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| What Hermes Trismegistus Thought Concerning Idolatry, and from What Source He Knew that the Superstitions of Egypt Were to Be Abolished.
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Chapter 23.—What Hermes
Trismegistus Thought Concerning Idolatry, and from What Source He
Knew that the Superstitions of Egypt Were to Be
Abolished.
The Egyptian Hermes, whom they call
Trismegistus, had a different opinion concerning those demons.
Apuleius, indeed, denies that they are gods; but when he says that
they hold a middle place between the gods and men, so that they
seem to be necessary for men as mediators between them and the
gods, he does not distinguish between the worship due to them and
the religious homage due to the supernal gods. This Egyptian,
however, says that there are some gods made by the supreme God, and
some made by men. Any one who hears this, as I have stated it, no
doubt supposes that it has reference to images, because they are
the works of the hands of men; but he asserts that visible and
tangible images are, as it were, only the bodies of the gods, and
that there dwell in them certain spirits, which have been invited
to come into them, and which have power to inflict harm, or to
fulfil the desires of those by whom divine honors and services are
rendered to them. To unite, therefore, by a certain art, those
invisible spirits to visible and material things, so as to make, as
it were, animated bodies, dedicated and given up to those spirits
who inhabit them,—this, he says, is to make gods, adding that men
have received this great and wonderful power. I will give the
words of this Egyptian as they have been translated into our
tongue: “And, since we have undertaken to discourse concerning
the relationship and fellowship between men and the gods,
know,
O Æsculapius, the power and strength of man. As the Lord and
Father, or that which is highest, even God, is the maker of the
celestial gods, so man is the maker of the gods who are in the
temples, content to dwell near to men.”320
| 320 These quotations are from a
dialogue between Hermes and Æsculapius, which is said to have been
translated into Latin by Apuleius. | And a little after he says,
“Thus humanity, always mindful of its nature and origin,
perseveres in the imitation of divinity; and as the Lord and Father
made eternal gods, that they should be like Himself, so humanity
fashioned its own gods according to the likeness of its own
countenance.” When this Æsculapius, to whom especially he was
speaking, had answered him, and had said, “Dost thou mean the
statues, O Trismegistus?”—“Yes, the statues,” replied he,
“however unbelieving thou art, O Æsculapius,—the statues,
animated and full of sensation and spirit, and who do such great
and wonderful things,—the statues prescient of future things, and
foretelling them by lot, by prophet, by dreams, and many other
things, who bring diseases on men and cure them again, giving them
joy or sorrow according to their merits. Dost thou not know, O
Æsculapius, that Egypt is an image of heaven, or, more truly, a
translation and descent of all things which are ordered and
transacted there, that it is, in truth, if we may say so, to be the
temple of the whole world? And yet, as it becomes the prudent man
to know all things beforehand, ye ought not to be ignorant of this,
that there is a time coming when it shall appear that the Egyptians
have all in vain, with pious mind, and with most scrupulous
diligence, waited on the divinity, and when all their holy worship
shall come to nought, and be found to be in vain.”
Hermes then follows out at great
length the statements of this passage, in which he seems to predict
the present time, in which the Christian religion is overthrowing
all lying figments with a vehemence and liberty proportioned to its
superior truth and holiness, in order that the grace of the true
Saviour may deliver men from those gods which man has made, and
subject them to that God by whom man was made. But when Hermes
predicts these things, he speaks as one who is a friend to these
same mockeries of demons, and does not clearly express the name of
Christ. On the contrary, he deplores, as if it had already taken
place, the future abolition of those things by the observance of
which there was maintained in Egypt a resemblance of heaven,—he
bears witness to Christianity by a kind of mournful prophecy. Now
it was with reference to such that the apostle said, that
“knowing God, they glorified Him not as God, neither were
thankful, but became vain in their imaginations, and their foolish
heart was darkened; professing themselves to be wise, they became
fools, and changed the glory of the incorruptible God into the
likeness of the image of corruptible man,”321
and so on, for the whole passage is
too long to quote. For Hermes makes many such statements
agreeable to the truth concerning the one true God who fashioned
this world. And I know not how he has become so bewildered by
that “darkening of the heart” as to stumble into the expression
of a desire that men should always continue in subjection to those
gods which he confesses to be made by men, and to bewail their
future removal; as if there could be anything more wretched than
mankind tyrannized over by the work of his own hands, since man, by
worshipping the works of his own hands, may more easily cease to be
man, than the works of his hands can, through his worship of them,
become gods. For it can sooner happen that man, who has received
an honorable position, may, through lack of understanding, become
comparable to the beasts, than that the works of man may become
preferable to the work of God, made in His own image, that is, to
man himself. Wherefore deservedly is man left to fall away from
Him who made Him, when he prefers to himself that which he himself
has made.
For these vain, deceitful,
pernicious, sacrilegious things did the Egyptian Hermes sorrow,
because he knew that the time was coming when they should be
removed. But his sorrow was as impudently expressed as his
knowledge was imprudently obtained; for it was not the Holy Spirit
who revealed these things to him, as He had done to the holy
prophets, who, foreseeing these things, said with exultation, “If
a man shall make gods, lo, they are no gods;”322
and in another place, “And it
shall come to pass in that day, saith the Lord, that I will cut off
the names of the idols out of the land, and they shall no more be
remembered.”323
But the
holy Isaiah prophesies expressly concerning Egypt in reference to
this matter, saying, “And the idols of Egypt shall be moved at
His presence, and their heart shall be overcome in them,”324
and other
things to the same effect. And with the prophet are to be classed
those who rejoiced that that which they knew was to come had
actually come,—as Simeon, or Anna, who immediately recognized
Jesus when He
was born, or Elisabeth, who in
the Spirit recognized Him when He was conceived, or Peter, who said
by the revelation of the Father, “Thou art Christ, the Son of the
living God.”325
But to
this Egyptian those spirits indicated the time of their own
destruction, who also, when the Lord was present in the flesh, said
with trembling, “Art Thou come hither to destroy us before the
time?”326
meaning by
destruction before the time, either that very destruction which
they expected to come, but which they did not think would come so
suddenly as it appeared to have done, or only that destruction
which consisted in their being brought into contempt by being made
known. And, indeed, this was a destruction before the time, that
is, before the time of judgment, when they are to be punished with
eternal damnation, together with all men who are implicated in
their wickedness, as the true religion declares, which neither errs
nor leads into error; for it is not like him who, blown hither and
thither by every wind of doctrine, and mixing true things with
things which are false, bewails as about to perish a religion,
which he afterwards confesses to be error.E.C.F. INDEX & SEARCH
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