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De resurrectione carnis

I.

[1] Fiducia Christianorum resurrectio mortuorum: illam credentes hoc sumus. Hoc credere veritas cogit: veritatem deus aperit. [2] Sed vulgus inridet, existimans nihil superesse post mortem: et tamen defunctis parentat, et quidem impensissimo officio pro moribus eorum, pro temporibus esculentorum, ut quos negant sentire quidquam etiam desiderare praesumant. [3] At ego magis ridebo vulgus tunc quoque cum ipsos defunctos atrocissime exurit, quos postmodum gulosissime nutrit, isdem ignibus et promerens et offendens. O pietatem de crudelitate ludentem! sacrificat an insultat cum crematis cremat? [4] Plane cum vulgo interdum et sapientes sententiam suam iungunt. Nihil esse post mortem Epicuri schola est: ait et Seneca omnia post mortem finiri, etiam ipsam. [5] Satis est autem si non minor sententia Pythagorae, et Empedocles et Platonici, immortalem animam e contrario reclamant, immo adhuc proxime etiam in corpora remeabilem adfirmant, etsi non in eadem, etsi non in humana tantummodo, ut Euphorbus in Pythagoram, ut Homerus in pavum recenseantur. [6] Certe recidivatum animae corporalem pronuntiaverunt, tolerabilius mutata quam negata qualitate, pulsata saltim licet non adita veritate. Ita saeculum resurrectionem mortuorum nec cum errat ignorat.

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On the Resurrection of the Flesh

Chapter I.--The Doctrine of the Resurrection of the Body Brought to Light by the Gospel. The Faintest Glimpses of Something Like It Occasionally Met with in Heathenism. Inconsistencies of Pagan Teaching.

The resurrection of the dead is the Christian's trust. ¹ By it we are believers. To the belief of this (article of the faith) truth compels us--that truth which God reveals, but the crowd derides, which supposes that nothing will survive after death. And yet they do honour ² to their dead, and that too in the most expensive way according to their bequest, and with the daintiest banquets which the seasons can produce, ³ on the presumption that those whom they declare to be incapable of all perception still retain an appetite. ⁴ But (let the crowd deride): I on my side must deride it still more, especially when it burns up its dead with harshest inhumanity, only to pamper them immediately afterwards with gluttonous satiety, using the selfsame fires to honour them and to insult them. What piety is that which mocks its victims with cruelty? Is it sacrifice or insult (which the crowd offers), when it burns its offerings to those it has already burnt? ⁵ But the wise, too, join with the vulgar crowd in their opinion sometimes. There is nothing after death, according to the school of Epicurus. After death all things come to an end, even death itself, says Seneca to like effect. It is satisfactory, however, that the no less important philosophy of Pythagoras and Empedocles, and the Plantonists, take the contrary view, and declare the soul to be immortal; affirming, moreover, in a way which most nearly approaches (to our own doctrine), ⁶ that the soul actually returns into bodies, although not the same bodies, and not even those of human beings invariably: thus Euphorbus is supposed to have passed into Phythagoras, and Homer into a peacock. They firmly pronounced the soul's renewal ⁷ to be in a body, ⁸ (deeming it) more tolerable to change the quality (of the corporeal state) than to deny it wholly: they at least knocked at the door of truth, although they entered not. Thus the world, with all its errors, does not ignore the resurrection of the dead.