Octavius 1 part 4/4

just as it was possible to be born out of nothing, so it is possible to be restored out of nothing? Furthermore, it is harder to begin that which has not been than to repeat that which has been. Do you believe that a thing perishes even with God, if anything is withdrawn from our dull eyes? Every body, whether it dries into dust, or dissolves into moisture, or is compressed into ash, or thinned into vapour, is withdrawn from us, but is reserved for God in the custody of the elements. Nor do we, as you believe, fear any loss from the lack of burial, but we keep to the old and better custom of inhumation. See, moreover, how all nature, for our consolation, broods upon a resurrection to come.

The sun sinks and is born again, the stars set and return, the flowers die and revive, after their old age the shrubs put forth leaves again, seeds revive only when corrupted: so the body in the tomb, like trees in winter, hide their greenness under a feigned dryness. Why do you hasten that it should revive and return while the winter is still raw? We must await the spring of the body too. Nor am I unaware that very many, from the consciousness of their deserts, rather wish than believe that they will be nothing after death: for they prefer to be utterly extinguished than to be restored for punishments. Their error is increased both by the licence let loose in this world and by the very great patience of God, whose judgment, the more delayed, is the more just.

And yet men are admonished by the books of the most learned and by the songs of the poets concerning that fiery river and the heat of the Stygian marsh that flows round about ever more frequently—which, prepared for eternal torments, they have handed down, learned both from the disclosures of demons and from the oracles of the prophets. And therefore among them even King Jupiter himself swears religiously by the burning banks and the black abyss: for, foreknowing, he shudders with dread at the punishment destined for himself together with his worshippers. Nor is there any measure or term to the torments. There the wise fire burns the limbs and restores them, gnaws and nourishes them. Just as the fires of lightning touch bodies yet do not consume them; just as the fires of Mount Etna and Mount Vesuvius and of burning lands everywhere blaze yet are not used up:

so that penal conflagration is not fed by the losses of those that burn, but is nourished by the unconsumed mangling of bodies. But that those who know not God are deservedly tormented as impious, as unjust, no one but a profane person deliberates—since to be ignorant of the Parent of all and the Lord of all is no lesser crime than to wrong Him. And although ignorance of God suffices for punishment, just as knowledge avails toward pardon, yet if we Christians be compared with you, although in some respects our discipline is the lesser, we shall nevertheless be found much better than you. For you forbid adulteries and commit them; we are born men only for our own wives. You punish crimes once committed; among us even to think of sin is to sin:

you fear witnesses; we fear even conscience alone, without which we cannot be. In short, the prison seethes with men of your number; there is no Christian there, unless either as one accused on account of his religion, or as a deserter from it. Nor let anyone catch at consolation from fate, or excuse the outcome thereby: let the lot be of fortune, yet the mind is free, and therefore it is the act of a man, not his condition, that is judged. For what else is fate than what God has spoken concerning each one of us? He who, since He can foreknow the material, determines even the fates according to the merits and qualities of individuals. Thus in us it is not the nativity that is chastised, but the nature of one's disposition that is punished. And concerning fate enough—or, if but little, suited to the occasion—since we shall discuss it more amply and fully another time.

'As for the fact that most of us are called poor, this is no disgrace to us, but our glory; for as the soul is loosened by luxury, so it is strengthened by frugality. And yet how can he be poor who lacks nothing, who covets nothing of another's, who is rich toward God? Rather is that man poor who, though he possesses much, still desires more. I will say, however, how I feel: no one can be so poor as he was when he was born. The birds live without any inheritance, and the cattle are fed from day to day; yet these things too were brought into being for us, all of which, if we do not crave them, we possess. Therefore, just as he who treads the road is the happier the lighter he goes, so on this journey of living he is the more blessed who lifts himself up by poverty, and does not groan beneath the burden of riches.'

And yet, if we thought possessions useful, we would ask them of God; surely He, to whom all things belong, could grant us some portion. But we prefer to despise wealth rather than to hoard it; we desire innocence the more, we demand patience the more, we would rather be good than be lavish. 'And as for the fact that we feel and suffer the human ailments of the body, this is not a punishment but a campaign of war. For courage is strengthened by weaknesses, and calamity is very often the discipline of virtue; in short, the powers both of mind and of body grow numb without the exercise of toil. Indeed, all those brave men of yours, whom you proclaim as examples, flourished in renown by reason of their own hardships.

And so God neither is unable to come to our aid nor despises us, since He is both the ruler of all and the lover of His own; but in adversities He tests and examines each one, He weighs the disposition of each by perils, He inquires into a man's will even unto the last extreme of death, secure that nothing can be lost to Him. Therefore, as gold is tried by fire, so are we tested by crises. 'How fair a spectacle for God it is when a Christian closes in combat with pain, when he is set against threats and tortures and torments, when, mocking the din of death and the terror of the executioner, he tramples them underfoot, when he raises up his liberty against kings and princes and yields to God alone, whose he is, when as triumphant victor he insults the very one who passed sentence against him!

For he has conquered who has obtained what he strove for. What soldier, under the eyes of his commander, would not provoke danger more boldly? For no one receives the reward before the trial. And yet a commander cannot give what he does not have: he cannot prolong life, though he can ennoble service. But the soldier of God is neither abandoned in pain nor ended by death. Thus a Christian may seem to be wretched, but he cannot be found so in truth. You yourselves exalt calamitous men to the heavens, such as Mucius Scaevola, who, after he had failed against the king, would have perished among the enemy had he not sacrificed his right hand. And how many of ours have endured not only the right hand but the whole body to be burned and consumed without any wailing, when it was especially within their own power to be released!

Shall I compare such men with Mucius or with Aquilius or Regulus? Our very boys and weak little women make sport of crosses and torments, of wild beasts and all the terrors of punishments, by an inspired endurance of pain. And you do not understand, O wretched men, that no one would either willingly undergo punishment without reason, or be able to endure torments without God. 'Unless perhaps it deceives you that those who know not God abound in riches, flourish in honors, and are mighty in powers. The wretched are raised the higher only that they may fall the lower. For these, like victims, are fattened for the slaughter; like sacrificial beasts, they are crowned for their punishment; indeed, some are exalted to commands and dominations for this very end, that the genius of their ruined mind may freely traffic in the license of power.

For without the knowledge of God, what solid happiness can there be, since death exists? Like a dream, it slips away before it can be grasped. Are you a king? Yet you fear as much as you are feared, and however thronged about with a great retinue, in the face of danger you are nonetheless alone. Are you rich? But fortune is ill trusted, and the short journey of life is not furnished, but only burdened, by a great store of provisions. Do you glory in the fasces and the purple? An empty error of man, and a vain worship of dignity, to gleam in purple while growing foul in mind. Are you noble by high birth? Do you praise your forebears? Yet we are all born by an equal lot, and are distinguished by virtue alone.

'We therefore, who are reckoned by our morals and modesty, rightly abstain from your wicked pleasures and your pompous shows and spectacles, of which we both know the origin to be in sacred rites and condemn their harmful enticements. For in the chariot races, who would not shudder at the madness of the populace quarreling within itself? In the gladiatorial games, at the schooling in homicide? In the theaters too there is no less frenzy and a more drawn-out shamefulness: for now the mime either sets forth adulteries or displays them; now the unmanly actor, while he feigns love, inflicts it; the same man disgraces your gods by clothing them in debaucheries, sighs, and hatreds; the same, by feigned griefs, provokes your tears with empty gestures and nods: thus in reality you demand homicide, while over a falsehood you weep.

'But as for the fact that we despise the leavings of sacrifices and the cups from which a libation has been poured, this is no confession of fear, but the assertion of true liberty. For although everything that comes into being, as an inviolable gift of God, is corrupted by no work of ours, we nevertheless abstain, lest anyone suppose either that we yield to the demons to whom the libation was offered, or that we are ashamed of our religion. 'But who is he who doubts that we delight in spring flowers, since we pluck both the rose of spring and the lily and whatever else among flowers has a charming color and scent? For we use these both scattered and loose, and we entwine our necks with soft garlands. Indeed, as for the fact that we do not crown the head, pardon us: we are accustomed to draw in the good fragrance of a flower through the nostrils, not to drink it in through the back of the head or the hair. 'Nor do we crown the dead.

In this I rather marvel at you, how you bestow upon a lifeless thing either a torch if it can perceive, or a crown if it cannot, since the blessed has no need of flowers, and the wretched takes no joy in them. But we adorn our funerals with the same tranquility with which we live, and we do not bind on a withering crown, but await from God one made vivid with eternal flowers: tranquil, modest, secure in the liberality of our God, we enliven the hope of future happiness by faith in His present majesty. Thus we both rise again blessed, and already live in the contemplation of what is to come.

'So let the Attic buffoon Socrates look to it—he who confessed that he knew nothing, glorious by the testimony of a most deceitful demon; let Arcesilaus too, and Carneades and Pyrrho and the whole multitude of Academics deliberate; let Simonides even put it off forever: we despise the haughty brows of the philosophers, whom we know to be corrupters and adulterers and tyrants, and ever eloquent against their own vices. We display wisdom not by our garb but by our mind; we do not speak great things, but we live them; we glory that we have attained what they sought with the utmost striving and yet could not find. 'Why are we ungrateful, why do we begrudge ourselves, if the truth of divinity has ripened in the age of our own time? Let us enjoy our good and temper the verdict of right reason:

let superstition be checked, let impiety be expiated, let true religion be preserved.' When Octavius had finished his speech, for some while we held our gaze fixed, stupefied into silence; and as for me, I vanished in the greatness of my admiration, because he had adorned with arguments and examples and the authority of his readings those things which it is easier to feel than to express, and because he had beaten back the malevolent with those very weapons of the philosophers with which they arm themselves, and had shown the truth to be not only easy but even favorable. While, then, I was silently turning these things over within myself, Caecilius burst out: 'I congratulate my Octavius with all my heart, but myself also, and I do not wait for a verdict. We have won, and in this way: though it is shameless, I claim the victory.

For as he is the victor over me, so I am the one who triumphs over error. 'Therefore, as far as concerns the chief point of the question, I confess concerning providence, and I yield concerning God, and I now consent concerning the sincerity of our own sect. Even now, however, certain matters remain unsettled, not as opposing the truth, but as necessary for a perfect instruction, about which we shall inquire tomorrow more readily, now that the sun is already declining toward its setting, so that, being in agreement, we may pursue them as a whole.' 'But I,' I said, 'rejoice more amply on behalf of us all, that Octavius has won even for me, since the great odium of judging has been taken from me. Nor yet can I repay his merit with the praises of words: the testimony both of a man and of one alone is weak:

he has the surpassing gift of God, by whom, being inspired, he both prayed and, being helped, prevailed.' After this we departed glad and cheerful—Caecilius, because he had come to believe; Octavius, because he had won; and I, both because the one had come to believe and the other had won.