1. Chapter VII
Chapter VII T he ἀνωφέλεια [unprofitableness] of natural theology in the state of sin
— The media of its total corruption — The fatal superstition substituted in its place — What kind of knowledge of God survived among the nations destitute of the word — The corruption of theology by philosophy — The origin of philosophy — The two parts of natural theology
— The first corrupted utterly through metaphysics and ethics — The origin, abuse, use, and restoration of ethics; and likewise of metaphysics — Then of astronomy and natural philosophy — Natural theology corrupted through them.
I. Since such has been the condition of natural theology vitiated by sin, considered in itself, that no spiritual good could ever have been expected from it, let us see further in what manner it was further corrupted by the cunning of the devil and the vanity of the human mind — intending to treat next of the new theology, and of those whom God by its force enrolled as his peculiar people. And here indeed we have resolved to dispatch only the main heads of things, consigning the investigation of the origin and
progress of idolatry elsewhere. That corrupt natural theology — lost for the most part among the majority of mortals — and in its place a pernicious superstition substituted from the most ancient records of things and the memory of men, all know. By what road and by what media that fatal and catholic metamorphosis was introduced into the world of nations, we shall now briefly narrate.
II. That some knowledge of God prevailed among the nations destitute of the light of the divine word, flowing from that twofold fountain of which we have spoken — namely, the internal natural light and that revelation of him made through the works of God — we have shown and proved. That the event corresponded to these principles, from the testimonies of learned men among them gathered from every quarter of their writings, Josephus,
Justin Martyr, Athenagoras, Theophilus of Antioch, Origen, Clement of Alexandria, Athanasius, Theophilus of Alexandria, Chrysostom, Eusebius,
Theodoret, Tertullian, Lactantius, Arnobius, Augustine, and among the ancients others, have long since been made publicly known. Thomas,
Eugubinus, Raymond of Sebonde, Lodovicus Vives, Mornaeus, Charonius, Fotherby, Vossius, Stuckius, Giraldus Ferrariensis, Grotius, and writers of every kind in later ages, have done the same. The works of Orpheus,
Homer, Plato, Xenophon, Aristotle, Hesiod, Plutarch, Epictetus, Arrian, Cicero, Seneca, Photinus, Iamblichus, Proclus, Philostratus, and others, which still survive, prove the same thing with great clarity. The monuments and histories of all ages, of all nations and peoples, agree. For let us grant that τοὺς πολλούς [the many] were always so hemmed in by the veil of ignorance and darkness that they never so much as thought of the supreme divine power, or of the obedience owed to it according to right reason; and let it be granted that οἱ χαρίεντες [the refined] were so empty of divine
things as to hold them in contempt — yet σοφῶν [the wise] and θεωρητικῶν [contemplative thinkers], in whom somewhat greater care for investigating the natures of things and promoting κοινὰς ἐννοίας [common notions] had taken root, stand on a different footing. That they set forth many things concerning God and his worship, the obedience owed to him, and the ultimate end and happiness of men, and did so admirably and with eloquence, while the first effort of labouring nature still endured — is well known. How, therefore, we may see, and by what media, this theology was utterly corrupted, until it ended in that dreadful and total apostasy from God which is the Lernaean swamp of monstrous idolatry and most impure vanities — this appears to have flowed from a twofold source. For men abandoned to themselves and their own ways either endeavoured to advance the relics of natural theology, and by that endeavour, from native blindness, corrupted them the more; or they deliberately undertook to corrupt them further. That both endeavours succeeded perniciously enough is evident from the outcome. The first, however, was the more noble and worthier of creatures endowed with reason. Of it, therefore, we shall treat in the first place.
III. We have proved that sinful men destitute of all supernatural revelation still retain the natural power of knowing God, which asserts itself spontaneously in adults. We have also before ascribed to them a general knowledge distinguishing the honourable from the base in relation to God and his governance and decreeing judgment, of which, without the destruction of the practical intellect, they could not be wholly deprived. But from the perpetual restlessness and fluctuation of conscience, by which they were burdened and which those κοινὰς ἐννοίας [common notions] produced, they easily perceived that this knowledge or theology was not
sufficient for them to attain their ultimate end. And so, furnished with the benefit of the revelation of the eternal power and divinity of God through the works of creation and providence — which we have shown was also left to them — they strove with the greatest force to advance those innate principles. That they, for the most part, did so without knowing what they were doing is evident from the outcome. Furnished with the means of the operations of the intellect, they set about, as it were, by groping, to try what could be produced from them. And this is the origin of philosophy.
Philosophy, I say, is the offspring and, as it were, the shoot of those relics of that theology which the first man had as innate in the state of integral nature, amplified by the aforesaid revelation through the works of God. To seek God by groping — "who is not far from every one of us" — to scrutinize those testimonies to which in his works "he did not leave himself without witness," and to ponder with the mind the natures of all things through which "the invisible things" of God are perceived — a knowledge of all which the first man possessed in full as necessary to the worship of God the Creator — this at last is to philosophise. It was the σοφοί [wise men] of the earlier ages who attempted in this manner to elucidate and advance those principles mentioned above, so that the minds of men might rise thereby to the origin and primaeval state of those principles.
IV. It is certain that philosophy had no other origin and no other end. The Greeks, as if they had been the first to cultivate it, have always boasted most magnificently of themselves — and quite absurdly without doubt.
Diogenes Laërtius in the preface to his work, chiding those who dared to say τὸ τῆς φιλοσοφίας ἔργον ἀπὸ βαρβάρων ἄρξαι "that the work of philosophy took its beginning from the barbarians": Λανθάνουσι, he says, αὐτοὺς τὰ τῶν Ἑλλήνων κατορθώματα, ἀφ' ὧν μὴ ὅτιγε φιλοσοφία, ἀλλὰ
καὶ γένος ἀνθρώπων ἦρξε, βαρβάροις προσάπτοντες — that is, "These men by their imprudence apply the right achievements of the Greeks to the barbarians; for from the Greeks not only philosophy but the very human race itself first flowed forth." Equally without doubt.
V. Tatian, Clement, Theophilus, Eusebius, and others prove the contrary more clearly than light. Indeed, the manifest traces of theft are still extant.
For from the Chaldaeans, Egyptians, Indians, Magi, Syrians, and Jews, they borrowed everything they had. But it cannot be denied that the ancient
Greeks greatly advanced the study of a philosophy devised by others. What they had received by report, what they had pilfered from the records of the Orientals, what they had learned from living teachers on long journeys undertaken to that end, and what they had themselves observed — with nature as their guide and companion — concerning the κοινὰς ἐννοίας
[common notions] about God and his works, and concerning the honourable and the base: all of these very many among them, first by the living voice under the title of wisdom, and then in writings bearing the name of philosophy, laboured to put to work among them. But I know not what Iliad of evils attended the endeavour of these men from its very cradle. For the philosophers themselves, who wished to be so called, were for the most part scoundrels of notorious lewdness — especially so servilely and openly greedy for vainglory and so ostentatious that they were themselves a byword and a mockery to the common people.
VI. "They ceased to be upright as soon as they turned out to be learned," says Seneca. And by Timon they are all said, to a man:
And Euripides:
Μισῶ σοφιστὴν ὅστις οὐδ' αὐτῷ σοφός [I hate a sophist who is not wise even for himself].
— Frag. inc. exi.
For scarcely one out of many ever gave any single specimen of true wisdom in human life. With these agrees that line of the comic poet
Anaxippus in Athenaeus:
Οἴμοι φιλοσοφεῖς; ἀλλὰ τοὺς τε φιλοσόφους Ἐν τοῖς λόγοις φρονοῦντας εὑρίσκω μόνον·
[Alas, do you philosophise?
But I find that philosophers are wise only in words; in deeds, I see them to be men of no understanding.]
VII. Absurdly, therefore, and arrogantly and contemptuously toward God, does Epictetus boast about these slaves of κενοδοξίας [vainglory], ch. 15: καφ' οὖ Φιλοσόφου, he says, στάσις καὶ χαρακτήρ πᾶσαν ὠφέλειαν καὶ βλάβην ἐξ ἑαυτοῦ προσδοκᾶν — that is, "The station and expressed character of a philosopher is to expect all benefit and damage from himself." He would evidently have every philosopher be a god. Even the Brahmins among the Indians openly boasted that they were gods. For when
Apollonius asked what opinion they had of themselves, their chief, Iarchas, replied "that they considered themselves to be gods." But in vain. For in what place and esteem they ought to be and to be held, the Indian king
Amithocrates judged more rightly, who, as Athenaeus testifies, Deipnosophistae, Bk. XIV, requested by letter from King Antiochus to send him sweet wine, dried figs, and a sophist, all purchased with his own money.
VIII. It is a shame to relate what the same Athenaeus records concerning Plato himself, Bk. XI — let them expect everything from themselves, if they wish, while others expect nothing from them. But whatever they were, it is evident from the outcome that they either lost or corrupted the true use and end of the common notions concerning God, the true and the honourable. That it ever entered their minds to use these as a rule and guide for human life with respect to the obedience owed to God and his natural worship, or as media for obtaining the blessed condition in the very enjoyment of God, does not appear. Hence, from that obscure and thin knowledge or reputation of the immortal state which they retained, no efficacy, or only the slightest, flowed into the ordering of life according to right reason. These, therefore, were those through whom all the relics of natural wisdom were converted into an empty sophistical learning. The attempt of certain Platonists, after the preaching of the Christian religion, to restore philosophy to its former place, is another matter, as we shall see later.
IX. Philosophy, therefore, had ἀπ' ἀρχῆς [from the beginning] no other aim than the restoration of primordial theology which had collapsed and been lost through the entrance of sin, and no other end. And the human race undertook by this road to repair theology.
X. Now that primordial theology had two parts, as was shown above. The natural knowledge of God and of his will concerning the obedience and worship owed to him in that state of things, and the knowledge of the works of God directing and stimulating theologians to rightly worship the supreme
Creator of all — these two completed it.
XI. Since, therefore, philosophy, in the ruins of theology, erected itself toward the same ends which that theology had proposed to itself, it was
either striving to render a vicarious service to sinful men, or it accomplished nothing at all. For the θεωρητικοί [speculative thinkers] who first sweated in its erection and refinement thought it their business first of all to foster, elicit, and arouse the common notions and προλήψεις [preconceptions] concerning God and his will, together with the innate dictate concerning the discrepant reasons of good and evil, so that, guided by these, they might, if possible, enjoy God.
XII. That the first endeavour of those who philosophised among the nations destitute of divine revelations was of this kind, and was destined for that end of which we have spoken, appears not only from the nature of the thing itself but from all the traces of their institution and purpose that meet us everywhere. That whole ancient wisdom which Pythagoras and others investigated through Egypt and the Eastern parts of the world consisted in the account of religions to be instituted and in the ceremonies of divine worship. Hence, they were held forth as the promoters of the priesthood.
Thus, when Telesinus asked what his wisdom or philosophy was, Apollonius, the follower of ancient wisdom, answered in Philostratus, Bk.
IV, ch. 13: Θειασμὸς, καὶ ὡς ἄν τις εὔχοιτο καὶ θύοι — "That which comes from divine inspiration and teaches in what manner it is fitting to pray to the gods and to sacrifice to them." It was after the new corruption of philosophy — of which we shall speak presently — that Greece first brought forth philosophers who were not priests. I confess that all this philosophy savoured of idolatrous superstition; yet it retained certain obscure images and traces of truth.
XIII. The event, therefore, did not correspond to this excellent endeavour.
Natural theology was not restored by its force and auspices — indeed, it was more corrupted. Whatever philosophy survives anywhere, drawn from
the most ancient records, testifies to this. For the native vanity of the human mind variously led the natural light — or what remained of it — astray in the investigation of truth; until, plunged into the Syrtes and swamps of empty curiosities, infinite wranglings, and useless speculations, it was almost extinguished.
XIV. For after it pleased certain men of acute intellect and subtle genius, setting aside all consideration of the primary end of this whole philosophy, to bind universal knowledge of things — and the account of the obedience owed to the divine power — artificially to certain methods of teaching, and to compress them into the fetters, shackles, and manacles of certain sciences or rather τεχνῶν [technical arts], and to burden them with the chains of empty notions, subtle terms, and arbitrary meanings — the art in short diverting nature away from its primitive institution — this knowledge gradually degenerated into a certain ethics, or systematic doctrine of virtues and vices, and into metaphysics; of which a brief treatment is necessary.
XV. Since moreover both these doctrines — both ethics, which Cicero calls the part of philosophy pertaining to manners, and metaphysics, which by some is called natural theology (though it presents a far more shadowy image of it than ethics) — formed according to the norm of Aristotle's doctrine, have so far obtained dominion over the judgments of learned men everywhere that they have not only occupied a conspicuous place in Christian schools for several ages now, but have also thoroughly intermixed themselves with that theology which is publicly taught in them — they must be received by me not otherwise than courteously and almost with ρήμασι βυσσίνοις [silken words]. For I would not wish to irritate the bees of learned men, or to rouse against myself fiery and endless disputants — long since have I been weary of all controversies, and I greatly fear lest I should
fall in with those who have their intellect so ready to hand that they can at any hour, on any subject whatever, bring out fifty or a hundred arguments
(most of them frivolous), and are almost entirely transformed into syllogisms. And it is an irritable race. But nothing, as far as I know, prevents me from thinking it free to me to set out briefly what I myself think about those arts and the place they occupy in the schools. First, therefore, I shall subject ethics to examination, then metaphysics.
XVI. Ethics is the science of morals. It was once a part of natural theology — namely, that part which prescribed the account of living to God according to the norm of the law of creation, and the manner and rule of discharging duties toward oneself and others. That the relics of this knowledge clung to the human mind after the entrance of sin has been shown. To rouse, bring forward, and elucidate by reasoning, and to distribute into various classes, those relics — this was the labour and work of the philosophers in ethics. Aristotle — the supreme and admirable craftsman in compressing general notions into a systematic body — having brought them forward, collected, and (such was his dexterity of intellect) enlarged them on his own account, reduced them into a disciplinary science.
But since both he himself and others who preceded him in that work were utterly ignorant of the true God and of the observance owed to him, they displaced the whole account of the discriminating faculty between the honourable and the base — which consisted in the relics of natural theology
— and twisted it toward a completely different end from that for which it was originally instituted by God. For which of the philosophers ever undertook to treat or teach the doctrine of virtue and vice, the base and the honourable, to that end, that it should be the norm of living to God, or the medium by which men might at last enjoy him in blessed condition forever?
Indeed, that the knowledge of virtue and moral duties should be in the same place, esteem, and degree — having the same end in theology as it held in the state of integral nature — was both impossible, and God himself denied it by the pact of the new covenant. Since, therefore, this doctrine of morals, or ethics, which Aristotle cultivated, appears at last to have been received into the church as it were by right of return, let us see briefly in what place it is to be held, or what use or end we can assign to it.
XVII. First: that the end for which this doctrine — which in the state of integral nature was ἐνδιάθετος [internal] — was appointed was none other than to be the directing principle of the minds of men in the worship and obedience owed to God, so that, walking before him according to the law of creation, they might at last live with him in blessedness — this we have proved above. If anyone is willing to acknowledge that man was made for the glory of God and is capable of moral dependence upon him, he will not,
I think, deny that this was the end of the knowledge of right and wrong. But which of the philosophers can we suspect ever to have had this in mind?
Nay, which Christian either ought or has dared to teach ethics to this end?
For would not this be to bring miserable sinners again under the dominion of the covenant of nature, where it is necessary for them to perish eternally?
And therefore:
XVIII. Second: let us grant that those who either learn or teach Aristotelian ethics do not aim at that end; tell me then what is that other end at which they have their eyes fixed? The end of moral science can be nothing other than practice. But the end of the practice of moral duties is nothing other than the glory of God and our own enjoyment of him. Let that therefore be the end of ethics — what then follows? Nothing other than that we wretched little men are by its help and benefit brought again under the
law of creation, as was said above. But we are far mistaken; another end will be given — namely, that furnished with this doctrine, we may rightly and profitably spend our political life here in the midst of the human race. Is that so? But who has that authority to pervert, at his own command, a doctrine which God instituted for one end, to another end? Furthermore, this is not another end either; for one ought not to live piously, soberly, and profitably among men except in order to obey God thereby and live to him.
As, therefore, it has departed from theology and is preparing its return into the church, this ethics pertains to the covenant of works.
XIX. Third: but then what need is there at last for this, whether theology or philosophy? No Christian will deny that true, solid, sincere knowledge of virtue, vices, the base and the honourable, and all moral duties is revealed and transmitted more plainly and fully in the holy Scriptures than is contained in all the writings of all the philosophers, or in their archetype — namely, the relics of the ἐνδιάθετου [internal] theology. I mean the things themselves; for the ἀκρίθεια [precision] of notions and the comprehension of the harmonies of terms by which knowledge of things is transmitted τεχνικῶς [technically] hold no place with me — unless the place of the greatest impediments to true wisdom. It is possible to see almost daily innumerable persons who, though they know by heart, as it were, all the definitions, divisions, distinctions, terms, and notions by which some science is transmitted, and indeed the whole system of the doctrine, so that they never triumph more earnestly than when it comes to disputations — are yet truly ignorant of the things themselves and most learnedly stupid.
Learned indeed in the manner in which Philostratus narrates that Euxenus, the teacher of Apollonius, was instructed in Pythagorean philosophy: Τὰς, he says, Πυθαγόρου δόξας ἐγίνωσκεν, ὥσπερ οἱ ὄρνιθες μανθάνουσι παρὰ
τῶν ἀνθρώπων· τὸ γὰρ χαῖρε, καὶ τὸ εὖ πράττε, καὶ Ζεὺς ἵλεως, καὶ τὰ τοιαῦτα οἱ ὄρνιθες εὔχονται οὔτε εἰδότες ὅ τι λέγουσιν, οὔτε διακείμενοι πρὸς τοὺς ἀνθρώπους, ἀλλὰ ἐῤῥυθμισμένοι τὴν γλώτταν — "He knew the opinions of Pythagoras as birds sometimes learn to speak human words from men; for birds utter 'hail,' and 'fare well,' and 'Jupiter be propitious,' and such things — neither knowing what they say, nor speaking with any proper bearing toward men, but merely having their tongue trained to a measured rhythm." Nor do the majority of men appear to know differently from the discipline of the sciences. Nowhere does this vanity of the human mind appear more than when it is engaged in this moral science. The unjust, the rapacious, the drunken, the angry, the cowardly — all are or can be imbued with this science; for it is not virtue but the shadow of virtue; not duties but the mask of moral duties that fills both its pages. I dare to say that not one true virtue is truly and certainly taught in all the Aristotelian books addressed to Nicomachus; nor will anyone ever turn out just, good, or truly σπουδαῖος [serious] from their teaching — only a masked hypocrite.
XX. Fourth: I will therefore say what the matter is. The whole doctrine of duties, of virtue, of the observance of right reason, God has placed in another place and in another order under the covenant of grace than that in which it was disposed under the law of nature. But those natural notions from which ethics was born and emerged have regard only to that first order
— now abolished — which was narrated above. There is now no virtue except that which is graciously granted to believers by the force of the new covenant. No moral act is good and profitable to the agent unless it proceeds from a new principle, or spiritual habit, graciously infused into the heart. And the reason is that God has constituted all moral duties — of whatever kind — and all abstinence from vices, as a part of the obedience
which he exacts under the new covenant. Nor are the virtues to be seriously taught otherwise (schooling is a game) if we wish to be Christians. That anyone should be instructed in the knowledge of virtue in general without simultaneously being instructed in the knowledge of supernatural grace and of its respect toward Christ the mediator; or that anyone should be urged toward the eliciting of acts of virtue without simultaneously being taught whence the strength for performing them is to be expected — this I judge to be plainly impious. Moral duties are to be performed; the acts of virtue are to be exercised; it is necessary that we be just, sober, temperate, and courageous — but not otherwise than under the aspect of the obedience which God demands of us in the covenant of grace. The nature of virtue is to be taught, all moral duties are to be explained, their practice is to be steadily urged, the knowledge of sin and the hatred of vices is to be earnestly inculcated — but that all these things should have regard to Christ the mediator, the Holy Spirit, the covenant of grace, and should be the obedience owed to God, is in no way to be omitted. But it would be absurd for anyone to introduce the mention of these or similar things in expounding that moral doctrine which now prevails in the schools. What darkness, what fluctuation, what uncertainty, what confusion of things and notions, doctrine so different concerning the same subject and the same things can and is accustomed to generate in the minds of men — anyone is at liberty to conjecture.
XXI. Fifth: furthermore, the doctrine of this moral philosophy — especially that which by the genius and method of its author now most widely prevails everywhere — is in many things false and corrupt, uncertain, entirely useless, and indeed pernicious. For:
(1) It encloses the end of virtue within the limits of this earthly life, which is nothing other than to destroy the whole nature of virtue and to uproot virtue itself, and to bind all its students with the horror and despair of that great Brutus who cried out: Ὦ τλήμων ἀρετή, ὡς σὺ μηδὲν ἄλλο εἶ πλὴν ὄνομα! [O wretched virtue, thou art nothing but a name!]
(2) It teaches that the sufficiency of moral powers for all that exercise of virtue which is necessary for obtaining its proper end resides with all men
— an opinion which contains an open denial of the whole gospel.
(3) It teaches man to trust in himself and to expect all blessedness from himself, which is also the sum of Epictetan wisdom, and the highest contempt of God.
(4) It asserts that virtue is a certain mean between extremes, than which nothing more absurd can be devised.
(5) It proposes or acknowledges no certain, stable, universal rule of virtue: what pleases the majority, what pleases the wise, what most appeals to those who divine at random — that is virtue.
(6) It discharges moral duties without any respect to grace, the justice, and the providence of God.
(7) It denies that friendship between God and man is possible.
(8) It knows nothing of eternal reward and punishment.
XXII. But I am unwilling to plunge myself into the middle of the controversies of learned men; I will only add: if this moral philosophy seems to learned and good men still to be retained in its place — which for my own part I cannot but wish to see expelled beyond the bounds of the church — I most earnestly desire that two evils in particular be diligently met: one, lest the minds of youth be pre-occupied with prejudices against the purity and simplicity, and indeed against all the mystery of the gospel
— how this can be the case when they are delivered over into the form of this doctrine, I plainly do not know; the other, lest the principles on which it rests should gradually creep into the theology of the schools — unless these things are judged to have been said too late.
XXIII. And I indeed favour the endeavours of those who have tried to forge new hypotheses in this moral science. For it must be acknowledged that they gave those enslaved to peripatetic philosophy an occasion of inquiring further into the natures of these matters. Whether they attained truth itself, let the judgment be with others. Nor, because of the obscure use of one or two little words in Aristotle, are those immediately to be said to embrace an opinion more accessible to human understanding, who repudiate it. A certain learned man, in a book which he published on duties, contended that the end of moral philosophy is for a man to occupy himself in tranquillity and joy of soul, without the stings of conscience. But we know — and that learned man knows — that a state of mind of this kind cannot in any way be obtained by the performance of whatever duties. For we are sinners, and cannot become partakers of any true tranquillity or joy except through the blood of Christ. Since the entrance of sin, no other road to peace or tranquillity has been laid out. Furthermore, in order to obtain this end, the same learned man commands each person diligently to observe the laws and principles of his own nature. But that this medium is by no means sufficient for attaining that end, all Christians know; we contend with the learned man that there is some law of nature. But since human nature itself has been so corrupted and vitiated by sin that it is capable neither of understanding its own vice nor of correcting it, we are under the necessity of denying that the law which prevails only in that nature is suited to the use that is pretended.
XXIV. There are very few things which it pleases me to add separately concerning metaphysics. Everything we said about the origin and corruption of ethics is common to it also; there is no need to repeat those things. But I judge this science to be plainly useless — indeed harmful — in human life. For remove first those things which properly and necessarily pertain on the one hand to logic, and those which pertain to theology on the other, what remains will be nothing but a laborious and useless heap of terms, notions, words, and abstractions which will never render any man better, more learned, wiser, or more fitted for his duty toward God and others. Let those who appear most exercised in it consult the archives of their own breasts, and say sincerely whether by its help and benefit anything of piety, probity, wisdom, prudence, or any true doctrine ever accrued to them. What need is there any longer to fix a cross upon those wretched little men who daily cry out that life is short and art is long — by this thorny collection of useless and perplexed notions, which they should commit to oblivion as quickly as possible if they wish to be wise?
XXV. Furthermore, the mixture of this science with supernatural theology — the contemplation of which once led Scotus to exclaim that at last "the theologians had mixed philosophy with theology to the greatest advantage"
— nearly brought ruin to evangelical truth. The things of the Spirit would not bear the fetters and chains of metaphysical notions and terms; the freedom and breadth of that spiritual understanding which God freely gives us for rightly understanding the mystery of the gospel also perishes, when it is ensnared in the toils of this worldly wisdom (for such it is, if indeed it ought to be called wisdom). The noble, sublime, spiritual, heavenly, and divinely-flavoured evangelical truth — constrained by the rules of this science and transmitted in the words it teaches — is rendered sterile, dry,
thorny, jejune, meagre, and philosophical, and is cast down from its heavenly beauty and spiritual sweetness. The mystery of the gospel and that doctrine which is according to godliness has within itself something higher, greater, more divine than ought to be confined within the barriers of human wisdom. If, therefore, I wished to keep theological controversies alive and perpetual, and to draw the souls of men away from the simplicity of the gospel, I would not hesitate to commend this cause of wranglings, its material and instrument, to students. What Prudentius once sang in his
Apotheosis about certain ancient philosophers, fits no less well the innumerable theologians puffed up with this vain wisdom:
"They assail the estate of almighty God with calumnious strifes.
They divide faith with minute circumlocutions, each one as he is more wicked in tongue:
They loose and bind the bonds of questions through pliant syllogisms."
XXVI. But we must return to our road. We have the origin, progress, and abuse of ethics and metaphysics. Contemplative men among the nations did indeed set themselves to use the relics of that ἐνδιαθέτου [internal] theology for its primordial end, and accordingly to rouse, ventilate, and advance them. From this flowed all the doctrine of the nations concerning vices and virtues, and the contemplations concerning the nature and perfections of God. Men learned sophistical acuity — forgetful of the origin, end, and scope of those contemplations — produced those arts which we cultivate under those names; and these are in themselves certain masks of wisdom, but mixed with supernatural theology, they are pernicious.
XXVII. Furthermore: since the works of God make manifest his τὸ γνωστόν [what can be known of him], sinners — carefully and accurately scrutinising their natures — sought, by groping, to find the Lord and Creator of all. And this was the second part of natural theology. Human ingenuity, labouring under its native vice, attempted to cultivate this also.
To seek God himself from the works of God — both of creation and of providence — that was the inner impulse which continually pressed upon them. But the matter came to the same result. For the vanity of mind from which they universally suffered became stronger in natural philosophy and astronomy, that endeavour also gradually evaporated learnedly.
XXVIII. This, I say, was the origin of astronomy, and of that vanity which is called astrology. The contemplation and knowledge of the beauty, order, and courses of the heavens, of the stars, and of all celestial bodies was a part of natural theology. From it, all men ought to have learned the greatness, infinite power, wisdom, and goodness of the Creator, and so have been stirred to his natural worship. After the entrance of sin and the catholic apostasy of the human race from the true God, that contemplation gradually fell everywhere into disuse, and the knowledge arising from it vanished. For the majority, being wise only in earthly things, had cast off all care for those things which were above them. Others were allured by the cunning of Satan into the worship of the stars; indeed, the stolid and gross contemplation of the order, course, and beauty of the heavens which strike the external senses was, to those who had cast off the knowledge and discipline of the living
God, an incitement to idolatry — as we shall prove at length later. Thus, at last, among many, heaven itself was the first, if not the only, God. And the very name Θεός [God] seems to have been derived from no other source than ἀπὸ τοῦ θεῖν [from running], taken from the course of the stars.
Among those pursuing these extremes, there arose at last certain speculative men who gave themselves to the contemplation of the celestial bodies for wholly different ends. For they had no mind either to follow them with religious worship or to seek the living God from the knowledge of them and to obey him; they appear to have taken upon themselves the care of satisfying the innate desire of knowing the causes and natures of things. For when they observed that celestial bodies presented themselves to the eyes with a certain incredible variety and change of appearing things, they investigated what order they observed among themselves and what were the hidden causes and reasons of those τῶν φαινομένων [of the phenomena/appearances]. From the observations and conjectures of such men, with the application of certain invented terms of arbitrary meaning to explain them (for most of what it rests upon are inventions), which they attempted to apply to the things themselves in some fashion, arose that art which we call astronomy — "gold," as it were, "was cast into the fire, and this calf came forth." In the contemplation of the heavens, of the stars, of all celestial bodies, in the investigation of their nature, order, course, influence, and the law implanted in them by the Creator of all — I judge the effort to be most well employed. For the bare and common sight of those things which immediately strike the eyes of all strikes the minds of men immediately with a certain silent admiration of the infinite wisdom and power of God. Far more efficacious is that contemplation which is joined with serious meditation and careful investigation. And it were to be wished that the knowledge of the celestial bodies and of the perennial law by which they are set in motion — insofar as anything certain can be known from it
— were more widely communicated than is now the case. Nevertheless, adhering to our proposed undertaking, there are some things which I must
add, without, as I hope, giving offence to anyone — I will say them briefly.
As it is now taught, and has for several ages now obtained the right of a science among the learned, astronomy has lost its place, its order, and almost all its utility. With natural theology removed with respect to the end of true theology, how, I ask, could astronomy maintain its place? Which was a part of that theology, if we are men created for the glory of God?
Either, therefore, it is restored through Christ (in whom all things are to be renewed) to another place under the new covenant, or it is to be utterly discarded. Nay, that the whole ἐγκυκλοπαιδεία [encyclopedia] of sciences, directed to a new end by new media, ought to be subordinated to the glory of God in Christ — he does not deserve to be called a Christian who will gainsay this. But what that restoration of the science or knowledge of natural things, or of the works of creation, for the use of men sincerely worshipping God in Christ, is and ought to be; and what place all knowledge holds in supernatural or revelational theology — especially this expertise in the stars and their courses — is a longer story than I have the leisure to narrate, or perhaps the adequacy to expound.
XXIX. In this manner, therefore, the human race — in a vain endeavour certainly — strove to restore that primordial theology of which we treated above, and in the very act of restoring it, destroyed it. This was the rational creature's effort to extricate itself from the curse of ignorance and blindness hanging over it on account of sin, by which it accomplished nothing other than to entangle itself more miserably. For since we are renewed in the image of God only in Christ, and that theology was an illustrious part of that image, it is evident that without that renewal all endeavour to restore it is altogether vain. Hence it came about that those who, being strangers to that renewal, or ignorant of the place which philosophy ought to occupy
within it, yet undertook to refine and teach it — twisting it from its proper end and use — scarcely advanced further than to fix a cross upon themselves and others with a collection of thorny and useless questions and disputations. And so from this first endeavour, natural theology appears not so much to have been further corrupted as to have been lost. Its total corruption, therefore, and how it ended in paganism, is to be further investigated. But here, let us see what sinners have done in deliberate wrongdoing.