Arnobius — Against the Nations 2.34
Since this is so, what injustice is so great that we seem fools to you for believing these things, when we see you both believing similar things and living in the same expectation? If we are thought worthy of mockery because we promise ourselves a hope of this kind, the same mockery awaits you who claim for yourselves a hope of immortality. If on other grounds you hold and follow reason, grant us also some share of that reason.
If Plato in the Phaedrus — or someone else from that company — had promised us these joys, that is, a way of escaping death, and could furnish it and bring the promises to their end, it would have been fitting for us to take up cults of the one from whom we would await so great a gift and favor.
As it is, since Christ has not only promised it but has also shown by such great powers that it can be fulfilled, what strange thing are we doing, or by what reasons do we bear the charge of folly, if we bow to his name and majesty — from whom both the expectation of so great a gift awaits us, and, in things already past, hope of things still to come has been conceived?
Latin
34.1. Cum igitur haec ita sint, quaenam iniustitia tanta est, ut fatui vobis credulitate in ista videamur, cum vos et similia credere et in eadem videamus expectatione versari? Si inrisione existimamur digni, quod spem nobis huiusmodi pollicemur, et vos eadem exspectat inrisio, qui spem vobis immortalitatis adsciscitis. Si tenetis alioqui sequiminique rationem, et nobis aliquam portionem ex ista ratione concedite. 2. Si nobis haec gaudia, hoc est viam fugiendae mortis, Plato <in> Phaedro promisisset aliusve ex hoc choro possetque eam praestare atque ad finem pollicitationes adducere, consentaneum fuerat eius suscipere nos cultus a quo tantum doni expectaremus et muneris. Nunc cum eam Christus non tantum promiserit verum etiam virtutibus tantis manifestaverit posse compleri, quid alienum facimus aut stultitiae crimen quibus rationibus sustinemus, si eius nomini maiestatique substernimur, a quo speramus utrumque, et mortem cruciabilem fugere et vitae aeternitate donari?