When the first man had sinned and had come to a sense of his [181] transgression, and was fittingly convicted thereof by God and filled with confusion and shame, he began to consider next by what contrivance he could cover his nakedness, and being stimulated by God to exert his faculty of reason, he invented the art of sewing, and with the thorns of shrubs stitched together for himself leaves of the fig tree. And being at the same time instructed by God as to the preparation of tunics, he learned to make them from the bark of trees. It is attested by scripture that Cain discovered the art or science of agriculture, and Abel that of the keeping of sheep. Then again, when Cain after the murder of his brother had been cast out by God, as it is written: Cain went out from the presence of God and dwelt in the land of Naïn. as much as to say, that Cain was cast out by God and banished from his home to a wretched country, for they thought that Paradise was God's dwelling-place, as he was wont to go forth therefrom and ofttimes showed himself there. The sons therefore of Sêth who lived near Paradise, and were so to speak under God's care, and ofttimes conversed with him, were always called the sons of God, while the sons of Cain who were settled somewhere far away from Paradise, and were not constantly under the care of God, but lived in a wild and wretched country, and were under their own care rather than God's, were called the sons of men. Since Cain therefore and his offspring lived in fear, they invented other arts for their security, as, for instance, carpentry, |124 stone-cutting, metallurgy and music. Carpentry----for making tents and doors and roofs for the protection of themselves and their cattle; masonry----for building houses and cities by way of providing for their safety and defence; metallurgy----for the tilling of the soil, and breaking it up with the ploughshare, and reaping the crops with hooks, and for making flutes and many other articles; lastly----music to keep them awake by night with the flute and the lyre and the singing of songs, and to protect themselves and their cattle from the attacks of wild beasts. So then they lived on in fear, and in exile they devised all kinds of expedients to ensure their safety, for scripture thus speaks of them, saying of Cain: And he built a city and named it Enoch after the name of his son; then of Thobel (Tubal), the son of Lamech by Ada, it says: He was the father of such as dwell in the tents of shepherds; and of Jubal, the brother of Thobel, it says: It was he who taught the use of the psaltery and harp. Scripture speaks also of metallurgy when it says concerning Thobel whom Sella (Zillah) bare: He was the forger of cutting instruments of brass and iron.
[182] God having thus from the first given man ingenuity, fitted him to invent arts, and while the first men at the outset invented them, their successors, starting from where they left off, by dint of assiduous practice, brought them to greater perfection. It will be well therefore if we here take up an argument against those sophists who say that the world is eternal and without beginning, and remind them how far they are in error, understanding neither from the things themselves ----namely, from the arts, that it is not eternal and without beginning, but of recent production. For if the arts were discovered gradually, and all human society subsists through art and rational science, how is it possible for the world to subsist without art and rational science? For without the art of stone-cutting, how can houses, fortifications and cities be reared for the protection of men and civic communities? In like manner, without the art of weaving, whence could men obtain coverings sufficient to protect them from cold and from frost. In like manner, were there not an art of working in metals, how would |125 it be possible for men to till the soil, and break up the earth with ploughs, or reap the crops with sickles, in order to provide themselves with food? If again there was no art of medicine, how could the sufferings to which men are liable be cured and their illnesses be mitigated?
From all this it is quite manifest that the world is not eternal, but a recent production, just like the inventions and the arts and the sciences of men. For where will they find among astronomers one equal to or greater than Ptolemy; or among philosophers, than Plato and Aristotle; or what greater geometricians and arithmeticians will they find than Euclid and Archimedes, who alone discovered the quadrature of the circle? But if these learned men were more exact than their predecessors, is it not most manifest that the arts were gradually discovered through the ingenuity which was bestowed by God upon men? Wherefore also the scripture, referring everything to God, exclaims: All wisdom is from God. They are therefore either liars or consummate fools in supposing the world to be eternal, when they are convicted of being in error by actual facts. But sacred scripture speaks more truly when it says: In the beginning God made the heaven and the earth. I should like again to put to those wise men this question: since the hammer, the anvil and the forceps precede the entire art of metallurgy, who was it prepared these instruments? Let them tell us and not begrudge us a reply. They, however, not having the sense to take refuge in God, the maker of the universe, who endowed the race of mankind with wisdom, and gave them the faculty of invention, but wishing after the ways of their own heart to construct and to demolish theories, on finding themselves beset with difficulties and the most formidable perplexities of reasoning, presume next to declare that the world is eternal and had no beginning, for such assertions show to what straits they are reduced. How hard, for instance, are they pressed both with respect to man and bird, since the one is produced from seed and the others from eggs; and if this opinion of theirs is true, the question arises did men and birds ----the products respectively of seed and of eggs----exist at the same |126 [183] time with God, or did they not? And if they did exist, the seed and the eggs will of necessity be found existing before God, and before men and birds; but if they did not exist they must submit to divine scripture, when it informs us through Moses: God said, Let us make man in our image, and through the Apostle at Athens on the Areopagus [tells us what we read in Acts xvii, 24-28]. So then, as has already been said, the sons of Seth, those namely who are called the sons of God, went in against the will of God but in obedience to their own self-will, to the daughters of men ----that is, to the women of the race of Cain----and joined themselves to them in marriage. Wherefore God, taking occasion from this, made a new dispensation and destroyed those who had sinned by means of the Deluge, but him that was righteous he preserved by the Ark, and transferred to this earth of ours, which was a better one and almost equal to Paradise.
Text.
But to continue,----the divine doctrines, the structure of the world, and the prophecies cannot possibly be explained unless one learn them from divine revelation, or receive them from men divinely inspired, the Prophets themselves, and the Apostles, and all divinely inspired scripture; for it is impossible to acquire such learning from conjectures or arrogant assumptions or human wisdom. But that the structure of the world coincides with the doctrine of the Christians, the whole of divine scripture, as has been said, proclaims, namely, Moses and the Prophets, the Lord Christ and the Apostles, as we have repeatedly explained. For God divided the one place which extends from the earth to the higher heaven by interposing in the middle the second heaven, and thus made two places; and to this mortal and mutable state he assigned the lower place, and to the immortal and immutable state the higher, which is called also the Kingdom of Heaven, and about which the Lord Christ speaks thus in the Gospel of Matthew: For in the resurrection they neither marry nor are given in marriage, |127 but are as the angels of God in heaven; and again: He shall to those on the right hand say ---- Come, ye blessed of my father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you before the [184] found-ation of the world, as if he should say prepared from that time; [see also] John xii, 32; Matt, xiv, 40; viii, 11, 12; Heb. iv, 11; Philipp iii, 20; Rom. viii, 17; Ephes. ii, 6; Philipp. iii, 14; Galat. iv, 26; Heb. iii, I; Ephes. ii, 19; Heb. xi, 9, 10; Ibid, v, 16; Ibid, xii, 22-24; Ibid, xiii, 14; Luke xxiv, 51; Acts i, 10, 11; Heb. ix, 24; Ibid. [185] vii, 26; Ibid, vi, 18-20; Ibid, x, 19, 23.
Can any one then be so infatuated, so lost in misery as to disbelieve such promises and such true prophecies, which both from the two places created in the beginning and made ready so to speak by God from the foundation of the world, and from such preparations are shown to be true and in harmony with the doctrine of the Christians? And this with regard both to the principles and the ends, namely, that when God had set apart the present mortal and mutable state of existence for the exercise of the reasoning faculty, and had led it through its trial, he at last releases the world from its toil and discipline, and reveals the future state, graciously bestowing everlasting benefits, exemption from penury and the sway of the passions, immortality, incorruption, immutability, perfect knowledge, righteousness, sanctification, redemption and blessedness for evermore, Amen! For the present state will not remain for ever, as the pagans are foolish enough to assert, supposing that God delights in evil, or rather that he is deficient in power or gives grudgingly, so that he is unable to grant the world release from its struggles and from corruption; yea, that day after day he adds destruction and sufferings, and death and trials, and is not strong enough to give the prizes of contests, or to award crowns, |128 or to bring the toils with which men are exercised to an end. For as they suppose him to be merely the artificer who shapes the material which he has at his command, so even now they suppose that he is not able to make it better, disbelieving the resurrection of the body as a thing impossible, and disbelieving also the whole of divine scripture. Wherefore those miserable men admit the spherical form of the heaven to be true, disbelieving, yea, rather execrating, the whole of divine scripture, and turning away from the truth as from old wives' fables. Far however be it from us to boast except in the whole of divine scripture, through which the outside world is crucified to us and we to the outside world. Be it ours, O most [186] pious Father Pamphilus, along with a good life, to embrace the divine oracles, and to repudiate those of our adversaries, according to the will of Him that is mighty, and by the help of Christ the saviour of us all, with whom to the Father, together with his holy and adorable Spirit, be glory now and evermore, world without end.----Amen!
[Footnotes moved to the end and renumbered]
1. Gen. xi, 4.
2. Gr. turannikw~| tro&pw| . In later Greek the adjective was used in this sense. Montfaucon, however, translates: tyrannico more.
3. Luke ii, 14.
4. There is evidently here a hiatus. Montfaucon has passed without notice.
5. Exod. viii, 19.
6. Gen. i, 6.
7. Gen. i, 2.
8. Gen. i, 20.
9. Matt. xi, 38.
10. John ii, 18.
11. John ii, 19.
12. Matt, i.x, 35.
13. John vi, 67.
14. John ii, 15.
15. John ii, 16.
16. John ii, 18.
17. John iii, 17.
18. Luke x, 18.