Arnobius — Against the Nations 2.13

Meanwhile, O you who admire and are stunned by the decrees of the learned and of philosophy, do you not count it most unjust to ride down and mock us as if we say stupid and brutish things, when you yourselves are found saying the same or such things as you laugh to hear said of us? I am not speaking with those scattered through the byways of the sects who have made this and that party by diversity of opinions: I call you who follow Mercury, Plato, and Pythagoras, and you others who are of one mind and walk by the same roads of shared opinions.

Do you dare laugh at us because we venerate and cultivate the Father and Lord of things and because we hand over and entrust our hopes to him? What of your Plato in the Theaetetus — to name him especially — does he not urge the mind to flee from the earth and, as far as can be done, always to dwell in thought and mind around that one? Do you dare laugh at us because we say a resurrection of the dead is to come — which we confess we say, but which is heard by you otherwise than we mean? What in the Politicus of the same Plato — does he not write that when the world has begun to rise from the western parts and to turn toward the hinge of the rising sun, humans will burst again from earth’s bosom as grey decrepit old men, and when the years begin to grow longer they will go down by the same steps by which growth happens today unto the cradles of infancy?

Do you dare laugh at us because we provide for the salvation of our souls — that is, for ourselves? For what are we humans if not souls shut in bodies? Do you yourselves not all take cares for their safety? Is it not fear that holds you — when you abstain from all vices and desires — lest you stick to bodies as if fixed by beam-nails? What do those rites of secret arts mean, by which you address I know not what powers so they may be gentle to you and not set obstacles of hindrance when you return to the ancestral seats?