Minucius Felix
For why do they strive so greatly to hide and conceal whatever it is they worship, when honorable things always rejoice in public, and crimes are secret?
Topics
true-worship
- 2nd century9 passages
- 3rd century74 passages
- 4th century49 passages
Minucius Felix
I hear the poets too proclaiming one father of gods and humans, and that mortals’ mind is such as the parent of all has led the day. What? Does Mantuan Maro not say more openly, more nearly, more truly that “in the beginning” heaven and earth and the other members of the world “an inward spirit nourishes and a mind…
Minucius Felix
II. For he had hurried to Rome for business and to see me, having left home, wife, and children, and—what is more lovable in children—still in innocent years and still attempting half-formed words, speech sweeter by the very stumble of the offending tongue.
Minucius Felix
For a wooden god — perhaps a portion of a pyre or unlucky stump — is hung, cut, hewn, planed; and a bronze or silver god is melted from a filthy little vessel, as often happened for an Egyptian king, beaten with hammers and shaped on anvils;
Minucius Felix
III. Then Octavius said: "It is not of a good man, brother Marcus, so to abandon a human clinging to your side at home and abroad in this blindness of vulgar ignorance that on so bright a day you allow him to strike against stones—figured, to be sure, and anointed and crowned—when you know that of this error no less…
Minucius Felix
Do you think we hide what we worship because we have no shrines and altars? What image should I fashion for God, when — if you judge rightly — the human being is himself God’s image? What temple should I raise for him, when this whole world, made by his work, cannot contain him?
Minucius Felix
Hence indeed through all empires, provinces, and towns we see each people have their ancestral rites of the sacred and municipal citizens worship gods—as the Eleusinians Ceres, the Phrygians the Mother, the Epidaurians Asclepius, the Chaldeans Belus, the Syrians Astarte, the Taurians Diana, the Gauls Mercury, the…
Minucius Felix
VII. "Nor yet rashly (for I would dare meanwhile even myself to concede, and so to err better) did our ancestors work hard either in observing auguries or consulting entrails or instituting rites or dedicating shrines.
Minucius Felix
VIII. "And so, since among all nations concerning the immortal gods, although the reason or origin is uncertain, a firm consensus nevertheless remains, I bear no one swelling with such boldness and with I-know-not-what so irreligious prudence who strives to dissolve or weaken this religion so ancient, so useful, so…
Tertullian
Since from the beginning of things the founder of these was discovered together with them, they themselves having been brought forth for this—that God might be known.
Tertullian
And rightly, they say. For who is not so known to his own as to strangers? No one.
Tertullian
For the rest, even if we could confess that he is, we ought to argue that he is without cause. For he would be without cause who had no thing, because every thing is a cause that someone be whose thing it is.
Tertullian
So then to say something also about this ‘unworthy’ of this world, which even among the Greeks has the name of ornament and culture, not of filth—those very professors of wisdom, from whose talents every heresy is animated, have pronounced as gods the ‘unworthy’ substances: as Thales water, as Heraclitus fire, as…
Tertullian
But when you also mock the tinier animals, which the greatest artisan of set purpose enlarged in talents or strengths, thus teaching greatness to be proved in mediocrity just as virtue in weakness according to the apostle—imitate, if you can, the bee’s buildings, the ant’s stables, the spider’s nets, the silkworm’s…
Tertullian
No other world therefore appearing, just as neither its god, it follows that they divide two species of things, visibles and invisibles, between two author-gods and so defend invisibles for their god.
Tertullian
Let him have proceeded, come now, already into knowledge when he willed, when he could, when the fated hour arrived. For perhaps the anabibazon was blocking him, or some malefic stars, or Saturn square, or Mars trine.
Tertullian
The Pontic brings in two gods, as if two Symplegades of his own shipwreck: the one he could not deny—that is the Creator, that is ours—and the one he will not be able to prove—that is his—having suffered, unhappy man, the impulse of this presumption from a simple chapter of the Lord’s pronouncement, which sets those…
Tertullian
Therefore the principal and thereafter the whole contest is about number: whether it is allowed to bring in two gods—by poetic and pictorial license if you like, and now also by a third, heretical.
Tertullian
But anyone will argue that even two supreme greats can stand, distinct and disjoined in their own bounds, and will of course summon the example of the kingdoms of the earth—so many in number and yet supreme greats in their several regions—and will think human things everywhere to be conferred with divine.
Tertullian
Or what reason composed two supreme greats? For first I will demand why not more, if two, when the substance of divinity ought to be believed richer if number belonged to it.
Tertullian
So far we still seem to dispute as if Marcion constitutes two equals. For while we defend that God, the supreme great, ought to be believed unique, excluding equality from him, we have treated of these as of two equals;
Tertullian
You will try against this to shake the inquiry from the name of God—as if passive and also permitted to others, because it is written: God stood in the assembly of gods; in the midst he will judge gods; and: I said, you are gods.
Tertullian
First the Marcionites build their amazement with a raised brow because they bring forth a new god, as if we were ashamed of the old God. Boys too are puffed up with new shoes, but soon, shod by the old pedagogue, they will be beaten for vain glory.
Tertullian
I know indeed in what sense they toss about a new god—by recognition of course. But I wanted to strike back the very novelty of cognition striking rude souls and the very natural graciousness of novelty, and from here already to challenge about the unknown god.
Tertullian
The occasion of reforming this little work—what happened to which we prefaced in the first booklet—this also conferred on us, that for rehandling two gods against Marcion we should distinguish for each his own title and volume according to division of matter, defining the one god to be not at all, defending the other…
Tertullian
So if the fellowship and conspiracy of goodness and justice cannot admit their separation, with what mouth will you set up a diversity of two gods in a split, reckoning apart a good god and apart a just god? Good stands there where just also stands. From the beginning, finally, the Creator is as good as also just.
Tertullian
Severity too is good, then, because just, if the judge is good—that is, just. Likewise the other goods through which the good work of good severity runs—whether anger or rivalry or fierceness—are owed to severity, as severity is owed to justice.
Tertullian
But now almighty God, Lord and founder of the universe, suffers trouble—only, I suppose, because he is known from the beginning, because he never hid, because he always shone, even before Romulus himself, much more before Tiberius—except that he is not known only to heretics, who make him trouble, thinking another god…
Tertullian
Accordingly also forbidding a likeness to be made of all things that are in heaven and on earth and in the waters, he also shows the causes—restraining of course the substance of idolatry. For he subjoins: You shall not adore them nor serve them.
Tertullian
So also you badly interpret repentance with him, as if from mobility or lack of foresight—or already from recollection of a fault—he repents, because he said, ‘I repent that I made Saul king,’ prescribing that repentance savor of confession of some evil work or error. But not always.
Tertullian
But God also swears. Surely not by Marcion’s god? ‘No,’ he says, ‘much more vainly, that by himself.’ What would you want him to do, if another god was not in his conscience—this when he is most of all swearing that another apart from himself is altogether not?
Tertullian
Now also concerning littlenesses and malignities and the other marks I myself will make rival antitheses against Marcion. If my God did not know there was another above him, yours too altogether did not know there was another below him. For what does that dark Heraclitus say?
Tertullian
Who will be called Lord of heaven who is not first shown as its maker? ‘I thank you,’ he says, ‘and confess, Lord of heaven, that you have revealed to little ones the things that were hidden from the wise and prudent.’ What things?
Tertullian
When in a certain place he had prayed to that superior Father—looking up with rash enough eyes to the Creator’s heaven, from which he might have been crushed by hail and lightning as he could have been fixed to Jerusalem by him—one of the disciples approached: Lord, teach us to pray, as John also taught his disciples…
Tertullian
Elsewhere I prefer to clear what Marcionites blame in the Creator; here it is enough if they are also found in Christ. See—he too is unequal, inconstant, light: teaching one thing and doing another.
Tertullian
Which two masters he denies can be served—because one must needs be offended and the other defended—he himself declares, setting forth God and mammon.
Tertullian
For commanding perseverance and insistence in praying he sets the parable of a judge forced to hear a widow by the insistence and perseverance of her appeals. Therefore he shows that God the judge is to be prayed to—not himself—unless he himself is the judge. But he also added that God will do vengeance for his elect.
Tertullian
XLVI. [1] See, we are pressed again even from the review of those very dreams by which the soul is tossed, to set them forth. And when shall we reach death?
Minucius Felix
XX. I have set out the opinions of almost all the philosophers of brighter fame, who designated one God though under many names, so that anyone may judge either that Christians are now philosophers or that philosophers were already then Christians.
Minucius Felix
Euhemerus relates that they were held as gods for merits of virtue or of gift, and he counts their births, countries, and tombs and shows them through the provinces — the Dictaean Jupiter, Delphic Apollo, Pharian Isis, Eleusinian Ceres.
Minucius Felix
XXIII. Consider finally the rites themselves and the mysteries themselves: you will find sad exits, fates and funerals and griefs and plaints of wretched gods.
Minucius Felix
XXIV. These fables and errors we learn both from unskilled parents and, what is heavier, we elaborate by studies and disciplines themselves — especially by the poems of the poets, who have harmed truth itself by their authority as much as possible.
Minucius Felix
Were they not at their rise both gathered by crime and fortified by the blood of Romulus’s brother? ****** Empire built on fratricide is not proof of true worship; leave the boast that superstition founded Rome.
Minucius Felix
XXVII. Those impure spirits, then — demons, as shown also by the magi and philosophers — lurk under consecrated statues and images, and by their breath they obtain the authority of a divinity as if present, while at times they inspire seers, linger in shrines, sometimes animate the fibers of entrails, govern the flight…
Minucius Felix
XXX. I would now like to meet the man who says or believes we are initiated by the slaughter of an infant and by blood. Do you think it possible that so soft, so tiny a body should take the doom of wounds? that anyone should strike, pour, drain that raw blood of a new and hardly-yet human?
Minucius Felix
XXXI. And concerning the incestuous banquet, a huge tale has been lied against us by a coalition of demons, so that it might stain the glory of chastity with a splash of ugly infamy, and so that before truth was examined it might turn people from us by terror of an unspeakable rumor.
Commodian
Who will be able to know properly the one God of the heavens, except the one he has drawn up from wicked error? I was wandering ignorant, roaming, caught by empty hope, while the fury of first age carried me into the air.
Commodian
Which death the Lord drank, having suffered, rising from hell. Therefore he also did not will to show plainly what he was, but said he was a Son sent by the Father. So he himself had handed himself over to be called by the prophets, that God on earth should be the Son of the Most High.
Commodian
Not this only did he do: under Noah’s times too he showed what he could, since no one was seeking God. Afterward he began to be present more gently little by little, once the flood was done so the earth could be filled.
Commodian
You make Apollo a lyre-player and also a diviner. First he was born of adultery on the island of Delos. ****** He draws lots and deceives. Why do you seek true things from a false lot-drawer?
Commodian
You yourselves say Liber the father was certainly twice-born. Born in India from Jupiter and Proserpina first — ****** You run mad in his rites. What god is celebrated by drunken frenzy?
Commodian
If Invictus born from a rock is held a god, now therefore I am silent; you give the prior from these! The rock conquered the god — the rock’s creator must be sought. Moreover you still paint him to be a thief, though if he were a god he would certainly not live by theft.
Commodian
Whence has Silvanus appeared to be a god again? Perhaps he pleases because the pipe sings well. If a sweet fistula makes gods, every shepherd is divine.
Commodian
Hercules because he crushed the monster of the Aventine mount — he who used to steal Evander’s herds. A strong cattle-thief is praised as god. Strength and theft do not confer divinity.
Commodian
A few wicked empty seers delude you while they seek to untangle their own life. They suborn for others from themselves a falsehood under mysteries. Then pretending, shaken by some divinity, they sing majesty and wear themselves under a figure.
Commodian
Ammudas, whom his worshipers used to cultivate in their fashion — he was great for them when there was gold in the temple. They put their heads under the divinity as if present. It came to the summit that Caesar took the gold: the divinity fails or flees or passes into fire.
Commodian
Is it not a disgrace that a prudent man be seduced and worship such a one, or say Diana is wood? In the morning you trust one drunk, raw, about to perish, who speaks by feigned art what seems to him; he truly plays god and demands entrails for himself.
Commodian
You say the Titans are guardians for you; thus you ask the Mute and Silent ones under your roof, ****** Vain is the cult that prays hush-gods in the house.
Commodian
When almighty God had adorned the world’s nature, he willed that earth to be visited by angels; sent, they scorned his laws. So great was women’s beauty that it bent them. Contaminated, they cannot return to heaven; rebels from then, they cast words against God.
Commodian
You say mountain gods — let them rule in the field — darkened by evil, swearing with an alien mind. ****** Leave the countryside’s divinities; the Lord made the hills. Serve him, not the mountain tales.
Commodian
And old Saturn — if he is a god, when does a god grow old? Or if he was a god, why did he devour his sons driven by terrors? But because he was not a god, he consumed his sons’ bowels in monstrous madness.
Commodian
This Jupiter was born to Saturn on the island of Crete; and when grown he robbed his father of the kingdom. Then he deluded nobles’ wives and sisters. Moreover Pyracmon the smith had made him a scepter.
Commodian
You say, O fools: Jupiter himself thunders and hurls lightning. Even if littleness felt so, why do years still say it? You were infants: will you be so forever?
Commodian
You want to be a Christian matron as one learning the world’s way: you surround yourself with gold or a silk dress, modest one; you send the law’s terror from the ears on the wind; you chase vain things, all from the Devil’s pomp; you adorn at the mirror curls bent back on the brow;
Commodian
You have heard the voice, you who want to remain Christian — how blessed Paul ordered to ask. And heaven-speaking Isaiah, teacher and author (for he detests those who follow the world’s love) says the daughters of Zion were lifted and fell.
Commodian
Concerning Sun and Moon: though they are present to us, you err; what I once thought, you think must be prayed to. They are among the stars, but they do not run by their own will. The Omnipotent, when he first founded all things, placed them there with the stars on the fourth of the days.
Commodian
Your Mercury is made painted with a purse and with helm and sole, winged and otherwise nearly bare. You say he is a messenger and also a thief. If he were a god, why did he steal?
Commodian
You make Neptune a god sprung from Saturn, and he rules a trident so he can spear fish. From that you say he is god of the sea. What divinity is it to chase fish with a fork?
Novatian
III. 1. This one, then, we acknowledge and know as God, founder of all things, Lord because of power, parent because of establishment — this one, I say, who spoke, and all things were made, commanded, and the universe proceeded; about whom it is written: You made all things in wisdom;
Novatian
VI. 1. And although heavenly Scripture often turns the divine face toward human form when it says: The eyes of the Lord are upon the just, or when the Lord God smelled a smell of good fragrance, or when tablets written by God’s finger are handed to Moses, or when the people of Israel’s sons is freed from Egypt’s land…
Novatian
VII. 1. But that which the Lord says, that God is spirit, I think Christ spoke thus about the Father, so that he still wants something more to be understood than that God is spirit.
Victorinus of Pettau
In the beginning God made the light, and divided it by a twelve-fold measure of hours, by day and by night, namely so that night might bring a place of rest over men's labors, and again day might overcome; by this alternate turn labor would be refreshed by rest, and rest again tempered by the exercise of day.
Victorinus of Pettau
On this day also, because of the passion of the Lord Jesus Christ, we keep either a station to God or a fast. On the seventh day He rested from all His works, and blessed it and sanctified it.
Victorinus of Pettau
Now the reason of the truth is shown why the fourth day is named tetras; why we fast even to the ninth hour, or even to evening, or why a carrying-over even to the next day should be made. This world therefore consists of four elements—fire, water, heaven, earth. These four elements make a tetrad of seasons.
Arnobius
3.1. Unless perhaps you doubt whether that commander of whom we speak exists, and you rather believe Apollo is, Diana, Mercury, Mars. 2. Give a true judgment, and looking around at all these things we see, one will doubt more whether the other gods exist than hesitate about God, whom we all naturally know…
Arnobius
60.1. Since therefore the origins, causes, and reasons of so many and such great things flee even you yourselves, and you can neither say nor explain what was done or why, or why it ought not to have been, you tear and rend our modesty—we who confess that we do not know what cannot be known and do not care to seek or…
Arnobius
67.1. Therefore when you charge us with turning away from the religion of the ancients, it is fitting that you inspect the cause, not the deed, and not oppose what we have left but rather look at what we have followed.
Arnobius
68.1. On the Alban mount of old it was allowed to sacrifice no bulls but of snowy whiteness: did you not change that custom and religion and, that reddish ones might be given, settle it by senate decree?
Arnobius
69.1. "But our name is novel and the religion we follow was born a few days ago." — That I may meanwhile grant that what is objected to us is not of false intention: for what is there in human affairs, which either is done by work of body and hands or is held by discipline and knowledge of mind alone, that did not…
Arnobius
70.1. But why do I speak of small things? The immortal gods themselves, whose temples you now approach and whose powers you adore as suppliants, according to your own letters and opinions, began not to be and not to be known from certain times, and to be named by imposed appellations of names?
Arnobius
But the authority of religion is not to be estimated by time but by the divinity, and it is fitting to look not on what day you began to worship but what you began. 2. "Three hundred years ago your religion was not." — And your gods were not before two thousand years.
Arnobius
72.1. “But your religions precede ours by many years, and for that reason are truer because they are fortified by the authority of antiquity.” — And what does it profit them to go before by as many years as you like, when they began from a fixed time—or what space are two thousand years of ages compared with so many…
Arnobius
73.1. But is the cause of this kind turned against us alone? What of the Egyptian powers whose names are Serapis and Isis—did you not after the consuls Piso and Gabinius enroll them in the number of your gods?
Lactantius
Aesculapius himself, born not without Apollo's shame, what else did he do worthy of divine honors except that he healed Hippolytus? He had a more famous death, because he deserved to be struck by a god's thunderbolt.
Lactantius
Who then is so senseless as to think this one reigns in heaven who ought not even to have reigned on earth? Not without wit a certain poet wrote Cupid's triumph, making Cupid not only most powerful of the gods but their conqueror—listing each god's loves under Cupid's power and staging a pomp where Jupiter with the…
Lactantius
Since we have uncovered the poets' mysteries and found Saturn's parents, let us return to his virtues and deeds. He was just in his kingdom. First, from this itself he is already not a god, because he was;
Lactantius
If therefore those reasonings of the philosophers are empty, what remains except that we believe it truly happened—that is, a human cut by a human?
Lactantius
Now, since Sacred History disagrees somewhat from what I have reported, let us open what is contained in the true writings, lest we seem to follow and approve the poets' follies in accusing the religions. These are Ennius's words: then Saturn took Ops as wife.
Lactantius
From which things, since it is established that those were humans, it is not obscure by what reason they began to be named gods. For if there were no kings before Saturn or Uranus because of humans' scarcity—who lived a rural life without any ruler—there is no doubt that in those times humans began to honor the king…
Lactantius
I could have been content with what I have reported, but much still remains needful for the work undertaken. For although by destroying the very head of the religions I have taken them all away, still it is pleasing to pursue the rest and refute more fully the long-settled persuasion, so that people may at last be…
Lactantius
For these reasons the Stoics interpret the gods otherwise, and because they do not see what is in the truth, they try to join them with the reason of natural things. Cicero, following them, gave this sentence about the gods and their religions.
Lactantius
Here those also must be refuted who not only confess that gods were made from humans but even boast of it to praise them—whether for virtue as Hercules, or for gifts as Ceres and Liber, or for arts discovered as Aesculapius and Minerva.
Lactantius
But someone will say veneration should be given both to this highest one who made all things and to those who partly benefited. First, it never happened that one who culted these also culted God, nor can it happen, because if the same honor is given to others, He Himself is not culted at all, whose religion is to…
Lactantius
I come now to the Romans' own religions, since I have spoken of the common ones. Romulus's nurse Lupa was given divine honors—and I would bear it if it were the animal itself whose figure she bears.
Lactantius
We have spoken of the gods who are culted; now a few things must be said of their rites and mysteries. Among the Cyprians Teucer immolated a human victim to Jupiter and handed that sacrifice to posterity—lately abolished under Hadrian.
Lactantius
The author and founder of these vanities among the Romans was that Sabinus king who especially entangled rude and unskilled human minds with new superstitions. To do this with some authority, he pretended to have nightly meetings with the goddess Egeria.
Lactantius
Now, since we have caught the origin of empty superstitions, it remains to gather also the times through which those whose memory is culted existed. Theophilus in his book on times written to Autolycus says Thallus relates in his history that Belus…
Lactantius
Let the beginning of our work be that following and second question: whether the world is ruled by the power of one God or of many. No one who indeed is wise and thinks reason with himself fails to understand that there is one who both founded all things and by the same virtue with which he founded them also governs…
Lactantius
The prophets, who were very many, proclaim one God, speak one thing, seeing that filled with the Spirit of one God they predicted what would be with equal and harmonious voice.
Lactantius
But let us omit the prophets' testimonies, lest the proof seem less suitable from those who are not believed at all. Let us come to the authors and cite as witnesses to truth's proof those very ones they are accustomed to use against us—I mean the poets and philosophers.
Lactantius
Now let us pass to divine testimonies. But first I will bring forward one that is like the divine—both for its extreme antiquity and because he whom I will name was transferred from humans among the gods.
Lactantius
For Apollo, whom they think more divine and prophetic than the rest, dwelling at Colophon—where I believe he had migrated from Delphi, drawn by Asia's pleasantness—answered someone asking who or what God altogether is in twenty-one verses, whose beginning is: self-grown, untaught, motherless, unshaken, a name not…
Lactantius
By these so many and so great witnesses it is proved that the world is governed by the power and providence of one God, whose force and majesty Plato in the Timaeus says is so great that no one can conceive it by mind or narrate it in words because of the excessive and inestimable power.
Lactantius
Hercules, who for virtue is counted most famous and as it were an Africanus among the gods—did he not pollute the circle of the earth, which he is said to have traversed and purged, with debaucheries, adulteries, and lusts? No wonder, since he was born of Alcmena's adultery.
Lactantius
Although in the first book I showed that the religions of the gods are false—because those whose varied and unlike cults the consensus of humans across the whole earth took up by foolish persuasion were mortals and, having finished life, yielded to divine necessity by death—nevertheless, lest any doubt remain, this…
Lactantius
But God afterward, when he saw the circle of the earth filled with malice and crimes, decided to destroy the human race by flood. Yet to repair the multitude he chose one who, among all corrupted, remained a singular example of justice.
Lactantius
When therefore the number of humans had begun to increase, God, foreseeing lest the devil—to whom from the beginning he had given power of the earth—should by his frauds either corrupt or destroy humans as he had done at the start, sent angels for the guardianship and care of the human race: whom he commanded before…
Lactantius
The reason of all these deceits is obscure to those without the truth. For they think those benefit them when they cease to harm—who can do nothing else than harm. Perhaps someone will say they are therefore to be culted lest they harm, if indeed they can harm.
Lactantius
Of these are the inventions: astrology and haruspicy and augury and the very things called oracles and necromancy and the magic art and whatever else of evils men practice openly or secretly—all which are false through themselves, as the Erythraean Sibyl testifies.
Lactantius
"We do not fear them," they say, "but Him whose image they are, and who is in heaven." Therefore you do not fear what you see, but what you do not see; and while images are before your eyes, fear is turned elsewhere.
Lactantius
But what does it profit to harangue the crowd and the unskilled this way, when we see even learned and prudent men, though they understand the vanity of the religions, nevertheless somehow by a certain wickedness persist in culting the very things they condemn? Cicero understood that what men adore is false.
Lactantius
What majesty then can images have, which were in a little human's power either to become something else or not to be made at all? Therefore in Horace Priapus speaks thus: Once I was a fig-wood trunk, useless timber; when the craftsman was unsure whether to make a bench or a Priapus, he preferred I be a god.
Lactantius
How much more rightly, then, omitting the senseless and vain, is it to stretch the eyes there where the seat, where the dwelling of the true God is—who suspended the earth with stable firmness, distinguished heaven with shining stars, kindled the sun as brightest and singular light for human affairs as argument of his…
Lactantius
For they shape likenesses of sun and moon in human fashion, likewise of fire and earth and sea, which they name Vulcan, Vesta, Neptune, nor do they understand that they are worshiping the works, not the Maker.
Lactantius
I will therefore set out the reason of all these things so that hard and obscure matters may be understood more easily, and I will unveil all these juggleries of a simulated divinity by which humans, led astray, have withdrawn farther from the path of truth.
Lactantius
Now since we have refuted those who think otherwise about the world and its maker God than the truth holds, let us return to the divine fabric of the world, which is handed down in the secret letters of the holy religion.
Lactantius
As I think and often turn over in my mind that earlier state of the human race, it usually seems both wondrous and unworthy that by the folly of one age—taking up various religions and believing many gods—it suddenly came into such ignorance of itself that, truth taken from the eyes, neither the religion of the true…
Lactantius
The cult of the gods, as I taught in the first book, has no wisdom—not only because it subjects the divine animal, man, to earthly fragile things, but because nothing is discussed there that would avail for cultivating morals and forming life;
Lactantius
It is worth knowing their piety, that from the things they do mildly and piously it may be understood what sort of things are done by them against the rights of piety. And lest I seem to attack anyone harshly, I will take for myself some poetic person who is the greatest example of piety.
Lactantius
But these, because they do not know either what or how something should be worshiped, blind and imprudent, fall into the contrary. They therefore adore their enemies, placate their robbers and killers with victims, and place their souls to be burned with the very incense on detestable altars.
Lactantius
When those of whom I spoke had unfolded their sacrilegious letters in my presence and to my grief, stimulated by their proud impiety and by conscience of the truth itself and, as I think, by God, I took on this task—to refute the accusers of justice with all the powers of my talent—not to write against these who could…
Lactantius
For while Saturn reigned there was not yet worship of false gods; people cultivated the one God; goods were held in common; there was no greed tearing society apart, no war. Poets painted that age as golden because justice--that is, the pious and religious worship of the one God--still walked among humans on earth.
Lactantius
But God, as a most indulgent parent, as the last time approached, sent a messenger who would bring back that old age and the justice that had fled, lest the human race be driven by the greatest and perpetual errors.
Lactantius
Lay aside every evil thought from your hearts, and that golden time will return to you at once--which you cannot obtain otherwise than by beginning to worship the true God. But while the cult of the gods remains you desire justice on the earth, which can by no pact happen.
Lactantius
Sometimes, however, they sense that they are evil, and they praise the condition of the old ages, and from their own manners and deserts they conjecture that justice is absent: which, though it stands before their eyes, they not only do not take up or recognize, but even violently hate and persecute and strive to wipe…
Lactantius
I come now to what is the summit and greatest part of this work: to teach by what rite or what sacrifice God ought to be worshiped. For that is the human's office, and in that alone the sum of things and the whole account of the blessed life consist, since we were formed and inspired by him not so that we might see sky…
Lactantius
They therefore sacrifice rich and fat victims to God as if to one hungry, pour out wines as if to one thirsty, kindle lights as if to one living in darkness.
Lactantius
I ask now whether pious and just humans can be those who are set under the blow of death and misery and constantly look at homicides and blood and lust on the stage and in the circus and still think they worship God.
Lactantius
Now let us say a few things about the sacrifice itself. Ivory, says Plato, is not a pure gift for God. What then?
Lactantius
The first head of this law is to know God himself, to obey him alone, to worship him alone. For he cannot hold a human's reason who does not know God, the parent of his soul; which is the highest crime. Which ignorance makes him serve other gods, than which nothing more wicked can be committed.
Lactantius
But of providence we said enough in book one: which if it is, as appears from the wonder of its works, it is necessary that by the same providence it also created man and the other living things.
Lactantius
For this we are born: that we might acknowledge God, the maker of the world and of us. For this we acknowledge him: that we might worship. For this we worship: that we might receive immortality as the wage of labors, since the worship of God consists in the greatest labors.