APPENDIX A. ANALYSIS OF THE PROTREPTICUS. IN Greek song and story we read how Amphion built the walls of Thebes by his skill in music, how Orpheus tamed the wild beasts, how the grasshopper took the place of the broken string on the lyre of Eunomus. But my Eunomus sings not in Phrygian or in Lydian measure, but He sings the new song-" a song to lull all pain and error, and bring forgetfulness of every sorrow." Orpheus and Amphion corrupted the life of man under the mask of music; my Singer has destroyed the bitter slavery of the demons, and by the might of His song such as were but "stones and "beasts" become men.1 This song has brought the whole universe into harmony. The Word of God-the New Song-is the philanthropic instrument of God. Our salvation is His only harvest from us. Though designated by me the New Song, "He was before the morning-star"; He "was in the beginning." The source of our being and our wellbeing, the Word, by whom all things were created, has appeared as our teacher to bestow on us eternal life. His pity is an eternal pity. Like those who bind captives to the dead, the wicked serpent binds living men to dead idols. He who now exhorts men to salvation is He who once spoke to men through the thorn and the cloud, and by the pillar of fire terrified men. Then He spoke by the mouth of the prophets; now, the Lord Himself, the compassionate God, speaks clearly to men. The Word of God became man that thou mightst learn from man how man may become God. Be very earnest in regard to Christ. He is the door to a true conception of God: only through Him is God truly discerned by the initiated.2 Do not concern yourselves with oracles and other insane forms of divination, artifices of unbelieving men. The mysteries are a seed of wickedness and corruption. What you are not ashamed to worship I shall not refrain from describing. What of Aphrodite, her origin and Are not the mysteries of Demeter an insult and a jest? What of Zeus and his intercourse with Persephone? What of the inhuman mysteries of Dionysus and the savagery of the Titans ? The mysteries of the Cabiri are but murders and funerals.1 Their mysteries are mysteries of atheists. Are they not atheists who do not recognise the truly existent God, and call those gods who are nothing but a name? Strange that men like Euhemerus, who saw clearly the errors of men in regard to God, should have been called atheists. The extreme points of atheism are ignorance and superstition. By it the primal fellowship between God and man was darkened, and man, the child of God, has been turned aside from the heavenly way of life. Some have deified the stars and worshipped the sun. Some have made gods of the fruits of the earth. Some have deified retribution and calamities. Some have made idols of the passions. Some deify incidents that befall men. Some manufacture gods and speak of their birth. Some attribute the beneficence of God Himself to "saviours," as Heracles and Asclepius.2 The things recorded of your gods really happened to dissolute men. Their fatherland, their crafts, their way of life, their graves, prove that they were but men. Listen to the loves of your gods-the monstrous legends of their dissoluteness, their wounds and their battles, their laughter and tears. The games, Isthmian, Olympian, and the like, were primarily gatherings at tombs. The mysteries seem to have been held in honour of the dead. Your gods ate and drank, sometimes unwittingly of the flesh of men like Zeus. The myths about Zeus are antiquated; he is dead and buried in Crete.3 Your Zeus, your Apollo, have different names and characteristics. Better than such worship the Egyptian worship of creatures without reason; they at least are not unnatural in their lusts. You scoff at the Egyptians; but do not some of you worship the stork, the weasel, and the ant? The impure demons are no "guardians of articulate-speaking men." Do they guard you from committing sin, as, of course, they have had no experience of it? 2 ii. 23-26. 3 ii. 27.37. 1 ii. 11, 12 Like gluttons they are enticed by the smoke, "the drink-offering and burnt-offering which is their due."1 Those gods of yours are inhuman and enjoy human sacrifices. A place does not transform a murder into a sacrifice. To sacrifice a man to Artemis is as much a murder as if done in passion or from lust of gold. You turn aside from a serpent, why not from man-hating demons? Can truth or profit be got from the wicked? Your temples are but tombs. Yourselves dead, you have put your trust in the dead; "your heads are shrouded in night."2 Statues are the work of men. As art flourished, error grew. The statue of Zeus at Olympias was fashioned by Pheidias. Other statues are the work of other sculptors, as the Egyptian Serapisthe so-called "made without hands." Well says the philosopher Heraclitus, "and they pray to their images as if one were to talk with houses." Statues are less worthy of honour than the meanest living creatures; these possess life and growth, though their senses be undeveloped. Your image is but dead matter; we have an intellectual image of the only true God. Men plunder idols; birds. defile them. Fire and earthquake have no fear of images.3 Kings of old, even private persons, claimed for themselves divine honours. How can phantoms and demons be gods? Why forsake heaven and honour earth? Matter needs art to fashion it; God is in need of nothing. I dare not intrust the hopes of my soul to soulless things. You have been deceived by art-though apes are not deceived by pictures in wax or clay. You have peopled the woods, fields, rivers, and seas with a mob of satyrs, nymphs, nereids, and nereiads. You have made a stage of heaven. We carry about in the living statue-man-the image of God, an image which is our guest. We are "not from beneath.”4 You have pictures of wantonness everywhere. We are forbidden to practise an art that deceives. The sculptor has a better claim to divine honours than the statue which he moulded. Take heed lest you become as void of perception as statues. What folly to worship the work of God, sun, moon, and stars, and not God Himself. The universe sprang into being by a mere act of His will. Do not deify the cosmos, but seek for its In the Divine wisdom is a holy. asylum.5 Creator. 1 ii. 38.41 2 iii. 42.45 3 iv. 46 53 4 iv. 54.59 5 iv. 60.63. Turn to philosophers. They have a dream of the truth. Think of the divergent views of Thales, Anaximenes, and Parmenides, &c., with regard to the first principles. The Stoics utterly disgrace philosophy by representing Divinity as permeating all matter. Epicurus, utterly impious, thinks that God cares for nothing.1 You fashion gods out of winds or air or fire or earth. I yearn for the Lord of the fire, the Creator of the cosmos, for God Himself, not for His works. In his conception of God Plato grazed the surface of the truth. He speaks truth as in a riddle. For true laws and opinions concerning God he is indebted to the Hebrews. By the inspiration of God not Plato alone, but many philosophers like Antisthenes and Cleanthes, have declared that God is the only true God.2 The witness of poetry is as that of philosophy. Take Aratus or Hesiod or Euripides. They have glimmerings of the truth, but only glimmerings; for to speak of God apart from the word of truth is to walk without feet.3 Turn to the Prophetic Scriptures. They are a short road to salvation. Mark how Jeremiah, Isaiah, the whole prophetic choir, set forth God. Listen to the divine Moses, the blessed psalmist, the holy apostle of the Lord. Thousands of Scriptures might be adduced. As a gentle Father, not as a master, God admonishes His children. You must become little children. The church of the first-born is formed of many good children. Be not slaves too proud to become sons. Do not prefer bondage to freedom, death to salvation. Scripture sets before us the threatening, the exhortation, the reward. The Lord exhorts all men to a full knowledge of the truth. If eternal salvation were for sale, the whole wealth of Pactolus would not suffice to purchase it; but with love and faith you can buy it. God alone can teach man and make him like to God. The apostle calls the sacred books God - inspired. No exhortation has such force as that of the Lord Himself, whose sole work is the salvation of men. He says, "The kingdom of heaven is at hand"; and the apostle interprets that divine voice. Faith will introduce you, experience will teach you, the Scriptures will The Word shines for all men. "Let us who are many train you. after oneness, seeking out the good Monad," that we may come to rest in the one truth, saying, "Abba, Father." 1 "It is not reasonable," you say, "to subvert the customs handed down to us from our fathers." Why not, then, use the milk of infancy? Why not slobber as we did when children? Abhorrent to piety is this insane custom. But for it you would never have rejected God's greatest boon to the race of men. Superstition destroys, piety saves. Look to those who serve the idols-their filthy hair, their ragged raiment, their nails like wild beasts' claws. They seem to be mourning for their gods, not to be worshipping them. Why not look up to the Lord of the universe? Monstrous that you, who are His absolute property, should become the slaves of another master. Let us pass from ignorance to knowledge, from unrighteousness to righteousness, from godlessness to God. Our loving Father never ceases to admonish or save. Why not prefer life to death? 3 By your obsession with ancestral customs you keep off the truth. Let us fight in the stadium of truth, with the Holy Word as umpire, and the Lord of the universe as presiding in the contest. The prize is immortality. Heed not the loafers in the market-place and their harangues. Heed not the image-makers who have had the audacity to make gods of men. No artist, great or mean, ever formed a living image. Only the Creator of the universe has formed a living image-man. Statues are but earthly images of the visible and earth-born man. As a man, seek out the Creator. As a son, acknowledge thy Father. By nature man is formed for intercourse with God. Piety is his peculiar prerogative-a sufficient viaticum for eternity. Till the fields, if you will, but, as you till, know God. Sail, if fond of seamanship, but invoke the heavenly pilot. If knowledge has come to you when soldiering, listen to the general who commands what is right.5 Awake out of your drunken stupor. Why love the darkness? Neither halo, nor iris, nor sun, nor moon, nor punishment, nor destiny, nor sleep, nor death, is a god. Only one God truly exists. "The earth is the Lord's." Why ignore the owner? Are stones and birds sacred, but not men? Wretched men to suppose that God speaks through the croaking of a raven or the chattering of a jackdaw, but not 6 |