On the Anger of God

I have often noticed, Donatus, that very many people hold the opinion, which some of the philosophers also held, that God is not angry: either because the divine nature is only beneficent, and it does not befit the most excellent and best power to harm anyone; or at least because it cares for nothing at all, so that neither does any good reach us from its beneficence nor any evil from its ill will.

Since their error is very great and tends to overturn the order of human life, it must be refuted by us, lest you too be deceived, driven by the authority of men who think themselves

wise. Yet we are not arrogant, so as to boast that we have grasped the truth by our own talent; rather, we follow the teaching of God, who alone can know and reveal secrets.

The philosophers, having no share in this teaching, supposed that the nature of things could be discovered by conjecture. This can by no means be done, because the mind of man, fenced round by the dark dwelling of the body, is far removed from the sight of the truth; and divinity differs from humanity in this, that ignorance belongs to humanity and knowledge to divinity.

Hence we need some light to drive away the darkness with which man's thought is overspread, since, living in mortal flesh, we cannot divine by our own senses.

But the light of the human mind is God; whoever has known him and admitted him into his breast will recognize, with enlightened heart, the mystery of the truth. But when God and heavenly teaching are removed, all things are full of errors; and rightly did Socrates, though he was the most learned of all the philosophers, nevertheless, to expose the ignorance of the others who thought they held something, say that he knew nothing except one thing: that he knew nothing.

For he understood that that learning had nothing certain, nothing true in it; nor, as some thought, did he himself hide his learning in order to refute others; but he saw the truth in some part, and testified even at his trial, as Plato records, that there was no human wisdom. So much did he despise, deride, and reject the learning in which the philosophers then gloried, that he professed as the highest learning this very thing: that he had learned that he knew nothing.

If, then, there is no human wisdom, as Socrates taught and Plato handed down, it is plain that there is a divine one, and that the knowledge of the truth is subject to no one but God.

God, therefore, must be known, in whom alone is truth: he, the parent of the world and founder of all things, who is not seen with the eyes and is scarcely discerned by the mind; whose religion is commonly attacked in many ways by those who have been able neither to hold true wisdom nor to grasp the meaning of the great and heavenly mystery.

For since there are many steps by which one climbs to the dwelling of truth, it is not easy for just anyone to be carried to the top. For those whose eyes are dimmed by the brightness of the truth, who cannot keep a steady step, roll back down to the level ground.

The first step is to understand that false religions are false and to cast off the impious worship of things made by human hands; the second, to perceive with the mind that there is one supreme God, whose power and providence made the world from the beginning and governs it hereafter; the third, to know his minister and messenger whom he sent as envoy to earth, by whose teaching we might be freed from the error in which we were held entangled and, formed for the worship of the true God, might learn righteousness.

From all these steps, as I have said, the slide is steep and the fall easy, unless the feet are planted with unshaken firmness.

From the first step we see those shaken off who, though they understand what is false, yet do not find what is true, and, having despised earthly and fragile images, do not betake themselves to worship God, whom they do not know, but, marveling at the elements of the world, venerate heaven, earth, sea, sun, and the other stars. But we have already refuted their ignorance in the second book of the Divine Institutes.

From the second step, we say, those fall who, though they perceive that there is one supreme God, yet, ensnared by the philosophers and captured by false arguments, think otherwise about that unique majesty than the truth holds: who either deny that God has any form, or think he is moved by no emotion, since every emotion belongs to weakness, which in God there is none.

From the third step those are cast headlong who, though they know the envoy of God, who is also the founder of the divine and immortal temple, yet either do not receive him or receive him otherwise than faith demands. These we have already refuted in part in the fourth book of the work mentioned above, and will refute more carefully later, when we begin to answer all the sects, which, in scattering the truth, have lost it.

But now we are arguing against those who, having slipped from the second step, think wrongly about the supreme God. For some say that he neither shows favor to anyone nor is angry, but, free from care and at rest, enjoys the goods of his immortality.

Others take away anger but leave favor to God: for a nature excelling in supreme virtue ought, as it is not maleficent, so to be beneficent. Thus all the philosophers agree about anger and disagree about favor.

But so that the discussion may come down to the subject proposed in order, we must make and follow a division of this kind: since anger and favor are different and opposed, either anger must be attributed to God and favor taken away, or both taken away alike, or anger removed and favor attributed, or both attributed.

Nature can admit nothing further beyond these, so that the truth we seek must be found in one of them. Let us consider each, so that both reason and order may lead us to the hiding places of the truth.

First, no one has ever said of God that he is only angry and is not moved by favor: for it is unfitting for God to be endowed with a power by which he may harm and injure, but be unable to help and do good.

What reason, then, what hope of salvation is set before men, if God is the author of evils only? If that were so, that venerable majesty would be brought down, not to the power of a judge, who is allowed to save and set free, but to the office of a torturer and executioner.

But since we see that there are not only evils in human affairs but goods too, then certainly, if God is the author of evils, there must be another who does the opposite to God and gives us good things.

If there is one, by what name is he to be called? Or why is he who does evil better known to us than he who does good? But if nothing can exist besides God, it is absurd and empty to think that the divine power, than which nothing is greater, nothing better, can harm but cannot help. And therefore no one has come forward who dared to say it, because it has no reason in it and can in no way be believed.

Since this is agreed, let us pass on and seek the truth elsewhere.

The next view is from the school of Epicurus: that, just as there is no anger in God, so there is not even favor. For since Epicurus thought it foreign to God to do evil and to harm, which usually arises from the passion of anger, he took beneficence from him too, since he saw it followed that if God has anger, he has favor also.

So, lest he grant him a vice, he made him devoid of virtue as well. “From this,” he says, “he is blessed and incorrupt, because he cares for nothing and neither has business himself nor causes it for another.”

He is therefore not God, if he is neither moved, which is proper to a living being, nor does anything impossible for man, which is proper to God; if he has no will at all, no action, in short no administration worthy of God.

And what greater, what worthier administration can be assigned to God than the governing of the world, than the care of living things, and above all of the human race, to which all earthly things are subject?

What blessedness, then, can there be in God, if he is always at rest and motionless and inert, if he is deaf to those who pray, blind to those who worship? What is so worthy, so proper to God, as providence?

But if he cares for nothing and foresees nothing, he has lost all divinity. Whoever, then, takes away from God all his power and all his substance, what else is he saying but that God does not exist at all?

Indeed, Marcus Tullius reports that Posidonius said Epicurus held that there are no gods, but that he said what he said about the gods to avert odium: so in words he left the gods, but in reality he took them away, since he assigned them no motion and no office.

If that is so, what is more deceitful than he? Such a thing ought to be foreign to a wise and serious man. But if he thought one thing and said another, what else is he to be called than a double-tongued deceiver, wicked, and therefore foolish?

But Epicurus was not so crafty as to say these things from a desire to deceive, since he committed them to writing as an eternal record; rather, he erred through ignorance of the truth. For, led on from the beginning by the plausibility of one opinion, he necessarily ran into the things that followed.

His first opinion was that anger does not befit God. Since this seemed to him true and unassailable, he could not cut off the consequences, because, once one emotion was cut away, necessity itself forced him to take the other emotions from God as well.

Thus one who is not angry is certainly not moved by favor either, which is the opposite of anger; and if there is neither anger nor favor in him, then certainly neither fear nor joy nor grief nor pity.

For all emotions have one principle, one motion, which cannot befall God. But if there is no emotion in God, because whatever is affected is weak, then there is neither care for anything nor providence in him.

So far the wise man's argument went; the rest that follows he passed over in silence: namely, that since there is neither care nor providence in him, therefore there is no thought or sense of any kind in him either; from which it follows that he does not exist at all. So, having gone down step by step, he stopped on the last step, because he now saw the precipice.

But what use was it to keep silent and hide the danger? Necessity forced him to fall even against his will; for he said what he did not want to say, because he arranged his argument in such a way that he necessarily came to what he was avoiding. You see, then, where it leads when anger is removed and taken away from God.

In fact either no one believes this, or very few, and those wicked and evil men who hope for impunity for their sins. But if this too is found to be false, that there is neither anger nor favor in God, let us come to the view placed in the third position.

The Stoics and some others are thought to have held a rather better view of the divinity, who say that there is favor in God but not anger.

It is a very attractive and popular argument: that this littleness of spirit does not befall God, that he should think himself injured by anyone, when he cannot be injured; that that tranquil and holy majesty should be roused, disturbed, and made mad, which belongs to earthly frailty. For anger, they say, is a commotion and disturbance of mind, which is foreign to God.

And if anger does not befit even a man, provided he is wise and serious, since when it falls upon anyone's mind it raises, like a savage storm, such great waves that it changes the state of the mind; the eyes blaze, the mouth trembles, the tongue stammers, the teeth chatter, and the face is stained by turns now with a flush of red, now with a whitening pallor, how much less does so foul a change befit God?

And if a man who has command and power does widespread harm through anger, sheds blood, overthrows cities, destroys peoples, and reduces provinces to desolation, how much more credible is it that God, who has power over the whole human race and the world itself, would have destroyed everything if he were angry?

So great and so pernicious an evil, then, ought to be far from him. And if anger and agitation are far from him, because they are both ugly and harmful, and he does evil to no one, nothing else remains but that he is gentle, calm, gracious, beneficent, and a preserver.

For only so could he be called both the common Father of all and Best and Greatest, which the divine and heavenly nature demands.

For if among men it seems praiseworthy to help rather than to harm, to give life rather than to kill, to save rather than to destroy, and innocence is not undeservedly counted among the virtues, and whoever has done these things is loved, preferred, honored, and celebrated with every blessing and prayer, and in the end, because of his merits and benefits, is judged most like God: how much more fitting is it that God himself, excelling in divine and perfect virtues and removed from every earthly stain, should win the gratitude of the whole human race by divine and heavenly benefits?

These things are said attractively and popularly, and they lure many to believe; but those who hold this view come nearer to the truth indeed, yet slip in part, not considering sufficiently the nature of the matter.

For if God is not angry with the impious and unjust, he certainly does not love the pious and just either. So the error of those who take away both anger and favor at once is more consistent. For in opposite things one must be moved either to both sides or to neither.

So one who loves the good hates the bad too, and one who does not hate the bad does not love the good either; because loving the good comes from hatred of the bad, and hating the bad comes down from love of the good.

There is no one who loves life without hating death, and no one seeks light except him who flees darkness: so closely are these things joined by nature that one cannot be without the other.

If a master has a good slave and a bad one in his household, he certainly does not either hate both or pursue both with kindnesses and honor (if he did, he would be both unjust and foolish); but the good one he speaks to in a friendly way, honors, and puts in charge of his house and household and all his affairs, while the bad one he punishes with reproaches, blows, nakedness, hunger, thirst, and fetters, so that the latter may be an example to the rest not to sin and the former an example of deserving well, so that fear may restrain some and honor spur on others.

He, then, who loves also hates, and he who hates also loves: for there are those who ought to be loved,

and there are those who ought to be held in hatred. And just as one who loves confers good things on those he loves, so one who hates inflicts evils on those he holds in hatred; and since this argument is true, it can in no way be refuted.

Vain and false, then, is the opinion of those who, attributing one to God, take away the other, no less than that of those who take away both. But the former, as we have shown, are not wrong in part, but keep the better of the two; while the latter, led on by the logic and truth of this argument, fall into the greatest error, having taken up a wholly false opinion.

For they ought not to have argued thus: “Since God is not angry, therefore he is not moved by favor either”; but thus: “Since God is moved by favor, therefore he is also angry.” For if it had been certain and beyond doubt that God is not angry, then one would necessarily have come to that other conclusion.

But since the matter of anger is more doubtful, and that of favor almost manifest, it is absurd to want to overturn the certain from the uncertain, when it is readier to confirm the uncertain from the certain.

These are the opinions of the philosophers about God; no one has said anything else besides. And if we find the things that have been said to be false, that one last view remains in which alone the truth can be found, which the philosophers have never taken up or at any time defended: that it follows that God is angry, since he is moved by favor.

This opinion must be maintained and asserted by us: for on it turns the whole sum and hinge of religion and piety. For neither can any honor be owed to God if he gives nothing to him who worships, nor any fear if he is not angry with him who does not worship.

Although the philosophers, through ignorance of the truth, have often departed from reason and fallen into inextricable errors (for the same thing usually happens to them as to a traveler who does not know the way and will not admit that he does not know it, so that he wanders about while he is ashamed to ask those he meets), yet no philosopher ever asserted that there is no difference between man and the beasts.

Nor indeed has anyone who wished to seem even slightly wise made the rational animal equal to the dumb and irrational ones. This is done by certain ignorant men, like the beasts themselves, who, wishing to give themselves up to the belly and to pleasure, say they were born on the same principle as all things that breathe: which it is not right for a man to say.

For who is so unlearned as not to know, who so imprudent as not to perceive, that there is something divine in man?

I do not yet come to the virtues of the soul and intellect, by which man has a manifest kinship with God: does not the very posture of the body and the shape of the face declare that we are not equal with the dumb beasts? Their nature is bent down toward the ground and their fodder and has nothing in common with heaven, which it does not look upon.

But man, raised up with upright posture and lofty face to the contemplation of the world, compares his countenance with God, and reason recognizes reason.

Therefore there is no animal, as Cicero says, except man that has any knowledge of God. For he alone is furnished with wisdom so that he alone may understand religion; and this is either the chief or the only difference between man and the dumb animals.

For the other things that seem proper to man, though they are not such in the dumb animals, can nevertheless seem similar. Speech is proper to man, yet there is in them also a certain likeness of speech. For they recognize one another by their voices, and when they are angry they give out a sound like quarreling, and when they see one another after an interval, they declare the courtesy of greeting by their voice.

To us their voices seem inarticulate, as perhaps ours do to them; but to them, since they understand one another, they are words. In fact, in every emotion they express fixed sounds as signs by which they show the state of their mind.

Laughter too is proper to man, and yet we see in other animals certain signs of joy, when they frisk about in play, lay back their ears, draw back their mouths, smooth their brows, and relax their eyes in playfulness.

What is so proper to man as reason and foresight of the future? And yet there are animals that open several different exits from their dens, so that if any danger arises, escape may lie open to the besieged: which they would not do unless there were understanding and thought in them.

Others provide for the future, as ants, “when they plunder a huge heap of grain, mindful of winter, and store it under their roof”; as bees, which “alone know a fatherland and a fixed home, and, mindful of the winter to come, undergo labor in summer and store up their gains for the common stock.”

It would be long if I wished to go through the things that each kind of animal usually does, most like human skill. But if a likeness of all these things usually ascribed to man is found in the dumb animals too, it is plain that religion alone is the thing of which no trace and no hint can be found in the dumb animals.

Righteousness is proper to religion, and no other animal attains it. For man alone shares; the other animals are attached only to themselves. And the worship of God is counted as part of righteousness; whoever does not take it up is estranged from the nature of man and will live the life of a beast under human form.

But since we differ from the other animals almost in this alone, that we alone of all perceive the divine force and power, while in them there is no understanding of God, it surely cannot be that in this the dumb animals are wiser or human nature foolish, since because of wisdom all things that breathe and the whole of nature have been made subject to man.

Therefore, if man's reason and power surpass and excel the other living creatures in this, that he alone receives the knowledge of God, it is clear that religion can in no way be dissolved.

But religion is dissolved if we believe Epicurus when he says: “For the whole nature of the gods must of itself enjoy immortal life in the deepest peace, removed and separated far from our affairs. For, free from all pain, free from dangers, strong in its own resources, needing nothing from us, it is neither won by good service nor touched by anger.”

When he says this, does he think any worship should be paid to God, or does he overturn all religion? For if God gives no good to anyone, if he returns no favor for the obedience of the worshiper, what is so empty, so foolish, as to build temples, offer sacrifices, bring gifts, and diminish our estates, only to gain nothing?

“But an excellent nature ought to be honored.” What honor can be owed to one who cares for nothing and is ungrateful? Or can we be bound by any obligation to one who has nothing in common with us? “If God,” says Cicero, “is such that he is held by no favor, no love of men, farewell to him. For why should I say, ‘May he be gracious’? He can be gracious to no one.” What more contemptuous thing could be said of God?

“Farewell to him,” he says; that is, let him go away and withdraw, since he can help no one.

But if God neither has business nor causes it, why then should we not do wrong whenever we can escape men's notice and get round the public laws? Wherever a chance of hiding smiles on us, let us look to our own interest, let us take what belongs to others, either without bloodshed or even with blood, if beyond the laws there is nothing more to be feared.

In holding these views Epicurus destroys religion utterly; and when it is taken away, confusion and disorder of life will follow.

But if religion cannot be taken away, so that we may keep both wisdom, by which we differ from the beasts, and righteousness, by which common life is safer, how can religion itself be held or guarded without fear? For what is not feared is despised, and what is despised is certainly not worshiped. So it comes about that religion, majesty, and honor rest on fear; but there is no fear where no one is angry.

Whether, then, you take away favor from God, or anger, or both, religion must be removed, and without it the life of men is filled with folly, crime, and savagery. For conscience restrains men greatly if we believe that we live in the sight of God, if we think that not only what we do is seen from above, but also what we think or say is heard by God.

“But it is useful to believe this,” as some think, “not for the sake of truth but of utility, since the laws cannot punish conscience unless some terror hangs over from above to restrain sins.”

“All religion, then, is false, and there is no divinity; everything was made up by prudent men so that life might be lived more rightly and innocently.” This is a great question and foreign to the subject we have proposed; but since it necessarily arises, it ought to be touched on, however briefly.

Although the opinions of the philosophers of former times had agreed about providence, and there was no doubt that the world was furnished by God and by reason and was ruled by reason, Protagoras, in the time of Socrates, was the first of all to arise who said that it was not clear to him whether there was any divinity or not.

This disputation of his was judged so impious and contrary to truth and religion that the Athenians both banished him from their territory and burned his books in the assembly. There is no need to dispute his opinion, because he pronounced nothing certain.

After these, Socrates himself and his hearer Plato, and those who flowed out from the school of Plato like streams in different directions, the Stoics and Peripatetics, were of the same opinion as their predecessors.

But later Epicurus said that God indeed exists, because there must be something in the world that is excellent, outstanding, and blessed, but that there is no providence: and so the world itself was not furnished by any reason, art, or workmanship, but the nature of things was rolled together out of certain tiny and indivisible seeds. I do not see what more self-contradictory thing could be said.

For if there is a God, he certainly has foresight, as God; nor can divinity be attributed to him in any other way, unless he both holds the past, knows the present, and foresees the future.

When, therefore, he took away providence, he also denied that God exists; but when he professed that God exists, he conceded at the same time that providence exists: for the one can neither exist nor be understood at all without the other.

But in later times, when philosophy had already lost its bloom, there arose a certain Diagoras of Melos, who said there was no god at all, and for that opinion was named “the atheist”; likewise Theodorus of Cyrene. Both of them, because they could find nothing new, everything having already been said and discovered, preferred, against the truth, to deny that on which all their predecessors had agreed without ambiguity. These are the men who slandered the providence asserted and defended through so many ages and by so many minds.

What then? Shall we refute these petty and idle philosophers by reason, or by the authority of eminent men, or rather by both? But we must hurry, lest the discussion wander too far from its subject.

Those who will not have it that the world was made by divine providence say either that it was compacted from first principles coming together at random, or that it arose suddenly by nature; and that nature, as Strato says, has in itself the power of producing and diminishing, but has neither any sense nor form, so that we are to understand that all things were generated as it were of their own accord, with no craftsman and no author.

Both are empty and impossible. But this happens to those who do not know the truth: they devise anything rather than hold what reason demands.

First, I ask where or whence those tiny seeds are, by whose chance collision they say the world cohered. Who ever saw them? Who felt them? Who heard them? Or did Leucippus alone have eyes? Alone a mind? He surely was of all men the only one blind and senseless, who said things that no sick man could rave in delirium nor anyone dream in sleep.

The ancient philosophers argued that all things consist of four elements. He would not have it, lest he seem to tread in others' footsteps; but he held that the elements themselves had other first beginnings, which could be neither seen nor touched nor perceived by any part of the body.

“They are so tiny,” he says, “that there is no edge of iron so fine that they could be cut and divided by it.” Hence he gave them the name of atoms. But it occurred to him that if all had one and the same nature, they could not produce things as diverse, with so great a variety as we see in the world. So he said they are smooth and rough and round and angular and hooked.

How much better it would have been to keep silent than to have a tongue for such miserable, such empty uses! Indeed I fear that one who thinks these things need refuting may seem no less mad; yet let us answer as though he were saying something.

If they are smooth and round, they certainly cannot grasp one another so as to form any body; just as, if someone wished to bind millet into one mass, the very smoothness of the grains would not allow them to come together into a lump.

But if they are rough and angular and hooked, so that they can cohere, then they are divisible and can be cut; for hooks and angles must stick out, so that they can be cut off. And so what can be cut off and torn apart can also be seen and held.

“These,” he says, “flit through the void with restless motions and are carried hither and thither, as we see tiny specks of dust in the sun when it has sent its rays and light through a window. From these arise trees and plants and all crops, from these animals and water and fire and all things are produced, and again they are dissolved into the same.” This can be borne as long as it is a question of small things. “From these the world too was compacted.”

He has completed the measure of perfect madness; nothing more, it seems, could be added. But he nevertheless found something to add. “Since all is infinite,” he says, “and nothing can be empty, it follows that there are innumerable worlds.”

What great force did the atoms have, that such inestimable masses should be rolled together from things so tiny? And first I ask what is the principle or origin of these seeds. For if all things are from them, where shall we say they themselves come from? What nature supplied so great an abundance to make even innumerable worlds?

But let us grant that he raved about the worlds with impunity; let us speak of this one in which we are and which we see. He says that all things are made from indivisible little bodies.

If this were so, nothing would ever need seed of its own kind: birds would be born without eggs, or eggs without laying; likewise other living things without mating; trees and what grows from the earth would not have their own seeds, which we handle and sow every day. Why does a crop spring from grain, and grain again from the crop? In short, if the coming together and clumping of atoms made all things, everything would grow together in the air, since the atoms flit through the void.

Why can neither grass nor tree nor crops arise and grow without earth, without roots, without moisture, without seed?

From this it is plain that nothing is made from atoms, since each thing has its own fixed nature, its own seed, its own law given from the beginning.

Indeed Lucretius, as if forgetting the atoms he was asserting, to refute those who say that all things come from nothing, used these arguments, which would count against himself. For he spoke thus: “For if they came from nothing, every kind could be born from all things; nothing would need seed.” And likewise later: “We must therefore think that nothing can come from nothing, since things need seed, from which each, when created, may be brought forth into the soft breezes of the air.”

Who would think he had a brain when he said these things and did not see that they contradicted him? For that nothing is made through atoms is plain from the fact that the seed of each thing is fixed; unless perhaps we are to believe that the nature of fire and water is from atoms.

What of the fact that if materials of the hardest firmness are struck together with a violent blow, fire is struck out? Do atoms lie hidden in iron or flint? Who shut them in? Or why do they not leap out of their own accord? Or how could the seeds of fire remain in the coldest matter?

I pass over flint and iron. If you hold a glass globe full of water in the sun, fire is kindled from the light reflected from the water, even in the hardest cold. Must we believe that there is fire in water too? And yet fire cannot be kindled from the sun even in summer.

If you breathe on wax, or if vapor touches something smooth, either a slab of marble or a metal plate, water gradually gathers in the tiniest drops. Likewise from the breath of the earth or the sea a mist arises, which either, when dispersed, moistens whatever it has covered, or, gathered on high mountains and snatched aloft by the wind, is packed into a cloud and pours down very great rains.

Where, then, are we to say the atoms of liquids are? In the vapor? In the breath? In the wind? Yet nothing can subsist in what is neither touched nor seen.

What, then, shall I say of animals, in whose bodies we see nothing shaped without reason, without order, without usefulness, without beauty, so that the most skillful and careful arrangement of all the parts and members rules out chance and fortune?

But let us suppose that limbs and bones and sinews and blood can be compacted from atoms: sense, thought, mind, memory, intellect, from what seeds can they be joined together? “From the tiniest,” he says. There are, then, others larger. How then are they indivisible?

Then, if the things that are not seen come from invisible atoms, it follows that the things that are seen come from visible ones. Why then does no one see them?

But whether you consider the invisible things in man or the tangible things that come under sight, who does not see that both consist by reason? How then can things coming together without reason produce anything rational? For we see that there is nothing in the whole world that does not have in itself the greatest and most wonderful reason. And since this is above man's perception and intellect, to what can it more rightly be attributed than to divine providence?

Or, if reason and art fashion an image and statue of a man, shall we think that man himself is made of scraps coming together at random? And what likeness of the truth is there in the image, since the highest and most excellent artistry can imitate nothing but the shadow and the outer lines of the body? Could human skill give its work any motion or sense?

I pass over the use of seeing, hearing, smelling, and the wonderful usefulness of the other members, visible or hidden: what craftsman could fashion the heart of man, or his voice, or wisdom itself? Does anyone in his right mind think that what man cannot make by reason and counsel could have been accomplished by a concourse of atoms sticking together anywhere? You see into what ravings they have fallen, while they refuse to give God the making and care of things.

Let us grant them, however, that earthly things are made from atoms: are heavenly things also? They say the gods are incorruptible, eternal, and blessed, and grant them alone exemption, so that they may not seem to be compacted by a concourse of atoms.

For if the gods too had been made of them, they would be capable of dissolution, when the seeds at some time were loosed and returned to their own nature. If, then, there is something the atoms did not make, why should we not understand the rest in the same way?

But I ask why, before those first beginnings had generated the world, the gods did not build a dwelling for themselves. Evidently, if the atoms had not come together and made the heaven, the gods would still be hanging in the midst of the void.

By what counsel, then, by what agreement did the atoms gather themselves together out of a confused heap, so that from some the earth was rolled together below, and the heaven stretched out above, adorned with so great a variety of stars that nothing more beautiful could ever be devised?

Can one who sees things so great and such as these think they were made by no counsel, no providence, no divine reason, but that such great wonders were compacted from fine and tiny crumbs?

Is it not like a portent either that a man was born who said these things, or that there were those who believed him, like Democritus, who was his hearer, or Epicurus, into whom all folly flowed from the spring of Leucippus?

“But,” as others say, “the world was made by nature, which lacks sense and form.” This is much more absurd. If nature made the world, it must have made it by counsel and reason; for he makes something who has either the will to make it or the knowledge.

If it lacks sense and form, how can what has both sense and form be made by it? Unless perhaps someone thinks that the structure of animals, so subtle and so wonderful, could have been formed and given life by something without sense; or that this appearance of the heaven, so providently tempered for the uses of living things, arose suddenly by some chance, without founder or craftsman.

“If there is anything,” says Chrysippus, “that makes things which man, though endowed with reason, cannot make, that is certainly greater and stronger and wiser than man. But man cannot make heavenly things; therefore what makes or has made them surpasses man in art, counsel, prudence, and power.”

Who, then, can this be but God? But nature, which they think is as it were the mother of things, if it has no mind, will never make anything, never contrive anything. For where there is no thought, there is no motion and no effectiveness.

But if it uses counsel to begin something, reason to arrange it, art to make it, power to complete it, and might to rule and hold it together, why should it be called nature rather than God?

Or if a concourse of atoms or a mindless nature made the things we see, I ask why it could make the heaven but could not make a city or a house; why it made mountains of marble but did not make columns and statues.

And yet the atoms ought to have come together to make these things too, since they leave no position untried. As for a nature that has no mind, it is no wonder that it forgot to make them.

What, then, is the case? Surely God, when he began this work of the world, than which nothing can be more ordered in arrangement, more fit for use, more adorned in beauty, or greater in mass, himself made the things that could not be made by man, among them man himself; to whom he gave a small portion of his wisdom and furnished him with reason, as much as earthly frailty could receive, so that he might make for himself the things necessary for his own uses.

But if in the commonwealth of this world, so to speak, there is no providence to rule, no God to administer, and no sense at all is powerful in this nature of things, from where, then, will the human mind, so skillful and so intelligent, be believed to have arisen?

For if the body of man was fashioned from the ground (humus), from which man (homo) received his name, then the soul, which is wise, which is ruler of the body, which the members obey as a king and commander, which can be neither seen nor grasped, could not have come into man except from a wise nature.

But just as mind and soul govern the whole body, so God governs the world. For it is not probable that lesser and lowly things have government and the greater and highest do not.

Indeed Marcus Cicero, in the Tusculans and in the Consolation, says: “No origin of souls can be found on earth. For there is nothing mixed and compounded in souls, or anything that seems born and fashioned from the earth; nothing even moist or airy or fiery.

For in these natures there is nothing that has the power of memory, mind, or thought, that holds the past, foresees the future, and can embrace the present: which alone are divine.” Nor will any source ever be found from which they could come to man except from God.

Setting aside, then, two or three empty slanderers, since it is agreed that the world is ruled by divine providence, as it was also made, and there is no one who would dare to prefer the opinion of Diagoras and Theodorus, or the empty fiction of Leucippus, or the levity of Democritus and Epicurus, to the authority either of those seven early men who were called the wise, or of Pythagoras, or Socrates, or Plato, and the other greatest philosophers who judged that providence exists: false, then, is also that opinion by which they think religion was instituted by wise men for the sake of terror and fear, so that ignorant men might keep themselves from sins.

If that were true, then we have been mocked by the ancient wise men. But if they invented religion to deceive us, and indeed the whole human race, then they were not wise, because lying does not befall a wise man.

But suppose they were wise: what great success in lying was theirs, that they deceived not only the unlearned but Plato too and Socrates, and so easily fooled Pythagoras, Zeno, and Aristotle, the founders of the greatest schools?

There is, therefore, a divine providence, as all these whom I have named held, by whose force and power all the things we see were both made and are governed.

For so great a magnitude of things, so great an arrangement, so great a constancy in keeping their orders and seasons, could neither have arisen at first without a provident craftsman, nor have lasted so many ages without a powerful indweller, nor be governed for ever without a skilled and perceiving ruler: which reason itself declares.

For whatever has reason must have arisen from reason. But reason belongs to a perceiving and wise nature, and a wise and perceiving nature can be nothing else than God. And since the world has reason, by which it is both governed and holds together, it was therefore made by God.

And if God is the founder and ruler of the world, then religion has been rightly and truly established: for honor and veneration are owed to the author of things and common parent.

Since the matter of providence is settled, it follows that we should show whether it is to be believed to be the providence of many gods or rather of one.

We have sufficiently shown, I think, in our Institutes that there cannot be many gods, because if the divine force and power were divided among several, it would necessarily be diminished; but what is diminished is certainly mortal, and if it is not mortal, it can be neither diminished nor divided.

God, therefore, is one, in whom force and power, being complete, can be neither diminished nor increased. But if there were many, while each had some share of power and deity, the sum itself would decrease, and no single one could have the whole of what is shared with several: each would lack as much as the others possessed.

There cannot, then, be many rulers in this world, just as there are not many masters in one house, nor many helmsmen in one ship, nor many leaders in a herd or flock, nor many kings in one swarm; indeed there could not even be many suns in the sky, just as there are not several souls in one body: so thoroughly does all nature agree in unity. And if the world

“a spirit within nourishes, and mind, poured through the limbs, moves the whole mass and mingles with the great body,” it is plain by the testimony of the poet that there is one God who inhabits the world, since no body can be inhabited and ruled except by one mind.

All divine power, therefore, must be in one, by whose nod and command all things are ruled; and so he is so great that he cannot be told in words by man or estimated by the senses.

From where, then, did the opinion of many gods come to men by persuasion? Doubtless all those who are worshiped as gods were men, and indeed the first and greatest kings; but who does not know that they were either honored with divine honors after death because of the virtue by which they had benefited the human race, or won immortal memory because of the benefits and inventions by which they had improved human life?

And not only men, but women too. This is taught both by the most ancient writers of Greece, whom they call theologians, and also by the Romans who followed and imitated the Greeks; among them especially Euhemerus and our Ennius, who show the births, marriages, offspring, reigns, deeds, deaths,

and tombs of them all; and Tullius, following them, in the third book On the Nature of the Gods, dissolved the public religions; but yet neither he nor anyone else could bring in the true one, of which he was ignorant.

So much so that he himself testified that the false is indeed evident, but the truth lies hidden. “I wish,” he says, “I could find the truth as easily as I can refute falsehood!” And this he cried out not with dissimulation, as an Academic, but truly and from his heart, because the truth can never be dug out by human senses. What human foresight could attain, he attained: to expose what is false. For whatever is invented and made up, since it rests on no reason, is easily dissolved.

There is, therefore, one God, prince and origin of things, as Plato both thought and taught in the Timaeus; whose majesty he declares to be so great that it can be neither grasped by the mind nor expressed by the tongue.

Hermes testifies the same, who, Cicero says, is counted among the gods by the Egyptians: that is, the one who for his virtue and his knowledge of many arts was named Thrice-Greatest; and he was far more ancient not only than Plato but even than Pythagoras and those seven wise men.

In Xenophon, Socrates, in discussion, says that the form of God ought not to be inquired into; and Plato, in the books of the Laws, that what God is ought not to be sought at all, because it can be neither found nor told.

Pythagoras too confesses one God, saying that he is an incorporeal mind which, spread and stretched through the whole nature of things, gives living sense to all living creatures. And Antisthenes in his Physicus said that there is one natural God, although nations and cities have their own popular gods.

Aristotle with his Peripatetics and Zeno with his Stoics said nearly the same. For it would be long to go through the opinions of each: though they used different names, they nevertheless agreed on one power that rules the world.

But although philosophers and poets, and even those who worship the gods, often confess the supreme God, no one has ever inquired, no one has discussed, about his worship and honors: from that persuasion, namely, by which, believing him always beneficent and incorruptible, they think he is neither angry with anyone nor needs any worship. So true is it that there can be no religion where there is no fear.

Now, since we have answered the impious and detestable prudence, or rather madness, of certain people, let us return to our subject.

We said that when religion is taken away neither wisdom nor righteousness can be kept: wisdom, because the understanding of divinity, by which we differ from the beasts, is found in man alone; righteousness, because unless God, who cannot be deceived, restrains our desires, we shall live wickedly and impiously.

That our actions are watched by God, then, concerns not only the usefulness of common life but also the truth; because when religion and righteousness are removed, we either sink, reason lost, to the stupidity of cattle, or to the savagery of wild beasts; indeed further, since wild beasts spare animals of their own kind.

What will be more ferocious than man, what more pitiless, if, fear of a higher power being removed, he can either evade or despise the force of the laws?

The fear of God, therefore, is the only thing that guards the society of men with one another, by which life itself is sustained, protected, and governed. But this fear is taken away if a man is persuaded that God is without anger; that he is moved and indignant when unjust things are done, not only the common good but reason itself and the truth persuade us. We must go back again to earlier matters, so that, since we have taught that the world was made by God, we may teach why it was made.

If anyone considers the whole administration of the world, he will certainly understand how true is the opinion of the Stoics, who say that the world was built for our sake. For all the things of which the world consists and which it produces from itself are adapted to the usefulness of man.

Man uses fire for warming and light, for softening food and working iron; he uses springs for drinking and bathing, rivers for watering fields and marking the boundaries of regions; he uses the earth to gather a variety of fruits, the plains for grain, the hills for planting vineyards, the mountains for trees and timber; he uses the sea not only for commerce and bringing supplies from distant regions but also for its abundance of every kind of fish.

And if he uses these elements to which he is nearest, there is no doubt that he uses the heaven also, since the functions of the heavenly bodies too are tempered for the fertility of the earth by which we live.

The sun, with unresting courses and unequal spaces, completes the yearly circuits, and either, rising, brings forth the day for labor, or, setting, brings on the night for rest; and, now by withdrawing further to the south, now by approaching nearer to the north, it makes the alternations of winter and summer, so that the earth may be enriched to fertility by the moisture and frosts of winter, and by the heat of summer either the grassy crops may be hardened to ripeness or those that grow in moist places, cooked and heated, may become mellow.

The moon too, governess of the night, regulates the monthly spaces by the alternations of her lost and recovered light, and illuminates with the brilliance of her brightness the nights that would otherwise be blind with bristling darkness, so that summer journeys, expeditions, and labors may be accomplished without toil or trouble; since “by night the light stubble, by night the dry meadows are better mown.”

The other stars also, by their rising or setting at fixed stations, supply the right seasons. They also give guidance to ships, so that they do not wander on an aimless course through the immensity, when the helmsman, duly observing them, is carried to the harbor of the shore he aims for.

By the breath of the winds the clouds are drawn along, so that the crops may be watered by rains, so that vines may abound in fruit and trees in apples. And these things are presented in turn throughout the world, so that there may never be lacking that by which human life is sustained. “But the same earth nourishes the other living creatures, and even the dumb animals are fed by its produce. Did God labor for the sake of the dumb animals too?”

Not at all, because they are devoid of reason. But we understand that they too were made by God in the same way for the use of man, partly for food, partly for clothing, partly for help in work; so that it is clear that divine providence willed to furnish and adorn the life of men with an abundance of things and supplies, and for this reason filled the air with birds, the sea with fish, and the earth with four-footed beasts.

But the Academics, arguing against the Stoics, usually ask why, if God made all things for the sake of men, many things are also found that are contrary, hostile, and pestilent to us, both on sea and on land.

This the Stoics, not perceiving the truth, rebutted most foolishly. For they say that there are many things among growing things and in the number of animals whose usefulness is still hidden, but that it will be found in the course of time, just as necessity and use have already found many things unknown to earlier ages.

What usefulness, pray, can be found in mice, in cockroaches, in serpents, which are troublesome and pernicious to man? Or does some medicine lie hidden in them? If there is, let it be found some day; namely, against evils, when they complain that that is wholly evil!

They say that a viper, burned and crumbled to ashes, heals the bite of the same beast. How much better it would have been for it not to exist at all than that a remedy against it should have to be sought from it!

They could, then, have answered more briefly and truly in this way: God, when he formed man as his own image, which was the summit of the divine workmanship, breathed wisdom into him alone, so that he might subject all things to his command and rule and use all the advantages of the world. Yet he set before him both goods and evils, because he gave him wisdom, whose whole principle lies in distinguishing good and evil.

For no one can choose the better and know what is good unless he knows at the same time how to reject and avoid what is evil. The two are bound to each other in turn, so that if either is removed, both must be removed.

When goods and evils have been set before it, then at last wisdom performs its work: it seeks the good for its usefulness, and rejects the evil for its safety.

Therefore, just as countless goods have been given which he might enjoy, so also evils which he should guard against. For if there were no evil, no danger, nothing in short that could harm a man, the whole material of wisdom would be removed, and it would not be necessary to man.

For if only goods were set in view, what need would there be of thought, understanding, knowledge, reason, since wherever he stretched out his hand, it would be suitable and fitted to his nature? As if someone wished to set a most lavish dinner before infants who do not yet have sense: each will certainly go for whatever impulse or hunger or even chance draws him to, and whatever they take will be life-giving and healthful to them.

What harm, then, will it do them to remain as they are and to be always infants and ignorant of things? But if you mix in bitter or useless or even poisonous things, they will certainly be deceived through ignorance of good and evil, unless wisdom comes to them, through which they may reject evil and choose good.

You see, then, that we need wisdom more because of evils; and if these had not been set before us, we would not be a rational animal.

And if this reasoning is true, which the Stoics could in no way see, then that argument of Epicurus too is dissolved. “God,” he says, “either wishes to take away evils and cannot; or can and does not wish to; or neither wishes nor is able; or both wishes and is able.

If he wishes and cannot, he is weak, which does not befall God; if he can and does not wish, he is envious, which is equally foreign to God; if he neither wishes nor is able, he is both envious and weak, and therefore not God; if he both wishes and is able, which alone befits God, where then do

evils come from, or why does he not take them away?” I know that most of the philosophers who defend providence are usually thrown into confusion by this argument and are driven almost against their will to admit that God cares for nothing, which is what Epicurus most seeks; but we, having looked into the reason, easily dissolve this formidable argument.

For God can do whatever he wills, and there is no weakness or envy in him. He can, therefore, take away evils, but he does not will it; and yet he is not envious for that reason. For he does not take them away because he has at the same time bestowed wisdom, as I have shown, and there is more good and delight in wisdom than there is trouble in evils. For wisdom brings it about that we know God too, and through that knowledge we attain immortality, which is the highest good. And so unless we first recognize evil, we shall not be able to recognize the good either.

But Epicurus did not see this, nor did anyone else: that if evils were taken away, wisdom would be taken away as well, and no traces of virtue would remain in man, whose principle consists in enduring and overcoming the bitterness of evils.

So for the sake of the small gain of having evils removed, we would lack the greatest, the true, and our own proper good. It is established, then, that all things, evils as well as goods, have been set before us for man's sake.

It follows that I should show why God made man himself. Just as he contrived the world for man's sake, so he made man himself for his own sake, as the priest of a divine temple, the spectator of his works and of heavenly things.

For he alone, being sentient and capable of reason, can understand God, admire his works, and perceive his virtue and power. For this reason he was furnished with counsel, mind, and prudence; for this reason he alone, beyond the other living creatures, was formed with an upright body and stance, so that he might seem roused to the contemplation of his parent; for this reason he alone received speech and a tongue, the interpreter of thought, so that he might tell the majesty of his Lord; finally, for this reason all things were made subject to him, so that he himself might be subject to God, his maker and craftsman.

If, then, God willed man to be his worshiper, and for that reason gave him so much honor that he should rule over all things, then certainly it is most just both to love God, who has bestowed such great things, and to love man, who is joined with us in the fellowship of divine law. For it is not right that a worshiper of God should be harmed by a worshiper of God.

From this we understand that man was fashioned for the sake of religion and righteousness. Marcus Tullius is a witness to this in the books On the Laws, where he says: “But of all the things discussed by learned men, nothing is surely more excellent than to understand plainly that we are born for righteousness.”

And if this is most true, then God wills all men to be righteous, that is, to hold God and man dear: namely, to honor God as a father and to love man as a brother; for in these two the whole of righteousness consists.

Whoever, then, either does not acknowledge God or harms a man lives unrighteously and against his own nature, and in this way breaks through the divine ordinance and law.

Here perhaps someone may ask where sins came to man from, or what perversity twisted the rule of the divine ordinance toward worse things, so that, though he was born for righteousness, he nevertheless does unrighteous works.

I have already explained above that God set forth good and evil at the same time, and that he loves the good but hates the evil, which is opposed to the good; but that he permitted evil for this reason, that the good too might shine out, since, as I have often taught, we understand that the one cannot exist without the other. Indeed, the world itself was compacted from two elements opposed and joined to each other, the fiery and the moist; nor could light have been made unless there had also been darkness, because there can be no above without a below, no east without a west, no hot without cold, no soft without hard.

So we too are compacted of two things equally opposed, soul and body, of which the one is assigned to heaven, because it is fine and cannot be handled, the other to earth, because it can be grasped; the one is solid and eternal, the other fragile and mortal. Therefore good clings to the one, evil to the other; to the one light, life, righteousness; to the other darkness, death, unrighteousness.

From this there arose in men a depravation of their nature, so that it was necessary that a law be established by which vices might be forbidden and the duties of virtue commanded.

Since, then, there are goods and evils in human affairs, whose reason I have declared, God must be moved in both directions: to favor, when he sees righteous things done, and to anger, when he sees unrighteous things.

But Epicurus meets us and says: “If there is in God the emotion of joy, leading to favor, and of hatred, leading to anger, he must also have fear and lust and desire and the other emotions, which belong to human weakness.”

It is not necessary that one who is angry should fear, or that one who rejoices should grieve; indeed, the irascible are less fearful, and those joyful by nature grieve less. What need is there to speak of human emotions, to which our frailty succumbs? Let us consider the divine necessity; for I do not wish to say “nature,” since God is never believed to have been born.

The emotion of fear has material in man, but in God it has none. Man, because he is subject to many accidents and dangers, fears lest some greater force arise that may beat, rob, tear, afflict, or kill him; but God, upon whom neither want nor injury nor pain nor death can fall, can in no way fear, because there is nothing that can do him violence.

Likewise the reason and cause of lust in man is plain. For because he was made fragile and mortal, it was necessary that another and different sex be established, by mingling with which offspring might be produced to continue the perpetuity of the race.

But this lust has no place in God, because both frailty and death are foreign to him; nor is there any female with him in union with whom he could delight; nor does he who will always be need a successor.

The same can be said of envy and desire: they fall upon man for fixed and plain reasons, upon God in no way.

But favor and anger and pity do have material in God, and that supreme and unique power rightly uses them for the preservation of things.

Someone will ask what that material is. First, men afflicted by misfortunes usually flee to God, appease him, and implore him, believing that he can ward off injuries from them. God therefore has cause for pity; for he is not so harsh and contemptuous of men as to deny help to those in distress.

Likewise very many, persuaded that righteousness pleases God, venerate him as Lord and parent of all; they offer him gifts and sacrifices with constant prayers and frequent vows, pursue his name with praises, and labor to win his favor by righteous and good works. There is, then, a reason why God both can and should show favor.

For if nothing is so fitting for God as beneficence, and nothing so foreign to him as being ungrateful, he must bestow something on the services of the best and of those who live holily, and make a return, lest he incur the charge of ingratitude, which is blameworthy even in a man.

On the other hand there are others, criminal and wicked, who pollute everything with their lusts, harass it with murders, defraud, rob, perjure themselves, spare neither kin nor parents, and neglect the laws and even God himself.

Anger, therefore, has material in God. For it is not right that, when he sees such things done, he should not be moved and rise up to punish the wicked and destroy the pestilent and guilty, so as to provide for all the good: so there is kindness even in anger itself.

Empty, then, are found the arguments both of those who, while unwilling that God be angry, want him to show favor, since not even this can happen without anger, and of those who think there is no motion of the mind in God.

And because there are some emotions that do not befall God, such as lust, fear, avarice, grief, and envy, they have said that he is wholly free of every emotion. He is indeed free of these, because they are emotions of vices; but those that belong to virtue, that is, anger toward the wicked, love toward the good, pity toward the afflicted, since they are worthy of divine power, he has as his own, just and true.

And if he did not have them, human life would be thrown into disorder, and the state of things would come to such confusion that, the laws being despised and overcome, audacity alone would reign, and no one in short could be safe except one who prevailed by strength: so the whole earth would be laid waste as by a common robbery. But now, since the wicked expect punishment, the good favor, and the afflicted help, there is room for virtues and crimes are rarer.

“But the wicked are often happier and the good more wretched, and the righteous are harassed with impunity by the unrighteous.” We shall consider later why these things happen; meanwhile let us explain about anger, whether there is any in God, or whether he cares for nothing at all and is not moved by what is done impiously.

“God,” says Epicurus, “cares for nothing.” Then he has no power; for one who has power must care. Or, if he has it and does not use it, what great cause of negligence is there, that not only our race, I will not say, but even the world itself is worthless to him?

“For this reason,” he says, “he is incorrupt and blessed, because he is always at rest.” To whom, then, has the administration of such great things fallen, if these things which we see governed with the highest reason are neglected by God? Or how can one who lives and perceives be at rest? For rest belongs either to sleep or to death.

But not even sleep has rest. For when we are asleep, the body indeed rests, but the mind is restlessly active; it forms images for itself to behold, so as to exercise its natural motion by the variety of what it sees, and distracts itself with false things while the limbs are refreshed and take strength from rest.

Everlasting rest, therefore, belongs to death alone. But if death does not touch God, then God is never at rest. And what can God's activity be but the administration of the world? But if he takes care of the world, then God cares for the life of men and notices the acts of each, and desires them to be wise and good.

This is the will of God, this the divine law: whoever follows and keeps it is dear to God. It is necessary, therefore, that God be moved to anger against one who has either violated or despised this eternal and divine law.

“If God harms anyone,” he says, “he is no longer good.” Those are in no small error who defame judgment, whether human or divine, with the name of harshness and malice, thinking that one who inflicts punishment on the guilty should be called harmful. If that is so, then we have harmful laws, which have decreed punishments for wrongdoers, and harmful judges, who inflict capital punishment on those convicted of crime.

But if the law is just which pays back to the guilty what he deserves, and the judge is called upright and good when he punishes evil deeds (for he who punishes the wicked guards the safety of the good), then God too, when he opposes the wicked, is not harmful. He is harmful, rather, who either harms the innocent or spares the guilty, so as to harm more people.

I should like to ask those who make God immovable: if someone had property, a house, a household, and his slaves, despising their master's patience, had seized everything, enjoyed his goods themselves, were honored by his household, while the master was despised, mocked, and abandoned by all, could he be wise who did not avenge the insults and let those over whom he had power enjoy his goods? What patience so great could be found in anyone? If indeed it should be called patience and not a kind of senseless stupor.

But it is easy to bear contempt. What if those things were done which Cicero speaks of? “For I ask, if a father of a family, when his children had been killed by a slave, his wife slain, and his house burned, did not inflict the harshest punishment on the slave, would he seem merciful and compassionate, or inhuman and most cruel?”

And if to pardon crimes of this kind belongs to cruelty rather than to kindness, then it is not a mark of virtue in God not to be moved by things done unjustly.

For the world is, as it were, God's house, and men, as it were, his slaves; if his name is a mockery to them, what kind or how great a patience is it that he should give up his honors, see wicked and unjust things done, and not be indignant? This is proper and natural to one who is not pleased by sins.

To be angry, then, belongs to reason: for offenses are removed and license is restrained, which is certainly done justly and wisely. But the Stoics did not see that there is a distinction between right and wrong, that there is a just anger and also an unjust one; and because they found no remedy for the thing, they wished to cut it out entirely. The Peripatetics said it should not be cut out but moderated; we have answered them sufficiently in the sixth book of the Institutes.

That the philosophers did not know what the principle of anger is appears from their definitions, which Seneca listed in the books he composed On Anger. “Anger,” he says, “is the desire to avenge an injury”; or, as Posidonius says, “the desire to punish one by whom you think you have been unjustly harmed.” Some have defined it thus: “Anger is an incitement of the mind to harm one who has either harmed or wished to harm.” Aristotle's definition is not far from ours; for he says that anger is the desire to repay pain.

This is the unjust anger of which we spoke above, which is present even in the dumb animals, but in man must be restrained, lest it leap through madness into some very great evil. This cannot be in God, because he cannot be harmed; but it is found in man, because he is frail. For injury burns in pain, and pain produces the desire for revenge.

Where, then, is that just anger by which people are moved against wrongdoers? It is certainly not a desire for revenge, since no injury precedes it.

I am not speaking of those who sin against the laws; although a judge may be angry with them without blame, let us suppose that he ought to be of calm mind when he subjects the guilty to punishment, because he is the minister of the laws, not of his own feeling or power; for so those wish who try to root out anger. But I speak especially of those who are in our power, such as slaves, children, wives, and pupils: when we see them do wrong, we are roused to restrain them.

For what is wicked must displease one who is good and just; and one to whom evil is displeasing is moved when he sees it done. So we rise to punish, not because we have been harmed, but so that discipline may be kept,

morals corrected, and license suppressed. This is just anger: which, as it is necessary in man for the correction of wickedness, so certainly in God, from whom the example came to man.

For just as we ought to restrain those subject to our power, so God too ought to restrain the sins of all. And to do this he must be angry, because it is natural for one who is good to be moved and stirred by another's sin.

They ought, therefore, to have defined it thus: anger is a motion of the mind rising up to restrain sins. For Cicero's definition, “anger is a lust for revenge,” is not much different from the earlier ones.

But that anger which we can call either fury or irascibility ought not to be even in man, because it is wholly vicious; but the anger that belongs to the correction of vices ought not to be taken from man, and cannot be taken from God, because it is both useful and necessary to human affairs.

“What need is there of anger,” they say, “since sins can be corrected without this emotion?” And yet there is no one who can see someone sinning with calm. Perhaps one who presides over the laws can, because the crime is not committed before his eyes but is reported from elsewhere as something doubtful. Nor can a crime ever be so clear that there is no room for defense; and so the judge can be unmoved against one who may be found innocent, and when the crime has been exposed and come to light, he now uses not his own sentence but that of the laws.

It may be granted that he does what he does without anger, for he has something to follow. But we, certainly, when wrong is done at home by our own people, whether we see it or perceive it, must be indignant; for the very sight of sin is unworthy.

For one who is not moved at all either approves the offenses, which is more shameful and unjust, or avoids the trouble of chastising, which a calm spirit and tranquil mind spurn and refuse unless anger has spurred and roused them. And one who is moved, yet by untimely leniency pardons either more often than necessary or even always, plainly ruins the life of those whose audacity he nourishes for greater crimes, and supplies himself with endless material for trouble. The restraint of one's anger in the face of sins is, therefore, a fault.

Archytas of Tarentum is praised, who, when he found that everything on his farm had been ruined by the fault of his steward, said: “Wretch, I would have beaten you to death by now if I were not angry.”

They think this a unique example of self-control, but, led by authority, they do not see how foolishly he both spoke and acted. For if, as Plato says, no prudent man punishes because a sin has been committed, but so that it may not be committed, it is plain what a bad example the wise man set.

For if slaves perceive that their master is harsh when he is not angry and spares them when he is angry, they certainly will not sin lightly, lest they be beaten, but as gravely as they can, so as to rouse the temper of a perverse man and get off unpunished.

I would have praised him if, when he was angry, he had given his anger some time, so that, as the swelling of his mind subsided over an interval, the chastisement might have had measure.

Punishment, therefore, was not to be remitted because of the greatness of his anger, but deferred, lest it inflict on the wrongdoer more pain than was just, or on the one chastising, madness. But as it is, what equity or what wisdom is it that someone should be punished for a small offense and not punished for a very great one?

If he had learned the nature and causes of things, he would never have professed so ill-timed a self-restraint that a worthless slave could congratulate himself that his master had been angry with him.

For just as God furnished the human body with many and various senses necessary for the use of life, so he also gave the soul various emotions by which the conduct of life might be maintained: as he gave desire for the sake of producing offspring, so he gave anger for the sake of restraining offenses.

But those who do not know the limits of good and evil, just as they use desire for corruption and pleasure, so use the emotion of anger for doing harm, when they are angry with those they hate. So they are angry even with those who do no wrong, even with equals or even superiors. Hence people rush daily into monstrous crimes; hence tragedies often arise.

Archytas would, then, have been praiseworthy if, when angry with some fellow citizen and equal who had wronged him, he had nevertheless restrained himself and calmed the rush of fury with patience. Such self-restraint is glorious, by which some great impending evil is held back; but not to restrain the sins of slaves and children is itself a sin, for through impunity they will go on to greater evil. Here anger must not be restrained, but even, if it lies idle, roused.

And what we say of man, we say also of God, who made man like himself. I pass over speaking of the form of God, since the Stoics deny that God has any form, and a huge further subject would arise if I wished to refute them; I speak only of the mind.

If it belongs to God to think, to be wise, to understand, to foresee, and to excel, and of all animals man alone has these, then he was made in the likeness of God. But he goes forward into vice because, being mixed with earthly frailty, he cannot keep uncorrupted and pure what he received from God, unless he is instructed by the same God in the precepts of righteousness.

But since he is compacted, as we have said, of two things, soul and body, the virtues are held in the one and the vices in the other, and they fight against each other. For the goods of the soul, which consist in restraining desires, are contrary to the body; and the goods of the body, which consist in every kind of pleasure, are hostile to the soul.

But if the virtue of the soul has resisted the desires and subdued them, he will truly be like God. From this it appears that the soul of man, which receives divine virtue, is not mortal.

But the difference is this: since virtue has bitterness and pleasure has a sweet allure, very many are overcome and dragged away to sweetness. And these, because they have given themselves over to the body and to earthly things, are pressed down to the earth and cannot attain the grace of the divine gift, because they have defiled themselves with the stains of vices.

But those who, following God and obeying him, have despised the desires of the body and, preferring virtue to pleasures, have kept innocence and righteousness, these God recognizes as like himself.

Since, then, he has laid down a most holy law and wills all to be innocent and beneficent, can he fail to be angry when he sees his law despised, virtue cast off, and pleasure pursued?

And if he is the administrator of the world, as he ought to be, he certainly does not despise what is the very greatest thing in the whole world. If he is provident, as God must be, he certainly takes thought for the human race, so that our life may be richer, better, and safer. If he is the father and lord of all, he is certainly both delighted by the virtues of men and moved by their vices. Therefore he both loves the righteous and hates the impious.

“There is no need of hatred,” he says, “for he has decreed once for all a reward for the good and a punishment for the wicked.” But if someone lives righteously and innocently and yet neither worships God nor cares for him at all, like Aristides and Cimon and most of the philosophers, will it turn out without punishment for him that, though he obeyed God's law, he nevertheless despised God himself?

There is, then, something for which God can be angry, as with one who rebels against him through confidence in his own integrity. If he can be angry with this man because of pride, why not rather with the sinner, who has despised the law together with its giver?

A judge cannot pardon sins, because he serves another's will; but God can, because he himself is the arbiter and judge of his own law. When he laid it down, he certainly did not take away all power from himself, but has the freedom to pardon.

If he can pardon, then he can also be angry. “Why then,” someone will say, “are those who sin often happy, and those who live piously often wretched?” Because runaways and disowned sons also live freely, while those under the discipline of a father or master live more strictly and frugally.

For virtue is both proved and established through evils, vices through pleasure. Yet the sinner ought not to hope for perpetual impunity, because no happiness is perpetual, but, of course, “a man must always wait for his last day, and no one should be called happy before his death and final funeral,” as a not unpleasing poet says.

It is the end that proves happiness; and no one can escape the judgment of God, either living or dead. For he has the power both to cast down the living from the height and to inflict eternal torments on the dead.

“But,” he says, “if God is angry, he should have punished at once and punished each according to his desert.” But if he did so, no one would be left. For there is no one who does not sin, and there are many things that incite to sin: age, drunkenness, poverty, opportunity, reward.

So subject to sin is the frailty of the flesh with which we are clothed that, unless God spared this necessity, perhaps very few would live. For this reason he is most patient and restrains his anger. For because virtue is perfect in him, his patience also must be perfect, since it too is a virtue.

How many of the sinners have later become righteous, of the wicked good, of the dissolute self-controlled! How many, disgraceful in their youth and condemned by the judgment of all, afterwards nevertheless became praiseworthy! This certainly would not happen if punishment followed every sin.

Public laws condemn the manifestly guilty; but there are very many whose sins are concealed, very many who silence the informer with prayers or bribes, very many who evade the courts through favor or power.

And if the divine judgment condemned all those who escape human punishment, man would be rare on the earth, or even nonexistent.

In fact, that one cause alone could have been just for destroying the human race: that men, despising the living God, give divine honor to earthly and fragile figments as though they were heavenly, adoring works fashioned by human fingers.

And although God the craftsman raised them up, fashioned with lofty face and upright stance, to the contemplation of heaven and the knowledge of God, they preferred to bend themselves to the earth and creep on the ground like cattle.

For he is lowly and bent and prone who, turned away from the sight of heaven and of God the Father, venerates the earth, which he ought to tread underfoot, that is, things fashioned and formed from earth.

In the midst of such great impiety of men and such great sins, then, the patience of God achieves this: that men, condemning the errors of their former life, correct themselves. In fact many are good and righteous, and, having cast off earthly cults, acknowledge the majesty of the one God.

But although the patience of God is very great and very useful, yet, however late, he punishes the guilty and does not allow them to go further when he has seen that they are incorrigible.

One last question remains. For someone might say that God is so far from being angry that he even forbids man in his precepts to be angry.

I could say that man's anger had to be curbed because he is often angry unjustly and has an immediate impulse, since he is temporal.

And so, lest those things be done which the lowly, the middling, and great kings do through anger, his fury had to be moderated and suppressed, lest, out of his mind, he commit some inexpiable crime. But God is not angry for the moment, because he is eternal and of perfect virtue, and he is never angry except with cause. And yet this is not the whole of the matter.

For if he forbade anger altogether, he himself would in a way have found fault with his own workmanship, since in the beginning he had put anger in man, as it is believed that the cause of this commotion is contained in the fluid of the gall.

He does not, then, forbid anger entirely, because this emotion was given of necessity; but he forbids remaining in anger. For the anger of mortals ought to be mortal: for if it remains,

enmities are confirmed to everlasting ruin. Then again, when he commanded us to be angry but not to sin, he certainly did not tear anger out by the roots, but moderated it, so that in every chastisement we might keep measure and justice.

He, then, who bids us be angry is certainly angry himself; he who commands us to be appeased quickly is certainly himself placable: for he commands things that are just and useful to the common good.

But since I had said that the anger of God is not temporal, like man's, who boils with a sudden agitation and cannot easily govern himself because of frailty, we must understand that, since God is eternal, his anger too remains for ever; but again, since he is endowed with the greatest virtue, he has his anger in his power and is not ruled by it, but himself governs it as he wills: which certainly does not contradict what was said before.

For if his anger had been wholly immortal, there would be no place for satisfaction or favor after an offense, since he himself commands men to be reconciled before the setting of the sun; but the divine anger remains for ever against those who sin for ever.

And so God is appeased not by incense, not by a victim, not by precious gifts, all of which are corruptible, but by the amendment of one's ways; and whoever ceases to sin makes God's anger mortal. For this reason he does not punish every guilty person at once, so that man may have the opportunity to come to his senses and correct himself.

These are the things I had to say about the anger of God, dearest Donatus, so that you might know how to refute those who make God immovable.

It remains for us, in the manner of Cicero, to use an epilogue to conclude. As he did in the Tusculans when discussing death, so we in this work ought to bring forward divine testimonies which may be believed, so as to overcome the persuasion of those who, believing God to be without anger, dissolve all religion; without which, as we have shown, we become equal either to wild beasts in savagery or to cattle in stupidity. For in religion alone, that is, in the knowledge of the supreme God, is wisdom.

All the prophets, filled with the divine Spirit, speak of nothing else but the favor of God toward the righteous and his anger against the impious. Their testimonies are indeed enough for us; but since those who parade wisdom in their hair and dress do not believe them, they had to be refuted by us with reason and arguments too.

For things are done so backwards that they grant authority to human things over divine ones, when rather they ought to have granted it to divine things over human ones. Let us now indeed leave these aside, lest we both accomplish nothing with such people and the subject run on endlessly. Let us seek, then, those testimonies which they can either believe or at least not oppose.

Very many and very great authors have recorded that there were many Sibyls: among the Greeks Aristonicus and Apollodorus of Erythrae, among our own Varro and Fenestella. All these relate that the Erythraean was the chief and most famous beyond the rest.

Apollodorus indeed boasts of her as his fellow citizen and countrywoman; and Fenestella even reports that envoys were sent to Erythrae by the senate so that the songs of this Sibyl might be brought to Rome, and that the consuls Curio and Octavius saw to their being placed in the Capitol, which had then been restored under the care of Quintus Catulus.

In her are found verses of this kind about the supreme God and founder of things: “Imperishable Creator, eternal, dwelling in the ether, bringing forth for the good a far greater reward, but for the wicked and unjust rousing wrath and fury.”

Again, in another place, listing the crimes by which God is most provoked, she added: “Flee lawless worship; serve him who lives. Guard against adultery and indiscriminate bedding with a male. Rear your own offspring of children and do not murder them. For the Immortal will be angry with whoever sins.” He is indignant, therefore, against sinners.

But since, as I have shown, there are said by the most learned authors to have been several Sibyls, the testimony of one may not be enough to confirm the truth, as we intend.

The volumes of the Cumaean, in which the fates of the Romans are written, are kept secret. But the books of almost all the others are not forbidden from being in common use by all.

Of these, one, announcing the wrath of God upon all nations because of the impiety of men, began in this way: “As great wrath comes upon a disobedient world, I reveal the wrath of God to the last age, prophesying to all men city by city.”

Another also said that through the indignation of God against the unjust a flood had been made in an earlier age, so that the wickedness of the human race might be extinguished: “From the time when the heavenly God was wrathful with the cities themselves and with all men, the sea covered the earth when the flood burst forth.”

In a similar way she prophesied a burning to come afterwards, by which the impiety of men will again be destroyed: “And then you will know that God is no longer gentle, but heavy with wrath, and destroying the whole race of men together by a great conflagration.” Hence in Naso it is said of Jupiter thus:

“He remembers too that it is in the fates that a time will come when the sea, when the earth, and the palace of heaven, seized by fire, will burn, and the laboring mass of the world will be in distress.”

This must happen when the honor and worship of the supreme God has perished among men. Yet the same Sibyl, testifying that he is appeased by repentance for deeds done and by amendment of oneself, added this: “Ah, wretched mortals, change your ways, and do not drive the great God to all manner of wrath.” And likewise a little later: “He will not destroy, but will again cease his wrath, if all of you practice precious piety in your hearts.”

Then another Sibyl declares that the begetter of things heavenly and earthly must be loved, lest his indignation rise up to destroy men: “Lest the imperishable God, angered, destroy the whole race of men, their life and shameless tribe. One must love God the Begetter, wise and everlasting.”

From these it appears that the reasonings of the philosophers are empty, who think God free of anger, and among his other praises place that which is most useless, taking away from him what is most salutary to human affairs, by which majesty itself stands.

This earthly kingdom and rule is dissolved unless fear guards it. Take away anger from a king: not only will no one obey him, but he will even be cast down from his height. Indeed, take this emotion from any lowly person: who will not rob him? Who will not mock him? Who will not do him injury?

So he could have neither clothing nor seat nor food, while others plundered whatever he had; much less should we think that the majesty of the heavenly empire can subsist without anger and fear.

Apollo of Miletus, consulted about the religion of the Jews, included these words in his reply: “To God the King and Begetter before all things, before whom earth and heaven and sea tremble, and the recesses of Tartarus, and the demons shudder.”

If he is as gentle as the philosophers would have it, how is it that at his nod not only the demons and the ministers of so great a power, but even heaven and earth and all nature trembles? For if no one serves another unless compelled, then all rule rests on fear, and fear on anger. For if one is not moved against one who refuses to obey, he cannot compel him to obedience either.

Let each consult his own feelings, and he will at once understand that no one can be brought under authority without anger and chastisement. Where, then, there is no anger, there will be no authority either. But God has authority; therefore he must also have anger, on which authority rests.

Therefore let no one, led on by the empty talk of the philosophers, train himself to despise God, which is the greatest wickedness. We ought all both to love him, because he is Father, and to revere him, because he is Lord; to honor him, because he is beneficent, and to fear him, because he is severe: in him both persons are venerable. Who, with piety intact, would not love the parent of his soul? Or who could with impunity despise him who, as ruler of all things, has true and eternal power over all? If you consider the Father, he gives us our birth into the light we enjoy; through him we live, through him we have entered the lodging of this world. If you think of the Lord, he nourishes us with countless resources, he sustains us; in his house we dwell, we are his household. And though we are less obedient than was fitting, and less dutiful than the immortal merits of our Lord and parent demanded, yet it helps most toward obtaining pardon if we hold to his worship and knowledge, if, casting aside lowly and earthly things and goods alike, we meditate on things heavenly, divine, and eternal.

That we may be able to do this, God must be followed, God must be adored and loved, since in him is the substance of things, the principle of the virtues, and the fountain of goods. For what is greater than God in power, more perfect in reason, more brilliant in glory? Since he begot us for wisdom and brought us forth for righteousness, it is not right for man to forsake God, the giver of sense and life, and to be a slave to earthly and fragile things, or, clinging to the pursuit of temporal goods, to fall away from innocence and piety. Vicious and deadly pleasures do not make one happy, nor wealth, the provoker of lusts, nor empty ambition, nor fleeting honors, by which the human soul, ensnared and enslaved to the body, is condemned to eternal death; but innocence alone, righteousness alone, whose lawful and worthy reward is immortality, which God appointed from the beginning for holy and incorrupt minds that keep themselves whole and unviolated by vices and by every earthly stain. Of this heavenly and everlasting reward those cannot share who have polluted their conscience with frauds, robberies, and swindles, and who, by committing abominable and wicked injuries, have branded on themselves indelible stains.

Therefore all who wish rightly to be called wise, and men, ought to despise fragile things, trample on earthly things, look down on lowly things, so that they may be joined with God in a most blessed bond. Let impiety be taken away; let discords and turbulent and pestilent dissensions be laid to rest, by which the divine union of human society and the common covenant is broken, severed, and scattered. As far as we can, let us strive to be good and beneficent; if we have any wealth, any abundance of resources, let it be shared not for the pleasure of one but for the welfare of many. For pleasure is as mortal as the body it serves; but righteousness and beneficence are as immortal as the mind and soul, which by good works attain likeness to God. Let God be consecrated for us not in temples but in our heart: all things made by hand are destructible. Let us cleanse this temple, which is soiled not by smoke or dust but by evil thoughts, which is lit not by burning tapers but by the brightness of God and the light of wisdom. If we always believe that God is present in it, to whose divinity the secrets of the mind lie open, we shall so live that we shall always have him gracious and never need to fear him angry.