Chapter XVII. That After the Teaching of the Gospel the Old Custom of Human Sacrifice Was Abolished

All these, and those who delighted in obscenities of language and illicit seductions of women and all the madness which has been before mentioned, the true and good god, or daemon, would have forewarned them, not by any means to regard as gods. But none of them ever yet is recorded to have done this, except only the God who is honoured among the Hebrews, as being the Only and true God.

For He alone forewarned all men by Moses the Prophet and Theologian, not to reverence the wicked daemons as good, but on the contrary to shun and repel them, as being evil spirits; and moreover He made a law to destroy their shrines and their unholy and profane sacrifices, and utterly to banish from among men the remembrance of them as gods, and the honour that was assigned to them: for it was an impiety that those who were cared for by the good should propitiate the evil.

And whether it is Phylarchus, or any one else, who records that all the Greeks, before going out to their wars, offer a human sacrifice, do not thou hesitate to take him also as a witness of the daemoniacal possession of the Greeks: do not neglect either to declare that those in Africa, and the Thracians, and the Scythians, who follow the like practices, have been subjected to the same daemoniacal frenzies; as also the Athenians, and the inhabitants of the Great City, since these also used to sacrifice men at the festivals of Jupiter Maximus.

But in fact if you were to collect the catalogue of all those who have been mentioned above, you would find that, as I might almost say, the whole manufacture of gods by the heathen depends upon these same murderous spirits and evil daemons. For if in Rhodes, and in Salamis and the other islands, and at Heliopolis in Egypt, in Chios, and Tenedos, and Lacedaemon, Arcadia, Phoenicia, Libya, and, besides all these, in Syria and Arabia, and among the Panhellenes and the Athenians who stand at the very head of them, in Carthage also and Africa, and among Thracians and Scythians, it has been shown that the rites of human sacrifice to daemons were celebrated in old times, and continued down to our Saviour’s time, why may you not say with good reason that all mankind were at that time enslaved to wicked daemons, and that life was not relieved from these great evils before our Saviour’s teaching shed light upon the world? For indeed it was proved by the statement of history that these things continued till the times of Adrian, and have been abolished since his reign: and this was exactly the time at which the doctrine of salvation began to flourish among all mankind.

Moreover it is not in their power to say that they used to sacrifice to the evil daemons; since the history made it clear that the human sacrifices were dedicated especially to the great gods themselves. For it affirmed that they were offered to Hera and to Athena, to Kronos and Ares and Dionysus, and to supreme Zeus himself, and to Phoebus, that is to Apollo the most venerable and most wise of all: and these and none other they address as the greatest and best of saviours and gods.

These then must themselves be the wicked daemons. For if they delighted in such human sacrifices and homicides, may you not with good reason reckon them in the same class of blood-guiltiness with the wicked spirits, whether they were said themselves to delight in such offerings, or to acquiesce in them, and connive at their being done by others?

For why should they permit men at all to propitiate the wicked spirits? Or why allow them to err so far as to worship and flatter the evil daemons? And why to be enslaved by the wicked, when, as being good themselves and gods, it behoved them by their greater and more divine power to drive away everything whatsoever base and wicked as far as possible from man’s daily life?

Surely a good father would not calmly see his own son corrupted by evil men; nor would a prudent master calmly see his servant led away by his enemies, nor yet a commander in time of war give up his own soldiers as prisoners to the enemy, when it was in his power to bring them safe off; nor would a shepherd give up his sheep to the wolves: and shall then gods and good daemons give up mankind in subjection to the bad and wicked daemons? And shall

‘The thrice ten thousand guardians of mankind,’ [1]

I mean their shepherds and preservers, kings and fathers and lords, deliver up their dearest ones to their enemies and foemen, fierce as wild beasts, to harry and plunder in so merciless and cruel a manner? Will they not cast a shield over their suppliants, and fight in their defence? Will they not drive the hostile and wicked daemons far away from the human fold, like savage and devouring beasts? And will they not teach every man to be of good courage because he is closely allied with a countless multitude of gods and good daemons, and, because he is consecrated to those who are not only stronger but also the more numerous and the greatest gods, to pay little or rather no regard to the weakness of the wicked daemons? But since they did not act thus, but on the contrary themselves helped the evil daemons by permitting the fore-mentioned human sacrifices by their oracles, and by delighting in all kinds of obscene language and the practices attendant thereon, it is proved by deed, as the saying is, that they were not themselves at all different in nature from the evil daemons, but rather were of one and the same will and purpose; and that, to speak yet more truly, he was no god at all, nor any good daemon, that was worshipped of old by all the heathen in every city and country district.

For how could the wicked ever become friendly to the good, unless one should say that one mixture might be made of light and darkness? And how much better is human reason than those supposed gods, when it enjoins that no sacrifice should be offered even to wicked daemons! So at all events the writer formerly quoted, in the work wherein he asserted that men ought not to offer living victims, says that neither ought we to sacrifice to wicked daemons, speaking in this wise: [2]