Eusebius of Caesarea · a new plain-English translation from the Greek
1| Come then, Constantine, Victor most great: in this imperial discourse about the universal King of all things, let us set before you initiations into hidden doctrines. We do not mean to initiate you, who have been made wise by God, nor to lay bare secrets before you, for even before our words God himself disclosed and revealed to you the hidden things of the sacred mysteries, not from human beings nor through a human being, but through the common Savior himself and through the divine vision of him that has shone upon you many times. Rather, we mean to lead the untaught into the light, and to set out for those who do not know them the grounds and the causes of your devout and holy works.
2| For the deeds that your virtue accomplishes day by day throughout the whole inhabited world of men, for the service and honor of God, the universal King, every mortal mouth celebrates in hymns. But the works in our own homeland, I mean the nation of Palestine, and in this very city, from which the saving Word welled up as from a spring and poured out to all mankind, the thank offerings dedicated to your Guardian and Savior, the trophies of his victory over death raised up in houses of prayer and in the consecrations of temples, the lofty and splendid works, imperial in their grandeur, of an imperial mind, built around the saving monument of undying memory,
3| these do not have a cause that is plain to all. Those whose minds have been enlightened in divine things by the power of the inspired Spirit know and recognize it, and they rightly admire you and call you blessed for a purpose and an impulse toward these works that were not stirred in you apart from God. But those who are ignorant of divine things, through the blindness of their souls, make the matter a subject of mockery and broad laughter, supposing it unfitting and unbecoming for so great an emperor to take pains over memorials and tombs of dead bodies.
4| "Would it not be better," one of them might say, "to keep the ancestral customs and to win the favor of the heroes and gods honored in each nation, rather than to spit upon them and shun them because of misfortunes of this kind? Either one should worship them as divine just as one worships this man, since they suffered alike, or, if they are to be rejected for having suffered as men suffer, it is only just to pass the same verdict on him as well." Such things, at any rate, one of them might say, knitting his brows tightly and parading his own conceit with an air of imagined wisdom.
5| Yet the loving Word of the all-good Father counts such a man worthy of pardon for his ignorance, and not him alone but everyone who has gone astray. He has established schools and places of teaching throughout the whole inhabited world of the nations, in country districts and villages, in fields and wildernesses, and in cities everywhere, and he generously calls all to instruction in divine learning: Greeks and barbarians alike, wise and unlearned, poor and rich, slaves together with masters, rulers and ruled. The ungodly, the unjust, the ignorant, the shameful, the blasphemers, all he urges to come and hasten to the divine service, as a loving Savior and physician of souls. With a clear voice, at least, he proclaimed to everyone an amnesty for their former wrongs, and he cried out, saying: "Come to me, all you who toil and are weighed down, and I will give you rest." And once more: "I did not come to summon the righteous but sinners to repentance." Then he gives the reason, saying: "Those who are strong have no need of a physician; the sick do." And: "I do not wish for the sinner's death so much as for his repentance."
6| From this point, then, only the one instructed in divine things, who has learned the causes of the zeal shown over the works before us, will come to acknowledge that our emperor was moved by an inspiration greater than human. He will marvel at the godly piety of his character, and he will believe that his zeal for the monument of the saving immortality did not arise apart from God, but truly from the inspiration of the Higher Power, whose good servant and minister of good things he is proud to be.
7| Being truly persuaded, most great Emperor, that these things are most dear and welcome to you, my present discourse wishes to disclose to all the reasons and causes of your God-loving works. It prays to be, as it were, a messenger of your mind and of your God-loving soul, teaching everything that must and ought to be taught to anyone who longs to learn the reasons of the power of God our Savior: the reasons for which, though he existed long before and cared for the universe, he at length came down to us from heaven; for which he put on a nature; and for which he went forward to death. And it will set out not only the causes of the immortal life that followed and of the return to life from the dead, but also reasoned demonstrations and clear lessons, necessary for those who still have need of them.
8| But it is time to begin from some point here with these very people. Those who exchanged reverence for the world-making God, the sovereign ruler of the universe, for the things he brought into being, and who honored the sun, the moon, the remaining parts of the world, and the first elements, earth, water, air and fire, with the same title as their creator and Maker, calling them gods, though these things would not exist anywhere or in any way, and would not even have been named, had they not come into being at the command of God's world-making Word, seem to me no different from those who pass over the architect of the magnificent works in royal palaces, and are struck with wonder at the ceilings and walls, the many-colored and many-flowered paintings on them, the gold-bearing ornaments and the carvings in stone, and assign to these very things the praise due to the craftsman's skill. They ought instead to credit the cause of their wonder not to what is seen but to the architect of these things alone, to acknowledge that the many works are works of wisdom, and to call wise only that man who provided the many with the cause of their being such.
9| Indeed, those who marvel at the seven-stringed lyre, the musical instrument itself, and not at the one who devised its arrangement and understands its wisdom, would differ in no way from utterly infant children; nor would those who pass over the champion in wars and adorn his spear and shield with victory garlands; nor would those who honor equally with the great emperor, the founder of the great imperial city, its marketplaces, broad streets, buildings, lifeless sacred precincts and gymnasia, when they ought to wonder not at columns and stones but at the performer of great deeds and lawgiver of the wise.
10| In the same way, then, those who behold this whole universe with the eyes of flesh must not assign the cause to the sun, or the moon, or any other thing in the heavens. It is fitting rather to acknowledge that all things are works of wisdom, and not to honor and revere them in the same way as their creator and Maker. Instead, starting from these very things, with every disposition of the soul they should speak of God and worship the Word of God, the sovereign of all, who is no longer perceived by the eyes of the body but only by a clear and pure mind. For never yet, when looking at a human body, has anyone declared that the eyes, or head, or hands, or feet, or the rest of the flesh of a wise and knowledgeable man are wise, and far less the outer covering of his cloak, nor are the furnishings of his house wise, nor the tools that serve the philosopher; but every sensible person admires the unseen and invisible mind in the man.
11| For this reason, then, even more than the visible ornaments of the whole world, which are bodies made from a single matter, one must be struck with wonder at the unseen and invisible Word, who gives form to the universe and adorns it, the only-begotten of God, whom the Maker of all, who is beyond and above all essence, himself begot from himself and established as leader and steersman of this universe.
12| For since it was not possible for the flowing essence of bodies, or the nature of rational beings only just brought into existence, to draw near to the God who rules over all, because of the great deficiency in comparison with what is better, for he was unbegotten, above and beyond all things, unspeakable, unattainable, unapproachable, dwelling in light that none can approach, as the oracles of Moses say, while the other nature was brought forth out of nothing, stands at the farthest distance, and is separated far from the unbegotten nature, it was reasonable that the supremely good God of the universe should first put forward, as a kind of middle term, the divine and all-powerful power of his only-begotten Word. This power converses with the Father in the most exact way and as closely as possible, enjoying the unspeakable things within him, yet most gently comes down and in some manner conforms itself to those left behind at the farthest remove. For otherwise it would be neither pure nor holy to entangle the one who is beyond and above all things with perishable matter and body. Therefore the divine Word, entering this universe and mingling throughout it, takes up the reins of the whole and drives and carries it along by an incorporeal and divine power, guiding the chariot with perfect wisdom in whatever way he sees to be good.
13| The proof of this claim is plain. Consider the parts of the cosmos taken by themselves, those we are accustomed to call the first elements: earth, water, air, fire. They are composed of a nature without reason, as we see with our own eyes. Or suppose a single essence underlies them, which those skilled in these matters like to name the receptacle, the mother and the nurse: this essence is itself without shape and without form, wholly without soul and without reason. From where, then, could anyone say that the order within it comes to be present in it? From where comes the separation of the elements? From where the meeting of opposites in one and the same thing? Who commanded the heavy element of earth to ride upon a watery essence? Who turned back the nature of the waters, which flow downward, and carried it aloft through the clouds? Who fettered the power of fire, made it lurk hidden in wood, and blended it with things opposite to it in nature? Who mixed the cold air with a power of heat, released them from their war with one another, and reconciled them into friendship? Who devised for the mortal race the way of succession, and so carried its life on through a long age as a life that does not die? Who, after shaping the one in this way and forming the other as female, joined both into a single harmony and discovered for all living things a beginning of generation? Who changed the flowing, seminal generation out of a perishable and senseless flux and made it life-giving? Who even now still works all these things, and countless others beyond them that surpass wonder and amazement? Who, every day and every hour, brings about their comings into being and their perishings by an unseen and invisible power?
14| The truth is that the wonder-working Word of God could justly be declared the cause of all these things. For the Word of God, being truly all-powerful, has spread himself through all things. Stretching himself without a body upward to the height and downward to the depth, and embracing the breadth and length of the universe as though with broad hands, he drew this whole together and bound it fast. He fitted it together for himself as an instrument in perfect harmony, and with an all-wise and rational power he strikes up the music of the essence of bodies, which is without reason, without shape and without form, joining most skillfully what stands apart by means of the intervals between them. The sun itself, and the moon, and the lights of heaven he steers by ineffable reasons and guides toward the good of the whole.
15| The same Word of God also sank himself down into the earth and established the races of living creatures of every kind and the many-shaped beauties of plants. This same Word of God went down even to the depths of the sea and devised the nature of swimming things, and there too he fashioned countless, innumerable forms and the differences of every kind of creature. The same one also brings to completion what is conceived within the womb, in the workshop of nature, and shapes it into a living thing. He too lifts aloft the fluid and heavy nature of the watery essence, then sweetens it by its change, and brings it down to the earth in measure, completing his supply of it at fixed seasons.
16| Then, like a most excellent farmer, he waters the land with great skill and blends the wet with the dry, and he remakes it in every way: now with flowers in their season, now with shapes of every kind, now with sweet scents, now with the changing varieties of fruits, now granting to the taste delights of every sort.
17| But why must I dare to go through the powers of the divine Word and attempt the impossible, when his working overpowers every mortal mind? Some, then, have named him the nature of the universe, others the soul of the whole, others fate. Yet others have asserted that he is the very God who is beyond all things, mixing together, I do not know how, things that stand farthest apart. They cast down to earth the ruler of all, the unbegotten and highest power itself, entangle him with a body and with perishable matter, and say that he is rolled about in the midst of living creatures, irrational and rational, mortal and immortal. But so much for them.
Cite a passage by its number: every paragraph here has its own anchor (for example https://openscriptorium.com/read/eusebius/067-in-praise-of-constantine-chapter-11#p1), and the bracketed reference numbers link the same way.
← All of Eusebius of Caesarea: The Works of Eusebius of Caesarea