Ante-Nicene Fathers/Volume VI/Arnobius/Adversus Gentes/Book II/Chapter XXXIV

by Arnobius

34. Since this is the case, what, pray, is so unfair as that we should be looked on by you as silly in that readiness of belief at which you scoff, while we see that you both have like beliefs, and entertain the same hopes? If we are thought deserving of ridicule because we hold out to ourselves such a hope, the same ridicule awaits you too, who claim for yourselves the hope of immortality. If you hold and follow a rational course, grant to us also a share in it. If Plato in the Phædrus,^[1] or another of this band of philosophers, had promised these joys to us—that is, a way to escape death, or were able to provide it and bring us to the end which he had promised,^[2] it would have been fitting that we should seek to honour him from whom we look for so great a gift and favour. Now, since Christ has not only promised it, but also shown by His virtues, which were so great, that it can be made good, what strange thing do we do, and on what grounds are we charged with folly, if we bow down and worship His name^[3] and majesty from whom we expect to receive both these blessings, that we may at once escape a death of suffering, and be enriched with eternal life?^[4]

Footnotes

1. Here, as in c. 7, p. 436, n. 3, the edd. read Phædone, with the exception of the first ed., LB., Hildebrand, and Oehler, who follow the ms. as above.
2. Lit., “to the end of promising.”
3. Meursius suggests numini, “deity,” on which it may be well to remark once for all, that nomen and numen are in innumerable places interchanged in one or other of the edd. The change, however, is usually of so little moment, that no further notice will be taken of it.
4. So the ms., according to Rigaltius and Hildebrand, reading vitæ æternitate, while Crusius asserts that the ms. gives vita et—“with life and eternity.”