Tricennial Oration (In Praise of Constantine)

But I do not come here having fashioned myths, snares for the ear, or eloquence of words, to charm your ears with the voice of the Sirens; nor shall I drink to the friends of this company drugs of pleasure from golden cups, words adorned with the flowers of beautiful phrasing. Rather, obeying the wise, I bid you flee and turn aside from the highways, and I urge you not to be swept along with the crowd.

I have come to begin among you a newer song of imperial hymns. While countless others hasten along the same road as I, I, "shunning the path of men," shall walk the untrodden way, on which it is not lawful to set unwashed feet. Some, pursuing popular speeches worn down by the sophistries of youths, and embracing a sweet and vulgar muse, charm mortal ears with mortal tales, giving the judgment to pleasure. But the initiates of wisdom itself, of wisdom as a whole, placing divine things in the portion of the good, have preferred and chosen to praise the godlike virtues of the emperor himself and his God-loving deeds above human ones, leaving it to others of second rank to hymn the second rank of good things.

For since there is a guard of both divine and human things in the emperor's soul, some reaching toward God and others toward human beings, let those standing outside the sacred precincts, who are suited for it, serve the human things: venerable, however, and admirable and useful for life these too; for all the emperor's deeds are noble, though still falling short of the more divine.

But let those who have passed within the holy shrines, into the inner sanctuaries and untrodden recesses, having shut the doors against profane ears, tell the secret mysteries of the emperor to his initiates alone, they who have cleansed their ears with streams of piety and have rested the mind of the soul itself on lofty wing, dancing around the King of all, celebrating divine things in silence.

Let the oracles of the sacred words, spoken not from divination (or rather from senseless madness) but by the inspirations of divine light, be our teachers of the rites: concerning kingship itself, and concerning the supreme King, and the divine guard about the King of all, and the royal pattern among us, and the one who has counterfeited the stamp, and the ranks that attend each of them. Being initiated by them into the godlike rites, we shall thus touch on the divine mysteries.

This is the festival of a great King. Let us, the King's children, rejoice in it, uttering divine things with the teachings of sacred words; and the great King leads our feast. By the great King I mean the one who is truly great; and this, I say (the emperor present will not take offence, but will join in praising the theology), is the one beyond the universe, the highest of all, the supreme, the exceedingly great, whose throne of kingship is the vault of heaven, and the earth the footstool of his feet ... if anyone could worthily conceive him; and light, flashing about him with ineffable gleams of rays, forbids the sight of his divinity to all.

Around him range the heavenly hosts; supramundane powers guard him as their master, Lord and King; and countless multitudes of angels, companies of archangels and choirs of holy spirits, drawing from the radiance around him as from ever-flowing springs of light, are illumined. All the lights, and the divine and intellectual kinds of incorporeal lights, which have their place in the region beyond heaven, honour the great King with the highest and most godly hymns. In the middle the great heaven is spread like a dark blue curtain, dividing those outside from those within the royal palace. Around it, as at the entrance of a palace, the sun and moon and the light-bearers of heaven range as torch-bearers, honouring the King beyond the universe, and by his nod and word kindling unquenchable lamps of light for those whose lot is the dark region outside heaven.

This great King, Christ, our victorious emperor himself also hymns, well aware of the cause of his kingship. Him the God-loving Caesars acknowledge as the source of all good things, having received the lesson from their father. Him the armies, the vast peoples in countries and cities, and the rulers of the nations, gathering in church, worship, taught by the great Saviour and teacher. Indeed the whole human race together, nations of every kind, tribes and tongues, all in common and each in part, though divided in their opinions on other things, agree in this one confession alone, calling on the one and only God by innate reasonings and self-taught, self-instructed notions.

What then? Does not the whole element of the earth acknowledge him as master, showing its subjection to the nod of the higher power by the plants and animals that spring from it? To him the streams of rivers flooding with their waters, and the ever-flowing currents of springs that well up from ages past and from boundless depths, ascribe the cause of their ineffable wonder-working. Before him the abysses of the sea, shut up in boundless depths, and the arching waves, lifted on high and threatening the land with fear, cower when they come up to the very shores, fettered by the nod of divine law. Him the measured streams of winter rains, the crashes of thunder and the flashes of lightning, the shifting gusts of winds and the airborne courses of the clouds reveal to those unable to see him with their own eyes.

And the all-shining sun, running its long course through the ages, knows him alone as Lord, and, serving his nod, never dares to go beyond its bounds. The moon, yielding its light to the sun, waning and waxing again in periods of time, is subject to divine laws. The beauties of heaven, glittering with the dances of the stars, moving in order and harmony and measuring out their circles, proclaim the giver of every kind of light. All the heavenly luminaries together, by his nod and word forming one melody, completing their long course in circles of long ages, ride through the contests of the ethereal racecourses. The alternating movements of nights and days, the changes of hours and seasons, the rhythms and orders of the universe, honour the many-sided wisdom of his boundless power. To him the invisible powers that fly about the open plains of the air send up the due and fitting praise. This great King the whole world itself hymns together; him the heavens above, and the choirs higher than the heavenly vaults, honour; the armies of angels hymn him with ineffable hymns; spirits born of intellectual light praise in divine terms their begetter. Him the timeless ages before this heaven and before the world, and other boundless ages of ages besides these, before all the existence of things seen, acknowledge as sole and great Master and Lord.

Him too his pre-existent only-begotten Word, over all and before all and after all, the great High Priest of the great God, older than all time and all ages, consecrated first and alone to the Father's honour, propitiates for the salvation of all. He is glorified with the first rank in the rule of the universe, and with the second in the Father's kingdom, because he himself was the light beyond the universe, dancing around the Father, mediating and separating the unoriginated and unbegotten nature from the substance of things that have come into being. This light, welling up from above out of unending and unoriginated deity, goes forth outward and illumines the region above heaven and all within heaven with rays of wisdom brighter than the sun. He would be the leader of this whole universe, the Word of God who is over all and through all and in all things seen and unseen, moving through them; from him and through him the emperor dear to God, bearing the image of the supreme kingdom, steers and directs all things on earth in imitation of the higher.

The only-begotten Word of God, reigning with his Father from ages without beginning, continues to ages without limit and without end. And the one dear to him, supplied with royal outflows from above and empowered by the name of the divine title, rules over things on earth for long periods of years.

Again, the Saviour of all prepares the whole heaven and world and the supreme kingdom fit for his Father; and the one dear to him, bringing his subjects on earth to the only-begotten and saving Word, makes them fit for his kingdom.

The common Saviour of all, by invisible and divine power, like a good shepherd, drives far away from his flock, as wild beasts, the apostate powers that once flew about this air above the earth and attacked human souls. The one dear to him, adorned from above by him with trophies over his enemies, subdues and chastens by the law of war the visible enemies of the truth.

The Word, being before the world and Saviour of all, imparting rational and saving seeds to his followers, makes them rational and at the same time knowers of his Father's kingdom. The one dear to him, as an interpreter of the Word of God, calls the whole human race to the knowledge of the higher, crying out in the hearing of all and proclaiming with a loud voice to all on earth the laws of true godliness.

The Saviour of all opens wide the heavenly gates of his Father's kingdom to those who pass from here to there. The other, in zeal for the higher, having cleansed the earthly kingdom of all the filth of godless error, invites choirs of holy and pious men into the royal palace, taking care to save the whole fleet of those whom he steers, crew and all. He alone of all who have ever led the Roman Empire, honoured by God, the King of all, with three periods of ten years, celebrates this festival not, as the ancients did, to the spirits of the underworld, nor to apparitions of demons who lead the people astray, nor to the deceits and nonsense of godless men; but he renders his thanks to the One who honoured him, aware of the good things supplied to him. He does not, like the ancients, defile the royal palace with blood and gore, nor appease the demons of the underworld with smoke and fire and sacrifices of whole burnt animals, but offers to the King of all himself the sacrifice dear and pleasing to him alone, namely his own royal soul and a mind most fit for God. This is what our emperor has been taught to offer in sacrifice, with thoughts cleansed in mind, without fire and without blood: strengthening the doctrines of godliness by the unerring convictions of his soul, honouring theology with magnificent speech, emulating by royal deeds the love for humanity of the higher, wholly devoted to him, and dedicating himself as a great gift, the firstfruits of the world entrusted to him. This greatest sacrifice the emperor offers before all; and he sacrifices like a good shepherd, "not offering glorious hecatombs of firstling lambs," but bringing the souls of the rational flock he shepherds to the knowledge of God and godliness.

And he who rejoices in such a sacrifice, gladly welcoming the gift and admiring the priest of the venerable and beautiful sacrifice, adds to him long periods of reign, increasing his benefits in return for his acts of devotion toward him. He grants him to celebrate festivals of every kind with great ease of his sole rule, at each period of a ten-year festival advancing one of his sons to share the royal throne, and, as to a flourishing and vigorous plant, granting increases of time.

First, at the first decade of his reign, he made the son who bears his father's name a sharer of the royal inheritance; second, at the second decade, the next in age; the third likewise at the third decade of the festival now in hand. And now, as a fourth period comes round, as though time were stretching to length, enlarging the empire by the ungrudging partnership of his family and by the appointment of Caesars, he fulfils the oracles of the divine prophets, which long ago and from of old cried out thus: "And the saints of the Most High shall receive the kingdom."

Thus God himself, the King of all, granting to the emperor most dear to God increases both of years and of sons, makes his rule over the nations of the earth flourishing and fresh, as though it were just beginning to grow; and he himself celebrates the festival with him, making him victor over all his enemies and foes, and showing him to all on earth as a pattern of true godliness.

And he, like the light of the sun with its gleams, illumines by the radiance of the Caesars those living farthest away, with rays sent far from himself. To us who dwell in the East he has assigned an offspring worthy of himself; another of his sons to another race of men; and again another elsewhere, distributing them like lamps and luminaries of the light that pours from him. Then, yoking under one yoke of the royal four-horse chariot the four most valiant Caesars, like colts, and harnessing them with the reins of divine harmony and concord, he drives from on high as charioteer, riding over the whole earth that the sun beholds, himself present to all and watching over all.

Then, adorned with the image of the heavenly kingdom, looking upward, he steers and directs those below according to the archetypal form, strengthened by the imitation of the monarch's sovereignty. For this the King of all has granted to human nature alone of things on earth. For this is the law of royal authority, which defines one rule over all.

Monarchy is superior to every constitution and government; for rule by many, set up on the basis of equal honour, is rather anarchy and faction. Therefore there is one God, not two or three or still more; for strictly speaking polytheism is atheism. There is one King, and his Word and royal law is one, not uttered in words and syllables nor wasted by length of time in writings and inscriptions, but the living and subsisting God the Word, who administers the Father's kingdom for all under him and after him. Around him range the heavenly hosts, myriads of angels of God, ministers, multitudes of the supramundane army and of the invisible spirits within heaven who serve the order of the whole world; and the royal Word leads them all, as a kind of prefect of the great King. The voices of the theologians proclaim him Commander-in-chief and great High Priest, Prophet of the Father and Angel of great counsel, radiance of the Father's light and only-begotten Son, and countless other titles besides. The Father, having brought him into being as living Word and Law and Wisdom and fullness of every good, gave him as a gift of the greatest good things to all under his kingdom. And he, pervading all things, moving everywhere, and unfolding the Father's graces ungrudgingly to all, extended an imitation of the royal sovereignty even to the rational beings on earth, adorning with divine powers the human soul made after his image. From this the sharing of the other virtues too belongs to it, by a divine outflow. For he alone is wise, who alone is God; he alone is good in essence, he alone mighty in strength, begetter of righteousness itself, Father of Word and Wisdom, source of light and life, steward of truth and virtue, and leader of kingship itself and of all rule and authority.

But how can human beings know these things? Who has conveyed them to mortal hearing? How can a tongue of flesh utter things foreign to flesh and bodies? Who has seen the invisible King and beheld these powers in him? By sense are grasped the elements akin to bodies and the compounds made of them; but no one has ever boasted of having taken in with bodily eyes the invisible kingdom over all, nor has mortal nature perceived the beauty of wisdom. Who by the senses of the flesh has seen the face of righteousness? From where did notions of lawful rule and royal authority enter into human beings? From where came sovereign power to what is compacted of flesh and blood? Who declared to those on earth the invisible and formless ideas and the incorporeal and formless substance?

There was, then, one interpreter of these things: the Word of God who reaches through all things, the father of the rational and intellectual substance in human beings, who alone depends on the Father's deity and pours the Father's outflows upon his own offspring. From him come to all people, Greeks and barbarians alike, the naturally self-taught reasonings; from him the notions of reason and wisdom; from him the seeds of prudence and justice; from him the grasp of the arts; from him the knowledge of virtue, the dear name of wisdom and the venerable love of philosophical learning; from him the knowledge of every good and noble thing; from him the very conception of God and a life worthy of godliness; from him comes to man the strength of kingship and invincible power over all things on earth. When the Word, the father of rational beings, had established in the human soul the stamp after the image and likeness of God, and made this creature royal, he showed it to be the only one on earth fit to rule and be ruled, and to practise and learn beforehand from here the promised hope of the heavenly kingdom, for the sake of which he also came. And the father of the children himself did not shrink from coming into fellowship with mortals; cultivating his own seeds and renewing the supplies from above, he proclaimed the good news to all that they would share in a heavenly kingdom, and called and urged them to be ready for the journey above, having prepared the garment worthy of the calling. With ineffable power he filled the whole earth that the sun beholds with his preaching, shaping the heavenly kingdom by the copy of the kingdom on earth, and he urges the whole human race to hasten toward it, holding out this good hope.

In this kingdom the one dear to God already shares from here, adorned with the virtues natural to God and having received in his soul the outflows from there: rational, as having come from the universal Word; wise by participation in wisdom; good by fellowship with the good; just by sharing in justice; self-controlled by the form of self-control; and brave, having shared in the supreme power.

Indeed he alone could truly be called an emperor who has shaped his soul with royal virtues into a copy of the kingdom beyond. But he who is estranged from these, who has denied the King of all, who has not acknowledged the heavenly Father of souls, nor put on the adornment fitting a king, but has taken on deformity and shame in his soul, exchanging royal gentleness for the rage of a wild beast, a liberal disposition for the incurable poison of wickedness, prudence for folly, and reason and wisdom for the most hideous unreason of all, from which, as from a bitter drink, the destructive shoots follow (a dissolute life, greed, bloodshed, war against God, impiety): such a man, given over to these, even if he is sometimes thought to rule by tyrannical force, will never truly be called an emperor.

How could he bear the copy of monarchical authority who has stamped on his soul countless falsely drawn images of demons? How could he be ruler and lord of all who has drawn upon himself countless bitter masters: a slave of shameful pleasure, a slave of licentious madness for women, a slave of money got by injustice, a slave of rage and anger, a slave of fear and terrors, a slave of bloodthirsty demons, a slave of soul-destroying spirits?

Therefore let him alone be proclaimed by us emperor, with truth as witness, who is dear to God the King of all: he who alone is free, or rather truly lord; above money, stronger than desire for women, conqueror of pleasures and of natural impulses, master of rage and anger and not mastered by them. He is truly autocrat, bearing by his conduct a title true to its name; truly victor, who has won the victory over the passions that overthrow the mortal race; he who has been fashioned after the archetypal form of the great King, and, shaped in mind as in a mirror by the rays of the virtues that come from it, has been made by them self-controlled, good, just, brave, pious, God-loving. Truly this emperor alone is a philosopher, who knows himself and understands the supplies of every good poured upon him from outside, or rather from heaven; who makes plain the venerable title of monarchical rule by the distinctive garment of his robe, and who alone worthily wears the royal purple that befits him.

He is emperor who night and day calls on the heavenly Father, who cries to him in his prayers, who yearns for the supreme kingdom. For, knowing that present things are unworthy of God the King of all, mortal and perishable, flowing and vanishing like a river, he longs for the incorruptible and incorporeal kingdom of God and prays to obtain it, having raised his mind by lofty reasoning above the vault of heaven and cherishing an ineffable longing for the lights there, compared with which he thinks the honours of the present life no different from darkness. For he sees rule over men as a small and short-lived oversight of a mortal and temporary life, not much better than the rule of goatherds or shepherds or cowherds (indeed he thinks it more laborious and over more troublesome flocks); and he regards the acclamations of the people and the voices of flatterers as more of a nuisance than a pleasure, because of his firm character and the genuine training of his soul. [6] Moreover, when he sees the guard of his subjects, the myriads of the armies, the slavish and obedient multitudes of heavy infantry and cavalry, he is not at all overawed, nor puffed up by his rule over them, but turns his thought to himself and sees in himself the common nature of all. He laughs at the gold-woven robe embroidered with varied flowers, the royal purple and the diadem itself, when he sees the many awestruck and treating the show as divine like little children with a bogey; he himself, feeling nothing of the sort in his soul through his knowledge of the divine, puts on the adornment that truly befits an emperor, a robe embroidered with self-control and justice and piety and the other virtues.

Besides this, he sees that the riches most desired by the many, gold, I mean, and silver and the kinds of stones that are admired, are truly stones, useless and unprofitable matter, as they are by nature, and of no help as a remedy against evils; for what power have they to free from disease or to escape death? Nevertheless, though he knows this, he arranges their use with understanding and dispassionate reasoning for the fitting adornment of his subjects, laughing at those excited by them through childishness of mind. From carousing and drunkenness and excessive delicacies, such as suit gluttons, he abstains, supposing that these befit others but not himself; for he is convinced that such things harm what is great and darken the mind of the soul.

Above all these things, the emperor taught in divine things and high-minded strives for what is better than the present life, calling on the heavenly Father and longing for his kingdom, doing everything with piety, and setting before his subjects, as pupils of a good teacher, the knowledge of the great King.

And he, providing pledges of reward, distributes to him the thirty-year crowns, completed in good periods of time; and, having now gone round three circles of decades, he allows all people to celebrate public, or rather universal, festivals.

As things on earth are brightened with the flowers of the knowledge of God, it would not be off the mark to suppose that the choirs in heaven, drawn by the laws of nature, rejoice with those on earth, and that the King over all himself, like a good father over good and godly sons, is glad, and in this way above all honours the leader and cause of good things with long-lasting honours, so that three periods of decades are not enough for his reign, but he extends it to the greatest length and sends it on into a long age. [3] But the age as a whole, ageless and endless, is by nature not to be seen by mortal reasonings, either in its beginning or its limit; nor can it be grasped from the middle point; it does not even allow what is called its 'now' to be grasped by those who wish to seize it, still less the future or the past of time. For the past is not, since it has gone by; the future is not yet present, and so it too is not; and what is called its 'now' escapes faster than thought and the sound of a word. It is not possible at all to lay hold of it as standing still; one must either await it as future or look back on it as past, for it slips away and flees as soon as it is conceived. So the age as a whole does not allow itself to be subjected to mortal reasonings, but refuses to be their slave.

Yet it does not refuse to acknowledge its own King and Master, but carries him riding on its back, priding itself on the ornaments from him. He drives it from above, not binding it 'with a golden chain,' as the poet says, but bridling it with bonds of ineffable wisdom as with reins; and he laid down in it months and times, seasons and years, and the alternating intervals of nights and days, with all harmony, binding it with various limits and measures. For it, being straight and stretched out to infinity, having taken the name of 'age' as being 'ever,' and alike to itself in its parts, or rather without parts and without intervals, grows lengthening only in a straight line. But he, dividing it by intermediate sections and, as it were, dividing by points a straight line stretched in length, laid down in it a great multitude; and though it is one and like the unit, he bound it with numbers of every kind, establishing in it a manifold variety out of the formless.

For first of all he established in it formless matter, as a substance that receives all things. Second, he made in matter quality, by the power of the dyad, producing form out of the formless. By the number of the triad he produced body, extended in three directions, in breadth, length and depth, composed of matter and form. From the double dyad he devised the tetrad of the elements, earth, water, air, fire, and put them forth as ever-flowing springs for the supply of this universe. The tetrad generates the decad, for one, two, three and four make up the number ten. The triad, combined with the decad, found the nature of the month; and the month in twelve turns completed the sun's circuit. From this the cycles of years and the changes of seasons gave form to the formless and shapeless age, as in a varied painting full of flowers, for the rest and delight of those who run the race of life in it.

For as for those who run races in a contest in hope of prizes the distances are marked off by stades, and for those who travel long journeys the highway is marked off by stations and milestones, so that no one, stretching his expectation to infinity, may grow weary in his eagerness, in the same way the King of all, enclosing the whole age by laws of wisdom, leads and carries it, driving it in varied ways as seems good to him. He himself, clothing the age, formerly shapeless, with beautiful colours and fresh flowers, brightened the white day with the sun; and spreading night beneath in a darker colour, he made the gleams of the stars glitter in it like gold-woven spangles. Kindling the bright rays of the morning star and the varied lights of the moon and the brilliant conjunctions of the stars, he crowned the whole heaven like a great robe with every beauty of painting. Stretching the air in depth from on high, and animating by its power the breadth and length of the whole world, he let it be shaped by all winged creatures, spreading a great sea for the invisible and visible beings borne through the air to swim through. Setting the earth in the middle like a centre, he surrounded it with ocean, and the sea roars upon it, adorned with the dark blue colour of its surrounding.

Showing it to be the hearth and mother and nurse of all living things on it, and watering it with rain and spring water, he granted it to grow green with plants of every kind and lovely flowers for the cheerful enjoyment of life. Of living things on it he fashioned the most honoured and dear to himself after his own image, capable of mind and knowledge, offspring of reason and wisdom, rational man, and gave him power to rule over the rest that creep and graze on earth. For man was to him the most God-loving of the living things on earth: man, to whom as a father he has handed over the races of irrational animals to serve; man, for whom he opened the sea to sailing and crowned the earth with plants of every kind; to whom he made subject the creatures that creep in the depths and the birds on high; to whom he granted powers of knowledge for receiving every kind of learning; to whom he revealed the contemplation of heaven, showing the courses of the sun, the phases of the moon, the periods of the planets and the fixed stars; man, to whom alone of things on earth he appointed to know the heavenly Father and to honour with hymns the great King of the whole age.

Besides all this, the maker of the world girded the unchanging age with the four turns of the year: bounding the wintry season by spring, and weighing spring, the beginning of the yearly seasons, in balanced scales; then, crowning the whole age with the abundant fruit of spring, he handed it over to the height of summer; then, as though resting it from its toil, he restored it in the autumnal interval; and with the wet showers of winter rains, washing it down like a royal horse and making it bright with their streams, and fattening it sufficiently with the waterings of the rains, he stands it again at the threshold of spring.

So, having bound his age in the circle of the whole year with such reins of wisdom, the great King appointed it to be carried under a lesser helmsman, his only-begotten Word, the common Saviour of all, handing over to him the reins of the universe. And he, as having received the inheritance from a good Father, holding together all that the vault of heaven encloses within and without, binding them in one harmony, brings them to completion in a straight course, overseeing with justice what is fitting for his rational flocks on earth. Having appointed measures of life for those who pass through mortal life, he has granted all people to practise beforehand here the preludes of the life beyond the present age. For he taught that there is, there is indeed, beyond the present age a divine and blessed life, stored up in good hopes for those who have contended well; and that for those who have lived soberly and piously the passage and removal from here to better things will come, while for those convicted here he will assign the place they deserve.

Then, as in the prizes of a contest, he proclaims crowns of every kind for the victors, and crowns some with one prize of virtue, others with another; and for a good emperor adorned with godliness he proclaims that greater honours of reward have been prepared, whose preludes he grants him to celebrate already here, in a festival composed of perfect numbers, of decades, triads, and threefold units,

of which the first, the triad, would be the offspring of the monad; and the monad is the mother of numbers, the eldest of all months, seasons and years and of every period of time; it might fittingly be called also the beginning, foundation and element of every multitude. The monad is named from 'remaining' (menein), because, while every multitude decreases and increases by subtraction and addition of numbers, the monad alone has received stability and permanence, isolated from all multitude and from the numbers generated from it, and bearing the image of the indivisible substance, distinct from all others, by whose power and participation the nature of all things exists.

For the monad is the creator of every number, since every multitude is established by composition and addition of units, and it is not possible otherwise to conceive the being of numbers without the monad. But it would itself be outside multitude, very far removed and superior to every number, making and establishing all, but itself never extended by any.

The triad is akin to it, likewise unsplit and indivisible, and the first of the numbers made up of even and odd; for the even number two, taking in a unit, produced the triad, the first odd nature. The triad first showed justice, leading the way in equality, as having received an equal beginning, middle and end. These things are an image of the mystical, all-holy and royal Triad, which, dependent on the unoriginated and unbegotten nature, has received the seeds and reasons and causes of the substance of all begotten things.

So the power of the triad might fittingly be thought the beginning of all. And the decad, having received the limit of all numbers, sets the whole within itself, fittingly called full and all-perfect, since it contains all forms and all measures of all numbers, ratios, concords and harmonies. Units, then, increased by composition, are bounded by ten; having it as mother and source, limit and boundary, they run around it as around the turning-post in a race.

Then, completing a second circuit, and again a third and fourth, up to ten, they make up a hundred from ten tens; then they run back to the first starting line, and beginning again from there and advancing to ten, and running round the hundred ten times, they turn back through the same turning-posts and run long double courses, circling back from themselves into themselves.

Of the ten, the tenth part is the unit; ten units make one decad; the decad is the limit of units, a boundary and turning-post that brings back: a turning-post for the infinity of numbers, a boundary and end of units. Together, the triad combined with the decad, and going round the circuit of ten cycles three times, produces the most natural number, thirty: for what the triad is among units, the thirty is among tens.

This is also the fixed limit of the second great luminary after the sun; for the moon's period from conjunction to conjunction completes the cycle of a month, after which, receiving again the beginning of its birth, it begins new light and new days, adorned with thirty units, honoured with three decads, and brightened by ten triads.

In these same numbers the reign of the victorious emperor over the world, honoured by the giver of all good things, takes up a beginning of new good things: until now completing thirty-year festivals, but from now on reaching to longer intervals, and foreshadowing hopes of future good things in the heavenly kingdom, where armies of countless lights dance around the King of all; not of one sun, but all the lights there bringing a light better than the sun, brightened and glittering with the splendour of the gleams from the eternal source,

where the life of the soul is in the pure beauties of good things; where life is free of all grief; where there is enjoyment of chaste and all-holy pleasure; and time without time, of long ages and endless, stretched to an unbounded end, no longer measured by intervals of days and months, nor by cycles of years and periods of seasons and times, but continuing in one life extended to infinity, not lit by the sun nor illumined by the multitude of stars and the rays of the moon, but having as its luminary God the Word himself, the only-begotten Son of the King of all.

Therefore the secret theologies of the sacred words initiate us into calling him the Sun of righteousness and a light beyond all lights; and teach that he illumines the all-blessed powers with rays of righteousness and gleams of wisdom, and that, receiving into his own bosom, instead of the heavenly sphere, the souls prepared by godliness, he confirms by deeds the promises of his own pledges.

"The eye of mortals has not seen, nor has any ear perceived," nor could a mind clothed in flesh discern "what has been prepared" for those adorned with godliness, as also for you, most godly emperor, to whom alone of all from the beginning God himself, the King of all, has granted to purify human life already here; to whom he also showed his own saving sign, through which he overcame death and raised the triumph over his enemies. Setting this victorious trophy, which averts the demons, against the idols of error, you have won victories over all godless enemies and barbarians, and now over the demons themselves, those other barbarians.

For since two natures are woven together in us, soul, I mean, and body, the one visible to all and the other invisible, two barbarous and hostile races were drawn up against these, the one invisibly, the other openly. The one set bodies against bodies; the other, with incorporeal weapons, besieged the naked human soul itself.

Then the visible barbarians, savage nomads no different from wild beasts, attacked the tame flocks of humanity, ravaging lands and enslaving cities, falling like cruel wolves from the desert on those in the cities and destroying whomever they could. And the invisible enemies, soul-destroying demons, more cruel than all barbarians, flying about this air, enslaved the whole mortal race by the devices of polytheistic wickedness, so that for them the true God was no longer God, but a manifold and godless error. For, bringing in from I know not where beings that in no way at all exist, they made the One who is, and alone truly is, into a side issue, as though he were not.

From this they took the generation of bodies for a god, and again another god opposed to it, their corruption and dissolution. The first, as the author of generation, they honoured with the rites of Aphrodite; the second, as manifold and prevailing over the mortal race, they named Pluto and Death. For the people of that time, knowing no other life than that which comes through generation, declared its cause, generation, to be a god; and, as though they would no longer exist after death, they proclaimed Death the victor over all and a great god. Then, as though in no way subject to account because of the dissolution brought by death, they went on doing things worthy of countless deaths, and lived a life that was no life, not taking God into their minds, not expecting the courts of divine judgment, not rekindling the memory of their own substance as souls, but having one terrible patron, Death; and persuading themselves that the corruption of bodies that comes from him was the dissolution of everything, they proclaimed Death a great and rich god, hence also Pluto. And Death was not their only god; so also were the things they valued before it, those that contributed to a life of pleasure.

So for them the pleasure of the flesh was a god; food was a god; its growth was a god; the growth of fruits was a god; luxury through drunkenness was a god; bodily desire was a god; its pleasure was a god. From this came the mysteries of Demeter and Pherephatta, the rape of Kore by Aidoneus and her return again; from this the rites of Dionysus and Heracles overcome by drunkenness as by a stronger god; from this the adulterous orgies of Eros and Aphrodite; from this Zeus himself mad for women and in love with Ganymede, and the licentious fictions of myths about pleasure-loving and passionate gods.

With so many arrows of God-fighting error those terrible barbarians, enemies of the King of all, wore down the people on earth, and made the whole race subject to them, so that pillars of godlessness were raised everywhere on earth, and temples and shrines of a falsely named theology were set up in every corner.

Those who were then thought to rule were so enslaved to error that they offered the murders of their own people and kin in sacrifice to their gods, sharpened their swords against the champions of the truth, and raised implacable war and godless hands, not against foreign and alien enemies, but against those of their own hearth and their friends, against brothers and kin and dearest ones, who had resolved to honour and worship the divine by dignity of life, self-control and the undertakings of true godliness.

So they, in madness of mind, slaughtered for their own demons those consecrated to the King of all. But the noble martyrs of true godliness, trained to prefer a glorious death for the truth even to life itself, set at nought so great a tyranny; as soldiers of God, fortified with the virtue of endurance, they laughed at every manner of death, fire and sword and nailing, wild beasts and the depths of the sea, the cutting off of limbs and branding irons, the gouging out of eyes, the mutilation of the whole body, and besides these hunger and mines and bonds, counting them sweeter than every good and every pleasure, through love and longing for their King. Likewise the youthful souls of women, made no less manly than men, some underwent the same contests as men and carried off equal prizes of virtue; others, dragged away for the violation of their bodies, gave up their soul to death sooner than their body to violation; and countless others, unable to endure hearing even with the edge of their ears the threats of the provincial rulers to give them over to sexual immorality, bravely underwent every kind of torture and every death-bringing sentence.

So the champions of the great King fought out the contests against the army of many gods with the strong reason of the soul. But the enemies of God and foes of human salvation, worse than all savage barbarians, rejoiced in such libations of human blood; and their servants in turn drank such toasts to them from unjust bloodshed, preparing for them this bitter and impious feast for the destruction of the common race. [9] Such being the case, what ought God, the King of those afflicted, to have done? Should he have passed by the salvation of his dearest ones, and so overlooked his own people besieged? But no helmsman would ever be called wise if he gave up the ship with all aboard to the depths, providing nothing from himself for the safety of those sailing; nor would any general be so careless as to surrender his own people to the enemy unavenged. Nor would a good shepherd look on unmoved at the straying sheep of his flock; he will leave those that are well in safety and suffer anything whatever for the sake of the safety of the one that strayed, even if he must grapple with wild beasts.

But the great King's concern was not for an irrational sheep; his whole concern was for his own army and those warred against for his sake. Accepting their contests and their struggles for godliness, he honoured those who had set out on the journey to him with the prizes of victory beside him and enrolled them in the angelic choirs of heaven; others he kept on earth, as living seeds of godliness for those born later, to be both spectators of the judgment on the impious and interpreters of the history of what was done.

Then, stretching out his right hand to repel the enemies, by a single nod he made some suddenly disappear, punishing them first with God-sent blows, and compelling them, even against their will, to sing with their own lips the recantation of the wrongs they had committed; while the others he raised from the ground, exalting those long humbled and despaired of by all.

And this the great King worked from heaven, setting forth as an invincible soldier his own servant (for the emperor rejoices to be so addressed, in the excess of his piety), whom he showed victor over the whole race of enemies, raising up one against many. For they were countless and many, as friends of many demons, or rather they were nothing, and so they are no longer; but he, one emperor from One, the image of the one King of all. They with godless souls killed godly men with bloody slaughter; but he, imitating his own Saviour and knowing only how to save, saved even the godless by teaching them to be godly.

Then, as a true victor, he conquered that twofold barbarous race: taming the savage tribes of men by reasonable embassies, compelling them to know and not be ignorant of their betters, and transforming them from a lawless and beastlike life to a rational and lawful one; and exposing by the deeds themselves the cruel and savage nature of the invisible demons, long since conquered by the higher power. For the common Saviour of all invisibly repelled the invisible ones; while he, as the prefect of the great King, pursued the conquered, stripping those long dead and lost and distributing the spoils ungrudgingly to the soldiers of the victor.

For when he saw the crowds foolishly fearing, like senseless children, the bogeys of error fashioned from gold and silver, he thought he must remove these out of the way like stumbling stones thrown before the feet of those walking in darkness, and he opened to all from then on a smooth and level royal road.

Having considered this, he thought he needed no soldiers or army for the exposure of these things; one or two of his friends sufficed him for the service, and he sent them through every province with a single nod.

And they, trusting in godliness, passed through the midst of populous peoples and nations, through all cities and lands, and exposed the long-standing error, ordering the priests themselves, amid much laughter and shame, to bring their gods out of their dark recesses into the light; then stripping them of their pretence and showing to the eyes of all the ugliness within the painted form. Then scraping off what seemed useful of the material and testing it by melting and fire, they kept in safety whatever they thought profitable and necessary, and left the rest, superfluous and useless, to the superstitious as a memorial of their shame.

And this too the wonderful emperor did: when the costly material of the dead idols had been stripped in the way described, he went after the rest, the statues made of bronze. These gods of old myths too were led away captive, bound with ropes of hair. Besides this, the great emperor, kindling as it were a far-shining torch, looked around with royal eye lest any hidden remnant of error escape notice.

And as a heaven-soaring eagle, most keen-sighted, would see from on high things far off on the earth, so he too, going about the royal hearth of his own beautiful city, saw from afar a terrible snare of souls hidden in the province of Phoenicia. This was a grove and precinct, not in the middle of cities nor in market-places and streets, such as are mostly built for the adornment of cities with lavish expense,

but it was off the beaten track, away from crossroads and highways, set up to the shameful demon of Aphrodite on a part of the ridge of Lebanon. It was a school of wickedness for all the licentious and for those who had corrupted their bodies with much indulgence. Effeminate men, men who were not men, having denied the dignity of their nature, propitiated the goddess with a womanish disease; unlawful intercourse with women, adulterous seductions, and unspeakable and infamous deeds were practised at this temple, as in a lawless and unguarded place. And there was no one to detect what was done, since no decent person dared to go there.

But what was done there could not escape the great emperor. Having seen it for himself with royal forethought, he judged that such a temple was not worthy of the sun's rays, and ordered the whole to be destroyed from its foundations, offerings and all. At once, by the emperor's nod, the devices of licentious error were dismantled, a military force served the cleansing of the place, and those who until then had been licentious learned self-control under the emperor's threat,

and so the emperor, having made the illusions of people-deceiving wickedness manifest to all, proclaimed his own Saviour to all. And there was no helper or defender for those taken, neither demon nor god nor oracle-singer nor prophet. For human souls were no longer rolling in dark gloom, but, illumined by the rays of unerring godliness, they blamed their forefathers' ignorance and pitied their blindness, and counted themselves blessed as set free from terrible error.

Thus in a short time, by the counsel of the great God and the service of the emperor, the whole race of enemies and foes, visible and invisible, was destroyed; and good peace, the nurse of children, at last embraced the dwelling of all people. There were no more wars, since there were no more gods; nor battles in the country and in the cities, as before when the cult of demons flourished; nor any more shedding of blood among men, as when the madness of polytheism was at its height.

It is time, then, to compare the new with the old, to see the turn to better things by contrast with the worse, and to discern and observe how formerly gateways and precincts, groves and shrines were elaborately built for them in every city, and the temples were crowned with very many offerings.

And the tyrants of that time made much of the gods; nations and peoples in the country and in every place, and even in their houses, in their storerooms and bedchambers, honoured the ancestral gods with altars and statues. Yet the fruit of their piety was not what is now seen with our eyes, peace with one another, but everything opposite to it: wars, battles and factions; worn out by these through their whole lives, they filled their own lands with blood and civil slaughter.

And those honoured by them promised the rulers of the time, with much flattery, divinations and oracles and foreknowledge of the future, but they could not foreknow or foretell their own destruction; which would be the greatest proof of the exposure of the deceit.

Not one of those formerly admired for oracles ever foretold the shining forth of the common Saviour among men, nor the new preaching of the knowledge of God put forth by him. Not even the Pythian himself understood, nor did any other of the great demons prophesy their own desolation, or foretell their besieger, or divine their destroyer.

What oracle-singer or prophet foretold that their sacred things would be extinguished when someone new appeared in life, and that the knowledge and worship of the King of all would be handed on to all people? Who foreknew this venerable and godly reign, and our victorious emperor himself, and the trophies raised by him everywhere on earth against the demons, and the destruction of the high places?

Who of the heroes ever announced the melting down by fire and the change of lifeless objects from a useless form to necessary uses? When their wooden images were being melted down and ridiculously chopped into small pieces, which of the gods ever made mention of it?

Where were their helpers, that they did not defend their own offerings being destroyed by men? when they saw their besiegers living in the deepest peace? Where were those who trusted in these as gods and lifted up their thoughts in vain confidence, who raised error on high and waged undeclared war against the champions of the truth?

Where is the band of God-fighting giants, and the hissing of dragons, who sharpened their tongues and let loose godless words against the King of all? They, at war with the King of all, trusting in a multitude of gods, advanced with a great power of military force, holding before them images of the dead in lifeless statues. But he, fortified with the breastplate of godliness, set against the multitude of his opponents the saving and life-giving sign as a terror and a defence against evils, and won the victory over enemies and demons together. Then, rendering with grateful mind the thanksgiving prayer to the cause of the victory, he proclaimed the victorious sign to all people with a loud voice and with monuments, raising this great trophy against all enemies in the middle of the ruling city, and expressly decreeing that this saving sign is the indelible safeguard of the Roman Empire and of the whole kingdom.

He taught all people to recognize this, above all the soldiers, who most of all ought not to hang their hopes on spears and armour or on bodily strength, but to know the God over all, the giver of every good and of victory itself.

So the emperor himself (O marvellous report!) handed on pious ordinances in keeping with the divine laws: that they should lift up their hands on high to heaven, send the eyes of the mind higher still to the heavenly King, and in their prayers call on him as giver of victory, Saviour, guardian and helper; and also that they should regard as the fitting day for prayers the one that is truly the lord and first day, the Lord's and saving day, named indeed after light and life, immortality and every good.

And he himself, becoming his own teacher of good things, honoured his Saviour in the very royal chambers: here he carried out divine ordinances with prayers, there he trained his mind by hearing the sacred words. His ministers and attendants, men consecrated to God and adorned with dignity of life and virtue, were appointed guardians of the whole household; and faithful guards, bodyguards armed with the ways of good loyalty, acknowledged the emperor as the teacher of a godly life.

The emperor honoured the victorious sign, having learned by deed the proof of the divinity in it. For by it the multitudes of the enemy army gave way, by it the boasts of the God-fighters were cast down, by it the tongues of blasphemers and impious men were silenced, by it barbarian tribes were subdued, by it the powers of invisible demons were driven off, by it the childish games of superstitious deceit were exposed. By it the emperor, rendering as a debt the end of all good things, set up monuments of victory everywhere on earth, commanding all with rich and royal hand to build temples, sacred precincts and houses of prayer.

At once the great works of imperial magnanimity rose in the middle of provinces and cities, and in a short time they shone through every nation, bringing with them the refutation of the godless tyranny. For those who a little before, in madness of soul, had rushed to fight against God, raging like dogs, let loose their fury against lifeless buildings, since they could not against God himself; then, throwing down the houses of prayer from on high to the ground and digging them up from their foundations, they presented the sight of a city captured by enemies. This was the drama of their wickedness, for which they at once experienced the divine power, as though avenging itself on their madness. Not even a short time passed, and with one blast of a God-sent storm it made them disappear, so that neither race nor seed nor any remnant of their memory was left among men, but all, though counted in great numbers, were punished by God-sent scourges and utterly extinguished in a short time. [14] Such was the end they found for their God-fighting madness. But he who had set forth the saving trophy alone (yet not alone, since the Only One was with him and working with him) made the new buildings far better than those so recently captured, the second far more honourable than the first: here brightening the city named after him with various churches of God, there honouring the chief city of the Bithynians with one very large and most beautiful, and adorning with similar ones the most powerful cities of the other provinces.

Choosing out two parts of the East above all, one in the province of Palestine, since from there the life-giving stream gushed forth to all like a spring, and the other in the eastern metropolis that bears the name of Antiochus, in the latter, as at the head of all the provinces there, he dedicated a divine and unique work for its size and beauty. Surrounding the whole temple outside with long enclosures, and raising the sanctuary within to an immense height, he built it in the form of an octagon, and, surrounding it all round with many chambers and exedras, crowned it with every kind of beauty.

These were completed in this way. In the province of Palestine, in the middle of the royal seat of the Hebrews, at the very saving witness itself, he adorned with rich and lavish munificence a vast house of prayer and holy temple to the saving sign; and he honoured with adornments beyond all description the tomb full of everlasting memory and the very trophies of the great Saviour over death.

Taking three places in that land honoured by three mystic caves, he adorned them with rich buildings: to the cave of the first manifestation he gave fitting honour; at the cave of the final ascension he exalted the memorial on the mountain ridge; and at the middle one he raised high the saving victories of the whole contest. All these the emperor adorned, proclaiming to all the saving sign.

And the sign, giving him the rewards of his piety, increases his whole house and family, strengthens the throne of his kingdom for long periods of years, storing up the fruits of virtue for his good sons, his family and their successors.

And this was the best proof of the power of the one honoured: that, weighing equally the scales of justice, he gave to each rank the reward it deserved. Therefore those who besieged the houses of prayer were followed at once by the wages of their impiety, and were made rootless and homeless, without hearth and vanished; while he, who honoured his Master with every kind of piety, now raising royal houses to him, now displaying him to his subjects by offerings everywhere on earth, fittingly found in him the saviour and guard of his house, his kingdom and his family. Thus the acts of God were made manifest through the divine virtue of the saving sign,

about which a long account would be handed down to initiates by men versed in theology. For this was truly saving, a wonder to say and far more wonderful to conceive: that, appearing alone on earth, it covered all the falsehoods about gods from all ages and gave error over to darkness and oblivion, and shining an intellectual light into human souls, revealed to all the only true God.

Therefore everyone who has turned to the better spits on the faces of dead idols, tramples on the lawless laws of demons, and laughs at the old deceit handed down from the fathers. People everywhere have established schools of sacred words and are trained in saving teachings, so that they are no longer excited by the creation seen with the eyes of the flesh, and, looking up at the sun and moon and stars, do not stop their wonder at these, but confess the One beyond them, the unseen and invisible Creator of all, having been taught to worship him alone.

Of so many good things for mankind this great and marvellous sign has been shown to be the cause, through which all that was bad no longer exists, and what formerly did not exist now shines among all with the rays of godliness.

Words and teachings and exhortations to a sober and godly life are proclaimed in the hearing of all nations, and the emperor himself proclaims them. And the greatest marvel is that so great an emperor has cried out with the loudest voice to the whole world, like an interpreter of God the King of all, calling all those shepherded under him to the knowledge of the One who is.

And in the middle of the imperial palace, no longer, as before, the babblers of godless men, but priests and worshippers of God celebrate, honouring with hymns the royal piety; and one God himself, the King of all, is proclaimed to all; and the good news of good things joins the human race to the King of the universe, announcing the heavenly Father as gracious and friendly to his sons on earth; choirs of every kind honour him with songs of victory, and all that is mortal sounds in harmony with the angelic companies of heaven.

Rational souls, through the bodies in which they are clothed, as through musical instruments, send up to him the fitting hymns and due praises. Those who dwell in the West are taught his lessons at one moment together with those in the East, and those whose lot is in the North sing in harmony with those in the South, pursuing the godly life by the same ways and words, praising one God over all, acknowledging one only-begotten Saviour, the cause of all good things, and recognizing one emperor on earth as corrector, and his sons dear to God.

And he, like a wise helmsman seated high above the rudders, steers in fair weather, sailing all under him with a favourable wind into the safe and calm harbour; and God himself, the great King, stretching out his right hand to him from above, makes him meanwhile victor over all enemies and foes, increasing the power of his reign for long periods of years, and he will also show him a sharer in better good things, confirming his own promises to him by deeds. These the present time does not allow to be told; we must wait for that place, since by nature divine things cannot be grasped by mortal eyes and the hearing of the flesh.

Come then, Victor, Greatest Constantine, let us set before you initiations into secret words in this royal treatise concerning the King of all, not initiating you, who have been made wise by God, nor laying bare the secrets to you, to whom, even before our words, God himself, not from men nor through man, but through the common Saviour himself and the divine vision that has often shone upon you, has shown and revealed the hidden things of the sacred mysteries; but bringing ignorant people into the light, and setting before those who do not know them the reasons and causes of your holy works of piety.

For what your virtue accomplishes daily throughout the whole inhabited world for the service and honour of God, the King of all, every mortal mouth hymns. But the things in our own land, I mean the province of Palestine, and in this city, from which the saving Word gushed forth as from a spring to all people, dedicated as thank-offerings to your guardian and Saviour, the trophies of the victory over death raised in houses of prayer and in dedications of temples, the lofty and most beautiful royal works of a royal mind built around the saving witness of immortal memory,

do not have their cause plain to everyone. Those enlightened in divine things by the power of the divine Spirit know and recognize it, and rightly admire and call you blessed for a purpose and impulse toward these things not moved without God. But those ignorant of divine things, through blindness of soul, make the matter an object of mockery and broad laughter, supposing it unbecoming and unfitting for so great an emperor to take trouble over memorials and tombs of dead bodies.

"Would it not be better," one of them might say, "to keep the ancestral customs and appease the heroes and gods honoured in each nation, and not to spit on them and flee from them because of such misfortunes? Either they too should be deified like this one, for their likeness of sufferings, or, if they are to be rejected because of their human sufferings, it is just to give the same verdict on this one." So one of them might say, drawing his brows close together and solemnly displaying his conceit with self-satisfied opinion.

But the loving Word of the all-good Father, judging him worthy of pardon for his ignorance, and not him only but everyone in error, having founded schools and places of teaching throughout the whole world of the nations, in countries and villages, in fields and deserts and in cities everywhere, generously calls them to the training of the divine teachings: Greeks and barbarians alike, wise and simple, poor and rich, slaves with masters, rulers and ruled, the impious, the unjust, the ignorant, the doers of shameful things, the blasphemers, urging them to come and hasten to the divine service, as a loving Saviour and physician of souls. With clear voice, proclaiming to all an amnesty for former evils, he cried: "Come to me, all who labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest"; again: "I came not to call the righteous but sinners to repentance"; and he adds the reason, saying: "Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick"; and: "I do not desire the death of the sinner, so much as his repentance."

From this it follows that only one taught in divine things, who has learned the causes of zeal for what lies before us, will acknowledge in our emperor an inspiration greater than human, will admire the godliness of his character, and will believe that his zeal for the witness of saving immortality came about not without God, but truly by the inspiration of the higher power, whose good servant he is proud to be as a minister of good things.

Being truly convinced that these things are dearest and most pleasing to you, greatest emperor, my present speech wishes to make known to all the reasons and causes of your God-loving works, praying to be a kind of messenger of your mind and God-loving soul, teaching everything that one who longs to learn the reasons of the power of our Saviour God ought and should be taught: why, though he existed of old and cared for the universe, he at last came down to us from heaven; why he put on a nature; why he went to death; and not only the causes of the immortal life after these things and of the return to life from the dead, but also reasoned demonstrations and clear teachings, necessary for those who still need them.

But it is time to begin from here. Those who exchanged the worship of God, the maker and ruler of the universe, for the things he had brought into being, honouring the sun and moon and the other parts of the world and the first elements, earth, water, air, fire, with the same name as their maker and creator, and calling them gods (things that would in no way at all have existed, nor been named, had they not been brought forth by the world-making Word of God), seem to me no different from those who pass by the architect of the great works in the royal palace and are utterly amazed at the ceilings and walls and the many-coloured and flowery paintings in them, the gilded carvings and the sculptures of stone, and attribute to these the title of the craftsman's wisdom. They ought to ascribe the cause of the wonder not to the things seen but to their architect alone, and to confess that the many things are works of wisdom, but that he alone is wise who has given the many the cause of being such as they are.

They would be no different from quite young children, those who admire the seven-stringed lyre, the musical instrument itself, but not the inventor of its arrangement who has the knowledge of the skill; or those who pass by the champion in war and adorn the spear and the shield with victory crowns; or those who honour equally with the great King, the founder of the great royal city, the market-places and streets and buildings, lifeless precincts and gymnasia. One should be amazed not at columns or stones, but at the master-builder and lawgiver of the wise.

In the same way, those who view this whole universe with the eyes of the flesh must not ascribe the cause to the sun or moon or any other of the heavenly bodies, but must confess that all things are works of wisdom, and must not honour and worship them like their maker and creator; but from the very sight of these they must, with every disposition of soul, praise and worship the Word of God, King of all, who is no longer perceived by the eyes of the body but only by a clear and pure mind. For who ever proclaimed wise, in the body of a wise and learned man, his eyes or head or hands or feet or the rest of his flesh, still less the outer cloak he wears? Nor is the furniture of the house wise, nor the philosopher's utensils; but every sensible person admires the unseen and invisible mind in the man.

In this way, all the more, beyond the visible works of art of the whole world, which are bodies and made from one matter, one should be amazed at the unseen and invisible Word, the giver of form and orderer of the universe, who is the only-begotten of God, whom the maker of all, who is beyond all and above all substance, begot from himself and appointed leader and helmsman of this universe.

For since it was not possible for the fluid substance of bodies and the nature of the newly made rational beings to approach God the ruler of all, because of the excess of their falling short of the higher (for he was unbegotten, above and beyond all things, ineffable, unattainable, unapproachable, "dwelling in unapproachable light," as the divine words say; while the other, brought forth from what was not, stood very far off and far removed from the unbegotten nature), it was fitting that the all-good God of the universe should put forth in the middle the divine and all-powerful power of his only-begotten Word, associating most exactly and as closely as possible with the Father and enjoying his secrets within him, yet most gently coming down and in some way conforming itself to those who fall short of the height. For otherwise it would be neither pious nor holy to bind the one beyond all and above all to corruptible matter and body. Therefore the divine Word, entering this universe in mingling and binding on the reins of the whole, leads and carries it with incorporeal and divine power, driving it all-wisely as seems good to him.

The proof of the argument is clear. For if the parts of the world taken by themselves, which we are accustomed to call the first elements, earth, water, air, fire, are composed of an irrational nature, as we see with our very eyes; or if one substance underlies them, which those skilled in these matters like to call receptacle and mother and nurse, and this is shapeless and formless, wholly lifeless and irrational, from where could one say the order in it exists in it? From where the separation of the elements? From where the coming together of opposites into the same? Who commanded the heavy element of earth to ride on the liquid substance? Who turned back the nature of the waters, which flows downward, and brought it up aloft through the clouds? Who fettered the power of fire to lurk in wood and mixed it with things opposite in nature? Who, mixing the cold air with warm power, released them from their battle with one another and reconciled them into friendship? Who devised the mortal race by the way of succession and led it on into a long age, a life of immortal life? Who, shaping the one male and fashioning the other female, and joining both into one harmony, found the beginning of generation for all living things? Who changed the fluid and seminal generation from a corruptible and senseless flow and showed it life-giving? Who still works all these things, and countless others beyond them more worthy of wonder and amazement? Who every day and hour accomplishes their generation and corruption by an unseen and invisible power?

But of all these the wonder-working Word of God would rightly be shown to be the cause. For the truly almighty Word of God, spreading himself through all things, stretching himself incorporeally up to the height and down to the depth, and embracing the breadth and length of the universe as with broad hands, gathered and bound this universe together; and, fitting together for himself this all-harmonious instrument, the irrational, shapeless and formless substance of bodies, by all-wise and rational power, skilfully joining the separated parts by the intervals of the scale, he plays upon it; and, steering by ineffable reasons the sun and moon and the light-bearers of heaven, he guides them to the benefit of the whole.

The same Word of God, reaching down into the earth, formed the races of animals of every kind and the many-formed beauties of plants. This same Word of God, sinking down to the depths of the sea, devised the nature of swimming creatures, there again making countless and innumerable forms and differences of living things of every kind. He himself, the same, shapes the life of what is conceived in the womb, completing it within the workshop of nature. He too, lifting aloft the fluid and heavy nature of the liquid substance and then sweetening it by its change, brings it to the earth in measure and completes the supply at fixed times.

Then, like a most excellent farmer, having irrigated the land well and mixed the moist with the dry, he transforms it in every way: now with beautiful flowers, now with shapes of every kind, now with sweet scents, now with changing varieties of fruits, now offering every kind of enjoyment to the taste.

Why should I dare to go through the powers of the divine Word and attempt the impossible, when its working surpasses every mortal mind? Some have named him the nature of the universe, others the universal soul, others fate. Others, mixing things that stand farthest apart, I know not how, have declared him to be the God beyond the universe himself, casting down to earth the ruler of all, the unbegotten and supreme power, binding him with body and corruptible matter, and saying that he is rolled about in the midst of irrational and rational, mortal and immortal living things. But so much for these.

But the divine teaching says that the highest of goods, the very cause of all things, is beyond all comprehension; therefore it is ineffable, unspeakable, unnameable, superior not only to speech but also to all thought, not contained in a place, not in bodies, not in heaven, not in the ether nor in any part of the universe, but stored up wholly outside all things in the secrecy of knowledge. The divine oracles teach us to know him alone as true God, separate from all bodily substance and foreign to every serving dispensation. Therefore it has been handed down that the universe is from him, but did not come into being through him.

He himself, like a king somewhere within, in ineffable, secret and untrodden places, "dwelling in unapproachable light," legislates and ordains continually by his power of will alone. For whatever exists, exists because he wills it, and if he does not will it, it does not exist; and he wills all good things, since he is in essence the good itself. But the Word of God, through whom are all things, gushing forth from above from the good Father as from an ever-flowing and boundless spring with ineffable words, goes forth like a river, overflowing wholly for the common salvation of the universe.

As in the example close to us: the invisible and unseen mind in us, whose identity and nature no one has ever known, like a king remaining within in its secret chambers, alone deliberates what is to be done; and from it goes forth the word, only-begotten, as born from the secret recess of the father, by an ineffable reason and an unnameable power; it becomes the first messenger to all of the father's thoughts, proclaims openly what was resolved in secret by the father, and accomplishes the resolutions in deeds, going forth into the hearing of all;

then some share in the benefit from the word, but no one has ever seen with eyes the unseen and invisible mind, the father of the word. In the same way, or rather beyond every image and example, the perfect Word of God the King of all, as the only-begotten Son of the Father, not consisting in the power of utterance, nor made up in nature of syllables of names and verbs, nor signified by a voice striking the air, but being the living and active Word of the God over all, subsisting in substance as the power of God and the wisdom of God, goes forth from the Father's deity and kingship; being the good offspring of a good Father and the common Saviour of all, he waters all things, flooding all with life and reason and wisdom and light and all good things from his own fullness. And he waters not only what is near and closest, but also what stands far off on land and sea, and any other region there may be among the things that exist.

To all of them together he appoints boundaries and regions, laws and lots, most justly, distributing and supplying what is fitting to each with royal authority: assigning to some to dwell in the vaults above the world, to others heaven itself, to others the regions of the ether, to others the air, to others the earth. And then he transfers them from here to elsewhere, judging well the lives of each and repaying the difference of their characters and ways, caring for the life and food not only of rational beings but also of irrational animals for the use of the rational,

and granting to some the enjoyment of a mortal and temporary life, to others a share in immortal life. He works all things as the Word of God, present to all and passing through all with rational power; and looking up to his own Father, he steers by his nods the things below and after him in due order, as the common Saviour of all, in some way mediating and bringing the begotten substance to the unbegotten.

This Word of God is a kind of unbreakable bond in the middle, binding together things far apart and not allowing them to fall far away. He is the universal providence, he the guardian and corrector of the universe, he the power of God and wisdom of God, he the only-begotten God, the Word begotten from God. For "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. All things came into being through him, and without him not one thing came into being that has come into being," as the sacred voices of the theologians teach. He is the common planter of all, through whom the substance of the universe grows and flourishes, watered continually by the showers from him, and supplying the universe with a bloom ever fresh and a most beautiful season.

And holding the reins, he goes on in a straight course by the Father's nod, steering the great ship of the whole world. The God beyond all, like a good father begetting a good fruit, gave to this world as its greatest good such a son, only-begotten, a craftsman of beautiful art, putting his own Word, like a soul into a lifeless body, into the irrational nature of bodies, and illuminating and animating the shapeless, formless, lifeless and unfigured substance by the divine power of the Word. Him we must recognize and revere, dwelling continually in matter and in the elements of bodies and giving life to all things, yet the same being light and the intellectual offspring of ineffable light; one in substance, as being from one Father, yet possessing many powers in himself.

For one should not think that, because the parts of the world are many, the powers are therefore many, nor, because the things made are many, that gods are therefore established, still more of them. The children of polytheistic men, like infants in their souls, have strayed into a terrible error, deifying the parts of the universe and dividing the one world into many,

as if someone, taking separately the eyes of one constituted man, should say that these are a man, and the ears again another man, and the head likewise, and, cutting up the neck and chest and shoulders, the feet and hands and the other limbs, and dividing in his reasoning the powers of the senses, should say that the one man is very many men, earning nothing but the laughter of the sensible for his folly. Such would be the man who constructs for himself countless gods out of the parts of one world, or who thinks the world itself, constituted of many parts, to be God, not knowing that the divine nature could never be composed of parts; for if it were composite, it would also need another to compose it. Nor again could it be divine if it were of many parts. How could it be, composed of unlike differences, of worse and better? Being simple, without parts and uncompounded, it is beyond all the visible order of the world.

Therefore the herald of the truth has cried out plainly, saying something like this: the Word of God, who is before all, alone would be the Saviour of all rational beings; and the God beyond, the originator of the Word, being alone the cause of all, would properly be called Father of the Word as his only-begotten, while he himself will acknowledge no higher cause. Therefore he alone is God, and from him goes forth the only-begotten Saviour of all, the one Word of God, who is through all. The perceptible world, like a many-stringed lyre made of unlike strings, high and low, slack, taut and middle, all well tuned by the art of music, is likewise of many parts and many compounds, of cold and its opposite hot, of moist and again its opposite dry substance, and, brought together into one harmony, it would be a great instrument, the work of the great God; while the divine Word, no longer made of parts nor composed of opposites, being himself without parts and uncompounded, plays on the whole well and wisely, rendering to his Father and the King of all the melody due and fitting to him. And as under one body countless limbs and parts and organs are brought together, while one invisible soul is spread through the whole, and one mind, without parts and incorporeal, so here too, the world is one, made of many parts, and likewise the one Word of God, of many powers and almighty, reaching through all and spread invisibly over all, would be the cause of all things in them.

Do you not see with your eyes the whole world, how one heaven embraces the countless choirs of stars moving round it? Again, one sun, not more, hides the gleams of all by the excess of its light. So, since the Father is one, his Word too must be one, a good Word of a good Father. And if anyone should complain that there are not more, it is time for such a one to blame the fact that more suns and moons and worlds and countless other things have not been established, trying like a madman to pervert what is right and well in nature. But as among visible things one sun lights up the whole perceptible world, so among intelligible things, invisibly and unseen by us, the one almighty Word of God illumines all things.

For in a man too one soul and one rational power would be the maker of very many things at once, if the same soul, having learned many things, should undertake farming, shipbuilding, steering and housebuilding; and one mind and reason in a man may receive the knowledge of countless things: the same man will do geometry and astronomy, and hand on the principles of grammar and rhetoric and medicine, and will be master both of sciences and of handicrafts. Yet no one has ever thought that there are several souls in one body, or wondered that there are many substances in a man because he takes in many kinds of learning.

And if someone, finding shapeless matter of clay and then softening it with his hands, should give it the form of a living creature, shaping the head in one form, the hands and feet in another, the eyes again in another and the cheeks likewise, and outlining the ears and mouth and nostrils, the chest and shoulders by the art of modelling; yet one should not, because many shapes and parts and limbs have been made in one body, think that there are as many makers, but praise only the one craftsman of the whole together, who fashioned the whole with one reasoning and one power. So too in this whole world, which is one but constituted of very many parts, one should not suppose many creative powers, nor name many gods, but confess one: the all-wise and all-harmonious, truly the power of God and the wisdom of God, reaching through all things with one power and one virtue, passing through the whole world, establishing and giving life to all things, and making its varied supply to all in general and to bodies and elements in particular.

So too one and the same stroke of the sun's light at once and in the same way lights the air, illumines the eyes, warms the touch, enriches the earth and makes plants grow, establishes time, leads, circles round, brightens the world, sets forth to the universe a clear power of God, and accomplishes all these by one impulse of nature. Likewise the nature of fire purifies gold, melts lead, dissolves wax, dries clay and burns wood, accomplishing so many things by one burning power.

In this way too the Word of God, King of all, who reaches through all things, is in all and passes through all things, heavenly and earthly, steering the invisible and the [visible], drives the sun itself and heaven and the whole world with ineffable powers, present to all with active power and passing through all. He pours ever-flowing light from his own spring on the sun and moon and stars; he holds heaven together for ever, having established it as a most natural image of his own greatness; the powers beyond heaven and the world, of angels, of intellectual spirits and rational substances, he fills with life and light and wisdom and every virtue, with everything noble and good, from the treasuries with him; and with one and the same creative art he never ceases to supply to the elements substance, and to bodies mixtures and blendings, forms and shapes and figures, embroidering countless qualities now one way, now another, in animals and plants and in rational and irrational souls, and supplying all things to all with one power; showing plainly not a seven-stringed nor a many-stringed lyre, but one world of many harmonies, the work of one world-making Word.

Let us then say what follows and make clear the cause for which so great a Word of God made his descent to men. This Word of God, who presides over heaven and earth, begotten from the Father's most remote deity as from a spring, ever present and with the world here, giving clear tokens of his providence and of his care for men, the race of foolish men did not take into account, and they gave the venerable title to the sun and moon and heaven and stars.

Nor did they stop there, but they also deified the earthy nature and the fruits of the earth and every kind of bodily food, making idols of Demeter and Kore and Dionysus and others akin to them. Nor did they stop there, but they did not shrink from calling gods even the reasonings of their own minds and the very word that interprets them, naming the mind Athena and the word Hermes, and calling the powers that attain learning Mnemosyne and the Muses. Nor did they stop there, but, increasing their absurdity with an excess of impiety, they deified their own passions, which they ought to have turned from and cured by sober reason: desire itself, the passionate and licentious disease of souls, the parts and members of the body that draw to shamefulness, and the incontinence of shameful pleasures, calling them Eros and Priapus and Aphrodite and other things akin to these.

Nor did they stop there, but, falling down to the generation of bodies and the mortal life below, they deified mortal men and after their common death proclaimed them heroes and gods, supposing that the immortal and divine substance lingers about memorials and tombs. Nor did they stop there, but they honoured with the venerable title all kinds of irrational animals and the most harmful of reptiles. Nor did they stop there, but, cutting down oaks and quarrying rocks and searching out the metals of the earth, bronze and iron and other material, they modelled figures of women and shapes of males, and forms of beasts and reptiles, and then surrounded these with honours.

Nor did they stop there, but they gave the same title of gods to the wicked demons that lurk in the wooden images and have sunk into dark recesses and greedily hover around the libations and smoke of sacrifices. Nor did they stop there, but by certain bindings of forbidden sorcery, by lawless and compelling songs and incantations, they drew to themselves as familiars invisible powers flying about the air. Different peoples deified different mortal men: the children of the Greeks honoured Dionysus, Heracles, Asclepius, Apollo and some other men with the title of heroes and gods; the Egyptians held Horus, Isis, Osiris and men like them to be gods. Nor did those wise men, boasting of their surpassing wisdom in the discovery of geometry, astronomy and arithmetic, know or understand how to weigh among themselves and reckon the measures of God's power and the difference of a mortal and irrational nature.

Therefore they did not shrink from calling gods every kind of hideous monster and all races of animals, venomous reptiles and wild beasts. The Phoenicians proclaimed as gods Melkathar and Usor and certain other more ignoble mortal men; so the children of the Arabs a certain Dusaris and Obodus, the Getae Zamolxis, the Cilicians Mopsus, the Thebans Amphiaraus, and others among other peoples others again, differing in nature not at all from mortals, but simply and truly men. So all together, Egyptians, Phoenicians, Greeks, and the whole mortal race, as far as the rays of the sun give light, proclaimed as gods and heroes, at random and as it happened, through the error of I know not what demonic working, the parts of the world and the elements, the fruits that spring from the earth, their own passions, yes, and demonic frenzies and fantasies, and before these mortal men who had met with human misfortunes, men who in their lifetime founded no schools of virtue, toiled at no teaching of a sober life for men, set forth no philosophical doctrines, displayed no beneficial work, left behind no disciples of virtue, handed down no words or writings tending to a good life, but were busy with women and shameful pleasures; and they honoured them with sacrifices and rites with sorcerous deceits, building temples and shrines for them in cities and in the country, while the only true Word of God beyond the world, King and maker of all, they counted as nothing. And they went so far in madness and derangement that at the same time they danced in honour of these chance men as gods, and at once attached to the same men the passions of mortals, ascribing to them lawless loves and shameful deeds, overthrows of life and deaths. Then, saying that these things were not slanders by others, but being themselves witnesses of them, confessing their wanderings and griefs and deaths and, above these, their adulteries, corruptions of males and abductions of women, they nonetheless filled all cities and villages and lands with temples and statues and shrines, destroying their own souls besides by imitating the ways of their gods.

So one could hear among them in word of gods and sons of gods, of heroes and good demons, but in deed everything was the opposite; for they revered the opposite things by opposite means, as if someone wishing to show another the sun and the lights of heaven did not lift his eyes up on high, but, casting his hands down to the earth and throwing himself to the ground, sought the heavenly powers in mud and mire. So too the human race, through derangement and the deceit of wicked demons, was persuaded that the divine and intelligible substance beyond heaven and the world was somewhere below, in the generation of bodies and the passions and deaths of mortals. And they went so far in folly that they even sacrificed their dearest ones to them, sparing not even nature, but already slaughtering their only and beloved children in madness and frenzy of mind.

And what could be more mad than this, to sacrifice human beings and to defile whole cities and their own houses with the murder of kin? Or do not the children of the Greeks bear witness to these things, and is not all history full of their memory? The Phoenicians every year sacrificed their beloved and only children to Kronos; to the same god in Rhodes, on the sixth of the month Metageitnion, they slaughtered men. In Salamis, a man driven within one precinct of Athena Agraulis and Diomedes ran three times around the altar, then the priest struck him with a spear in the stomach and so burned him whole on the heaped-up pyre. In Egypt too very many human killings took place: three men a day were sacrificed to Hera at Heliopolis, in whose place King Amosis, seeing how terrible it was, ordered the same number of wax figures to be offered. In Chios they sacrificed a man to Dionysus Omadios by tearing him apart, and likewise in Tenedos; in Lacedaemon they performed the sacrifice by men to Ares. In Crete they did this very thing, sacrificing men to Kronos. A virgin was sacrificed yearly to Athena in Laodicea of Syria, but now a deer. Moreover the Libyans and Carthaginians propitiated their gods with human sacrifices. The Dumatenes of Arabia sacrificed a boy every year and buried him under the altar. History teaches that all the Greeks in common killed men before going out to war, and the Thracians and Scythians likewise. The Athenians remember the daughters of Leos and the daughter of Erechtheus who were slain. And even now, who does not know that at the great city a man is slaughtered at the festival of Jupiter Latiaris?

That these things are so, even the most esteemed of the philosophers have testified. Diodorus, who abridged the libraries, says that the Libyans publicly sacrificed to Kronos two hundred of the most distinguished children, and gave to the sacrifice no fewer than three hundred others besides. And Dionysius, the writer of Roman history, says that Zeus himself and Apollo demanded human sacrifices in Italy from those called Aborigines. He says that those of whom they were demanded offered to the gods a tithe of all their crops; but because they did not also sacrifice men, they fell into misfortunes of every kind, and had no rest from evils until they tithed themselves; and so, taking away tithes of men and sacrificing them, they became the cause of desolation for the land. With so many evils was the whole human race formerly worn down.

Nor was this enough of evil for them; they were also enslaved by countless other incurable misfortunes. For the nations throughout the whole world, Greek and barbarian, as though goaded by demonic working, were torn apart by a terrible and most grievous disease, because the human race was unsociable and irreconcilable with itself, the great body of our common nature being torn here and there, as men in every corner of the earth revolted and fought one another with their laws and constitutions,

and not only this, but also growing savage in frequent uprisings against one another, so that always, throughout life, they were occupied with battles and wars against one another; no one who wished could travel anywhere without being armed like an enemy; farmers carried swords in the fields and villages and owned weapons of war rather than tools for farming; and plundering and enslaving their neighbours they counted as a part of virtue.

And not only this, but, taking from the very stories they had made up about their own gods provisions for a shameful and lawless life, they corrupted their souls together with their bodies by every kind of licentiousness. And not only this, but, overstepping the bounds of nature, they went beyond into unspeakable deeds and did unbelievable outrages to one another, "men committing shameless acts with men, and receiving in themselves the due penalty for their error," as the sacred words say.

And [not] only this, but, perverting the natural notions of God, they thought all things here without providence and without guardian, and ascribed the being and constitution of the universe to an irrational and spontaneous nature and to the necessity of fate.

And not only this, but, supposing that their souls perished together with their bodies, they lived a beastlike life and a life not worth living, not inquiring into the substance of the soul, not expecting the courts of divine judgment, not taking to mind the prizes of virtue or the punishments of an unjust life,

and already whole nations were wasting away in a beastlike life by many kinds of wickedness: some having lawless and most unlawful intercourse with their mothers, others marrying their sisters, others corrupting their own daughters; some slaughtering the strangers who visited them, others tasting human flesh, others strangling the aged with a noose and then feasting on them, others throwing them still alive to dogs. Time will fail me in telling all the ancient disease that had mastered the whole human race,

these things and countless others akin to them. For their sake the loving Word of God, taking pity on the rational flock among men, called the despairing to their healing, of old through some of his prophets, and still earlier through other God-loving men, and after them through those who were known later, laying down among men, through laws and exhortations and teachings of every kind, preludes and elements of godliness. When, then, the mortal race no longer needed human power but a helper stronger than human, wandering here and there and mercilessly torn, not by wolves and untamed beasts, but by terrible and savage demons and cruel, soul-destroying spirits, at last the Word of God himself came to us most willingly and was present in our camp, obeying the nod of the all-good Father.

The cause of his presence here was what has been described. For the sake of all these he came into the company of mortals, and did not do what was customary for him, being incorporeal and passing invisibly through the whole world and displaying his great works by deeds in heaven and on earth, but did it in a newer way, changing his customary manner. For through a mortal instrument he undertook his converse and dwelling with mortals, taking care to save the mortal through what is like it.

Come then, after this let us say for what reason the incorporeal Word of God, using a body as an instrument, came to dwell among men. How else could the divine, intangible, immaterial and invisible substance show itself to those who seek God in things that come into being and down on earth, and who cannot, or will not, behold the creator and maker of all, than through a human shape and form?

Therefore he came down to converse with mortals through a mortal instrument, a fitting aid, because this was dear to them; for like, they say, is dear to like. To those who delight in the perception of things seen, who seek gods in statues and carvings of lifeless wooden images, who imagine the divine to be in matter and bodies, and who proclaim as gods men mortal by nature, in this way the Word of God showed himself.

Therefore he prepared for himself an all-holy temple, a bodily instrument, a perceptible dwelling of rational power, a venerable and all-holy statue, more honourable than any lifeless wooden image. For the image made of lifeless matter, crafted by the hands of base workmen into a likeness of bronze and iron, gold and ivory, stone and wood, would be a fitting dwelling for demons; but the divine statue, embroidered by the power of divine wisdom, shared in life and intellectual substance, a statue full of every virtue, a statue that is the dwelling of the Word of God and a holy temple of God.

The Word dwelling in it was with mortals through what is akin to them and was known by them; yet he did not fall under like passions, nor was he bound to the body in the manner of a human soul, nor, becoming worse than himself, was he changed from his own deity. For as the rays of the sun's light would suffer nothing, though they fill all things and touch dead and impure bodies, so much more the incorporeal power of the Word of God would suffer nothing, nor be harmed in substance, nor ever become worse than itself, touching a body incorporeally.

So the common Saviour of all made himself beneficent and saving to all through the human instrument he had put forth, like a musician showing his skill through the lyre. A Greek myth hands down that Orpheus charmed every kind of beast with his song and tamed the fury of the wild ones by striking the strings of his instrument with a plectrum; this is sung by the chorus of the Greeks, and it is believed that a lifeless lyre tamed the beasts and even moved the trees, the oaks, yielding to music. So the all-wise and all-harmonious Word of God, applying every kind of cure to human souls subject to many kinds of wickedness, took in his hands a musical instrument, the work of his own wisdom, man, and through it played songs and charms to rational, not irrational, beasts, healing every savage manner of Greeks and barbarians and the wild and beastlike passions of souls with the remedies of divine teaching; and to sick souls that seek the divine in things that come into being and in bodies, like the best of physicians, with a kindred and fitting aid, he presented God in a man.

And then, caring no less for bodies than for souls, he showed to the eyes of the flesh marvellous wonders and divine portents and powers, and sounded in the ears of the flesh teachings through tongue and flesh; and he accomplished all things through the man he had taken up, for those who could perceive such a deity in no other way but this. [7] And he ministered these things to the Father's counsels, remaining himself again immaterial, as he was before this with the Father, not changing his substance, not losing his own nature, not fettered by the bonds of the flesh, nor, while his human vessel spent its time here where it was, being prevented from being in the other parts of the universe.

But even at that time, when he lived among men, he filled all things, was with the Father and in him, and at that very time cared for all things together, in heaven and on earth, in no way shut out, as we are, from presence everywhere, nor hindered from putting forth the divine as usual; but giving from himself to the man, and not receiving from the mortal in turn; supplying the mortal from the divine power, and not drawing in turn a share from the mortal.

So he was not defiled when the body was born, nor did the impassible suffer in his substance when the mortal was separated from him again; since, if the lyre should happen to be struck or its strings broken, it is not likely that the player suffers; nor, when the body of a wise man is punished, would we rightly say that the wisdom in the wise man, or the soul in the body, is beaten or burned.

In this way, much more, it is reasonable to say that the power of the Word took no harm from the sufferings of the body, since the example of light does not allow that the sun's rays, sent to earth from heaven, are stained when they touch mud and mire and every pollution. Nothing would prevent us from saying that these are lit by the rays of light, but not that the light is muddied or the sun defiled by mixing with bodies.

And these things would not be foreign to nature. But the Saviour and incorporeal Word of God, being life itself and intellectual light itself, whatever he touches with divine and incorporeal power must live and continue in rational light. So whatever body he touches is at once sanctified and enlightened; every disease and weakness and suffering gives way before him, and what is in want receives from his fullness.

Therefore he spent his whole life in this way: now showing in his bodily instrument the likeness of passions he shared with us, now revealing the God Word, doing great works and wonders as God, uttering beforehand predictions of things to come, and displaying by his very deeds the Word of God not seen by the many, in marvellous acts, wonders, signs and extraordinary powers, and indeed in divine teachings leading souls to prepare themselves above for the place beyond heaven.

What remains, then, but to state the cause of the very chief point of the whole, I mean the much-talked-of end of his life, the manner of his passion, and the great wonder of his return to life after death? After considering these, we shall confirm all of them by testimonies.

He used a mortal instrument, then, for the reasons we have given, as a statue worthy of God, and through it, like a great king through an interpreter, he passed through human life and did everything in a manner worthy of divine power. If, then, after his time among men, he had in some other way become invisible and suddenly flown away, stealing away his interpreter secretly and trying to escape death by flight with his own statue, and then had himself, by his own act, consumed the mortal in corruption and destruction, he would have seemed a phantom to all, and would not have done what was fitting to himself, being life and the Word of God and the power of God, by handing his own interpreter over to corruption and destruction,

nor would his deeds against the demons have received their completion through the struggle with death; nor would it have been known where he had gone; nor would he have been believed by those who had not received him; nor would he have appeared stronger than the nature of death; nor would he have freed the mortal from its own nature; nor would he have been heard of throughout the whole inhabited world; nor would he have persuaded his disciples to despise death; nor would he have given those who follow his teaching the hope of life with God after death; nor would he have fulfilled the promises of his words; nor would he have provided outcomes in harmony with the prophetic predictions about him; nor would he have gone through the last contest of all, which was the one against death. [4] Therefore, for the sake of all these, since in any case the instrument, after the sufficient service it had rendered to the divine Word, had to meet an end worthy of God, in this way death too was ordered for it. For two ways of ending remained: either to give the whole over to corruption and destruction, and make the overthrow of life the most shameful end of the whole drama; or to show himself stronger than death, making the mortal immortal by divine power. The first was foreign to his promise. For it is not proper to fire to cool, nor to light to darken; so neither is it proper to life to kill, nor to the Word of God to act contrary to reason. What reason, then, would it be for the one who promises life to others to overlook his own instrument perishing, to hand over his own statue to destruction, and to let death destroy the interpreter of his deity, he who provides immortality to those who flee to him?

So the second was necessary, I mean to show himself stronger than death? How then should this have been done? Secretly and stealthily, or in a manner conspicuous and evident to all? A success achieved in darkness and in secret, known to no one, would have benefited no one; but seen and heard by all, it gave to all the benefit of the wonder. Fittingly, therefore, since his instrument had to be shown stronger than death, and this done not in secret but before the eyes of men, he does not flee death (for then he would have been thought cowardly and weaker than death), but through the struggle with death, as with an opponent, he made the mortal immortal, having undertaken this contest for the salvation, life and immortality of all.

Just as, if someone wished to show us a vessel that cannot be burned and is stronger than fire, he could not present the wonder otherwise than by giving the thing in his hands to the fire and then taking it out of the fire safe and undamaged, so too the Word of God, life-giver of all, wishing to show the mortal instrument which he had used for the salvation of men to be stronger than death, and to make it a sharer in his own life and immortality, undertook a most useful dispensation. He left the body for a short time and gave the mortal over to death, to prove its own nature; then, not long after, he took it back from death again, to display the divine power by which he showed the eternal life proclaimed by him to be stronger than every death.

The cause is plain and clear. Since it was necessary for his disciples to see with their eyes the evident rebirth of life after death, on which he taught them to hang their hopes, preparing them to be stronger than death, he fittingly let them see this with their eyes. For those who were going to pursue a godly life had to receive this first and most necessary lesson of all through clear sight; and much more those who were very soon to preach him to the whole world and to announce to all people the knowledge of God put forth by him to all the nations.

These had to receive the greatest conviction of life after death, so that, unafraid and fearless of death, they might eagerly undertake the contest against the polytheistic error of the nations; for if they had not practised despising death, they would never have prepared themselves for terrors. Therefore, of necessity arming them against the dominion of death, he did not hand on the lesson in mere words and phrases, nor composing an argument about the immortality of the soul persuasively and from probabilities like human words, but showed them by the deed itself his trophies over death.

This, then, is the first and greatest cause of our Saviour's battle against death: he showed his disciples that death, terrible to all, is nothing, and presented to their eyes by clear sight the life he had promised, making it the firstfruits of our common hope of life with God and immortality. [10] A second cause of the return to life would be the demonstration of the divine power that dwelt in the body. For since formerly men deified mortal men conquered by death, and named as heroes and gods those overcome by death, there too, fittingly, for this reason the loving Word of God showed himself, displaying to men a nature stronger than death, leading the mortal after its dissolution to a second life, granting all to see a trophy of immortality over death, and teaching them to confess that he alone, in death, is true God, who has bound on the prizes of victory over death. I could also describe for you a third cause of the saving death.

It was a victim offered up for the common race to God, the King of all; a victim consecrated for the flock of men; a victim to avert demonic error. When the one victim and great sacrifice, the all-holy body of our Saviour, had been slain for the human race and offered as a ransom for all the nations formerly held in the impiety of demonic error, at last the whole power of the impure and unholy demons was cast down, and all earthly and deceitful error was at once loosed and relaxed by a higher power.

The saving victim from among men, then, the very bodily instrument of the Word, was consecrated for the common flock of men; and this was the sacrifice given over to death, of which the voices of the sacred words cry out, at one time saying something like this: "Behold the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world"; at another foretelling thus: "As a sheep he was led to slaughter, and as a lamb before its shearer is dumb"; and they teach the cause too, adding: "He bears our sins and suffers pain for us; and we counted him to be in toil and in blows and in affliction; but he was wounded for our sins and made weak for our transgressions. The chastisement of our peace was upon him; by his bruise we were healed. ... went astray. And the Lord gave him up for our sins."

The human instrument of the divine Word, then, was consecrated for these reasons. But this great High Priest, consecrated to God the ruler and King of all, being other than the victim, the Word of God, the power of God and wisdom of God, not long after called the mortal back from death and presented it to the Father as the firstfruits of our common salvation, raising it for all men as a victorious trophy over death and the demonic array, and a means to avert the human sacrifices formerly carried out.

These things being so, it is time to come to the proofs, if indeed proof of their truth is needed, and if it is necessary to confirm the testimonies of plain facts. Receive them, preparing a well-disposed ear for the argument.

In former times all the nations on earth were divided, and the whole human race was cut up into provinces, ethnarchies, toparchies, tyrannies and governments of many, from which continual battles and wars, ravagings and enslavements in fields and cities never left them, and countless subjects for histories, adulteries and abductions of women: from this the evils of Ilium and the tragedies of the ancients remembered among all people.

You would not be wrong to ascribe the causes of these things to polytheistic error. But when the saving instrument, the all-holy body of Christ itself, which was seen to be stronger than all demonic error and working and foreign to wickedness in deed and word, was raised up as a victorious trophy against the demons and a defence against ancient evils, at once all the works of demons were undone; and there were no longer toparchies and governments of many, tyrannies and democracies, and the ravagings and sieges arising from them in cities and countries; but one God was proclaimed to all,

and at the same time one kingdom flourished for all, that of the Romans, and the enmity of the nations, from of old implacable and irreconcilable, was suddenly removed. And as the knowledge of one God was handed on to all people, and one way of godliness, the saving teaching of Christ, so in the same way, one emperor having arisen at one and the same time over the whole Roman Empire, deep peace embraced all things. At the same time and in one season, as though from one nod of God, two shoots of good things sprang up for men: the Roman Empire and the teaching of godliness.

Before this, some ruled Syria separately, others reigned over Asia, others over Macedonia; others had cut off Egypt and held it, and the land of the Arabs likewise; and the race of the Jews ruled over Palestine; and in villages and cities and every place, as though from some madness, they were murderous toward one another and truly demon-possessed, occupied with wars and battles. But suddenly two great powers, coming forth as from one starting line, tamed all and brought them into friendship: the Roman Empire, shown from then on as a monarchy, and the teaching of Christ, flourishing together at the same time with each other.

The power of our Saviour overthrew the many rules and many gods of the demons, proclaiming one kingdom of God to all people, Greeks and barbarians, even to the ends of the earth; and the Roman Empire, as though the causes had been removed beforehand, subdued the visible powers, hastening to join the whole race into one unity and concord. It had already brought together most of the various nations, and was about very soon to reach even to the ends of the inhabited world, the saving teaching with divine power smoothing all things beforehand and making them level for it.

This would indeed be the great wonder to those who attend with a truth-loving mind and do not wish to begrudge good things. At the same time the error of the demons was refuted, and at the same time the age-old enmity and fighting of the nations was ended; and again at the same time one God and one knowledge of him was proclaimed to all, and at the same time one kingdom was established among men, and the whole human race was at the same time brought into peace and friendship; all acknowledged one another as brothers and recognized their kindred nature. At once, as though sprung from one father and as children of one God and one mother, true godliness, they greeted and received one another peaceably, so that from then on the whole inhabited world differed in nothing from one well-ordered household and family, and anyone who wished could travel and go abroad wherever he liked with all ease; those from the West could go safely to the East, and those from here go there as to their own homelands; and the oracles of ancient prophecies and the utterances of prophets were fulfilled, countless others which there is no leisure to set out now, and also those which cry out concerning the saving Word: "He shall have dominion from sea to sea, and from the rivers to the ends of the inhabited world"; and again: "In his days righteousness shall arise, and abundance of peace"; "And they shall beat their swords into ploughshares and their spears into sickles, and nation shall not take up sword against nation, and they shall no more learn to make war." [8] These things were foretold and proclaimed beforehand in Hebrew voices from a long age; these things, seen in deeds in our own time, confirm the testimonies of the ancient voices. But if you long for an abundance of other proofs, take them not from words but from deeds. Open the eyes of your mind, throw wide the gates of reason, and, pausing long, reckon with yourself; ask yourself, and inquire as of another, examining the nature of the facts in this way: who of all kings or rulers or philosophers or lawgivers or prophets, Greek or barbarian, from the beginning ever won such virtue, not after death but while still living and breathing and having much power, as to fill the hearing and tongue of all people on earth with his name? No one but our Saviour alone accomplished this after his victory over death, speaking the word to his disciples and fulfilling it in deed, saying to them, "Go and make disciples of all the nations in my name." And having foretold ... that his gospel must be preached in the whole inhabited world as a testimony to all the nations, he joined the deed to the word; and at once, not long after, the whole inhabited world was filled with his words.

What then could the one who at the beginning of our speech found fault with us say to this, when the testimony of sight is stronger than every word? But passing from the first point, come to another and consider with yourself: who in all the ages, having laid down pious and sober laws by word alone without any writing, ever caused them to be read easily, through his disciples, from the ends of the earth to the farthest parts of the whole world, opening schools everywhere on earth, in the hearing of all people, barbarians and Greeks alike? You would not find another if you searched. This was the work of our Saviour alone; and this, done after his death, would be a proof of his divine life and power. But even this does not persuade the disobedient. Then let him tell us, who long to learn, what other of those esteemed among men for wisdom ever abolished the barbarous and savage customs of barbarian nations by his most humane laws, so that those who are his disciples no longer eat men among the Scythians, nor marry their mothers among the Persians, nor throw their dead to dogs among others, nor hand over the aged to the noose among others, nor do other things akin to these, cruel and beastlike, among others. But these are small proofs of our Saviour's divine life after death. Behold others greater than these, considering who ever among men, warred against for so long by all men, rulers and kings, citizens and armies, peoples and nations, and always warred against, displayed a superhuman virtue, so as to flourish daily and be young throughout all his life. Who else of all the ages, like our Saviour, wishing to establish a nation never heard of before under his name, founded it not hidden in some corner of the earth but over all the earth under the sun, bringing his will to completion by the power of divine authority? Who ever undertook to teach all the nations to know and worship God alone, who is beyond heaven and the whole world? And then, having set such a goal, brought the achievement to effect, showing by its very working that what was done was dear to God? This above all stopped every unbridled mouth: that, having proclaimed the supreme God and commanded all the nations to know him alone as true, as one who willed what was dear to God, he was counted worthy of the co-operation and help of the One he preached. And what are the teachings received along with such preaching, handed on to the hearing of all and confirmed in deed? Behold and consider. Who else ever, enlightening the souls of men with rational light, prepared them to laugh at their ancestral error, so that they no longer attach the divine name to stones and wood and lifeless matter? Who else but our Saviour persuaded the Egyptians, the most superstitious of all, from whom the polytheistic error passed even to the Greeks, no longer to be foolish, nor to give the venerable honour to beasts and reptiles and the most dishonourable of irrational animals, but to know only the God over all, and to contend for [him] through deaths of every kind? Who from the beginning drove away from the flock of men with invisible and mighty hand, like terrible beasts, the harmful and destructive race of demons, which formerly grazed upon all human nature and displayed many sorceries among men through the movement of images? Who else, like our Saviour, gave authority, through calling on him and through the purest prayers sent up through him to the God of all, to drive the remnants of the wicked spirits out of men, to those who pursue purely and without pretence the life of the philosophy handed down by him? And who else but our Saviour alone handed down to his worshippers bloodless and rational sacrifices to be offered through prayers and secret theology?

Therefore throughout the whole inhabited world altars have been set up and dedications of churches, and sacred liturgies of intellectual and rational sacrifices are offered up by all the nations to God alone, the King of all. And who by an unseen and invisible power caused the sacrifices performed with blood and gore, smoke and fire, and those cruel and mad slaughters of men and human sacrifices, to be quenched and to exist no longer, as the history of the Greeks itself testifies? For not before, but only after the divine teaching of our Saviour, in the times of Hadrian, were all human sacrifices everywhere on earth abolished.

When so many clear proofs establish the virtue and power of our Saviour after death, who is so iron-hearted as not to bear witness with the truth and confess his divine life? For achievements belong to the living, not the dead; and, they say, things visible are the sight of things unseen. Only yesterday and the day before, the race of God-fighters was stirring up human life, leading and driving it, and was very powerful; but when it was removed from among men, it became thereafter more cast out than refuse on the earth, breathless, motionless, voiceless, and there is no longer any word or memory of them; for such is the nature of the dead, and he who no longer exists is no one. And how could one who is no one do anything? But he who works and acts and is more powerful than the living, how could he be supposed not to exist? If he is invisible to the eyes of the flesh, the judgment does not lie in sense-perception: we do not learn the principles of the arts or the theories of the sciences by bodily sense, nor has anyone ever seen with eyes the mind in men, still less the power of God; such things are naturally conceived from their works.

Therefore in the case of our Saviour too it would be fitting to examine and judge his invisible power from his works, whether we must confess that the things still accomplished by him up to now belong to one who is living, or say that they belong to one who does not exist. Or rather the question is foolish and incoherent: for how could anyone reasonably say that one who does not exist exists? For what does not exist has been declared by every vote not to exist, nor to have any power to work or act. Such is the nature of the dead; the opposite is that of the living.

Here, then, it is time to look at the results of our Saviour's work in our own time and to see the living works of a living God. For are not such achievements truly living works of one who lives, and lives the life of God? What are these, you ask? Learn.

Some God-fighters, lately, with great contentiousness and with greater power and force, dug up from their foundations and pulled down the buildings of his houses of prayer and made his churches disappear; and with every device they made war on the one not seen with the eyes, hurling and shooting at him countless volleys of words. But the invisible one invisibly defended himself.

Then, by a single nod of God, they no longer existed, those who a little before were luxurious and thrice-happy, hymned by all as equal to gods, who had governed their realm conspicuously for long periods of years, while things were friendly and peaceful between them and the one later warred against. But when they ventured to begin fighting against God, setting their own gods as champions and defenders against ours, at once, with one turn of the scale, by the nod of God and the power of the one warred against, they all paid the penalty of their daring, so that they yielded to the one they fought and, turning their backs, confessed his deity, and granted and permitted the opposite of what they had formerly dared.

And he at once set up victorious trophies everywhere on earth, again adorning the whole world anew with holy temples and venerable dedications of houses of prayer, consecrating in cities and villages and in all lands and in the deserts of the barbarians sacred buildings and precincts to the one God, the King of all, the Master of the universe; from which the consecrated buildings have been counted worthy of the Master's name, receiving their title not from men but from the Lord of all himself, and so they have been counted worthy of the name 'the Lord's'.

Let anyone who wishes come forward into the midst and teach: who raised up buildings from the ground to a height after such destruction and desolation? Who counted worthy of a second renewal, far better than the former, things deprived of all hope, and renewed them; and, the greatest wonder of the account, not after the death of those God-fighters, but while those very destroyers were still in life, so that the recantation of their deeds was sung by their own mouth and their own writing; and that they did this not in a time of good cheer (as one might perhaps suppose, from a reckoning of humanity), but driven by God-sent scourges?

Who, after so many storms of persecution, and at the very height of the terrors, established throughout the whole world countless men as zealots of the philosophic life and servants of God, and priestesses among women and choirs of perpetual virgins who have dedicated the whole time of their life in complete purity to the lessons of his divine teaching; who made them endure most eagerly abstinence from food, fasts and many days without wine, and practise self-control and the strength of a firm life with sobriety? Who persuaded women and countless multitudes of men to exchange the foods of the body for rational foods suited to rational souls through divine readings? Who taught barbarians and country folk, women and children and households of slaves, and countless multitudes of countless nations to despise death and to be convinced that their soul is immortal, that there is an eye of justice watching over human affairs, of the pious and the impious, and to expect God's courts of judgment, and for this reason to care for a just and sober life? For unless they were so disposed, it would be impossible otherwise to take on the yoke of godliness. This is still accomplished even now by our Saviour alone. But let us pass these things by,

and come, let us bring forward otherwise the one who has turned his mind to stone with questions of this sort, inquiring of him thus: Come, sir, utter a rational voice, not from a foolish heart but the fruit of an intellectual and rational soul, and say, having often considered it with yourself: what other of those esteemed as wise in all the ages was, like our Saviour, known and proclaimed beforehand by prophetic voices from on high, countless ages before, among the ancient God-loving children of the Hebrews? They anticipated the place of his birth, the times of his coming, the manner of his life, his powers and words and achievements, and laid them down in sacred books.

Or who has been shown so swift an avenger of the outrages against him, so that together with the impiety against him he pursued the whole Jewish nation with invisible power, and their royal city was utterly removed from its foundations, and the temple itself, with the sacred things in it, brought down to the ground? And who, like our Saviour, uttered predictions corresponding to the facts about these impious men themselves and about the church founded by him throughout the whole world, and showed them trustworthy by deeds? About the temple of the impious he said: "Your house is left to you desolate," and: "Not one stone shall remain upon another in this place that shall not be thrown down"; and about the church: "On the rock I will build my church, and the gates of Hades shall not prevail against it."

And what do you think of his bringing over from fishing poor and rustic men at the beginning, and making them lawgivers and teachers of the law for the inhabited world? Of his promising, and saying in word and doing in deed, that he would make them fishers of men, and giving them such virtue and power that they composed writings and handed down books, and so strengthened these that throughout the whole world, translated into every tongue of barbarians and Greeks, they are studied among all the nations, and what is laid down in them is believed to be divine oracles?

And what of his prophesying the future and testifying beforehand to his disciples that they would be led before kings and governors, punished and made to endure the extreme penalties, not for any wrongdoing but only for their confession of him? And his preparing them to endure this eagerly, and so fortifying them with the weapons of godliness that they appeared stronger in soul than adamant in their struggles with their adversaries: what words would this not surpass?

And what of his so strengthening the powers of the soul, not only of those who followed him, but also of their successors, and again of those who came after, and of those still down to our own time, that, having done nothing worthy of death, they endured every kind of punishment and every form of torture with pleasure for the sake of godliness toward the God of all: what words would this not surpass? Who of kings ever continued ruling for so long an age? Who commands armies in this way after death, sets up trophies against enemies, and subjects every place and land and city, Greek and barbarian, subduing his adversaries with an invisible and unseen right hand?

And the sum of what has been said, the peace established everywhere on earth by his power, of which we spoke fittingly before: what mouth of a slanderer would it not stop, since in deed the concord and harmony of all the nations ran together with our Saviour's teaching and the preaching laid down by him for the whole world, and since the worldwide peace of the nations, and the word laid down by him for the nations, had been foretold long ago by the prophets of God? The whole length of the day will fail me, O emperor, if I try to gather together and set out at once the clear proofs of our Saviour's divine power from what is still seen even now; for no one of all the ages, among Greeks or barbarians, has shown such power of divine virtue as our Saviour.

But why do I speak of men, when not even among those deified by all the nations has any such nature appeared on earth? Or let anyone who wishes show it; let every philosopher come forward and tell us: what god or hero in all the ages was ever heard of as having handed down to men teachings that procure eternal life and a heavenly kingdom, as our Saviour did; making countless multitudes throughout the whole world practise philosophical doctrines, persuading them to pursue heaven and to hope for the dwellings in heaven stored up for God-loving souls? What god or hero ever, running almost the same course as the sun from its rising to its setting, lit up and illumined the earth with the most brilliant rays of his teaching, so that everywhere on earth every nation performs one and the same worship to one God? What god or hero ever, thrusting aside all the gods and heroes of Greeks and barbarians, legislated that none of them should be thought a god, and having legislated, persuaded them; then, warred against by all, being one himself, overthrew the whole camp of his opponents, prevailing over all the gods and heroes of all ages, so that from the ends of the earth throughout the whole inhabited world he alone is proclaimed God by all the nations?

Who has handed down to those who inhabit the great element of the earth, on land and on sea, to come together every week and keep as a festival the day called the Lord's, and has prepared them not to fatten their bodies but to rekindle their souls with divine teachings? What god or hero, warred against as our Saviour was, raised victorious trophies over his enemies? For they did not cease from the beginning to the end besieging his teachings and his people; but he, invisible, invisibly led his own, with their very houses of worship, to great glory.

And why should we strive to gather in words the divine powers of our Saviour that surpass every word, when, even if we are silent, the facts themselves cry out to those who have ears of the soul: that this truly strange and marvellous thing, unique in all the ages, has been borne by the world of men, and that the true Son of God alone in all the ages has been seen by those on earth?

But what we say would in any case be superfluous <to you>, who, having often received perception of the Saviour's deity by experience itself, have become a herald of the truth to all, not by words but by deeds themselves. For you yourself, O emperor, if leisure were given, could tell us, if you wished, of countless manifestations of your Saviour, countless presences in sleep,

I do not mean his secret suggestions to us, but those laid down in your very reasoning, setting before you, concerning the providence of the whole, what is of common benefit and useful in every way.

[Who] could tell us, as you could go through, the clear aids in wars of God your champion and guardian, the destruction of enemies and plotters, the rescues in dangers, the provision in want, the help in desolation, the solutions in perplexity, the foreknowledge of things to come, the forethought for the whole, the examination of things unclear, the undertaking of great things, the civil administration, the ordering of the armies, the correction of each, the arrangements for the common good, the laws beneficial to life? You could count up without omission each of the things hidden from us but known to you alone, stored up in your royal memory as in secret treasuries. For all these reasons, fittingly, using these very brilliant proofs of the saving power, you have displayed to all people, believers and unbelievers alike, a house of prayer as a trophy of his victory over death, a holy temple of the holy God, splendid and great and most beautiful dedications of immortal life and divine kingdom, offerings most fitting and proper for a victorious emperor to the Saviour, King of all; and these you have placed around the witness and the tomb of immortal life. Engraving with royal characters the heavenly Word of God as victor and bearer of trophies, you proclaim to all the nations with brilliant and unclouded voices, in word and in deed, the pious and God-loving confession.