Chapter XII.—Of the Fact that the God of the Jews, After the Subjugation of that People, Was Still Not Accepted by the Romans, Because His Commandment Was that He Alone Should Be Worshipped, and Images Destroyed.

18. Furthermore, that Hebrew nation, which, as I have said, was commissioned to prophesy of Christ, had no other God but one God, the true God, who made heaven and earth, and all that therein is. Under His displeasure they were ofttimes given into the power of their enemies. And now, indeed, on account of their most heinous sin in putting Christ to death, they have been thoroughly rooted out of Jerusalem itself, which was the capital of their kingdom, and have been made subject to the Roman empire. Now the Romans were in the habit of propitiating58    The text gives deos…colendos propitiare. Five mss. give deos…colendo propitiare.—Migne. the deities of those nations whom they conquered by worshipping these themselves, and they were accustomed to undertake the charge of their sacred rites. But they declined to act on that principle with regard to the God of the Hebrew nation, either when they made their attack or when they reduced the people. I believe that they perceived that, if they admitted the worship of this Deity, whose commandment was that He only should be worshipped, and that images should be destroyed, they would have to put away from them all those objects to which formerly they had undertaken to do religious service, and by the worship of which they believed their empire had grown. But in this the falseness of their demons mightily deceived them. For surely they ought to have apprehended the fact that it is only by the hidden will of the true God, in whose hand resides the supreme power in all things, that the kingdom was given them and has been made to increase, and that their position was not due to the favour of those deities who, if they could have wielded any influence whatever in that matter, would rather have protected their own people from being over-mastered by the Romans, or would have brought the Romans themselves into complete subjection to them.

19. Certainly they cannot possibly affirm that the kind of piety and manners exemplified by them became objects of love and choice on the part of the gods of the nations which they conquered. They will never make such an assertion, if they only recall their own early beginnings, the asylum for abandoned criminals and the fratricide of Romulus. For when Remus and Romulus established their asylum, with the intention that whoever took refuge there, be the crime what it might be with which he stood charged, should enjoy impunity in his deed, they did not promulgate any precepts of penitence for bringing the minds of such wretched men back to a right condition. By this bribe of impunity did they not rather arm the gathered band of fearful fugitives against the states to which they properly belonged, and the laws of which they dreaded? Or when Romulus slew his brother, who had perpetrated no evil against him, is it the case that his mind was bent on the vindication of justice, and not on the acquisition of absolute power? And is it true that the deities did take their delight in manners like these, as if they were themselves enemies to their own states, in so far as they favoured those who were the enemies of these communities? Nay rather, neither did they by deserting them harm the one class, nor did they by passing over to their side in any sense help the other. For they have it not in their power to give kingship or to remove it. But that is done by the one true God, according to His hidden counsel. And it is not His mind to make those necessarily blessed to whom He may have given an earthly kingdom, or to make those necessarily unhappy whom He has deprived of that position. But He makes men blessed or wretched for other reasons and by other means, and either by permission or by actual gift distributes temporal and earthly kingdoms to whomsoever He pleases, and for whatsoever period He chooses, according to the fore-ordained order of the ages.

CAPUT XII. Judaeorum Deus, illis subjugatis, ideo non fuit a Romanis receptus, quod is juberet se solum coli simulacris deletis.

18. Proinde illius Hebraeae gentis ad prophetandum Christum, sicut dixi, deputatae nullus alius deus erat, nisi Deus unus, Deus verus, qui fecit coelum et terram et omnia quae in eis sunt: quo offenso saepe suis hostibus subdebantur; nunc etiam pro gravissimo scelere occisi Christi, ex ipsa Jerosolyma, quod erat regni eorum caput, penitus eradicati, et Romano imperio subjugati sunt. Solebant autem Romani deos gentium quas subjugabant, colendos propitiare , et eorum sacra suscipere. Hoc de Deo gentis Hebraeae, cum eam vel oppugnaverunt vel vicerunt, facere noluerunt. Credo quod videbant, si ejus Dei sacra reciperent, qui se solum, deletis etiam simulacris, coli juberet, dimittenda esse omnia quae prius colenda susceperant, quorum religionibus imperium suum crevisse arbitrabantur. In quo eos plurimum fallacia daemonum decipiebat: nam utique intelligere debebant, occulta Dei veri voluntate, penes quem rerum summa potestas est, sibi datum et auctum regnum, non illorum deorum favore; qui si aliquid in hac re potestatis habuissent, suos potius protexissent, ne a Romanis superarentur, aut ipsos eis Romanos edomitos subjugassent.

19. Neque enim possunt dicere pietatem ac mores suos a diis gentium quas vicerunt, dilectos et electos. Nunquam hoc dicent, si primordia sua recolant, facinorosorum asylum et Romuli fratricidium. Neque enim quando asylum constituerunt Remus et Romulus, ut quisquis cujuslibet sceleris reus eo confugisset, inultum haberet commissum, praecepta poenitentiae dederunt ad sanandas animas miserorum; ac non potius collectam timentium manum contra suas civitates, quarum leges timebant, mercede impunitatis armarunt: aut quando Romulus fratrem, qui nihil in eum mali perpetrarat, occidit, justitiam vindicandi, ac non principatum dominandi cogitavit. Itane istos mores dilexerunt dii, hostes suarum civitatum favendo hostibus earum? Quin potius nec illas deserendo presserunt, nec ad istos transeundo eos aliquid adjuverunt; quia non habent in potestate regnum dare et 1051 auferre: sed Deus unus et verus hoc agit occulto judicio, non continuo beatos facturus, quibus terrenum regnum dederit; nec continuo miseros, quibus ademerit; sed beatos vel miseros propter aliud et aliunde faciens, temporalia regna atque terrena quibus voluerit, et quamdiu voluerit, secundum praedestinatum ordinem saeculorum, vel sinendo vel donando distribuit.