10. Tacitus, Annals, 1.10.6, 1.11-1.12, 1.74-1.77, 1.76.1, 1.78.1, 1.79-1.81, 2.26.4, 2.27.1, 2.28, 2.69.3, 3.18.2, 3.36, 3.66.1, 3.70, 4.1, 4.15.3, 4.37.3, 6.5, 15.74.2, 16.7.1, 16.16.2, 16.22.1-16.22.3 (1st cent. CE - 2nd cent. CE)
| 1.11. Then all prayers were directed towards Tiberius; who delivered a variety of reflections on the greatness of the empire and his own diffidence:â "Only the mind of the deified Augustus was equal to such a burden: he himself had found, when called by the sovereign to share his anxieties, how arduous, how dependent upon fortune, was the task of ruling a world! He thought, then, that, in a state which had the support of so many eminent men, they ought not to devolve the entire duties on any one person; the business of government would be more easily carried out by the joint efforts of a number." A speech in this tenor was more dignified than convincing. Besides, the diction of Tiberius, by habit or by nature, was always indirect and obscure, even when he had no wish to conceal his thought; and now, in the effort to bury every trace of his sentiments, it became more intricate, uncertain, and equivocal than ever. But the Fathers, whose one dread was that they might seem to comprehend him, melted in plaints, tears, and prayers. They were stretching their hands to heaven, to the effigy of Augustus, to his own knees, when he gave orders for a document to be produced and read. It contained a statement of the national resources â the strength of the burghers and allies under arms; the number of the fleets, protectorates, and provinces; the taxes direct and indirect; the needful disbursements and customary bounties catalogued by Augustus in his own hand, with a final clause (due to fear or jealousy?) advising the restriction of the empire within its present frontiers. 1.12. The senate, meanwhile, was descending to the most abject supplications, when Tiberius casually observed that, unequal as he felt himself to the whole weight of government, he would still undertake the charge of any one department that might be assigned to him. Asinius Gallus then said:â "I ask you, Caesar, what department you wish to be assigned you." This unforeseen inquiry threw him off his balance. He was silent for a few moments; then recovered himself, and answered that it would not at all become his diffidence to select or shun any part of a burden from which he would prefer to be wholly excused. Gallus, who had conjectured anger from his look, resumed:â "The question had been put to him, not with the hope that he would divide the inseparable, but to gain from his own lips an admission that the body politic was a single organism needing to be governed by a single intelligence." He added a panegyric on Augustus, and urged Tiberius to remember his own victories and the brilliant work which he had done year after year in the garb of peace. He failed, however, to soothe the imperial anger: he had been a hated man ever since his marriage to Vipsania (daughter of Marcus Agrippa, and once the wife of Tiberius), which had given the impression that he had ambitions denied to a subject and retained the temerity of his father Asinius Pollio. 1.74. Before long, Granius Marcellus, praetor of Bithynia, found himself accused of treason by his own quaestor, Caepio Crispinus, with Hispo Romanus to back the charge. Caepio was the pioneer in a walk of life which the miseries of the age and effronteries of men soon rendered popular. Indigent, unknown, unresting, first creeping, with his private reports, into the confidence of his pitiless sovereign, then a terror to the noblest, he acquired the favour of one man, the hatred of all, and set an example, the followers of which passed from beggary to wealth, from being despised to being feared, and crowned at last the ruin of others by their own. He alleged that Marcellus had retailed sinister anecdotes about Tiberius: a damning indictment, when the accuser selected the foulest qualities of the imperial character, and attributed their mention to the accused. For, as the facts were true, they were also believed to have been related! Hispo added that Marcellus' own statue was placed on higher ground than those of the Caesars, while in another the head of Augustus had been struck off to make room for the portrait of Tiberius. This incensed the emperor to such a degree that, breaking through his taciturnity, he exclaimed that, in this case, he too would vote, openly and under oath, â the object being to impose a similar obligation on the rest. There remained even yet some traces of dying liberty. Accordingly Gnaeus Piso inquired: "In what order will you register your opinion, Caesar? If first, I shall have something to follow: if last of all, I fear I may inadvertently find myself on the other side." The words went home; and with a meekness that showed how profoundly he rued his unwary outburst, he voted for the acquittal of the defendant on the counts of treason. The charge of peculation went before the appropriate commission. 1.75. Not satiated with senatorial cases, he took to sitting in the common courts, â at a corner of the tribunal, so as not to dispossess the praetor of his chair. As a result of his presence, many verdicts were recorded in defiance of intrigue and of the solicitations of the great. Still, while equity gained, liberty suffered. â Among these cases, Aurelius Pius, a member of the senate, complained that by the construction of a public road and aqueduct his house had been left insecure; and he asked compensation from the Fathers. As the treasury officials were obdurate, Tiberius came to the rescue, and paid him the value of his mansion: for, given a good cause, he was ready and eager to spend â a virtue which he long retained, even when he was denuding himself of every other. When Propertius Celer, the ex-praetor, applied to be excused from his senatorial rank on the score of poverty, he satisfied himself that his patrimony was in fact embarrassed, and made him a gift of one million sesterces. Others who tried a similar experiment were ordered to make out a case before the senate: for in his passion for austerity, even where he acted justly, he contrived to be harsh. The rest, therefore, preferred silence and poverty to confession and charity. 1.76. In the same year, the Tiber, rising under the incessant rains, had flooded the lower levels of the city, and its subsidence was attended by much destruction of buildings and life. Accordingly, Asinius Gallus moved for a reference to the Sibylline Books. Tiberius objected, preferring secrecy as in earth so in heaven: still, the task of coercing the stream was entrusted to Ateius Capito and Lucius Arruntius. Since Achaia and Macedonia protested against the heavy taxation, it was decided to relieve them of their proconsular government for the time being and transfer them to the emperor. A show of gladiators, given in the name of his brother Germanicus, was presided over by Drusus, who took an extravagant pleasure in the shedding of blood however vile â a trait so alarming to the populace that it was said to have been censured by his father. Tiberius' own absence from the exhibition was variously explained. Some ascribed it to his impatience of a crowd; others, to his native morosity and his dread of comparisons; for Augustus had been a good-humoured spectator. I should be slow to believe that he deliberately furnished his son with an occasion for exposing his brutality and arousing the disgust of the nation; yet even this was suggested. 1.76.1. In the same year, the Tiber, rising under the incessant rains, had flooded the lower levels of the city, and its subsidence was attended by much destruction of buildings and life. Accordingly, Asinius Gallus moved for a reference to the Sibylline Books. Tiberius objected, preferring secrecy as in earth so in heaven: still, the task of coercing the stream was entrusted to Ateius Capito and Lucius Arruntius. Since Achaia and Macedonia protested against the heavy taxation, it was decided to relieve them of their proconsular government for the time being and transfer them to the emperor. A show of gladiators, given in the name of his brother Germanicus, was presided over by Drusus, who took an extravagant pleasure in the shedding of blood however vile â a trait so alarming to the populace that it was said to have been censured by his father. Tiberius' own absence from the exhibition was variously explained. Some ascribed it to his impatience of a crowd; others, to his native morosity and his dread of comparisons; for Augustus had been a good-humoured spectator. I should be slow to believe that he deliberately furnished his son with an occasion for exposing his brutality and arousing the disgust of the nation; yet even this was suggested. 1.77. The disorderliness of the stage, which had become apparent the year before, now broke out on a more serious scale. Apart from casualties among the populace, several soldiers and a centurion were killed, and an officer of the Praetorian Guards wounded, in the attempt to repress the insults levelled at the magistracy and the dissension of the crowd. The riot was discussed in the senate, and proposals were mooted that the praetors should be empowered to use the lash on actors. Haterius Agrippa, a tribune of the people, interposed his veto, and was attacked in a speech by Asinius Gallus, Tiberius said nothing: these were the phantoms of liberty which he permitted to the senate. Still the veto held good: for the deified Augustus had once remarked, in answer to a question, that players were immune from the scourge; and it would be blasphemy in Tiberius to contravene his words. Measures in plenty were framed to limit the expenditure on entertainments and to curb the extravagance of the partisans. The most striking were: that no senator was to enter the houses of the pantomimes; that, if they came out into public, Roman knights were not to gather round, nor were their performances to be followed except in the theatre; while the praetors were to be authorized to punish by exile any disorder among the spectators. 1.78.1. Permission to build a temple of Augustus in the colony of Tarraco was granted to the Spaniards, and a precedent set for all the provinces. A popular protest against the one per cent duty on auctioned goods (which had been imposed after the Civil Wars) brought from Tiberius a declaration that "the military exchequer was dependent on that resource; moreover, the commonwealth was not equal to the burden, unless the veterans were discharged only at the end of twenty years' service." Thus the misconceived reforms of the late mutiny, in virtue of which the legionaries had extorted a maximum term of sixteen years, were cancelled for the future. 1.79. Next, a discussion was opened in the senate by Arruntius and Ateius, whether the invasions of the Tiber should be checked by altering the course of the rivers and lakes swelling its volume. Deputations from the municipalities and colonies were heard. The Florentines pleaded that the Clanis should not be deflected from its old bed into the Arno, to bring ruin upon themselves. The Interamnates' case was similar:â "The most generous fields of Italy were doomed, if the Nar should overflow after this scheme had split it into rivulets." Nor were the Reatines silent:â "They must protest against the Veline Lake being dammed at its outlet into the Nar, as it would simply break a road into the surrounding country. Nature had made the best provision for the interests of humanity, when she assigned to rivers their proper mouths â their proper courses â their limits as well as their origins. Consideration, too, should be paid to the faith of their fathers, who had hallowed rituals and groves and altars to their country streams. Besides, they were reluctant that Tiber himself, bereft of his tributary streams, should flow with diminished majesty." Whatever the deciding factor â the prayers of the colonies, the difficulty of the work, or superstition â the motion of Piso, "that nothing was to be changed," was agreed to. 1.80. Poppaeus Sabinus was continued in his province of Moesia, to which Achaia and Macedonia were added. It was one of the peculiarities of Tiberius to prolong commands, and, as often as not, to retain the same man at the head of the same army or administrative district till his dying day. Various reasons are given. Some hold it was the weary dislike of recurring trouble which caused him to treat a decision once framed as eternally valid; others that he grudged to see too many men enjoying preferment; while there are those who believe that as his intellect was shrewd so his judgment was hesitant; for, on the one hand, he did not seek out pre-eminent virtue, and, on the other, he detested vice: the best he feared as a private danger, the worst as a public scandal. In the end, this vacillation carried him so far that he gave provinces to men whom he was never to allow to leave Rome. 1.81. As to the consular elections, from this year's â the first â down to the last of the reign, I can hardly venture a single definite assertion: so conflicting is the evidence, not of the historians alone, but of the emperor's own speeches. Sometimes, he withheld the candidate's names, but described the birth, career, and campaigns of each in terms that left his identity in no doubt. Sometimes even these clues were suppressed, and he urged "the candidates" not to vitiate the election by intrigue, and promised his own efforts to that end. Generally, he declared that no one had applied to him for nomination, except those whose names he had divulged to the consuls: others might still apply, if they had confidence in their influence or their merits. In words the policy was specious; in reality, it was nugatory or perfidious and destined to issue in a servitude all the more detestable the more it was disguised under a semblance of liberty! 2.27.1. Nearly at the same time, a charge of revolutionary activities was laid against Libo Drusus, a member of the Scribonian family. I shall describe in some detail the origin, the progress, and the end of this affair, as it marked the discovery of the system destined for so many years to prey upon the vitals of the commonwealth. Firmius Catus, a senator, and one of Libo's closest friends, had urged that short-sighted youth, who had a foible for absurdities, to resort to the forecasts of astrologers, the ritual of magicians, and the society of interpreters of dreams; pointing to his great-grandfather Pompey, to his great-aunt Scribonia (at one time the consort of Augustus), to his cousinship with the Caesars, and to his mansion crowded with ancestral portraits; encouraging him in his luxuries and loans; and, to bind him in a yet stronger chain of evidence, sharing his debaucheries and his embarrassments. 2.28. When he had found witnesses enough, and slaves to testify in the same tenor, he asked for an interview with the sovereign, to whom the charge and the person implicated had been notified by Vescularius Flaccus, a Roman knight on familiar terms with Tiberius. The Caesar, without rejecting the information, declined a meeting, as "their conversations might be carried on through the same intermediate, Flaccus." In the interval, he distinguished Libo with a praetorship and several invitations to dinner. There was no estrangement on his brow, no hint of asperity in his speech: he had buried his anger far too deep. He could have checked every word and action of Libo: he preferred, however, to know them. At length, a certain Junius, solicited by Libo to raise departed spirits by incantations, carried his tale to Fulcinius Trio. Trio's genius, which was famous among the professional informers, hungered after notoriety. He swooped immediately on the accused, approached the consuls, and demanded a senatorial inquiry. The Fathers were summoned, to deliberate (it was added) on a case of equal importance and atrocity. 3.36. Now came the disclosure of a practice whispered in the private complaints of many. There was a growing tendency of the rabble to cast insult and odium on citizens of repute, and to evade the penalty by grasping some object portraying the Caesar. The freedmen and slaves, even, were genuinely feared by the patron or the owner against whom they lifted their voices or their hands. Hence a speech of the senator, Gaius Cestius:â "Princes, he admitted, were equivalent to deities; but godhead itself listened only to the just petitions of the suppliant, and no man fled to the Capitol or other sanctuary of the city to make it a refuge subserving his crimes. The laws had been abolished â overturned from the foundations â when Annia Rufilla, whom he had proved guilty of fraud in a court of justice, could insult and threaten him in the Forum, upon the threshold of the curia; while he himself dared not try the legal remedy because of the portrait of the sovereign with which she confronted him." Similar and, in some cases, more serious experiences, were described by a din of voices around him; and appeals to Drusus, to set the example of punishment, lasted till he gave orders for her to be summoned and imprisoned, after conviction, in the public cells. 3.66.1. Then, step by step, they passed from the degrading to the brutal. Gaius Silanus, the proconsul of Asia, accused of extortion by the provincials, was attacked simultaneously by the ex-consul Mamercus Scaurus, the praetor Junius Otho, and the aedile Bruttedius Niger, who flung at him the charge of violating the godhead of Augustus and spurning the majesty of Tiberius, while Mamercus made play with the precedents of antiquity â the indictment of Lucius Cotta by Scipio Africanus, of Servius Galba by Cato the Censor, of Publius Rutilius by Marcus Scaurus. Such, as all men know, were the crimes avenged by Scipio and Cato or the famous Scaurus, the great-grandsire of Mamercus, whom that reproach to his ancestors dishonoured by his infamous activity! Junius Otho's old profession had been to keep a school; afterwards, created a senator by the influence of Sejanus, by his effrontery and audacity he brought further ignominy, if possible, upon the meanness of his beginnings. Bruttedius, amply provided with liberal accomplishments, and bound, if he kept the straight road, to attain all distinctions, was goaded by a spirit of haste, which impelled him to outpace first his equals, then his superiors, and finally his own ambitions: an infirmity fatal to many, even of the good, who, disdaining the sure and slow, force a premature success, though destruction may accompany the prize. 3.70. Later, an audience was given to the Cyrenaeans, and Caesius Cordus was convicted of extortion on the arraignment of Ancharius Priscus. Lucius Ennius, a Roman knight, found himself indicted for treason on the ground that he had turned a statuette of the emperor to the promiscuous uses of household silver. The Caesar forbade the entry of the case for trial, though Ateius Capito protested openly and with a display of freedom: for "the right of decision ought not to be snatched from the senate, nor should so grave an offence pass without punishment. By all means let the sovereign be easy-tempered in a grievance of his own; but injuries to the state he must not condone!" Tiberius understood this for what it was, rather than for what it purported to be, and persisted in his veto. The degradation of Capito was unusually marked, since, authority as he was on secular and religious law, he was held to have dishonoured not only the fair fame of the state but his personal good qualities. 4.1. The consulate of Gaius Asinius and Gaius Antistius was to Tiberius the ninth year of public order and of domestic felicity (for he counted the death of Germanicus among his blessings), when suddenly fortune disturbed the peace and he became either a tyrant himself or the source of power to the tyrannous. The starting-point and the cause were to be found in Aelius Sejanus, prefect of the praetorian cohorts. of his influence I spoke above: now I shall unfold his origin, his character, and the crime by which he strove to seize on empire. Born at Vulsinii to the Roman knight Seius Strabo, he became in early youth a follower of Gaius Caesar, grandson of the deified Augustus; not without a rumour that he had disposed of his virtue at a price to Apicius, a rich man and a prodigal. Before long, by his multifarious arts, he bound Tiberius fast: so much so that a man inscrutable to others became to Sejanus alone unguarded and unreserved; and the less by subtlety (in fact, he was beaten in the end by the selfsame arts) than by the anger of Heaven against that Roman realm for whose equal damnation he flourished and fell. He was a man hardy by constitution, fearless by temperament; skilled to conceal himself and to incriminate his neighbour; cringing at once and insolent; orderly and modest to outward view, at heart possessed by a towering ambition, which impelled him at whiles to lavishness and luxury, but oftener to industry and vigilance â qualities not less noxious when assumed for the winning of a throne. 6.5. Next Cotta Messalinus, father of every barbarous proposal and therefore the object of inveterate dislike, found himself, on the first available occasion, indicted for hinting repeatedly that the sex of Gaius Caesar was an open question; for dining with the priests on Augusta's birthday and describing the function as a wake; for adding, when he was complaining of the influence of Manius Lepidus and Lucius Arruntius, his opponents in a money dispute:â "The senate will side with them, but my pretty little Tiberius with me." The whole of the charges were proved against him by men of the highest position; and, as they pressed their case, he appealed to the emperor. Before long came a letter; in which Tiberius, by way of defence, harked back to the origin of the friendship between himself and Cotta, commemorated his many services, and desired that mischievously perverted phrases and the frankness of table-talk should not be turned into evidence of guilt. 16.7.1. To the death of Poppaea, outwardly regretted, but welcome to all who remembered her profligacy and cruelty, Nero added a fresh measure of odium by prohibiting Gaius Cassius from attendance at the funeral. It was the first hint of mischief. Nor was the mischief long delayed. Silanus was associated with him; their only crime being that Cassius was eminent for a great hereditary fortune and an austere character, Silanus for a noble lineage and a temperate youth. Accordingly, the emperor sent a speech to the senate, arguing that both should be removed from public life, and objecting to the former that, among his other ancestral effigies, he had honoured a bust of Gaius Cassius, inscribed:â "To the leader of the cause." The seeds of civil war, and revolt from the house of the Caesars, â such were the objects he had pursued. And, not to rely merely on the memory of a hated name as an incentive to faction, he had taken to himself a partner in Lucius Silanus, a youth of noble family and headstrong temper, who was to be his figure-head for a revolution. 16.22.1. He preferred other charges as well:â "At the beginning of the year, Thrasea evaded the customary oath; though the holder of a quindecimviral priesthood, he took no part in the national vows; he had never offered a sacrifice for the welfare of the emperor or for his celestial voice. Once a constant and indefatigable member, who showed himself the advocate or the adversary of the most commonplace resolutions of the Fathers, for three years he had not set foot within the curia; and but yesterday, when his colleagues were gathering with emulous haste to crush Silanus and Vetus, he had preferred to devote his leisure to the private cases of his clients. Matters were come already to a schism and to factions: if many made the same venture, it was war! 'As once,' he said, 'this discord-loving state prated of Caesar and Cato, so now, Nero, it prates of yourself and Thrasea. And he has his followers â his satellites, rather â who affect, not as yet the contumacity of his opinions, but his bearing and his looks, and whose stiffness and austerity are designed for an impeachment of your wantonness. To him alone your safety is a thing uncared for, your talents a thing unhonoured. The imperial happiness he cannot brook: can he not even be satisfied with the imperial bereavements and sorrows? Not to believe Poppaea deity bespeaks the same temper that will not swear to the acts of the deified Augustus and the deified Julius. He contemns religion, he abrogates law. The journal of the Roman people is scanned throughout the provinces and armies with double care for news of what Thrasea has not done! Either let us pass over to his creed, if it is the better, or let these seekers after a new world lose their chief and their instigator. It is the sect that produced the Tuberones and the Favonii â names unloved even in the old republic. In order to subvert the empire, they make a parade of liberty: the empire overthrown, they will lay hands on liberty itself. You have removed Cassius to little purpose, if you intend to allow these rivals of the Bruti to multiply and flourish! A word in conclusion: write nothing yourself about Thrasea â leave the senate to decide between us!' " Nero fanned still more the eager fury of Cossutianus, and reinforced him with the mordant eloquence of Eprius Marcellus. |
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14. Augustine, The City of God, 8.23 (4th cent. CE - 5th cent. CE)
| 8.23. The Egyptian Hermes, whom they call Trismegistus, had a different opinion concerning those demons. Apuleius, indeed, denies that they are gods; but when he says that they hold a middle place between the gods and men, so that they seem to be necessary for men as mediators between them and the gods, he does not distinguish between the worship due to them and the religious homage due to the supernal gods. This Egyptian, however, says that there are some gods made by the supreme God, and some made by men. Any one who hears this, as I have stated it, no doubt supposes that it has reference to images, because they are the works of the hands of men; but he asserts that visible and tangible images are, as it were, only the bodies of the gods, and that there dwell in them certain spirits, which have been invited to come into them, and which have power to inflict harm, or to fulfil the desires of those by whom divine honors and services are rendered to them. To unite, therefore, by a certain art, those invisible spirits to visible and material things, so as to make, as it were, animated bodies, dedicated and given up to those spirits who inhabit them - this, he says, is to make gods, adding that men have received this great and wonderful power. I will give the words of this Egyptian as they have been translated into our tongue: And, since we have undertaken to discourse concerning the relationship and fellowship between men and the gods, know, O Æsculapius, the power and strength of man. As the Lord and Father, or that which is highest, even God, is the maker of the celestial gods, so man is the maker of the gods who are in the temples, content to dwell near to men. And a little after he says, Thus humanity, always mindful of its nature and origin, perseveres in the imitation of divinity; and as the Lord and Father made eternal gods, that they should be like Himself, so humanity fashioned its own gods according to the likeness of its own countece. When this Æsculapius, to whom especially he was speaking, had answered him, and had said, Do you mean the statues, O Trismegistus? - Yes, the statues, replied he, however unbelieving you are, O Æsculapius - the statues, animated and full of sensation and spirit, and who do such great and wonderful things - the statues prescient of future things, and foretelling them by lot, by prophet, by dreams, and many other things, who bring diseases on men and cure them again, giving them joy or sorrow according to their merits. Do you not know, O Æsculapius, that Egypt is an image of heaven, or, more truly, a translation and descent of all things which are ordered and transacted there, that it is, in truth, if we may say so, to be the temple of the whole world? And yet, as it becomes the prudent man to know all things beforehand, you ought not to be ignorant of this, that there is a time coming when it shall appear that the Egyptians have all in vain, with pious mind, and with most scrupulous diligence, waited on the divinity, and when all their holy worship shall come to nought, and be found to be in vain. Hermes then follows out at great length the statements of this passage, in which he seems to predict the present time, in which the Christian religion is overthrowing all lying figments with a vehemence and liberty proportioned to its superior truth and holiness, in order that the grace of the true Saviour may deliver men from those gods which man has made, and subject them to that God by whom man was made. But when Hermes predicts these things, he speaks as one who is a friend to these same mockeries of demons, and does not clearly express the name of Christ. On the contrary, he deplores, as if it had already taken place, the future abolition of those things by the observance of which there was maintained in Egypt a resemblance of heaven, - he bears witness to Christianity by a kind of mournful prophecy. Now it was with reference to such that the apostle said, that knowing God, they glorified Him not as God, neither were thankful, but became vain in their imaginations, and their foolish heart was darkened; professing themselves to be wise, they became fools, and changed the glory of the incorruptible God into the likeness of the image of corruptible man, Romans 1:21 and so on, for the whole passage is too long to quote. For Hermes makes many such statements agreeable to the truth concerning the one true God who fashioned this world. And I know not how he has become so bewildered by that darkening of the heart as to stumble into the expression of a desire that men should always continue in subjection to those gods which he confesses to be made by men, and to bewail their future removal; as if there could be anything more wretched than mankind tyrannized over by the work of his own hands, since man, by worshipping the works of his own hands, may more easily cease to be man, than the works of his hands can, through his worship of them, become gods. For it can sooner happen that man, who has received an honorable position, may, through lack of understanding, become comparable to the beasts, than that the works of man may become preferable to the work of God, made in His own image, that is, to man himself. Wherefore deservedly is man left to fall away from Him who made Him, when he prefers to himself that which he himself has made. For these vain, deceitful, pernicious, sacrilegious things did the Egyptian Hermes sorrow, because he knew that the time was coming when they should be removed. But his sorrow was as impudently expressed as his knowledge was imprudently obtained; for it was not the Holy Spirit who revealed these things to him, as He had done to the holy prophets, who, foreseeing these things, said with exultation, If a man shall make gods, lo, they are no gods; Jeremiah 16:10 and in another place, And it shall come to pass in that day, says the Lord, that I will cut off the names of the idols out of the land, and they shall no more be remembered. Zechariah 13:2 But the holy Isaiah prophesies expressly concerning Egypt in reference to this matter, saying, And the idols of Egypt shall be moved at His presence, and their heart shall be overcome in them, Isaiah 19:1 and other things to the same effect. And with the prophet are to be classed those who rejoiced that that which they knew was to come had actually come - as Simeon, or Anna, who immediately recognized Jesus when He was born, or Elisabeth, who in the Spirit recognized Him when He was conceived, or Peter, who said by the revelation of the Father, You are Christ, the Son of the living God. Matthew 16:16 But to this Egyptian those spirits indicated the time of their own destruction, who also, when the Lord was present in the flesh, said with trembling, Have You come here to destroy us before the time? Matthew 8:29 meaning by destruction before the time, either that very destruction which they expected to come, but which they did not think would come so suddenly as it appeared to have done, or only that destruction which consisted in their being brought into contempt by being made known. And, indeed, this was a destruction before the time, that is, before the time of judgment, when they are to be punished with eternal damnation, together with all men who are implicated in their wickedness, as the true religion declares, which neither errs nor leads into error; for it is not like him who, blown here and there by every wind of doctrine, and mixing true things with things which are false, bewails as about to perish a religion, which he afterwards confesses to be error. |
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