Mockery of Christian resurrection and final judgment
Caecilius is still attacking Christian beliefs, now ridiculing their expectation of resurrection and their idea of a judging God.
What about this? They threaten the whole world and the universe itself, stars and all, with fire, and plot its ruin. As if the eternal order established by nature's divine laws could be thrown into confusion, or the covenant binding all the elements could be broken, the heavenly frame torn apart, and this great mass that contains and encircles us could be overthrown.
Not content with this mad opinion, they pile on old wives' tales and attach them to it. They claim they will be born again after death, from ashes and embers, and with some kind of confidence they believe each other's lies. You would think they had already come back to life.
A double evil and twin madness: to announce destruction for heaven and the stars, which we leave behind just as we found them, while promising eternity to themselves, dead and extinguished, born and perishing just like the rest of us!
That is obviously why they curse funeral pyres and condemn burial by fire. As if every body, even if it is snatched from the flames, does not still dissolve into the earth over years and ages. What difference does it make whether wild beasts tear it apart, the sea consumes it, the ground covers it, or fire carries it away? For corpses, every form of burial is a punishment if they can feel, and if they cannot feel, the very speed of destruction is a remedy.
Deceived by this error, they promise themselves a blessed and everlasting life after death, as if they were good, and threaten everyone else with eternal punishment, as if they were wicked. Much more could be added to this, if my speech were not in a hurry. That they themselves are the wicked ones I have already shown, and I need not labor the point. And yet, even if I granted that they were good, most people hold that guilt or innocence is assigned by fate, and this is your own view as well.
For whatever we do, you attribute to God just as others attribute it to fate. So your sect desires not willing ones but chosen ones. You invent an unjust judge, then, who punishes the lot assigned to human beings, not their will.
Still, I would like to ask: do you rise again with bodies or without bodies, and with what kind of bodies, the same ones or new ones? Without a body? As far as I know, that is neither mind nor soul nor life. With the same body? But it has already fallen apart. With another body? Then a new human being is born, not the former one restored.
And yet so long an age has passed, countless centuries have flowed by. Has any single person ever returned from the dead, even by the lot of Protesilaus, the hero who was granted leave from the underworld for just a few hours, so that we might believe by example?
All these inventions of a diseased imagination and these foolish consolations were played out by lying poets in the sweetness of verse, and you, too credulous, have shamefully remolded them into your god.
Latin
Quid? quod toto orbi et ipsi mundo cum sideribus suis minantur incendium, ruinam moliuntur, quasi aut naturae diuinis legibus constitutus aeternus ordo turbetur aut rupto elementorum omnium foedere et caelesti conpage diuisa moles ista, qua continetur et cingitur, subruatur.
nec hac furiosa opinione contenti aniles fabulas adstruunt et adnectunt: renasci se ferunt post mortem et cineres et fauillas et nescio qua fiducia mendaciis suis inuicem credunt: putes eos iam reuixisse.
anceps malum et gemina dementia, caelo et astris, quae sic relinquimus, ut inuenimus, interitum denuntiare, sibi mortuis et extinctis, qui sicut nascimur et interimus, aeternitatem repromittere!
inde uidelicet et execrantur rogos et damnant ignium sepulturas, quasi non omne corpus, etsi flammis subtrahatur, annis tamen et aetatibus in terram resoluatur, nec intersit, utrum ferae diripiant an maria consumant an humus contegat an flamma subducat, cum cadaueribus omnis sepultura, si sentiunt, poena sit, si non sentiunt, ipsa conficiendi celeritate medicina.
hoc errore decepti beatam sibi ut bonis et perpetem uitam mortuis pollicentur, ceteris ut iniustis poenam. sempiternam. multa ad haec subpetunt, ni festinet oratio. iniustos ipsos magis nec laboro, iam docui: quamquam, etsi iustos darem, culpam tamen uel innocentiam fato tribui sententia est plurimorum , etiam uestra consensio est.
nam quicquid agimus, ut alii fato, ita uos deo addicitis: sic sectae uestrae non spontaneos cupere, sed electos.
igitur iniquum iudicem fingitis qui sortem in hominibus puniat, non uoluntatem. uellem tamen sciscitari, utrumne cum corporibus an sine corporibus, et corporibus quibus, ipsisne an innouatis resurgatur? sine corpore? hoc, quod sciam, neque mens neque anima nec uita est. ipso corpore ? sed iam ante dilapsum est. alio corpore? ergo homo nouus nascitur, non prior ille reparatur.
et tamen tanta aetas abiit, saecula innumera fluxerunt: quis unus ullus ab inferis uel Protesilai sorte remeauit, horarum saltem.. permisso commeatu, uel ut exemplo crederemus ?
omnia ista figmenta male sanae opinionis et inepta solacia a poetis fallacibus in dulcedinem carminis lusa a uobis nimium credulis in deum uestrum turpiter reformata sunt.