The Divine Institutes, Books I–VII

Book IV: True Wisdom and Religion

BOOK FOUR TRUE WISDOM AND RELIGION Chapter 1 IllliI:""JIlil'lRT SEEMS TO ME) as I think about it and often reconsider it in my mind, that that former state of the human race is equally strange and unbecoming, because, through the foolishness of one age or generation taking up various religions and believing that there are many gods, man has suddenly come into such great ignorance of himself that when truth was removed from the sight, neither the religion of the true God nor the reason of humanity was held by men seeking their highest good, not in heaven but on earth. And for this reason, of course, the happiness of olden times has been changed. For, abandoning God as the parent and ruler of all things, men began to venerate the insensible products of their own handiwork. What this perverseness accomplished or what evil it brought about the thing itself makes known. For turned away from the highest good which is, therefore, blessed and everlasting, since it is not able to be seen, touched, or grasped, and also from the virtues which are in accord with that good, slipping to these corrupt and fragile gods and desiring those things with which only the body is adorned, nourished, and delighted, they have sought perpetual death for themselves with their gods and bodily goods, because every body is subject to death. There followed upon religions of this sort injustice and impiety, just as was necessary. For they ceased to raise their gaze to the heavens, and as the minds of 245 246 LACTANTIUS men were pressed down by earthly religions, so also did they cling to goods of earth. There followed a severing, a crisis of the human race, and fraud and every crime,! because, spurning eternal and incorruptible goods which alone ought to be desired by man, they preferred temporal and short-lived ones, and the greater faith was toward evil for men who preferred the wicked to the upright because it was more present or immediate to them. Thus mist and darkness seized human life which had been in the clearest light in earlier ages; and, what was fitting to this depravity, after wisdom had been removed, then at length men began to claim for themselves the name of wise men. Then, however, no one was called wise, when everyone was. Would that that name, however, at one time so general, although reduced now in application to a few, retained its force! For those few, perhaps, would be able by their genius or influence or assiduous exhortation to set the people free from vices and errors. But wisdom has so entirely fallen, that from the very arrogance of the name, it appears that no one of those who were called wise was wise.2 Yet before this philosophy , which it is said to be, was discovered, there are said to have been seven who, first of all, deserved to be considered and to be named wise men,3 since they dared to make inquiry and to hold discussion about natural things. 0 miserable and disastrous time in which throughout the whole world there were only seven who were called by the name of men! For no one can rightly be called a man except the one who is wise. But if all the rest besides those men were fools, then not even were they wise, since no one can be truly wise according to the judgment of fools. Wisdom was to such a degree absent from them that not even afterwards, with the increase of I Cf. Ovid, Metamorphoses 1.128. 2 Cf. Cicero, Tusculans 5.3.7. 3 The traditional list of the Seven Sages included: Solon of Athens (c. 638-555 B.C.), Chilo of Sparta (d. 597 B.C,), Thales of Miletus (d. 548 B.C.), Bias of Priene (fl. 6th C. B.C.), Cleobulus of Lindos (d. 564 B.C.), Pittacus of Mitylene (d. 570 B.C.), and Periander of Corinth (d. !l58 B.C.). BOOK FOUR 247 teaching and many and great geniuses being always intent upon this very pursuit, could truth be perfected and comprehended . For after the glory of those seven wise men, it is incredible with how much zeal for searching out the truth all Greece burned. And as soon as they thought the very name of wisdom arrogant, they called themselves, not wise men, but eager for...