Arnobius — Against the Nations 2.66
Therefore though you be pure and cleansed from every stain of vices, though you have won over and bent those powers so that they do not shut and bar the ways to one returning to heaven, you will be able by no efforts to reach the prize of immortality unless you have received what itself makes immortality, with Christ bestowing it, and have been admitted to true life.
For what you are accustomed to throw at us — that our religion is new and born almost a few days ago, and that we ought not to have left the ancient and ancestral and been led over into barbarian and foreign rites — is urged by no reason. For what if in this way we should wish to blame those earlier and most ancient ages, because when fruits were found they scorned acorns and rejected arbutus berries; because they ceased to be covered and clothed with bark and skins after woven clothing was devised, shorter in use and convenience; or because, when houses were built and richer successes established, they did not love the old huts nor prefer to remain under rocks and caves like beasts?
It is common to all and handed down almost from the cradle itself to prefer goods to evils, to set useful things before useless, and what is agreed to be more precious and gladder, to pursue and seek that and in it to fix the hope of salvation and of saving advantages.
Latin
66.1. Licet ergo tu purus et ab omni fueris vitiorum contaminatione purgatus, conciliaveris illas atque inflexeris potestates, ad caelum <ne> redeunti vias cludant atque obsaepiant transitum, ad immortalitatis accedere nullis poteris contentionibus praemium, nisi quod ipsam immortalitatem facit Christo adtribuente perceperis et veram fueris admissus ad vitam.
2. Nam quod nobis obiectare consuestis, novellam esse religionem nostram et ante dies natam propemodum paucos neque nos oportuisse antiquam et patriam linquere et in barbaros ritus peregrinosque traduci, ratione istud intenditur nulla. 3. Quid enim, si hoc modo culpam velimus infligere prioribus illis atque antiquissimis saeculis, quod inventis frugibus glandes spreverint et repudiaverint arbuta, quod corticibus contegi et amiciri desierint pellibus, postquam vestis excogitata est textilis usu et commoditate succinctior, aut quod structis domibus et lautioribus successibus institutis non antiquas adamaverint casulas nec sub rupibus et cavernis praeoptaverint ut beluae permanere?
4. Commune est omnibus et ab ipsis paene incunabulis traditum, bona malis anteferre, inutilibus utilia praeponere, et quod esse constiterit pretiosius, laetius, id consectari et petere in eoque defigere spem salutis et salutarium commodorum.