{"collection":"chr","html_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/browse/chr/ecf/002/0020414.htm","path":"chr/ecf/002/0020414.htm","source_url":"https://sacred-texts.com/chr/ecf/002/0020414.htm","text":"Now, as the Greeks represent the gods as possessing human forms, so also do they as possessing human passions. And as each of them p. 529 depict their forms similar to themselves, as Xenophanes says, \u201cEthiopians as black and apes, the Thracians ruddy and tawny;\u201d so also they assimilate their souls to those who form them: the Barbarians, for instance, who make them savage and wild; and the Greeks, who make them more civilized, yet subject to passion.\nWherefore it stands to reason, that the ideas entertained of God by wicked men must be bad, and those by good men most excellent. And therefore he who is in soul truly kingly and gnostic, being likewise pious and free from superstition, is persuaded that He who alone is God is honourable, venerable, august, beneficent, the doer of good, the author of all good things, but not the cause of evil. And respecting the Hellenic superstition we have, as I think, shown enough in the book entitled by us The Exhortation, availing ourselves abundantly of the history bearing on the point. There is no need, then, again to make a long story of what has already been clearly stated. But in as far as necessity requires to be pointed out on coming to the topic, suffice it to adduce a few out of many considerations in proof of the impiety of those who make the Divinity resemble the worst men. For either those Gods of theirs are injured by men, and are shown to be inferior to men on being injured by us; or, if not so, how is it that they are incensed at those by whom they are not injured, like a testy old wife roused to wrath?\nAs they say that Artemis was enraged at the \u00c6tolians on account of \u0152neus. 3539 For how, being a goddess, did she not consider that he had neglected to sacrifice, not through contempt, but out of inadvertence, or under the idea that he had sacrificed?\nAnd Latona, 3540 arguing her case with Athene, on account of the latter being incensed at her for having brought forth in the temple, says:\u2014\n \u201cMan-slaying spoils\nTorn from the dead you love to see. And these\nTo you are not unclean. But you regard\nMy parturition here a horrid thing,\nThough other creatures in the temple do\nNo harm by bringing forth their young.\u201d\nIt is natural, then, that having a superstitious dread of those irascible [gods], they imagine that all events are signs and causes of evils. If a mouse bore through an altar built of clay, and for want of something else gnaw through an oil flask; if a cock that is being fattened crow in the evening, they determine this to be a sign of something.\nOf such a one Menander gives a comic description in The Superstitious Man:\u2014\n \u201cA. Good luck be mine, ye honoured gods!\nTying my, right shoe\u2019s string,\nI broke it.\u201d\n\u201cB. Most likely, silly fool,\nFor it was rotten, and you, niggard, you\nWould not buy new ones.\u201d 3541\nIt was a clever remark of Antiphon, who (when one regarded it as an ill omen that the sow had eaten her pigs), on seeing her emaciated through the niggardliness of the person that kept her, said, Congratulate yourself on the omen that, being so hungry, she did not eat your own children.\n\u201cAnd what wonder is it,\u201d says Bion, \u201cif the mouse, finding nothing to eat, gnaws the bag?\u201d For it were wonderful if (as Arcesilaus argued in fun) \u201cthe bag had eaten the mouse.\u201d\nDiogenes accordingly remarked well to one who wondered at finding a serpent coiled round a pestle: \u201cDon\u2019t wonder; for it would have been more surprising if you had seen the pestle coiled round the serpent, and the serpent straight.\u201d\nFor the irrational creatures must run, and scamper, and fight, and breed, and die; and these things being natural to them, can never be unnatural to us.\n \u201cAnd many birds beneath the sunbeams walk.\u201d\nAnd the comic poet Philemon treats such points in comedy:\u2014\n \u201cWhen I see one who watches who has sneezed,\nOr who has spoke; or looking, who goes on,\nI straightway in the market sell him off.\nEach one of us walks, talks, and sneezes too,\nFor his own self, not for the citizens:\nAccording to their nature things turn out.\u201d\nThen by the practice of temperance men seek health: and by cramming themselves, and wallowing in potations at feasts, they attract diseases.\nThere are many, too, that dread inscriptions set up. Very cleverly Diogenes, on finding in the house of a bad man the inscription, \u201cHercules, for victory famed, dwells here; let nothing bad enter,\u201d remarked, \u201cAnd how shall the master of the house go in?\u201d\nThe same people, who worship every stick and greasy stone, as the saying is, dreads tufts of tawny wool, and lumps of salt, and torches, and squills, and sulphur, bewitched by sorcerers, in certain impure rites of expiation. But God, the true God, recognises as holy only the character of the righteous man,\u2014as unholy, wrong and wickedness.\nYou may see the eggs, 3542 taken from those who have been purified, hatched if subjected to the necessary warmth. But this could not take p. 530 place if they had had transferred to them the sins of the man that had undergone purification. Accordingly the comic poet Diphilus facetiously writes, in comedy, of sorcerers, in the following words:\u2014\n \u201cPurifying Pr\u0153tus\u2019 daughters, and their father\nPr\u0153tus Abantades, and fifth, an old wife to boot,\nSo many people\u2019s persons with one torch, one squill,\nWith sulphur and asphalt of the loud-sounding sea,\nFrom the placid-flowing, deep-flowing ocean.\nBut blest air through the clouds send Anticyra\nThat I may make this bug into a drone.\u201d\nFor well Menander remarks: 3543 \u2014\n \u201cHad you, O Phidias, any real ill,\nYou needs must seek for it a real cure;\nNow \u2019tis not so. And for the unreal ill\nI\u2019ve found an unreal cure. Believe that it\nWill do thee good. Let women in a ring\nWipe thee, and from three fountains water bring.\nAdd salt and lentils; sprinkle then thyself.\nEach one is pure, who\u2019s conscious of no sin.\u201d\nFor instance, the tragedy says:\u2014\n Menelaus. \u201cWhat disease, Orestes, is destroying thee?\u201d \nOrestes. \u201cConscience. For horrid deeds I know I\u2019ve done.\u201d 3544\nFor in reality there is no other purity but abstinence from sins. Excellently then Epicharmus says:\u2014\n \u201cIf a pure mind thou hast,\nIn thy whole body thou art pure.\u201d\nNow also we say that it is requisite to purify the soul from corrupt and bad doctrines by right reason; and so thereafter to the recollection of the principal heads of doctrine. Since also before the communication of the mysteries they think it right to apply certain purifications to those who are to be initiated; so it is requisite for men to abandon impious opinion, and thus turn to the true tradition.\nThe text has \u1f29 \u03b1\u1f50\u03c4\u03ae, which is plainly unsuitable; hence the suggestion \u1f21 \u0391\u03b7\u03c4\u03ce.\n529:3541\nThese lines are quoted by Theodoret, and have been amended and arranged by Sylburgius and Grotius. The text has \u1f08\u03b3\u03b1\u03b8\u03cc\u03bd \u03c4\u03b9; Theodoret and Grotius omit \u03c4\u03af as above.\n529:3542\nWhich were used in lustrations, \u1f67\u03c4\u03b1. The text has \u1fa5\u03ac.\n530:3543\nTranslated as arranged and amended by Grotius.\n530:3544","title":"Ante-Nicene Fathers, Vol II: CLEMENT OF ALEXANDRIA: Chapter IV.\u2014The Heathens Made Gods Like Themselves, Whence Springs All Superstition.","type":"page"}