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| Argument: Although the Heathens Acknowledge Their Kings to Be Mortal, Yet They Feign that They are Gods Even Against Their Own Will, Not Because of Their Belief in Their Divinity, But in Honour of the Power that They Have Exerted. Yet a True God Has Neither Rising Nor Setting. Thence Octavius Criticises the Images and Shrines of the Gods.
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Chapter XXIII.—Argument: Although the Heathens
Acknowledge Their Kings to Be Mortal, Yet They Feign that They are Gods
Even Against Their Own Will, Not Because of Their Belief in Their
Divinity, But in Honour of the Power that They Have
Exerted. Yet a True God Has Neither Rising Nor Setting. Thence
Octavius Criticises the Images and Shrines of the Gods.
“It is needless to go through each
individual case, and to develope the entire series of that race, since
in its first parents their mortality is proved, and must have flowed
down into the rest by the very law of their succession, unless perhaps
you fancy that they were gods after death; as by the perjury of
Proculus, Romulus became a god; and by the good-will of the
Mauritanians, Juba is a god; and other kings are divine who are
consecrated, not in the faith of their divinity, but in honour of the
power that they exercised. Moreover, this name is ascribed to
those who are unwilling to bear it. They desire to persevere in
their human condition. They fear that they may be made gods;
although they are already old men, they do not wish it. Therefore
neither are gods made from dead people, since a god cannot die; nor of
people that are born, since everything which is born dies. But
that is divine which has neither rising nor setting. For why, if
they were born, are they not born in the present day
also?—unless, perchance, Jupiter has already grown old, and
child-bearing has failed in Juno, and Minerva has grown grey before she
has borne children. Or has that process of generation ceased, for
the reason that no assent is any longer yielded to fables of this
kind? Besides, if the gods could create,1796
| 1796 “Be
created” is a more probable reading. |
they could not perish: we should have more gods than all men
together; so that now, neither would the heaven contain them, nor the
air receive them, nor the earth bear them. Whence it is manifest,
that those were men whom we both read of as having been born, and know
to have died. Who therefore doubts that the common people pray to
and publicly worship the consecrated images of these men; in that the
belief and mind of the ignorant is deceived by the perfection of art,
is blinded by the glitter of gold, is dimmed with the shining of silver
and the whiteness of ivory? But if any one were to present to his
mind with what instruments and with what machinery every image is
formed, he would blush that he had feared matter, treated after his
fancy by the artificer to make a god.1797
| 1797 Otherwise, “that
he had rashly been so deceived by the artificer in the material, as to
make a god.” | For a god of wood, a portion perhaps
of a pile, or of an unlucky log, is hung up, is cut, is hewn, is
planed; and a god of brass or of silver, often from an impure vessel,
as was done by the Egyptian king,1798
| 1798
[Footbaths. See vol. ii., Theophilus, p. 92, and
Athenagoras, p. 143.] | is fused, is
beaten with hammers and forged on anvils; and the god of stone is cut,
is sculptured, and is polished by some abandoned man, nor feels the
injury done to him in his nativity, any more than afterwards it feels
the worship flowing from your veneration; unless perhaps the stone, or
the wood, or the silver is not yet a god. When, therefore, does
the god begin his existence? Lo, it is melted, it is wrought, it
is sculptured—it is not yet a god; lo, it is soldered, it is
built together—it is set up, and even yet it is not a god; lo, it
is adorned, it is consecrated, it is prayed to—then at length it
is a god, when man has chosen it to be so, and for the purpose has
dedicated it.E.C.F. INDEX & SEARCH
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