Cyprian & Lactantius · a new plain-English translation from the original language
But let us by all means set aside the testimonies of the prophets, lest the proof seem less adequate when it concerns those to whom no credence is given at all. Let us come instead to the authors and summon as witnesses to the truth those very writers whom our opponents are accustomed to use against us — I mean the poets and the philosophers. We must derive proof of the one God from these, not because they grasped the truth themselves, but because truth's own force presses so hard upon the eyes that only blindness could fail to notice its shining. The poets, then, although they adorned the gods in their songs and magnified their deeds with the highest praises, nevertheless time and again admit that a single spirit or mind holds everything together and governs it. Orpheus — older than any other poet, indeed a contemporary of the gods themselves, since he is said to have sailed among the Argonauts with the sons of Tyndareus and Hercules — calls the true and great God Protogonos, because nothing was born before him, but all things were generated by him. He also names him Phanes, because when as yet nothing existed, he was the first to appear and come forth out of the infinite. Since he could not grasp where this being came from or what it was by nature, he said he was born of the boundless air: 'Protogonos Phaethon, son of the far-stretching air.' For he had nothing further to say. He declares this being to be the father of all the gods; he built the heavens for their sake and gave his offspring a shared dwelling and home: 'he built for the immortals an undecaying house.' By nature and the guidance of reason, then, he grasped that a most excellent power exists, the maker of sky and earth. Jupiter, however, could not be named as the first principle of things, since Jupiter was begotten of Saturn; nor could Saturn himself, who was said to be born of Heaven; and he did not dare to establish Heaven as the first god, since he saw it to be an element of the universe, one which itself needed a maker. This reasoning led him to that firstborn god to whom he assigns and attributes supremacy. Homer offered us nothing useful bearing on the truth, since human affairs rather than divine ones filled his pages. Hesiod could have done better, since he compressed the generation of the gods into the work of a single book; yet he gave nothing that took its beginning from a founding god, but rather from Chaos, which is the confused heap of raw and unordered matter — though he ought first to have explained whence, when, and how Chaos itself began or came to be. Surely, just as all things that are arranged, ordered, and made are the work of some craftsman, so it is necessary that matter itself was fashioned by someone. Who, then, could have made it, if not the God under whose power all things lie? Yet he shrank from this, recoiling in dread from a truth he did not recognize. For that song of his was not poured out on Helicon by the inspiration of the Muses, as he wished it to seem, but came already meditated and prepared. Among our own poets, Virgil came not far from the truth, whose words about the supreme God, whom he named mind and spirit, are these: 'In the beginning, spirit nourishes from within the sky and the earth and the watery plains, the shining orb of the moon and the Titanic stars, and mind, poured through the limbs, stirs the whole mass and mingles itself with its vast body.' And lest anyone should fail to recognize what spirit this was that held such power, he made it plain elsewhere, saying: 'For God moves through all lands and tracts of sea and the deep sky; from him flocks, herds, men, every kind of beast, each draws at birth its thin thread of life.' Ovid too, at the beginning of his celebrated work, without any concealment of the name, confesses that the world was built by God, whom he calls the maker of the world, the artisan of things. Had Orpheus, or these poets of ours, held firmly to the insight nature's guidance gave them, they would, once truth was in hand, have reached the very same teaching we now follow. That covers the poets; we turn now to the philosophers, greater in authority and surer in judgment, since they are believed not to have been given to invented tales but devoted to the pursuit of truth. Thales of Miletus — counted among the seven sages, and credited as the very earliest to search out the causes of nature — said that water was that from which all things were born, but that God was the mind that formed all things out of water. Thus he placed the matter of things in moisture, but set the principle and cause of generation in God. Pythagoras defined God thus: a spirit that travels and spreads across every region of the cosmos and every part of nature, the source from which each living, born creature draws life. Anaxagoras says that God is an infinite mind that moves by itself. Antisthenes says that there are indeed many gods of the peoples, but one natural god, the maker of the whole. Cleanthes and Anaximenes say that the highest god is the aether, an opinion our own poet endorsed: 'then the almighty father Aether descends with fertile rains into the lap of his joyful spouse, and, mingled with her vast body, nourishes all her great offspring.' Chrysippus at times calls a natural force endowed with divine reason, at times divine necessity, by the name of God; likewise Zeno calls it natural and divine law. Uncertain as all these opinions are, they nevertheless point to the same thing: that they agree there is one providence. For whether you call it nature, or aether, or reason, or mind, or fated necessity, or divine law, or whatever else, it is the same thing that we call God. Nor does the diversity of names stand in the way, since by their very meaning they all revolve back to one. Aristotle, though he is at odds with himself and both says and thinks contradictory things, nevertheless testifies in the end that one mind presides over the world as its highest. Plato — held to be wisest of them all — defends monarchy plainly and openly, and names God neither aether, nor reason, nor nature, but simply as he is: God — by whom this perfect and wonderful universe was fashioned. Cicero, following and imitating him, frequently and in many places confesses God and calls him supreme, in the books he wrote on the Laws; and he argues that the world is governed by him, disputing the gods' own nature along these lines: 'Nothing is more excellent than God. It is necessary, then, that the world be ruled by him. God, therefore, obeys and is subject to no nature. He himself, then, rules all nature.' And as to what God is, he defines it in the Consolation: 'Nor indeed, as we conceive him, can God himself be understood except as a mind — released and free, set apart from all mortal admixture, perceiving and moving all things.' Annaeus Seneca too, who was the keenest of the Stoics among the Romans, how often does he follow up the supreme God with well-deserved praise! For when discoursing on untimely death, he says: 'Do you fail to grasp how supreme in authority and majesty is the judge over you — ruler of the earth and of heaven and of all the gods, the god from whom those divine powers that we individually adore and worship depend?' Likewise in the Exhortations: 'As he set down the earliest foundation stones of this most beautiful structure, and beginning that work than which nature knows nothing greater or better, so that all things might proceed under their own guides — although he himself had stretched throughout the whole body — nevertheless God brought forth attendants for his realm.' And what a great many other sayings of his echo ours! These I now set aside, since they are more fitting for other places. For now it suffices to show that minds of the greatest genius brushed against the truth and all but seized it, had habit, tainted with depraved opinions, not dragged them back — the same habit by which they supposed there were other gods, and believed that the things God made for man's use ought to be regarded and worshipped as gods, as though endowed with sense.
Let us now pass on to divine testimonies. But first I shall bring forward one that is like a divine testimony, both because of its exceeding antiquity and because the one I shall name was, from among men, raised up into the gods. In Cicero, the pontiff Gaius Cotta, arguing against the Stoics about religions and the variety of opinions that commonly exist concerning the gods, in order to render everything uncertain in the manner of the Academics, says that there were five Mercurys, and having enumerated four in order, identifies the fifth as the one who killed Argus, and says that for this reason he fled to Egypt and handed down to the Egyptians laws and letters. The Egyptians call him Thoth; September, the opening month of their calendar, took its name from him. He also founded a city, which even now is called in Greek the City of Mercury, and the people of Pheneus worship him religiously. Although he was a man, he was nevertheless of the greatest antiquity and so thoroughly instructed in every kind of learning that his knowledge of many matters and arts earned him the surname Trismegistus. He wrote books, and many of them, bearing on the knowledge of divine things, in which he asserts the majesty of the supreme and singular God and calls him by the same names by which we call him Lord and Father. And lest anyone should ask his name, he said he was nameless, because he has no need of the particularity of a name, on account of his very unity. His own words are these: 'God is one, and he who is one has no need of a name; for he who exists is nameless.' God, then, has no name, because he alone exists, and there is no need of a proper term except when a multitude demands distinction, so that you may mark out each single person by its own token and designation. But for God, since he is always one, his proper name is God. It remains to bring forward, concerning oracles and sacred verses, testimonies that are far more certain. For perhaps those against whom we argue think that neither the poets, as inventors of empty fictions, nor the philosophers, since they too were men and could err, deserve to be believed. Marcus Varro, than whom no one ever lived more learned, not even among the Greeks, in the books on divine matters that he wrote for Gaius Caesar, Pontifex Maximus, speaking of the Board of Fifteen, says that the Sibylline Books did not belong to one Sibyl, but are called Sibylline under a single name because the ancients gave the name Sibyl to all women who prophesied, either from the name of one particular Delphic woman or from their announcing the counsels of the gods. For they used to say 'theos' for gods, not 'theous,' and for counsel not 'boulen' but 'boullan,' in the Aeolic manner of speech. And so a Sibyl was said to be, as it were, 'theoboule' — one who tells the counsel of god. There were, moreover, ten Sibyls in number, and he enumerated them all, along with the authorities who had written about each. The first was from Persia, mentioned by Nicanor, who wrote the deeds of Alexander the Macedonian; the second was the Libyan, whom Euripides mentions in the prologue to the Lamia; the third the Delphic, of whom Chrysippus speaks in the book he composed on divination; the fourth the Cimmerian, in Italy, cited by Naevius in his volumes on the war with Carthage and by Piso in his Annals; the fifth the Erythraean, whom Apollodorus of Erythrae affirms to have been his own fellow citizen, and to have foretold to the Greeks bound for Ilium that Troy would fall and that Homer's verses would contain lies; the sixth was the Samian, of whom Eratosthenes writes that he found it recorded in the old annals of the Samians; the seventh the Cumaean, named Amalthea, called by others Herophile or Demophile, who brought nine books to King Tarquinius Priscus and demanded three hundred gold pieces for them, and when the king scorned so great a price and mocked the woman's madness, she burned three of the books before the king's eyes yet asked the identical sum for what remained; Tarquin judged her madness only greater still; but after she burned three more and would not lower her price, the king relented and purchased what was left for three hundred gold pieces. Their number was later increased, after the Capitol was rebuilt, since verses were gathered from every city, both Italian and Greek, especially from Erythrae, and brought to Rome under whatever Sibyl's name they bore. The eighth was the Hellespontine, born in the territory of Troy, in the village of Marmessus near the town of Gergithium, whom Heraclides Ponticus records as active in the era of Solon and Cyrus; the ninth was the Phrygian, who gave oracles at Ancyra; the tenth the Tiburtine, called Albunea, honored at Tibur as a goddess along the banks of the river Anio, in whose whirling waters her image is said to have been found holding a book in her hand. The songs of all these Sibyls are current and preserved, except those of the Cumaean, whose books are kept hidden by the Romans, and no one is permitted to inspect them save the Board of Fifteen. And each Sibyl has her own separate book; but because they are all inscribed under the single name 'Sibyl,' people take them all for the product of a single author, and they lie jumbled together, nor can it be discerned or assigned which belongs to which, except in the case of the Erythraean, who inserted her own true name into her song and stated beforehand that she would be called the Erythraean, though she had been born at Babylon. But we too shall speak of them confusedly as 'the Sibyl,' wherever it is necessary to make use of their testimonies. All these Sibyls, taken together, announce a single God, but the Erythraean especially, who is held to be the most celebrated and noble among the rest, since Fenestella, a most careful writer, speaking of the Board of Fifteen, says that after the Capitol was restored, the consul Gaius Curio proposed to the Senate that envoys be sent to Erythrae to gather and bring back to Rome the songs of the Sibyl; and so the envoys chosen for the errand were Publius Gabinius, Marcus Otacilius, and Lucius Valerius, bringing back to Rome about a thousand verses transcribed from private individuals. We have shown above that Varro said the same. In these verses, then, which the envoys brought to Rome, there are these testimonies concerning the one God: 'One God, who alone rules, immensely great, unbegotten.' That he alone is the supreme God, who made the heavens and adorned them with lights: 'but God alone, highest above all, who has made the sky, the sun and the stars, and the moon, the fruit-bearing earth and the swelling waves of the sea.' And since he alone constructed the world and fashioned everything — both the substance it is made of and what it contains — she affirms that worship belongs to him alone: 'worship him alone, the sole ruler of the universe, who alone has come to be from age to age and unto age.' Likewise another Sibyl, whoever she may be, when declaring that she was bringing to men the voice of God, speaks thus: 'For I am the only god; no other god exists.' I could proceed through the remaining testimonies too, but these already suffice, and I hold the rest back for better occasions. Yet given that our task is to uphold truth's case in front of people who wander from truth to serve counterfeit religions, what better proof could we offer against them than turning their own gods' testimonies against them?
For Apollo — whom beyond all others they consider divine and especially prophetic — while residing at Colophon, whither, I suppose, he had migrated from Delphi drawn by the pleasantness of Asia, when someone asked him who or what God actually is, answered with a set of twenty-one lines that opens thus: 'Self-generated, untaught, without mother, immovable, a name no speech can hold, abiding within fire — this is god, and as for us angels, we are god's small share.' Could anyone imagine this description fits Jupiter, given that he had a mother, and a name besides? What of the fact that the great Mercury Trismegistus, whom I mentioned above, calls God not only motherless, as Apollo does, but also fatherless, since he has no origin from anywhere else? For he who himself begot all things cannot have been begotten by anyone. Enough, I think, have I taught by arguments and confirmed by witnesses what is in any case sufficiently clear by itself: that there is one king of the world, one father, one lord. But perhaps someone will ask of us the question Hortensius raises in Cicero's dialogue: if God is one, what blessed solitude can that be? As though, because we say he is one, we therefore say he is deserted and alone. He keeps envoys, the ones we term messengers. And it holds true, as I noted earlier, quoting Seneca's Exhortations — that God brought forth attendants for his realm. Yet none of these count as gods, nor do they seek the title of god or any worship, since whatever they do follows God's own command and desire alone. Nor are they, on the other hand, identical to the beings commonly worshipped, whose count is limited and set. Yet should worshippers of the gods imagine that these ministers — those we term the supreme God's attendants — are exactly the ones they honor, they have no grounds to resent us for affirming a single God while rejecting a plurality. If a multitude pleases them, we do not say there are twelve, or three hundred sixty-five as Orpheus says, but that they are innumerable. We turn their mistake around in the other direction, since they reckon the number too small. Still, let them recognize what these beings should properly be titled, so they do not wrong the true God — whose name they scatter across many — by misapplying it. Let them trust their own Apollo instead — in that identical oracle, just as he stripped Jupiter of primacy, he likewise stripped the other gods of their name. Its third line, after all, makes clear these attendants of God should bear the name angels, not gods. As for himself, indeed, he lied, for although he belongs to the number of demons, he joined himself to the angels of God; but elsewhere, in other oracles, he admitted openly to being a demon. When asked in what manner he wanted his prayers addressed, this was his reply: 'All-wise, all-taught, much-turning one, hear, O demon.' Likewise again, when asked to utter a prayer to Apollo Smintheus, he began with this verse: 'Harmony of the world, light-bringer, all-wise demon.' What is left, then, except that his own admission puts him beneath the true God's whip and everlasting punishment? Indeed, in yet another oracle he said: 'The demons who roam about the earth and about the sea are subdued beneath the unwearying scourge of God.' We shall discuss both kinds of beings in the second book. For now, meanwhile, it is enough for us that, while wishing to honor himself and to be set in heaven, he confessed — as the matter indeed stands — how those who always stand beside God ought to be called. Let men, therefore, draw themselves back from their errors, and, casting aside their depraved religions, come to know their parent and lord, whose power cannot be measured, whose greatness cannot be perceived, whose beginning cannot be grasped. When the reach, the keenness, and the memory of the human mind arrive at him, as though all paths were withdrawn and exhausted, it stops, clings, and fails, nor is there anything further to which it can advance. But since it cannot be that what exists should not at some point have begun to exist, it follows that, since nothing existed before him, he himself was brought forth out of himself before all things; and for this reason he is called by Apollo self-born, and by the Sibyl self-begotten and unbegotten and unmade. This Seneca, a keen man, perceived in his Exhortations. 'We,' he says, 'depend upon something else. And so we look to someone else, to whom we owe whatever is best in us. Another brought us forth, another equipped us: God made himself.'