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| Of the Universal Way of the Soul’s Deliverance, Which Porphyry Did Not Find Because He Did Not Rightly Seek It, and Which the Grace of Christ Has Alone Thrown Open.
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Chapter 32.—Of the Universal Way
of the Soul’s Deliverance, Which Porphyry Did Not Find Because He
Did Not Rightly Seek It, and Which the Grace of Christ Has Alone
Thrown Open.
This is the religion which
possesses the universal way for delivering the soul; for except by
this way, none can be delivered. This is a kind of royal way,
which alone leads to a kingdom which does not totter like all
temporal dignities, but stands firm on eternal foundations. And
when Porphyry says, towards the end of the first book De
Regressu Animœ, that no system of doctrine which furnishes the
universal way for delivering the soul has as yet been received,
either from the truest philosophy, or from the ideas and practices
of the Indians, or from the reasoning437
of the Chaldæans, or from any
source whatever, and that no historical reading had made him
acquainted with that way, he manifestly acknowledges that there is
such a way, but that as yet he was not acquainted with it.
Nothing of all that he had so laboriously learned concerning the
deliverance of the soul, nothing of all that he seemed to others,
if not to himself, to know and believe, satisfied him. For he
perceived that there was still wanting a commanding authority which
it might be right to follow in a matter of such importance. And
when he says that he had not learned from any truest philosophy a
system which possessed the universal way of the soul’s
deliverance, he shows plainly enough, as it seems to me, either
that the philosophy of which he was a disciple was not the truest,
or that it did not comprehend such a way. And how can that be the
truest philosophy which does not possess this way? For what else
is the universal way of the soul’s deliverance than that by which
all souls universally are delivered, and without which, therefore,
no soul is delivered? And when he says, in addition, “or from
the ideas and practices of the Indians, or from the reasoning of
the Chaldæans, or from any source whatever,” he declares in the
most unequivocal language that this universal way of the soul’s
deliverance was not embraced in what he had learned either from the
Indians or the Chaldæans; and yet he could not forbear stating
that it was from the Chaldæans he had derived these divine oracles
of which he makes such frequent mention. What, therefore, does he
mean by this universal way of the soul’s deliverance, which had
not yet been made known by any truest philosophy, or by the
doctrinal systems of those nations which were considered to have
great insight in things divine, because they indulged more freely
in a curious and fanciful science and worship of angels? What is
this universal way of which he acknowledges his ignorance, if not a
way which does not belong to one nation as its special property,
but is common to all, and divinely bestowed? Porphyry, a man of
no mediocre abilities, does not question that such a way exists;
for he believes that Divine Providence could not have left men
destitute of this universal way of delivering the soul. For he
does not say that this way does not exist, but that this great boon
and assistance has not yet been discovered, and has not come to his
knowledge. And no wonder; for Porphyry lived in an age when this
universal way of the soul’s deliverance,—in other words, the
Christian religion,—was exposed to the persecutions of idolaters
and demon-worshippers, and earthly rulers,438
| 438 Namely, under Diocletian and
Maximian. | that the number of martyrs or
witnesses for the truth might be completed and consecrated, and
that by them proof might be given that we must endure all bodily
sufferings in the cause of the holy faith, and for the commendation
of the truth. Porphyry, being a witness of these persecutions,
concluded that this way was destined to a speedy extinction, and
that it, therefore, was not the universal way of the soul’s
deliverance, and did not see that the very thing that thus moved
him, and deterred him from becoming a Christian, contributed to the
confirmation and more effectual commendation of our
religion.
This, then, is the universal way of
the soul’s deliverance, the way that is granted by the divine
compassion to the nations universally. And no nation to which the
knowledge of it has already come, or may hereafter come, ought to
demand, Why so soon? or, Why so late?—for the design of Him who
sends it is impenetrable by human capacity. This was felt by
Porphyry when he confined himself to saying that this gift of God
was not yet received, and had not yet come to his knowledge. For
though this was so, he did not on that account pronounce that the
way it
self had no existence. This, I say, is the universal
way for the deliverance of believers, concerning which the faithful
Abraham received the divine assurance, “In thy seed shall all
nations be blessed.”439
He, indeed, was by birth a
Chaldæan; but, that he might receive these great promises, and
that there might be propagated from him a seed “disposed by
angels in the hand of a Mediator,”440
in whom this universal way, thrown
open to all nations for the deliverance of the soul, might be
found, he was ordered to leave his country, and kindred, and
father’s house. Then was he himself, first of all, delivered
from the Chaldæan superstitions, and by his obedience worshipped
the one true God, whose promises he faithfully trusted. This is
the universal way, of which it is said in holy prophecy, “God be
merciful unto us, and bless us, and cause His face to shine upon
us; that Thy way may be known upon earth, Thy saving health among
all nations.”441
And hence,
when our Saviour, so long after, had taken flesh of the seed of
Abraham, He says of Himself, “I am the way, the truth, and the
life.”442
This is
the universal way, of which so long before it had been predicted,
“And it shall come to pass in the last days, that the mountain of
the Lord’s house shall be established in the top of the
mountains, and shall be exalted above the hills; and all nations
shall flow unto it. And many people shall go and say, Come ye,
and let us go up to the mountain of the Lord, to the house of the
God of Jacob; and He will teach us of His ways, and we will walk in
His paths: for out of Sion shall go forth the law, and the word
of the Lord from Jerusalem.”443
This way, therefore, is not the
property of one, but of all nations. The law and the word of the
Lord did not remain in Zion and Jerusalem, but issued thence to be
universally diffused. And therefore the Mediator Himself, after
His resurrection, says to His alarmed disciples, “These are the
words which I spake unto you while I was yet with you, that all
things must be fulfilled which were written in the law of Moses,
and in the prophets, and in the Psalms, concerning me. Then
opened He their understandings that they might understand the
Scriptures, and said unto them, Thus it is written, and thus it
behoved Christ to suffer, and to rise from the dead the third
day: and that repentance and remission of sins should be preached
in His name among all nations, beginning at Jerusalem.”444
This is
the universal way of the soul’s deliverance, which the holy
angels and the holy prophets formerly disclosed where they could
among the few men who found the grace of God, and especially in the
Hebrew nation, whose commonwealth was, as it were, consecrated to
prefigure and fore-announce the city of God which was to be
gathered from all nations, by their tabernacle, and temple, and
priesthood, and sacrifices. In some explicit statements, and in
many obscure foreshadowings, this way was declared; but latterly
came the Mediator Himself in the flesh, and His blessed apostles,
revealing how the grace of the New Testament more openly explained
what had been obscurely hinted to preceding generations, in
conformity with the relation of the ages of the human race, and as
it pleased God in His wisdom to appoint, who also bore them witness
with signs and miracles some of which I have cited above. For not
only were there visions of angels, and words heard from those
heavenly ministrants, but also men of God, armed with the word of
simple piety, cast out unclean spirits from the bodies and senses
of men, and healed deformities and sicknesses; the wild beasts of
earth and sea, the birds of air, inanimate things, the elements,
the stars, obeyed their divine commands; the powers of hell gave
way before them, the dead were restored to life. I say nothing of
the miracles peculiar and proper to the Saviour’s own person,
especially the nativity and the resurrection; in the one of which
He wrought only the mystery of a virgin maternity, while in the
other He furnished an instance of the resurrection which all shall
at last experience. This way purifies the whole man, and prepares
the mortal in all his parts for immortality. For, to prevent us
from seeking for one purgation for the part which Porphyry calls
intellectual, and another for the part he calls spiritual, and
another for the body itself, our most mighty and truthful Purifier
and Saviour assumed the whole human nature. Except by this way,
which has been present among men both during the period of the
promises and of the proclamation of their fulfillment, no man has
been delivered, no man is delivered, no man shall be
delivered.
As to Porphyry’s statement that
the universal way of the soul’s deliverance had not yet come to
his knowledge by any acquaintance he had with history, I would ask,
what more remarkable history can be found than that which has taken
possession of the whole world by its authoritative voice? or what
more trustworthy than that which narrates past events, and predicts
the future with
equal clearness, and in the
unfulfilled predictions of which we are constrained to believe by
those that are already fulfilled? For neither Porphyry nor any
Platonists can despise divination and prediction, even of things
that pertain to this life and earthly matters, though they justly
despise ordinary soothsaying and the divination that is connected
with magical arts. They deny that these are the predictions of
great men, or are to be considered important, and they are right;
for they are founded, either on the foresight of subsidiary causes,
as to a professional eye much of the course of a disease is
foreseen by certain pre-monitory symptoms, or the unclean demons
predict what they have resolved to do, that they may thus work upon
the thoughts and desires of the wicked with an appearance of
authority, and incline human frailty to imitate their impure
actions. It is not such things that the saints who walk in the
universal way care to predict as important, although, for the
purpose of commending the faith, they knew and often predicted even
such things as could not be detected by human observation, nor be
readily verified by experience. But there were other truly
important and divine events which they predicted, in so far as it
was given them to know the will of God. For the incarnation of
Christ, and all those important marvels that were accomplished in
Him, and done in His name; the repentance of men and the conversion
of their wills to God; the remission of sins, the grace of
righteousness, the faith of the pious, and the multitudes in all
parts of the world who believe in the true divinity; the overthrow
of idolatry and demon worship, and the testing of the faithful by
trials; the purification of those who persevered, and their
deliverance from all evil; the day of judgment, the resurrection of
the dead, the eternal damnation of the community of the ungodly,
and the eternal kingdom of the most glorious city of God,
ever-blessed in the enjoyment of the vision of God,—these things
were predicted and promised in the Scriptures of this way; and of
these we see so many fulfilled, that we justly and piously trust
that the rest will also come to pass. As for those who do not
believe, and consequently do not understand, that this is the way
which leads straight to the vision of God and to eternal fellowship
with Him, according to the true predictions and statements of the
Holy Scriptures, they may storm at our position, but they cannot
storm it.
And therefore, in these ten books,
though not meeting, I dare say, the expectation of some, yet I
have, as the true God and Lord has vouchsafed to aid me, satisfied
the desire of certain persons, by refuting the objections of the
ungodly, who prefer their own gods to the Founder of the holy city,
about which we undertook to speak. Of these ten books, the first
five were directed against those who think we should worship the
gods for the sake of the blessings of this life, and the second
five against those who think we should worship them for the sake of
the life which is to be after death. And now, in fulfillment of
the promise I made in the first book, I shall go on to say, as God
shall aid me, what I think needs to be said regarding the origin,
history, and deserved ends of the two cities, which, as already
remarked, are in this world commingled and implicated with one
another. E.C.F. INDEX & SEARCH
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