Chapter IX. Of the Doctrinal Theories of the Hebrews

FIRST of all then that admirable theologian and lawgiver himself, in founding by his own writing a polity in accordance with religion for the Jewish people, did not think it fit to employ the common and trite preambles to his books; but after he had collected every law enjoining what ought to be done and forbidding what ought not to be done, and the public and civic arrangements concerning their mutual contracts, he thought it right to make his teaching begin with their ancestral theology, because he considered no other instruction to be proper to laws pertaining to religion, than that theology which had come down to him from their forefathers.

He begins therefore with God according to the hereditary doctrines of the theology of their Hebrew progenitors, not as was the wont of Egyptians, nor yet of Phoenicians, or the other nations, who like them degraded the adorable name to a multitude of gods, and regarded the luminaries in the sky as visible gods, and as unseen and invisible gods either the departed from among men, or the daemons of earth and air, according to the statements which we have previously proved.

But having made his whole narrative begin with the universal Cause and Creator of things visible and invisible, he shows that He is the Lawgiver of the constitution of the universe, and establishes Him as king of the world, as of one great city.

He teaches us therefore at the outset to regard Him as the real Author and Ruler not only of the laws which he is himself about to ordain presently for men, but also of the laws of universal nature.