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| Chapter XIX. Depravity Lies at the Bottom of Demon-Worship.
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But do you, who have not the perception of these
things, be instructed by us who know them: though you do profess to
despise death, and to be sufficient of yourselves for everything. But
this is a discipline in which your philosophers are so greatly deficient,
that some of them receive from the king of the Romans 600 aurei yearly,
for no useful service they perform, but that they may not even wear a long
beard without being paid for it! Crescens, who made his nest in the great
city, surpassed all men in unnatural love (παιδεραστία),
and was strongly addicted to the love of money. Yet this man, who
professed to despise death, was so afraid of death, that he endeavoured
to inflict on Justin, and indeed on me, the punishment of death,
as being an evil, because by proclaiming the truth he convicted the
philosophers of being gluttons and cheats. But whom of the philosophers,
save you only, was he accustomed to inveigh against? If you say, in
agreement with our tenets, that death is not to be dreaded, do not
court death from an insane love of fame among men, like Anaxagoras,
but become despisers of death by reason of the knowledge of God. The
construction of the world is excellent, but the life men live in it is
bad; and we may see those greeted with applause as in a solemn assembly
who know not God. For what is divination? and why are ye deceived by
it? It is a minister to thee of worldly lusts. You wish to make war,
and you take Apollo as a counsellor of slaughter. You want to carry off
a maiden by force, and you select a divinity to be your accomplice. You
are ill by your own fault; and, as Agamemnon478
| 478 Comp. Hom. Il., ii. 372. | wished
for ten councillors, so you wish to have gods with you. Some woman by
drinking water gets into a frenzy, and loses her senses by the fumes
of frankincense, and you say that she has the gift of prophecy. Apollo
was a prognosticator and a teacher of soothsayers: in the matter of
Daphne he deceived himself. An oak, forsooth, is oracular, and birds
utter presages! And so you are inferior to animals and plants! It would
surely be a fine thing for you to become a divining rod, or to assume
the wings of a bird! He who makes you fond of money also foretells
your getting rich; he who excites to seditions and wars also predicts
victory in war. If you are superior to the passions, you will despise
all worldly things. Do not abhor us who have made this attainment,
but, repudiating the demons,479
| 479
[The baptismal renunciation.] | follow the one God. “All
things480
were made by Him, and without Him not one thing was made.” If
there is poison in natural productions, this has supervened through
our sinfulness. I am able to show the perfect truth of these things;
only do you hearken, and he who believes will understand.E.C.F. INDEX & SEARCH
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