No One Compelled to Worship

But these men do not know what to worship or how, and so they blunder into the very opposite of worship without realizing it. They adore their own enemies. They buy off with sacrificial animals the robbers and murderers who prey on them. And along with the incense they lay their own souls on those loathsome altars to be burned. What is more, the wretched men are angry that other people are not destroying themselves in the same fashion — a blindness of mind past believing. For what can men see who cannot see the sun? As if, supposing these were gods, they would need help from men against the people who despise them. So why are they angry on their gods’ behalf, if the gods can do nothing themselves? Unless it is that they are the ones pulling their own gods down, by distrusting their power — which leaves them more irreligious than the people who do not worship them at all. [a]

Cicero, in his Laws, tells men to come to the sacrifices in a state of purity, and says, “Let them bring devotion with them; let them leave their wealth behind. If anyone does otherwise, God himself will be his avenger.” That is well said. It is not right to despair of God — the whole reason you worship him is that you believe him powerful. For how could he avenge wrongs done to his worshippers if he cannot avenge the wrongs done to himself?

So I should like to ask them whom exactly they think they are doing a favor when they force people to sacrifice against their will. The people they force? But nothing done to a man who refuses it is a kindness. We have to look after their interests even against their will, they say, since they do not know what is good for them. Then why do they harry and torture and break these people so cruelly, if what they want is their safety? How did devotion get so undevout that it either destroys, in this miserable way, or leaves crippled and useless, the very people whose welfare it means to promote? Or is the favor done to the gods? But nothing wrung out of a man against his will is a sacrifice. Unless it is offered freely and from the soul, it is a curse — and these men are sacrificing under the compulsion of proscription, of injuries done them, of prison, of torture. If the beings worshipped in this way really are gods, then for this reason alone they ought not to be worshipped: because they want to be worshipped in this way. They deserve nothing from men but loathing, since what is poured out to them is tears and groaning and blood running from every limb.

We, on the other hand, do not demand that anyone be compelled to worship our God, who is the God of all people, whether he wants to or not; and we are not angry if a man does not worship him. We trust in the greatness of the one who has power to avenge contempt shown to himself, just as he has power to avenge the injuries and disasters brought on his servants. So when such godless things are done to us, we do not fight back even with a word. We leave the vengeance to God. We do not act as they do, who want to be seen defending their gods and rage without restraint against anyone who does not worship them. That by itself shows how worshipping their gods cannot be a good thing: men ought to have been led to what is good by good means, not by evil ones, and since this way is evil, the very service done for it is empty of good. But people who destroy religions, they say, have to be punished. Have we destroyed them worse, then, than the Egyptian nation does, who worship the most disgraceful shapes of beasts and cattle and adore as gods things it is shameful even to name? Have we done worse than the very men who say they worship the gods and then deride them publicly and shamefully — who let mimes be acted about them, and laugh, and enjoy it? What kind of religion is this? How great can that majesty be, when it is adored in the temples and mocked in the theaters? And the men who do this suffer no vengeance from the deity they have injured; they go away honored and praised. Have we destroyed them worse than certain philosophers, who say there are no gods at all, that everything was produced of itself and everything that happens happens by chance? Have we destroyed them worse than the Epicureans, who admit that gods exist but deny that they take notice of anything, and say they are neither angry nor won over by favor? By saying that, they plainly persuade men that the gods are not to be worshipped at all, since they neither notice their worshippers nor are angry with those who do not worship them. And when they argue against fear, the whole aim of their work is that no one should fear the gods. Yet men are glad to hear this, and it is discussed without any penalty at all.

So it is not because we do not worship their gods that they rage at us. It is because the truth is on our side — and truth, as the truest of sayings has it, breeds hatred. What are we to think, then, except that they do not know what is happening to them? They are carried along by a blind, unreasoning fury; we can see it, and they cannot. For it is not the men themselves who do the persecuting — they have no cause for anger against the innocent. It is those filthy, ruined spirits, who both know the truth and hate it, working their way into men’s minds and goading them, in their ignorance, into fury. As long as there is peace among the people of God, these spirits run from the righteous and are afraid of them. And when they have seized men’s bodies and are tormenting their souls, the righteous put them under oath, and at the name of the true God they take flight. When they hear that name they tremble and cry out and say they are being branded and beaten; and when they are asked who they are, where they have come from, and how they worked their way into a person, they confess it. So, tortured and racked by the power of the divine name, they are driven out of the man. Because of these blows and threats they always hate holy and righteous men. And since they cannot injure them directly, they hound with public hatred the people they find hard to bear, and use all the violence they can lay hold of, either to break their faith with pain or, if they cannot manage that, to take them off the earth altogether, so that no one is left to hold their wickedness in check. [g]

I am well aware what can be said on the other side. Then why, they ask, does that God of surpassing power, that mighty one you admit presides over everything and is Lord of all, allow this to be done, and neither avenge nor defend his own worshippers? Why, in short, are the people who do not worship him rich and powerful and happy? Why do they enjoy honors and royal state, and have these very people under their power and command?

This too needs an answer, so that no mistake is left standing. It is above all the reason why people think religion has no power of God behind it: they are swayed by the look of earthly, present goods, which have nothing at all to do with the care of the mind. Because they see the righteous without these goods and the unrighteous overflowing with them, they judge that the worship of God is worthless, since they cannot see such things included in it, and they suppose that the rites of the other gods are the true ones, since the people who keep them enjoy riches and honors and kingdoms. But people who hold that opinion are not looking carefully at what a human being is or how he is put together, which lies wholly in the mind and not in the body. They see nothing beyond what can be seen — the body. And because the body is a thing you can take in with the eyes and the hand, it is weak, frail, and mortal; and to it belong all the goods they long for and admire: wealth, honors, offices. Those goods bring the body its pleasures, and so they decay just as the body does. But the soul, which is the whole of what a person is, is not exposed to the sight of the eyes, and its goods cannot be seen either, since they are placed in virtue and nowhere else. So the soul must be as firm and steady and lasting as the virtue in which its good consists.

It would take a long time to bring out every form of virtue and show, one by one, how necessary it is for a wise and righteous man to be kept far away from those goods — the goods whose enjoyment by the unrighteous makes people take the worship of their gods for something true and effective. For the question in front of us, one virtue will be enough to prove the point. Take patience: a great virtue, a leading one, praised to the skies by every voice alike, ordinary people and philosophers and orators. But if there is no denying that this is a virtue of the highest kind, then the righteous and wise man has to be in the power of the unrighteous in order to have patience at all; for patience is the bearing, with an even mind, of the evils that are inflicted on us or that happen to fall on us. So the righteous and wise man has patience in him, because he is exercising virtue; but he will be entirely without it if he never meets any hardship. The man who lives in prosperity, on the other hand, is impatient, and lacks the greatest virtue. I call him impatient because he suffers nothing. He also cannot keep his innocence, a virtue that belongs to the righteous and wise man alone. Instead he often acts unjustly: he wants what belongs to others, and seizes by injustice what he has wanted, because he has no virtue and is at the mercy of vice and sin; and, forgetting how frail he is, he swells up with a mind puffed out with insolence. [k]

This is why the unrighteous, the people who do not know God, are loaded with riches and power and honors. All of it is the pay of unrighteousness, because none of it can last, and it is got by craving and by force. But the righteous and wise man counts all of it human, as Laelius said, and counts his own goods divine. So he wants nothing that belongs to anyone else, for fear of injuring anybody at all and breaking the law of our shared humanity; and he does not hunger after power or office, so that he may do no one an injury. He knows that all people are brought into being by the same God, on the same terms, and are joined together by the right of brotherhood. Content with his own, and with little of it, since he keeps his frailty in mind, he looks for nothing beyond what will keep his life going; and out of even that he gives a share to the destitute, because he is devout — and devotion is a very great virtue. On top of that he despises frail and vicious pleasures, the pleasures for whose sake riches are wanted, since he is temperate and has his passions in hand. Having no pride or insolence in him, he does not lift himself too high or carry his head arrogantly; he is quiet and peaceable, plain and approachable, because he knows what he is. And so, since he injures no one, wants nothing of anyone else’s, and does not even defend his own when it is taken from him by force, since he knows how to bear an injury done to him with moderation, because virtue is in him — it follows necessarily that the righteous man is subject to the unrighteous, and the wise man is insulted by the fool: the one so that he may sin, being unrighteous, and the other so that he may have virtue in him, being righteous.

If anyone wants to know more fully why God allows the wicked and the unrighteous to become powerful and happy and rich, and on the other hand lets the devout be lowly and miserable and poor, let him take up the book of Seneca titled Why Many Evils Happen to Good Men, Though There Is a Providence. In that book he says a great deal — not, certainly, with this world’s ignorance, but wisely, and almost as a man inspired: “God treats men as his children. But the corrupt and the vicious he lets live in luxury and softness, because he does not think them worth correcting. The good, whom he loves, he often disciplines, and by unbroken hard work he trains them in the practice of virtue; and he does not let them be spoiled and ruined by frail and perishable goods.” So no one should find it strange if we are often disciplined by God for our faults. On the contrary: when we are harassed and pressed hard, that is when we thank our most indulgent Father most, because he does not let our corruption run on any further, but corrects it with stripes and blows. From that we understand that we are an object of God’s regard, since he is angry when we sin.

He could have given his own people riches and kingdoms, as he had given them earlier to the Jews, whose successors and descendants we are. Instead he chose to have them live under the power and government of others, so that the happiness of prosperity should not spoil them and let them slide into luxury and contempt for God’s commands — as those ancestors of ours did, who again and again were softened by these earthly and frail goods, walked away from discipline, and burst the bonds of the law. So he foresaw how far he would grant rest to his worshippers if they kept his commandments, and how he would correct them if they did not obey what he laid down. And so, to keep them from being as corrupted by ease as their fathers had been by a free hand, it was his will that they should be held down by the men in whose power he placed them: that he might steady them when they wavered, make them strong again when they were spoiled, and test and prove them when they were faithful. For how can a general prove the courage of his soldiers unless he has an enemy? An enemy rises up against that general whether he likes it or not, because he is mortal and can be beaten. But since God cannot be opposed, he himself stirs up adversaries against his own name — not to fight against God himself, but against God’s soldiers — so that he may either prove the devotion and faithfulness of his servants, or strengthen them, until he has corrected their wasting discipline with the blows of affliction.

There is another reason as well why he allows persecutions to be carried on against us: so that the people of God may be increased. It is not hard to show why this happens, or how. First of all, great numbers are driven away from the worship of the false gods by their hatred of cruelty. Who would not shrink back from sacrifices like these? Next, some are drawn by virtue and faith itself. Some suspect that there must be a reason why so many men count the worship of the gods an evil thing — men who would rather die than do what others do in order to keep their lives. Someone wants to know what that good is which is defended even to the death, which is preferred to everything pleasant and dear in this life, and out of which neither the loss of property, nor the loss of the light, nor bodily pain, nor the tearing of the vitals can frighten them. These things carry great weight; and these are the causes that have always done most to increase our numbers. The people standing around hear them saying, in the middle of the torments themselves, that they do not sacrifice to stones worked by a man’s hand but to the living God who is in heaven; and many understand that this is true and take it into their hearts. Then, as usually happens with anything uncertain, while they ask one another what the cause of such perseverance is, a great deal about our religion gets spread abroad and carefully picked up from what people are saying; and since these things are good, they cannot fail to please. Besides that, the vengeance that follows, as it always does, drives men hard toward belief. And it is no small cause, either, that the unclean spirits of demons, having been given permission, throw themselves into the bodies of many people; and when they have afterwards been driven out, those who have been healed hold fast to the religion whose power they have felt for themselves. All these causes gathered up together win a great crowd over to God in a wonderful way.

So whatever wicked rulers plot against us, God himself allows to be done. And yet the most unjust of persecutors, men to whom the name of God was a matter for insult and mockery, must not suppose that they will get off unpunished because they have been, in a manner of speaking, the agents of his displeasure with us. They will be punished by the judgment of God — men who were given power and abused it to an inhuman degree, who even insulted God in their arrogance and put his eternal name under their feet to be trampled on wickedly and profanely. For that reason he promises that he will take vengeance on them soon and wipe the evil beasts off the earth. And although he is in the habit of avenging the persecution of his people even in the present world, he still commands us to wait patiently for that day of heavenly judgment, on which he himself will honor or punish every person according to what he deserves. So let no sacrilegious soul expect that the people they trample on will be left despised and unavenged. Those greedy, devouring wolves who have tormented righteous and innocent souls, guilty of no crime at all, will certainly get their pay. Only let us take pains that nothing in us is punished by men except righteousness alone; let us strive with all our strength to deserve at God’s hands, at one and the same time, the avenging of our suffering and a reward. [r]