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    Fiducia. 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 honour2    Parentant. 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    Pro temporibus esculentorum. on the presumption that those whom they declare to be incapable of all perception still retain an appetite.4    Etiam desiderar. 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    Cum crematis cremat. 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    Adhuc proxime: “Christianæ scilicet doctrinæ.” Oehler. 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 renewal7    Recidivatum. to be in a body,8    Corporalem. (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.

CAPUT PRIMUM.

0795B Fiducia Christianorum, resurrectio mortuorum. Illa credentes sumus; hoc credere veritas cogit. Veritatem Deus aperit; sed vulgus irridet, existimans nihil superesse post mortem; et tamen defunctis parentant, et quidem impensissimo officio, pro moribus eorum, pro temporibus esculentorum; ut quos negant sentire quicquam, escam desiderare praesumant . At ego magis ridebo vulgus, tunc quoque, cum ipsos defunctos atrocissime exurit, quos postmodum gulosissime nutrit, iisdem ignibus et promerens et offendens. O pietatem de crudelitate ludentem! sacrificat, an insultat, cum crematis cremat? Plane cum vulgo interdum et sapientes sententiam suam jungunt. Nihil esse post mortem Epicuri schola est. Ait et Seneca, omnia 0795C post mortem finiri, etiam ipsam. Satis est autem, si non minor philosophia Pythagorae et Empedocli. Sed et Platonici immortalem animam e contrario reclamant: imo adhuc proxime etiam in corpora remeabilem 0796A affirmant; etsi non in eadem, etsi non in humana tantummodo; ut Euphorbus in Pythagoram, Homerus in pavum recenseantur. Certe recidivatum animae corporalem pronuntiaverunt; tolerabilius mutata , quam negata qualitate: pulsata saltem , licet non adita veritate. Ita saeculum resurrectionem mortuorum, nec cum errat, ignorat.