Chap. v.—that god only, the creator of all things, is to be worshipped, and not the elements or heavenly bodies; and the opinion of the stoics is refuted, who think that the stars and planets are gods.

How much better, therefore, is it, leaving vain and insensible objects, to turn our eyes in that direction where is the seat and dwelling-place of the true God; who suspended the earth136    [A hint to Cæsar himself, the force of which began soon after very sorely to be felt in the empire.]      Ps. cxlviii. 6: “He hath established them for ever and ever.”   on a firm foundation, who bespangled the heaven with shining stars; who lighted up the sun, the most bright and matchless light for the affairs of men, in proof of His own single majesty; who girded the earth with seas, and ordered the rivers to flow with perpetual course!  

All these things truly were not the work of Jupiter, who was born seventeen hundred years ago; but of the same, “that framer of all things, the origin of a better world,”138    Ovid, Metam., lib. i. [79. Jussit et extendi campos, etc.].   who is called God, whose beginning cannot be comprehended, and ought not to be made the subject of inquiry. It is sufficient for man, to his full and perfect wisdom, if he understands the existence of God: the force and sum of which understanding is this, that he look up to and honour the common Parent of the human race, and the Maker of wonderful things. Whence some persons of dull and obtuse mind adore as gods the elements, which are both created objects and are void of sensibility; who, when they admired the works of God, that is, the heaven with its various lights, the earth with its plains and mountains, the seas with their rivers and lakes and fountains, struck with admiration of these things, and forgetting the Maker Himself, whom they were unable to see, began to adore and worship His works. Nor were they able at all to understand how much greater and more wonderful He is, who made these things out of nothing. And when they see that these things, in obedience to divine laws, by a perpetual necessity are subservient to the uses and interests of men, they nevertheless regard them as gods, being ungrateful towards the divine bounty, so that they preferred their own works to their most indulgent God and Father. But what wonder is it if uncivilized or ignorant men err, since even philosophers of the Stoic sect are of the same opinion, so as to judge that all the heavenly bodies which have motion are to be reckoned in the number of gods; inasmuch as the Stoic Lucilius thus speaks in Cicero:139    [De Nat. Deor., ii. cap. 21.]   “This regularity, therefore, in the stars, this great agreement of the times in such various courses during all eternity, are unintelligible to me with out the exercise of mind, reason, and design; and when we see these things in the constellations, we cannot but place these very objects in the number of the gods.” And he thus speaks a little before: “It remains,” he says, “that the motion of the stars is voluntary; and he who sees these things, would act not only unlearnedly, but also impiously, if he should deny it.” We in truth firmly deny it; and we prove that you, O philosophers, are not only unlearned and impious, but also blind, foolish, and senseless, who have surpassed in shallowness the ignorance of the uneducated. For they regard as gods only the sun and moon, but you the stars also.  

Make known to us, therefore, the mysteries of the stars, that we may erect altars and temples to each; that we may know with what rites and on what day to worship each, with what names and with what prayers we should call on them; unless perhaps we ought to worship gods so innumerable without any discrimination, and gods so minute in a mass. Why should I mention that the argument by which they infer that all the heavenly bodies are gods, tends to the opposite conclusion? For if they imagine that they are gods on this account, because they have their courses fixed and in accordance with reason, they are in error. For it is evident from this that they are not gods, because it is not permitted them to deviate140    Exorbitare, “to wander from their orbits.”   from their prescribed orbits. But if they were gods, they would be borne hither and thither in all directions without any necessity, as living creatures on the earth, who wander hither and thither as they please, because their wills are unrestrained, and each is borne wherever inclination may have led it. Therefore the motion of the stars is not voluntary, but of necessity, because they obey141    Deserviunt, “they are devoted to.”   the laws appointed for them. But when he was arguing about the courses of the stars, while he understood from the very harmony of things and times that they were not by chance, he judged that they were voluntary; as though they could not be moved with such order and arrangement, unless they contained within them an understanding acquainted with its own duty. Oh, how difficult is truth to those who are ignorant of it! how easy to those who know it! If, he says, the motions of the stars are not by chance, nothing else remains but that they are voluntary; nay, in truth, as it is plain that they are not by chance, so is it clear that they are not voluntary. Why, then, in completing their courses, do they preserve their regularity? Undoubtedly God, the framer of the universe, so arranged and contrived them, that they might run through their courses142    Spatium; a word borrowed frown the chariot-course, and applied with great beauty to the motions of the stars.   in the heaven with a divine and wonderful order, to accomplish the variations of the successive seasons. Was Archimedes143    Archimedes was the greatest of ancient mathematicians, and possessed in an eminent degree inventive genius. He constructed various engines of war, and greatly assisted in the defence of Syracuse when it was besieged by the Romans. His most celebrated work, however, was the construction of a sphere, or “orrery,” representing the movements of the heavenly bodies. To this Lactantius refers.   of Sicily able to contrive a likeness and representation of the universe in hollow brass, in which he so arranged the sun and moon, that they effected, as it were every day, motions unequal and resembling the revolutions of the heavens, and that sphere, while it revolved,144    Dum vertitur.   exhibited not only the approaches and withdrawings of the sun, or the increase and waning of the moon, but also the unequal courses of the stars, whether fixed or wandering? Was it then impossible for God to plan and create the originals,145    Illa vera. [Newton showed his orrery to Halley the atheist, who was charmed with the contrivance, and asked the name of the maker. “Nobody,” was the ad hominem retort.]   when the skill of man was able to represent them by imitation? Would the Stoic, therefore, if he should have seen the figures of the stars painted and fashioned in that brass, say that they moved by their own design, and not by the genius of the artificer? There is therefore in the stars design, adapted to the accomplishment of their courses; but it is the design of God, who both made and governs all things, not of the stars themselves, which are thus moved. For if it had been His will that the sun should remain146    Staret.   fixed, it is plain that there would be perpetual day. Also if the stars had no motions, who doubts that there would have been eternal night? But that there might be vicissitudes of day and night, it was His will that the stars should move, and move with such variety that there might not only be mutual interchanges of light and darkness, by which alternate courses147    Spatia.   of labour and rest might be established, but also interchanges of cold and heat, that the power and influence of the different seasons might be adapted either to the production or the ripening of the crops. And because philosophers did not see this skill of the divine power in contriving the movements of the stars, they supposed them to be living, as though they moved with feet and of their own accord, and not by the divine intelligence. But who does not understand why God contrived them? Doubtless lest, as the light of the sun was withdrawn, a night of excessive darkness should become too oppressive with its foul and dreadful gloom, and should be injurious to the living. And so He both bespangled the heaven with wondrous variety, and tempered the darkness itself with many and minute lights. How much more wisely therefore does Naso judge, than they who think that they are devoting themselves to the pursuit of wisdom, in thinking that those lights were appointed by God to remove the gloom of darkness! He concludes the book, in which he briefly comprises the phenomena of nature, with these three verses:—  

But if it is impossible that the stars should be gods, it follows that the sun and moon cannot be gods, since they differ from the light of the stars in magnitude only, and not in their design. And if these are not gods, the same is true of the heaven, which contains them all.  

CAPUT V. Quod solus omnium creator Deus est colendus, non vero elementa, nec corpora coelestia: Refelliturque Stoicorum sententia, qui stellas et astra deos putant.

0276C Quanto igitur rectius est, omissis insensibilibus et 0277A vanis, oculos eo tendere, ubi sedes, 0277A ubi habitatio est Dei veri; qui terram stabili firmitate suspendit; qui coelum distinxit astris fulgentibus; qui solem rebus humanis clarissimum, ac singulare lumen, in argumentum suae unicae majestatis accendit: terris autem maria circumfudit, flumina sempiterno lapsu fluere praecepit. Jussit et extendi campos, subsidere valles, Fronde tegi silvas, lapidosos surgere montes.Quae utique omnia non Jupiter fecit, qui ante annos mille septingentos natus; sed idem: Ille opifex rerum, mundi melioris origo,qui vocatur Deus, cujus principium, quoniam non potest comprehendi, ne quaeri quidem debet. Satis est homini ad plenam perfectamque prudentiam, si 0277B Deum esse intelligat: cujus intelligentiae vis et summa haec est, ut suspiciat et honorificet communem parentem generis humani, et rerum mirabilium fabricatorem. Unde quidam hebetis obtusique cordis, elementa, quae et facta sunt et carent sensu, tamquam deos adorant. Qui cum Dei opera mirarentur, id est coelum cum variis luminibus, terram cum campis et montibus, maria cum fluminibus et stagnis et fontibus, earum rerum admiratione obstupefacti, et ipsius artificis obliti, quem videre non poterant, ejus opera venerari et colere coeperunt; nec umquam intelligere quiverunt, quanto major quantoque mirabilior sit, qui illa fecit ex nihilo. Quae cum videant divinis legibus obsequentia commodis atque usibus 0278A hominis perpetua necessitate famulari, tamen illa deos existimant esse; ingrati adversus beneficia divina, qui Deo et patri indulgentissimo sua sibi opera praetulerunt. Sed quid mirum, si aut barbari, aut imperiti homines errant? cum etiam philosophi Stoicae disciplinae in eadem sint opinione, ut omnia coelestia, quae moventur, in deorum numero habenda esse censeant; siquidem Lucilius Stoicus apud Ciceronem sic loquitur: «Hanc igitur in stellis constantiam, hanc tantam in tam variis cursibus in omni aeternitate convenientiam temporum, non possum intelligere sine mente, ratione, consilio; quae cum in sideribus esse videamus, non possumus ea ipsa non in deorum numero reponere.» Item paulo superius: «Restat, inquit, ut motus astrorum sit voluntarius; quae qui videat, non indocte solum, verum etiam 0278B impie faciat, si deos esse neget.» Nos vero et quidem constanter negamus, ac vos, o philosophi, non solum indoctos et impios, verum etiam caecos, ineptos delirosque probamus, qui ignorantiam imperitorum vanitate vicistis. Illi enim solem et lunam, vos etiam sidera deos putatis.

Tradite igitur nobis stellarum mysteria, ut aras et templa singulis erigamus; ut sciamus quo quamque ritu, quo die colamus, quibus nominibus, quibus precibus advocemus; nisi forte nullo discrimine tam innumerabiles, tam minutos deos acervatim colere debemus. Quid quod argumentum illud, quo colligunt universa coelestia deos esse, in contrarium 0279A valet. Nam si deos esse idcirco opinantur, quia certos et rationabiles 0279A cursus habent, errant. Ex hoc enim apparet deos non esse, quod exorbitare illis a praestitutis itineribus non licet. Caeterum si dii essent, huc atque illuc passim sine ulla necessitate ferrentur, sicut animantes in terra, quarum quia liberae sunt voluntates, huc atque illuc vagantur, ut libuit, et quo quamque mens duxerit, eo fertur. Non est igitur astrorum motus voluntarius, sed necessarius, quia praestitutis legibus officiisque deserviunt. Sed cum disputaret de cursibus siderum, quos ex ipsa rerum ac temporum congruentia intelligebat non esse fortuitos, existimavit voluntarios esse, tamquam non possent tam disposite, tam ordinate moveri, nisi sensus illis inesset officii sui sciens. O quam difficilis est ignorantibus veritas, et quam facilis scientibus! 0279B Si motus, inquit, astrorum fortuiti non sunt, nihil aliud restat, nisi ut voluntarii sint; immo vero, ut non esse fortuitos manifestum est, ita nec voluntarios. Quomodo igitur in conficiendis itineribus constantiam suam servant? Nimirum Deus, universi artifex, sic illa disposuit, sic machinatus est, ut per spatia coeli divina et admirabili ratione decurrerent, ad efficiendas succedentium sibi temporum varietates. An Archimedes Siculus concavo aere similitudinem mundi ac figuram potuit machinari, in quo ita solem ac lunam composuit, ut inaequales motus, et coelestibus similes conversionibus, singulis quasi diebus efficerent, et non modo accessus solis et recessus, vel incrementa diminutionesque lunae, verum 0279C etiam stellarum, vel inerrantium, vel vagarum, dispares cursus orbis ille, dum vertitur, exhiberet? Deus ergo illa vera non potuit machinari et efficere quae potuit solertia hominis imitatione simulare?

Utrumne igitur stoïcus, si astrorum figuras in illo 0280A aere pictas effictasque vidisset, suo illa consilio moveri diceret, ac non potius artificis ingenio? Inest ergo sideribus ratio ad peragendos meatus suos apta: sed Dei est illa ratio, qui et fecit, et regit omnia, non ipsorum siderum, quae moventur. Nam si solem stare voluisset, perpetuus utique dies esset. Item, si motus astra non haberent, quis dubitet sempiternam noctem fuisse futuram? Sed ut diei ac noctis vices essent, moveri ea voluit: et tam varie moveri, ut non modo lucis ac tenebrarum mutuae vicissitudines fierent, quibus laboris et quietis alterna spatia constarent; sed etiam frigoris et caloris, ut diversorum temporum vis ac potestas, vel generandis, vel maturandis frugibus conveniret. Quam solertiam divinae potestatis in machinandis itineribus astrorum, quia 0280B philosophi non videbant, animalia esse sidera putaverunt; tamquam pedibus, et sponte, non divina ratione procederent. Cur autem illa excogitaverit Deus, quis non intelligit? Scilicet ne solis lumine decedente, nimium caeca nox tetris atque horrentibus tenebris ingravesceret, noceretque viventibus. Itaque et coelum simul mira varietate distinxit, et tenebras ipsas multis minutisque luminibus temperavit. Quanto igitur Naso prudentius, quam illi, qui sapientiae studere se putant, qui sentit a Deo lumina illa, ut honorem tenebrarum depellerent, instituta! Is eum librum, quo Φαινόμενα breviter comprehendit, his tribus versibus terminavit: Tot numero, talique Deus simulacra figura Imposuit coelo, perque atras sparsa tenebras Clara pruinosae jussit dare lumina nocti.0280C Quod si fieri non potest, ut stellae dii sint; ergo nec sol quidem, nec luna dii esse possunt, quoniam luminibus astrorum, non ratione differunt, sed magnitudine. Quod si hi dii non sunt; ergo nec coelum quidem, in quo illa omnia continentur.