Lactantius — Divine Institutes 2.1

Although in the first book I showed that the religions of the gods are false—because those whose varied and unlike cults the consensus of humans across the whole earth took up by foolish persuasion were mortals and, having finished life, yielded to divine necessity by death—nevertheless, lest any doubt remain, this second book will lay open the very font of errors and explain all the causes by which deceived humans both at first believed there are gods and afterward, by persuasion grown old, persisted in religions most crookedly taken up.

For I am eager, with empty things convicted and humans' impious vanity detected, to assert the majesty of the singular God, taking up the more useful and greater office of recalling humans from crooked paths and bringing them back into favor with themselves, lest—as some philosophers do—they despise themselves so greatly and think themselves weak and superfluous and of no account and born wholly in vain, which opinion drives many to vices. For while they think we are no god's care or will be nothing after death, they give themselves wholly to lusts and, while they think it is allowed them, eagerly press upon draining pleasures, through which unwise they run into death's snares.

For they do not know what the reason of the human is: which if they wished to hold, they would first recognize their Lord, follow virtue and justice, not lay their souls under earthly figments, not seek the death-bearing sweets of lusts, finally value themselves highly and understand there is more in the human than appears—whose force and condition cannot otherwise be kept unless, having put down crookedness, they take up the cult of their true Parent.

Indeed, as often as I think as one ought about the summit of things, I am accustomed to wonder that the majesty of the singular God which contains and rules all things has come into such forgetfulness that what alone ought to be worshiped is above all neglected, and that humans themselves have been led to such blindness that they prefer the dead to the true and living God, and those earthly and buried in earth to Him who was Founder of the earth itself. And yet pardon could be granted this impiety of humans if this error came wholly from ignorance of the divine name. But when we often see the very worshipers of the gods both confess and proclaim the highest God, what pardon of their impiety can they hope for who do not recognize the cult of Him whom it is not right for a human to be wholly ignorant of?

For both when they swear and when they wish and when they give thanks, they name not Jupiter or many gods but God: so much does truth itself, with nature compelling, burst even from unwilling breasts. Which indeed they do not do in prosperous affairs. For then especially God slips from humans' memory when, enjoying His benefits, they ought to give honor to divine kindness. But if some heavy necessity has pressed, then they remember God: if war's terror has roared, if disease's pestilent force has settled, if long drought has denied food to crops, if a savage storm, if hail rushes in—to God there is fleeing, from God help is sought, God is prayed to come to aid.

If anyone is tossed on the sea with raging wind, he calls on this One; if anyone is struck by some force, he rather implores this One; if anyone, reduced to the extreme need of begging, seeks food by prayers, he adjures God alone and through His divine and unique name seeks humans' mercy for himself. Therefore they never remember God except while they are in evils: after fear has left and dangers have withdrawn, then eagerly they run together to the gods' temples, pour to these, sacrifice to these, crown these. But to God whom they had implored in the very necessity they do not give thanks even by a word. So much from prosperity of things is born luxury, and from luxury, as all vices, so also impiety against God.

For what cause should we think this happens except that there is some perverse power which is always enemy to truth, which rejoices in human errors, whose one and perpetual work is to pour darkness and blind humans' minds lest they see the light, lest finally they look into heaven and keep the nature of their own body? For since the other living things with prone bodies look to the ground because they did not receive reason and wisdom, but to us a straight stance and uplifted face was given by God the craftsman, it appears that those religions of the gods are not of human reason, because they bend the heavenly animal to venerating earthly things.

For that one and only Parent of ours, when He fashioned the human—that is, an intelligent animal capable of reason—raised him, lifted from the soil, to contemplation of his Craftsman. Which the ingenious poet marked best: and while other animals look prone at the earth, He gave the human a lofty face and ordered him to see heaven and lift upright faces to the stars. Hence of course the Greeks called him anthropos, because he looks upward. Therefore they renounce themselves and abdicate the name of humans who do not look upward but downward—unless perhaps they think that very thing, that we are upright, was assigned to the human without cause. God wished us to look at heaven, and not in vain. For birds too and almost all from the mute see heaven, but to us it was properly given to gaze at heaven rigid and standing, that we might seek religion there, that we might contemplate with the mind God whose seat that is, since we cannot with eyes—which indeed one who venerates bronze or stone, which are earthly, does not do.

And it is most crooked that, when the body's reason is upright—which is temporal—the mind itself, which is eternal, should be made low, when figure and stance signify nothing other than that the human mind ought to look where the face does, and that the mind ought to be as upright as the body, so that it may imitate that which it ought to rule. But humans, forgetful of their name and reason, cast their eyes down from on high and fix them on the ground and fear the works of their own fingers, as if anything could be greater than its craftsman.