The Stromata, or Miscellanies

“Do you think, O Niceratus, that the dead,
Who in all kinds of luxury in life have shared,
Escape the Deity, as if forgot?
There is an eye of justice, which sees all.
For two ways, as we deem, to Hades lead—
One for the good, the other for the bad.
But if the earth hides both for ever, then
Go plunder, steal, rob, and be turbulent.
But err not. For in Hades judgment is,
Which God the Lord of all will execute,
Whose name too dreadful is for me to name,
Who gives to sinners length of earthly life.
If any mortal thinks, that day by day,
While doing ill, he eludes the gods' keen sight,
His thoughts are evil; and when justice has
The leisure, he shall then detected be
So thinking. Look, whoe'er you be that say
That there is not a God. There is, there is.
If one, by nature evil, evil does,
Let him redeem the time; for such as he
Shall by and by due punishment receive.”

And with this agrees the tragedy in the following lines:—

“For there shall come, shall come that point of time,
When Ether, golden-eyed, shall ope its store
Of treasured fire; and the devouring flame,
Raging, shall burn all things on earth below,
And all above.”...

And after a little he adds:—

“And when the whole world fades,
And vanished all the abyss of ocean's waves,
And earth of trees is bare; and wrapt in flames,
The air no more begets the winged tribes;
Then He who all destroyed, shall all restore.”

We shall find expressions similar to these also in the Orphic hymns, written as follows:—

“For having hidden all, brought them again
To gladsome light, forth from his sacred heart,
Solicitous.”

And if we live throughout holily and righteously, we are happy here, and shall be happier after our departure hence; not possessing happiness for a time, but enabled to rest in eternity.

“At the same hearth and table as the rest
Of the immortal gods, we sit all free
Of human ills, unharmed,”

says the philosophic poetry of Empedocles. And so, according to the Greeks, none is so great as to be above judgment, none so insignificant as to escape its notice.

And the same Orpheus speaks thus:—

“But to the word divine, looking, attend,
Keeping aright the heart's receptacle
Of intellect, and tread the straight path well,
And only to the world's immortal King
Direct your gaze.”

And again, respecting God, saying that He was invisible, and that He was known to but one, a Chaldean by race— meaning either by this Abraham or his son— he speaks as follows:—

“But one a scion of Chaldean race;
For he the sun's path knew right well,
And how the motion of the sphere about
The earth proceeds, in circle moving
Equally around its axis, how the winds
Their chariot guide o'er air and sea.”

Then, as if paraphrasing the expression, “Heaven is my throne, and earth is my footstool,” he adds:—

“But in great heaven, He is seated firm
Upon a throne of gold, and 'neath His feet
The earth. His right hand round the ocean's bound
He stretches; and the hills' foundations shake
To the centre at His wrath, nor can endure
His mighty strength. He all celestial is,
And all things finishes upon the earth.
He the Beginning, Middle is, and End.
But You I dare not speak. In limbs
And mind I tremble. He rules from on high.”

And so forth. For in these he indicates these prophetic utterances: “If You open the heaven, trembling shall seize the mountains from Your presence; and they shall melt, as wax melts before the fire;” and in Isaiah, Who has measured the heaven with a span, and the whole earth with His fist? Again, when it is said:—

“Ruler of Ether, Hades, Sea, and Land,
Who with Your bolts Olympus' strong-built home
Dost shake. Whom demons dread, and whom the throng
Of gods do fear. Whom, too, the Fates obey,
Relentless though they be. O deathless One,
Our mother's Sire! Whose wrath makes all things reel;
Who mov'st the winds, and shroud'st in clouds the world,
Broad Ether cleaving with Your lightning gleams,—
Yours is the order 'mongst the stars, which run
As Your unchangeable behests direct.
Before Your burning throne the angels wait,
Much-working, charged to do all things, for men.
Your young Spring shines, all prank'd with purple flowers;
Your Winter with its chilling clouds assails;
Your Autumn noisy Bacchus distributes.”

Then he adds, naming expressly the Almighty God:—

“Deathless Immortal, capable of being
To the immortals only uttered! Come,
Greatest of gods, with strong Necessity.
Dread, invincible, great, deathless One,
Whom Ether crowns.”...

By the expression “Sire of our Mother” (μητροπάτωρ) he not only intimates creation out of nothing, but gives occasion to those who introduce emissions of imagining a consort of the Deity. And he paraphrases those prophetic Scripture— that in Isaiah, “I am He that fixes the thunder, and creates the wind; whose hands have founded the host of heaven;” and that in Moses, “Behold, behold that I am He, and there is no god beside me: I will kill, and I will make to live; I will smite, and I will heal: and there is none that shall deliver out of my hands.”

“And He, from good, to mortals plants ill,
And cruel war, and tearful woes,”

according to Orpheus.

Such also are the words of the Parian Archilochus.

“O Zeus, yours is the power of heaven, and you
Inflict on men things violent and wrong.”

Again let the Thracian Orpheus sing to us:—

“His right hand all around to ocean's bound
He stretches; and beneath His feet is earth.”

These are plainly derived from the following: “The Lord will save the inhabited cities, and grasp the whole land in His hand like a nest;” “It is the Lord that made the earth by His power,” as says Jeremiah, “and set up the earth by His wisdom.” Further, in addition to these, Phocylides, who calls the angels demons, explains in the following words that some of them are good, and others bad (for we also have learned that some are apostate):—

“Demons there are— some here, some there— set over men;
Some, on man's entrance [into life], to ward off ill.”

Rightly, then, also Philemon, the comic poet demolishes idolatry in these words:—

“Fortune is no divinity to us:
There's no such god. But what befalls by chance
And of itself to each, is Fortune called.”

And Sophocles the tragedian says:—

“Not even the gods have all things as they choose,
Excepting Zeus; for he beginning is and end.”

And Orpheus:—

“One Might, the great, the flaming heaven, was
One Deity. All things one Being were; in whom
All these revolve fire, water, and the earth.”

And so forth.

Pindar, the lyric poet, as if in Bacchic frenzy, plainly says:—

“What is God? The All.”

And again:—

“God, who makes all mortals.”

And when he says—

“How little, being a man, do you expect
Wisdom for man? 'Tis hard for mortal mind
The counsels of the gods to scan; and you
Were of a mortal mother born,”

he drew the thought from the following: “Who has known the mind of the Lord, or who was His counsellor?” Hesiod, too, agrees with what is said above, in what he writes:—

“No prophet, sprung of men that dwell on earth,
Can know the mind of Ægis-bearing Zeus.”

Similarly, then, Solon the Athenian, in the Elegies, following Hesiod, writes:—

“The immortal's mind to men is quite unknown.”

Again Moses, having prophesied that the woman would bring forth in trouble and pain, on account of transgression, a poet not undistinguished writes:—

“Never by day
From toil and woe shall they have rest, nor yet
By night from groans. Sad cares the gods to men
Shall give.”

Further, when Homer says—

“The Sire himself the golden balance held,”

he intimates that God is just.

And Menander, the comic poet, in exhibiting God, says:—

“To each man, on his birth, there is assigned
A tutelary Demon, as his life's good guide.
For that the Demon evil is, and harms
A good life, is not to be thought.”

Then he adds:—

“Ἅπαντα δ᾿ ἁγαθὸν εἱναι τὸν Θεόν,”

meaning either “that every one good is God,” or, what is preferable, “that God in all things is good.”

Again, Æschylus the tragedian, setting forth the power of God, does not shrink from calling Him the Highest, in these words:—