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Chapter 40.—Whatever Has Been Rightly Said by the Heathen, We Must
Appropriate to Our Uses.
60. Moreover, if those who are called philosophers, and especially the
Platonists, have said aught that is true and in harmony with our faith, we are
not only not to shrink from it, but to claim it for our own use from those who
have unlawful possession of it. For, as the Egyptians had not only the idols and
heavy burdens which the people of Israel hated and fled from, but also vessels
and ornaments of gold and silver, and garments, which the same people when going
out of Egypt appropriated to themselves, designing them for a better use, not
doing this on their own authority, but by the command of God, the Egyptians
themselves, in their ignorance, providing them with things which they themselves
were not making a good use of; in the same way all branches of heathen learning
have not only false and superstitious fancies and heavy burdens of unnecessary
toil, which every one of us, when going out under the leadership of Christ from
the fellowship of the heathen, ought to abhor and avoid; but they contain also
liberal instruction which is better adapted to the use of the truth, and some
most excellent precepts of morality; and some truths in regard even to the
worship of the One God are found among them. Now these are, so to speak, their
gold and silver, which they did not create themselves, but dug out of the mines
of God’s providence which are everywhere scattered abroad, and are perversely
and unlawfully prostituting to the worship of devils. These, therefore, the
Christian, when he separates himself in spirit from the miserable fellowship of
these men, ought to take away from them, and to devote to their proper use in
preaching the gospel. Their garments, also,—that is, human institutions such as
are adapted to that intercourse with men which is indispensable in this life,—we
must take and turn to a Christian use.
61. And what else have many good and faithful men among our brethren done? Do we
not see with what a quantity of gold and silver and garments Cyprian, that most
persuasive teacher and most blessed martyr, was loaded when he came out of
Egypt? How much Lactantius brought with him? And Victorinus, and Optatus, and
Hilary, not to speak of living men! How much Greeks out of number have borrowed!
And prior to all these, that most faithful servant of God, Moses, had done the
same thing; for of him it is written that he was learned in all the wisdom of
the Egyptians. And to none of all these would heathen superstition (especially
in those times when, kicking against the yoke of Christ, it was persecuting the
Christians) have ever furnished branches of knowledge it held useful, if it had
suspected they were about to turn them to the use of worshipping the One God,
and thereby overturning the vain worship of idols. But they gave their gold and
their silver and their garments to the people of God as they were going out of
Egypt, not knowing how the things they gave would be turned to the service of
Christ. For what was done at the time of the exodus was no doubt a type
prefiguring what happens now. And this I say without prejudice to any other
interpretation that may be as good, or better.
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