The misery and impotence of Christians
Caecilius is still attacking Christianity, now turning from the absurdity of resurrection to the present wretchedness of Christians and their absent God.
You do not even learn a lesson from what is before you, from how empty vows and hollow promises deceive you. Miserable people, while you are still alive, consider what hangs over you after death.
Look at a part of you—and the greater part, the better part, as you say. You are in need, you are cold, you labor in hunger, and God ignores it. He does not want to help his own, or he cannot. So he is either weak or unjust.
You who dream of immortality after death—when you are shaken by danger, when you burn with fever, when you are torn by pain, do you not yet feel your condition? Do you not yet recognize your fragility? Unwilling and miserable, you are convicted of weakness, and you will not admit it.
But I pass over what is common to everyone. Look at what awaits you: threats, punishments, tortures, and crosses now not to be adored but to be endured, and the fires you both predict and fear. Where is that God who can help those rising again but cannot help the living?
Do not the Romans rule and reign without your God, enjoy the whole world, and lord it over you? But you, suspended meanwhile and anxious, abstain from honorable pleasures. You do not visit the shows, you do not attend the processions, public banquets go on without you, sacred games, foods snatched first and drinks tasted at the altars you abhor. So you dread the gods you deny.
You do not weave flowers around your head, you do not honor your body with perfumes. You reserve ointments for funerals, you even deny garlands to tombs, pale and trembling, worthy of pity from our gods. So you neither rise again, miserable ones, nor do you live in the meantime.
Therefore, if you have any wisdom or modesty, stop prying into the plagues of heaven, the fates of the world and its secrets. It is enough to look at what is before your feet, especially for the untaught, the uncultured, the rude, the rustic, who have not been given to understand civil matters, and much more have been denied the right to discuss divine ones.
Latin
Nec saltem de praesentibus capitis experimentum, quam uos inritae pollicitationis cassa uota decipiant: quid post mortem inpendeat, miseri,-dum adhuc uiuitis, aestimate.
ecce pars uestrum, et maior, melior, ut dicitis, egetis algetis, opere fame laboratis, et Deus patitur dissimulat, non uult aut non potest opitulari suis: ita aut inualidus aut iniquus est.
tn, qui inmortalitatem postumam somnias, cum periculo quateris, cum febribus ureris, cum dolore laceraris, nondum condicionem tuam sentis? nondum adgnoscis fragilitatem ? inuitus miser infirmitatis argueris nec fateris.
sed omitto communia. ecce uobis minae, supplicia, tormenta, et iam non adorandae sed subeundae cruces, ignes etiam quos et praedicitis et timetis: ubi deus ille, qui subuenire reuiuescentibus potest, uiuentibus non potest?
nonne Romani sine uestro deo imperant regnant, fruuntur orbe toto uestrique dominantur? uos uero suspensi interim atque solliciti honestis uoluptatibus abstinetis, non spectacula uisitis, non pompis interestis, conuiuia publica absque uobis, sacra certamina, praecerptos cibos et delibatos altaribus potus abhorretis. sic reformidatis deos quos negatis.
non floribus caput nectitis, non corpus odoribus honestatis: reseruatis unguenta funeribus, coronas etiam sepulcris denegatis, pallidi trepidi, misericordia digni, sed nostrorum deorum. ita nec resurgitis miseri nec interim uiuitis.
proinde si quid sapientiae uobis ant uerecundiae est, desinite caeli plagas et mundi fata et secreta rimari: satis est pro pedibus aspicere maxime indoctis, inpolitis, rudibus, agrestibus, quibus non est datum intellegere ciuilia, multo magis denegatum est disserere diuina.