can confer happiness either on angels or men, but that it yet
remains a question whether those spirits whom they direct us
to worship, that we may obtain happiness, wish sacrifice to be
offered to themselves, or to the one God only._
It is the decided opinion of all who use their brains, that all men
desire to be happy. But who are happy, or how they become so, these
are questions about which the weakness of human understanding stirs
endless and angry controversies, in which philosophers have wasted
their strength and expended their leisure. To adduce and discuss
their various opinions would be tedious, and is unnecessary. The
reader may remember what we said in the eighth book, while making a
selection of the philosophers with whom we might discuss the question
regarding the future life of happiness, whether we can reach it by
paying divine honours to the one true God, the Creator of all gods,
or by worshipping many gods, and he will not expect us to repeat
here the same argument, especially as, even if he has forgotten it,
he may refresh his memory by reperusal. For we made selection of
the Platonists, justly esteemed the noblest of the philosophers,
because they had the wit to perceive that the human soul, immortal
and rational, or intellectual, as it is, cannot be happy except
by partaking of the light of that God by whom both itself and the
world were made; and also that the happy life which all men desire
cannot be reached by any who does not cleave with a pure and holy
love to that one supreme good, the unchangeable God. But as even
these philosophers, whether accommodating to the folly and ignorance
of the people, or, as the apostle says, "becoming vain in their
imaginations,"[364] supposed or allowed others to suppose that many
gods should be worshipped, so that some of them considered that
divine honour by worship and sacrifice should be rendered even to
the demons (an error I have already exploded), we must now, by God's
help, ascertain what is thought about our religious worship and piety
by those immortal and blessed spirits, who dwell in the heavenly
places among dominations, principalities, powers, whom the Platonists
call gods, and some either good demons, or, like us, angels,--that
is to say, to put it more plainly, whether the angels desire us to
offer sacrifice and worship, and to consecrate our possessions and
ourselves, to them, or only to God, theirs and ours.
For this is the worship which is due to the Divinity, or, to
speak more accurately, to the Deity; and, to express this worship
in a single word, as there does not occur to me any Latin term
sufficiently exact, I shall avail myself, whenever necessary, of a
Greek word. Λατρεία, whenever it occurs in Scripture, is rendered
by the word service. But that service which is due to men, and in
reference to which the apostle writes that servants must be subject
to their own masters,[365] is usually designated by another word
in Greek,[366] whereas the service which is paid to God alone by
worship, is always, or almost always, called λατρεία in the usage
of those who wrote from the divine oracles. This cannot so well be
called simply "cultus," for in that case it would not seem to be due
exclusively to God; for the same word is applied to the respect we
pay either to the memory or the living presence of men. From it, too,
we derive the words agriculture, colonist, and others.[367] And the
heathen call their gods "cœlicolæ," not because they worship heaven,
but because they dwell in it, and as it were colonize it,--not in
the sense in which we call those colonists who are attached to their
native soil to cultivate it under the rule of the owners, but in the
sense in which the great master of the Latin language says, "There
was an ancient city inhabited by Tyrian colonists."[368] He called
them colonists, not because they cultivated the soil, but because
they inhabited the city. So, too, cities that have hived off from
larger cities are called colonies. Consequently, while it is quite
true that, using the word in a special sense, "cult" can be rendered
to none but God, yet, as the word is applied to other things besides,
the cult due to God cannot in Latin be expressed by this word alone.
The word "religion" might seem to express more definitely the worship
due to God alone, and therefore Latin translators have used this word
to represent θρησκεία; yet, as not only the uneducated, but also
the best instructed, use the word religion to express human ties,
and relationships, and affinities, it would inevitably introduce
ambiguity to use this word in discussing the worship of God, unable
as we are to say that religion is nothing else than the worship
of God, without contradicting the common usage which applies this
word to the observance of social relationships. "Piety," again, or,
as the Greeks say, εὐσέβεια, is commonly understood as the proper
designation of the worship of God. Yet this word also is used of
dutifulness to parents. The common people, too, use it of works
of charity, which, I suppose, arises from the circumstance that
God enjoins the performance of such works, and declares that He
is pleased with them instead of, or in preference to sacrifices.
From this usage it has also come to pass that God Himself is called
pious,[369] in which sense the Greeks never use εὐσεβεῖν, though
εὐσέβεια is applied to works of charity by their common people
also. In some passages of Scripture, therefore, they have sought to
preserve the distinction by using not εὐσέβεια, the more general
word, but θεοσέβεια, which literally denotes the worship of God.
We, on the other hand, cannot express either of these ideas by one
word. This worship, then, which in Greek is called λατρεία, and in
Latin "servitus" [service], but the service due to God only; this
worship, which in Greek is called θρησκεία, and in Latin "religio,"
but the religion by which we are bound to God only; this worship,
which they call θεοσέβεια, but which we cannot express in one word,
but call it the worship of God,--this, we say, belongs only to that
God who is the true God, and who makes His worshippers gods.[370] And
therefore, whoever these immortal and blessed inhabitants of heaven
be, if they do not love us, and wish us to be blessed, then we ought
not to worship them; and if they do love us and desire our happiness,
they cannot wish us to be made happy by any other means than they
themselves have enjoyed,--for how could they wish our blessedness to
flow from one source, theirs from another?