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| Chapter IV
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Chapter IV.
Notwithstanding, those who have written in this
manner regarding the “chief good” will go down to the
Piræus and offer prayer to Artemis, as if she were God, and will
look (with approval) upon the solemn assembly held by ignorant men; and
after giving utterance to philosophical remarks of such profundity
regarding the soul, and describing its passage (to a happier world)
after a virtuous life, they pass from those great topics which God has
revealed to them, and adopt mean and trifling thoughts, and offer a
cock to Æsculapius!4291
| 4291 Cf. Plato,
Phædo [lxvi. p. 118. S.] | And although
they had been enabled to form representations both of the
“invisible things” of God and of the “archetypal
forms” of things from the creation of the world, and from (the
contemplation of) sensible things, from which they ascend to those
objects which are comprehended by the understanding alone,—and
although they had no mean glimpses of His “eternal power and
Godhead,”4292
| 4292 καὶ τὰ
ἀόρατα τοῦ
Θεοῦ, καὶ τὰς
ἰδέας
φαντασθέντες
ἀπὸ τῆς
κτίσεως τοῦ
κόσμου, καὶ
τῶν αἰσθητῶν,
ἀφ᾽ ὧν
ἀναβαίνουσιν
ἐπὶ τὰ
νοούμενα·
τὴν τε ἀΐδιον
αὐτοῦ
δύναμιν καὶ
θειότητα οὐκ
ἀγεννῶς
ἰδόντες, etc. | they nevertheless
became “foolish in their imaginations,” and their
“foolish heart” was involved in darkness and ignorance as
to the (true) worship of God. Moreover, we may see those who
greatly pride themselves upon their wisdom and theology worshipping the
image of a corruptible man, in honour, they say, of Him, and
sometimes even descending, with the Egyptians, to the worship of birds,
and four-footed beasts, and creeping things! And although some
may appear to have risen above such practices, nevertheless they will
be found to have changed the truth of God into a lie, and to worship
and serve the “creature more than the Creator.”4293
As the wise and learned among the
Greeks, then, commit errors in the service which they render to God,
God “chose the foolish things of the world to confound the wise;
and base things of the world, and things that are weak, and things
which are despised, and things which are nought, to bring to nought
things that are;” and this, truly, “that no flesh should
glory in the presence of God.”4294
Our wise men, however,—Moses, the most ancient of them
all, and the prophets who followed him,—knowing that the chief
good could by no means be described in words, were the first who wrote
that, as God manifests Himself to the deserving, and to those who are
qualified to behold Him,4295
He appeared to
Abraham, or to Isaac,
or to Jacob. But who He was that appeared, and of what form, and
in what manner, and like to which of mortal beings,4296
| 4296 καὶ τίνι τῶν
ἐν ἡμῖν. Boherellus
understands ὅμοιος, which has been
adopted in the translation. | they have left to be investigated by those
who are able to show that they resemble those persons to whom God
showed Himself: for He was seen not by their bodily eyes, but by
the pure heart. For, according to the declaration of our Jesus,
“Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see
God.”4297
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