Bad Advertisement?
Are you a Christian?
Online Store:Visit Our Store
| Chapter XXXI.—Confutation of the Other Charges Brought Against the Christians.
PREVIOUS SECTION - NEXT SECTION - HELP 
Chapter XXXI.—Confutation of the Other Charges Brought Against the Christians.
But they have further also made up stories against us of
impious feasts818
| 818 [“Thyestian
feasts” (p. 130, supra); a charge which the Christian
Fathers perpetually repel. Of course the sacrament of the Lord’s
Supper lent colour to this charge; but it could not have been repelled,
had they believed the material body and blood of the “man Christ
Jesus,” present in this sacrament. See cap. iii., note.] |
and forbidden intercourse between the sexes, both that they may appear
to themselves to have rational grounds of hatred, and because they
think either by fear to lead us away from our way of life, or to render
the rulers harsh and inexorable by the magnitude of the charges they
bring. But they lose their labour with those who know that from of old it
has been the custom, and not in our time only, for vice to make war on
virtue. Thus Pythagoras, with three hundred others, was burnt to death;
Heraclitus and Democritus were banished, the one from the city of the
Ephesians, the other from Abdera, because he was charged with being mad;
and the Athenians condemned Socrates to death. But as they were none
the worse in respect of virtue because of the opinion of the multitude,
so neither does the undiscriminating calumny of some persons cast any
shade upon us as regards rectitude of life, for with God we stand in
good repute. Nevertheless, I will meet these charges also, although I
am well assured that by what has been already said I have cleared myself
to you. For as you excel all men in intelligence, you know that those
whose life is directed towards God as its rule, so that each one among
us may be blameless and irreproachable
before Him, will not entertain even the thought of the slightest sin. For
if we believed that we should live only the present life, then we might
be suspected of sinning, through being enslaved to flesh and blood,
or overmastered by gain or carnal desire; but since we know that God
is witness to what we think and what we say both by night and by day,
and that He, being Himself light, sees all things in our heart, we are
persuaded that when we are removed from the present life we shall live
another life, better than the present one, and heavenly, not earthly
(since we shall abide near God, and with God, free from all change
or suffering in the soul, not as flesh, even though we shall have
flesh,819
but as
heavenly spirit), or, falling with the rest, a worse one and in fire;
for God has not made us as sheep or beasts of burden, a mere by-work,
and that we should perish and be annihilated. On these grounds it is not
likely that we should wish to do evil, or deliver ourselves over to the
great Judge to be punished.E.C.F. INDEX & SEARCH
|
