No More Learning

But all habitude is produced through
imitation and similitude. Hence temples imitate the
heavens, but altars,. . .

{66}

one should fancy that these ought never to be corrupted, because they
were once called the images of the gods, such a one appears to me to
be perfectly void of intellect. For if this were admitted, it is also
requisite that they should not be made by men. That, however, which
is produced by a wise and good man may be corrupted by a depraved and
ignorant man. But the gods which circularly revolve about the heavens,
and which are living statues, fashioned by the gods themselves as
resemblances of their unapparent essence,--these remain for ever. No
one, therefore, should disbelieve in the gods, in consequence of seeing
and hearing that some persons have behaved insolently towards statues
and temples. For have there not been many who have destroyed good men,
such as Socrates and Dion, and the great Empedotimus? And who, I well
know, have, more than statues or temples, been taken care of by the
gods. See, however, that the gods, knowing the body of these to

. . . the earth; statues resemble life, and on this account
they are similar to animals.
Prayers imitate that which is
intellectual; but characters, superior ineffable powers.
Herbs and stones resemble matter; and animals which are
sacrificed, the irrational life of our souls. But, from all
these, nothing happens to the gods beyond what they already
possess; for what accession can be made to a divine nature?
But a conjunction with our souls and the gods is by these
means produced.

{67}

be corruptible, have granted that it should yield and be subservient
to nature, but afterwards have punished those by whom it was destroyed;
which clearly happened to be the case with all the sacrilegious of our
time.

"Let no one, therefore, deceive us by words, nor disturb us with
respect to providential interference. For as to the prophets of the
Jews, who reproach us with things of this kind, what will they say of
their own temple, which has been thrice destroyed, but has not been
since, even to the present time, rebuilt? I do not, however, say this as
reproaching them; for I have thought of rebuilding it, after so long
a period, in honour of the divinity who is invoked in it. But I have
mentioned this, being willing to show, that it is not possible for any
thing human to be incorruptible; and that the prophets who wrote things
of this kind were delirious, and the associates of stupid old women.
Nothing, however, hinders, I think, but that God may be great, and yet
he may not have worthy interpreters [of his will]. But this is because
they have not delivered their soul to be purified by the liberal
disciplines; nor their eyes, which are profoundly closed, to be opened;
nor the darkness which oppresses them to be purged away. Hence, like men
who survey a great light through thick darkness,

{68}

neither see purely nor genuinely, and in consequence of this do not
conceive it to be a pure light, but a fire, and likewise perceiving
nothing of all that surrounds it, they loudly exclaim, _Be seized with
horror, be afraid, fire, flame, death, a knife, a two-edged sword_;
expressing by many names the one noxious power of fire. Of these men,
however, it is better peculiarly to observe how much inferior their
teachers of the words of God are to our poets. "


AN EDICT, FORBIDDING THE CHRISTIANS TO TEACH THE LIFE-RATURE OF THE
HEATHENS.

"We are of opinion that proper erudition consists not in words, nor
in elegant and magnificent language, but in the sane disposition of an
intelligent soul, and in true opinions of good and evil, and of what is
beautiful and base. Whoever, therefore, thinks one thing, and teaches
another to his followers, appears to be no less destitute of erudition
than he is of virtue.