City of God (Penguin Classics), page 130
6. Not all marvels are natural: many are devised by man’s ingenuity, many by the craft of demons
At this point, it may be, our opponents will answer, ‘Of course, all those marvels have no reality: we do not believe a word of them. The tales about them, and the records of them, are all lies.’ And they may go on to add their arguments, and say, ‘If those tales are to be believed, then you should also believe the story, told in the same source, that there was, and still is, a shrine of Venus, with a lampstand in it, and in the lampstand a lamp which burns under the open sky so steadily that no storm of wind or rain could ever put it out;12 and hence, like the stone you mentioned, it is called the Lychnos asbestos.‘the inextinguishable lamp’. It is quite possible that they will make this objection, and their purpose will be to confront us with a dilemma: if we say that this story is not to be believed, we shall weaken the authority of the records of marvels we quoted, whereas if we admit its credibility, we shall be supporting the power of the pagan gods. But, as I said in the eighteenth book of this work,13 we are not obliged to believe everything contained in the historical records of the pagans, since their chroniclers, as Varro declares, seem to be at pains to differ from one another – apparently of set purpose! But we are free to believe, if we so choose, those reports which are not in conflict with the books which, as we have no doubt, we are obliged to believe. Now in the matter of these marvels we may content ourselves with those which we can find in our own experience and those for which there is no difficulty in finding adequate evidence. These should be sufficient for our purpose, to persuade the unbelievers of those events which are to come. As for this shrine of Venus and its ‘inextinguishable lamp’, not only does it fail to constrict us in our argument; it actually opens up a wider field for us. For we can add to that inextinguishable lamp a host of other marvels of human and of magical origin – that is, miracles of the demon’s black arts performed by men, and miracles performed by the demons themselves. If we choose to deny the reality of these, we shall ourselves be in conflict with the truth of the sacred books in which we believe. Thus either human ingenuity has devised in that inextinguishable lamp some contrivance based on the asbestos stone; or else it was contrived by magic art to give men something to marvel at in that shrine; or perhaps some demon presented himself there under the name of Venus with such effect that this prodigy was displayed to the public there and continued there for so many years. For the demons are enticed to take up their abodes by the action of created beings, created not by them, but by God; they are attracted by a wide variety of baits, proportionate to the wide variety of demons, not by food, as animals are enticed, but as spirits they are allured by tokens – designed to suit their different tastes – in the shape of various kinds of stones, plants, pieces of wood, animals, spells and ceremonies.
The demons, for their part, seek to ensure that they will be so enticed by men; and they do this by first misleading human beings by their subtle cleverness, either by breathing a secret poison into their hearts, or even by appearing to them in the deceptive guise of friends, making a few of them disciples of their own, and teachers of very many others. For it would be impossible for men to discover, without previous instruction from the demons themselves, the different likes and aversions of the various demons, the names by which they are to be invoked or compelled to do man’s will. Hence comes the first appearance of the magic arts and their practitioners. But their most effective hold upon the hearts of mortals (and it is in the possession of them that they especially glory) is gained when they transform themselves into angels of light.14
We see then that their activities are very numerous, and the more we acknowledge the marvel of them the more careful we should be to avoid them. And yet those activities actually prove a help to us towards the achievement of our present task. For if the foul demons have such power, how much greater is the power of the holy angels, and how much greater than all of them is the power of God, who has given even the angels themselves the ability to work such great miracles.
Thus God’s created beings can, by the use of human arts, effect so many marvels, which they call mêchanêmata (contrivances), of a nature so astounding that those unfamiliar with them would suppose them to be the works of God himself. That is how in one of the temples an image of iron hung suspended in mid-air between two loadstones of the required size, fastened, one in the floor, the other in the roof, suggesting to those who did not know what was above and beneath the image that it hung there by an exercise of divine power;15 and we have already said that something of this sort may have been effected by some craftsman in the case of the well-known ‘Lamp of Venus’ by the use of the asbestos stone. And it seems that the demons can raise the operations of the magicians (our Scriptures call them ‘sorcerers’ and ‘enchanters’) to such a pitch of efficiency that Virgil, that famous poet, thought himself to be in harmony with the general sense of mankind when he wrote these lines about a woman who was a great mistress of that kind of art:
She promises with spells to soothe man’s mind,
If she so will, or to inflict harsh sorrow;
To stop the flow of rivers, turn the stars
Back on their course. She will arouse the spirits
That haunt the night; and you will feel the earth
Groaning beneath your feet, and from the mountains
Behold the trees descending to the plain.16
Now, if all this be true, how much more has God the power to achieve things incredible to the unbeliever but easy to his omnipotence, seeing that he himself endowed stones and other substances with their wonderful properties, and that he it is who bestowed on man the wit to employ those properties in marvellous ways, and gave to the angels a nature with powers surpassing those of all living creatures on earth. And all this he did with a power whose wonder exceeds all wonders taken together, with a wisdom shown in the wonders he performs, in those which he orders, in those which he permits; and the use he makes of his creation is as wonderful as the act of creation itself.
7. The omnipotence of the Creator is the ground of belief in marvels
Then why should not God have power to make the bodies of the dead rise again, and the bodies of the damned to suffer torment in the everlasting fire, since he made the world so full of innumerable marvels in the sky, on the earth, in the air, and in the water – although the world itself is beyond doubt a marvel greater and more wonderful than all the wonders with which it is filled? But these rationalists with whom, or rather against whom, we are now engaged, also believe in the existence of God, by whom the world was made; and they believe in gods created by him, through whose agency he governs the world; and either they do not deny or else they go further and openly proclaim that there are powers in the universe which effect marvels, whether produced spontaneously or obtained by the performance of some kind of rite or ceremony, or even achieved by magic arts.
And yet, when we put before them an instance of some wonderful property displayed by other substances which are neither rational living creatures nor spirits endowed with any kind of reason (the kind of thing of which I have mentioned a few instances), then their usual reply is, ‘This is the force of nature; this is their natural quality; these are the special properties of their natural substances.’ This, then, is the complete rational explanation! This explains why flame makes the salt of Agrigentum fluid, while water makes it crackle –because that is its nature! And yet this appears to be in. fact contrary to nature; for nature has given to salt the property of dissolving in water, and to fire, and not to water, the property of drying. ‘Ah yes’, they say, ‘but it is the natural property of this particular salt to display these contrary effects.’ Very good. Then this is the rational explanation offered in the case of the spring of Garamantum, where the same source is cold in the daytime and boiling hot at night, both properties causing distress to those who touch; and it applies also to that other spring which is cold to the touch and, like other springs, extinguishes a burning torch, and yet, unlike other springs, and miraculously, it also rekindles the torch it has put out; and to the asbestos stone, which has no fire of its own, and yet, when it has received fire, blazes so fiercely with a fire not its own that it cannot be quenched; and to other marvels besides which it would be tedious to go over. Although they may seem to display an inherent property which is unexampled and contrary to nature, the only rational explanation that is offered is, ‘That is their nature’! A good short answer, to be sure! A sufficient reason, indeed!
But since God is the author of all natures, why do they object to our supplying a stronger reason? For when they refuse to believe something, alleging its impossibility, and demand that we supply a rational explanation, we reply that the explanation is the will of Almighty God. For God is certainly called ‘Almighty’ for one reason only; that he has the power to do whatever he wills, and he has the power to create so many things which would be reckoned obviously impossible, if they were not displayed to our senses or else reported by witnesses who have always proved reliable; and this applies not only to phenomena very unfamiliar to us but even to the most familiar instances I have quoted. As for the accounts which have no supporting evidence beyond the statements of the authors of the books in which we read them, and which are written by authors not instructed by divine inspiration and therefore susceptible, perhaps, to human delusion, it is open to anyone to withhold belief from them, and no one can justly be blamed for so doing.
For myself, indeed, I do not wish all the instances I have quoted to be believed without question; I myself do not believe them all implicitly, in the sense of having no doubt at all in my mind, apart from those of which I have had personal experience, or which can easily be put to the proof by anyone at all. Examples of these are: the fact that lime grows hot in water, and remains cold in oil; that the loadstone by some insensible power of suction attracts iron, though it will not stir a straw; that the flesh of a peacock does not putrefy, whereas Plato’s body decayed; that chaff is cool, in the sense that it keeps snow from melting, and warm, in the sense that it brings apples to ripeness; that a bright fire bakes stones to a shining whiteness appropriate to its own brilliance, while it bums most things to a dusky hue quite contrary to that brilliance. There is a similar paradox in the fact that dark stains are spread from shining oil, and likewise dark lines are imprinted by gleaming silver, and That in some substances blazing fire effects a reversal of their qualities: beautiful woods become unsightly, durable timber becomes brittle, and timber liable to rot is made resistant to decay.
I have personal knowledge of these facts, some of which are known to all, others to most people; and there are a great many other such facts which it would be tedious to insert in this book. However, with regard to the instances I quoted from my reading and not from my own experience, I have not been able to find any reliable witnesses to establish the truth of these stories, except for the report about the spring in which burning torches are extinguished and then relit, and the account of the apples of Sodom, which look ripe on the outside but inside are full of smoke. In fact in the case of that spring I have not found any witnesses to declare that they have seen it in Epirus, but I have encountered people who know a similar fountain in Gaul, not far from Grenoble. The apples of Sodom, on the other hand, are attested not only in literary sources worthy of credence, but also by many who talk of them from personal experience; and so I cannot doubt the truth of the report.
As for the other stories, my position is that I have decided that I should neither affirm nor deny their truth; but I have quoted them along with the others for the very reason that I have read them in authorities from the side of our antagonists. My purpose here is to demonstrate the kind of marvels recorded in profusion in pagan literature and generally believed by our opponents, although no rational explanation is offered, whereas the same people cannot bring themselves to believe us, even though rational grounds are produced, when we say that Almighty God is to perform an act which lies outside their experience and contravenes the evidence of their senses. For what better reason or more valid ground could be given in such matters than when the assertion that the Almighty can achieve this result and the statement that he is going to achieve it is supported by the written evidence that he has foretold this achievement, evidence contained in books in which he foretold many other acts which he is proved to have performed? He will certainly effect what are supposed to be impossibilities, because he has foretold that he will do so; for in the past he has fulfilled his promises and has thus ensured belief in things that passed belief, even from nations that refused belief.
8. A change of some property in a substance is not contrary to nature
However, our opponents may retort, their refusal to believe in our assertion that human bodies are destined to bum for ever and that these bodies will never the is based on this consideration: that we know that the nature of human bodies has been very differently constituted; and hence it is impossible here to advance the explanation offered in respect of those natural marvels we have mentioned. It cannot in this case be said that ‘this is a natural power’ or ‘this is a natural property of this substance’; for in fact we are aware that this is not a natural property of human bodies.
Now we have an answer to this, based on our sacred books, namely, that this human flesh of ours was differently constituted before man’s sin; I mean that it was possible for this flesh never to suffer death. That condition changed after man’s sin, and man’s flesh became what it has always been known to be in this distressful situation of mortality, so that it cannot hold on to life for ever; by the same token, at the resurrection of the dead it will be differently constituted from the flesh as it is known to us. But our opponents do not believe in those books of ours, in which we read the description of man’s condition when he lived in paradise and learn how remote he was from the inevitability of death. For if they believed them, then of course we should not be engaged with them in a laborious debate about the punishment of the damned. As it is, then, we shall have to produce some evidence from the writings of the most learned of their own authors, to show that it is possible for a particular substance to acquire a character different from that which has become familiar in experience as belonging to the definition of its nature.
There is a passage in Marcus Varro’s book entitled On the Race of the Roman People which I will quote in the author’s own words:
A wonderful portent appeared in the sky. Castor17 writes that in the well-known star Venus, called Vesperugo by Plautus, and Hesperus by Homer18 (who speaks of it as ‘most beautiful’), a remarkable portent appeared. The star actually changed its colour, its size, its shape, and its course; a thing which had never happened before, and has never happened again. This occurred in the reign of King Ogygus,19 according to the famous mathematicians Adrastus of Cyzicus and Dion of Neapolis.
Now Varro would certainly not have called this phenomenon a portent if it had not seemed contrary to nature; in fact we say, as a matter of course, that all portents are contrary to nature. But they are not. For how can an event be contrary to nature when it happens by the will of God, since the will of the great Creator assuredly is the nature of every created thing? A portent, therefore, does not occur contrary to nature, but contrary to what is known of nature.
Now who can count the enormous number of portents which are included in pagan histories? But at the moment we must confine our attention to what is relevant to the matter in hand. Is there anything so firmly regulated by the author of the nature of the sky and the earth as the orderly course of the stars? Is there anything so securely established by unvarying laws? And yet, when it so pleased him who rules his own creation with supreme dominion and power, the star renowned beyond all other stars for size and splendour altered its size, its shape and, still more wonderful, the decreed order of its course. On that occasion this star certainly upset the rules of the astrologers, if any of those rules were by then in existence. For astrologers have their written rules according to which they compute, by calculations thought to be infallible, the past and future movements of the stars: and in reliance on those rules they have been bold enough to assert that what happened then to Lucifer never happened before and has never happened afterwards.
