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| If Christians and the Heathen Thus Resemble Each Other, There is Great Difference in the Grounds and Nature of Their Apparently Similar Conduct.
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Chapter XIX.750
| 750 Compare The
Apology, cc. xlvii. xlviii. xlix. [This Vol.,
supra.] | —If Christians and the Heathen Thus
Resemble Each Other, There is Great Difference in the Grounds and
Nature of Their Apparently Similar Conduct.
Here end, I suppose, your tremendous charges of
obstinacy against the Christians. Now, since we are amenable to them in
common with yourselves, it only remains that we compare the grounds
which the respective parties have for being personally derided. All our
obstinacy, however, is with you a foregone conclusion,751
based on our strong convictions; for we take
for granted752
a resurrection of the
dead. Hope in this resurrection amounts to753
a
contempt of death. Ridicule, therefore, as much as you like the
excessive stupidity of such minds as die that they may live; but then,
in order that you may be able to laugh more merrily, and deride us with
greater boldness, you must take your sponge, or perhaps your tongue,
and wipe away those records of yours every now and then cropping
out,754
which assert in not dissimilar terms that
souls will return to bodies. But how much more worthy of acceptance is
our belief which maintains that they will return to the same bodies!
And how much more ridiculous is your inherited conceit,755
that the human spirit is to reappear in a
dog, or a mule, or a peacock! Again, we affirm that a judgment has been
ordained by God according to the merits of every man. This you ascribe
to Minos and Rhadamanthus, while at the same time you reject
Aristides, who was a juster judge than either. By the award of
the judgment, we say that the wicked will have to spend an eternity in
endless fire, the pious and innocent in a region of bliss. In your view
likewise an unalterable condition is ascribed to the respective
destinations of Pyriphlegethon756
and Elysium. Now they
are not merely your composers of myth and poetry who write songs of
this strain; but your philosophers also speak with all confidence of
the return of souls to their former state,757
and
of the twofold award758
of a final
judgment.E.C.F. INDEX & SEARCH
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