Trust and lived allegiance held together without later slogans.
See how this topic lines up over time
Let no one be deceived. Even the things of heaven and the glory of the angels and the rulers, visible and invisible — if they do not believe in the blood of Christ, judgment waits for them too. The one who can take this in, let him take it in.
First of all, believe that God is one — who created and framed all things, who brought all things from non-being into being, who contains all things and alone is uncontained. Trust him, then, and fear him; and having feared him, practice self-control.
Christians are not distinguished from the rest of people by land, language, or customs. They live in Greek and barbarian cities as each one’s lot falls; they follow local customs in dress and food and the rest of life. Yet they show a striking and admittedly paradoxical citizenship of their own.
But because man has been of free decision from the beginning, and God — whose likeness he bears — is of free decision, counsel is always given him to hold to the good, which is completed in obedience to God.
I. As I was thinking and reviewing with my mind the memory of Octavius, my good and most faithful comrade, such sweetness and affection for the man clung to me that I somehow seemed to myself to return into past things, not to call back by recollection those things that are already finished and run through: so much has…
XIV. Thus Caecilius, also smiling (for the impetus of poured-forth speech had relaxed the swelling of his indignation): "Does Octavius at all dare anything toward these things," he said, "a man of Plautine lineage, as chief of bakers, so last of philosophers?" "Spare," I said, "applauding against him: for it is not…
XV. "You depart," said Caecilius, "from the duty of a religious judge: for it is most unjust that you weaken the forces of my action by an interruption of a most weighty disputation, when Octavius may have each point intact and untouched to refute, if he can." "That which you charge," I said, "I brought forth as a…
How fair a spectacle for God, when a Christian engages with pain, when he sets himself against threats and punishments and torments, when laughing he treads down death’s noise and the executioner’s horror, when he raises his liberty against kings and princes and yields only to God whose he is, when as triumpher and…
IV. Therefore when we were all caught by this pleasure of the spectacle, Caecilius was attending to nothing nor laughing about the contest, but silent, anxious, separated, was confessing by his face that he was grieving I-know-not-what. To whom I: "What is this matter?
Yet I take it that most either flee this work as a publishing of themselves or put it off from day to day, more mindful of shame than of salvation — like those who, when trouble strikes the more modest parts of the body, shun the healer's notice and so perish with their blush.
What if, beyond the shame they count the greater thing, they also dread the body's hardships — that one must lodge unwashed and dirty, outside gladness, in the roughness of sackcloth and the horror of ash and a mouth emptied by fasting? Are we then to plead for our faults in scarlet and Tyrian purple?
V. [1] For this I say: repentance, which by God’s grace has been shown and enjoined to us and recalls us into the Lord’s grace, once known and taken ought never afterward to be unsealed by a repetition of delict.
Thus far, Christ our Lord, let your servants speak or hear of the discipline of repentance only while even the hearers must not sin — or else let them now know nothing of repentance and ask nothing of it.
If you still doubt, unroll what the Spirit says to the churches. He charges the Ephesians with love left behind, reproaches the Thyatirenes with fornication and eating what was offered to idols, accuses Sardis of works not full, rebukes Pergamum for teaching what is crooked, and chides Laodicea for trusting riches…
‘According to these things,’ he says, ‘their fathers did to the prophets.’ O changeable Christ, now destroyer now assertor of the prophets! He was destroying them as a rival, turning their disciples to himself; he was asserting them as a friend, branding their persecutors.
‘But to you I say who hear’—showing this was long commanded by the Creator: speak in the ears of those who hear—‘love your enemies and bless those who hate you and pray for those who calumniate you.’ The Creator enclosed these in one pronouncement through Isaiah: say ‘you are our brothers’ to those who hate you.
Next, how incredible that he should praise the centurion’s faith as not found in Israel, if Israel’s faith were none of his concern. It could not yet belong to him: still raw, so as to be tested or compared—not to say still none. Why then may he use another’s faith as example?
I take on myself Israel’s person. Let Marcion’s Christ stand and cry: O unbelieving generation, how long shall I be with you? how long shall I bear you? At once he must hear from me: whoever you are, O steward, first tell who you are and from whom you come and what right you have among us.
Rightly therefore the Pharisees’ hypocrisy does not please him—lovers of God with lips, not with heart. ‘Beware,’ he says to the disciples, ‘of the leaven of the Pharisees, which is hypocrisy,’ not the Creator’s preaching.
We also confess the letter that teaches the Galatians as the chief letter against Judaism. For we embrace that whole removal of the old law, as itself coming from the Creator’s arrangement — as we have often already treated in this order about the renewal preached by our God’s prophets.
XXXIX. When Octavius had finished speaking, for some time we, stunned to silence, held our faces intent, and as for me, I vanished in the greatness of admiration, because he had adorned with arguments and examples and authorities of readings those things which it is easier to feel than to say, and because he had…
This also is defined in the church’s proclamation: that every rational soul is of free choice and will; and that it has a struggle against the devil and his angels and opposing powers — because they strive to weigh it down with sins, while we, if we live rightly and wisely, try to throw off that kind of burden.
God left aside, it prefers the age’s luxuries. This the Lord most of all drives his beloved to avoid; he forewarns them to be cut off wholly from the age. If he called them sons, let us stay in his holy things; why do we go outside following adulterous shows?
They do nothing but the heart; for the rest, about life it is silent. What helps to chase worldly things on earth in vain, and to know kings’ riches, their wars? And to know the mad forum, skilled in law — that rights wobble, lest by chance they be ruled by a bribe?
While you serve the belly you say you are innocent, and as if common you make yourself ready everywhere. Woe to you, foolish man — you yourself look round at death; in barbarian fashion you seek to live without law: you yourself plant an axe in your shin by the word. You who feign the simple — live simply with him.
Thinking to be free by living doubtfully between both, stripped of the law, worn out, you go ahead in luxury. So many luxuries, vain one, you look toward — why seek unjust things? And whatever you have done remains from here for the dead — look!
How long, foolish man, will you refuse to know Christ? You avoid the rich field and cast seed on the barren. You want to stay in the wood where the robber lurks.
Learn, you who will die, to show good to all. In the people’s midst why make yourself another? You go where you do not know, and unaware you leave from there; you handle wickedly, though you thirst with the body itself.
Consider Solomon’s sayings, all you judges — how with one word he pulls you down: gifts and presents corrupt all judges! Thence follows: you always love the giver; when a cause is sought, an unjust cause carries the victory. I here am innocent, nor do I, a little one, accuse you — let Solomon take up the open charge.
If place or time favors or a person advances, be judge of yourself. Why are you lifted from that? You blaspheme, untaught: from whose bounty you live, in such frailty you never look back.
What? Half a Jew, you want to be half profane? From there you will not escape Christ’s judgment when dead.
I warn the faithful that brothers not take up hatreds: impious hatreds are counted to the fire for martyrs; the martyr is destroyed whose confession is such. Law is given the unjust so he can rein himself; thence washed, you likewise ought to be free of it. Twice you sin against God who stretch quarrels to a brother.
Let birds and beasts of the woods be deceived by foods: an incautious nature of mind has been handed to them; they are caught by tricks or following bait, and they do not know how to avoid evil nor are they held by law.
You have become a penitent: pray night and day, yet do not go far from the mother, and the Most High will be able to be merciful to you. Confusion of fault will not happen into a void; in your guilt you ought to weep things openly;
But when war is waged or the enemy floods in, whoever can conquer or hide — great trophies; but unhappy will he be who is captured by them. He loses both country and king, which worthily befalls him who would not fight for country or for life.
When you have given the name of military service, you are held by a bit. Begin then therefore to dismiss former deeds; avoid luxuries, since labor hangs over the arms; the King’s command must be obeyed with every virtue, if you wish to reach the last glad times.
You dissemble the law given with such heralding, while the trumpet is present and the heavenly voice cries. If a prophet had only cried out into a cloud, the Lord’s voice sent through him would surely suffice. In so many volumes of speakers the Lord’s voice proclaims; no one likewise puts malice away from the heart.
If certain teachers, while they wait for your gifts or fear persons, loosen single things for you — I too do not “teach,” but I am forced to say the truth. With the Evil one’s crowd you go to empty spectacles, where Satan prepares tricks with crashes; you persuade yourself it is allowed, wherever it will please.
When the Lord says to eat bread in groaning, what are you doing now who want to live glad? You seek to cancel the Highest’s sentence sent — see in the first-formed that the law’s bit goes forth. If almighty God ordered to live with sweat, you who make merry are already outside to him.
I am not just, brothers — lifted from a sewer — nor do I lift myself, but I grieve for you, seeing from so great a people none crowned in the agony. If one does not himself fight, at least let him supply them. Rebuke the disaster; serve luxuriously with shouting!
You want to wage war, fool, as if wars are quiet! From the first-formed day there is fighting for us unto the end. Desire throws headlong: it is war — fight it through with it.
Why do you feign yourself good by another’s wound, you worthless one? Whence you give lavishly, another weeps daily. You refuse to believe the Lord sees this — you are taught.
Bring also just obedience of the elders; make yourselves like Christ, little sons, to the teacher; among rustic things be lilies doing good. You have been made blessed when you have done the edicts. You are flowers in the people, you are Christ’s lamps; keep what you are and you can remember.
Exercise Christ’s ministry, chaste deacons; therefore, ministers, do the Master’s precepts. Do not flee the person of a fair judge; keep your place whole, taught in all things. Looking upward, always devoted to the highest God, render to God all the holy things unhurt, ministers.
If a pastor has confessed, he has doubled the contest. But the apostle orders such to be teachers: let the ruler be patient; let him know where to loosen the reins; let him terrify first and afterward anoint with honey; and let him watch first that he himself do what he says.
XXVII. 1. But because they frequently press on us that place where it was said: I and the Father are one, in this too we will defeat them equally easily. 2. For if Christ were the Father, as the heretics think, he ought to have said ‘I the Father am one’.
XXX. 1. And let these things about Father and Son and Holy Spirit be briefly said by us and tightly set and not stretched by long dispute. For they could have been stretched more widely and produced by fuller dispute, since for testimony that true faith stands so, the whole old and new testament can be brought in. 2.
IX. 1. The same rule of truth teaches us to believe, after the Father, also in the Son of God, Christ Jesus our Lord God — yet the Son of God, of this God who is both one and alone, namely the founder of all things, as has already been set out above. 2.
10.1. Let us grant the very chiefs and fathers of the aforesaid opinions—do they not say what they say as trusted to their own suspicions? For did Heraclitus see that things come about by conversions of fires, Thales by condensation of waters, Pythagoras that numbers combine, Plato incorporeal forms, Democritus…
But let these things hinder nothing and impede nothing, least of all that you ought not to believe and listen to them: and what is it that in this part either you have more or we less? You believe Plato, Cronius, Numenius, or whom you please: we believe and rest in Christ.
4.1. But all these things will be recalled more brightly and more plainly when we have been carried further still. For we will show that Christ did not teach the nations impiety, but rescued the folly of wretched humans from the worst robbers. 2.
What do you say, O ignorant ones, even most worthy of tears and pity? Do you so not fear that perhaps these things are true which are contempt to you and furnish matter for laughter?
51.1. But our answer is a laugh to you, because when we deny that souls are royal offspring we do not bring against you from what causes and origins they were procreated.
56.1. All the other matters that are usually tossed in questions and controversies—from what parents they arise or by what authors they are made—we neither strive to know nor care to inquire or investigate: we leave all things to their own causes and do not judge them joined and applied to that which we seek. 2.
57.1. Since therefore these things are so and it cannot be otherwise than that one among all is true, yet all fight with arguments, and individuals do not lack what they may say with probability, whether when they assert their own matters or when they contradict others' opinions. 2.
58.1. What then? Are we alone ignorant, not knowing who is the maker of souls, who their constitutor, what cause fashioned the human, whence evils burst forth, or why the highest king suffers them both to be and to be done and does not drive them from human affairs?
59.1. If what one may wish to know is at hand and the knowledge of things is set in the open, explain to us and say by what modes and reasons rains are made, how in the upper parts and in this middle of the air water is held suspended—a thing by nature slippery and always so prone to flowing and running down. 2.
6.1. Unless perhaps those seem to you dull and foolish who already throughout the whole world conspire and gather into the assent of this belief. 2.
7.1. And you yourselves thoroughly see yourselves, whenever you dispute about obscure matters and proceed to unlock natural secrets, that you do not know even those things which you say, which you assert, which you commonly defend with capital contention, and that each one guards his own suspicions with stubborn…
76.1. "Why then," he says, "if you serve an almighty God and trust that he has care of your salvation and safety, why does he suffer you to endure such great persecutions and undergo all kinds of penalties and tortures?" 2.
And since you are accustomed to laugh at our faith and to slash at credulity itself with joking strokes, say, O merry ones dyed and filled with wisdom’s neat wine: is there any busy and active kind of work in life that actors take up, seize, and approach without faith going before?
9.1. What? Those things about matters set apart from human knowing which you yourselves write, which you read—have you seen them by eyed inspection and held them handled with hands?
Men of great and excellent talent, when they had given themselves wholly to learning, whatever labor could be spent they poured—despising all private and public actions—upon the study of seeking truth, thinking it far more splendid to investigate and know the reason of human and divine things than to cling to building…
Having undertaken the office of illuminating the truth, I did not think it so necessary to take the beginning from that question which seems first by nature—whether there is providence that looks after all things, or whether all things were made or are carried on by chance.
Unless I am mistaken, a great and difficult portion of the undertaken work is finished, and with heavenly majesty supplying us facility of speech we have driven off manifold errors. But now a greater and harder wrestling is set before us with the philosophers, whose highest learning remains to be emptied.
Therefore in that matter especially in which the rule of life is at stake, each ought to trust himself and lean on his own judgment and proper senses for investigating and weighing the truth, rather than be deceived believing others' errors as if himself empty of reason.
I would wish, since truth is still thought to lie in obscurity—either by the error and inexperience of the crowd serving various and silly superstitions, or by philosophers who by crooked talent muddy it rather than illuminate it—that even if not such eloquence as was in Marcus Tullius, because that was outstanding and…
Therefore man's highest good is in religion alone. For the rest, even what are thought proper to man, are also found in the other animals. When they distinguish and recognize their voices by their own marks among themselves, they seem to converse.
It is agreed, then, by the consensus of the whole human race that religion ought to be undertaken. But how people err in it must be explained. God willed this to be human nature: that it be desirous and eager for two things, religion and wisdom.
More rightly therefore Lucretius, when he praises him who first found wisdom—but this foolishly, that he thought it found by a man: as if that man he praised found it lying somewhere like pipes at a spring, as the poets say.
Led by the same error, Seneca—for who would hold the true way while Cicero wanders?—says philosophy is nothing other than right reason of living, or the knowledge of living honorably, or the art of conducting a right life.
But since they hand themselves to perpetual idleness and grasp no virtue and finish their whole life in nothing other than speaking, what else should they be thought than inert? For wisdom, unless it is in some act,
I have spoken of philosophy itself as briefly as I could. Now let us come to the philosophers—not to fight those who cannot stand, but to pursue them as they flee, cast down on our field.
Now, since in the two prior books the falsehood of the religions has been shown and the origin of the whole error laid out, this book's duty is to show that philosophy also is how empty and false, so that when every error is removed the opened truth may shine clear.
Let us see now what was so great in Socrates himself that a wise man might rightly give thanks to have been born in his times. I do not deny he was a little more sensible than the rest who thought the nature of things could be grasped by talent—in which I judge them not only senseless but also impious, because they…
Yet let us see what Socrates taught him: who, when he had repudiated all physics, turned himself to inquire about virtue and duty. And so I do not doubt that he educated his hearers with precepts of justice.
It remains that that sharing has nothing other than adulteries and lusts, for whose thorough uprooting virtue is especially necessary. And so he did not find the concord he sought, because he did not see whence it arises.
When therefore the very chiefs of the philosophers are caught in such great vanity, what shall we think of the lesser ones? They never seem so wise to themselves as when they boast of contempt of money. 'A brave soul'—but I wait to see what they do and where that contempt ends.
What of those who think there are antipodes contrary to our footsteps—do they say anything? Or is anyone so silly as to believe there are humans whose footprints are above their heads? Or that there what lies among us hangs inverted, crops and trees grow downward, rains and snows and hail fall upward to earth?
Now a few things must be said of philosophy in common, so that with the case strengthened we may perorate. That highest imitator of Plato thought philosophy not common, because only learned humans can attain it. Philosophy, he says, is for few.
What therefore they sensed must be done as nature demands, yet neither could do themselves nor saw could be done by philosophers—this alone heavenly teaching effects, because it alone is wisdom.
What then? Do they teach nothing like ours? On the contrary, very many things, and they often approach the true; but those precepts have no weight, because they are human and lack a greater authority—that is, divine.
Wherefore there is nothing else in life on which our reason and condition may rest except recognition of the God who generated us and religious and pious cult: whence, since the philosophers wandered, they were of course not wise.
But let us take up again what we omitted. Fortune, then, through itself is nothing: nor is it to be held as if it were in some sense, since fortune is the sudden and unexpected outcome of accidental things.
Philosophy seems to consist in two things, knowledge and opinion, and in nothing else. Knowledge cannot come from native talent nor be grasped by thinking, because to have proper knowledge in oneself is not of man but of God. But mortal nature does not take knowledge except what comes from outside.
I have taught, as far as my mediocrity allowed, that philosophers have held a path far astray from the truth; yet I sense how much I have passed over, because a dispute against philosophers was not properly my own.
Rightly therefore Zeno and the Stoics repudiated mere opining. For to suppose you know what you do not know is not of the wise but of the rash and foolish. Therefore if nothing can be known, as Socrates taught, and one ought not to opine, as Zeno, the whole of philosophy is taken away.
For there are many things which nature itself and frequent use and life's necessity compel us to know. And so one must perish unless you know what is useful for life, that you may seek it, and what is dangerous, that you may flee and avoid it.
Is wisdom then nowhere? On the contrary, it was among them themselves, but no one saw it. Some thought everything can be known: they were certainly not wise.
Let us now pass to the other part of philosophy which they call moral, in which they locate the ratio of all philosophy—since in physics there is only delight, in this also utility. And since in arranging the state of life and forming characters the claim is great,
What then remains except that, leaving aside furious and stubborn litigants, we come to the Judge—namely that Giver of simple and quiet wisdom, which can not only form us and lead us into the way but also pass sentence on those men's controversies? This teaches us what is the human's true and highest good.
Therefore if neither those who were called wise were wise, nor the later ones who did not hesitate to confess folly, what remains except that wisdom is to be sought elsewhere, because it was not found where it was being sought?
But since many heresies have arisen and by demons' goads the people of God has been split, we must briefly determine the truth and place it in its own proper dwelling, so that if anyone desires to draw the water of life he may not be led down to worn cisterns that have no vein, but may know God's richest fountain by…
From which things it appears how joined wisdom and religion are to each other. Wisdom looks to sons, which requires love; religion to servants, which requires fear. For as those ought to love and honor the father, so these to cult and revere the Lord.
Now, since I have taught that wisdom and religion cannot be pulled apart, it remains that we discuss religion and wisdom themselves. I feel indeed how hard a dispute about heavenly things is, yet it must be dared, so that illuminated truth may lie open and many may be freed from error and ruin who scorn and spit out…
What would you do with those who call 'law' the butcheries of old tyrants raging madly against the innocent? And though they are teachers of injustice and cruelty, they still want to seem just and prudent — blind and dull and ignorant of things and of truth.
But since our number is always increased from the worshipers of the gods, and is never lessened even in the persecution itself — because humans can sin and be defiled by sacrifice, but cannot be turned away from God: for truth is strong by its own force — who at last is so senseless and so blind that he does not see on…
What the cause is that they think those who are wise to be fools is a great reason--for they are not deceived for nothing--which we must carefully unfold, so that at last, if it can be done, they may recognize their errors.
Therefore with those two fountains of justice changed, all beauty and all truth is taken away and justice itself migrates back to heaven. That is why that good found by the philosophers is not true, because they did not know either whence it arose or what it effected--which has been revealed to none others except our…
I have set out why the philosophers could neither find justice nor defend it: now I return to what I had aimed at. Carneades therefore, since what the philosophers asserted was weak, took boldness to refute, because he understood it could be refuted.
What belonged to the present dispute I have shown: how justice bears a likeness of folly, that it may appear they are not deceived without cause who think the people of our religion fools, who seem to do such things as that man proposed.
Therefore because there were lacking among us fit and skilled teachers who would sharply refute public errors and defend the whole cause of truth ornately and abundantly, that very poverty provoked some to dare write against a truth unknown to them.
They do not rage against us because the gods are not worshiped by us — for many do not worship them — but because the truth is with us, which, as has been most truly said, begets hatred.
It would be long to bring forward all the kinds of virtue, that I may teach concerning each how necessary it is that the wise and just man be far estranged from those goods: by enjoying which, because the unjust enjoy them, the worship of the gods is believed true and effective.
Therefore inventing will and cunning were absent from these, since they were rude. Or who untaught could invent things fitted and coherent, when the most learned philosophers—Plato, Aristotle, Epicurus, Zeno—said things repugnant and contrary to themselves? For this is the nature of lies, that they cannot cohere.
I have said what is owed to God: I will now say what is to be granted to a human; although that very thing which you have granted to a human is granted to God, because a human is God's image. But still the first office of justice is to be joined with God, the second with a human.
Humanity is therefore to be kept, if we wish to be rightly called humans. But that itself, to keep humanity, what else is it than to love a human, because he is a human and the same that we are?
This is that perfect justice which guards the human society of which the philosophers speak; this is the greatest and truest fruit of riches, not to use wealth for one person's private pleasure but for many people's salvation, not for one's present fruit but for justice, which alone does not perish.
Whenever therefore you ask, believe you are being tested by God whether you are worthy to be heard. Look round your conscience and, as much as you can, heal the wounds.
If therefore mercy is a splendid and excellent good in the human, and by divine testimonies and by the agreement of good and bad it is judged best, it is clear that the philosophers were far from the human good, who neither taught anything of this kind nor did it, but always held as a vice the virtue that is almost…
For that these are natural, not voluntary, the account of all living things shows, which is shaken by the same affections in all. The Peripatetics therefore more rightly deny that all these can be taken away, because they were born together with us, and they try to show how providently and how necessarily God or nature…
But I do not think even the Peripatetics have reached the truth, who grant that there are vices but temper them moderately. For one must abstain even from middling vices.
But I have been carried farther by the zeal of refuting, though my plan is to show that what the philosophers thought vices are not only not vices but even great virtues. From these, for teaching's sake, I will take what I judge most belongs to the matter.
But let us leave the philosophers, who either know nothing at all and parade that itself as the highest knowledge, or who do not even see through what they know, or who, because they think they know what they do not, are foolishly and arrogantly out of their minds.
The Stoics, when they try to tear affections out of the human as diseases, the Peripatetics oppose them and not only keep them but even defend them and say there is nothing in the human that was not planted by great reason and providence. That is right indeed, if they knew the true limits of each thing.
I come now to that pleasure which is taken from touch: which sense is of the whole body. But I must speak not of ornaments and clothes, but of lust alone, which must be most restrained because it most harms.
But before I begin to set out the several virtues, virtue itself must be defined, which the philosophers have not defined rightly — what it was or in what things, what work, what office it had. They have therefore kept the name alone, but lost the force and reason and effect.
And since we speak of philosophers' errors, the Stoics divide nature into two parts, one that effects, the other that offers itself workable for making: in the first a sensing force, in this matter, neither without the other able to do anything.