24. What will then be the glory of faith? what the punishment of faithlessness? When the day of judgment shall come, what joy of believers, what sorrow of unbelievers; that they should have been unwilling to believe here, and now that they should be unable to return that they might believe! An ever-burning Gehenna will burn up the condemned, and a punishment devouring with living flames; nor will there be any source whence at any time they may have either respite or end to their torments. Souls with their bodies will be reserved in infinite tortures for suffering. Thus the man will be for ever seen by us who here gazed upon us for a season; and the short joy of those cruel eyes in the persecutions that they made for us will be compensated by a perpetual spectacle, according to the truth of Holy Scripture, which says, "Their worm shall not die, and their fire shall not be quenched; and they shall be for a vision to all flesh." [3445] And again: "Then shall the righteous men stand in great constancy before the face of those who have afflicted them, and have taken away their labours. When they see it, they shall be troubled with horrible fear, and shall be amazed at the suddenness of their unexpected salvation; and they, repenting and groaning for anguish of spirit, shall say within themselves, These are they whom we had some time in derision, and a proverb of reproach; we fools counted their life madness, and their end to be without honour. How are they numbered among the children of God, and their lot is among the saints! Therefore have we erred from the way of truth, and the light of righteousness hath not shined upon us, and the sun rose not on us. We wearied ourselves in the way of wickedness and destruction; we have gone through deserts where there lay no way; but we have not known the way of the Lord. What hath pride profited us, or what good hath the boasting of riches done us? All those things are passed away like a shadow." [3446] The pain of punishment will then be without the fruit of penitence; weeping will be useless, and prayer ineffectual. Too late they will believe in eternal punishment who would not believe in eternal life.
25. Provide, therefore, while you may, for your safety and your life. We offer you the wholesome help of our mind and advice. And because we may not hate, and we please God more by rendering no return for wrong, we exhort you while you have the power, while there yet remains to you something of life, to make satisfaction to God, and to emerge from the abyss of darkling superstition [3447] into the bright light of true religion. We do not envy your comforts, nor do we conceal the divine benefits. We repay kindness for your hatred; and for the torments and penalties which are inflicted on us, we point out to you the ways of salvation. Believe and live, and do ye who persecute us in time rejoice with us for eternity. When you have once departed thither, there is no longer any place for repentance, and no possibility of making satisfaction. Here life is either lost or saved; here eternal safety is provided for by the worship of God and the fruits of faith. Nor let any one be restrained either by his sins or by his years from coming to obtain salvation. To him who still remains in this world no repentance is too late. The approach to God's mercy is open, and the access is easy to those who seek and apprehend the truth. Do you entreat for your sins, although it be in the very end of life, and at the setting of the sun of time; and implore God, who is the one and true God, in confession and faith of acknowledgment of Him, and pardon is granted to the man who confesses, and saving mercy is given from the divine goodness to the believer, and a passage is opened to immortality even in death itself. This grace Christ bestows; this gift of His mercy He confers upon us, by overcoming death in the trophy of the cross, by redeeming the believer with the price of His blood, by reconciling man to God the Father, by quickening our mortal nature with a heavenly regeneration. If it be possible, let us all follow Him; let us be registered in His sacrament and sign. He opens to us the way of life; He brings us back to paradise; He leads us on to the kingdom of heaven. Made by Him the children of God, with Him we shall ever live; with Him we shall always rejoice, restored by His own blood. We Christians shall be glorious together with Christ, blessed of God the Father, always rejoicing with perpetual pleasures in the sight of God, and ever giving thanks to God. For none can be other than always glad and grateful, who, having been once subject to death, has been made secure in the possession of immortality. [3448]
[3402] [Written a.d. 252.]
[3403] Next, having reproached him with the unaccustomed kinds of tortures with which he tormented the Christians more severely than any other criminals, not for the purpose of making them confess, but of making them deny their faith, he shows the impotence of the gods,--as well because they themselves cannot defend themselves, and so Demetrianus, who pretended to avenge them, should rather be worshipped by them, than himself worship them;--as because, when expelled by Christians from possessed bodies, they themselves confess what they are. Nor indeed must the fall of kings, the destruction of property, and such like evils which accompanied the persecutions of Christians as a punishment from Heaven, be judged not to be punishments, because they were shared by the Christians themselves; inasmuch as all these things are a joy to them rather than a punishment. Accordingly, while there is time, he urges him to return to a better mind, or at least to dread the judgment and an ever burning fiery Gehenna. In this tract Cyprian partly imitates Tertullian's Apology and his treatise to Scapula, partly the Octavius of Minucius Felix.
[3404] Some add, "and name."
[3405] Prov. xxiii. 9.
[3406] Prov. xxvi. 4.
[3407] Matt. vii. 6.
[3408] [Elucidation VI. See Commodian, vol. iv. 219.]
[3409] [Wisd. v. 13.]
[3410] Deut. vi. 13.
[3411] Ex. xxix. 3.
[3412] Jer. xxv. 6.
[3413] Hag. i. 9.
[3414] Amos iv. 7.
[3415] Jer. ii. 30. [Compare Aug., City of God, passim.]
[3416] Jer. v. 3.
[3417] Some read, "But you do not serve God, by whom all things are ordained to your service; you do not wait upon Him," etc.
[3418] ["Æquali jure et pari lege." This would have furnished ground for Jefferson's famous sentence in the American Declaration of Independence. See also Franklin's sentiment, vol. i. p. 552, note 9. There is a very remarkable passage in Massillon which might have engendered the French Revolution had it been known to the people. See Petit Carême, On Palm Sunday, p. 189, etc., ed. 1745.]
[3419] Some add, "over man."
[3420] Hos. iv. 1-4.
[3421] Some texts read, "fear or shame in sinning."
[3422] Or, "no pretence." Some add, "no fear."
[3423] Isa. lix. 1.
[3424] Or, "distress;" v. l.
[3425] [Vol. iii. pp. 176, 180.]
[3426] Ex. xxii. 20.
[3427] Isa. ii. 8.
[3428] Some read, "the Son whom."
[3429] Or, according to some, "of kings."
[3430] Rom. xii. 19.
[3431] Prov. xx. 22.
[3432] [Beautiful triumph of faith, "peace in believing!"]
[3433] Or, "whom you do not see not to suffer with yourself."
[3434] Hab. iii. 17.
[3435] Otherwise read, "to us the worshippers of God, and to His profane opponents."
[3436] Isa. xiii. 6-9.
[3437] Mal. iv. 1.
[3438] Ezek. ix. 5.
[3439] Ezek. ix. 4.
[3440] Ex. xii. 13.
[3441] [Ezek. ix. 4; Rev. vii. 3; ix. 4.]
[3442] Or, according to some readings, "Be wise, therefore."
[3443] Amos v. 6.
[3444] John xvii. 3.
[3445] Isa. lxvi. 24.
[3446] Wisd. v. 1-9.
[3447] "From the deep and darkling night of superstition" is another reading.
[3448] [Compare the Octavius of Minucius Felix with this treatise, and also the other apologists, e.g., vol. ii. 93.]
Treatise VI. [3449]
On the Vanity of Idols: Showing that the Idols are Not Gods, and that God is One, and that Through Christ Salvation is Given to Believers.
Argument.--This Heading Embraces the Three Leading Divisions of This Treatise. The Writer First of All Shows that They in Whose Honour Temples Were Founded, Statues Modelled, Victims Sacrificed, and Festal Days Celebrated, Were Kings and Men and Not Gods; And Therefore that Their Worship Could Be of No Avail Either to Strangers or to Romans, and that the Power of the Roman Empire Was to Attributed to Fate Rather Than to Them, Inasmuch as It Had Arisen by a Certain Good Fortune, and Was Ashamed of Its Own Origin. [3450]
1. That those are no gods whom the common people worship, is known from this. They were formerly kings, who on account of their royal memory subsequently began to be adored by their people even in death. Thence temples were founded to them; thence images were sculptured to retain the countenances of the deceased by the likeness; and men sacrificed victims, and celebrated festal days, by way of giving them honour. Thence to posterity those rites became sacred which at first had been adopted as a consolation. And now let us see whether this truth is confirmed in individual instances.
2. Melicertes and Leucothea are precipitated into the sea, and subsequently become sea-divinities. The Castors [3451] die by turns, that they may live. Æsculapius is struck by lightning, that he may rise into a god. Hercules, that he may put off the man, is burnt up in the fires of OEta. Apollo fed the flocks of Admetus; Neptune founded walls for Laomedon, and received--unfortunate builder--no wages for his work. The cave of Jupiter is to be seen in Crete, and his sepulchre is shown; and it is manifest that Saturn was driven away by him, and that from him Latium received its name, as being his lurking-place. [3452] He was the first that taught to print letters; he was the first that taught to stamp money in Italy, [3453] and thence the treasury is called the treasury of Saturn. And he also was the cultivator of the rustic life, whence he is painted as an old man [3454] carrying a sickle. Janus had received him to hospitality when he was driven away, from whose name the Janiculum is so called, and the month of January is appointed. He himself is portrayed with two faces, because, placed in the middle, he seems to look equally towards the commencing and the closing year. The Mauri, indeed, manifestly worship kings, and do not conceal their name by any disguise.
3. From this the religion of the gods is variously changed among individual nations and provinces, inasmuch as no one god is worshipped by all, but by each one the worship of its own ancestors is kept peculiar. Proving that this is so, Alexander the Great writes in the remarkable volume addressed to his mother, that through fear of his power the doctrine of the gods being men, which was kept secret, [3455] had been disclosed to him by a priest, that it was the memory of ancestors and kings that was (really) kept up, and that from this the rites of worship and sacrifice have grown up. But if gods were born at any time, why are they not born in these days also?--unless, indeed, Jupiter possibly has grown too old, or the faculty of bearing has failed Juno.
4. But why do you think that the gods can avail on behalf of the Romans, when you see that they can do nothing for their own worshipers in opposition to the Roman arms? For we know that the gods of the Romans are indigenous. Romulus was made a god by the perjury of Proculus, and Picus, and Tiberinus, and Pilumnus, and Consus, whom as a god of treachery Romulus would have to be worshipped, just as if he had been a god of counsels, when his perfidy resulted in the rape of the Sabines. Tatius also both invented and worshipped the goddess Cloacina; Hostilius, Fear and Paleness. By and by, I know not by whom, Fever was dedicated, and Acca and Flora the harlots. [3456] These are the Roman gods. But Mars is a Thracian, and Jupiter a Cretan, and Juno either Argive or Samian or Carthaginian, and Diana of Taurus, and the mother of the gods of Ida; and there are Egyptian monsters, not deities, who assuredly, if they had had any power, would have preserved their own and their people's kingdoms. Certainly there are also among the Romans the conquered Penates whom the fugitive Æneas introduced thither. There is also Venus the bald,--far more dishonoured by the fact of her baldness in Rome than by her having been wounded in Homer.