Epitome of the Divine Institutes

Contents

Reading pages: 0.1–21.5 · 22.1–35.5 · 36.1–49.7 · 50.1–61.10 · 62.1–68.5

1. 0.1Lactantius writes this summary of his Divine Institutes at the request of his friend Pentadius.
2. 0.2He agrees, though compressing seven volumes into one is hard.
3. 0.3A summary must leave out many arguments and examples, and so is less full and clear.
4. 0.4He will condense the work while keeping it full and clear.
5. 1.1Almost all philosophers except the Epicureans agree that the world was made and is ruled by providence.
6. 1.2Epicurus is refuted by learned and ordinary people alike.
7. 1.3The ordered beauty and usefulness of the world prove providence.
8. 1.4What is rationally ordered must have a rational origin.
9. 2.1The next question is whether there is one God or many.
10. 2.2Reason shows there can be only one Lord and Father of all.
11. 2.3The universe can only hold together under one ruler.
12. 2.4Bees, herds, and armies show that many rulers bring strife.
13. 2.5The world needs one founder and governor.
14. 2.6Many gods with divided powers could not be almighty.
15. 2.7Each pagan god has only a limited domain.
16. 2.8God is the one who can do all, not those with partial powers.
17. 3.1There is one God, perfect, eternal, beyond human thought and speech.
18. 3.2Besides the prophets, poets, philosophers, and seers testify to one God.
19. 3.3Orpheus spoke of a first God who made heaven, sun, earth, and sea.
20. 3.4Virgil calls the highest God a spirit or mind that animates the world.
21. 3.5Ovid also names God as the world's maker.
22. 4.1Plato taught one God who ordered the world.
23. 4.2Aristotle and Antisthenes also taught one ruling God.
24. 4.3Many Greek and Roman philosophers affirmed one highest God who rules the world.
25. 4.4Hermes Trismegistus praised the one God as nameless, unbegotten Lord and Father.
26. 4.5Hermes wrote that God is hard to understand and impossible to describe.
27. 5.1Varro lists ten Sibyls.
28. 5.2Most Sibylline books circulate under one name; the Erythraean signed hers.
29. 5.3The Sibyls testify that there is one self-existent God who alone should be worshipped.
30. 5.4The Sibyls' texts are omitted here; the reader is referred to the full work.
31. 6.1All these witnesses show that one power rules the world.
32. 6.2Gods born of intercourse are absurd, since sex exists only to preserve mortal kinds.
33. 6.3Immortals need neither sex nor offspring.
34. 6.4The pagan gods were mortal kings deified after death for their benefits to mankind.
35. 7.1The recorded deeds of the gods show they were human.
36. 7.2Hercules lived at a known time, about 1,500 years ago.
37. 7.3Hercules was born of adultery and was himself lustful.
38. 7.4Hercules was humiliated by Omphale and in madness killed his family.
39. 7.5Hercules burned himself to death; his life shows he was a man, not a god.
40. 8.1Aesculapius was a foundling of uncertain birth.
41. 8.2Aesculapius died by lightning and was buried; Apollo served as a herdsman and mourned a boy he killed.
42. 8.3Mars was caught in adultery; Castor and Pollux, bride-thieves, died and were buried, as Homer says.
43. 8.4Mercury was deified for inventing the lyre and wrestling.
44. 8.5Bacchus married the abandoned Ariadne and placed her crown among the stars.
45. 8.6The Great Mother castrated her faithless young lover, hence her eunuch priests.
46. 9.1The goddesses conceived through immorality; Venus invented prostitution.
47. 9.2Even the virgin goddesses' chastity is doubtful, as the birth of Erichthonius shows.
48. 9.3Diana's hiding of Hippolytus suggests unchastity.
49. 10.1Jupiter overthrew his father and was given to every lust.
50. 10.2Jupiter committed adultery, seized Ganymede, and violated countless virgins.
51. 10.3Jupiter avoided Thetis for fear of a greater son, showing he was not all-powerful.
52. 10.4Jupiter cannot be “Best and Greatest” when he sinned and feared a greater.
53. 11.1Poets do not invent everything but veil real events in figures.
54. 11.2The golden shower means bribery with gold; the eagle that took Ganymede must also be explained.
55. 11.3The eagle was a legion; the bull that carried Europa was a ship.
56. 11.4Io fled in a ship shaped like a cow and became Isis in Egypt.
57. 12.1Poets clothed true events in divine colouring, as with the gods' kingdoms.
58. 12.2The division of heaven, underworld, and sea among the gods refers to earthly territories.
59. 12.3Those who call the poets liars still worship gods in male and female forms, agreeing with them.
60. 13.1He turns from poetry to history.
61. 13.2Euhemerus compiled the human histories of the gods from temple inscriptions.
62. 13.3Ennius translated Euhemerus into Latin.
63. 13.4Euhemerus says Jupiter died in Crete, where his tomb bears his name.
64. 13.5Jupiter was therefore a man who reigned on earth.
65. 14.1Saturn is said to be the son of Heaven and Earth.
66. 14.2Saturn's father was named Uranus, as Hermes and Euhemerus say.
67. 14.3Hermes named Uranus, Saturn, and Mercury as his learned kinsmen.
68. 14.4Euhemerus says Uranus was the first king on earth.
69. 14.5The fragment ends: divinity was ascribed to them through human error.
70. 15.1He turns to the Romans' own gods.
71. 15.2Romulus's nurse, honoured at the Larentinalia, was a prostitute called “she-wolf”.
72. 15.3Faula and Flora, honoured by Rome, were prostitutes.
73. 15.4A statue found in the great sewer became the goddess Cloacina.
74. 15.5Rome honoured Bald Venus and Jupiter the Baker for help in the Gallic siege.
75. 15.6Rome deified Fear, Pallor, Mind, Honour, and Virtue.
76. 16.1The senate made virtues into gods, putting them in temples instead of hearts.
77. 16.2Worse still are gods like Rust, Fever, Dung, and others.
78. 16.3Terminus, a shapeless stone, would not yield even to Jupiter.
79. 16.4Terminus was prayed to as guardian of Rome's boundaries.
80. 17.1Faunus introduced these follies into Latium.
81. 17.2Numa loaded early Rome with new cults to tame its warlike people.
82. 17.3Lucilius mocked those who fear bogeys and believe statues are alive.
83. 17.4Cicero too condemned invented gods and superstition.
84. 18.1Human sacrifice was offered to Jupiter in Cyprus.
85. 18.2Other cults also demanded human victims.
86. 18.3The Carthaginians sacrificed children to Saturn.
87. 18.4Priests of Cybele and Bellona mutilate themselves.
88. 18.5Isis's rites re-enact her loss and finding of her son.
89. 18.6The mourning ritual ends in joy when the child is found.
90. 18.7The mysteries of Ceres re-enact the search for Proserpina.
91. 18.8At Lampsacus an ass was sacrificed to Priapus.
92. 18.9At Lindos Hercules is worshipped with curses.
93. 18.10Cretan rites recall the hiding and nursing of the infant Jupiter.
94. 18.11The cymbals and drums of Cybele's rites imitate the hiding of the infant Jupiter.
95. 19.1Next, the origin of the pagan religions.
96. 19.2Didymus says the Cretan king Melisseus's daughters nursed Jupiter.
97. 19.3Melisseus first introduced sacrifices, to Vesta and the Mother of the Gods.
98. 19.4Euhemerus says Jupiter founded shrines to himself wherever he travelled.
99. 19.5Thallus dates Belus, Saturn's contemporary, 322 years before the Trojan war.
100. 19.6The worship of the gods began no more than 1,800 years ago.
101. 20.1In the golden age people knew only the one God.
102. 20.2When people began worshipping idols, the ages declined to iron.
103. 20.3Losing the knowledge of God, people turned to violence.
104. 20.4People made upright to look to God bow down to earthly things, as Lucretius says.
105. 20.5It is vain to fear or trust idols that can neither see nor hear.
106. 20.6Idols made by human choice can have no divinity.
107. 20.7Offering gifts to idols that must be guarded against theft is madness.
108. 20.8Dionysius robbed the gods' temples and lived unpunished.
109. 20.9Humans should turn to God, as their Greek name, “one who looks up”, implies.
110. 20.10To look up is to seek the true God in heaven.
111. 20.11Worshipping what one has made puts a human work above God's work.
112. 20.12Prometheus invented image-making for Jupiter's cult.
113. 20.13Hence the legend that Prometheus made living men; he invented clay images.
114. 20.14Later images were made of marble, bronze, gold, and ivory.
115. 20.15Dazzled by beauty, living people worshipped lifeless things.
116. 21.1Others worship the heavenly bodies instead of their maker.
117. 21.2The Stoics deified the stars because of their regular motion.
118. 21.3Their regular motion shows they obey laws set by their maker.
119. 21.4Admiration of the stars should lead to their greater maker.
120. 21.5What is visible cannot be eternal, and the eternal cannot be seen.
121. 22.1He will explain the apparent signs and powers of the gods.
122. 22.2God created the world from nothing, made man in his image, and forbade him the tree of knowledge.
123. 22.3The serpent, envious, tempted man, who gained knowledge but lost immortality.
124. 22.4God expelled man from Paradise and guarded it with fire.
125. 22.5Death came; lives lasted up to a thousand years before the flood, then were shortened to 120.
126. 22.6The serpent, called the devil (accuser), kept attacking Adam's descendants.
127. 22.7The devil incited Cain to murder Abel.
128. 22.8In every generation the devil corrupted mankind until righteousness was rare.
129. 22.9God sent angels to guard mankind, forbidding them earthly contact.
130. 22.10The devil lured the angels to sin with women, and they lost their angelic nature.
131. 22.11The fallen angels now seek to destroy mankind.
132. 23.1These are the demons the poets speak of, whom people took for gods.
133. 23.2Socrates claimed a guiding demon from childhood.
134. 23.3Demons are worshipped in homes as genii, penates, and Lares.
135. 23.4The demons invented idolatry to keep people from God and eternal life.
136. 23.5Demons invented astrology and divination and make them seem true.
137. 23.6Demons are behind magical illusions.
138. 23.7Demons work through necromancy, oracles, and false wonders in temples.
139. 23.8Demons cause illness and dreams to win worship.
140. 23.9By such frauds demons have hidden the one God from mankind.
141. 24.1Why does God permit evil and why did he make the devil?
142. 24.2Virtue is good, so vice, its opposite, is evil.
143. 24.3Virtue needs vice to overcome, so good cannot exist without evil.
144. 24.4Chrysippus rejected the idea that God made good but not evil.
145. 24.5Gellius reports the argument that evils disprove providence.
146. 24.6Chrysippus replies that goods cannot exist without evils.
147. 24.7Contraries need each other to exist.
148. 24.8Each virtue is understood only by its opposite vice.
149. 24.9Truth implies falsehood; so too good and evil, pleasure and pain, are bound together.
150. 24.10Good and evil cannot exist apart.
151. 24.11God allowed evils as a contest in which the virtuous win immortality.
152. 25.1Summary: pagan worship is impious and vain, being given to dead men, lifeless images, and fallen spirits.
153. 25.2Next he turns to the false wisdom of the philosophers.
154. 25.3Human wisdom can be overcome by heavenly truth.
155. 25.4Philosophy, as love or pursuit of wisdom, is not wisdom itself.
156. 25.5It is not even a real pursuit, since it never attains wisdom.
157. 25.6Students of other arts earn a title when they finish; philosophers never become wise.
158. 25.7A pursuit that never reaches its goal is not a true pursuit.
159. 26.1Socrates denied knowledge and Zeno opinion, undermining philosophy.
160. 26.2If wisdom is knowledge of divine and human things, humans cannot have it.
161. 26.3Humans may know human things.
162. 26.4Only God, or one taught by God, can be wise.
163. 26.5Philosophers, untaught by God, cannot be wise.
164. 26.6With knowledge and opinion both removed, philosophy has no root.
165. 27.1Philosophy's sects condemn one another and so destroy it.
166. 27.2The Academics attacked all schools, asserting only that nothing can be known.
167. 27.3By professing ignorance the Academics lost even the name of philosophers.
168. 27.4Philosophy destroys itself.
169. 27.5Do philosophers at least agree on ethics?
170. 28.1The highest good must belong to man alone, to the soul, and be gained by virtue.
171. 28.2He will test the philosophers' definitions by these criteria.
172. 28.3Aristippus, who made bodily pleasure the highest good, likened himself to a beast.
173. 28.4Freedom from pain is shared with animals and cannot be man's highest good.
174. 28.5Zeno's “living according to nature” applies to all creatures.
175. 28.6Epicurus's pleasure of the mind is also found in well-fed animals.
176. 28.7“Honourable pleasure” either repeats Epicurus or still makes a bodily good supreme.
177. 28.8The Peripatetic mixture of goods depends on things outside our control shared with animals.
178. 28.9Virtue is not itself the highest good but the means to it.
179. 28.10Aristotle linked virtue with honour; Herillus made knowledge the highest good.
180. 28.11Knowledge can be gained without virtue and can concern bad or useless things.
181. 28.12Knowledge is sought for other ends and so is not the highest good.
182. 28.13Philosophers disagree even on the foundation of ethics.
183. 28.14Their conflicting precepts err because they do not know God.
184. 29.1Scripture and even philosophers teach that humans are born for justice.
185. 29.2Cicero: nothing is more excellent than knowing we are born for justice.
186. 29.3Even predators spare their own kind.
187. 29.4Much more should humans spare and love one another.
188. 29.5Justice owes duty to God as Father and to others as brothers.
189. 29.6We owe God religion and neighbours love; justice includes both.
190. 29.7The just must suffer evils in order to exercise virtue.
191. 29.8The just man shuns pleasure, gives away wealth, seeks no honours, and does not retaliate.
192. 29.9He will accept torture and death rather than deny God, and so lives poor and despised.
193. 30.1Since virtue suffers in this life, its reward must be immortality.
194. 30.2True happiness requires incorruptibility, hence immortality.
195. 30.3Immortality is the highest good, for which we were born.
196. 30.4God offers virtue as the way to eternal reward.
197. 30.5Logic adds nothing to happiness; wisdom lies in the heart.
198. 30.6So all philosophy proves empty and useless.
199. 31.1Epicurus denied providence but admitted gods, both irrationally.
200. 31.2Gods without providence are contradictory.
201. 31.3Without providence Epicurus in effect abolished God; whence then the world?
202. 31.4Epicurus says the world arose from the chance meeting of atoms.
203. 31.5Invisible atoms are unprovable and self-contradictory; and Epicurus made souls mortal.
204. 31.6All witnesses refute Epicurus, who alone equated man with beasts.
205. 31.7Pythagoras taught immortality but also transmigration into animals.
206. 31.8Annihilation would be better than rebirth as an animal.
207. 31.9Pythagoras claimed he had been Euphorbus at Troy.
208. 31.10Pythagoras's folly found learned followers.
209. 32.1Socrates was called wisest because he knew he knew nothing.
210. 32.2The oracle should have restrained the natural philosophers.
211. 32.3Socrates' saying “what is above us is nothing to us” contradicts his claim to know nothing.
212. 32.4Socrates mocked religion yet vowed a cock to Aesculapius.
213. 32.5Socrates' dying request proved he truly knew nothing.
214. 33.1Plato came nearest the truth but erred badly, above all in making everything common.
215. 33.2Common property is unjust but tolerable; common wives and children are not.
216. 33.3Common wives would destroy families and chastity.
217. 33.4Without marriage there is no conjugal or family love.
218. 33.5Plato also admitted women to public offices.
219. 33.6Zeno condemned pity, which is dear to God and needed by people.
220. 33.7Everyone in trouble wants pity, which moves others to help.
221. 33.8Pity, given only to humans for mutual help, cannot be removed without making us beasts.
222. 33.9Zeno's doctrine that all sins are equal leads to cruelty or laxity.
223. 33.10Unequal crimes need unequal penalties.
224. 34.1Xenophanes claimed the moon was a huge inhabited world.
225. 34.2The idea of antipodes is laughable; Anaxagoras said snow was black.
226. 34.3Democritus abandoned his inheritance.
227. 34.4Diogenes and the Cynics chose begging over honest work.
228. 34.5If all followed these philosophers, society would collapse.
229. 34.6The Cynics had intercourse in public.
230. 34.7Aristippus founded a school that justified vice by making pleasure the highest good.
231. 34.8What of the philosophers who killed themselves?
232. 34.9Philosophers who committed suicide were guilty of murder under God's law.
233. 34.10Only God may call us out of the body.
234. 34.11Suicide is an attempt to escape God, which is impossible.
235. 34.12They even taught others to commit suicide.
236. 35.1A few examples of the philosophers' folly suffice.
237. 35.2Philosophers cannot teach justice or virtue, as they admit their ignorance.
238. 35.3Anaxagoras and Empedocles admitted the limits of knowledge.
239. 35.4Democritus said truth lies at the bottom of a well.
240. 35.5Since human wisdom fails, we follow the divine wisdom God has revealed.
241. 36.1He now turns to true religion and wisdom, which belong together.
242. 36.2True worship of God is wisdom.
243. 36.3God gave humans reason so they would honour and fear him and gain immortality.
244. 36.4Pagan religion lacks wisdom and philosophy lacks religion, so both are false.
245. 36.5Truth is wise religion or religious wisdom.
246. 37.1Before creation God begot a Son from his eternal Spirit.
247. 37.2The Son is God's power, reason, Word, and wisdom, through whom the world was made.
248. 37.3Alone among the spirits the Son shares God's power and is called God; all was made through him.
249. 37.4Plato spoke of a first and second god, perhaps following Hermes.
250. 37.5Hermes says God made a second, visible God, whom he found most good.
251. 37.6The Sibyls also speak of the Son of God.
252. 37.7Solomon and David also testified that the Son was born of God.
253. 37.8His true name is known only to himself and the Father.
254. 37.9He is called Jesus (Saviour) and Christ (King), who will return to judge and reign forever.
255. 38.1Why is the pre-existent Son the same as the man born 300 years ago?
256. 38.2He was born twice: of God before creation and in the flesh under Augustus.
257. 38.3True religion survived among the Hebrews, who received the law through Moses.
258. 38.4Israel too fell into idolatry.
259. 38.5God sent prophets warning of a new lawgiver and a new people from the nations.
260. 38.6Israel killed the prophets, so God sent his Son to call the nations.
261. 38.7The Son came first to Israel, so that they might keep their inheritance if they obeyed.
262. 38.8The Father sent the Son to take flesh and teach virtue by example.
263. 38.9Born of a virgin without a father, he became holy flesh to free the flesh from sin.
264. 39.1The prophets foretold these things.
265. 39.2A text ascribed to Solomon foretells the virgin birth.
266. 39.3Isaiah foretold the virgin birth of Emmanuel, God with us.
267. 39.4Isaiah foretold that he would be God.
268. 39.5A prophecy says God himself would be seen on earth among people.
269. 39.6The prophets also foretold that he would be a man.
270. 39.7God took flesh to mediate between God and man and conquer death.
271. 40.1Some thought Jesus's miracles were magic, not knowing the prophets foretold them.
272. 40.2By his word he healed every disease, drove out demons, and raised the dead.
273. 40.3He fed five thousand, walked on water, and calmed the storm, as prophecy foretold.
274. 40.4Jealous of his following and angry at his rebukes, the leaders plotted his death.
275. 40.5The book of Wisdom foretold the plot against the righteous one who called himself God's son.
276. 40.6They incited the crowd to have him arrested and condemned.
277. 40.7They charged him with claiming to be God's Son and healing on the sabbath.
278. 40.8Pilate sent him to Herod and left him to his accusers, who scourged, mocked, and crucified him while he stayed silent.
279. 40.9The executioners cast lots for his clothes and crucified him on the eve of Passover.
280. 40.10At his death there was an earthquake and the sun was darkened.
281. 41.1Isaiah foretold his scourging, the spitting, and his silence.
282. 41.2The Psalms foretold the scourging and the gall and vinegar.
283. 41.3The Psalm foretold the piercing of his hands and feet and the lots cast for his clothes.
284. 41.4Moses foretold the one hanging on the cross.
285. 41.5Zechariah foretold the piercing and Amos the darkening of the sun.
286. 41.6Jeremiah foretold that the sun would set at noon over Jerusalem.
287. 41.7The Roman conquest of Judaea under Vespasian fulfilled these prophecies.
288. 41.8A text ascribed to Solomon foretold Israel's ruin for persecuting its king.
289. 41.9They deserved this for killing the Lord who came to save them.
290. 42.1Buried, he rose on the third day; only his grave-clothes were found.
291. 42.2The Psalms and Hosea foretold the resurrection on the third day.
292. 42.3The risen Christ commissioned his disciples, gave them the Spirit, and ascended on the fortieth day.
293. 42.4Daniel foresaw the Son of Man coming on the clouds to receive an eternal kingdom.
294. 42.5The Psalm foretold his sitting at God's right hand.
295. 43.1Those who rejected Christ can hope only if they repent and trust in him.
296. 43.2A saying ascribed to Ezra calls the Passover the Saviour.
297. 43.3Scripture shows the nations adopted in Israel's place.
298. 43.4Jeremiah: God has forsaken his inheritance.
299. 43.5Malachi: God's name will be glorified among the nations.
300. 43.6Isaiah: God will gather all nations.
301. 43.7Isaiah: the Father gives the Son as a light to the nations.
302. 44.1The only hope for humanity is the true religion and wisdom found in Christ.
303. 44.2No one knows the Father without the Son, through whom God is known and worshipped.
304. 44.3Prophecy fulfilled in him shows he is Son of God and God.
305. 44.4Father and Son are not two gods but one, sharing one substance, will, and faith.
306. 44.5One honour is due to Father and Son; separating them loses both.
307. 45.1Why was it fitting for God to take a mortal body and suffer?
308. 45.2A teacher must do what he teaches.
309. 45.3Teaching is perfected by example.
310. 45.4Christ took a body so that he could practise the virtues he taught.
311. 45.5He overcame the flesh himself so no one could excuse himself by its weakness.
312. 46.1Why did Christ die the shameful death of the cross?
313. 46.2Christ humbled himself to open salvation to the lowly.
314. 46.3He died as the lowly die, and his body stayed whole for the resurrection.
315. 46.4The cross kept his body whole and lifted him up.
316. 46.5On the cross Christ spread his arms like wings to gather all nations.
317. 46.6The sign of the cross drives out demons.
318. 46.7Demons are cast out by Christ's name and the sign of the cross.
319. 46.8The pagan gods, which are demons, are defeated by the cross.
320. 47.1The only hope is to know God, reject idols and philosophy, and embrace true religion.
321. 47.2Pagans reject this as a crime.
322. 47.3Pagans refuse to listen, curse the Christians, and persecute them worse than enemies of war.
323. 47.4Unable to argue, persecutors condemn Christians unheard.
324. 47.5They torture Christians because the truth exposes their evil lives.
325. 48.1Real gods would not need human defenders.
326. 48.2Gods who cannot avenge themselves cannot help anyone.
327. 48.3Defending one's god admits the god's weakness.
328. 48.4Christians do not resist but patiently endure, trusting God to avenge them.
329. 48.5All the persecutors met wretched ends.
330. 48.6Forced sacrifice is no worship.
331. 48.7A good that must be forced with torture is no good.
332. 48.8A benefit forced on someone against his will is not felt as a benefit.
333. 48.9A benefit is judged by the recipient.
334. 48.10If paganism is good, keep it; the Christian has chosen freely.
335. 48.11Better to die in the good than live in evil.
336. 49.1Religion is the one realm of true freedom.
337. 49.2Worship must be voluntary; compulsion can produce only pretence.
338. 49.3Those forced to sacrifice return to God with penance and are forgiven.
339. 49.4Forcing a libation achieves nothing, yet persecutors gloat as if victorious.
340. 49.5Knowing that martyrdom is a Christian victory, persecutors try to break rather than kill.
341. 49.6They prolong tortures to break Christians while calling themselves pious.
342. 49.7The victim is called impious and the torturer pious.
343. 50.1Ancestral custom cannot forbid following the truth.
344. 50.2People must be free to seek the truth.
345. 50.3Egyptian animal cults, mockery on stage, and atheist philosophers go unpunished.
346. 50.4Only Christians are called impious, as evil is called good and good evil.
347. 50.5Plato and Aristotle praised justice as the outward-looking virtue that gives each his due.
348. 50.6Justice belongs to everyone, not only to rulers.
349. 50.7Not knowing justice's source, they reserved it for a few.
350. 50.8Carneades attacked their idea of justice to show it lacked foundation.
351. 51.1Justice is the worship of the true God, which the philosophers lacked.
352. 51.2Carneades argued that justice which neglects self-interest is folly.
353. 51.3If empires returned their conquests they would be just but foolish.
354. 51.4Carneades' example: honesty in a bargain is just but costly.
355. 51.5Carneades' dilemmas of the plank and the horse set justice against self-preservation.
356. 52.1Justice only looks like folly, and malice only looks like wisdom.
357. 52.2Self-serving cleverness is cunning; justice is innocence, and the just are truly wise.
358. 52.3The just man, doing only good, must be wise.
359. 52.4Only the wise can tell good from evil; justice and wisdom go together.
360. 52.5Refusing to harm another in the plank or horse case is wise, not foolish.
361. 52.6He seems foolish only to those who deny life after death.
362. 52.7If there is eternal life after death, the just man rightly despises this life.
363. 52.8Let us keep justice even if it looks foolish, and stay faithful under torture.
364. 52.9Idolaters face eternal punishment; those who suffer for God gain eternal life.
365. 52.10Christians await God's judgement, when they will judge their judges.
366. 53.1God, needing nothing, desires not material offerings but an incorporeal sacrifice.
367. 53.2God needs no temple, image, or lamps.
368. 53.3The true sacrifice is the pure worship of the heart.
369. 53.4God seeks only justice, which is true worship.
370. 54.1Philosophers spoke of two ways of life, but only in terms of this life.
371. 54.2Poets placed the two ways of the just and the wicked in the underworld.
372. 54.3The two ways of life and death are in this life, leading to heaven or eternal punishment.
373. 54.4Justice first owes God love and fear as Father and Lord, then brotherhood to all people.
374. 54.5Created alike by God, all people are brothers.
375. 54.6When people turned to many gods, justice fled and human fellowship broke down.
376. 54.7Then every kind of crime and lust broke out.
377. 54.8Laws restrained open crime but could not reach conscience.
378. 54.9Crime went underground, judges were corrupted, and violence grew.
379. 55.1In mercy God revealed himself and gave his divine law to end human error.
380. 55.2God's law teaches that what we do for others we do for God.
381. 55.3Justice is rooted in the golden rule: do not do to others what you would not suffer.
382. 55.4First do no harm, then do good.
383. 55.5Vices must be uprooted before virtues can be sown by God's word.
384. 56.1Anger, avarice, and lust are the three great disturbers of the soul.
385. 56.2Stoics would remove the passions and Peripatetics moderate them; both are wrong.
386. 56.3The passions are good gifts of God that become evil only through misuse.
387. 56.4Anger is given to restrain wrongdoing, but beyond its limits it leads to murder and war.
388. 56.5Desire is for life's necessities; unbounded it breeds fraud.
389. 56.6Sexual desire exists for procreation; misused it leads to adultery and corruption.
390. 56.7The passions must be kept within their proper bounds.
391. 57.1Restrain anger under injury and curb avarice when one has enough.
392. 57.2It is madness to hoard what others will take.
393. 57.3Sexual desire belongs within marriage; unchastity brings eternal death.
394. 57.4One must also resist the pleasures of the other senses.
395. 57.5Virtue must resist the pleasures of sight, hearing, smell, and taste.
396. 57.6Taste and smell lead to luxury; pleasing words and music can lead to false worship.
397. 57.7The eloquent despise Scripture's plain style and prefer pleasant words to truth.
398. 57.8Pleasure of the eyes breeds avarice or lust.
399. 58.1The public shows must be avoided because they corrupt and honour the gods.
400. 58.2Each kind of show belongs to a pagan god.
401. 58.3Gladiatorial shows make killing into entertainment.
402. 58.4Spectators share the bloodguilt of the killing.
403. 58.5The theatre portrays immorality.
404. 58.6Actors' mimes teach vice.
405. 58.7The young are trained in vice by the theatre.
406. 58.8The circus inflames spectators to violence.
407. 58.9Shun all shows to keep a tranquil mind.
408. 59.1The follower of God will not curse, perjure himself, or even swear.
409. 59.2He will be honest, content, free of envy and theft, and lend without interest.
410. 59.3Treat children and slaves as one wishes God to treat oneself.
411. 59.4Do not take gifts from the poor.
412. 59.5“Do not kill” also forbids endangering life by word, killing or exposing infants, and suicide.
413. 59.6“Do not commit adultery” also forbids resorting to prostitutes.
414. 59.7The ban on false witness forbids all lying, even harmless lies.
415. 59.8The just man never flatters; truth in the end wins gratitude, not hatred.
416. 60.1Mercy completes the justice that innocence begins.
417. 60.2God gave weak humans mercy so they would protect one another.
418. 60.3As one family we must love all, not avenge wrongs, and pray for enemies.
419. 60.4Human frailty requires mutual help.
420. 60.5Imagine yourself in the sufferer's place.
421. 60.6Feed the hungry, clothe the naked, defend the weak, shelter strangers, protect orphans and widows.
422. 60.7Ransoming captives, visiting the sick, and burying the poor are true sacrifices to God.
423. 60.8God shows mercy to the merciful and none to the harsh.
424. 60.9Despise money and store up treasure in heaven.
425. 61.1Christians, who bear the name of faith, must above all keep faith with God.
426. 61.2If dying for others is glorious, dying for God is far more so.
427. 61.3Under compulsion to apostatize, keep the faith with God's inward help.
428. 61.4Thinking of immortal life, we can bear any torture.
429. 61.5Let us meet death gladly, knowing the glory to come.
430. 61.6Faithfulness is rewarded even in peacetime and must be kept in marriage too.
431. 61.7A husband who has relations with any other woman, free or slave, is an adulterer before God.
432. 61.8Husband and wife are equally bound; a wife may be dismissed only if convicted of adultery.
433. 61.9Chastity excludes even lustful thoughts.
434. 61.10The heart must be cleansed to be God's temple.
435. 62.1Since no one is sinless, the remedy is repentance, which God will not refuse.
436. 62.2Repentance heals sin; without it there is no way of life.
437. 62.3Always confess and give thanks; God exalts the humble.
438. 62.4True worship earns immortality; now he refutes those who say the soul dies with the body.
439. 62.5Denying providence, they denied God.
440. 62.6Things cannot be eternal or self-generated.
441. 62.7Denying a rational creator, they also denied the soul's immortality.
442. 62.8Others taught one God, creation, and immortality, but without grasping the purpose.
443. 62.9Christians, taught by God, can complete what the philosophers could not.
444. 63.1Plato said God made the world because he is good, yet there are evils in it.
445. 63.2A cynic could reply that God is evil; Plato blames evil on matter.
446. 63.3If evil is eternal matter and good was made, evil would be stronger.
447. 63.4Plato's view would make God both good and evil.
448. 63.5Goodness alone does not explain creation; everything is made for a purpose beyond itself.
449. 63.6Houses, ships, and vessels exist for a use.
450. 63.7The world was made for humans, but why were humans made?
451. 63.8Plato affirmed immortality but not its purpose or means.
452. 63.9Plato's transmigration replaces God's judgement with an endless, pointless cycle.
453. 64.1The world exists for humans, humans to know and worship God, and worship leads to immortality and eternal service.
454. 64.2Each link of this chain can be tested.
455. 64.3All creation serves humans, so it was made for them.
456. 64.4God made humans for himself, so they owe him worship.
457. 64.5Plato missed that humans are bound (religio) to God, which is why souls become immortal.
458. 64.6Plato reached immortality by chance, not by reasoning.
459. 64.7Worship of God is rewarded with immortality.
460. 65.1Plato argued the soul is immortal because it is self-moving and has godlike powers.
461. 65.2Virtue, unique to humans and contrary to self-interest, implies immortality.
462. 65.3Virtue that accepts suffering and death makes sense only if the soul is immortal.
463. 65.4Only humans know God and look upward, proof that they are immortal.
464. 65.5Humans alone use fire, the heavenly element, a sign of immortality.
465. 65.6Scripture, the Sibyls, and even oracles attest the soul's immortality.
466. 65.7At the appointed time, which is near, the world will end and be renewed.
467. 65.8Scripture shows the philosophers wrong in thinking the world eternal or very old.
468. 65.9When six thousand years are complete, evil will end and justice reign.
469. 66.1Near the end, wickedness will prevail and every virtue will vanish.
470. 66.2Family love will fail and wars of every kind will spread.
471. 66.3Ten kings will divide the world, then a more wicked one will overthrow three and rule all.
472. 66.4Earthquakes, floods, plagues, famine, and waters turned to blood will devastate the earth.
473. 66.5Signs in the sun, moon, and stars will terrify the world.
474. 66.6Time itself will be shortened, the world's old age, before God returns.
475. 66.7An impious king, enemy of God, will arise and devastate the earth.
476. 66.8The Antichrist will persecute for 42 months, claim to be Christ, and work false wonders.
477. 66.9Those refusing his mark will be tortured; two-thirds will perish and a third flee.
478. 66.10When the Antichrist besieges the righteous, God will send them a deliverer.
479. 67.1Christ will descend from heaven with his angels, destroy the wicked, and cast the Antichrist into fire.
480. 67.2The devil will be chained so the earth may have peace.
481. 67.3Christ will judge, raise the righteous, and reign with them on earth for a thousand years.
482. 67.4In the millennium the heavens will shine brighter and the earth yield without labour.
483. 67.5The earth will overflow with plenty and wild beasts will become tame.
484. 67.6After the thousand years the devil is loosed and the nations attack the holy city.
485. 67.7God will destroy the rebel nations with fire and earthquake; the righteous will be hidden and then emerge.
486. 67.8God will renew the world, make the righteous like angels forever, and raise the wicked to eternal punishment.
487. 68.1Prophets, Hermes, Hystaspes, and the Sibyls agree: salvation lies only in the religion of God.
488. 68.2Whoever does not receive Christ and keep God's law will be punished.
489. 68.3Despise the temporal to gain the eternal.
490. 68.4Each must train for justice and self-control to stand firm in persecution.
491. 68.5Know the one God, shun pleasures, do good, and gain the crown of faith or immortality.