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| Against Those Who Deny that the Books of the Church are to Be Believed About the Miracles Whereby the People of God Were Educated.
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Chapter 18.—Against Those Who
Deny that the Books of the Church are to Be Believed About the
Miracles Whereby the People of God Were Educated.
Will some one say that these
miracles are false, that they never happened, and that the records
of them are lies? Whoever says so, and asserts that in such
matters no records whatever can be credited, may also say that
there are no gods who care for human affairs. For they have
induced men to worship them only by means of miraculous works,
which the heathen histories testify, and by which the gods have
made a display of their own power rather than done any real
service. This is the reason why we have not undertaken in this
work, of which we are now writing the tenth book, to refute those
who either deny that there is any divine power, or contend that it
does not interfere with human affairs, but those who prefer their
own god to our God, the Founder of the holy and most glorious city,
not knowing that He is also the invisible and unchangeable Founder
of this visible and changing world, and the truest bestower of the
blessed life which resides not in things created, but in Himself.
For thus speaks His most trustworthy prophet: “It is good for
me to be united to God.”413
Among philosophers it is a
question, what is that end and good to the attainment of which all
our duties are to have a relation? The Psalmist did not say, It
is good for me to have great wealth, or to wear imperial insignia,
purple, sceptre, and diadem; or, as some even of the philosophers
have not blushed to say, It is good for me to enjoy sensual
pleasure; or, as the better men among them seemed to say, My good
is my spiritual strength; but, “It is good for me to be united to
God.” This he had learned from Him whom the holy angels, with
the accompanying witness of miracles, presented as the sole object
of worship. And hence he himself became the sacrifice of God,
whose spiritual love inflamed him, and into whose ineffable and
incorporeal embrace he yearned to cast himself. Moreover, if the
worshippers of many gods (whatever kind of gods they fancy their
own to be) believe that the miracles recorded in their civil
histories, or in the books of magic, or of the more respectable
theurgy, were wrought by these gods, what reason have they for
refusing to believe the miracles recorded in those writings, to
which we owe a credence as much greater as He is greater to whom
alone these writings teach us to sacrifice?E.C.F. INDEX & SEARCH
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