Bad Advertisement?
Are you a Christian?
Online Store:Visit Our Store
| Chapter LXIV
PREVIOUS SECTION - NEXT SECTION - HELP 
Chapter
LXIV.
But if we were to reproach those who have been
converted with their former lives, then we would have occasion to
accuse Phædo also, even after he became a philosopher; since, as
the history relates, he was drawn away by Socrates from a house of bad
fame3196
| 3196 ἀπὸ
οἰκήματος.
Such is the reading in the text of Lommatzsch. Hoeschel and
Spencer read ἀπὸ
οἰκήματος
ἐτείου, and Ruaus proposes
ἑταιρίου. | to the pursuits of philosophy. Nay,
even the licentious life of Polemo, the successor of Xenocrates, will
be a subject of reproach to philosophy; whereas even in these instances
we ought to regard it as a ground of praise, that reasoning was
enabled, by the persuasive power of these men, to convert from the
practice of such vices those who had been formerly entangled by
them. Now among the Greeks there was only one Phædo, I know
not if there were a second, and one Polemo, who betook themselves to
philosophy, after a licentious and most wicked life; while with Jesus
there were not only at the time we speak of, the twelve disciples, but
many more at all times, who, becoming a band of temperate men, speak in
the following terms of their former lives: “For we
ourselves also were sometimes foolish, disobedient, deceived, serving
divers lusts and pleasures, living in malice and envy, hateful, and
hating one another. But after that the kindness and love of God
our Saviour towards man appeared, by the washing of regeneration, and
renewing of the Holy Ghost, which He shed upon us
richly,”3197
we became such as
we are. For “God sent forth His Word and healed them, and
delivered them from their destructions,”3198
as
the prophet taught in the book of Psalms. And in addition to what
has been already said, I would add the following: that
Chrysippus, in his treatise on the Cure of the Passions, in his
endeavours to restrain the passions of the human soul, not pretending
to determine what opinions are the true ones, says that according to
the principles of the different sects are those to be cured who have
been brought under the dominion of the passions, and continues:
“And if pleasure be an end, then by it must the passions be
healed; and if there be three kinds of chief blessings, still,
according to this doctrine, it is in the same way that those are to be
freed from their passions who are under their dominion;” whereas
the assailants of Christianity do not see in how many persons the
passions have been brought under restraint, and the flood of wickedness
checked, and savage manners softened, by means of the Gospel. So
that it well became those who are ever boasting of their zeal for the
public good, to make a public acknowledgement of their thanks to that
doctrine which by a new method led men to abandon many vices, and to
bear their testimony at least to it, that even though not the truth, it
has at all events been productive of benefit to the human
race.E.C.F. INDEX & SEARCH
|
