"Piety," again, or, as the Greeks say,eusebeia, is commonly understood as the proper designation of the worship of God.Yet this word also is used of dutifulness to parents.The common people, too, use it of works of charity, which, I suppose, arises from the circumstance that God enjoins the performance of such works, and declares that He is pleased with them instead of, or in preference to sacrifices.From this usage it has also come to pass that God Himself is called, pious,(3) in which sense the Greeks never use eusebein, though eusebeiais applied to works of charity by their common people also.In some passages of Scripture, therefore, they have sought to preserve the distinction by using not eisebeia, the more general word, but qeosebeia, which literally denotes.the worship of God.We, on the other hand, cannot express either of these ideas by one word.This worship, then, which in Greek is called latreia, and in Latin "servitus" [service], but the service due to God only; this worship, which in Greek is called qrhskeia, and in Latin "religio," but the religion by which we are bound to God only;this worship, which they call qeosebeia, but which we cannot express in one word, but call it the worship of God,--this, we say, belongs only to that God who is the true God, and who makes His worshippers gods.(4) And therefore, whoever these immortal and blessed inhabitants of heaven be, if they do not love us, and wish us to be blessed, then we ought not to worship them; and if they do love us and desire our happiness, they cannot wish us to be made happy by any other means than they themselves have enjoyed,--for how could they wish our blessedness to flow from one source, theirs from another ?
CHAP.2.--THE OPINION OF PLOTINUS THE PLATONISTREGARDING ENLIGHTENMENT FROM ABOVE.
But with these more estimable philosophers we have no dispute in this matter.For they perceived, and in various forms abundantly expressed in their writings, that these spirits have the same source of happiness as ourselves,--a certain intelligible light, which is their God, and is different from themselves, and illumines them that they may be penetrated with light, and enjoy perfect happiness in the participation of God.Plotinus, commenting on Plato, repeatedly and strongly asserts that not even the soul which they believe to be the soul of the world, derives its blessedness from any other source than we do, viz., from that Light which is distinct from it and created it, and by whose intelligible illumination it enjoys light in things intelligible.He also compares those spiritual things to the vast and conspicuous heavenly bodies, as if God were the sun, and the soul the moon; for they suppose that the moon derives its light from the sun.
