The Octavius of Minucius Felix.

 The Octavius of Minucius Felix.

 Chapter II.—Argument:  The Arrival of Octavius at Rome During the Time of the Public Holidays Was Very Agreeable to Minucius.  Both of Them Were Desir

 Chapter III.—Argument:  Octavius, Displeased at the Act of This Superstitious Man, Sharply Reproaches Minucius, on the Ground that the Disgrace of Thi

 Chapter IV.—Argument:  Cæcilius, Somewhat Grieved at This Kind of Rebuke Which for His Sake Minucius Had Had to Bear from Octavius, Begs to Argue with

 Chapter V.—Argument:  Cæcilius Begins His Argument First of All by Reminding Them that in Human Affairs All Things are Doubtful and Uncertain, and tha

 Chapter VI.—Argument:  The Object of All Nations, and Especially of the Romans, in Worshipping Their Divinities, Has Been to Attain for Their Worship

 Chapter VII.—Argument:  That the Roman Auspices and Auguries Have Been Neglected with Ill Consequences, But Have Been Observed with Good Fortune.

 Chapter VIII.—Argument:  The Impious Temerity of Theodorus, Diagoras, and Protagoras is Not at All to Be Acquiesced In, Who Wished Either Altogether t

 Chapter IX.—Argument:  The Religion of the Christians is Foolish, Inasmuch as They Worship a Crucified Man, and Even the Instrument Itself of His Puni

 Chapter X.—Argument:  Whatever the Christians Worship, They Strive in Every Way to Conceal:  They Have No Altars, No Temples, No Acknowledged Images. 

 Chapter XI.—Argument:  Besides Asserting the Future Conflagration of the Whole World, They Promise Afterwards the Resurrection of Our Bodies:  and to

 Chapter XII.—Argument:  Moreover, What Will Happen to the Christians Themselves After Death, May Be Anticipated from the Fact that Even Now They are D

 Chapter XIII.—Argument:  Cæcilius at Length Concludes that the New Religion is to Be Repudiated And that We Must Not Rashly Pronounce Upon Doubtful M

 Chapter XIV.—Argument:  With Something of the Pride of Self-Satisfaction, Cæcilius Urges Octavius to Reply to His Arguments And Minucius with Modesty

 Chapter XV.—Argument:  Cæcilius Retorts Upon Minucius, with Some Little Appearance of Being Hurt, that He is Foregoing the Office of a Religious Umpir

 Chapter XVI.—Argument:  Octavius Arranges His Reply, and Trusts that He Shall Be Able to Dilute the Bitterness of Reproach with the River of Truthful

 Chapter XVII.—Argument:  Man Ought Indeed to Know Himself, But This Knowledge Cannot Be Attained by Him Unless He First of All Acknowledges the Entire

 Chapter XVIII.—Argument:  Moreover, God Not Only Takes Care of the Universal World, But of Its Individual Parts.  That by the Decree of the One God Al

 Chapter XIX.—Argument:  Moreover, the Poets Have Called Him the Parent of Gods and Men, the Creator of All Things, and Their Mind and Spirit.  And, Be

 Chapter XX.—Argument:  But If the World is Ruled by Providence and Governed by the Will of One God, an Ignorant Antipathy Ought Not to Carry Us Away i

 Chapter XXI.—Argument:  Octavius Attests the Fact that Men Were Adopted as Gods, by the Testimony of Euhemerus, Prodicus, Persæus, and Alexander the G

 Chapter XXII.—Argument:  Moreover, These Fables, Which at First Were Invented by Ignorant Men, Were Afterwards Celebrated by Others, and Chiefly by Po

 Chapter XXIII.—Argument:  Although the Heathens Acknowledge Their Kings to Be Mortal, Yet They Feign that They are Gods Even Against Their Own Will, N

 Chapter XXIV.—Argument:  He Briefly Shows, Moreover, What Ridiculous, Obscene, and Cruel Rites Were Observed in Celebrating the Mysteries of Certain G

 Chapter XXV.—Argument:  Then He Shows that Cæcilius Had Been Wrong in Asserting that the Romans Had Gained Their Power Over the Whole World by Means o

 Chapter XXVI.—Argument:  The Weapon that Cæcilius Had Slightly Brandished Against Him, Taken from the Auspices and Auguries of Birds, Octavius Retorts

 Chapter XXVII.—Argument:  Recapitulation.  Doubtless Here is a Source of Error:  Demons Lurk Under the Statues and Images, They Haunt the Fanes, They

 Chapter XXVIII.—Argument:  Nor is It Only Hatred that They Arouse Against the Christians, But They Charge Against Them Horrid Crimes, Which Up to This

 Chapter XXIX.—Argument:  Nor is It More True that a Man Fastened to a Cross on Account of His Crimes is Worshipped by Christians, for They Believe Not

 Chapter XXX.—Argument:  The Story About Christians Drinking the Blood of an Infant that They Have Murdered, is a Barefaced Calumny.  But the Gentiles,

 Chapter XXXI.—Argument:  The Charge of Our Entertainments Being Polluted with Incest, is Entirely Opposed to All Probability, While It is Plain that G

 Chapter XXXII.—Argument:  Nor Can It Be Said that the Christians Conceal What They Worship Because They Have No Temples and No Altars, Inasmuch as The

 Chapter XXXIII.—Argument:  That Even If God Be Said to Have Nothing Availed the Jews, Certainly the Writers of the Jewish Annals are the Most Sufficie

 Chapter XXXIV.—Argument:  Moreover, It is Not at All to Be Wondered at If This World is to Be Consumed by Fire, Since Everything Which Has a Beginning

 Chapter XXXV.—Argument:  Righteous and Pious Men Shall Be Rewarded with Never-Ending Felicity, But Unrighteous Men Shall Be Visited with Eternal Punis

 Chapter XXXVI.—Argument:  Fate is Nothing, Except So Far as Fate is God.  Man’s Mind is Free, and Therefore So is His Action:  His Birth is Not Brough

 Chapter XXXVII.—Argument:  Tortures Most Unjustly Inflicted for the Confession of Christ’s Name are Spectacles Worthy of God.  A Comparison Instituted

 Chapter XXXVIII.—Argument:  Christians Abstain from Things Connected with Idol Sacrifices, Lest Any One Should Think Either that They Yield to Demons,

 Chapter XXXIX.—Argument:  When Octavius Had Finished This Address, Minucius and Cæcilius Sate for Some Time in Attentive and Silent Wonder.  And Minuc

 Chapter XL.—Argument:  Then Cæcilius Exclaims that He is Vanquished by Octavius And That, Being Now Conqueror Over Error, He Professes the Christian

 Chapter XLI.—Argument:  Finally, All are Pleased, and Joyfully Depart:  Cæcilius, that He Had Believed Octavius, that He Had Conquered And Minucius,

Chapter XIX.—Argument:  Moreover, the Poets Have Called Him the Parent of Gods and Men, the Creator of All Things, and Their Mind and Spirit.  And, Besides, Even the More Excellent Philosophers Have Come Almost to the Same Conclusion as the Christians About the Unity of God.

“I hear the poets also announcing ‘the One Father of gods and men;’ and that such is the mind of mortal men as the Parent of all has appointed His day.56    Homer, Odyss., xviii. 136, 137.  What says the Mantuan Maro?  Is it not even more plain, more apposite, more true?  ‘In the beginning,’ says he, ‘the spirit within nourishes, and the mind infused stirs the heaven and the earth,’ and the other members ‘of the world.  Thence arises the race of men and of cattle,’57    Virgil, Æneid, vi. 724. and every other kind of animal.  The same poet in another place calls that mind and spirit God.  For these are his words:58    Some read, “For these things are true.”  ‘For that God pervades all the lands, and the tracts of the sea, and the profound heaven, from whom are men and cattle; from whom are rain and fire.’59    Virgil, Georgics, iv. 221; Æneid, i. 743.  What else also is God announced to be by us, but mind, and reason, and spirit?  Let us review, if it is agreeable, the teaching of philosophers.  Although in varied kinds of discourse, yet in these matters you will find them concur and agree in this one opinion.  I pass over those untrained and ancient ones who deserved to be called wise men for their sayings.  Let Thales the Milesian be the first of all, for he first of all disputed about heavenly things.  That same Thales the Milesian said that water was the beginning of things, but that God was that mind which from water formed all things.  Ah! a higher and nobler account of water and spirit than to have ever been discovered by man.  It was delivered to him by God.  You see that the opinion of this original philosopher absolutely agrees with ours.  Afterwards Anaximenes, and then Diogenes of Apollonia, decide that the air, infinite and unmeasured, is God.  The agreement of these also as to the Divinity is like ours.  But the description of Anaxagoras also is, that God is said to be the motion of an infinite mind; and the God of Pythagoras is the soul passing to and fro and intent, throughout the universal nature of things, from whom also the life of all animals is received.  It is a known fact, that Xenophanes delivered that God was all infinity with a mind; and Antisthenes, that there are many gods of the people, but that one God of Nature was the chief of all; that Xeuxippus60    Otherwise, “Speusippus.” acknowledged as God a natural animal force whereby all things are governed.  What says Democritus?  Although the first discoverer of atoms, does not he especially speak of nature, which is the basis of forms, and intelligence, as God?  Strato also himself says that God is nature.  Moreover, Epicurus, the man who feigns either otiose gods or none at all, still places above all, Nature.  Aristotle varies, but nevertheless assigns a unity of power:  for at one time he says that Mind, at another the World, is God; at another time he sets God above the world.61    The ms. here inserts, “Aristoteles of Pontus varies, at one time attributing the supremacy to the world, at another to the divine mind.”  Some think that this is an interpolation, others transfer the words to Theophrastus below.  Heraclides of Pontus also ascribes, although in various ways, a divine mind to God.  Theophrastus, and Zeno, and Chrysippus, and Cleanthes are indeed themselves of many forms of opinion but they are all brought back to the one fact of the unity of providence.  For Cleanthes discoursed of God as of a mind, now of a soul, now of air, but for the most part of reason.  Zeno, his master, will have the law of nature and of God, and sometimes the air, and sometimes reason, to be the beginning of all things.  Moreover, by interpreting Juno to be the air, Jupiter the heaven, Neptune the sea, Vulcan to be fire, and in like manner by showing the other gods of the common people to be elements, he forcibly denounces and overcomes the public error.  Chrysippus says almost the same.  He believes that a divine force, a rational nature, and sometimes the world, and a fatal necessity, is God; and he follows the example of Zeno in his physiological interpretation of the poems of Hesiod, of Homer, and of Orpheus.  Moreover, the teaching of Diogenes of Babylon is that of expounding and arguing that the birth of Jupiter, and the origin of Minerva, and this kind, are names for other things, not for gods.  For Xenophon the Socratic says that the form of the true God cannot be seen, and therefore ought not to be inquired after.  Aristo the Stoic62    Otherwise, “Aristo the Chian.” says that He cannot at all be comprehended.  And both of them were sensible of the majesty of God, while they despaired of understanding Him.  Plato has a clearer discourse about God, both in the matters themselves and in the names by which he expresses them; and his discourse would be altogether heavenly, if it were not occasionally fouled by a mixture of merely civil belief.  Therefore in his Timæus Plato’s God is by His very name the parent of the world, the artificer of the soul, the fabricator of heavenly and earthly things, whom both to discover he declares is difficult, on account of His excessive and incredible power; and when you have discovered Him, impossible to speak of in public.  The same almost are the opinions also which are ours.  For we both know and speak of a God who is parent of all, and never speak of Him in public unless we are interrogated.63    [See note on Plato, chap. xxvi.]

CAPUT XIX.

ARGUMENTUM.---Praeterea poetae illum divum hominumque Parentem, omnium rerum creatorem, mentem et spiritum appellarunt. Quin et ipsimet praestantiores philosophi eadem fere ac Christiani de Deo uno sensere.

Quid Mantuanus Maro? nonne apertius, proximius, verius? «Principio, ait, coelum et terras,» et caetera mundi membra «spiritus intus alit, et infusa mens agitat. Inde hominum pecudumque genus» et quidquid 0292B aliud animalium. Idem alio loco, mentem istam et spiritum, Deum nominat; haec enim vera [impr. verba] sunt: 0293A Deum namque ire per omnes Terrasque tractusque maris coelumque profundum. Unde homines, et pecudes, unde imber et ignis.Quid aliud et a nobis Deus, quam mens et ratio et spiritus praedicatur? Recenseamus, si placet, disciplinas philosophorum, deprehendes eos, etsi sermonibus variis, ipsis tamen rebus in hanc unam coire et conspirare sententiam. (XII) Omitto illos rudes et veteres qui de suis dictis sapientes esse meruerunt. Sit Thales Milesius omnium primus, qui primus omnium de coelestibus disputavit. Is Milesius Thales rerum initium aquam dixit; Deum autem eam mentem quae ex aqua cuncta formaverit. Eho! altior et sublimior aquae et spiritus ratio, quam ab homine potuerit inveniri; a Deo traditum. Vides Philosophi principalis 0294A nobiscum penitus opinionem consonare. Anaximenes deinceps, et post Apolloniates Diogenes, aera Deum statuunt, infinitum et immensum. Horum quoque similis de divinitate consensio est. Anaxagorae vero descriptio et motus infinitae mentis Deus dicitur. Et Pythagorae Deus est animus, per universam rerum naturam commeans et intentus: ex quo etiam animalium omnium vita capiatur. Xenophanem notum est omne infinitum cum mente Deum tradere; et Antisthenem, populares deos multos, sed naturalem unum praecipuum; Zeuxippum [imp. Spensippum], vim naturalem, animalem, qua omnia regantur, Deum nosse. Quid Democritus? quamvis atomorum primus inventor, nonne plerumque naturam, quae imagines 0295A fundat, et intelligentiam, Deum loquitur? Straton quoque et ipse naturam: etiam Epicurus ille qui deos aut otiosos fingit aut nullos, naturam tamen superponit. Aristoteles variat, et adsignat tamen unam potestatem. Nam interim mentem, mundum interim Deum dicit, interim mundo Deum praeficit. Aristoteles Ponticus variat, alias mundo, alias menti divinae tribuens principatum. Heraclides Ponticus quoque Deo divinam mentem, quamvis varie, adscribit. Theophrastus, et Zenon, et Chrysippus, et Cleanthes, sunt et ipsi multiformes; sed ad unitatem providentiae omnes revolvuntur. Cleanthes enim mentem, modo animum, modo aethera, plerumque rationem Deum disseruit. Zenon, ejusdem magister, naturalem legem atque divinam, et aethera interim, 0295B interdumque rationem, vult omnium esse principium. Item interpretando Junonem aera, Jovem coelum, Neptunum mare, ignem esse Vulcanum, et caeteros similiter vulgi deos elementa esse monstrando, publicum arguit graviter et revincit errorem. Eadem 0296A fere Chrysippus, vim divinam, rationalem naturam, et mundum interim, et fatalem necessitatem Deum credit, Zenonemque interpretatione physiologiae in Hesiodi, Homeri Orpheique carminibus imitatur. (XIII) Babylonio etiam Diogeni disciplina est exponendi et disserendi Jovis partum et ortum Minervae, et hoc genus caeterarum rerum vocabula esse, non deorum. (XIV) Nam Socraticus Xenophon formam Dei veri negat videri posse, et ideo quaeri non oportere. Aristo Stoicus [impr. Chius], comprehendi omnino non posse. Uterque majestatem Dei, intelligendi desperatione; senserunt. Platoni apertior de Deo et rebus ipsis et nominibus oratio est; et quae tota esset coelestis, nisi persuasionis civilis nonnumquam admixtione sordesceret. Platoni itaque in Timaeo Deus est ipso 0296B suo nomine mundi parens, artifex animae, coelestium terrenorumque fabricator; quem et invenire difficile, prae nimia et incredibili potestate; et, cum inveneris, in publicum dicere impossibile praefatur. 0297A (XV) Eadem fere et ista quae nostra sunt nam et Deum novimus et parentem omnium dicimus, et numquam publice, nisi interrogati, praedicamus.