Writings of Clement of Alexandria (Exhortation, Instructor, Stromata)

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.” 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 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, 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.” 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.” 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.’ 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;” 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.” Here add that prophecy: “The ox knoweth his owner, and the ass his master’s crib: but Israel hath not understood me.” 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;” 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.” 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.

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?” 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.”

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.”

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.” 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.” 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.” 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.” 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.” “Continue in prayer, watching therein with thanksgiving.” 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.” 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.”

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;” 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.” Similarly David sings: “For, lo, Thou hast loved truth; the obscure and hidden things of wisdom hast Thou showed me.” “Day utters speech to day” (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;” 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.” 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.”

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,” 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;” - a sacrifice hard to procure, in truth, the Son of God consecrated for us.

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” - 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.” 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.” “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.”

Again: “Abraham, when he came to the place which God told him of on the third day, looking up, saw the place afar off.” For the first day is that which is constituted by the sight of good things; and the second is the soul’s 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, 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,” and so on. Similarly respecting sacrifices: “I do not desire the blood of bulls and the fat of lambs,” 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.” 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.”

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 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!”

And was it not this which the prophet meant, when he ordered unleavened cakes 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.” 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.” These things the Saviour Himself seals when He says: “To you it is given to know the mysteries of the kingdom of heaven.” 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.” 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.” 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 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, “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,” - 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.”

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.” 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.” And again: “He that believeth hath everlasting life.” “Blessed are all they that put their trust in Him.” For trusting is more than faith. For when one has believed that the Son of God is our teacher, he trusts 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.” 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.” 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.” 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.”

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;” 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.” 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.” 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, 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. 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.” 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.” 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 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, 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.” 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.

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 written, they neither see nor hear them. But party feelings of political associations and public meetings, and revels with musicians [occupy them]; 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?” 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.” 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, 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;” 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?” 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;” 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?” 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,” 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 never succumb, And blameless are; in nought resembling men.” And also Cleanthes, the Stoic, who writes thus in a poem on the Deity: “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 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 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.” “Lo 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, alone as thou art, offers thee violence, And there is no escaping disease sent by Zeus, For the Cyclops heed not Ægis-bearing Zeus.” 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?” 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. 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.”

He then adds expressly: “Reason governs mortals, and alone preserves manners.” Then: “There is in man reasoning; and there is a divine Reason. 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,” 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.”... “I am a God at hand,” it is said by Jeremiah, “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,” 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.”

“Whilst thou art yet speaking,” says the Scripture, “I will say, Lo, here I am.” 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.” And with this agrees the tragedy in the following lines:

“For there shall come, shall come 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.” 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,” 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;” and in Isaiah, “Who hath measured the heaven with a span, and the whole earth with His fist?” 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;” 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.” “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.” 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;” “It is the Lord that made the earth by His power,” as saith Jeremiah, “and set up the earth by His wisdom.” 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?” 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,” 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.” Does he not seem to you to paraphrase that text, “At the presence of the Lord the earth trembles?” 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;” 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, 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; 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 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.”

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, - 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 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. 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?” 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.” 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.” 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, “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 to be the spouse, And she, the Hours, gold-diademed, fair-fruited, good, brought forth.” He, then, who is not obedient to the truth, and is puffed up with human teaching, is wretched and miserable, according to Euripides:

“Who these things seeing, yet apprehends not God, But mouthing lofty themes, casts far Perverse deceits; stubborn in which, the tongue Its shafts discharges, about things unseen, Devoid of sense.” Let him who wishes, then, approaching to the true instruction, learn from Parmenides the Eleatic, who promises: “Ethereal nature, then, and all the signs In Ether thou 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;” 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.