The Golden Verses of Pythagoras — with commentary (1917)

" S. August., De Grat. Christ., cit6 par Plucquet, Diet, des HerSs., art.

P^LAGIENS.

p. 17

258 The Golden Verses of Pythagoras church that formidable faction which all the united efforts of the Pope and the Jesuits have been unable to convict of erring in the doctrine of Saint Augustine, which it has sustained with a force worthy of a better cause.

According to Calvin, who of all of them expresses himself most clearly, the sotil of man, all of whose faculties are infected with sin, lacks force to resist the temptation which lures him on toward evil. The liberty of which he prides himself is a chimera; he confounds the free with the voluntary, and believes that he chooses freely because there is no constraint, and that he wills to do the evil that he does. " Thus following the doctrine of this reformer, man, dominated by his vicious passions, can produce of himself only wicked actions; and it is to draw him from this state of corruption and impotence that it was necessary that God should send his son upon earth to redeem him and to atone for him ; so that it is from the absence of liberty in man that Calvin draws his strongest proofs of the coming of Christ: "For," he said, "if man had been free, and if he had been able to save himself, it would not have been needful that God should offer up his Son in sacrifice. " *

This last argument seems irresistible. Besides when the Jesuits had accused Calvin and his followers of making God the author of sin, and of destroying thus all idea of the Divinity' they knew better than to say how it can be otherwise accomplished. They would not have been able," without doing a thing impossible for them — that is, without giving the origin of evil. The difficulty of this explanation, which Moses, even as I have said, has enveloped with a triple veil, has in no wise escaped the fathers of the primitive church. They have well felt that it was the important point whereon depended the solution of all other questions. But how can one attempt even the explanation? The most o Calvin, Institut., 1. ii., c. I et 2. b Ibid., t. ii.

c Maimbourg, Hist, du Calvinisme, 1. i., p. 73.

Examinations of the Golden Verses 259

enlightened among them had agreed that it is an abyss of nature that one would not know how to fathom."

31. . . . that these unfortunates

Seek afar the goodness whose source within they bear.

The source of all goodness is wisdom, and wisdom begins with the knowledge of oneself. Without this knowledge, one aspires in vain to real goodness. But how is it obtainable? If you interrogate Plato upon this important point, he will respond to you, that it is in going back to the essence of things — that is to say, in considering that which constitutes man in himself. "A workman, you will say to this philosopher, is not the same thing as the instrument which he uses; the one who plays the lyre differs from the lyre upon which he plays. You wiU readily agree to this, and the philosopher, pursuing his reasoning, will add': And the eyes with which this musician reads his music, and the hands with which he holds his lyre, are they not also instruments? Can you deny, if the eyes, if the hands are instruments, that the whole body may likewise be an instrument, different from the being who makes use of it and who commands?" Unquestionably no, and you will comprehend sufficiently that this being, by which man is really man, is the soul, the knowledge of which you ought to seek. "For," Plato will also tell you, "he who knows his body, only knows that it is his, and is not himself. To know his body as a physician or as a sculptor, is an art, to know his soul, as a sage, is a science and the greatest of all sciences. "*

From the knowledge of himself man passes to that of God; and it is in fixing this model of aU perfection that he succeeds in delivering himself from the evils which he has attracted by his own choice.'' His deliverance depends, o Origen., Contr. Cels., 1. iv., p. 207. * Plato, In Akibiad., ii.

e Hidrocl., Aur. Carm., v. 56.

26o The Golden Verses of Pythagoras