D. Nicolaus Le Nourry, Dissertatio de septem Divinarum Institutionum libris

DISSERTATION ON THE SEVEN BOOKS OF THE DIVINE INSTITUTES, BY DOM NIC. LE NOURRY, O.S.B.

CHAPTER ONE.

Analysis of the seven books.

ARTICLE ONE.

Analysis of the first book.

Lactantius began this book with a fairly long preface, in which he sets out before the eyes and in the sight of all the reasons for the work he has undertaken. He relates (ch. 1) that many men of great and excellent talent, having cast aside all their private means and public affairs, devoted themselves wholly to the pursuit of searching out the truth, but utterly wasted their oil and their labour. For truth, he says, being the secret of the supreme God, cannot be grasped by any powers of human talent alone. Yet God, taking pity on man searching for it with such zeal, did not suffer him to wander any longer, but showed him the light of wisdom and the way to attain immortality. But since that way is still beset with the greatest difficulties, few therefore make use of this heavenly gift. For this reason Lactantius thought he ought to come to their help, so as to direct both the learned to true wisdom and the unlearned to true religion. And this, he shows by the example of the Greek orators and philosophers, is far more useful and more glorious than the art of oratory, in which he himself had long been engaged, training young men not to virtue but to downright clever wickedness. Yet he does not deny that by this exercise he has gained the means of now defending and pleading the cause of truth with greater fullness and facility of speech, though it can be defended without it.

He declares, therefore, that he has the better right to undertake a discussion of religion and divine things, inasmuch as the greatest orators spent a more burdensome labour in the study of philosophy at the last season of their lives, vainly and to no profit. Moreover, if some have published Institutes of civil law for settling the lawsuits of citizens at variance, how much more ought divine Institutes to be committed to writing, by which deadly superstitions and most shameful errors may be laid to rest and rooted out.

But if various manuscript and printed copies are to be trusted, our author there addressed Constantine the Great, and praises him for restoring the worship of the true God, and without hesitation promises that happiness will be given by God to him and to his sons. Further, the truth of our religion, briefly indeed

for the abundance of the subject, he hopes to assert and set forth in seven volumes, yet so clearly and plainly that it would be a wonder if it seemed obscure to men, and especially to the wise or philosophers. And when they have come to know it, he will then send them to the richest fountain of doctrine, by drinking of which, provided they do not cling too stubbornly to their superstitions, all things will become easy and plain to them. And then all will readily acknowledge that this is the sum of true religion: That neither is any religion to be taken up without wisdom, nor any wisdom to be approved without religion.

This preface set before, he declares openly that he did not see fit to begin this work from the question which seems to come first, whether providence takes thought for all things, or whether all things were made and are carried on by chance and accident, as the Epicureans dreamed (ch. 2). For their error, which is that of atheists or of the foolish, having been sufficiently refuted by other pagan philosophers, especially by the Stoics, and by Cicero himself, though an Academic, will be refuted here and there in these books. He therefore takes his start from another question, which is nevertheless closest to the former: whether the world is governed by the power of one God or of many. First, then, Lactantius shows by various arguments drawn from natural reason that this world was created by one God and is ruled by His providence, and he overturns the opposing sophisms of his adversaries (ch. 3). Next he proves the same view by the authority of the prophets, which, although it could not be rejected by the heathen, he nevertheless touches on more briefly because of their blindness and obstinacy (ch. 4). But he presses them harder (ch. 5) with the testimonies of their own pagan authors, whom they themselves praised: chiefly of the poets Orpheus, Homer and Hesiod; then of the philosophers Thales, Pythagoras, Anaxagoras, Antisthenes, Cleanthes, Anaximenes, Chrysippus, Aristotle, Cicero and Seneca; and lastly of the seers inspired, as the same heathen supposed, by a divine spirit: of Mercury, surnamed Trismegistus, whom the Egyptians called Thoyth (ch. 6), and others worshipped as a god; and of the Sibyls, concerning whose name, authority, number and preserved verses he first says much, and then, passing over the rest, brings forward several of their verses, to which he adds a certain much-vaunted oracle of Apollo of Delphi, which is confirmed by Trismegistus (ch. 7).

Then to those who, after Cicero, would be about to ask of him

perhaps, what the blessed solitude of the one God could be, he replies that God, as Seneca writes, begot ministers of His kingdom, namely the angels, who are not gods and do not wish to be worshipped or called gods. The heathen, however, bestowed the venerable name of divinity on their fictitious deities, falsely deceived by the testimony of Apollo, who on one occasion enrolled himself among the number of the angels, although elsewhere he confessed that he was a demon. Therefore he exhorts these same heathen to lay aside their errors and acknowledge the true God, whose power cannot be estimated, nor His greatness perceived, nor His beginning comprehended (ch. 8). And he confirms this by the testimony of Apollo, of the Sibyl and of Plato. He, then, Who by infinite power created all things, is sufficiently known to none other than Himself.

Passing from there to the gods of the gentiles, he rejects their false and fabricated divinity on the ground that they were said to have been born of a male and a female, and were therefore neither incorporeal nor immortal, such as, as the Sibyl says, the true God must be. Nor does he allow it to be objected to him that God, in order to have ministers, needs sex. For if He granted to certain living creatures, that is, to bees, that they should gather their offspring for themselves from flowers with their mouth, how much more can He Himself, the Almighty, create ministers and others at His pleasure without the mingling of sex.

Moreover, by a longer induction our Author there makes it plain to all that it is ridiculous for the herd of gods to be made up of those kings of men who had been dear to their subjects on account of outstanding deeds or benefits conferred (ch. 9). At the head of their troop, moreover, he set Hercules, who, born of the adultery of Alcmena, defiled the whole world with his debaucheries and adulteries. Nothing, then, could be divine in him, unless perhaps his various labours and contests, which are here reviewed one by one. But these, as Cicero too testifies, show that he was indeed a very brave man, but by no means a god. What, moreover, of the fact that weakness and wickedness were most clearly evident in him, who shamefully served the Erythraean king, and more basely still the unchaste woman Omphale? Nor indeed is there reason for anyone to say that no credence is to be given to the poets who had invented these things. For no other writers could be brought forward who either denied these things or related what in their gods is admirable and divine.

What, indeed, did Aesculapius, born of Apollo's misdeed, do that was worthy of divine honours? Was it because he healed Hippolytus? But for that very thing he was struck by a thunderbolt (ch. 10). Tarquitius, moreover, relates his birth from uncertain parents and other human deeds of his, just as Tully points out his tomb. Nor was his father Apollo any better, who pastured another's flock, built walls for Laomedon, and violated a boy. Mars, again, a murderer and the adulterer of Venus, and Castor and Pollux, abductors of brides, are celebrated by the poets as living on alternate days, and are said by Homer to have been buried. Mercury, although a thief and a rascal, was nevertheless enrolled in the number of the gods because he was reported to have invented the lyre and taught wrestling. The same honour was conferred on Liber for his expedition into India, but he burned with a mad love for a woman.

Moreover Jupiter, whom they call best, greatest, and father of all, was impious from boyhood, drove his father from the kingdom, and, once the Titans had been conquered, led a life so disgraced by so many and such horrible shameful deeds that he ought never to have reigned on earth, much less in heaven (ch. 11). Not without wit, therefore, did a certain poet sing that he was led in chains before the chariot of triumphant Cupid. Lactantius presses the point that he is invoked as God by all the heathen, who yet was born, as they used to say, of Saturn and Rhea, who abstained from Thetis alone lest he should have someone greater than his father, who swore by the Stygian marsh, who obeyed fate and the power of the Fates, who is called Zeus for this reason, that he was the first of Saturn's children to be preserved and to live.

And there Lactantius again refutes those who objected that these things were the fictions and lies of the poets. For the poets did not invent the deeds themselves, as he proves by various examples, but by poetic licence added more to them, so that they might persuade [men] that they had narrated these things not about men but about gods. Then indeed, if the poets lied, why do the heathen worship their gods as such, and represent them such as they had been depicted by them? Moreover, the heathen could not deny that a true history of the gods had been written by Euhemerus, which Ennius afterwards translated. But because the poets thereafter had transferred more things to the gods for the charm of their songs, for that reason certain people accused them of falsehood. He proves this, however, by various examples, from which he concludes that what the poets say is true, but related under some covering and outward show. But the philosophers, since they recognized that these things were false, invented two Joves, indeed, but with no less error, one natural, the other wholly fabulous. Nor was there truly any ground on which anyone might answer that by the name of Jove he understood and worshipped the true God. For Jupiter, says Lactantius, is not usually worshipped without the companionship of his wife and daughter, and his name signifies a power not divine but merely human. Finally, by the testimonies of Ennius, the Sibyl and Cicero already cited above, he clearly proves that this Jove died and was buried in the island of Crete, and that the Capitol is his empty monument. But the gentiles could never prove that these things were the fictions of the poets.

Nothing in Saturn either, Lactantius continues, is worthy of the majesty of God. For although they boasted that the golden age was brought in by him, yet it was more certain that he had been born of Heaven and Earth, just as other gods were said either to have sprung from mountains and rivers, or seas to have received their name from them. For from Trismegistus and Ennius we learn that his father was Uranus, to whom Jupiter, having set up an altar on a mountain, first sacrificed, and gave his name to Heaven. And he made not only this sacrifice, but another also on the shore, when he was setting out from the island of Naxos against the Titans, as Aglaosthenes says. But this very Caelus, or Uranus, died in Oceanus, as Euhemerus relates, and was buried in the town of Aulatia.

Rightly, therefore, from these things thus narrated Lactantius gathers that Saturn was not a god, inasmuch as, being an impious man, he cut off his father's genitals and devoured his sons, begotten of Rhea or Ops, except Jupiter, who was carried off by the deceit of his mother and the Corybantes (ch. 12 and 13). Again, he there rejects the response of the Stoics, who tried to turn this fable into a physical explanation (ch. 13). For Saturn proved himself to be a man not only by the crimes mentioned, but also because, stripped of his rule and a fugitive, he came to Italy by ship. And there, when he had lain hidden, he was received by Janus, and reigned first, or at any rate second after Uranus. Our author, moreover, makes it plain that these things were handed down by various writers, whom he names, both historians and poets. But since Ennius differed a little from them, he therefore describes in a few words the things that are recorded concerning the deeds of Saturn by him and by the Sibyl in almost the same manner (ch. 14).

And when the occasion is given, he relates what he judges to have been the origin of idolatry (ch. 15). In the time of this Saturn, he says, men still uncultivated called their king, and all his offspring, gods, either because of the marvel of his virtue, or in flattery of present power, or because of benefits received. Then afterwards others fashioned images of their dead kings, either for the solace of grief or for the sake of sharpening virtue. Hence the feigned divinity of Hercules, Castor, Pollux, Aesculapius and Liber. Hence the Egyptians worshipped Isis, the Moors Juba, the Macedonians Cabyrus, the Carthaginians Uranus, the Romans Quirinus and their Caesars. Hence some worshipped some, others others, as though true gods.

Moreover, certain men, led by a false piety, such as Aeneas, Liber, Pan, Mercury and Apollo, paid divine honour to their parents, and by their example led others into the same error. But this wickedness was afterwards increased by those who, deceived by the fictions of the poets and by lying panegyrics, handed on to other nations the wholly impious rites they had taken up, but they are sharply rebuked by the Sibyl. Now one of these was Cicero, who, although after Plato he proclaimed that the gods of his people had been men, nevertheless declared that he would consecrate an image of his dead daughter, just as if she had been a goddess. But surely, if something is to be indulged to those who mourn so bitterly, certainly no pardon can be granted to those who believe these things in earnest. For what is more senseless than to proclaim and worship as gods Julius Caesar, because he pleased the wicked Antony, and Quirinus or Romulus, because Proculus perjured himself (ch. 16)? And he further refutes the madness of these and the other gentiles who worshipped gods of this kind from the fact that they asserted them to be male and female. For if there is a diversity of sex in them, then they have intercourse and beget children, then they dwell in houses and cities, then they till fields for the sake of food, and accordingly they are not gods but mortal and weak creatures. To this is added that the female sex is weaker than the male. But neither this nor any other weakness befalls the true God.

After our Lactantius (ch. 17) has established these things by the testimony of Cicero, he utterly overturns their fictitious divinity, which the Stoics had linked with an account of natural things, by pointing out the age and the death of each one as represented in their images, by recounting their much-sung sufferings, for example those of Isis, Ceres, Latona and Juno, and by making known their crimes, debaucheries and adulteries: those of Venus, who instituted the harlot's trade, and likewise of Vulcan, Minerva, Aesculapius and many others, whom he lists by name (ch. 18). No less clearly does he show that those men are foolish who supposed that they had been made gods on account of bodily strength, or for the discovery of crops, or of wine, or of certain arts (ch. 19). Nor, he says, may it be said that at least some veneration and worship is owed to them. For it cannot be that he who worships these worships the true God. Moreover, Maro sang that all of them are among those below. But he and other poets, although they are mistaken in the name of gods, are nevertheless not mistaken in narrating their various misdeeds, wars, adulteries, wounds and death.

Lactantius then comes to the Romans' own religions, and makes it quite plain that whores and harlots were placed by them among the number of the gods, and especially the she-wolf, Romulus' nurse, just as earlier a lioness had been by the Athenians (ch. 20). But greater beyond doubt was the impiety of those who established both a feast day and the Larentinalia in honour of the she-wolf. They also venerated Faula, the mistress of Hercules, and the harlot Flora, in whose memory they held the most obscene Floral games. And what of the fact that Tatius consecrated Cloacina, Tullus Hostilius Fear and Pallor, Marcellus Honour and Virtue, the senate Mind, and, what is worse, others Blight and Fever, as true gods, and worshipped them? What more need be said? Just as the Lacedaemonians set up an image to Venus Armed, so the same Romans built a temple to Venus the Bald, and at the same time an altar to Jupiter the Baker. Finally, among them divine powers were Fornax, Muta or Lara, Caca and Cunina; the god Sterculius and Terminus, and a thousand other monstrosities of the blind and wandering human mind.

If, then, so great was the madness of the gentiles in creating their gods, greater surely was it in instituting and celebrating their solemn rites (ch. 21). For what is more insane and more cruel than the human victims that were sacrificed to Jupiter, Diana, Haesus, Teutates and Saturn? The rites of the Mother of the gods, of Virtus or Bellona, and of Egyptian Isis were customarily performed either by cutting off the genitals, or by shedding human blood, or with the body flayed, and by beating the breast. And because the name of Osiris, who was sought in those same rites, had been changed, Lactantius there proves by various examples that the names of the gods were altered after their death. But let us proceed, if you please. The mysteries of Eleusinian Ceres, he says, were performed not without the utmost obscenity, which he deservedly assails, and in the same place he shows that the rites of Hercules and of Jupiter are sheer sacrileges. Further, he refutes Sallust and others who wished to interpret these things ingeniously. For by the writings of the pontiffs and by the example of Furius Bibuculus

he shows with what credulity, foulness and impiety all these things were celebrated by the heathen.

Now the author of these vanities among the Romans was the Sabine king, that is, Numa Pompilius, who, in order to deceive the peoples more securely, pretended that he held converse with Egeria, just as Minos once did with Jupiter (chap. 22). But the malice of the deceitful king was laid bare by the books on pontifical law, found long after his death, by which the impious king was dissolving all religions. And although these books were burned by decree of the senate, the memory of this deed was not on that account abolished, but rather commended to posterity. Earlier, indeed, Faunus in Latium prescribed wicked rites to his grandfather Saturn, and numbered among the gods his father Picus and his sister Fatua Fauna, whose ridiculous mysteries Lactantius there recounts. To these he added the rites of Father Liber introduced into Greece by Orpheus, and inquires whether he is older than Faunus. Next he makes plain to us what the opinions of Didymus and Euhemerus were on the origin of idolatry, and how temples were built to Jupiter Atabyrius, Labradeus, Laprius, Molion and Cassius. Lastly, from the writings of Theophilus of Antioch he gathers that the heathen boast in vain of the antiquity of their gods and rites, since Saturn, the begetter of all the gods, had been born not more than 1800 years before these books were made public (chap. 23).

Article II.

Analysis of the second book.

In this book Lactantius undertakes to lay open the fetid and wholly corrupt source of the error by which men fell into idolatry, and to assert the supreme majesty of the one God (chap. 1). And first he marvels that men had come into so great a forgetfulness both of God and of themselves that, having denied the providence of God, they preferred the dead to Him and believed their own soul to be mortal. For, he says, the knowledge and presence of the true God is so implanted in their minds that when swearing, wishing, giving thanks, and above all in adversity, they name Him alone and not other gods. But blind men, once the danger had passed, or in prosperity, at the instigation of the devil, eagerly ran together to the temples of the gods, sacrificed to these false gods and crowned them. But these wicked men had forgotten that they were admonished by their stature, erect towards heaven, and by the name ἄνθρωπος, to acknowledge God, and not, turned towards images, to fear or venerate the works of their own fingers.

And how absurd this superstition is our author clearly demonstrates from this, that those images represent men who are absent and long dead, and lack all sense (chap. 2). Things fashioned by the hands of men, therefore, ought rather to worship them than be worshipped by them. For indeed they receive no power from the craftsman, who cannot give them the faculty he has of seeing, hearing, speaking or moving himself. Yet Lactantius shows that this opinion about the worship of images was held not only by unlearned men but also by the learned, and

especially by Cicero, who, although he gathered many things here and there in his books for overturning the religions of those same heathens, nevertheless, fearing the prison of Socrates, says that these matters are not to be disputed before the common people (ch. 3). But our author rightly and deservedly rebukes this foolish fear of so great an orator, who was acting against his own conscience. He therefore declares that he and others like him are less worthy of pardon than the crowd of the unlearned, who are captivated by the appearance of images. Yet if these men had had a sound mind, they certainly ought to have understood that whatever we perceive with our eyes is in truth mortal, and that it is therefore not divine nor to be worshipped. Much less still was it right for them to turn to a stone and, with covered head and prostrate body, to adore it, themselves to slay victims, and to make vows that were utterly useless.

Then, after our author has most clearly proved that false religions are rightly attacked by the more prudent, but that the true one, which God alone can teach, was not found by them, he again assails the images of the gods (ch. 4). It lay indeed in the power of a petty man to make them, or something else, or nothing. But once they have been made, birds settle on them, build nests, and befoul them with their droppings. Moreover, these images can perish and be burned. Very often too they have been reduced to ashes, or have fallen as plunder to thieves. In vain, therefore, did the heathens adorn them with gold, ivory, gems and costly garments. For they were nothing other than dolls larger than those which girls dedicated to Venus. To this is added that they were mocked, despoiled and carried off with impunity by Dionysius, tyrant of Sicily, and by the impious Verres. And there Lactantius presses above all the image of Ceres of Catana or of Enna, carried off by the same Verres.

He therefore concludes that those impious cults are to be abandoned and the eyes raised to heaven, so that we may acknowledge and honour the Creator of it and of all things (ch. 5). By various arguments, moreover, he proves false the opinion of the philosophers who attributed a soul and divinity to the elements, and in particular of the Stoics, who attributed them to the stars or to the world. He further rebukes those who not only worshipped figures of the elements, represented in human form and adorned with gold, ivory and gems, but also consecrated to them their spoils and plunder (ch. 6). Yet they defended those absurd superstitions with such obstinacy that they cried out that it was a crime to investigate them. But by the example of Romulus and Numa our author proves that truth is to be sought not by unjust tradition or by the errors of others, but by intelligence and wisdom (ch. 7).

But the heathens thought that the strongest argument for retaining their religions was drawn from prodigies, dreams, auguries and oracles, by which they asserted that the gods had made their majesty manifest to all. For not without a great miracle, they said, did Accius Navius cut through a whetstone with a razor; Castor and Pollux were seen to fight, and to announce the victory won over King Perses. The images also of Fortuna Muliebris and of Juno Moneta spoke. As for the ship by which the image of the Idaean Mother was being carried, Claudia Quintia

drew it with her girdle. Aesculapius checked a pestilence at Rome. Claudius the Censor was blinded on account of his sacrileges against the gods, Fulvius died out of his mind, Turullius was slain, Pyrrhus suffered shipwreck, and the soldiers of Alexander were deprived of the light of their eyes. Indeed, Attinius too, who had not complied with Jupiter when he appeared to him in his sleep, was struck down, and by his obedience at length recovered his former health. Finally, through the dream of Artorius, Augustus Caesar escaped from danger. From all these portents and miracles, then, which they supposed could not have come about without the help of their gods, the heathen concluded that those gods truly exist and are all-powerful.

But Lactantius replies that all these things were by no means done by the power of those gods, but by the deceptions of demons (ch. 8). And to make this plain to all, he traces the matter back from its very origin thus. God, he says, at the beginning of the world brought forth a spirit like Himself, and made another who, becoming evil from good through envy, received the name of devil. Then, by various weighty arguments and by the testimonies of the ancients, our author proves against Epicurus that neither the world nor matter has existed from eternity, but that they were made out of nothing by God, Who set His Son over their creation. And last of all creatures man was made, whose part it is not to pry into the secrets which God willed to be hidden, but whose highest wisdom is to acknowledge this true God, by Whom all those things were made (ch. 9). This great work He began from the heaven, adorned with the lights of the stars, and He established opposite parts of the earth, namely the east set against the west, and the south against the north. From the east our day rises, and the night from the west; and the latter belongs to the devil, just as the former belongs to God. To those four parts of the earth are assigned heat and cold and the various changes of season; and to fire and water the generation of all things. Hence, no doubt, certain philosophers taught that all things are formed out of a discordant concord, or out of fire, as Heraclitus did, or out of water, as Thales of Miletus did. Moreover, the matter of the body of living creatures lies in moisture, but that of the soul in fire. But living creatures make use of water, and man alone of fire.

God created living creatures of various kinds, and when He had resolved to create innumerable souls, He made man like Himself out of the ground (humus), whence he took his name (ch. 10). Mere fables of the poets, then, are those in which man is said to have been fashioned by Prometheus, the father of Deucalion, whom they invented as the only one saved from the flood. But it is true, says Lactantius, that the art of fashioning statues and images proceeded from that same Prometheus, and that in his time temples were first built and the worship of false gods brought in. By the authority of Hermes too he again confirms that man was created by God, and he hoots off the stage the senseless errors of the philosophers, who prattled that living creatures arose from the earth without any maker, or that the world always has been, or always will be. There he attacks at greater length Lucretius, who peddles trifles after his fashion when he sings that animals and men not only their food, but their origin

also drew out of little sacs of the earth, as if out of their wombs (ch. 11). For since these things could not have come about by mere chance, the divine providence by which man, as Tullius and the Sibyl attest, was in truth created, ought to have been acknowledged by the same poet, even against his will.

But after God had formed the body of man and poured a soul into it, He then fashioned woman, so that offspring might be propagated from both (ch. 12). And although the opinion of Trismegistus and Empedocles, that man is composed of four elements, is not altogether false, Lactantius nevertheless contends that these are reduced to two, fire and water, and that the latter is enclosed in the body, the former in the soul. Thus man consists of body and soul, which are images of heaven and of earth, in such a way that the soul, which is from God, holds the dominion and the upper part of the body, while the body, which belongs to the devil, holds the lower. Since, then, man is composed of these two mutually opposed things, there is within him a mutual conflict between them, as of light and darkness, of life and death; and if in this conflict the soul conquers, it will become immortal, that is, it will enjoy immortality in blessedness; but if it is conquered, it will be afflicted with the second death, that is, with eternal punishments.

Man, then, having been made thus, was placed in paradise, so that, free from all labour, he might serve God. But because the first woman, at the devil's instigation, and then the man broke the law given by the same God, death followed them when they had been cast out of paradise. The life of men was extended to a thousand years, and, after all of them had afterwards been destroyed by the flood on account of their crimes, to one hundred and twenty years (ch. 13). After that flood Noah, and by no means Bacchus, planted a vine with his own hand; drunk with its fruit, he lay naked, and he disowned his son Ham, who had not covered his nakedness. Ham, a fugitive, at length fixed his abode in that part of the earth which was called Canaan. His descendants, the Canaanites, were the first of all to abandon the worship of the true God, which remained among the Hebrews. Afterwards the Egyptians began to worship the stars, and then the monstrous figures of animals. The rest, scattered over the earth, honoured the elements without any images or temples and offered sacrifices to them in the open air, until in the course of time they built temples to their most powerful kings.

Moreover, since God had from the beginning given the devil power over the earth, He sent angels to guard men, so that the devil might not corrupt them as they had begun to multiply (ch. 14). But these, at the devil's persuasion, had intercourse with women, and for so great a crime fell to the earth and became satellites of that same devil. From them were begotten very many unclean spirits, which have a nature midway between angels and men, and under their prince the devil are the authors of all evils, and are acknowledged by poets and philosophers. They know many things, but not all, and therefore give ambiguous answers to those who question them. They wish, moreover, to be seen as guardians of men, so that they may be worshipped by them, but they deceive them by magic arts. And in order to lead them more easily into error, they wander over the whole earth, having taken the name of genii, and by the thinness of their spirit they insinuate themselves

into the bodies of men, whom they afflict with diseases and terrify with dreams.

Nor must it be said that they are to be worshipped, lest they do harm. For they do no harm except to the worshippers of idols, and to those by whom they are feared (ch. 15). On the contrary, they fear the worshippers of the true God, by Whose name they are put to flight when adjured, and they proclaim, even against their will, who they are. Indeed, Hermes and Asclepius long ago testified that these same worshippers of the true God are safe from their assaults. By them, moreover, says Lactantius, astrology, soothsaying, augury, necromancy and the other evil arts were invented; and by all these deceits they falsely claim that they are gods, and, having brought in idolatry, they make sport of men (ch. 16). The magi, however, by their accursed art summon them by their true names. Yet those wandering and unclean spirits so throw everything into confusion, and mix false things with true, that although the other holy and immortal angels neither wish nor allow themselves to be called gods, these most wicked spirits have nevertheless very often claimed for themselves the name and worship of gods.

And from these things thus explained our author resolves that line of argument which we set out above, by which the heathen strove wrongly to infer, from the prodigies, dreams, auguries and oracles mentioned, that their gods exist and are to be worshipped. For he asserts that these things were brought about by the evil arts of the demons which we have described, by illusions, deceits and frauds, by which they hide themselves in the temples and are present at the sacrifices of the impious. And this indeed he makes plain and manifest to anyone at all, by taking up again and examining one by one all the prodigies and miracles, as they called them, that had been put forward.

Why then, said the heathen, does God permit these things to happen? So that evil things may fight with good, answers Lactantius, and that God, Whose patience and wrath are perfect, may after the end of the world pay out to pious and impious men everlasting rewards or punishments (ch. 17). Finally, having made a brief recapitulation of the things he had written in this book, he concludes that God is to be sought neither on earth nor in images, which display nothing but what is feigned and false, but in heaven, whence is the origin of our souls. Then, having there set out the subject of the following book, he brings this one to a close.

Article III.

Analysis of the third book.

Lactantius, being about to argue in this book against the heathen philosophers, wishes for some power of speech close to Tullian eloquence, by which he might the more easily demonstrate the vanity of philosophy and of the philosophers (ch. 1). Relying, however, on the power of truth, which reveals itself by its own clarity, he hopes that he will prove by the most certain arguments that the opinions of those philosophers are as false as their own confession of their ignorance is true.

He draws his first argument, then, from the name of philosophy, or the pursuit of wisdom, by which Pythagoras, its originator, although he was a little wiser than others, indicated that true wisdom cannot be attained by any human pursuit (ch. 2). For the philosophers, in truth, of wisdom

cannot be called students; since they, after a very long study through so many ages, have not attained it.

Now there are three parts of philosophy, physics, logic and ethics, which must rest either on knowledge or on opinion (ch. 3). But what knowledge can there be in physics, since we are unable to perceive the causes of natural things? For to whom has it ever been plainly ascertained how great the body of the sun is, and of what kind that of the moon, what the position of the stars, how great the thickness of the earth? Rightly, therefore, and deservedly did Socrates and the Academics take knowledge away from all philosophers. Opinion alone, then, is had in this first part of philosophy (ch. 4 and 5). Yet opinion brings nothing certain, and renders us so doubtful that it is permitted to assert nothing for either side. Rightly, therefore, was this very opinion repudiated by Zeno and the Stoics. Those, then, are deceived who have boasted that there is some pursuit of wisdom in physics.

Besides this, the philosophers have been divided into so many sects, and these so much at variance with one another, and their defenders so fight it out among themselves, that with mutual wounds they slay and destroy themselves and the whole of philosophy along with them. Out of these contests, moreover, emerged Arcesilaus, who asserted that nothing at all can be known. But he, by overturning the opinions of others, established his own no more firmly than the others did. For just as we are ignorant of many things, so also we have many other things clearly perceived (ch. 6). For it must not be thought that we know all things, which belongs to God, nor that we are ignorant of all things, which belongs to a beast. Man, therefore, has knowledge joined with ignorance. The latter arises from the body, the former from the soul. The physicists, therefore, who prattled that they could know all things, err along the whole way, and Arcesilaus is deceived, together with the Academics, since he held that nothing can be known.

Lactantius then passes to the other part of philosophy, which they call ethics, and in which one errs with far greater danger (ch. 7). How far, however, the philosophers have departed from the truth in it, he shows clearly from their various opinions on the highest good, on which the hinge of all wisdom turns. How many these were you may infer from this, that he reviews one by one and refutes not indeed all of them, but ten principal ones (ch. 8). Next he rebukes Anaxagoras, who had dreamed that the highest good lay in this, that he believed himself born for the sake of seeing the sky and the sun (ch. 9). For man is born in order to contemplate the Maker of the heaven and of all things, to honour Him, and to serve Him alone. From these things, further, our author concludes that the highest good is recognized only by those who profess the worship of the true God and the true religion (ch. 10). Moreover, by certain weighty arguments, and those by no means feeble, he proves that that highest good cannot be obtained by others than by the worshippers of the true religion, which is therefore to be embraced by all. Nor indeed did the philosophers deny that the true religion ought to be embraced; but because they did not know that it cannot be separated from wisdom, they did not perceive which it is, from which that highest good must be sought, which neither in pleasure, nor in riches, nor in kingship, nor in glory

can be placed (ch. 11). For virtue, than which nothing is more beautiful and more honourable, despises all these perishable and fragile goods, and fights against unlawful desires and vices; so that, these having been overcome, a man may become spotless and attain blessed immortality (ch. 12).

Now that this good is placed in this very immortality Lactantius proves by the authority of Euclid, Seneca, the Stoics and Anaxagoras, and asserts it with various reasons. Indeed even Menecaeus, as he adds, Codrus, Curtius and the Mures steadfastly met death in the hope of immortality. But certainly to the philosophers who hold the soul to be immortal this ought to have been entirely acceptable, had they not clung to their errors with excessive obstinacy. Others, however, who placed the highest good in knowledge or in virtue, held indeed to the way of truth, but did not arrive at the true highest good. For it is placed in that happy immortality to which virtue leads, which is granted only to the worshippers of the true religion.

Then Lactantius, having deferred the question of the immortality of the soul, teaches that another part of philosophy, which is called logic, is not required for acquiring divine learning; because wisdom lies not in words, but in things and in the heart (ch. 13). But if this part of philosophy, and physics as well, which cannot make a man happy, are not necessary; if in this, and in ethics, to which Socrates devoted himself, there are, as has been said, such great errors, what else remains but that we conclude the philosophy of the gentiles to be false and empty?

Those therefore are deceived who think philosophy to be wisdom, and above all Cicero, who had said that it cannot be censured, and that it is the teacher of virtue and justice. For by this very thing he is convicted of greater inconsistency than Lucretius. For this poet extols Epicurus, the founder of his sect, with praises excessive and tasteless indeed, but always the same. But Cicero never fails to accuse the Greeks whom he praises and follows of intolerable levity (ch. 14). He also calls philosophy the parent of life, yet denies that anyone was ever wise. And he often boasts that he has diligently studied philosophy: but having followed the side of the Academics, he was able to attain nothing certain at all with so great study.

But since Cicero errs, who will ever assert with certainty that he has obtained the truth? Not Seneca, surely, who wrongly defined philosophy as the method, or art, or science of living rightly and honourably (ch. 15). For it is false, varied, manifold and contrary to itself. Moreover, men are good without philosophy. Philosophers, on the contrary, are irascible, greedy, lustful, arrogant; and Lactantius demonstrates this by the examples of Cicero, Cornelius Nepos, Aristippus, the Cynics, and even of Seneca himself.

What more? The philosophers spent their life not in the works of the virtues, but in the pursuit of eloquence (ch. 16). And from philosophy itself they sought not usefulness, but

delight. Finally, Cicero, Lucretius and Seneca admit that the origin of philosophy is recent. Persius indeed sang that it was brought to Rome in a later age together with pepper and palms. But wisdom began with man, and preceded the philosophy of the heathens by many ages.

Lactantius then proceeds to the philosophers themselves, and overturns their principal teachings from the foundations. Beginning with Epicurus, whose school was more celebrated than the rest, he shows that he indulged each person in whatever better suited his disposition, and foolishly contradicted himself when he maintained that pleasure is the highest good. Next our author sets out by what reasoning that man denied providence, and with several arguments he storms this error. With similarly weighty reasons he tears out by the roots another opinion, no less absurd, which he had received from Leucippus and Democritus, namely that all things come about by a chance concourse of atoms; and he further pursues Lucretius, who flattered him. Finally he asserts that what the impious man proclaimed, that our souls are mortal, is falser than falsehood itself.

Nor does he think the Pythagoreans and Stoics any more tolerable, who taught that souls are indeed introduced into the body, but migrate from one into another (chap. 18). But those, he says, who supposed souls to be immortal laid bloody hands on themselves, as though they were about to migrate to heaven, such as Cleanthes, Chrysippus, Zeno, Empedocles and Cato, whom Democritus, although he was led by another opinion, and the Ambraciot, after reading Plato's book on the immortality of the soul, imitated. But what, pray, is a greater delirium, insanity and fury than that of these murderers?

Lactantius inveighs also against those, and above all against Cicero, who taught that life is evil and death good, or that the first good of man is not to be born, and the second to die quickly (chap. 19). And with no light arm does he strike this error, and he rightly concludes that death is good or bad according to the acts of the past life. Nor was Plato any wiser, who, having embraced the error of Pythagoras, who foolishly proclaimed the transmigration of souls and that he himself had been Euphorbus, used to give thanks to nature that he was a man, that he was male, that he was an Athenian, that he lived in the time of Socrates. For did not Alcibiades and Critias assiduously listen to Plato? Yet the former was an enemy of his fatherland, the latter a tyrant.

Lactantius does not, however, deny that Socrates was somewhat more sensible than the other philosophers, who asserted that the nature of things could be grasped by the intellect (chap. 20). For these were without doubt more wicked than those excessively curious men who, against the prohibition, entered the temple of Vesta, or of the Good Goddess, or of Ceres. Yet he contends that many of Socrates' doctrines are most deserving of censure, and above all that saying: What is above us is nothing to us. He is indeed to be praised if by this pronouncement he meant to overthrow the public religions of the heathens; but in this he was, like the Egyptians, superstitious, that he swore by a dog and a goose, and

before his death ordered that a cock which he had vowed to Aesculapius be sacrificed on his behalf.

As for Plato, what, I ask, is more repugnant to modesty, to conjugal fidelity, to human society and to justice than that doctrine of his by which he held that marriages ought to be held in common? For in this way he reduced human life to the likeness of beasts (ch. 21 and 22). Was he even sane, who, when he saw that the duties of those same beasts, whether males or females, are held in common, inferred from this that arms must be handled, and magistracy and command undertaken, by our women too? For why did he not by equal right assign to men both wool-work and the carrying of infants?

Was not Democritus also foolish among the lesser philosophers, who made his fields public pastures (ch. 23)? Was not he who threw into the sea his patrimony, after turning it into coin, more insane than that man? Surely each of them ought, like Tuditanus, to have scattered it among the people, or rather to have bestowed it on the needy. Is not Zeno also to be laughed at, who taught that sins are equal, and placed mercy among vices and diseases? What would you make of another philosopher, who asserted that snow is black? What of Xenophanes, who thought that the globe of the moon is eighteen times larger than the earth, and is inhabited by men other than those of this earth? What, finally, would you make of Seneca, who doubted whether certain peoples were inhabitants on the globe of the sun?

Lactantius also judges that those stray from the truth who confidently affirmed that there are antipodes and, as he puts it, dangling men (ch. 24). For these, he says, ought to have stirred greater wonder in us than the hanging gardens once celebrated by everyone with so much talk.

He then returns to philosophy, which Cicero declares shuns the multitude and is acquired only by the learned (ch. 25). That, therefore, says Lactantius, is not wisdom, which, being given to men without any distinction, can be grasped by all. The Stoics indeed, against Cicero's opinion, held that slaves and women should philosophize, Epicurus that the unlearned should, and Plato that a city should be composed of the wise. But none of them carried this through to its end. For grammar, rhetoric, geometry, music and astrology must first be learned. Yet it has not been granted either to women or to the unlearned to learn these sciences and arts. Therefore no woman except Themiste, no slave except Phaedo, no barbarian except Anacharsis cultivated philosophy. Plato and Diogenes, who devoted themselves to it, were not slaves, as some suppose, but slavery befell them.

On the other hand, all easily attain the heavenly doctrine handed down in the Christian religion; and by keeping the decrees of that doctrine, which alone is wisdom, men from being wicked and unjust become just and good (ch. 26). For by one washing, which is given freely, all malice is abolished, and, the old man having been put off, he is rendered new.

Lactantius indeed admits that there are many precepts of the philosophers; but they are, he says, of such small weight,

that no one obeys them on that account (ch. 27). There he plainly refutes the Stoics, who declared that a happy life is brought about by virtue alone, and Epicurus, who declared that the wise man is happy even under torture: both because not just any tortures, but only those which are endured for faith, for justice and for God, make a man happy; and also because God alone can give the reward due to virtue, namely immortality and eternal happiness. The philosophers, therefore, who seek this and do not hold the true religion, are wholly ignorant of the force of virtue and of its reward.

Moreover, through this ignorance of the true religion, of the one supreme God, and of the worship due to Him, these same philosophers fell into the greatest errors (ch. 28). Hence they invented the notion that nature is the mother of all things, or that fortune is a goddess. Hence Empedocles complains that the paths of our senses are narrow. Hence Anaxagoras dreamed that all things are surrounded by darkness, Democritus that truth is sunk in a well, the Academics that nothing can be known. But Lactantius overthrows all these false opinions, and above all that by which they prattled that the goddess Fortune rules over all things, and he plainly confutes Tully, its defender (ch. 29). But Christians, he says, know well that there is no fortune of this kind, but a wicked spirit, the enemy of justice, the plotter against all good men, who, in order that he might exercise man in virtue, was not at once thrust down by God to punishment. Finally, having made a recapitulation of the things he had said in this book, and having set out the argument of the preceding books and of the following book, he brings this one to an end.

Article IV.

Analysis of the fourth book.

Lactantius marvels at, and deplores, the blindness of men who, having abandoned the worship of the true God, began to venerate many other fictitious gods and their images (ch. 1). From this indeed came forth injustice, impiety, dissensions, frauds, crimes, gloom and darkness. Yet, when wisdom had been taken away, seven men disputed about natural things, who by antonomasia were called the wise. But the small number of these, who were condemned by others for arrogance and ignorance, exposed the foolishness of all the rest. Other philosophers after them sought wisdom in vain where it was not (ch. 2). For Pythagoras and Plato, for the sake of searching out it and the truth, went to the Egyptians, the Magi and the Persians, but by no means to the Jews, among whom alone it had remained. Lactantius, however, judges that they were turned away from there by divine providence, so that they should not know the truth which God had determined, as the last time drew near, to reveal through the great Leader. This indeed he undertakes to demonstrate in this book, after he has shown that wisdom cannot be separated from religion.

He therefore first makes plain what he had already demonstrated in the first book, that wisdom is not found in the worship of many gods, but in the true religion, in which one God only is worshipped, and which for that reason cannot be separated from wisdom (ch. 3). For the worship of many gods is contrary both to reason and to nature, since just as one man has one father and one master, so also there is one

God only. Moreover, just as a marriage cannot be true where one woman has many husbands, so neither is a religion true which worships many gods. Wisdom therefore commands that we love one God only, as a father, and religion that we fear Him, as God (ch. 4). Neither, then, can be separated from the other. Therefore the philosophers, like disowned sons or runaway slaves, will not receive the inheritance of the heavenly kingdom, because they did not know God, the true source of wisdom and of religion, its inseparable companion. Nor should you reply that it was recognized by Plato and Tully. For they did not render to the one and true God that worship which is owed to Him alone, the father of all, lord, ruler, and holder of the power of life and death.

But to us the true God has disclosed this wisdom and religion; and before our author discusses Him and His works, he judged that the age of our sacred prophets, who foretold many things about Him, should be briefly set out (ch. 5). For from this account all will easily understand, first, that they are older than the Greek writers; second, that the things they prophesied concerning Christ are true, since we have seen these things fulfilled just as they had foretold them.

These things being set out first, he relates that God, before He undertook the work of the world, begot a spirit, mighty with the Father's power, whom He called His Son and God (ch. 6). He proves that this generation was announced by all seers, whether profane or sacred, and in particular by the testimony of Trismegistus, the Sibyl and Solomon. And although the name of the Son of God, Who by His power and prudence founded the world, is known only to Himself and to His Father, He is nevertheless called Jesus by men (ch. 7). He gives various reasons why He is surnamed Christ, by no means as a proper name but as a designation of power and kingship, and not Chrestus, as certain ignorant people kept saying.

In addition to this, he clearly shows that not only the first and eternal generation of Christ, but also the second, by which He was made man, was announced by Jeremiah once and again (ch. 8). But because that twofold generation had spread no small darkness over the minds of most men, and of certain Christians as well, he explains the first thus: the Son of God was begotten by His Father alone, without the mingling of a woman. Yet although no man can know or recount in what way He was begotten, we learn from the sacred writings that He is the speech and reason of God. He is a spirit whom God the Father conceived and begot, God from God, not silently, as the angels, but as voiced from His own mouth, not in a womb but in His mind. Therefore He is rightly and deservedly called the speech and word of God, and He abides for ever. This our author tries to unfold more clearly by making a comparison with the creation of the angels and with the voice of men; and he establishes and confirms it by the words of the prophets David and Solomon and of John the evangelist. And because He is the voice and wisdom of God, the Greeks therefore called Him better λόγος than the Latins called Him verbum or sermo. Lactantius adds that this λόγος was not entirely unknown to Zeno and Trismegistus (ch. 9).

Moreover, by the supreme disposition of God it was necessary that He, as the end of the age drew near, should descend to earth, not in the power of an angel (these are the very words of our Author), or with heavenly might, but in the form of a man and in a mortal condition, so that He might teach men justice, and establish for God a temple, that is, the Church (ch. 10). And so that all may more easily recognize that wisdom is found in this Church, or religion, alone, he promises that he will demonstrate that those oracles have obtained their fulfilment by which the holy prophets foretold that the Son of God would be born as a man, would do wonders, would spread the worship of God through the whole earth, would be fastened to the gibbet, and would rise again on the third day.

He therefore traces the matter back from its first origin thus. Our ancestors, the chiefs of the Hebrews, having left their ancestral homes because of barrenness, migrated into Egypt. But since they were oppressed by an intolerable yoke of servitude, they were led out from there, under the leadership of Moses, after 430 years, and with him crossed through the waves of the Red Sea, wondrously divided. When thereafter they had wandered through the vastest wildernesses, being not at all moved by the miracles performed by the same Moses, they took up the profane rites of the Egyptians. For this reason they paid the heaviest penalties for so ungrateful a spirit and for such great crimes, and were put under the yoke of the Mosaic law. Afterwards, when they had settled in a certain part of Syria, this land was called Judaea, and they themselves Jews. There, placed under judges and then under kings, on account of their sins and the depraved religions they had taken up, they were harassed by wars and by various kinds of servitude, the last of which befell them at Babylon. From then on they had tetrarchs up to Herod and the fifteenth year of the emperor Tiberius, in which they put Christ to the punishment of the cross.

Accordingly, after the Jews had thus fallen away to the impious worship of the gods, and had spurned and killed the holy prophets sent to them by God, who exhorted them to a better life, then God, as Jeremiah, Ezra, Elijah, Malachi, David and Isaiah had foretold, sent His Son, the maker of things and His own counsellor, so that He might transfer holy religion to the gentiles (ch. 11). Yet that Son of God, in order to give these same Jews free power of following God, chose a virgin from their nation and introduced Himself into her womb, as had been foretold long before by Solomon, Isaiah, David and Daniel (ch. 12). With full right, therefore, our Author rebukes them for this, that they await another Messiah; for he plainly proves, by still other words of Daniel, David and Isaiah, that Christ is the true Messiah, born of this virgin and made true man. Furthermore, that He, sprung in His first generation from the eternal Father without the office of a mother, just as in His second from His mother without that of a father, is true God and man, not only His deeds have proved, but also the words of Isaiah, Jeremiah, David and Moses cited by Lactantius, and indeed even those of the Milesian Apollo, although the latter speaks rather obscurely of His divinity (ch. 13).

He next makes it plain that the same prophets showed beforehand in their oracles that it would come to pass that Christ, of David's

family, should be born. For this is what the words of Isaiah and Nathan signify, which the Jews perversely strove to twist round to Solomon. With no less clarity he teaches that the priesthood of the same Christ, in the Church founded by Him, was foretold in the divine oracles of David, of the author of the first book of Kings, and of Zechariah; which the Jews vainly tried to explain of Joshua, or of the priest Jesus, son of Josedech (ch. 14).

From there he passes on to the miracles of Christ foretold by the same sacred seers, after he has shown that the voice heard at His baptism had likewise been announced beforehand by them (ch. 15). For, washed in that bath, by innumerable miracles, which are called by Apollo "portent-working powers", He healed the paralysed, the lame, the blind, the dumb, the deaf, the lepers and those afflicted with every kind of disease, not by hand or by medicines but by His word alone, and He recalled many dead to life. Besides these things, He fed five thousand men in the desert with five loaves and two fishes, calmed storms, and walked upon the sea with dry feet. And Lactantius shows that these things had been announced beforehand, either in the prophecies of our prophets or in the songs of the Sibyls, whose authority the gentiles at that time wrongly strove to belittle.

But very many, far more unjust than these, objected that a man put to death by the punishment of an infamous death could not be worshipped by other men without madness (ch. 16). But, besides the fact that no one would have believed Christ to be God, or worthy of divine honour, if He had lived a most happy life in this world, that very kind of death, undergone with great and divine power, David and Solomon had certainly prophesied many ages before. The Jews, blinded by anger and envy, nailed Him to the cross for this reason, that they did not know there would be two comings of His into this world, of which the former, as David, Isaiah and the Sibyl had foretold, had to be not without disgrace and ignominy.

The Jews nevertheless insisted that Christ had been an impious man, since He abrogated the law of Moses, the prohibition of swine's flesh and circumcision (ch. 17). But in vain, says Lactantius. For, like Micah, the Sibyl and Moses himself, so too Isaiah, and likewise Moses and Jesus Nave [Joshua son of Nun], a type of Christ, had foretold that a new law was to be brought in, by which the old law and circumcision would be done away. And what of the fact that that Jewish circumcision prefigured the holy circumcision of heart and spirit announced by the prophets, just as the prohibition of swine's flesh showed that one must abstain from sins and foul deeds?

Moreover, Christ had foretold the betrayal of Judas and His own death, and, not before the appointed time, Pilate handed Him over, falsely accused, to the Jews (ch. 18). By them, as Isaiah, the Sibyls and David had foretold, He was beaten with scourges, disfigured with spittle, given gall and vinegar to drink, was dumb like a lamb, and, led to the sacrifice and hung on the wood of the cross, He willingly underwent a death crueller than that of Gavius, and one which no power of eloquence can sufficiently lament. Furthermore, that death of Christ, and the things which happened afterwards, by

Ezra, Isaiah, David, Jeremiah, Moses, Amos and the Sibyl, we read as handed down beforehand in writing (ch. 19).

No less clearly did our sacred prophets long before declare that Christ was to be recalled to life on the third day after His death. Of these our author cites David, Hosea and the Sibyl (ch. 20). Then he relates how Christ, come back to life, set out into Galilee, where He showed Himself to be seen not by the Jews, lest He should bring them to repentance, but by His disciples, and disclosed to them the secrets of sacred Scripture, which until then could be perceived by no one. This sacred Scripture, moreover, is called the Old Testament, in no way separate from the New. For the latter is the fulfilment of the former, and in both the testator is the same Christ, Who by His death made Christians, the Jews having been rejected, heirs of the eternal kingdom, as Jeremiah bears witness.

Finally, on the fortieth day after His death, He ascended into heaven, as Daniel had written beforehand (ch. 21). His disciples, dispersed afterwards through the whole world, performed great and almost innumerable miracles, and laid the foundations of the Church. Of these, Peter and Paul, while preaching at Rome, were put to death by Nero. There is extant, moreover, says Lactantius, that preaching of Peter which foretold the ruin of the Jewish nation that was to come in the reign of Vespasian.

Against this, however, the enemies of the Christian religion insisted that it could not be that anything should ever be taken away from an immortal nature, and that it was unworthy of God that He Who was to teach men should become man, subject to the infirmities of our flesh and to death (ch. 22). For would not Christ have taught men with greater and more effective authority if He had come as God?

By no means, says Lactantius. For a teacher and instructor ought not only to teach by word the precepts of conduct and of life handed down by him, but also to fulfil them by example (ch. 23). This indeed, since the founding of the world, Christ alone has carried out, inasmuch as He is God and man. For an earthly teacher cannot grasp the highest doctrine and virtue unless he is taught by others (ch. 24). But a heavenly master, unless he is man, cannot go before men by example and show beforehand what is to be done. Christ therefore had to be born of a virgin, and to be at once man and God, so that, appointed mediator, or, as the Greeks say, mesites, between God and men, He might found the Church, teach men, and lead them through to immortality (ch. 25).

As to why He willed to die fixed to a cross, Lactantius offers a twofold reason (ch. 26). First, because this kind of death of His had been foretold by the prophets. Secondly, just as the miracles performed by Christ, which our author recounts one by one, so too the drink of vinegar, the crown of thorns and the other torments which He endured signified something great. Finally, by so many and such great tortures, and by so cruel a death, He taught men both patience and contempt of death.

But, they said, why did He prefer to end His life by the punishment of the cross rather than by some other more honourable death? Lactantius replies: so that He might bring help to the weak and the lowly; so that He might offer an example to all; so that His body, intact,

and fit for rising again, might be kept; that His death might become known to all; that He might show that a people was to be gathered from the whole world under His wings, a people which was to take up the sign of the cross. He added that the lamb which was sacrificed by the Jews as they went out of Egypt was a figure of the death of Christ.

He then shows that the power of the sign of the cross is wonderful, since by it indeed, and by the name of Christ, demons are driven out, and when consulted they cannot give answers (ch. 27). Nor is it to be said that this is done by them not from fear but from hatred. For in that case they ought rather to punish the Christians, fortified by this sign of the cross, than to flee them. Moreover, if the demons, who were in truth the gods of the gentiles, cannot harm Christians who bear before them the sign of the cross, and are vanquished by them, then the Christian religion is assuredly true and victorious. And that these demons are the same as the gods of the heathen Lactantius proves by various arguments, and above all by this, that when summoned by the arts of necromancy they did indeed give answers about themselves and about God, but from nowhere else than from the underworld, where Christ was for two days only.

Trismegistus, moreover, said a good deal about Him, and about God His Father, Whom we are altogether bound to acknowledge and to serve (ch. 28). And it is from this that religion, that is, from the bond of piety by which we are bound fast, and not from relegere [to go over again], as Cicero supposed, took its name. And just as religion is the worship of the true God, so superstition, which takes its name from the word superstes, is the impious worship of false gods.

After this Lactantius teaches that Christ, the Son of God, is one God and of the same substance with His supreme Father (ch. 29). For He proceeds from Him as a stream from a spring and a ray from the sun, and cannot be separated from Him. This, having explained it by certain examples, he confirms by a twofold testimony of Isaiah. From which he concludes that the supreme Father, God, is to be worshipped together with the Son.

This true doctrine, however, was not only assailed by the gentiles and the Jews, the most bitter enemies of the Christian religion; but heretics too, as had been foretold, strove to undermine it (ch. 30). For some of those who by their slippery faith and their errors caused a rupture of the Church's unity were eager to increase their wealth and for honour, and aspired to the highest priesthood; or they believed that it was either unfitting or in no way possible that God should be clothed in human flesh; or else they were deceived by the prophecy of false prophets. Lactantius calls the individual authors of the heresies by their names, so that we may beware of them the more carefully, and makes plain which is the true Catholic Church. Finally he promises that he will argue against all heretics in a separate work, and sets before us the subject of this and the following book.

Article V.

Analysis of the fifth book.

In the prologue of this book Lactantius declares that he has no doubt that men foolishly religious, scarcely

having perhaps read the beginning of his [work] and of the others', at once throw them aside and execrate them (ch. 1). Yet by the right of humanity he asks of them that they read them before they condemn them. But he admits that he will not obtain this from those who, without hearing the case, were slaughtering Christians after tormenting them with every kind of punishment. Yet he hopes that he will not lose his labour altogether. For he will strengthen wavering Christians, or at least he will rejoice that he dwells in the light of truth. Nor does he foresee that it must be wholly despaired of that the sweetness and charm of his discourse may draw sound minds to hear him. For the heathen did not believe our sacred writers because of their rough and unpolished manner of speaking. Since, therefore, wisdom and the truth of the Christian religion need fit heralds, and those who have so far applied themselves to defending it, such as Minucius Felix, Tertullian and Cyprian, have not been sufficient for its defence, many have for that reason dared to write against a truth unknown to them.

He mentions two of these, both very well known to him and contemporary with him. The first of them professed the calling of a philosopher but undid his disputations by his most corrupt morals (ch. 2). In the three books which he vomited forth against the Christian religion, he showed himself empty, inept and ridiculous, as much in championing the worship of the gods as in attacking our religion. The other, who was one of the judges and among the chief instigators of the persecution, composed two little books, inscribed with the Greek name Philaletheis. In them he strove to demonstrate that sacred Scripture contradicts itself; that Paul and Peter and the other disciples of Christ were fishermen, rough, unlearned, and sowers of deceits; that Christ, put to flight by the Jews, gathered a band of nine hundred men and committed thefts and robberies; that miracles equal to or greater than those done by Him were done by Apollonius; and finally that this Apollonius, who did not arrogate divinity to himself, was more modest than Christ (ch. 3). When all these have been refuted, as invincibly as briefly, and overturned from their foundations, our author tells us that he was stirred by the impious commentaries which these sacrilegious writers had published, and so set his hand to composing these books. In them he will defend and demonstrate the truth of the Christian religion more fully and more abundantly than Tertullian in the Apologeticus and Cyprian in his address to Demetrianus (ch. 4). He does not doubt that, if learned men enter upon the way shown beforehand by his exhortation and example, the depraved religions will soon vanish and the Christian religion alone will remain.

With this preface finished, he comes to the proposed disputation on justice (ch. 5). This justice, he says, is the highest virtue or the fount of virtue, which poets and philosophers sought in vain and imagined had migrated from the earth into heaven. For while Saturn reigned, the worship of the true God, the highest peace and temperance reigned everywhere. But after Jupiter snatched the kingdom from that same Saturn, his father, he led men away from God by the terror of his most insolent power, so that they would adore him (ch. 6). Then indeed the worship of the true God was taken away, and ignorance,

blindness, error, vice, avarice, idolatry, and all evils afterwards so flooded in that no further trace of justice remained. But God, most indulgent, as the last time drew near, sent His messenger, who at length brought back to us this justice, which is itself the pious and religious worship of the one God (ch. 7).

Why then, you will say, did He not give it to all alike? Although Lactantius had already satisfied this question, he nevertheless answers again that God did not wholly exclude evils, and permitted them, so that virtue might have its adversary, without which it cannot exist, and so that the faith and constancy of Christians might be exercised. Those therefore are mistaken who thought that justice was absent from the world. For it was before their eyes, and can easily be taken up by all, if they are willing to worship the true God and to fulfil His precepts. For if these were duly observed, there would be no wars at all, no dissensions, plots, frauds, robberies, no debaucheries, adulteries and other crimes; there would be no intercourse apart from the desire of begetting, and throughout the whole circle of the earth gentleness, piety, peace, innocence, equity, temperance and good faith would flourish. For the impious worship of the gods brought in all evils with it (ch. 8).

No justice, therefore, could exist among the worshippers of false gods, since by harassing with every kind of horrible torture, and by killing, innocent Christians, who were, as they themselves admitted, imitators of the just, they surpassed beasts in ferocity (ch. 9). Now such great cruelty and such great hatred had been produced by the truth, and by the piety and holiness of the Christians, by which the crimes of wicked men are wont to be exposed and condemned. For the Christians were as pious as the gentiles were impious, as our author proves by a long enumeration of the wicked deeds and crimes in which these wallowed daily, and by the testimony of Seneca and Lucilius. What of the fact that by the example of Aeneas he shows that they were most impious even at the time when they wished to seem pious to all (ch. 10)?

Accordingly, as their impiety deserved, they were often harassed by heavier evils, which they wrongly attributed to fortune. For since the true God was offended, these men and others, who among them seemed religious and good by nature, paid the penalty most deservedly. For they worshipped Jupiter, and Venus, and other gods infamous for detestable crimes. And they did not blush to represent all these things in the theatres, so that their worshippers might imitate them with impunity.

And so such was their impiety and cruelty that they stirred up against the Christians a most monstrous persecution, utterly horrible to tell, which Lactantius vividly depicts (ch. 11). Moreover, most wicked men framed sacrilegious laws, collected by Domitius, so that all might know with what penalties the Christians ought to be punished. But the heathen ought to have imitated these [Christians], if they had been wise, or, if foolish, to have spurned and mocked them, or to have left them their folly (ch. 12). For who, unless most foolish,

should envy a fool? But when these same heathen rage so cruelly against the Christians, they admit that they are not fools; rather they fear that, as the justice of the Christians grows stronger day by day, they themselves will be deserted together with their gods. And indeed the number of the Christians, diminished neither by tortures nor by death, kept growing (ch. 13). And who, considering the patience, unconquered everywhere among the nations, not only of men but also of women and children under the most monstrous and horrible punishments, and their number ever increasing, did not at once understand both that they were by no means fools and that their religion was true?

Nor does Lactantius allow it to be thrown up against him that some yielded to the punishments. For indeed, when the opportunity was given them and peace to the Churches, they returned at once to the Christian profession, and once penance for their sin had been done their faith became firmer. Our martyrs, moreover, though they could most easily have avoided the death inflicted on them by the most monstrous tortures, met it of their own accord far more gloriously than Mucius and Regulus. In these martyrs, therefore, there was the true virtue and wisdom that is praised by Horace and Seneca, just as in the gentiles, who worshipped fictitious gods, there was, as the Sibyls sing, sheer impiety and folly.

As to why the Christians, although wise, were called fools by the heathen, Lactantius gives this reason: that justice carries before it a certain appearance of folly (ch. 14). But before he shows this from the double speech, for justice and against justice, of Carneades the Academic, much praised by Cicero and Lucilius, he certainly makes it plain to us that there are two parts of justice, piety and equity. Piety is the knowledge and worship of God. Equity, or equability, makes all men equal and alike. But the heathen neither know nor venerate the true God. Among them, too, there were poor and rich, and wholly different conditions of men, just as there were also different grades of honours and dignities. Among them, therefore, there was no piety and no equity, and consequently no justice. All Christians, however, worship the true God, and although different in the condition of their bodies, they were nevertheless equal and alike in spirit, by sincere lowliness of mind, or humility, by contempt for human things, and by the sharing of wealth and advantages (ch. 15). Then next he sets out this summary of the speech delivered by Carneades against justice, which the philosophers could neither find nor defend (ch. 16). In it Carneades divided justice into civil and natural. He tried to overthrow both on the ground that civil justice is indeed wisdom but is not justice, while natural justice is justice but not wisdom. For very many things, he said, which seemed to be done wisely were plainly unjust, as is clear from the example of the man who either conceals the faults of a house for sale, or, to save his own life, snatches a plank from another man shipwrecked with him, or a horse from another man wounded by the enemy with him in a common battle. But this whole speech of Carneades, to which the more learned heathen could not reply, by our author with firm reasons, and by giving the true

definition of wisdom and folly, is refuted, and utterly destroyed (ch. 17).

In another speech for justice Carneades tries to prove that it is cultivated and acquired by men for this reason, because honour is the reward due to virtue (ch. 18). But Lactantius refutes this speech too, because that Academic contradicted himself absurdly and did not know for certain what the reward of virtue is. For it can be given only by the true God, Who willed that virtue should be hidden under the appearance of folly. No less clearly does our author show that the Christians were counted by the senseless heathen among the number of fools for this reason, that they preferred to be tortured and killed rather than burn incense with three fingers to false gods.

He proves, moreover, that those are guilty of an inexpiable crime who, impiously serving gods of this kind, or rather demons, whose origin and name they did not know, do not allow the true God to be worshipped by others (ch. 19). For before they used force against the Christians, they certainly ought to have proved who and of what kind their gods are, with what worship they are to be honoured, and whether the world is ruled by their providence. For religion, he says, cannot be compelled: it must be defended and urged not by force and arms, not by crime and cruelty, not by tortures and slaughter, but by the invincible weight of reasons, by patience and a voluntary death. And it is voluntary for this reason, because God neither loves anyone except one who loves Him, nor hears anyone except one who prays from the heart. Yet the religion of the heathen lies wholly in external rites, with which [they worship] false gods, whereas that of the Christians lies wholly in the mind, with which they adore and pray to the true God.

He, then, who does not worship the gods does them no injury, or if he does any, it ought to have been repelled by the gods themselves, not by others (ch. 20). Nor was it lawful for anyone to compel the Christians to offer sacrifices to them. For what is extorted from an unwilling man is an execration, not a sacrifice: nor could it be of profit either to the gods who wished it or to the Christians who did not.

But the heathen objected that those who overthrow religion ought to be punished. But the Christians, Lactantius replies, were destroying it less than the Egyptians, who venerated beasts and things shameful to mention; than the other heathen, who adored their gods in the temples and mocked them in the theatres; than the philosophers, who taught either that there are no gods or that all things happen of their own accord or by chance; than others, finally, who put it about that the gods have no care for earthly affairs, are never moved by anger or favour, and are not to be feared by any man. But it was the Gentiles who were truly insane, and, blinded by a frenzy inspired by the demons, they put to death with every kind of most atrocious punishment the Christians who refused to sacrifice to fictitious gods (ch. 21).

But these men asked those same Christians why their God allows His worshippers not only to be tortured but to be poor, wretched and without honour (ch. 22). But Lactantius easily answers this question. For, having set out the definition of patience, which no one can deny is the greatest virtue, he shows most evidently that these things are permitted by God; because it is not to

the fragile things of the body, but to the everlasting goods of the soul that one must look. Next, God permits Christians to be tried by these adversities, so that they may not be corrupted by prosperity, so that He may prove their faith and devotion, so that their number may be increased, and that very many, having at last abandoned the worship of the gods, may follow their example. Yet the tyrants, who raged against them with such great inhumanity, will not bear this unpunished, but will be punished at the last judgement. Rightly therefore he concludes from this that effort must be given by all men to justice, patience and the other virtues, so that, when the course of this life is finished, they may receive an eternal reward.

Article VI.

Analysis of the sixth book.

In this book Lactantius teaches by what rite, or by what sacrifice, God ought to be worshipped, and what the true worship of God is, in which the sum of things consists (ch. 1). This, he says, is nothing other than innocence, which alone God desires from man. He therefore shows that the heathen went entirely astray, who held that their gods were to be worshipped with victims, sacrifices, libations and other external rites, as though they needed them (ch. 2). For the true worship of God is that by which the mind of the worshipper presents itself to Him as a spotless victim. How this is to be accomplished, our author says he will next make plain, so that men may be instructed in justice, than which, on Cicero's testimony, nothing is better. First he teaches that there are two ways of human life, of which one is the way of virtue and leads to heaven, the other the way of the vices, and it thrusts down to the lower regions (ch. 3). He then explains to us clearly how unknown the outcomes of each way were to the philosophers and poets, and how far they differ from the Christians in explaining each of them. Next he shows that the way of the vices is as level, easy and pleasant as the road of the virtues is difficult, thorny and rough; but that the end of the former is everlasting punishment, and of the latter blessed immortality (ch. 4). For this eternal happiness is granted only for the greatest labours steadfastly endured in this life. For this reason God willed that men should have a common adversary, who lies in wait for them with every deceit and art, and tries to entice them to sin and to call them away from the right path of the virtues.

Before he comes to setting out the individual virtues, he rejects and refutes the descriptions of virtue given by the poet Lucilius, from which Cicero had drawn the duties of living explained in his books (chs. 5 and 6). He then makes it plain that virtue does not consist precisely, as they supposed, in the knowledge of good and evil, or in increasing one's estate, or in seeking wealth, or in paying riches their due value; or in the defence of good men or bad, or in procuring the advantages of one's country. He further concludes that Lucilius and others were deceived in handing down definitions of virtue for this reason: that since no one, unless taught by God, can know what true virtue is, these men pursued only its shadow and images (ch. 7). To this is added that, deluded by a false appearance of virtue and wisdom, they did not notice the various paths of the vices and of hell, by which the devil, according to each one's own

inclination of mind, leads and drags men to ruin. Nor was it any better known to them that there is one single path of virtue and truth, namely the worship of the true God, by which alone we can make our way into the harbour of salvation.

Then Lactantius teaches that the law of God must be taken up, a law wonderfully praised by Cicero, but whose precepts he never recognized (ch. 8). The first and chief of these is to know God, to worship Him, and to obey Him alone. Therefore ignorance of Him is the greatest evil. Civil law, on the other hand, and the other particular laws of nations were devised by expediency (ch. 9). Whoever, then, follows these while ignorant of the divine law cannot become just. And those whose virtues, whatever they may be, as in the case of Cimon, appear to have been acquired by natural talent and without knowledge of the true God, their good works are superfluous and empty, and like a human body lacking a head. Thus whoever has not acknowledged God lacks true piety, and all his actions which appear good are found on the deadly way of darkness. But he who acknowledges God and lives unjustly is like some faulty and feeble animal, yet he can be healed. For a man to be perfectly healthy and live justly, the knowledge of God is as plainly necessary to him as the head to the body, and the virtues as the limbs to the same body. The first duty of justice, therefore, in which the salvation of man and the sum of things is involved, is to acknowledge the true God, to attend Him with due worship, always to obey Him, to serve Him most devotedly, and to devote all one's effort to deserving well of Him.

And just as the first duty of justice is to be joined with God, and this is called religion, so the second is to be associated with man, and that is called mercy or humanity (ch. 20). This virtue, which is proper to the just, holds together the fellowship of common life. For God created men unarmed and furnished them with wisdom for this reason: that they might love one another and protect one another by mutual services. Therefore enmities must be removed, as God commands, and good must always be done to others. Lactantius therefore rightly rebukes Plautus and Cicero, who said that help should be refused to the needy, and refutes other haters of mercy, who were unwilling that a man should succour another even when he was about to perish (ch. 11). Cicero, however, afterwards driven as it were by repentance, acknowledged that something from one's household goods should be bestowed on suitable men in need. But Lactantius refutes him, because by the name of suitable he understands men who are able to return the favour. He does indeed admit that it is better to be generous to one's fellow tribesmen, but he contends that the true duty of mercy and of liberality is to feed the needy and the useless, and to help others in necessity, yet without any hope either of courting human glory or of receiving any interest. For those who do good to another ought to expect their reward from God alone.

Next our author argues against the same Cicero concerning hospitality, the redemption of captives, the defence of orphans, widows and others destitute of help, the care of the sick, and of strangers

and of the poor, the burial: which last duty of mercy, indeed, had been neglected by the heathen (ch. 12).

Then by various arguments he refutes the heathen, who objected that by these duties of piety and mercy a single man's patrimony would be exhausted in one day. For by various arguments he proves that poverty of this kind is not to be feared, and that at least those things which are superfluous are to be given away.

He teaches, moreover, that great is the reward of mercy, on account of which God promises man, provided that there is the resolve not to sin henceforth, that He will remit all his sins (ch. 13). Nor is it lawful for anyone to plead a mind conscious of no sin. For besides the fact that such a man ought on that account to expend greater effort on justice, there is surely no one altogether empty and pure of every stain of any sin whatever. Further, riches are to be placed in justice alone, and whoever lacks it is poor. And indeed, if the heathen consume their wealth in making and adorning images of the gods, how much more just is it to bestow it liberally on needy men, who are the living and breathing images of God.

After this Lactantius attacks and assails the Stoics, who held the opinion that mercy and all the other affections of the soul must be removed from man (chs. 13 and 14). He shows clearly, moreover, that these affections have been implanted by nature one by one in the dumb animals, each in each, and all together in man, and that this opinion of the Stoics falls back into the error of the Peripatetics, who had dreamed that vices, since, as they used to say, they cannot be removed, must be tempered by a mean (chs. 15 and 16). For he contends that, not without reason, even moderate vices are to be shunned. Besides this, vice and virtue can exist in the greatest affections just as in the least. Furthermore, it is neither a disease nor a vice to be moved by anger, desire and longing, but to be wrathful, lustful and covetous. (ch. 17.) Indeed fear is sometimes the highest fortitude. For does not the fear of God make men unconquered in the most horrible and cruel tortures and in death itself. Fear, therefore, is not to be rooted out, as the Stoics thought, nor moderated, as the Peripatetics thought, but directed into the true way. Likewise desire is not a vice, if we desire not earthly but heavenly things. He therefore refutes the Stoics once more, who babbled that these things come about not by desire but by will, and that men can be brought to an immovable torpor of mind, or ἀπάθεια. For the force and reason of the soul lie in motion, and just as thought is the agitation of the mind, and life is active, so death is at rest. But their error had arisen from this, that they did not know the prescribed limits of virtue. For virtue is not to despise death in the manner of certain philosophers, but to endure it steadfastly when some wish to drive us to abandon God or to betray the true faith. And Lactantius asserts and confirms this by the testimony of Cicero and Seneca.

From there he returns to explaining other precepts of God, by which it is forbidden that anyone should seek the frail glory of a good work, or lie, or take interest on money lent, or any gift from a poor man, or to one who curses

respond except by blessing; or by his own fault make another man his enemy, or do injury to anyone, or bear impatiently an injury inflicted (ch. 18). There, moreover, Cicero is rightly rebuked, who rules that punishment may with good right be demanded back from him who has provoked us. For he who seeks punishment from the one who harms him is already defeated. Further, God forbids that the sun should set upon our anger. And not undeservedly does Cicero praise Caesar above all for this, that he was accustomed to forget nothing except injuries.

There our author falls once more upon the Peripatetics, and condemns them of ignorance on this account, that they taught that anger is the kindling of virtue, by which one fights more bravely against enemies (ch. 19). For in truth anger, desire and lust, from which the three Furies were invented by the poets, drive a man headlong into every sin, unless the limits set for them by God are rightly kept. But just as the gentiles have overstepped them, so he who keeps himself within them is patient, brave and just.

From there he passes to the pleasures of the five bodily senses, which must be restrained, or, like the affections of the mind, recalled to right reason (ch. 20). In beasts, he holds, there is only one, which pertains to generation; but in man they are without number, yet to be held in check by virtue. One of them is that of the eyes, which some philosophers would with good right proscribe, were it not that they approved public spectacles and took delight in them. He teaches that the circus games, and by name the gladiatorial spectacles, are forbidden by the general law of God, by which all without exception are prohibited from committing any homicide whatever, or watching it, or exposing newborn children. With no less severity he condemns comedies, tragedies, the hunts dedicated to Saturn, the stage games to Liber, the aforesaid circus games consecrated to Neptune, and the other celebrations of games of that kind.

Nor less vicious, he says, is the pleasure of the ears, which is taken from the sweetness of voice, speech and song, above all on the stage and in the theatre (ch. 21). It was indeed for this reason that God willed the divine Scriptures to be written in plain speech. But if songs and poems are a pleasure to any man, to him, says Lactantius, it ought to be delightful to sing and to hear the praises of God.

The delights of taste and smell must likewise be guarded against (ch. 22). For it is shameful for a good and wise man if he is a slave to his belly and gullet, or goes about crowned with flowers. Moreover, the allurements of pleasures supply the devil with weapons, with which he tickles souls and tries to storm their virtue.

Lactantius admits indeed that the pleasure of touch is the sense of the whole body, but he discusses lust alone (ch. 23). And although this is far greater and more ardent in men than in the other living creatures, yet the devil sharpens and inflames it in various ways, and above all by brothels set up openly and with impunity. Against its assaults, therefore, we must be armed with the greatest virtue. But if anyone cannot rein in its passions, let him keep it within the rule of the lawful marriage-bed. For to no man several women, nor to any woman

several husbands, is it in any way at all permitted to have at the same time. By both spouses, moreover, the faith of marriage must be kept, and it is wrong for anyone to use its lawful pleasure except for the sake of begetting offspring. Therefore not only must all adultery be avoided, but also wicked thought, so that no one, on seeing another man's wife, desires her in his mind. Nor should it be objected that it is difficult to put reins on pleasure. For very many, says our author, have kept a blessed and uncorrupted integrity of the body. But this kind of continence, which God does not command but only counsels, is as it were the consummation of virtue, by which man becomes like God Himself.

Further, if anyone has sinned through lust, through desire, or in any other way, pardon for the sin is not to be despaired of, which God grants to one who repents sincerely and truly. Nor indeed is there any reason why anyone should flatter himself about a hidden sin. For nothing, as Lactantius confirms there with various words of Seneca and Cicero, is hidden from God. The conscience, therefore, must be cleansed of every stain of sin, and laid open to Him alone Who can heal it (chs. 24 and 25).

But whoever, endowed with every virtue, complies with and obeys the commands of God, he is His true worshipper, and truly sacrifices to Him. For God does not demand sacred boughs, entrails, turf, ivory, or any work of weaving and painting, not slaughterings and the blood of cattle, not magnificent temples, but a pure mind, a chaste and innocent life, praises, hymns and thanksgivings, which, as Trismegistus records, are the true gifts and sacrifices that God requires of man, born, as Tully says, for justice. In this justice and virtue, moreover, consist the true worship of God and true religion. For the rest, the mercy of God must be implored by all, pardon of sins must be sought, and God Himself must be consecrated in our heart.

Article VII.

Analysis of the seventh book.

At the beginning of this book Lactantius openly declares that he is to undertake a discussion of the divine reward of everlasting happiness, which he trusts he will demonstrate by various testimonies of the sacred Scriptures and by probable arguments (ch. 1). But first he thought it must be proved for what reason the world was made, and the opinion refuted of Plato, who declared that it would last for ever, and of Aristotle, who declared that it always had been and always would be. He judges indeed that the opinion of Epicurus is truer, who, following Democritus, asserts that the world both had a beginning and will perish. But neither he, he says, nor other philosophers, having caught a faint scent of the truth, were able to give a reason why the world will be dissolved. Indeed, these men, ensnared by vices and desires, never understood those things to be true which are handed down by Christians.

Of so many and so great errors, however, the chief origin and source was without doubt that they wished to grasp by the strength of their own intellect those things which cannot be understood by man unless he has been taught by God (ch. 2). The Stoics, moreover, he rebukes by name, who at one time nature

divided into two parts, the efficient and the effected, of which the one cannot exist without the other; at another they asserted that God is the mind of the world, and the world the body of God (ch. 3). Plato indeed had gone before them, who taught that the world was made by God and is governed by His providence; but he does not explain why and for whose sake it was made. The Stoics, however, proclaimed that it was founded for the sake of men. But Epicurus rejected this opinion, and asserted that it arose of its own accord and by a chance concourse of atoms. Yet he admitted that he did not know for what cause it was made. Our author therefore attacks and destroys all those errors (ch. 4). And by various reasons he demonstrates that the world was created by God, not indeed for its own sake, nor for the sake of Him Who created it and can exist without it, but for the sake of living creatures, and living creatures for the sake of man. Why then, said the philosophers, and Cicero with them, was so great a multitude of pestilent beasts and water-snakes created? Lactantius replies that good things and evil things have been set before man, endowed as he is with wisdom, so that he might avoid the latter and make use of the former. After he has strengthened this reply with the testimony of Asclepiades, he teaches that man was certainly created for the sake of God Himself, so that he might understand His works, admire them, proclaim them, and worship and revere Him as his true father (ch. 5). And from this he easily answers Epicurus, who wrongly asks what advantage comes to God from the creation of man.

But that impious philosopher pressed the point that, if these things are true, man ought not to have been created mortal and liable to so many diseases. But before Lactantius replies to so frivolous an argument, already overturned in the earlier books, he again briefly sets out the creation of the world, and says that man was established mortal after all the other creatures, so that an infinite force, or multitude, of souls might be begotten, and that man himself, by the endurance of toils and evils, might attain the supreme good of immortality, which is to be attributed not to nature but to virtue. He is therefore first born mortal, and afterwards becomes immortal, and will be endowed with immortal happiness, provided that, having spurned earthly goods, he has kept justice, which is contained in the worship of the true God and received in the heavenly washing, whole, sound and intact by holy works.

They err, therefore, who worship many gods, and prattle that the world was made for no reason but for the sake of our pleasure, that it is administered by no providence of God, and that the soul of man will perish with the body (ch. 6).

But although the pagan philosophers did not understand the sum of this heavenly doctrine, yet there was no sect of them which did not see something of the truth; but what it saw, its adherents are convicted of having corrupted through their own fault and their zeal for contradicting (ch. 7). Plato indeed rightly said that the world was made by God, others very wrongly that it was made of its own accord or from atoms. The Stoics rightly proclaimed that it was created for the sake of man; Democritus very wrongly thought that men were dug out of the earth like little worms, for no reason and with no author. Aristotle rightly asserted that man was born for virtue, Aristarchus very wrongly that he was born for the pursuit of pleasure. Zeno rightly taught

that there are those below, Epicurus very wrongly rejected it as a fiction of the poets.

Next Lactantius proceeds to prove the immortality of the human soul. Plato demonstrates it from this, that the soul perceives through itself and is always in motion (ch. 8). But lest he should grant the same immortality to dumb animals, to this perpetual motion, which man has of himself, he very rightly added wisdom. Of the same opinion were both Pythagoras and Pherecydes, an opinion which Dicaearchus, Democritus, Epicurus, and even Cicero tried in vain to make doubtful and uncertain.

Nor is it to be objected that the soul is no longer seen after the death of the body. For voice, wind, smell, and God Himself, although they do not fall under our eyes, are nevertheless discerned by the sharpness of our mind and from their effects. Therefore no one ought to have pressed the point that it is hard to understand how the soul can retain sensation without bodily organs. For it is no easier to understand how God lives and is strong without a body. And what of the fact that the heathen were certainly compelled to believe that their gods existed, although they declared them to be without a body (ch. 9)?

Lactantius also demonstrates the immortality of the soul by other arguments. And first, because there is no animal other than man which has knowledge of God, worship and religion. Second, because man alone of the animals makes use of fire, which is a heavenly element and the element of light and life. Third, because virtue, he says, given to man alone, is a great proof that souls are immortal. For by that virtue man despises the sweet and pleasant pleasures of this life, indeed fights against them even to death. But to this fight and victory some reward is owed, and will be given by God, which can be nothing other than a blessed immortality after this life.

Fourth, vices, and the pleasure which is derived from them, come to an end, but virtue must be perpetual (ch. 10). Therefore its reward, and the human mind, which alone among living things desires it, must, as Cicero says, be immortal. Fifth, those who follow virtue and justice, since in this bodily life they are for the most part wretched, must in the other life, like God Himself, Who bestows eternal goods, be blessed for ever. Sixth, just as the works of the body are perishable and mortal, so those of the mind must be eternal, just as everyone sees that the monuments of genius and of things nobly done are everlasting (ch. 11). Seventh, the body desires nothing at all but something temporal, whereas the soul desires many things that are neither bodily nor fragile, but eternal. But this desire has not been implanted in it in vain. Therefore it must be eternal. Finally, the body is subject to sight and touch, but the soul can be neither touched nor seen. Therefore, as the former is mortal, so the latter is immortal.

After this Lactantius weakens and entirely refutes the opposing arguments of Lucretius (ch. 12). For he objected: The soul is born with the body; therefore it must perish with it. Lactantius indeed grants that the body is born, inasmuch as it is solid, and formed by an earthly concretion,

but he maintains that the soul, which is most fine and falls under no sense of the body, is derived from a heavenly subtlety, as Lucretius himself sang elsewhere, that is, is created by God. It is false, moreover, that the body perishes as soon as the soul departs. For it remains intact for many days afterwards, and, when embalmed with certain spices, it lasts a very long time indeed.

Lucretius pressed on: Sense grows in children, is strong in young men, and diminishes in old men. Therefore sense, that is, the soul, is mortal. Lactantius replies that the mind, by which we live, is one thing, and the soul, by which we think, is another. But the mind, he says, that is, the intelligence in man, increases and diminishes according to age. The soul, however, remains always in the same state. Moreover, if memory and knowledge receive any increase or loss, or if they fail altogether, the fault is not of the soul but of the body.

The same Epicurean urged that the soul is subject to pain and grief, and therefore to frailty and death. On the contrary, says our author, the soul repels sorrow by wisdom and virtue, which is the maker of immortality.

With the same ease he refutes the point added by Lucretius, that the soul is affected by disease and forgetfulness together with its body. For virtue, he says, must be employed precisely so that the mind, and not the soul, may not be broken by any pain of the body and suffer forgetfulness of itself.

Nor did Lucretius gain a whit by objecting again that the soul is a part of the body, which, when separated from it, has no more sensation than an eye torn from the body. For Lactantius denies, and flatly denies, that the soul is a part of the body; just as all rightly deny that what is contained in a vessel or a house is a part of it.

But he judges weaker and more futile than all the rest the objection which that Epicurean poet raises again, that the soul departs gradually from the dying parts of the body. For in those who are killed in a single moment the soul bursts forth from the body at once. And if in others, who labour under a long illness, it seems to free itself gradually from their growing-cold limbs, that happens through the failure not of the soul but of the body.

Lactantius further laughs at Lucretius, who finally presses the ridiculous fiction of a soul complaining that it is being dissolved. For who has ever heard such a complaint from the soul of anyone, even of a dying Epicurean? And what complaint can a dead man make? Finally, very many of the dying indicate by voice or gesture that they are going out and setting forth rather than dying.

Our author could indeed have set against the Epicureans the opinion of the Pythagoreans on the transmigration of the soul. But he passes it over, as being absurd and worthy neither of mention nor of refutation. The true doctrine of the immortality of the soul, however, he establishes and confirms not only by the testimonies of Trismegistus, of Apollo of Miletus and of the Sibyls, but also because no one would dare to deny it in the presence of a certain magician who knew how to call up souls by his incantations. And he judges that no one is more senseless and foolish than Aristoxenus,

who, while he said that there is no soul, did not understand that he was living and that he had the mind with which he had thought this (ch. 13).

But in order to explain when and how, after the death of the body, impious men are to be punished with eternal punishment and the just are to be rewarded with a blessed and immortal reward, Lactantius asserts without hesitation that the time of judgement is approaching, and that the world, which certain philosophers had dreamed had existed for many thousands of ages, is to be consumed once six thousand years from its beginning have been completed: but he strives to establish this opinion by reasons drawn only from a certain fittingness (ch. 14).

Many signs, however, he says, will precede this final destruction of the world (ch. 15). For everywhere calamities of every kind, miseries, impiety and a flood of all vices will overwhelm the earth. Egypt will be covered with blood as with a river. The Roman empire, whose various ages Seneca described, will be overthrown, as was foretold by the Prophets, and by the Sibyl and Hystaspes (ch. 16). For after civil wars ten kings will divide it among themselves, until from the furthest regions of the north there arises a most powerful king, who will destroy three of these ten kings and will be established as ruler of all. And what evils and portents, and how great, will come to pass while he reigns, our author recounts in detail.

He adds that a great prophet is to be sent by God, who, having performed many miracles, will convert many to the worship of God (ch. 17). But this prophet will be killed by another king, sprung from Syria, and, left without burial, after the third day he will come back to life and be caught up into heaven. But that impious king and prophet of lies will set himself up and call himself god, and, so that he may be worshipped, he will work signs and portents. He will try to destroy the temple of God, he will order his followers to be marked like cattle, he will lay waste the circle of the earth with most savage cruelty, and he will besiege the mountain to which the worshippers of the true God will flee. But God, moved by their prayers, will send from heaven a great king, who will set them free and will destroy all the impious. All these things, indeed, he judges to have been foretold by the testimony of Hystaspes and by the words, which he has cited, both of Hermes and of the Sibyls (ch. 18).

Furthermore, that great king, after the sword has fallen, will descend from heaven by night, on the very vigil of the Pasch, with the Angels accompanying Him, who will deliver into the hands of the just the impious who are besieging the mountain (ch. 19). When these have been destroyed and the mountain cut down, the impious Antichrist alone will flee, who, vanquished afterwards in a fourth battle, will pay the penalty for his crimes together with the princes and tyrants. At last, wickedness having been extinguished, the world will be at rest, and the images of the gods and all idolatry will be utterly extinguished.

Afterwards the dead will rise again, and the worshippers of the true God will be judged by the great King, the Son of God, and each according to his deserts will receive either reward or punishment (ch. 20). There, moreover, Lactantius explains how and by what fire the souls of wicked men, although immortal and spiritual,

will truly be tormented. Moreover, he adds that even the just are to be tested by fire (ch. 21).

Nor are these things, he says, mere fictions of the poets, as some think, [and] of the other more ancient writers. For these, not sufficiently understanding the true doctrine of the resurrection of men, proclaimed in the constant preaching of our prophets, either altered it or corrupted it. He confirms this, moreover, by the testimony of Maro, and further shows that that most certain proof cannot be shaken or weakened by anyone, for this reason, that after so many ages no one has come back alive from the underworld (ch. 22).

He therefore declares false those who taught that souls are either born again or migrate from bodies into other bodies. For the dead will in fact rise again, when their souls, as was handed down by Chrysippus and the Sibyl, will be clothed once more by God with their own bodies. Nor does he think that one should inquire too curiously how this can come about. For although no account can be given of the works of God, yet we must believe that the old man is to be restored in an indescribable manner by Him Who created him new (ch. 23).

After the greatest judgement, he says, and after the just have been called back to life, Christ will reign for a thousand years among men, and will dwell with them (ch. 24). He reminds us, moreover, that he is briefly recounting the things which he supposed would come to pass during that time, and what manner of living men would have. But because of the various opinions about the number of years elapsed since the beginning of the world, he admits that it is difficult to say when those six thousand years will be completed, at whose end, as he had said above, the fall and ruin of the world will take place. He thinks, however, that from the time at which he was writing these things no more than two hundred years remain (ch. 25).

Then next he sets before our eyes how great the evils are which, as the thousand-year reign of Christ draws to its end, the prince of demons will do with his followers, how he will utterly perish together with them, and how the people of God will remain alone for seven years (ch. 26). When these are at last completed, he says, the world will be renewed, men will be transformed into the likeness of angels, and the unjust will rise again, so that with the demon and his ministers they may be tormented with fire and everlasting torture. Furthermore, he declares that this is the doctrine of the holy prophets, and that, because the Christians kept it hidden, the heathen falsely ascribed to them abominable opinions. After this, in certain editions only, an epilogue is appended, in which Lactantius praises the piety of Constantine the Great and gives thanks for the restoration of the Christian religion. But these passages, omitted in the better manuscripts, appear as surely spurious and interpolated as it is certain that our author exhorts all men to take up the true religion, to despise frail and perishable goods, and always to devote their effort to justice and the other virtues, so that they may obtain the reward of everlasting happiness promised by God (ch. 27).

Chapter II.

On the author of these books, their title, subjects, number, division into chapters, and the reasons for which they were brought out into the light.

First Article.

On the author of these books, and their title; what is understood by the name of Divine Institutes; on the titles of the whole Work and of the individual books, their subjects, number, and division into chapters.

That Lactantius is the true author of these seven books on the Divine Institutes has always been the agreement of all, so great and so unanimous that it seems no controversy, not even the least, can be had on that matter. There is therefore no need for us to gather together the almost countless testimonies of the ancients, and above all of the more recent writers, by which this may be proved. Yet one witness, equal to all and beyond every exception, we shall call upon, Jerome, who most expressly asserts that there were composed by our Lactantius seven books of Divine Institutes against the Gentiles (Jerome, Catalogue of Ecclesiastical Writers § 80, p. 121). Also in his letter to Magnus the orator: « Arnobius, he says, published seven books against the Gentiles, and as many his disciple Lactantius, who also composed two volumes, On Anger and On the Workmanship of God; if you are willing to read them, you will find in them an epitome of the Dialogues of Cicero (Letter 83, to Magnus, p. 656). And again in another letter, to Pammachius and Oceanus, he writes this: Who can forbid me to read the books of his Institutes, of Lactantius, which he wrote most vigorously against the Gentiles (Letter 41, to Pammachius and Oceanus, p. 345)?

Do you wish yet another, more certain testimony to be given you? See, here at hand is the testimony of Lactantius himself, who in another work, where he assails the impious worshippers of false gods, wrote this in so many words: But we have already exposed the ignorance of these men in the second book of the Divine Institutes (Lactantius, book On the Anger of God, ch. 2). Later indeed he rebukes others who think wrongly concerning Christ the Lord: Whom, he says, we have already in part refuted in the fourth book of the aforesaid work. Where also he remarks on the opinion of the Peripatetics on moderating anger: To whom, he says, we have replied in the sixth book of the Institutes (ibid. ch. 17). What more? Again in the same treatise he says: We have shown sufficiently, as I think, in our Institutes that there cannot be many gods (ibid. ch. 11). Finally, we have made it plain that in these very books of the Divine Institutes his book On the Workmanship of God is cited by him. Thus he himself indicates that both this and the others were composed by himself. It is therefore wholly settled and certain that our Lactantius is the author and parent of these books.

No less, from the words of his and of Jerome already cited, it must be firm and fixed that no other title was set by Lactantius at the head of these books with which we are dealing than that of Divine Institutes. But why he inscribed them with that title we can gather from these words of his own: If certain men learned in the law, and arbiters of equity, have published Institutes of civil law set in order; by which

they might settle the lawsuits and disputes of quarrelling citizens; how much better and more rightly shall we treat in writing the divine institutes, in which we shall speak not about rain-drippings, or the warding off of waters, or the joining of hands in a claim, but about hope, about life, about salvation, about immortality, about God, so that we may lay to rest deadly superstitions and most shameful errors (Institutes, book 1, chapter 1). Just as, therefore, very many men, as is clear from their works, and other most eminent men, as Cicero says (Cicero, On the Laws, book 1), called the books they had published on civil Law and the Laws, and, to use the words of the same Cicero, on composing the law of rain-drippings and of party walls, or the formulas of stipulations and of judgements, institutes of the civil law, so far better and more rightly did Lactantius think that these books of his, in which the overthrowing of the worship of false gods and the establishing of the worship of the true God are treated, ought to be inscribed with the name and title of Divine Institutes.

But if you ask what is signified by the name of institutes, we shall answer that it has seemed to some that those books are designated in which the first elements of some art or science to be taught are so set out that men still unskilled and untaught may attain it step by step. But Lactantius employed that name in a wider sense. For he openly declares that in this work he has disputed about all the institutions of the Christian religion, and about the false superstitions of the gentiles, much more fully and abundantly than the other defenders of the Christian religion up to his own times had debated. Therefore by the name of Divine Institutes he designates a full and complete disputation on explaining and vindicating the precepts and institutions of the same Christian religion, and on refuting the impious worships of the heathen. Accordingly, where he himself or others cite these books by the name of Institutes alone, no one, I think, will deny that this was done for the sake of brevity.

But although that title of the whole work is general, he seems nevertheless to have set before the individual books each its own particular inscription, as is read in the most ancient editions. We are indeed not unaware that these inscriptions were at times altered in some more recent editions. But we shall easily be persuaded that they, without these corrections, came from Lactantius himself. For they are presented in the same way, at the end of each book and the beginning of the next, not only in those ancient editions but also in manuscript codices, both more recent and ancient. And what of the fact that this too can be gathered from Lactantius himself? For at the end of the third book he sets out the title and argument of the fourth book thus: What religion and what wisdom is true, the next book will show (Institutes, book 3, chapter 30). In a similar way too he concludes the fourth book thus: It follows that, since we have spoken enough about true religion and wisdom, we should discourse in the next book about justice (book 4, chapter 30). If, however, anyone should contend that from this some person, put in charge of writing the most ancient codices, took from this the occasion of inscribing titles on the individual books, he may remain in his opinion, and if he has duly proved it, we shall yield at once.

What we have said about the various titles, both of the whole work and of each book, must likewise be said about their subjects. For in the whole work one general subject is treated, and in the individual books some particular subject. The subject common to all the books is set forth by Lactantius in these words: A disputation is undertaken by us concerning religion and divine matters (bk. 1 Inst., ch. 1). There are two parts of that disputation. In the first he utterly overturns the false religions of the gentiles in the three earlier books; in the second, in the remaining books that follow, he asserts, establishes and demonstrates the truth and holiness of the Christian religion (bk. 4, ch. 30).

He also sets before us the particular subject of each book. In the first, which he calls the first institution, he lays bare, as he himself puts it, the false religions of the gods. In the second he discloses the source and the causes through which men at first believed that there were many gods, and afterwards persevered in their depraved worship (bk. 1, ch. 23; bk. 2, ch. 1). Next, in the third (ch. 1, 2, 25, 30), he explodes the vain philosophy of the heathen. In the fourth book (ch. 3, ch. 30) he shows what true wisdom and religion are. But in it he disputes chiefly against the Jews concerning Christ the Lord. In the fifth book (ch. 1), engaging specifically with the gentiles, he discourses on justice. In the sixth book (ch. 1, ch. 2, ch. 3) he teaches what true worship is, or, as he himself says, « with what rite, or with what sacrifice, God ought to be worshipped: » and what the virtues are, and their forms and limits. Finally, the subject of the seventh book (ch. 1) is « the divine reward of everlasting blessedness, » as Lactantius himself said; or, as elsewhere, « What reward virtue earns from God, » and more briefly in another place: « On the blessed life. » In what manner he treated that subject, learn from these words of his: « We shall give satisfaction to this part too, both with testimonies of the divine Scriptures and with probable arguments. » After this last word, in a very ancient codex of Bologna, vatum [of the seers] is noted as added. But if this reading is true and genuine, then by the name vatum must without doubt be understood the celebrated oracles of Hystaspes, of Hermes, and above all of the Sibyls, which are quite frequently cited in this book (bk. 6, ch. 3; bk. 3, ch. 13; bk. 1, ch. 1).

Furthermore, that the whole work of the Divine Institutes was divided by Lactantius himself into these seven books, and no more, is most plainly attested by Jerome, cited by us a little before. But even if he had been entirely silent on it, what, I ask, could be clearer than these words of Lactantius himself: « No food is sweeter to the mind than the knowledge of truth, to the asserting and illustrating of which (two very ancient manuscripts of the Royal Library [read] cui) we have devoted seven volumes. » (bk. 1 Inst., ch. 1). Moreover, in the first book (ch. 23) he indicates in these words that he has put an end to it: « But I have now decided to put an end to the book, lest it exceed due measure. » Similarly in the third book (ch. 30): « What religion is... the next book will show more plainly: » and in the fourth (ch. 30): « In the next book we shall discourse on justice. » And from the very beginning of the second book (ch. 1): « Although, he says, in the first,

book I have shown the religions of the gods to be false. » In the same book (ch. 3) he describes the other four, the later ones, in this manner: « The four later books will serve for setting forth the knowledge of the truth, » and in the seventh he mentions the earlier books. To this is added the fact that he sends us from one book to another. For besides those things which we noted a little before, he himself in these books has referred us from the third and fourth to the second; from the sixth to the third, from the seventh to the second; and finally, after he had quite often said in various places that the seventh book of the Institutes would be the last, we read these things written in so many words in its epilogue: « Having run through the seven laps of the work we proposed, we have been carried forward to the finishing post. »

As true and manifest, therefore, as it is that this work was divided into seven books by Lactantius himself, so certain indeed ought it to be to all that the divisions of these books into chapters, and the summaries of those same chapters, were composed not by Lactantius but by another writer, and he quite a recent one, who lived on beyond the time of their first edition by no long interval of time. For these things are not found in the ancient manuscript codices which it has been possible to see, but only in the more recent ones.

Article II.

By what reasons Lactantius was led to compose these books, and whether Minucius Felix, Tertullian and Cyprian did not fully discharge the task they had undertaken of defending the Christian religion.

Lactantius gives various reasons by which he was led to bring out and publish these books. For in the first place he makes it attested that he applied his mind to writing them for this purpose, that he might give his effort to throwing light on the truth, and show true wisdom to learned men and true religion to the unlearned, and that he might be able to direct the minds of individuals, imbued with heavenly precepts, to the true worship of the divine majesty (Inst. book 1, ch. 2).

Moreover, if the greatest orators towards the end of life gave themselves over to the vain philosophy of the Gentiles, and jurists composed certain institutes of the civil law, he himself thought it far more fitting, more advisable and more useful, by committing these divine institutes to writing, to betake himself to true, pious and divine wisdom as to some most safe harbour, "in which," he says, "all things are easy to say, sweet to hear, easy to understand, honourable to undertake." Yet he did not undertake so great a work merely for his own particular advantage and his own uses, but in order that, deadly superstitions and most shameful errors being laid to rest and utterly extinguished, he might demonstrate the truth of the Christian religion. He therefore destined seven volumes to asserting and illustrating it, so that the heathen might be instructed by them, and might no longer, hardened or more obstinate, fight against themselves and against the very lights of right reason, clearer than the light of the Sun, and might at length be freed from inveterate errors. But if some most stubborn persons should still close their ears, he hopes that there will not be lacking men of sound mind whom the truth, delivered in a speech not altogether unpleasing and unpolished, may please.

But if none of them as yet, which is difficult, should be willing to return to a sound mind and to the way of salvation, he will at least strengthen wavering Christians by his writings. Finally, if [they profit] no one, which does not seem credible, his writings will certainly profit himself, and he will rejoice to dwell in the light of truth (bk. 4, ch. 5, and bk. 5, ch. 1).

Now the one reason and occasion above all for composing these books was, for our author, this: that he was persuaded that down to his own age there had been lacking capable and skilled teachers who would vehemently, who would sharply refute the public errors of the gentiles, and would defend the whole cause of the Christian religion ornately and perfectly (bk. 5, ch. 2). Two heathen writers in particular, of whom shortly, spurred on by this dearth of vigorous champions, had dared to assail and attack the Christian religion in sacrilegious writings, with Lactantius himself present and grieving. Roused, therefore, and compelled by so proud an impiety and by his consciousness of the truth, he wrote these books, by which he might break their vain assaults and present a defence of that same Christian religion perfect and complete in every respect. But it is necessary that these things be explained by us somewhat more fully.

Indeed it may seem strange to many on what ground Lactantius asserts with such confidence that capable defenders of the Christian religion had been lacking down to his own time, unless he were speaking expressly only of those who were known to him. But it will seem more strange to some that he placed among their number Minucius Felix, Septimius Tertullian and Cyprian, yet passed over his own teacher Arnobius in the deepest silence. For the latter did not plead the cause of the Christian religion more perfectly than they. But the reason for so great a silence was perhaps the dignity of his teacher. Perhaps, too, the labours of Arnobius, which he had lately published in Africa, were unknown to him. For Lactantius, having left there when young and being placed so far away, could have been ignorant of what had been written there by his master. But whatever be the case with Arnobius, what, someone will say, was lacking in the three other most celebrated writers mentioned by Lactantius, to prevent them from discharging the so illustrious office of defenders of the Christian religion? Lactantius answers freely that Minucius Felix did not devote himself wholly to that pursuit, that is, did not undertake a full and complete disputation on defending the truth of the Christian religion, as he easily could have. But we have already dealt with that matter in our dissertation on his book (Dissertation on the Octavius of Minucius, ch. 2, art. 1).

Now in Tertullian's Apologeticus on behalf of the Christian faith Lactantius finds two things wanting, both instruction in Christian doctrine and elegance and clarity of style: "In expression," these are the words of Lactantius, "he was not very fluent, little polished, and very obscure" (bk. 5, ch. 1). Nor did Jerome depart far from this opinion, who wrote to Paulinus in these words: "Tertullian is dense in his thoughts, but difficult in his speech" (Jerome, Letter 49 to Paulinus, p. 567). But however great, others will say, the barbarity and obscurity of his style may be, each

is nevertheless rightly compensated by the very great force, strength and weight of his arguments.

But as regards establishing our doctrine, Lactantius grants that Tertullian in that book rightly answered the absurd accusations of the heathen, but denies that the teachings of our religion were sufficiently explained or proved by him: "Yet it is one thing," he says, "to answer accusers, which consists in defence or denial alone, another to instruct, which is what we are doing, in which the sum of the whole doctrine must be contained." (Lactantius, book 5, chapter 4).

But Tertullian had no other aim in his Apology than to show plainly to all that the Christians, accused of all crimes, even the gravest, yet never heard, and much less convicted, were condemned by the heathen wholly undeservedly. Therefore in his Apology he undertook to prove nothing else than to make most manifest to all the true doctrine of the Christians, their innocence, the highest integrity of life and morals, and that the gentiles were in truth guilty of those very crimes of which they most falsely accused them. And he accomplished all this in his book most brilliantly, although he does not set out all the teachings of the Christian religion, but only the chief ones, which he expounds as sincerely as he demonstrates them briefly but most evidently. Since, then, he has amply fulfilled his purpose, it ought not to be counted a fault in him, nor in any other author whatever, that he did not say more than he judged conducive to the disputation he had undertaken. But Lactantius doubtless wished that the defence of the Christians undertaken by Tertullian should not be confined within such narrow bounds (Dissertation on Tertullian, chapter 4, article 4).

Greater is his complaint about Cyprian. For the more he praises his talent and eloquence, the more he reproves him, because in his disputation against Demetrianus, who was barking at the Christian religion, he cannot "please beyond words those ignorant of the sacrament," that is, the gentiles (Lactantius, book 4, chapter 2 and chapter 4). If you ask him the reason, he answers: "Because the things he said are mystical, and prepared for this, that they be heard by faithful Christians alone." And what those mystical things are he afterwards explains thus: "For he should not have been refuted with testimonies of Scripture, which he, Demetrianus, certainly held to be vain and fabricated, but with arguments and reason." Moreover he relates openly, and with scarcely any excuse, that he was mocked on that account not only by learned men of this age, but that he himself had also heard a certain quite eloquent man who, "changing one letter, called Cyprian Coprian, as though he had devoted an elegant talent, fit for better things, to old wives' tales" (ibid., chapter 1). And indeed the name Coprianus, or Copreus, and Coprea, or, as others read in Suetonius, Coprias, is derived from the Greek word κοπρία and κοπρίον, which signifies a buffoon, a wrangler, a sycophant, and a worthless man, who was wont to boast great things indeed of himself, but old wives' and silly tales

to hawk about (Suetonius, Life of Nero § 6, and in Claudius § 8).

No one, indeed, ought to think it surprising if the gentiles tried to harass Cyprian, the most bitter enemy of their religion, with gibes, mockeries and insults. But Lactantius will arouse the astonishment of very many, since he repelled them only with these words: 'He was carried away,' he says, 'by his outstanding learning in the divine writings, so that he was content with those alone on which faith rests' (Inst. book 5, ch. 4). He therefore judged that Cyprian, in his disputation against Demetrian, ought first to have adduced the human testimonies of the philosophers and historians rather than the divine testimonies of sacred Scripture. For since that man 'could not yet,' as Lactantius says, 'grasp' these things, 'he ought to have been refuted above all by his own authors.' Not badly said, perhaps, if this had been Cyprian's first contest with Demetrian concerning the truth of the Christian religion. But he indicates that he had had several before, from the very opening of his discourse, where he addresses Demetrian thus: 'Since you often came to me with a zeal for contradicting rather than a wish for learning, and, clamouring with noisy voices, preferred to thrust your own views on me impudently rather than to hear ours patiently.'

Some, therefore, reply that the passages of the sacred Scriptures cited by Cyprian were taken from the testimonies of the prophets, which, as we shall see, supply a most powerful argument against the heathen for establishing the Christian religion. But what serves Cyprian's defence more is the fact that in this treatise he undertook to refute the calumny of Demetrian and of the other gentiles, who kept crying out that the Christians were the cause of all the evils by which the world was being shaken. Now he overturns it with those testimonies of Sacred Scripture by which these evils were foretold as coming in vengeance for the crimes committed by the heathen. And because these things came to pass just as they had been predicted long before, those same gentiles could not deny that the authority of these oracles, and of the whole of our sacred Scripture, was divine. Besides, with certain reasons that are by no means weak, he refutes Demetrian's senseless accusation.

Finally, concerning that censure of Lactantius, Jerome wrote these words to Magnus the orator: 'Cyprian, a man powerful in eloquence and in martyrdom, is bitten, as Firmianus relates, because in writing against Demetrian he used the testimonies of the prophets and apostles, which that man said were fictitious and invented, and not rather those of the philosophers and poets, whose authority he, as a heathen, could not gainsay' (Jerome, Letter 93, to Magnus, p. 655). But what, pray, did he mean to indicate by that word 'is bitten'? Was it not some disparagement, and a censure not altogether fair? For in that sense we read it written by Terence: 'That all envy me, bite me in secret' (Terence, The Eunuch, act 3, scene 1, line 20). That it is used in the same sense by Jerome himself, too, one might perhaps not unreasonably gather from the words of his that follow: 'Cyprian, [in the work] That Idols Are Not Gods, with what brevity, with what knowledge of all histories, with what

splendour of words and meanings he touched upon [it]!' (Jerome, loc. cit., p. 657). But does he not signify by these words that Cyprian duly performed his office as a Christian defender, if not in the single [speech] against Demetrian, as Lactantius thought, at least in his other speeches against the heathen?

Article III.

On the two pagan philosophers by whose impious writings Lactantius was driven to publish these books; and whether the cause of the Christian religion is defended by him more perfectly than by others, and in what manner.

Lactantius has painted in their natural colours, though with their names suppressed, both those philosophers who, as we said a little earlier, drove him to compose these books of the Divine Institutes. And he makes it plain to us that they were active at the time when he himself was teaching rhetoric in Bithynia and the temple of God was being overthrown (Inst. 5, ch. 2).

The first professed philosophy, but was infamous for every vice, which he strove to cover with his hair and cloak, that is, with the profession of philosophy, and with riches. For while a most bitter accuser of others, he destroyed by his depraved morals his own disputations on virtue. He spewed out three books against the Christian religion at the time when the tyrants were raging against it most cruelly. But that imprudent man, wholly ignorant both of what he was attacking and of what he was saying, appeared in these books so inept, empty and ridiculous that he was as much despised as derided by all.

The other, one of the number of the judges and an instigator of the stirring up of persecution against the Christians, whose faith he had once seemed to have embraced, tried in two books, which he had inscribed with the deceitful title Philalethes, to convict Sacred Scripture of falsehood, as though it were wholly contradictory to itself. Then he strove to show that miracles equal to, or even greater than, those performed by Christ had been performed by Apollonius (Lactantius, ibid., and Caecilius, book On the Deaths of the Persecutors, ch. 16).

This second philosopher seems to be none other than Hierocles, whom Eusebius refuted in a book printed after his Demonstratio Evangelica and elsewhere. For Eusebius indicates the same title of the work: "These things have been said in the very words of Hierocles, who entitled his discourse against us Philalethes." These are the words of Hierocles himself in the speech written against us, whose title is Philalethes (Eusebius, book against Hierocles, p. 513). Moreover, from the very beginning of the book he mentions the same title, and adds that Hierocles had come to such a pitch of impudence that he did not hesitate to compare Apollonius of Tyana, just as Lactantius had said, with our Saviour Christ. Besides this, Eusebius copied out the words of Hierocles in which he censures Peter and Paul and the other disciples of Christ as liars, unlearned men and impostors, on the ground that they had exaggerated the deeds done by their divine teacher. And similarly our Lactantius: "Above all," he says, "he tore at Paul and Peter, and the other disciples, as sowers of deceit,

the very men whom he nevertheless testified to have been rude and unlearned. (Lactantius, Institutes, book 4, chapter 2.)

We are indeed not unaware that some think that Eusebius of Caesarea is not the author of this book, but another of the same name who, on the testimony of Photius, had refuted the books on fate and providence published by Hierocles around the time of Theodosius the Younger. But these do not seem to have paid sufficient attention to what the same Photius had earlier committed to writing: "There was read a little refutatory book of Eusebius Pamphili against the discourses of Hierocles on behalf of Apollonius of Tyana." There was read a brief confutation by Eusebius Pamphili of the books of Hierocles on Apollonius of Tyana. Nor is there any reason why anyone should object to us that only two little books are mentioned by Lactantius, and seven are confuted by Eusebius. For the latter attacks the books not of Hierocles alone, but also of Philostratus. But another occasion for discussing this Hierocles will be given.

Further, it is far more difficult to say who was the first writer, and philosopher, who is addressed by Lactantius. Now the opinion of Baronius was that this was Porphyry, the most hostile enemy of the Christian religion, who in the year of Christ 302, and the 19th of the Emperor Diocletian, was passing the sixty-ninth year of his age, and prolonged his life right up to extreme old age. (Baronius, at the year 302, § 51.) For this Porphyry, like the writer cited by Lactantius, having discharged the office of a philosopher before all things, professed himself a high priest of philosophy. (Institutes, book 5, chapter 2.) By Augustine too Porphyry is called the most learned and most noble of philosophers, and the fiercest enemy of the Christians, who boasted that he was a lover of virtue and wisdom. (Augustine, City of God, book 19, chapter 22, and book 22, chapter 3; book 10, chapter 28.) Nor is Baronius held back by the fact that Lactantius said that only three books were composed by the man whom he cites, and Suidas that fifteen were composed by Porphyry. For the most learned writer of the Annals judges that three were first published separately by Porphyry, and afterwards the twelve that followed.

But several things seem to stand against this opinion. For it can by no reasoning be proved that these books were made public separately. Who, moreover, would easily persuade himself that Porphyry, a man of seventy, was polluted by those vices of lust and gluttony which Lactantius openly and publicly reproached his philosopher with? But if anyone should reply that he, no differently from many lustful old men, could have been defiled by these vices, we shall say that this has still to be proved to us.

Moreover, Eusebius and Jerome have related without hesitation that the books against the Christian religion were published by Porphyry at the time when he was living in Sicily. (Eusebius, Ecclesiastical History, book 6, chapter 19; Jerome, Catalogue of Ecclesiastical Writers, § 81.) Yet Lactantius affirms that, in his own presence, when he was teaching oratorical letters in Bithynia, this philosopher and the other man of whom we have treated "set forth their sacrilegious writings." (Institutes, book 5, chapters 2 and 4.)

Baronius indeed replies that Jerome believed that Porphyry completed them in Sicily for this reason, that

he had moved there from Rome. But that they were composed by him in Sicily is openly asserted not by Jerome alone but also by Eusebius, whom we have cited. Then, next, Baronius ought to have indicated to us the time at which Porphyry withdrew to Sicily, and how long he stayed there. (Baronius, at the year 302, § 57.)

Finally, from the words of Lactantius already cited it can not unreasonably be concluded that each of those two philosophers was refuted by him first of all. But if the matter stands so, it may be gathered from this that someone other than Porphyry is designated by him. For we learn from Jerome that other [books] against this Porphyry were composed by Methodius, who, as he says, at the end of the last persecution, or, as others affirm, under Decius and Valerian, was crowned with martyrdom at Chalcis in Greece (Jerome, in the Catalogue of Ecclesiastical Writers § 83, Apology against Jovinian, against Rufinus book II, Letter 83, to Magnus). Now he reports there two opinions on the time at which that most holy martyr fell by death for the faith of Christ. The first is that of those who thought he died under Decius and Valerian, that is, between the years 250 and 260. The second is that of others, who held that he departed this life at the end of the last persecution, stirred up by Diocletian, that is, about the year of Christ 311. But the first opinion cannot stand together with the books published by Methodius against Porphyry, who in the year of Christ 263 was in the thirtieth year of his age. For he seems not yet to have brought out into public light these books which Methodius refuted. If the second opinion is the truer, then certainly Lactantius, who composed the Divine Institutes a little after the year 311, must be said not to have read at that time the books of Methodius against Porphyry. For in these Institutes he indicates that that man was refuted by himself first of all. But since it is scarcely credible at all that the Apology of Methodius was unknown to him, does it not follow from this that someone other than Porphyry is denoted by him?

These, moreover, are the arguments of each side, which, having examined them according to our custom and duty, we place before the eyes of all, so that each may give his own judgement on them and embrace whichever he thinks the truer. But if anyone proves to us with certainty that this man of whom Lactantius speaks is not Porphyry, he will draw us over to his opinion all the more easily, as we are the more persuaded that there is no reason why Lactantius, in refuting the books of Porphyry, should have spared his name.

But whatever be decided about this philosopher, whose writings, and perhaps whose name, have not come down to us, it ought to be certain that Lactantius composed these books of the Divine Institutes for this purpose: to refute the treatises of that man and of another impious writer, published against the Christian religion, and to demonstrate its truth more fully and more perfectly than other defenders of the Christian religion had done up to that time. But whether he fully satisfied this purpose can be a question, and not even the least one. For Jerome wrote of him to Paulinus in these words: Lactantius, like a kind of river of Tullian eloquence,

would that he had been able to affirm our things as well as he easily destroyed those of others. (Jerome, Ep. 49, to Paulinus.) But what else do these words mean, except that Lactantius fell into that very fault which he charged against others, and which he promised that he would correct? Those of others, says Jerome, that is, the errors of the heathen, he easily destroyed, but ours, namely the teachings, he could not with the same ease establish, prove, make firm. Yet it is certain that in these books of the Divine Institutes the doctrines and institutions of our religion are asserted and confirmed far more fully than in the treatises of Minucius Felix, Tertullian and Cyprian cited by him, not only against the Gentiles but also against the Jews. Whether, however, he asserted them well or badly, whether plainly and perfectly, or meagrely and thinly, we shall weigh later. But Jerome does not seem to have passed that judgement which we have recorded concerning these books for any other reason than that he thought he had noticed in them errors opposed to the doctrines of our sincere faith. But whatever those [errors] may have been, of which we must treat later, he nevertheless openly affirms that they were never any hindrance to him from reading these books of the Divine Institutes, in which, he says, Lactantius wrote most forcefully against the Gentiles (Jerome, Ep. 41, to Pammachius and Oceanus; Jerome, Commentary on Ecclesiastes). In another book, moreover, he calls the work of the Divine Institutes a splendid one, in which Lactantius discussed vices and virtues most fully.

As for what Jerome further added, that Lactantius is as it were a kind of river of Tullian eloquence, all readily grant that this is indeed true, and gladly side with Jerome. But we have already discussed the eloquence of Lactantius.

Finally, Jerome writes in his letter to Magnus that in the books of the Divine Institutes and On the Workmanship of God there is found an epitome of the dialogues of Cicero (Jerome, Ep. 83, to Magnus). But in what sense he said this has been observed by us above. Therefore we shall add only this, that Cicero is very often refuted by Lactantius, and especially where the sacred teachings of the Christian religion and of moral discipline are treated.

Chapter III.

On the date of these books, and on various fragments which seem to have been ineptly inserted into them, and on the errors ascribed to Lactantius.

Article One.

At what time Lactantius wrote these books, and whether he published two editions of them.

Some surmise that the time at which Lactantius brought out his books of the Divine Institutes is indicated by these very words of his: From the destruction of the Trojan City 1470 years are reckoned. From this reckoning of times it is clear that Saturn, who was also the begetter of all the gods, was born not more than 1800 years ago (Lactantius, Institutes, book I, chapter 23). For Isaeus thinks

that from this it can be concluded that Lactantius published these books in the year of Christ 302. For according to the accurate chronology of Glareanus on Livy, he says, from the destruction of Troy to the founding of the City 432 years elapsed; from the founding of the City to the birth of Christ, 751 years; and if you add to these 302 years, the very sum of 1485 years is made up. But if this method of computing the years is true, it follows from it that the opinion of Baronius, rejected by Isaeus, is the more probable, who judges that these same books of Lactantius were composed in the year 316. For out of the whole sum 317 years must be counted. Therefore Isaeus is forced to admit that the opinions of the chronologers on this matter are so varied that nothing certain can be established. He then adds, what is certainly true, that Lactantius does not much concern himself with handing down any fixed method of computing the years. And indeed he undertakes to prove nothing else there except that Saturn, the father of the gods, according to the very chronology of the heathen, was born not earlier than about 1800 years ago, and that they therefore boast in vain of the antiquity of their impious rites. Accordingly, in the following book he speaks thus of the age of Jupiter: "Who was born one thousand seven hundred years ago." (The same, book 2, chapter 5). Was Jupiter, then, the son of Saturn, a hundred years younger than his father? It is therefore clear that nothing can be drawn from all these things by which the age of these books may be determined with certainty.

But although Isaeus admits this, he nevertheless thinks that they were in fact composed in the very year of Christ 302. For Lactantius testifies that, when he was professing the art of oratory in Bithynia and the temple of God was being overthrown, he was spurred by the impious writings of two heathens, of whom we spoke a little before, to publish his Divine Institutes (Inst. book 5, chapter 2). But that temple was overthrown in the year 302, in which, namely, Diocletian, by a law he issued, had ordered all the churches of the Christians to be destroyed. And it will seem probable to no one, says Isaeus, that Lactantius, provoked no less by the great impiety and audacity of these gentiles than inflamed by the highest zeal for defending the true religion, spent his labour on writing these books, by which he would refute them, only after fourteen years at the least. Nor is he held back by the oration of Lactantius to Constantine, presented in certain books. For this, of which we must treat below, he utterly rejects and repudiates as spurious and supposititious.

But others answer him that it is not at all surprising if Lactantius did not at once, as often happens to writers, refute the impious fabrications of the heathen writers, even though they had been scattered and disseminated everywhere in public writings. For who would dare to assert whether it lay in his power, during the time when the Christians were being shaken by various and most violent storms of persecution, to publish books against the gentiles? Other causes too, known to no one, could have been added, on account of which he had judged that a more opportune occasion for writing should be awaited. Be that as it may, let him be persuaded that it can be proved by arguments certainly stronger that these books came into public light long after the year 302.

But these are still split into two parties. For Baronius judges that they were published by Lactantius in the very year of Christ 316 (Baron., at the year 315, § 20 and 21, and at the year 316, § 55). Others, on the contrary, have held that they were not written by him before the year 321. That most eminent Cardinal tried to establish his opinion chiefly by two arguments. He draws the first from the fact that Lactantius devoted his labour to composing these books when Licinius was harassing the Church and Constantine was preparing an expedition against him. For our author, in the preface of this work, foretells to him the victory that he was to win. The second he seeks from this, that mention is made by this same author of ours of the Arian heresy, which had raised its head in the year 315, as of one known and already spread everywhere (Book 1 of the Institutes, chap. 1; Book 4 of the Institutes, chap. 30, p. 449).

But the others reply that it is called into doubt whether that preface and the name "Arian" were not thrust into the text of Lactantius by some ill-employed writer. Then, further, even if it were entirely established that these came from Lactantius, Baronius could conclude nothing from it except against his own opinion. For, they say, it can be shown by certain and invincible weight of argument that the persecution of Licinius did not arise before the year of Christ 319. If, therefore, Lactantius makes mention of this persecution, he must be said to have composed these books not in the year of Christ 316, but after the year 319.

The whole question, therefore, lies in this: whether Lactantius speaks of the persecution of Licinius, and at what time it was stirred up. As regards the first point, the supporters of both opinions admit that mention of that persecution was in fact made by him: He was writing, says Baronius, in this year, in which the persecution of Licinius was harassing the Church (Baron., at the year 316, § 55). He therefore declares in no obscure words that it was not soon to arise, as some think, but had already arisen.

And certainly Lactantius depicted the monstrous cruelty of Diocletian raging against the Christians, and the horrible and hitherto unheard-of punishments inflicted on Christians under his rule, as things already past, and some of which he had himself seen (Book 5 of the Institutes, chap. 11). But other things plainly like these, or altogether the same, still being inflicted when he was writing these books, he records elsewhere thus: The worshippers of the supreme God, that is, just men, namely Christians, they torture, they kill, they banish, nor can they themselves give the reasons for their hatred, who hate so vehemently; because they themselves are in error. They are angry with those who follow the true way, and though they could correct themselves, they heap up their errors besides with cruel deeds, they are stained with the blood of the innocent, and they wrench out minds dedicated to God by disembowelling their bodies. With such men we now strive to engage and dispute. And afterwards: Behold, the city, or rather the whole world itself, is in such error that it persecutes, tortures, condemns and kills good and just men as though they were wicked and impious..... For why do they rage so cruelly, unless because they fear lest, with justice growing stronger day by day,

they should be left with their sneering gods (Book 5 of the Institutes, ch. 12). And again in another book: The punishments of the worshippers of God have been seen, and are still seen throughout the world, and for torturing them new and unheard-of torments have been devised. For the mind shudders to recall the kinds of death, since the butchery of monstrous beasts has raged beyond death itself (Book 6, ch. 17). Finally, we shall not now heap up more passages on a matter that is admitted and is to be treated further later, passages in which he makes plain that the number of Christians was not only not diminished by so many and such cruel torments and slaughters, but was always increased. For from the quoted words of Lactantius it is understood clearly enough that a twofold persecution is recorded by him, one set in motion by Diocletian, and the other by Licinius (Book 5, ch. 12).

It remains, then, to determine at what time this second persecution began. Now Baronius assigns it to the three hundred and fourteenth year of Christ, when, after quarrels had arisen between Constantine and Licinius, the latter was routed and defeated in the battle of Cibalae, which in the Eusebian chronicle and in other writers is assigned to the same year 314. But others judged that the beginning of the Licinian persecution took place in the nineteenth year above three hundred. For by the author of that same Eusebian chronicle, as also by Theophanes and Cedrenus, Licinius is said to have expelled the Christians from his palace in the year 319 or 320. Yet beyond doubt he cast them out from there as soon as he began openly to rage against the Christian religion. Moreover, in the same chronicle, under the year 321, Basileus, bishop of Amasea in Pontus, is reported to have won the crown of martyrdom under Licinius. Theodore too, on the testimony of Nicephorus, obtained the same crown on a Saturday, the seventh day of the month of February, as we read in the Acts of his martyrdom published by Bolland. Yet a Saturday on the seventh day of February falls in the year of Christ 319, marked by the dominical letter D, and not in the year 316. Lactantius therefore did not publish the books of the Divine Institutes before this year 319.

And does not some strength and support accrue to this latter opinion from the fact that Lactantius seems to indicate that he had withdrawn from Bithynia, whither, as we have said, he had been summoned by Diocletian, before he brought these books of the Divine Institutes out into the light? (Book 5 of the Institutes, ch. 2.) For it can, not altogether ineptly, be inferred from this that they were composed by him after he had betaken himself to Gaul and Crispus had there been handed over to his instruction. And that happened in the year 318 or a little after.

Certain more recent critics, however, think that they have removed these difficulties of both opinions, that of Baronius and that of the others, by saying that a twofold edition of these books was made by Lactantius. For they hold that he first set his hand to writing them while he was living in Bithynia, with the persecution raging against the Christians; but that afterwards, when peace had been given to the Church, they were revised by him with a second hand and enlarged, and brought out into the public light. This later edition, they reckon, was published long after the Cibalae

war, and when Lactantius was staying with Crispus Caesar in Gaul, where he dedicated it to Constantine the Great. And perhaps the great variety among the manuscript codices, and especially in presenting certain fragments, seems to favour this opinion not a little.

But what, I ask, prevents this discrepancy from being laid at the door of some idle and dishonest corrupter of old books? Besides, Lactantius, as we noted a little earlier, indicates clearly enough that he did not compose these books for as long as he remained in Bithynia.

Someone will perhaps press the point that, after the books of the Divine Institutes had been published, an epitome of them was issued by Lactantius. But why did he make it, if not because of the very great usefulness which very many people derived from these books? Could he not, then, for the same reason have put out a second edition of the same books, more carefully done than the first, as usually happens, and therefore more useful than the other? We shall not indeed deny that this could have happened; but whether it actually happened is established by no sufficiently certain and firm argument. For Jerome is our witness that the first and greater part of this epitome had already been lost in his own time, a part which was in fact found and published a few years ago, as we shall relate. But why, I ask, in that whole epitome, the labour of composing which he excuses himself from at its beginning, did he make no mention of a double edition of the Divine Institutes? Nor is any trace at all of a second edition of these books detected in the edition we have, unless a most uncertain and wholly deceptive one. Therefore either this second edition was never made by him, or we have suffered its loss.

Further, which of these different opinions about the date of these books is the truer, let a fair judge of the matter decide, and let him embrace it. But whatever judgement is passed, it must be admitted that these books were published between the year 316 and 322. Yet that interval of only six years will seem to most people of no such importance that the thread of the discussion should be drawn out further on its account. Meanwhile let us weigh whether these books were really dedicated to Constantine the Great, which can help towards knowing their date.

Article II.

Whether Lactantius dedicated these books to Constantine the Great and addressed him in one or two speeches.

Two passages in particular occur in these books of the Divine Institutes where Lactantius addresses Constantine the Great and testifies that this work was begun under the happy auspice of his name. In the former of these its author plainly asserts that he was the first of the Roman emperors who, having rejected the errors of the Gentiles, worshipped the true God and embraced the true religion, namely that of Christ, restored by himself (Lactantius, book 1, chapter 1). Therefore he promises him that God will grant him happiness for as long as he steers the helm of the empire, and that

as an old man he may hand on to his children what he himself as a young man received from his father. No less confidently does he promise that for so outstanding and pious a deed he will receive a worthy reward from God, and that others in other parts of the earth, who were then still raging against the Christians, will pay the penalty for so great a crime.

In the second, however, which is longer than the first, he again congratulates the Emperor Constantine on these grounds: that, since he had been raised up by God for the protection of the human race and the restoration of the Christian religion, no one any longer dared to reproach anyone even with the name of Christian; that, all the tyrants having been destroyed, he had escaped very many dangers; and that he alone holds the rule of the whole world. He adds further that all pray to God that, protected and guarded by Him, he may persevere in His love (Lact., bk 7, ch. 26).

But Isaeus, and afterwards Thomasius, judge on various grounds that the first address is entirely spurious and supposititious. For first, it is absent from seven Vatican codices and from a great many others written by various hands, and from other printed ones, and above all from the oldest copy of all, the manuscript of San Salvatore at Bologna. Then, he says, this address conflicts with the genuine books of Lactantius, in which he indicates that the Christians were at that time still being most cruelly harassed throughout the whole world by the gentiles and the tyrants. You have already heard his words quoted by us above; and these seem no less clear: "No one can describe as it deserves the savagery of this so great beast, which, though lying in one place, yet rages throughout the whole world with iron teeth, and not only tears apart the limbs of men but also grinds the very bones, and rages against their ashes, so that no place of burial may remain" (bk 5, ch. 11). Yet in that address to Constantine the Great the tyrants are said to rage against the Christians not everywhere, but only in certain parts of the world.

But these things, contradictory in appearance and in word only, do not much detain others. For it has already been observed by us that Lactantius denotes a twofold most bitter harassment of the Christians, one stirred up by Diocletian, the other by Licinius, the former indeed past, the latter present. If, then, somewhere, as in the passage cited, he speaks of the former too as if it were still present, there he follows the custom not of a historian but of an orator, by whom past things are not seldom presented as present. It suffices, moreover, for rightly distinguishing the two, that the time of the one is indicated as elapsed, that of the other as present. Nothing, furthermore, prevents the Licinian persecution, which did not rage everywhere, from having been meant.

Of less weight beyond doubt is the point Isaeus presses, that Lactantius, where he records the most celebrated defenders of the Christian religion, made no mention of Arnobius his teacher, who was pleading the cause of the Christians at the same time as he. For we have given the reasons why he passed over Arnobius, or, if you prefer, spared his name and the ever venerable dignity of his master (above, ch. 3, art. 2).

Nor does another argument of the same Isaeus seem any stronger, drawn from the fact that various writers,

and above all Jerome, who carefully reviewed the works of Lactantius, nowhere said that these books of the Divine Institutes were inscribed to the name of Constantine the Great, or that he was addressed in them. For that same Jerome passed over in a like silence the person to whom Lactantius' book On the Wrath of God, a most beautiful one, as he himself says, and another On the Persecution were inscribed and dedicated.

Nor indeed was there any reason for Isaeus to insist that Lactantius had been driven to publish these books when he had seen the church of the Christians utterly destroyed in the year of Christ 302, as we have said, and that for this reason he had put off their publication until the time when Constantine the Great restored peace to the churches. For what wonder is it if he waited for a more opportune time, namely when that most pious emperor, Licinius having been defeated, favoured the Christians as much as that Licinius had raged and run riot against them in certain provinces?

The greater, then, and almost the whole difficulty seems to lie in the authority of the manuscript codices. For the name of Constantine, and the words with which Lactantius addresses him, are entirely omitted in the very ancient Bologna manuscript, and in other manuscript codices of various ages, and also in several printed editions; but in others, nevertheless, no fewer in number, they are found. For, to pass over five Vatican manuscripts and others written either earlier or later, all these things are presented in the codex once of the monastery of Fleury, now of the Royal Library, which is marked there with the number 3735 and seems to have been written 900 years ago. In another, however, formerly Claude Dupuy's but now belonging to the same Royal Library under the number 3736, copied about 800 years ago, that address of Lactantius to Constantine does not indeed occur, but in it the title of the second book reads thus: "Here begins the second book of Lactantius Caecilius Firmianus, On the Origin of Error, to Constantine." Nor would you think that this was written heedlessly by a copyist-scribe. For in the same codex the same name of Constantine is thus prefixed at the beginning of the third book: "I could wish, Emperor Constantine, since truth, etc." Likewise also at the beginning of the fourth: "As I consider, Emperor Constantine, and with my mind, etc." And again at the opening of the fifth: "There is no doubt in my mind, Emperor Constantine, that this work, etc." It would be a longer and perhaps hardly useful labour to enumerate all the other codices in which all these things are read. For the number of these codices is indeed the greater, but not many of them were written long before the editions published in print.

Further, among these editions in which the name of Constantine and Lactantius' speech to him are found, the first to be named is the one which came out at Rome from the house of Pietro de Massimi in the year 1468. It is read also in the edition of Betuleius of the year 1563 and in almost all the others. Thomasius, however, in the notes of the edition which he made public in the year 1570, observes that this address of Lactantius to Constantine is absent from two Bologna manuscripts and five Vatican ones, which address Isaeus therefore, just as

the name of Constantine, afterwards removed from the text of Lactantius.

There is therefore no doubt that so great a discrepancy among the manuscript codices holds the mind of very many in suspense, so that it does not incline more readily to the one side than to the other. And certainly, if the greater antiquity of the Bologna codex should seem to outweigh the others, yet the age of the others copied in the Gauls, which is later by only one or two centuries, has its own weight and its own authority. To this is added the fact that there seems to be no reason why that address of Lactantius and the name of Constantine should either have been added to these books or removed from them. For these things contribute nothing to Lactantius's purpose, and whether they are added or deleted, his books are neither less complete, nor better or worse. Finally, critics of no small note recognize the Lactantian style in that address, which could more easily have been removed than added.

But perhaps these arguments would carry greater weight if there were not several other fragments which appear to have been fraudulently inserted into the same books of the Divine Institutes. For besides several others, of which we must treat shortly, there is certainly a second address of Lactantius to Constantine, longer than the first, as we have noted, which towards the end of the whole work is read as genuine in some editions, and in certain others has been relegated to the margin (Inst. book 7, ch. 26). But Isaeus declares that he found it neither in the two Bologna manuscripts, nor in the twelve Vatican ones, nor in the others which he was able to see. Nor did others either, who were in charge of the later editions in England, at Cambridge and at Oxford, find it in the English manuscripts which they had used. It is also absent from the Roman edition, published in the year 1468, and from the manuscript codex of the Royal Library, number 3736, written, as we have said, about 800 years ago, which we have carefully collated. But about the other, older copy of the same library nothing can be determined, since its last leaves after the middle of the ninth chapter of the seventh book have been torn out or lost.

Since, therefore, this address or allocution lacks the authority of so many older codices, can it not be concluded from this with no uncertainty that it is wholly spurious and counterfeit? But if this one is illegitimate and fabricated by some trifler, why not the other, earlier one as well? But the reasoning does not seem at all equal. For this second address bears far greater marks of a spurious addition than the first. For the first, as we have already observed, exists in many manuscripts, older as well as more recent; the second in very few, and those of the latest age. Then, moreover, the later one is at odds not only with this earlier one, but with the genuine text of Lactantius itself. For in the first, as has been observed, the writer said that Christians, at least in a great part of the world, were being tortured with horrible punishments, slain and killed; in the second, on the contrary, that there was no one who would hold the name of God against the Christians as a fault. In the first, tyrants and most bitter enemies of the Christian religion are said to have then held power;

in the other it is asserted that they, having paid the penalties of their crimes, lie overthrown, and that Constantine alone holds the supreme power. But can it not be concluded from this, and not absurdly, that this second oration is spurious, and stitched into the true text of Lactantius as preposterously as the other seems, not without reason, to be genuine and to have really proceeded from him? If the matter stands so, it will have to be said that these books of the Divine Institutes were published by Lactantius, as we have said, in the year 320 or 321, at which time enmities and rivalries had already arisen between Licinius and Constantine, and the former was raging against the Christians. Nevertheless, since forgers and corrupters of the most ancient manuscripts have dared with such rashness to lay wicked hands on the books of Lactantius, I would have you weigh, and pronounce, what ought to be decided about these orations. Meanwhile, however, other passages of these books must be examined, which are said likewise to have been spurious, or even corrupted and adulterated.

Article III.

On several fragments which seem spurious, and were preposterously inserted into the text of Lactantius.

To all who read the writings of Lactantius many things present themselves which to very many seem, not altogether without reason and rightly, to have been wrongly thrust into his text. The first is this: "As the mother without precedent bore her Author, so the Father must be believed to have ineffably begotten One coeternal. He was born of the mother, Who already existed before; of the Father, Who at some time did not exist. Let faith believe this, let understanding not inquire into it. Let it not either think it incredible because it was not found out, or, once discovered, not believe it to be unique" (Lactant., bk. 2, ch. 8 and 9). Many, however, think that these words were added quite preposterously by some most witless writer. For Isaeus has informed us that they are lacking in the very ancient Bologna manuscript, in eight Vatican ones, and in other excellent manuscripts. Others, again, have noted that they are also absent from those which they had at hand for correcting the edition of these books of Lactantius. They are missing too in two of the older copies of the Royal Library, written in the years 900 and 800.

Then, moreover, whoever reads even most cursorily what precedes and follows the fragment will at once find that the discourse of Lactantius is plainly disturbed by it. We notice besides an open contradiction in this addition, brief though it is. For there the Son of God is asserted to be coeternal with His Father, and nevertheless at some time not to have existed, that is, not to be coeternal. We know indeed that Betuleius observed that in the second Roman edition one reads: "Who at no time was lacking." But who does not see that this emendation was made by some more sharp-sighted writer, in order that so evident a contradiction might be removed? Rightly, therefore, those words, enclosed with asterisks in some editions and, better, thrown out of the text into the margin in others, are noted in the notes as spurious. Yet there are not lacking certain learned men who think that these words are genuine and were spoken in a Catholic sense. But we shall examine their reasons below, where we treat of the divinity of the Son of God.

Not long after, where Lactantius begins to treat of the creation of all things, this period seems likewise to have been added: He made in the beginning good and evil; what exactly this is, I shall explain more openly, lest anyone think that I speak in the way poets are accustomed to, who grasp incorporeal things by certain figures as though they were visible, especially since it was itself as yet nothing. This whole period, indeed, being plainly ill-fitting and wholly unworthy of Lactantius, has been rejected by almost all editions; both because it is not found in the Bologna manuscripts, in eleven Vatican ones, and in very many others; and because it has seemed to many to smack of the errors of Manichaeus. We, however, have read it in the older manuscript codex of the Royal Library, which [is marked] with the number 3735, but not in the other, which is marked with the following number. Yet from this it is nonetheless gathered that it was long ago ineptly added to the text of our Lactantius. And not without reason indeed. For these words in that place disturb and confuse the discourse of Lactantius. Some moreover add that these words signify that God made good and evil not only before the creation of the world but also before the generation of His Son. If the matter is so, nothing, surely, could be devised more contrary to the doctrine of Lactantius, as we shall show later.

A little later, in the older Royal codex, between these words: So dear also is he, and these: This one, then, made evil of himself out of good, the Greeks [call] diabolos, the following were inserted: He is also dear. Of whom [I speak] more sparingly now, because his power, his name and his nature will have to be set forth by us in another place. Meanwhile [I speak] more fully of this, so that the divine disposition may be known; for neither can good be understood without evil, nor evil likewise without good, and wisdom is the knowledge of good and evil. This evil spirit, then, the Greeks [call] diabolos, etc. But these words occur neither in other handwritten codices nor in most printed ones, nor has any writer anywhere noted that he read them. If, then, this fragment is genuine, those by whom it was torn out or omitted surely erred. If it is spurious and bastard, far more wicked are those who deliberately dared to insert it into the text of Lactantius.

A very few words later, however, and before these: God therefore, having begun, etc., another addition has been interposed, much larger than the others, and whose length does not allow us to copy it out in full. There, however, we read it handed down in writing that the world was created by God so as to consist of things contrary and repugnant to one another; that two spirits were also made, one good, the other evil, so that the things which in the world are opposed to each other should be in their power. Likewise God, as is asserted in the same place, when about to create man, made good and evil, so that virtue might be possible. Yet since it is not right that evil should proceed from God, He appointed an evil spirit as the inventor of evils, and gave him ingenuity and cunning for devising evils, so that in him there might be both a depraved will and perfect wickedness. And He so arranged both those spirits for the contest that He set the one over good and the other over evil. Afterwards He created many angels of a repugnant nature, such as [that] of the gods, part of whom, after the world was founded, from the heavenly substance's

vigour fell away. Moreover, all the angels, whose chiefs were those two spirits, were equal in the beginning and of the same standing before God.

These things, indeed, are related in this rather long addition. But Isaeus asserts that it is not found in the very ancient Bologna codex, nor in twelve Vatican ones, nor in very many others. Spark., moreover, notes that it is also absent from the English manuscripts, of which he had a supply, except, however, the Bulliosensis. It is also missing in the Roman edition published in the year 1568, and in other more correct ones, as also in the very old royal copy number 3736. We admit, indeed, that it was found by us in another, older one, number 3735, but with this verse added in the margin:

You who read these things, reader, beware of pits and snares.

The copyist, therefore, or the one in charge of correcting the codex, thought that in this fragment the poison of the Manichaeans was being administered, who ignorantly proclaimed two principles, the one good and the other evil. The same was the opinion of Isaeus, who observes in his notes that this impious dogma is nowhere more clearly asserted. Spark., however, censures Betuleius because in his commentary on this passage he wrote that Lactantius there fights against the error of the Origenists and the Manichaeans, who held that God is the author of evil. Betuleius, moreover, wanted this addition enclosed in asterisks, because he judged it to be either spurious or at least plainly doubtful. That some deadly poison of the Manichaeans is cunningly and subtly insinuated in it can be gathered from the fact that its author openly declares that God made good and evil. But since these words could seem rather harsh, in order to correct or soften them he added a little later: And since it was not right that evil should proceed from God (for He would not act against Himself), He appointed him the inventor of evils, and when He made him He gave him wit and cunning for devising evils, so that in him there should be both a depraved will and perfect wickedness, and He willed that things contrary to His own virtues should arise from him, and that he should contend with Him, whether He would give more good things or he more evil ones. But what, someone will say, did that shifty writer intend by this sly emendation? Had he not read what had been truly written a little before by our Lactantius himself, that another spirit was made by God, in whom the character of the divine stock did not remain: And so, he says, he was infected by his own envy as by poison, and passed over from good to evil, and by his own choice, which had been given to him free by God, he took to himself a name contrary [to his first]. Whence it appears that the source of all evils is envy. Were not these things, as they were orthodox, so also sufficiently clear and plain? What need was there for some obscure and malicious interpretation added a few lines later in the same place? However much that may be explained in some good sense, to whom, pray, will it be credible that all this was added quite uselessly by Lactantius?

Furthermore, in this addition the two spirits which Lactantius records were first created by God are called the chiefs of the angels. Yet in the fourth book, to which the author of that addition refers us, the first spirit by

Lactantius is called the true Son of God (bk. 4, ch. 6 and 7). Besides this, in the same fragment the angels are represented as being not of one nature but of a conflicting one, such as that of the gods. But where, I ask, did Lactantius ever speak so? What, too, of the fact that that writer departed so far from imitating Lactantius' style that within two lines these words, "He began the fabric of the world," are repeated? Finally, just as much as the discourse of Lactantius is badly interrupted by this addition, so much, once it is removed, does the whole hold together and connect most fittingly.

Another fragment, longer than the preceding one, is presented in the seventh book (bk. 7, ch. 5). Its author declares that in other books, and a little before, he has answered those who objected that the guilt of man must be laid back upon God, Who made evil just as He made good. Moreover, he says, there could be no virtue unless God had made things diverse. For when evil is removed, good too is taken away. God therefore made good and evil, so that He might render virtue perfect by exercise and by the struggle against evils. For there is no victory without an enemy and a contest. He then introduces someone arguing against him thus: "If good cannot exist without evil, how do you say that the first man, before God was offended, was in good alone, or that hereafter he will be in good alone?" To him, accordingly, he at once replies that he passed over this question in the earlier books, so that it might be discussed there in a more suitable place. Therefore, in order to resolve it now, he teaches first that man consists of an earthly body and of a soul that is subtle but eternal; and since these are contrary to each other, man must necessarily be subject to good and evil: "Now to the soul," he says, "good is ascribed, because it is indissoluble; but to the body evil, because it is fragile." Wherefore good and evil cannot be separated unless the soul be separated from the body. Further, the knowledge of good and evil was given to the first man at the same time: but since he was in good only, he did not know that this very thing was good. But as soon as he perceived the understanding of good and evil, he was banished from the place of blessedness into the common world, so that he might experience good and evil, whose nature he had come to know. Hence it is clear that wisdom was given to man in order that he might distinguish good from evil, and that it cannot stand without evil.

Now the first man, he continues, as long as he was in good alone, lived like an infant, ignorant of good and evil. But one cannot be wise, and blessed without any evil, before the separation of soul and body. For then, just as the body, so too evil will fall away, and good alone will remain for ever with the blessed soul. Thus, then, God placed man in this life midway between the two, so that he might have the liberty of following good or evil. But because evils are mingled with goods, and goods with evils, in appearance, the office of wisdom is required, so that we may see more with the mind than with the body. And since this is difficult and rare, therefore the wise man, who despises fragile goods, and the Christian, who for the faith refuses neither torments nor death, is held to be a fool. Man, therefore, was made mortal by God and subject to evils, so that he might take up virtue, and virtue might give him immortality.

And so argues the author of this fragment. But that it

is spurious, and falsely attributed to Lactantius, is concluded from this, that Isaeus states that it is not found in the Bologna manuscripts, in twelve Vatican ones, and in others, and Spark[e] states that it is not found in any of the English ones. Nor was it found by us either in the old royal manuscript number 3736. About another, more ancient one nothing can be determined, because there it was cut short and mutilated. It is also omitted in the old editions, the Roman, the Florentine, the Antwerp and other better ones. Betuleius, however, suspected that it was first of all put into print by Gryphius.

For this reason it is rejected by very many as counterfeit. Some, however, suspect that it was fabricated by some old hand, as ingenious as he was crafty, who imitated the style of Lactantius well. But this was without doubt not difficult for a man who had collected his sayings from various books of Lactantius himself. We, however, will not easily be persuaded that so many comparisons were employed by Lactantius in one place as this man has heaped into the first part of this fragment. Much less do we think that the same Lactantius made use of the one which is taken from the Circus, against which he declaims so vehemently and with such good right. Moreover, he indicates not obscurely that the things which are discussed in the first part of that fragment had already been sufficiently treated by him: But indeed, he says, it has often been said already that there would have been no virtue if it did not have something to overcome (Lact. ch. 22). The author of this addition, however, openly declares, or rather pretends, that he has touched on these things lightly, although what he wrote there he culled from the fifth and especially from the sixth book of the Divine Institutes (book 5, ch. 7 and 21; book 6, ch. 15; book 2, ch. 12; book 7, ch. 4 and 5; book On the Anger of God, ch. 15). Nor with any better reason could he say that the question about man, who cannot exist without evil, had been passed over in the earlier books. For what he brought forward there, nearly all of it, anyone will easily be able to recognize as excerpted from the second and seventh [books] of the Institutes and from the book On the Anger of God. We know indeed that the book On the Anger of God was published by Lactantius, as we shall show more fully below, after the seven books of the Divine Institutes, in which we read this addition. But certainly, if it had been written there by him, and he had resolved this question with such care, then certainly in the book On the Anger of God, where he treated it again, he would not have omitted, in his usual manner, to refer us to this place, or to make some mention of it.

Furthermore, although Isaeus rejected it, as he did the earlier fragments, and did not allow them to be printed in the text of Lactantius, yet, relying on the authority of the Bologna manuscript alone, he inserted into his text these words, where Lactantius discusses Cyprian: Whence it appears that that most eloquent and most learned man lacked, as regards refuting the sacrilegious, not the ability to speak but judgement, especially in this, that he crushed Demetrianus, who had no share in the truth, not by the reasoning of human prudence, which he ought to have used at the beginning, but by the authority of the heavenly precepts, of which that man confessed himself an enemy (book 5, ch. 1). But here the usual diligence of Isaeus is wanting, who did not set out for us expressly in which Bologna manuscript, whether in the most ancient or in the other, more recent one

these things were written. But even if they stood in the former, should the authority of that one alone prevail over all the others? Are there not in it too, as in the others, some errors of the copyist? But that this is the addition of some writer is clear from the fact that the same things are said about Cyprian later on, and more elegantly. Nor is it likely that Lactantius thought these insulting words ought to be repeated, which, as we have seen, were said of so eminent a writer without any right or desert at all. Is it not, then, much more probable, not to say more certain, that this repetition is to be ascribed to a drowsy copyist? (Lact. ch. 4.)

Finally, the distinguished Étienne Baluze (Baluze, Miscellanea book 2, p. 46) published another short fragment on the last judgement, which he had found copied in codex 1095 of the Colbert Library after the seven books of the Divine Institutes and before the book On the Wrath of God. Relying on the authority of this codex, he judged that it had truly come from Lactantius. Baluze was followed by Thomas Spark, who afterwards had it printed from two English codices in the Oxford edition. We, however, saw two others in the Colbert library, of which we shall speak a little later, in which the same fragment is likewise found in the same way. But how could it come about that it occurs only in these copies, which are certainly very recent, and not in the others, far more numerous and older? Why, too, even in these books written by so recent a hand, was it not copied in its proper place? Can it not be concluded from this that there is no reason why it should be said to have been transcribed from the books of our Lactantius rather than from those of another author? However that may be, this short fragment is not of such importance that we should be detained any longer in searching out its parent. For it supplies us with nothing new except the name of Elijah the Tishbite, who, as is related there, pursued the Antichrist with the faith (two English mss., fidem, the faith as object) of the Jews. But I fear that these words too may not agree with what Lactantius set down both in the seventh book of the Institutes and in the Epitome, in what he wrote on the last judgement.

But it is truly astonishing with what confidence a certain more recent critic (Simon, Selected Letters 25, Rotterdam, in the year 1704) asserted in one of his selected letters that all these fragments, about which we have been disputing up to now, are genuine and authentic, and were cut out of the text of Lactantius by those who once presided in the monasteries over the correction of old codices. He wished us to be advised in the same place that in another letter, so that this one might not be too long, he would examine these same fragments only. Whether he has kept his promise is unknown to us. In the letter cited, however, he admits that those additions in which the errors of the Manichaeans are detected are not found in a portion of the better manuscript codices. But he boldly affirms that for many centuries the correctors of these codices removed from the authors' text these and many other things which did not seem orthodox to them. Finally, he asserts without hesitation that Lactantius, who had not been perfectly instructed in our theological doctrines, could have been infected with the false opinions of the Manichaeans, who sprang from the Gnostics.

But see, I pray, the plainly extraordinary sagacity of the man to whom the name of critic is so much an object of love and delight, and a truly new kind of arguing. Lactantius, says that critical gentleman, could have been polluted by the errors of the Manichaeans; therefore he was in fact polluted by them; therefore he wrote those fragments which are in question; therefore the monks who corrected the manuscripts cut them away. O argument truly worthy of so great a critic! But in order to accuse the monks of so great a crime, he ought first to have proved that Lactantius was in fact contaminated by these errors of the Manichaeans, next that those additions were written by Lactantius, and when they were torn out by the monks or not copied into the later manuscripts. But this he will certainly never prove, nor will anyone else be able to prove it. Moreover, we have demonstrated by several arguments that all those additions are bastard and spurious, and especially those which seem to smell of the poison and venom of the Manichaeans. No less clearly and plainly have we shown that by most of these same fragments the discourse of Lactantius is perversely thrown into disorder, and errors opposed to his teaching are championed. But I am ashamed to waste longer effort in refuting the calumnies with which that modern writer, here and there in his writings, vainly tried to defame not only the good faith of the monks but also the teaching of the most ancient writers. Yet the man must be spared, who, before he breathed his last in the year 1712, publicly asked pardon of those whom he had offended as gravely as undeservedly, and died in the bosom of the Catholic Church. One thing at least is to be wished: that he had turned his mind and his learning to better things.

Article IV.

On the various errors ascribed to Lactantius.

If there are errors of Lactantius in the additions reviewed so far, nearly everyone judges, not at all without reason, that these are to be attributed not to our Lactantius, as we have seen, but to others abusing their leisure. To Lactantius himself, however, belong a great many false opinions and errors of every kind whatever, which many have indeed believed they detected here and there in his writings. So great is their number that scarcely any other writer seems ever to have erred so often in so few books. For some once counted a hundred and seventy errors of his, others afterwards reduced them to ninety-four, and others again to a smaller number. The greater part of them concerns the orthodox faith, a lesser part moral discipline, and the least part physical matters. But the greater their number is made out to be, the more easily everyone understands that many of the passages noted are sound and wholly undeserving to be branded with that mark of censorial severity. Accordingly, in the Roman edition of the Works of Lactantius published in the year 1468, Brother Antonius Raudensis, theologian, is refuted, as we read written there, by Brother Adam of Genoa in these verses:

Here Antonius with foolish ventures wrongly censured the author in various places, a fault to be expiated. It was not right to call the star the star of an image wandering in darkness, or to say that the shining radiance lacks light.

Finally, since it is established that the pious lights of the holy Church fell silent out of deference to so great a man, you, whose tongue is barred from Latin eloquence, go to bed; for hellebore is weighing you up.

Nevertheless there were afterwards not a few among the more recent heterodox who accused Lactantius of still other errors, or made him party to and supporter of those false dogmas which they vainly try to defend. But such great rashness we have thought should be rebuked later, in a more suitable place, so that the same things are not repeated.

Of weightier moment beyond doubt must be the testimony of Pope Damasus, who in his letter to Jerome passed this judgement on the letters of our Lactantius: I confess to you that those books of Lactantius (two mss. Lectitanti) which you had given me long ago I do not read willingly, because very many of his letters stretch to thousands of lines in length, and they rarely discuss our doctrine; whence it comes about that the length breeds weariness in the reader, and if any are short, they are more suited to schoolmen than to us, discussing metres, and the situation of regions, and philosophers; several mss. and editions disputandis, others disputantia. But by these words, Rarely of our doctrine, Damasus seems to mean nothing else than the questions which Jerome had put forward concerning certain passages of sacred Scripture. Then again, this censure of Damasus seems to regard only the letters of Lactantius, if his name is written there, and not the books of the divine Institutes, in which, as in others, he certainly discusses many things concerning our dogmas and tenets neither meagrely nor unlearnedly, as can easily be discerned from the analysis of them and from other things to be said more fully below. And what of the fact that Jerome, to whom Damasus wrote, speaks thus of these same books of Lactantius: Our Firmianus too, in the splendid work of his Institutes, made mention of the letter Y, and discussed most fully the right-hand things and the left-hand things, that is, vices and virtues (Jerome, Commentary on Ecclesiastes, p. 770). Of his letters, however, we can determine nothing with certainty, since none have come down to us.

But at least Gelasius I, someone will say, in the Roman council rejected the works of Lactantius, together with others which the catholic and apostolic Roman Church does not receive, in these words: The little works of Lactantius, apocryphal. But many formerly doubted whether those words are genuine and authentic. We, however, know more certainly than certain that they are found in all the older manuscript codices of better note. But we hold it no less established

that by this decree of Pope Gelasius several writings of the ancient Fathers of the Church, such as those of Tertullian, Eusebius Pamphili and others, are banished as apocryphal, which all nevertheless readily acknowledge to be sound and orthodox. They were therefore marked with that name either on account of other works of the same writers, infected with errors, or on account of certain mistakes with which they are sprinkled here and there. No one, however, can deny that our Lactantius, in composing these books of the Divine Institutes, struck upon many reefs of error, and above all upon that one which the Chiliasts had devised concerning the millenary reign of Christ on earth after the last judgement. But could not this error alone have given occasion to the aforesaid censure of Damasus? We, however, have treated of it, and shall say something more below.

Other errors, moreover, whether real or ascribed to him, we shall set out in their proper place with our accustomed candour, in such a way that, having explained them without any dissimulation, we make plain to all what in them is worthy of reproof. But with the same frankness we shall wash away others, which are ascribed to him by certain people through thoughtlessness or ill will. For nothing lies closer to the heart of some more recent writers than to enlarge and multiply the lapses and errors of the ancient Fathers of the Church. Sometimes, however, those cunning men pretend to excuse them somewhat, because to err is human, or because to the ancient writers, coming over from the heathen to the religion of Christ, our sacred teachings had not yet been sufficiently explored. But by this crafty and fraudulent excuse they do nothing else than weaken and diminish the authority of those men and of the ancient and ever venerable tradition.

However, whatever the blemishes or errors of Lactantius may be, we shall certainly show a little later that the truth of the Christian religion is demonstrated by him with the most powerful weight of reasons. Nor can it be denied that in his books many teachings of the Christian faith concerning sacred Scripture, God, Christ the Lord, the old and the new law, and its precepts and institutions, are rightly explained, asserted and confirmed by him. But these things are handed down more clearly and more fully in the books of the Divine Institutes. Wherefore these are rightly judged to be his principal work, elaborated with great care and effort of mind. Yet that work is most richly filled not with sacred learning alone, but also with profane, varied and manifold erudition.