Arnobius, Against the Nations (Book I)

I have discovered that certain people, convinced by their own reasoning that they possess superior wisdom, are in fact raving like fanatics and spouting pronouncements as if they came straight from an oracle. They claim that ever since the Christian religion appeared in the world, the earth has been ruined and the human race overwhelmed by every kind of misery. They even assert that the heavenly powers have abandoned their age-old duty of overseeing human affairs and have been driven from the regions of the earth. I have therefore decided, within the limits of my ability and my plain style, to confront this envy and dismantle these slanderous charges. I must act so that these accusers do not mistake their popular rhetoric for real substance, nor imagine that our silence would concede them a victory won by the weakness of their own case, not by any failure of its defenders.

I will not deny that their accusation carries great weight and that we deserve hostile hatred — if it can be proven that among us exist the causes that made the world stray from its laws, that exterminated the gods, and that imported such vast sorrows into the ages. Let us therefore examine the thinking behind this opinion and the actual claims being made. Setting aside all partisan zeal that usually obscures and buries the truth, let us weigh the evidence on balanced scales. A chain of rigorous reasoning will certainly show that the impious ones are not us, but the accusers themselves — those who boast of cultivating the divine and clinging to ancient rites.

First, I put this question to them in a calm and reasonable tone: since the name of the Christian religion began to exist on earth, what unseen disaster, what unknown cataclysm, what violation of the fundamental laws of nature has the world itself experienced or suffered? Have the primary elements, from which all things are composed, been transmuted into opposite qualities? Has any part of the cosmic machine that envelops and contains us been loosened or dissolved? Has the world's rotation, which governs the primal motion, begun to drag or to race, or has it been seized by a headlong, precipitous speed? Have the stars started rising in the west and setting in the east? Has the sun, the prince of the stars, which clothes all things in light and animates them with heat, flared up or gone cold, corrupting the balanced temperaments of its usual course? Has the moon ceased to renew itself and return to its ancient phases through the constant cycle of waxing and waning? Have cold, heat, and the moderate temperatures of the irregular seasons perished in confusion? Has winter begun to stretch its days long and summer nights to recall the latest dawns? Have the winds breathed their last? Have the lightning flashes died out, so that the sky no longer condenses into clouds and rain-moistened fields no longer follow? Does the earth refuse the seed committed to it? Do trees refuse to put forth leaves? Have the flavor of edible fruits and the juice of the vine been altered? Does the oil pressed from olives no longer feed lamps when they go out? Do land animals and sea creatures no longer breed or conceive? Do fetuses no longer develop in the womb according to their nature and law? Finally, do human beings — scattered by the first seafaring to the world's uninhabitable shores — no longer join in marriage with solemn rites? Do they no longer beget children, conduct public and private business, or manage their households? Do they no longer direct their talents through diverse arts and disciplines as they please, and reap the returns of their labors? Do those to whom the lot of rule has fallen no longer reign or command? Are they not daily growing greater in dignity and power? Do they not preside over courts, interpret laws, and administer justice? Do not all the other institutions that sustain and structure human life continue to be observed in every nation according to ancestral custom?