And the Sibyl, who was a prophetess among the Greeks and among the other nations, reproaches the human race at the very beginning of her prophecy. She says:
Mortal men, made of flesh, who are nothing at all —
how quickly you are puffed up, with no eye on the end of your life!
Do you not tremble? Do you not fear God, your overseer,
the Most High, who knows, who sees everything, the witness of all,
the Creator who feeds all things, who has set his sweet breath in every creature
and made it the guide of every mortal?
There is one God, who rules alone, immense, uncreated,
Almighty, unseen, himself alone seeing all things,
while he himself is seen by no mortal flesh at all.
For what flesh can see with its eyes
the true and undying God of heaven, who lives in the vault of the sky?
Men cannot even stand facing the rays of the sun —
men who were born mortal,
men framed in bone, made of veins and flesh.
Worship him who alone is, the leader of the world,
who alone is, from age to age,
sprung from himself, uncreated, holding all things in his power always,
dealing out judgment to all mortals in the common light.
You will be paid the wage your bad counsel has earned,
because you gave up glorifying the true and everlasting God
and offering him holy hecatombs,
and made your sacrifices instead to the demons that are in Hades.
You walk in conceit and madness. You have left the straight
and level path and gone away, and wandered off through thorns
and sharp stakes. Empty mortals, stop your drifting
in the dark, in the black and lightless night.
Leave the darkness of night behind and take hold of the light.
Look — he stands plain to everyone, and he does not lead you astray.
Come; do not chase after darkness and gloom forever.
Look, the sun’s sweet light is shining out above all.
Know it, and store wisdom away in your hearts.
There is one God, who sends the rains and the winds and the earthquakes,
the lightning, the famines, the plagues and the bitter griefs,
the snowfalls and the ice. Why should I list them one by one?
He leads the sky. He rules the earth. He himself simply is.
And about the ones who are said to have come into being, she said:
If a thing has come into being at all, it also decays;
and God cannot be a shape formed out of a man’s loins and a womb.
No — God is one alone, highest of all, who made
the sky and the sun and the stars and the moon,
and the fruit-bearing earth and the swelling waters of the sea,
and the high mountains and the ever-flowing streams of the springs.
He breeds again the countless swarm of the water creatures.
The creeping things that stir on the ground he keeps alive,
and all the kinds of birds — clear-voiced, chattering,
darting, shrill-winged, troubling the air with their wings.
In the glens of the mountains he set a wild race of beasts,
and he put all the cattle under us mortals,
and set over them a ruler of God’s own making,
and gave into man’s hands things of every kind, past all grasping.
For what mortal flesh can know all this?
Only he knows, who made it from the beginning —
the Creator who cannot decay, who is everlasting, who lives in the upper air,
holding out to the good a good reward, far more than they earned,
but rousing anger and rage against the evil and the unjust,
and war and plague and tearful pains.
Men, why are you lifted up for nothing, and torn out by the roots?
Be ashamed of yourselves, making gods of weasels and vermin!
Is it not madness, is it not raving that has stripped your minds of sense —
if your gods steal the dishes and rob the cooking pots?
Instead of living up in the rich golden vault of heaven,
he is on view moth-eaten and matted over with thick cobwebs.
You bow down to snakes, to dogs, to cats, you fools,
and you worship birds and the crawling animals of the earth,
and images cut from stone and statues made by hand,
and heaps of stones piled by the roadside. These you worship,
and many other empty things it is shameful even to name.
These are the gods, the tricksters of senseless mortals,
and out of their mouths pours a venom that kills.
But he in whom there is life, and light that never fades or fails,
who pours out for men a joy sweeter than sweet honey —
to him alone you must bend your neck,
and turn your road into the ways of reverence, forever.
All of this you have left behind. In your folly, with a maddened spirit,
you have all drained the cup that is full of justice —
raw, heavy, weighted down, and not watered down at all.
And you will not sober up and come to a sound mind
and know God the king, who oversees everything.
That is why the glare of burning fire is coming upon you.
You will burn in the torchlight through the age, all day long,
put to shame for your lying, useless idols.
But those who honor the true and everlasting God
inherit life, and live out the time of the age
in the deep-blooming garden of paradise,
feasting on sweet bread from the starry sky.
That all this is true, and useful, and right, and welcome to everyone, is plain — and so is this, that people who have done evil must be punished in proportion to what they did.
What the Poets Let Slip
Some of the poets, too, have already come out with these same things — like oracles delivered against themselves, and as a witness against people who do what is unjust — saying that they are going to be punished. Aeschylus said:
The doer must also suffer.
And Pindar said the same:
Since a man who does something must expect to suffer for it.
So too Euripides:
Bear it now that you suffer; you enjoyed the doing.
It is the law to harm your enemy wherever you catch him.
And again the same poet:
Doing your enemies harm I count part of being a man.
Archilochus, likewise:
One great thing I know:
to pay back the man who wrongs me with terrible harm.
And that God oversees everything and nothing escapes him, but that he is patient and holds back until the time when he is to judge — Dionysius has spoken about this too:
The eye of Justice, looking out from a still face,
sees everything alike, always.
And that God’s judgment is going to come, and that evils will overtake the wicked suddenly — Aeschylus signaled this as well, saying:
Evil comes on mortals swift-footed,
for the offense, on the man who steps across what is right.
Look at Justice: voiceless, unseen,
beside you sleeping, walking, sitting still.
She comes up at your side next, or later, at another time.
Night does not cover over the man who has done wrong.
Whatever terrible thing you do, count on it that someone sees.
And why not Simonides as well?
There is no evil that men can rule out;
in a little while God overturns everything.
Euripides again:
Never reckon a bad man’s good fortune
or his arrogant wealth secure,
nor the line of the unjust; for time, sprung from nothing,
exposes the wickedness of men.
Euripides once more:
The divine is not without understanding.
It can recognize an oath struck wrongly,
and one wrung out of a man against his will.
And Sophocles:
If you dealt out terrible things, you must suffer terrible things too.
So they themselves have all but foretold that God is going to look into a false oath and into every other offense; and about the burning up of the world they said, willing or not, what agrees with the prophets — though they came long afterward, and stole this material out of the law and the prophets.
The Prophets Said It First
And what does it matter whether they came last or first? The point is that they too said what agrees with the prophets. About the burning up, the prophet Malachi foretold:“Look, a day of the Lord is coming like a burning oven, and it will set all the godless alight.”And Isaiah:“For the anger of God will come like hail driven down by force, and like water sweeping through a ravine.”
So the Sibyl and the rest of the prophets, and the poets and the philosophers as well, have made plain what concerns righteousness and judgment and punishment — and providence too: that God takes thought not only for us who are alive but also for the dead. They said it unwillingly; the truth convicted them. Among the prophets, Solomon said of the dead:“There will be healing for the flesh, and care for the bones.”And David says the same:“Bones that have been humbled will rejoice.”Timocles said what agrees with these:“For the dead there is mercy: God is considerate.”
So the writers who spoke of a multitude of gods came down at last to the rule of one. Those who talked of there being no providence spoke of providence; those who insisted there is no judgment admitted that a judgment will come; and those who denied that there is any sensation after death admitted that there is. Homer, then, though he said:
The soul flew off and fluttered away like a dream,
says in another place:
The soul flew from his limbs and went off to Hades.
And again:
Bury me as fast as you can — let me pass the gates of Hades.
As for the rest of the writers you have read, I take it you know exactly how they have put it. But all of this will be understood by anyone who looks for the wisdom of God and pleases him through faith and righteousness and the doing of good. For one of the prophets I wrote about earlier, Hosea by name, said:“Who is wise, and will understand these things? Who has sense, and will know them? For the ways of the Lord are straight, and the righteous will enter them, but the godless will grow weak in them.”
So a man who loves learning must go on loving learning. Try, then, to meet with me more often, so that by hearing a living voice you may learn the truth exactly.