Arnobius — Against the Nations 2.14
Do you dare laugh at us when we speak of Gehenna and certain inextinguishable fires into which we have learned souls are cast by their enemies and foes? What of that same Plato of yours, in the volume he composed on the soul’s immortality — does he not name Acheron, Styx, Cocytus, and Pyriphlegethon, in which he asserts souls are rolled, sunk, and burned? And a man of no perverse prudence and of weighed examination and judgment undertakes an insoluble thing: while he says souls are immortal, perpetual, and stripped of bodily solidity, he still says they are punished and afflicted with a sense of pain. Who among men does not see that what is immortal and simple can admit no pain, and that what feels pain cannot have immortality? Yet his authority does not decline far from the truth. For although a gentle man of kindly will believed it inhuman to condemn souls by a capital sentence, he still not absurdly suspected they are cast into rushing rivers foul with balls of flame and muddy gulfs.
For they are cast, and reduced to nothing they vanish in the frustration of perpetual destruction. For they are of mid quality, as has been found with Christ as author, and can perish if they ignore God, and can be freed for life and from ruin if they apply themselves to his threats and indulgences — and what is unknown may lie open.
This is man’s true death, this that leaves nothing remaining — for that which is seen under the eyes is souls’ unyoking from bodies, not the extreme end of abolition — this, I say, is man’s true death, when souls that do not know God are consumed through longest-time torment by fierce fire, into which certain cruelly savage ones, unknown before Christ and exposed by the only one who knows, will cast them.
Latin
14.1. Audetis ridere nos, cum gehennas dicimus et inextinguibiles quosdam ignes, in quos animas deici ab earum hostibus inimicisque cognovimus? 2. Quid Plato idem vester in eo volumine, quod de animae immortalitate conposuit [Plato, Phaed. 113 d], non Acherontem, non Stygem, non Cocytum fluvios et Pyriphlegethontem nominat, in quibus animas adseverat volvi mergi exuri? Et homo prudentiae non pravae et examinis iudiciique perpensi rem inenodabilem suscipit, ut cum animas dicat immortales perpetuas et ex corporali soliditate privatas, puniri eas dicat tamen et doloris adficiat sensu. 3. Quis autem hominum non videt quod sit immortale, quod simplex, nullum posse dolorem admittere, quod autem sentiat dolorem, immortalitatem habere non posse? Nec tamen eius auctoritas plurimum a veritate declinat. Quamvis enim vir lenis et benivolae voluntatis inhumanum esse crediderit capitali animas sententia condemnare, non est tamen absone suspicatus iaci eas in flumina torrentia. flammarum globis et caenosis voraginibus taetra.
4. Iaciuntur enim et ad nihilum redactae interitionis perpetuae frustratione vanescunt. 5. Sunt enim mediae qualitatis, sicut Christo auctore compertum est, et interire quae possint deum si ignoraverint, vitae et ab exitio liberari, si ad eius se minas atque indulgentias adplicarint, et quod ignotum est pateat.
6. Haec est hominis mors vera, haec nihil residuum faciens - nam illa quae sub oculis cernitur animarum est a corporibus diiugatio, non finis abolitionis extremus - haec inquam est hominis mors vera, cum animae nescientes deum per longissimi temporis cruciatum consumentur igni fero, in quem illas iacient quidam crudeliter saevi et ante Christum incogniti et ab solo sciente detecti.