CHAPTER 9
1/8
THE PROOF OF THE GOSPEL
Bk. IV.
CHAPTER
Of the Hostile Power opposed to God, atid of its Ruler, and hoiv the Whole Race of Mankind was in Subjection thereto.
Such was their position.
While those on the side of the opposing rebel power were either daemons, or vile spirits immersed more or less in wickedness, with the cunning ruler of them all the mighty daemon, who first failed of their reverence of the Divinity and fell from their own portion, when envy of man's salvation drew them the (d) contrary way, plotting with all sorts of evil devices against all the nations, and even against the Lord's portion in their jealousy of the good.
It is this godless and unholy scheme of the great Daemon, which the prophetic spirit in Isaiah reproves in this way, saying "13.
I will act in strength, antl in the wisdom of understanding I will take away the boundaries of the nations, and will diminish their strength, 14. and I will shake inhabited cities.
And the whole inhabited world I will take in my hand as a nest, and I will take them Isa.
13. even as eggs that have been left; and none shall escape (13;) me or say me nay."
These are the words of (iod's antagonist, boasting in the strength of his wickedness, as he threatens to steal and obliterate the divisions of the nations delivered by the Most
Iligii to the angels, and loudly cries that he will spoil the earth, and shake the whole race of men, and change them from their former good order.
But hear the same proj^hecy speak about him again, how he thought about himself and (b) how he bragged :
" How has Lucifer that rose at morn lallcn from heaven : He is crushed to earth that sent to all the nations.
But thou saidst in thy heart, ' I will go up to heaven, I will set my throne above the stars of heaven.^ ...
I will ascend above the clouds.
I will be '
IC. omits K'afiw t'c w^iti i''v//);A(j;, (VI toI <ipij ra I'i'/^n to Trfihs Bopfiay.
Ch. 9.
RULE OF SATAN
like the Most High.'
But now thou shalt go down to hell, and to the foundations of the earth.'
Isa.xiv. 12.
Truly Scripture shews many things at once in this, the madness of the said spirit, his fall from the better to the worse, and the end of his fall.
And having uttered terrible (c) threats against all mankind, he discovered that men could be caught otherwise by his weapons,^ since they possessed in their power of free choice the ever-ready possibility of falling into evil from their own thoughts.
Then he turned the conditions of states from the better to the worse, and drew away the souls of the multitude by the bait of pleasure to every form of wickedness, and left no sort of device untried, and with base myths of the gods and impure stories (d) he tempted his victims with what they loved and with what gave them pleasure, using the artful deceit of the daemons.
And in this way he took the whole world and held it captive, and obliterated the boundaries of the nations, as he had threatened to do when he said :
" I will remove the boundaries of the nations, and I will diminish their strength, and I will take the whole world in my hand as a nest."
And from that day forward he ruled all men with deceit, and the evil da'mons were arrayed under their king in every place and city and land.And thus the whole of human life was enslaved by earthly powers and evil spirits instead of the earlier ministers of God, and all gave themselves over in throngs and swiftly to the snares of pleasure so that they soon overleapt the bounds even of nature, in unnatural offences of one kind or another, and they not only did things of which it is wrong even to think, but (160) connected them with their conceptions of their own gods, and worked their lust with all the more freedom as a thing supposed to please the gods.
Hence soon, according to the holy Apostle, they took no heed of the works of God still bright in heaven.
^ Dindorf reads with Viguier irpoSoKiots.
(irpo0o\ioy, a hunting spear. ) MS. has vpofiovKiois.
Gaisford refers to Viguier, De Idiotiimis, hi.
I, 7.
* The passage seems rhetorically to suggest that the Roman Empire was the negation of the divine plan of nationalities.
But E. abundantly recognizes elsewhere the provident bl preparation of the world for Christ, and for the evangelization of men of all races, through the existence of one central authority, and the cessation of wars in the Pax
Romana.
Cf Terlullian, Af-olo^y, cc. xxx.-xxxvi.
i8o
THE PROOF OF THE GOSPEL
Bk. IV.
"They became vain in their reasonings: and their senseless heart was darkened.
22.
Professing them- (b) selves to be wise, they became fools.
23. And changed ^ the glory of the incorruptible God into an image made like to corruptible man, and of birds and four-footed 21. beasts and creeping things."
And that in the earliest age those upon earth worshipped only the lights of heaven, and knew no image, nor were concerned with the error of the daemons, there is satisfactory proof to be found in the evidence of those, who are strangers to my argument, which I drew upon in the first book of the Preparatio (which I wrote) before the present treatise (c) they clearly prove that the earliest men did not serve idols fashioned by hand from lifeless matter, nor even invisible dremons, but only those beings, which are said in Holy Scripture to have been distributed among the nations.
It is time for the Greeks themselves, therefore, whose statements I have arranged in the work mentioned, to agree that the superstition connected with idols was something more recent and novel, being introduced subsequently to the worship of the ancients, as well as the devotion to unseen spirits.
All this was the work of the said antagonist of God, who plotted against all those on earth.
And all (d) the tribe of unclean spirits co-operated with him.
Yea, he surely, the prince of evil himself, worked this result, fulfilling in very deed, in the madness of strange pride, the threats he had uttered against all men, raising the godless cry, " I will be like the Most High," and with the aid of impure and evil daemons offering oracles and cures and such like in response to human sorcery.
CHAPJER
Tluit the Only-hcgottcn Son of God made His Entry anioni:; Mankind of Neassity.
{i6i)Thkv that were their guardian angels before were unable to defend in any way the subject nations now involved in !
W.ll.:
^AAofai'.
: vA\(f{o»TO.
Ch.
10.
DELIVERER FROM D^^^MONS
i8i such a flood of evil.
They took care of the rest of the created world.
They guarded the other parts of the Cosmos, (!>) and served according to their wont the will of God the Creator of ail.
But they did not realize the fall of mortal men through the undetermined human choice of evil.
Wherefore a sickness great and hard to heal overcame all on the face of the earth, the nations being driven now one way now another by the evil spirits, and falling into a depthless abyss of evil.
Yea, now some thought it good to feast on the bodies of their dearest, like wild beasts that devour the raw flesh of men, and to lie shamelessly with (c) mothers, sisters and daughters, to strangle their old men, and cast their bodies to the dogs and birds.
Why should I recall the cruel and terrible human sacrifices of the "gods,"
I mean the evil daemons, into which they maddened the human race?
I have dealt sufficiently with them previously in the Prolegomena to the present treatise.
But it was when evils of such magnitude had fallen on the(<l) whole world from the wicked and vile spirits and their king, and none of the guardian angels was able to defend them from the evils, that He, Cod the Word, the Saviour of the Universe, by the good will of His Father's love to man, that the human race so dear to Him might not be seethed in the gulf of sin, sent forth at last some few and watery rays of His own light to shine through the prophet Moses and the godly men before and after him, providing a cure for the evil in man by the holy Law.
It is exactly this that the Word says to the race of the Hebrews when giving the law by Moses :
"Ye shall not do according to the devices of Egypt, (162) in which ye dwelt,' and according to the devices of the land of Canaan, into which I Ijring you shall ye not * • do, and ye shall not walk in their ordinances, ye shall observe my judgments, and ye shall keep my ordinances.^ Lev.
I am the Lord your Cod." xviii.
Then, having forbidden all unlawful marriage, and all unseemly practice, and the union of women with women and men with men, he adds " Ho not defile yourselves with any of these things : (b) '
: KaToi/(TJ(TOT€ for irap<f>KT)ffarf.
* S. adils :
"to w.ilk in them."
i82
THE PROOF OF THE GOSPEL
Bk. IV. for in all these things the nations were defiled, which I will drive out before you.
And the land was polluted, and I have recompensed (their) iniquity upon Lev. xviii. it, and the land is aggrieved with them that dwell ^"^" upon it."
And again, he says :
"And when thou shalt have entered into the land which the Lord thy God gives thee, thou shalt by no means learn to do according to the abominations of those nations.
There shall not be found in thee one who purges his son or his daughter in the fire, one who uses divination, and who deals in the omens, a sorcerer (c) using incantations,^ a divining spirit, an observer of auguries, a questioner of the dead.
For every one that doeth these things is an abomination to the Lord thy God.
For because of these abominations the Lord Deut.xviii. will destroy them from before thy face.Thou shalt 9be perfect before the T>ord thy God."
These and many other holy teachings and commands God the Word gave to them of old by Moses, as delivering the elementary truths at the entry of the life of holiness, by means of symbols, and worship of a shadowy and external
(<1) character, in bodily circumcision, and other things of that kind, which were completed on the earth.
But since as time went on none of the prophets who succeeded Moses had the power to cure the evils of life owing to excess of wickedness, and the activity of the daemons daily waxed greater, so that even the Hebrew race was hurried along in the destruction of the godless, at last the Saviour and Physician of the Universe comes down Himself to men, bringing reinforcement to His angels for the salvation of men, since the Father had promised Him that He would give Him this boon, as He therefore teaches in the Psalms, when He says :
" 7. The I,ord said to me. Thou art my Son, This day have I begotten thee, 8.
Desire of me, and I shall give thee the heathen ., .. for thine inheritance, (u,-,) And utmost parts of tiic cartii for thy possession."
S. has (papfxaKOis iiradSuH'
«V.ioi5j)i', "chaining an incantation with sorcery." for (papfiaxo^ dw(iovy.
* S.
: "from thcc."
Ch.
10.
WORK OF CHRL'^T
18;, And thus He no longer claimed asunder His own authority just and clear-sighted Israel, nor His own proper portion only, but all the nations on the earth, which before were allotted to many angels, and were involved in all sorts of wickedness, and He came announcing to all the knowledge and love of His Father, and promismg the remission and forgiveness of their former ignorance and sins, which He also announced clearly when He said :
" The strong have Matt. ix. no need of a physician, but they that are sick :
I came not ^^• to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance."
And (h) He came, too, as overseer of His own angels, who were first set over the nations : and they at once very distinctly recognized their helper and Lord, and came gladly and ministered to Him, as the Holy Scripture teaches, saying : Matt. iv.
"And angels came and ministered to him," and when, too, "• "a multitude of the heavenly host praising God said, 'Glory (c) to God in the highest, and on earth peace, goodwill among Luleii.i3. men.'"
These, then, as being His own angels He thus received, since they were in need of His help, but those that of old had flown around the pursuits of men, the malicious daemons who both visibly and invisibly had tyrannized over those on earth, and the tribes of wild and merciless spirits, with their leader in all evil, that cunning and baneful one ' He put to flight and subdued with mighty and divine power, as certain of them that recognized Him (dj said :
" What have we to do with thee, Son of God ? Matt. viii.
Hast thou come to torment us before the time?'
29.
And these by Hi? deeds and words He mightily
plagued, while j He healed and cured the whole human race with the gentle and kind medicines of His words, and. with the tonic of His teaching.
He freed them from all,' sorts of sicknesses and suffering of body as well as soul, He
| set all that came to Him free from age-long superstition,} and the fears of polytheistic error, and from a low and] dissolute life.
He converted and changed those who; listened to Him from lust to purity, from impiety to piety, from injustice to justice, yea, verily from the power of the (164) malicious dx*mons to the divine acceptance of true holiness."] In addition to all this He threw open the gates of * aAaffrJpa.
Originally "the Avenging Deity," as in /lisch., Pcrs.
354, A^ani.
1 501, 1508.
Then of any plague, as in Soph., Track, 1092.
i84
THE PROOF OF THE GOSPEL
Bk. IV. heavenly life and of His holy teaching to all the nations of the world, and so greatly condescended, as not only to (1)) extend His saving hand to the sick and grievously afflicted, but also to save the half-dead from the very gates of death, and to loose from the bonds of death those who had been a long time dead and buried.
And for this reason especially there was need for Him to be active, even as far as the resting-places of the dead, that He might be Lord not only of the living but of the dead as well.
So long, then, as He is with the Father, and steers the Providence of the Universe with divine power, the Divine ^^'ord and Wisdom and Power oversees and protects the heaven itself and the earth likewise, and the things by (c) nature included in them, as well as the divine and unembodied essences beyond the heaven.
He is their Ruler and Head and King, and is already hymned as God and Lord in the sacred oracles, and He gives light to the unembodied and purely rational natures.
And He is called Sun of Righteousness, and the True Light, carrying out, and co-operating in His Father's commands, wherefore He is also styled minister of the Father and Creator, but since He
(d) alone in His ordained rank knows how to serve God, and stands midway between the unbegotten God and the things after Him begotten, and has received the care of the Universe, and is Priest to the Father on behalf of all who are obedient, and alone shews Himself favourable and merciful to all. He is called as well Eternal High Priest, and also the Anointed (Christ) of the Father, for so among the Hebrews they were called Christs, who long ago symbolically presented a copy of the first (Christ).
And when as Captain of the Angels He heads them, He is I,n. ix.
6. called: "The Angel of Great Counsel," and as Leader of the Armies of Heaven :
" Captain of the Host of the Jos.
14.
Lord."i Put now descending to our world, receiving our rational nature, for the sake of His own likeness to it by the goodwill of the Father, as He is like to rule over infants and as it were over tlie Hocks, He is named Shepherd of the Sheep, while as promising to care for sick souls. He would rightly be called .Saviour and Physician.
And this of {165) course is the meaning of the name "Jesus" in Hebrew.
' Karh Tofir.
Ch. ro.
THE INCARNATION
And since He needed a human organism, so that He could show Himself to men, and give true teaching of the knowledge of the Father and of holiness, He did not even refuse the way of the Incarnation ; but assuming our nature in a moment He came among men, shewing the great Miracle to all of God in Man.
So that He did not take command (b) imperceptibly and obscurely as a being without flesh ( r body, but seen by the very eyes of flesh, and allowing the eyes of men to see miracles even beyond the power of man, and moreover giving His teaching by tongue and articulate sound to the bodily ears, He manifested Himself— and truly it was a di\ine and miraculous thing, such as never before or since is recorded to have happened— the Saviour and the Benefactor, too, of all.
So, then, God the Word was called the Son of Man, and was named Jesus, because He made His approach to us to cure and to heal the souls of men.
And therefore in Hebrew the name Jesus is inter- (c) preted Saviour.
^Vnd He led the life which we lead, in no way forsaking the being that He had before, and ever in the Manhood retaining the Divinity.
Immediately, therefore, at the first moment of His descent among men, lie mingles with God the divine glory of ou*human birth, ^ for while He is born like us, and arrayed like men with mortality, yet as One Who is not man, but God, He is born into the phenomenal world from an undefiled and unwedded maiden, and not of sexual union and corruption.
CHAPTER
That He passed through the Life of Men.
(d) And He lived His whole life through in the same manner, now revealing His nature as like our own, and now that of God the Word, doing great works and miracles as God, ' So Donatus : "cum Deo divinam commiscct iioslri ortus admirabilitatem."
We may interpret: " He associated humanity with God, so that it became gloriously divine."
VOL.