on our disputations on matters of theology, their opinions
being preferable to those of all other philosophers._
If, then, Plato defined the wise man as one who imitates, knows,
loves this God, and who is rendered blessed through fellowship with
Him in His own blessedness, why discuss with the other philosophers?
It is evident that none come nearer to us than the Platonists.
To them, therefore, let that fabulous theology give place which
delights the minds of men with the crimes of the gods; and that
civil theology also, in which impure demons, under the name of
gods, have seduced the peoples of the earth given up to earthly
pleasures, desiring to be honoured by the errors of men, and, by
filling the minds of their worshippers with impure desires, exciting
them to make the representation of their crimes one of the rites of
their worship, whilst they themselves found in the spectators of
these exhibitions a most pleasing spectacle,--a theology in which,
whatever was honourable in the temple, was defiled by its mixture
with the obscenity of the theatre, and whatever was base in the
theatre was vindicated by the abominations of the temples. To these
philosophers also the interpretations of Varro must give place, in
which he explains the sacred rites as having reference to heaven and
earth, and to the seeds and operations of perishable things; for,
in the first place, those rites have not the signification which
he would have men believe is attached to them, and therefore truth
does not follow him in his attempt so to interpret them; and even
if they had this signification, still those things ought not to be
worshipped by the rational soul as its god which are placed below
it in the scale of nature, nor ought the soul to prefer to itself
as gods things to which the true God has given it the preference.
The same must be said of those writings pertaining to the sacred
rites, which Numa Pompilius took care to conceal by causing them to
be buried along with himself, and which, when they were afterwards
turned up by the plough, were burned by order of the senate. And, to
treat Numa with all honour, let us mention as belonging to the same
rank as these writings that which Alexander of Macedon wrote to his
mother as communicated to him by Leo, an Egyptian high priest. In
this letter not only Picus and Faunus, and Æneas and Romulus, or even
Hercules and Æsculapius and Liber, born of Semele, and the twin sons
of Tyndareus, or any other mortals who have been deified, but even
the principal gods themselves,[294] to whom Cicero, in his Tusculan
questions,[295] alludes without mentioning their names, Jupiter,
Juno, Saturn, Vulcan, Vesta, and many others whom Varro attempts to
identify with the parts or the elements of the world, are shown to
have been men. There is, as we have said, a similarity between this
case and that of Numa; for, the priest being afraid because he had
revealed a mystery, earnestly begged of Alexander to command his
mother to burn the letter which conveyed these communications to her.
Let these two theologies, then, the fabulous and the civil, give
place to the Platonic philosophers, who have recognised the true God
as the author of all things, the source of the light of truth, and
the bountiful bestower of all blessedness. And not these only, but
to these great acknowledgers of so great a God, those philosophers
must yield who, having their mind enslaved to their body, supposed
the principles of all things to be material; as Thales, who held that
the first principle of all things was water; Anaximenes, that it
was air; the Stoics, that it was fire; Epicurus, who affirmed that
it consisted of atoms, that is to say, of minute corpuscules; and
many others whom it is needless to enumerate, but who believed that
bodies, simple or compound, animate or inanimate, but nevertheless
bodies, were the cause and principle of all things. For some of
them--as, for instance, the Epicureans--believed that living things
could originate from things without life; others held that all things
living or without life spring from a living principle, but that,
nevertheless, all things, being material, spring from a material
principle. For the Stoics thought that fire, that is, one of the four
material elements of which this visible world is composed, was both
living and intelligent, the maker of the world and of all things
contained in it,--that it was in fact God. These and others like
them have only been able to suppose that which their hearts enslaved
to sense have vainly suggested to them. And yet they have within
themselves something which they could not see: they represented
to themselves inwardly things which they had seen without, even
when they were not seeing them, but only thinking of them. But
this representation in thought is no longer a body, but only the
similitude of a body; and that faculty of the mind by which this
similitude of a body is seen is neither a body nor the similitude of
a body; and the faculty which judges whether the representation is
beautiful or ugly is without doubt superior to the object judged of.
This principle is the understanding of man, the rational soul; and
it is certainly not a body, since that similitude of a body which
it beholds and judges of is itself not a body. The soul is neither
earth, nor water, nor air, nor fire, of which four bodies, called the
four elements, we see that this world is composed. And if the soul
is not a body, how should God, its Creator, be a body? Let all those
philosophers, then, give place, as we have said, to the Platonists,
and those also who have been ashamed to say that God is a body, but
yet have thought that our souls are of the same nature as God. They
have not been staggered by the great changeableness of the soul,--an
attribute which it would be impious to ascribe to the divine
nature,--but they say it is the body which changes the soul, for in
itself it is unchangeable. As well might they say, "Flesh is wounded
by some body, for in itself it is invulnerable." In a word, that
which is unchangeable can be changed by nothing, so that that which
can be changed by the body cannot properly be said to be immutable.