Minucius Felix, Octavius 11

XI. "What of this—that they threaten fire to the whole orb and to the world itself with its stars, and work ruin, as if either the eternal order constituted by divine laws of nature were disturbed, or, the covenant of all elements broken and the heavenly frame divided, this mass by which it is contained and girded were undermined? Not content with this furious opinion they pile on and attach old wives' tales: they say they are reborn after death and ashes and cinders, and with I-know-not-what confidence they believe one another's lies: you would think they had already come back to life.

A two-sided evil and twin madness: to denounce destruction to heaven and the stars, which we leave as we found them, and to promise eternity to themselves dead and extinguished, who as we are born also perish! Hence clearly they also curse pyres and condemn burials by fire, as if every body, even if withdrawn from flames, were not still resolved into earth by years and ages, and it made no difference whether beasts tear, seas consume, soil cover, or flame take away, since for corpses every burial, if they feel, is a penalty, if they do not feel, medicine by the very speed of finishing.

Deceived by this error they promise themselves, as to the good, a blessed and perpetual life when dead, and to the rest, as to the unjust, everlasting penalty. Many things are at hand for these points, if the speech were not hurrying. I do not even much labor that they themselves are the unjust; I have already taught it: although, even if I granted them just, I know that fault or innocence is attributed to fate in the judgments of very many. And this is your agreement too; for whatever we do, as others say by fate so you say by God: thus the eager of your sect are not spontaneous but chosen. Therefore you fashion an unjust judge who punishes lot in humans, not will.

"Still I would like to inquire whether rising is with bodies or without bodies, and with which bodies—the same or renewed. Without body? This, as far as I know, is neither mind nor soul nor life. With the same body? But it has already fallen apart before. With another body? Then a new human is born; that prior one is not restored. And yet so great an age has gone, countless centuries have flowed; who is there, even one, who has returned from the dead even by Protesilaus's lot, with leave of hours at least granted, or that by example we might believe? All those fictions of a sickly opinion and unfit consolations, played by deceitful poets into the sweetness of song, have by you, too credulous, been shamefully reshaped into your God."