Chapter I. Preface Concerning the Oracles in Various Cities, and the Most Celebrated Responses by the Extraordinary Manifestations of Daemons, and Our Reason for Disregarding Them

In this fourth book of the Preparation for the Gospel, due order bids me to refute the third form of polytheistic error, from which we were delivered by the power and beneficence of our Redeemer and Saviour.

For since they divide their whole system of theology under three general heads, the mythical treated by the poets in tragedy, and the physical which has been invented by the philosophers, and that which is enforced by the laws and observed in each city and country; and since two of these parts have been already explained by us in the preceding books, namely the historical, which they call mythical, and that which has transcended the mythical, and which they call physical, or speculative, or by any other name they please; in this present book it will be the right time to examine the third part, and this is what is established in the several cities and countries, and which they call political, or state-religion, which also is especially enforced by the laws, as both ancient and ancestral, and as in itself indicating the excellence of the power of those whom they deify.

There are for instance oracles renowned among them, and responses, and cures, and healings of all kinds of sufferings, and judgements inflicted upon the impious; whereof they profess to have had experience, and have thoroughly persuaded themselves that they act rightly in honouring the deities, and that we are guilty of the greatest impiety in making no account of powers so manifest and so beneficent, but directly breaking the laws, which require every one to reverence ancestral customs, and not disturb what should be inviolable, but to walk orderly in following the religion of his forefathers, and not to be meddlesome through love of innovation. Thus they say that even death has been deservedly fixed by the laws as the punishment for those who transgress.

As to the first form then of their theology, being historical and mythical, let any of the poets arrange it as he will, and so let any of the philosophers deal with the second form, reported to us through the allegorical interpretation of the legends in a more physical sense: but since the third form, as being both ancient and politic, has been legally ordained by their rulers to be honoured and observed, this, say they, let neither poet nor philosopher disturb; but let every one, both in rural districts and in cities, continue to walk by the customs which have prevailed from old time, and obey the laws of his forefathers.

In answer then to this, it is time to render the reason alleged on our side, and to submit a defence of our Saviour’s evangelic system, as protesting against what has been described, and laying down laws opposed to the laws of all the nations.

Well then! it is manifest even to themselves that their lifeless images are no gods; and that their mythical theology offers no explanation that is respectable and becoming to deity, has been shown in the first book, as likewise in the second and third it has been shown that neither does their more physical and philosophical interpretation of the legends contain an unforced explanation.

Come then, let us examine the third point----how we are to regard the powers that lurk in the carved images, whether as civilized and good and truly divine in character, or the very opposite of all these.

Others, peradventure, in entering upon the discussion of these questions, might have laid it down that the whole system is a delusion, and mere conjuror’s tricks and frauds, stating their opinion generally and concisely, that we ought not to attribute even to an evil daemon, much less to a god, the stories commonly told of them. For the poems and the compositions of the oracles, he would say, are fictions of men not without natural ability but extremely well furnished for deception, and are composed in an equivocal and ambiguous sense, and adapted, not without ingenuity, to either of the cases expected from the event: and the marvels which deceive the multitude by certain prodigies are dependent on natural causes.

For there are many kinds of roots, and herbs, and plants, and fruits, and stones, and other powers, both solid and liquid of every kind of matter in the natural world; some of them fit to drive off and expel certain diseases; others of a nature to attract and superinduce them; some again with power to secrete and disperse, or to harden and to bind, and others to relax and liquidate and attenuate; some again to save and others to kill, or to give a thorough turn, and change the present condition, altering it now this way and now that; and some to work this effect for a longer and some for a shorter time; and again, some to be efficacious on many and others only on a few; and some to lead and others to follow; and some to combine in different ways, and to grow and decay together. Yet further, that some are conducive to health, not unconnected with medical science, and others morbific and deleterious; and lastly that some things occur by physical necessities, and wax and wane together with the moon, and that there are countless antipathies of animals and roots and plants, and many kinds of narcotic and soporific vapours, and of others that produce delusion: that the places also, and regions in which the effects are accomplished give no little help; also that they have tools and instruments provided from afar in a way well fitted to their art, and that they associate with themselves in their jugglery many confederates from without, who make many inquiries about those who arrive, and the wants of each, and what he is come to request; also that they conceal within their temples many secret shrines and recesses inaccessible to the multitude; and that the darkness also helps their purpose not a little; and not least the anticipatory assumption itself, and the superstition of those who approach them as gods, and the opinion which has prevailed among them from the time of their forefathers. To this must be added also the silliness of mind of the multitude, and their feeble and uncritical reasoning, and on the other hand the cleverness and craftiness of those who are constantly practising this mischievous art, and the deceitful and knavish disposition of the impostors, at one time promising what will please each person, and soothing the present trouble by hopes of advantage, and at other times guessing at what is to come, and prophesying obscurely, and darkening the sense of their oracles by equivocations and indistinctness of expression, in order that no one may understand what is foretold, but that they may escape detection by the uncertainty of their statement.

They might also say that many events coincide with other frauds and quackeries, when certain so-called spells are associated with the events, with a kind of unintelligible and barbaric incantation, in order that the occurrences which are not in the least affected by them may seem to be hastened by them. Most, too, even of those who are supposed to start with a good education are especially astonished at the poetry of the oracles themselves, finely adorned as it is by the combination of the words, finely inflated also by the pompous grandeur of the language, and arrayed with much, boastful exaggeration and arrogant pretence of inspiration, and deceiving nearly all the people by their ambiguous sound.