honour, or those who teach us to render holy service, not to
themselves, but to God, are to be trusted about the way to life
eternal._
What angels, then, are we to believe in this matter of blessed and
eternal life?--those who wish to be worshipped with religious rites
and observances, and require that men sacrifice to them; or those who
say that all this worship is due to one God, the Creator, and teach us
to render it with true piety to Him, by the vision of whom they are
themselves already blessed, and in whom they promise that we shall be
so? For that vision of God is the beauty of a vision so great, and is
so infinitely desirable, that Plotinus does not hesitate to say that
he who enjoys all other blessings in abundance, and has not this, is
supremely miserable.[405] Since, therefore, miracles are wrought by
some angels to induce us to worship this God, by others, to induce
us to worship themselves; and since the former forbid us to worship
these, while the latter dare not forbid us to worship God, which
are we to listen to? Let the Platonists reply, or any philosophers,
or the theurgists, or rather, _periurgists_,[406]--for this name is
good enough for those who practise such arts. In short, let all men
answer,--if, at least, there survives in them any spark of that natural
perception which, as rational beings, they possess when created,--let
them, I say, tell us whether we should sacrifice to the gods or
angels who order us to sacrifice to them, or to that One to whom we
are ordered to sacrifice by those who forbid us to worship either
themselves or these others. If neither the one party nor the other had
wrought miracles, but had merely uttered commands, the one to sacrifice
to themselves, the other forbidding that, and ordering us to sacrifice
to God, a godly mind would have been at no loss to discern which
command proceeded from proud arrogance, and which from true religion.
I will say more. If miracles had been wrought only by those who demand
sacrifice for themselves, while those who forbade this, and enjoined
sacrificing to the one God only, thought fit entirely to forego the use
of visible miracles, the authority of the latter was to be preferred
by all who would use, not their eyes only, but their reason. But since
God, for the sake of commending to us the oracles of His truth, has, by
means of these immortal messengers, who proclaim His majesty and not
their own pride, wrought miracles of surpassing grandeur, certainty,
and distinctness, in order that the weak among the godly might not be
drawn away to false religion by those who require us to sacrifice to
them and endeavour to convince us by stupendous appeals to our senses,
who is so utterly unreasonable as not to choose and follow the truth,
when he finds that it is heralded by even more striking evidences than
falsehood?
As for those miracles which history ascribes to the gods of the
heathen,--I do not refer to those prodigies which at intervals
happen from some unknown physical causes, and which are arranged and
appointed by Divine Providence, such as monstrous births, and unusual
meteorological phenomena, whether startling only, or also injurious,
and which are said to be brought about and removed by communication
with demons, and by their most deceitful craft,--but I refer to these
prodigies which manifestly enough are wrought by their power and
force, as, that the household gods which Æneas carried from Troy in
his flight moved from place to place; that Tarquin cut a whetstone
with a razor; that the Epidaurian serpent attached himself as a
companion to Æsculapius on his voyage to Rome; that the ship in which
the image of the Phrygian mother stood, and which could not be moved
by a host of men and oxen, was moved by one weak woman, who attached
her girdle to the vessel and drew it, as proof of her chastity; that
a vestal, whose virginity was questioned, removed the suspicion by
carrying from the Tiber a sieve full of water without any of it
dropping: these, then, and the like, are by no means to be compared
for greatness and virtue to those which, we read, were wrought among
God's people. How much less can we compare those marvels, which even
the laws of heathen nations prohibit and punish,--I mean the magical
and theurgic marvels, of which the great part are merely illusions
practised upon the senses, as the drawing down of the moon, "that,"
as Lucan says, "it may shed a stronger influence on the plants?"[407]
And if some of these do seem to equal those which are wrought by the
godly, the end for which they are wrought distinguishes the two,
and shows that ours are incomparably the more excellent. For those
miracles commend the worship of a plurality of gods, who deserve
worship the less the more they demand it; but these of ours commend
the worship of the one God, who, both by the testimony of His own
Scriptures, and by the eventual abolition of sacrifices, proves
that He needs no such offerings. If, therefore, any angels demand
sacrifice for themselves, we must prefer those who demand it, not
for themselves, but for God, the Creator of all, whom they serve.
For thus they prove how sincerely they love us, since they wish
by sacrifice to subject us, not to themselves, but to Him by the
contemplation of whom they themselves are blessed, and to bring us to
Him from whom they themselves have never strayed. If, on the other
hand, any angels wish us to sacrifice, not to one, but to many, not,
indeed, to themselves, but to the gods whose angels they are, we must
in this case also prefer those who are the angels of the one God of
gods, and who so bid us to worship Him as to preclude our worshipping
any other. But, further, if it be the case, as their pride and
deceitfulness rather indicate, that they are neither good angels nor
the angels of good gods, but wicked demons, who wish sacrifice to be
paid, not to the one only and supreme God, but to themselves, what
better protection against them can we choose than that of the one God
whom the good angels serve, the angels who bid us sacrifice, not to
themselves, but to Him whose sacrifice we ourselves ought to be?