The City of God, Volume I by Saint of Hippo Augustine
24. _How Hermes openly confessed the error of his forefathers, the
1816 words | Chapter 241
coming destruction of which he nevertheless bewailed._
After a long interval, Hermes again comes back to the subject of
the gods which men have made, saying as follows: "But enough on
this subject. Let us return to man and to reason, that divine gift
on account of which man has been called a rational animal. For the
things which have been said concerning man, wonderful though they
are, are less wonderful than those which have been said concerning
reason. For man to discover the divine nature, and to make it,
surpasses the wonder of all other wonderful things. Because,
therefore, our forefathers erred very far with respect to the
knowledge of the gods, through incredulity and through want of
attention to their worship and service, they invented this art of
making gods; and this art once invented, they associated with it a
suitable virtue borrowed from universal nature, and, being incapable
of making souls, they evoked those of demons or of angels, and united
them with these holy images and divine mysteries, in order that
through these souls the images might have power to do good or harm to
men." I know not whether the demons themselves could have been made,
even by adjuration, to confess as he has confessed in these words:
"Because our forefathers erred very far with respect to the knowledge
of the gods, through incredulity and through want of attention to
their worship and service, they invented the art of making gods."
Does he say that it was a moderate degree of error which resulted
in their discovery of the art of making gods, or was he content to
say "they erred?" No; he must needs add "very far," and say, "_They
erred very far._" It was this great error and incredulity, then,
of their forefathers who did not attend to the worship and service
of the gods, which was the origin of the art of making gods. And
yet this wise man grieves over the ruin of this art at some future
time, as if it were a divine religion. Is he not verily compelled by
divine influence, on the one hand, to reveal the past error of his
forefathers, and by a diabolical influence, on the other hand, to
bewail the future punishment of demons? For if their forefathers, by
erring very far with respect to the knowledge of the gods, through
incredulity and aversion of mind from their worship and service,
invented the art of making gods, what wonder is it that all that is
done by this detestable art, which is opposed to the divine religion,
should be taken away by that religion, when truth corrects error,
faith refutes incredulity, and conversion rectifies aversion?
For if he had only said, without mentioning the cause, that his
forefathers had discovered the art of making gods, it would have
been our duty, if we paid any regard to what is right and pious, to
consider and to see that they could never have attained to this art
if they had not erred from the truth, if they had believed those
things which are worthy of God, if they had attended to divine
worship and service. However, if we alone should say that the causes
of this art were to be found in the great error and incredulity of
men, and aversion of the mind erring from and unfaithful to divine
religion, the impudence of those who resist the truth were in some
way to be borne with; but when he who admires in man, above all other
things, this power which it has been granted him to practise, and
sorrows because a time is coming when all those figments of gods
invented by men shall even be commanded by the laws to be taken
away,--when even this man confesses nevertheless, and explains the
causes which led to the discovery of this art, saying that their
ancestors, through great error and incredulity, and through not
attending to the worship and service of the gods, invented this art
of making gods,--what ought we to say, or rather to do, but to give
to the Lord our God all the thanks we are able, because He has taken
away those things by causes the contrary of those which led to their
institution? For that which the prevalence of error instituted, the
way of truth took away; that which incredulity instituted, faith took
away; that which aversion from divine worship and service instituted,
conversion to the one true and holy God took away. Nor was this the
case only in Egypt, for which country alone the spirit of the demons
lamented in Hermes, but in all the earth, which sings to the Lord a
new song,[322] as the truly holy and truly prophetic Scriptures have
predicted, in which it is written, "Sing unto the Lord a new song;
sing unto the Lord, all the earth." For the title of this psalm is,
"When the house was built after the captivity." For a house is being
built to the Lord in all the earth, even the city of God, which is
the holy Church, after that captivity in which demons held captive
those men who, through faith in God, became living stones in the
house. For although man made gods, it did not follow that he who made
them was not held captive by them, when, by worshipping them, he was
drawn into fellowship with them,--into the fellowship not of stolid
idols, but of cunning demons; for what are idols but what they are
represented to be in the same Scriptures, "They have eyes, but they
do not see,"[323] and, though artistically fashioned, are still
without life and sensation? But unclean spirits, associated through
that wicked art with these same idols, have miserably taken captive
the souls of their worshippers, by bringing them down into fellowship
with themselves. Whence the apostle says, "We know that an idol is
nothing, but those things which the Gentiles sacrifice they sacrifice
to demons, and not to God; and I would not ye should have fellowship
with demons."[324] After this captivity, therefore, in which men were
held by malign demons, the house of God is being built in all the
earth; whence the title of that psalm in which it is said, "Sing unto
the Lord a new song; sing unto the Lord, all the earth. Sing unto the
Lord, bless His name; declare well His salvation from day to day.
Declare His glory among the nations, among all people His wonderful
things. For great is the Lord, and much to be praised: He is terrible
above all gods. For all the gods of the nations are demons: but the
Lord made the heavens."[325]
Wherefore he who sorrowed because a time was coming when the worship
of idols should be abolished, and the domination of the demons over
those who worshipped them, wished, under the influence of a demon,
that that captivity should always continue, at the cessation of which
that psalm celebrates the building of the house of the Lord in all
the earth. Hermes foretold these things with grief, the prophet with
joyfulness; and because the Spirit is victorious who sang these things
through the ancient prophets, even Hermes himself was compelled in a
wonderful manner to confess, that those very things which he wished not
to be removed, and at the prospect of whose removal he was sorrowful,
had been instituted, not by prudent, faithful, and religious, but by
erring and unbelieving men, averse to the worship and service of the
gods. And although he calls them gods, nevertheless, when he says
that they were made by such men as we certainly ought not to be, he
shows, whether he will or not, that they are not to be worshipped by
those who do not resemble these image-makers, that is, by prudent,
faithful, and religious men, at the same time also making it manifest
that the very men who made them involved themselves in the worship
of those as gods who were not gods. For true is the saying of the
prophet, "If a man _make_ gods, lo, they are no gods."[326] Such gods,
therefore, acknowledged by such worshippers and made by such men,
did Hermes call "gods made by men," that is to say, demons, through
some art of I know not what description, bound by the chains of their
own lusts to images. But, nevertheless, he did not agree with that
opinion of the Platonic Apuleius, of which we have already shown the
incongruity and absurdity, namely, that they were interpreters and
intercessors between the gods whom God made, and men whom the same
God made, bringing to God the prayers of men, and from God the gifts
given in answer to these prayers. For it is exceedingly stupid to
believe that gods whom men have made have more influence with gods
whom God has made than men themselves have, whom the very same God has
made. And consider, too, that it is a demon which, bound by a man to
an image by means of an impious art, has been made a god, but a god
to such a man only, not to every man. What kind of god, therefore, is
that which no man would make but one erring, incredulous, and averse
to the true God? Moreover, if the demons which are worshipped in the
temples, being introduced by some kind of strange art into images, that
is, into visible representations of themselves, by those men who by
this art made gods when they were straying away from, and were averse
to the worship and service of the gods,--if, I say, those demons are
neither mediators nor interpreters between men and the gods, both on
account of their own most wicked and base manners, and because men,
though erring, incredulous, and averse from the worship and service of
the gods, are nevertheless beyond doubt better than the demons whom
they themselves have evoked, then it remains to be affirmed that what
power they possess they possess as demons, doing harm by bestowing
pretended benefits,--harm all the greater for the deception,--or else
openly and undisguisedly doing evil to men. They cannot, however, do
anything of this kind unless where they are permitted by the deep and
secret providence of God, and then only so far as they are permitted.
When, however, they are permitted, it is not because they, being
midway between men and the gods, have through the friendship of the
gods great power over men; for these demons cannot possibly be friends
to the good gods who dwell in the holy and heavenly habitation, by
whom we mean holy angels and rational creatures, whether thrones, or
dominations, or principalities, or powers, from whom they are as far
separated in disposition and character as vice is distant from virtue,
wickedness from goodness.
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