76. Inasmuch then, you say,
as you serve the Almighty God, and trust that He cares for your safety
and salvation, why does He suffer you to be exposed to such storms of
persecution, and to undergo all kinds of punishments and
tortures? Let us, too, ask in reply, why, seeing that you worship
so great and so innumerable gods, and build temples to them, fashion
images of gold, sacrifice herds of animals, and all heap
up3912
| 3912
Lit., “provide,” conficiatis, which, however, some
would understand “consume.” |
boxfuls of
incense on the already loaded
altars, why you
live subject to so many
dangers and
storms of calamity, with which many fatal
misfortunes
vex you every day? Why, I say, do your gods neglect
to avert from you so many kinds of
disease and sickness, shipwrecks,
downfalls, conflagrations, pestilences, barrenness, loss of
children,
and confiscation of goods, discords,
wars, enmities, captures of
cities, and the
slavery of those who are
robbed of their rights of free
birth?
3913
| 3913
Lit., “slaveries, their free births being taken away.” |
But,
my opponent says, in such mischances we, too, are in no
wise
helped by
God. The cause is plain and manifest. For no
hope
has been held out to us with respect to this
life, nor has any help
been
promised or
3914
aid
decreed
us for what
belongs to the husk of this
flesh,—nay, more, we have
been taught to esteem and value lightly all the
threats of fortune,
whatever they be; and if ever any very grievous calamity has assailed
us, to
count as pleasant in
that misfortune
3915
| 3915
So the ms. first five edd., Hild. and
Oehler, reading adscribere infortunio voluptatem, which
is omitted in the other edd. as a gloss which may have crept in from
the margin. |
the end which
must follow, and not to
fear or
flee from it, that we may be the more
easily
released from the
bonds of the body, and escape from our
darkness and
3916
blindness.
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