True freedom: rejecting pagan offerings, garlands, and philosophers
Octavius is still answering Caecilius's charges against Christian customs, now explaining why Christians reject sacrificial food, garlands, and pagan philosophy.
As for our contempt for the remnants of sacrifices and the cups that have been libated, this is not a confession of fear but an assertion of true freedom. For although everything that is born is an inviolable gift of God and is corrupted by no work of ours, we still abstain, lest anyone think that we either yield to the demons to whom the offering was made or are ashamed of our religion.
Who, after all, is there who doubts that we indulge ourselves in the flowers of spring, when we pluck the rose of spring and the lily and whatever else among the flowers has pleasing color and scent? For we use them both scattered, soft and loose, and woven into garlands around our necks. Indeed, forgive us for not crowning our heads: we are accustomed to draw the good breath of a flower with our nostrils, not to drink it in through the back of the head or the hair.
Nor do we crown the dead. In this matter I wonder at you all the more: how can you give the dead a torch if they can feel, or a crown if they feel nothing, when the blessed person has no need and the wretched person takes no joy in flowers?
But we adorn our funerals with the same tranquility with which we live, and we do not attach a withering crown, but from God we bear a living crown of eternal flowers. Quiet and modest, made secure by the generosity of our God, we animate our hope of future happiness by faith in his present majesty. Thus we both rise again in blessedness and already live by the contemplation of the future.
So let Socrates, the Atticus jester, look to it—he who confessed he knew nothing, yet boasted in the testimony of a most deceitful demon. Let Arcesilas too, and Carneades and Pyrrho and the whole crowd of Academics deliberate; let Simonides also postpone forever. We despise the arrogance of the philosophers, whom we know as corrupters and adulterers and tyrants, always eloquent against their own vices.
We, who display wisdom not in our dress but in our mind, do not speak great things but live them, and we glory that we have attained what they sought with the utmost effort and could not find. Why are we ungrateful? Why do we begrudge ourselves, if the truth of divinity has matured in the age of our time? Let us enjoy our good and temper our judgment of what is right: let superstition be restrained, let impiety be atoned for, let true religion be preserved.
Latin
Quod uero sacrificiorum reliquias et pocula delibata contemnimus, non confessio timoris est, sed uerae libertatis adsertio. nam etsi omne quod nascitur ut inuiolabile Dei munus nullo opere conrumpitur, abstinemus tamen, ne quis nos existimet aut daemoniis, quibus libatum est, cedere aut nostrae religionis pudere.
quis autem ille qui dubitat, uernis indulgere nos floribus, cum carpamus et rosam ueris et lilium et quicquid aliud in floribus blandi coloris et odoris est ? his enim et sparsis utimur mollibus ac solutis et sertis colla conplectimur. sane quod caput non coronamus, ignoscite: auram bonam floris naribus ducere, non occipitio capillisue solemus haurire.
nec mortuos coronamus. ego uos 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 uiuimus, nec adnectimus arescentem coronam, sed a Deo aeternis floribus uiuidam sustinemus: quieti, modesti, Dei nostri liberalitate securi spem futurae felicitatis fide praesentis eius maiestatis animamus. sic et beati resurgimus et futuri contemplatione iam uiuimus.
proinde Socrates scurra Atticus uiderit, nihil se scire confessus, testimonio licet fallacissimi daemonis gloriosus, Arcesilas quoque et Carneades et Pyrro et omnis Academicorum multitudo deliberet, Simonides etiam in perpetuum conperendinet: philosophorum supercilia contemnimus, quos corruptores et adulteros nouimus et tyrannos et semper aduersus sua uitia facundos.
nos, qui non habitu sapientiam sed mente praeferimus, non eloquimur magna sed uiuimus, gloriamur nos consecutos quod illi summa intentione quaesiuerunt nec inuenire potuerunt. quid ingrati sumus, quid nobis inuidemus, si ueritas diuinitatis nostri temporis aetate maturuit? fruamur bono nostro et recti sententiam temperemus: cohibeatur superstitio, impietas expietur, uera religio reseruetur.