Again, with the Lord's saying, "Let your yea be yea, and your nay nay," may be compared the following: "But to admit a falsehood, and destroy a truth, is in nowise lawful." With the prohibition, also, against swearing agrees the saying in the tenth book of the Laws: "Let praise and an oath in everything be absent."
And in general, Pythagoras, and Socrates, and Plato say that they hear God's voice while closely contemplating the fabric of the universe, made and preserved unceasingly by God. For they heard Moses say, "He said, and it was done," describing the word of God as an act.
And founding on the formation of man from the dust, the philosophers constantly term the body earthy. Homer, too, does not hesitate to put the following as an imprecation:--
"But may you all become earth and water."
As Esaias says, "And trample them down as clay." And Callimachus clearly writes:--
"That was the year in which
Birds, fishes, quadrupeds,
Spoke like Prometheus' clay."
And the same again:--
"If thee Prometheus formed,
And thou art not of other clay."
Hesiod says of Pandora:--
"And bade Hephæstus, famed, with all his speed,
Knead earth with water, and man's voice and mind
Infuse."
The Stoics, accordingly, define nature to be artificial fire, advancing systematically to generation. And God and His Word are by Scripture figuratively termed fire and light. But how? Does not Homer himself, is not Homer himself, paraphrasing the retreat of the water from the land, and the clear uncovering of the dry land, when he says of Tethys and Oceanus:--
"For now for a long time they abstain from
Each other's bed and love?" [3123]
Again, power in all things is by the most intellectual among the Greeks ascribed to God; Epicharmus--he was a Pythagorean--saying:--
"Nothing escapes the divine. This it behoves thee to know.
He is our observer. To God nought is impossible."
And the lyric poet:--
"And God from gloomy night
Can raise unstained light,
And can in darksome gloom obscure
The day's refulgence pure."
He alone who is able to make night during the period of day is God.
In the Phoenomena Aratus writes thus:--
"With Zeus let us begin; whom let us ne'er,
Being men, leave unexpressed. All full of Zeus,
The streets, and throngs of men, and full the sea,
And shores, and everywhere we Zeus enjoy."
He adds:--
"For we also are
His offspring; . . . . "
that is, by creation.
"Who, bland to men,
Propitious signs displays, and to their tasks
Arouses. For these signs in heaven He fixed,
The constellations spread, and crowned the year
With stars; to show to men the seasons' tasks,
That all things may proceed in order sure.
Him ever first, Him last too, they adore:
Hail Father, marvel great--great boon to men."
And before him, Homer, framing the world in accordance with Moses on the Vulcan-wrought shield, says:--
"On it he fashioned earth, and sky, and sea,
And all the signs with which the heaven is crowned." [3124]
For the Zeus celebrated in poems and prose compositions leads the mind up to God. And already, so to speak, Democritus writes, "that a few men are in the light, who stretch out their hands to that place which we Greeks now call the air. Zeus speaks all, and he hears all, and distributes and takes away, and he is king of all." And more mystically the Boeotian Pindar, being a Pythagorean, says:--
"One is the race of gods and men,
And of one mother both have breath;"
that is, of matter: and names the one creator of these things, whom he calls Father, chief artificer, who furnishes the means of advancement on to divinity, according to merit.
For I pass over Plato; he plainly, in the Epistle to Erastus and Coriscus, is seen to exhibit the Father and Son somehow or other from the Hebrew Scriptures, exhorting in these words: "In invoking by oath, with not illiterate gravity, and with culture, the sister of gravity, God the author of all, and invoking Him by oath as the Lord, the Father of the Leader, and author; whom if ye study with a truly philosophical spirit, ye shall know." And the address in the Timoeus calls the creator, Father, speaking thus: "Ye gods of gods, of whom I am Father; and the Creator of your works." So that when he says, "Around the king of all, all things are, and because of Him are all things; and he [or that] is the cause of all good things; and around the second are the things second in order; and around the third, the third," I understand nothing else than the Holy Trinity to be meant; for the third is the Holy Spirit, and the Son is the second, by whom all things were made according to the will of the Father. [3125]
And the same, in the tenth book of the Republic, mentions Eros the son of Armenius, who is Zoroaster. Zoroaster, then, writes: "These were composed by Zoroaster, the son of Armenius, a Pamphylian by birth: having died in battle, and been in Hades, I learned them of the gods." This Zoroaster, Plato says, having been placed on the funeral pyre, rose again to life in twelve days. He alludes perchance to the resurrection, or perchance to the fact that the path for souls to ascension lies through the twelve signs of the zodiac; and he himself says, that the descending pathway to birth is the same. In the same way we are to understand the twelve labours of Hercules, after which the soul obtains release from this entire world.
I do not pass over Empedocles, who speaks thus physically of the renewal of all things, as consisting in a transmutation into the essence of fire, which is to take place. And most plainly of the same opinion is Heraclitus of Ephesus, who considered that there was a world everlasting, and recognised one perishable--that is, in its arrangement, not being different from the former, viewed in a certain aspect. But that he knew the imperishable world which consists of the universal essence to be everlastingly of a certain nature, he makes clear by speaking thus: "The same world of all things, neither any of the gods, nor any one of men, made. But there was, and is, and will be ever-living fire, kindled according to measure, [3126] and quenched according to measure." And that he taught it to be generated and perishable, is shown by what follows: "There are transmutations of fire,--first, the sea; and of the sea the half is land, the half fiery vapour." For he says that these are the effects of power. For fire is by the Word of God, which governs all things, changed by the air into moisture, which is, as it were, the germ of cosmical change; and this he calls sea. And out of it again is produced earth, and sky, and all that they contain. How, again, they are restored and ignited, he shows clearly in these words: "The sea is diffused and measured according to the same rule which subsisted before it became earth." Similarly also respecting the other elements, the same is to be understood. The most renowned of the Stoics teach similar doctrines with him, in treating of the conflagration and the government of the world, and both the world and man properly so called, and of the continuance of our souls.
Plato, again, in the seventh book of the Republic, has called "the day here nocturnal," as I suppose, on account of "the world-rulers of this darkness;" [3127] and the descent of the soul into the body, sleep and death, similarly with Heraclitus. And was not this announced, oracularly, of the Saviour, by the Spirit, saying by David, "I slept, and slumbered; I awoke: for the Lord will sustain me;" [3128] For He not only figuratively calls the resurrection of Christ rising from sleep; but to the descent of the Lord into the flesh he also applies the figurative term sleep. The Saviour Himself enjoins, "Watch;" [3129] as much as to say, "Study how to live, and endeavour to separate the soul from the body."
And the Lord's day Plato prophetically speaks of in the tenth book of the Republic, in these words: "And when seven days have passed to each of them in the meadow, on the eighth they are to set out and arrive in four days." [3130] By the meadow is to be understood the fixed sphere, as being a mild and genial spot, and the locality of the pious; and by the seven days each motion of the seven planets, and the whole practical art which speeds to the end of rest. But after the wandering orbs the journey leads to heaven, that is, to the eighth motion and day. And he says that souls are gone on the fourth day, pointing out the passage through the four elements. But the seventh day is recognised as sacred, not by the Hebrews only, but also by the Greeks; according to which the whole world of all animals and plants revolve. Hesiod says of it:--
"The first, and fourth, and seventh day were held sacred."
And again:--
"And on the seventh the sun's resplendent orb."
And Homer:--
"And on the seventh then came the sacred day."
And:--
"The seventh was sacred."
And again:--
"It was the seventh day, and all things were accomplished."
And again:--
"And on the seventh morn we leave the stream of Acheron."
Callimachus the poet also writes:--
"It was the seventh morn, and they had all things done."
And again:--
"Among good days is the seventh day, and the seventh race."
And:--
"The seventh is among the prime, and the seventh is perfect."
And:--
"Now all the seven were made in starry heaven,
In circles shining as the years appear."
The Elegies of Solon, too, intensely deify the seventh day.
And how? Is it not similar to Scripture when it says, "Let us remove the righteous man from us, because he is troublesome to us?" [3131] when Plato, all but predicting the economy of salvation, says in the second book of the Republic as follows: "Thus he who is constituted just shall be scourged, shall be stretched on the rack, shall be bound, have his eyes put out; and at last, having suffered all evils, shall be crucified." [3132]
And the Socratic Antisthenes, paraphrasing that prophetic utterance, "To whom have ye likened me? saith the Lord," [3133] says that "God is like no one; wherefore no one can come to the knowledge of Him from an image."
Xenophon too, the Athenian, utters these similar sentiments in the following words: "He who shakes all things, and is Himself immoveable, is manifestly one great and powerful. But what He is in form, appears not. No more does the sun, who wishes to shine in all directions, deem it right to permit any one to look on himself. But if one gaze on him audaciously, he loses his eyesight."
"What flesh can see with eyes the Heavenly, True,
Immortal God, whose dwelling is the poles?
Not even before the bright beams of the sun
Are men, as being mortal, fit to stand,"--
the Sibyl had said before. Rightly, then, Xenophanes of Colophon, teaching that God is one and incorporeal, adds:--
"One God there is 'midst gods and men supreme;
In form, in mind, unlike to mortal men."
And again:--
"But men have the idea that gods are born,
And wear their clothes, and have both voice and shape."
And again:--
"But had the oxen or the lions hands,
Or could with hands depict a work like men,
Were beasts to draw the semblance of the gods,
The horses would them like to horses sketch,
To oxen, oxen, and their bodies make
Of such a shape as to themselves belongs."
Let us hear, then, the lyric poet Bacchylides speaking of the divine:--
"Who to diseases dire [3134] never succumb,
And blameless are; in nought resembling men."
And also Cleanthes, the Stoic, who writes thus in a poem on the Deity: [3135] --
"If you ask what is the nature of the good, listen--
That which is regular, just, holy, pious,
Self-governing, useful, fair, fitting,
Grave, independent, always beneficial,
That feels no fear or grief, profitable, painless,
Helpful, pleasant, safe, friendly,
Held in esteem, agreeing with itself: honourable,
Humble, careful, meek, zealous,
Perennial, blameless, ever-during."
And the same, tacitly vilifying the idolatry of the multitude, adds:--
"Base is every one who looks to opinion,
With the view of deriving any good from it."
We are not, then, to think of God according to the opinion of the multitude.
"For I do not think that secretly,
Imitating the guise of a scoundrel,
He would go to thy bed as a man,"
says Amphion to Antiope. And Sophocles plainly writes:--
"His mother Zeus espoused,
Not in the likeness of gold, nor covered
With swan's plumage, as the Pleuronian girl
He impregnated; but an out and out man."
He further proceeds, and adds:--
"And quick the adulterer stood on the bridal steps."
Then he details still more plainly the licentiousness of the fabled Zeus:--