Cyprian & Lactantius · a new plain-English translation from the original language
But since man, as we have said, is compounded of two things, soul and body, in the one are contained the virtues, in the other the vices, and they war against one another. For the soul's goods — restraint of the appetites — stand against the body, whereas the body's goods, found in pleasures of any and every sort, work against the soul. Yet should the soul's virtue push back against desire and subdue it, that soul becomes truly godlike. From this it is plain that the soul of man, which lays hold of divine virtue, is not mortal. But here is the difference: virtue is bitter, while the enticement of pleasure is sweet, and so the great majority are conquered and dragged off toward what is agreeable. These, because they have given themselves over to the body and to earthly things, are pressed down into the earth and cannot attain the grace of the divine gift, since they have fouled themselves with the filth of their vices. But those who followed God and, in submitting to him, turned away from what the body craves — ranking virtue above pleasure and so safeguarding their innocence and justice — these God acknowledges as bearing his own likeness. Since God established a law of the utmost holiness and desires everyone to be blameless and generous, how could he fail to grow angry on seeing that law despised, virtue cast off, and pleasure pursued instead? Suppose he governs the world, as indeed he must — he surely would not disregard whatever ranks as the greatest thing within that entire world. Suppose he exercises foresight, as befits deity — he surely attends to the human race, that our existence might grow fuller, sounder, and more secure. Suppose, further, he is father and master of everything that exists — he takes delight, then, in human virtue and is roused by human wrongdoing, and from this it follows that the upright win his love while the wicked draw his hatred. 'There is no need of hatred,' someone says, 'for he has once for all determined a reward for the good and a punishment for the evil.' But suppose someone lives justly and blamelessly and yet neither worships nor cares for God at all — like Aristides, or Cimon, or many of the philosophers — will such a man go unpunished, because, while he obeyed God's law, he nonetheless despised God himself? There is, then, something for which God can rightly be angry — namely, at one who rebels against him while trusting in his own uprightness. If pride alone can draw his anger down on this man, how much more will it fall on the wrongdoer who treats both the statute and the one who wrote it with equal scorn? A human judge cannot pardon offenses, because he is bound to serve another's will; but God can, because he himself is the one who examines and judges his own law. When he laid it down, he certainly did not thereby strip himself of all power, but retains the right of forgiving.
If he can forgive, then he can also be angry. 'Why, then,' someone will say, 'are those who sin often happy, and those who live devoutly often wretched?' Because runaways and disowned sons live freely, while those under the discipline of a father or a master live more strictly and frugally. Virtue is proved and made firm through hardships, vice through pleasure. Yet the sinner ought not to hope for permanent impunity, since there is no permanent happiness; rather, as the not unpleasing poet says, a man's last day must always be awaited, and no one should be called happy before his death and his final rites, for it is the outcome that tests happiness, and no one, living or dead, can escape the judgment of God. For it lies within his power to hurl down anyone still living from the summit, just as it lies within his power to torment the dead with punishments unending. 'But surely,' comes the objection, 'were God truly angry, he would have punished on the spot, giving each his exact due.' But had he acted that way, not a single person would be left standing, since no one lives free of sin, and there are many things that incite one to sin — youth, drunkenness, poverty, opportunity, reward. The frailty of the flesh we wear is so subject to sin that, unless God made allowance for this necessity, very few indeed would perhaps be left alive; and this is why his patience is so great, and why he holds his anger in check. For since his virtue is perfect, his patience too must necessarily be perfect, since patience is itself a virtue. How many who were sinners have afterward become just, out of evil men good, out of the shameless self-controlled! How many who in their early years were disgraceful and condemned by everyone's judgment later proved praiseworthy! This certainly would not happen if every sin were followed at once by punishment. Public laws condemn only those offenders who are caught; but very many are there whose sins are hidden, very many who silence their accuser either with entreaties or with bribes, very many who evade judgment through influence or power. But if divine judgment condemned all those who escape human punishment, mankind on earth would be either rare or nonexistent altogether. Indeed, this alone might have been just cause for blotting out the human race: that men, spurning the living God, pay divine honor to fragile earthly images, as though to heavenly beings, worshiping works fashioned by human fingers. And though God the craftsman fashioned them with an upright face and erect posture, made so as to contemplate the sky and come to know God, they chose instead to bend down toward the earth and crawl upon the ground like cattle. For lowly, bent, and stooping is the man who, turned away from the sight of heaven and of God the Father, reveres the earth he ought to be treading underfoot — that is, something shaped and formed out of earth. So then, confronted with wrongdoing and sin on so vast a scale, this is what God's patience achieves: that men correct themselves, condemning the errors of their former life. In the end, there are also many good and just people, who, having cast off earthly cults, acknowledge the majesty of the one God. But although God's patience is very great and most useful, still, no matter how delayed, he brings punishment upon the guilty and refuses to let them proceed any further once he perceives they cannot be reformed.
One question remains, the last of all. For someone might well object that God is anger's very opposite, seeing that his commandments actually prohibit man from being angry at all. I could reply that human anger needed to be reined in, because it is often unjust and its impulse is immediate, being a thing of the moment. And so, in order to prevent the deeds that humble men and middling men and even great kings do under the sway of anger, its fury had to be tempered and restrained, lest, out of control of his own mind, a man commit some unpardonable crime. But God's anger is not of the moment, for he is everlasting and wholly virtuous, and anger touches him only when there is cause for it. Yet the matter is not quite so simple. For if he forbade anger altogether, he would in a sense be finding fault with his own handiwork, since in the beginning he had implanted anger [the liver] in man, seeing that the cause of this emotion is believed to be contained in the humor of the bile. He does not, then, forbid anger absolutely, since that feeling was necessarily given to us, but he forbids remaining in anger. For the anger of mortal men ought to be mortal; if it persists, enmities are confirmed toward everlasting ruin. Again, when he commanded that one might be angry yet not sin, he certainly did not tear out anger by the roots, but tempered it, so that in every act of correction we might keep measure and justice. He, then, who bids us be angry is certainly himself capable of anger, and he who bids us be quickly reconciled is certainly himself capable of being appeased; for what he commands is just and useful to the common good. But since I had said that God's anger is not a thing of the moment as man's is, who blazes up with an immediate impulse and cannot easily govern himself because of his frailty, we ought to understand that, since God is eternal, his anger too remains forever — yet again, since he is endowed with supreme virtue, he has his anger under his own control and is not ruled by it, but himself moderates it as he wills; and this in no way contradicts what was said above. For if his anger were utterly undying, there would be no room for satisfaction or grace after an offense, since he himself commands that men be reconciled before sunset; but the divine anger remains forever against those who sin forever. And so God is appeased not by incense, not by sacrifice, not by costly gifts — all of which are perishable — but by amendment of morals, and whoever ceases to sin makes God's anger mortal. For this reason he does not punish every guilty person at once, so that man may have the opportunity to come to his senses and correct himself.
This is what I had to set down about God's anger, dearest Donatus, so that you would have the means of answering those who claim God cannot be moved. It remains for me, in the manner of Cicero, to make use of an epilogue in bringing this to a close. Just as he, discoursing on death in the Tusculan Disputations, did this, so in this work we ought to bring forward divine testimonies deserving of belief, so as to overturn the conviction of those who suppose God feels no anger and thereby do away with religion altogether — and lacking religion, as our argument has already established, we sink to the level of savage beasts or witless cattle; wisdom exists nowhere but within religion, meaning within acquaintance with the one supreme God. All the prophets, filled with the divine spirit, speak of nothing else than the favor of God toward the just and his anger against the impious. What they testify would be enough on its own for us; yet since it carries no weight with those who flaunt wisdom through their hair and dress, we were obliged to refute these people as well, using reason and argument. For things are handled so preposterously that men grant divine authority to human sayings, when rather human sayings ought to have yielded to the divine. But let us now set this aside, lest we accomplish nothing with such people and the matter drag on without end. Let us seek, then, such testimonies as they can either believe or at least not resist. That there were many Sibyls has been recorded by very many and very great authorities — among the Greeks, Aristonicus and Apollodorus of Erythrae; among our own, Varro and Fenestella. All of these record that the Erythraean was the foremost and most distinguished of them all. Apollodorus takes pride in claiming her as a fellow townswoman of his own city, while Fenestella additionally reports that the senate dispatched envoys to Erythrae so that this Sibyl's verses could be carried to Rome; there the consuls Curio and Octavius saw them set up on the Capitol, a building at that time rebuilt under Quintus Catulus's supervision. In her verses are found lines of this kind concerning the supreme God, the founder of all things: 'incorruptible creator, eternal, dwelling in the sky, granting those who are good a reward far greater still, while for the wicked and unjust he rouses up wrath and fury.' Again, elsewhere, listing the crimes by which God is most provoked, she added this: 'flee lawless worship, serve the living one alone; guard against adultery and against unnatural union with males; nourish your own offspring and do not slay them. For the undying one will be angered against whoever transgresses these things.' She declares, then, that he is indignant against sinners.
But because, as I have shown, more Sibyls than one are recorded by the most learned authorities, the testimony of a single one is not enough to establish the truth as we intend. The Cumaean books, in which the fates of the Romans are written, are kept secret; but the little books of nearly all the others are not forbidden to common use. Among these, one, foretelling to all nations the wrath of God because of the impiety of men, began thus: 'a great wrath is coming upon a disobedient world; to the last age I declare the anger of God, prophesying to all men throughout every city.' Another likewise said that a flood came upon the earlier age through the indignation of God against the unjust, so that the wickedness of mankind might be wiped out: 'from the time when the heavenly God, angered, against their very cities and against all men alike, covered the earth with the sea when the flood burst forth.' In like manner she prophesied that a future conflagration would likewise blot out the impiety of men: 'and then men shall know that God is no longer mild, but heavy with wrath, and destroying the whole race of men together by a great burning.' Hence in Ovid it is said of Jupiter: 'he recalls too that it is fated that a time will come when sea, and earth, and the vaulted palace of heaven shall catch fire, and the elaborate mass of the world shall labor in ruin.' And this must necessarily come about when honor and worship of the supreme God have perished among men. Yet the same Sibyl, testifying that he is appeased by repentance for one's deeds and by amendment of oneself, added this: 'ah, wretched mortals, change your ways, and do not provoke the great God to every kind of wrath.' And again, a little after: 'nor will he destroy, but will again check his wrath, if only you all cultivate honored piety in your hearts.' Then another Sibyl declares that the begetter of things heavenly and earthly ought to be loved, lest his indignation rise up to destroy men: 'lest the undying God, once angered, utterly destroy the whole race of men and the shameless tribe of the living. One must cherish the begetter, God, wise and everlasting.' From these things it appears how empty is the reasoning of the philosophers who think God incapable of anger, and who count among his other praises this, which is most useless of all, thereby taking from him that which is most beneficial to human affairs, and through which his very majesty stands firm. This earthly kingdom and rule, unless fear guards it, is undone. Take away a king's anger — not only will no one obey him, but he will even be cast down from his height. Nay, take this feeling away from any humble man whatever, and who will not despoil him? Who will not mock him? Who will not do him wrong? So he will be able to keep neither clothing, nor home, nor food, since others will snatch away whatever he has — how much less, then, could the majesty governing the heavens possibly remain intact absent anger and fear. Apollo of Miletus, consulted about the religion of the Jews, brought forth this response: 'toward the God who is king, and the begetter before all things, whom earth and heaven and sea tremble at, and the depths of Tartarus, and before whom even the daemons shudder.' If he is as mild as the philosophers wish, how is it that at his nod not only the daemons, ministers of so great a power, but even heaven and earth and the whole of nature tremble? For if no one serves another except under compulsion, then all rule rests on fear, and fear through anger. For if one is not moved against him who refuses to obey, he cannot be compelled to obedience either. Let each person examine his own feelings, and he will understand at once that no one can be brought under rule without anger and chastisement. Where, then, there is no anger, there will be no rule either. But God has rule; therefore he must also have the anger on which rule depends. The undying merits of a father demanded as much; yet it profits us greatly toward obtaining pardon if we hold fast to his worship and knowledge, if, casting aside lowly and earthly things — possessions and goods alike — we meditate upon things heavenly, divine, and everlasting. And to do this...