Chapter XLVII.

Unless I am utterly mistaken, there is nothing so old as the truth; and the already proved antiquity of the divine writings is so far of use to me, that it leads men more easily to take it in that they are the treasure-source whence all later wisdom has been taken. And were it not necessary to keep my work to a moderate size, I might launch forth also into the proof of this. What poet or sophist has not drunk at the fountain of the prophets? Thence, accordingly, the philosophers watered their arid minds, so that it is the things they have from us which bring us into comparison with them. For this reason, I imagine, philosophy was banished by certain states—I mean by the Thebans, by the Spartans also, and the Argives—its disciples sought to imitate our doctrines; and ambitious, as I have said, of glory and eloquence alone, if they fell upon anything in the collection of sacred Scriptures which displeased them, in their own peculiar style of research, they perverted it to serve their purpose: for they had no adequate faith in their divinity to keep them from changing them, nor had they any sufficient understanding of them, either, as being still at the time under veil—even obscure to the Jews themselves, whose peculiar possession they seemed to be. For so, too, if the truth was distinguished by its simplicity, the more on that account the fastidiousness of man, too proud to believe, set to altering it; so that even what they found certain they made uncertain by their admixtures.  Finding a simple revelation of God, they proceeded to dispute about Him, not as He had revealed to them, but turned aside to debate about His properties, His nature, His abode. Some assert Him to be incorporeal; others maintain He has a body,—the Platonists teaching the one doctrine, and the Stoics the other.  Some think that He is composed of atoms, others of numbers: such are the different views of Epicurus and Pythagoras. One thinks He is made of fire; so it appeared to Heraclitus. The Platonists, again, hold that He administers the affairs of the world; the Epicureans, on the contrary, that He is idle and inactive, and, so to speak, a nobody in human things. Then the Stoics represent Him as placed outside the world, and whirling round this huge mass from without like a potter; while the Platonists place Him within the world, as a pilot is in the ship he steers. So, in like manner, they differ in their views about the world itself, whether it is created or uncreated, whether it is destined to pass away or to remain for ever. So again it is debated concerning the nature of the soul, which some contend is divine and eternal, while others hold that it is dissoluble. According to each one’s fancy, He has introduced either something new, or refashioned the old. Nor need we wonder if the speculations of philosophers have perverted the older Scriptures. Some of their brood, with their opinions, have even adulterated our new-given Christian revelation, and corrupted it into a system of philosophic doctrines, and from the one path have struck off many and inexplicable by-roads.68    [See Irenæus, vol. i. p. 377 this Series.] And I have alluded to this, lest any one becoming acquainted with the variety of parties among us, this might seem to him to put us on a level with the philosophers, and he might condemn the truth from the different ways in which it is defended. But we at once put in a plea in bar against these tainters of our purity, asserting that this is the rule of truth which comes down from Christ by transmission through His companions, to whom we shall prove that those devisers of different doctrines are all posterior. Everything opposed to the truth has been got up from the truth itself, the spirits of error carrying on this system of opposition. By them all corruptions of wholesome discipline have been secretly instigated; by them, too, certain fables have been introduced, that, by their resemblance to the truth, they might impair its credibility, or vindicate their own higher claims to faith; so that people might think Christians unworthy of credit because the poets or philosophers are so, or might regard the poets and philosophers as worthier of confidence from their not being followers of Christ. Accordingly, we get ourselves laughed at for proclaiming that God will one day judge the world. For, like us, the poets and philosophers set up a judgment-seat in the realms below.  And if we threaten Gehenna, which is a reservoir of secret fire under the earth for purposes of punishment, we have in the same way derision heaped on us. For so, too, they have their Pyriphlegethon, a river of flame in the regions of the dead. And if we speak of Paradise,69    [Elucidation X.] the place of heavenly bliss appointed to receive the spirits of the saints, severed from the knowledge of this world by that fiery zone as by a sort of enclosure, the Elysian plains have taken possession of their faith. Whence is it, I pray you have all this, so like us, in the poets and philosophers?  The reason simply is, that they have been taken from our religion. But if they are taken from our sacred things, as being of earlier date, then ours are the truer, and have higher claims upon belief, since even their imitations find faith among you. If they maintain their sacred mysteries to have sprung from their own minds, in that case ours will be reflections of what are later than themselves, which by the nature of things is impossible, for never does the shadow precede the body which casts it, or the image the reality.70    True, in the sense that a shadow cannot be projected by a body not yet existent.

CAPUT XLVII.

0515A

47. Adhuc enim mihi proficit antiquitas praestructa divinae litteraturae , quo facile credatur thesaurum eam fuisse posteriori cuique sapientiae. Et si non onus jam voluminis temperarem, etiam excurrerem 0515B in hanc quoque probationem. Quis poetarum, quis sophistarum, qui non de prophetarum fonte 0516A potaverit? Inde igitur philosophi sitim ingenii sui rigaverunt; nam quia quaedam de nostris habent, ea propter nos comparant illis . Inde, opinor, et a quibusdam philosophia legibus quoque ejecta est, a Thebanis dico , a Spartiatis et Argivis. Dum ad nostra conantur et homines gloriae , ut diximus, et eloquentiae solius libidinosi, si quid in sanctis offenderunt digestis, exinde regestum pro instituto curiositatis ad propria verterunt , neque satis credentes divina esse, quo minus interpolarent, neque satis intelligentes, ut adhuc tunc subnubila , etiam ipsis Judaeis obumbrata, quorum propria videbantur. Nam et si qua simplicitas erat veritatis, eo magis scrupulositas humana fidem aspernata nutabat , per quod in incertum miscuerunt etiam 0516B quod invenerant certum. Inventum enim solummodo Deum non ut invenerant disputaverunt, ut de 0517A qualitate et de natura ejus et de sede disceptent , Alii incorporalem asseverant, alii corporalem , qua platonici, qua et stoici ; alii ex atomis, alii ex numeris qua Epicurus et Pythagoras, alii ex igne, qua Heraclito visum est; et Platonici quidem curantem rerum; contra Epicurei otiosum et inexercitum , 0518A et ut ita dixerim, neminem humanis rebus ; positum vero extra mundum Stoici, qui figuli modo extrinsecus torqueat molem hanc, intra mundum Platonici, qui gubernatoris exemplo, intra illud maneat, quod regat. Si et de ipso mundo natus innatusve sit, decessurus mansurusve sit variant ; 0519A sic et de animae statu, quam alii divinam et aeternam, alii dissolubilem contendunt: ut quis sensit, ita et intulit aut reformavit. Nec mirum, si vetus instrumentum ingenia pbilosophorum interverterunt. Ex horum semine et nostram hanc novitiolam paraturam viri quidam suis opinionibus ad philosophicas sententias adulteraverunt, et de una via obliquos multos tramites et inexplicabiles sciderunt. Quod ideo suggesserim, ne cui nota varietas sectae hujus in hoc quoque nos philosophis adaequare videatur, et ex varietate defensionum indicet veritatem . Expedite autem praescribimus adulteris nostris illam esse regulam veritatis, quae veniat a Christo, transmissa per comites ipsius, quibus aliquanto posteriores diversi isti commentatores probabuntur. Omnia adversus 0519B veritatem de ipsa veritate constructa sunt, operantibus aemulationem istam spiritibus erroris. Ab his adulteria hujusmodi salutaris disciplinae subornata ; ab his quaedam etiam fabulae immissae, quae de similitudine fidem infirmarent veritatis, vel eam sibi potius evincerent , ut quis ideo non putet Christianis credendum, quia nec poetis, nec philosophis, vel ideo magis Poetis et Philosophis existimet credendum, quia non christianis. Itaque et ridemur Deum praedicantes judicaturum. Sic enim et 0520A poetae et philosophi tribunal apud inferos ponunt. Si gehennam comminemur, quae est ignis arcani subterraneus ad poenam thesaurus, proinde decachinnamur. Sic enim et Pyriphlegethon apud mortuos amnis est. Et si paradisum nominemus , locum divinae amoenitatis recipiendis sanctorum spiritibus destinatum, maceria quadam igneae illius zonae a notitia orbis communis segregatum, Elysii campi fidem occupaverunt. Unde haec, oro vos, philosophis aut poetis tam consimilia? non nisi de nostris sacramentis: si de nostris sacramentis, ut de prioribus, ergo fideliora sunt nostra, magisque credenda, quorum imagines quoque fidem inveniunt; si de suis sensibus, jam ergo sacramenta nostra imagines posteriorum habebuntur, quod rerum, forma non sustinet; nunquam 0520B enim corpus umbra aut veritatem imago praecedit.