"Demons there are--some here, some there--set over men;
Some, on man's entrance [into life], to ward off ill."
Rightly, then, also Philemon, the comic poet demolishes idolatry in these words:--
"Fortune is no divinity to us:
There's no such god. But what befalls by chance
And of itself to each, is Fortune called."
And Sophocles the tragedian says:--
"Not even the gods have all things as they choose,
Excepting Zeus; for he beginning is and end."
And Orpheus:--
"One Might, the great, the flaming heaven, was
One Deity. All things one Being were; in whom
All these revolve fire, water, and the earth."
And so forth.
Pindar, the lyric poet, as if in Bacchic frenzy, plainly says:--
"What is God? The All."
And again:--
"God, who makes all mortals."
And when he says,--
"How little, being a man, dost thou expect
Wisdom for man? 'Tis hard for mortal mind
The counsels of the gods to scan; and thou
Wast of a mortal mother born,"
he drew the thought from the following: "Who hath known the mind of the Lord, or who was His counsellor?" [3164] Hesiod, too, agrees with what is said above, in what he writes:--
"No prophet, sprung of men that dwell on earth,
Can know the mind of Ægis-bearing Zeus."
Similarly, then, Solon the Athenian, in the Elegies, following Hesiod, writes:--
"The immortal's mind to men is quite unknown."
Again Moses, having prophesied that the woman would bring forth in trouble and pain, on account of transgression, a poet not undistinguished writes:--
"Never by day
From toil and woe shall they have rest, nor yet
By night from groans. Sad cares the gods to men
Shall give."
Further, when Homer says,--
"The Sire himself the golden balance held," [3165]
he intimates that God is just.
And Menander, the comic poet, in exhibiting God, says:--
"To each man, on his birth, there is assigned
A tutelary Demon, as his life's good guide.
For that the Demon evil is, and harms
A good life, is not to be thought."
Then he adds:--
"Hapanta d' hagathon heinai ton Theon,"
meaning either "that every one good is God," or, what is preferable, "that God in all things is good."
Again, Æschylus the tragedian, setting forth the power of God, does not shrink from calling Him the Highest, in these words:--
"Place God apart from mortals; and think not
That He is, like thyself, corporeal.
Thou know'st Him not. Now He appears as fire,
Dread force; as water now; and now as gloom;
And in the beasts is dimly shadowed forth,
In wind, and cloud, in lightning, thunder, rain;
And minister to Him the seas and rocks,
Each fountain and the water's floods and streams.
The mountains tremble, and the earth, the vast
Abyss of sea, and towering height of hills,
When on them looks the Sovereign's awful eye:
Almighty is the glory of the Most High God." [3166]
Does he not seem to you to paraphrase that text, "At the presence of the Lord the earth trembles?" [3167] In addition to these, the most prophetic Apollo is compelled--thus testifying to the glory of God--to say of Athene, when the Medes made war against Greece, that she besought and supplicated Zeus for Attica. The oracle is as follows:--
"Pallas cannot Olympian Zeus propitiate,
Although with many words and sage advice she prays;
But he will give to the devouring fire many temples of the immortals,
Who now stand shaking with terror, and bathed in sweat;" [3168]
and so forth.
Thearidas, in his book On Nature, writes: "There was then one really true beginning [first principle] of all that exist"--one. For that Being in the beginning is one and alone."
"Nor is there any other except the Great King,"
says Orpheus. In accordance with whom, the comic poet Diphilus says very sententiously, [3169] the
"Father of all,
To Him alone incessant reverence pay,
The inventor and the author of such blessings."
Rightly therefore Plato "accustoms the best natures to attain to that study which formerly we said was the highest, both to see the good and to accomplish that ascent. And this, as appears, is not the throwing of the potsherds; [3170] but the turning round of the soul from a nocturnal day to that which is a true return to that which really is, which we shall assert to be the true philosophy." Such as are partakers of this he judges [3171] to belong to the golden race, when he says: "Ye are all brethren; and those who are of the golden race are most capable of judging most accurately in every respect." [3172]
The Father, then, and Maker of all things is apprehended by all things, agreeably to all, by innate power and without teaching,--things inanimate, sympathizing with the animate creation; and of living beings some are already immoral, working in the light of day. But of those that are still mortal, some are in fear, and carried still in their mother's womb; and others regulate themselves by their own independent reason. And of men all are Greeks and Barbarians. But no race anywhere of tillers of the soil, or nomads, and not even of dwellers in cities, can live, without being imbued with the faith of a superior being. [3173] Wherefore every eastern nation, and every nation touching the western shore; or the north, and each one towards the south, [3174] --all have one and the same preconception respecting Him who hath appointed government; since the most universal of His operations equally pervade all. Much more did the philosophers among the Greeks, devoted to investigation, starting from the Barbarian philosophy, attribute providence [3175] to the "Invisible, and sole, and most powerful, and most skilful and supreme cause of all things most beautiful;"--not knowing the inferences from these truths, unless instructed by us, and not even how God is to be known naturally; but only, as we have already often said, by a true periphrasis. [3176] Rightly therefore the apostle says, "Is He the God of the Jews only, and not also of the Greeks?"--not only saying prophetically that of the Greeks believing Greeks would know God; [3177] but also intimating that in power the Lord is the God of all, and truly Universal King. For they know neither what He is, nor how He is Lord, and Father, and Maker, nor the rest of the system of the truth, without being taught by it. Thus also the prophetic utterances have the same force as the apostolic word. For Isaiah says, "If ye say, We trust in the Lord our God: now make an alliance with my Lord the king of the Assyrians." And he adds: "And now, was it without the Lord that we came up to this land to make war against it?" [3178] And Jonah, himself a prophet, intimates the same thing in what he says: "And the shipmaster came to him, and said to him, Why dost thou snore? Rise, call on thy God, that He may save us, and that we may not perish." [3179] For the expression "thy God" he makes as if to one who knew Him by way of knowledge; and the expression, "that God may save us," revealed the consciousness in the minds of heathens who had applied their mind to the Ruler of all, but had not yet believed. And again the same: "And he said to them, I am the servant of the Lord; and I fear the Lord, the God of heaven." And again the same: "And he said, Let us by no means perish for the life of this man." And Malachi the prophet plainly exhibits God saying, "I will not accept sacrifice at your hands. For from the rising of the sun to its going down, My name is glorified among the Gentiles; and in every place sacrifice is offered to Me." [3180] And again: "Because I am a great King, saith the Lord omnipotent; and My name is manifest among the nations." What name? The Son declaring the Father among the Greeks who have believed.
Plato in what follows gives an exhibition of free-will: "Virtue owns not a master; and in proportion as each one honours or dishonours it, in that proportion he will be a partaker of it. The blame lies in the exercise of free choice." But God is blameless. For He is never the author of evil.
"O warlike Trojans," says the lyric poet, [3181] --
"High ruling Zeus, who beholds all things,
Is not the cause of great woes to mortals;
But it is in the power of all men to find
Justice, holy, pure,
Companion of order,
And of wise Themis
The sons of the blessed are ye
In finding her as your associate."
And Pindar expressly introduces also Zeus Soter, the consort of Themis, proclaiming him King, Saviour, Just, in the following lines:--
"First, prudent Themis, of celestial birth,
On golden steeds, by Ocean's rock,
The Fates brought to the stair sublime,
The shining entrance of Olympus,
Of Saviour Zeus for aye [3182] to be the spouse,
And she, the Hours, gold-diademed, fair-fruited, good, brought forth."
He, then, who is not obedient to the truth, and is puffed up with human teaching, is wretched and miserable, according to Euripides:--
"Who these things seeing, yet apprehends not God,
But mouthing lofty themes, casts far
Perverse deceits; stubborn in which, the tongue
Its shafts discharges, about things unseen,
Devoid of sense."
Let him who wishes, then, approaching to the true instruction, learn from Parmenides the Eleatic, who promises:--
"Ethereal nature, then, and all the signs
In Ether thou shall know, and the effects,
All viewless, of the sacred Sun's clear torch
And whence produced. The round-eyed Moon's
Revolving influences and nature thou
Shall learn; and the ensphering heaven shall know;
Whence sprung; and how Necessity took it
And chained so as to keep the starry bounds."
And Metrodorus, though an Epicurean, spoke thus, divinely inspired: "Remember, O Menestratus, that, being a mortal endowed with a circumscribed life, thou hast in thy soul ascended, till thou hast seen endless time, and the infinity of things; and what is to be, and what has been;" when with the blessed choir, according to Plato, we shall gaze on the blessed sight and vision; we following with Zeus, and others with other deities, if we may be permitted so to say, to receive initiation into the most blessed mystery: which we shall celebrate, ourselves being perfect and untroubled by the ills which awaited us at the end of our time; and introduced to the knowledge of perfect and tranquil visions, and contemplating them in pure sunlight; we ourselves pure, and now no longer distinguished by that, which, when carrying it about, we call the body, being bound to it like an oyster to its shell.
The Pythagoreans call heaven the Antichthon [the opposite Earth]. And in this land, it is said by Jeremiah, "I will place thee among the children, and give thee the chosen land as inheritance of God Omnipotent;" [3184] and they who inherit it shall reign over the earth. Myriads on myriads of examples [3185] rush on my mind which might adduce. But for the sake of symmetry the discourse must now stop, in order that we may not exemplify the saying of Agatho the tragedian:--
"Treating our by-work as work,
And doing our work as by-work."
It having been, then, as I think, clearly shown in what way it is to be understood that the Greeks were called thieves by the Lord, I willingly leave the dogmas of the philosophers. For were we to go over their sayings, we should gather together directly such a quantity of notes, in showing that the whole of the Hellenic wisdom was derived from the Barbarian philosophy. But this speculation, we shall, nevertheless, again touch on, as necessity requires, when we collect the opinions current among the Greeks respecting first principles.
But from what has been said, it tacitly devolves on us to consider in what way the Hellenic books are to be perused by the man who is able to pass through the billows in them. Therefore
"Happy is he who possesses the wealth of the divine mind,"
as appears according to Empedocles,
"But wretched he, who cares for dark opinion about the Gods."
He divinely showed knowledge and ignorance to be the boundaries of happiness and misery. "For it behoves philosophers to be acquainted with very many things," according to Heraclitus; and truly must
"He, who seeks to be good, err in many things."
It is then now clear to us, from what has been said, that the beneficence of God is eternal, and that, from an unbeginning principle, equal natural righteousness reached all, according to the worth of each several race,--never having had a beginning. For God did not make a beginning of being Lord and Good, being always what He is. Nor will He ever cease to do good, although He bring all things to an end. And each one of us is a partaker of His beneficence, as far as He wills. For the difference of the elect is made by the intervention of a choice worthy of the soul, and by exercise.