(1) In order, therefore, that from an abundance of arguments we may contend against the objection which is now adduced, we will grant, if you please, the contrary to what we have asserted, viz. that certain unjust things are performed in this business of invocations. That the Gods, however, are not to be accused as the causes of these is immediately manifest. For those that are good are the causes of good; and the Gods possess good essentially. They do nothing, therefore, that is unjust. Hence other causes of guilty deeds must be investigated. And if we are not able to discover these causes, it is not proper to throw away the true conception respecting the Gods, nor on account of the doubts whether these unjust deeds are performed, and how they are effected, to depart from notions concerning the Gods which are truly clear. For it is much better to acknowledge the insufficiency of our power to explain how unjust actions are perpetrated, than to admit any thing impossible and false respecting the Gods; since all the Greeks and Barbarians truly opine the contrary to be the case with divine natures. After this manner, therefore, the truth respecting these particulars subsists.

(2) Wherefore 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?

(1) The multitude, also, are accustomed to doubt in common the very same thing concerning providence, viz. why certain persons are afflicted undeservedly, as they have not done any thing unjustly prior to their being thus afflicted. For neither here is it possible to understand [perfectly] what the soul is, and its whole life, how many offences it has committed in former lives, and whether it now suffers from its former guilt. In this life, also, many unjust actions are concealed from human knowledge, but are known to the Gods, since neither is the same scope of justice proposed to them as to men. For men, indeed, define justice to be the soul’s performance of its own proper business, and the distribution of desert, conformably to the established laws, and the prevailing polity. But the Gods, looking to the whole orderly arrangement of the world, and to the subserviency of souls to the Gods, form a judgment of what is just. Hence the judgment of just actions with the Gods is different from what it is with us. Nor is it wonderful, if we are unable, in most things, to arrive at the supreme and most perfect judgment of more excellent natures.

(4) But if strict accuracy must be employed in dealing with them, let them know, that that which does not prevent what we assert to have taken place in the theft, is not a cause at all; but that what prevents is involved in the accusation of being a cause. For he that protects with a shield is the cause of him whom he protects not being wounded; preventing him, as he does, from being wounded. For the demon of Socrates was a cause, not by not preventing, but by exhorting, even if (strictly speaking) he did not exhort. And neither praises nor censures, neither rewards nor punishments, are right, when the soul has not the power of inclination and disinclination, but evil is involuntary. Whence he who prevents is a cause; while he who prevents not judges justly the soul's choice. So in no respect is God the author of evil. But since free choice and inclination originate sins, and a mistaken judgment sometimes prevails, from which, since it is ignorance and stupidity, we do not take pains to recede, punishments are rightly inflicted. For to take fever is involuntary; but when one takes fever through his own fault, from excess, we blame him. Inasmuch, then, as evil is involuntary, - for no one prefers evil as evil; but induced by the pleasure that is in it, and imagining it good, considers it desirable; -such being the case, to free ourselves from ignorance, and from evil and voluptuous choice, and above all, to withhold our assent from those delusive phantasies, depends on ourselves. The devil is called "thief and robber;" having mixed false prophets with the prophets, as tares with the wheat. "All, then, that came before the Lord, were thieves and robbers;" not absolutely all men, but all the false prophets, and all who were not properly sent by Him. For the false prophets possessed the prophetic name dishonestly, being prophets, but prophets of the liar. For the Lord says, "Ye are of your father the devil; and the lusts of your father ye will do. He was a murderer from the beginning, and abode not in the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he speaketh a lie, he speaketh of his own; for he is a liar, and the father of it."

(4) But the other, magnanimous, at whose desire I had remained, did not his aspect change, Neither his neck he moved, nor bent his side. "And if," continuing his first discourse, "They have that art," he said, "not learned aright, That more tormenteth me, than doth this bed. But fifty times shall not rekindled be The countenance of the Lady who reigns here, Ere thou shalt know how heavy is that art; And as thou wouldst to the sweet world return, Say why that people is so pitiless Against my race in each one of its laws?" Whence I to him: "The slaughter and great carnage Which have with crimson stained the Arbia, cause Such orisons in our temple to be made." After his head he with a sigh had shaken, "There I was not alone," he said, "nor surely Without a cause had with the others moved. But there I was alone, where every one Consented to the laying waste of Florence, He who defended her with open face." "Ah! so hereafter may your seed repose," I him entreated, "solve for me that knot, Which has entangled my conceptions here.

(1) Moreover, it is necessary to add the causes whence evils sometimes arise, and to show how many and of what kind they are. For the form of them is not simple; but, being various, is the leader of the generation of various evils. For if what we a little before said, concerning images and evil dæmons, who assume the appearance of Gods and good dæmons, is true, an abundant evil-producing tribe, about which a contrariety of this kind usually happens, will from hence appear to flow. For an evil dæmon requires that his worshipper should be just, because he assumes the appearance of one belonging to the divine genus; but he is subservient to what is unjust, because he is depraved. The same thing, likewise, that is said of good and evil may be asserted of the true and the false. As, therefore, in divinations we attribute true predictions to the Gods alone, but when we detect any falsehood in predictions we refer this to another genus of cause, viz. that of dæmons; thus, also, in things just and unjust, the beautiful and the just are to be alone ascribed to Gods and good dæmons; but such dæmons as are naturally depraved, perpetrate what is unjust and base. And that, indeed, which consents and accords with itself, and always subsists with invariable sameness, pertains to more excellent natures; but that which is hostile to itself, which is discordant, and never the same, is the peculiarity in the most eminent degree of dæmoniacal dissension, about which it is not at all wonderful that things of an opposing nature should subsist; but perhaps the very contrary, that this should not be the case, would be more wonderful.

(11) We will now explain, in detail, to the best of our ability, certain works of God, of which we spoke. For I am not competent to sing all, much less to know accurately, and to reveal their mysteries to others. Now whatever things have been sung and ministered by the inspired Hierarchs, agreeably to the Oracles, these we will declare, as far as attainable to us, invoking the Hierarchical inspiration to our aid. When, in the beginning, our human nature had thoughtlessly fallen from the good things of God, it received, by inheritance, the life subject to many passions, and the goal of the destructive death. For, as a natural consequence, the pernicious falling away from genuine goodness and the transgression of the sacred Law in Paradise delivered the man fretted with the life-giving yoke, to his own downward inclinations and the enticing and hostile wiles of the adversary--the contraries of the divine goods; thence it pitiably exchanged for the eternal, the mortal, and, having had its own origin in deadly generations, the goal naturally corresponded with the beginning; but having willingly fallen from the Divine and elevating life, it was carried to the contrary extremity,--the variableness of many passions, and lead astray, and turned aside from the strait way leading to the true God,--and subjected to destructive and evil-working multitudes--naturally forgot that it was worshipping, not gods, or friends, but enemies. Now when these had treated it harshly, according to their own cruelty, it fell pitiably into danger of annihilation and destruction; but the boundless Loving-kindness of the supremely Divine goodness towards man did not, in Its benevolence, withdraw from us Its spontaneous forethought, but having truly participated sinlessly in all things belonging to us, and having been made one with our lowliness in connection with the unconfused and flawless possession of Its own properties in full perfection, It bequeathed to us, as henceforth members of the same family, the communion with Itself, and proclaimed us partakers of Its own beautiful things; having, as the secret teaching holds, loosed the power of the rebellious multiplicity, which was against us; not by force, as having the upper hand, but, according to the Logion, mystically transmitted to us, "in judgment and righteousness." The things within us, then, It benevolently changed to the entire contrary. For the lightless within Our mind It filled with blessed and most Divine Light, and adorned the formless with Godlike beauties; the tabernacle of our soul It liberated from most damnable passions and destructive stains by a perfected deliverance of our being which was all but prostrate, by shewing to us a supermundane elevation, and an inspired polity in our religious assimilation to Itself, as far as is possible.

(1) It will follow, I think, that I should treat of martyrdom, and of who the perfect man is. With these points shall be included what follows in accordance with the demands of the points to be spoken about, and how both bond and free must equally philosophize, whether male or female in sex. And in the sequel, after finishing what is to be said on faith and inquiry, we shall set forth the department of symbols; so that, on cursorily concluding the discourse on ethics, we shall exhibit the advantage which has accrued to the Greeks from the barbarian philosophy. After which sketch, the brief explanation of the Scriptures both against the Greeks and against the Jews will be presented, and whatever points we were unable to embrace in the previous Miscellanies (through having respect necessarily to the multitude of matters), in accordance with the commencement of the poem, purposing to finish them in one commentary. In addition to these points, afterwards on completing the sketch, as far as we can in accordance with what we propose, we must give an account of the physical doctrines of the Greeks and of the barbarians, respecting elementary principles, as far as their opinions have reached us, and argue against the principal views excogitated by the philosophers.

(3) He who comes next in the circumference Of which I speak, upon its highest arc, Did death postpone by penitence sincere; Now knoweth he that the eternal judgment Suffers no change, albeit worthy prayer Maketh below to-morrow of to-day. The next who follows, with the laws and me, Under the good intent that bore bad fruit Became a Greek by ceding to the pastor; Now knoweth he how all the ill deduced From his good action is not harmful to him, Although the world thereby may be destroyed. And he, whom in the downward arc thou seest, Guglielmo was, whom the same land deplores That weepeth Charles and Frederick yet alive; Now knoweth he how heaven enamoured is With a just king; and in the outward show Of his effulgence he reveals it still. Who would believe, down in the errant world, That e'er the Trojan Ripheus in this round Could be the fifth one of the holy lights? Now knoweth he enough of what the world Has not the power to see of grace divine, Although his sight may not discern the bottom."

(88) "And He, from good, to mortals planteth ill, And cruel war, and tearful woes," according to Orpheus.

(18) Souls vary in worth; and the difference is due, among other causes, to an almost initial inequality; it is in reason that, standing to the Reason-Principle, as parts, they should be unequal by the fact of becoming separate.

We must also remember that every Soul has its second grade and its third, and that, therefore, its expression may take any one of three main forms. But this point must be dealt with here again: the matter requires all possible elucidation.

We may perhaps think of actors having the right to add something to the poet's words: the drama as it stands is not perfectly filled in, and they are to supply where the Author has left blank spaces here and there; the actors are to be something else as well; they become parts of the poet, who on his side has a foreknowledge of the word they will add, and so is able to bind into one story what the actors bring in and what is to follow.

For, in the All, the sequences, including what follows upon wickedness, become Reason-Principles, and therefore in right reason. Thus: from adultery and the violation of prisoners the process of nature will produce fine children, to grow, perhaps, into fine men; and where wicked violence has destroyed cities, other and nobler cities may rise in their place.

But does not this make it absurd to introduce Souls as responsible causes, some acting for good and some for evil? If we thus exonerate the Reason-Principle from any part in wickedness do we not also cancel its credit for the good? Why not simply take the doings of these actors for representative parts of the Reason-Principle as the doings of stage-actors are representative parts of the stage-drama? Why not admit that the Reason-Principle itself includes evil action as much as good action, and inspires the precise conduct of all its representatives? Would not this be all the more Plausible in that the universal drama is the completer creation and that the Reason-Principle is the source of all that exists?

But this raises the question: "What motive could lead the Logos to produce evil?"

The explanation, also, would take away all power in the Universe from Souls, even those nearest to the divine; they would all be mere parts of a Reason-Principle.

And, further- unless all Reason-Principles are Souls- why should some be souls and others exclusively Reason-Principles when the All is itself a Soul?

(5) And saying: "If of that city thou art lord, For whose name was such strife among the gods, And whence doth every science scintillate, Avenge thyself on those audacious arms That clasped our daughter, O Pisistratus;" And the lord seemed to me benign and mild To answer her with aspect temperate: "What shall we do to those who wish us ill, If he who loves us be by us condemned?" Then saw I people hot in fire of wrath, With stones a young man slaying, clamorously Still crying to each other, "Kill him! kill him!" And him I saw bow down, because of death That weighed already on him, to the earth, But of his eyes made ever gates to heaven, Imploring the high Lord, in so great strife, That he would pardon those his persecutors, With such an aspect as unlocks compassion. Soon as my soul had outwardly returned To things external to it which are true, Did I my not false errors recognize.

(4) But those who have not seen the self-determination of the human soul, and its incapability of being treated as a slave in what respects the choice of life, being disgusted at what is done through rude injustice, do not think that there is a God. On a par with these in opinion, are they who, falling into licentiousness in pleasures, and grievous pains, and unlooked-for accidents, and bidding defiance to events, say that there is no God, or that, though existing, He does not oversee all things. And others there are, who are persuaded that those they reckon gods are capable of being prevailed upon by sacrifices and gifts, favouring, so to speak, their prof-ligacies; and will not believe that He is the only true God, who exists in the invariablehess of righteous goodness.

(4) There the high glory of the Roman Prince Was chronicled, whose great beneficence Moved Gregory to his great victory; 'Tis of the Emperor Trajan I am speaking; And a poor widow at his bridle stood, In attitude of weeping and of grief. Around about him seemed it thronged and full Of cavaliers, and the eagles in the gold Above them visibly in the wind were moving. The wretched woman in the midst of these Seemed to be saying: "Give me vengeance, Lord, For my dead son, for whom my heart is breaking." And he to answer her: "Now wait until I shall return." And she: "My Lord," like one In whom grief is impatient, "shouldst thou not Return?" And he: "Who shall be where I am Will give it thee." And she: "Good deed of others What boots it thee, if thou neglect thine own?" Whence he: "Now comfort thee, for it behoves me That I discharge my duty ere I move; Justice so wills, and pity doth retain me." He who on no new thing has ever looked Was the creator of this visible language, Novel to us, for here it is not found.

(3) It should no longer now seem difficult To thee, when it is said that a just vengeance By a just court was afterward avenged. But now do I behold thy mind entangled From thought to thought within a knot, from which With great desire it waits to free itself. Thou sayest, 'Well discern I what I hear; But it is hidden from me why God willed For our redemption only this one mode.' Buried remaineth, brother, this decree Unto the eyes of every one whose nature Is in the flame of love not yet adult. Verily, inasmuch as at this mark One gazes long and little is discerned, Wherefore this mode was worthiest will I say. Goodness Divine, which from itself doth spurn All envy, burning in itself so sparkles That the eternal beauties it unfolds. Whate'er from this immediately distils Has afterwards no end, for ne'er removed Is its impression when it sets its seal. Whate'er from this immediately rains down Is wholly free, because it is not subject Unto the influences of novel things.

(1) Upon the margin of a lofty bank Which great rocks broken in a circle made, We came upon a still more cruel throng; And there, by reason of the horrible Excess of stench the deep abyss throws out, We drew ourselves aside behind the cover Of a great tomb, whereon I saw a writing, Which said: "Pope Anastasius I hold, Whom out of the right way Photinus drew." "Slow it behoveth our descent to be, So that the sense be first a little used To the sad blast, and then we shall not heed it." The Master thus; and unto him I said, "Some compensation find, that the time pass not Idly;" and he: "Thou seest I think of that. My son, upon the inside of these rocks," Began he then to say, "are three small circles, From grade to grade, like those which thou art leaving. They all are full of spirits maledict; But that hereafter sight alone suffice thee, Hear how and wherefore they are in constraint. Of every malice that wins hate in Heaven, Injury is the end; and all such end Either by force or fraud afflicteth others.

(1) Moreover, you inquire, and at the same time doubt, “ how it comes to pass that the Gods do not hear him who invokes them, if he is impure from venereal connexions; but, at the same time, they do not refuse to lead any one to illegal venery .” You have, indeed, a clear solution of these things from what has been before said; if they are done contrary to [human] laws, but are effected according to another order and cause more excellent than laws. Or if it happens that things of this kind are conformable to the mundane harmony and friendship, yet produce a conflict in parts through a certain sympathy. Or if the communication of good, which is beautifully imparted, is perverted by those that receive it to the contrary.

(10) For as the devil is the founder and father of hell and damnation, and has himself built and prepared for himself the hellish quality to be his royal seat, so also such writers and scribblers are the masterbuilders of lies and damnation, who help to confirm and establish the devil's lies, and to make of the merciful, loving and friendly God, a murderer and furious destroyer, and so pervert and turn the truth of God into lies.

(16) But if all this is true, what room is left for evil? Where are we to place wrong-doing and sin?

How explain that in a world organized in good, the efficient agents behave unjustly, commit sin? And how comes misery if neither sin nor injustice exists?

Again, if all our action is determined by a natural process, how can the distinction be maintained between behaviour in accordance with nature and behaviour in conflict with it?

And what becomes of blasphemy against the divine? The blasphemer is made what he is: a dramatist has written a part insulting and maligning himself and given it to an actor to play.

These considerations oblige us to state the Logos once again, and more clearly, and to justify its nature.

This Reason-Principle, then- let us dare the definition in the hope of conveying the truth- this Logos is not the Intellectual Principle unmingled, not the Absolute Divine Intellect; nor does it descend from the pure Soul alone; it is a dependent of that Soul while, in a sense, it is a radiation from both those divine Hypostases; the Intellectual Principle and the Soul- the Soul as conditioned by the Intellectual Principle engender this Logos which is a Life holding restfully a certain measure of Reason.

Now all life, even the least valuable, is an activity, and not a blind activity like that of flame; even where there is not sensation the activity of life is no mere haphazard play of Movement: any object in which life is present, and object which participates in Life, is at once enreasoned in the sense that the activity peculiar to life is formative, shaping as it moves.

Life, then, aims at pattern as does the pantomimic dancer with his set movements; the mime, in himself, represents life, and, besides, his movements proceed in obedience to a pattern designed to symbolize life.

Thus far to give us some idea of the nature of Life in general.

But this Reason-Principle which emanates from the complete unity, divine Mind, and the complete unity Life - is neither a uniate complete Life nor a uniate complete divine Mind, nor does it give itself whole and all-including to its subject. it sets up a conflict of part against part: it produces imperfect things and so engenders and maintains war and attack, and thus its unity can be that only of a sum-total not of a thing undivided. At war with itself in the parts which it now exhibits, it has the unity, or harmony, of a drama torn with struggle. The drama, of course, brings the conflicting elements to one final harmony, weaving the entire story of the clashing characters into one thing; while in the Logos the conflict of the divergent elements rises within the one element, the Reason-Principle: the comparison therefore is rather with a harmony emerging directly from the conflicting elements themselves, and the question becomes what introduces clashing elements among these Reason-Principles.

Now in the case of music, tones high and low are the product of Reason-Principles which, by the fact that they are Principles of harmony, meet in the unit of Harmony, the absolute Harmony, a more comprehensive Principle, greater than they and including them as its parts. Similarly in the Universe at large we find contraries- white and black, hot and cold, winged and wingless, footed and footless, reasoning and unreasoning- but all these elements are members of one living body, their sum-total; the Universe is a self-accordant entity, its members everywhere clashing but the total being the manifestation of a Reason-Principle. That one Reason-Principle, then, must be the unification of conflicting Reason-Principles whose very opposition is the support of its coherence and, almost, of its Being.

And indeed, if it were not multiple, it could not be a Universal Principle, it could not even be at all a Reason-Principle; in the fact of its being a Reason-Principle is contained the fact of interior difference. Now the maximum of difference is contrariety; admitting that this differentiation exists and creates, it will create difference in the greatest and not in the least degree; in other words, the Reason-Principle, bringing about differentiation to the uttermost degree, will of necessity create contrarieties: it will be complete only by producing itself not in merely diverse things but in contrary things.

(2) I shall likewise say the same thing to you, concerning the more excellent genera that follow the Gods, I mean dæmons, heroes, and undefiled souls. For it is necessary to understand respecting these, that there is always in them one definite reason of essence, and to remove from them the indefiniteness and instability of the human condition. It is likewise requisite to separate from them that inclination to one side of an argument rather than another, arising from the equilibrium of a reasoning process. For a thing of this kind is foreign from the principles of reason and life, and rather tends to secondary natures, and to such things as pertain to the power and contrariety of generation. But it is necessary that the more excellent genera should be apprehended uniformly.