"The object of our worship is the One God, He who by His commanding word, His arranging wisdom, His mighty power,
brought forth from nothing this entire mass of our world, with all its array of elements, bodies, spirits, for the
glory of His majesty... The eye cannot see Him,
though He is (spiritually) visible. He is incomprehensible, though in grace He is manifested. He is beyond our utmost
thought, though our human faculties conceive of Him. He is therefore equally real and great. But that which, in the
ordinary sense, can be seen and handled and conceived, is inferior to the eyes by which it is taken in, and the
hands by which it is tainted, and the faculties by which it is discovered; but that which is infinite is known only
to itself. This it is which gives some notion of God, while yet beyond all our conceptions--our very incapacity of
fully grasping Him affords us the idea of what He really is. He is presented to our minds in His transcendent
greatness, as at once known and unknown. And this is the crowning guilt of men, that they will not recognize One,
of whom they cannot possibly be ignorant. Would you have the proof from the works of His hands, so numerous and so
great, which both contain you and sustain you, which minister at once to your enjoyment, and strike you with awe;
or would you rather have it from the testimony of the soul itself? Though under the oppressive bondage of the body,
though led astray by depraving customs, though enervated by lusts and passions, though in slavery to false gods;
yet, whenever the soul comes to itself, as out of a surfeit, or a sleep, or a sickness, and attains something of
its natural soundness, it speaks of God; using no other word, because this is the peculiar name of the true God.
'God is great and good'--'Which may God give,' are the words on every lip."
"We have already asserted that God made the world, and all which it
contains, by His Word, and Reason, and Power. It is abundantly plain that your philosophers, too, regard the Logos--that
is, the Word and Reason--as the Creator of the universe. For Zeno lays it down that he is the creator, having made
all things according to a determinate plan; that his name is Fate, and God, and the soul of Jupiter, and the
necessity of all things. Cleanthes ascribes all this to spirit, which he maintains pervades the universe. And we,
in like manner, hold that the Word, and Reason, and Power, by which we have said God made all, have spirit as their
proper and essential substratum, in which the Word has in being to give forth utterances, and reason abides to
dispose and arrange, and power is over all to execute. We have been taught that He proceeds forth from God, and in that
procession He is generated; so that He is the Son of God, and is called God from unity of substance with God.
For God, too, is a Spirit. Even when the ray is shot from the sun, it is still part of the parent mass; the sun will
still be in the ray, because it is a ray of the sun-there is no division of substance, but merely an extension.
Thus Christ is Spirit of Spirit, and God of God, as light of light is kindled. The material matrix remains entire
and unimpaired, though you derive from it any number of shoots possessed of its qualities; so, too, that which has
come forth out of God is at once God and the Son of God, and the two are one."
"Never will I call the emperor God, and that either because it is not in me to be guilty of falsehood; or that
I dare not turn him into ridicule; or that not even himself will desire to have that high name applied to him.
If he is but a man, it is his interest as man to give God His higher place. Let him
think it enough to bear the name of emperor. That, too, is a great name of God's giving. To call him God, is to rob
him of his title. If he is not a man, emperor he cannot be."
"This is the reason, then, why Christians are counted public enemies: that they pay no vain, nor false, nor
foolish honours to the emperor; that, as men believing in the true religion, they prefer to celebrate their festal
days with a good conscience, instead of with the common wantonness. It is, forsooth, a notable homage to bring fires
and couches out before the public, to have feasting from street to street, to turn the city into one great tavern,
to make mud with wine, to run in troops to acts of violence, to deeds of shamelessness to lust allurements! What!
Is public joy manifested by public disgrace? Do things unseemly at other times beseem the festal days of princes?
Do they who observe the rules of virtue out of reverence for Caesar, for his sake turn aside from them? Shall piety
be a license to immoral deeds, and shall religion be regarded as affording the occasion for all riotous extravagance?
Poor we, worthy of all condemnation! For why do we keep the votive days and high rejoicings in honour of the Caesars
with chastity, sobriety, and virtue? Why, on the day of gladness, do we neither cover our door-posts with laurels,
nor intrude upon the day with lamps? It is a proper thing, at the call of a
public festivity, to dress your house up like some new brothel. However, in the matter of this homage to a lesser
majesty, in reference to which we are accused of a lower sacrilege, because we do not celebrate along with you the
holidays of the Caesars in a manner forbidden alike by modesty, decency, and purity,--in truth they have been
established rather as affording opportunities for licentiousness than from any worthy motive;--in this matter I am anxious
to point out how faithful and true you are, lest perchance here also those who will not have us counted Romans,
but enemies of Rome's chief rulers, be found themselves worse than we wicked Christians!"
"But how, you say, can a substance which has been dissolved be made to reappear again? Consider thyself, O man,
and thou wilt believe in it! Reflect on what you were before you came into existence. Nothing. For if you had been
anything, you would have remembered it. You, then, who were nothing before you existed, reduced to nothing also when
you cease to be, why may you not come into being again out of nothing, at the will of the same Creator whose will created
you out of nothing at the first? Will it be anything new in your case? You who were not, were made; when you cease to
be again, you shall be made. Explain, if you can, your original creation, and then demand to know how you shall be
re-created. Indeed, it will be still easier surely to make you what you were once, when the very same creative
power made you without difficulty what you never were before. There will be doubts, perhaps, as to the power of God,
of Him who hung in its place this huge body of our world, made out of what had never existed, as from a death of
emptiness and inanity, animated by the Spirit who quickens all living things, its very self the unmistakable type
of the resurrection, that it might be to you a witness-nay, the exact image of the resurrection. Light, every day
extinguished, shines out again; and, with like alternation,
darkness succeeds light's outgoing. The defunct stars re-live; the seasons, as soon as they are finished, renew
their course; the fruits are brought to maturity, and then are
reproduced. The seeds do not spring up with abundant produce, save as they rot and dissolve away;--all things are
preserved by perishing, all things are refashioned out of
death. Thou, man of nature so exalted, if thou understandest thyself, taught even by the Pythian words,
lord of all these things that die and rise,--shalt thou die to perish evermore?"from DE CARNE CHRISTE (ON THE FLESH OF CHRIST)
"But, say you, I deny that God was truly changed to man in such wise as to be born and endued with a body of flesh,
on this ground, that a being who is without end is also of necessity incapable of change.
For being changed into something else puts an end to the former state. Change, therefore, is not possible to a Being
who cannot come to an end. Without doubt, the nature of things which are subject to change is regulated by this law,
that they have no permanence in the state which is undergoing change in them, and that they come to an end
from thus wanting permanence, whilst they lose that in the process of change which they previously were. But nothing
is equal with God; His nature is different from the condition of all things. If, then, the things which differ from God,
and from which God differs, lose what existence they had whilst they are undergoing change, wherein will
consist the difference of the Divine Being from all other things except in His possessing the contrary faculty of theirs,
--in other words, that God can be changed into all conditions, and yet continue just as He is?
"The Son of God was crucified; I am not ashamed because men must needs be ashamed of it. And the Son of God died;
it is by all means to be believed, because it is absurd. And He was buried, and rose again; the fact is certain,
because it is impossible."from DE IDOLATRIA (ON IDOLATRY)
"God prohibits an idol as much to be made as to be worshipped. In so far as the making what may be worshipped is
the prior act, so far is the prohibition to make (if the worship
is unlawful) the prior prohibition. For this cause--the eradicating, namely, of the material of idolatry--the divine
law proclaims, 'Thou shall make no idol;' and by conjoining,
'Nor a similitude of the things which are in the heaven, and which are in the earth, and which are in the sea,'
has interdicted the servants of God from acts of that kind all
the universe over. Enoch had preceded, predicting that 'the demons, and the spirits of the angelic apostates, would turn
into idolatry all the elements, all the garniture of the universe, all things contained in the heaven, in the sea,
in the earth, that they might be consecrated as God, in opposition to God.' All things, therefore, does human
error worship, except the Founder of all Himself. The images of those things are idols; the consecration of the images
is idolatry."
"Learning literature is allowable for believers, rather than teaching;
for the principle of learning and of teaching is different. If a believer teach literature, while he is teaching
doubtless he commends, while he delivers he affirms, while he recalls he bears testimony to, the praises of idols
interspersed therein... But when a believer learns these things, if he is already
capable of understanding what idolatry is, he neither receives
nor allows them; much more if he is not yet capable. Or, when he begins to understand, it behoves him first to
understand what he has previously learned, that is, touching God and the faith. Therefore he will reject those
things, and will not receive them; and will be as safe as one who from one who knows it not, knowingly accepts
poison, but does not drink it."
"If we rejoice with the world, there is reason to fear that with the world we shall grieve too. But when the world
rejoices, let us grieve; and when the world afterward grieves, we shall rejoice."from DE BAPTISMO (ON BAPTISM)
"For concluding our brief subject, it remains to put you in mind also of the due observance of giving and
receiving baptism. Of giving it, the chief priest (who is the bishop) has the right: in the next place, the presbyters
and deacons, yet not without the bishop's authority, on account of the honour of the Church, which being preserved,
peace is preserved. Beside these, even laymen have the right; for what is equally received can be equally given.
Unless bishops, or priests, or deacons, be on the spot, other disciples are called i.e. to the work. The word of
the Lord ought not to be hidden by any: in like manner, too, baptism, which is equally God's property, can be administered
by all. But how much more is the rule of reverence and modesty incumbent on laymen--seeing that these powers belong
to their superiors--lest they assume to themselves the specific function of the bishop! Emulation of the episcopal
office is the mother of schisms."
"And so, according to the circumstances and disposition, and even age, of each
individual, the delay of baptism is preferable; principally, however, in the case of little children. For why is it
necessary--if (baptism itself) is not so necessary--that the sponsors likewise should be thrust into danger?
Who both themselves, by reason of mortality, may fail to fulfil their promises, and may be disappointed by the
development of an evil disposition, in those for whom they stood? The Lord does indeed say, 'Forbid them not to
come unto me.' Let them 'come,' then, while they are growing up; let them
'come' while they are learning, while they are learning whither to come; let them become Christians when they have
become able to know Christ. Why does the innocent period of life hasten to the 'remission of sins?' More caution will
be exercised in worldly matters: so that one who is not trusted with earthly substance is trusted
with divine! Let them know how to 'ask' for salvation, that you may seem (at least) to have given 'to him that asketh.'
For no less cause must the unwedded also be deferred--in whom the ground of temptation is prepared, alike in such as
never were wedded by means of their maturity, and in the widowed by means of their freedom--until
they either marry, or else be more fully strengthened for continence. If any understand the weighty import of baptism,
they will fear its reception more than its delay."from DE ORATIONE (ON PRAYER)
"In the matter of kneeling also prayer is subject to diversity of observance, through the act of some few who abstain
from kneeling on the Sabbath; and since this dissension is particularly on its trial before the churches, the Lord
will give His grace that the dissentients may either yield, or else indulge their opinion without offence to others. We,
however (just as we have received), only on the day of the Lord's Resurrection ought to guard not only against kneeling,
but every posture and office of solicitude; deferring even our businesses lest we give any place to the devil.
Similarly, too, in the period of Pentecost; which period we distinguish by the same solemnity of exultation. But
who would hesitate every day to prostrate himself before God, at least in the first prayer with which we enter on the
daylight? At fasts, moreover, and Stations, no prayer should be made without kneeling, and the remaining customary
marks of humility; for (then) we are not only praying, but deprecating, and making satisfaction to God our Lord."
"Prayer is alone that which vanquishes God. But Christ has willed that it be operative for no evil: He had conferred
on it all its virtue in the cause of good. And so it knows nothing save how to recall the souls of
the departed from the very path of death, to transform the weak, to restore the sick, to purge the possessed, to open
prison-bars, to loose the bonds of the innocent. Likewise it
washes away faults, repels temptations, extinguishes persecutions, consoles the faint-spirited, cheers the high-spirited,
escorts travellers, appeases waves, makes robbers stand aghast, nourishes the poor, governs the rich, upraises the
fallen, arrests the falling, confirms the standing. Prayer is the wall of faith: her arms and missiles against the foe
who keeps watch over us on all sides. And, so never walk we unarmed."from DE PAENITENTIA (ON REPENTANCE)
"Reason, in fact, is a thing of God, inasmuch as there is nothing which God the Maker of all has not provided,
disposed, ordained by reason--nothing which He has not willed should be handled and understood by reason. All,
therefore, who are ignorant of God, must necessarily be ignorant also of a thing which is His, because no
treasure-house at all is accessible to strangers. And thus, voyaging all the universal course of life without
the rudder of reason, they know not how to shun the hurricane which is impending over the world."