Ante-Nicene Fathers/Volume VI/Arnobius/Adversus Gentes/Book II/Chapter LXXVIII
78. Wherefore, O men, refrain from obstructing what you hope for by vain questions; nor should you, if anything is otherwise than you think, trust your own opinions rather than that which should be reverenced.[1] The times, full of dangers, urge us, and fatal penalties threaten us; let us flee for safety to God our Saviour, without demanding the reason of the offered gift. When that at stake is our souls’ salvation and our own interests, something must be done even without reason, as Arrhianus approves of Epictetus having said.[2] We doubt, we hesitate, and suspect the credibility of what is said; let us commit ourselves to God, and let not our incredulity prevail more with us than the greatness of His name and power, lest, while we are seeking out arguments for ourselves, through which that may seem false which we do not wish and deny to be true, the last day steal upon us, and we be found in the jaws of our enemy, death.
Footnotes[edit]
- ↑ Lit., “than an august thing.”
- ↑ Orelli refers to Arrh., i. 12; but the doctrine there insisted on is the necessity of submission to what is unavoidable. Oehler, in addition, refers to Epict., xxxii. 3, where, however, it is merely attempted to show that when anything is withheld from us, it is just as goods are unless paid for, and that we have therefore no reason to complain. Neither passage can be referred to here, and it seems as though Arnobius has made a very loose reference which cannot be specially identified.