HOW THE PERFECT MAN TREATS THE BODY AND THE
THINGS OF THE WORLD.
Those, then, who run down created existence and vilify the body are
wrong; not considering that the frame of man was formed erect for the
contemplation of heaven, and that the organization of the senses tends
to knowledge; and that the members and parts are arranged for good, not
for pleasure. Whence this abode becomes receptive of the soul which is
most precious to God; and is dignified with the Holy Spirit through
the sanctification of soul and body, perfected with the perfection
of the Saviour. And the succession of the three virtues is found in
the Gnostic, who morally, physically, and logically occupies himself
with God. For wisdom is the knowledge of things divine and human; and
righteousness is the concord of the parts of the soul; and holiness
is the service of God. But if one were to say that he disparaged the
flesh, and generation on account of it, by quoting Isaiah, who says,
“All flesh is grass, and all the glory of man as the flower of grass:
the grass is withered, and the flower has fallen; but the word of the
Lord endureth for ever;”[677] let him hear the Spirit interpreting
the matter in question by Jeremiah, “And I scattered them like dry
sticks, that are made to fly by the wind into the desert. This is the
lot and portion of your disobedience, saith the Lord. As thou hast
forgotten me, and hast trusted in lies, so will I discover thy hinder
parts to thy face; and thy disgrace shall be seen, thy adultery, and
thy neighing,” and so on.[678] For “the flower of grass,” and “walking
after the flesh,” and “being carnal,” according to the apostle, are
those who are in their sins. The soul of man is confessedly the better
part of man, and the body the inferior. But neither is the soul good by
nature, nor, on the other hand, is the body bad by nature. Nor is that
which is not good straightway bad. For there are things which occupy a
middle place, and among them are things to be preferred, and things to
be rejected. The constitution of man, then, which has its place among
things of sense, was necessarily composed of things diverse, but not
opposite--body and soul.
Always therefore the good actions, as better, attach to the better and
ruling spirit; and voluptuous and sinful actions are attributed to the
worse, the sinful one.
Now the soul of the wise man and Gnostic, as sojourning in the
body, conducts itself towards it gravely and respectfully, not with
inordinate affections, as about to leave the tabernacle if the time of
departure summon. “I am a stranger in the earth, and a sojourner with
you,” it is said.[679] And hence Basilides says, that he apprehends
that the election are strangers to the world, being supramundane by
nature. But this is not the case. For all things are of one God. And no
one is a stranger to the world by nature, their essence being one, and
God one. But the elect man dwells as a sojourner, knowing all things
to be possessed and disposed of; and he makes use of the things which
the Pythagoreans make out to be the threefold good things. The body,
too, as one sent on a distant pilgrimage, uses inns and dwellings by
the way, having care of the things of the world, of the places where he
halts; but leaving his dwelling-place and property without excessive
emotion; readily following him that leads him away from life; by no
means and on no occasion turning back; giving thanks for his sojourn,
and blessing [God] for his departure, embracing the mansion that is in
heaven. “For we know, that, if the earthly house of our tabernacle be
dissolved, we have a building of God, an house not made with hands,
eternal in the heavens. For we that are in this tabernacle do groan,
desiring to be clothed upon with our house which is from heaven: if
so be that being clothed we shall not be found naked. For we walk by
faith, not by sight,”[680] as the apostle says; “and we are willing
rather to be absent from the body, and present with God.” The rather is
in comparison. And comparison obtains in the case of things that fall
under resemblance; as the more valiant man is more valiant among the
valiant, and most valiant among cowards. Whence he adds, “Wherefore we
strive, whether present or absent, to be accepted with Him,”[681] that
is, God, whose work and creation are all things, both the world and
things supramundane. I admire Epicharmus, who clearly says:
“Endowed with pious mind, you will not, in dying,
Suffer aught evil. The spirit will dwell in heaven above;”
and the minstrel[682] who sings:
“The souls of the wicked flit about below the skies on earth,
In murderous pains beneath inevitable yokes of evils;
But those of the pious dwell in the heavens,
Hymning in songs the Great, the Blessed One.”
The soul is not then sent down from heaven to what is worse. For God
works all things up to what is better. But the soul which has chosen
the best life--the life that is from God and righteousness--exchanges
earth for heaven. With reason therefore, Job, who had attained to
knowledge, said, “Now I know that Thou canst do all things; and nothing
is impossible to Thee. For who tells me of what I know not, great and
wonderful things with which I was unacquainted? And I felt myself vile,
considering myself to be earth and ashes.”[683] For he who, being in a
state of ignorance, is sinful, “is earth and ashes;” while he who is in
a state of knowledge, being assimilated as far as possible to God, is
already spiritual, and so elect. And that Scripture calls the senseless
and disobedient “earth,” will be made clear by Jeremiah the prophet,
saying, in reference to Joachim and his brethren, “Earth, earth, hear
the word of the Lord; Write this man, as man excommunicated.”[684]
And another prophet says again, “Hear, O heaven; and give ear, O
earth,”[685] calling understanding “ear,” and the soul of the Gnostic,
that of the man who has applied himself to the contemplation of heaven
and divine things, and in this way has become an Israelite, “heaven.”
For again he calls him who has made ignorance and hardness of heart
his choice, “earth.” And the expression “give ear” he derives from
the “organs of hearing,” “the ears,” attributing carnal things to
those who cleave to the things of sense. Such are they of whom Micah
the prophet says, “Hear the word of the Lord, ye peoples who dwell
with pangs.”[686] And Abraham said, “By no means. The Lord is He who
judgeth the earth;”[687] “since he that believeth not, is,” according
to the utterance of the Saviour, “condemned already.”[688] And there is
written in the Kings[689] the judgment and sentence of the Lord, which
stands thus: “The Lord hears the righteous, but the wicked He saveth
not, because they do not desire to know God.” For the Almighty will not
accomplish what is absurd. What do the heresies say to this utterance,
seeing Scripture proclaims the Almighty God to be good, and not the
author of evil and wrong, if indeed ignorance arises from one not
knowing? But God does nothing absurd. “For this God,” it is said, “is
our God, and there is none to save besides Him.”[690] “For there is no
unrighteousness with God,”[691] according to the apostle. And clearly
yet the prophet teaches the will of God, and the gnostic proficiency,
in these words: “And now, Israel, what doth the Lord God require of
thee, but to fear the Lord thy God, and walk in all His ways, and love
Him, and serve Him alone?”[692] He asks of thee, who hast the power
of choosing salvation. What is it, then, that the Pythagoreans mean
when they bid us “pray with the voice?” As seems to me, not that they
thought the Divinity could not hear those who speak silently, but
because they wished prayers to be right, which no one would be ashamed
to make in the knowledge of many. We shall, however, treat of prayer
in due course by and by. But we ought to have works that cry aloud, as
becoming “those who walk in the day.”[693] “Let thy works shine,”[694]
and behold a man and his works before his face. “For behold God and His
works.”[695] For the gnostic must, as far as is possible, imitate God.
And the poets call the elect in their pages godlike and gods, and equal
to the gods, and equal in sagacity to Zeus, and having counsels like
the gods, and resembling the gods,--nibbling, as seems to me, at the
expression, “in the image and likeness.”[696]
Euripides accordingly says, “Golden wings are round my back, and I am
shod with the winged sandals of the Sirens; and I shall go aloft into
the wide ether, to hold converse with Zeus.”
But I shall pray the Spirit of Christ to wing me to my Jerusalem. For
the Stoics say that heaven is properly a city, but places here on earth
are not cities; for they are called so, but are not. For a city is
an important thing, and the people a decorous body, and a multitude
of men regulated by law as the church by the word--a city on earth
impregnable--free from tyranny; a product of the divine will on earth
as in heaven. Images of this city the poets create with their pen. For
the Hyperboreans, and the Arimaspian cities, and the Elysian plains,
are commonwealths of just men. And we know Plato’s city placed as a
pattern in heaven.
BOOK V.
CHAPTER I.
ON FAITH.
Of the gnostic so much has been cursorily, as it were, written. We
proceed now to the sequel, and must again contemplate faith; for there
are some that draw the distinction, that faith has reference to the
Son, and knowledge to the Spirit. But it has escaped their notice
that, in order to believe truly in the Son, we must believe that He
is the Son, and that He came, and how, and for what, and respecting
His passion; and we must know who is the Son of God. Now neither is
knowledge without faith, nor faith without knowledge. Nor is the Father
without the Son; for the Son is with the Father. And the Son is the
true teacher respecting the Father; and that we may believe in the Son,
we must know the Father, with whom also is the Son. Again, in order
that we may know the Father, we must believe in the Son, that it is the
Son of God who teaches; for from faith to knowledge by the Son is the
Father. And the knowledge of the Son and Father, which is according to
the gnostic rule--that which in reality is gnostic--is the attainment
and comprehension of the truth by the truth.
We, then, are those who are believers in what is not believed, and
who are gnostics as to what is unknown; that is, gnostics as to what
is unknown and disbelieved by all, but believed and known by a few;
and gnostics, not describing actions by speech, but gnostics in the
exercise of contemplation. Happy is he who speaks in the ears of
the hearing. Now Faith is the ear of the soul. And such the Lord
intimates faith to be, when He says, “He that hath ears to hear, let
him hear;”[697] so that by believing he may comprehend what He says, as
He says it. Homer, too, the oldest of the poets, using the word “hear”
instead of “perceive”--the specific for the generic term--writes:
“Him most they heard.”[698]
For, in fine, the agreement and harmony of the faith of both[699]
contribute to one end--salvation. We have in the apostle an unerring
witness: “For I desire to see you, that I may impart unto you some
spiritual gift, in order that ye may be strengthened; that is, that
I may be comforted in you, by the mutual faith of you and me.”[700]
And further on again he adds, “The righteousness of God is revealed
from faith to faith.”[701] The apostle, then, manifestly announces a
double faith, or rather one which admits of growth and perfection; for
the common faith lies beneath as a foundation. To those, therefore,
who desire to be healed, and are moved by faith, He added, “Thy faith
hath saved thee.”[702] But that which is excellently built upon is
consummated in the believer, and is again perfected by the faith which
results from instruction and the word, in order to the performance of
the commandments. Such were the apostles, in whose case it is said
that “faith removed mountains and transplanted trees.”[703] Whence,
perceiving the greatness of its power, they asked “that faith might
be added to them;”[704] a faith which salutarily bites the soil “like
a grain of mustard,” and grows magnificently in it, to such a degree
that the reasons of things sublime rest on it. For if one by nature
knows God, as Basilides thinks, who calls intelligence of a superior
order at once faith and kingship, and a creation worthy of the essence
of the Creator; and explains that near Him exists not power, but
essence and nature and substance; and says that faith is not the
rational assent of the soul exercising free-will, but an undefined
beauty, belonging immediately to the creature;--the precepts both of
the Old and of the New Testament are, then, superfluous, if one is
saved by nature, as Valentinus would have it, and is a believer and an
elect man by nature, as Basilides thinks; and nature would have been
able, one time or other, to have shone forth, apart from the Saviour’s
appearance. But were they to say that the visit of the Saviour was
necessary, then the properties of nature are gone from them, the elect
being saved by instruction, and purification, and the doing of good
works. Abraham, accordingly, who through hearing believed the voice,
which promised under the oak in Mamre, “I will give this land to thee,
and to thy seed,” was either elect or not. But if he was not, how did
he straightway believe, as it were naturally? And if he was elect,
their hypothesis is done away with, inasmuch as even previous to the
coming of the Lord an election was found, and that saved: “For it was
reckoned to him for righteousness.”[705] For if any one, following
Marcion, should dare to say that the Creator (Δημιουργόν) saved the
man that believed on him, even before the advent of the Lord, (the
election being saved with their own proper salvation); the power of
the good Being will be eclipsed; inasmuch as late only, and subsequent
to the Creator spoken of by them in words of good omen, it made the
attempt to save, and by his instruction, and in imitation of him. But
if, being such, the good Being save, according to them; neither is it
his own that he saves, nor is it with the consent of him who formed
the creation that he essays salvation, but by force or fraud. And how
can he any more be good, acting thus, and being posterior? But if the
locality is different, and the dwelling-place of the Omnipotent is
remote from the dwelling-place of the good God; yet the will of him
who saves, having been the first to begin, is not inferior to that of
the good God. From what has been previously proved, those who believe
not are proved senseless: “For their paths are perverted, and they
know not peace,” saith the prophet.[706] “But foolish and unlearned
questions” the divine Paul exhorted to “avoid, because they gender
strifes.”[707] And Æschylus exclaims:
“In what profits not, labour not in vain.”
For that investigation, which accords with faith, which builds, on
the foundation of faith, the august knowledge of the truth, we know
to be the best. Now we know that neither things which are clear
are made subjects of investigation, such as if it is day, while it
is day; nor things unknown, and never destined to become clear, as
whether the stars are even or odd in number; nor things convertible;
and those are so which can be said equally by those who take the
opposite side, as if what is in the womb is a living creature or not.
A fourth mode is, when, from either side of those, there is advanced
an unanswerable and irrefragable argument. If, then, the ground
of inquiry, according to all of these modes, is removed, faith is
established. For we advance to them the unanswerable consideration,
that it is God who speaks and comes to our help in writing, respecting
each one of the points regarding which I investigate. Who, then, is
so impious as to disbelieve God, and to demand proofs from God as
from men? Again, some questions demand the evidence of the senses, as
if one were to ask whether the fire be warm, or the snow white; and
some admonition and rebuke, as the question if you ought to honour
your parents. And there are those that deserve punishment, as to ask
proofs of the existence of Providence. There being then a Providence,
it were impious to think that the whole of prophecy and the economy
in reference to a Saviour did not take place in accordance with
Providence. And perchance one should not even attempt to demonstrate
such points, the divine Providence being evident from the sight of
all its skilful and wise works which are seen, some of which take
place in order, and some appear in order. And He who communicated to
us being and life, has communicated to us also reason, wishing us
to live rationally and rightly. For the Word of the Father of the
universe is not the uttered word (λόγος προφορικός), but the wisdom and
most manifest kindness of God, and His power too, which is almighty
and truly divine, and not incapable of being conceived by those who
do not confess--the all-potent will. But since some are unbelieving,
and some are disputatious, all do not attain to the perfection of the
good. For neither is it possible to attain it without the exercise of
free choice; nor does the whole depend on our own purpose; as, for
example, what is destined to happen. “For by grace we are saved:” not,
indeed, without good works; but we must, by being formed for what is
good, acquire an inclination for it. And we must possess the healthy
mind which is fixed on the pursuit of the good; in order to which
we have the greatest need of divine grace, and of right teaching,
and of holy susceptibility, and of the drawing of the Father to Him.
For, bound in this earthly body, we apprehend the objects of sense by
means of the body; but we grasp intellectual objects by means of the
logical faculty itself. But if one expect to apprehend all things by
the senses, he has fallen far from the truth. Spiritually, therefore,
the apostle writes respecting the knowledge of God, “For now we see as
through a glass, but then face to face.”[708] For the vision of the
truth is given but to few. Accordingly, Plato says in the _Epinomis_,
“I do not say that it is possible for all to be blessed and happy;
only a few. Whilst we live, I pronounce this to be the case. But
there is a good hope that after death I shall attain all.” To the
same effect is what we find in Moses: “No man shall see my face, and
live.”[709] For it is evident that no one during the period of life
has been able to apprehend God clearly. But “the pure in heart shall
see God,”[710] when they arrive at the final perfection. For since the
soul became too enfeebled for the apprehension of realities, we needed
a divine teacher. The Saviour is sent down--a teacher and leader in
the acquisition of the good--the secret and sacred token of the great
Providence. “Where, then, is the scribe? where is the searcher of
this world? Hath not God made foolish the wisdom of this world?”[711]
it is said. And again, “I will destroy the wisdom of the wise, and
bring to nothing the understanding of the prudent,”[712] plainly of
those wise in their own eyes, and disputatious. Excellently therefore
Jeremiah says, “Thus saith the Lord, Stand in the ways, and ask for
the eternal paths, what is the good way, and walk in it, and ye shall
find expiation for your souls.”[713] Ask, he says, and inquire of those
who know, without contention and dispute. And on learning the way of
truth, let us walk on the right way, without turning till we attain
to what we desire. It was therefore with reason that the king of the
Romans (his name was Numa), being a Pythagorean, first of all men,
erected a temple to Faith and Peace. “And to Abraham, on believing,
righteousness was reckoned.”[714] He, prosecuting the lofty philosophy
of aerial phenomena, and the sublime philosophy of the movements in the
heavens, was called Abram, which is interpreted “sublime father.”[715]
But afterwards, on looking up to heaven, whether it was that he saw
the Son in the spirit, as some explain, or a glorious angel, or in any
other way recognised God to be superior to the creation, and all the
order in it, he receives in addition the Alpha, the knowledge of the
one and only God, and is called Abraam, having, instead of a natural
philosopher, become wise, and a lover of God. For it is interpreted,
“elect father of sound.” For by sound is the uttered word: the mind is
its father; and the mind of the good man is elect. I cannot forbear
praising exceedingly the poet of Agrigentum, who celebrates faith as
follows:
“Friends, I know, then, that there is truth in the myths
Which I will relate. But very difficult to men,
And irksome to the mind, is the attempt of faith.”[716]
Wherefore also the apostle exhorts, “that your faith should not be in
the wisdom of men,” who profess to persuade, “but in the power of
God,”[717] which alone without proofs, by mere faith, is able to save.
“For the most approved of those that are reputable knows how to keep
watch. And justice will apprehend the forgers and witnesses of lies,”
says the Ephesian.[718] For he, having derived his knowledge from the
barbarian philosophy, is acquainted with the purification by fire of
those who have led bad lives, which the Stoics afterwards called the
Conflagration (ἐκπύρωσις), in which also they teach that each will
arise exactly as he was, so treating of the resurrection; while Plato
says as follows, that the earth at certain periods is purified by fire
and water: “There have been many destructions of men in many ways; and
there shall be very great ones by fire and water; and others briefer by
innumerable causes.” And after a little he adds: “And, in truth, there
is a change of the objects which revolve about earth and heaven; and
in the course of long periods there is the destruction of the objects
on earth by a great conflagration.” Then he subjoins respecting the
deluge: “But when, again, the gods deluge the earth to purify it with
water, those on the mountains, herdsmen and shepherds, are saved; those
in your cities are carried down by the rivers into the sea.” And we
showed in the first Miscellany that the philosophers of the Greeks are
called thieves, inasmuch as they have taken without acknowledgment
their principal dogmas from Moses and the prophets. To which also we
shall add, that the angels who had obtained the superior rank, having
sunk into pleasures, told to the women the secrets which had come
to their knowledge; while the rest of the angels concealed them, or
rather, kept them against the coming of the Lord. Thence emanated the
doctrine of providence, and the revelation of high things; and prophecy
having already been imparted to the philosophers of the Greeks, the
treatment of dogma arose among the philosophers, sometimes true when
they hit the mark, and sometimes erroneous, when they comprehended not
the secret of the prophetic allegory. And this it is proposed briefly
to indicate in running over the points requiring mention. Faith, then,
we say, we are to show must not be inert and alone, but accompanied
with investigation. For I do not say that we are not to inquire at all.
For “Search, and thou shalt find,”[719] it is said.
“What is sought may be captured,
But what is neglected escapes,”
according to Sophocles.
The like also says Menander the comic poet:
“All things sought,
The wisest say, need anxious thought.”
But we ought to direct the visual faculty of the soul aright to
discovery, and to clear away obstacles; and to cast clean away
contention, and envy, and strife, destined to perish miserably from
among men.
For very beautifully does Timon of Phlius write:
“And Strife, the Plague of Mortals, stalks vainly shrieking,
The sister of Murderous Quarrel and Discord,
Which rolls blindly over all things. But then
It sets its head towards men, and casts them on hope.”
Then a little below he adds:
“For who hath set these to fight in deadly strife?
A rabble keeping pace with Echo; for, enraged at those silent,
It raised an evil disease against men, and many perished;”
of the speech which denies what is false, and of the dilemma, of
that which is concealed, of the Sorites, and of the Crocodilean, of
that which is open, and of ambiguities and sophisms. To inquire,
then, respecting God, if it tend not to strife, but to discovery, is
salutary. For it is written in David, “The poor eat, and shall be
filled; and they shall praise the Lord that seek Him. Your heart shall
live for ever.”[720] For they who seek Him after the true search,
praising the Lord, shall be filled with the gift that comes from
God, that is, knowledge. And their soul shall live; for the soul is
figuratively termed the heart, which ministers life: for by the Son is
the Father known.
We ought not to surrender our ears to all who speak and write
rashly. For cups also, which are taken hold of by many by the ears,
are dirtied, and lose the ears; and besides, when they fall they are
broken. In the same way also, those, who have polluted the pure hearing
of faith by many trifles, at last becoming deaf to the truth, become
useless and fall to the earth. It is not, then, without reason that
we commanded boys to kiss their relations, holding them by the ears;
indicating this, that the feeling of love is engendered by hearing. And
“God,” who is known to those who love, “is love,”[721] as “God,” who by
instruction is communicated to the faithful, “is faithful;”[722] and we
must be allied to Him by divine love: so that by like we may see like,
hearing the word of truth guilelessly and purely, as children who obey
us. And this was what he, whoever he was, indicated who wrote on the
entrance to the temple at Epidaurus the inscription:
“Pure he must be who goes within
The incense-perfumed fane.”
And purity is “to think holy thoughts.” “Except ye become as these
little children, ye shall not enter,” it is said, “into the kingdom of
heaven.”[723] For there the temple of God is seen established on three
foundations--faith, hope, and love.
CHAPTER II.
ON HOPE.
Respecting faith we have adduced sufficient testimonies of writings
among the Greeks. But in order not to exceed bounds, through eagerness
to collect a very great many also respecting hope and love, suffice it
merely to say that in the _Crito_ Socrates, who prefers a good
life and death to life itself, thinks that we have hope of another life
after death.
Also in the _Phædrus_ he says, “That only when in a separate state
can the soul become partaker of the wisdom which is true, and surpasses
human power; and when, having reached the end of hope by philosophic
love, desire shall waft it to heaven, then,” says he, “does it
receive the commencement of another, an immortal life.” And in the
_Symposium_ he says, “That there is instilled into all the natural
love of generating what is like, and in men of generating men alone,
and in the good man of the generation of the counterpart of himself.
But it is impossible for the good man to do this without possessing the
perfect virtues, in which he will train the youth who have recourse to
him.” And as he says in the _Theætetus_, “He will beget and finish
men. For some procreate by the body, others by the soul;” since also
with the barbarian philosophers to teach and enlighten is called to
regenerate; and “I have begotten you in Jesus Christ,”[724] says the
good apostle somewhere.
Empedocles, too, enumerates friendship among the elements, conceiving
it as a combining love:
“Which do you look at with your mind; and don’t sit gaping with
your eyes.”
Parmenides, too, in his poem, alluding to hope, speaks thus:
“Yet look with the mind certainly on what is absent as present,
For it will not sever that which is from the grasp it has of that
which is
Not, even if scattered in every direction over the world or
combined.”
CHAPTER III.
THE OBJECTS OF FAITH AND HOPE PERCEIVED BY THE
MIND ALONE.
For he who hopes, as he who believes, sees intellectual objects and
future things with the mind. If, then, we affirm that aught is just,
and affirm it to be good, and we also say that truth is something, yet
we have never seen any of such objects with our eyes, but with our mind
alone. Now the Word of God says, “I am the truth.”[725] The Word is
then to be contemplated by the mind. “Do you aver,” it was said,[726]
“that there are any true philosophers?” “Yes,” said I, “those who love
to contemplate the truth.” In the _Phædrus_ also, Plato, speaking
of the truth, shows it as an idea. Now an idea is a conception of God;
and this the barbarians have termed the Word of God. The words are
as follow: “For one must then dare to speak the truth, especially in
speaking of the truth. For the essence of the soul, being colourless,
formless, and intangible, is visible only to God,[727] its guide.”
Now the Word issuing forth was the cause of creation; then also he
generated himself, “when the Word had become flesh,”[728] that He
might be seen. The righteous man will seek the discovery that flows
from love, to which if he hastes he prospers. For it is said, “To
him that knocketh, it shall be opened: ask, and it shall be given to
you.”[729] “For the violent that storm the kingdom”[730] are not so in
disputatious speeches; but by continuance in a right life and unceasing
prayers, are said “to take it by force,” wiping away the blots left by
their previous sins.
“You may obtain wickedness, even in great abundance.[731]
And him who toils God helps;
For the gifts of the Muses, hard to win,
Lie not before you, for any one to bear away.”
The knowledge of ignorance is, then, the first lesson in walking
according to the Word. An ignorant man has sought, and having sought,
he finds the teacher; and finding has believed, and believing has
hoped; and henceforward having loved, is assimilated to what was
loved--endeavouring to be what he first loved. Such is the method
Socrates shows Alcibiades, who thus questions: “Do you not think that
I shall know about what is right otherwise?” “Yes, if you have found
out.” “But you don’t think I have found out?” “Certainly, if you have
sought.” “Then you don’t think that I have sought?” “Yes, if you think
you do not know.”[732] So with the lamps of the wise virgins, lighted
at night in the great darkness of ignorance, which the Scripture
signified by “night.” Wise souls, pure as virgins, understanding
themselves to be situated amidst the ignorance of the world, kindle
the light, and rouse the mind, and illumine the darkness, and dispel
ignorance, and seek truth, and await the appearance of the Teacher.
“The mob, then,” said I, “cannot become a philosopher.”[733]
“Many rod-bearers there are, but few Bacchi,” according to Plato. “For
many are called, but few chosen.”[734] “Knowledge is not in all,”[735]
says the apostle. “And pray that we may be delivered from unreasonable
and wicked men: for all men have not faith.”[736] And the _Poetics_ of
Cleanthes, the Stoic, writes to the following effect:
“Look not to glory, wishing to be suddenly wise,
And fear not the undiscerning and rash opinion of the many;
For the multitude has not an intelligent, or wise, or right judgment,
And it is in few men that you will find this.”[737]
And more sententiously the comic poet briefly says:
“It is a shame to judge of what is right by much noise.”
For they heard, I think, that excellent wisdom, which says to us,
“Watch your opportunity in the midst of the foolish, and in the midst
of the intelligent continue.”[738] And again, “The wise will conceal
sense.”[739] For the many demand demonstration as a pledge of truth,
not satisfied with the bare salvation by faith.
“But it is strongly incumbent to disbelieve the dominant wicked,
And as is enjoined by the assurance of our muse,
Know by dissecting the utterance within your breast.”
“For this is habitual to the wicked,” says Empedocles, “to wish to
overbear what is true by disbelieving it.” And that our tenets are
probable and worthy of belief, the Greeks shall know, the point being
more thoroughly investigated in what follows. For we are taught what
is like by what is like. For says Solomon, “Answer a fool according to
his folly.”[740] Wherefore also, to those that ask the wisdom that is
with us, we are to hold out things suitable, that with the greatest
possible ease they may, through their own ideas, be likely to arrive
at faith in the truth. For “I became all things to all men, that I
might gain all men.”[741] Since also “the rain” of the divine grace
is sent down “on the just and the unjust.”[742] “Is He the God of the
Jews only, and not also of the Gentiles? Yes, also of the Gentiles: if
indeed He is one God,”[743] exclaims the noble apostle.
CHAPTER IV.
DIVINE THINGS WRAPPED UP IN FIGURES BOTH IN THE
SACRED AND IN HEATHEN WRITERS.
But since they will believe neither in what is good justly nor in
knowledge unto salvation, we ourselves reckoning what they claim as
belonging to us, because all things are God’s; and especially since
what is good proceeded from us to the Greeks, let us handle those
things as they are capable of hearing. For intelligence or rectitude
this great crowd estimates not by truth, but by what they are delighted
with. And they will be pleased not more with other things than with
what is like themselves. For he who is still blind and dumb, not having
understanding, or the undazzled and keen vision of the contemplative
soul, which the Saviour confers, like the uninitiated at the mysteries,
or the unmusical at dances, not being yet pure and worthy of the
pure truth, but still discordant and disordered and material, must
stand outside of the divine choir. “For we compare spiritual things
with spiritual.”[744] Wherefore, in accordance with the method of
concealment, the truly sacred Word, truly divine and most necessary for
us, deposited in the shrine of truth, was by the Egyptians indicated by
what were called among them _adyta_, and by the Hebrews by the
veil. Only the consecrated--that is, those devoted to God, circumcised
in the desires of the passions for the sake of love to that which is
alone divine--were allowed access to them. For Plato also thought it
not lawful for “the impure to touch the pure.”
Thence the prophecies and oracles are spoken in enigmas, and the
mysteries are not exhibited incontinently to all and sundry, but only
after certain purifications and previous instructions.
“For the Muse was not then
Greedy of gain or mercenary;
Nor were Terpsichore’s sweet,
Honey-toned, silvery soft-voiced
Strains made merchandise of.”
Now those instructed among the Egyptians learned first of all that
style of the Egyptian letters which is called Epistolographic; and
second, the Hieratic, which the sacred scribes practise; and finally,
and last of all, the Hieroglyphic, of which one kind which is by the
first elements is literal (Kyriologic), and the other Symbolic. Of the
Symbolic, one kind speaks literally by imitation, and another writes as
it were figuratively; and another is quite allegorical, using certain
enigmas.
Wishing to express Sun in writing, they make a circle; and Moon,
a figure like the Moon, like its proper shape. But in using the
figurative style, by transposing and transferring, by changing and
by transforming in many ways as suits them, they draw characters. In
relating the praises of the kings in theological myths, they write in
anaglyphs.[745] Let the following stand as a specimen of the third
species--the Enigmatic. For the rest of the stars, on account of their
oblique course, they have figured like the bodies of serpents; but the
sun like that of a beetle, because it makes a round figure of ox-dung,
and rolls it before its face. And they say that this creature lives
six months under ground, and the other division of the year above
ground, and emits its seed into the ball, and brings forth; and that
there is not a female beetle. All then, in a word, who have spoken
of divine things, both Barbarians and Greeks, have veiled the first
principles of things, and delivered the truth in enigmas, and symbols,
and allegories, and metaphors, and such like tropes. Such also are the
oracles among the Greeks. And the Pythian Apollo is called Loxias. Also
the maxims of those among the Greeks called wise men, in a few sayings
indicate the unfolding of matter of considerable importance. Such
certainly is that maxim, “Spare Time:” either because life is short,
and we ought not to expend this time in vain; or, on the other hand, it
bids you spare your personal expenses; so that, though you live many
years, necessaries may not fail you. Similarly also the maxim “_Know
thyself_” shows many things; both that thou art mortal, and that
thou wast born a human being; and also that, in comparison with the
other excellences of life, thou art of no account, because thou sayest
that thou art rich or renowned; or, on the other hand, that, being rich
or renowned, you are not honoured on account of your advantages alone.
And it says, Know for what thou wert born, and whose image thou art;
and what is thy essence, and what thy creation, and what thy relation
to God, and the like. And the Spirit says by Isaiah the prophet, “I
will give thee treasures, hidden, dark.”[746] Now wisdom, hard to
hunt, is the treasures of God and unfailing riches. But those, taught
in theology by those prophets, the poets, philosophize much by way of
a hidden sense. I mean Orpheus, Linus, Musæus, Homer, and Hesiod, and
those in this fashion wise. The persuasive style of poetry is for them
a veil for the many. Dreams and signs are all more or less obscure
to men, not from jealousy (for it were wrong to conceive of God as
subject to passions), but in order that research, introducing to the
understanding of enigmas, may haste to the discovery of truth. Thus
Sophocles the tragic poet somewhere says:
“And God I know to be such an one,
Ever the revealer of enigmas to the wise,
But to the perverse bad, although a teacher in few words,”--
putting bad instead of simple. Expressly then respecting all our
Scripture, as if spoken in a parable, it is written in the Psalms,
“Hear, O my people, my law: incline your ear to the words of my mouth.
I will open my mouth in parables, I will utter my problems from the
beginning.”[747] Similarly speaks the noble apostle to the following
effect: “Howbeit we speak wisdom among those that are perfect; yet not
the wisdom of this world, nor of the princes of this world, that come
to nought. But we speak the wisdom of God hidden in a mystery; which
none of the princes of this world knew. For had they known it, they
would not have crucified the Lord of glory.”[748]
The philosophers did not exert themselves in contemning the appearance
of the Lord. It therefore follows that it is the opinion of the wise
among the Jews which the apostle inveighs against it. Wherefore he
adds, “But we preach, as it is written, what eye hath not seen, and
ear hath not heard, and hath not entered into the heart of man, what
God hath prepared for them that love Him. For God hath revealed it
to us by the Spirit. For the Spirit searcheth all things, even the
deep things of God.”[749] For he recognises the spiritual man and the
gnostic as the disciple of the Holy Spirit dispensed by God, which is
the mind of Christ. “But the natural man receiveth not the things of
the Spirit, for they are foolishness to him.”[750] Now the apostle,
in contradistinction to gnostic perfection, calls the common faith
_the foundation_, and sometimes _milk_, writing on this wise:
“Brethren, I could not speak to you as to spiritual, but as to carnal,
to babes in Christ. I have fed you with milk, not with meat: for ye
were not able. Neither yet are ye now able. For ye are yet carnal: for
whereas there is among you envy and strife, are ye not carnal, and
walk as men?”[751] Which things are the choice of those men who are
sinners. But those who abstain from these things give their thoughts
to divine things, and partake of gnostic food. “According to the
grace,” it is said, “given to me as a wise master builder, I have laid
the foundation. And another buildeth on it gold and silver, precious
stones.”[752] Such is the gnostic superstructure on the foundation of
faith in Christ Jesus. But “the stubble, and the wood, and the hay,”
are the additions of heresies. “But the fire shall try every man’s
work, of what sort it is.” In allusion to the gnostic edifice also in
the Epistle to the Romans, he says, “For I desire to see you, that I
may impart unto you a spiritual gift, that ye may be established.”[753]
It was impossible that gifts of this sort could be written without
disguise.
CHAPTER V.
ON THE SYMBOLS OF PYTHAGORAS.
Now the Pythagorean symbols were connected with the Barbarian
philosophy in the most recondite way. For instance, the Samian counsels
“not to have a swallow in the house;” that is, not to receive a
loquacious, whispering, garrulous man, who cannot contain what has
been communicated to him. “For the swallow, and the turtle, and the
sparrows of the field, know the times of their entrance,”[754] says
the Scripture; and one ought never to dwell with trifles. And the
turtle-dove murmuring shows the thankless slander of fault-finding, and
is rightly expelled the house.
“Don’t mutter against me, sitting by one in one place, another in
another.”[755]
The swallow too, which suggests the fable of Pandion, seeing it is
right to detest the incidents reported of it, some of which we hear
Tereus suffered, and some of which he inflicted. It pursues also the
musical grasshoppers, whence he who is a persecutor of the word ought
to be driven away.
“By sceptre-bearing Here, whose eye surveys Olympus,
I have a trusty closet for tongues,”
says Poetry. Æschylus also says:
“But I, too, have a key as a guard on my tongue.”
Again Pythagoras commanded, “When the pot is lifted off the fire, not
to leave its mark in the ashes, but to scatter them;” and “people on
getting up from bed, to shake the bed-clothes.” For he intimated that
it was necessary not only to efface the mark, but not to leave even a
trace of anger; and that on its ceasing to boil, it was to be composed,
and all memory of injury to be wiped out. “And let not the sun,” says
the Scripture, “go down upon your wrath.”[756] And he that said, “Thou
shalt not desire,”[757] took away all memory of wrong; for wrath is
found to be the impulse of concupiscence in a mild soul, especially
seeking irrational revenge. In the same way “the bed is ordered to be
shaken up,” so that there may be no recollection of effusion in sleep,
or sleep in the day-time; nor, besides, of pleasure during the night.
And he intimated that the vision of the dark ought to be dissipated
speedily by the light of truth. “Be angry, and sin not,” says David,
teaching us that we ought not to assent to the impression, and not to
follow it up by action, and so confirm wrath.
Again, “Don’t sail on land” is a Pythagorean saying, and shows that
taxes and similar contracts, being troublesome and fluctuating, ought
to be declined. Wherefore also the Word says that the tax-gatherers
shall be saved with difficulty.[758]
And again, “Don’t wear a ring, nor engrave on it the images of the
gods,” enjoins Pythagoras; as Moses ages before enacted expressly,
that neither a graven, nor molten, nor moulded, nor painted likeness
should be made; so that we may not cleave to things of sense, but pass
to intellectual objects: for familiarity with the sight disparages the
reverence of what is divine; and to worship that which is immaterial
by matter, is to dishonour it by sense. Wherefore the wisest of the
Egyptian priests decided that the temple of Athene should be hypæthral,
just as the Hebrews constructed the temple without an image. And some,
in worshipping God, make a representation of heaven containing the
stars; and so worship, although Scripture says, “Let us make man in our
image and likeness.”[759] I think it worth while also to adduce the
utterance of Eurysus the Pythagorean, which is as follows, who in his
book _On Fortune_, having said that the “Creator, on making man,
took Himself as an exemplar,” added, “And the body is like the other
things, as being made of the same material, and fashioned by the best
workman, who wrought it, taking Himself as the archetype.” And, in
fine, Pythagoras and his followers, with Plato also, and most of the
other philosophers, were best acquainted with the Lawgiver, as may be
concluded from their doctrine. And by a happy utterance of divination,
not without divine help, concurring in certain prophetic declarations,
and seizing the truth in portions and aspects, in terms not obscure,
and not going beyond the explanation of the things, they honoured it
on ascertaining the appearance of relation with the truth. Whence
the Hellenic philosophy is like the torch of wick which men kindle,
artificially stealing the light from the sun. But on the proclamation
of the Word all that holy light shone forth. Then in houses by night
the stolen light is useful; but by day the fire blazes, and all the
night is illuminated by such a sun of intellectual light.
Now Pythagoras made an epitome of the statements on righteousness in
Moses, when he said, “Do not step over the balance;” that is, do not
transgress equality in distribution, honouring justice so.
“Which friends to friends for ever,
To cities, cities--to allies, allies binds,
For equality is what is right for men;
But less to greater ever hostile grows,
And days of hate begin,”
as is said with poetic grace.
Wherefore the Lord says, “Take my yoke, for it is gentle and
light.”[760] And on the disciples, striving for the pre-eminence, He
enjoins equality with simplicity, saying “that they must become as
little children.”[761] Likewise also the apostle writes, that “no one
in Christ is bond or free, or Greek or Jew. For the creation in Christ
Jesus is new, is equality, free of strife--not grasping--just.” For
envy, and jealousy, and bitterness, stand without the divine choir.
Thus also those skilled in the mysteries forbid “to eat the heart;”
teaching that we ought not to gnaw and consume the soul by idleness and
by vexation, on account of things which happen against one’s wishes.
Wretched, accordingly, was the man whom Homer also says, wandering
alone, “ate his own heart.” But again, seeing the Gospel supposes
two ways--the apostles, too, similarly with all the prophets--and
seeing they call that one “narrow and confined” which is circumscribed
according to the commandments and prohibitions, and the opposite one,
which leads to perdition, “broad and roomy,” open to pleasures and
wrath, and say, “Blessed is the man who walketh not in the counsel
of the ungodly, and standeth not in the way of sinners.”[762] Hence
also comes the fable of Prodicus of Ceus about Virtue and Vice.
And Pythagoras shrinks not from prohibiting to walk on the public
thoroughfares, enjoining the necessity of not following the sentiments
of the many, which are crude and inconsistent. And Aristocritus, in
the first book of his _Positions against Heracliodorus_, mentions
a letter to this effect: “Atœeas king of the Scythians to the people
of Byzantium: Do not impair my revenues in case my mares drink your
water;” for the Barbarian indicated symbolically that he would make war
on them. Likewise also the poet Euphorion introduces Nestor saying,
“We have not yet wet the Achæan steeds in Simois.”
Therefore also the Egyptians place Sphinxes before their temples, to
signify that the doctrine respecting God is enigmatical and obscure;
perhaps also that we ought both to love and fear the Divine Being: to
love Him as gentle and benign to the pious; to fear Him as inexorably
just to the impious; for the sphinx shows the image of a wild beast and
of a man together.
CHAPTER VI.
THE MYSTIC MEANING OF THE TABERNACLE AND
ITS FURNITURE.
It were tedious to go over all the Prophets and the Law, specifying
what is spoken in enigmas; for almost the whole Scripture gives its
utterances in this way. It may suffice, I think, for any one possessed
of intelligence, for the proof of the point in hand, to select a few
examples.
Now concealment is evinced in the reference of the seven circuits
around the temple, which are made mention of among the Hebrews; and the
equipment on the robe, indicating by the various symbols, which had
reference to visible objects, the agreement which from heaven reaches
down to earth. And the covering and the veil were variegated with blue,
and purple, and scarlet, and linen. And so it was suggested that the
nature of the elements contained the revelation of God. For purple is
from water, linen from the earth; blue, being dark, is like the air, as
scarlet is like fire.
In the midst of the covering and veil, where the priests were allowed
to enter, was situated the altar of incense, the symbol of the earth
placed in the middle of this universe; and from it came the fumes of
incense. And that place intermediate between the inner veil, where the
high priest alone, on prescribed days, was permitted to enter, and the
external court which surrounded it--free to all the Hebrews--was, they
say, the middlemost point of heaven and earth. But others say it was
the symbol of the intellectual world, and that of sense. The covering,
then, the barrier of popular unbelief, was stretched in front of the
five pillars, keeping back those in the surrounding space.
So very mystically the five loaves are broken by the Saviour, and fill
the crowd of the listeners. For great is the crowd that keep to the
things of sense, as if they were the only things in existence. “Cast
your eyes round, and see,” says Plato, “that none of the uninitiated
listen.” Such are they who think that nothing else exists, but what
they can hold tight with their hands; but do not admit as in the
department of existence, actions and processes of generation, and the
whole of the unseen. For such are those who keep by the five senses.
But the knowledge of God is a thing inaccessible to the ears and
like organs of this kind of people. Hence the Son is said to be the
Father’s face, being the revealer of the Father’s character to the
five senses by clothing Himself with flesh. “But if we live in the
Spirit, let us also walk in the Spirit.”[763] “For we walk by faith,
not by sight,”[764] the noble apostle says. Within the veil, then, is
concealed the sacerdotal service; and it keeps those engaged in it far
from those without.
Again, there is the veil of the entrance into the holy of holies.
Four pillars there are, the sign of the sacred tetrad of the ancient
covenants. Further, the mystic name of four letters which was affixed
to those alone to whom the adytum was accessible, is called Jave, which
is interpreted, “Who is and shall be.” The name of God, too, among the
Greeks contains four letters.
Now the Lord, having come alone into the intellectual world, enters
by His sufferings, introduced into the knowledge of the Ineffable,
ascending above every name which is known by sound. The lamp, too, was
placed to the south of the altar of incense; and by it were shown the
motions of the seven planets, that perform their revolutions towards
the south. For three branches rose on either side of the lamp, and
lights on them; since also the sun, like the lamp, set in the midst of
all the planets, dispenses with a kind of divine music the light to
those above and to those below.
The golden lamp conveys another enigma as a symbol of Christ, not in
respect of form alone, but in his casting light, “at sundry times and
divers manners,”[765] on those who believe on Him and hope, and who see
by means of the ministry of the First-born. And they say that the seven
eyes of the Lord “are the seven spirits resting on the rod that springs
from the root of Jesse.”[766]
North of the altar of incense was placed a table, on which there
was “the exhibition of the loaves;” for the most nourishing of the
winds are those of the north. And thus are signified certain seats of
churches conspiring so as to form one body and one assemblage.
And the things recorded of the sacred ark signify the properties of the
world of thought, which is hidden and closed to the many.
And those golden figures, each of them with six wings, signify either
the two bears, as some will have it, or rather the two hemispheres. And
the name cherubim meant “much knowledge.” But both together have twelve
wings, and by the zodiac and time, which moves on it, point out the
world of sense. It is of them, I think, that Tragedy, discoursing of
Nature, says:
“Unwearied Time circles full in perennial flow,
Producing itself. And the twin-bears
On the swift wandering motions of their wings,
Keep the Atlantean pole.”
And Atlas,[767] the unsuffering pole, may mean the fixed sphere, or
better perhaps, motionless eternity. But I think it better to regard
the ark, so called from the Hebrew word Thebotha,[768] as signifying
something else. It is interpreted, _one instead of one in all
places_. Whether, then, it is the eighth region and the world of
thought, or God, all-embracing, and without shape, and invisible, that
is indicated, we may for the present defer saying. But it signifies the
repose which dwells with the adoring spirits, which are meant by the
cherubim.
For He who prohibited the making of a graven image, would never Himself
have made an image in the likeness of holy things. Nor is there at all
any composite thing, and creature endowed with sensation, of the sort
in heaven. But the face is a symbol of the rational soul, and the wings
are the lofty ministers and energies of powers right and left; and the
voice is delightsome glory in ceaseless contemplation. Let it suffice
that the mystic interpretation has advanced so far.
Now the high priest’s robe is the symbol of the world of sense.
The seven planets are represented by the five stones and the two
carbuncles, for Saturn and the Moon. The former is southern, and moist,
and earthy, and heavy; the latter aerial, whence she is called by some
Artemis, as if Aerotomos (cutting the air); and the air is cloudy.
And co-operating as they did in the production of things here below,
those that by Divine Providence are set over the planets are rightly
represented as placed on the breast and shoulders; and by them was the
work of creation, the first week. And the breast is the seat of the
heart and soul.
Differently, the stones might be the various phases of salvation; some
occupying the upper, some the lower parts of the entire body saved. The
three hundred and sixty bells, suspended from the robe, is the space of
a year, “the acceptable year of the Lord,” proclaiming and resounding
the stupendous manifestation of the Saviour. Further, the broad gold
mitre indicates the regal power of the Lord, “since the head of the
church” is the Saviour.[769] The mitre that is on it [_i.e._ the
head] is, then, a sign of most princely rule; and otherwise we have
heard it said, “The Head of Christ is the God and Father of our Lord
Jesus Christ.”[770] Moreover, there was the breastplate, comprising the
ephod, which is the symbol of work, and the oracle (λογίον); and this
indicated the Word (λόγος) by which it was framed, and is the symbol
of heaven, made by the Word,[771] and subjected to Christ, the Head of
all things, inasmuch as it moves in the same way, and in a like manner.
The luminous emerald stones, therefore, in the ephod, signify the
sun and moon, the helpers of nature. The shoulder, I take it, is the
commencement of the hand.
The twelve stones, set in four rows on the breast, describe for us the
circle of the zodiac, in the four changes of the year. It was otherwise
requisite that the law and the prophets should be placed beneath
the Lord’s head, because in both Testaments mention is made of the
righteous. For were we to say that the apostles were at once prophets
and righteous, we should say well, “since one and the self-same Holy
Spirit works in all.”[772] And as the Lord is above the whole world,
yea, above the world of thought, so the name engraven on the plate
has been regarded to signify, above all rule and authority; and it
was inscribed with reference both to the written commandments and the
manifestation to sense. And it is the name of God that is expressed;
since, as the Son sees the goodness of the Father, God the Saviour
works, being called the first principle of all things, which was imaged
forth from the invisible God first, and before the ages, and which
fashioned all things which came into being after itself. Nay more, the
oracle[773] exhibits the prophecy which by the Word cries and preaches,
and the judgment that is to come; since it is the same Word which
prophesies, and judges, and discriminates all things.
And they say that the robe prophesied the ministry in the flesh, by
which He was seen in closer relation to the world. So the high priest,
putting off his consecrated robe (the universe, and the creation in the
universe, were consecrated by Him assenting that, what was made, was
good), washes himself, and puts on the other tunic--a holy-of-holies
one, so to speak--which is to accompany him into the adytum;
exhibiting, as seems to me, the Levite and Gnostic, as the chief of
other priests (those bathed in water, and clothed in faith alone, and
expecting their own individual abode), himself distinguishing the
objects of the intellect from the things of sense, rising above other
priests, hasting to the entrance to the world of ideas, to wash himself
from the things here below, not in water, as formerly one was cleansed
on being enrolled in the tribe of Levi. But purified already by the
gnostic Word in his whole heart, and thoroughly regulated, and having
improved that mode of life received from the priest to the highest
pitch, being quite sanctified both in word and life, and having put
on the bright array of glory, and received the ineffable inheritance
of that spiritual and perfect man, “which eye hath not seen and ear
hath not heard, and it hath not entered into the heart of man;” and
having become son and friend, he is now replenished with insatiable
contemplation face to face. For there is nothing like hearing the Word
Himself, who by means of the Scripture inspires fuller intelligence.
For so it is said, “And he shall put off the linen robe, which he had
put on when he entered into the holy place; and shall lay it aside
there, and wash his body in water in the holy place, and put on his
robe.”[774] But in one way, as I think, the Lord puts off and puts on
by descending into the region of sense; and in another, he who through
Him has believed puts off and puts on, as the apostle intimated, the
consecrated stole. Thence, after the image of the Lord, the worthiest
were chosen from the sacred tribes to be high priests, and those
elected to the kingly office and to prophecy were anointed.
CHAPTER VII.
THE EGYPTIAN SYMBOLS AND ENIGMAS OF SACRED THINGS.
Whence also the Egyptians did not entrust the mysteries they possessed
to all and sundry, and did not divulge the knowledge of divine things
to the profane; but only to those destined to ascend the throne,
and those of the priests that were judged the worthiest, from their
nurture, culture, and birth. Similar, then, to the Hebrew enigmas
in respect to concealment, are those of the Egyptians also. Of the
Egyptians, some show the sun on a ship, others on a crocodile. And they
signify hereby, that the sun, making a passage through the delicious
and moist air, generates time; which is symbolized by the crocodile
in some other sacerdotal account. Further, at Diospolis in Egypt,
on the temple called Pylon, there was figured a boy as the symbol of
production, and an old man as that of decay. A hawk, on the other hand,
was the symbol of God, as a fish of hate; and, according to a different
symbolism, the crocodile of impudence. The whole symbol, then, when put
together, appears to teach this: “Oh ye who are born and die, God hates
impudence.”
And there are those who fashion ears and eyes of costly material,
and consecrate them, dedicating them in the temples to the gods--by
this plainly indicating that God sees and hears all things. Besides,
the lion is with them the symbol of strength and prowess, as the ox
clearly is of the earth itself, and husbandry and food, and the horse
of fortitude and confidence; while, on the other hand, the sphinx, of
strength combined with intelligence--as it had a body entirely that
of a lion, and the face of a man. Similarly to these, to indicate
intelligence, and memory, and power, and art, a man is sculptured in
the temples. And in what is called among them the Komasiæ of the gods,
they carry about golden images--two dogs, one hawk, and one ibis; and
the four figures of the images they call four letters. For the dogs
are symbols of the two hemispheres, which, as it were, go round and
keep watch; the hawk, of the sun, for it is fiery and destructive (so
they attribute pestilential diseases to the sun); the ibis, of the
moon, likening the shady parts to that which is dark in plumage, and
the luminous to the light. And some will have it that by the dogs are
meant the tropics, which guard and watch the sun’s passage to the south
and north. The hawk signifies the equinoctial line, which is high and
parched with heat, as the ibis the ecliptic. For the ibis seems, above
other animals, to have furnished to the Egyptians the first rudiments
of the invention of number and measure, as the oblique line did of
circles.
CHAPTER VIII.
THE USE OF THE SYMBOLIC STYLE BY POETS AND
PHILOSOPHERS.
But it was not only the most highly intellectual of the Egyptians,
but also such of other barbarians as prosecuted philosophy, that
affected the symbolical style. They say, then, that Idanthuris king
of the Scythians, as Pherecydes of Syros relates, sent to Darius,
on his passing the Ister in threat of war, a symbol, instead of a
letter, consisting of a mouse, a frog, a bird, a javelin, a plough.
And there being a doubt in reference to them, as was to be expected,
Orontopagas the Chiliarch said that they were to resign the kingdom;
taking dwellings to be meant by the mouse, waters by the frog, air
by the bird, land by the plough, arms by the javelin. But Xiphodres
interpreted the contrary; for he said, “If we do not take our flight
like birds, or like mice get below the earth, or like frogs beneath the
water, we shall not escape their arrows; for we are not lords of the
territory.”
It is said that Anacharsis the Scythian, while asleep, held his secret
parts with his left hand, and his mouth with his right, to intimate
that both ought to be mastered, but that it was a greater thing to
master the tongue than voluptuousness.
And why should I linger over the barbarians, when I can adduce
the Greeks as exceedingly addicted to the use of the method of
concealment? Androcydes the Pythagorean says the far-famed so-called
Ephesian letters were of the class of symbols. For he said that ἄσκιον
(shadowless) meant darkness, for it has no shadow; and κατάσκιον
(shadowy) light, since it casts with its rays the shadow; and λίξ is
the earth, according to an ancient appellation; and τετράς is the
year, in reference to the seasons; and δαμναμενεύς is the sun, which
overpowers (δαμάζων); and τὰ αἴσια is the true voice. And then the
symbol intimates that divine things have been arranged in harmonious
order--darkness to light, the sun to the year, and the earth to
nature’s processes of production of every sort. Also Dionysius
Thrax, the grammarian, in his book, _Respecting the Exposition of
the Symbolical Signification in Circles_, says expressly, “Some
signified actions not by words only, but also by symbols: by words, as
is the case of what are called the Delphic maxims, ‘Nothing in excess,’
‘Know thyself,’ and the like; and by symbols, as the wheel that is
turned in the temples of the gods, derived from the Egyptians, and the
branches that are given to the worshippers. For the Thracian Orpheus
says:
“Whatever works of branches are a care to men on earth,
Not one has one fate in the mind, but all things
Revolve around; and it is not lawful to stand at one point,
But each one keeps an equal part of the race as they began.”
The branches either stand as the symbol of the first food, or they are
that the multitude may know that fruits spring and grow universally,
remaining a very long time; but that the duration of life allotted to
themselves is brief. And it is on this account that they will have
it that the branches are given; and perhaps also that they may know,
that as these, on the other hand, are burned, so also they themselves
speedily leave this life, and will become fuel for fire.
Very useful, then, is the mode of symbolic interpretation for many
purposes; and it is helpful to the right theology, and to piety,
and to the display of intelligence, and the practice of brevity,
and the exhibition of wisdom. “For the use of symbolical speech is
characteristic of the wise man,” appositely remarks the grammarian
Didymus, “and the explanation of what is signified by it.” And indeed
the most elementary instruction of children embraces the interpretation
of the four elements; for it is said that the Phrygians call water
Bedu, as also Orpheus says:
“And bright water is poured down, the Bedu of the nymphs.”
Dion Thytes also seems to write similarly:
“And taking Bedu, pour it on your hands, and turn to divination.”
On the other hand, the comic poet, Philydeus, understands by Bedu the
air, as being (Biodoros) life-giver, in the following lines:
“I pray that I may inhale the salutary Bedu,
Which is the most essential part of health;
Inhale the pure, the unsullied air.”
In the same opinion also concurs Neanthes of Cyzicum, who writes that
the Macedonian priests invoke Bedu, which they interpret to mean _the
air_, to be propitious to them and to their children. And Zaps some
have ignorantly taken for fire (from ζέσιν, _boiling_); for so the
sea is called, as Euphorion, in his reply to Theoridas:
“And Zaps, destroyer of ships, wrecked it on the rocks.”
And Dionysius Iambus similarly:
“Briny Zaps moans about the maddened deep.”
Similarly Cratinus the younger, the comic poet:
“Zaps casts forth shrimps and little fishes.”
And Simmias of Rhodes:
“Parent of the Ignetes and the Telchines briny Zaps was born.”[775]
And χθών is the earth (κεχυμένη), spread forth to bigness. And
Plectron, according to some, is the sky (πόλος), according to others,
it is the air, which strikes (πλήσσοντα) and moves to nature and
increase, and which fills all things. But these have not read Cleanthes
the philosopher, who expressly calls Plectron the sun; for darting his
beams in the east, as if striking the world, he leads the light to its
harmonious course. And from the sun it signifies also the rest of the
stars.
And the Sphinx is not the comprehension[776] of the universe, and the
revolution of the world, according to the poet Aratus; but perhaps it
is the spiritual tone which pervades and holds together the universe.
But it is better to regard it as the ether, which holds together and
presses all things; as also Empedocles says:
“But come now, first will I speak of the Sun, the first principle
of all things,
From which all, that we look upon, has sprung,
Both earth, and billowy deep, and humid air;
Titan and Ether too, which binds all things around.”
And Apollodorus of Corcyra says that these lines were recited by
Branchus the seer, when purifying the Milesians from plague; for he,
sprinkling the multitude with branches of laurel, led off the hymn
somehow as follows:
“Sing Boys Hecaergus and Hecaerga.”
And the people accompanied him, saying, “Bedu,[777] Zaps, Chthon,
Plectron, Sphinx, Cnaxzbi, Chthyptes, Phlegmos, Drops.” Callimachus
relates the story in iambics. Cnaxzbi is, by derivation, the plague,
from its gnawing (κναίειν) and destroying (διαφθείρειν), and θῦψαι
is to consume with a thunderbolt. Thespis the tragic poet says that
something else was signified by these, writing thus: “Lo, I offer to
thee a libation of white Cnaxzbi, having pressed it from the yellow
nurses. Lo, to thee, O two-horned Pan, mixing Chthyptes cheese with
red honey, I place it on thy sacred altars. Lo, to thee I pour as a
libation the sparkling gleam of Bromius.” He signifies, as I think, the
soul’s first milk-like nutriment of the four-and-twenty elements, after
which solidified milk comes as food. And last, he teaches of the blood
of the vine of the Word, the sparkling wine, the perfecting gladness
of instruction. And Drops is the operating Word, which, beginning with
elementary training, and advancing to the growth of the man, inflames
and illumines man up to the measure of maturity.
The third is said to be a writing copy for children--μάρπτες σφίγξ,
κλώψ ζυνχθηδόν. And it signifies, in my opinion, that by the
arrangement of the elements and of the world, we must advance to the
knowledge of what is more perfect, since eternal salvation is attained
by force and toil; for μάρψαι is to grasp. And the harmony of the
world is meant by the Sphinx; and ζυνχθηδόν means difficulty; and
κλὼψς means at once the secret knowledge of the Lord and day. Well!
does not Epigenes, in his book on the _Poetry of Orpheus_, in
exhibiting the peculiarities found in Orpheus, say that by “the curved
rods” (κεραίσι) is meant “ploughs;” and by the warp (στήμοσι), the
furrows; and the woof (μίτος) is a figurative expression for the seed;
and that the tears of Zeus signify a shower; and that the “parts”
(μοῖραι) are, again, the phases of the moon, the thirtieth day, and the
fifteenth, and the new moon, and that Orpheus accordingly calls them
“white-robed,” as being parts of the light? Again, that the Spring is
called “flowery,” from its nature; and Night “still,” on account of
rest; and the Moon “Gorgonian,” on account of the face in it; and that
the time in which it is necessary to sow is called Aphrodite by the
“Theologian.”[778] In the same way, too, the Pythagoreans figuratively
called the planets the “dogs of Persephone;” and to the sea they
applied the metaphorical appellation of “the tears of Kronus.” Myriads
on myriads of enigmatical utterances by both poets and philosophers
are to be found; and there are also whole books which present the mind
of the writer veiled, as that of Heraclitus _On Nature_, who on
this very account is called “Obscure.” Similar to this book is the
_Theology_ of Pherecydes of Syrus; for Euphorion the poet, and the
_Causes_ of Callimachus, and the _Alexandra_ of Lycophron,
and the like, are proposed as an exercise in exposition to all the
grammarians.
It is, then, proper that the Barbarian philosophy, on which it is our
business to speak, should prophesy also obscurely and by symbols, as
was evinced. Such are the injunctions of Moses: “These common things,
the sow, the hawk, the eagle, and the raven, are not to be eaten.”[779]
For the sow is the emblem of voluptuous and unclean lust of food,
and lecherous and filthy licentiousness in venery, always prurient,
and material, and lying in the mire, and fattening for slaughter and
destruction.
Again, he commands to eat that which parts the hoof and ruminates;
“intimating,” says Barnabas, “that we ought to cleave to those who fear
the Lord, and meditate in their heart on that portion of the word which
they have received, to those who speak and keep the Lord’s statutes,
to those to whom meditation is a work of gladness, and who ruminate on
the word of the Lord. And what is the parted hoof? That the righteous
walks in this world, and expects the holy eternity to come.” Then he
adds, “See how well Moses enacted. But whence could they understand
or comprehend these things? We who have rightly understood speak the
commandments as the Lord wished; wherefore He circumcised our ears and
hearts, that we may comprehend these things. And when he says, ‘Thou
shalt not eat the eagle, the hawk, the kite, and the crow;’ he says,
‘Thou shalt not adhere to or become like those men who know not how
to procure for themselves subsistence by toil and sweat, but live by
plunder, and lawlessly.’ For the eagle indicates robbery, the hawk
injustice, and the raven greed. It is also written, ‘With the innocent
man thou wilt be innocent, and with the chosen choice, and with the
perverse thou shalt pervert.’[780] It is incumbent on us to cleave to
the saints, because they that cleave to them shall be sanctified.”
Thence Theognis writes:
“For from the good you will learn good things;
But if you mix with the bad, you will destroy any mind you may have.”
And when, again, it is said in the ode, “For He hath triumphed
gloriously: the horse and his rider hath He cast into the sea;”[781]
the many-limbed and brutal affection, lust, with the rider mounted,
who gives the reins to pleasures, “He has cast into the sea,” throwing
them away into the disorders of the world. Thus also Plato, in his
book _On the Soul_, says that the charioteer and the horse that ran
off--the irrational part, which is divided in two, into anger and
concupiscence--fall down; and so the myth intimates that it was through
the licentiousness of the steeds that Phaëthon was thrown out. Also in
the case of Joseph: the brothers having envied this young man, who by
his knowledge was possessed of uncommon foresight, stripped off the
coat of many colours, and took and threw him into a pit (the pit was
empty, it had no water), rejecting the good man’s varied knowledge,
springing from his love of instruction; or, in the exercise of the bare
faith, which is according to the law, they threw him into the pit empty
of water, selling him into Egypt, which was destitute of the divine
word. And the pit was destitute of knowledge; into which being thrown
and stript of his knowledge, he that had become unconsciously wise,
stript of knowledge, seemed like his brethren. Otherwise interpreted,
the coat of many colours is lust, which takes its way into a yawning
pit. “And if one open up or hew out a pit,” it is said, “and do not
cover it, and there fall in there a calf or ass, the owner of the
pit shall pay the price in money, and give it to his neighbour; and
the dead body shall be his.”[782] Here add that prophecy: “The ox
knoweth his owner, and the ass his master’s crib: but Israel hath not
understood me.”[783] In order, then, that none of those, who have
fallen in with the knowledge taught by thee, may become incapable of
holding the truth, and disobey and fall away, it is said, Be thou sure
in the treatment of the word, and shut up the living spring in the
depth from those who approach irrationally, but reach drink to those
that thirst for truth. Conceal it, then, from those who are unfit to
receive the depth of knowledge, and so cover the pit. The owner of the
pit, then, the Gnostic, shall himself be punished, incurring the blame
of the others stumbling, and of being overwhelmed by the greatness
of the word, he himself being of small capacity; or transferring the
worker into the region of speculation, and on that account dislodging
him from offhand faith. “And will pay money,” rendering a reckoning,
and submitting his accounts to the “omnipotent Will.”
This, then, is the type of “the law and the prophets which were until
John;”[784] while he, though speaking more perspicuously as no longer
prophesying, but pointing out as now present, Him, who was proclaimed
symbolically from the beginning, nevertheless said, “I am not worthy
to loose the latchet of the Lord’s shoe.”[785] For he confesses that he
is not worthy to baptize so great a Power; for it behoves those, who
purify others, to free the soul from the body and its sins, as the foot
from the thong. Perhaps also this signified the final exertion of the
Saviour’s power toward us--the immediate, I mean--that by His presence,
concealed in the enigma of prophecy, inasmuch as he, by pointing out
to sight Him that had been prophesied of, and indicating the Presence
which had come, walking forth into the light, loosed the latchet of the
oracles of the [old] economy, by unveiling the meaning of the symbols.
And the observances practised by the Romans in the case of wills have
a place here; those balances and small coins to denote justice, and
freeing of slaves, and rubbing of the ears. For these observances
are, that things may be transacted with justice; and those for the
dispensing of honour; and the last, that he who happens to be near, as
if a burden were imposed on him, should stand and hear and take the
post of mediator.
CHAPTER IX.
REASONS FOR VEILING THE TRUTH IN SYMBOLS.
But, as appears, I have, in my eagerness to establish my point,
insensibly gone beyond what is requisite. For life would fail me to
adduce the multitude of those who philosophize in a symbolical manner.
For the sake, then, of memory and brevity, and of attracting to the
truth, such are the scriptures of the Barbarian philosophy.
For only to those who often approach them, and have given them a trial
by faith and in their whole life, will they supply the real philosophy
and the true theology. They also wish us to require an interpreter
and guide. For so they considered, that, receiving truth at the
hands of those who knew it well, we would be more earnest and less
liable to deception, and those worthy of them would profit. Besides,
all things that shine through a veil show the truth grander and
more imposing; as fruits shining through water, and figures through
veils, which give added reflections to them. For, in addition to the
fact that things unconcealed are perceived in one way, the rays of
light shining round reveal defects. Since, then, we may draw several
meanings, as we do from what is expressed in veiled form, such being
the case, the ignorant and unlearned man fails. But the Gnostic
apprehends. Now, then, it is not wished that all things should be
exposed indiscriminately to all and sundry, or the benefits of wisdom
communicated to those who have not even in a dream been purified in
soul, (for it is not allowed to hand to every chance comer what has
been procured with such laborious efforts); nor are the mysteries of
the word to be expounded to the profane.
They say, then, that Hipparchus the Pythagorean, being guilty of
writing the tenets of Pythagoras in plain language, was expelled
from the school, and a pillar raised for him as if he had been dead.
Wherefore also in the Barbarian philosophy they call those dead
who have fallen away from the dogmas, and have placed the mind in
subjection to carnal passions. “For what fellowship hath righteousness
and iniquity?” according to the divine apostle. “Or what communion hath
light with darkness? or what concord hath Christ with Belial? or what
portion hath the believer with the unbeliever?”[786] For the honours of
the Olympians and of mortals lie apart. “Wherefore also go forth from
the midst of them, and be separated, saith the Lord, and touch not the
unclean thing; and I will receive you, and will be to you for a Father,
and ye shall be my sons and daughters.”[787]
It was not only the Pythagoreans and Plato, then, that concealed many
things; but the Epicureans too say that they have things that may not
be uttered, and do not allow all to peruse those writings. The Stoics
also say that by the first Zeno things were written which they do not
readily allow disciples to read, without their first giving proof
whether or not they are genuine philosophers. And the disciples of
Aristotle say that some of their treatises are esoteric, and others
common and exoteric. Further, those who instituted the mysteries,
being philosophers, buried their doctrines in myths, so as not to be
obvious to all. Did they then, by veiling human opinions, prevent the
ignorant from handling them; and was it not more beneficial for the
holy and blessed contemplation of realities to be concealed? But it was
not only the tenets of the Barbarian philosophy, or the Pythagorean
myths. But even those myths in Plato (in the _Republic_, that
of Hero the Armenian; and in the _Gorgias_, that of Æacus and
Rhadamanthus; and in the _Phædo_, that of Tartarus; and in the
_Protagoras_, that of Prometheus and Epimetheus; and besides
these, that of the war between the Atlantini and the Athenians in the
Atlanticum) are to be expounded allegorically, not absolutely in all
their expressions, but in those which express the general sense. And
these we shall find indicated by symbols under the veil of allegory.
Also the association of Pythagoras, and the twofold intercourse with
the associates which designates the majority, hearers (ἀκουσματικοι),
and the others that have a genuine attachment to philosophy, disciples
(μαθεματικοί), yet signified that something was spoken to the
multitude, and something concealed from them. Perchance, too, the
twofold species of the Peripatetic teaching--that called probable, and
that called knowable--came very near the distinction between opinion on
the one hand, and glory and truth on the other.
“To win the flowers of fair renown from men,
Be not induced to speak aught more than right.”
The Ionic muses accordingly expressly say, “That the majority of
people, wise in their own estimation, follow minstrels and make use of
laws, knowing that many are bad, few good; but that the best pursue
glory: for the best make choice of the everlasting glory of men above
all. But the multitude cram themselves like brutes, measuring happiness
by the belly and the pudenda, and the basest things in us.” And the
great Parmenides of Elea is introduced describing thus the teaching of
the two ways:
“The one is the dauntless heart of convincing truth;
The other is in the opinions of men, in whom is no true faith.”
CHAPTER X.
THE OPINION OF THE APOSTLES ON VEILING THE MYSTERIES
OF THE FAITH.
Rightly, therefore, the divine apostle says, “By revelation the mystery
was made known to me (as I wrote before in brief, in accordance with
which, when ye read, ye may understand my knowledge in the mystery
of Christ), which in other ages was not made known to the sons of
men, as it is now revealed to His holy apostles and prophets.”[788]
For there is an instruction of the perfect, of which, writing to the
Colossians, he says, “We cease not to pray for you, and beseech that
ye may be filled with the knowledge of His will in all wisdom and
spiritual understanding; that ye may walk worthy of the Lord to all
pleasing; being fruitful in every good work, and increasing in the
knowledge of God; strengthened with all might according to the glory
of His power.”[789] And again he says, “According to the disposition
of the grace of God which is given me, that ye may fulfil the word of
God; the mystery which has been hid from ages and generations, which
now is manifested to His saints: to whom God wished to make known what
is the riches of the glory of this mystery among the nations.”[790]
So that, on the one hand, then, are the mysteries which were hid till
the time of the apostles, and were delivered by them as they received
from the Lord, and, concealed in the Old Testament, were manifested to
the saints. And, on the other hand, there is “the riches of the glory
of the mystery in the Gentiles,” which is faith and hope in Christ;
which in another place he has called the “foundation.”[791] And again,
as if in eagerness to divulge this knowledge, he thus writes: “Warning
every man in all wisdom, that we may present every man (the whole
man) perfect in Christ;” not every man simply, since no one would
be unbelieving. Nor does he call every man who believes in Christ
perfect; but he says all the man, as if he said the whole man, as if
purified in body and soul. For that the knowledge does not appertain
to all, he expressly adds: “Being knit together in love, and unto all
the riches of the full assurance of knowledge, to the acknowledgment
of the mystery of God in Christ, in whom are hid all the treasures of
wisdom and of knowledge.”[792] “Continue in prayer, watching therein
with thanksgiving.”[793] And thanksgiving has place not for the soul
and spiritual blessings alone, but also for the body, and for the good
things of the body. And he still more clearly reveals that knowledge
belongs not to all, by adding: “Praying at the same time for you, that
God would open to us a door to speak the mystery of Christ, for which I
am bound; that I may make it known as I ought to speak.”[794] For there
were certainly, among the Hebrews, some things delivered unwritten.
“For when ye ought to be teachers for the time,” it is said, as if
they had grown old in the Old Testament, “ye have again need that one
teach you which be the first principles of the oracles of God; and are
become such as have need of milk, and not of solid food. For every one
that partaketh of milk is unskilful in the word of righteousness; for
he is a babe, being instructed with the first lessons. But solid food
belongs to those who are of full age, who by reason of use have their
senses exercised so as to distinguish between good and evil. Wherefore,
leaving the first principles of the doctrine of Christ, let us go on to
perfection.”[795]
Barnabas, too, who in person preached the word along with the apostle
in the ministry of the Gentiles, says, “I write to you most simply,
that ye may understand.” Then below, exhibiting already a clearer trace
of gnostic tradition, he says, “What says the other prophet Moses to
them? Lo, thus saith the Lord God, Enter ye into the good land which
the Lord God sware, the God of Abraham, and Isaac, and Jacob; and ye
received for an inheritance that land, flowing with milk and honey.
What says knowledge? Learn, hope, it says, in Jesus, who is to be
manifested to you in the flesh. For man is the suffering land; for from
the face of the ground was the formation of Adam. What, then, does
it say in reference to the good land, flowing with milk and honey?
Blessed be our Lord, brethren, who has put into our hearts wisdom, and
the understanding of His secrets. For the prophet says, “Who shall
understand the Lord’s parable but the wise and understanding, and he
that loves his Lord?” It is but for few to comprehend these things.
For it is not in the way of envy that the Lord announced in a Gospel,
“My mystery is to me, and to the sons of my house;”[796] placing the
election in safety, and beyond anxiety; so that the things pertaining
to what it has chosen and taken may be above the reach of envy. For he
who has not the knowledge of good is wicked: for there is one good, the
Father; and to be ignorant of the Father is death, as to know Him is
eternal life, through participation in the power of the incorrupt One.
And to be incorruptible is to participate in divinity; but revolt from
the knowledge of God brings corruption. Again the prophet says: “And I
will give thee treasures, concealed, dark, unseen; that they may know
that I am the Lord.”[797] Similarly David sings: “For, lo, Thou hast
loved truth; the obscure and hidden things of wisdom hast Thou showed
me.”[798] “Day utters speech to day”[799] (what is clearly written),
“and night to night proclaims knowledge” (which is hidden in a mystic
veil); “and there are no words or utterances whose voices shall not be
heard” by God, who said, “Shall one do what is secret, and I shall not
see him?”
Wherefore instruction, which reveals hidden things, is called
illumination, as it is the teacher only who uncovers the lid of the
ark, contrary to what the poets say, that “Zeus stops up the jar of
good things, but opens that of evil.” “For I know,” says the apostle,
“that when I come to you, I shall come in the fulness of the blessing
of Christ;”[800] designating the spiritual gift, and the gnostic
communication, which being present he desires to impart to them present
as “the fulness of Christ, according to the revelation of the mystery
sealed in the ages of eternity, but now manifested by the prophetic
Scriptures, according to the command of the eternal God, made known to
all the nations, in order to the obedience of faith,” that is, those of
the nations who believe that it is. But only to a few of them is shown
what those things are which are contained in the mystery.
Rightly then, Plato, in the epistles, treating of God, says: “We must
speak in enigmas; that should the tablet come by any mischance on its
leaves either by sea or land, he who reads may remain ignorant.” For
the God of the universe, who is above all speech, all conception, all
thought, can never be committed to writing, being inexpressible even
by His own power. And this too Plato showed, by saying: “Considering,
then, these things, take care lest some time or other you repent on
account of the present things, departing in a manner unworthy. The
greatest safeguard is not to write, but learn; for it is utterly
impossible that what is written will not vanish.”
Akin to this is what the holy Apostle Paul says, preserving the
prophetic and truly ancient secret from which the teachings that were
good were derived by the Greeks: “Howbeit we speak wisdom among them
who are perfect; but not the wisdom of this world, or of the princes of
this world, that come to nought; but we speak the wisdom of God hidden
in a mystery.”[801] Then proceeding, he thus inculcates the caution
against the divulging of his words to the multitude in the following
terms: “And I, brethren, could not speak to you as to spiritual, but as
to carnal, even to babes in Christ. I have fed you with milk, not with
meat: for ye were not yet able; neither are ye now able. For ye are yet
carnal.”[802]
If, then, “the milk” is said by the apostle to belong to the babes, and
“meat” to be the food of the full-grown, milk will be understood to
be catechetical instruction--the first food, as it were, of the soul.
And meat is the mystic contemplation; for this is the flesh and the
blood of the Word, that is, the comprehension of the divine power and
essence. “Taste and see that the Lord is Christ,”[803] it is said. For
so He imparts of Himself to those who partake of such food in a more
spiritual manner; when now the soul nourishes itself, according to the
truth-loving Plato. For the knowledge of the divine essence is the meat
and drink of the divine Word. Wherefore also Plato says, in the second
book of the _Republic_, “It is those that sacrifice not a sow, but
some great and difficult sacrifice,” who ought to inquire respecting
God. And the apostle writes, “Christ our passover was sacrificed for
us;”[804]--a sacrifice hard to procure, in truth, the Son of God
consecrated for us.
CHAPTER XI.
ABSTRACTION FROM MATERIAL THINGS NECESSARY IN ORDER
TO ATTAIN TO THE TRUE KNOWLEDGE OF GOD.
Now the sacrifice which is acceptable to God is unswerving abstraction
from the body and its passions. This is the really true piety. And
is not, on this account, philosophy rightly called by Socrates the
practice of Death? For he who neither employs his eyes in the exercise
of thought, nor draws aught from his other senses, but with pure mind
itself applies to objects, practises the true philosophy. This is,
then, the import of the silence of five years prescribed by Pythagoras,
which he enjoined on his disciples; that, abstracting themselves from
the objects of sense, they might with the mind alone contemplate the
Deity. It was from Moses that the chief of the Greeks drew these
philosophical tenets. For he commands holocausts to be skinned and
divided into parts. For the gnostic soul must be consecrated to the
light, stript of the integuments of matter, devoid of the frivolousness
of the body and of all the passions, which are acquired through vain
and lying opinions, and divested of the lusts of the flesh. But the
most of men, clothed with what is perishable, like cockles, and rolled
all round in a ball in their excesses, like hedgehogs, entertain the
same ideas of the blessed and incorruptible God as of themselves. But
it has escaped their notice, though they be near us, that God has
bestowed on us ten thousand things in which He does not share: birth,
being Himself unborn; food, He wanting nothing; and growth, He being
always equal; and long life and immortality, He being immortal and
incapable of growing old. Wherefore let no one imagine that hands, and
feet, and mouth, and eyes, and going in and coming out, and resentments
and threats, are said by the Hebrews to be attributes of God. By no
means; but that certain of these appellations are used more sacredly
in an allegorical sense, which, as the discourse proceeds, we shall
explain at the proper time.
“Wisdom of all medicines is the Panacea,” writes Callimachus in the
_Epigrams_. “And one becomes wise from another, both in past times
and at present,” says Bacchylides in the _Pæans_; “for it is not
very easy to find the portals of unutterable words.” Beautifully,
therefore, Isocrates writes in the _Panathenaic_, having put
the question, “Who, then, are well trained?” adds, “First, those who
manage well the things which occur each day, whose opinion jumps
with opportunity, and is able for the most part to hit on what is
beneficial; then those who behave becomingly and rightly to those who
approach them, who take lightly and easily annoyances and molestations
offered by others, but conduct themselves as far as possible, to
those with whom they have intercourse, with consummate care and
moderation; further, those who have the command of their pleasures,
and are not too much overcome by misfortunes, but conduct themselves
in the midst of them with manliness, and in a way worthy of the nature
which we share; fourth--and this is the greatest--those who are not
corrupted by prosperity, and are not put beside themselves, or made
haughty, but continue in the class of sensible people.” Then he puts
on the top-stone of the discourse: “Those who have the disposition of
their soul well suited not to one only of these things, but to them
all--those I assert to be wise and perfect men, and to possess all the
virtues.”
Do you see how the Greeks deify the gnostic life (though not knowing
how to become acquainted with it)? And what knowledge it is, they know
not even in a dream. If, then, it is agreed among us that knowledge
is the food of reason, “blessed truly are they,” according to the
scripture, “who hunger and thirst after truth: for they shall be
filled” with everlasting food. In the most wonderful harmony with
these words, Euripides, the philosopher of the drama, is found in the
following words,--making allusion, I know not how, at once to the
Father and the Son:
“To thee, the lord of all, I bring
Cakes and libations too, O Zeus,
Or Hades would’st thou choose be called;
Do thou accept my offering of all fruits,
Rare, full, poured forth.”
For a whole burnt-offering and rare sacrifice for us is Christ. And
that unwittingly he mentions the Saviour, he will make plain, as he
adds:
“For thou who, ’midst the heavenly gods,
Jove’s sceptre sway’st, dost also share
The rule of those on earth.”
Then he says expressly:
“Send light to human souls that fain would know
Whence conflicts spring, and what the root of ills,
And of the blessed gods to whom due rites
Of sacrifice we needs must pay, that so
We may from troubles find repose.”
It is not then without reason that in the mysteries that obtain among
the Greeks, lustrations hold the first place; as also the laver among
the Barbarians. After these are the minor mysteries, which have some
foundation of instruction and of preliminary preparation for what is
to come after; and the great mysteries, in which nothing remains to be
learned of the universe, but only to contemplate and comprehend nature
and things.
We shall understand the mode of purification by confession, and that of
contemplation by analysis, advancing by analysis to the first notion,
beginning with the properties underlying it; abstracting from the body
its physical properties, taking away the dimension of depth, then that
of breadth, and then that of length. For the point which remains is a
unit, so to speak, having position; from which if we abstract position,
there is the conception of unity.
If, then, abstracting all that belongs to bodies and things called
incorporeal, we cast ourselves into the greatness of Christ, and
thence advance into immensity by holiness, we may reach somehow to the
conception of the Almighty, knowing not what He is, but what He is not.
And form and motion, or standing, or a throne, or place, or right hand
or left, are not at all to be conceived as belonging to the Father of
the universe, although it is so written. But what each of these means
will be shown in its proper place. The First Cause is not then in
space, but above both space, and time, and name, and conception.
Wherefore also Moses says, “Show thyself to me”[805]--intimating most
clearly that God is not capable of being taught by man, or expressed
in speech, but to be known only by His own power. For inquiry was
obscure and dim; but the grace of knowledge is from Him by the Son.
Most clearly Solomon shall testify to us, speaking thus: “The prudence
of man is not in me: but God giveth me wisdom, and I know holy
things.”[806] Now Moses, describing allegorically the divine prudence,
called it the tree of life planted in Paradise; which Paradise may be
the world in which all things proceeding from creation grow. In it also
the Word blossomed and bore fruit, being “made flesh,” and gave life to
those “who had tasted of His graciousness;” since it was not without
the wood of the tree that He came to our knowledge. For our life was
hung on it, in order that we might believe. And Solomon again says:
“She is a tree of immortality to those who take hold of her.”[807]
“Behold, I set before thy face life and death, to love the Lord thy
God, and to walk in His ways, and hear His voice, and trust in life.
But if ye transgress the statutes and the judgments which I have given
you, ye shall be destroyed with destruction. For this is life, and the
length of thy days, to love the Lord thy God.”[808]
Again: “Abraham, when he came to the place which God told him of on
the third day, looking up, saw the place afar off.”[809] For the first
day is that which is constituted by the sight of good things; and the
second is the soul’s[810] best desire; on the third, the mind perceives
spiritual things, the eyes of the understanding being opened by the
Teacher who rose on the third day. The three days may be the mystery of
the seal,[811] in which God is really believed. It is consequently afar
off that he sees the place. For the region of God is hard to attain;
which Plato called the region of ideas, having learned from Moses that
it was a place which contained all things universally. But it is seen
by Abraham afar off, rightly, because of his being in the realms of
generation, and he is forthwith initiated by the angel. Thence says
the apostle: “Now we see as through a glass, but then face to face,”
by those sole pure and incorporeal applications of the intellect. In
reasoning, it is possible to divine respecting God, if one attempt
without any of the senses, by reason, to reach what is individual; and
do not quit the sphere of existences, till, rising up to the things
which transcend it, he apprehends by the intellect itself that which is
good, moving in the very confines of the world of thought, according to
Plato.
Again, Moses, not allowing altars and temples to be constructed in
many places, but raising one temple of God, announced that the world
was only-begotten, as Basilides says, and that God is one, as does
not as yet appear to Basilides. And since the gnostic Moses does
not circumscribe within space Him that cannot be circumscribed, he
set up no image in the temple to be worshipped; showing that God
was invisible, and incapable of being circumscribed; and somehow
leading the Hebrews to the conception of God by the honour for His
name in the temple. Further, the Word, prohibiting the constructing
of temples and all sacrifices, intimates that the Almighty is not
contained in anything, by what He says: “What house will ye build to
me? saith the Lord. Heaven is my throne,”[812] and so on. Similarly
respecting sacrifices: “I do not desire the blood of bulls and the fat
of lambs,”[813] and what the Holy Spirit by the prophet in the sequel
forbids.
Most excellently, therefore, Euripides accords with these, when he
writes:
“What house constructed by the workmen’s hands,
With folds of walls, can clothe the shape divine?”
And of sacrifices he thus speaks:
“For God needs nought, if He is truly God.
These of the minstrels are the wretched myths.”
“For it was not from need that God made the world; that He might
reap honours from men and the other gods and demons, winning a kind
of revenue from creation, and from us, fumes, and from the gods and
demons, their proper ministries,” says Plato. Most instructively,
therefore, says Paul in the Acts of the Apostles: “The God that made
the world, and all things in it, being the Lord of heaven and earth,
dwelleth not in temples made with hands; neither is worshipped by
men’s hands, as if He needed anything; seeing that it is He Himself
that giveth to all breath, and life, and all things.”[814] And Zeno,
the founder of the Stoic sect, says in this book of the _Republic_,
“that we ought to make neither temples nor images; for that no work
is worthy of the gods.” And he was not afraid to write in these very
words: “There will be no need to build temples. For a temple is not
worth much, and ought not to be regarded as holy. For nothing is
worth much, and holy, which is the work of builders and mechanics.”
Rightly, therefore, Plato too, recognising the world as God’s temple,
pointed out to the citizens a spot in the city where their idols were
to be laid up. “Let not, then, any one again,” he says, “consecrate
temples to the gods. For gold and silver in other states, in the case
of private individuals and in the temples, is an invidious possession;
and ivory, a body which has abandoned the life, is not a sacred votive
offering; and steel and brass are the instruments of wars; but whatever
one wishes to dedicate, let it be wood of one tree, as also stone for
common temples.” Rightly, then, in the great epistle he says: “For it
is not capable of expression, like other branches of study. But as the
result of great intimacy with this subject, and living with it, a
sudden light, like that kindled by a coruscating fire, arising in the
soul, feeds itself.” Are not these statements like those of Zephaniah
the prophet? “And the Spirit of the Lord took me, and brought me up to
the fifth heaven, and I beheld angels called Lords; and their diadem
was set on in the Holy Spirit; and each of them had a throne sevenfold
brighter than the light of the rising sun; and they dwelt in temples of
salvation, and hymned the ineffable, Most High God.”[815]
CHAPTER XII.
GOD CANNOT BE EMBRACED IN WORDS OR BY THE MIND.
“For both is it a difficult task to discover the Father and Maker
of this universe; and having found Him, it is impossible to declare
Him to all. For this is by no means capable of expression, like the
other subjects of instruction,” says the truth-loving Plato. For he
had heard right well that the all-wise Moses, ascending the mount for
holy contemplation, to the summit of intellectual objects, necessarily
commands that the whole people do not accompany him. And when the
Scripture says, “Moses entered into the thick darkness where God was,”
this shows to those capable of understanding, that God is invisible and
beyond expression by words. And “the darkness”--which, is in truth, the
unbelief and ignorance of the multitude--obstructs the gleam of the
truth. And again Orpheus, the theologian, aided from this quarter, says:
“One is perfect in himself, and all things are made the progeny of
one,”
or, “are born;” for so also is it written. He adds:
“Him
No one of mortals has seen, but He sees all.”
And he adds more clearly:
“Him see I not, for round about, a cloud
Has settled; for in mortal eyes are small,
And mortal pupils--only flesh and bones grow there.”
To these statements the apostle will testify: “I know a man in
Christ, caught up into the third heaven, and thence into Paradise,
who heard unutterable words which it is not lawful for a man to
speak,”--intimating thus the impossibility of expressing God, and
indicating that what is divine is unutterable by human[816] power; if,
indeed, he begins to speak above the third heaven, as it is lawful to
initiate the elect souls in the mysteries there. For I know what is in
Plato (for the examples from the barbarian philosophy, which are many,
are suggested now by the composition which, in accordance with promises
previously given, waits the suitable time). For doubting, in _Timæus_,
whether we ought to regard several worlds as to be understood by many
heavens, or this one, he makes no distinction in the names, calling the
world and heaven by the same name. But the words of the statement are
as follows: “Whether, then, have we rightly spoken of one heaven, or of
many and infinite? It were more correct to say one, if indeed it was
created according to the model.” Further, in the Epistle of the Romans
to the Corinthians it is written, “An ocean illimitable by men and the
worlds after it.” Consequently, therefore, the noble apostle exclaims,
“Oh the depth of the riches both of the wisdom and the knowledge of
God!”[817]
And was it not this which the prophet meant, when he ordered unleavened
cakes[818] to be made, intimating that the truly sacred mystic word,
respecting the unbegotten and His powers, ought to be concealed? In
confirmation of these things, in the Epistle to the Corinthians the
apostle plainly says: “Howbeit we speak wisdom among those who are
perfect, but not the wisdom of this world, or of the princes of this
world, that come to nought. But we speak the wisdom of God hidden
in a mystery.”[819] And again in another place he says: “To the
acknowledgment of the mystery of God in Christ, in whom are hid all
the treasures of wisdom and knowledge.”[820] These things the Saviour
Himself seals when He says: “To you it is given to know the mysteries
of the kingdom of heaven.”[821] And again the Gospel says that the
Saviour spake to the apostles the word in a mystery. For prophecy says
of Him: “He will open His mouth in parables, and will utter things
kept secret from the foundation of the world.”[822] And now, by the
parable of the leaven, the Lord shows concealment; for He says, “The
kingdom of heaven is like leaven, which a woman took and hid in three
measures of meal, till the whole was leavened.”[823] For the tripartite
soul is saved by obedience, through the spiritual power hidden in it
by faith; or because the power of the word which is given to us, being
strong[824] and powerful, draws to itself secretly and invisibly every
one who receives it, and keeps it within himself, and brings his whole
system into unity.
Accordingly Solon has written most wisely respecting God, thus:
“It is most difficult to apprehend the mind’s invisible measure
Which alone holds the boundaries of all things.”
For “the divine,” says the poet of Agrigentum,[825]
“Is not capable of being approached with our eyes,
Or grasped with our hands; but the highway
Of persuasion, highest of all, leads to men’s minds.”
And John the apostle says: “No man hath seen God at any time. The
only-begotten God, who is in the bosom of the Father, He hath declared
Him,”[826]--calling invisibility and ineffableness the bosom of God.
Hence some have called it the Depth, as containing and embosoming all
things, inaccessible and boundless.
This discourse respecting God is most difficult to handle. For since
the first principle of everything is difficult to find out, the
absolutely first and oldest principle, which is the cause of all other
things being and having been, is difficult to exhibit. For how can
that be expressed which is neither genus, nor difference, nor species,
nor individual, nor number; nay more, is neither an event, nor that to
which an event happens? No one can rightly express Him wholly. For on
account of His greatness He is ranked as the All, and is the Father
of the universe. Nor are any parts to be predicated of Him. For the
One is indivisible; wherefore also it is infinite, not considered with
reference to inscrutability, but with reference to its being without
dimensions, and not having a limit. And therefore it is without form
and name. And if we name it, we do not do so properly, terming it
either the One, or the Good, or Mind, or Absolute Being, or Father,
or God, or Creator, or Lord. We speak not as supplying His name; but
for want, we use good names, in order that the mind may have these as
points of support, so as not to err in other respects. For each one
by itself does not express God; but all together are indicative of
the power of the Omnipotent. For predicates are expressed either from
what belongs to things themselves, or from their mutual relation. But
none of these are admissible in reference to God. Nor any more is He
apprehended by the science of demonstration. For it depends on primary
and better known principles. But there is nothing antecedent to the
Unbegotten.
It remains that we understand, then, the Unknown, by divine grace, and
by the word alone that proceeds from Him; as Luke in the Acts of the
Apostles relates that Paul said, “Men of Athens, I perceive that in all
things ye are too superstitious. For in walking about, and beholding
the objects of your worship, I found an altar on which was inscribed,
To the Unknown God. Whom therefore ye ignorantly worship, Him declare I
unto you.”[827]
CHAPTER XIII.
THE KNOWLEDGE OF GOD A DIVINE GIFT, ACCORDING TO
THE PHILOSOPHERS.
Everything, then, which falls under a name, is originated, whether
they will or not. Whether, then, the Father Himself draws to Himself
every one who has led a pure life, and has reached the conception of
the blessed and incorruptible nature; or whether the free-will which is
in us, by reaching the knowledge of the good, leaps and bounds over the
barriers, as the gymnasts say; yet it is not without eminent grace that
the soul is winged, and soars, and is raised above the higher spheres,
laying aside all that is heavy, and surrendering itself to its kindred
element.
Plato, too, in _Meno_, says that virtue is God-given, as the
following expressions show: “From this argument then, O Meno, virtue
is shown to come to those, in whom it is found, by divine providence.”
Does it not then appear that “the gnostic disposition” which has come
to all is enigmatically called “divine providence?” And he adds more
explicitly: “If, then, in this whole treatise we have investigated
well, it results that virtue is neither by nature, nor is it taught,
but is produced by divine providence, not without intelligence, in
those in whom it is found.” Wisdom which is God-given, as being the
power of the Father, rouses indeed our free-will, and admits faith, and
repays the application of the elect with its crowning fellowship.
And now I will adduce Plato himself, who clearly deems it fit to
believe the children of God. For, discoursing on gods that are visible
and born, in _Timæus_, he says: “But to speak of the other demons,
and to know their birth, is too much for us. But we must credit those
who have formerly spoken, they being the offspring of the gods, as they
said, and knowing well their progenitors, although they speak without
probable and necessary proofs.” I do not think it possible that clearer
testimony could be borne by the Greeks, that our Saviour, and those
anointed to prophesy (the latter being called the sons of God, and
the Lord being His own Son), are the true witnesses respecting divine
things. Wherefore also they ought to be believed, being inspired, he
added. And were one to say in a more tragic vein, that we ought not to
believe,
“For it was not Zeus that told me these things,”
yet let him know that it was God Himself that promulgated the
Scriptures by His Son. And he, who announces what is his own, is to
be believed. “No one,” says the Lord, “hath known the Father but
the Son, and he to whom the Son shall reveal Him.”[828] This, then,
is to be believed, according to Plato, though it is announced and
spoken “without probable and necessary proofs,” but in the Old and
New Testament. “For except ye believe,” says the Lord, “ye shall die
in your sins.”[829] And again: “He that believeth hath everlasting
life.”[830] “Blessed are all they that put their trust in Him.”[831]
For trusting is more than faith. For when one has believed[832] that
the Son of God is our teacher, he trusts[833] that his teaching is
true. And as “instruction,” according to Empedocles, “makes the mind
grow,” so trust in the Lord makes faith grow.
We say, then, that it is characteristic of the same persons to vilify
philosophy and run down faith, and to praise iniquity and felicitate
a libidinous life. But now faith, if it is the voluntary assent of
the soul, is still the doer of good things, the foundation of right
conduct; and if Aristotle defines strictly when he teaches that ποιεῖν
is applied to the irrational creatures and to inanimate things, while
πράττειν is applicable to men only, let him correct those who say that
God is the maker (ποιητής) of the universe. And what is done (πρακτον),
he says, is as good or as necessary. To do wrong, then, is not good,
for no one does wrong except for some other thing; and nothing that
is necessary is voluntary. To do wrong, then, is voluntary, so that
it is not necessary. But the good differ especially from the bad in
inclinations and good desires. For all depravity of soul is accompanied
with want of restraint; and he who acts from passion, acts from want of
restraint and from depravity.
I cannot help admiring in every particular that divine utterance:
“Verily, verily, I say unto you, He that entereth not in by the
door into the sheepfold, but climbeth up some other way, the same
is a thief and a robber. But he that entereth in by the door is the
shepherd of the sheep. To him the porter openeth.” Then the Lord says
in explanation, “I am the door of the sheep.”[834] Men must then
be saved by learning the truth through Christ, even if they attain
philosophy. For now that is clearly shown “which was not made known to
other ages, which is now revealed to the sons of men.”[835] For there
was always a natural manifestation of the one Almighty God, among all
right-thinking men; and the most, who had not quite divested themselves
of shame with respect to the truth, apprehended the eternal beneficence
in divine providence. In fine, then, Xenocrates the Chalcedonian was
not quite without hope that the notion of the Divinity existed even in
the irrational creatures. And Democritus, though against his will, will
make this avowal by the consequences of his dogmas; for he represents
the same images as issuing, from the divine essence, on men and on the
irrational animals. Far from destitute of a divine idea is man, who,
it is written in Genesis, partook of inspiration, being endowed with a
purer essence than the other animate creatures. Hence the Pythagoreans
say that mind comes to man by divine providence, as Plato and Aristotle
avow; but we assert that the Holy Spirit inspires him who has believed.
The Platonists hold that mind is an effluence of divine dispensation in
the soul, and they place the soul in the body. For it is expressly said
by Joel, one of the twelve prophets, “And it shall come to pass after
these things, I will pour out of my Spirit on all flesh, and your sons
and your daughters shall prophesy.”[836] But it is not as a portion
of God that the Spirit is in each of us. But how this dispensation
takes place, and what the Holy Spirit is, shall be shown by us in the
books on prophecy, and in those on the soul. But “incredulity is good
at concealing the depths of knowledge,” according to Heraclitus; “for
incredulity escapes from ignorance.”
CHAPTER XIV.
GREEK PLAGIARISMS FROM THE HEBREWS.
Let us add in completion what follows, and exhibit now with greater
clearness the plagiarism of the Greeks from the Barbarian philosophy.
Now the Stoics say that God, like the soul, is essentially body and
spirit. You will find all this explicitly in their writings. Do not
consider at present their allegories as the gnostic truth presents
them; whether they show one thing and mean another, like the dexterous
athletes. Well, they say that God pervades all being; while we call Him
solely Maker, and Maker by the Word. They were misled by what is said
in the book of Wisdom: “He pervades and passes through all by reason of
His purity;”[837] since they did not understand that this was said of
Wisdom, which was the first of the creation of God.
So be it, they say. But the philosophers, the Stoics, and Plato, and
Pythagoras, nay more, Aristotle the Peripatetic, suppose the existence
of matter among the first principles; and not one first principle. Let
them then know that what is called matter by them, is said by them to
be without quality, and without form, and more daringly said by Plato
to be non-existence. And does he not say very mystically, knowing
that the true and real first cause is one, in these very words: “Now,
then, let our opinion be so. As to the first principle or principles
of the universe, or what opinion we ought to entertain about all these
points, we are not now to speak, for no other cause than on account of
its being difficult to explain our sentiments in accordance with the
present form of discourse.” But undoubtedly that prophetic expression,
“Now the earth was invisible and formless,” supplied them with the
ground of material essence.
And the introduction of “chance” was hence suggested to Epicurus, who
misapprehended the statement, “Vanity of vanities, and all is vanity.”
And it occurred to Aristotle to extend Providence as far as the moon
from this psalm: “Lord, Thy mercy is in the heavens; and Thy truth
reacheth to the clouds.”[838] For the explanation of the prophetic
mysteries had not yet been revealed previous to the advent of the Lord.
Punishments after death, on the other hand, and penal retribution by
fire, were pilfered from the Barbarian philosophy both by all the
poetic Muses and by the Hellenic philosophy. Plato, accordingly, in the
last book of the _Republic_, says in these express terms: “Then
these men fierce and fiery to look on, standing by, and hearing the
sound, seized and took some aside; and binding Aridæus and the rest
hand, foot, and head, and throwing them down, and flaying them, dragged
them along the way, tearing their flesh with thorns.” For the fiery
men are meant to signify the angels, who seize and punish the wicked.
“Who maketh,” it is said, “His angels spirits; His ministers flaming
fire.”[839] It follows from this that the soul is immortal. For what
is tortured or corrected being in a state of sensation lives, though
said to suffer. Well! Did not Plato know of the rivers of fire and the
depth of the earth, and Tartarus, called by the Barbarians Gehenna,
naming, as he does prophetically,[840] Cocytus, and Acheron, and
Pyriphlegethon, and introducing such corrective tortures for discipline?
But indicating “the angels,” as the Scripture says, “of the little
ones, and of the least, which see God,” and also the oversight reaching
to us exercised by the tutelary angels, he shrinks not from writing,
“That when all the souls have selected their several lives, according
as it has fallen to their lot, they advance in order to Lachesis; and
she sends along with each one, as his guide in life, and the joint
accomplisher of his purposes, the demon which he has chosen.” Perhaps
also the demon of Socrates suggested to him something similar.
Nay, the philosophers, having so heard from Moses, taught that the
world was created.[841] And so Plato expressly said, “Whether was
it that the world had no beginning of its existence, or derived its
beginning from some beginning? For being visible, it is tangible;
and being tangible, it has a body.” Again, when he says, “It is a
difficult task to find the Maker and Father of this universe,” he not
only showed that the universe was created, but points out that it
was generated by him as a son, and that he is called its father, as
deriving its being from him alone, and springing from non-existence.
The Stoics, too, hold the tenet that the world was created.
And that the devil so spoken of by the Barbarian philosophy, the
prince of the demons, is a wicked spirit, Plato asserts in the tenth
book of the _Laws_, in these words: “Must we not say that spirit
which pervades the things that are moved on all sides, pervades also
heaven? Well, what? One or more? Several, say I, in reply for you.
Let us not suppose fewer than two--that which is beneficent, and
that which is able to accomplish the opposite.” Similarly in the
_Phædrus_ he writes as follows: “Now there are other evils. But
some demon has mingled pleasure with the most things at present.”
Further, in the tenth book of the _Laws_, he expressly emits that
apostolic sentiment, “Our contest is not with flesh and blood, but
principalities, with powers, with the spiritual things of those which
are in heaven;” writing thus: “For since we are agreed that heaven is
full of many good beings; but it is also full of the opposite of these,
and more of these; and as we assert such a contest is deathless, and
requiring marvellous watchfulness.”
Again, the Barbarian philosophy knows the world of thought and the
world of sense--the former archetypal, and the latter the image of that
which is called the model; and assigns the former to the Monad, as
being perceived by the mind, and the world of sense to the number six.
For six is called by the Pythagoreans marriage, as being the genital
number; and he places in the Monad the invisible heaven and the holy
earth, and intellectual light. For “in the beginning,” it is said, “God
made the heaven and the earth; and the earth was invisible.” And it is
added, “And God said, Let there be light; and there was light.”[842]
And in the material cosmogony He creates a solid heaven (and what is
solid is capable of being perceived by sense), and a visible earth,
and a light that is seen. Does not Plato hence appear to have left
the ideas of living creatures in the intellectual world, and to make
intellectual objects into sensible species according to their genera?
Rightly then Moses says, that the body which Plato calls “the earthly
tabernacle” was formed of the ground, but that the rational soul was
breathed by God into man’s face. For there, they say, the ruling
faculty is situated; interpreting the access by the senses into the
first man as the addition of the soul.
Wherefore also man is said “to have been made in [God’s] image and
likeness.” For the image of God is the divine and royal Word, the
impassible man; and the image of the image is the human mind. And if
you wish to apprehend the likeness by another name, you will find it
named in Moses, a divine correspondence. For he says, “Walk after the
Lord your God, and keep His commandments.”[843] And I reckon all the
virtuous, servants and followers of God. Hence the Stoics say that the
end of philosophy is to live agreeably to nature; and Plato, likeness
to God, as we have shown in the second Miscellany. And Zeno the Stoic,
borrowing from Plato, and he from the Barbarian philosophy, says that
all the good are friends of one another. For Socrates says in the
_Phædrus_, “that it has not been ordained that the bad should be a
friend to the bad, nor the good be not a friend to the good;” as also
he showed sufficiently in the _Lysis_, that friendship is never
preserved in wickedness and vice. And the Athenian stranger similarly
says, “that there is conduct pleasing and conformable to God, based
on one ancient ground-principle, That like loves like, provided it be
within measure. But things beyond measure are congenial neither to
what is within nor what is beyond measure. Now it is the case that
God is the measure to us of all things.” Then proceeding, Plato[844]
adds: “For every good man is like every other good man; and so being
like to God, he is liked by every good man and by God.” At this point
I have just recollected the following. In the end of the _Timæus_
he says: “You must necessarily assimilate that which perceives to that
which is perceived, according to its original nature; and it is by so
assimilating it that you attain to the end of the highest life proposed
by the gods to men,[845] for the present or the future time.” For those
have equal power with these. He, who seeks, will not stop till he find;
and having found, he will wonder; and wondering, he will reign; and
reigning, he will rest. And what? Were not also those expressions of
Thales derived from these? The fact that God is glorified for ever,
and that He is expressly called by us the Searcher of hearts, he
interprets. For Thales being asked, What is the divinity? said, What
has neither beginning nor end. And on another asking, “If a man could
elude the knowledge of the Divine Being while doing aught?” said, “How
could he who cannot do so while thinking?”
Further, the Barbarian philosophy recognises good as alone excellent,
and virtue as sufficient for happiness, when it says, “Behold, I
have set before your eyes good and evil, life and death, that ye may
choose life.”[846] For it calls good, “life,” and the choice of it
excellent, and the choice of the opposite “evil.” And the end of good
and of life is to become a lover of God: “For this is thy life and
length of days,” to love that which tends to the truth. And these
points are yet clearer. For the Saviour, in enjoining to love God and
our neighbour, says, “that on these two commandments hang the whole
law and the prophets.” Such are the tenets promulgated by the Stoics;
and before these, by Socrates, in the _Phædrus_, who prays, “O
Pan, and ye other gods, give me to be beautiful within.” And in the
_Theætetus_ he says expressly, “For he that speaks well (καλῶς)
is both beautiful and good.” And in the _Protagoras_ he avers to
the companions of Protagoras that he has met in with one more beautiful
than Alcibiades, if indeed that which is wisest is most beautiful.
For he said that virtue was the soul’s beauty, and, on the contrary,
that vice was the soul’s deformity. Accordingly, Antipatrus the Stoic,
who composed three books on the point, “That, according to Plato,
only the beautiful is good,” shows that, according to him, virtue is
sufficient for happiness; and adduces several other dogmas agreeing
with the Stoics. And by Aristobulus, who lived in the time of Ptolemy
Philadelphus, who is mentioned by the composer of the epitome of the
books of the Maccabees, there were abundant books to show that the
Peripatetic philosophy was derived from the law of Moses and from the
other prophets. Let such be the case.
Plato plainly calls us brethren, as being of one God and one teacher,
in the following words: “For ye who are in the state are entirely
brethren (as we shall say to them, continuing our story). But the God
who formed you, mixed gold in the composition of these of you who are
fit to rule, at your birth, wherefore you are most highly honoured; and
silver in the case of those who are helpers; and steel and brass in the
case of farmers and other workers.” Whence, of necessity, some embrace
and love those things to which knowledge pertains; and others matters
of opinion. Perchance he prophesies of that elect nature which is bent
on knowledge; if by the supposition he makes of three natures he does
not describe three polities, as some supposed: that of the Jews, the
silver; that of the Greeks, the third; and that of the Christians, with
whom has been mingled the regal gold, the Holy Spirit, the golden.[847]
And exhibiting the Christian life, he writes in the _Theætetus_
in these words: “Let us now speak of the highest principles. For
why should we speak of those who make an abuse of philosophy? These
know neither the way to the forum, nor know they the court or the
senate-house, or any other public assembly of the state. As for laws
and decrees spoken or[848] written, they neither see nor hear them.
But party feelings of political associations and public meetings, and
revels with musicians [occupy them][849]; but they never even dream
of taking part in affairs. Has any one conducted himself either well
or ill in the state, or has aught evil descended to a man from his
forefathers?--it escapes their attention as much as do the sands of the
sea. And the man does not even know that he does not know all these
things; but in reality his body alone is situated and dwells in the
state, while the man himself flies, according to Pindar, beneath the
earth and above the sky, astronomizing, and exploring all nature on all
sides.”
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?”[850]
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 _Phænomena_ 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.”[851]
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 Bœotian 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 _Timæus_ 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.
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 Pamphyllian 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,[852] 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;”[853] 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?”[854] 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;”[855] 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.” 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?”[856] 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.”
And the Socratic Antisthenes, paraphrasing that prophetic utterance,
“To whom have ye likened me? saith the Lord,”[857] 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[858] never succumb,
And blameless are; in nought resembling men.”
And also Cleanthes, the Stoic, who writes thus in a poem on the
Deity:[859]
“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 Pluronian 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:
“But he nor food nor cleansing water touched,
But heart-stung went to bed, and that whole night
Wantoned.”
But let these be resigned to the follies of the theatre.
Heraclitus plainly says: “But of the word which is eternal men are
not able to understand, both before they have heard it, and on first
hearing it.” And the lyrist Melanippides says in song:
“Hear me, O Father, Wonder of men,
Ruler of the ever-living soul.”
And Parmenides the great, as Plato says in the _Sophist_, writes of God
thus:
“Very much, since unborn and indestructible He is,
Whole, only-begotten, and immoveable, and unoriginated.”
Hesiod also says:
“For He of the immortals all is King and Lord.
With God[860] none else in might may strive.”
Nay more, Tragedy, drawing away from idols, teaches to look up to
heaven. Sophocles, as Hecatæus, who composed the histories in the work
about Abraham and the Egyptians, says, exclaims plainly on the stage:
“One in very truth, God is One,
Who made the heaven and the far-stretching earth,
The Deep’s blue billow, and the might of winds.
But of us mortals, many erring far
In heart, as solace for our woes, have raised
Images of gods--of stone, or else of brass,
Or figures wrought of gold or ivory;
And sacrifices and vain festivals
To these appointing, deem ourselves devout.”
And Euripides on the stage, in tragedy, says:
“Dost thou this lofty, boundless Ether see,
Which holds the earth around in the embrace
Of humid arms? This reckon Zeus,
And this regard as God.”
And in the drama of Pirithous, the same writes those lines in tragic
vein:
“Thee, self-sprung, who on Ether’s wheel
Hast universal nature spun,
Around whom Light and dusky spangled Night,
The countless host of stars, too, ceaseless dance.”
For there he says that the creative mind is self-sprung. What follows
applies to the universe, in which are the opposites of light and
darkness.
Æschylus also, the son of Euphorion, says with very great solemnity of
God:
“Ether is Zeus, Zeus earth, and Zeus the heaven;
The universe is Zeus, and all above.”
I am aware that Plato assents to Heraclitus, who writes: “The one thing
that is wise alone will not be expressed, and means the name of Zeus.”
And again, “Law is to obey the will of one.” And if you wish to adduce
that saying, “He that hath ears to hear, let him hear,” you will find
it expressed by the Ephesian[861] to the following effect: “Those that
hear without understanding are like the deaf. The proverb witnesses
against them, that when present they are absent.”
But do you want to hear from the Greeks expressly of one first
principle? Timæus the Locrian, in the work on Nature, shall testify
in the following words: “There is one first principle of all things
unoriginated. For were it originated, it would be no longer the
first principle; but the first principle would be that from which it
originated.” For this true opinion was derived from what follows:
“Hear,” it is said, “O Israel; the Lord thy God is one, and Him only
shalt thou serve.”[862]
“Lo[863] He all sure and all unerring is,”
says the Sibyl.
Homer also manifestly mentions the Father and the Son by a happy hit of
divination in the following words:
“If Outis,[864] alone as thou art, offers thee violence,
And there is no escaping disease sent by Zeus,
For the Cyclops heed not Ægis-bearing Zeus.”[865]
And before him Orpheus said, speaking of the point in hand:
“Son of great Zeus, Father of Ægis-bearing Zeus.”
And Xenocrates the Chalcedonian, who mentions the supreme Zeus and the
inferior Zeus, leaves an indication of the Father and the Son. Homer,
while representing the gods as subject to human passions, appears
to know the Divine Being, whom Epicurus does not so revere. He says
accordingly:
“Why, son of Peleus, mortal as thou art,
With swift feet me pursuest, a god
Immortal? Hast thou not yet known
That I am a god?”[866]
For he shows that the Divinity cannot be captured by a mortal, or
apprehended either with feet, or hands, or eyes, or by the body at all.
“To whom have ye likened the Lord? or to what likeness have ye likened
Him?” says the Scripture.[867] Has not the artificer made the image? or
the goldsmith, melting the gold, has gilded it, and what follows.
The comic poet Epicharmus speaks in the _Republic_ clearly of the
Word in the following terms:
“The life of men needs calculation and number alone,
And we live by number and calculation, for these save mortals.”[868]
He then adds expressly:
“Reason governs mortals, and alone preserves manners.”
Then:
“There is in man reasoning; and there is a divine Reason.[869]
Reason is implanted in man to provide for life and sustenance,
But divine Reason attends the arts in the case of all,
Teaching them always what it is advantageous to do.
For it was not man that discovered art, but God brought it;
And the Reason of man derives its origin from the divine Reason.”
The Spirit also cries by Isaiah: “Wherefore the multitude of
sacrifices? saith the Lord. I am full of holocausts of rams, and
the fat of lambs and the blood of bulls I wish not;” and a little
after adds: “Wash you, and be clean. Put away wickedness from your
souls,”[870] and so forth.
Menander, the comic poet, writes in these very words:
“If one by offering sacrifice, a crowd
Of bulls or kids, O Pamphilus, by Zeus,
Or such like things; by making works of art,
Garments of gold or purple, images
Of ivory or emerald, deems by these
God can be made propitious, he does err,
And has an empty mind. For the man must prove
A man of worth, who neither maids deflowers,
Nor an adulterer is, nor steals, nor kills
For love of worldly wealth, O Pamphilus.
Nay, covet not a needle’s thread. For God
Thee sees, being near beside thee.”...[871]
“I am a God at hand,” it is said by Jeremiah,[872] “and not a God afar
off. Shall a man do aught in secret places, and I shall not see him?”
And again Menander, paraphrasing that scripture, “Sacrifice a sacrifice
of righteousness, and trust in the Lord,”[873] thus writes:
“And not a needle even that is
Another’s ever covet, dearest friend;
For God in righteous works delights, and so
Permits him to increase his worldly wealth,
Who toils, and ploughs the land both night and day.
But sacrifice to God, and righteous be,
Shining not in bright robes, but in thy heart;
And when thou hear’st the thunder, do not flee,
Being conscious to thyself of nought amiss,
Good sir, for thee God ever present sees.”[874]
“Whilst thou art yet speaking,” says the Scripture, “I will say, Lo,
here I am.”[875]
Again Diphilus, the comic poet, discourses as follows on the judgment:
“Think’st thou, O Niceratus, that the dead,
Who in all kinds of luxury in life have shared,
Escape the Deity, as if forgot.
There is an eye of justice, which sees all.
For two ways, as we deem, to Hades lead--
One for the good, the other for the bad.
But if the earth hides both for ever, then
Go plunder, steal, rob, and be turbulent.
But err not. For in Hades judgment is,
Which God the Lord of all will execute,
Whose name too dreadful is for me to name,
Who gives to sinners length of earthly life.
If any mortal thinks, that day by day,
While doing ill, he eludes the gods’ keen sight,
His thoughts are evil; and when justice has
The leisure, he shall then detected be
So thinking. Look, whoe’er you be that say
That there is not a God. There is, there is.
If one, by nature evil, evil does,
Let him redeem the time; for such as he
Shall by and by due punishment receive.”[876]
And with this agrees the tragedy[877] in the following lines:
“For there shall come, shall come[878] that point of time,
When Ether, golden-eyed, shall ope its store
Of treasured fire; and the devouring flame,
Raging, shall burn all things on earth below,
And all above.”...
And after a little he adds:
“And when the whole world fades,
And vanished all the abyss of ocean’s waves,
And earth of trees is bare; and wrapt in flames,
The air no more begets the winged tribes;
Then He who all destroyed, shall all restore.”
We shall find expressions similar to these also in the Orphic hymns,
written as follows:
“For having hidden all, brought them again
To gladsome light, forth from his sacred heart,
Solicitous.”
And if we live throughout holily and righteously, we are happy here,
and shall be happier after our departure hence; not possessing
happiness for a time, but enabled to rest in eternity.
“At the same hearth and table as the rest
Of the immortal gods, we sit all free
Of human ills, unharmed,”
says the philosophic poetry of Empedocles. And so, according to the
Greeks, none is so great as to be above judgment, none so insignificant
as to escape its notice.
And the same Orpheus speaks thus:
“But to the word divine, looking, attend,
Keeping aright the heart’s receptacle
Of intellect, and tread the straight path well,
And only to the world’s immortal King
Direct thy gaze.”[879]
And again, respecting God, saying that He was invisible, and that
He was known to but one, a Chaldean by race--meaning either by this
Abraham or his son--he speaks as follows:
“But one a scion of Chaldean race;
For he the sun’s path knew right well,
And how the motion of the sphere about
The earth proceeds, in circle moving
Equally around its axis, how the winds
Their chariot guide o’er air and sea.”
Then, as if paraphrasing the expression, “Heaven is my throne, and
earth is my footstool,”[880] he adds:
“But in great heaven, He is seated firm
Upon a throne of gold, and ’neath His feet
The earth. His right hand round the ocean’s bound
He stretches; and the hills’ foundations shake
To the centre at His wrath, nor can endure
His mighty strength. He all celestial is,
And all things finishes upon the earth.
He the Beginning, Middle is, and End.
But Thee I dare not speak. In limbs
And mind I tremble. He rules from on high.”
And so forth. For in these he indicates these prophetic utterances: “If
Thou openest the heaven, trembling shall seize the mountains from Thy
presence; and they shall melt, as wax melteth before the fire;”[881]
and in Isaiah, “Who hath measured the heaven with a span, and the whole
earth with His fist?”[882] Again, when it is said:
“Ruler of Ether, Hades, Sea, and Land,
Who with Thy bolts Olympus’ strong-built home
Dost shake. Whom demons dread, and whom the throng
Of gods do fear. Whom, too, the Fates obey,
Relentless though they be. O deathless One,
Our mother’s Sire! whose wrath makes all things reel;
Who mov’st the winds, and shroud’st in clouds the world,
Broad Ether cleaving with Thy lightning gleams,--
Thine is the order ’mongst the stars, which run
As Thine unchangeable behests direct.
Before Thy burning throne the angels wait,
Much-working, charged to do all things for men.
Thy young Spring shines, all prank’d with purple flowers;
Thy Winter with its chilling clouds assails;
Thine Autumn noisy Bacchus distributes.”
Then he adds, naming expressly the Almighty God:
“Deathless Immortal, capable of being
To the immortals only uttered! Come,
Greatest of gods, with strong Necessity.
Dread, invincible, great, deathless One,
Whom Ether crowns.”...
By the expression “Sire of our Mother” (μητροπάτωρ) he not only
intimates creation out of nothing, but gives occasion to those who
introduce emissions of imagining a consort of the Deity. And he
paraphrases those prophetic Scriptures--that in Isaiah, “I am He that
fixes the thunder, and creates the wind; whose hands have founded the
host of heaven;”[883] and that in Moses, “Behold, behold that I am He,
and there is no god beside me: I will kill, and I will make to live; I
will smite, and I will heal: and there is none that shall deliver out
of my hands.”[884]
“And He, from good, to mortals planteth ill,
And cruel war, and tearful woes,”
according to Orpheus.
Such also are the words of the Parian Archilochus:
“O Zeus, thine is the power of heaven, and thou
Inflict’st on men things violent and wrong.”[885]
Again let the Thracian Orpheus sing to us:
“His right hand all around to ocean’s bound
He stretches; and beneath His feet is earth.”
These are plainly derived from the following: “The Lord will save
the inhabited cities, and grasp the whole land in His hand like a
nest;”[886] “It is the Lord that made the earth by His power,” as
saith Jeremiah, “and set up the earth by His wisdom.”[887] Further, in
addition to these, Phocylides, who calls the angels demons, explains in
the following words that some of them are good, and others bad (for we
also have learned that some are apostate):
“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?”[888] 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,”[889]
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:
“Ἅπαντα δ’ ἀγαθὸν εἶναι τὸν Θεόν,”--
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.”[890]
Does he not seem to you to paraphrase that text, “At the presence of
the Lord the earth trembles?”[891] 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;”[892]
and so forth.
Thearidas, in his book _On Nature_, writes: “There was then one
really true beginning [first principle] of all that exists--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,[893] 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;[894] 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[895] 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.”[896]
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 immortal, 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. Wherefore every eastern nation, and every nation
touching the western shores; or the north, and each one towards
the south,[897]--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[898] 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.[899]
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; 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?”[900] 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.”[901] 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.”[902] 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,[903]
“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[904] to be the spouse,
And she, the Hours, gold-diademed, fair-fruited, good, brought
forth.”[905]
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 shalt 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
Shalt learn; and the ensphering heaven shalt 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;”[906] and they who inherit it shall reign over the earth.
Myriads on myriads of examples rush on my mind which I 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.
Thus, then, let our fifth Miscellany of gnostic notes in accordance
with the true philosophy be brought to a close.
BOOK VI.
CHAPTER I.
PLAN.
The sixth and also the seventh Miscellany of gnostic notes, in
accordance with the true philosophy, having delineated as well as
possible the ethical argument conveyed in them, and having exhibited
what the Gnostic is in his life, proceed to show the philosophers that
he is by no means impious, as they suppose, but that he alone is truly
pious, by a compendious exhibition of the Gnostic’s form of religion,
as far as it is possible, without danger, to commit it to writing in a
book of reference. For the Lord enjoined “to labour for the meat which
endureth to eternity.”[907] And the prophet says, “Blessed is he that
soweth into all waters, whose ox and ass tread,”[908] [that is,] the
people, from the Law and from the Gentiles, gathered into one faith.
“Now the weak eateth herbs,” according to the noble apostle.[909]
_The Instructor_, divided by us into three books, has already
exhibited the training and nurture up from the state of childhood,
that is, the course of life which from elementary instruction grows by
faith; and in the case of those enrolled in the number of men, prepares
beforehand the soul, endued with virtue, for the reception of gnostic
knowledge. The Greeks, then, clearly learning, from what shall be said
by us in these pages, that in profanely persecuting the God-loving
man, they themselves act impiously; then, as the notes advance, in
accordance with the style of the _Miscellanies_, we must solve
the difficulties raised both by Greeks and Barbarians with respect to
the coming of the Lord.
In a meadow the flowers blooming variously, and in a park the
plantations of fruit-trees, are not separated according to their
species from those of other kinds. If some, culling varieties, have
composed learned collections, Meadows, and Helicons, and Honeycombs,
and Robes; then, with the things which come to recollection by
haphazard, and are expurgated neither in order nor expression,
but purposely scattered, the form of the _Miscellanies_ is
promiscuously variegated like a meadow. And such being the case, my
notes shall serve as kindling sparks; and in the case of him, who is
fit for knowledge, if he chance to fall in with them, research made
with exertion will turn out to his benefit and advantage. For it is
right that labour should precede not only food, but also, much more
knowledge, in the case of those that are advancing to the eternal and
blessed salvation by the “strait and narrow way,” which is truly the
Lord’s.
Our knowledge, and our spiritual garden, is the Saviour Himself;
into whom we are planted, being transferred and transplanted, from
our old life, into the good land. And transplanting contributes to
fruitfulness. The Lord, then, into whom we have been transplanted, is
the Light and the true Knowledge.
Now knowledge is otherwise spoken of in a twofold sense: that, commonly
so called, which appears in all men (similarly also comprehension and
apprehension), universally, in the knowledge of individual objects;
in which not only the rational powers, but equally the irrational,
share, which I would never term knowledge, inasmuch as the apprehension
of things through the senses comes naturally. But that which _par
excellence_ is termed knowledge, bears the impress of judgment and
reason, in the exercise of which there will be rational cognitions
alone, applying purely to objects of thought, and resulting from
the bare energy of the soul. “He is a good man,” says David,[910]
“who pities” (those ruined through error), “and lends” (from the
communication of the word of truth) not at haphazard, for “he will
dispense his words in judgment:” with profound calculation, “he hath
dispersed, he hath given to the poor.”
CHAPTER II.
THE SUBJECT OF PLAGIARISMS RESUMED. THE GREEKS
PLAGIARIZED FROM ONE ANOTHER.
Before handling the point proposed, we must, by way of preface, add to
the close of the fifth book what is wanting. For since we have shown
that the symbolical style was ancient, and was employed not only by our
prophets, but also by the majority of the ancient Greeks, and by not a
few of the rest of the Gentile Barbarians, it was requisite to proceed
to the mysteries of the initiated. I postpone the elucidation of these
till we advance to the confutation of what is said by the Greeks on
first principles; for we shall show that the mysteries belong to the
same branch of speculation. And having proved that the declaration of
Hellenic thought is illuminated all round by the truth, bestowed on us
in the Scriptures, taking it according to the sense, we have proved,
not to say what is invidious, that the theft of the truth passed to
them.
Come, and let us adduce the Greeks as witnesses against themselves
to the theft. For, inasmuch as they pilfer from one another, they
establish the fact that they are thieves; and although against their
will, they are detected, clandestinely appropriating to those of their
own race the truth which belongs to us. For if they do not keep their
hands from each other, they will hardly do it from our authors. I shall
say nothing of philosophic dogmas, since the very persons who are the
authors of the divisions into sects, confess in writing, so as not to
be convicted of ingratitude, that they have received from Socrates the
most important of their dogmas. But after availing myself of a few
testimonies of men most talked of, and of repute among the Greeks, and
exposing their plagiarizing style, and selecting them from various
periods, I shall turn to what follows.
Orpheus, then, having composed the line:
“Since nothing else is more shameless and wretched than woman,”--
Homer plainly says:
“Since nothing else is more dreadful and shameless than a woman.”[911]
And Musæus having written: