Minucius Felix, Octavius 38
That we scorn leftovers of sacrifices and sipped cups is not a confession of fear but an assertion of true liberty. For although everything that is born, as God’s inviolable gift, is corrupted by no work, we abstain nonetheless lest anyone think either that we yield to the demons to whom it was poured or that we are ashamed of our religion. Who then doubts that we indulge spring flowers, when we pluck both the rose of spring and the lily and whatever else in flowers is of sweet color and scent? For we use them both scattered and loose and clasp our necks with soft garlands. That we do not crown the head, forgive: we are used to draw a flower’s good air with the nostrils, not to drink it with the occiput or hair. Nor do we crown the dead. I wonder at you more in this — how you assign to a corpse either a torch if it senses or a crown if it does not, since the blessed does not need flowers and the wretched does not rejoice in them.
But we adorn funerals with the same quiet with which we live, and we do not tie on a withering crown, but keep one vivid with eternal flowers from God: quiet, modest, secure in our God’s generosity, we animate the hope of future happiness by faith in his present majesty. So we both rise blessed and already live by contemplation of what will be. Therefore let Socrates the Attic jester see to it — he who confessed he knew nothing, glorious by the testimony of a most lying demon — and let Arcesilas and Carneades and Pyrrho and the whole Academic crowd deliberate, and let Simonides adjourn forever: we scorn philosophers’ eyebrows, whom we know as corrupters and adulterers and tyrants and always eloquent against their own vices. We display wisdom not by costume but by mind; we do not speak great things but live them; we boast we have obtained what they sought with highest effort and could not find. Why are we ungrateful, why envy ourselves, if the truth of divinity has ripened in the age of our time? Let us enjoy our good and temper the judgment of the right: let superstition be checked, impiety atoned, true religion preserved.
Latin
XXXVIII. "Quod vero sacrificiorum reliquias et pocula delibata contemnimus, non confessio timoris est, sed verae libertatis adsertio. Nam, etsi omne quod nascitur, ut inviolabile dei munus, nullo opere conrumpitur, abstinemus tamen, ne quis existimet aut daemoniis, quibus libatum est, cedere aut nos nostrae religionis pudere. "Quis autem ille qui dubitat, vernis indulgere nos floribus, cum carpamus et rosam veris et lilium et quicquid aliud in floribus blandi coloris et odoris est? His enim et sparsis utimur ac solutis et sertis mollibus colla conplectimur. Sane quod caput non coronamus, ignoscite: auram bonam floris naribus ducere, non occipitio capillisve solemus haurire. "Nec mortuos coronamus. Ego vos in hoc magis miror, quemadmodum tribuatis exanimi aut sentienti facem aut non sentienti coronam, cum et beatus non egeat et miser non gaudeat floribus. At enim nos exsequias adornamus eadem tranquillitate qua vivimus, nec adnectimus arescentem coronam, sed a deo aeternis floribus vividam sustinemus: quieti, modesti, dei nostri liberalitate securi spem futurae felicitatis fide praesentis eius maiestatis animamus.
Sic et beati resurgimus et futuri contemplatione iam 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 conperendinet: 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 invidemus, si veritas divinitatis nostri temporis aetate maturuit? Fruamur bono nostro et recti sententiam temperemus: cohibeatur superstitio, impietas expietur, vera religio reservetur."