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| Chapter XVIII. They Deceive, Instead of Healing.
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Chapter XVIII.—They Deceive, Instead of Healing.
But medicine and everything included in it is an
invention of the same kind. If any one is healed by matter, through
trusting to it, much more will he be healed by having recourse to the
power of God. As noxious preparations are material compounds, so are
curatives of the same nature. If, however, we reject the baser matter,
some persons often endeavour to heal by a union of one of these bad
things with some other, and will make use of the bad to attain the
good. But, just as he who dines with a robber, though he may not be a
robber himself, partakes of the punishment on account of his intimacy
with him, so he who is not bad but associates with the bad, having
dealings with them for some supposed good, will be punished by God the
Judge for partnership in the same object. Why is he who trusts in the
system of matter476
| 476 [ὓλης
οἰκονομία. note
Comp. cap. ix., supra, note 4; p. 69.] | not
willing to trust in God? For what reason do you not approach the
more powerful Lord, but rather seek to cure yourself, like the dog
with grass, or the stag with a viper, or the hog with river-crabs,
or the lion with apes? Why you deify the objects of nature? And why,
when you cure your neighbour, are you called a benefactor? Yield
to the power of the Logos! The demons do not cure, but by their
art make men their captives. And the most admirable Justin477
| 477 [The language of an affectionate
pupil: ὁ
θαυμασιώτατος
Ιουστινος.] |
has rightly denounced them as robbers. For, as it is the practice of
some to capture persons and then to restore them to their friends for a
ransom, so those who are esteemed gods, invading the bodies of certain
persons, and producing a sense of their presence by dreams, command them
to come forth into public, and in the sight of all, when they have taken
their fill of the things of this world, fly away from the sick, and,
destroying the disease which they had produced, restore men to their
former state.E.C.F. INDEX & SEARCH
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