EXTRACTS FROM THE FRAGMENT OF AN ORATION OR EPISTLE ON THE DUTIES OF A PRIEST.
"If any are detected behaving disorderly to their prince, they are immediately punished; but those who refuse to approach the gods, are possessed by a tribe of evil dæmons, who driving many of the atheists [i. e. of the Christians] to distraction, make them think death desirable, that they may fly up into heaven, after having forcibly dislodged their souls. Some of them prefer deserts to towns; but man, being by nature a gentle and social animal, they also are abandoned to evil dæmons, who urge them to this misanthropy; and many of them* have had recourse to chains and collars. Thus, on all sides, they are impelled by an evil dæmons, to whom they have voluntarily surrendered themselves, by forsaking the eternal and saviour gods.
"Statues and altars, and the preservation of the unextinguished fire, and in short all such particulars, have been established by our fathers, as symbols of the presence of the gods; not that we should believe that these symbols are gods, but that through these we should worship the gods. For since we are connected with body, it is also
* i. e. The Cappadocian monks and hermits.
necessary that our worship of the gods should be performed in a corporeal manner; but they are incorporeal. And they, indeed, have exhibited to us as the first of statues, that which ranks as the second genus of gods from the first, and which circularly revolves round the whole of heaven*. Since, however, a corporeal worship cannot even be paid to these, because they are naturally unindigent, a third kind of statues was devised in the earth, by the worship of which we render the gods propitious to us. For as those who reverence the images of kings, who are not in want of any such reverence, at the same time attract to themselves their benevolence; thus, also, those who venerate the statues of the gods, who are not in want of any thing, persuade the gods by this veneration to assist and be favourable to them. For alacrity in the performance of things in our power is a document of true sanctity; and it is very evident that he who accomplishes the former, will in a greater degree possess the latter. But he who despises things in his power, and afterwards pretends to desire impossibilities, evidently does not pursue the
* Meaning those divine bodies the celestial orbs, which in
consequence of participating a divine life from the
incorporeal powers from which they are suspended, may be
very properly called secondary gods.
latter, but overlooks the former. For though divinity is not in want of any thing, it does not follow that on this account nothing is to be offered to him. For neither is he in want of celebration through the ministry of words. What then? Is it, therefore, reasonable that he should also be deprived of this? By no means. Neither, therefore, is he to be deprived of the honour which is paid him through works; which honour has been legally established, not for three or for three thousand years, but in all preceding ages, among all nations of the earth.