Let us notice also how he thinks to cast discredit upon our system of
morals,[1141] alleging that it is only common to us with other
philosophers, and no venerable or new branch of instruction. In reply to
which we have to say, that unless all men had naturally impressed upon
their minds sound ideas of morality, the doctrine of the punishment of
sinners would have been excluded by those who bring upon themselves the
righteous judgments of God. It is not therefore matter of surprise that
the same God should have sown in the hearts of all men those truths
which He taught by the prophets and the Saviour, in order that at the
divine judgment every man may be without excuse, having the
“requirements[1142] of the law written upon his heart,”—a truth
obscurely alluded to by the Bible[1143] in what the Greeks regard as a
myth, where it represents God as having with His own finger written down
the commandments, and given them to Moses, and which the wickedness of
the worshippers of the calf made him break in pieces, as if the flood of
wickedness, so to speak, had swept them away. But Moses having again
hewn tables of stone, God wrote the commandments a second time, and gave
them to him; the prophetic word preparing the soul, as it were, after
the first transgression, for the writing of God a second time.
Footnote 1141:
τὸν ἠθικὸν τόπον.
Footnote 1142:
τὸ βούλημα τοῦ νόμου.
Footnote 1143:
ὁ λόγος.