Ante-Nicene Fathers/Volume VI/Arnobius/Adversus Gentes/Book II/Chapter V

by Arnobius

5. What say you, O ignorant ones, for whom we might well weep and be sad?^[1] Are you so void of fear that these things may be true which are despised by you and turned to ridicule? and do you not consider with yourselves at least, in your secret thoughts, lest that which to-day with perverse obstinacy you refuse to believe, time may too late show to be true,^[2] and ceaseless remorse punish you? Do not even these proofs at least give you faith to believe,^[3] viz., that already, in so short and brief a time, the oaths of this vast army have spread abroad over all the earth? that already there is no nation so rude and fierce that it has not, changed by His love, subdued its fierceness, and with tranquillity hitherto unknown, become mild in disposition?^[4] that men endowed with so great abilities, orators, critics, rhetoricians, lawyers, and physicians, those, too, who pry into the mysteries of philosophy, seek to learn these things, despising those in which but now they trusted? that slaves choose to be tortured by their masters as they please, wives to be divorced, children to be disinherited by their parents, rather than be unfaithful to Christ and cast off the oaths of the warfare of salvation? that although so terrible punishments have been denounced by you against those who follow the precepts of this religion, it^[5] increases even more, and a great host strives more boldly against all threats and the terrors which would keep it back, and is roused to zealous faith by the very attempt to hinder it? Do you indeed believe that these things happen idly and at random? that these feelings are adopted on being met with by chance?^[6] Is not this, then, sacred and divine? Or do you believe that, without God’s grace, their minds are so changed, that although murderous hooks and other tortures without number threaten, as we said, those who shall believe, they receive the grounds of faith with which they have become acquainted,^[7] as if carried away (A) by some charm, and by an eager longing for all the virtues,^[8] and prefer the friendship of Christ to all that is in the world?^[9]

Footnotes

1. Lit., “most worthy even of weeping and pity.”
2. Redarguat. This sense is not recognised by Riddle and White, and would therefore seem to be, if not unique, at least extremely rare. The derivative redargutio, however, is in late Latin used for “demonstration,” and this is evidently the meaning here.
3. Fidem vobis faciunt argumenta credendi. Heraldus, joining the two last words, naturally regards them as a gloss from the margin; but read as above, joining the first and last, there is nothing out of place.
4. Lit., “tranquillity being assumed, passed to placid feelings.”
5. Res, “the thing.”
6. Lit., “on chance encounters.”
7. Rationes cognitas. There is some difficulty as to the meaning of these words, but it seems best to refer them to the argumenta credendi (beginning of chapter, “do not even these proofs”), and render as above. Hildebrand, however, reads tortiones, “they accept the tortures which they know will befall them.”
8. The ms. reads et non omnium, “and by a love not of all the virtues,” changed in most edd. as above into atque omnium, while Oehler proposes et novo omnium, “and by fresh love of all,” etc. It will be remembered that the transposition of leaves in the ms. (note on ii. 1) occurs here, and this seems to account for the arbitrary reading of Gelenius, which has no ms. authority whatever, but was added by himself when transposing these chapters to the first book (cf. p. 432, n. 14), atque nectare ebrii cuncta contemnant—“As if intoxicated with a certain sweetness and nectar, they despise all things.” The same circumstance has made the restoration of the passage by Canterus a connecting of fragments of widely separated sentences and arguments.
9. Lit., “all the things of the world.” Here the argument breaks off, and passes into a new phase, but Orelli includes the next sentence also in the fifth chapter.