Chapter II.—The Pious Old Man
Rejoices that He Read Plato and the Scriptures, and Tells Him of
the Rhetorician Victorinus Having Been Converted to the Faith
Through the Reading of the Sacred Books.
3. To Simplicianus then I went,—the father
of Ambrose (at that
time a bishop) in receiving Thy grace, and whom he truly loved as a
father. To him I narrated the windings of my error. But when I
mentioned to him that I had read certain books of the Platonists, which Victorinus, sometime Professor of Rhetoric at Rome (who died a Christian, as I had been told), had translated into Latin, he congratulated me that I had not fallen upon the writings of other philosophers, which were full of fallacies and deceit, “after the rudiments of the world,” whereas they, in many ways, led to the belief in God and His word. Then, to exhort me to the humility of Christ, hidden from the wise, and revealed to little ones, he spoke of Victorinus himself, whom, whilst he was at Rome, he had known very intimately; and of him he related that about which I will not be silent. For it contains great praise of Thy grace, which ought to be confessed unto Thee, how that most learned old man, highly skilled in all the liberal sciences, who had read, criticised, and explained so many works of the philosophers; the teacher of so many noble senators; who also, as a mark of his excellent discharge of his duties, had (which men of this world esteem a great honour) both merited and obtained a statue in the Roman Forum, he,—even to that age a worshipper of idols, and a participator in the sacrilegious rites to which almost all the nobility of Rome were wedded, and had inspired the people with the love of
“The dog Anubis, and a medley crew
Of monster gods [who] ’gainst Neptune stand in
arms,
’Gainst Venus and Minerva, steel-clad
Mars,”
whom Rome once conquered, now worshipped, all which old
Victorinus had with thundering eloquence defended so many
years,—he now blushed not to be the child of Thy Christ, and an
infant at Thy fountain, submitting his neck to the yoke of
humility, and subduing his forehead to the reproach of the
Cross.
4. O Lord, Lord, who hast bowed the heavens
and come down, touched the mountains and they did smoke, by what
means didst Thou convey Thyself into that bosom? He used to read, as Simplicianus said, the Holy Scripture, most studiously sought after and searched into all the Christian writings, and said to Simplicianus,—not openly, but secretly, and as a friend,—“Know thou that I am a Christian.” To which he replied, “I will not believe it, nor will I rank you among the Christians unless I see you in the Church of Christ.” Whereupon he replied derisively, “Is it then the walls that make Christians?” And this he often said, that he already was a Christian; and Simplidanus making the same answer, the conceit of the “walls” was by the other as often renewed. For he was fearful of offending his friends, proud demon-worshippers, from the height of whose Babylonian dignity, as from cedars of Lebanon which had not yet been broken by the Lord, he thought a storm of enmity would descend upon him. But after that, from reading and inquiry, he had derived strength, and feared lest he should be denied by Christ before the holy angels if he now was afraid to confess Him before men, and appeared to himself guilty of a great fault in being ashamed of the sacraments of the humility of Thy word, and not being ashamed of the sacrilegious rites of those proud demons, whose pride he had imitated and their rites adopted, he became bold-faced against vanity, and shame-faced toward the truth, and suddenly and unexpectedly said to Simplicianus,—as he himself informed me,—“Let us go to the church; I wish to be made a Christian.” But he, not containing himself for joy, accompanied him. And having been admitted to the first sacraments of instruction, he not long after gave in his name, that he might be regenerated by baptism,—Rome marvelling, and the Church rejoicing. The proud saw, and were enraged; they gnashed with their teeth, and melted away! But the Lord God was the hope of Thy servant, and He regarded not vanities and lying madness.