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| The Mythology Respecting the Gods; The Dogmas of the Manichæans Resemble This: the Homeric Allegory of the Battle of the Gods; Envy and Emulation Existing In God According to the Manichæan Opinion; These Vices are to Be Found in No Good Man, and are to Be Accounted Disgraceful.
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Chapter
X.—The Mythology Respecting the Gods; The Dogmas of the
Manichæans Resemble This: the Homeric Allegory of the Battle
of the Gods; Envy and Emulation Existing In God According to the
Manichæan Opinion; These Vices are to Be Found in No Good Man, and
are to Be Accounted Disgraceful.
Moreover, they far surpass the mythologists in
fables, those, namely, who either make Coelus suffer mutilation, or
idly tell of the plots laid for Saturn by his son, in order that that
son might attain the sovereignty; or those again who make Saturn devour
his sons and to have been cheated of his purpose by the image of a
stone that was presented to him. For how are these things which
they put forward dissimilar to those? When they speak openly of
the war between God and matter, and say not these things either in a
mythological sense, as Homer in the Iliad;2203
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Hom., Il., xx. 23–54. | when he makes Jupiter to rejoice in the
strife and war of the gods with each other, thus obscurely signifying
that the world is formed of unequal elements, fitted one into another,
and either conquering or submitting to a conqueror. And this has
been advanced by me, because I know that people of this sort, when they
are at a loss for demonstration, bring together from all sides passages
from poems, and seek from them a support for their own opinions.
Which would not be the case with them if they had only read what they
fell in with some reflection. But, when all evil is banished from
the company of the gods, surely emulation and envy ought especially to
have been got rid of. Yet these men leave these things with God,
when they say that God formed designs against matter, because it felt a
desire for good. But with which of those things which God
possessed could He have wished to take vengeance on matter? In
truth, I think it to be more accurate doctrine to say that God is of a
simple nature, than what they advance. Nor, indeed, as in the
other things, is the enunciation of this fancy easy. For neither
is it possible to demonstrate it simply and with words merely, but with
much instruction and labour. But we all know this, that anger and
rage, and the desire of revenge upon matter, are passions in him who is
so agitated. And of such a sort, indeed, as it could never happen
to a good man to be harassed by them, much less then can it be that
they are connected with the Absolute Good.E.C.F. INDEX & SEARCH
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