pay to their martyrs._
But, nevertheless, we do not build temples, and ordain priests,
rites, and sacrifices for these same martyrs; for they are not
our gods, but their God is our God. Certainly we honour their
reliquaries, as the memorials of holy men of God who strove for the
truth even to the death of their bodies, that the true religion might
be made known, and false and fictitious religions exposed. For if
there were some before them who thought that these religions were
really false and fictitious, they were afraid to give expression
to their convictions. But who ever heard a priest of the faithful,
standing at an altar built for the honour and worship of God over
the holy body of some martyr, say in the prayers, I offer to thee a
sacrifice, O Peter, or O Paul, or O Cyprian? for it is to God that
sacrifices are offered at their tombs,--the God who made them both
men and martyrs, and associated them with holy angels in celestial
honour; and the reason why we pay such honours to their memory
is, that by so doing we may both give thanks to the true God for
their victories, and, by recalling them afresh to remembrance, may
stir ourselves up to imitate them by seeking to obtain like crowns
and palms, calling to our help that same God on whom they called.
Therefore, whatever honours the religious may pay in the places of
the martyrs, they are but honours rendered to their memory,[327] not
sacred rites or sacrifices offered to dead men as to gods. And even
such as bring thither food,--which, indeed, is not done by the better
Christians, and in most places of the world is not done at all,--do
so in order that it may be sanctified to them through the merits of
the martyrs, in the name of the Lord of the martyrs, first presenting
the food and offering prayer, and thereafter taking it away to be
eaten, or to be in part bestowed upon the needy.[328] But he who
knows the one sacrifice of Christians, which is the sacrifice offered
in those places, also knows that these are not sacrifices offered to
the martyrs. It is, then, neither with divine honours nor with human
crimes, by which they worship their gods, that we honour our martyrs;
neither do we offer sacrifices to them, or convert the crimes of the
gods into their sacred rites. For let those who will and can read
the letter of Alexander to his mother Olympias, in which he tells
the things which were revealed to him by the priest Leon, and let
those who have read it recall to memory what it contains, that they
may see what great abominations have been handed down to memory, not
by poets, but by the mystic writings of the Egyptians, concerning
the goddess Isis, the wife of Osiris, and the parents of both, all
of whom, according to these writings, were royal personages. Isis,
when sacrificing to her parents, is said to have discovered a crop
of barley, of which she brought some ears to the king her husband,
and his councillor Mercurius, and hence they identify her with Ceres.
Those who read the letter may there see what was the character of
those people to whom when dead sacred rites were instituted as
to gods, and what those deeds of theirs were which furnished the
occasion for these rites. Let them not once dare to compare in any
respect those people, though they hold them to be gods, to our holy
martyrs, though we do not hold them to be gods. For we do not ordain
priests and offer sacrifices to our martyrs, as they do to their
dead men, for that would be incongruous, undue, and unlawful, such
being due only to God; and thus we do not delight them with their
own crimes, or with such shameful plays as those in which the crimes
of the gods are celebrated, which are either real crimes committed
by them at a time when they were men, or else, if they never were
men, fictitious crimes invented for the pleasure of noxious demons.
The god of Socrates, if he had a god, cannot have belonged to this
class of demons. But perhaps they who wished to excel in this art of
making gods, imposed a god of this sort on a man who was a stranger
to, and innocent of any connection with that art. What need we say
more? No one who is even moderately wise imagines that demons are to
be worshipped on account of the blessed life which is to be after
death. But perhaps they will say that all the gods are good, but that
of the demons some are bad and some good, and that it is the good who
are to be worshipped, in order that through them we may attain to the
eternally blessed life. To the examination of this opinion we will
devote the following book.
FOOTNOTES:
[291] Wisdom vii. 24-27.
[292] "Sapiens," that is, a wise man, one who had attained to wisdom.
[293] Finem boni.
[294] Dii majorum gentium.
[295] Book i. 13.
[296] Rom. i. 19, 20.
[297] Col. ii. 8.
[298] Rom. i. 19, 20.
[299] Acts xvii. 28.
[300] Rom. i. 21-23.
[301] _De Doctrina Christiana_, ii. 43. Comp. _Retract._ ii. 4, 2.
[302] Liberating Jewish slaves, and sending gifts to the temple. See
Josephus, _Ant._ xii. 2.
[303] Gen. i. 1, 2.
[304] Spiritus.
[305] Ex. iii. 14.
[306] Rom. i. 20.
[307] Ch. 14.
[308] _De Deo Socratis._
[309] Virgil, _Æn._ 7. 338.
[310] Virgil, _Æn._ 4. 492, 493.
[311] Virgil, _Ec._ 8. 99.
[312] Pliny (_Hist. Nat._ xxviii. 2) and others quote the law as
running: "Qui fruges incantasit, qui malum carmen incantasit.... neu
alienam segetem pelexeris."
[313] Before Claudius, the prefect of Africa, a heathen.
[314] Another reading, "whom they could not know, though near to
themselves."
[315] These quotations are from a dialogue between Hermes and
Æsculapius, which is said to have been translated into Latin by
Apuleius.
[316] Rom. i. 21.
[317] Jer. xvi. 20.
[318] Zech. xiii. 2.
[319] Isa. xix. 1.
[320] Matt. xvi. 16.
[321] Matt. viii. 29.
[322] Ps. xcvi. 1.
[323] Ps. cxv. 5, etc.
[324] 1 Cor. x. 19, 20.
[325] Ps. xcvi. 1-5.
[326] Jer. xvi. 20.
[327] Ornamenta memoriarum.
[328] Comp. _The Confessions_, vi. 2.
BOOK NINTH.
ARGUMENT.
HAVING IN THE PRECEDING BOOK SHOWN THAT THE WORSHIP OF DEMONS MUST
BE ABJURED, SINCE THEY IN A THOUSAND WAYS PROCLAIM THEMSELVES
TO BE WICKED SPIRITS, AUGUSTINE IN THIS BOOK MEETS THOSE WHO
ALLEGE A DISTINCTION AMONG DEMONS, SOME BEING EVIL, WHILE
OTHERS ARE GOOD; AND, HAVING EXPLODED THIS DISTINCTION, HE
PROVES THAT TO NO DEMON, BUT TO CHRIST ALONE, BELONGS THE
OFFICE OF PROVIDING MEN WITH ETERNAL BLESSEDNESS.