Divine Institutes
Divinae institutiones
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Contents
Reading pages: 1.1.1–1.5.28 · 1.6.1–1.10.14 · 1.11.1–1.14.12 · 1.15.1–1.19.7 · 1.20.1–1.22.28 · 1.23.1–2.3.25 · 2.4.1–2.6.16 · 2.7.1–2.8.71 · 2.9.1–2.13.13 · 2.14.1–3.3.16 · 3.4.1–3.10.15 · 3.11.1–3.15.21 · 3.16.1–3.19.25 · 3.20.1–3.27.16 · 3.28.1–4.4.11 · 4.5.1–4.12.22 · 4.13.1–4.16.17 · 4.17.1–4.23.10 · 4.24.1–4.28.16 · 4.29.1–5.4.8 · 5.5.1–5.10.18 · 5.11.1–5.16.13 · 5.17.1–5.20.15 · 5.21.1–6.3.18 · 6.4.1–6.8.12 · 6.9.1–6.11.28 · 6.12.1–6.16.11 · 6.17.1–6.20.36 · 6.21.1–6.25.16 · 7.1.1–7.4.19 · 7.5.1–7.10.11 · 7.11.1–7.16.14 · 7.17.1–7.25.9 · 7.26.1–7.27.16
- 1.1.1Gifted men once gave up everything else to search for the truth, thinking it better than wealth or honour.
- 1.1.2Wealth and honours cannot make anyone better or more just.
- 1.1.3The philosophers deserved to know the truth because they longed for it above everything.
- 1.1.4Some philosophers gave up property and pleasure to follow virtue alone.
- 1.1.5The philosophers failed, because God's truth cannot be reached by human ability alone.
- 1.1.6God himself revealed the truth, showing that human wisdom is nothing and pointing to the way of immortality.
- 1.1.7Few accept revealed truth, so Lactantius writes to lead the learned to true wisdom and the unlearned to true religion.
- 1.1.8Teaching heavenly precepts is better than the oratory Lactantius once taught.
- 1.1.9Teaching people to live well matters more than teaching them to speak well.
- 1.1.10Rhetorical training helps present the truth persuasively, and the work now turns to religion.
- 1.1.11If retired orators turned to philosophy, Lactantius has more reason to turn to divine wisdom, which is clear and honourable.
- 1.1.12As jurists wrote institutes of civil law, Lactantius writes divine institutes about life, salvation, and God.
- 1.1.17Lactantius sets the philosophers aside because they offer nothing certain.
- 1.1.18The philosophers contradict one another and themselves, and so leave seekers confused.
- 1.1.19Christians, having received revealed truth, invite everyone of every sex and age to it.
- 1.1.20Lactantius announces seven books on the truth, though the subject is almost limitless.
- 1.1.21The treatment will be brief, because the truth is clear and the aim is to call people back from error.
- 1.1.22Readers who are persuaded will be sent on to the full source of teaching, if they are patient enough to read or listen.
- 1.1.23Many cling to superstition against plain truth and so harm themselves.
- 1.1.24Such people must be helped to see why they were born, so they will want to leave their errors.
- 1.1.25Ignorance of oneself causes error; religion and wisdom must go together.
- 1.2.1Lactantius does not think he must begin with the question of whether providence exists.
- 1.2.2Democritus and Epicurus denied providence, but the Stoics refuted them.
- 1.2.3Cicero, though an Academic, argued for providence, especially in On the Nature of the Gods.
- 1.2.4The consent of all peoples easily refutes the few who deny providence.
- 1.2.5Anyone who looks at the order of the heavens recognizes a governing providence.
- 1.2.6Providence will be treated throughout the work rather than separately here.
- 1.3.1The work begins with whether the world is ruled by one God or many; reason shows there is one.
- 1.3.2Many gods would only be needed if each were weak.
- 1.3.3Belief in many gods implies weak gods, whereas God, eternal Mind, is perfect in power.
- 1.3.4Perfect power must belong to one being.
- 1.3.5A king who rules the whole world is the most powerful.
- 1.3.6Kings who share the world are each weaker.
- 1.3.7Many gods would each be weaker; a perfect God must be one.
- 1.3.8The more gods there are, the weaker each would be.
- 1.3.9Divine power cannot be divided, because what is divisible is perishable.
- 1.3.10God is one, though polytheists say the gods divide their offices.
- 1.3.11If the gods share offices, none is perfect; ruling the world needs the perfect power of one.
- 1.3.12The one God who made the world can also rule it.
- 1.3.13Since one God created the world from nothing, one God can more easily rule it.
- 1.3.14Whatever power one ascribes to many gods, Lactantius ascribes all of it to one God.
- 1.3.15God's greatness exceeds human thought and speech, and that itself must be acknowledged.
- 1.3.16Many all-powerful gods are impossible, since each would limit the others.
- 1.3.17Many gods could want different things and fight, as Homer's gods did over Troy.
- 1.3.18The world must be ruled by one will, just as an army needs one commander.
- 1.3.19An army with many generals would fall apart, and so would a universe with many rulers.
- 1.3.20Saying many gods rule the world is like saying one body has many minds.
- 1.3.21One mind rules the body; polytheists themselves admit one supreme ruler over the gods.
- 1.3.22Lesser beings who serve the supreme God are ministers, not gods.
- 1.3.23Beings obliged to obey the supreme God cannot be gods.
- 1.3.24Lactantius will explain the source of the error later and now turns to testimonies for one God.
- 1.4.1The many prophets, filled with one Spirit, all proclaim one God.
- 1.4.2Unbelievers dismiss the prophets as mad or deceitful.
- 1.4.3Fulfilled and harmonious prophecies show the prophets were not mad.
- 1.4.4The prophets, who forbade fraud, were sent by God and were not deceivers.
- 1.4.5Lying comes from greed, which the prophets lacked.
- 1.4.6The prophets lived without provision, trusting God for daily food, and suffered torture and death.
- 1.4.7The prophets were killed by sinners they rebuked, and without greed they had no motive to deceive.
- 1.4.8Even prophets who were princes or kings, free of any suspicion of greed, proclaimed one God.
- 1.5.1Lactantius sets the prophets aside, since opponents do not believe them.
- 1.5.2Lactantius will prove one God from the poets and philosophers, whom his opponents respect.
- 1.5.3The poets often admit that one spirit or mind rules all things.
- 1.5.4Orpheus called the great God "first-born" and "Phanes", since all things came from him.
- 1.5.5Orpheus, unable to explain God's origin, called him son of the air.
- 1.5.6Orpheus called this God the parent of the gods and builder of heaven, recognizing a supreme creator.
- 1.5.7Orpheus could not make Jupiter, Saturn, or Heaven the first principle, so he posited a first-begotten God.
- 1.5.8Homer offers nothing on God, and Hesiod began from Chaos without explaining its origin.
- 1.5.9Matter itself must have a maker, namely God.
- 1.5.10Hesiod's poem was his own premeditated work, not inspired by the Muses.
- 1.5.11Virgil came near the truth, describing a spirit and mind that pervades and moves the universe.
- 1.5.12Elsewhere Virgil says plainly that God pervades all things and gives life to every creature.
- 1.5.13Ovid opens the Metamorphoses by saying God made the world.
- 1.5.14Had these poets held firm to what nature taught them, they would have reached the Christian doctrine.
- 1.5.15Lactantius turns from the poets to the philosophers.
- 1.5.16Thales held that God is the mind who formed all things from water.
- 1.5.17Pythagoras defined God as a soul pervading all nature and giving life.
- 1.5.18Anaxagoras called God infinite mind; Antisthenes said there is one natural God behind the popular gods.
- 1.5.19Cleanthes and Anaximenes called the aether God, as Virgil also did.
- 1.5.20Chrysippus and Zeno described God as divine reason, necessity, or law.
- 1.5.21Whatever the philosophers call it, they agree on one providence, which Christians call God.
- 1.5.22Aristotle, despite inconsistencies, testifies that one Mind rules the world.
- 1.5.23Plato openly taught that one God made the world.
- 1.5.24Cicero, following Plato, calls God supreme and argues that he rules all nature.
- 1.5.25In his Consolation Cicero defines God as a free mind separate from everything mortal.
- 1.5.26Seneca often praised the supreme God, the ruler of the world on whom all the lesser gods depend.
- 1.5.27Seneca wrote that God, while making the world, begot ministers of his kingdom.
- 1.5.28Great minds nearly grasped the truth, but custom drew them back into worshipping many gods and created things.
- 1.6.1Lactantius first cites a witness who was deified: Hermes Trismegistus.
- 1.6.2In Cicero, Cotta lists five Mercuries, the fifth of whom fled to Egypt and gave it laws and letters.
- 1.6.3This Mercury, called Thoth by the Egyptians, was so learned that he was named Trismegistus.
- 1.6.4Hermes Trismegistus called the one God Lord and Father and said he needs no name, being one.
- 1.6.5Because God is one, he needs no proper name other than God.
- 1.6.6Lactantius now turns to oracles and sacred verses as more certain witnesses.
- 1.6.7Varro explains that "Sibyl" was a name for many women prophets, meaning one who declares the gods' counsel.
- 1.6.8Varro counted ten Sibyls, beginning with the Persian and the Libyan.
- 1.6.9The list continues with the Delphic, Cimmerian, Erythraean, and Samian Sibyls.
- 1.6.10The Cumaean Sibyl offered King Tarquin nine books, burning three when he refused her price.
- 1.6.11Tarquin finally bought the last three books, and more Sibylline verses were later collected for Rome.
- 1.6.12The last three Sibyls are the Hellespontine, the Phrygian, and the Tiburtine.
- 1.6.13The Sibylline verses circulate mixed together, except the hidden Cumaean books and the signed Erythraean verses.
- 1.6.14All the Sibyls proclaim one God, especially the Erythraean, whose verses envoys brought to Rome.
- 1.6.15The Sibyl proclaims one unbegotten God who made heaven, sun, stars, earth, and sea.
- 1.6.16The Sibyls say that only the one God, the maker of all, is to be worshipped.
- 1.6.17Lactantius will now refute his opponents with the testimony of their own gods.
- 1.7.1Apollo's oracle at Colophon described God as self-existent and called the lesser beings angels.
- 1.7.2The oracle cannot mean Jupiter, and Hermes calls God both motherless and fatherless.
- 1.7.3Arguments and witnesses show there is one King, Father, and Lord of the world.
- 1.7.4God is not lonely, for he has ministers, the angels.
- 1.7.5God's ministers are not gods and do not wish to be worshipped as gods.
- 1.7.6If pagans worship God's ministers, they have no reason to resent Christians' belief in one God.
- 1.7.7Christians count God's ministers as innumerable, but they must not be called gods.
- 1.7.8Apollo's own oracle says God's ministers should be called angels, not gods.
- 1.7.9Apollo, really a demon, falsely counted himself among the angels, but in other oracles called himself a daemon.
- 1.7.10Apollo himself admitted that demons are subject to God's scourge and punishment.
- 1.7.11Even in self-praise Apollo admitted what God's attendants should be called.
- 1.7.12People should turn from error to their Father and Lord, whose greatness the mind cannot comprehend.
- 1.7.13God, having nothing before him, exists from himself, as Apollo, the Sibyl, and Seneca attest.
- 1.8.1Many witnesses prove one God rules the world, whose power Plato says cannot be conceived or expressed.
- 1.8.2Nothing is impossible for God, who made and sustains all things.
- 1.8.3Pagans foolishly think beings born of man and woman can be gods, though the Sibyl denies it.
- 1.8.4The gods born of two parents were therefore men.
- 1.8.5Immortal gods would have no need of sexual reproduction or offspring.
- 1.8.6Sex and generation exist so mortal creatures can continue; the eternal God needs neither.
- 1.8.7God does not need a female partner to have ministers or subjects.
- 1.8.8God can beget without a female; the pagan gods were powerful kings deified out of gratitude.
- 1.9.1Hercules, born of adultery, defiled the world with lust and could not be divine.
- 1.9.2Hercules' labours were the deeds of a brave man, not of a god.
- 1.9.3What Hercules conquered was mortal, and any force can be broken.
- 1.9.4True bravery is self-mastery, which Hercules never achieved.
- 1.9.5Conquering one's own anger, greed, and lust is braver than Hercules' labours.
- 1.9.6Only the temperate and just are truly brave; beside God's works Hercules' feats are trivial.
- 1.9.7Hercules even served Omphale, sitting at her feet in women's clothes, spinning.
- 1.9.8These stories come not from mockers like Lucilius or Lucian but from the gods' own admirers.
- 1.9.9If the poets who praise the gods are not believed, no better sources exist.
- 1.9.10The poets place Hercules at the time of the Argonauts and Troy and say he killed his wife and children in madness.
- 1.9.11Philoctetes, who burned and buried Hercules, knew he was mortal.
- 1.10.1Aesculapius did nothing divine and was killed by a thunderbolt.
- 1.10.2Tarquitius and Cicero describe Aesculapius as an exposed child who became a physician and was buried.
- 1.10.3Apollo served as a herdsman and a hired builder, and violated and killed a boy he loved.
- 1.10.4Mars was a murderer and an adulterer.
- 1.10.5Castor and Pollux, killed for abducting brides, are said to live and die by turns.
- 1.10.6Homer says plainly that Castor and Pollux were dead and buried.
- 1.10.7Mercury is remembered for his frauds, not for anything divine.
- 1.10.8Liber conquered India but was shamefully conquered by lust.
- 1.10.9Liber married Ariadne, a betrayer abandoned by another, and took her to heaven.
- 1.10.10Jupiter overthrew his father, fought the Titans, and spent his life in debauchery and adultery.
- 1.10.11Jupiter dishonoured virgins and brought disgrace on the houses of Amphitryon and Tyndareus.
- 1.10.12Jupiter's abduction of a royal boy was a crime against nature.
- 1.10.13A seducer and adulterer cannot be called "Best".
- 1.10.14Cicero condemned in Verres and Clodius the very crimes Jupiter committed.
- 1.11.1A poet wittily portrayed Cupid triumphing over the gods.
- 1.11.2In the poem Jupiter and the gods are led in chains before Cupid's chariot, which is close to the truth.
- 1.11.3Whoever is ruled by lust is subject to eternal death.
- 1.11.4Lactantius turns from morals to the historical facts about the gods.
- 1.11.5Everyone believes Jupiter reigns in heaven, as their worship shows.
- 1.11.6Jupiter was born of Saturn and Rhea after countless people already lived, so he cannot be the maker of men.
- 1.11.7If Saturn's rule passed to Jupiter, Jupiter's rule could pass to another.
- 1.11.8Divine rule should be unchangeable, yet Jupiter can lose his kingdom as his father did.
- 1.11.9Jupiter avoided Thetis only because her son was foretold to be greater than his father.
- 1.11.10Jupiter needed Themis to tell him the future, so he lacked divine foreknowledge.
- 1.11.11Jupiter's fear shows he knew he was not the greatest.
- 1.11.12Jupiter swears by the Styx, which implies a power above the gods and fear of death.
- 1.11.13Men swear by the gods above, yet these gods themselves revere the underworld.
- 1.11.14If even Jupiter obeys the Fates, the Fates rather than he should be said to reign.
- 1.11.15Jupiter restrained himself with Thetis only out of fear of being succeeded.
- 1.11.16Jupiter, secretly saved at birth, was named Zeus because he was Saturn's first son to survive.
- 1.11.17The poets described real men and invented only their divinity.
- 1.11.18The shower of gold was really the price Jupiter paid to seduce Danae.
- 1.11.19The eagle that took Ganymede was a legion's standard or a ship's emblem.
- 1.11.20Io is said to have become a cow, swum to Egypt, and become Isis.
- 1.11.21The festival of Isis's voyage shows she sailed rather than swam.
- 1.11.22The Ganymede story is not wholly false; it happened on earth.
- 1.11.23The poets did not invent the deeds but coloured them to honour their subjects.
- 1.11.24People misunderstand poetic licence, which reshapes real events rather than inventing them.
- 1.11.25Inventing everything would make a poet a liar.
- 1.11.26If the poets lied, why do images and cults also show goddesses and divine marriages?
- 1.11.27If Jupiter were the one God, only his image would stand in the temples.
- 1.11.28Images of goddesses and of Jupiter's lovers prove he was a man.
- 1.11.29The temple images, like Ganymede and the eagle beside Jupiter, confirm the poets' stories.
- 1.11.30The division of heaven, sea, and underworld veils a real division of earthly kingdoms.
- 1.11.31Jupiter received the east and Pluto the west, which the poets called heaven and underworld.
- 1.11.32Neptune ruled the coasts and islands, like Marcus Antonius' command against the pirates.
- 1.11.33Euhemerus wrote a history of the gods as men, based on temple inscriptions.
- 1.11.34Ennius' version of Euhemerus says Jupiter gave Neptune rule over the sea and islands.
- 1.11.35Jupiter lived on Mount Olympus, whose name also means heaven, as Ennius records.
- 1.11.36Poets use figures for beauty, not to lie about the gods.
- 1.11.37Philosophers invented two Jupiters, one natural and one of myth.
- 1.11.38The philosophers rightly saw the mythical Jupiter was a man but wrongly gave his name to God.
- 1.11.39Calling the supreme God "Jupiter" is absurd, since Jupiter is worshipped with his wife and daughter.
- 1.11.40Cicero derives Jupiter from "helping", a human rather than divine role.
- 1.11.41People ask God not for help but for salvation, and no father merely "helps" his children.
- 1.11.42God, our true Father, gives life, salvation, and food, far more than help.
- 1.11.43Calling God "Jupiter" belittles him and is impious.
- 1.11.44Having shown Jupiter was a man, Lactantius turns to his death.
- 1.11.45Ennius records that Jupiter, after travelling and giving laws, left lasting monuments of himself.
- 1.11.46Ennius says Jupiter died in Crete, where his tomb is inscribed "Zeus son of Kronos".
- 1.11.47The Sibylline verses confirm that the gods were dead men whose tombs are in Crete.
- 1.11.48Cicero mentions the Cretan Jupiter's tomb.
- 1.11.49A god with a tomb is dead, so the Capitol is only an empty monument.
- 1.11.50Lactantius turns to Saturn, said to have ruled a golden age of justice.
- 1.11.51A just and pious reign would suit a god.
- 1.11.52Saturn, born of heaven and earth, cannot be the supreme God, who made them.
- 1.11.53One who owes his origin to others cannot be the first God.
- 1.11.54Heaven and earth could not beget a son unlike themselves; this is poetic fiction.
- 1.11.55Minucius Felix explained Saturn's parentage as figures of speech.
- 1.11.56Minucius' explanation is plausible but not correct.
- 1.11.57Saturn perhaps named heaven and earth after his parents.
- 1.11.58Poets' talk of offspring of mountains or rivers means descendants of men who named them.
- 1.11.59Places were often named after people, such as seas, hills, and rivers.
- 1.11.60Heaven and earth likely bear the names of the parents of great kings.
- 1.11.61Saturn's father was a man named Uranus, as Hermes Trismegistus attests.
- 1.11.62Ennius records that Jupiter, not Saturn, named the heaven.
- 1.11.63Ennius says Jupiter built an altar to his grandfather Caelus and named the sky after him.
- 1.11.64Germanicus Caesar reports that an eagle appeared to Jupiter as an omen before his war with the Titans.
- 1.11.65Jupiter sacrificed to his grandfather Caelus, a man buried in Oceania.
- 1.12.1Lactantius returns to Saturn's supposed justice.
- 1.12.2Saturn is past, not eternal, and was impious to both sons and father.
- 1.12.3The Stoics reinterpreted Saturn's myth as natural philosophy, as Cicero reports.
- 1.12.4The Stoics said the fiery heaven needs no sexual organs, which would fit Vesta better.
- 1.12.5Vesta is thought a virgin because fire generates nothing.
- 1.12.6Ovid identifies Vesta with flame, which is virgin because it begets nothing.
- 1.12.7The Stoic explanation would suit Vulcan or the Sun no better, since heat causes all generation.
- 1.12.8If heaven generates by itself, castration makes no sense; if not, nature would have ended.
- 1.12.9The Stoics made Saturn a symbol of time, Kronos as chronos.
- 1.12.10The Stoic allegory of Saturn as time is absurd.
- 1.13.1Saturn was a man who castrated another man, not a god.
- 1.13.2Saturn killed his sons, and the Sacred History says men then ate human flesh until Jupiter forbade it.
- 1.13.3Saturn's cannibalism leaves him unjust; Ops hid the infant Jupiter in Crete.
- 1.13.4Saturn needed an oracle and could not see events on earth, so lacked divine knowledge.
- 1.13.5Saturn was deceived and overthrown, like any old man by a young one.
- 1.13.6Saturn fled by ship to Italy, where Janus received him, as Ovid relates.
- 1.13.7Old coins with Janus and a ship record Saturn's arrival by sea.
- 1.13.8Historians Greek and Latin agree that Saturn was a man who lived in Italy.
- 1.13.9Virgil says Saturn hid in Latium, but a god does not flee and hide.
- 1.13.10One who flees and hides fears death, so is not a god.
- 1.13.11Orpheus says Saturn reigned over men on earth before Zeus.
- 1.13.12Virgil places Saturn's golden reign on earth.
- 1.13.13Virgil shows that Saturn was an earthly king in Latium.
- 1.13.14Ennius says Uranus (Caelus) reigned on earth before Saturn.
- 1.13.15Uranus may have held leadership first and Saturn later taken the title of king.
- 1.14.1Lactantius turns to the Sacred History of Ennius as the true record.
- 1.14.2Ennius relates that Saturn married Ops and, urged by his mother and sisters, kept the kingdom from his elder brother Titan.
- 1.14.3Titan yielded the kingdom on condition that Saturn raise no sons.
- 1.14.4Saturn's first son was killed; Jupiter was hidden and Juno shown.
- 1.14.5Ops hid Neptune and Pluto, showing Saturn only the daughters.
- 1.14.6So the Sacred History gives the family of Jupiter and his brothers.
- 1.14.7Titan, discovering the hidden sons, imprisoned Saturn and Ops.
- 1.14.8The Erythraean Sibyl confirms this history in substance.
- 1.14.9Titan, not Jupiter, put Saturn in chains.
- 1.14.10Jupiter freed his parents, defeated the Titans, and restored Saturn's kingdom.
- 1.14.11Warned by an oracle, Saturn plotted against Jupiter, who then drove him out.
- 1.14.12Pursued everywhere, Saturn barely found a hiding place in Italy.
- 1.15.1Since the gods were men, Lactantius explains how they came to be called gods.
- 1.15.2The first kings were called gods from wonder, flattery, or gratitude.
- 1.15.3The dead kings were greatly missed.
- 1.15.4People made images of dead kings and honoured them, which led to worship.
- 1.15.5Cicero says benefactors were raised to heaven by fame, as Hercules and others.
- 1.15.6Cities deified brave men to encourage virtue, as Romans did their emperors.
- 1.15.7Such honours passed down the generations and became established religions.
- 1.15.8Each people worshipped its own founders, like Egypt Isis and the Latins Faunus.
- 1.15.9Other cities likewise worshipped their own gods.
- 1.15.10Gratitude to dead leaders produced the various local cults.
- 1.15.11Successors deified their parents to appear of divine descent.
- 1.15.12Virgil shows Aeneas establishing worship of his dead father Anchises.
- 1.15.13Children deified their fathers, and poets flattered them into heaven.
- 1.15.14The eloquent Greeks spread these lies and rites to all nations.
- 1.15.15The Sibyl rebukes Greece for worshipping dead men and idols.
- 1.15.16Cicero, in his Consolation on his daughter's death, said the public gods were men.
- 1.15.17Cicero's testimony is weighty because he was an augur.
- 1.15.18Cicero's plan to deify his daughter reveals that the gods were dead people.
- 1.15.19Cicero notes that many men and women have been counted among the gods.
- 1.15.20Cicero vows to consecrate his daughter among the gods.
- 1.15.21Cicero wrote this with a steady mind, not in grief-stricken raving.
- 1.15.22The polish of the work shows his grief had eased.
- 1.15.23Cicero's Laws command worship of those whose merits placed them in heaven.
- 1.15.24In the Tusculans Cicero says even the chief gods went from earth to heaven.
- 1.15.25Cicero points to the tombs of the gods and the teaching of the mysteries.
- 1.15.26Cicero hinted that even the chief gods were men but feared to say so openly.
- 1.15.27Mourners who deify the dead may be pardoned, but believers in such gods cannot.
- 1.15.28No crowd of fools can open heaven to the dead; Julius Caesar was deified by the will of a wicked man.
- 1.15.29Julius was deified by Antony, Quirinus by shepherds, though one killed his brother and the other his country.
- 1.15.30Without Antony, Caesar would have had no honours; Ennius shows the Romans' longing for Romulus.
- 1.15.31Ennius' Romans mourn Romulus as father and guardian.
- 1.15.32Julius Proculus, prompted by the senators, falsely claimed Romulus appeared as a god.
- 1.15.33The lie deified Romulus and cleared the senate of his murder.
- 1.16.1Lactantius continues his argument.
- 1.16.2Though the case is made, he will refute the rest fully so people repent.
- 1.16.3Lucretius tried to free minds from religion but failed; Christians can, because they know the true God.
- 1.16.4Belief in goddesses implies the gods mate and bear children.
- 1.16.5Two sexes imply conception, which cannot apply to God.
- 1.16.6If gods are born and never die, the world must be full of countless gods.
- 1.16.7Immortal gods born over many ages would be innumerable.
- 1.16.8Either the gods are innumerable or their sexes serve only lust.
- 1.16.9If gods were once born, they should still be born, or we need to know why they stopped.
- 1.16.10Seneca mocks Jupiter for no longer fathering children.
- 1.16.11If gods have two sexes, they must have intercourse and therefore houses.
- 1.16.12If the gods have houses, they have cities and fields, as Ovid implies.
- 1.16.13Gods who farm for food are mortal.
- 1.16.14Reversing the argument, female gods prove they are not gods.
- 1.16.15The chain of reasoning compels the conclusion.
- 1.16.16Weakness does not belong to God, so neither does the female sex.
- 1.16.17Female deities show the pagan gods are not gods.
- 1.17.1The Stoics interpreted the gods as natural forces, and Cicero followed them.
- 1.17.2Cicero says natural philosophy produced fictitious gods and old wives' superstitions.
- 1.17.3Cicero, a priest and philosopher, exposed the gods as fictions.
- 1.17.4Cicero destroyed the false gods but, not knowing the truth, could not say what is true.
- 1.17.5The gods were men, which is why their images show different ages.
- 1.17.6The goddesses suffered human sorrows and hardships.
- 1.17.7The Mother of the Gods castrated her lover, and Juno persecuted Jupiter's mistresses.
- 1.17.8Varro's account of Juno growing up and marrying on Samos shows she was human.
- 1.17.9Venus had children by many gods and men.
- 1.17.10The Sacred History says Venus introduced prostitution in Cyprus.
- 1.17.11Even the virgin goddesses were not chaste, as the birth of Erichthonius shows.
- 1.17.12Vulcan, granted any reward by Jupiter, asked to marry Minerva.
- 1.17.13Erichthonius was born from Vulcan's seed during his struggle with Minerva.
- 1.17.14Minerva's secret care of Erichthonius shows her guilt.
- 1.17.15Diana hid the healed Hippolytus in Italy under a new name.
- 1.17.16Diana's secrecy reveals a guilty, unvirginal love.
- 1.17.17Diana had reason to reward Hippolytus, who had rejected his stepmother's advances.
- 1.18.1Lactantius turns to those who praise gods for having been deified for virtue, gifts, or arts.
- 1.18.2Lactantius will show that these grounds for deification are foolish.
- 1.18.3Hercules is said to have won immortality by bodily strength.
- 1.18.4Bodily strength is not a divine good, since beasts have more and it fails with illness and age.
- 1.18.5Hercules chose death rather than weakness or disfigurement.
- 1.18.6Hercules' self-immolation was taken as ascent to heaven, and his statues record this folly.
- 1.18.7The Greeks always prized trivial things.
- 1.18.8Romans think conquering generals become gods through war and destruction.
- 1.18.9Conquerors call their crimes virtue for the sake of empty glory.
- 1.18.10One murderer is shut out of temples, but a mass killer is admitted to heaven.
- 1.18.11In Ennius, Scipio Africanus claims heaven's gate is open to him for his conquests.
- 1.18.12Lactantius rebukes Ennius, and Cicero, for thinking bloodshed opens heaven.
- 1.18.13Cicero agreed that heaven's gate opened to Scipio as to Hercules.
- 1.18.14Such errors in learned men are both sad and laughable.
- 1.18.15Lactantius would rather die than win immortality by killing.
- 1.18.16If only killers reach heaven, a peaceful world would leave no one worthy of heaven.
- 1.18.17Lovers of military glory would destroy peace just to have enemies.
- 1.18.18Ceres and Liber were deified for grain and wine, though Scripture shows these were used earlier.
- 1.18.19Making bread and wine is less than creating grain and vines.
- 1.18.20Everything discovered by humans still belongs to God, who gave both wisdom and the things found.
- 1.18.21If inventors become gods, so should the inventors of fulling, shoemaking, and pottery.
- 1.18.22Other useful inventors have no temples.
- 1.18.23Minerva is credited with all crafts and so reached heaven from menial work.
- 1.18.24It is absurd to leave the Creator to worship the inventor of weaving.
- 1.18.25The healer cannot surpass the Creator of bodies and healing herbs.
- 1.19.1An objector suggests worshipping both God and the benefactor gods.
- 1.19.2God cannot be worshipped alongside others, since his worship means believing he alone is God.
- 1.19.3Virgil places inventors among the dead and says Aesculapius was struck down by the thunderbolt.
- 1.19.4Since Aesculapius was struck down, he was a man, not a god.
- 1.19.5The poets told true facts but falsely called men gods, fearing public opinion.
- 1.19.6If gods were once men, the poets' accounts of their sins should be believed.
- 1.19.7They were not even good men, and their deeds lead to eternal death.
- 1.20.1The Romans deified Romulus' nurse, the She-wolf.
- 1.20.2Livy says the She-wolf was Larentina, a prostitute called lupa.
- 1.20.3The Athenians likewise honoured the harlot Leaena with a lioness statue.
- 1.20.4The Romans also gave Larentina a festival.
- 1.20.5The Romans worship other harlots too, such as Faula.
- 1.20.6Flora, a rich harlot, left money for games in her honour, the Floralia.
- 1.20.7The senate disguised Flora as a goddess of flowers.
- 1.20.8Ovid made Flora a nymph who received power over flowers as a dowry.
- 1.20.9Such decent stories must not hide the shameful truth.
- 1.20.10The Floralia are celebrated with obscene speech and naked prostitutes performing.
- 1.20.11Tatius deified a statue found in a sewer, and Tullus Hostilius worshipped Fear and Pallor.
- 1.20.12Tullus deserved his gods' company; Marcellus' deification of Honour and Virtue is no different in principle.
- 1.20.13The senate foolishly deified Mind.
- 1.20.14Cicero praised Greece for placing images of Cupid in gymnasia, flattering Atticus.
- 1.20.15Placing Cupids in gymnasia was a wicked means of corrupting boys.
- 1.20.16Greek vice was sacred; Cicero said virtues, not vices, should be consecrated.
- 1.20.17If virtues are deified, vices will be too, as the Romans deified Blight and Fever.
- 1.20.18Virtues belong in the heart, not in shrines, and should not be deified.
- 1.20.19Cicero's law of shrines to the virtues is absurd, since virtues exist only in people.
- 1.20.20Virtue is cultivated by will and purpose, not by sacrifice or incense.
- 1.20.21Virtue is cultivated by holding it in the mind; worship belongs to the one God alone.
- 1.20.22Temples, priests, and sacrifices for virtues are useless.
- 1.20.23The human heart is the true temple, to be filled with real virtues.
- 1.20.24Worshipping images of virtues prevents possessing real ones.
- 1.20.25Where virtues are worshipped as images, real virtues vanish and vice rules.
- 1.20.26People outwardly worship virtues they inwardly hate, from ignorance of the supreme good.
- 1.20.27The Romans dedicated a temple to Bald Venus after using women's hair for siege engines.
- 1.20.28Such absurd cults show how empty these religions are.
- 1.20.29Spartan women routed the Messenians who raided Sparta.
- 1.20.30The armed women, mistaken for enemies, uncovered themselves to their husbands.
- 1.20.31The men, aroused, lay with the women promiscuously.
- 1.20.32The Spartans commemorated this by a temple to Armed Venus.
- 1.20.33The Romans set up an altar to Jupiter the Baker after a ruse that ended the siege.
- 1.20.34Such names bring the gods into contempt.
- 1.20.35Gods like Oven and the mute goddess Muta are ridiculous.
- 1.20.36Roman cults of Caca, Cunina, Stercutus, and others are more foolish than Egyptian animal worship.
- 1.20.37Romans worship a rough stone, Terminus, said to be the stone Saturn swallowed.
- 1.20.38Terminus alone refused to yield to Jupiter on the Capitol.
- 1.20.39Even a stone would not yield to Jupiter.
- 1.20.40An opening was left in the Capitol roof so Terminus could see the sky.
- 1.20.41Terminus, worshipped as guardian of boundaries, is only a stone or stake.
- 1.20.42Worshippers of stones and stakes are like them.
- 1.21.1Human sacrifice to Jupiter continued in Cyprus until Hadrian.
- 1.21.2The Taurians sacrificed strangers to Diana.
- 1.21.3Gauls and even Latins offered human blood to their gods.
- 1.21.4Romans, who boast of humanity, are more savage than barbarians in these rites.
- 1.21.5Educated people who commit such crimes are guiltier than the ignorant.
- 1.21.6Saturn was worshipped in Latium by throwing men into the Tiber.
- 1.21.7Varro says an ambiguous oracle about sending "a man" or "a light" led to this rite.
- 1.21.8Hercules replaced the human victims with straw figures, as Ovid relates.
- 1.21.9The Vestals throw rush figures from the bridge; the sacrifice of infants to Saturn is beyond words.
- 1.21.10Sacrificing infants was worse than the savagery of beasts, which love their young.
- 1.21.11These gods harm their worshippers more when pleased than they could when angry.
- 1.21.12Those who commit crimes at altars respect nothing holy.
- 1.21.13The Carthaginians sacrificed two hundred noble sons to Saturn after a defeat.
- 1.21.14As Lucretius says, religion has caused great evils.
- 1.21.15The Carthaginians killed more of their own than their conqueror had.
- 1.21.16The rites of Cybele and Bellona involve self-castration and self-wounding.
- 1.21.17Bellona's frenzied priests wound themselves; Quintilian says such a god must be angry.
- 1.21.18Living like cattle is better than worshipping bloodthirsty gods.
- 1.21.19Lactantius now considers rites that involve no crime.
- 1.21.20The rites of Isis re-enact her loss and finding of her son.
- 1.21.21The rites show Isis was a mortal mother, as Lucan also implies.
- 1.21.22Osiris is Serapis; the deified dead are renamed so no one remembers they were men.
- 1.21.23Other deified mortals were given new names.
- 1.21.24The Eleusinian rites re-enact Ceres' search for Proserpina with torches.
- 1.21.25Ovid explains that the ass is sacrificed to Priapus because its braying saved Vesta from him.
- 1.21.26Lampsacus sacrifices the ass while Rome crowns it for saving Vesta.
- 1.21.27It is shameful that Vesta owes her virginity to an ass.
- 1.21.28The astronomical writers tell an even more obscene story about Priapus and an ass.
- 1.21.29Such fictions must hide some greater baseness.
- 1.21.30Victims resemble their gods, so the ass suits Priapus.
- 1.21.31At Lindus Hercules is honoured with curses rather than good words.
- 1.21.32Lactantius gives the supposed reason for this rite.
- 1.21.33A hungry Hercules asked a ploughman to sell him an ox and was refused.
- 1.21.34Hercules took both oxen, and the ploughman cursed him, which amused Hercules.
- 1.21.35Hercules feasted on the oxen laughing at the curses.
- 1.21.36Hercules' altar at Lindus requires two yoked oxen and the ploughman's curses.
- 1.21.37Such rites are sacrileges, not sacred.
- 1.21.38Jupiter's Cretan rites recall how the goat Amalthea nursed him.
- 1.21.39Jupiter used the goat's hide as a shield, and the rites re-enact his concealment.
- 1.21.40Ovid shows that Cybele's noisy rites imitate the hiding of the infant Jupiter.
- 1.21.41Sallust explained the Curetes as the first to understand the divine.
- 1.21.42The Curetes were rather the first to misunderstand the divine and bring in error.
- 1.21.43The rites themselves show that the gods were dead men.
- 1.21.44The priests' own writings prove the rites are empty inventions.
- 1.21.45The wise will laugh at ritual dances, naked runners, and ancient shields.
- 1.21.46Bearers of the sacred shields think they carry the gods.
- 1.21.47Furius Bibaculus, though praetor, carried a sacred shield and was praised for piety.
- 1.21.48Lucretius rightly laments the blindness of such learned men.
- 1.21.49What these men do seriously would look foolish even as play.
- 1.22.1Numa introduced Roman superstitions, pretending to meet the goddess Egeria.
- 1.22.2Numa withdrew to a cave to claim his rites came from Egeria.
- 1.22.3Numa imitated Minos, who claimed his laws came from Jupiter.
- 1.22.4Numa created the priesthoods and turned the Romans to peace.
- 1.22.5Numa's own books, found later, undermined all religions, so the senate ordered them destroyed.
- 1.22.6The praetor burned Numa's books publicly.
- 1.22.7Burning the books was useless, since the reason was remembered.
- 1.22.8The senate's act only publicized the doubts it meant to suppress.
- 1.22.9Before Numa, Faunus instituted cults of Saturn, Picus, and his sister-wife Fauna.
- 1.22.10Varro says Fauna was so modest no other man saw her.
- 1.22.11Sextus Clodius says Faunus beat his wife to death for drunkenness and then deified her as the Good Goddess.
- 1.22.12Faunus left behind much error that wise people recognize.
- 1.22.13Lucilius mocks those who, like children, think statues are alive.
- 1.22.14Idolaters are worse than children, whose mistake passes with age.
- 1.22.15Orpheus introduced the rites of Liber in Greece on Mount Cithaeron.
- 1.22.16Orpheus, torn apart in his own rites, lived about the time of Faunus.
- 1.22.17Faunus and Orpheus were roughly contemporary.
- 1.22.18Lactantius asks who first introduced the worship of gods.
- 1.22.19Didymus says the Cretan king Melisseus first sacrificed to gods, and his daughters nursed Jupiter.
- 1.22.20This is the origin of the story of bees feeding Jupiter and of the Melissae priestesses.
- 1.22.21The Sacred History says Jupiter set up shrines to himself.
- 1.22.22Jupiter had shrines built bearing the names of his hosts.
- 1.22.23Jupiter's many titles come from hosts he honoured by name.
- 1.22.24His hosts gladly kept these festivals for their own fame.
- 1.22.25Aeneas similarly named a city after his host Acestes.
- 1.22.26Jupiter spread his own cult worldwide as an example to others.
- 1.22.27Whether from Melisseus or Jupiter, the time when god-worship began is known.
- 1.22.28Melisseus may have begun worship of Jupiter's family, leading Jupiter to claim divine honours.
- 1.23.1Lactantius now dates the deified men.
- 1.23.2Theophilus, citing Thallus, dates Belus and Saturn 322 years before the Trojan War.
- 1.23.3The genealogies of the Trojan War heroes place Jupiter a few generations earlier.
- 1.23.4The count agrees, and 1,470 years have passed since Troy fell.
- 1.23.5Saturn lived no more than 1,800 years ago, so pagan rites are not truly ancient.
- 1.23.6Lactantius ends the book, leaving further arguments for later.
- 1.23.7Refuting error prepares people for true religion.
- 1.23.8Wisdom begins with recognizing falsehood and then knowing truth.
- 1.23.9Whoever has learned this will be ready to seek the truth of heavenly teaching.
- 2.1.1Book 2 will explain the source of error and why people persist in false religions.
- 2.1.2Lactantius wants to show God's majesty and to keep people from thinking their lives worthless.
- 2.1.3Believing God does not care or that death ends all, people run after pleasures into death's snares.
- 2.1.4Knowing man's purpose would lead people to worship God and live justly.
- 2.1.5It is astonishing that people neglect the one living God for the dead.
- 2.1.6Pagans who acknowledge the supreme God yet do not worship him have no excuse.
- 2.1.7People instinctively say "God" when swearing, wishing, or thanking.
- 2.1.8In prosperity people forget God.
- 2.1.9In war, plague, drought, or storm people turn to God.
- 2.1.10The endangered and the poor call on God alone.
- 2.1.11Once danger passes, people thank the idols instead of God.
- 2.1.12Prosperity breeds luxury, and luxury breeds impiety toward God.
- 2.1.13A perverse power hostile to truth blinds people so they do not look to heaven.
- 2.1.14Humans are made upright to look to heaven, so idol worship goes against their nature.
- 2.1.15God made man upright to contemplate him, as Ovid says.
- 2.1.16The Greek word for man means "one who looks up"; those who look down disown their humanity.
- 2.1.17Humans stand upright to seek God in heaven, not to venerate earthly bronze or stone.
- 2.1.18The soul should be as upright as the body, looking where the face looks.
- 2.1.19People look down and fear the works of their own hands.
- 2.2.1Idolaters say they fear not the images but the gods they represent, who must be in heaven.
- 2.2.2If the gods are in heaven, why worship walls, wood, and stone?
- 2.2.3Images were invented to remember the dead or absent.
- 2.2.4Gods who are dead or absent should not be worshipped.
- 2.2.5If the gods are everywhere, images are unnecessary.
- 2.2.6Saying gods are present only at their images is like believing ghosts haunt tombs.
- 2.2.7No sane person prefers a portrait to the friend who has come home.
- 2.2.8Since God is never absent, an image of him is always superfluous.
- 2.2.9Idolaters need something visible, but their images, like the dead, lack sense.
- 2.2.10The true image of the living God is man, not a statue.
- 2.2.11If images could feel, they would worship the man who made them.
- 2.2.12The maker of an image is better than the image.
- 2.2.13People fear the work but not its maker.
- 2.2.14Seneca notes that people adore statues but despise the sculptors.
- 2.2.15Statues cannot have powers their maker lacks, nor even the ones he has.
- 2.2.16Images contain nothing divine, but people are soaked in foolish belief.
- 2.2.17Living, rational, heavenly beings adore lifeless earthly things.
- 2.2.18With Persius, Lactantius calls people to raise their eyes to heaven.
- 2.2.19People bend their God-given upright minds down, as if they wished to be beasts.
- 2.2.20Humans should not grovel on the ground seeking below what is above.
- 2.2.21Idols are only earth.
- 2.2.22Bowing to earthly things sinks people toward death and the underworld.
- 2.2.23People should despise the earth beneath them and look to their Maker.
- 2.2.24Rejecting idols, riches, and bodily pleasures means worshipping the living God and living.
- 2.3.1Even learned men like Cicero, knowing idolatry false, still practised it.
- 2.3.2Cicero said such criticism should not be aired before the people.
- 2.3.3Knowingly joining the people's error harms both them and oneself.
- 2.3.4Lactantius challenges Cicero to use his eloquence to make the people wise.
- 2.3.5Cicero feared Socrates' fate; dying for truth would have been nobler than dying for the Philippics.
- 2.3.6Cicero himself worshipped idols he knew were vain.
- 2.3.7If the learned err willingly, the childish crowd is even more captivated by images.
- 2.3.8The real person is seen in deeds and character, not in the body that contains him.
- 2.3.9Idolaters are bodies without true humanity, seeing nothing beyond the physical.
- 2.3.10Lucretius accused worshippers of abasing themselves, though he meant the gods should not be worshipped at all.
- 2.3.11Lucretius says ritual is not piety; so souls should think only of heavenly things.
- 2.3.12The wise attacked false religions but could not introduce the true one.
- 2.3.13Rejecting all religion was a worse error than holding a false one.
- 2.3.14Idolaters at least keep religion, which chiefly distinguishes humans from animals.
- 2.3.15The philosophers were wise to reject false religion but foolish to deny any true one.
- 2.3.16They saw others' errors but not their own.
- 2.3.17Both idolaters and irreligious philosophers mix folly with some wisdom.
- 2.3.18The ignorant may be pardoned, but not those who profess wisdom and show folly.
- 2.3.19Lactantius asks of the philosophers only what reason could achieve.
- 2.3.20They should have admitted a true religion existed; perhaps they thought a true one would prevail by itself.
- 2.3.21Why true religion was suppressed is a divine mystery known only by revelation.
- 2.3.22The ignorant hold false religions; the wise either keep them anyway or reject all religion, the worst error.
- 2.3.23Human wisdom recognizes falsehood; knowing truth requires God's teaching.
- 2.3.24Philosophers could say what is not but not what is, as Cicero admitted.
- 2.3.25God has given Christians the truth, which the last four books will explain.
- 2.4.1Horace's Priapus admits he was a log that happened to be carved into a god.
- 2.4.2Even birds nest on and foul these supposed guardian gods.
- 2.4.3Horace mocked this, but worshippers take it seriously.
- 2.4.4Even Virgil foolishly recommends Priapus as a guardian of gardens.
- 2.4.5Idols can be broken, burned, or stolen.
- 2.4.6It is absurd to seek protection from idols that cannot protect themselves.
- 2.4.7Truth is where religion cannot be violated; visible things are fragile and not immortal.
- 2.4.8Adorning idols with riches is useless.
- 2.4.9Gifts to idols are like perfumes on corpses, useless to the senseless.
- 2.4.10Persius objected to golden vessels in temples as instruments of greed.
- 2.4.11Persius says the best gift to God is a just and holy heart.
- 2.4.12Persius compared temple gold to a girl's dolls offered to Venus.
- 2.4.13The great statues of the gods are only large dolls consecrated by grown men.
- 2.4.14Seneca says adults are always children, only playing with bigger toys.
- 2.4.15People lavish offerings on idols that can use none of them.
- 2.4.16Dionysius of Sicily plundered and mocked the gods.
- 2.4.17Dionysius took Jupiter's golden cloak, joking that wool was more practical.
- 2.4.18Dionysius removed Aesculapius' golden beard with a joke.
- 2.4.19Dionysius took offerings from idols' hands, saying he was only accepting their gifts.
- 2.4.20Dionysius prospered unpunished, so the gods should have avenged themselves.
- 2.4.21Lowly people are cruelly punished for sacrilege.
- 2.4.22Punishing sacrilege shows distrust of the gods' power.
- 2.4.23People punish sacrilege for fear the gods will blame them, though the gods cannot harm the robbers.
- 2.4.24Occasional punishment of the sacrilegious may be chance, as will be explained.
- 2.4.25The gods did not stop Dionysius, who even sailed safely with their treasures.
- 2.4.26Dionysius joked that the gods gave sacrilegious men good voyages.
- 2.4.27Verres plundered Sicily's temples and images.
- 2.4.28Cicero lamented Verres' theft of the sacred statues of Ceres at Catina and Henna.
- 2.4.29In the Gracchan crisis Rome sent envoys to appease Ceres of Henna.
- 2.4.30Verres' slaves stole the most sacred and ancient Ceres with impunity.
- 2.4.31Cicero said the Sicilians had no gods left to flee to, as if Verres had robbed heaven.
- 2.4.32Such gods are nothing but their material.
- 2.4.33The Sicilians turned to Cicero because their gods had proved powerless.
- 2.4.34Cicero's diligence, not the gods, secured Verres' condemnation.
- 2.4.35Verres' exile was a comfortable retirement to enjoy his loot.
- 2.4.36Verres lived safely through the civil wars until the proscription that also killed Cicero.
- 2.4.37Verres even outlived Cicero, as if the gods granted him revenge.
- 2.5.1People should look to the true God who made earth, sky, sun, sea, and land.
- 2.5.2Not Jupiter but God, the maker of all, created the world; his beginning cannot be grasped.
- 2.5.3True prudence is to know God exists and to honour him as Father and Creator.
- 2.5.4Some foolishly worship the senseless elements.
- 2.5.5Admiring creation, people forgot the unseen Creator and worshipped his works.
- 2.5.6People ungratefully prefer God's works, made to serve them, to God himself.
- 2.5.7Even Stoic philosophers held the heavenly bodies to be gods.
- 2.5.8Cicero's Stoic speaker argues that the stars' order shows they are gods.
- 2.5.9The Stoic says the stars move by will and are therefore gods.
- 2.5.10Christians deny the stars are gods; the philosophers are more foolish than the common people.
- 2.5.11Lactantius mocks the idea of worshipping each of the innumerable stars.
- 2.5.12The stars' fixed courses show they are not gods.
- 2.5.13Gods would move freely, not by fixed laws.
- 2.5.14The stars move by necessity, not by will.
- 2.5.15The Stoic wrongly concluded that orderly motion must be voluntary.
- 2.5.16The stars' motions are neither chance nor voluntary.
- 2.5.17God arranged the stars' courses to produce the seasons.
- 2.5.18If Archimedes could model the heavens, God can certainly make and move them.
- 2.5.19The order in the stars is God's reason, not theirs.
- 2.5.20Without God's ordering of motion there would be endless day or night.
- 2.5.21God made the heavens move to give day and night and the seasons.
- 2.5.22Not seeing God's design, philosophers thought the stars were alive.
- 2.5.23God made the stars so night would not be utterly dark.
- 2.5.24Ovid rightly said God set the stars to light the night.
- 2.5.25If the stars are not gods, neither are the sun, moon, or heaven.
- 2.5.26The earth and its parts are not gods.
- 2.5.27Neither water, springs, rivers, nor sea are gods.
- 2.5.28If its parts are not gods, the world is not a god, as the inconsistent Stoics claim.
- 2.5.29The Stoics argue the world must be sentient because it produces sentient man.
- 2.5.30They argue the world has sense because man, its part, has sense.
- 2.5.31The Stoic premises fail: the world does not beget man, and man is not its part.
- 2.5.32The world is humanity's house, distinct from those who live in it.
- 2.5.33The Stoics did not see where their arguments led.
- 2.5.34By their logic the world would also be mortal and subject to disease.
- 2.5.35Conversely, man and every animal would be gods.
- 2.5.36The argument would make even frogs, gnats, and ants gods.
- 2.5.37If the world was built like a house, it has a Maker distinct from it.
- 2.5.38Calling both the elements and the whole world gods is contradictory.
- 2.5.39Either the stars are gods and the world their house, or the world is a god and they are its limbs.
- 2.5.40Limbs are not separate persons, and the world is not like a living body.
- 2.5.41A world built like a house is not a god, and neither are its parts.
- 2.5.42Like a house, the world is subject to God who made it.
- 2.6.1The foolish prefer the elements to God and worship them in human form.
- 2.6.2They make human images of the elements and love the costly images more than reality.
- 2.6.3Under the guise of religion people worship the wealth that drives crime and war.
- 2.6.4Gods who welcome plunder must be weak and greedy.
- 2.6.5Gods who desire earthly wealth cannot be heavenly, blessed, or incorruptible.
- 2.6.6People visit temples to admire riches; their religion is admiration of wealth.
- 2.6.7People defend ancestral religions without examining them, trusting antiquity alone.
- 2.6.8Cicero's Cotta says he believes ancestral religion without reason but wants reasons from philosophers.
- 2.6.9Seeking reasons is inconsistent with believing blindly.
- 2.6.10Cotta must choose between his ancestors and the reason that exposed their religion.
- 2.6.11Either follow reason and abandon the ancestors, or admit their and your own folly.
- 2.6.12Lactantius examines who the revered ancestors were.
- 2.6.13Romulus populated Rome with shepherds and fugitives from an asylum.
- 2.6.14Rome's first senators were rustic men clad in skins, as Propertius says.
- 2.6.15Posterity reveres decrees of rustic old men whom Numa deceived.
- 2.6.16These ancestors were once thought unworthy even to marry into.
- 2.7.1Each person should use his own judgment in matters of religion rather than follow others' errors.
- 2.7.2Wisdom is given to all equally; the ancients have no monopoly on it.
- 2.7.3Wisdom, like sunlight, is inexhaustible; it is the light of the heart.
- 2.7.4Those who follow ancestors without judgment throw away their own wisdom.
- 2.7.5The words "greater" and "lesser" for ancestors and descendants mislead people.
- 2.7.6Christians should pass on truth as the ancestors passed on falsehood.
- 2.7.7Lactantius turns to reports that the gods showed power through prodigies, dreams, and oracles.
- 2.7.8The augur Attus Navius cut a whetstone with a razor at Tarquin's challenge.
- 2.7.9Castor and Pollux were reportedly seen watering their horses after a battle.
- 2.7.10They were also said to have announced Perseus' defeat before the news arrived.
- 2.7.11Statues of Fortune and Juno were said to have spoken.
- 2.7.12Claudia moved the stranded ship of Cybele with her girdle, proving her chastity.
- 2.7.13Aesculapius was said to have ended a plague at Rome.
- 2.7.14Stories of punished sacrilege are also cited.
- 2.7.15Appius Claudius was blinded and the Potitii died out after changing Hercules' rites.
- 2.7.16Fulvius went mad and lost his sons after robbing Juno's temple.
- 2.7.17Turullius was killed where he had cut down a sacred grove.
- 2.7.18Pyrrhus was shipwrecked after robbing Proserpina's treasury, and only the money survived.
- 2.7.19Soldiers plundering Ceres' temple at Miletus were blinded by a flash.
- 2.7.20Jupiter reportedly appeared in a dream to Atinius demanding that the games be repeated.
- 2.7.21Atinius, after losing his son and falling ill, obeyed and was healed.
- 2.7.22A dream of Minerva saved Augustus by warning him not to stay in camp.
- 2.7.23Many more such examples exist, but Lactantius will not dwell on them.
- 2.8.1Lactantius will explain and expose these false signs of divine power.
- 2.8.2He will go back to the beginning to explain the root cause of these evils.
- 2.8.3Before creating the world, God brought forth a Spirit like himself, endowed with the Father's powers.
- 2.8.4God then made another spirit, who by his own free choice turned from good to evil through envy.
- 2.8.5Envy of the first-born Son is the source of all evils.
- 2.8.6This fallen spirit is the devil, the accuser who reports the sins he provokes.
- 2.8.7God made his first and greatest Son counsellor and craftsman of creation.
- 2.8.8God made everything from nothing, not from a pre-existing chaos.
- 2.8.9Poets and philosophers wrongly thought God needed pre-existing matter.
- 2.8.10Cicero argued that matter was not made by providence.
- 2.8.11Cicero compared providence to a builder who uses existing material.
- 2.8.12Cicero here contradicts his usual defence of providence.
- 2.8.13Cicero is best refuted by his own words.
- 2.8.14Granting the Academics' freedom, Lactantius examines Cicero's claim itself.
- 2.8.15Cicero gave no reason for his claim.
- 2.8.16Lactantius finds it most probable that God made matter, since Cicero reduces God to a human craftsman.
- 2.8.17If God needed materials from another, that other would be more powerful than God.
- 2.8.18Making is greater than arranging.
- 2.8.19Since nothing surpasses God, he made matter as well as the things made from it.
- 2.8.20Matter's force and nature must have come from God.
- 2.8.21Nature that can produce things must have purpose, and so be God.
- 2.8.22A force that plans and makes can only be called God.
- 2.8.23Seneca rightly said that nature is God.
- 2.8.24Crediting nature instead of God only renames God, as Terence's proverb says.
- 2.8.25Cicero compares God to a builder using ready materials.
- 2.8.26Needing materials is a mark of human weakness, not of God.
- 2.8.27God makes his own material because he is able.
- 2.8.28Man makes from existing things, God from nothing.
- 2.8.29God first made the matter of the world out of nothing.
- 2.8.30If anything existed before God, he would not be God; the objector says matter is eternal like God.
- 2.8.31Two opposed eternal principles would destroy each other.
- 2.8.32The eternal must be one; either God came from matter or matter from God.
- 2.8.33Only a thinking being can make things.
- 2.8.34Making requires foresight.
- 2.8.35Only what has will and hands can make; senseless matter cannot.
- 2.8.36Rational beings cannot come from what lacks reason.
- 2.8.37Creatures that seem to spring from the earth are produced by God's Spirit.
- 2.8.38God cannot come from matter; matter comes from God.
- 2.8.39Everything bodily is perishable and so had a beginning from a wise maker, God.
- 2.8.40God, having reason and power, can make living and lifeless things.
- 2.8.41Matter changes, so it cannot be eternal.
- 2.8.42Matter is transformed when things are made from it.
- 2.8.43Since matter ended in forming the world, it had a beginning, from God.
- 2.8.44God alone is unmade, self-existent, and indestructible.
- 2.8.45Cicero's conclusion evades the real question.
- 2.8.46Cicero assumed the more doubtful premise to argue that God did not make the world.
- 2.8.47Cicero reasoned from uncertain premises against certain truth.
- 2.8.48Hermes, the Sibyls, the prophets, and most philosophers agree that providence made the world.
- 2.8.49Until Epicurus, all the wise held that providence made the world.
- 2.8.50Epicurus overturned old truths to seem original; providence in the world is more certain than in matter.
- 2.8.51Since the world is providential, its matter must be too.
- 2.8.52It is more credible that God made matter than that he did not make the world.
- 2.8.53Cicero's Academic school led him to reject all divinity along with the gods.
- 2.8.54Cicero rightly abolished the gods but failed when he attacked providence.
- 2.8.55Cotta must prove matter eternal and explain how it could change.
- 2.8.56Even if he did, Lactantius would still catch him another way.
- 2.8.57Attributing everything to nature brings him back to God.
- 2.8.58Wonderful order requires mind and power.
- 2.8.59God made everything.
- 2.8.60Cicero's Epicurean asks how God built the world; no one was there to see.
- 2.8.61God brought man into the world only after finishing it.
- 2.8.62Man could not have survived creation's process, so he was made last.
- 2.8.63Scripture teaches man was made last, into a world prepared for him.
- 2.8.64Ovid also says man was made last; it is wrong to pry into what God has hidden.
- 2.8.65The Epicurean asked only to refute, as if not knowing how meant God did not make it.
- 2.8.66Ignorance of how a house is built does not prove no one built it.
- 2.8.67If man achieves great things by reason, God's creation of the world is not incredible.
- 2.8.68As Hermes says, mortals cannot comprehend how God works; the body limits understanding.
- 2.8.69Prying into the unknowable exceeds human limits.
- 2.8.70God revealed only what is needed for eternal life.
- 2.8.71Human wisdom is complete in knowing one God who made all things.
- 2.9.1Lactantius turns to Scripture's account of creation.
- 2.9.2God first made heaven as his seat, then the earth for man, surrounded by water.
- 2.9.3God placed light and life in heaven and darkness and death on earth.
- 2.9.4Earth differs from heaven as evil from good.
- 2.9.5The east belongs to God, source of light and life; the west to the perverse spirit of darkness.
- 2.9.6East means light and life; west means darkness and death.
- 2.9.7South and north are paired with east and west.
- 2.9.8The hot south goes with the east, the cold north with the west.
- 2.9.9Each direction has its season: spring east, summer south, autumn west, winter north.
- 2.9.10South and north figure life and death, as heat and cold.
- 2.9.11Day belongs to God and night to his rival; they picture true and false religion.
- 2.9.12As the one sun lights everything, so the one God has perfect majesty and power.
- 2.9.13Night represents the devil's many false religions.
- 2.9.14Like stars, the many false religions give no warmth and cannot dispel darkness.
- 2.9.15Heat and moisture are the two opposed principles of life.
- 2.9.16God tempered fire with moisture so that things could exist.
- 2.9.17Poets and philosophers spoke of the world's "discordant concord" without understanding it.
- 2.9.18Heraclitus and Thales each saw part of the truth; all things come from fire and water together.
- 2.9.19Fire and water cannot mix, but heat and moisture can.
- 2.9.20Ovid says all things arise from the balance of heat and moisture.
- 2.9.21Fire and water are like male and female, which is why Roman weddings used them.
- 2.9.22Body comes from moisture and soul from heat, as eggs show.
- 2.9.23Exiles were denied fire and water in place of death.
- 2.9.24Denial of fire and water was equivalent to death, showing their importance.
- 2.9.25Only humans use fire, a heavenly element and sign of immortality.
- 2.9.26Animals use only water, a downward element, and so lack religion.
- 2.9.27Only God knows how he made fire and water.
- 2.10.1God made the animals in pairs and gave them food so they could serve man.
- 2.10.2God resolved to create souls for an eternal kingdom.
- 2.10.3God formed man from the earth in his own image.
- 2.10.4Plato and the Sibyl also say man is made in God's likeness.
- 2.10.5The poets knew man was made from clay but credited Prometheus.
- 2.10.6The poets distorted the prophets' truth through rumour and credited a man with God's work.
- 2.10.7Prometheus, a man punished on the Caucasus, could beget but not create a man.
- 2.10.8Only Saturn's line was deified; the Prometheus story can be refuted.
- 2.10.9All agree the flood came to destroy wickedness, as the prophets also say.
- 2.10.10If Deucalion, son of Prometheus, survived the flood alone, Prometheus cannot be man's maker.
- 2.10.11The poets distorted the flood story that Scripture tells correctly.
- 2.10.12Prometheus was probably the first maker of statues, which the poets turned into making men.
- 2.10.13Making a living man from clay is God's work, not Prometheus'.
- 2.10.14Hermes taught that God made man in his image and designed each limb for use and beauty.
- 2.10.15Lactantius passes over the design of the body, which he treated in his book to Demetrianus.
- 2.10.16Some philosophers who deny providence say animals sprang from the earth without a maker.
- 2.10.17Aristotle claimed the world and humankind always existed.
- 2.10.18Since individuals begin and end, the race too must have a beginning and end.
- 2.10.19All things have past origin, present existence, and future dissolution.
- 2.10.20The three Fates represent birth, life, and death.
- 2.10.21From the present, the race's beginning and end can be inferred.
- 2.10.22A race of mortals had a beginning and will end.
- 2.10.23Famine, plague, fire, or flood could destroy the whole race at once.
- 2.10.24The survival of one man in the flood shows God controls humanity's life and end.
- 2.10.25Aristotle's eternal world fails; if it began, as Plato and Epicurus say, it will also end.
- 2.10.26Lactantius returns to the origin of man.
- 2.11.1Some claim the early earth grew womb-like pods that burst to release animals.
- 2.11.2They say the earth fed the first animals with milk in a perpetual spring.
- 2.11.3They explain that spontaneous generation happened only once.
- 2.11.4The world's order has always been as it began, under divine governance.
- 2.11.5Their theory actually requires providence.
- 2.11.6Such a process would require great foresight, that is, providence.
- 2.11.7The milk and mild climate could not be chance.
- 2.11.8Only God could have provided for the first animals.
- 2.11.9Earthborn infants could not have survived without someone to rear them.
- 2.11.10Infants cannot move for many months.
- 2.11.11An untended infant would die in its own filth.
- 2.11.12Someone must have reared the first humans.
- 2.11.13Denying providence overturns reason itself.
- 2.11.14Since nothing arises without reason, God made man.
- 2.11.15Cicero, without Scripture, agreed with the prophets that God made man.
- 2.11.16Cicero says man, alone rational among creatures, was made by the supreme God.
- 2.11.17Even Cicero saw that only God could make man.
- 2.11.18The Sibyl testifies that God alone formed mankind.
- 2.11.19Scripture teaches that God formed the body and breathed in the soul.
- 2.11.20God has not revealed how he made man because we need not know.
- 2.12.1God made man in his likeness and woman after man, so they might fill the earth.
- 2.12.2Man was made from the two opposed elements, fire and water.
- 2.12.3Man, of soul from God and body from earth, mirrors heaven and earth.
- 2.12.4Empedocles, perhaps following Hermes, taught four elements.
- 2.12.5The body contains earth in flesh, water in blood, air in breath, and fire in its warmth.
- 2.12.6Really only two elements, heat and moisture, make up the body.
- 2.12.7Soul and body contend in man; if the soul wins he gains eternal light, if the body, eternal death.
- 2.12.8The second death punishes unjust souls forever rather than annihilating them.
- 2.12.9The first death separates soul and body; the second is eternal punishment, which animals do not face.
- 2.12.10In man the soul belongs to God and should rule; the body, earthly, belongs to the devil's side and should serve.
- 2.12.11The body is a temporary vessel; the heavenly soul should rule it.
- 2.12.12Sallust too said the mind should rule and the body serve.
- 2.12.13Sallust spoke well but did not live accordingly.
- 2.12.14The soul, like fire, must rise toward heaven and is kept alive by justice alone.
- 2.12.15God placed man in Paradise, a fruitful garden in the east, to serve him.
- 2.12.16God forbade man to eat from the tree of knowledge of good and evil, on pain of death.
- 2.12.17The devil, envious, plotted to rob man of immortality.
- 2.12.18The devil deceived the woman and through her the man, who then hid in shame.
- 2.12.19God expelled man from Paradise and guarded it with fire until the just return at the final judgment.
- 2.12.20Death followed man by God's sentence, as the Sibyl also says.
- 2.12.21Man's life became mortal but long, nearly a thousand years, which Varro tried to explain away.
- 2.12.22Varro claimed the ancients' 'years' were really months.
- 2.12.23Varro's theory fails, since people now live over a thousand months.
- 2.12.24Not knowing why life was shortened, Varro shortened it himself.
- 2.13.1God resolved to destroy the wicked world by a flood but chose one righteous man.
- 2.13.2Noah built the ark and was saved with his family.
- 2.13.3After the flood God shortened human life to 120 years.
- 2.13.4Noah planted the first vineyard, long before Liber.
- 2.13.5Noah got drunk; Ham told his brothers, who covered their father.
- 2.13.6Noah drove out Ham, whose land and descendants were called Canaan.
- 2.13.7Ham's line was the first to lose the knowledge of God.
- 2.13.8Noah's other descendants, the Hebrews, kept the worship of God.
- 2.13.9Overcrowding scattered people across the world, where they formed new customs apart from the true religion.
- 2.13.10The Egyptians, under clear skies, first began to worship the stars.
- 2.13.11Then the Egyptians invented animal-shaped gods.
- 2.13.12Other peoples first worshipped the elements, then deified kings, and so became the Gentiles.
- 2.13.13The worship of God is older than paganism.
- 2.14.1God sent angels to guard mankind, forbidding them to be defiled by earthly things.
- 2.14.2The devil lured the angels into vice and relations with women.
- 2.14.3The fallen angels became the devil's servants.
- 2.14.4Their offspring, half-angel and half-human, belong neither to heaven nor the underworld.
- 2.14.5Thus arose two kinds of demons, unclean spirits ruled by the devil.
- 2.14.6Hermes calls the devil prince of demons; demons know much of the future but not all.
- 2.14.7Hesiod calls demons guardians of mortals.
- 2.14.8Sent as guardians, demons pose as protectors to be worshipped instead of God.
- 2.14.9Plato and Socrates also spoke of demons.
- 2.14.10Magicians work by demons who deceive the eyes.
- 2.14.11Lost spirits roam the earth to destroy people.
- 2.14.12Demons attach to people and houses, calling themselves genii.
- 2.14.13People worship these demons as household gods who ward off evils they themselves cause.
- 2.14.14Demons enter bodies to cause illness, nightmares, and madness so people will seek their help.
- 2.15.1Pagans think demons help when they merely stop harming.
- 2.15.2Demons harm only those who fear them and lack God's protection; they fear the righteous.
- 2.15.3Adjured in God's name, demons leave the possessed and confess their names.
- 2.15.4Demons howl that they are being beaten and must leave.
- 2.15.5Knowledge of God and righteousness overpower demons.
- 2.15.6Hermes says piety protects from demons and fate.
- 2.15.7Hermes defines piety as the knowledge of God, as Asclepius also explains.
- 2.15.8Hermes calls demons evil angels fallen from heaven.
- 2.16.1Demons invented astrology, divination, oracles, and magic, all of them false.
- 2.16.2Demons make false arts seem true to deceive people.
- 2.16.3Demons taught image-making and took on the names of dead kings.
- 2.16.4Sorcerers summon demons by their true angelic names.
- 2.16.5Demons mix truth and falsehood, imitating the angels and the one God with Jupiter and many gods.
- 2.16.6God needs no name, and angels refuse to be called gods.
- 2.16.7Angels are like a governor's attendants, not co-rulers.
- 2.16.8God alone rules all things; angels simply obey.
- 2.16.9Fallen angels seek worship to keep humans from the immortality they themselves lost.
- 2.16.10Demons hide in temples and work prodigies to make idols seem divine.
- 2.16.11Demons were behind the prodigies and punishments recounted earlier.
- 2.16.12The serpent brought from Epidaurus was the prince of demons himself.
- 2.16.13Through oracles demons take credit for victories and deliverances.
- 2.16.14Demons foresee God's plans and claim credit for them in exchange for worship.
- 2.16.15Worship of demons does not save its worshippers.
- 2.16.16Demons blame disasters on trivial offences, like Juno's anger at Varro before Cannae.
- 2.16.17The Cannae story shows the gods' supposed anger is nonsense.
- 2.16.18Juno, as in Virgil, could neither defend Carthage nor harm Rome.
- 2.16.19Demons claim credit for averted dangers and blame neglect for disasters.
- 2.16.20By such tricks demons have erased knowledge of the true God everywhere.
- 2.16.21Demons devised human sacrifice to destroy souls.
- 2.17.1God permits evil so that good may be tested, and he will judge the living and the dead at the end.
- 2.17.2God waits until the end to pour out his wrath, as the prophets warn.
- 2.17.3Meanwhile God, just and patient, allows men to err.
- 2.17.4Some deny that God can be angry, which destroys true religion.
- 2.17.5God's anger will be treated elsewhere; worshippers of demons will share their eternal darkness and punishment.
- 2.17.6First, idols are images of dead men, and man, God's image, should not worship them.
- 2.17.7Deserting the living God for dead men is inexpiable; there is only one God.
- 2.17.8Second, idols are senseless earth.
- 2.17.9Man was made upright to look to heaven and worship only his Maker, not the earth.
- 2.17.10Third, the demons behind idolatry can give nothing and only lead people astray.
- 2.17.11Demons should not be worshipped, since the righteous can drive them out in God's name.
- 2.17.12Worshippers of the dead, of earth, or of demons abandon reason and will be punished.
- 2.18.1God is above man and must be sought on high, not in earthly things.
- 2.18.2There is no true religion where there is an image.
- 2.18.3An image (simulacrum) is a counterfeit, a mime of religion.
- 2.18.4Truth must be preferred and earthly things trampled to reach heaven.
- 2.18.5Whoever casts his soul down falls; one must always strive upward.
- 2.18.6One who looks upward is wise, just, truly human, and worthy of heaven.
- 2.19.1Lactantius has finished refuting long-standing errors.
- 2.19.2Next comes the harder struggle against the philosophers.
- 2.19.3The philosophers carry great authority.
- 2.19.4A few learned men weigh more than many ignorant ones.
- 2.19.5With God's help even the philosophers can be persuaded.
- 2.19.6Lactantius will show the philosophers that truth has been found, but not by human wit.
- 3.1.1Lactantius wishes he had eloquence near Cicero's, so that truth might be set forth more powerfully against popular and philosophical error.
- 3.1.2Eloquence would help people believe the truth and would let him defeat the philosophers with their own weapons.
- 3.1.3Since plain truth shines by itself while falsehood needs ornament, he is content with a modest talent.
- 3.1.4He relies on truth and God's help, not on eloquence.
- 3.1.5Truth often defeats even great orators.
- 3.1.6Truth will shine by its own light; the philosophers' learning does not give them knowledge of the truth.
- 3.1.7The philosophers' desire for truth was good, but they did not know what truth was or how to seek it.
- 3.1.8Trying to cure error, the philosophers fell into it; the plan of the work now leads to refuting philosophy.
- 3.1.9Error comes from false religion and from false wisdom, so both must be refuted.
- 3.1.10Scripture says the philosophers' thoughts are foolish; this must now be shown by argument.
- 3.1.11Scripture speaks briefly and without argument, because God, as judge, pronounces rather than argues.
- 3.1.12With Scripture's testimony for each point, Christians can defend truth with surer arguments than those used for falsehood.
- 3.1.13The philosophers' eloquence is not to be feared.
- 3.1.14The philosophers spoke well but not truly, since they had not learned truth from God.
- 3.1.15The philosophers often confess their own ignorance.
- 3.1.16The philosophers were most truthful when they admitted their ignorance.
- 3.2.1After refuting false religion in Books 1–2, Book 3 will show philosophy to be empty and false.
- 3.2.2He will begin with the name 'philosophy' itself, a body whose members do not cohere.
- 3.2.3Philosophy, the pursuit of wisdom, is by its very name not yet wisdom.
- 3.2.4In other arts, whoever masters the art is called a craftsman, not a student.
- 3.2.5An objection: the philosophers took the name out of modesty.
- 3.2.6Pythagoras invented the name 'philosopher' because he knew that human pursuit cannot reach wisdom.
- 3.2.7Philosophy is not wisdom, and its seeking is not right, because it never finds wisdom.
- 3.2.8After so many ages of searching without success, it is clear philosophy contains no wisdom.
- 3.2.9Philosophers only think they pursue wisdom, since they do not know what it is.
- 3.2.10Either way the philosophers are not wise; he will test whether philosophy can find anything.
- 3.3.1Philosophy consists of knowledge and opinion.
- 3.3.2Self-derived knowledge belongs to God, not to human beings.
- 3.3.3Human knowledge comes from outside, through the senses God made.
- 3.3.4He lists the questions of natural philosophy about sun, moon, stars, sky and earth.
- 3.3.5Conjecturing about nature is like describing a distant city known only by name.
- 3.3.6Claiming knowledge of nature, which cannot be known, is madness.
- 3.3.7Socrates and the Academics rightly denied such knowledge.
- 3.3.8Without knowledge, philosophy is left with opinion, which is of the uncertain.
- 3.3.9He imagines forming opinions about the unknown city.
- 3.3.10Others will offer contrary opinions about it.
- 3.3.11Even if one opinion is true, no one can know which.
- 3.3.12Disputing about the unknown is foolish and invites ridicule.
- 3.3.13A nearer example is better.
- 3.3.14No one dares guess what happens behind a wall, since he could be refuted at once.
- 3.3.15Philosophers speculate about heaven because no one can refute them.
- 3.3.16God, who alone knows the truth, refutes them and counts their wisdom as folly.
- 3.4.1Zeno and the Stoics rightly rejected opinion.
- 3.4.2Combining Socrates and Zeno, philosophy is wholly abolished, and indeed all philosophers overthrow it.
- 3.4.3Philosophy is split into many contradictory sects.
- 3.4.4Each sect denies wisdom to all others and is denied it by them.
- 3.4.5Every sect is condemned as false by other philosophers.
- 3.4.6Should we believe one self-praising sect or the many that condemn it?
- 3.4.7No one judges himself rightly, as Terence says.
- 3.4.8Whether we believe all or none of the sects, none is wise.
- 3.4.9Like the Sown Men of legend, the sects destroy one another, having swords but no shields.
- 3.4.10Philosophy destroys itself.
- 3.4.11Arcesilas founded a new philosophy of not philosophizing by arming himself with all the others' criticisms.
- 3.4.12Two kinds of philosophy arose, the old claiming knowledge and the new denying it.
- 3.4.13Whichever side wins, philosophy perishes, being at war with itself.
- 3.4.14Arcesilas seems to win, but he too falls, since something can be known.
- 3.5.1Nature and life compel us to know many things.
- 3.5.2Experience has produced real knowledge in astronomy, medicine and farming.
- 3.5.3Arcesilas should have distinguished the knowable from the unknowable, but that would have made him ordinary.
- 3.5.4Ordinary people know what they know and admit what they do not.
- 3.5.5Arcesilas rightly refuted others but lost the name of philosopher by teaching that nothing is known.
- 3.5.6One who knows nothing cannot claim to be a philosopher for refuting others.
- 3.5.7The philosophers can reply that he is not wise either.
- 3.5.8Arcesilas killed himself with the same sword he used on the others.
- 3.6.1Wisdom was near the philosophers, but some claimed too much knowledge and others too little.
- 3.6.2Human wisdom lies between knowing all, which is God's, and knowing nothing, which is a beast's.
- 3.6.3Knowledge comes from the heavenly soul, ignorance from the earthly body.
- 3.6.4Human beings have a share of both knowledge and ignorance, a bridge from which the philosophers fell on either side.
- 3.6.5The Academics denied all knowledge because some things are obscure.
- 3.6.6The natural philosophers claimed all knowledge from plain things; neither side saw the middle door to wisdom.
- 3.6.7Arcesilas, opposing Zeno, claimed on Socrates' authority that nothing can be known.
- 3.6.8The Academy arose like the old age of philosophy, refuting the claim to have found truth.
- 3.6.9Arcesilas rightly saw that truth cannot be grasped by conjecture.
- 3.6.10Without knowing the truth, Arcesilas produced an unstable, self-inconsistent philosophy.
- 3.6.11To assert that nothing can be known, one must know something.
- 3.6.12Declaring that nothing is known claims knowledge of that very thing.
- 3.6.13Like the dream that says not to trust dreams, the sceptical claim refutes itself.
- 3.6.14The doctrine that nothing can be known contradicts itself.
- 3.6.15Arcesilas took knowledge from others only to keep it himself, and so betrays himself.
- 3.6.16He should have said only that the hidden causes of nature cannot be known.
- 3.6.17Such an exception would have warned the natural philosophers and given us something to follow.
- 3.6.18By turning us from others he also turns us from himself.
- 3.6.19No one would toil to learn a teaching that teaches nothing.
- 3.6.20Both natural philosophy and scepticism fail, so philosophy is extinguished.
- 3.7.1He turns to moral philosophy, the useful part.
- 3.7.2Errors in moral philosophy are more dangerous, so more care is needed.
- 3.7.3In ethics there is no room for disagreement, since error overturns life.
- 3.7.4Ethics is more dangerous but less difficult than natural philosophy, since experience teaches it.
- 3.7.5He will test whether the philosophers agree on ethics.
- 3.7.6He will examine the chief good, the hinge of all wisdom.
- 3.7.7He lists the philosophers' views of the highest good.
- 3.7.8He completes the list of views of the highest good.
- 3.7.9If we could choose among them, we would already be wise and not need philosophy.
- 3.7.10Learners cannot judge, and the Academic forbids belief while offering nothing.
- 3.8.1We must turn from quarrelling philosophers to God, the giver of true wisdom.
- 3.8.2Before stating the true highest good, he will refute all the other opinions.
- 3.8.3Man's highest good must be something not shared with animals.
- 3.8.4The highest good must be proper to man, as teeth, horns and wings are to animals.
- 3.8.5Mental pleasure, being common to all creatures, is not the highest good.
- 3.8.6Aristippus, devoted to bodily pleasure, lived like a beast.
- 3.8.7Beasts, if they could speak, would give Aristippus's answer.
- 3.8.8We should not learn how to live from those who think like irrational creatures.
- 3.8.9The Cyrenaic praise of virtue as producing pleasure is what a dog or pig might say.
- 3.8.10Making freedom from pain the highest good is a philosophy for the sickbed.
- 3.8.11A good that a doctor can give, and that requires prior pain, is absurd as the highest good.
- 3.8.12On that view the man who has never suffered would be most wretched.
- 3.8.13Painlessness is not in our power and is shared with animals.
- 3.8.14Painlessness is given by nature to all creatures, not gained by virtue.
- 3.8.15Joining pleasure and honour produces a contradictory good.
- 3.8.16The Peripatetic good is too manifold and largely shared with beasts.
- 3.8.17Bodily goods are as necessary to animals as to men.
- 3.8.18Animals need prey and fodder as men need wealth.
- 3.8.19Goods of fortune put man under another's control.
- 3.8.20Zeno's 'living according to nature' would have us live like beasts.
- 3.8.21Beasts do everything man should avoid and do not know God.
- 3.8.22Nature inclines to vice, so it cannot be the rule of life.
- 3.8.23Even so, 'living by nature' does not define the highest good, since every animal does that.
- 3.8.24Knowledge is proper to man but sought for something else.
- 3.8.25Knowledge is sought for its fruits, so it is not the highest good.
- 3.8.26The fruits of knowledge, livelihood, glory and pleasure, are shared with animals.
- 3.8.27Even horses love glory, as Virgil says.
- 3.8.28Unqualified knowledge would make even a poisoner happy.
- 3.8.29Knowledge of nature brings no happiness and is only opinion.
- 3.8.30If knowledge of good and evil is meant, 'wisdom' would have been better, but no one said it.
- 3.8.31Knowledge without virtue is not enough; virtue joined to knowledge is wisdom.
- 3.8.32Virtue is not the highest good but the mother of it, contrary to Cicero and others.
- 3.8.33Is the highest good reached easily or with toil?
- 3.8.34If it were easy, it would not be the highest good.
- 3.8.35If the highest good needs toil, virtue would need another virtue to reach itself, which is absurd.
- 3.8.36Virtue is the means to the good, so it cannot be the highest good.
- 3.8.37Not knowing virtue's goal, they made virtue the highest good, a good that needs another good.
- 3.8.38Aristotle's 'virtue with honour' is redundant.
- 3.8.39Making virtue depend on public esteem departs from the good.
- 3.8.40Virtue must not be abandoned because fools condemn it.
- 3.8.41Virtue must stand by its own strength.
- 3.8.42Virtue expects no good from men and shrinks from no evil.
- 3.9.1The true highest good must be proper to man, belong to the soul, and require knowledge and virtue.
- 3.9.2This definition rules out all the philosophers' answers.
- 3.9.3He will show that the philosophers never grasped man's highest good.
- 3.9.4Anaxagoras said he was born to see the heaven and the sun.
- 3.9.5Anaxagoras's answer was either careless or seriously wrong.
- 3.9.6He placed man's duty in the eyes, not the mind.
- 3.9.7Would a blind man lose his human purpose?
- 3.9.8Hearing matters more than sight for learning wisdom.
- 3.9.9Seeing the heavens implies someone who brought us to see and praise them.
- 3.9.10Anaxagoras should confess God the Creator.
- 3.9.11One should thank and honour the Maker of what one admires.
- 3.9.12Like a guest who ignores his host, philosophers value creation above the Creator.
- 3.9.13We are born to contemplate the Maker with the mind.
- 3.9.14The wise man answers that he was born to worship and serve God.
- 3.9.15Serving God means keeping justice by good works; Anaxagoras reduced the greatest matter to two objects.
- 3.9.16Even contemplating the world would fall short, for God is above the world as soul is above body.
- 3.9.17God is to be contemplated with the immortal soul, which means worshipping him.
- 3.9.18Not knowing God, Anaxagoras did not truly see what he claimed to be born for.
- 3.9.19Humanity is justice, justice is piety, and piety is acknowledging God as Father.
- 3.10.1Man's highest good lies in religion alone.
- 3.10.2Animals seem to communicate, laugh and love.
- 3.10.3Animals show foresight and signs of reason.
- 3.10.4Bees show something like perfect prudence.
- 3.10.5Animals may share other human traits, but not religion.
- 3.10.6Man's perfected reason, wisdom, alone understands divine things.
- 3.10.7Cicero says only man knows God, and every nation knows there is a God.
- 3.10.8Acknowledging God is like remembering one's origin.
- 3.10.9Philosophers who remove fear of the gods remove religion, man's proper good.
- 3.10.10Man's upright stance, pointing to heaven, is for religion.
- 3.10.11Our upright posture keeps us from bowing to the earth.
- 3.10.12We look to heaven either for religion or for knowledge of the heavens.
- 3.10.13Knowledge of the heavens is impossible.
- 3.10.14Whoever rejects religion lives like cattle and renounces his humanity.
- 3.10.15The unlearned who worship, even wrongly, are wiser than the irreligious philosophers.
- 3.11.1All agree religion must be taken up; he will explain how people err in it.
- 3.11.2Religion and wisdom must go together; people err by separating them.
- 3.11.3Religion without wisdom leads to polytheism; wisdom without religion is false.
- 3.11.4Man's duty and all truth lie in religion and wisdom joined.
- 3.11.5No philosopher found where the highest good dwells.
- 3.11.6Pleasure cannot be the highest good, since it is not open to all and has many defects.
- 3.11.7Riches are not the highest good.
- 3.11.8Kingship is not open to all, so it is not the highest good.
- 3.11.9Virtue is a good for all but not happy in itself, since it consists in enduring evils.
- 3.11.10Virtue is supremely beautiful and cannot be without reward.
- 3.11.11Virtue's struggle must produce some great good.
- 3.11.12Virtue's reward is not pleasure, riches, power, or glory.
- 3.11.13Virtue's good must be inseparable from it and complete.
- 3.11.14Virtue consists in despising what others count as goods.
- 3.11.15Virtue rejects present goods because it seeks greater ones.
- 3.11.16The reward can be found by careful thought.
- 3.12.1Man is soul and body; virtue belongs to both, and in the body is called fortitude.
- 3.12.2Body and soul each have their own combat.
- 3.12.3The soul's enemies are desires, vices and sins.
- 3.12.4Bodily fortitude fights for life.
- 3.12.5As the body conquers to live, so the soul conquers to endure; defeated by vice it dies.
- 3.12.6The soul's combat is for eternal life.
- 3.12.7Virtue endures evils, rejects goods, and even embraces death, so it must yield some great reward.
- 3.12.8Virtue's reward must be heavenly: immortality.
- 3.12.9Euclides of Megara defined the highest good as what is always the same.
- 3.12.10Euclides grasped its nature; the highest good is immortality, which never changes.
- 3.12.11Seneca admitted that virtue's only reward is immortality.
- 3.12.12The Stoics' own teaching makes the happy life virtue's reward.
- 3.12.13Virtue is sought for the happy life that follows it.
- 3.12.14The present bodily life cannot be happy.
- 3.12.15Epicurus called God happy because everlasting; happiness must be perfect.
- 3.12.16Only immortality is truly happy.
- 3.12.17If man can have virtue, he can have happiness and so immortality.
- 3.12.18Immortality alone meets all the conditions of the highest good.
- 3.12.19Everyone's love of this life shows the rightness of desiring immortality.
- 3.12.20People endure any misery just to see the light.
- 3.12.21Life without end and without evil would be the perfect good.
- 3.12.22Heroes who died for their cities did so hoping for immortality.
- 3.12.23Virtue despises this brief life to gain an everlasting one.
- 3.12.24Orderly reasoning leads to the good for which we are born.
- 3.12.25Those who held the soul immortal should have seen that virtue leads souls back to God.
- 3.12.26Our upright posture points us to our highest good above.
- 3.12.27Religion shows the human spirit is immortal, since it longs for the immortal God.
- 3.12.28Those who chose knowledge or virtue were on the right road but did not arrive.
- 3.12.29Knowledge shows the way, virtue reaches it; together they yield the highest good.
- 3.12.30They failed because they sought the highest good below instead of above.
- 3.12.31The highest is heaven and God; the lowest is earth.
- 3.12.32Even those who placed the good in the soul tied it to this bodily life.
- 3.12.33Whatever concerns the mortal body is the lowest.
- 3.12.34Happiness comes to man not in the body but after the soul is freed from it.
- 3.12.35In this life we are happy only by keeping to virtue's hard way amid hardships.
- 3.12.36The highest good is found only in the religion that brings hope of immortality.
- 3.13.1Having shown immortality is the highest good, he turns to the soul's immortality.
- 3.13.2Philosophers who held the soul immortal could not prove it.
- 3.13.3He defers the proof of the soul's immortality to the last book.
- 3.13.4The third part of philosophy is logic.
- 3.13.5Divine teaching needs no logic, since wisdom is in the heart, not the tongue.
- 3.13.6Only ethics remains of philosophy, as Socrates saw.
- 3.13.7Since they erred in ethics too, all philosophy is false and empty.
- 3.13.8Following philosophy rather than truth risks eternal punishment.
- 3.13.9Trusting human wisdom is arrogant.
- 3.13.10Cicero praises philosophy as the pursuit of wisdom.
- 3.13.11Cicero argues philosophy is the only art of virtue.
- 3.13.12Lactantius, no orator, trusts the goodness of his cause.
- 3.13.13He wishes Cicero could return to be taught where true virtue is learned.
- 3.13.14In the Tusculans Cicero addresses philosophy as the teacher of virtue.
- 3.13.15Cicero's apostrophe to philosophy.
- 3.13.16Praising philosophy rather than its Giver is like thanking food instead of the host.
- 3.14.1Lucretius praised the discoverer of wisdom but wrongly thought a man found it.
- 3.14.2Lucretius calls the discoverer of wisdom a god.
- 3.14.3God should be praised for making man capable of wisdom.
- 3.14.4Lucretius said this man deserved to be counted among the gods.
- 3.14.5Lactantius supposes Lucretius meant Pythagoras or Thales.
- 3.14.6Exalting a human discoverer lowers wisdom itself.
- 3.14.7Cicero too praised philosophy extravagantly.
- 3.14.8Cicero calls blaming philosophy parricide.
- 3.14.9Lactantius rejects Cicero's charge.
- 3.14.10Cicero is ungrateful to the true God; philosophy only increases uncertainty.
- 3.14.11Philosophy has not defined virtue, life, or truth, as Cicero himself admits.
- 3.14.12Philosophy did not keep Cicero from his fatal invectives.
- 3.14.13Cicero studied philosophy more than anyone.
- 3.14.14Cicero followed the Academy.
- 3.14.15Cicero himself confessed that philosophers are blind and dull.
- 3.14.16If philosophy taught life, Cicero would not have felt blind.
- 3.14.17Cicero told his son to know philosophy but live as a citizen.
- 3.14.18Cicero's advice implies philosophy is not wisdom.
- 3.14.19By Cicero's own judgment philosophy is folly.
- 3.14.20In his Consolation Cicero confessed wretched ignorance of the truth.
- 3.14.21Cicero should admit that philosophy cannot teach virtue.
- 3.15.1Seneca defined philosophy as the rule of right living.
- 3.15.2Philosophy's disagreements make Seneca's definitions false.
- 3.15.3The Academy, a philosophy, overthrows all Seneca's definitions.
- 3.15.4Only heavenly wisdom provides the rule of good living.
- 3.15.5As God and truth are one, true wisdom must be one.
- 3.15.6If philosophy made men good, only philosophers would be good.
- 3.15.7Many unlearned people are good, few philosophers are; so they do not teach virtue.
- 3.15.8Philosophers often practise at home the vices they condemn in school.
- 3.15.9Cicero himself complains that few philosophers live by their teaching.
- 3.15.10Cornelius Nepos wrote to Cicero that philosophers most need teachers of living.
- 3.15.11Seneca says philosophers condemn themselves when they condemn vice.
- 3.15.12Some philosophers invent defences for their vices.
- 3.15.13Seneca allows the wise man to do what he disapproves for a greater end.
- 3.15.14Intention cannot excuse a vicious act, since deeds are seen and intentions are not.
- 3.15.15Aristippus excused his affair with the courtesan Lais with a clever saying.
- 3.15.16Lactantius mocks Aristippus's wisdom.
- 3.15.17Lais used the philosopher to draw young men to her.
- 3.15.18His intention did not matter; all saw him as the worst.
- 3.15.19Aristippus's teaching that bodily pleasure is the highest good came from the brothel.
- 3.15.20The Cynics lived like the dogs they are named after.
- 3.15.21Philosophy does not teach virtue; any goodness in philosophers comes from nature.
- 3.16.1Philosophers, who only talk, are idle.
- 3.16.2Wisdom must act; Cicero rightly ranks statesmen above philosophers.
- 3.16.3Teachers who do not practise what they teach empty their precepts of force.
- 3.16.4Goodness on the lips but not in the heart is a lie.
- 3.16.5Cicero admits philosophy offers more amusement than usefulness.
- 3.16.6Philosophers dispute for amusement and are mere talkers.
- 3.16.7Philosophy is to be discarded: one must be wise, not endlessly seek wisdom.
- 3.16.8Wisdom must be found quickly in this one life.
- 3.16.9In Cicero's Hortensius, the critic of philosophy is shown to be philosophizing.
- 3.16.10Christians reject human philosophy but defend divine wisdom.
- 3.16.11Hortensius lost because he offered nothing better than philosophy.
- 3.16.12Philosophy's known beginning shows it is not wisdom.
- 3.16.13Hortensius noted that philosophy began only recently with Thales.
- 3.16.14Lucretius says the knowledge of nature was lately discovered.
- 3.16.15If philosophy began recently, mankind lived long without wisdom, which is absurd.
- 3.16.16Wisdom existed from the beginning; the Greeks, lacking Scripture, did not know how it was lost.
- 3.16.17The Greeks invented philosophy to find a hidden truth and mistook it for wisdom.
- 3.17.1He turns from philosophy to the philosophers.
- 3.17.2Epicureanism is popular because of its appeal to pleasure.
- 3.17.3Epicurus tailors his teaching to each vice.
- 3.17.4Epicurus tells the irreligious and the selfish what they wish to hear.
- 3.17.5Epicurus offers each temperament a doctrine to suit it.
- 3.17.6Ambitious and retiring men are both accommodated.
- 3.17.7Pleasing everyone, Epicurus contradicts himself; he will explain the origin of his teaching.
- 3.17.8Epicurus saw the good suffer, the wicked prosper, and death strike at random.
- 3.17.9The religious suffered more, and temples were struck by lightning.
- 3.17.10Lucretius complains that lightning strikes temples and the innocent.
- 3.17.11God destroys temples because they are not his.
- 3.17.12The Capitol was repeatedly burned by lightning.
- 3.17.13Cicero explained the burning of the Capitol as divine demand for a grander temple.
- 3.17.14Cicero's poem on his consulship says Jupiter himself struck the Capitol.
- 3.17.15Rebuilding the Capitol defied heaven's judgment.
- 3.17.16Epicurus concluded from apparent injustice that there is no providence.
- 3.17.17Epicurus denied order in the world and criticized its design.
- 3.17.18The design of animal bodies shows providence.
- 3.17.19Epicurus said organs were not made for their uses; use arose from them.
- 3.17.20Epicurus says nature works spontaneously, not for living things.
- 3.17.21Epicurus says all things arise from atoms colliding at random in the void.
- 3.17.22Atoms are invisible, without qualities, and indivisible.
- 3.17.23Atomism descends as an inheritance of folly from Leucippus through Democritus to Epicurus.
- 3.17.24Epicurus compares atoms to letters forming words.
- 3.17.25If atoms have hooks, they can be divided; if smooth, they cannot cohere.
- 3.17.26Projecting hooks could be broken off, contradicting indivisibility.
- 3.17.27Senseless atoms cannot produce rational order.
- 3.17.28Lucretius's extravagant praise of Epicurus is laughable.
- 3.17.29Lucretius's praise of Epicurus is like praising a mouse as a lion.
- 3.17.30Epicurus argued that death is nothing to us.
- 3.17.31What is feared is dying itself, not death once past.
- 3.17.32The approach to death, with its pain, is what is wretched.
- 3.17.33If pain is the greatest evil, the approach to death must be feared; besides, souls do not perish.
- 3.17.34He defers refuting the soul's mortality to the last book.
- 3.17.35Epicurus's doctrine promised impunity for vice.
- 3.17.36If souls perish and no god cares, crime becomes rational.
- 3.17.37A god without anger or favour removes all motive for goodness.
- 3.17.38Epicureanism in effect teaches living for pleasure every moment.
- 3.17.39The Epicurean wise man acts only for himself.
- 3.17.40Such teaching discourages good and encourages crime.
- 3.17.41Epicurus speaks like a robber chief.
- 3.17.42He lists the Epicurean doctrines a robber might preach.
- 3.17.43Doctrine fit for robbers is not wisdom.
- 3.18.1Pythagoreans and Stoics rightly held the soul survives, but by chance and with errors.
- 3.18.2To escape the argument for mortality, they taught pre-existence and transmigration.
- 3.18.3Both sides err, one about the future, the other about the past.
- 3.18.4The truth is that souls are born and do not perish.
- 3.18.5Many who believed in immortality killed themselves.
- 3.18.6Suicide is murder, since it kills a man.
- 3.18.7Only God may release the soul from the body; wrongs done to us are for him to avenge.
- 3.18.8Cato killed himself after reading Plato on immortality.
- 3.18.9A man of Ambracia threw himself to his death after reading Plato.
- 3.18.10Had Plato known the truth about immortality, he would have taught life and justice.
- 3.18.11Cato died for fame and Stoic dogma rather than to escape Caesar.
- 3.18.12Caesar would have spared Cato.
- 3.18.13One who complains of life has not yet learned what life is.
- 3.18.14Ignorance of God led some to say we are born to be punished for past crimes.
- 3.18.15Pythagoras's claim to have been Euphorbus is ridiculous.
- 3.18.16Lactantius mocks Pythagoras's claimed memory of a former life.
- 3.18.17Pythagoras lied to his followers as if they were children.
- 3.18.18Cicero too said men are born to atone for crimes.
- 3.19.1Some argue that death is either no evil or a positive good.
- 3.19.2Cicero argues that death brings either a divine life or no evil.
- 3.19.3Scripture teaches that souls are either rewarded or punished forever.
- 3.19.4Justice requires that the wicked be punished and the just rewarded after death.
- 3.19.5Cicero too said the just and the wicked have different abodes after death.
- 3.19.6Cicero's Consolation distinguishes the fates of pure and stained souls, contradicting his other argument.
- 3.19.7The earlier argument assumed everyone receives immortality.
- 3.19.8That argument erases the difference between virtue and crime.
- 3.19.9Whether death is good or evil depends on the life lived.
- 3.19.10Death is good for the godly and evil for others.
- 3.19.11Seeking death or fleeing life is wrong.
- 3.19.12Those who lived for pleasure despise life at the first trouble.
- 3.19.13Some said it is best not to be born, and next best to die early.
- 3.19.14Cicero repeated Silenus's saying that it is best not to be born.
- 3.19.15Not being born cannot be good for anyone, since no one exists to feel it.
- 3.19.16Life is God's gift, not fortune's, and not a fire.
- 3.19.17Plato thanked nature for being born a man, male, Greek, Athenian, in Socrates' time.
- 3.19.18Plato's thanksgiving is absurd, since he would not otherwise have been Plato.
- 3.19.19Transmigration of souls is both needless and impossible.
- 3.19.20Plato imagined a human soul trapped in an animal body.
- 3.19.21Plato should have been thankful for talent and education.
- 3.19.22Birth at Athens was no special benefit.
- 3.19.23Place of birth does not give wisdom.
- 3.19.24Socrates could not give his pupils talent.
- 3.19.25Alcibiades and Critias, pupils of Socrates, turned out badly.
- 3.20.1He examines Socrates himself.
- 3.20.2Socrates was wiser than those who pried impiously into nature's secrets.
- 3.20.3Some pagan rites forbid men to look on them, on pain of punishment.
- 3.20.4Prying into nature's secrets is worse than violating forbidden shrines.
- 3.20.5Yet the philosophers win fame for it.
- 3.20.6They can neither find nor defend anything.
- 3.20.7Any truth they stumble on is refuted by others.
- 3.20.8Such inquirers are foolish.
- 3.20.9Socrates was sensible in avoiding natural philosophy, but perhaps only in that.
- 3.20.10Socrates' saying: what is above us is nothing to us.
- 3.20.11On that principle we should crawl like beasts and ignore the heavens.
- 3.20.12Socrates' proverb really meant rejecting religion.
- 3.20.13The world's design shows it is governed by providence.
- 3.20.14As houses, ships and bodies need a governor, so does the world.
- 3.20.15Socrates swore by a dog and a goose, which was either mockery or madness.
- 3.20.16Socrates asked for a cock to be sacrificed to Asclepius before he died.
- 3.20.17Socrates' last request was folly, and Plato's gratitude misplaced.
- 3.21.1Socrates turned to ethics and taught justice.
- 3.21.2Plato proposed that all property be held in common for the sake of equality.
- 3.21.3Common property is doubtful, but let it pass.
- 3.21.4Plato also proposed common wives, which Lactantius ridicules.
- 3.21.5Common wives abolish chastity and marital fidelity.
- 3.21.6Plato's philosopher-king would do what no tyrant ever did.
- 3.21.7Plato argued common families would make the city harmonious.
- 3.21.8True marital love needs a shared life and kept faith, impossible in promiscuity.
- 3.21.9Common children destroy love between parents and children.
- 3.21.10A child can have only one father, so nature defeats the community of children.
- 3.21.11Common wives would cause discord, not harmony.
- 3.21.12Animals and human wars show rivalry over women.
- 3.22.1Plato's community amounts to adultery and lust.
- 3.22.2Justice lies in the mind, not in external arrangements.
- 3.22.3True equality comes from removing pride, not property or marriage.
- 3.22.4Only the religion of God can make minds equal.
- 3.22.5Plato overthrew justice, since community should be of minds, not goods.
- 3.22.6Plato's scheme removes frugality, abstinence, temperance, chastity and modesty.
- 3.22.7Private ownership gives matter for virtue; community only licenses vice.
- 3.22.8Plato's scheme makes men debauchees and women prostitutes.
- 3.22.9Even birds keep pair-bonds and know their own young.
- 3.22.10Plato's proposal that women fight and rule reverses nature.
- 3.22.11No nation has ever lived as Plato proposed.
- 3.23.1Lesser philosophers boast of despising money.
- 3.23.2They throw away inheritances out of perverse fear.
- 3.23.3They waste what could have been used generously.
- 3.23.4Democritus abandoned his land rather than giving it away.
- 3.23.5A philosopher threw his money into the sea.
- 3.23.6Money should be given to the poor, not thrown away.
- 3.23.7Even scattering money to the crowd would be better; Zeno's equality of sins is also absurd.
- 3.23.8Zeno counted pity a vice, destroying the basis of human life.
- 3.23.9Compassion is man's natural protection in place of animals' weapons.
- 3.23.10Without compassion there would be no society.
- 3.23.11Anaxagoras said snow is black.
- 3.23.12Xenophanes said people live inside the moon.
- 3.23.13Lactantius mocks the moon-dwellers.
- 3.23.14A Stoic wondered whether the sun has inhabitants.
- 3.24.1Lactantius ridicules belief in the antipodes.
- 3.24.2A false first assumption leads to absurd conclusions.
- 3.24.3They defend consequences instead of testing their premises.
- 3.24.4They observed heavenly bodies always rising and setting in the same places.
- 3.24.5From these observations they inferred a spherical, rotating heaven.
- 3.24.6They built armillary spheres with star figures.
- 3.24.7A round sky implied a round earth at its centre.
- 3.24.8A round earth led to the idea of inhabited antipodes.
- 3.24.9They answer that heavy things tend to the centre and light things away from it.
- 3.24.10Such philosophers defend absurdities either in jest or to show off.
- 3.24.11He leaves the subject, since enough examples have been given.
- 3.25.1Cicero held that philosophy is only for the learned.
- 3.25.2True wisdom, unlike philosophy, is given to all.
- 3.25.3Philosophers would keep a common good to themselves.
- 3.25.4Denying wisdom to people takes away their divine light.
- 3.25.5If wisdom is natural to man, all kinds of people should have been taught it.
- 3.25.6Philosophy belongs only to those with a beard and cloak.
- 3.25.7Some philosophers wanted everyone to philosophize.
- 3.25.8Philosophers tried to open philosophy to all.
- 3.25.9Philosophy requires much prior learning, beginning with reading.
- 3.25.10Grammar takes years.
- 3.25.11Rhetoric, geometry, music and astronomy are also required.
- 3.25.12Women, slaves, the poor and labourers cannot acquire this learning.
- 3.25.13The uneducated cannot understand Epicurus's physics.
- 3.25.14Philosophy's obscurity excludes the unlearned.
- 3.25.15Philosophers taught only one woman, Themista, and one slave, Phaedo.
- 3.25.16Plato was ransomed by Anniceris, whom Seneca blamed for paying too little.
- 3.25.17Seneca's complaint is absurd.
- 3.25.18Only one barbarian, Anacharsis, became a philosopher, and only after learning Greek.
- 3.26.1Only heavenly teaching makes all people wise.
- 3.26.2Philosophers cannot reform others when they cannot reform themselves.
- 3.26.3God's precepts prove their power daily.
- 3.26.4God's words make the angry gentle.
- 3.26.5They make the greedy generous.
- 3.26.6They make the fearful brave in the face of torture.
- 3.26.7They make the lustful chaste.
- 3.26.8They make the cruel merciful.
- 3.26.9One washing, baptism, abolishes all wickedness.
- 3.26.10Divine wisdom drives out folly at once, without fees or study.
- 3.26.11God's wisdom is free to all, like water and sunlight.
- 3.26.12Philosophy hides vices but does not remove them.
- 3.26.13A few of God's precepts make a person wholly new.
- 3.27.1Philosophers' precepts, though often near the truth, lack divine authority.
- 3.27.2Hearers do not defer to a merely human teacher.
- 3.27.3No one obeys uncertain precepts.
- 3.27.4The Stoics say the virtuous are happy even under torture.
- 3.27.5Epicurus absurdly claimed the wise man would find torture pleasant.
- 3.27.6Neither glory nor fame can make the tortured wise man happy.
- 3.27.7Dying calmly is a poor reward for a lifetime of toil.
- 3.27.8On their view virtue gains only glory.
- 3.27.9If virtue is mortal it has no fruit.
- 3.27.10They saw only the shadow of virtue, not virtue itself.
- 3.27.11Their precepts either teach vice or offer no real reward or penalty.
- 3.27.12Suffering for faith and God makes one truly happy.
- 3.27.13Only God rewards virtue, with immortality; looking to heaven means religion and hope of immortality.
- 3.27.14The worshipper's mind is in heaven.
- 3.27.15The irreligious and those who deny immortality are earthbound.
- 3.27.16An upright body is useless without an upright mind fixed on God and eternal life.
- 3.28.1Human life rests on knowing and worshipping God; the philosophers failed here.
- 3.28.2Seeking wrongly, they lost even common wisdom.
- 3.28.3They abolished religion and put 'nature' in God's place.
- 3.28.4Nature without God's providence is nothing.
- 3.28.5Either nature needs a divine mind behind it or it is God's work.
- 3.28.6They also invented Fortune as a goddess.
- 3.28.7They boast of fighting Fortune without explaining her.
- 3.28.8Consolations and discussions of virtue constantly attack Fortune.
- 3.28.9Cicero confessed that the death of his daughter defeated him.
- 3.28.10Philosophers claim wisdom yet admit they have none.
- 3.28.11When baffled, philosophers cry out that they are blind.
- 3.28.12Anaxagoras and Empedocles lamented human ignorance.
- 3.28.13Democritus said truth lies in a bottomless well.
- 3.28.14Truth is not in a well but on high, in heaven.
- 3.28.15Placing truth below is like placing the mind in the feet.
- 3.28.16Even their upright bodies did not teach them to seek truth above.
- 3.28.17Socrates' confession and the Academy came from this despair.
- 3.28.18Even those who claimed knowledge could not defend it.
- 3.28.19Their views were inconsistent and contradictory.
- 3.28.20Aristotle, quoted by Cicero, expected philosophy soon to be completed.
- 3.28.21Aristotle himself was wrong to expect philosophy to be completed.
- 3.28.22Truth cannot be found by the wrong road.
- 3.29.1Fortune is nothing but the unexpected outcome of events.
- 3.29.2Philosophers made Fortune a male god.
- 3.29.3Ignorant of causes, they are ignorant of the Cause.
- 3.29.4Cicero told his son that fortune's power is great.
- 3.29.5Cicero the sceptic contradicted himself.
- 3.29.6Cicero cannot prove what he claims everyone knows.
- 3.29.7Cicero, who urged withholding assent, accepted the popular view of Fortune.
- 3.29.8Virgil and Sallust made Fortune all-powerful.
- 3.29.9If Fortune is a goddess, why is she hostile to her worshippers?
- 3.29.10Who gave Fortune such an evil power?
- 3.29.11The philosophers accuse Fortune without reason.
- 3.29.12Their speeches against Fortune are ravings.
- 3.29.13Christians know that Fortune is nothing, but that a malicious spirit, the devil, opposes the good.
- 3.29.14The devil keeps unbelievers from knowing God.
- 3.29.15Believers he attacks with temptation or violence.
- 3.29.16God allows the devil to remain so that virtue may be exercised.
- 3.29.17Not knowing the devil, they invented Fortune, as Juvenal saw.
- 3.29.18Ignorance produced the names of nature and fortune.
- 3.29.19Not knowing the adversary, they cannot know virtue.
- 3.29.20One cannot fight an enemy one does not know.
- 3.30.1He has shown the philosophers' errors, though not exhaustively.
- 3.30.2He refuted philosophy lest people turn to it after leaving false religion.
- 3.30.3Man's only hope and wisdom is to know and worship God.
- 3.30.4Here is what the philosophers sought and never found.
- 3.30.5Leave the philosophers, who cannot help themselves, and turn to true wisdom.
- 3.30.6We need not wait for the philosophers to find truth.
- 3.30.7A voice from heaven offers the wisdom the learned never found.
- 3.30.8To be wise and happy, hear God's voice and seek the highest good.
- 3.30.9Having refuted false religion and philosophy, he turns to true religion and wisdom.
- 3.30.10Book 4 will set out the true religion and wisdom.
- 4.1.1Lactantius marvels that humanity fell from true religion into polytheism.
- 4.1.2People abandoned God to worship man-made images, with evil results.
- 4.1.3Turning to bodily goods and frail gods, they chose everlasting death.
- 4.1.4Earthly religion brought injustice and impiety.
- 4.1.5Preferring temporal goods, humanity fell into division and crime.
- 4.1.6Only after wisdom was lost did men call themselves wise.
- 4.1.7Once all were wise and no one was called so.
- 4.1.8Wisdom had so perished that none of the so-called wise was wise.
- 4.1.9The Seven Sages were called wise for first inquiring into nature.
- 4.1.10A sad age when only seven deserved to be called wise men.
- 4.1.11Judged wise by fools, they were not truly wise.
- 4.1.12Even with much learning afterward, Greece never grasped truth.
- 4.1.13The philosophers rejected the title 'wise' and so condemned both the sages and themselves.
- 4.1.14Those who admitted ignorance were wiser than those who claimed wisdom.
- 4.2.1Wisdom must be sought elsewhere.
- 4.2.2The philosophers sought wisdom in the wrong place.
- 4.2.3God hid wisdom under the appearance of folly.
- 4.2.4Pythagoras and Plato visited Egypt and Persia but not the Jews, who alone had wisdom.
- 4.2.5Providence reserved the truth for the gentiles through a great leader sent from heaven.
- 4.3.1Pagan worship has no wisdom and no moral teaching, only bodily ritual.
- 4.3.2Pagan religion lacks wisdom and philosophy lacks religion; neither is true.
- 4.3.3God, like a father, deserves thanks and honour.
- 4.3.4Separated, philosophy and pagan religion are both false.
- 4.3.5Neither could reach the truth.
- 4.3.6Where wisdom and religion are joined, both are true.
- 4.3.7Wisdom and religion are joined where one God is worshipped and his priests teach wisdom.
- 4.3.8A philosopher-priest does not unite philosophy and religion.
- 4.3.9Pagan religion is mute ritual; Christian religion is of heart and tongue.
- 4.3.10Wisdom is honouring the true God with just and pious worship.
- 4.3.11Every god worshipped is called father.
- 4.3.12Lucilius mocked the many gods all called 'father'.
- 4.3.13As no one has many fathers, worshipping many gods is unnatural.
- 4.3.14The one God is both father and lord.
- 4.3.15Roman law too makes the father a master over his sons.
- 4.3.16'Father of the household' covers both sons and slaves.
- 4.3.17The father's power is double: indulgent as father, restraining as master.
- 4.3.18There can be only one father and one master.
- 4.3.19Polytheism is against reason and nature.
- 4.3.20A mind divided among many gods cannot hold truth.
- 4.3.21Religion needs a fixed foundation.
- 4.3.22Worship of many gods is like a woman with many husbands, not a marriage.
- 4.3.23Pagan religion is unfaithful and has no source.
- 4.4.1Wisdom is a son's love, religion a servant's fear.
- 4.4.2God as father and lord is to be both loved and feared, so wisdom and religion are inseparable.
- 4.4.3Knowing God comes first, worship follows; both flow from one spring.
- 4.4.4God is the spring; without him there is neither wisdom nor religion.
- 4.4.5Philosophers lose the inheritance of immortality; idolaters suffer everlasting death.
- 4.4.6Even Plato and Cicero, who knew of one supreme God, did not worship him.
- 4.4.7The gods did not make man and are younger than man.
- 4.4.8Men existed before the gods were born.
- 4.4.9Gods who did not make man cannot be his father or god.
- 4.4.10Only the Creator who preceded all things is to be worshipped.
- 4.4.11God alone is Father and Lord; not to worship him is folly and impiety.
- 4.5.1He turns to the true religion and wisdom.
- 4.5.2The task is hard but must be attempted to free people from error.
- 4.5.3He will now use the prophets' testimony, avoided in earlier books.
- 4.5.4One must know the prophets' dates to see their predictions fulfilled.
- 4.5.5The prophets record the kings under whom they prophesied.
- 4.5.6Chronologies begin with Moses, about 900 years before Troy, succeeded by Joshua.
- 4.5.7He outlines Israel's history from the judges to the return under Cyrus.
- 4.5.8Zechariah, the last prophet, dates from Darius, so the prophets are older than Greek writers.
- 4.5.9Scripture is ancient, not recently invented.
- 4.5.10Knowing the chronology lays a sound foundation for truth.
- 4.6.1Before creation God begot a holy Spirit whom he called Son.
- 4.6.2Among countless created spirits, only the firstborn Son bears the divine name.
- 4.6.3Prophets, Hermes Trismegistus and the Sibyls testify to the Son of God.
- 4.6.4Hermes speaks of a second, visible god made and loved by the Lord of all as his offspring.
- 4.6.5Sibylline verses speak of God's Son as leader of all and to be honoured.
- 4.6.6The Son speaks through Solomon in Proverbs 8 of being begotten before creation.
- 4.6.7Wisdom was with God at creation.
- 4.6.8Wisdom was God's daily delight.
- 4.6.9Hermes and the Sibyl call him God's craftsman and counsellor at creation.
- 4.7.1Who is this Son, and what is his name?
- 4.7.2His true name is known only to him and the Father until God's plan is fulfilled.
- 4.7.3Hermes says God's name cannot be spoken by human lips.
- 4.7.4Among men he is called Jesus; 'Christ' is a royal title.
- 4.7.5Some wrongly call him Chrestus.
- 4.7.6Among the Jews anointing conferred kingship, as purple does at Rome.
- 4.7.7'Christ' means 'anointed', the Greek for the Hebrew 'Messiah'.
- 4.7.8His kingdom is heavenly and everlasting; now to his first birth.
- 4.8.1Christ was born twice, in the spirit and in the flesh, as the prophets indicate.
- 4.8.2His double birth has confused many, even believers.
- 4.8.3The Son was not begotten through union with a woman.
- 4.8.4God needed no partner, nor is he both male and female as Orpheus said.
- 4.8.5Hermes called God self-fathered and self-mothered, but the prophets call him Father only.
- 4.8.6Scripture calls the Son God's Word and the angels God's spirits.
- 4.8.7The angels came forth as silent breaths, created for service.
- 4.8.8The Son came forth as a spoken Word, to reveal God's will to people.
- 4.8.9God gave the Word proceeding from his mouth a living form with its own mind and wisdom.
- 4.8.10God's spirits, unlike ours, live and endure.
- 4.8.11God's Word, unlike ours, endures forever with sense and power.
- 4.8.12The prophets explain how God was begotten from God.
- 4.8.13David and Solomon were kings and prophets, older than the fall of Troy.
- 4.8.14David's psalms speak of God's Word as creator and king.
- 4.8.15Wisdom in Sirach speaks of coming from God's mouth before creation.
- 4.8.16John's Gospel names the Word as God and creator.
- 4.9.1The Greek logos means both word and reason, fitting Christ as God's voice and wisdom.
- 4.9.2Zeno the Stoic spoke of the Logos as the world's craftsman.
- 4.9.3Hermes too described the ineffable Word.
- 4.9.4Having treated the first birth, he turns to the disputed second birth.
- 4.10.1God's plan was that the Son should come as a mortal man, teach, die and rise to give hope of immortality.
- 4.10.2He will show that everything fulfilled in Christ was foretold.
- 4.10.3The prophets foretold Christ's birth, miracles, mission, crucifixion and resurrection.
- 4.10.4Proving this from Jewish Scripture will show true wisdom is in Christianity alone.
- 4.10.5The Hebrews went to Egypt in famine and were enslaved.
- 4.10.6After 430 years God freed them through Moses.
- 4.10.7God led Israel through the Red Sea.
- 4.10.8Pharaoh's army was drowned; the Hebrews saw wonders in the wilderness.
- 4.10.9Water flowed from the rock for the thirsty Israelites.
- 4.10.10God fed them with manna and quails.
- 4.10.11Despite these gifts, they turned to Egyptian rites.
- 4.10.12While Moses was on the mountain they made a golden calf.
- 4.10.13God punished them and placed them under the law.
- 4.10.14Settled in Syria, they were called Jews after Judah.
- 4.10.15Judges governed them for life; later came kings.
- 4.10.16Under the judges, idolatry brought subjection until repentance brought release.
- 4.10.17Under the kings came exile to Babylon until Cyrus's decree.
- 4.10.18Christ was crucified in the fifteenth year of Tiberius, on 23 March.
- 4.10.19He will now explain why Christ came.
- 4.11.1God sent prophets to rebuke Israel and call it to repentance.
- 4.11.2Otherwise God would give his inheritance to the gentiles.
- 4.11.3Israel killed the prophets, as Scripture records.
- 4.11.4Jeremiah: God sent prophets whom Israel would not hear.
- 4.11.5Ezra's prayer confesses that Israel killed the prophets.
- 4.11.6Elijah laments that Israel killed the prophets.
- 4.11.7God sent his Son to bring true religion to the gentiles.
- 4.11.8Malachi foretold that God's name would be glorified among the gentiles.
- 4.11.9David foresaw the gentiles serving God's anointed.
- 4.11.10Isaiah foretold the gathering of all nations.
- 4.11.11God sent his Son in humility, so that the ungrateful would stumble and be judged, as the prophets foretold.
- 4.11.12Isaiah, martyred by being sawn in two, lamented Israel's ignorance of God.
- 4.11.13Jeremiah: birds know their seasons, but God's people do not know his judgment.
- 4.11.14God sent the teacher of virtue to be born as a man.
- 4.11.15God still sent his Son to the Jews, offering them salvation; many accepted.
- 4.11.16He was born a Jew, so that none could excuse themselves and no nation would be excluded.
- 4.12.1The Spirit of God entered a holy virgin, who conceived without a man.
- 4.12.2If animals can conceive by the wind, the virgin conception is not incredible.
- 4.12.3The Odes of Solomon foretold the virgin birth.
- 4.12.4Isaiah foretold that a virgin would conceive.
- 4.12.5These prophecies are in the Jews' own Scriptures.
- 4.12.6He was called Jesus, 'Saviour'; 'Emmanuel' signified God coming in the flesh.
- 4.12.7'Emmanuel' means God with us; Psalm 85 foretells truth springing from the earth.
- 4.12.8Isaiah speaks of God raising up the shepherd of the sheep.
- 4.12.9Isaiah names the shepherd the Saviour, that is, Jesus.
- 4.12.10Isaiah foretold the child whose name is Messenger of Great Counsel.
- 4.12.11He was sent to reveal God to all nations.
- 4.12.12Daniel's vision of the Son of Man receiving an eternal kingdom.
- 4.12.13The Jews await a Christ yet rejected him for being born of a woman.
- 4.12.14Christ comes twice: first to proclaim God, then to reign.
- 4.12.15Daniel's 'son of man' points to the incarnation, death, descent, resurrection and ascension.
- 4.12.16The Ancient of Days is the eternal supreme God.
- 4.12.17Psalm 110 foretells Christ's ascension to the Father's right hand.
- 4.12.18Isaiah addresses God's anointed as Lord.
- 4.12.19For his faithfulness he received an eternal kingdom.
- 4.12.20Christ now reigns through the nations' worship and obedience.
- 4.12.21At his return he will judge all and bring a just and peaceful golden age.
- 4.12.22The second coming is left for the last book.
- 4.13.1God sent a teacher from heaven with a new law, born as man.
- 4.13.2God is fatherless and motherless; the Son's two births made him so too.
- 4.13.3In his first birth he had no mother.
- 4.13.4In his second birth he had no human father; as mediator he leads our nature to immortality.
- 4.13.5He is both God and man: his works show divinity, his passion humanity.
- 4.13.6The prophets foretold that he would be both God and man.
- 4.13.7Isaiah addresses him as God.
- 4.13.8A text ascribed to Jeremiah says God was seen on earth among men.
- 4.13.9Psalm 45 calls him God and anointed.
- 4.13.10Jeremiah, Isaiah and Moses foretold that he would be man.
- 4.13.11An oracle of Apollo called Christ mortal in the flesh, a wise wonder-worker who was crucified.
- 4.13.12'Mortal according to the flesh' implies he was God according to the spirit.
- 4.13.13Truth forced the oracle to speak of the flesh and call him wise.
- 4.13.14If Christ was wise, his followers are wise, by the gods' own admission.
- 4.13.15The oracle admits his miracles.
- 4.13.16Apollo then claimed Christ's miracles were magic.
- 4.13.17The Jews too, seeing his miracles, called them magic.
- 4.13.18David condemned those who did not understand the Lord's works; Christ was to be born of his house.
- 4.13.19Isaiah: the root of Jesse will rule the nations.
- 4.13.20Isaiah: a shoot from Jesse on whom the Spirit rests.
- 4.13.21Jesse was David's father; the Sibyl too speaks of a pure flower.
- 4.13.22Nathan's oracle: God will raise up David's seed.
- 4.13.23David's son will build God's house and reign forever as God's son.
- 4.13.24The Jews applied the prophecy to Solomon.
- 4.13.25Solomon does not fit: he began to reign in David's lifetime and not forever.
- 4.13.26The true temple is the church, built in believers' hearts; Solomon's temple fell.
- 4.13.27Psalm 127: unless the Lord builds the house, labour is vain.
- 4.14.1The prophets foretold that Christ, of David's line, would found the church as God's eternal temple.
- 4.14.2Only in the church is the reward of immortality.
- 4.14.3Christ, builder of the temple, holds an everlasting priesthood; access to God is through him.
- 4.14.4Psalm 110: a priest forever.
- 4.14.51 Samuel: God will raise a faithful priest.
- 4.14.6Zechariah names the high priest Jesus.
- 4.14.7Jesus the priest, a brand from the fire, in filthy garments.
- 4.14.8He is clothed in clean garments and a mitre.
- 4.14.9If he keeps God's ways he will judge God's house.
- 4.14.10The Jews read these things yet laid hands on their God.
- 4.14.11About 500 years separate Zechariah from the crucifixion.
- 4.14.12The prophecy cannot refer to Joshua son of Nun or Joshua son of Jozadak.
- 4.14.13None of the prophecy's details fit either Joshua.
- 4.14.14The filthy garment is his humble flesh; the brand signifies his sufferings and death.
- 4.14.15Having done the Father's will, he would receive everlasting dominion.
- 4.14.16God's ways and commandments are clear.
- 4.14.17When idolatry prevailed, God sent his Son, prince of angels, to turn people to the true God.
- 4.14.18Christ faithfully taught one God and did not proclaim himself a second god.
- 4.14.19He did not separate himself from the Father he came to reveal.
- 4.14.20For his faithfulness he received priesthood, kingship, judgment, and the name of God.
- 4.15.1He turns to Christ's miracles, which the Jews called magic.
- 4.15.2Christ was baptized by John, not for his own sins, but to save the gentiles by baptism.
- 4.15.3At his baptism the heavenly voice and the dove came upon him.
- 4.15.4His miracles were by heavenly power, as the prophets foretold.
- 4.15.5He will list the miracles only briefly.
- 4.15.6He healed the sick and paralysed with a word.
- 4.15.7He healed the lame and the blind.
- 4.15.8He healed the dumb, the deaf and lepers.
- 4.15.9He healed by his word, as the Sibyl foretold.
- 4.15.10As the Word of God, he worked wonders by a word.
- 4.15.11He also raised the dead.
- 4.15.12The Jews attributed his miracles to demons, though their Scriptures foretold them.
- 4.15.13Isaiah foretold God's coming to save.
- 4.15.14Isaiah foretold healing of the blind, deaf, lame and dumb.
- 4.15.15The Sibyl foretold the same healings.
- 4.15.16In a desert place Christ had the crowd sit down; there were five loaves and two fishes.
- 4.15.17Five thousand were fed and twelve baskets were left.
- 4.15.18The Sibyl foretold the feeding of the five thousand.
- 4.15.19Magic only deceives the eyes; it could not do this.
- 4.15.20The disciples set out by boat against a contrary wind.
- 4.15.21Christ walked on the sea, unlike Orion in the poets.
- 4.15.22He calmed the storm with a word.
- 4.15.23Scripture teaches his power over wind, sea, disease and death.
- 4.15.24The Sibyl foretold his stilling of the winds and walking on the sea.
- 4.15.25Another Sibyl foretold his miracles.
- 4.15.26Some claim the Sibylline verses are Christian forgeries.
- 4.15.27Cicero and Varro, who died before Christ, knew the Sibyls.
- 4.15.28The verses were once thought ravings because no one understood them.
- 4.15.29The Sibyl predicted she would be called mad until her words came true.
- 4.15.30The Sibyls and prophets were understood only after Christ fulfilled them.
- 4.15.31Prophecy is understood only when fulfilled.
- 4.16.1He will show that Christ's passion, a reproach to pagans, contains virtue, truth and wisdom.
- 4.16.2Earthly success would not have shown him to be God; pagans deify worldly fortune.
- 4.16.3Only virtue and justice are truly heavenly goods.
- 4.16.4Christ, himself virtue and justice, taught and practised it and so is believed God by all nations.
- 4.16.5The Jewish leaders, angered and envious, plotted his death, as the prophets foretold.
- 4.16.6Psalm 1 alludes to the counsel of the impious.
- 4.16.7Wisdom foretells the plot against the just man who calls himself God's son.
- 4.16.8They resolve to test whether he is truly God's son.
- 4.16.9They plan to torture and condemn him to a shameful death.
- 4.16.10Wisdom describes the plot as if present, a thousand years before.
- 4.16.11The Jews still read the prophecies of their own condemnation without heeding them.
- 4.16.12Rebuked and losing followers, the Jewish leaders were emboldened by his humility to kill him.
- 4.16.13They expected glory and missed the humble first coming.
- 4.16.14Psalm 72 speaks of his silent coming like rain on a fleece.
- 4.16.15Isaiah's suffering servant, without form or beauty.
- 4.16.16The servant bore our sins; by his wounds we are healed.
- 4.16.17The Sibyl too foretold his humility; they plotted to kill the giver of life.
- 4.17.1They accused him of breaking the law on sabbath, circumcision and pork.
- 4.17.2He changed the law by God's will and as foretold.
- 4.17.3Micah foretold a new law from Zion.
- 4.17.4The old law came from Horeb; the Sibyl foretold its dissolution by the Son.
- 4.17.5Moses foretold a great prophet above the law.
- 4.17.6Deuteronomy 18: God will raise up a prophet like Moses.
- 4.17.7The Son is the living law replacing the old.
- 4.17.8The prophet calls for circumcision of the heart.
- 4.17.9Moses and Joshua speak of a second circumcision.
- 4.17.10The second circumcision is of the heart, given by Christ, the true Jesus.
- 4.17.11God's words 'to Jesus' point to Christ.
- 4.17.12Joshua, renamed from Hoshea, prefigured Christ by his name and deeds.
- 4.17.13Joshua succeeding Moses figures the new law succeeding the old.
- 4.17.14Circumcision figures an open and sincere heart.
- 4.17.15Circumcision of the heart means hiding no shameful deed.
- 4.17.16God moved circumcision from flesh to soul.
- 4.17.17Circumcision signifies repentance: confessing sins to God brings pardon.
- 4.17.18The ban on pork signifies abstaining from sin.
- 4.17.19The pig is earthbound and useless in life, unlike other animals.
- 4.17.20The ban warns against living like pigs for the belly.
- 4.17.21All the Jewish law's precepts are figures of spiritual justice.
- 4.18.1They conspired to condemn Christ.
- 4.18.2Christ foretold his death and betrayal, and withdrew as an example in persecution.
- 4.18.3Judas betrayed him for money.
- 4.18.4Before Pilate they accused him of claiming to be Son of God and king, and of the temple saying.
- 4.18.5Pilate found nothing worthy of death, but the crowd demanded crucifixion.
- 4.18.6Pilate yielded and handed him to the Jews to judge.
- 4.18.7They scourged, mocked and crowned him with thorns, and gave him gall and vinegar.
- 4.18.8They spat on him, struck him, and cast lots for his clothes.
- 4.18.9Silent, he was crucified between two robbers.
- 4.18.10This crime surpasses the crucifixion of Gavius that Cicero lamented.
- 4.18.11Gavius was innocent but mortal.
- 4.18.12No eloquence can lament the cross on which God was hung.
- 4.18.13Isaiah foretold the scourging and spitting.
- 4.18.14Psalm 35 foretells the mockery.
- 4.18.15The Sibyl foretold the blows, spitting and scourging.
- 4.18.16Isaiah foretold his silence.
- 4.18.17The Sibyl foretold his silence and crown of thorns.
- 4.18.18Psalm 69 foretold the gall and vinegar.
- 4.18.19The Sibyl foretold the gall and vinegar.
- 4.18.20Another Sibyl rebukes Judaea for crowning God with thorns.
- 4.18.21The prophets foretold that the Jews would kill their God.
- 4.18.22A passage attributed to Ezra calls the passover our Saviour, to be humbled on a sign.
- 4.18.23The Jews' only hope is to repent and trust in him.
- 4.18.24Isaiah describes his unjust death and innocence.
- 4.18.25The servant was numbered with the wicked and bore the sins of many.
- 4.18.26Psalm 94 foretells the condemning of innocent blood.
- 4.18.27Jeremiah foretells the plot: 'let us put wood into his bread'.
- 4.18.28The wood is the cross and the bread his body, the food of believers.
- 4.18.29Moses and Zechariah foretold the hanging and piercing.
- 4.18.30Psalm 22 foretells the piercing and the casting of lots.
- 4.18.31David spoke of Christ, not himself, a thousand years before.
- 4.18.32Solomon's oracle foretells the destruction of Israel and the temple.
- 4.18.33The oracle says the ruin came because they persecuted their king beloved of God.
- 4.19.1The Jews read these prophecies yet fulfilled them blindly.
- 4.19.2At his death came an earthquake, the torn veil, and darkness.
- 4.19.3Amos foretold the darkness at noon.
- 4.19.4Jeremiah foretold the sun setting at midday.
- 4.19.5The Sibyl foretold the torn veil and three hours of darkness.
- 4.19.6They buried him and set a guard lest his body be stolen.
- 4.19.7On the third day he rose and went to Galilee; only the grave-clothes were left.
- 4.19.8David foretold the resurrection.
- 4.19.9Hosea foretold rescue from death on the third day.
- 4.19.10The Sibyl foretold his resurrection after three days.
- 4.19.11Immortality comes only by believing in Christ and taking up the cross.
- 4.20.1In Galilee the risen Christ opened the prophets to his disciples.
- 4.20.2The law is a testament, confirmed only by the testator's death.
- 4.20.3Without Christ's death the testament could not be opened.
- 4.20.4Scripture is divided into Old and New Testaments.
- 4.20.5The New Testament fulfils the Old; Christ, the testator, makes believers heirs.
- 4.20.6Jeremiah foretold a new covenant.
- 4.20.7Jeremiah: God forsook his inheritance.
- 4.20.8God hates not the inheritance but the ungrateful heirs.
- 4.20.9He interprets the lion and its voice as the sentence of crucifixion.
- 4.20.10The old covenant was imperfect; the new is complete.
- 4.20.11The 'house of Judah' now means the gentile church, adopted in the Jews' place.
- 4.20.12Isaiah: the Son is given as covenant and light of the gentiles.
- 4.20.13Christ has freed and enlightened the gentiles and made them heirs.
- 4.21.1Forty days after the passion Christ ascended in a cloud, as Daniel foretold.
- 4.21.2The apostles founded the church; Peter and Paul at Rome foretold the destruction of the Jews.
- 4.21.3They foretold famine in the siege.
- 4.21.4They foretold the horrors of the siege and exile, as punishment for rejecting the Son.
- 4.21.5After Nero killed Peter and Paul, Vespasian fulfilled their prophecy.
- 4.22.1He will now also argue from reason against the objections.
- 4.22.2He will use both testimony and argument.
- 4.22.3Objectors deny that God could fittingly become man and suffer.
- 4.22.4They say all would have obeyed a God in power.
- 4.22.5Why did Christ come in weakness and not in divine power?
- 4.22.6He will show that Christ's sufferings were necessary for him to be believed God.
- 4.23.1Must a teacher of morals practise what he teaches?
- 4.23.2A teacher who does not practise undermines his own precepts.
- 4.23.3Hearers resent being bound to obey.
- 4.23.4The hearer demands that the teacher show his precepts can be kept.
- 4.23.5The teacher must first learn and correct himself.
- 4.23.6Such a teacher is rightly despised.
- 4.23.7Only example removes the excuse; so no one obeys the philosophers.
- 4.23.8People want example, not words; a God who did not share our frailty would face the excuse of weakness.
- 4.23.9Philosophers, ruled by passions, cannot teach virtue; no perfect sage has existed.
- 4.23.10Only Christ united perfect teaching and perfect virtue.
- 4.24.1Suppose a teacher were sent from heaven.
- 4.24.2A heavenly teacher must be perfect in knowledge and virtue.
- 4.24.3Human beings cannot find truth by themselves.
- 4.24.4An earthly teacher cannot be perfect.
- 4.24.5A heavenly teacher must take a mortal body to be a perfect teacher.
- 4.24.6God without a body could not practise what he taught.
- 4.24.7The perfect teacher must show by deeds that virtue is possible, while leaving people free.
- 4.24.8The teacher must be like his pupil to lead by example.
- 4.24.9Without shared weakness, the pupil could plead the weakness of the flesh.
- 4.24.10Only a teacher clothed in flesh can refute the excuse of the flesh.
- 4.24.11Human nature wants excuses for sin.
- 4.24.12The teacher must be like man to show that sin can be conquered.
- 4.24.13An immortal teacher could be answered that he has no temptations.
- 4.24.14The mortal fears death and pain.
- 4.24.15The teacher had to remove the excuse of necessity.
- 4.24.16The perfect teacher can answer every objection by his own example.
- 4.24.17Christ, sharing our flesh, overcame sin, desire, pain and death and so removes every excuse.
- 4.24.18The perfect teacher must be both God and man.
- 4.24.19The teacher of justice had to be embodied and to suffer and die, to show that virtue can endure all.
- 4.25.1This is why God willed his messenger to take flesh, suffer and die.
- 4.25.2God sent Christ as a living law to spread true worship.
- 4.25.3He was born without a human father, to show his heavenly origin.
- 4.25.4God was father of his spirit without a mother; a virgin mother of his body without a father.
- 4.25.5Christ, God and man, is the mediator who leads humanity to God.
- 4.25.6The mortal flesh drags the spirit toward death.
- 4.25.7A bodiless spirit could not lead flesh, which is subject to sin and death.
- 4.25.8God came in the flesh to rescue it from death and show that sin is a choice.
- 4.25.9Our great struggle is against the desires of the flesh.
- 4.25.10God showed the way to overcome the flesh, rewarding victors with immortality.
- 4.26.1He turns to the meaning of the cross.
- 4.26.2Prophecy and the passion itself reveal God's plan.
- 4.26.3His sufferings and miracles had symbolic meaning; for example, he gave sight to the blind.
- 4.26.4Giving sight to the blind signified enlightening the gentiles.
- 4.26.5The truly blind worship earthly things.
- 4.26.6Healing the deaf signified people coming to hear God's word.
- 4.26.7Healing the dumb signified the ignorant learning to speak of God.
- 4.26.8Whoever cannot speak of God is truly dumb.
- 4.26.9Healing the lame signified opening the road of truth.
- 4.26.10The truly lame stumble along the way of death.
- 4.26.11Cleansing lepers signified purifying sinners.
- 4.26.12The true lepers are those stained by vice.
- 4.26.13He raised the dead, a wonder fitting for God.
- 4.26.14Raising the dead signified bringing the nations to immortal life.
- 4.26.15The truly dead are those who do not know God.
- 4.26.16His miracles were figures of spiritual realities to come.
- 4.26.17His passion too had meaning.
- 4.26.18The gall and vinegar foretold hardships for followers of truth.
- 4.26.19His bitter drink is an example of the trials believers must bear.
- 4.26.20Truth's followers must endure; truth is hateful to the unvirtuous.
- 4.26.21The crown of thorns signified a holy people gathered from sinners around him.
- 4.26.22Before knowing God, believers were thorns.
- 4.26.23Believers, once thorns, now crown Christ as King.
- 4.26.24He will explain the meaning of the cross.
- 4.26.25God sent the teacher of virtue to open the way to eternal life.
- 4.26.26He took flesh to give examples of virtue.
- 4.26.27He willingly suffered to teach patience in pain and contempt of death.
- 4.26.28He died so that humanity might triumph over death.
- 4.26.29Why did God choose the shameful death of the cross?
- 4.26.30First, he died as the lowly die, so that all could imitate him.
- 4.26.31Second, his body had to remain whole for the resurrection.
- 4.26.32His bones were not broken; only his side was pierced.
- 4.26.33The cross kept his body whole and lifted him up for all nations to see.
- 4.26.34The cross signified that all nations would come to him.
- 4.26.35His passion and majesty are known everywhere.
- 4.26.36His outstretched arms embraced the world; believers would bear the sign of the cross on their foreheads.
- 4.26.37The Passover blood on the doorposts was a figure of the cross.
- 4.26.38The blood saved only as a figure of what was to come.
- 4.26.39Christ is the spotless lamb; the sign of the cross on the forehead saves.
- 4.26.40Pascha is derived from 'to suffer', as a figure of the passion.
- 4.26.41The figure foreshadows the protection of God's people at the end.
- 4.26.42The last book will explain how the sign will protect believers.
- 4.27.1The sign of the cross terrifies demons, who flee when adjured through Christ.
- 4.27.2Christians expel demons by Christ's name and the sign of the cross.
- 4.27.3A Christian present at pagan sacrifice spoils the omens, which provoked persecution.
- 4.27.4Christian attendants with the sign of the cross disrupted sacrifices.
- 4.27.5The soothsayers stirred the rulers to persecute, for which the persecutors were punished.
- 4.27.6Even so, pagans do not see which religion is true.
- 4.27.7If the gods hated Christians, they would punish rather than flee them.
- 4.27.8Demons, unable to touch those sealed with the cross, persecute them through men.
- 4.27.9If demons exist, the religion that overcomes them must be true.
- 4.27.10If they admit evil demons, they must distinguish them from gods.
- 4.27.11What is the difference between gods and demons?
- 4.27.12Pagan priests cannot drive out demons.
- 4.27.13Demons flee at the name of the true God.
- 4.27.14Demons and pagan gods flee alike from God's name, so they are the same.
- 4.27.15Homer and others call the gods demons.
- 4.27.16Demons confess their nature when exorcized but pose as gods when worshipped.
- 4.27.17Demons took the names of dead kings to receive divine honours.
- 4.27.18Necromancers can summon the gods from the underworld, proving they were dead men.
- 4.27.19Christ cannot be summoned, since he rose after two days.
- 4.27.20Hermes may have learned about the Father and Son by some such means.
- 4.28.1Man's only hope is to know and serve God and live justly.
- 4.28.2We are born to obey, know, and follow God.
- 4.28.3Religion comes from being bound (religare) to God, not from relegere as Cicero said.
- 4.28.4Cicero derives 'superstitious' from praying that children survive.
- 4.28.5Cicero derives 'religious' from re-reading the rites.
- 4.28.6Cicero's distinction fails, since both worship the same gods.
- 4.28.7If praying once is good, praying often is better.
- 4.28.8Greater devotion should not earn a name of blame.
- 4.28.9The argument from the contrary also refutes Cicero.
- 4.28.10Those who repeat rites more often would be more religious on Cicero's own view.
- 4.28.11Religion is worship of the true God; superstition of false gods.
- 4.28.12Religion means the bond by which God ties man to himself.
- 4.28.13Lucretius's 'knots of religion' fits; superstition is worship of the dead.
- 4.28.14The superstitious worshipped dead men as gods.
- 4.28.15Virgil contrasts superstition with the ancient gods.
- 4.28.16Since the ancient gods were dead men too, pagans are superstitious and Christians religious.
- 4.29.1How can Christians worship one God yet speak of Father and Son?
- 4.29.2Having discussed his mortality, he now explains the unity of Father and Son.
- 4.29.3Father and Son are not separate, since each implies the other.
- 4.29.4Father and Son share one mind, spirit and substance, like spring and stream, sun and ray.
- 4.29.5The Son is inseparable from the Father, as ray from sun.
- 4.29.6As hand and word of God, the Son is undivided from him.
- 4.29.7A father and son in one household are one household and one master.
- 4.29.8Father and Son are one God, as two in one household.
- 4.29.9The Son is in the Father and the Father in the Son.
- 4.29.10Isaiah shows that Father and Son are one God.
- 4.29.11Isaiah speaks of two persons yet says 'besides me', since they are not separated.
- 4.29.12The supreme God is one and contains the Son and all things.
- 4.29.13Father and Son are one God, sharing one mind and will.
- 4.29.14God can be worshipped only through the Son.
- 4.29.15Whoever receives the Son worships the Father; the Son is the way and the door.
- 4.30.1Because heresies have divided God's people, he will define where truth is found.
- 4.30.2Christ and the apostles foretold sects and warned against them.
- 4.30.3Many abandoned the commands and led the simple astray.
- 4.30.4Some believers caused schism through weak faith, ignorance, or carelessness.
- 4.30.5Some, failing to gain the episcopate, broke away with their supporters.
- 4.30.6Others, unable to answer objections to the incarnation and cross,
- 4.30.7corrupted the Scriptures and invented new doctrines.
- 4.30.8Others followed false prophets and left the true tradition.
- 4.30.9All of them lost the divine name through demonic deception.
- 4.30.10Sects named after men have ceased to be Christian.
- 4.30.11Only the catholic church keeps true worship; outside it there is no hope of salvation.
- 4.30.12Salvation is at stake.
- 4.30.13The true church is the one that has confession and penance for sin.
- 4.30.14He promises a separate work against all heresies.
- 4.30.15Book 5 will treat justice.
- 5.1.1Lactantius expects superstitious readers to reject his book unread.
- 5.1.2He asks readers to hear the whole case before condemning it.
- 5.1.3Opponents refuse a hearing because they fear being refuted.
- 5.1.4Their refusal to listen shows they distrust their own position.
- 5.1.5Refusing discussion, they rule by force and condemn the innocent unheard.
- 5.1.6Persecutors torture and kill the righteous without being able to say why.
- 5.1.7Those in error rage against the followers of truth with cruelty.
- 5.1.8He asks whether arguing with such men is wasted effort.
- 5.1.9Even if opponents are not won, wavering believers will be strengthened.
- 5.1.10Literary charm easily ensnares the unwary.
- 5.1.11He joins wisdom to religion so that learning serves the faith.
- 5.1.12At the least, the work will delight the author's own mind with truth.
- 5.1.13There are still sound minds who will follow the truth when shown it.
- 5.1.14Truth must be sweetened like medicine with honey on the cup.
- 5.1.15The learned despise Scripture because the prophets spoke plainly.
- 5.1.16Plain Scripture is scorned by those who want polished style.
- 5.1.17People judge by ornament, not by truth.
- 5.1.18Neither Scripture nor its interpreters are believed, being unadorned.
- 5.1.19Eloquence serves worldly ambition.
- 5.1.20Eloquence shuns the hidden things of faith.
- 5.1.21Truth lacks capable advocates.
- 5.1.22Minucius Felix's Octavius shows what he might have done.
- 5.1.23Tertullian was learned but obscure in style.
- 5.1.24Cyprian stands out as the eloquent Christian writer.
- 5.1.25Cyprian's style was fluent, rich, and clear.
- 5.1.26Cyprian's writings, meant for believers, are mocked by outsiders.
- 5.1.27A scoffer punned on Cyprian's name.
- 5.1.28Lesser Christian writers fare even worse.
- 5.2.1The lack of able Christian teachers emboldened critics.
- 5.2.2In Bithynia, when the church was destroyed, two men attacked the faith.
- 5.2.3The first critic was a hypocritical, greedy philosopher.
- 5.2.4During the persecution he wrote three books against the Christians.
- 5.2.5He claimed a philosopher must recall people to the gods.
- 5.2.6He urged Christians to return to the gods and escape torture.
- 5.2.7He flattered the emperors for suppressing Christianity.
- 5.2.8His arguments against Christianity were ignorant and ridiculous.
- 5.2.9Christians privately laughed at the blind guide.
- 5.2.10All blamed him for writing during the persecution.
- 5.2.11He won contempt instead of favor.
- 5.2.12A second critic, a judge and instigator of persecution, also wrote.
- 5.2.13Hierocles tried to show Scripture contradicts itself.
- 5.2.14His knowledge suggests he had once been a Christian.
- 5.2.15If he had been a Christian, he was an apostate traitor.
- 5.2.16Scripture has no contradictions; he simply did not understand it.
- 5.2.17He attacked the apostles as deceivers, yet called them unlearned fishermen.
- 5.3.1Unlearned apostles could not have invented a coherent teaching.
- 5.3.2The apostles' teaching is consistent because it is true.
- 5.3.3The apostles gained nothing and foretold their own and their followers' sufferings.
- 5.3.4Hierocles called Christ a bandit chief.
- 5.3.5Many robbers have been crucified, but none was ever called God.
- 5.3.6Pagans deified the murderer Mars, who was never crucified.
- 5.3.7Hierocles set Apollonius's wonders against Christ's.
- 5.3.8No one worships Apollonius except perhaps Hierocles himself.
- 5.3.9By Hierocles' logic, Apollonius would be the better magician.
- 5.3.10Hierocles charged Christ with arrogance for claiming divinity.
- 5.3.11Magic was discussed in earlier books.
- 5.3.12Everyone desires lasting honor after death.
- 5.3.13People seek immortality through fame, as Hierocles does by his book.
- 5.3.14Apollonius surely desired divine honor, as his cult shows.
- 5.3.15Christ was believed to be God because he truly was.
- 5.3.16Hierocles said pagans were wiser than Christians for not deifying Apollonius.
- 5.3.17Even the Jews did not understand the prophets they read.
- 5.3.18Christ is believed to be God because prophecy was fulfilled in him.
- 5.3.19Without prophecy his miracles might have seemed magic.
- 5.3.20The foretold cross is also evidence of his divinity.
- 5.3.21Christ's divinity rests on the prophets' prior testimony.
- 5.3.22Hierocles titled his attack "Lover of Truth."
- 5.3.23The title is a wolf in sheep's clothing.
- 5.3.24Hierocles betrayed the gods he defended.
- 5.3.25By praising the supreme God, Hierocles demoted Jupiter.
- 5.3.26He made the gods servants of the God he attacked.
- 5.4.1Lactantius wrote to refute all attackers of the faith at once.
- 5.4.2He aims to answer all critics, past and future, at once.
- 5.4.3Tertullian's Apology and Cyprian's To Demetrianus left the task incomplete.
- 5.4.4Cyprian should have used reason, not Scripture, against an unbeliever.
- 5.4.5An unbeliever must be led gradually into the light.
- 5.4.6Like infants on milk, unbelievers should first be given human testimonies.
- 5.4.7Lactantius undertakes the reasoned approach Cyprian omitted.
- 5.4.8If the learned defended the faith, false religion and philosophy would fall.
- 5.5.1Justice, the highest virtue, was sought by poets and philosophers.
- 5.5.2The poets said Justice left the earth after the golden age of Saturn.
- 5.5.3In the golden age, before the gods, the one God was worshipped.
- 5.5.4In that age there was no war or discord.
- 5.5.5In the golden age people lived simply and held land in common.
- 5.5.6God gave the earth for the common use of all.
- 5.5.7The golden age meant generosity to the poor, not the absence of property.
- 5.5.8When the just shared, no one went hungry.
- 5.5.9When Jupiter overthrew Saturn and was worshipped, Justice left the earth.
- 5.5.10Jupiter's reign brought hatred, envy, and deceit.
- 5.5.11Persecutors act like the serpents and wolves of the poem.
- 5.5.12Then war and greed entered the world.
- 5.5.13Losing God's religion, people lost the knowledge of good and evil.
- 5.5.14Violence and bloodshed followed.
- 5.6.1Greed, born of contempt for God, concentrated wealth in few hands.
- 5.6.2The greedy hoarded necessities to enslave others.
- 5.6.3They made unjust laws to protect their plunder.
- 5.6.4Without justice they delighted in inequality and display.
- 5.6.5Offices and insignia arose to enforce rule by terror.
- 5.6.6Jupiter's tyranny ended the golden age and turned people from God.
- 5.6.7Everyone feared the armed parricide.
- 5.6.8Fear made the people flatter and revere him.
- 5.6.9People abandoned piety to imitate the king.
- 5.6.10With justice gone, error and blindness remained.
- 5.6.11Jupiter drove out Justice rather than receiving her.
- 5.6.12True religion makes people brothers who share, help, and welcome.
- 5.6.13The golden age ended with the worship of many gods.
- 5.7.1God sent a messenger to bring justice back.
- 5.7.2Justice returned but only to a few: it is the worship of the one God.
- 5.7.3Why justice was not given to all needs explanation.
- 5.7.4Virtue needs opposing vice and adversity.
- 5.7.5God allowed evil so that virtue could exist.
- 5.7.6God lets the wicked be strong and many so virtue is tested and rare.
- 5.7.7Quintilian: innocence is praised because it is rare.
- 5.7.8Virtue needs evil to fight against.
- 5.7.9Adversity strengthens virtue.
- 5.7.10The age is not golden because evil remains for virtue's sake.
- 5.8.1Justice is present and easy to attain if one wills.
- 5.8.2Justice is at hand; take it into your heart.
- 5.8.3Worship the true God and the golden age will return.
- 5.8.4God's true temple is the human being, adorned with virtue.
- 5.8.5Evils multiply because God is abandoned and his worship forbidden.
- 5.8.6Worship of the one God would end war, plots, and theft.
- 5.8.7Knowing God condemns lust beyond procreation would end adultery and prostitution.
- 5.8.8If all lived as Christians do, the world would be golden.
- 5.8.9God's one law would make human laws and punishments unnecessary.
- 5.8.10Cicero saw that people, kin by nature, disagree through depravity.
- 5.8.11Idolatry, the denial of the common Father, caused all evils.
- 5.9.1People lament justice's absence but persecute it when present.
- 5.9.2They kill those who do good, yet expect justice to come.
- 5.9.3Christians are treated worse than enemies in war.
- 5.9.4Persecutors are like wolves ravaging God's flock.
- 5.9.5They openly prey on the innocent while speaking of justice.
- 5.9.6Truth is hated because sinners want freedom to sin unrebuked.
- 5.9.7They try to eliminate the righteous as witnesses against them.
- 5.9.8The good are resented because their lives rebuke the wicked.
- 5.9.9The just suffer the fate of Christ, the author of justice.
- 5.9.10Persecutors torture before killing.
- 5.9.11Apostates are honored to lure others.
- 5.9.12Faithful confessors are tortured and called desperate.
- 5.9.13Persecutors hurl at the righteous the insults they deserve.
- 5.9.14Those who call Christians impious are themselves guilty.
- 5.9.15The crimes of society come from pagans, not Christians.
- 5.9.16Incest, treason, sacrilege, and fraud are pagan crimes.
- 5.9.17Sexual vices, castration, gladiatorial self-selling, and corrupt judges are theirs too.
- 5.9.18Such crimes leave no room for justice among idolaters.
- 5.9.19Seneca documents public vices fully.
- 5.9.20Lucilius describes a society devoted to deceit.
- 5.9.21Christians' whole religion is a blameless life.
- 5.9.22Conduct shows who is truly pious.
- 5.9.23Those who live rightly cannot err in religion.
- 5.9.24Religion and conduct reveal each other.
- 5.10.1Pagan "piety" reveals their impiety.
- 5.10.2He takes Aeneas as the poets' model of piety.
- 5.10.3Virgil's Aeneas bound captives to sacrifice at a funeral.
- 5.10.4Human sacrifice is no piety.
- 5.10.5Virgil himself shows 'pious' Aeneas taking victims alive.
- 5.10.6Aeneas's words of mercy contradict his actions.
- 5.10.7Virgil confused piety with love of one's father.
- 5.10.8Aeneas killed suppliants in rage.
- 5.10.9Aeneas was not truly pious.
- 5.10.10True piety is found among peacemakers who love even enemies.
- 5.10.11Devotion to idols makes people impious toward the true God.
- 5.10.12Unexplained misfortunes lend support to Epicurus' view of indifferent gods.
- 5.10.13They blame fortune for their sufferings.
- 5.10.14Even upright idolaters are strangers to justice.
- 5.10.15Worshippers imitate violent and immoral gods.
- 5.10.16The gods' thefts and adulteries teach vice.
- 5.10.17The gods train their worshippers in injustice.
- 5.10.18Worship is imitation, so worshippers become like their gods.
- 5.11.1Idolaters rage against the just and are rightly called beasts.
- 5.11.2Cicero: a savage soul in a human body is worse than a beast's body.
- 5.11.3Persecutors are human only in form.
- 5.11.4Wild beasts stop when fed; persecutors do not.
- 5.11.5The true beast is the ruler whose command sheds blood everywhere.
- 5.11.6The persecutor destroys even the bodies and ashes of Christians.
- 5.11.7Those who carry out the persecution are most wretched.
- 5.11.8Their office is a sentence to eternal punishment.
- 5.11.9Officials' cruelty was countless and varied.
- 5.11.10Motives varied; one governor in Phrygia burned a whole congregation.
- 5.11.11The worst persecutor tortures without killing.
- 5.11.12Judges devised countless tortures.
- 5.11.13They avoid killing to boast and to deny martyrs glory.
- 5.11.14Torture is a contest they seek to win.
- 5.11.15A Bithynian governor rejoiced when one Christian yielded after two years.
- 5.11.16They keep victims alive, not knowing torture adds to their glory.
- 5.11.17Victims are healed only to be tortured again.
- 5.11.18Impious laws and legal writings were made against Christians.
- 5.11.19Ulpian collected imperial rulings on punishing Christians.
- 5.12.1Jurists call tyrants' butchery law.
- 5.12.2Innocence is punished more harshly than crime.
- 5.12.3Christians only ask to be allowed to do good.
- 5.12.4Christians choose the 'folly' of loving those who hate them.
- 5.12.5Cicero's Furius imagines a just man thought wicked and punished.
- 5.12.6Furius asks who would not rather be the honored wicked man.
- 5.12.7Cicero's example foretells what Christians suffer.
- 5.12.8The world persecutes the just as wicked.
- 5.12.9Furius argued the wise prefer a good reputation to goodness.
- 5.12.10Christians prefer true goodness with suffering to false with prosperity.
- 5.12.11Their envy shows Christian folly is wisdom.
- 5.12.12Persecution concedes that Christians are not fools.
- 5.12.13Their fear shows they know the faith is winning.
- 5.13.1The church grows even in persecution, showing where wisdom lies.
- 5.13.2The agreement of thousands shows the faith is not folly.
- 5.13.3Men, women, young and old all hold the faith.
- 5.13.4Not every city and nation can be foolish.
- 5.13.5The faith's worldwide steadfastness shows it has a solid foundation.
- 5.13.6Those who lapse can make satisfaction and return more devoted.
- 5.13.7Repentance makes faith firmer.
- 5.13.8God is not implacable toward those forced to sacrifice.
- 5.13.9The tortured come to hate the gods more.
- 5.13.10When peace comes, the lapsed return and new converts join.
- 5.13.11The martyrs' endurance convinces onlookers that God is with them.
- 5.13.12Even Christian children and women endure torture in silence.
- 5.13.13Roman heroes' endurance was forced by circumstance.
- 5.13.14Christians endure by choice, trusting God.
- 5.13.15Philosophers praise such constancy only in words.
- 5.13.16Horace praises the just man unshaken by tyrants.
- 5.13.17Horace's words fit Christian martyrs, who defend true freedom.
- 5.13.18No one may compel worship.
- 5.13.19Worship must be voluntary; Christians do what philosophers praise.
- 5.13.20Seneca notes people praise greatness of soul but call those who despise death mad.
- 5.13.21The Sibyl calls idolaters deaf and senseless.
- 5.14.1He will explain why the wise are thought fools.
- 5.14.2Justice by nature looks like folly.
- 5.14.3Carneades lectured on justice at Rome.
- 5.14.4The next day he argued against justice.
- 5.14.5Cicero's Republic records Carneades' argument against justice.
- 5.14.6Justice then had no roots on earth.
- 5.14.7Justice springs from religion and consists in equity.
- 5.14.8He will define justice briefly.
- 5.14.9Justice's two chief parts are piety and equity.
- 5.14.10The Romans had lesser virtues, not justice itself.
- 5.14.11Piety is the knowledge of God, per Trismegistus.
- 5.14.12Without worshipping God one cannot know justice.
- 5.14.13Plato knew of one God but not true religion.
- 5.14.14Socrates' fate foreshadowed the Christians'.
- 5.14.15Equity means treating oneself as equal to others.
- 5.14.16God made all people equal.
- 5.14.17Before God no one is slave or master.
- 5.14.18God's measure of rank is virtue and mercy.
- 5.14.19Greek and Roman inequality excluded justice.
- 5.14.20Justice makes equal those born equal.
- 5.15.1Only Christians know the source and effect of justice.
- 5.15.2Christians call each other brothers because they are equal.
- 5.15.3Slaves are brothers in spirit and fellow servants.
- 5.15.4True riches lie in good use and contentment.
- 5.15.5Before God rank depends on justice.
- 5.15.6Those who make themselves lower will be raised higher by God.
- 5.15.7Contending for rank is contrary to wisdom.
- 5.15.8What is high among men is low with God.
- 5.15.9Christ taught that the humble will be exalted.
- 5.15.10The humble are distinguished before God.
- 5.15.11Euripides: earthly evils are heavenly goods.
- 5.16.1He returns to Carneades.
- 5.16.2Carneades saw the philosophers' case for justice was weak.
- 5.16.3Carneades argued that law is mere advantage and justice folly.
- 5.16.4Empires would have to give everything back to be just.
- 5.16.5Carneades: must a seller disclose hidden defects?
- 5.16.6Honesty is foolish, deception wise but bad.
- 5.16.7Must a buyer reveal the seller's mistake?
- 5.16.8Carneades concluded the just man is a fool.
- 5.16.9He turned to cases where justice risks life.
- 5.16.10The shipwreck dilemma: the just man is a fool.
- 5.16.11The fleeing soldier dilemma.
- 5.16.12Carneades: civil justice is wise but unjust; natural justice just but foolish.
- 5.16.13Cicero's Laelius evaded Carneades' arguments.
- 5.17.1Justice looks like folly, which explains the charge against Christians.
- 5.17.2He will answer Furius better than Laelius did.
- 5.17.3Christians know justice in reality.
- 5.17.4Plato and Aristotle lacked divine knowledge.
- 5.17.5Philosophy without heavenly foundation persuaded no one.
- 5.17.6Philosophers could show no living examples of justice.
- 5.17.7No one lived as the philosophers taught.
- 5.17.8Christians demonstrate justice by examples.
- 5.17.9Carneades used the paradox to support Academic skepticism.
- 5.17.10He examines Carneades' claim.
- 5.17.11The truly just man would not be in such situations.
- 5.17.12The just man neither trades abroad nor makes war.
- 5.17.13The just man seeks no gain and will not even watch killing.
- 5.17.14Justice is not powerless to protect itself.
- 5.17.15Those who think only of this life misjudge justice.
- 5.17.16Without eternal reward, virtue would be folly.
- 5.17.17Justice obtains all things from God.
- 5.17.18Horace: innocence needs no weapons.
- 5.17.19God protects the just in danger.
- 5.17.20The just man will die rather than kill.
- 5.17.21Innocence kept even to death is perfect, not foolish.
- 5.17.22The Pythagorean friends who risked death are praised, not called fools.
- 5.17.23The tyrant admired and spared them.
- 5.17.24Dying for God is more glorious than dying for a friend.
- 5.17.25The fool, not knowing the good, always sins.
- 5.17.26Justice requires wisdom, so the just cannot be fools.
- 5.17.27Refusing to harm another is wise, not foolish.
- 5.17.28The question is settled by defining folly.
- 5.17.29Folly is erring through ignorance of the good.
- 5.17.30Animals harm others by nature, lacking wisdom.
- 5.17.31Humans, knowing good and evil, prefer to suffer rather than harm.
- 5.17.32Deceit in trade is cunning, not wisdom.
- 5.17.33Cunning is animal; wisdom is human.
- 5.17.34Wisdom seeks the good and corrects others' errors.
- 5.18.1Disbelief in life after death makes justice seem foolish.
- 5.18.2If death ends all, one should maximize this life.
- 5.18.3Since a better life follows, the wise despise this one.
- 5.18.4Laelius in Cicero misunderstands virtue's reward.
- 5.18.5Laelius contradicts himself.
- 5.18.6Laelius admits virtue may be robbed of its rewards.
- 5.18.7True virtue cannot be robbed of divine goods.
- 5.18.8Virtue's supposed consolations fail under punishment.
- 5.18.9Virtue will receive its reward from God.
- 5.18.10Virtue's goodness shows the soul is immortal.
- 5.18.11God hid virtue under folly so that the narrow path leads to immortality.
- 5.18.12Refusing a pinch of incense seems as foolish as sparing another at one's own cost.
- 5.18.13Worshipping any but the Creator is a great crime.
- 5.18.14Deserting God, who is Lord and Father, is worse than a slave's or son's desertion.
- 5.18.15Human masters and fathers give little compared with God.
- 5.18.16Deserters of God face the eternal fire.
- 5.19.1Persecutors destroy their own souls and try to destroy others'.
- 5.19.2Idolaters follow demons they know nothing about.
- 5.19.3They appeal only to ancestral custom.
- 5.19.4They drag others into their error.
- 5.19.5Persecutors pretend to help those they persecute.
- 5.19.6They use torture, not argument.
- 5.19.7The torturers, not the victims, have evil minds.
- 5.19.8Let them refute Christians by argument, not force.
- 5.19.9Force fails, since the faith grows under oppression.
- 5.19.10Let pagan priests argue their case with divine testimony.
- 5.19.11Religion cannot be compelled; persuade with words, not blows.
- 5.19.12Christians persuade by teaching and proof.
- 5.19.13No one is kept unwillingly, yet truth holds all.
- 5.19.14Even Christian children would laugh at pagan arguments.
- 5.19.15Pagan books show their gods were mortals.
- 5.19.16Truth persuades even through the unlearned.
- 5.19.17Force and cruelty cannot serve truth.
- 5.19.18Pagans avoid teaching for fear of ridicule.
- 5.19.19Mysteries are kept secret to hide that they honor dead men.
- 5.19.20Christians know both sides; pagans defend public rites with good intent but in error.
- 5.19.21They rightly value religion but err in how to defend it.
- 5.19.22Religion is defended by dying, not killing.
- 5.19.23Nothing is so voluntary as religion.
- 5.19.24Faithfulness to death pleases God and strengthens religion.
- 5.19.25Faithfulness to God, the Commander of all, is rewarded even after death.
- 5.19.26Worship of God requires devotion from the heart.
- 5.19.27Pagan worship is external and leaves no mark on life.
- 5.19.28Such religions teach nothing for life.
- 5.19.29Pagan religion is mere ritual of the fingers.
- 5.19.30Christian worship is inward; pagan rites admit criminals praying for success.
- 5.19.31Criminals pray for success in crime.
- 5.19.32Christian worship demands a clean conscience before God who sees the heart.
- 5.19.33Washing the skin cannot purify the heart.
- 5.19.34The true washing is of the mind by virtue and faith.
- 5.20.1Pagans worship demons who are their enemies.
- 5.20.2Defending the gods by force shows distrust of their power.
- 5.20.3Cicero: God himself avenges impiety.
- 5.20.4A true God can avenge himself.
- 5.20.5Forced benefit is no benefit.
- 5.20.6Torture cannot be for the victims' good.
- 5.20.7Forced sacrifice is a curse, not worship.
- 5.20.8Gods who want forced worship deserve loathing.
- 5.20.9Christians compel no one, trusting God to avenge.
- 5.20.10Christians leave vengeance to God.
- 5.20.11Coercion shows pagan worship is evil.
- 5.20.12Egyptians and theater-goers insult the gods more than Christians do.
- 5.20.13Gods adored in temples are mocked in theaters.
- 5.20.14Philosophers who deny the gods are tolerated.
- 5.20.15Epicurean teaching is heard freely while Christians are punished.
- 5.21.1They hate Christians because truth breeds hatred.
- 5.21.2Persecutors do not know what drives them.
- 5.21.3Demons drive the persecutors.
- 5.21.4Demons are expelled by Christians in God's name.
- 5.21.5Exorcised demons confess and flee.
- 5.21.6Demons, hating exorcists, stir up persecution.
- 5.21.7Objection: why does God let his worshippers suffer?
- 5.21.8People judge religions by earthly prosperity.
- 5.21.9Man's nature lies in the mind, not the body.
- 5.21.10Bodily goods are as perishable as the body.
- 5.21.11The soul's goods, in virtue, are lasting.
- 5.22.1The just must shun the goods that make idolatry seem effective.
- 5.22.2Patience is a great virtue.
- 5.22.3Patience requires that the just suffer at the hands of the unjust.
- 5.22.4Without adversity there is no patience.
- 5.22.5The prosperous lack patience and innocence.
- 5.22.6Wealth and power are the rewards of injustice.
- 5.22.7The just man seeks neither others' goods nor power.
- 5.22.8He is content and shares with the needy.
- 5.22.9The just man is self-controlled and humble.
- 5.22.10The just are necessarily subject to the unjust.
- 5.22.11Seneca's On Providence explains why the good suffer.
- 5.22.12Seneca: God chastises the good whom he loves.
- 5.22.13Christians thank God for correcting them through suffering.
- 5.22.14God keeps his people from power so prosperity will not corrupt them as it did Israel.
- 5.22.15God grants peace to the obedient and correction to the disobedient.
- 5.22.16Oppression strengthens, restores, and tests believers.
- 5.22.17God raises up adversaries to test his soldiers.
- 5.22.18Persecution makes the church grow.
- 5.22.19Cruelty repels, and martyrs' courage attracts.
- 5.22.20Onlookers want to know what good is worth dying for.
- 5.22.21Martyrs' confession of the living God persuades bystanders.
- 5.22.22Curiosity spreads knowledge of the faith.
- 5.22.23Divine vengeance and exorcisms bring converts.
- 5.22.24Together these win many for God.
- 5.23.1Persecutors will not escape though God permits them.
- 5.23.2Abusers of power will be punished by God.
- 5.23.3God will avenge his people and judge each by his deeds.
- 5.23.4The persecuting wolves will receive their due.
- 5.23.5Christians should be punished only for justice.
- 6.1.1Book 6 opens: the defense of truth is completed with God's help.
- 6.1.2Man was made to worship God with a pure mind.
- 6.1.3The truth shines clearest in true worship.
- 6.1.4God desires only innocence.
- 6.1.5Pagans think blood and wine make them religious.
- 6.1.6They offer what pleases themselves, not knowing God needs nothing.
- 6.1.7Turning from heaven, they let the body rule the soul.
- 6.1.8They seek wealth by any means for display and luxury.
- 6.1.9Slaves to pleasure, they rush toward death.
- 6.1.10Those who serve the body live in darkness.
- 6.1.11They know neither the true God nor true worship.
- 6.2.1Pagans treat God as hungry, thirsty, and in the dark.
- 6.2.2Knowing heavenly goods would show their offerings foolish.
- 6.2.3The giver of the sun needs no lamps.
- 6.2.4If the sun is so bright, how much brighter is God.
- 6.2.5Offering candles to the giver of light is senseless.
- 6.2.6God wants the light of the mind.
- 6.2.7Earthly gods need lamps because they belong to the dark earth.
- 6.2.8They attribute human needs to the gods.
- 6.2.9Earthly rites show the gods were mortal men.
- 6.2.10Pagan gods favor any criminal who sacrifices.
- 6.2.11Persius mocks buying the gods with offal.
- 6.2.12Persius saw that God wants a holy mind.
- 6.2.13True worship offers the mind as a spotless victim.
- 6.2.14This book will teach how to worship rightly.
- 6.2.15Cicero valued moral precepts above oratory.
- 6.2.16He will teach advanced moral precepts from God.
- 6.2.17Christian ethics completes the philosophers' precepts.
- 6.2.18He will skip what is common with philosophers.
- 6.3.1Human life follows one of two ways, to heaven or to hell.
- 6.3.2Philosophers say virtue's way is hard at first, then pleasant.
- 6.3.3The way of vice is pleasant at first, then ruinous.
- 6.3.4Virtue costs labor but yields lasting fruit; vice ends in misery.
- 6.3.5Not knowing the soul is immortal, philosophers judged by earthly rewards.
- 6.3.6Philosophers compare life to the letter Y.
- 6.3.7With a good teacher, a youth takes the better road.
- 6.3.8Without guidance he falls into idleness and ruin.
- 6.3.9The ways belong to this life; their ends to what follows death.
- 6.3.10The two ways lead to immortality or eternal punishment.
- 6.3.11He will explain the virtues and vices and their outcomes.
- 6.3.12Discussing good implies its opposite.
- 6.3.13Virtues and vices expel each other.
- 6.3.14Each way has an immortal guide: God and the devil.
- 6.3.15Philosophers offer only human teachers for the young.
- 6.3.16God guides people of every kind toward immortality.
- 6.3.17The good way faces the sunrise, the evil the sunset and darkness.
- 6.3.18He will describe both ways.
- 6.4.1The way of virtue leads to heaven, the left way to Tartarus.
- 6.4.2The left way belongs to the devil.
- 6.4.3The broad way looks delightful but holds vice.
- 6.4.4The broad way ends suddenly in an abyss.
- 6.4.5Those who live for present goods are condemned after death.
- 6.4.6The heavenly way is hard and steep.
- 6.4.7The narrow way holds virtues along with hardships.
- 6.4.8Riches hinder travel on the narrow way.
- 6.4.9The wicked prosper more easily because their road is downhill.
- 6.4.10The just are despised by those driven by greed and pleasure.
- 6.4.11Patient endurance wins the crown of immortality.
- 6.4.12God's way puts brief evils before eternal goods; the other the reverse.
- 6.4.13Earthly goods and evils are brief; spiritual ones eternal.
- 6.4.14Better brief evils and eternal goods than the reverse.
- 6.4.15In war one labors first to enjoy peace later.
- 6.4.16Choosing ease invites ruin.
- 6.4.17Life is a campaign against the adversary, with eternal rewards.
- 6.4.18No labor is too much for an imperishable prize.
- 6.4.19The one enemy attacks each person by suitable arts.
- 6.4.20The devil uses greed, anger, lust, and envy.
- 6.4.21Others he fills with ambition for office.
- 6.4.22Some aim at universal domination.
- 6.4.23He misleads the pious with false religion and the wise with philosophy.
- 6.4.24God has armed us with heavenly virtue against the devil.
- 6.5.1Philosophers kept the name of virtue but lost its substance.
- 6.5.2Lucilius summarizes the definitions of virtue.
- 6.5.3Lucilius' verses defining virtue.
- 6.5.4Cicero's On Duties followed these definitions.
- 6.5.5Lucilius' list reduces to knowing good and evil.
- 6.5.6Virtue lies in the will, not in knowledge.
- 6.5.7Knowing the way is useless without walking it.
- 6.5.8Sinners know they sin and hide it.
- 6.5.9Virtue is the right desire to do good.
- 6.5.10Knowledge without virtue deserves punishment.
- 6.5.11Virtue is doing good and avoiding evil.
- 6.5.12Horace defined virtue only negatively.
- 6.5.13Virtue restrains anger, greed, and lust.
- 6.5.14Restrained anger ends strife.
- 6.5.15Restrained greed ends robbery and war.
- 6.5.16Restrained lust preserves chastity.
- 6.5.17Calming the passions removes crime.
- 6.5.18Without knowing God one cannot avoid sin.
- 6.5.19Knowledge is knowing God; virtue is worshipping him.
- 6.6.1Philosophers did not know what good and evil are.
- 6.6.2Not knowing the highest good, they erred about lesser goods.
- 6.6.3God is the source of goods, the devil of evils.
- 6.6.4God's goods lead to immortality; the devil's evils to eternal punishment.
- 6.6.5Without knowing God and the devil, one cannot know good and evil.
- 6.6.6Philosophers' goods are earthly and die with the body.
- 6.6.7Their precepts aim at mortal goods.
- 6.6.8Seeking wealth is not virtue.
- 6.6.9Virtue seeks goods that neither man nor death can take.
- 6.6.10Pagans thought using wealth rightly meant thrift.
- 6.6.11Thrift is an earthly, not a true, virtue.
- 6.6.12Opposing the wicked and defending the good can be done by the wicked too.
- 6.6.13Some feign goodness to gain power.
- 6.6.14Once in power, the pretenders turn on the good.
- 6.6.15Victory depends on God and fortune, not virtue.
- 6.6.16The better side is often defeated.
- 6.6.17Pompey defended the good and was killed.
- 6.6.18Virtue cannot depend on chance.
- 6.6.19Patriotic gain comes at others' expense and overthrows virtue.
- 6.6.20War destroys justice and human fellowship.
- 6.6.21Cicero: favoring citizens over foreigners destroys justice.
- 6.6.22Those who harm and kill for country cannot be just.
- 6.6.23Conquerors are praised as virtuous, even by philosophers.
- 6.6.24Philosophers' military ethics serve civil custom, not justice.
- 6.6.25Cicero admitted pagans had only a shadow of justice.
- 6.6.26Cicero admitted no one was truly wise.
- 6.6.27Even Cato, Laelius, and the Seven Sages only resembled the wise.
- 6.6.28Only those taught by God know true virtue.
- 6.7.1The false way has many paths.
- 6.7.2The way of folly imitates wisdom and justice.
- 6.7.3The devil deceives with likenesses of truth; God hides his way under hardship.
- 6.7.4The way of death is manifold.
- 6.7.5The devil leads different people by different paths.
- 6.7.6Even philosophers are led down steep paths.
- 6.7.7All side paths rejoin the road to death.
- 6.7.8Idolatry joins all these paths in death.
- 6.7.9God's way is simple, narrow, and steep.
- 6.8.1Philosophers seek the way on earth, where it is not.
- 6.8.2They wander without a guide.
- 6.8.3Like ships, we must steer by heaven's light.
- 6.8.4Look to heaven, follow God, and live for eternity.
- 6.8.5God's light guides to the harbor of virtue.
- 6.8.6Cicero described God's law almost divinely.
- 6.8.7Cicero: true law is right reason, eternal and universal.
- 6.8.8This law cannot be amended or repealed.
- 6.8.9One eternal law, given by God, binds all nations.
- 6.8.10Cicero spoke truth as if inspired.
- 6.8.11Cicero did not know the law's precepts.
- 6.8.12Christians, who have God's law, must teach its precepts.
- 6.9.1The first commandment is to know and worship God alone.
- 6.9.2Without God, people take national law, based on expediency, for justice.
- 6.9.3Human laws vary with national interest.
- 6.9.4Rome won its empire by lawful injustice.
- 6.9.5Keeping the law from fear is not justice.
- 6.9.6Obeying human laws does not make one just.
- 6.9.7Civil law differs from God's uniform justice.
- 6.9.8Good works without knowledge of God are empty.
- 6.9.9Justice without God is a headless body.
- 6.9.10Knowing God without virtue is a head without a body.
- 6.9.11Knowledge of God is the head, virtues the body.
- 6.9.12One who knows God but sins still lives, for God forgives.
- 6.9.13Without God, philosophers are blind, deaf, and dumb.
- 6.9.14Knowing God, one begins to see, hear, and speak.
- 6.9.15True sight, hearing, and speech concern God.
- 6.9.16Virtues without God belong to the way of darkness.
- 6.9.17Virtue without hope is wretched and foolish.
- 6.9.18Without immortality, virtue is vanity.
- 6.9.19Virtue sought for its own sake is mere suffering.
- 6.9.20If souls are mortal, virtue makes no sense.
- 6.9.21Without hope, choosing hardship is insane.
- 6.9.22Virtue needs a greater hope to be a good.
- 6.9.23Only God gives the eternal life that makes virtue worthwhile.
- 6.9.24All hope rests on knowing and worshipping God.
- 6.10.1What is given to man is given to God, whose image he is.
- 6.10.2Justice joins us to God (religion) and to man (mercy).
- 6.10.3God gave frail man compassion so that people would help one another.
- 6.10.4All descend from one man, so hating anyone is a crime.
- 6.10.5God commands us to end enmities.
- 6.10.6We are brothers in soul through one God.
- 6.10.7Lucretius: all share one heavenly father.
- 6.10.8Harming others is bestial; God teaches only good.
- 6.10.9Doing good means helping the oppressed and feeding the hungry.
- 6.10.10We must help others as we would be helped.
- 6.10.11Philosophers (Stoics) removed mercy.
- 6.10.12Stoic rigor cuts them off from human fellowship.
- 6.10.13Some philosophers say early humans lived wild and were prey to beasts.
- 6.10.14Fear drove them together and speech developed.
- 6.10.15They built towns for protection.
- 6.10.16These theories are absurd.
- 6.10.17Animals know by nature what these men deny to humans.
- 6.10.18Others say humans gathered from a natural desire for society.
- 6.10.19Humanity came from one man made by God, not from the earth.
- 6.10.20Humans always had speech.
- 6.10.21Even granting their theories, they can be refuted.
- 6.10.22If society is for mutual help, we must help the needy.
- 6.10.23Breaking the compact of mutual help is wicked.
- 6.10.24Whoever refuses help forfeits help.
- 6.10.25Humans cannot live without mutual help.
- 6.10.26If society rests on humanity, we must recognize one another.
- 6.10.27Civilized people owe even more to one another.
- 6.11.1Humanity means loving others as fellow humans.
- 6.11.2Harming others is against nature; helping them accords with it.
- 6.11.3Failing to help forfeits the name of human.
- 6.11.4Even Stoics would help a man attacked by a beast.
- 6.11.5All agree one must save the endangered.
- 6.11.6Hunger and cold call for help as much as accidents.
- 6.11.7They help only those who can repay.
- 6.11.8Plautus said giving to beggars is waste.
- 6.11.9Cicero warned that generosity drains itself.
- 6.11.10Cicero put property above justice.
- 6.11.11Cicero allowed giving to "suitable" people.
- 6.11.12Cicero measured duty by advantage.
- 6.11.13True justice gives to those who cannot repay.
- 6.11.14Cicero himself said generosity seeks no profit.
- 6.11.15Cicero's rule would abandon the destitute.
- 6.11.16Give most to those from whom you expect nothing.
- 6.11.17Do not choose whom to help; everyone who asks is human.
- 6.11.18Give to the blind, lame, and destitute, whom God keeps alive.
- 6.11.19Failing to save the dying is killing.
- 6.11.20Fearing loss, the ungenerous lose what they give.
- 6.11.21Misers to the poor squander fortunes elsewhere.
- 6.11.22Spending fortunes on public shows is madness.
- 6.11.23Public shows win only brief favor or even offense.
- 6.11.24Public buildings for fame are also perishable.
- 6.11.25Cicero: only justice and kindness last.
- 6.11.26True beneficence meets real need.
- 6.11.27Gifts to the non-needy are not justice.
- 6.11.28True generosity feeds the needy.
- 6.12.1Wealth's true fruit is using it for others and for justice.
- 6.12.2Mercy must expect reward from God alone.
- 6.12.3Invite those who cannot repay.
- 6.12.4Friendship is allowed, but the just work is for God.
- 6.12.5Cicero praised hospitality only to the illustrious.
- 6.12.6The just man's home should be open to the lowly.
- 6.12.7A repaid benefit ceases to be a benefit.
- 6.12.8Only gifts to those who cannot repay remain benefits.
- 6.12.9Cicero's hospitality aimed at gaining influence.
- 6.12.10Cicero contradicts himself.
- 6.12.11Cicero condemned pretense as crafty.
- 6.12.12Hospitality for influence is pretense.
- 6.12.13Cicero erred from ignorance of true law.
- 6.12.14Cicero admitted he taught only a shadow of justice.
- 6.12.15Cicero praised ransoming captives.
- 6.12.16Feeding the poor and ransoming captives is the work of the just.
- 6.12.17Doing good to kin earns little praise.
- 6.12.18Doing good to strangers is true justice.
- 6.12.19Ransoming should not even be compared with shows.
- 6.12.20Public shows are not true gifts.
- 6.12.21Protecting orphans and widows is a great work of justice.
- 6.12.22Christians know why the defenseless must be protected.
- 6.12.23Care for widows and orphans frees believers to face martyrdom.
- 6.12.24Caring for the sick is a living sacrifice to God.
- 6.12.25Burying strangers and the poor is the last duty of piety.
- 6.12.26Philosophers ignored burial because it brought no advantage.
- 6.12.27Some philosophers held burial unnecessary.
- 6.12.28They only console those left unburied.
- 6.12.29Burial must be done because it is humane.
- 6.12.30Christians bury the unknown dead as God's image.
- 6.12.31Burying strangers is a sacrifice to God.
- 6.12.32Objection: such giving would impoverish me.
- 6.12.33Poverty, praised by philosophers, is a harbor from care.
- 6.12.34Wealth exposes its owner to danger.
- 6.12.35Entrust wealth to God, where no thief or rust can reach it.
- 6.12.36Throw off wealth to run freely to God.
- 6.12.37These precepts are for the whole church, united as one.
- 6.12.38Do your share, in proportion to your wealth.
- 6.12.39Redirect spending on games to ransom, food, and burial.
- 6.12.40Turn wasteful spending into gifts to God.
- 6.12.41God forgives the merciful and judges the unmerciful by their own measure.
- 6.13.1Almsgiving removes sins but is no license to sin.
- 6.13.2Repentance means resolving to sin no more.
- 6.13.3Even the purified should keep giving.
- 6.13.4The justified should do good for the glory of virtue.
- 6.13.5Sin affects deeds, words, and thoughts.
- 6.13.6Three steps of virtue.
- 6.13.7The third step brings likeness to God.
- 6.13.8Pure thought is almost beyond human power.
- 6.13.9Even the just sin by word and thought.
- 6.13.10Constant giving wipes out sins of the flesh.
- 6.13.11Riches placed in justice are the only true wealth.
- 6.13.12Put on the garment of justice.
- 6.13.13Adorn God's living images, the poor, rather than idols.
- 6.13.14God rewards good done to his images.
- 6.14.1Philosophers treated mercy, a chief human good, as a vice.
- 6.14.2He turns to the Stoic view of the passions.
- 6.14.3Virtues become vices when they exceed their limits.
- 6.14.4Courage, frankness, and severity each have limits.
- 6.14.5Philosophers say people sin from ignorance.
- 6.14.6Their virtues serve only this temporary life.
- 6.14.7The Stoics would remove the four passions.
- 6.14.8Stoics call the passions diseases born of false opinion.
- 6.14.9They think the wise man can be free of all passion.
- 6.14.10The Stoic aim is arrogant and against nature.
- 6.15.1The passions are natural.
- 6.15.2The Peripatetics say the passions are natural and should be moderated.
- 6.15.3Removing the passions would mutilate human nature.
- 6.15.4Passions are rooted in the body's organs.
- 6.15.5Without passions there is no virtue to restrain them.
- 6.15.6Virtue needs something to restrain.
- 6.15.7No virtue without vice, as no victory without an enemy.
- 6.15.8Passions are like fertile soil that needs cultivation.
- 6.15.9God implanted passions so that virtue could grow.
- 6.15.10The Stoics merely renamed the passions.
- 6.15.11They tried to abolish grief entirely.
- 6.15.12Grief at great calamities is unavoidable.
- 6.15.13Their scheme is incomplete.
- 6.15.14They lacked only a word, so they removed grief altogether.
- 6.15.15The renamed passions hardly differ from the originals.
- 6.15.16The Stoics end up moderating, not removing, the passions.
- 6.15.17Stoics end where Peripatetics begin.
- 6.16.1Even moderate vices must be avoided.
- 6.16.2Passions become vices or virtues by their use.
- 6.16.3The direction of a passion matters, not its degree.
- 6.16.4Some joy is wrong even in small measure, some right in great.
- 6.16.5Joy at an enemy's harm versus joy at liberation.
- 6.16.6The object determines whether a passion is right.
- 6.16.7Passions should be directed to proper objects and times.
- 6.16.8Passions directed rightly are good.
- 6.16.9Sexual desire within marriage is blameless; outside it, a grave vice.
- 6.16.10The vice lies in the disposition, not in feeling itself.
- 6.16.11Passions should be steered onto the right road.
- 6.17.1He will show that some supposed vices are great virtues.
- 6.17.2Philosophers count fear a great vice.
- 6.17.3Can fear be courage?
- 6.17.4He will show that the greatest fear is the greatest virtue.
- 6.17.5Whoever fears God fears nothing else.
- 6.17.6The martyrs' sufferings prove it.
- 6.17.7Martyrs endured horrific tortures without a groan.
- 6.17.8Patience conquered cruelty.
- 6.17.9The fear of God removes all other fears.
- 6.17.10Desire for heavenly things is a virtue.
- 6.17.11Desire for God persists where mere will fails.
- 6.17.12The passions should be directed rightly.
- 6.17.13The passions are like a chariot that needs the right road.
- 6.17.14Fear and desire aimed at God become virtues.
- 6.17.15Thrift that serves possession is no virtue.
- 6.17.16Thrift is not a virtue when mercy requires spending.
- 6.17.17Frugality springs from love of possessions.
- 6.17.18Philosophers distinguish generous from prodigal.
- 6.17.19Giving to the poor is not prodigality.
- 6.17.20Spending to save lives is virtue; stinginess is vice.
- 6.17.21Stoics would reduce man to numbness.
- 6.17.22A motionless soul is useless, like stagnant water.
- 6.17.23Immobility of soul is death.
- 6.17.24Constancy means obeying God rather than men, not resisting injury.
- 6.17.25Despising death means martyrdom, not suicide.
- 6.17.26True constancy lets nothing turn us from God.
- 6.17.27Cicero: no one who fears death can be just.
- 6.17.28Seneca praises the man who asks how well, not what, he suffers.
- 6.17.29Only the worshipper of God knows true virtue.
- 6.18.1Leaving the philosophers behind.
- 6.18.2Bear one another's burdens and seek no glory.
- 6.18.3Boasting of good works forfeits the heavenly reward.
- 6.18.4Never lie to deceive or harm.
- 6.18.5There is no place for lying on the way of justice.
- 6.18.6The Christian lies to no one, friend or foe.
- 6.18.7Lend without interest.
- 6.18.8Taking interest preys on need.
- 6.18.9An interest-free loan is a good work.
- 6.18.10Take no gifts from the poor; answer curses with blessing.
- 6.18.11Bear wrongs mildly and leave vengeance to God.
- 6.18.12Do not avenge wrongs; God the Judge sees all.
- 6.18.13The world despises the forbearing and honors the vengeful.
- 6.18.14The just man prefers contempt to wrongdoing.
- 6.18.15Cicero: the good man harms no one unless provoked.
- 6.18.16Cicero's exception spoils his definition.
- 6.18.17Returning injury is as bad as inflicting it.
- 6.18.18Impatience answering wickedness breeds strife.
- 6.18.19Patience quenches wickedness; impatience inflames it.
- 6.18.20Universal patience would end crime.
- 6.18.21Anger unrestrained strips one of humanity.
- 6.18.22Even beasts and fools retaliate.
- 6.18.23Patience distinguishes the wise from the foolish.
- 6.18.24Cicero mistook winning for virtue.
- 6.18.25Retaliation imitates the wrongdoer.
- 6.18.26Cicero's "dog-like" eloquence taught biting back.
- 6.18.27Cicero's own death shows the cost of retaliation.
- 6.18.28Had Cicero been patient, his Philippics would not have cost his life.
- 6.18.29The wise remove the quarrel, not the adversary.
- 6.18.30Patience is the highest virtue, proved by insults.
- 6.18.31Retaliation is defeat; self-control is mastery.
- 6.18.32Patience opposes all vices and restores the soul.
- 6.18.33Do not let the sun set on anger.
- 6.18.34Cicero himself praised Caesar for forgetting injuries.
- 6.18.35Christians, candidates for immortality, should forgive all the more.
- 6.19.1The Peripatetics defend the passions as providential.
- 6.19.2They call anger the whetstone of courage.
- 6.19.3Anger was not given for killing.
- 6.19.4Anger, greed, and lust are the three Furies.
- 6.19.5God set limits to each passion.
- 6.19.6Desire is for necessities, lust for offspring, anger for disciplining children.
- 6.19.7Anger against equals is impious and ruinous.
- 6.19.8God forbids anger at equals but commands correcting children.
- 6.19.9The ignorant misuse the passions.
- 6.19.10Misused passions produce war, crime, and sexual sin.
- 6.19.11Keeping the passions within limits makes one just.
- 6.20.1The pleasures of the five senses must be controlled.
- 6.20.2Animals use their senses only for natural needs.
- 6.20.3Man's unlimited pleasure is a field for virtue's fight.
- 6.20.4Cicero: pleasure is the enemy of the mind.
- 6.20.5God gave virtue to master pleasure.
- 6.20.6Philosophers rejected the pleasure of the eyes.
- 6.20.7Better to gaze at the heavens than at art.
- 6.20.8Yet philosophers attend public shows.
- 6.20.9Christians must shun public spectacles.
- 6.20.10Watching executions for pleasure defiles the conscience.
- 6.20.11Gladiatorial "games" are bloodshed.
- 6.20.12Spectators demand death and mutilation.
- 6.20.13Crowds thirst for quick killing.
- 6.20.14The arena destroys humanity.
- 6.20.15God's prohibition of killing extends to lawful killing.
- 6.20.16The just man may not be a soldier or bring capital charges.
- 6.20.17Killing a human being is always wrong.
- 6.20.18Infanticide is the greatest impiety.
- 6.20.19Parents deny their infants the light they did not give.
- 6.20.20Exposure of infants is also condemned.
- 6.20.21Exposure is crueler than strangling.
- 6.20.22Exposed children end in slavery or prostitution.
- 6.20.23Exposure risks unwitting incest, as with Oedipus.
- 6.20.24Poverty is no excuse for killing children.
- 6.20.25Those too poor for children should abstain from intercourse.
- 6.20.26One may not even watch a killing.
- 6.20.27The theater corrupts through eloquent depictions of vice.
- 6.20.28Tragedy displays royal crimes.
- 6.20.29Actors' gestures incite lust.
- 6.20.30Mimes teach adultery.
- 6.20.31Spectators carry the vices home.
- 6.20.32Chariot races incite frenzy.
- 6.20.33All spectacles must be avoided.
- 6.20.34The games are pagan religious festivals.
- 6.20.35The games were dedicated to gods.
- 6.20.36Attending the games is idolatry.
- 6.21.1Pleasure of the ears is also dangerous.
- 6.21.2Private or public, stage luxury is the same.
- 6.21.3Music without words is easily resisted.
- 6.21.4Literary people are hindered by plain Christian teaching.
- 6.21.5They scorn Scripture's plain style.
- 6.21.6God made Scripture plain so all could understand.
- 6.21.7Prefer the true, eternal, and useful.
- 6.21.8Use sight and hearing for good.
- 6.21.9Sing God's praises.
- 6.21.10True pleasure accompanies virtue and lasts.
- 6.21.11Pleasure for its own sake leads to death.
- 6.21.12Choosing the temporal forfeits the eternal.
- 6.22.1Gluttony and perfumes are unworthy of the wise.
- 6.22.2Pleasures exist so that virtue may overcome them.
- 6.22.3Pleasures are the devil's weapons.
- 6.22.4Deceptive goods lead to true evil.
- 6.22.5Avoid pleasures as snares.
- 6.23.1He turns to the pleasure of touch, especially lust.
- 6.23.2God gave the two sexes desire for union so that kinds would multiply.
- 6.23.3Desire is stronger in man, so that restraint may be virtuous.
- 6.23.4The devil twists sexual desire toward evil.
- 6.23.5He prompts desire for others' spouses.
- 6.23.6He inflames desire until the person is trapped.
- 6.23.7The devil established brothels.
- 6.23.8He brought in homosexual acts against nature and God's ordinance.
- 6.23.9The abuse of children is condemned.
- 6.23.10Such acts are impious, yet treated as trivial by pagans.
- 6.23.11He condemns a still more shameful practice.
- 6.23.12We must arm ourselves against lust.
- 6.23.13Whoever cannot restrain desire should keep it within marriage.
- 6.23.14Pleasure may be enjoyed lawfully in marriage.
- 6.23.15Where marriage is impossible, continence; God forbids adultery and prostitution.
- 6.23.16Sexual sin defiles the mind, which is cleansed only slowly.
- 6.23.17Sexual union was given for procreation.
- 6.23.18The genitals are for procreation, as the name shows.
- 6.23.19Disciples of God must master themselves.
- 6.23.20Serving lust enslaves the soul to death.
- 6.23.21Cultivate modesty and chastity beyond what law requires.
- 6.23.22Habit in virtue makes vice shameful.
- 6.23.23A married man may have no other woman, slave or free.
- 6.23.24Unlike Roman law, God's law does not excuse the husband.
- 6.23.25God's law binds husband and wife equally; either is an adulterer if unfaithful.
- 6.23.26Woman remains receptive during pregnancy so men will not seek others.
- 6.23.27Chastity is a virtue only where sin is possible.
- 6.23.28Human chastity is praiseworthy because it is chosen.
- 6.23.29Husband and wife owe equal fidelity; a husband's example teaches his wife.
- 6.23.30Unfaithful wives excuse themselves by their husbands' infidelity.
- 6.23.31A husband's adultery provokes his wife's.
- 6.23.32Spouses should bear the yoke together, following the golden rule.
- 6.23.33Marrying a divorced woman, or divorcing a wife (except for adultery) to marry another, is adultery.
- 6.23.34Even the thought of adultery must be avoided.
- 6.23.35Sin lies in the mind.
- 6.23.36Chastity requires a pure mind, not only a pure body.
- 6.23.37Many have kept perpetual virginity.
- 6.23.38Virginity is permitted, not commanded, and greatly rewarded.
- 6.23.39Continence is the summit of the virtues.
- 6.23.40Knowing God makes the hard way easy.
- 6.24.1The fallen can be restored through repentance.
- 6.24.2Cicero doubted that repentance could correct a life; it can.
- 6.24.3As parents forgive repentant children, so God forgives.
- 6.24.4God promises to forgive the repentant.
- 6.24.5Later justice wipes out earlier sins, and later wickedness earlier good.
- 6.24.6Repentance (metanoia) is coming to one's senses.
- 6.24.7Animals learn caution from traps.
- 6.24.8Repentance makes one careful.
- 6.24.9God gave repentance as a harbor for frail humanity.
- 6.24.10Returning is hard, but a reformed life earns pardon.
- 6.24.11Nothing is hidden from God.
- 6.24.12Seneca: we live for a great divinity to whom we lie open.
- 6.24.13Seneca rightly saw God's greatness and life's purpose.
- 6.24.14Seneca could have become a true worshipper.
- 6.24.15God sees within us; there is no room for pretense.
- 6.24.16Seneca: an inner guardian always accompanies us.
- 6.24.17Conscience is a witness one cannot escape.
- 6.24.18Cicero: God, through the mind, is our witness.
- 6.24.19The good man thinks nothing he would not proclaim.
- 6.24.20Live as under God's eye, who will judge.
- 6.24.21Confess our wounds to Christ, the only healer.
- 6.24.22Christ heals the soul's passions.
- 6.24.23Seek the soul's healing quickly.
- 6.24.24Bodily health is not true health.
- 6.24.25The healthy soul is humble, merciful, and at peace.
- 6.24.26A true worshipper's sacrifices are virtues.
- 6.24.27God desires the living sacrifice of a good life.
- 6.24.28The heart's offerings, not rites, are needed.
- 6.24.29The heart is God's altar; virtues are its offerings.
- 6.24.30He has given only the chief precepts.
- 6.24.31The rest is found in Scripture itself.
- 6.25.1Plato: ivory is no pure gift; nothing perishable is.
- 6.25.2No bodily gift befits an incorporeal God.
- 6.25.3Seneca: God is worshipped with a pure mind, in the heart.
- 6.25.4Valuables do not please God.
- 6.25.5Two offerings: a lasting gift and a sacrifice.
- 6.25.6Pagans offer material gifts and burnt victims.
- 6.25.7The gift is a pure soul; the sacrifice is praise.
- 6.25.8The just will serve God forever.
- 6.25.9Cicero: we are born for justice.
- 6.25.10Hermes: the one worship of God is not to be evil.
- 6.25.11Hermes: God needs no incense; his sacrifice is thanksgiving.
- 6.25.12The highest worship is humble praise from a just man.
- 6.25.13Always ask God's mercy and forgiveness.
- 6.25.14Give thanks in all things and pray everywhere.
- 6.25.15Each person is God's temple.
- 6.25.16Such service is perfect justice.
- 7.1.1Book 7 opens: the building is nearly complete.
- 7.1.2The roof remains to be added.
- 7.1.3Everything depends on the reward of eternal happiness.
- 7.1.4This book treats the heavenly reward.
- 7.1.5He will argue from Scripture and reason.
- 7.1.6Plato was wrong that the world will last forever.
- 7.1.7Aristotle said the world is eternal.
- 7.1.8A world with mortal parts is mortal.
- 7.1.9Whatever is visible is corporeal and dissoluble.
- 7.1.10Epicurus rightly said the world will end, but not why.
- 7.1.11God revealed what philosophers only faintly sensed.
- 7.1.12Vicious minds will reject or ignore this teaching.
- 7.1.13The greedy prefer to think the faith false.
- 7.1.14The lustful reject precepts of self-control.
- 7.1.15The ambitious reject a teaching of humility.
- 7.1.16The sound-minded will gladly accept the truth.
- 7.1.17Poverty makes people capable of virtue.
- 7.1.18The always-prosperous cannot bear evils.
- 7.1.19The poor believe more easily than the rich.
- 7.1.20The narrow way requires traveling light.
- 7.1.21The rich walk the broad way of death.
- 7.1.22Opposing God's precepts shows enmity to justice.
- 7.1.23The last theme is God's judgment at Christ's return.
- 7.1.24Christ's second coming, which the Jews await in vain.
- 7.1.25Those who crucified Christ will face his judgment.
- 7.1.26A separate work against the Jews is promised.
- 7.2.1This unjust age will end, and a golden age will follow under God's reign.
- 7.2.2Philosophers erred by not grasping the world's plan.
- 7.2.3Without God's teaching philosophers stuck in the mud.
- 7.2.4Man cannot fully understand God's works.
- 7.2.5Divine wisdom surpasses human as God's works surpass ours.
- 7.2.6God's wisdom is perfect.
- 7.2.7Human wisdom is subject to error.
- 7.2.8Truth is known only to God.
- 7.2.9Truth comes by learning from God.
- 7.2.10Socrates, via Cicero: only the gods know which is better.
- 7.2.11Human philosophies lack divine foundation.
- 7.3.1Stoics divide nature into active and passive parts.
- 7.3.2The potter is not the clay.
- 7.3.3Stoics confuse God with the world.
- 7.3.4Stoics contradict themselves about God and the world.
- 7.3.5Virgil's world-soul.
- 7.3.6God rules the world as a master rules a house.
- 7.3.7A world-body would make God insensible and mortal.
- 7.3.8Natural disasters show the world's parts are mortal.
- 7.3.9Human works would wound a God identified with the world.
- 7.3.10The Stoic view is absurd.
- 7.3.11God's spirit pervades all without being mixed with matter.
- 7.3.12Plato rightly said God made the world, but not why.
- 7.3.13Lucretius denies the world was made for humans.
- 7.3.14Christians alone can explain the purpose of creation.
- 7.3.15Philosophers could not defend their true premises.
- 7.3.16A world made for mortals must be mortal.
- 7.3.17Only the intangible is eternal.
- 7.3.18Without man as its purpose, creation is pointless.
- 7.3.19Even so, God would care for man, lord of creation.
- 7.3.20An eternal world would have no rational plan.
- 7.3.21Every work requires prior planning.
- 7.3.22The world was made and will be dissolved.
- 7.3.23Atomists said the world arose by chance.
- 7.3.24Atomism reduces the world to a meaningless dream.
- 7.3.25The world's order shows providential design.
- 7.3.26Denying providence is madness.
- 7.4.1Providence created man and animals.
- 7.4.2The world was made for man.
- 7.4.3Hermes knew man was made in God's likeness.
- 7.4.4Everything is made for a purpose.
- 7.4.5A house is for living in, a ship for sailing.
- 7.4.6All things are made for use.
- 7.4.7The insensible world was not made for itself.
- 7.4.8God did not make the world for himself.
- 7.4.9The world was made for living beings.
- 7.4.10Animals were made for man.
- 7.4.11Cicero asks why God made harmful creatures.
- 7.4.12Man, made of opposites, faces both goods and evils.
- 7.4.13Man has reason in place of natural armor.
- 7.4.14Without evils, wisdom would be unnecessary.
- 7.4.15Reason exists to distinguish good from evil.
- 7.4.16God made all things for man and set him over them.
- 7.4.17Asclepiades: providence placed man nearest itself.
- 7.4.18Only man appreciates sun, sky, earth, and sea.
- 7.4.19God made all things for man's use.
- 7.5.1Why God made man.
- 7.5.2Not knowing man's purpose left philosophy vulnerable to skepticism.
- 7.5.3God made man for himself.
- 7.5.4God made man to understand his works and worship him.
- 7.5.5Understanding God's works is worship.
- 7.5.6Man's upright form shows he was made for God.
- 7.5.7Objection: why is God's beloved creature mortal and suffering?
- 7.5.8He will explain God's plan more fully.
- 7.5.9God set souls in bodies between good and evil so they would earn immortality.
- 7.5.10God first made a dwelling for embodied souls.
- 7.5.11God made heaven and earth.
- 7.5.12God set lights in heaven and gave the earth fertility.
- 7.5.13God formed man from earth, clothing spirit in body.
- 7.5.14Human reproduction renews the mortal race.
- 7.5.15Mortality allows many souls and the testing of virtue.
- 7.5.16Man has two lives, temporal and eternal.
- 7.5.17Eternal life is gained by virtue, not nature.
- 7.5.18This life is the testing ground for eternal life.
- 7.5.19The highest good lies in spiritual life.
- 7.5.20Immortality is the reward of virtue, not a natural endowment.
- 7.5.21Infants crawl before they stand, a sign of the two lives.
- 7.5.22Baptism begins the immortal life.
- 7.5.23Soul and body have opposite goods.
- 7.5.24The just suffer; the unjust prosper in earthly goods.
- 7.5.25One must choose the life of the soul over the body.
- 7.5.26Good now, evil forever; or evil now, good forever.
- 7.5.27God rewards piety with eternal blessedness.
- 7.6.1The whole plan: world, birth, knowledge, worship, immortality, service.
- 7.6.2Lovers of pleasure are strangers to this mystery.
- 7.6.3Without providence and afterlife, all is vain.
- 7.6.4Nature's labor would be pointless.
- 7.6.5Idolatry and mortalism have no reason.
- 7.6.6The gods cannot need offerings.
- 7.6.7Pagan religion answers none of life's questions.
- 7.6.8What would gods do with souls?
- 7.6.9Without the true plan all reason collapses.
- 7.7.1Philosophers had fragments but not the whole.
- 7.7.2Every school saw part of the truth.
- 7.7.3Contentiousness made them lose the truth.
- 7.7.4Gathered together, the scattered truths agree with Christianity.
- 7.7.5Truth shines by its own light.
- 7.7.6Sectarian philosophers attack everything indiscriminately.
- 7.7.7Plato said God made the world.
- 7.7.8Prophets and the Sibyl agree that God made the world.
- 7.7.9Scripture agrees with the Stoics that the world was made for man.
- 7.7.10Not knowing man's purpose, Democritus reduced life to nothing.
- 7.7.11Ariston rightly said man is born for virtue; Aristippus erred.
- 7.7.12Pherecydes and Plato taught the soul's immortality.
- 7.7.13Zeno taught separate abodes after death; Epicurus denied them.
- 7.7.14Philosophers touched all truths but could not unite them.
- 7.8.1Immortality is the highest good.
- 7.8.2Plato's arguments for immortality are incomplete.
- 7.8.3Christians know by divine tradition.
- 7.8.4Plato's argument from self-motion.
- 7.8.5Plato: the mind's powers show it is divine.
- 7.8.6The subtle soul returns to heaven when freed from the body.
- 7.8.7Pythagoras and Pherecydes held the same.
- 7.8.8Opponents of immortality had equal authority.
- 7.8.9Cicero confessed he did not know.
- 7.8.10God has revealed the truth to Christians.
- 7.9.1New arguments for the soul's eternity.
- 7.9.2Invisible things like voice and wind show God can be unseen yet real.
- 7.9.3Powerful things are perceived without being seen.
- 7.9.4God is seen with the mind through his works.
- 7.9.5Atheists are like beasts.
- 7.9.6Seeing the good suffer, they denied providence.
- 7.9.7An unseen soul need not perish.
- 7.9.8Objection: how can the soul sense without the body?
- 7.9.9If gods live without bodies, so can souls.
- 7.9.10Religion, unique to man, shows the soul is eternal.
- 7.9.11Man's upright form looks to God (theoptia).
- 7.9.12Seeking the eternal God, the soul is eternal.
- 7.9.13Man alone uses fire, the heavenly element.
- 7.9.14Fire, source of light and life, points to immortality.
- 7.9.15Virtue harms this life, so it must aim beyond it.
- 7.9.16Without afterlife, virtue would be foolish.
- 7.9.17Choosing suffering without reward is senseless.
- 7.9.18Virtue must aim at eternity.
- 7.10.1Vices too point to immortality.
- 7.10.2Vices are temporary.
- 7.10.3Virtue is constant.
- 7.10.4Virtue must keep perpetual watch.
- 7.10.5Perpetual virtue implies a perpetual soul.
- 7.10.6Virtue's reward is everlasting, unlike vice's.
- 7.10.7Virtue's reward lies in the future.
- 7.10.8Virtue's reward comes after death.
- 7.10.9Cicero: death brings the highest good or no evil.
- 7.10.10The wicked suffer the eternal second death.
- 7.10.11Two lives and two deaths.
- 7.11.1When bodily death ends, souls rise to everlasting life.
- 7.11.2The soul's death is eternal punishment.
- 7.11.3Those happy now will be wretched forever.
- 7.11.4Those who suffer for justice will be happy forever.
- 7.11.5Bodily works perish.
- 7.11.6The soul's lasting works show it is immortal.
- 7.11.7The soul desires eternal things.
- 7.11.8The soul can act without the body, so it survives.
- 7.11.9The invisible and intangible is eternal.
- 7.11.10The unseen soul is immortal.
- 7.12.1Lucretius: the soul, born with the body, dies with it.
- 7.12.2Body and soul differ in nature; the soul is from heaven.
- 7.12.3The intangible soul cannot be destroyed by blows.
- 7.12.4At death body returns to earth and soul endures.
- 7.12.5Lucretius unwittingly admitted the soul returns to heaven.
- 7.12.6The body outlasts the soul's departure.
- 7.12.7If they perished together, both would vanish at once.
- 7.12.8The soul, with an eternal origin, endures.
- 7.12.9Soul and mind differ.
- 7.12.10The soul remains constant through life.
- 7.12.11The embodied soul lacks innate knowledge.
- 7.12.12Decline in old age belongs to the body, not the soul.
- 7.12.13Memory fails because the body's dwelling decays.
- 7.12.14Lucretius: the soul suffers and so is mortal.
- 7.12.15Virtue defends the soul; pleasure makes it liable to death.
- 7.12.16The soul's death is eternal torment, not annihilation.
- 7.12.17Lucretius: the soul sickens and recovers.
- 7.12.18Forgetfulness in illness affects the mind, not the soul.
- 7.12.19Separated from the body, the soul is free of frailty.
- 7.12.20Lucretius: the soul is part of the body like an eye.
- 7.12.21The soul is in the body, not part of it.
- 7.12.22Gradual dying does not prove the soul mortal.
- 7.12.23Coldness in the limbs has a physical cause.
- 7.12.24The body loses sensation when the soul departs.
- 7.12.25The soul is itself life and sensation.
- 7.12.26Lucretius' argument from the complaints of the dying.
- 7.12.27Only an Epicurean would say so.
- 7.12.28No one can report his own dissolution.
- 7.12.29The dying speak of departing, showing the soul survives.
- 7.12.30Pythagoras taught transmigration.
- 7.12.31Transmigration deserves no serious refutation.
- 7.12.32Only arguments against truth need refuting.
- 7.13.1Witnesses to the soul's immortality.
- 7.13.2He will cite pagan witnesses.
- 7.13.3Hermes: man is set between the immortal and the mortal.
- 7.13.4Hermes may be counted only a philosopher.
- 7.13.5An oracle of Apollo on the soul.
- 7.13.6Apollo's oracle and the Sibyl affirm the soul's survival.
- 7.13.7Necromancy refutes the materialists.
- 7.13.8They denied what they could not perceive.
- 7.13.9Aristoxenus called the soul a harmony.
- 7.13.10Aristoxenus was blind in heart.
- 7.13.11Philosophers wrongly equated existence with visibility.
- 7.14.1When is immortality granted?
- 7.14.2Only justice brings eternal life, and only God gives it.
- 7.14.3Deified heroes earned hell; the judgment is near.
- 7.14.4Philosophers and Chaldeans claimed vast ages for the world.
- 7.14.5Scripture teaches the world's beginning and end.
- 7.14.6The world is nearing six thousand years, when the end comes.
- 7.14.7God made the world in six days and rested on the seventh.
- 7.14.8The number seven is complete.
- 7.14.9Six days of creation mean six thousand years of history.
- 7.14.10Truth labors for six thousand years under wickedness.
- 7.14.11A thousand-year reign of justice will follow.
- 7.14.12Small things foreshadow great ones.
- 7.14.13In the sixth age God forms a holy people.
- 7.14.14The perfected people will rule the world for a thousand years.
- 7.14.15Scripture reveals the end.
- 7.14.16Pagan prophets also foretell the end.
- 7.14.17He will gather the prophecies of the end.
- 7.15.1Jacob's family went down to Egypt.
- 7.15.2God freed Israel from Egypt through the sea.
- 7.15.3Pharaoh's army drowned.
- 7.15.4The Exodus prefigures the final deliverance.
- 7.15.5At the end the whole world will be struck to free God's people.
- 7.15.6Portents will announce the end.
- 7.15.7Things will get far worse before the end.
- 7.15.8Justice will vanish and the good suffer.
- 7.15.9Force will rule and all order collapse.
- 7.15.10Universal war; Egypt first punished.
- 7.15.11Rome will fall and power return to the East.
- 7.15.12All human empires are mortal.
- 7.15.13Rome, like earlier empires, will fall, and more heavily.
- 7.15.14Seneca divided Rome's history into life stages.
- 7.15.15Rome, unrivaled, turned its strength on itself.
- 7.15.16Under the emperors Rome entered old age.
- 7.15.17Rome's death will follow its old age.
- 7.15.18The Sibyls foretell Rome's fall for persecuting God's people.
- 7.15.19Hystaspes foretold Rome's end.
- 7.16.1Ten kings will divide the world.
- 7.16.2Their armies will devour everything.
- 7.16.3A northern enemy will destroy three kings and rule the rest.
- 7.16.4He will change laws and move the seat of empire.
- 7.16.5Cities will perish by war, earthquake, flood, and famine.
- 7.16.6Weather and harvests will fail.
- 7.16.7Waters will dry up or turn to blood.
- 7.16.8Animals will die and portents fill the sky.
- 7.16.9Sun and moon will be darkened and seasons confused.
- 7.16.10Time will be shortened and stars fall.
- 7.16.11Mountains will fall and a trumpet sound from heaven.
- 7.16.12God's wrath will bring terror; people will long for death.
- 7.16.13The earth will be desolate.
- 7.16.14Few will survive; a tested third of believers will remain.
- 7.17.1A great prophet will come before the end.
- 7.17.2The prophet does wonders; then a king from Syria arises.
- 7.17.3The prophet is killed, rises on the third day, and ascends.
- 7.17.4The false king claims to be God and does signs.
- 7.17.5He will bring fire from heaven and make an image speak.
- 7.17.6He will persecute the just in unprecedented tribulation.
- 7.17.7His followers receive his mark; refusers flee or die.
- 7.17.8He will burn the just with the Scriptures and rule forty-two months.
- 7.17.9All order and piety will collapse.
- 7.17.10The just flee; the Antichrist besieges them.
- 7.17.11God will send a great King from heaven to rescue them.
- 7.18.1Prophets and pagan seers alike foretold these things.
- 7.18.2Hystaspes foretold the rescue, but ascribed it to Jupiter.
- 7.18.3Hermes foretold a divine restoration.
- 7.18.4Hermes: God will cleanse and restore the world.
- 7.18.5The Sibyls foretell the sending of the Son of God.
- 7.18.6A Sibyl: a king sent from God will destroy the great kings.
- 7.18.7A Sibyl: God will send a king to end war.
- 7.18.8A Sibyl: a gentle one will lift the yoke of slavery.
- 7.19.1Only God can overthrow the final tyranny.
- 7.19.2The deliverer descends at night like lightning.
- 7.19.3The Easter vigil anticipates Christ's return.
- 7.19.4Christ is deliverer, judge, king, and God.
- 7.19.5Christ descends with angels and destroys the Antichrist's army.
- 7.19.6The Antichrist is defeated in the fourth battle.
- 7.19.7The tyrants are brought bound for judgment.
- 7.19.8The world will rest from its long slavery.
- 7.19.9Idols will be burned.
- 7.20.1The dead rise for Christ's judgment.
- 7.20.2The Sibyl foretells the great judgment.
- 7.20.3All will come before God's judgment seat.
- 7.20.4The Sibyl: God will raise the dead and judge them.
- 7.20.5Only those within God's religion are judged; unbelievers are already condemned.
- 7.20.6Believers' good and evil deeds will be weighed.
- 7.20.7Objection: an immortal soul cannot suffer.
- 7.20.8Stoics: just souls return to heaven.
- 7.20.9Stoics: wicked souls, stained by the flesh, can suffer.
- 7.20.10Virgil on the purgation of souls after death.
- 7.20.11The soul is ungraspable to us, but not to God.
- 7.21.1God can punish even incorporeal beings.
- 7.21.2Spirits can be handled only by God.
- 7.21.3The wicked will rise in indestructible bodies for eternal fire.
- 7.21.4The divine fire needs no fuel and has no smoke.
- 7.21.5The divine fire burns and restores endlessly.
- 7.21.6The just too will be tested by fire.
- 7.21.7Souls await the judgment in a common custody.
- 7.21.8The approved receive immortality; the condemned are cast into darkness.
- 7.22.1Some dismiss these things as poets' fictions.
- 7.22.2The poets distorted a rumor of the resurrection.
- 7.22.3Virgil admitted he spoke from hearsay.
- 7.22.4Poets' partial agreement with the prophets confirms the truth.
- 7.22.5The poets turned the Son of God as judge into Jupiter's sons.
- 7.22.6Truth was distorted in transmission.
- 7.22.7Virgil's thousand-year cycle of souls.
- 7.22.8The dead will rise to reign with God a thousand years.
- 7.22.9Except for Lethe, the poets' account is true.
- 7.22.10Objection: no one has ever risen.
- 7.22.11The resurrection cannot occur while injustice rules.
- 7.22.12The just are persecuted in this age.
- 7.22.13A risen person would only be killed again.
- 7.22.14Persecutors would silence any risen witness.
- 7.22.15The resurrection happens once, when evil is gone.
- 7.22.16Lethe was invented to explain return to an evil world.
- 7.22.17Virgil questions why souls would return to bodies.
- 7.22.18Poets imagined rebirth into infancy.
- 7.22.19Plato's doctrine of recollection came from the poets.
- 7.23.1The just will rise in bodies, remembering their lives.
- 7.23.2Pythagoras taught transmigration.
- 7.23.3Chrysippus: we will be restored to our present form.
- 7.23.4The Sibyl: God will judge, and the pious will live again on earth.
- 7.23.5The Creator can restore the dead.
- 7.24.1The Son of God will come to judge the living and the dead.
- 7.24.2Christ will reign among men for a thousand years.
- 7.24.3In the millennium the living will beget holy offspring; the risen will judge.
- 7.24.4Some nations will remain in servitude to the just.
- 7.24.5The devil will be bound for the thousand years.
- 7.24.6A holy city will be established in the midst of the earth.
- 7.24.7The earth will be renewed in abundance and light.
- 7.24.8Animals will live in peace.
- 7.24.9The poets' golden age is really the future millennium.
- 7.24.10Pagans misread prophecies as past events.
- 7.24.11Virgil's golden-age verses describe the millennium.
- 7.24.12The Sibyl on peace among animals.
- 7.24.13The Sibyl on the abundance of the earth.
- 7.24.14Honey and milk will flow for the just.
- 7.24.15Kings of the nations will honor the great King.
- 7.25.1He has cited pagan rather than prophetic sources.
- 7.25.2Read the prophets themselves.
- 7.25.3The end comes at six thousand years.
- 7.25.4Signs show the end is near.
- 7.25.5Chronographers place the end within two hundred years.
- 7.25.6The end is restrained while Rome stands.
- 7.25.7When Rome falls, the end will come.
- 7.25.8Christians pray that Rome's fall be delayed.
- 7.25.9Return to the sequence of events.
- 7.26.1At the end of the millennium the devil is loosed and besieges the holy city.
- 7.26.2God's final wrath destroys the besieging nations.
- 7.26.3God's people hide for three days.
- 7.26.4The impious perish; for seven years their weapons are burned.
- 7.26.5After the millennium the world is renewed and the just become like angels.
- 7.26.6The second, general resurrection raises the unjust to eternal torment.
- 7.26.7The devil and the impious are burned forever.
- 7.26.8Christians keep this teaching quietly and do not dispute with scoffers.
- 7.26.9The mystery must be guarded.
- 7.26.10Christian reticence gives rise to slanders.
- 7.27.1Final exhortation: seek the heavenly treasure.
- 7.27.2Heaven's reward far outweighs present sufferings.
- 7.27.3The wise must be ready to suffer even death.
- 7.27.4All must take the right road or persevere in it.
- 7.27.5God the Creator sent a guide to show the way of justice.
- 7.27.6Christ alone, in Lucretius's words, showed the way to the highest good.
- 7.27.7Christ went ahead on the road of virtue.
- 7.27.8The old should prepare to meet the Judge in purity.
- 7.27.9Turn to God before the day of judgment.
- 7.27.10We take nothing with us but a good life.
- 7.27.11Virtues are the true inheritance.
- 7.27.12Invitation to the hungry and thirsty.
- 7.27.13God's food and drink heal and give life.
- 7.27.14The virtuous will be raised to eternal life.
- 7.27.15Wealth and power cannot make one immortal.
- 7.27.16Close: serve God as soldiers to win the promised reward.