On True Religion 1–11

Since the whole way of a good and happy life is established in true religion, by which one God is worshiped and is known with most purified piety as the principle of all natures, by whom the universe is begun, perfected and held together, the error of those peoples who chose to worship many gods rather than the one true God and Lord of all is more evidently detected from this: that their wise men, whom they call philosophers, had schools that disagreed and temples in common. For neither the peoples nor the priests were unaware how different were their views about the nature of the gods themselves, since each was not afraid to profess his opinion publicly and strove to persuade everyone of it, if he could; yet all of them, with their followers holding different and opposed views, came to the common rites with no one forbidding them. The question now is not which of them thought more truly; but this at least, it seems to me, is clear enough: that they adopted one thing in religion with the people, and defended another privately in the hearing of that same people.

Socrates, however, is reported to have been bolder than the others, swearing by any dog, any stone, and whatever was ready to hand when he was about to swear, as if it had come to hand. I believe he understood that any works of nature whatever, which come into being under the administration of divine providence, are much better than those of men and of any craftsmen, and therefore more worthy of divine honors than the things that were worshiped in the temples. Not that a stone and a dog were truly to be worshiped by the wise, but so that those who could might understand in this way that men were sunk in such superstition that, to those emerging from it, so shameful a step had to be shown; and if they were ashamed to come to it, they would see how much more shameful it was to remain in a more shameful one. At the same time he admonished of their shame those who thought this visible world was the supreme God, teaching that it would follow that any stone might rightly be worshiped as a particle of the supreme God. If they abhorred this, they would change their opinion and seek the one God, who alone, it would be agreed, is above our minds, and by whom every soul and this whole world was made. Afterward Plato wrote, more pleasantly to read than powerfully to persuade. For these men were not so born as to convert the opinion of their peoples from the superstition of idols and the vanity of this world to the true worship of the true God. And so Socrates himself venerated idols with the people, and after his condemnation and death no one dared to swear by a dog or to call any stone Jupiter, but only to commit these things to memory and writing. Whether they did this from fear of severity or from some knowledge of the times, it is not for me to judge.

But this I would say most confidently, with the leave of all those who obstinately love their books: that in Christian times there can be no doubt which religion above all is to be held, and what is the way to truth and happiness. For suppose Plato himself were alive and did not scorn my questions; or rather, suppose some disciple of his, in the very time when he lived, had questioned him, when he was being persuaded by him that truth is seen not with bodily eyes but with a pure mind; that any soul which cleaves to it becomes happy and perfect; that nothing hinders the perception of it more than a life given to lusts and the false images of sensible things, which, impressed on us from this sensible world through the body, generate various opinions and errors; that therefore the mind must be healed in order to behold the unchangeable form of things, and the beauty that is always the same and everywhere like itself, not spread out in places nor varied in time, but keeping itself one and the same in every part, which men do not believe exists, though it alone truly and supremely is; that other things are born, die, flow and slip away, and yet, insofar as they are, are made and stand by that eternal God through his truth; and that among them it is given to the rational and intellectual soul alone to enjoy the contemplation of his eternity, to be affected and adorned by it, and to be able to merit eternal life; but that while it is wounded by love and grief for things that are born and pass away, and, given over to the habits of this life and the senses of the body, vanishes into empty images, it laughs at those who say that there is something which is neither seen by these eyes nor conceived by any phantasm, but can be perceived by the mind and intelligence alone. When, then, these things were being taught him by his master, suppose that disciple asked him whether, if some great and divine man should arise who would persuade the peoples that such things are at least to be believed, if they could not perceive them, or, if some could perceive them, that they should not be entangled in the depraved opinions of the multitude and overwhelmed by common errors, he would judge him worthy of divine honors. He would answer, I believe, that this could not be done by a man, unless perhaps the very Power and Wisdom of God had taken him up apart from the very nature of things, and, enlightened from the cradle not by human teaching but by inner illumination, honored him with such grace, strengthened him with such firmness, and raised him with such majesty, that by despising all that wicked men desire, enduring all that they shudder at, and doing all that they marvel at, he should convert the human race with the highest love and authority to so wholesome a faith. As for his honors, he would say it was useless to consult him, since it could easily be judged what honors are owed to the Wisdom of God, bearing and guiding whom that man would merit, for the true salvation of the human race, something great and his own, above men.

If these things have been done, if they are celebrated in writings and monuments, if from one region of the earth, in which alone the one God was worshiped and where such a one had to be born, chosen men sent throughout the whole world have kindled by their virtues and words the fires of divine love; if, having established a most wholesome teaching, they have left enlightened lands to their posterity; and, not to speak of the past, which anyone may refuse to believe, if today it is preached among nations and peoples: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things were made through him, and without him nothing was made”; if, so that the soul may be healed to perceive, love and enjoy this, and the sight of the mind grow strong to drink in so great a light, it is said to the greedy, “Do not lay up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy and where thieves break in and steal; but lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust destroys, nor thieves break in and steal: for where your treasure is, there is your heart also”; it is said to the self-indulgent, “He who sows in the flesh will from the flesh reap corruption; he who sows in the spirit will from the spirit reap eternal life”; it is said to the proud, “He who exalts himself will be humbled, and he who humbles himself will be exalted”; it is said to the angry, “You have received a slap: make ready the other cheek”; it is said to the quarrelsome, “Love your enemies”; it is said to the superstitious, “The kingdom of God is within you”; it is said to the curious, “Do not seek the things that are seen, but those that are not seen. For the things that are seen are temporal, but the things that are not seen are eternal”; finally it is said to all, “Do not love the world or the things that are in the world; for everything that is in the world is the lust of the flesh, and the lust of the eyes, and the ambition of the world”; if these things are now read to peoples throughout the whole world and heard most gladly with veneration; if after so much blood, so many fires, so many crosses of the martyrs, the churches have sprung up all the more fruitfully and abundantly even among barbarian nations; if no one any longer marvels at so many thousands of young men and virgins scorning marriage and living chastely (when Plato had done this, he so feared the perverse opinion of his times that he is said to have sacrificed to nature, so that it might be wiped away as a sin); if these things are so received that, as it was once monstrous to argue for such things, so it is now monstrous to argue against them; if to such a promise and pledge the Christian mysteries are handed on throughout all parts of the earth that men inhabit; if these things are read daily in the churches and expounded by the priests; if those who try to fulfill them beat their breasts; if so countless a number enter upon this way that, as men of every kind abandon riches and the honors of this world, wishing to dedicate their whole life to the one supreme God, once-deserted islands and the solitude of many lands are filled; if finally, through cities and towns, forts, villages and even fields and private estates, turning away from earthly things and turning to the one true God is so openly urged and sought that daily throughout the whole world the human race answers almost with one voice that it has lifted up its heart to the Lord: why do we still yawn out yesterday's drunkenness and search for divine oracles in dead cattle, and, if ever we come to a discussion, are eager to have mouths rattling with the name of Plato rather than a heart full of truth?

Those, then, who think it vain or evil to despise this sensible world, and to subject and subjugate to the supreme God the soul purified by virtue, must be refuted by another argument, if indeed it is worth arguing with them. But those who admit that this is good and to be desired should acknowledge God and yield to God, through whom all peoples have now been persuaded to believe these things. Surely they would have done this themselves, if they had been able; or if they did not do it, they could not escape the charge of envy. So let them yield to him by whom it has been done, and not be hindered by curiosity or empty boasting from acknowledging the difference between the timid conjectures of a few and the manifest salvation and correction of peoples. For if those men in whose names these boast were to come to life again, and find the churches full and the temples deserted, and the human race called and running from the desire of temporal and fleeting goods to the hope of eternal life and to spiritual and intelligible goods, they would perhaps say (if they were such as they are reported to have been): These are the things which we did not dare to persuade the peoples of, and we yielded to their custom rather than bringing them over to our faith and will. And so, if those men could live this life again with us, they would surely see by whose authority mankind is more easily helped, and, with a few words and opinions changed, they would become Christians, as very many of the Platonists of recent times, and of our own, have done. Or if they did not admit or do this, remaining in pride and envy, I do not know whether they could fly back, with that filth and birdlime, to the very things they had said were to be sought and desired. For as to the third vice, the curiosity of consulting demons, by which those with whom we are now dealing, the pagans, are chiefly held back from Christian salvation, I do not know whether such men would have been hindered by it, because it is too childish.

But however things stand with the boasting of the philosophers, anyone can easily understand that religion is not to be sought from those who took part in the same rites as the peoples, and who in their schools, with the same multitude as witness, loudly proclaimed different and contrary opinions about the nature of their gods and the supreme good. If we saw this one vice alone healed by Christian teaching, no one ought to deny that it must be proclaimed with ineffable praise. For the heresies, so countless, which have turned away from the rule of Christianity, are witnesses that those who think about God the Father, and his Wisdom, and the divine Gift otherwise than the truth demands, and try to persuade men of it, are not admitted to share the sacraments. For so it is believed and taught (and this is the chief point of human salvation) that philosophy, that is, the pursuit of wisdom, is not one thing and religion another, since those whose teaching we do not approve do not share the sacraments with us either. This is less surprising in those who chose to differ even in the rite of the sacraments, such as those called Serpentines, whoever they are, such as the Manichaeans, and some others. But it is more to be noticed and more to be proclaimed in those who, celebrating the same sacraments, yet because they differ in opinion and preferred to defend their errors spiritedly rather than correct them cautiously, were excluded from catholic communion and from participation in the sacraments, though these were the same, and earned their own names and their own assemblies, not only in speech but also in superstition, such as the Photinians, the Arians, and many others besides. As for those who have made schisms, that is another question. For the Lord's threshing floor could have borne them like chaff until the time of the last winnowing, had they not, through excessive lightness, yielded to the wind of pride and separated themselves from us of their own accord. The Jews, though they pray to the one almighty God, yet expecting from him only temporal and visible goods, out of excessive security would not notice in their own Scriptures the first beginnings of the new people rising from humility, and so remained in the old man. Since this is so, religion is to be sought neither in the confusion of the pagans, nor in the refuse of the heretics, nor in the languor of the schismatics, nor in the blindness of the Jews, but only among those who are called catholic or orthodox Christians, that is, guardians of integrity and followers of what is right.

For this catholic Church, spread vigorously and widely throughout the whole world, uses all who err for its own advancement, and for their correction when they are willing to wake up. It uses the Gentiles as material for its work, heretics as a test of its teaching, schismatics as proof of its stability, Jews as a comparison for its beauty. Some therefore it invites, some it excludes, some it leaves, some it goes before; yet to all it gives the power of sharing in the grace of God, whether they are still to be formed, or to be reformed, or to be gathered again, or to be admitted. Its own carnal members, that is, those living or thinking carnally, it tolerates like chaff, by which the grain on the threshing floor is safer, until it is stripped of such coverings. But since on this threshing floor each is chaff or grain by his own will, the sin or error of anyone is borne until either it finds an accuser, or he defends his depraved opinion with obstinate animosity. Those excluded either return by repentance, or, wickedly free, flow away into wickedness, to admonish our diligence; or they make a schism, to exercise our patience; or they give birth to some heresy, to test our understanding or give it occasion. These are the ends of carnal Christians who could neither be corrected nor borne.

Often too divine providence allows even good men to be driven out of the Christian congregation through some overly turbulent seditions of carnal men. When they have borne this insult or injury most patiently for the peace of the Church, and have attempted no novelties of schism or heresy, they will teach men with what true affection and what great sincerity of love God is to be served. The purpose of such men, then, is either to return when the storms have calmed; or, if they are not allowed to, whether because the same storm persists or lest a similar or fiercer one arise from their return, they keep the will to help even those very people by whose disturbances and agitations they gave way, without any separation into conventicles, defending until death, and aiding by their testimony, that faith which they know is preached in the catholic Church. These the Father, who sees in secret, crowns in secret. This kind seems rare, but examples are not lacking; indeed, there are more than can be believed. So divine providence uses all kinds of men and examples for the healing of souls and the instruction of the spiritual people.

Therefore, since a few years ago I promised to write to you, my dearest Romanianus, what I think about true religion, I have judged that the time has now come, since, for the love by which I am bound to you, I could no longer bear your most searching questions to drift about without any certain end. Rejecting, then, all those who neither philosophize in their rites nor consecrate in their philosophy; and those who, puffed up either by depraved opinion or by some rivalry, have strayed from the rule and communion of the catholic Church; and those who have refused to have the light of the holy Scriptures and the grace of the spiritual people, which is called the New Testament (all of whom I have touched on as briefly as I could), we must hold the Christian religion and the communion of that Church which is catholic and is called catholic not only by its own members but also by all its enemies. For willing or not, even heretics and the nurslings of schisms, when they speak not with their own people but with outsiders, call the Catholic Church nothing but the Catholic Church. For they cannot be understood unless they distinguish it by the name by which it is called by the whole world.

The chief thing in following this religion is the history and prophecy of the temporal dispensation of divine providence for the salvation of the human race, which is to be re-formed and restored to eternal life. When this has been believed, a way of life in harmony with the divine precepts will purify the mind and make it fit to perceive spiritual things, which are neither past nor future but always remaining in the same way, subject to no change: that is, the one God himself, Father and Son and Holy Spirit. When this Trinity is known, as far as is granted in this life, it is seen without any doubt that every intellectual and animal and bodily creature has its being, insofar as it is, from the same creating Trinity, and has its own form, and is governed in the most orderly way; not so that the Father is understood to have made one part of the whole creation, the Son another, and the Holy Spirit another, but that the Father made all things together and each single nature through the Son in the gift of the Holy Spirit. For every thing, or substance, or essence, or nature, or whatever other word expresses it better, has these three at once: that it is some one thing, that it is distinguished from others by its own form, and that it does not go beyond the order of things.

When this is known, it will be clear enough, as far as man can attain, by what necessary, invincible and just laws all things are subject to their God and Lord. From this, those things which we first believed, following nothing but authority, are understood partly so that we see them to be most certain, partly so that we see they can happen and that they had to happen so; and we grieve for those who do not believe here, who chose to mock us when we believed rather than believe with us. For then that most holy assumption of a man, and the Virgin's giving birth, and the death of the Son of God for us, and the resurrection from the dead, and the ascension into heaven, and the sitting at the right hand of the Father, and the abolition of sins, and the day of judgment, and the raising of bodies, once the eternity of the Trinity and the changeableness of the creature are known, are not merely believed, but are also judged to belong to the mercy of the supreme God which he shows to the human race. But since it was most truly said, “There must be many heresies, so that those who are approved may be made manifest among you,” let us also use this benefit of divine providence. For heretics come from those men who would err even if they were in the Church. But when they are outside, they are very useful, not by teaching the truth, which they do not know, but by rousing carnal catholics to seek the truth and spiritual catholics to open it. For there are countless men in the holy Church approved by God, but they are not made manifest among us so long as, delighted with the darkness of our ignorance, we prefer to sleep rather than behold the light of truth. Wherefore many are awakened from sleep by heretics, so as to see the day of God and rejoice. Let us then use even heretics, not so as to approve their errors, but so that, asserting the catholic teaching against their snares, we may be more watchful and more cautious, even if we cannot call them back to salvation.

I believe that God will be present, so that this writing, with piety going before, may avail for good readers not against some one false opinion but against all depraved and false opinions. Yet it is set up chiefly against those who think there are two natures or substances, rebelling against each other, each with its own principle. For, offended by some things and again delighted by others, they want God to be the author not of those by which they are offended, but of those in which they delight. And since they cannot overcome their habit, already entangled in carnal snares, they think there are two souls in one body: one from God, which by nature is what he is; the other from the race of darkness, which God neither begot, nor made, nor brought forth, nor cast off, but which had its own life, its own land, its own offspring and animals, and finally its own kingdom and an unbegotten principle; but which at a certain time rebelled against God; and that God, since he had nothing else to do and found no other way to resist the enemy, under the pressure of necessity sent here a good soul and a certain particle of his own substance, by whose commingling and mixture, they dream, the enemy was tempered and the world made. We are not refuting their opinions now, which we have partly already done and will partly do as far as God allows; but in this work we show as far as we can, by the reasons which the Lord deigns to give, how safe the catholic faith is against them, and how those things by which men are moved to go over to their opinion need not disturb the mind. This above all I want you to hold, who know my mind well: that I am not saying this as a formality to avoid arrogance, namely that whatever error may be found in these pages is to be attributed to me alone, but whatever is true and fittingly set forth, to God alone, the giver of all good gifts.

So let it be clear and plain to you that there could have been no error in religion if the soul did not worship in place of its God a soul, or a body, or its own phantasms, or any two of these joined, or all of them together; but if, conforming without guile to the society of the human race in this life for a time, it meditated on eternal things, worshiping the one God, who, unless he remained unchangeable, would leave no changeable nature remaining. That the soul can change, not indeed in place but in time, everyone knows from his own feelings. That body is changeable both in time and in place anyone can easily notice. And phantasms are nothing but figments drawn by bodily sense from the form of body; to commit them to memory as received, or to divide, multiply, contract, extend, arrange, disturb, or shape them in any way in thought is very easy, but when truth is sought, it is difficult to guard against and avoid them. Let us not, then, serve the creature rather than the Creator, nor become vain in our thoughts, and religion is perfect. For cleaving to the eternal Creator, we too must be affected by eternity. But since the soul, overwhelmed and entangled by its sins, could not see and hold this by itself, there being no step set in human affairs for grasping divine things, by which man might strive from earthly life to the likeness of God, by the ineffable mercy of God help is given, through a temporal dispensation by means of changeable creation, which yet serves eternal laws, to remind it of its first and perfect nature, partly to individual men, partly to the human race itself. That is, in our times, the Christian religion, to know and follow which is the most secure and most certain salvation. It can be defended against the talkative and opened to seekers in many ways, while the almighty God himself shows through himself what is true, and helps good wills to behold and perceive it through good angels and through men of every kind. Each uses the way which he sees suits those with whom he deals. I therefore, having long and much considered what kinds of barkers and what kinds of seekers I have experienced, and what kind I myself was, whether when I was barking or when I was seeking, have thought I should use this way. What you perceive to be true, hold, and attribute to the catholic Church; what is false, reject, and pardon me, who am a man; what is doubtful, believe, until either reason teaches or authority commands that it is to be rejected, or is true, or is always to be believed. Attend, then, to what follows, diligently and piously, as far as you can; for God helps such.

There is no life that is not from God, because God is surely the supreme life and himself the fountain of life; nor is any life, insofar as it is life, evil, but insofar as it tends toward death. And the death of life is nothing but wickedness, which is so called from being nothing at all; and therefore the most wicked men are called men of nothing. Life, then, falling away by a voluntary defect from him who made it, and whose essence it enjoyed, and wishing, against the law of God, to enjoy bodies, over which God set it, tends toward nothing; and this is wickedness; not because body is already nothing. For body too has some harmony of its parts, without which it could not exist at all. So body too was made by him who is the head of all harmony. Body has a certain peace of its form, without which it would be nothing at all. So he is the founder of body too, from whom all peace comes, and who is the unmade form, and the most beautiful of all. It has some appearance, without which body is not body. If, then, it is asked who established body, let him be sought who is the most beautiful of all. For all beauty is from him. And who is this but the one God, the one truth, the one salvation of all, and the first and supreme essence, from which is everything that is, insofar as it is; because whatever is, insofar as it is, is good. And therefore death is not from God. For “God did not make death, nor does he rejoice in the destruction of the living”; since the supreme essence makes everything that is to be, whence it is also called essence. But death compels whatever dies not to be, insofar as it dies. For if things that die died completely, they would undoubtedly come to nothing; but they die only so far as they participate less in essence; which can be said more briefly thus: they die the more, the less they are. And body is less than any life; since however little remains in form, it remains through life, whether that by which each animal or that by which the whole nature of the world is governed. Body, then, is more subject to death, and therefore nearer to nothing; wherefore life, which, delighted with the enjoyment of body, neglects God, inclines toward nothing, and that is wickedness.