Minucius Felix, Octavius 38
Our contempt for sacrificial leftovers and tasted cups is no confession of fear, but an assertion of true freedom. Although everything born, as an inviolable gift of God, suffers no corruption from any use, we nevertheless abstain so that no one may think we yield to the demons to whom these things were offered, or that we are ashamed of our religion. Who doubts that we enjoy spring flowers, since we pick the spring rose and the lily, and every other flower of pleasant color and scent? We use them scattered and loose, and we twine garlands around our necks. Pardon us for not crowning our heads; we do not draw in the fragrance of fine flowers with our nostrils, nor do we habitually inhale it with the back of our head or our hair. Nor do we crown the dead. I marvel at you all the more: how you bestow a torch or a crown on the lifeless, the non-sentient, when the blessed have no need of flowers and the wretched find no joy in them. But we adorn funerals with the same tranquility in which we live. We do not bind on a withering crown; instead we sustain a living crown from God woven of eternal flowers. Modest and secure in the liberality of our God, we are animated by the hope of future happiness and by faith in the present majesty of our God. Thus we rise again blessed, and we walk our path of life in contemplation of the future.
Let Socrates, that Attic jester, see to it—he who confessed he knows nothing, yet boasts the testimony of a most deceitful demon. Let Arcesilas and Carneades and Pyrrho and the whole multitude of Academics deliberate. Let Simonides too be comprehended forever. We despise the scowling brows of philosophers, whom we know as corrupters and adulterers and tyrants, forever eloquent against their own vices. We prefer wisdom not in dress but in mind; we do not speak great things, we live them. We glory in having attained what they, with utmost effort, sought but could not find. Why are we called ungrateful? Why are we envied, if the truth of Divinity has ripened in our own time? Let us enjoy our good, and let us moderate the judgment of what is right: let superstition be restrained, let impiety be expiated, let true religion be preserved.
Latin
Quod vero sacrificiorum reliquias et pocula delibata contemnimus, non confessio timoris est, sed verae libertatis assertio. Nam, etsi omne quod nascitur, ut inviolabile Dei munus, nullo opere corrumpitur, abstinemus tamen, ne quis existimet aut daemoniis, quibus libatum est, cedere, aut nostrae religionis pudere. Quis autem ille qui dubitat vernis indulgere nos floribus, quum capiamus et rosam veris et lilium, et quidquid aliud in floribus blandi coloris et odoris est? His enim et sparsis utimur mollibus ac solutis, et sertis colla complectimur. Sane, quod caput non coronamus, ignoscite. Auram boni floris naribus ducere, non occipitio capillisve solemus haurire. Nec mortuos coronamus. Ego vos in hoc magis miror, quemadmodum tribuatis exanimi, aut non sentienti, facem, aut non sentienti, coronam; quum et beatus non egeat, et miser non gaudeat floribus. At enim nos exsequias adornamus eadem tranquillitate qua vivimus. Nec annectimus arescentem coronam, sed a Deo aeternis floribus vividam sustinemus, qui et modesti, Dei nostri liberalitate securi, spem futurae felicitatis, fide praesentis ejus majestatis animamur. Sic et beati resurgimus, et futuri contemplatione viam vivimus. Proinde Socrates, scurra atticus, viderit, nihil se scire confessus, testimonio licet fallacissimi daemonis gloriosus: Arcesilas quoque et Carneades, et Pyrrho, et omnis Academicorum multitudo deliberet: Simonides etiam, in perpetuum, comprehendi nec [ vulg. comperendinet;] Philosophorum supercilia contemnimus, quos corruptores et adulteros novimus et tyrannos; et semper adversus sua vitia facundos. Nos, non habitu, sapientiam, sed mente, praeferimus: non eloquimur magna, sed vivimus: gloriamur nos consecutos; quod illi, summa intentione, quaesiverunt, nec invenire potuerunt. Quid ingrati sumus? quid nobis invidemur, si veritas Divinitatis, nostri temporis aetate, maturuit? Fruamur bono nostro, et recti sententiam temperemus: cohibeatur superstitio, impietas expietur, vera religio reservetur.