Ante-Nicene Fathers/Volume VI/Arnobius/Adversus Gentes/Book IV/Chapter XIX

by Arnobius

19. But perhaps these things will turn out to be false, and what you say to be true. By what proof, by what evidence, will it be shown? For since both parties are men, both those who have said the one thing and those who have said the other, and on both sides the discussion was of doubtful matters, it is arrogant to say that that is true which seems so to you, but that that which offends your feelings manifests wantonness and falsehood. By the laws of the human race, and the associations of mortality itself, when you read and hear, That god was born of this father and of that mother, do you not feel in your mind^[1] that something is said which belongs to man, and relates to the meanness of our earthly race? Or, while you think that it is so,^[2] do you conceive no anxiety lest you should in something offend the gods themselves, whoever they are, because you believe that it is owing to filthy intercourse…^[3] that they have reached the light they knew not of, thanks to lewdness? For we, lest any one should chance to think that we are ignorant of, do not know, what befits the majesty of that name, assuredly^[4] think that the gods should not know birth; or if they are born at all, we hold and esteem that the Lord and Prince of the universe, by ways which He knew Himself, sent them forth spotless, most pure, undefiled, ignorant of sexual pollution,^[5] and brought to the full perfection of their natures as soon as they were begotten?^[6]

Footnotes

1. Lit., “does it not touch the feeling of your mind.”
2. Ursinus would supply eos—“that they are so.”
3. Atque ex seminis, actu, or jactu, as the edd. except Hild. read it.
4. The ms. reads dignitati-s aut; corrected, as above, d. sane, in the first five edd., Oberthür, and Orelli. [John x. 35.]
5. Quæsit fœditas ista coeundi.
6. Lit., “as far as to themselves, their first generation being completed.”