De laudibus Constantini

Prologue to the praises of Constantine.

1 But I have not come to weave myths, nor snares for the ear, nor to fashion elegance of speech to charm hearing with a Sirens' voice, nor to offer to friends here the drugs of pleasure in golden cups, with phrases adorned by beautiful words and blooming flowers of speech. Rather, persuaded by the wise, I proclaim to flee the highways and turn aside, and I urge not to be crowded together with the multitude. I have come to begin among you a newer song of imperial hymns. And while countless others hasten on the same path as I, I myself, avoiding the beaten track of men, will walk the untrodden way, which it is not lawful to tread with unwashed feet. For some, pursuing common words trodden by the sophistries of youths, and embracing a sweet and vulgar muse, charm mortal ears with mortal narratives, yielding the judgment to pleasure. But the initiates of universal wisdom itself, partakers of the knowledge of both divine and human things, having placed the choice of the better in the category of the good, have preferred and chosen the God-loving virtues and God-befitting actions of the emperor himself over human ones, leaving to others to hymn the secondary among beautiful things with secondary songs. For since wisdom of divine and human matters exists also in the emperor's soul, and some things tend toward God, others toward men, let those standing outside the sacred precincts, who are suited, minister to human affairs—these too are solemn and extraordinary and beneficial for life, for all the emperor's goods are good, yet still inferior to the more divine ones.

But those who have entered within the sacred palaces, into the innermost and inaccessible recesses, having closed the doors to profane ears, let them relate the secret initiations of the emperor to the initiates alone. And those who have purified their ears with streams of piety and have lifted the intellect on the soaring wing of the soul, as they dance around the king of all, let them be initiated in silence into the divine mysteries. Let the oracles of the divine words, not from divination or rather from mad frenzy, but spoken by the inspirations of the divine light, be our teachers concerning the kingdom itself, concerning the highest king, the divine retinue around the king of all, the royal paradigm among us, the debased counterfeit, and the orders attendant upon each. With these, as we are initiated into the godly mysteries, we shall here touch upon the sacred rites.

This is a festival of the great emperor. Let us rejoice in it, being inspired by the teachings of sacred words, we the royal children; and the great emperor leads us in the feast. I call great the truly great king; I say this is he, and the present emperor will not begrudge this, but will join in acclaiming with theology the one beyond all, the highest of all, the supreme, the super-great, whose throne of kingship is the heavenly vaults, and the earth is the footstool of his feet. If one could conceive of him worthily, the light flashing around him with ineffable gleams of rays would repel the sight of his divinity from everyone.

Armies of heaven surround him, and supercosmic powers attend him as bodyguards, recognizing him as their own master and lord and king. Countless hosts of angels, choirs of archangels, and bands of holy spirits, drawing from the perpetual fountains of light around him, are illuminated by his radiance. All lights and incorporeal, divine, and intellectual orders of luminaries, having obtained the region beyond the sky, honor the great king with the highest and most godly hymns. In the midst is spread the great sky, a dark blue canopy, separating those outside from the inner royal chambers. Around this, as in the forecourts of a palace, the sun and moon and the light-bearing bodies in the sky move in procession, bearing torches, honoring the king beyond all things, and at his nod and command kindling inextinguishable torches of light for those who have obtained the dark region outside the sky. This great king, Christ, our own victorious emperor also hymns, having well understood the source of his kingship. Him, the pious Caesars recognize as the source of all good things, having received this teaching from their father. Him, the multitudes of armies, whole peoples throughout lands and cities, and rulers of nations, gathering in assemblies, worship, being instructed by a great savior and teacher. And indeed, every race of humanity, all kinds of nations, tribes, and tongues, both all together and individually, though differing in other opinions, agree in this one confession, calling upon the one and only God with innate reasonings, self-learned and self-taught conceptions. What then?

Does not every element of the earth recognize him as master, showing by the shoots and animals it produces its submission to the nod of the superior? The overflowing streams of rivers, and the flows of springs gushing from eternal depths and infinite ever-flowing abysses, ascribe to him the cause of their unspeakable wonder-working. The abysses of the sea, confined in infinite depths, and the swelling waves, raised to a height and threatening the earth with fear, advancing to the very shores, are restrained by the nod of divine law. The measured streams of winter rains, the crashes of thunder and flashes of lightning, the shifting gusts of winds, and the aerial courses of clouds reveal him to those unable to behold his sight directly. But also the all-bright sun, traversing the long age, knows only him as lord and, serving at his nod, never dares to step beyond its bounds. The moon, yielding its light to the sun and waning and waxing in cycles of time, is subject to divine ordinances. The beauties of heaven, gleaming with choruses of stars, moving in order and harmony and measuring out their cycles, proclaim the giver of all lights. Together all the heavenly luminaries, marshaled by his nod and word into a single melody, completing a long course in cycles of long ages, race through the contests of ethereal stadia. The alternating motions of nights and days, the changes of seasons and times, the rhythms and orders of the whole, honor the manifold wisdom of the infinite power.

to him also invisible powers, flitting through the open plains of the air, send up the due and fitting theology. This great king the whole world together hymns. Above, the heavens and the choirs higher than the heavenly vaults honor him. The armies of angels sing hymns in unspeakable strains, and the spirits, offspring of intellectual light, theologize their begetter. Timeless ages before this heaven and before the world, and other infinite ages of ages before the whole subsistence of visible things, claim him alone as great master and lord. And he himself, before all and after all, his pre-existent only-begotten Logos, the great high priest of the great God, most ancient of all time and all ages, consecrated to the honor of the Father, first and alone, intercedes for the salvation of all, glorified with the primacy of the rule of all and the second place of the paternal kingdom, because he himself was the light beyond all, dancing around the Father, mediating and separating the unoriginate and

an ungenerated form, which, flowing forth from the inexhaustible and unoriginate divinity above, advances into the supramundane space and all things within the heavens, illuminating them with rays of wisdom mightier than the sun. This would be the guide of this entire universe, the Word of God, who passes over all things, through all things, and in all things visible and invisible, bearing the image of the supreme kingdom from whom and through whom the emperor beloved of God, in imitation of the better, steers and directs the helm of all things on earth. For the only-begotten Word of God, reigning together with his own Father from unoriginate ages, endures into infinite and unending ages; while his friend, supplied by the royal effluences from above and strengthened by the title of the divine appellation, rules over earthly affairs for long cycles of years. Then the savior of all things prepares the entire heaven and cosmos and the supreme kingdom as seemly for his own Father; while his friend, bringing the subjects on earth to the only-begotten and savior Word himself, renders them fit for his kingdom. And the common savior of all things, by an invisible and divine power, like a good shepherd driving wild beasts far from his flock, removes the apostate powers that once flitted through the air above the earth and assailed human souls; while his friend, adorned from above by him with trophies against enemies, subdues and chastens the manifest enemies of truth by the law of war.

And the Word, being pre-cosmic and savior of all, imparts rational and salvific seeds to his own disciples, rendering them both rational and knowledgeable of the father's kingdom. And his friend, like a kind of interpreter of the divine Word, calls every human race to the knowledge of the better, crying out with a great voice to the ears of all and proclaiming to all on earth the laws of true piety. And the savior of all opens the heavenly gates of the father's kingdom to those who depart from here to there. And he, with zeal for the better, having cleansed all the filth of godless error from the earthly kingdom, invites choruses of holy and pious men within the royal palaces, taking care to preserve the entire fleet of those governed by him, ship and all. And this one alone of all who have ever ruled the Roman empire, already honored by the all-king God with three periods of ten years, does not celebrate this festival with earthly spirits as the ancients did, nor with specters of deceiving demons, nor with deceits and follies of godless men, but offers thanks to the one who honored him, aware of the goods provided to him, not defiling the royal palaces with blood and gore as the ancients did, nor propitiating earthly demons with smoke and fire and sacrifices of whole animals, but dedicating to him the sacrifice pleasing and gracious to the king of all, namely his own royal soul and his most godly mind.

For this sacrifice alone is pleasing to him, which our own king has learned to offer with fireless and bloodless offerings, purified in the reasoning of the mind: strengthening the doctrines of piety with the unerring principles of the soul, honoring theology with magnificent speech, and emulating the philanthropy of the superior one through royal deeds, wholly devoted to him and offering himself as a great gift—the choicest portion of the world entrusted to him. This is the greatest sacrifice the king offers before all else; he sacrifices as a good shepherd, not by slaying glorious hecatombs of firstborn lambs, but by bringing the souls of the rational flocks under his care to his own knowledge and piety. And rejoicing in such a sacrifice, gladly accepting the gift, and delighting in the solemn and beautiful offering, the Hierophant bestows upon him additions of long periods of reign, reciprocally increasing his benefactions in response to the holy acts toward him, and grants him to celebrate all manner of festivals with great ease under the monarchy. At each decennial festival, he advances one of his sons to share in the royal throne, granting increases of time as to a flourishing and vigorous plant. First, he made the one named after his father a partner in the royal lot during the first decade of the royal period; second, during the second decade, the one next in time; and likewise the third during the third decade of the present festival.

Now, as a fourth cycle is being completed, with the times extending into length, he increases the empire with generous sharing of his lineage and with the appointments of Caesars, fulfilling the oracles of the divine prophets, which long, long ago cried out thus: "And the saints of the Most High will take up the kingdom." Thus, as times and children increase together, God himself, the universal king, bestows upon the most God-beloved king a flourishing and youthful hegemony over the nations on earth, as if it were just beginning to grow, and himself completes the festival for him, establishing him as victor over all enemies and adversaries, and revealing him as an example of true piety to all on earth. And he, like the rays of the sun, illuminates those dwelling in the most distant places with the radiance of the Caesars, with beams transmitted far from him: here to us who have obtained the East, his worthy fruit, and the other of his children to another race of men, and again another elsewhere, distributing them like lamps and luminaries of the lights poured forth from him. Then, having yoked four under a single yoke of a royal four-horse chariot, like colts, the most valiant Caesars, and having harmonized them with reins of divine concord and unity, he drives from above, guiding from on high, riding through the whole world that the sun beholds, himself present to all and overseeing everything. And then, adorned with the image of the heavenly kingdom, looking upward according to the archetypal form, he directs and governs those below, strengthened by the imitation of monarchical power.

This alone, of all things on earth, has the king of all granted to human nature. For this is the law of royal authority, which defines the single rule over all. Monarchy stands above the constitution and administration of all things; for anarchy and faction are rather the polyarchy that is set in opposition from equality of status. Hence there is one God, not two, nor three, nor yet more; for polytheism is precisely atheism. There is one king, and his reason and royal law is one, not uttered in words and syllables, nor consumed by the length of time in writings and on stelae, but living and subsisting as the divine Word, arranging the kingdom of the father for all those under him and after him. Heavenly armies surround him, myriads of angels serving God, multitudes of a supramundane host, and the invisible spirits within the heaven ministering to the order of the whole cosmos, over all of whom the royal Word presides like some viceroy of a great king. They proclaim him commander-in-chief and high priest, prophet of the father and messenger of the great counsel, radiance of paternal light, only-begotten son, and countless other such things, the voices of theologians chanting, whom the begetter established as living Word and law and wisdom and fullness of every good, a gift of the greatest goods to all under his kingdom. And he, pervading all things and traversing everything, spreading the father's graces ungrudgingly to all

extending the imitation of royal power even to rational beings on earth, adorning the soul of man, made in his image, with divine powers. Hence, the communion of other virtues also accrues to it from a divine emanation. For only the one who is God is wise alone. And he alone is good in essence, alone powerful in might, and begetter of justice itself, father of reason and wisdom, source of light and life, steward of truth and virtue, and indeed leader of royalty itself and of every beginning and authority. But whence do humans know these things? Who conveyed them to mortal hearing? Whence does a tongue of flesh utter things alien to flesh and bodies? Who, having discerned the invisible king, perceived these powers in him? For by sense, the elements akin to bodies and the compounds from them are apprehended, but no one has ever boasted of receiving with bodily eyes the invisible rule over all, nor has mortal nature comprehended the beauty of wisdom. Who with the sense of flesh has beheld the face of justice? Whence did concepts of lawful rule and royal authority enter into humans? Whence does autocratic power come to one compacted of flesh and blood? And who proclaimed to those on earth the invisible and unformed ideas and the incorporeal and unformed substance? But there was one interpreter of these things, the Word of God, who pervades all things, the father of the rational and intellectual essence in humans, alone attached to the divinity of the Father, and pouring the Father's emanations upon his own offspring.

Hence, all people, Greeks and barbarians alike, possess natural self-taught reasonings; hence come conceptions of speech and wisdom; hence seeds of prudence and justice; hence the grasp of arts; hence the knowledge of virtue and the dear name of wisdom, and the reverent love of philosophical education; hence the recognition of all that is good and beautiful; hence the very vision of God and a life worthy of piety; hence for man the power of kingship and the invincible dominion over all things on earth. And as the Father of rational beings established the character in the human soul that is according to the image of God and in His likeness, He also made this living creature royal, declaring that it alone among earthly beings knows how to rule and be ruled, and to practice and be taught beforehand from this source the promised hope of the heavenly kingdom, for which it has also come. The Father Himself did not shrink from coming into communion with mortals, cultivating His own seeds and renewing the supplies from above, and He proclaimed to all that they would partake of the heavenly kingdom, calling and exhorting them to be prepared for the journey upward, having prepared the garment worthy of the calling. He filled the whole world, as far as the sun beholds, with the proclamation, by the imitation of the earthly kingdom fashioning the heavenly one, toward which He urges the entire human race to hasten, holding forth this good hope.

Of this, the one who is a friend to God will partake even from here, adorned with the virtues innate to God and having received the effluences from there into the soul, and having become rational from the universal reason, wise by participation in wisdom, good by communion with the good, just by participation in justice, temperate by the form of temperance, and courageous by having partaken of the highest power. Moreover, this one would truly be called a king in the true sense, who has formed in his soul the likeness of that transcendent kingdom through royal virtues. But the one estranged from these and having denied the king of all, not having inscribed the heavenly father of souls, nor having put on the adornment befitting a king, but having assumed ugliness and shame in the soul, and having exchanged the rage of a wild beast for royal gentleness, the incurable venom of vice for a liberal disposition, folly for prudence, and for reason and wisdom the most hideous irrationality of all, from which, as from a bitter draught, accompany the destructive offshoots: profligate life, greed, murders, wars against God, impieties—given over to these, even if he is ever thought to rule by tyrannical force, this one will never be called a king in the true sense. For how could he bear the likeness of monarchic authority who has stamped upon his own soul countless false images of demons?

How can one be a ruler and lord of all, who has drawn upon himself countless bitter masters, being a slave to shameful pleasure, a slave to unbridled woman-madness, a slave to money procured unjustly, a slave to passion and anger, a slave to fear and terrors, a slave to bloodthirsty demons, a slave to soul-destroying spirits? Therefore, let only he be proclaimed king for us, with truth as witness, who is a friend to the all-king God, who alone is free—or rather, truly lord—and superior to money, stronger than desire for women, victor over pleasures even those according to nature, master of passion and anger, not mastered by them; this one is truly an autocrat, bearing a name that matches his deed. A victor in truth is he who has won the victory over the passions that wrestle down the mortal race, who is molded after the archetypal form of the great king and, as in a mirror, formed in his mind by the rays of virtues emanating from it, and from these has become temperate, good, just, brave, pious, and a friend of God. Truly and alone is this one a philosopher-king, who knows himself and understands the choruses of every good thing poured into him from without—rather, from heaven—who makes the venerable title of monarchic power shine through the exceptional garment of his attire, and who alone is worthily enveloped in the royal purple that befits him. This is the king who by night and day calls upon the heavenly father, who invokes him in his prayers, who yearns for the highest kingdom.

For knowing that present things are not worthy of the all-king God, the mortal and perishable flowing like a river and perishing, he longs for the incorruptible and bodiless kingdom of God, and prays to attain it, having raised his mind above the heavenly vault through magnanimous reasoning and having embraced an ineffable longing for the lights there, in comparison with which he considers the honors of this present life to differ in no way from darkness. For he sees that human rule, being the oversight of a mortal and temporary life, is small and short-lived, no better than the rule of goatherds or shepherds or cowherds, but rather more laborious and over more difficult creatures; and he sets the acclamations of the populace and the voices of flatterers as more for the mob than for pleasure, through his firm character and genuine education of soul. But also the bodyguard of subjects, myriads of armies, multitudes of infantry and cavalry together, slave and subject multitudes, he does not at all see with astonishment, nor is he puffed up by his rule over them, turning his mind to himself and seeing the common nature of all within himself. As for gold-woven raiment, a purple robe woven with varied flowers, together with a diadem, he laughs at the many who are astounded and who, like very infants, deify the phantom as some kind of bogey; he himself, having suffered nothing similar in his soul through knowledge of the divine, puts on the ornament truly befitting a king, variegated with temperance, justice, piety, and the remaining virtues.

Furthermore, in addition to these things, he sees that the much-desired possessions of the many—I mean gold and silver and all the kinds of stones that are admired—are truly stones, useless and worthless matter, being by nature what they are, and he sees them as such, of no avail against evils, nor able to help; for what power do these have against the removal of diseases or the avoidance of death? Nevertheless, although he knows this, he knowingly disposes of their use with rational judgment for the seemly adornment of his subjects, laughing at those who are frantic over these things due to the childishness of their minds. Moreover, he abstains from drunkenness and debauchery and from excessive seasoning, as is proper for gluttons, considering that these things belong to others and not to himself; for he is convinced that such things harm the great and dim the intellect of the soul. For all these reasons, the emperor, educated in divine matters and thinking great thoughts, longs for the better things of the present life, calling upon the heavenly Father and desiring his kingdom, doing everything with piety and, as a good teacher to those under his rule who are being educated, setting before them the knowledge of the great king God. And He who provides the guarantees of rewards distributes to him thirty-year crowns, completed by good cycles of time, and having already traversed three cycles of decades, he permits all men to celebrate public, indeed universal, festivals.

of those who are adorned on earth with the flowers of the knowledge of God, it would not be off the mark for the dances in heaven, drawn by the laws of nature, to rejoice together with those on earth, and for the king of all himself, like a good father, to take delight in good sons who are pious, and especially in this way to honor the guide and cause of good things with long-lived honors, so that three periods of ten are not sufficient for the reign, but to extend it to the greatest length and to send it on into a long eternity. The whole of eternity, ageless and unending, is by nature not to be seen by mortal reasoning as having either a beginning or a boundary, nor can it be grasped from its middle center, nor does the so-called "now" of it allow itself to be seized by those who wish, let alone the future or the past of time; for what has passed is not, and what is future is not yet present, and therefore is not, and the so-called "now" of it escapes more quickly than thought and the utterance of speech. It is not possible at all to take hold of it as something standing still. For one must either await the future or observe the past; for it slips away and flees at the very moment of conception. Thus the whole of eternity does not submit to being subjected to mortal reasonings, but refuses servitude among them. Yet it does not refuse to acknowledge its own king and master, but bears him riding upon its back, taking pride in the adornments that come from him.

the one who guides it from above, having bound it not with a golden chain, as the poet says, but with bonds of ineffable wisdom, as if with reins, laid down in it months and times, seasons and years, the alternating intervals of nights and days, with all harmony, binding it with various boundaries and measures. For the straight line, extending to infinity, having taken the name of eternity as if always existing, being itself like its own parts, or rather being without parts and without interval, increases by extending only in a straight line; but the one who intercepted it with middle sections and, as if dividing a straight line stretched out in length, with many centers, laid down a great multitude in it, and, though it is one and likened to a monad, bound it with all kinds of numbers, establishing in it a multiform variety from the formless. For first of all he established in it formless matter, like a substance receiving all things; second, working in matter a quality by the power of a dyad, he produced a form from the formless; and by the number of a triad, a three-dimensional extension, into breadth, length, and depth, he fashioned a body composed of matter and form. And from the dyad, having conceived the double tetrad of elements—earth, water, air, fire—he set forth ever-flowing sources for the provision of this universe. The tetrad generates the decad, for one, two, three, four together make the number ten. The triad

interwoven with the tenth day of the month, it discovered its nature, and the month, by the twelve turnings of the sun, completed its cycle; hence the cycles of years and the changes of seasons gave form to the shapeless and formless age, as if in the variegation of a many-flowered painting, for the rest and delight of those running the course of life within it. For just as for those who, in hope of prizes, complete their courses in a contest, the distances are defined by stadia, and for those traveling long roads, the highway is marked out by certain stations and signs, so that one may not, by extending expectation into the infinite, grow weary in zeal; in the same way, the king of all, having surrounded the whole age with the ordinances of wisdom, leads and guides it, variously driving the chariot as seems good to him. And the same one, clothing the previously unshaped age with beautiful colors and fresh flowers, brightened the white day with the sun, and, spreading out the night with a darker color, made the gleam of the stars shine in it like gold-woven specks; and, kindling the bright rays of the morning star and the varied lights of the moon and the many-radiant conjunctions of stars, he crowned the whole heaven like a great robe with all kinds of beauties of painting. And, stretching out the air into depth from above, from the height, and animating the breadths and lengths of the whole world with its power, he released it to be formed by all winged creatures, spreading out a great sea for those borne through the air, both invisible and visible, to swim through. And, having poised the earth in the middle like a center, he surrounded it with the ocean, and the sea gleams upon it, adorned with the dark blue color of its enclosure.

Having established this as the hearth, mother, and nurse of all living creatures within it, and having watered it with rains and spring waters, he granted it to flourish with all kinds of plants and seasonal flowers for the joyful enjoyment of life. And having fashioned the most precious of living creatures within it, dear to himself in his own image, endowed with mind and knowledge, offspring of reason and wisdom, the rational human, he gave to this one the power to rule over the rest that creep and graze upon the earth. For the human was to him the most god-loving of the creatures on earth, to whom he handed over the races of irrational animals to serve as a father, the human for whom he opened the sea to navigation and crowned the earth with all kinds of plants, for whom the creatures creeping in the depths and the birds of the air have been made subject, to whom he granted scientific powers for the reception of all kinds of learning, for whom he also unveiled the heavenly speculations, revealing the courses of the sun, the turnings of the moon, the circuits of the planets and fixed stars, the human alone among those on earth whom he ordained to know the heavenly father and to honor the great king of the entire age with hymns.

But over and above all these things, the world-maker encircled the unvarying age with four turnings of the year, having bounded the winter season with spring, and spring, the beginning of the yearly seasons, having balanced with equal scales, and then having crowned the whole age with the fruitfulness of spring, he handed it over to the height of summer, and then, as if giving rest from labor, he restored it in the autumn interval, and with the moist floods of winter rains, as if washing a royal horse and making it bright with its own streams, and having sufficiently fattened it with the irrigations from rains, he again stations it at the gates of spring. From this, then, in the cycle of the whole year, the great king, having bound his own age here with such reins of wisdom, ordered it to be borne by a greater helmsman, his own only-begotten word, the common savior of all, to whom he entrusted the reins of the whole. And he, having received the inheritance from a good father, having bound together in one harmony all things that the vault of heaven contains within and without itself, proceeds straight, with justice, the things suitable to his own on earth.

ced by the oversight of rational creatures. And having established measures of life for those who complete the mortal existence, he has permitted all men to rehearse in this life the preludes of the life beyond the present age. For he taught that there is, indeed, a divine and blessed life beyond the present age, stored up in hopes of good things for those who have contended well, and that for those who have lived temperately and piously there will be a transition and migration from here to better things, while for those convicted in this life he will assign a fitting place. Then, as in the contests of games, having proclaimed various crowns for the victors, he crowns some with one prize of virtue after another, and for a good king adorned with piety he proclaims that greater rewards of the prizes are prepared, the preludes of which he already grants to celebrate here, in a festival composed of perfect numbers, of tens, threes, and triple units, of which the first triad would be born of the unit, and the unit is the mother of numbers, presiding over all months and seasons and years and every cycle of times, and would rightly be called the beginning, foundation, and element of every multitude, named "unit" from "remaining," because, while every multitude is diminished and increased by the subtraction and addition of numbers, only the unit has received stability and permanence, isolated from all multitude and from the numbers generated from it, bearing an image of the undivided and distinct essence of other things, by whose power and participation the nature of all beings is constituted.

The monad is the creator of every number, since every multitude is strengthened by the composition and addition of monads, and it is not possible to conceive the substance of numbers otherwise without the monad. This monad would be outside of multitude, farthest from and superior to every number, making and substantiating all things, yet never extended by anything. The triad is akin to it, likewise indivisible and undivided, and first among numbers composed of even and odd; for the even number, having received the monad, generated the first odd nature of the triad. The triad first revealed justice, presiding over equality, as it receives an equal beginning, middle, and end. These are images of the mystical, all-holy, and royal triad, which, dependent on the unoriginate and unbegotten nature, has received the seeds, principles, and causes of the substance of all generated things. And the power of the triad would reasonably be considered the beginning of everything. The decad, having received the limit of all numbers, establishes the whole up to itself, being fittingly called full and perfect, since it contains all forms and all measures of all numbers, ratios, concords, and harmonies. Monads, when increased by composition, are limited by the ten; having acquired this mother and fixed boundary and limit, they run around as around a turning-post in a circuit.

Then, having completed a second circle and again a third and a fourth, and up to ten, they fill the hundred from ten tens, and then run back to the first starting point, and from there beginning again and proceeding to ten, and having run around the hundred ten times, they turn back through the same turning points and traverse long double courses, revolving from themselves into themselves. For the tenth part of ten is a monad; and ten monads produce one decad; and the decad is the limit of monads, a boundary and a turning point of restoration, a turning point of the infinity of numbers and a boundary and end of monads; and when the triad is combined with the decad and goes around the third time the period of ten circles, it generates the most natural number, thirty; for what the triad is in monads, the thirty is in decads. And this is a fixed boundary of the second great luminary after the sun; for the period of the moon from conjunction to conjunction completes the cycle of a month, after which it again receives a beginning of new light and begins new days, being adorned with thirty monads, honored with three decads, and brightened with ten triads. With these same things, the honors of the victorious emperor’s world-ruling office, granted by the giver of all good things, take hold of a beginning of new goods, for the present fulfilling thirty-year festivals, and from there already touching upon longer intervals and prefiguring hopes of future goods in the heavenly kingdom.

There, armies of infinite lights dance around the king of all, not one sun, but all lights there, brighter than the sun, bringing radiance and gleaming with the splendor of the reflections from the eternal source. There, the soul's life exists in the pure beauties of goods; there, a life free from all distress; there, the enjoyment of temperate and all-holy pleasure; and time without time, long-lived and endless, extending into an unbounded end, no longer measured by intervals of days and months or by cycles of seasons and periods of years, but enduring in a single life stretched to infinity, not illuminated by the sun nor lit by the multitude of stars and the rays of the moon, but having as its own luminary the divine Word, the only-begotten son of the universal king. Hence, secret theologies initiate him as the sun of righteousness and light beyond all lights, and this same one, with rays of righteousness and beams of wisdom, illuminates the all-blessed powers, and, receiving souls prepared by piety into his own bosom instead of the heavenly sphere, confirms his promises by the works of his own pledges. But no mortal eye has seen, nor any hearing perceived, nor even a mind clothed in flesh can discern what has been prepared for those adorned with piety, just as for you, most pious king, to whom alone from eternity the universal king God has granted to purify human life here below, and to whom he has revealed his saving sign, through which, having conquered death, you raised a triumph over your enemies.

He set up the victorious trophy, the averter of demons, arraying it against the phantoms of error, and won victories over all godless enemies and barbarians, and now even over the demons themselves, these other barbarians. For since two natures are intertwined in us—I mean soul and body—one visible to all, the other invisible, two opposing barbarian and hostile races were arrayed against these: one invisibly, the other openly. And one, with bodies arrayed against bodies, besieged the body; the other, with incorporeal panoplies, besieged the human soul itself. Then the visible barbarians, some wild nomads no different from beasts, would descend upon the civilized herds of men, ravaging lands, enslaving cities, like savage wolves from the desert attacking those in cities, and then destroying whomever they could. The invisible enemies, soul-destroying demons, more savage than all barbarians, flitting about this air, enslaved the entire mortal race with the contrivances of manifold godless wickedness, so that for them the true God no longer existed, but rather some manifold and godless deceiver. For, bringing in those that are nowhere and in no way from somewhere unknown, they made the one who truly exists and is alone truly existent a mere afterthought, as if non-existent. Hence, for them, the generation of bodies was considered a god, and again another god opposed to this, the destruction and dissolution of the same bodies. But the first was honored by them as the originator of generation with the rites of Aphrodite; the second, as manifold and prevailing over the mortal race, was called Pluto and Death.

For since the men of that time knew no other life than that through birth, they declared the cause of this life to be the god Birth. And since they believed they no longer existed after death, they proclaimed Death the victor over all and a great god. Then, because they were subject to no penalties due to dissolution through death, they went about committing deeds worthy of countless deaths, living an unlivable life, taking no thought of God, expecting no just judgments of divine justice, rekindling no memory of their own essence in the soul, but using one terrible patron, Death, and having persuaded themselves that the corruption of bodies from this was the dissolution of the whole, they proclaimed Death a great and rich god, and hence also Pluto. And Death was not their only god, but also the things prized before this, those things that contributed to a life of pleasure for them. Thus for them the pleasure of the flesh was a god, food was a god, the growth of these things was a god, the sprouting of fruit trees was a god, the delight of drunkenness was a god, the desire for bodies was a god, the pleasure of these things was a god. Hence the mysteries of Demeter and Persephone and the abduction of Kore by Hades and again her return. Hence the rites of Dionysus and Heracles overcome as by a stronger god, drunkenness. Hence the adulterous orgies of Eros and Aphrodite. Hence Zeus himself mad for women and loving Ganymede, and the licentious fictions of pleasure-loving and passion-loving gods.

With so many weapons of god-fighting error, the terrible barbarians and enemies of the king of all oppressed the people on earth, and indeed they subdued the entire race, so that everywhere on earth they set up pillars of atheism and established temples and shrines of falsely-named theology in every corner. Those who were then thought to rule were so enslaved by error that they sacrificed the murders of their own tribesmen and kinsmen to their gods and sharpened their swords against the champions of truth, waging an implacable war and raising impious hands, not against foreign and alien enemies, but against their own hearth-companions and friends, against brothers and kinsmen and dearest ones, who had resolved to honor and worship the divine with dignity of life, temperance, and endeavors of true piety. But some, in their madness, slaughtered those devoted to the king of all for their own demons, while the noble martyrs of true piety, having practiced preferring a glorious death for truth even to life itself, held such tyranny as nothing, and as soldiers of God, armed with the virtue of endurance, they laughed at every manner of death—fire and iron and nails, wild beasts and the depths of the sea, amputations of limbs and branding irons, gougings of eyes, mutilations of the whole body, and beyond these, hunger, mines, and bonds—deeming them sweeter than any good and all pleasure, through love and longing for their own king.

Likewise, the youthful souls of women, no less manly than those of men, some endured the same contests as men and carried off equal prizes of virtue, while others, dragged to the corruption of their bodies, surrendered their soul to death more quickly than their body to corruption. And countless others, under the rulers of each nation, unable even to hear the threat of prostitution with the tips of their ears, steadfastly underwent every form of torture and every death sentence. But the champions of the great king among the polytheistic army here and there contended in the struggles of the soul with a fortified reason; while the enemies of God and foes of human salvation, worse than all savage barbarians, rejoiced in such libations of human blood. And their servants prepared for them such toasts from unjust bloodshed, arranging this bitter and impious feast for the destruction of the common race. With these things thus, what was the God, the king of the oppressed, to do? Was he to pass by the salvation of his dearest ones and overlook his own people so?

those under siege; but neither would a helmsman ever be called wise if he surrendered the ship with all hands to the depths, providing nothing from himself for the safety of those on board, nor would a general ever be so reckless as to abandon his own comrades to the enemy without punishment; nor would a good shepherd heedlessly overlook a strayed sheep of his flock, but would leave those that are well and safely placed, and for the sake of the stray's salvation would suffer anything, even if it meant grappling with wild beasts. But the zeal of the great emperor was not for a brute beast; his whole concern was for his own army and for those warred against on his account. Having approved their struggles and contests for piety, he honored those who had made the journey to him with the victory prizes at his disposal, enrolling them in the angelic choirs in heaven, while he preserved others on earth as living sparks of piety for posterity, to be at once spectators of the punishment of the impious and narrators of the history of what had been done. Then, extending his right hand for the defense against the enemies, with a single nod he made some vanish utterly, having first punished them with god-sent plagues, and compelled them, even against their will, to sing with their own lips the palinode of their transgressions; others he raised from the ground, exalting those long low and despaired of by all.

And this the great king was effecting from heaven, setting before him his invincible champion, the emperor, who rejoices in being thus addressed by excess of piety; whom he declared victor over the whole race of enemies, raising one against many. For the enemies were countless and many, and moreover friends of many demons, or rather they were nothing, whence they are not; but he is one king from one, an image of the one universal king. And while they, with godless soul, destroyed pious men by bloody slaughters, he, imitating his own savior and knowing only how to save, saved even the godless, teaching them piety. Then, as a true victor, he conquered that twofold barbarian race: on the one hand, taming the savage tribes of men by diplomatic embassies and compelling them to know and not ignore the better, changing them from lawless and bestial life to rational and lawful conduct; on the other hand, refuting by his very deeds the harsh and savage nature of the invisible demons, long since conquered by the stronger. For the common savior of all repelled the invisible ones invisibly, while he, as a viceroy of the great king, proceeded against the conquered, despoiling those long dead and lost, and distributing the spoils generously to the soldiers of the victor. For when he perceived that the multitudes, like foolish children, were vainly terrified by the bugbears of error, fashioned from gold and silver, he thought it necessary to remove these from the path, like stones stumbling before the feet of those walking in darkness, and to spread out for all a royal road, smooth and level henceforth.

Having considered these things, he did not think it necessary to employ an army of hoplites and a multitude of camps for their refutation; one man alone, and a second of his acquaintances, sufficed for the service, whom he dispatched with a single nod to every nation. And these men, trusted for their piety, passing through the midst of multitudes of ten thousand peoples and nations in all cities and countries, made a search for long-standing error, urging with much laughter and shame the priests themselves to bring their gods out of dark recesses into the light, and then, stripping the phantom and revealing the formlessness within the painted shape to the eyes of all. Then, scraping off what seemed useful of the material, testing it by smelting and fire, they kept in safe custody whatever profit they considered necessary for themselves, while the rest, superfluous and useless, they left to the superstitious as a memorial of shame. And what a wonderful thing the king did! For when the precious material of the dead idols had been plundered in the manner described, the remaining images made of bronze were dealt with. These gods of ancient myths were bound and led away, wrapped in coverings of aged hair, and over them the great king, as if kindling a many-bright torch, surveyed with his royal eye lest some hidden remnant of error escape notice; and just as a most sharp-sighted eagle, falling from heaven, might see from on high the farthest things spread out on the earth, so he, traversing the royal hearth of his beautiful city, perceived from a distance a terrible snare for souls lying hidden among the Phoenician nation.

This was a grove and a sacred precinct, not in the midst of cities nor in marketplaces and squares, such as many are ambitiously set up for the sake of ornament in cities, but it was situated outside the beaten path of crossroads and highways, on a part of the summit of Libanus, dedicated to the shameful daemon Aphrodite. It was a kind of school of evil-doing for all the licentious, and for those who had corrupted their bodies with great ease. Certain effeminate men, not men, having denied the dignity of their nature, propitiated the daemon with a female malady; and there were unlawful unions of women, adulterous corruptions, and unspeakable and abominable practices, as in a lawless and unprotected place, attempted in this temple. There was no one to watch over the deeds, since no one of decent character dared to pass by there. But the great king was not unaware of what was done there; having seen these things with his own eyes, with royal foresight he judged that such a temple was not worthy of the rays of the sun, and he ordered the whole thing, together with the offerings themselves, to be destroyed from its foundations. So it was dissolved. Immediately, at the royal command, the contrivances of licentious error were dismantled, and a military hand served for the purification of the place, and the licentious up to that time learned to be temperate through the king's threat. But after thus making the phantoms of popular-deluding wickedness manifest to all, the king proclaimed his own savior to all; there was no helper nor defender for those who had been caught, no daemon, no god, no oracle-monger, no seer.

For no longer did the souls of men wallow in dark gloom, but, illuminated by the rays of unerring piety, they reproached their own ancestors for ignorance and pitied them for their blindness, and declared themselves blessed as having been freed from terrible error. Thus, by the will of the great God and the service of the emperor, the whole race of enemies and adversaries, both visible and invisible, was destroyed; and thereafter good and nurturing peace took hold of the dwelling-place of all men, and there were no longer wars, nor even battles in the countryside and in the cities, such as formerly flourished when the demons held sway, and there were no longer outpourings of blood among men, as when the madness of polytheism was at its height. It is time, then, to compare the new with the old and to observe the turn toward the better from the contrast with the worse, and to discern and perceive how in former times porches and sacred groves and temples were zealously cultivated in every city, and the temples were crowned with very many offerings. And there was great regard for the gods among the tyrants of that time, and nations and peoples in the countryside and in every place, and even in their own homes, in their treasuries and chambers, honored the ancestral gods with altars and statues; but the fruit of their piety was not the peace among themselves now visible to the eyes, but the very opposite of these: wars and battles and seditions, with which, worn down throughout their whole life, they filled their own lands with blood and civil slaughter. And those honored by them, with oracles and

oracles and predictions of the future with much flattery they proclaimed to those then in power, but they did not know how to foresee or foretell their own destruction, which would be the greatest proof of the refutation of their deceit. For no one of those formerly admired for oracles ever foretold the shining forth among men of the common saviour, nor the new proclamation of the knowledge of God set forth by him; but not even the Pythian himself understood, nor any other of the great daimones, their own desolation, nor did he prophesy the besieger, nor did he divine their own destroyer. And what oracle-monger or seer foretold that their own revered things would be extinguished by the appearance of some new one in the world, and that knowledge and piety toward the king of all would be delivered to all men? Who foretold this reverent and godly imperial power, and our own victorious emperor himself, and the trophies raised up by him everywhere on earth against daimones, and the annihilation of the high places? And who ever among the heroes distinguished the smelting by fire and the transformation of lifeless matter from useless form into necessary uses? And when their statues were being melted down and laughably cut into small pieces, who ever made mention of gods? And where were their helpers, not defending their own consecrated objects when they were being destroyed by men? And where were those who formerly waged wars, when they saw their own besiegers living in the deepest peace?

But where are those who, emboldened by these as by gods and puffed up with vain confidence, raised their delusion to the heights and waged an undeclared war against the champions of truth? Where is the throng of the god-fighting giants and the hissings of the serpents, who sharpened their tongues and uttered godless voices against the King of All? Yet those who were at war with the King of the Universe, trusting in a multitude of gods, advanced with great military force, having set before them the lifeless images of the dead in soulless statues, while he, fortified with the breastplate of piety, arrayed the saving and life-giving sign as a terror and a defense against evils in opposition to the host of enemies, and simultaneously carried off victory over both foes and demons. Then, with grateful reasoning, rendering a thank-offering in prayer to the cause of victory, he proclaimed with a loud voice and on pillars to all men the victory-wrought sign, raising in the midst of the imperial city a great trophy of this against all enemies, and declaring explicitly that this saving sign is an indelible guardian of the Roman empire and of the universal kingdom. This he taught all men to recognize, especially the soldiers, whom he instructed above all not to fix their hopes on spears and full armor or on bodily strength, but to know the God over all, the giver of every good and of victory itself.

Thus the emperor himself—O what a wondrous report!—became a teacher of prayers to his army, transmitting pious prayers in accordance with divine ordinances, raising their hands aloft toward heaven and directing the eyes of their mind upward to the heavenly king, invoking him in their prayers as giver of victory, savior, guardian, and helper. Indeed, he also prescribed as the suitable day for prayers the Lord's day, truly the first and indeed the Lord's and saving day, named after light and life, immortality and every good. And he himself, having become his own teacher of good things, honoring his savior in the imperial treasuries, here performed divine ordinances with prayers, and there trained his mind by listening to sacred words. Men consecrated to God, adorned with the dignity of life and virtue, were appointed as his servants and attendants, guardians of the whole household, and faithful bodyguards, armed with the ways of good will, who enrolled the emperor as teacher of a godly life. And the emperor honored the victory-bringing sign, having learned by experience the divinity in it.

of their souls toward the heavenly kingdom. For it was by this means that multitudes of the enemy army gave way, by this that the boastings of the god-fighters were humbled, by this that the tongues of the impious and profane were silenced, by this that barbarian tribes were subdued, by this that the powers of unseen demons were driven off, by this that the games of superstitious deceit were exposed, by this that the emperor, as if paying a debt of all good things, set up victory monuments throughout the whole earth, commanding with a rich and royal hand that churches and sacred precincts and houses of prayer be established for all. And immediately there arose in the very midst of provinces and cities the great works of royal magnanimity, and in a short time these shone forth in every nation, drawing to themselves the condemnation of the godless tyranny. For those who, with madness of soul, had shortly before been eager to fight against God, like rabid dogs venting their rage against lifeless buildings, since it was not possible for them to vent it against God himself, and then casting them down from on high to the ground and digging up from their very foundations the houses of prayer, presented the spectacle of a city captured by enemies. And this was for them the drama of their evils, through which, as if avenging themselves on the divine, they immediately received the experience of their madness. But not even a short time passed for them, and with a single blast of a god-sent storm they were made invisible, so that no race, no seed, no remnant of their memory was left among men, but all, though they were set apart in multitude, were utterly extinguished in a short time, punished by god-sent scourges.

But such was the end they found for their god-fighting madness, while he who had set before him the saving trophy, alone yet not alone—for the Only One was present and cooperating with him—showed the new acquisitions to be far superior to those recently captured, and the second far more precious than the first. Here he adorned the city named after him with various churches of God; there he honored the ruling city of the Bithynians with a very great and most beautiful one; and he decorated the most prominent cities of the remaining nations with similar works. Taking two exceptional portions of the East, one in the nation of the Palestinians, as if from there the life-giving stream had gushed forth like a spring to all, and the other in the eastern metropolis that bears the name of Antiochus, he dedicated there, as at the head of all the nations of that region, a divine and unique work, for its size and beauty. Enclosing the entire temple with long outer precincts, and raising the sanctuary within to an inconceivable height, he embellished it in the form of an octagon, and surrounding it with many chambers and exedras in a circle, he crowned it with all kinds of beauties. These things were accomplished there; while in the nation of the Palestinians, at the royal hearth of the Hebrews, in the middle of the very saving martyrion, he adorned a vast house of prayer and a holy temple with the saving sign, with rich and lavish munificence, and a monument full of eternal memory, honoring the very trophies of the great Savior over death with adornments surpassing all description.

Having received three regions in this land, honored with three mystic caves, he adorned them with rich buildings, assigning to the cave of the first theophany its due honor, exalting the memory of the final ascension on the mountaintop, and raising up the saving victories of the whole struggle in the middle cave. All these the emperor adorned, proclaiming the saving sign to all; and piety, granting him reciprocal gifts, increases his entire house and race, strengthens his royal throne through long periods of years, and stores up the fruits of virtue for good children, his own lineage, and their successors. And this indeed was the greatest proof of the power of the one honored, that, distributing the talents of justice equally, he brought the fitting reward to each order. Therefore, for those who besieged the houses of prayer, the penalties of impiety followed immediately, and they became rootless, homeless, hearthless, and obscure at once; but he who honored his master with every form of piety, at one time raising up royal houses for him, at another revealing the dedications throughout the earth to his subjects, rightly found him a savior and guardian of his house, kingdom, and race. Here the deeds of God were manifested through the inspired virtue of the saving sign, concerning which a long account would be given, handed down to initiates by theological men.

For this was truly a saving sign, a marvel to speak of and a great wonder to contemplate, how all the falsehoods about the gods from time immemorial, once it appeared, covered only the earth and consigned error to darkness and oblivion, while it shone forth intellectual light into the souls of men and revealed to all the one true God. Therefore everyone, having changed for the better, spits upon the faces of dead idols, tramples upon the lawless ordinances of demons, and laughs at the ancient, inherited deceit. And men everywhere have established gatherings for sacred discourses, where they are instructed in saving teachings, so that they no longer marvel at the visible creation with the eyes of the flesh, nor, looking upward, stop their wonder at the sun, moon, and stars, but confess the one beyond these, the invisible and unseen creator of all, having learned to revere only him. So great a cause of good things for men has this great and paradoxical sign been revealed to be, through which all that is base no longer exists, while things that previously did not exist now shine forth among all with rays of piety. Discourses, teachings, and exhortations to a temperate and godly life are proclaimed to all nations so as to be heard, and the emperor himself proclaims them; and the greatest wonder is that such a great emperor, with a very loud voice, cries out to the whole world, like some interpreter of the all-ruling God, summoning all those shepherded under him to the knowledge of that which truly is.

And indeed in the midst of the imperial palaces there are no longer, as before, the foolish prattlings of godless men, but priests and devotees of God, exulting in hymns of imperial piety, celebrate festivals; and one God, the king of all, is proclaimed to all; and the evangelical word of good things unites the race of men with the king of all, proclaiming the heavenly father as gracious and friendly to his sons on earth; and all kinds of choruses honor him with victory songs, and the whole mortal race joins in harmony with the angelic choruses in heaven; and rational souls, through the bodies with which they are clothed as through musical instruments, send up to him the fitting hymns and the owed theologies; and at the same time, those dwelling in the east and those allotted the west are instructed in his teachings under a single moment of time, and those in the south and those who have received the northern portion sing harmonious songs, pursuing the pious life with the same modes and words, and they acclaim one God over all, and they ascribe one only-begotten savior as the cause of all good things, and they recognize one king on earth as the corrector and his sons as beloved of God. And he, like a wise helmsman seated high above the tillers, steers a straight course, sailing all under him with a fair wind to the safe and calm harbor; and God himself, the great king, stretching forth his right hand from above, for the present establishes him as victor over all enemies and foes, increasing the power of his reign through long cycles of years, and will also make him a partaker of better things.

of good things, confirming by his deeds his own promises, which the present time no longer permits us to recount; but we must defer the journey thither, since divine matters are not by nature apprehended by mortal eyes and the ears of flesh. Come then, O Great Victor Constantine, let us set forth in this imperial treatise the initiations into secret teachings concerning the universal King of all, not initiating you, who have been made wise by God, nor laying bare the secrets to you, to whom God himself, not through men nor through a human intermediary, but through the common Savior himself and through his divine vision which has shone upon you in many ways, has revealed and disclosed the hidden things of the sacred mysteries, but rather leading the ignorant into the light and setting before those who do not know the foundations and causes of your pious works.

For the things that are accomplished daily throughout the whole inhabited world by your virtue for the service and honor of the all-king God, every mortal mouth hymns; but the things at our own hearth—I mean of the nation of the Palestinians and of this city, whence the saving word, as from a spring, flowed forth to all men—dedicated to your guardian and savior as thank-offerings, and trophies of the victory over death erected in houses of prayer and dedications of temples, lofty and very beautiful royal great works of a royal mind built around the saving martyrion of immortal memory, do not have their cause evident to all. But those illuminated by the power of the divine spirit in divine matters know and recognize them, and justly admire and bless you for your thought and impulse toward these things, which was not moved without God; while those ignorant of divine things, with blindness of soul, make the matter a subject of mockery and broad laughter, having supposed it unbecoming and inappropriate for so great a king to be zealous for memorials and tombs of dead bodies. Then would it not be better, one of them might say, to preserve ancestral customs and to propitiate the heroes and gods honored by each nation, and not to spurn and flee them because of such misfortunes? But either those are likewise to be deified for the sake of shared suffering, or if they are rejectable because of their human passions, it is just to assign the same verdict to this one. These things, then, one might say, greatly knitting his brows and with a conceited pretension to wisdom, magnifying his own vanity.

The philanthropic Word of the all-good Father, deeming not only the ignorant but also everyone who is utterly astray worthy of pardon, having established schools and places of instruction throughout the whole inhabited world of the nations, in lands and villages, fields and deserts, and in cities everywhere, calls ungrudgingly to the education of divine teachings, summoning Greeks and barbarians alike, wise and ignorant, poor and rich, slaves together with masters, rulers and ruled, impious, unjust, unlearned, shameful, blasphemous, to come and hasten to the divine therapy, as a philanthropic savior and physician of souls, exhorting them. Indeed, with clear proclamations, announcing to all a forgetting of former evils, he cried out: "Come to me," he said, "all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest;" and again: "I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance;" and he adds the reason, saying: "For the strong have no need of a physician, but those who are ill." And: "I do not desire the death of the sinner, but his repentance." From this, only to one educated in divine matters, who has learned the reasons for the zeal of the subjects, does it occur to acknowledge an inspiration greater than human in our emperor, and to admire the piety of his character, and to believe that his zeal for the martyrdom of saving immortality has not been without divine guidance.

Truly of the inspiration of the higher power, whose good servant you boast to be the minister of good things. Convinced that these things are indeed most dear and agreeable to you, greatest emperor, my present discourse wishes to set forth to all the words and reasons of your God-loving works, praying to be a kind of interpreter of your mind and a messenger of your God-loving soul, teaching all that is necessary and fitting for all to learn, for whom there is a desire to learn the words of the power of our savior God, on account of which he, being from of old and caring for the whole, at length came down from heaven to us, and on account of which he assumed human nature, and on account of which he went to death, and the reasons not only of the immortal life thereafter and of the resurrection from the dead, but also the clear proofs and necessary teachings for those who still need them. But indeed it is time to begin these very things from somewhere here.

Those who have exchanged the reverence for the world-maker and universal ruler God of all for the things generated by him—sun and moon and the remaining parts of the cosmos, and the primary elements, earth, water, air, fire—honoring them with the same appellation as their maker and creator, and calling these things gods, which in no way, nowhere, were, nor would have existed nor been named, had it not been for the world-making word of God, seem to me to differ not at all from those who, passing by the architect of the great works in royal palaces, are utterly amazed at roofs and walls and the many-colored and many-flowered paintings in them, and at gold-bearing ornaments and carvings of stones, and attribute the appellation of the craftsman's wisdom to these very things themselves, when they ought to ascribe the cause of wonder not to the visible things but only to their architect, and to acknowledge that many things are works of wisdom, but that only that one is wise who provided the cause for the many to be such. They would differ not at all from utterly infantile children, as would also those who admire the very musical instrument of the seven-stringed lyre, but not the discoverer and expert of its arrangement, or those who, passing by the hero in wars, adorn the spear and shield with victory crowns, or those who honor equally with the great king, the cause of the great and royal city, the marketplaces and squares and buildings and lifeless precincts and gymnasia, when they ought to be amazed not at columns nor stones but at the great worker and lawgiver of the wise.

Similarly, one must not attribute the cause of this entire universe, as seen by the eyes of the flesh, to the sun or the moon or any other of the heavenly bodies, but it is proper to confess that all things are works of wisdom, and not to honor and revere them in the same way as their maker and creator. Instead, from these very things, with the sight of the mind alone, clear and pure, one must theologize and worship the all-kingly Word of God, who is no longer perceived by the eyes of the body but by the pure and clear mind, with every disposition of the soul. For even in the case of a human body, no one has ever called the eyes or head or hands or feet or the rest of the flesh of a wise and learned man wise, still less the external covering of his cloak, nor the furniture of his house wise, nor the serving utensils of the philosopher; rather, every sensible person admires the invisible and unseen mind within the human being. So too, and even more so, before the visible fabrications of the entire cosmos, which are bodies and made from a single matter, one must marvel at the invisible and unseen Word, the very one who is the form-giver and orderer of the whole, who is the only-begotten of God, whom the maker of all, who is beyond and above all substance, himself generated from himself and established as leader and governor of this universe. For since it was not possible for the flowing substance of bodies and the nature of recently created rational beings to approach the all-ruling God because of the excess of

from the better to the deficient. For the one was unbegotten, highest and beyond the whole, ineffable, unattainable, inaccessible, dwelling in an unapproachable light, as the divine words say; the other was projected from non-being, standing far off and separated by a great distance from the unbegotten nature. Naturally, the all-good God of the whole interposes a certain middle power, the divine and all-powerful force of his only-begotten Logos, which on the one hand converses most precisely and as closely as possible with the Father and enjoys his ineffable mysteries within him, and on the other hand descends most gently and somehow conforms itself to those who fall short of the highest. For otherwise it is neither holy nor pious to entangle the one beyond the whole and highest with corruptible matter and body. Therefore, the divine Logos, entering this whole universe interstitially and binding the reins of the whole, leads and carries it with an incorporeal and divine power, guiding it with all wisdom as seems good to him. The proof of the Logos is clear. For if the parts of the cosmos themselves, which we are accustomed to call the primary elements—earth, water, air, fire—which consist of irrational nature, and which we see with our own eyes, or if there is one underlying substance for all, which those skilled in these matters like to call the all-receiving, mother, and nurse, and this is formless, shapeless, entirely soulless and irrational, how could one say that the cosmos within it exists in it? Whence the separation of the elements? Whence the convergence of opposites into the same? Who commanded the heavy element of earth to ride upon a liquid substance?

Who turned the nature of waters, which flows downward, back upward and led it through clouds suspended aloft? Who bound the power of fire, making it dwell in wood, and blended it with its natural opposites? Who, mixing cold air with hot power, dissolved their mutual strife and reconciled them into friendship? Who devised the mortal race through the mode of succession and extended its life into a long age of immortal existence? Who here formed the male and shaped the female, and brought both together into one harmony, discovering for all living beings the beginning of generation? Who transformed the flowing and seminal generation of perishable and insentient flux and made it life-producing? Who even now works all these things and countless others beyond wonder and astonishment? Who, each day and hour, invisibly and unseen, brings about their generations and destructions? But indeed, the wonder-working Word of God would justly be declared the cause of all these things; for truly the all-powerful Word of God, extending himself incorporeally both upward to the height and downward to the depth, and embracing the breadths and lengths of the whole with his broad hands as it were, has gathered and bound together this universe, and having fitted together for himself this all-harmonious instrument, he strikes up the irrational, formless, and shapeless substance of bodies with all-wise and rational power, skillfully joining the separated with the intervals, and governs the sun, the moon, and the luminous bodies in the heavens with ineffable words, guiding them to the benefit of the whole.

The same Word of God, deepening itself into the earth, constituted the manifold kinds of animals and the multiform beauties of plants. This same Word of God, sinking even to the depths of the sea, devised the nature of swimming creatures, and there again produced countless and innumerable forms and differences of all kinds of animals. This same Word also, fashioning within the workshop of nature what is conceived in the womb, gives life to it. And this Word, lifting the fluid and heavy nature of liquid substance upward into the air and then sweetening it by change, introduces it to the earth in due measure and accomplishes its supply at fixed times. Then, like some excellent farmer, having well channeled water over the land and blended the moist with the dry, it reshapes everything variously—at one time with seasonal flowers, at another with all kinds of forms, at another with sweet scents, at another with changing varieties of fruits, at another providing all manner of pleasures to the taste. Why should I dare to go through the powers of the divine Word and attempt the impossible, since its activity surpasses every mortal mind? Some, then, have called this nature of the universe, others the universal soul, others fate; while others have declared it to be the God beyond all things, mixing, I know not how, things that are most widely separated, casting down the universal leader and the unbegotten and highest power to the earth, entangling it with body and perishable matter, and saying that it is rolled about in the midst of irrational and rational, mortal and immortal beings. But these are the opinions of some.

The inspired teaching declares that the highest of goods, the very cause of all things, is beyond every form of comprehension. Hence it is ineffable, unspeakable, nameless, and superior not only to all speech but to all thought as well, not circumscribed in place, not existing in bodies, not in heaven, not in the aether, nor in any part of the universe, but wholly and entirely outside of all things, stored away in an ineffable depth of knowledge. The divine oracles teach that this alone is the true God, separated from all corporeal substance, alien to all servile economy. Therefore it is handed down that the universe came from him, not through him. But he himself, like a king dwelling somewhere within ineffable, inaccessible, and unapproachable light, inaccessible throughout, by his mere volitional power legislates and ordains; for what he wills exists, and what he does not will does not exist, and he wills all good things, since he is essentially the Good itself. And he through whom all things exist, the Word of God, from above, from the good Father as from an ever-flowing and infinite spring, pouring forth in ineffable words like a river, proceeds, flooding entirely into the common salvation of the universe.

As in the case of the example among ourselves: the invisible and unseen mind within us—what it is and of what nature it consists in substance, no human being has ever known—exists like a king in his secret inner chambers, deliberating alone on what must be done; while from it proceeds a word, only-begotten, born as from a father’s innermost sanctuary, by an ineffable reason and an unnameable power, which then becomes the first messenger of the father’s thoughts to all, proclaims openly what has been secretly deliberated by the father, and accomplishes the plans in deeds as it goes forth to the ears of all. Then some partake of the benefit from the word, but the unseen and invisible mind, the father of the word, no one has ever seen with eyes. In the same way—indeed, beyond every image and example—the perfect Word of the all-king God, as the only-begotten Son of the Father, is not constituted by a power of utterance, nor is its nature constructed from syllables, names, and verbs, nor is it signified in a voice striking the air; but it is the living and active Word of God over all, subsisting in substance as the power of God and the wisdom of God. It proceeds from the Father’s divinity and kingship, and being a good offspring of a good Father, a common savior of all, it waters the whole universe, pouring forth life, reason, wisdom, light, and all good things from its own fullness to all. It waters not only what is near and closest, but also what is far distant on land and sea, and any other portion that exists among beings.

For all of them together he ordains boundaries, regions, laws, and allotments most justly, distributing and supplying what is fitting to each with royal authority, assigning to some the supercosmic vaults, to others heaven itself to dwell in, to others ethereal abodes, to others air, to others earth, and then again transferring them from here elsewhere, distinguishing well the lives of each, altering differences in character and manners, caring for the life and nourishment not only of rational beings but also of irrational animals for the use of rational ones, and providing to some the enjoyment of mortal and temporary life, to others participation in immortal life; and he himself, as the Word of God, energizes all things, being present to all and traversing all with rational power, looking upward to his own father and by his nods governing the things below and after him accordingly as a common savior of all, mediating in some way and uniting the generated substance to the ungenerated. This is an unbreakable bond, the Word of God, being in the middle, binding together the separated and not allowing them to fall far apart; this is the universal providence, this is the guardian and corrector of the whole, this is the power of God and the wisdom of God, this is the only-begotten God, the Word born from God; for "in the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God; all things came to be through him, and without him not one thing that has come to be came to be," the sacred voices of theologians teach.

This is the common planter of all, through whom the substance of the whole grows and flourishes, being watered throughout by the rains from him, ever presenting a fresh bloom and the beautiful season of the universe. And he who has taken hold of the reins proceeds on a straight course, steering the great vessel of the entire cosmos by a fatherly nod. Such a beautiful-artificer only-begotten son the God beyond the whole has, as a good father begetting a good fruit, given as the greatest good to this cosmos, like a soul to a soulless body, casting his own reason into the irrational nature of bodies, and illuminating and ensouling the formless, shapeless, soulless, and unshaped substance by the divine power of reason. This one we must both recognize and revere, as he dwells throughout in matter and the elements of bodies and gives life to all things, while being himself light and a noetic offspring of unutterable light, and one in substance, as being from one father, but possessing many powers in himself. For it is not because there are many parts of the cosmos that one should suppose there are many powers, nor because there are many created things that it is fitting for there to be many gods.

A terrible error, as if children in soul, the offspring of polytheistic men, were led astray, deifying the parts of the whole and dividing the one cosmos into many, just as if someone, taking a single human being composed of one, were to isolate the eyes and say these are a man, and the ears again another man, and the head similarly, and the neck and chest and shoulders, and feet and hands and the remaining limbs, having cut them up, and having divided the powers of the senses by reason, were to say that the one man is many men, gaining nothing more than the laughter of folly from the sensible. Such would be the one who posits for himself countless gods from the parts of the one cosmos, or who thinks that this generated cosmos itself is god, consisting of many parts, and does not know that divine nature could never be composed of parts; for if it were composite, it would need another to compose it; nor, being multi-partite, would it be divine; for how could it, consisting of dissimilar differences, of worse and better? Being simple and partless and uncompounded, it lies beyond the entire visible order of the cosmos. Therefore the herald of truth cries out explicitly somewhere thus: God's Logos, who alone before all, would be the savior of all rational beings, but God, who is beyond, the begetter of the Logos, alone being the cause of all, would properly be called father of the Logos as of an only-begotten, and he himself will not inscribe a higher cause; therefore he alone is God, and the only-begotten proceeds from him, the savior of all, the one Logos of God, who is through all. Now the perceptible cosmos, like a many-stringed lyre from dissimilar

composed of strings, both high and low, both slack and taut and intermediate, all well-tuned by the art of music, so too this universe, being many-parted and many-compounded, of cold together with its opposite hot, of moist and again its opposite dry substance, having come together into a single harmony, would be a great instrument, the creation of a great god; but the divine Word, no longer composed of parts nor compounded of opposites, being itself partless and uncompounded, strikes up the whole well and wisely, rendering to its own father and king of all the melody that is owed and fitting to him. And just as under a single body limbs and parts and entrails and inward parts have been assembled in countless number, but an invisible soul is spread through all, one, and a mind partless and incorporeal, one, so too in this case, from many parts the cosmos has been constituted as one, and the Word of God, likewise, many-powered and all-powerful, one, extending through all and invisibly spread over all, would be the cause of all things in them. Do you not see with your eyes the whole cosmos, how one heaven encompasses countless choruses of stars circling around it? Again, one sun, but not more, covers the gleams of all by the excess of its light. Thus, since there is one father, his Word also must be one, good, of a good father. But if someone should find fault because there are not more, it is time for such a person to blame also that there are not more suns and moons and worlds and countless other things, as if in a madman's manner attempting to pervert what is right and well-ordered in nature.

But just as in the visible realm one sun illumines the entire sensible world, so too in the intelligible realm, invisibly and unseen by us, the one all-powerful Word of God irradiates the whole universe. For also in a human being there is one soul and one rational faculty, which could be the maker of many things at once, if the same soul, having learned to farm and build ships and steer and construct many things, should apply itself; and one mind and reason in a human being could at some time receive the sciences of countless things: the same mind will practice geometry and astronomy, will teach the principles of grammar and rhetoric and medicine, and will preside over both mathematics and manual arts; and yet no one has ever supposed that there are more souls than one in a single body, nor has anyone marveled at many substances in a human being because of the reception of many disciplines. And if someone, finding formless clay, should soften it with his hands and then impose the shape of a living creature, fashioning the head in one form, the hands and feet in another, the eyes in yet another, and likewise the cheeks, ears, mouth, nose, chest, and shoulders by the art of sculpture—still, because many shapes and parts and limbs have been created under one body, one must not suppose that there are as many makers, but must praise only the one craftsman of the whole, who has constructed everything at once with a single reason and a single power.

Thus also in the case of this entire universe, which is one but subsists from many parts, one must not suppose many creative powers, nor name many gods, but rather theologize one all-wise and all-harmonious power and wisdom of God, truly of God, which by one power and one virtue penetrates through all things and pervades the whole world, establishing and vivifying all things, and universally providing to all and to each individual body and element a varied supply from itself. In like manner, the one and same impact of the sun’s light simultaneously and at the same time illuminates the air, brightens the eyes, warms the touch, enriches the earth, increases plants, constitutes time, governs the stars, traverses the heaven, adorns the cosmos, and manifests the power of God clearly to the whole; and all these things it accomplishes by a single inclination of its nature. And the nature of fire likewise purifies gold, melts lead, dissolves wax, dries clay, and burns wood, by one burning power.

so many things does it accomplish. Thus also the all-king Word of God, who pervades all things, being in all and traversing all, governing both heavenly and earthly, the invisible and the visible, guides the sun itself, the heaven, and the entire cosmos with ineffable powers, being present to all with an active power and passing through all, while from his own source he pours forth perpetual light upon the sun, moon, and stars; having established the heaven as the most fitting image of his own magnitude, he maintains it forever; and he fills the powers beyond heaven and the cosmos—angels, spirits, and intellectual and rational substances—with life, light, wisdom, and every virtue, and with all that is beautiful and good, from the treasures beside him; and with one and the same creative art he never ceases to provide substances to the elements, and to bodies mixtures, blends, forms, shapes, and countless qualities, variously adorning them in animals, plants, and rational and irrational souls at different times, and supplying all things to all with one power, manifestly showing not a seven-stringed nor a many-stringed lyre, but one cosmos, a work of one world-making Word, as a many-harmonious whole. Let us now speak of what follows and clarify the reason why the great Word of God made his descent to men.

This then is the Word of God, who presides over heaven and earth, born from the highest paternal divinity as from a source, and ever present and coexistent with this cosmos, providing clear signs of his providence and care for mankind. A race of foolish men, not having reasoned this out, attributed the venerable appellation to the sun, moon, heaven itself, and the stars. Nor did they stop even at these, but also deified the earthly nature, the fruits of the earth, and all manner of bodily nourishment, fashioning images of Demeter, Kore, Dionysus, and other such beings. Nor did they stop even at these, but did not shrink from proclaiming as gods the reasonings of their own intellect and the very word that interprets these, naming Athena as the intellect and Hermes as the word, and proclaiming the powers that preside over the sciences as Mnemosyne and the Muses. Nor did they stop even at these, but, increasing their absurdity to a greater excess of impiety, they deified their own passions, which ought to be shunned and healed by a temperate reason, proclaiming as gods their own desire, the passionate and licentious disease of their souls, the parts and members of the body that draw toward shameful acts, and the incontinence of base pleasures, naming them Eros, Priapus, Aphrodite, and other kindred beings.

Nor did they stop even at these things, but falling down to the level of bodily births and the mortal life below, they deified mortal men and, after their common death, proclaimed them heroes and gods, supposing that the immortal and divine substance was confined to tombs and graves. Nor did they stop even at these things, but they also honored with the title of reverence all kinds of irrational animals and the most harmful reptiles. Nor did they stop even at these things, but cutting down oaks and hewing rocks and mining the earth's metals, and searching out bronze and iron and other material, they fashioned shapes of females and forms of males and figures of beasts and reptiles, and then bestowed honors upon these. Nor did they stop even at these things, but to the evil demons lurking in the wooden images and hiding in dark recesses, licking after the libations and savor of sacrifices, they assigned the same appellation of gods. Nor did they stop even at these things, but also to certain spells of forbidden sorcery, to unlawful and compulsory songs and incantations, they attributed invisible powers around

air as their companions. Moreover, different peoples deified different mortal men: the children of the Greeks honored Dionysus, Heracles, Asclepius, Apollo, and certain other men with the appellation of heroes and gods; the Egyptians considered Horus, Isis, Osiris, and similar men again as gods. And yet, boasting excessively of wisdom in geometry, astronomy, and arithmetic, these wise men neither knew nor understood how to measure among themselves and calculate the measures of God's power and the difference between mortal and irrational nature. Therefore, they did not shrink from calling every form of repulsive vermin and all kinds of animals, venomous reptiles, and wild beasts gods. The Phoenicians proclaimed Melqart, Usoos, and certain other more dishonorable mortal men again as gods, as did the children of the Arabs a certain Dushara and Obodas, and the Getae Zalmoxis, and the Cilicians Mopsus, and the Thebans Amphiaraus, and among others still other men, differing in nature not at all from mortals, but being truly only men.

Thus all together—Egyptians, Phoenicians, Greeks, and every mortal race that the rays of the sun illuminate—have declared the parts of the world and the elements, the fruits that sprout from the earth, their own passions, and indeed the demonic frenzies and phantasms, and, before these, mortal men who experienced human misfortunes, and who neither established schools of virtue during their lifetime, nor produced teachings of a temperate life for men, nor set forth philosophical doctrines, nor exhibited any beneficial work, nor left behind disciples of virtue, nor handed down discourses or writings conducive to a good life, but were occupied with women and shameful pleasures—these, by some demonic energy, they vainly and haphazardly proclaimed gods and heroes, honoring them with sacrifices and initiations accompanied by magical deceptions, building temples and sanctuaries for them in cities and throughout lands, while they held in no regard the only true divine Word beyond the cosmos, the universal king and creator of all. And they advanced to such a pitch of madness and mental derangement that they would at one and the same time declare certain chance men to be gods and immediately attribute to the same the passions of mortals—lawless loves, shameful deeds, and the catastrophes and deaths of their lives.

Then, claiming such things not slandered by others but being themselves witnesses of these things, and confessing their own wanderings, griefs, deaths, and before these their adulteries, corruptions of males, and abductions of women, they nonetheless filled all cities, villages, and lands with temples, statues, and shrines, destroying their own souls by the likeness of their gods. Now, indeed, one could hear among them of gods and children of gods, heroes and good daemons in word, but in deed everything was the opposite; at any rate, they honored the opposites with the opposites, as if someone, wishing to show the sun and the lights in the sky to another, should not raise his eyes upward but, casting his hands downward to the earth and throwing them on the ground, should seek the heavenly powers in mud and filth. Thus also the human race, by madness and the deceit of evil daemons, was persuaded that the divine and intelligible substance beyond heaven and cosmos exists somewhere below in the generation of bodies and in the passions and deaths of mortals. And they drove themselves to such folly that they even sacrificed their dearest to them, showing no regard for nature, but already slaughtered even their only-begotten and beloved children in madness and derangement of mind. And what could be more mad than this: to sacrifice humans and to defile all cities and their own houses with civil murders? Or do not the children of the Greeks bear witness to these things?

And the whole history is filled with the memory of these things. For the Phoenicians sacrificed to Cronus each year their beloved and only-begotten children, and to this same god in Rhodes on the sixth day of the month Metageitnion they slaughtered human beings. In Salamis, within a single precinct of Athena Agraulis, a man driven by Diomedes would run three times around the altar, and then the priest would strike him in the throat with a spear and thus burn him whole on the prepared pyre. In Egypt there were very many human sacrifices, and three were sacrificed each day to Hera in Heliopolis, until King Amasis, recognizing the horror, ordered that equal numbers of wax figures be substituted. In Chios they sacrificed a man by tearing him apart to Dionysus Omadius, and likewise in Tenedos. In Lacedaemon they performed human sacrifice to Ares. In Crete they did the same, offering human sacrifices to Cronus. To Athena a virgin was sacrificed each year in Laodicea of Syria, but now a deer. Moreover, the Libyans and Carthaginians propitiated their gods with human sacrifices. The Dumathenians of Arabia sacrificed a child each year, whom they buried beneath the altar. And history teaches that all Greeks, before setting out for war, practiced human sacrifice, as did the Thracians and Scythians likewise. The Athenians recall the daughters of Leos and the daughter of Erechtheus who were slaughtered. But even now, who is unaware that in the great city a human being is sacrificed at the festival of Zeus Latiarius?

These things the most esteemed of philosophers have testified to be so. And Diodorus, who compiled the libraries, says that the Libyans publicly sacrificed two hundred of the most distinguished children to Cronus, and no fewer than three hundred others they offered up for the sacrifice. And Dionysius, the writer of Roman history, says that Jupiter and Apollo themselves by name demanded human sacrifices in Italy from the so-called Aborigines. He says that those who were asked offered to the gods the first fruits of all their crops; but because they did not also sacrifice human beings, they fell into all kinds of misfortunes, and had no respite from evils until they tithed themselves. And so, by taking and sacrificing tithes of men, they became the cause of desolation for the land. With so many evils the whole human race was formerly afflicted. Nor was it enough that they did evil in these matters, but they were also enslaved by countless other incurable calamities.

For together all the nations throughout the whole inhabited world, both Greek and barbarian, as if goaded by demonic energy, were divided by a terrible and most grievous disease, because the human race was unsociable and irreconcilable with itself, the great body of common nature being torn asunder here and there, with men rebelling in every corner of the earth, contending with each other over laws and constitutions, and not only this, but also being driven wild by frequent uprisings against one another, so that always and throughout their whole life they devoted themselves to battles and wars against each other, and it was not possible for anyone who wished to travel to go unarmed, as if against an enemy, but farmers in fields and villages carried swords and possessed military equipment more than the tools for agriculture, and plundering and enslaving their neighbors was considered a part of virtue. And not only this, but also from the myths they fabricated about their own gods, taking provisions for a shameful and lawless life, they corrupted both their bodies and their souls together with every kind of licentiousness. And not only this, but also overstepping the boundaries, they went beyond nature into unspeakable acts and committed outrages against each other that are unbelievable to the ears, "males working shame upon males, and the requital which their error required they exacted upon themselves.

receiving, as the sacred words say. And not only this, but also perverting the natural conceptions about God, they considered all things here to be without providence and without governance, and they attributed the essence and constitution of the universe to irrational and spontaneous nature and to the necessity of fate. And not only this, but also supposing that their own souls were destroyed together with their bodies, they led a bestial life and an unlivable existence, not inquiring into the substance of the soul, not expecting the just awards of divine judgment, not considering the rewards of virtue or the punishments of an unjust life in their minds; and already whole nations were consumed by a bestial life with manifold forms of vice, some mingling with their mothers in an unlawful and most lawless union, others marrying their sisters, others corrupting their own daughters, and some slaughtering visiting strangers, others even tasting human flesh, others strangling the aged with a noose and then feasting on them, others throwing them while still alive to dogs. Time will fail me if I recount all the ancient disease that had seized the whole human race—these and countless things akin to them, on account of which the benevolent Word of God, taking pity on the rational flock among men, long ago through some of his prophets, and even earlier through other God-loving men, and after them through later disciples, called the despairing to their own healing, laying down certain preludes and elements of piety among men through laws and various exhortations and all kinds of teachings.

As, then, the mortal race, wandering here and there and being mercilessly torn not by wolves and untamed beasts but by terrible and savage demons and harsh, soul-destroying spirits, no longer needed human power but a helper stronger than man, the Word of God himself, very eagerly, came to us and was present in our camps, obeying the nod of the all-good Father. The cause of his presence here was the things that have been made clear, for the sake of which, when he came into the company of mortals, he did not do what was customary for him, being incorporeal and traversing the whole universe invisibly, revealing his great works by his very deeds both in the heavens and on earth, but in a newer way, deviating from his usual manner. For he entered into intercourse and association with mortals through a mortal instrument, providing for the salvation of the mortal through the like. Let us then set forth after this also the reason why the incorporeal Word of God, using a body as an instrument, came into the company of men. And how else could a divine, intangible, immaterial, and invisible substance reveal itself to those who seek God among things subject to generation and down on earth, who are either unable or unwilling to behold the creator and maker of all things, except through a human form and shape? Hence he descended into intercourse with mortals through a mortal instrument, a suitable aid, because this was dear to them; for like, they say, is dear to like.

To those who delight in the perception of visible things, who seek gods in statues and carvings of lifeless images, who imagine the divine to exist in matter and bodies, and who proclaim mortal men by nature as gods, the Word of God showed himself in this way. Therefore he constructed for himself a most holy temple, a bodily instrument, a sentient dwelling-place of rational power, a venerable and all-holy image, more honorable than any lifeless statue. For the image made from lifeless matter, crafted by the hands of vulgar men in the likeness of bronze, iron, gold, ivory, stones, and wood, would be a fitting dwelling-place for demons; but the inspired image, adorned with the power of divine wisdom, partook of life and intellectual substance, an image full of every virtue, an image and dwelling-place of the divine Word, a holy temple of the holy God. In this, the indwelling Word dwelt with mortals through kinship and was known, yet he did not succumb to like passions, nor was he bound to the body as a human soul is, nor did he become worse than himself and change from his own divinity. For just as the rays of the sun would suffer nothing, filling all things and touching dead and impure bodies, so much more the incorporeal power of the Word of God would neither suffer in essence nor be harmed nor ever become worse than itself, touching the body incorporeally. Thus the common savior of all provided himself beneficially and salvifically to all through the human instrument he had set forth, like a musician displaying his skill through the lyre.

Orpheus, indeed, a Greek myth relates, charmed all kinds of wild beasts with his song and tamed the tempers of the savage, with an instrument, a plectrum striking strings, and this is sung by the chorus of Greeks, and it is believed that a lifeless lyre tames the beasts and even the trees, the oaks, yielding to music, change. Therefore, the all-wise and all-harmonious Word of God, applying manifold remedies to human souls subject to manifold vices, taking in his hands a musical instrument, his own creation of wisdom, the human being, struck up songs and incantations through this for rational, not irrational, beasts, healing every savage manner of Greeks and barbarians, and wild and beastly passions of souls with the drugs of divine teaching, and to sick souls seeking the divine in generation and bodies, like a most excellent physician, with a kindred and suitable remedy, he presented God in a human being. And then, caring for bodies no less than souls, for the eyes of the flesh to see certain wondrous and divine marvels and powers, and for the ears of the flesh again, he sounded forth teachings through tongue and flesh, and accomplished everything through the human being he had assumed, for those who could perceive such divinity in no other way than this alone.

And these things were administered according to the Father's counsels, while he himself remained again without matter, as he was before this with the Father, not having changed his substance, nor his nature having been destroyed, nor yet bound by the bonds of flesh, nor making his abode here where his human vessel was, while being prevented from being elsewhere in the universe. But indeed, even at that time when he dwelt among men, he filled all things, and was with the Father, and was in him, and cared for all things together, both those in heaven and on earth, at that time as well, in no way excluded from presence everywhere as we are, nor hindered in performing divine acts as is customary, but on the one hand transmitting from himself to the man, and on the other not receiving from the mortal, and supplying divine power to the mortal while not partaking of the mortal's participation. Therefore he was not defiled when the body was born, nor did the impassible one suffer in his substance when the mortal was again divided; since, if a lyre were to be broken or its strings torn apart, it is not likely that the one who plucks it would suffer, nor would we reasonably say that the wisdom in a wise man or the soul in the body is cut or burned when the body of some wise man is punished. By this much more, it is reasonable to say that no harm accrues to the power of the Word from the sufferings of the body, because not even the example of light for us would allow that the sun's rays, sent from heaven to earth and touching mud, filth, and every defilement, are stained.

For it would not be forbidden to say that these things too are illuminated by the rays of light, but the light itself is no longer made of clay, nor is the sun polluted by contact with bodies. And indeed these things would not be alien to nature. But the Savior, the incorporeal Word of God, being itself life and itself intellectual light, by whatever he touches with divine and incorporeal power, that thing must live and dwell in rational light; thus also whatever body he touches is immediately sanctified and illuminated, and every disease, infirmity, and passion withdraws from it, and it receives from him the fullness of what it lacked. Therefore he continued his whole life in this way, at one time showing the sympathy of the bodily instrument with us, at another revealing the divine Word, working great deeds and performing wonders as God, and proclaiming beforehand prophecies of things to come, and demonstrating the divine Word, not seen by the many, through his very deeds in miraculous actions, wonders, signs, and paradoxical powers, and indeed through divine teachings preparing souls for the supracelestial place above. What remains after this but to tell the very sum of the whole, what cause it had, I mean the much-talked-about end of his life, the manner of his passion, and the great wonder of his resurrection after death. And after the contemplation of these things, we will confirm the proofs of all through clear testimonies.

Using a mortal instrument, for the reasons we have stated, as if employing a godlike statue, and through it, like a great king through an interpreter, he traversed human life, accomplishing everything in a manner worthy of divine power. If, then, after his sojourn among men, he had become invisible and suddenly flown away, secretly stealing away the interpreter and his own statue, hastening to escape death by flight, and then had himself obliterated the mortal part through corruption and destruction, he would have seemed a phantom to all, and would not have done what was fitting for himself, being life and the Word of God and the power of God; nor would his deeds against the demons have been brought to completion through the entanglement of death; nor would it have been known where he had gone; nor would he have been believed by those who had not received him; nor would he have appeared superior to the nature of death; nor would he have freed the mortal from his own nature; nor would he have been heard throughout the whole inhabited world; nor would he have persuaded his disciples to despise death; nor would he have presented to those following his teaching the hope of life with God after death; nor would he have fulfilled the promises of his words; nor would he have provided results in harmony with the prophetic predictions about him; nor would he have undergone the final contest of all, which was against death. Therefore, for all these reasons, since it was absolutely necessary that the mortal instrument, after the sufficient service it rendered to the divine Word, should meet a godlike end, death is thus also arranged for him.

For of the two remaining possibilities at the end—either to consign the whole to corruption and destruction and make the conclusion of life the most shameful of the entire drama, or to show himself superior to death by presenting the mortal as immortal through divine power—the first was inconsistent with the promise. For it is not proper for fire to cool, nor for light to darken; so too it is not proper for life to cause death, nor for the divine Word to act irrationally. What reason would there be for one who promises life to others to overlook his own instrument being destroyed, to consign his own statue to ruin, and to mar with death the interpreter of his divinity, while he procures immortality for his suppliants? Therefore the second was necessary, I mean to show himself superior to death. How then was this to be accomplished? Secretly and stealthily, or in a manner conspicuous and evident to all? But a deed done by him in darkness and concealment, known to no one, would benefit no one; whereas if it were seen and heard by all, it would provide everyone with the benefit derived from the miracle. Reasonably, then, since it was necessary for his instrument to be shown superior to death and for this to be done not in secret but before the eyes of men, he does not flee death—for he would have been considered cowardly and worse than death—but through his engagement with death, as with an antagonist, he presents the mortal as immortal, having undertaken this struggle for the salvation, life, and immortality of all.

Just as if someone wished to show us a vessel that is unburnable and stronger than fire, he would not otherwise present the marvel than by consigning the object in hand to the fire and then removing it safe and undamaged from the fire, so also the life-giving Word of God, wishing to show the mortal instrument which he had used for the salvation of men as stronger than death and to declare it a partner in his own life and immortality, very fittingly undertook the economy: he left the body for a short time and gave the mortal over to death for a demonstration of its own nature, then after not long removed it again from death, for a display of the divine power through which he showed the eternal life proclaimed by him to be stronger than any death. The reason is clear and evident. For since it was necessary for his disciples to see with their own eyes a clear regeneration into life after death, on which he taught them to fix their hopes, preparing them to be stronger than death, he naturally provided them with this sight for their eyes; for those who were going to pursue a pious life needed first of all to receive this most necessary lesson through clear vision, and much more so those who were about to proclaim him throughout the whole world and to announce to all men the knowledge of God set forth by him to all nations. For they needed to take up the greatest proof of life after death, so that they might fearlessly and without dread of death eagerly undertake the struggle against the polytheistic error of the nations.

For never having practiced contempt for death would they have been prepared for terrors. Therefore, of necessity, when arming them against the dominion of death, he did not entrust the lesson to words and sounds, nor did he compose a discourse on the immortality of the soul persuasively and from probabilities in human language, but by deed itself he displayed to them the trophies against death. This, then, is the first and greatest cause of our Savior's array against death: he showed death, which is fearful to all, to be nothing to his disciples, and he presented the life promised by him to their eyes through clear vision, having made that very life the firstfruits of our common hope of life with God and immortality. A second cause would be the demonstration of the divine power dwelling in the body through the resurrection. For since previously men deified mortals who had been conquered by death, calling them heroes and gods—those who had been overcome by death—the benevolent Word of God fittingly revealed himself for this reason, showing to men a nature stronger than death, leading the mortal part after dissolution to the second life, and providing for all to see a trophy of immortality against death, teaching that only he who has assumed the prizes of victory over death is to be acknowledged as a true god in death. I could also describe for you a third cause of the saving death.

a sacrifice was being offered up on behalf of the common race to the all-king god of the universe, a sacrifice being consecrated on behalf of the human flock, a sacrifice averting demonic error. Indeed, of a single and great victim, the all-holy body of our savior, slaughtered on behalf of the human race and offered up as a ransom for all nations previously held in the impiety of demonic error, the entire power of the unclean and unholy demons was thereafter destroyed, and every earthly and deceitful error was at once dissolved and undone by a mightier power. So the salvific sacrifice from among men, that very bodily instrument of the Word, was being consecrated on behalf of the common human flock, and this indeed was the victim exposed to death, concerning which the voices of holy scriptures cry out, sometimes saying here: "Behold the lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world," and sometimes proclaiming there: "He was led as a sheep to slaughter, and as a lamb voiceless before its shearer," and they teach the cause, adding: "This one bears our sins, and is pained on our behalf. And we thought him to be in pain and in plague and in affliction, but he was wounded for our sins, and was weakened for our lawless acts; the discipline of our peace is upon him. By his bruise we were healed; we all wandered as sheep, each wandered his own way.

and the Lord delivered him over to our sins." So the human instrument of the divine word was consecrated for these reasons, while this great high priest, consecrated to the all-ruling and all-king god, being distinct from the sacrificial victim—the word of God, the power of God, and the wisdom of God—recalled the mortal from death not long after, and presented this to the Father as the first offering of our common salvation, raising up a trophy of victory over death and the demonic battle array, and as an averting of the human sacrifices once performed, on behalf of all men. But since these matters stand thus, it is time to come to the proofs, if indeed proof of their truth is needed, and if indeed it is necessary to confirm the testimonies of evident facts. Receive these, having prepared your ear with a favorable disposition toward the argument. All the nations formerly on earth were divided, and the whole race of mankind was cut up into provinces, ethnarchies, toparchies, tyrannies, and polyarchies, from which continuous battles and wars, devastations and enslavements in country and city never ceased, and countless subjects of histories, adulteries and abductions of women, whence the evils of Ilium and the tragedies of old remembered among all men. You would not err in attributing the causes of these to polytheistic error.

As the instrument of salvation, that is, the all-holy body of Christ itself, which was seen to be superior to every demonic deception and activity and alien to the evil of deeds and words, was raised up as a victorious trophy against demons and an averting charm against ancient evils, immediately all the works of demons were dissolved, and there were no longer toparchies and polyarchies, tyrannies and democracies, nor the devastations and sieges of cities and countries that arose from these; but one God was proclaimed to all. At the same time, one empire, that of the Romans, flourished for all, and the age-long, implacable and irreconcilable enmity of the nations was suddenly abolished. As the knowledge of one God was imparted to all men, and one way of piety, the saving teaching of Christ, so also, when one emperor arose under one and the same time throughout the whole Roman dominion, deep peace pervaded all things; and at one and the same time, as if from a single divine nod, two shoots of good sprang up among men: the Roman empire and the pious teaching. Before this, some held Syria separately, others ruled Asia, others Macedonia, others, having cut off Egypt, held it, and the land of the Arabs

Likewise others, and indeed the race of the Jews among the Palestinians prevailed, and in villages and cities and every place, as if by some madness, they raged against each other and truly demonized, devoting themselves to wars and battles. But then all at once, as if from a single starting point, two great powers emerged and tamed them and brought them into friendship: the monarchy of the Roman empire, which from that time appeared, and the teaching of Christ, which flourished together and simultaneously with it. For the power of our Savior destroyed the polyarchies and polytheisms of the demons, proclaiming one kingdom of God to all men, both Greeks and barbarians, and to those as far as the ends of the earth; while the Roman empire, as if the causes of polyarchy had been previously removed, subdued the visible realms, hastening to unite the whole race into one unity and harmony, and having gathered together many nations of all kinds, and being about to reach even the ends of the inhabited world, with the salvific teaching, by divine power, smoothing the way for it and making everything level. This indeed would be the great wonder for those who apply their mind truthfully and do not wish to begrudge the good: for at the same time the error of the demons was refuted, at the same time the age-old hatred and war of the nations was dissolved, and again at the same time one God and one knowledge of him was proclaimed to all, at the same time one monarchy among men was strengthened, and the whole race of men was simultaneously transformed into peace and friendship, and all acknowledged each other as brothers and recognized their own nature.

At once, then, as if sprung from a single father and one God, like children of one mother—true piety—they greeted and welcomed one another peacefully, so that the whole inhabited world seemed no different from a single well-ordered household and family. Travel was open to anyone who wished, and one could journey wherever one pleased with complete ease: those from the West could pass without danger to the East, and those from there could go back again as to their own homeland. The oracles of ancient prophecies and the utterances of the prophets were fulfilled—countless others which I have no leisure now to set forth, but also those concerning the saving Word, which cry out somewhere thus: "He will rule from sea to sea, and from the rivers to the ends of the earth." And again: "In his days justice and an abundance of peace will arise." "And they will beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into sickles. And no nation will take up sword against nation, and they will no longer learn to make war." These things were foretold and proclaimed long ago by Hebrew voices from ages past; these things, seen in deeds in our own time, confirm the testimonies of those ancient voices. But if you desire an abundance of other proofs, take them not from words but from deeds. Open the eyes of your own mind, throw wide the gates of your reason, and after much reflection, consider within yourself: question yourself, and inquire as if from another, examining the nature of things in this way.

Who among all the kings or rulers or philosophers or lawgivers or prophets, Greek or barbarian, from the beginning of time ever achieved such a height of virtue—not after death, but while still living and breathing and powerful—as to fill the ears and tongues of all people on earth with his own name? Yet this no one accomplished except our one Savior alone, after his victory over death, when he spoke a word to his disciples and fulfilled it in deed, saying to them, "Go forth and teach all nations in my name." And having foretold and declared beforehand that his gospel must be proclaimed throughout the whole world as a witness to all nations, he immediately joined the deed to the word. At once, then, and not long after, the whole inhabited world was filled with his words. So what could the one who blamed us at the beginning of this discourse say to this, when the testimony of sight surpasses every word? But come, passing from the first point, proceed to another and consider within yourself: Who from all eternity ever ordained pious and temperate laws by word alone, without any writing, and then through his disciples, from the ends of the earth to the farthest reaches of the whole inhabited world, opening schools everywhere on earth, easily established that these be read aloud to all people, both barbarians and Greeks? You would find no other if you searched. And this too was the work of our Savior alone, which, accomplished after his death, would be indicative of his divine life and power. But not even this persuades the unbelieving one.

Therefore, let him tell us, who long to learn, or whoever else among men who were celebrated for wisdom ever dissolved the barbaric and savage customs of barbarian nations with his most humane laws, so that his disciples no longer practice cannibalism among the Scythians, nor mother-marriage among the Persians, nor do others cast their dead to dogs, nor do still others strangle their aged, nor are other such cruel and bestial acts performed among different peoples. But these are but small examples of our Savior's divine life after death. Behold now even greater things than these, considering who among men, over so many ages, fought by all men—rulers and kings, citizens and armies, peoples and nations—and ever warred against, displayed a superhuman virtue, so as to flourish daily and renew itself throughout his entire life. And who else from eternity, desiring to establish a nation never even heard of before under his own name, like our Savior, did not set it up in some hidden corner of the earth, but founded it throughout the whole world under the sun, imposing a limit on his own will by divine power? And who ever proposed to teach all nations to know and worship only the God beyond the heavens and the entire cosmos? And then, having set such a goal, brought the achievement to completion, making the deed itself manifestly god-loving through its very execution.

This indeed especially blocked every mouth that was not yet opened, because, having proclaimed the highest God and commanded that this one alone be recognized as true by all nations, as one who wished for what is dear to God, he was deemed worthy of the cooperation and assistance of the one whom he himself preached. What the teachings taken up together with such a proclamation are like, and what they are like when delivered to all for hearing and confirmed by deed, behold and consider. Or who else among all who ever lived, having illuminated the souls of men with rational light, prepared them to laugh at their ancestral error, so that they no longer attach the divine appellation to stones and wood or to inanimate matter? And the Egyptians, the most superstitious of all, from whom even the polytheistic error spread to the Greeks—who else but our savior persuaded them no longer to be foolish, nor to assign venerable honor to beasts and reptiles and the most dishonorable of irrational animals, but to recognize only the God over all, and to contend through all kinds of deaths for piety? And who from eternity has driven away the harmful and destructive race of demons, which once infested the whole nature of men and, through the movement of statues, displayed many sorceries among men, with an invisible and mighty hand, like terrible beasts from the human flock? And who else, like our savior, has given the power, through invocation of him in the purest prayers sent up through him to the God of all, to drive away the remnants of evil spirits from men?

to those who purely and guilelessly pursue the life of the philosophy handed down by him; and who else but our savior alone delivered to his devotees the bloodless and rational sacrifices consisting of prayers and ineffable theology to be performed? Therefore throughout the whole inhabited world of men, altars have been established and consecrated temples, and the sacred liturgies of intellectual and rational sacrifices are sent up to the one supreme king God by all nations. And who caused those sacrifices performed with blood and gore, smoke and fire, those raw and frenzied acts of murder and human sacrifice, to be extinguished and no longer exist by an invisible and unseen power, as is testified even by Greek history itself? For it was not before, but only after the divine teaching of our savior, in the time of Hadrian, that all human sacrifices everywhere on earth were abolished. With so many clear proofs confirming the virtue and power of our savior after his death, who is so iron-hearted as not to bear witness to the truth and confess his divine life? For the achievements belong to the living, not the dead, and visible things are said to be the appearances of invisible ones. Indeed, just yesterday and the day before, a race of god-fighters disturbed the life of men, led and misled, and had great power. But when he departed from among men, he lay thereafter on the ground, more contemptible than refuse, breathless, motionless, speechless, and there is no longer any account of them, no memory; for such is the nature of the dead, and he who no longer exists is nothing. And he who is nothing could not accomplish anything.

The one who is active and effective and capable of more than the living—how could he be supposed not to exist? But if he is invisible to the eyes of the flesh, yet the criterion does not lie in sense perception; we do not learn technical arguments or scientific theories through the perception of bodies, nor has anyone ever seen with their eyes the mind in humans, let alone the power of God; rather, such things are naturally conceived from their works. Therefore, in the case of our savior as well, it would be fitting to examine and discern his invisible power from his works, whether we must confess that the things accomplished by him even to this day are those of a living being, or say that they belong to one who does not exist—or else the question is foolish and incoherent; for how could one reasonably say that a non-existent being exists? For that which does not exist is declared by all votes not to exist, and is capable of neither being active nor effective nor doing anything. For such is the nature of the dead, while the opposite is that of the living. Now is the time to contemplate the achievements of our savior among us and to see the living works of a living God; for are not such accomplishments the living works of one who is truly living, a living God? What are these, you ask? Learn. Some enemies of God formerly, with great contentiousness and with greater power and force, tore down the buildings of his places of prayer from their foundations, and made his churches invisible, and with every device they warred against the one not seen by the eyes, hurling and shooting with countless verbal darts; but he, invisible, defended himself invisibly.

Then those who not long before were luxurious and thrice-blessed, celebrated as gods by all, who had governed their rule splendidly through long cycles of years, when the things later warred against were friendly and peaceful to them—as soon as they changed and dared to wage war against God, arraying their own gods as champions and protectors against ours, immediately, by a single turn of the scale and by the nod and power of the God they fought, all of them paid the penalty for their audacity, so that, yielding to the one they fought and turning their backs, they acknowledged the divinity, conceding and permitting the opposite of what they had previously dared. And he at once set up trophies of victory everywhere on earth, adorning the whole inhabited world anew from the beginning with holy temples and solemn dedications of prayer-houses, consecrating in cities and villages, in all regions and even in the deserts of the barbarians, sacred precincts and shrines to the one king God, the lord of all; whence the consecrated places have been deemed worthy of the title "of the Lord," not receiving this appellation from men, but from the lord of all, for which reason they have also been deemed worthy of the name "Lord's.

So the one who wishes, coming forward into the midst, let him teach: who, after such great destruction and desolation, raised up foundations from the ground to a height; who deemed things deprived of all hope worthy of a second renewal far better than the former, and renewed them—and this, the greatest marvel of the account, not after the death of those god-fighters, but while those very destroyers still lived, so that through their own mouth and through their own writing the palinode of what they had dared was sung, and they did this not being in a state of cheerfulness, as one might perhaps suppose from a reasoning of philanthropy, but driven by god-sent scourges. Who, after so many winters of persecution and even at the very peak of the terrors, established throughout the whole world zealots of the philosophical life and servants of God—countless men and women, priestesses and choirs of perpetual virgins, dedicating the entire time of their lives in complete purity to the teachings of his inspired instruction, and most eagerly persevering in abstinences from food, in fasts and abstinences from wine for many days, and practicing continence and the strength of a hardy life with temperance? Who persuaded women and countless multitudes of men to exchange the rational nourishment suitable for rational souls through inspired readings for the nourishment of the body?

Who taught barbarians and rustic men, women and children, and multitudes of slaves, and countless myriads of nations, to despise death and to be persuaded that their own soul is immortal, and that there exists an eye of justice as overseer of human affairs, both pious and impious, and to expect judgments from God, and for these reasons to take care to live a just and temperate life? For unless they were so disposed, it is impossible for them otherwise to submit to the yoke of piety; this is accomplished even now only by our savior. But let us pass over these matters; let us instead approach the one whose mind is petrified and lead him on with questions of this sort, inquiring of him thus. Come then, you, releasing a rational utterance, not from a foolish heart but putting forth the fruit of a rational and intelligent soul, tell me, after often considering within yourself, who else among the wise proclaimed from eternity has ever been known and proclaimed beforehand by prophetic voices from above, thousands of years before, among the ancient God-loving children of the Hebrews, like our savior? They, anticipating the place of his birth, the times of his arrival, the manner of his life, his powers, his words, and his achievements, have deposited them in sacred books. Or who has been shown to be so swift an avenger of the outrages committed against him, that at the same time as the impiety against him, the entire nation of the Jews was overtaken by an invisible power, their royal place was utterly uprooted from its foundations, and the temple itself together with its sacred objects was razed to the ground?

Who, having made predictions concerning these impious men themselves and concerning the church established by him throughout the whole world, fitting to the events, showed these to be trustworthy by the deeds, as our Savior did? Concerning the temple of the impious, he said: "Your house is left to you desolate," and "Not a stone will remain upon a stone in this place that will not be overthrown." Concerning his own church: "I will build my church upon the rock, and the gates of Hades will not prevail against it." And what do you think of taking men of low birth and rustics from fishing, making them the beginning, and declaring them lawgivers and teachers of law for the inhabited world of men? And of promising and in word saying, and in deed making them fishers of men, and providing them with such virtue and power that they composed writings and handed down books, and established these so firmly that, translated into every language of barbarians and Greeks throughout the whole world, they are studied among all nations, and the oracles deposited in them are believed to be divine? And what of his prophesying the future and forewarning his disciples that they would be brought before kings and governors, punished, and undergo the most extreme tortures, not for any wrongful act but solely for their confession of him? And of his preparing them to endure these things willingly, and arming them with the weapons of piety so that their souls appeared stronger than adamant in the contests against their adversaries—what speech would not be surpassed by this?

Not only those who had followed him, but also their successors and those who came after them, and even down to our own day, have so braced the powers of the soul that, having done nothing worthy of death, they endure every kind of punishment and every form of torture with pleasure for the sake of piety toward the God of the universe—what wonder would this not surpass? But of kings, who has ever continued in power for so long an age? Who, after death, thus commands armies and sets up trophies against enemies, and subdues every place, country, and city, both Greek and barbarian, overcoming opponents with an invisible and unseen right hand? And the chief point of what has been said—the peace everywhere on earth administered through his power, concerning which we have already spoken appropriately—what mouth of a slanderer would it not stop, when the teaching of our Savior and the proclamation cast by him upon the whole world concerning the concord and harmony of all nations has thus in fact coincided, and when the cosmic peace of the nations and the word cast by him among the nations was thus long ago foretold by the prophets of God? The whole length of the day will fail me, O Emperor, if I attempt to gather and present in one the clear proofs of the divine power of our Savior from what is still now seen, that no one ever from the beginning, either among Greeks or among barbarians, has displayed so great a power of divine virtue as our Savior has.

Why speak of men, when not even among those who are deified by all nations has any such nature ever appeared on earth? Let anyone who wishes show me, let every philosopher come forward and tell me, who in all eternity ever heard of a god or hero who provided men with lessons of eternal life and heavenly kingdom, such as our Savior, who by his philosophical teachings caused countless multitudes throughout the whole world to be trained together, and persuaded them to pursue heaven and to hope for the abodes in heaven reserved for souls beloved of God? What god or hero ever, from the rising of the sun to its setting, traversing a course almost equal to the sun, illuminated and enlightened with the brightest rays of his own teaching, so that every nation everywhere on earth performs one and the same worship to one God? What god or hero ever, having thrust aside all Greek and barbarian gods and heroes, legislated and persuaded men to consider none of those as gods; and then, when warred upon by all, being one himself, overthrew the entire army of his opponents, prevailing over all gods and heroes from all eternity, so that from the ends of the earth throughout the whole inhabited world he alone is called son of God by all nations?

be proclaimed? Who has handed down to those who inhabit the great element of the earth, both on land and on sea, to come together on each week to celebrate the day called the Lord's Day as a festival, and has prepared them not to fatten their bodies but to rekindle their souls with divine teachings? What god or hero, when warred against as our Saviour was, has raised up trophies of victory over his enemies? For they did not cease from the beginning to the end besieging his teachings and his people, while he, invisible, invisibly advanced his own to great glory in their sacred houses. And why should I labor to gather in words the divine powers of our Saviour, which surpass every word, when even in our silence the facts themselves cry out to those who possess ears of the soul, that this truly strange and paradoxical thing, and the only one from eternity, has brought the world of men into being, and that the true child of God alone from eternity has been seen by those on earth. But it would be superfluous and otherwise for you to hear what comes from us, since you yourself, having often received perception of the saving divinity through experience itself, have become a herald of the truth to all not by words but by deeds themselves. For you yourself, O Emperor, if granted leisure, could, if you wished, tell of countless theophanies of your Saviour, countless presences in dreams—I do not mean his secret suggestions to us, but those deposited in your own mind concerning providence over all things, setting forth what is beneficial to all and useful in every way.

Worthily, then, would you recount for us the manifest assistance of your divine protector and guardian in wars, the destruction of enemies and plotters, the deliverances in dangers, the resources in difficulties, the supports in desolate places, the discoveries in perplexities, the foreknowledge of future events, the providence concerning universal matters, the deliberations on uncertainties, the undertakings of great deeds, the political administrations, the management of armies, the corrections of each individual, the ordinances concerning public affairs, the beneficial legislations. And you would enumerate without omission each of those things hidden from us but known to you alone and stored away in your royal memory as in secret treasuries. For the sake of all these, having used these very things as brilliant proofs of the saving power, you have shown forth to all men, both faithful and unbelieving, a house of prayer as a trophy of his victory over death, and a holy temple of the holy God, splendid and great and beautiful offerings of immortal life and divine kingdom, fitting and proper for a victorious king, dedications of the universal king and savior, which you have surrounded with the testimony and memorial of immortal life, depicting the heavenly word of God as victor and trophy-bearer with royal characters, proclaiming to all nations with clear and unshadowed voices, in deed and word, the pious and God-loving confession.