But for you, there still remains this end: to choose what is more advantageous, whether judgment or grace. For as for me, I do not even deem it worthy of doubt which of the two is better; nor indeed is it right to compare life with destruction.

CONSTRUCTED IS FOR YOU, O YOUTH, THE FOUNDATION OF TRUTH; FOR YOU YOURSELVES, THE FIRM BASE OF KNOWLEDGE OF THE GREAT HOLY TEMPLE OF GOD; A NOBLE EXHORTATION, CAST INTO [YOUR] INTELLECTUAL GROUND AS THE ETERNAL APPETITE FOR A LIFE OF REASONABLE OBEDIENCE.

THE INSTRUCTOR (PAEDAGOGUS) OF CLEMENT OF ALEXANDRIA

CHAPTERS OF BOOK ONE

1. What the Instructor professes. 2. That it is on account of our sins that the Instructor oversees us. 3. That the Instructor is a lover of mankind. 4. That the Word is the Instructor of men and women alike. 5. That all who are occupied with the truth are children in the sight of God. 6. To those who imagine that the title of "children" and "infants" signifies the instruction of first principles. 7. Who the Instructor is; and concerning His instruction. 8. Against those who think that what is just is not good. 9. That it belongs to the same power both to benefit and to punish justly; in which it is also said what the method of the Word's instruction is. 10. That the same God, through the same Word, both restrains us from sins by threatening, and saves humanity by exhorting. 11. That the Word was the instructor through the law and the prophets. 12. That the Instructor uses severity and kindness in proportion to the Father's disposition. 13. That just as an achievement is performed according to right reason, so conversely, sin is contrary to reason. ^{A B}

BOOK FIRST. CHAPTER I.

What the Pedagogue professes.

^A Since these three things exist in man—character, actions, and emotions—the hortatory Word lays claim to character. It is the guide to piety and religion, placed like the keel for the building up of faith. Exulting greatly in this, and abjuring our old opinions, we are made young again for salvation, singing in concert with the prophesying psalmist: "How good is God to Israel, to those who are right in heart!" ^B The prescriptive Word oversees all actions, while the consolatory Word heals the emotions. Yet this is one and the same Word, snatching man away from the worldly habit in which he has been nurtured, and training him for the simple and uniform salvation of faith in God.

The heavenly leader, the Word, when He was inviting us to salvation, was named the "Hortatory" (Protrepticus). This word is, properly speaking, an incitement, a term applied taking the part for the whole, for all of true religion provides the desire for both this present life and the life to come, generating this desire in the kindred faculty of reason. ^C But now, being both therapeutic and prescriptive at once—following himself and urging the achievement of what has been proposed, while promising the healing of our emotions—He may fittingly be called by us by one name: the Pedagogue (Tutor).

The Pedagogue is occupied with action, not with the transmission of theoretical knowledge. His goal is to make the soul better, not to instruct it; to guide it toward a life that is honest and prudent, not one that is endowed with mere knowledge. ^D Yet, even this same Word is capable of teaching, though that is not His present task. For the Word that deals in dogmas is demonstrative and revelatory, and this is the teaching Word. But the Pedagogue, being occupied with action, first exhorts one toward the disposition of a virtuous character, and now calls one to the performance of necessary duties, entrusting us with uncorrupted prescriptions, and showing to those who have wandered the images of what is to come after. Both roles coincide.

^A most useful: the one, a hortatory kind, for the sake of obedience; the other, taken by way of image, is also twofold, similar to the former pairing. The one part of it is that we may choose and imitate the good; the other is that we may turn away from it, rejecting the contrary. Hence, the cure of the passions follows from these things, when the Instructor, by applying the persuasion of the images, strengthens the souls of those who suffer from disease, by his kindly precepts—as if by gentle medicines—leading them toward the complete knowledge of the truth. Yet health and knowledge are not the same; rather, the former is acquired through healing, the latter through learning. Therefore, no one who is still sick would learn any of the things pertaining to doctrine before he has become perfectly sound; for not in the same way is each precept always spoken to those who are learning and to those who are sick, but to the former it is spoken for the sake of knowledge, and to the latter for the sake of healing. Just as, therefore, they whose body is sick need a physician, so in the same way those whose soul is weak need an Instructor, that he may heal our passions; and then [he shall lead us] to the Teacher, who will guide us by preparing the soul for the aptitude of knowledge, rendering it able to receive the revelation of the Word. Since the all-kind Word is ^B eager to lead us to perfection by a salutary approach appropriate for fostering us, He employs a beautiful economy: first exhorting, then acting as Instructor, and finally teaching.

CHAPTER II.

That the Instructor governs us because of our sins.

Our Instructor, O you children, is like to God His Father, whose Son He is—He in whom no sin at all resides, and who is beyond all reproach, and in soul is impassible; God in the form of man, unpolluted, attending to the Father’s will, the Word who is God, who is in the Father, who is at the right hand of the Father, and in that form is God. This is to us an unstained image; to this image we must strive with all our might to assimilate our soul. And He indeed is free ^C from all human disturbances of the soul; for this reason He is the only judge, because He alone is sinless; but we, as far as we have power, must try to sin as little as possible. For nothing presses so much... ^D

^A as, first, the removal of passions and diseases, and then the prevention of falling easily into the habit of sinning. Now, it is best not to sin at all in any way—which we say belongs to God; the second is never to touch any voluntary evil actions—which is proper for the wise; the third is not to fall into many involuntary ones—which is peculiar to those who are being reared nobly by the Tutor. Let not lingering long in sins, but finally ceasing from them, be ranked last. But even this for those who are being called back to repentance, to wrestle them down, is salutary. And it seems to me that the Tutor says quite beautifully through Moses: "If anyone should die suddenly ^B by him, immediately the head of his consecration shall be defiled, and he shall be shaved" (Num. VI, 9), calling involuntary sin "sudden death." He says it defiles him, staining the soul; hence he also suggests the cure, namely, speed, advising that the head be shaved immediately, exhorting him to wipe off the hairs of ignorance that shade the reasoning faculty, so that the reasoning faculty, having been left bare of the dense matter of vice—which is enthroned in the brain—may hasten back to repentance. He then adds, after saying a few things, "And the former days shall be irrational" (Num. VI, 12); by which it is clear that those sins are signaled which have not occurred according to reason. And he called involuntary sin "sudden," but sinning "irrational," for which reason the Word designated as Tutor has received the supervision for the prevention of irrational sin. Consider this from the Scripture: "For this reason, thus saith the Lord," (Jer. VI, 19, or similar), the sin that existed before is shown by the following utterance; ^C for just judgment follows. And this is evident through the prophets, as they say, "If you had not sinned, He would not have threatened these things."

On the Passionless State

By communing cleanly with the Divine, he who partakes of the holy quality in a gnostic manner becomes more nearly in a state of passionless identity. The ancient just men, enjoying passionlessness of soul and tranquility, [were] masters, in a state of passionlessness. Expecting to be invested with a divine form. But the man who is purified toward passionlessness becomes uniquely spotless. Passionlessness is the sinlessness. Passionlessness is a peaceful state of soul, according to which the soul becomes difficult to move toward malice. ^D

^A For this cause the Lord says thus: "Because you have not obeyed these words, for this cause the Lord says these things," and, "For this cause, behold, the Lord says." For this is the reason for prophecy: for obedience and for disobedience. For the sake of the former, that we might be saved; for the sake of the latter, that we might be chastened. Our Tutor (Paedagogus), therefore, the Word, heals the unnatural affections of the soul through admonitions. For the aid against the diseases of the body is properly called the medical art, and it is something taught by human wisdom. But the paternal Word alone is the Paeonian physician of human diseases, and the holy enchanter ^B of the ailing soul. "Save your servant," he says, "my God, who trusts in you. Have mercy on me, O Lord, for I will cry to you all the day." For medicine, as Democritus says, cures the diseases of the body; but wisdom frees the soul from perturbations. But the good Tutor, who is Wisdom, who is the Word of the Father, who fashioned man, cares for the whole creature, and he heals both his body and soul, being the all-sufficient physician of human nature, our Savior. "Arise," he says to the paralytic, "and having taken up the pallet on which you lie, go home." And he who was previously infirm immediately departed sound and firm. And to the dead man, "Lazarus," he said, "come out." And the dead man came out from the tomb, just as he was before he died, having practiced the resurrection. But he also heals the soul itself through his ^C commandments and his gifts. But while he delays in doing so through his precepts, he is rich in gifts—"Your sins are forgiven you," he says to us sinners. But we, as soon as he thought of us, were made infants, having attained the best and most stable place from his best and excellently ordered government: which first revolves around the world, and the heaven, and the solar rotations, and is occupied with the movements of the rest of the stars, because of man; and then [moves] around man himself, on whom all care is bestowed, ^D and considering this his greatest work, he directed his soul with wisdom and temperance, and tempered his body with beauty and good proportion; and regarding the deeds of humanity, the success within them

and the beautiful order that is in them, he inspired these from his own. ^A

CHAP. III. That the Pedagogue is kind and loves humanity.

The Lord benefits in all things, and helps in all things, both as man and as God: as God, forgiving sins; ^B but as man, training us so that we might not sin. With good reason, therefore, is man a friend to God, since he is also his creation. And he made other things by command alone, but he fashioned man by his own hand, and inspired into him something of his own. That, then, which was fashioned by him and toward his own image, is either to be chosen by God for its own sake—being fabricated by God himself—or it has been fashioned to be chosen for the sake of another. ^C If, indeed, it is chosen for its own sake, he who is good has loved the good; and the love (philtron) exists within man, which is called an inspiration of God. But if man has been made to be chosen for the sake of other things, God has no other cause for making him than that without him, neither could God be a good creator, nor could man arrive at the knowledge of God. For God would not otherwise have made that, for whose sake man was made, unless man had been made; and the power ^D which he had kept hidden by his own will, God fulfilled through the external power of creation, having taken from man what he made man. And he saw what he had, and it was done as he willed. But there is nothing that God cannot do. Man, therefore, whom God has made, is a thing to be chosen for its own sake; and that which is to be chosen for its own sake is related to that for whose sake it is to be chosen; and this is both desirable and lovable. But although something is "lovable," it is not yet "loved" by him; yet man has been proven to be lovable. Therefore, man is loved by God. For how is he not loved, for whose sake the Only-begotten is sent down from the bosom of the Father, the Word of faith, the faith from superabundance, the Lord himself, openly confessing and saying: "For the Father himself loves you, because you have loved me" (John xvi, 27)? And again the same: "And you have loved them, as you have loved me" (John xvii, 23). What, then, the Pedagogue intends, and what he professes, and how he is disposed in deed and word, and in these...

things also, what is to be done and what is to be avoided, is already clear enough. But it is manifest that there is another kind of discourse whose purpose is to teach, which indeed is subtle and spiritual, follows an accurate method of treatment, and busies itself with the contemplation of mysterious secrets. But let that be deferred for the present. However, it is just that we should love in return Him who, for the sake of His love for us, is the guide for us toward living the best life; and to live according to the commands of His will, not only by executing what is ordered or by avoiding what is forbidden, but also by turning away from those images [of vice] and, as far as possible, by imitating those [images of virtue], and by performing the deeds of the Pedagogue so as to relate them to the likeness of his acts: so that what is "according to the image and likeness" may be fulfilled. For, as if wandering in deep darkness in this life, we have need of a guide who does not stumble and is accurate; and the best guide is not the blind one, as the Scripture says, leading the blind into pits ^B, but the Word, whose vision is most piercing and who sees into the innermost parts of the heart. For just as there is no light that does not illuminate, nor anything moving that does not move, nor anyone loving who does not love, so neither is there any good that does not profit and lead to salvation. Let us, therefore, carry out the commandments by the works of the Lord; for indeed the Word Himself, having openly become flesh, demonstrated the same virtue to be both active and contemplative at once. Therefore, considering the Word as law, let us recognize His precepts and admonitions as short and direct paths to eternity. For the precepts are full of persuasion, not of fear. ^C

CAP. IV. That the Word is equally the Pedagogue of men and women.

Embracing this good obedience, therefore, more and more, let us deliver ourselves to the Lord, fastening ourselves to the most firm cable of His faith, recognizing that the virtue of man and woman is the same. For if the God of both is one, then the Pedagogue of both is also one; there is one Church, one moderation, one temperance, one modesty; the diet is common, marriage is a tie, breathing, sight, hearing, knowledge, hope, obedience, love—all things are alike. For those whose life is common, the grace is common, and the salvation is common: common to them also is love and education. For in this age, He says, men marry and women are given in marriage, in which alone the feminine is distinguished from the masculine; but in that [future state] no longer; where the rewards of this social and holy life of marriage, ^D

are offered not to male and female, but to the human being, since desire separates him while he is apart. Therefore, "human" is a name common to both men and women. For this reason, it seems to me that the Attics have used the epicene gender to designate not only the masculine but also the feminine; if the comic poet ^B Menander in his *Rhapizomena* is considered trustworthy by anyone, who says something like this:

My little daughter: for by nature The little one is very kindly.

Furthermore, "lambs" is an epicene designation signifying simplicity, appropriate to both the male and female animal. And the Lord Himself shepherds us unto the ages of ages. Amen. For without a shepherd, neither sheep, nor anything else, can ever live; nor can children live without a Tutor; nor servants without a Master. ^B

CAP. V. That all who are occupied with the truth are children before God.

That pedagogy is therefore the education of children is clear from the very name. It remains for us to consider the children whom Scripture signifies, and then to set the Tutor over them. We are the children. ^C But Scripture celebrates us in many ways, and allegorizes in many ways, changing the simplicity of faith by means of various names. At any rate, in the Gospel, it says: The Lord having stood on the shore, addressed the disciples (who happened to be fishing): "Children, have you any food?" ^D calling those whom He had in the place of disciples "children." And they brought children, He says, to Him for the laying on of hands for a blessing. But when those who were well-acquainted with Him objected, Jesus said: "Suffer the children, and do not hinder them from coming to me— [index: entries preserved]

for of such is the kingdom of heaven." ^A What is meant by this statement, the Lord Himself will clarify, saying: "Unless you are converted and become as these children, you shall not enter into the kingdom of heaven." He does not here allegorize about regeneration, but rather commends to us the simplicity that exists in children, so that we may resemble it. The prophetic Spirit also chooses us as children: "The children, having plucked," He says, "branches of olives or palms, went out to meet the Lord, and cried out, saying: Hosanna to the Son of David! Blessed is He who comes in the name of the Lord." Here, light and glory and praise are offered with supplication to the Lord; for this is what is signified, if one explains the Greek term "Hosanna." ^B And it seems to me that Scripture, in hinting at this prophecy which has just been mentioned, brings it as a reproach against the slothful: "Have you never read, 'Out of the mouths of infants and nursing babes You have perfected praise'?" This is what the Lord also darkly implies in the Gospel to those who are well-acquainted with Him, urging them to pay attention to Him, since He was already hastening to the Father; preparing the hearers with greater longing, and signaling that in a little while He would be away; hinting that they ought to reap the fruit of the truth more liberally than ever before, because the Word would soon withdraw Himself into heaven. Again, therefore, He calls them children. For He says: "Children, I am with you yet a little while." And again, He likens the kingdom of heaven to children sitting in the marketplace and saying: ^C "We have piped to you, and you have not danced; we have mourned, and you have not wept." And whatever else He subjoined as appropriate to these things. And not only does the Gospel hold this opinion, but the prophecy also is of the same mind. David therefore says: "Praise the Lord, O you children; praise the name of the Lord." And He also says through Isaiah: "Behold, I and the children whom God has given me." Do you marvel, hearing that men who are among the nations are called children by the Lord? You do not seem to me to understand the Attic tongue, from which it is possible to learn the noble and beautiful ^D [index: entries preserved]

and also free young women, called maidservants; and [i]maid-servants[/i]; for even though they are adolescent, they are honored for the sake of the flower of childish age by the flattering name of "maidens." And when He says, "Let the lambs stand on the right," 65 He signifies the simple children, as lambs and sheep in their kind, not men. He deemed the lambs worthy of privilege, preferring in men ease, tenderness, and simplicity of mind—namely, innocence. And again when He says, "As sucking calves," 57 He allegorizes us again; and, "As a simple and harmless dove," He signifies us again. 66 And He commands through Moses to offer for sin two 58 young pigeons or a pair of turtledoves; saying that what is young, namely the "pullets," is acceptable to God on account of their sinlessness, ^B harmlessness, and lack of malice; and He teaches that the like is a purifier of the like. But the timidity of the turtledoves also typifies caution against sins. And that He calls us "pullets," the Scripture is witness: "As a hen gathers her 59 pullets under her wings; so are we the pullets of the Lord." Wonderfully and mystically the Word characterizes the simplicity of the soul according to a childish age. For at one time He calls us "children," at another "pullets," sometimes "infants," and elsewhere "sons," and often "children," and "a new people," and "a new nation." "But upon my servants," He says, "a new name shall be called" 60 (He names a new, eternal, immaculate, simple, childlike, and true name) ^C and it "will be blessed upon the earth." By allegory 61 He calls us again "colts," those 62 unyoked to vice, those unbroken to wickedness; but simple, and leaping toward the Father alone; not horses 63 neighing at the wives of neighbors, those "yoke-horses" and effeminates, but those who are free.

and newly born, who by reason of faith exult, who are swift toward salvation, who trample upon and crush worldly things. "Rejoice greatly, daughter of Sion; proclaim, daughter of Jerusalem; behold, your king comes to you, righteous, and saving, and himself meek, and riding upon a beast of burden and a new foal." It did not suffice to have said "foal" only, but he also added "new" to it, indicating the newness of humanity which is in Christ, and an eternity exempt from old age, together with simplicity. ^B Such new foals are we, who are infants, whom our divine foal-tamer nourishes. And if the "new" in Scripture implies an ass, it is yet a foal of an ass. "And his foal," He says, "he bound to a vine," binding this simple and infant people to the Word, whom He allegorizes as a vine. For the vine produces wine, just as the Word produces blood; and both are a drink to men for salvation: the wine for the body, but the blood for the spirit. And as He calls us "lambs," the Spirit is a trustworthy witness, speaking through Isaiah: "As a shepherd He shall feed His flock, and in His arm He shall gather" ^C the lambs, allegorizing as lambs the most tender of the sheep for the sake of simplicity. Indeed, we too, distinguishing the most beautiful and perfect of the possessions in life with the appellation "childish," have called them "instruction" and "pedagogy." We confess, then, that pedagogy is a good upbringing from childhood toward virtue. The Lord, however, revealing more openly and clearly to us what is signified by the term "children," when a question arose among the apostles as to who among them might be the greater, Jesus set a child in their midst, saying, "Whoever shall humble himself as this child, he is the greater in the kingdom of the heavens." ^D He did not, therefore, make use of the name of children as though they were thoughtless by reason of age, and could not use reason at all, as some have supposed; nor should one interpret it unlearnedly, where He says, "Unless you become as these children, you shall not enter into the kingdom of God." We who are infants are no longer rolling on the ground; nor do we creep, as before, upon the earth, after the manner of serpents, with our whole body indulging in senseless desires.

^A But being lifted up in mind, and having renounced the world and sins, we touch the earth only with a light foot, so far as to seem to be in the world, while we pursue holy wisdom—which, however, appears as folly to those who have sharpened themselves for craftiness and guile. They are then children in truth, who have known God alone as their Father, simple, and infants, and guileless, and lovers of the horns of the unicorns. ^B To those who have thus advanced in the Word, He has proclaimed this saying, bidding them to be unconcerned about worldly things, and exhorting them to heed only the Father, imitating children. For this reason, in what follows, He says: "Do not be anxious about tomorrow; for sufficient to the day is its own evil." In this way, having laid aside the anxieties of life, He bids us to cleave to the Father alone. And he who fulfills this commandment is in truth an infant and a child to God and to the world—to the latter as one led astray and wandering, but to the former as one beloved.

Now, if there is one teacher in the heavens, as Scripture says, it is acknowledged that all who are on the earth are rightly called disciples. ^C For the truth stands thus: that which is perfect is with the Lord, who is always teaching, but the childish and infant state is with us, who are always learning. Thus, therefore, prophecy has honored the "perfect" with the name of "man." And indeed through David, concerning the devil, it says: "A man of bloods," it says, "does the Lord abhor"; He calls him a man as being perfect in wickedness. But the Lord is also called a man, because He is perfect in justice. For instance, the Apostle, in writing to the Corinthians, says: "For I betrothed you to one man, to present you as a pure virgin to Christ"; whether as infants and saints, yet we are betrothed to the Lord alone. ^D But most clearly, in writing to the Ephesians, he revealed what is in question, speaking in this manner: "Until we all arrive at the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of God, unto a perfect man, unto the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ; that we may be no longer infants, tossed to and fro and carried about by every wind of doctrine, by the sleight of men, in craftiness toward the scheming of error; but speaking truth in love, we may grow up in all things into Him"—these things he says for the building up of the body of Christ, who is the head and the man, the only one perfect in justice; but we are infants, watching those who blow us up.

avoiding the ^A winds of heresies, and having no faith in those who teach us otherwise than the fathers. We then become perfect when we are the Church, having received Christ as the head. It is right here to consider the naming of the "infant," in that "infant" is not applied to the senseless 76—for such a one is a 77 simple-minded person—but the infant is the "newly-speaking" one; as the "gentle" one is the "tender-minded" one, just as "gentle" is one who has recently become mild in his manner. The blessed Paul most clearly indicated this, saying: *Being able to be burdensome as the apostles of Christ, we became* 78 *gentle* 79 *in your midst, as a nursing mother cherishes her own children.* ^B The infant, therefore, is gentle, and in this regard rather "tender" 80, soft and simple, free of malice and fraud, and removed from simulation, straight in purpose and upright; and that is the foundational structure of simplicity and truth. *For upon whom,* he says, *shall I look, unless upon the gentle and quiet?* 81 For such is the virginal word, tender and unformed; wherefore it is customary to call the virgin a tender bride 82, and the child tender-minded. But we are tender, those who are soft toward persuasion, and easily fashioned toward goodness, free of anger and unmixed with malice and crookedness; for the old generation 83 is indeed crooked and hard-hearted, but the choir of infants, which we are—a new ^C people—is tender as a child. ^D

^A Because of the hearts of the innocent, the Apostle confesses that he rejoices in his Epistle to the Romans, and he provides a sort of definition of infants, saying, "I would have you wise indeed unto what is good, but simple unto what is evil" (Rom. xvi, 19). For the name of "infant" is not understood by us as a deprivation, even though grammarians define the *ni* as a privative particle. For if those who attack our infancy call us senseless, see how they blaspheme against the Lord, regarding as senseless those who have fled to God; but if, which is more to be heard, they themselves also ^B accept "infants" in the sense of "simple," we rejoice at the name. For new minds are infants in the old foolishness, new in understanding, which have sprung up according to the New Testament. For just now (Matt. xi, 27; Luc. x, 22) God has been known by the coming of Christ. For no one has known God except the Son, and he to whom the Son shall reveal Him. The new people, therefore, are young, in contrast to the older people, having learned new good things; and this ageless youth, in which we ever bloom for understanding, is for us the cream of life—ever young, ever gentle, and ever new. For those who have partaken of the new Word must be new. ^C And that which partakes of eternity tends to be made like the incorruptible, so that the name of childhood is for us the springtime of all life, because it is devoid of old age, as is the truth that is in us, and our character, which is imbued with truth. But Wisdom is ever-blooming, ever remaining the same and in the same state, and never changing. "They [the children]," he says, "shall be carried upon shoulders, and upon knees shall they be coddled; as if a mother should comfort one, so will I also comfort you." The mother brings the children, and we seek the mother, the Church. Now, everything that is weak and delicate, since it is in need of help because of its weakness, is both pleasing, and sweet, and delightful, while the irascible element ^D is set aside for the sake of such help. For just as fathers and mothers more gladly look upon the foals of horses, the little calves of cows, the whelp of lions, the fawn of a deer, and the child of man, so too does the Father of all receive those who have fled to Him.

^A He receives them, and having regenerated them by the Spirit unto adoption, He knows the gentle, and He loves them only, and He helps and champions them, and for this reason He calls them "little child." I myself also refer Isaac to the child; Isaac is interpreted as "laughter." Him did the curious king ^B see playing with his wife and helper, Rebecca. Now the king, whose name was Abimelech, seems to me to be a certain supramundane wisdom, which was contemplating the mystery of this play. But they interpret Rebecca as "endurance." O prudent play! Laughter aided by endurance; and the king is the spectator; and the spirit of those who are children in Christ, who pass their life in endurance, truly rejoices and exults. And this is divine play. Such play, Heraclitus says, his Zeus plays. For what else is more fitting for the truly wise and perfect man than to play and rejoice together with the endurance of noble things, and with the administration of good things, celebrating holidays with God!

On the play of the wise man

According to the most sacred Moses, the end of wisdom is play and laughter, yet not that which is practiced by infants without understanding and children, but by those who have already grown gray, not in time, but in good counsels. Do you not see that he says that the one who has drunk from the autodidactic and self-taught and self-acting [source of] knowledge does not partake of laughter, but is himself laughter? This is Isaac, which is interpreted "laughter," whom it befits ^C to play with endurance, which the Hebrews call Rebecca. But the divine play of the soul, it is not permitted for the layman to see, but it is permitted to the King, to whom, for a very long time, though he may not have dwelt there for all time, wisdom has passed by. He is called Abimelech, who, having peered through the window—the opened and light-bringing eye of the mind—saw Isaac playing with Rebecca his wife. For what other work becomes the wise man than to play, and to glow, and to rejoice together with the endurance of noble things?

^D

On the mystical play of the initiate

And Abimelech the king of Gerar, having peered through the window, saw Isaac playing with Rebecca his wife.

^A It may be understood in another way, since it is signified by prophecy that we ourselves rejoice and laugh for the sake of salvation, just as Isaac did. He too laughed when released from death, playing and exulting with his spouse, who is our helper unto salvation, namely the Church, to whom a firm and solid name has been given—Tolerantia (Endurance); or because she remains for the ages, always rejoicing; or because she consists of the endurance of the believers, who are the members of Christ, and is the witness of those who have sustained unto the end, and which becomes, for that reason, a thanksgiving. This is the mystical play, and the salvation which brings aid together with honorable consolation. ^B Therefore the King, Christ, watches our laughter from above, and looking through the window, as Scripture says, he watches the thanksgiving, and the blessing, and the exultation and joy, and at the same time also the endurance that assists; and he watches the conjunction of these things, his own Church only; showing his own face, which was lacking to the Church, which is made perfect by the royal head. And where, then, was the window through which the Lord was shown? It was the flesh, through which he was manifested. He himself is Isaac (for it is possible to take it in another way), who is a type and figure of the Lord. A boy, indeed, as a son: for he was the son of Abraham, just as Christ is of God; but a sacrifice, as the Lord; yet he was not sacrificed as the Lord was: Isaac merely carried the wood of the ministration, just as the Lord carried the wood. But he laughed mystically, prophesying to fill us—the ones redeemed from corruption by the blood of the Lord—with the joy of the Lord. For Isaac, then, did not suffer not only fittingly, yielding the primacy of the passion to the Word; but he also hints at the divinity of the Lord, in that he was not slain; for Jesus rose after the funeral rites had been performed, not having suffered, just as Isaac was released from the sacrifice. ^C But I shall bring forward another, most significant argument for the matter at hand. The Spirit, prophesying through Isaiah, calls the Lord himself a child: Behold, a child is born to us, and a son is given to us, whose government is upon his shoulder, and his name is called the Messenger of great counsel. What, then, is the child, the infant? According to whose likeness we are the infants. Through the same prophet, he declares his greatness: Wonderful Counselor, ^D God the Mighty, Eternal Father, Prince of Peace; for the multiplying of his discipline, and of his peace there is no end. O the great God! O the perfect child! A Son in the Father, and a Father in the Son. And how is the discipline of that child not perfect, which reaches to all, guiding us as children, his own infants? This one stretched out his hands to us, who have been clearly entrusted to him. John also bears witness to this child, he who is the greatest among those born

of women: *Behold, the Lamb of God*. For since the Scripture calls children and infants "lambs," it has called God the Word—who for our sake became man, and who wished in all things to be likened to us—the Lamb of God, the Son of God, the infant of the Father.

CAP. VI. Against those who think that the appellation of children and infants signifies the teaching of primary disciplines.

^B It is permitted to us, as if from abundance, to attack those who delight in finding fault with others. For we are not called children and infants because our discipline is puerile and contemptible, as those have slandered us who are puffed up with knowledge. For immediately upon being regenerated, we received the perfection for which we were hastening. For we were illuminated, and this is to know God. Therefore, he who has known the perfect one is not imperfect. And do not find fault with me for confessing that I know God; for it seemed good to the Word himself so to speak: and he is truly free. For already, while the Lord was being baptized, a voice from the heavens ^C resounded as a witness to the beloved: *You are my beloved Son, this day have I begotten you*. Let us therefore ask these wise men: has Christ, having been regenerated today, already become perfect, or, which is most absurd, does he lack anything? But if the latter is true, there would have been a need for him to learn something further. But being God, it is consistent that he has learned nothing. For no one could be greater than the Word, nor is there a teacher of the only Teacher. Will they not, then, even unwillingly confess that the Word, born perfect from the perfect Father, was perfectly regenerated according to the economy of preordination ^D? And if he was perfect, why was he who was perfect baptized? "It was necessary," they say, "to fulfill the human profession." Excellent. For I grant this. Therefore, as soon as he is baptized by John, does he become perfect? Clearly so. Did he, then, learn anything further from him? By no means. But is he perfected by the washing alone, and sanctified by the descent of the Spirit? It is so. This very thing also happens to us, of whom the Lord was the prototype.

^A Being baptized, we are illuminated; being illuminated, we are adopted as sons; being adopted, we are perfected; being perfected, we are rendered immortal. "I," he says, "said: You are gods, and all of you are children of the Most High" (Ps. LXXXI, 6). This work is called by many names: grace, and illumination, and perfection, and washing; washing, by which we wash away our sins; grace, by which the penalties incurred for our sins are released; illumination, by which that holy and saving light is contemplated, that is, by which we behold the Divine; and we call that perfect which is in need of nothing. For what is still lacking to one who has known God? Truly, it is absurd to call that a grace of God which is not perfect and full in every respect. For He who is perfect will surely grant perfect things. And just as all things come into being as soon as He commands, so it follows that, from the mere fact that He wills to bestow grace, the grace is full. For that which is of future time is anticipated by the power of His will. ^B To this is added that liberation from evils is the beginning of salvation. We alone, therefore, who have first attained the boundaries of life, are now perfect; and we now live, who are separated from death. To follow Christ, then, is salvation. For "what has been made in Him is life" (Joan. I, 4). "Amen, amen, I say to you," He says, "he who hears my words and believes in Him who sent me, has eternal life, and does not come into judgment, but has passed from death to life" (Joan. V, 24). Thus to have believed and to have been regenerated is, by itself, perfection in life; for God is never weak. For as His will is a work, and this is called the world, so also His purpose is the salvation of men, and this has been called the Church. He knows, therefore, whom He has called, whom He has saved; for He has called and saved at the same moment. "For you yourselves," says the Apostle, "are taught by God" (I Thess. IV, 9). It is not right, therefore, for us to consider imperfect that which is taught by Him; and that lesson is the eternal salvation of the eternal Savior, to whom be grace for ever and ever. Amen. And he who is only regenerated and illuminated, just as the name itself indicates, has immediately departed from the darkness, ^C and from that moment has received the light.

^A Just as those who have shaken off sleep are immediately awake, or rather, just as those who try to remove a suffusion from their eyes do not provide the light to them from outside, which they do not possess, but by clearing away the obstruction to their vision, they leave the pupil free; so also those of us who are baptized, having wiped away as if it were a mist the sins that darkened us, by means of the divine Spirit, possess the eye of the Spirit free, unobstructed, and luminous—the very thing by which alone we behold the divine, as the holy Spirit pours into us from heaven. This mixture is an eternal radiance, capable of beholding the eternal light; ^B since the like is dear/friendly to the like, and the holy is dear/friendly to that from which the holy proceeds; and He is properly called Light. "For you were sometimes darkness, but now you are light in the Lord." From this, I think, man was called "light" by the ancients. "But they have not yet," they say, "received the perfect gift." I agree also; but he is in the light, and the darkness does not comprehend him. And between light and darkness, there is nothing intermediate. In the resurrection of believers, the end is laid up. This, however, is not to obtain something else, but to attain that which was promised before. For we do not say that both come to pass at the same time, namely, the reaching toward the end and the anticipation of that reaching; for eternity and time are not the same thing, nor are starting and finishing the same; yet both revolve around one thing, and the one revolves around both. ^C It is, so to speak, that the starting point is faith, which is generated in time, but the end is the attainment of the promise, being confirmed unto the ages. And the Lord Himself most clearly revealed the equality of salvation, saying: "For this is the will of my Father, that every one who sees the Son, and believes on Him, may have eternal life; and I will raise him up at the last day." ^D Therefore, it is not the case that some are Gnostics and others Psychics in the same Word; but all who have put away carnal desires are equal and spiritual before the Lord. Those, moreover, were the Valentinians, whom Irenaeus in book 1, chapters 11 and 14, reports to have distributed men into three classes. 1. The first of these was that which was material and earthly, to which they said salvation was entirely impossible. 2. The animal, in which those are who are confirmed by works and empty faith, and do not have perfect knowledge; these they say are us who are in the Church. 3. The spiritual, which consists of those who have perfect knowledge; whence they called themselves Gnostics, and boasted that they were made safe not by faith or any works, but by nature, and furthermore would be deemed worthy of greater glory than other men could attain. Consequently, against these, Clement asserts that salvation pertains equally to all who are endowed with true faith.

^A Insofar as it is possible in this world, which he signified as the "last day," and which is preserved until it shall cease, we believe that we have been made perfect. For faith is the perfection of learning; that is why he says: "He who believes in the Son 39 has eternal life." If, therefore, we who believe possess life, what further obstacle remains to the possession of eternal life? Nothing is lacking to faith, being perfect and complete in itself 41. If anything were lacking to it, it would not be whole; nor does faith limp in any respect, nor does it wait for those who have believed to depart from here, having received the pledge 43 without reserve while still here. That "believing," which we have already taken hold of, we receive as fulfilled after the resurrection, so that that which was said might be satisfied: "Let it be done to you according ^B to your faith." But as for the faith here, it is the promise; and the perfection of the promise is rest. Thus, knowledge is in the illumination, but the end of knowledge is rest; which is understood as the ultimate object of desire. Just as ignorance is dissolved by experience, and difficulty by the way forward, so it is necessary that darkness be dissipated by illumination. Ignorance is the darkness, by which we fall into sins, seeing the truth only dimly. Therefore, knowledge is illumination, which disperses ignorance and implants the penetrating faculty of sight. Furthermore, the rejection of the worse things is the revelation of the better. For the things which ignorance bound together badly, knowledge resolves beautifully; and these bonds are loosed as quickly as possible: by human faith, and by divine ^C grace, since sins are remitted by one Paeonian remedy, namely, the baptism according to the Word. We wash away all our sins, and we are no longer evil people at the heels of our sins. This is the one grace of illumination: that the character is not the same as it was before we were washed. But since knowledge arises together with illumination, shining upon the mind, we who were rude and ignorant are immediately called disciples: was this done when discipline had finally arrived? For you will not be able to say the time. For catechesis leads to faith, and faith is educated at the same time as the holy baptism by the Spirit; since it is true that there is one universal salvation for humanity, faith, and the equality and communion of the just and benevolent God, the same toward all, ^D the Apostle explained most clearly, speaking thus: "But before faith came, we were guarded under the law."

kept under restraint unto the faith which should be revealed. So that the law is become our tutor to bring us unto Christ, that we might be justified by faith. But now that faith is come, we are no longer under a tutor." ^A Do you not hear that we are no longer under that law which was accompanied by fear, but under the Word, the Tutor of free will? He then added a statement which is removed from all respect of persons: "For ye are all sons of God, through faith, in Christ Jesus. For as many of you as were baptized into Christ, did put on Christ. There can be neither Jew nor Greek, there can be neither bond nor free, there can be no male and female: for ye are all one man in Christ Jesus." It does not follow, therefore, that some are endowed with knowledge while others are mere animal souls within the same Word; rather, all who have put away carnal desires are equal and spiritual before the Lord. And elsewhere he writes again: "For in one Spirit were we all baptized into one body, whether Jews or Greeks, whether bond or free; and were all made to drink of one Spirit." ^B Nor would it be absurd to use the very words of those who define the "percolation" of the Spirit as the remembrance of better things. By percolation, they mean the separation of the worse from the better, which occurs through the remembrance of the superior things. It follows necessarily that for one who has been reminded of better things, repentance for the inferior things ensues; indeed, they themselves admit that the Spirit, having been brought to repentance, has returned. In the same way, we also, moved to repentance for our sins, renouncing our transgressions, and being percolated through baptism, run back to the eternal light, as children to a father. ^C Exulting therefore in the Spirit, Jesus says: "I thank thee, O Father, Lord of heaven and earth, that thou didst hide these things from the wise and understanding, and didst reveal them unto babes." The Tutor and Master calls us infants and babes, as being more fit for salvation than those who are wise in the eyes of the world; for those who deem themselves wise have become puffed up. ^D And He exclaims, exulting and rejoicing exceedingly, as if…

babbling together with infants: "Rightly, O Father, because it has so pleased Thee." Therefore, those things which have been hidden from the wise and understanding of this present age have been revealed to infants. Deservedly, therefore, are we the children of God, who have laid aside the old man and put off the tunic of vice, and have put on the incorruption of God, in order that, having become a new, holy people, reborn, we might keep the man undefiled. And the infant, as a child of God, is purged from fornication and wickedness. Most clearly, therefore, has the blessed Paul freed us from this question, writing thus in the First Epistle to the Corinthians: "Brothers, do not become children in your minds, but as regards evil be infants, though in your minds be perfect." And the phrase: "When I was a child, I thought as a child, I spoke as a child," signifies the life that he lived under the Law, in which he acted not as one who was already simple, but as one who was still foolish, ^B following after things foolish in his mind; and speaking foolishly, he assailed the Word with blasphemies. For the term "infant" signifies two things: to wit, both the infant and the foolish. "But after I became a man," says Paul (again the Apostle speaks), "I have done away with the things of an infant." He does not signify an imperfect size of age, nor yet a defined measure of time, nor the secret doctrines of manlier and more perfect disciplines ^C when he puts away infancy, which he himself acknowledges the Apostle to be announcing. But he calls those "infants" who are under the Law, who, no differently than children frightened by masks, are terrified by fear; but he has called "men" those of us who obey the Word and are of our own right and choice, who have believed, saved by a spontaneous choice, acting wisely, not foolishly terrified by fear. Concerning this matter, the Apostle himself will bear witness, calling the Jews heirs according to the former Testament, but us according to the promise. "Now I say," he says, "as long as the heir is an infant, he differs in nothing from a slave, although he is lord of all, but is under tutors and curators until the time appointed by the father; so also we, when we were infants, were enslaved under the elements of the world; but when the fullness of the time had come, God sent forth His Son, ^D born of a woman, made under the Law, that He might redeem those who were under the Law, that we might receive the adoption of sons through Him." See how he confessed those who were under fear and sin to be infants; but calling those who are under faith "sons," he has made them men, as if by way of contrast

with the infants who are under the law. "For," he says, "thou art no longer a servant, but a son; and if a son, then an heir through God." What, then, is lacking to the son after the inheritance? It is elegant, therefore, to interpret that passage ^A in this way: "When I was an infant," that is, when I was a Jew (for I was a Hebrew by birth), "I thought as an infant," because I followed the law. "But after I became a man, I no longer think the things of the infant," that is, the things of the law, "but the things of the man," that is, the things of Christ; for Scripture calls Him the only man, as we have said before: "I have put away the things of the infant." Now, the infancy in Christ is perfection. Thus, in this respect, we must argue in defense of our infancy against the law. Furthermore, we must also interpret that which was said by the Apostle: "I fed you with milk, as infants in Christ, and not with meat; for you were not yet able, nor are you able even now." For it does not seem to me that what he says ought to be understood in the Jewish sense. For I will oppose that Scripture to him ^B from the other side: "I will lead you into a good land, flowing with milk and honey." A very great difficulty therefore arises for those who reflect upon the collation of these Scriptures. For if the beginning of faith in Christ is infancy, which is designated by milk; and if this is held in low esteem as childish and imperfect: how is the rest of him who is perfect and endowed with knowledge, after the meat, honored again with infantile milk? Might it not be, then, that this, as a thing which declares a certain parable, signifies some such thing; and that the saying ought in fact to be read in this way: "I fed you with milk in Christ," and after a small interval let us add, "as infants": so that by the differentiation of reading, we may receive such a meaning: "I instructed you in Christ with simple and true and essentially natural spiritual food; ^C for such is the life-giving substance of milk, gushing forth from loving breasts; so that the whole may be understood thus: Just as nurses feed newly born infants with milk, so I, with the milk of Christ, that is to say the Word, instilling spiritual nourishment into you." Thus, therefore, milk is a perfect food, it leads to the perfect, and leads to the end which shall never cease. Wherefore in the Rest also, the same milk and honey is promised. For surely the Lord promises milk again to the righteous, that the Word may be clearly shown to be both, Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end; the Word allegorized as milk. Something of this sort Homer, though unwillingly, guesses, calling the righteous among men milk-eaters; ^D and it is permitted to understand Scripture in this way: "And I, brethren, could not" speak to you as to spiritual, but as to carnal.

as to infants in Christ. ^A For it is possible that those who have recently been instructed and made catechumens, and are still infants in Christ, should be understood as carnal. For he called those who have already believed in the Holy Spirit spiritual; but he called those who have recently been catechized, and are not yet purged, carnal; whom he rightly calls carnal, as they still mind the things of the flesh, just as the Gentiles do. "For where there is among you jealousy and strife, are you not carnal, and walking according to man?" Therefore he says, "I gave you milk to drink"; I poured into you the knowledge which is from catechesis, which nourishes unto eternal life. But even the word "I gave to drink" is a symbol and sign of perfect participation. For the perfect are said to drink, but infants to suck. "For my blood," says the Lord, "is true 85 drink." Did he then, by saying "I gave milk to drink," hint at the perfect joy in the Word—in the milk—namely, the knowledge of the truth? The next part, "Not with food; for you were not yet able," can signify the clear revelation in the future age, like food, face to face. ^B For we see "as in a mirror," says the same Apostle, "but then face to face." Wherefore he also added this: "But neither yet are you now able; for you are still carnal," minding the things of the flesh, coveting, loving, envying, being angry, jealous. For it is not that we are in the flesh, as some have supposed; for with it, having a face like the angels, we shall see the promise face to face. But if that promise really exists after our departure from here—which "eye has not seen, nor has it entered into the heart of man"—how do they say they know it, having not understood it by the Spirit, but having received it from learning, which "the ear has never heard," save only for that one who was caught up to the third heaven, and even he was commanded to keep that secret at that time? But if it is human wisdom—which is what remains to be thought—that is the boasting of knowledge, hear the law of Scripture: "Let not the wise man boast in his wisdom; and let not the strong man boast in his strength; but let him who boasts, boast in the Lord." ^C But we are taught by God, and boasting in the name of Christ. How, then, is it not to be understood that the Apostle is here speaking of the milk of infants—if indeed we are shepherds who lead the Churches, after the image of the good shepherd; and we are the sheep—is it not also the milk of the flock

^A Must it not be that he who calls the Lord the "milk" of the flock ^B maintains the sequence in his allegory? Now we must apply this statement once more to our present meaning: "I fed you with milk, not with meat; for you were not yet able to receive it." For he does not consider the food to be something other than the milk, but the same thing in substance. For in the same way, the Word himself is either fluid and gentle, like milk; or solid and condensed, like food. But even if we understand it this way, preaching, which is very widely diffused, may be understood by us as milk; while faith, which has been condensed and turned into a foundation from catechesis—and which, since it is firmer than hearing, is equated to food—is portrayed as assimilating such nourishment into the very soul, changing it into substance.

^C Elsewhere also, the Lord in the Gospel according to John expounded this differently through symbols and signs, when he said: "Eat my flesh and drink my blood," plainly indicating the symbol of faith and of the promise, that which is the drink through which the Church, like a human being, consisting of many members, is irrigated and grows, and is framed and coalesces from both: the body, through faith; but the soul, through hope; just as the Lord also consists of flesh and blood. For in very truth, hope is the blood of faith, by which faith is held together as if by a soul; but when hope has expired, it is as if the blood had flowed out, and the vital faculty of faith is dissolved.

But if some wish to contend, saying that the milk signifies the primary teachings, as if they were initial nourishment, and that the meat signifies the spiritual gnosis, to which they lead themselves for the sake of knowledge—let them know that in calling the meat and the flesh and blood of Jesus "solid food," they are carried away by their own boastful wisdom, which is far from the true simplicity. For blood is found to be the first-born thing in a man; indeed, some have dared to call it the very essence of the soul.

^D Tiresias indeed possesses understanding of human things, yet he himself does not prophesy about the things fated for the living until he has drunk the blood. For Homer, as also many after him have supposed, believes that human prudence consists in the blood; since many of those who came after him also confirm this, showing that that which, when heated by fever and bile, causes one to rave and be senseless. Empedocles also appears to have the blood as an instrument of intelligence, saying as follows:

For in the turns of the blood, swirling and acting in opposition, The thought is most called by men; For blood surrounding the heart is the thought for men.

^A This blood indeed, by a natural digestion being turned, when the mother has conceived, sympathizes with her affection, blossoms forth, and grows old, toward the harmlessness of the child; and blood is more liquid than flesh, being as it were a kind of liquid flesh, but milk is more pleasant and subtle than blood. For whether the blood supplied to the embryo, and sent forward first through the maternal navel, or again the menses themselves, being shut off from their proper course, are commanded by the all-nourishing and generation-working God to go, by a natural overflow, to the already inflamed breasts, and, being altered by warm spirit, is prepared as a desirable nourishment for the infants; it is blood that is transformed: for of all members, the breasts are most sympathetic with the womb. When, therefore, ^B at the time of birth, the vessel by which the blood was carried to the embryo receives a severance, there is a closing of the duct, and the blood takes its impulse toward the breasts; and a great influx having occurred, they are distended, and the blood is transformed into milk, analogously to the transformation of blood into pus in the case of a sore; or again, from the veins lying in the breasts, which open up according to the distensions of pregnancy, the blood is transfused into the natural channels of the breasts; and by this, the spirit sent down from the neighboring arteries being mingled—while the underlying, integral substance of the blood still remains—it is tossed about and whitens; and by such a repression it is transformed into a froth, having suffered something similar to the sea, which indeed, according to the onsets of the winds, the poets say ^C spits out the foam of the salt; yet it still possesses blood for its substance. In this way also, rivers carried along with a roar, being churned by the inclusion of the surrounding air, foam with a murmuring sound; and the moisture in our mouth is whitened by the spirit. What then is that claim, ^D that one should not acknowledge that even the blood is turned by the spirit toward the brightest and whitest state? It undergoes the change in quality, not in substance. Indeed, you would find nothing more nourishing, nor sweeter, nor furthermore whiter than milk. And this in every way resembles spiritual nourishment: sweet, because it exists for the sake of grace; nourishing, as life; white, as the day of Christ; and the blood of the Word has been revealed as milk. Thus, therefore, being provided for in relation to the birth, milk is supplied to the infant; and the breasts which until then [index: entries preserved]

looked toward the husband, now incline toward the child, for the nourishment is elaborated by nature so as to be easily received and to instruct [the child] for the nourishment of salvation. For the breasts are not like springs full of ready-flowing milk, but by transforming the nourishment, they produce milk within themselves and exhale it. And ^B this nourishment, which is appropriate and useful for the child recently formed and born, is elaborated by God, the provider and Father of those who are begotten and regenerated—just as the manna flowed down from heaven to the ancient Hebrews, the heavenly 12 nourishment of the angels. Indeed, even now, nurses call the first-flowing draught of milk "manna," by the same name as that nourishment. But while women who are pregnant, once they have become mothers, exude milk, the Lord Christ, the fruit of the Virgin, did not bless female breasts, nor did he judge them to be producers of nourishment; but as the affectionate and benevolent Father rained down the Word, he himself became spiritual nourishment for those who are temperate. O mystical wonder! One is the Father of all; one also is the Word of all; and the Holy Spirit is one and the same everywhere; and there is but one mother who is a virgin—it pleases me to call her the Church. This mother alone had no milk, because she alone did not become a woman. She is, however, at once virgin and mother; undefiled as a virgin, loving as a mother. And calling her children to herself, she nurses them with holy milk, with the infant Word. Therefore she had no milk; because this child 15 was milk, fair and appropriate, the body of Christ that nourishes the youth with the Word—which the Lord himself brought forth in the travail of the flesh; which the Lord himself swaddled. “Blessed is the womb that bore thee, and the breasts which thou hast sucked.” Yea rather, blessed are they that hear the word of God, and keep it.

CONCERNING THE ANGELS

^C [The Greek fragment begins:] ...standing upright as men do, those who are like men stood upright [in the presence of Abraham]. “Man ate the bread of angels.” But if we hear it said that they ate, and not only the two who were truly angels and are in the heavens, it is evident to us that, although they are nourished—even if not by the same nourishment that we humans use—they are nourished. For concerning the nourishment of the manna, with which your fathers were fed in the desert, the Scripture says thus, that “they ate the bread of angels.” I would say that the speech which says they ate would mean [it] as we ourselves might say of fire, that it consumed everything; but it is not by any means to be understood that they ate by chewing with teeth and jaws.

[The Latin continues:] ...as we, if we were to assert concerning fire that it consumes all things; but it is by no means to be understood as if they ate by chewing with teeth and jaws. Tertullian, *Adv. Judæos* cap. 3, says of the people of Israel: “Untainted by human passions, ^D or fed on the foods of this age, but fed with the bread of angels, with manna.” The same, *De carne Christi*, cap. 6, regarding the angels who appeared in human form: “But,” he says, “if it was necessary for the angels to have assumed flesh, it is more credible that it was from earthly matter than from any kind of heavenly substance, since it was of such an earthly quality that it was fed by earthly food.” [The text continues with a hypothetical argument regarding manna as heavenly, yet being consumed as earthly food.] ...we read that manna was for the food of the people: “Man,” he says, “eats the bread of angels.” Cf. what we noted above regarding the *Protrepticus*, page 35, note 6.

(13) [Respecting the passage: "Blessed is the womb that bore thee..."] A certain woman had said to Christ; he replied... (14) [Regarding the Triad] ...Cl. Bullus, *Defens. fidei Nicænæ* sect. 2, cap. 6, art. 3, noted this: “Observe: he attributes to each person of the holy Trinity the divine power which pervades the universality of things, so that the first is the Father of all; the second is the Word, likewise of all; and the third is finally everywhere and present in all things.” (15) [Regarding the Greek term *paidion*] The ancient interpreter distinguishes, and shortly after reads in the nominative case...

^A with precious blood. O holy childbirth! O holy swaddling clothes! The Word is everything to the infant: both father, and mother, and tutor, and nurse. "Eat," He says, "my flesh, and drink my blood." these appropriate nutrients the Lord provides for us; He proffers flesh and pours out blood, and nothing is lacking for the growth of the young children. O amazing mystery! He commands us to cast off the old and carnal corruption, just as we cast off our old food; and by partaking of another, a new regimen, that of Christ, we take up that One, if it is possible, to deposit Him within ourselves and to cherish the Savior in our hearts ^B (17) so that we may order the passions of our flesh. But perhaps you do not wish to understand it in this way, but rather in a more common way. Listen also to this: the Holy Spirit allegorizes flesh, for it is by Him that the flesh was fashioned. He hints to us that the Word is blood; for just as rich blood, the Word is poured out upon life. And the mixture of both is the Lord, the food of infants; the Lord, both Spirit and Word. The food, that is, the Lord Jesus, that is, the Word of God, Spirit becoming flesh, ^C heavenly sanctified flesh. The food is the milk of the Father, by which alone we little ones are nursed. He Himself, therefore, the Beloved and our nurse the Word, poured out His own blood for us, saving humanity; through whom we, having believed in God, flee to the Father's breast that grants forgetfulness of cares—that is, to the Word. He, as it seems, alone provides for us little ones the milk of love; and truly blessed alone are those who suck at this breast. For this reason also Peter says: "Therefore, laying aside all malice, and all deceit, and hypocrisy ^D (19), and envy, and evil speaking, as newborn babes, desire the rational milk, that by it you may grow unto salvation, if indeed you have tasted that Christ (20) is the Lord." But if anyone should agree with them that food is something other than milk, then how will they not be caught in contradiction with themselves, not having understood nature? For food, when the surrounding season is freezing and does not provide a passage for the heat enclosed within, being cooked and digested, departs as it turns into blood in the veins; but those parts which do not obtain ventilation, being filled… [alt-version omitted]

are stretched and throb; hence, nurses are at that time most full of milk. It has been demonstrated ^A by us a little before, that in those who are pregnant, blood is reduced to milk by a change 23, not by a change of substance: just as, of course, the blonde hair of those aging changes into grey. In summer, however, since the body is looser 24, it allows the nourishment to be more easily dispersed, and the milk does not abound as much, since neither the blood—for not all the nourishment is retained 25—is fully contained. If, therefore, the processing of food is turned into blood, and the blood turns into milk—for blood is the preparation for milk, just as blood is for a man, and the seed for the vine 26—we are nourished with the milk, that is, the Lord’s nourishment, as soon as we are born; and as soon as we are reborn, we are honored, receiving the good news of the hope of rest, the Jerusalem above, in which 27 it is written that honey and milk rain; and through the material, we are betrothed to the holy nourishment. For foods are laid aside, as the Apostle himself says, but the nourishment through milk leads to the heavens, having nurtured citizens of heaven and co-dancers with angels. Since, moreover, the Word is a gushing fountain of life 28 and has been called a river of oil, Paul, speaking allegorically and calling Him milk, fittingly adds: "I have given you drink." For the Word is drunk; it is the nourishment of truth. Surely, drink is also called liquid nourishment. It is possible for the same thing to be both food and drink, if it relates in a certain way, and drink, if it is considered in another way; just as cheese, too, is the coagulation of milk, or coagulated milk—for I do not care about word-hunting ^B at present, except that both kinds of nourishment are provided by one substance. Still, for nursing infants, milk alone is sufficient to be both drink and food. "I have," says the Lord, "food to eat that you do not know. My food is to do the will of Him who sent me 29." You see another food, allegorically taken like milk, [which is] the will of God. Moreover, He has also termed the fulfillment of His own passion a cup, ^C ironically, when it was necessary only to drink it down and finish it. In this way, for Christ, the nourishment was the completion of the Father’s counsel, but for us, Christ Himself is the nourishment for the infants who milk the Word from heaven. From this, it is called "to seek" and "to search"; because for the infants who seek the Word, the paternal breasts of philanthropy provide the milk. Furthermore, He is also [called] the bread of heaven. ^D

^A for the Word confesses: "For Moses," He says, "gave you not the bread from heaven; but my Father giveth you the bread from heaven, the true bread. For the bread of God is that which cometh down from heaven and giveth life unto the world." And "the bread that I will give is my flesh, which I will give for the life of the world." Here we must note the mystery of the bread, that He calls it flesh, and as it were rising again through fire, just as wheat rises from corruption and sowing; and yet it is formed through fire into the joy of the Church, as bread that is baked. But this will be made clearer to us again in the book *On the Resurrection*.

Since, however, He said, "And the bread that I will give is my flesh," and the flesh is irrigated by blood, and blood is allegorically called wine, we must know that just as bread, when broken into a mixture, absorbs the wine but leaves behind the watery part, so also the flesh of the Lord, the bread of the heavens, drinks in the blood, nourishing the heavenly ones among men unto incorruptibility, ^B while leaving only those carnal lusts to corruption. Thus the Word is allegorically called in many ways, both food, and flesh, and nourishment, and bread, and blood, and milk; the Lord is everything for the enjoyment of us who have believed in Him. Let no one, then, be surprised that we say the blood of the Lord is allegorically milk; for is not wine also allegorically spoken of? "He will wash," he says, "his garment in wine, and his vesture in the blood of the grape." By His Spirit, he says, He will adorn the body of the Word, just as, indeed, He will nourish those who hunger for the Word with His own Spirit. And that the blood is the Word is testified by the blood of Abel the just, which pleads with God; for the blood would never emit a voice, were it not that the Word is understood as the blood; for the old just man is a type of the new just man, and the blood that pleads, the old, pleads on behalf of the blood of the new. The blood, the Word, speaks to God, since it revealed the Word who was to suffer. But even the flesh itself, and ^C the blood within it, [is related] to the milk, as it were by a mutual return of kindness...

^A is irrigated and grows. And indeed, the development of the conceived fetus is mixed with the pure residue of the monthly cleansing that remains; for the power within it, curdling the nature of the blood, in the same way that rennet makes milk thicken, produces the substance for formation. For a good temperament easily generates, but extreme conditions are prone to childlessness. For even in the earth itself, that which is flooded by excessive rains has its seed washed away, and through the dryness of moisture, it is parched; but the viscous juice, being present, holds the seed and makes it grow. Some also suppose the seed of the animal to be, according to its substance, a foam of blood, which, being agitated ^B by the innate heat of the male during the act of union and fanned, becomes foamy, and is deposited in the seminal vessels; hence, the Apolloniate Diogenes wishes for the things of love (aphrodisia) to be so called. It is clear, therefore, from all these things that blood is the substance of the human body. And indeed, that which is in the womb is at first a milky coagulation of fluid; then, this coagulation, being transformed into blood, becomes flesh; and being congealed in the womb by the natural and warm spirit, by which the fetus is fashioned, it is quickened. But even after the (39) birth, the child continues to be nourished by the same blood; for the nature of milk is the nature of blood, and milk is the fountain of nourishment; by which also a woman is plainly shown to have truly given birth and to be a mother, through which she also receives the stimulus of affection. Therefore, the Holy Spirit who was in the Apostle, using the voice of the Lord, says mystically: "I fed you with milk" (1 Cor. iii, 2). For if we have been regenerated into Christ, He who regenerated us nourishes us with His own milk, that is, the Word; for whatever has generated [anything] is accustomed to provide food immediately for what is generated. And just as the regeneration was analogous, so also the nourishment for man has become spiritual. In every way, therefore, we are ^C closely united to Christ in all things: and into kinship through His blood, by which we are redeemed; and into sympathy through the nourishment which is derived from the Word; and into incorruption through His own instruction and manner of conduct: For to have nourished among men often brings More incentives of love than to have begotten children.

Concerning Aphrodite

^A The same, therefore, is both blood and milk; a symbol of the Lord’s passion and of His teaching. It is permitted, then, to each of us who are infants to boast in the Lord, and to say: "From a good father, and from such blood, I boast to be." That milk is produced from blood by transformation is already clear; but one may learn this also from the flocks and herds. For these animals, during the time of year we call spring, when the air is more humid and the grasses and pastures are full of better juice and dew, are filled with blood first, as can be seen from the distension of their veins, which become more rounded; and from the blood, milk is poured forth more abundantly. In summer, however, the reverse happens, for being scorched and dried up by the heat, the blood halts its transformation, and therefore they are milked less. Moreover, milk possesses a most natural affinity with water, just as the spiritual bath does with spiritual nourishment. Those, therefore, who drink a little cold water with the aforementioned milk are immediately benefited; for the association it has with water does not allow the milk to sour, not by any antipathy, but maturing through an affection joined to it. And the same association that the Word has with baptism, milk has with water; for of all liquids, it alone accepts the mixing with water, being received for the sake of purification, just as baptism is for the remission of sins. It is also mixed with honey ^B fittingly, and this too for the sake of cleansing while providing sweet nourishment. For the Word, mixed with kindness, simultaneously heals the passions of the soul and cleanses sins; and that, "More sweet than honey flows his speech," seems to me to have been said of the Word, who is honey. And in many places the prophecy raises Him above honey and the honeycomb. Furthermore, milk is also mixed with wine ^C for the sake of purification. Directly after being reborn, we were honored with the hope of rest, the Jerusalem above, the land of which it is proclaimed that it rains honey and milk. What then are the milk and honey? They are the sign that the child is made alive first by honey, then by milk. "...but you sucked the full udders of milk Of the goat Amalthea, and in addition ate the sweet honeycomb." "...clear-voiced orator of the Pylians, From whose tongue a voice flowed sweeter than honey." ^D

^C But this mixture is useful, just as passion is tempered toward incorruption; for the milk is curdled by the wine and separated, and whatever is adulterated in it is drained away as if through a conduit. In the same way, the communion of spiritual faith has an effect upon the suffering human; for, by curdling fleshly desires, it settles the human being toward eternity with the divine, making them immortal. ^D But many take the fat of milk, which they call butter, and use it for a lamp, signifying by this clear enigma the multi-faceted mercy of the Word, as it alone justly nourishes, increases, and illuminates the infants. For this reason, the Scripture also says concerning the Lord: "He fed them with the produce of the fields; they sucked honey from the rock, and oil from the solid rock; butter of cows, and milk of sheep, with the fat of lambs; and whatever follows, He gave to them." But also, the prophet, predicting the birth of the child, says, "Butter and honey he shall eat." ^B But sometimes it occurs to me to marvel how some dare to call themselves "perfect" and "Gnostics," thinking more of themselves than even the Apostles, being puffed up and boasting, while Paul himself confesses concerning himself: "Not that I have already received, or am already made perfect; but I pursue, if I may also attain, for the sake of which I was also attained by Christ. Brethren, I do not consider myself to have attained. But one thing: forgetting the things which are behind, and extending myself to those which are before, I pursue according to the mark for the prize of the upward calling in Christ Jesus." And he considers himself perfect, in that he has been delivered from his former life, but he pursues the better, not as if perfect in knowledge, but as desiring that which is perfect. And therefore he adds: "Whoever therefore are perfect, let us think this"; for he speaks of perfection, clearly meaning to have renounced sins, and to have been regenerated into the faith of Him who alone is perfect, forgetting the sins which are behind.

CHAP. VII.

Who the Tutor is, and concerning His Tutelage.

Since, therefore, we have shown that we are all called children by the Scripture, and not only that, but also that we who have followed Christ have been called infants allegorically, ^C yet that only the Father of all is perfect (for in Him is the Son, and in the Son is the Father), it remains for us, following the order, to say who is