Lactantius

“ It is pleasant to find, however, that Christianity is not incapable of meeting all sorts and conditions of men; and Lactantius’ was doubtless the instrument of Providence in bearing the testimony of Jesus, “even before kings,” in language which promised to Roman letters the new and commanding development imparted to its language by Christianity, which has made it imperishable, and more truly “eternal” than Rome itself. ”

“ Besides the Institutions Lactantius wrote several treatises: (1) De Ira Dei, addressed to one Donatus and directed against the Epicurean philosophy. (2) De Opificio Dei sive de Formatione Hominis, his earliest work, and one which reveals very little Christian influence. He exhorts a former pupil, Demetrianus, not to be led astray by wealth from virtue; and he demonstrates the providence of God from the adaptability and beauty of the human body. ”

“ This appears also in his discussion of pagan philosophy and religion, and indeed the chief interest attaching to the books Adversus Nationes is their testimony to the manner in which an educated pagan employed his education in the service of Christianity.
Lactantius (Lucius Cæcilius Firmianus Lactantius) was a pupil of Arnobius, according to Jerome’s statement, and was called by Diocletian with the grammarian Flavius to teach Latin rhetoric at Nicomedia, in Bithynia, a Greek city in which teachers of Latin found few patrons. Lactantius. ”

“ We hear, for example, of another unnamed philosopher who “vomited three books against the Christian religion,” and the violence with which Lactantius denounces him as “an accomplished hypocrite” makes one suspect that his work had a considerable success. Still better known was Hierocles, Governor at one time of Palmyra, and then transferred to the royal province of Bithynia, who wrote a book to which he gave the name of The Friend of Truth, and addressed it, “To the Christians.” ”

“ Nostra religio, vera religio,972 is for him the whole Christian faith and practice as it stood then—the depth of feeling and the acts which gave it outward form. The one true religion can thus be now expressed by the word. In Lactantius, Arnobius, Tertullian, in the third century A.D., this new sense is to be found on almost every page, but a single noble passage of Lactantius must suffice to illustrate it. "The heathen sacrifice," he says, "and leave all their religion in the temple; thus it is that such religiones cannot make men good or firm in their faith. ”

“ It is certain that this...was composed and published while Licinius, sovereign of the East, still preserved the friendship of Constantine and of the Christians. Every reader of taste must perceive that the style is of a very different and inferior character to that of Lactantius; and such, indeed, is the judgment of Le Clerc [2] and Lardner. [3] Three arguments (from the title of the book and from the names of Donatus and Cæcilius) are produced by the advocates of Lactantius. [4] Each of these proofs is, singly, weak and defective; but their concurrence has great weight. ”

“ The sixth book, De Vero Cultu, describes the true worship of God, which is righteousness, and consists chiefly in the exercise of Christian love towards God and man. The seventh book, De Vita Beata, discusses, among a variety of subjects, the chief good, immortality, the second advent and the resurrection. Jerome states that Lactantius wrote an epitome of these Institutions, and such a work, which may well be authentic, was discovered in MS. in the royal library at Turin in 1711 by C. M. Pfaff. ”

“ Footnotes ↑ Fill up and complete the outline which he has conceived. ↑ Lactantius charges Cicero with want of courage, in being unwilling to declare the truth to the Romans, lest he should incur the peril of death. The fortitude with which Socrates underwent death, when condemned by the Athenians, is related by Xenophon and Plato. ↑ Lactantius here follows Plato, who placed the essence of man in the intellectual soul. The body, however, as well as the soul, is of the essence of man; but Lactantius seems to limit the name of man to the higher and more worthy part. ”

“ Lactantius does not know what to say to those who, having fallen into such an error, persevere in their folly (stultitia) , and defend one vain thing by another, but sometimes he supposes that they philosophize in jest, or knowingly defend falsehoods to display their ingenuity. Space alone prevents his proving that it is impossible for heaven to be below the earth. ”

“ The treatise on The Anger of God is directed mainly against the tenets of the Epicureans and Stoics, who maintained that the deeds of men could produce no emotions of pleasure or anger in the Deity. Lactantius holds that the love of the good necessarily implies the hatred of evil; and that the tenets of these philosophers, as tending to overthrow the doctrine of future rewards and punishments, are subversive of the principles of true religion. ”

“ Constantine was greatly influenced by such testimonies, if we may judge from his own liberal quotations [4] and his comments on the Pollio of Virgil, to which, as a Christian oracle, our author may have introduced him. In short, the day had come in which it could no longer be said with strict propriety of phrase, “Not many mighty, not many noble, are called;” and Lactantius accepted, as his mission, the enforcement, before such a class, of despised truths which the great had persecuted in vain for centuries. ”

“ He and Arnobius furnish but a supplement to the real teachers of the Church, and are not to be always depended on in statements of doctrine. They write like earnest converts, but not like theologians; yet, although their loose expressions are often inconsistent one with another, it is manifest that their design is to support orthodoxy as it had been defined by abler expounders. I think the large respect which Lactantius pays to the testimony of the Sibyls was addressed to the class with which he had to deal. ”

“ The nations shall not be entirely extinguished, but some shall be left as a victory for God, that they may be the occasion of triumph to the righteous and may be subjected to perpetual slavery." [26] The Chiliasm of Lactantius is proved from the Sibylline Oracles and from the philosopher Chrysippus, a Stoic. For the rest Lactantius repeats the traditional Christian and pre-Christian Jewish Chiliastic concepts with very little variation, but it is evident that the fact that the fall of Rome is dreaded will work out a change. ”

“ The monstrosities of idolatry, the disputes of philosophical schools, the aspirations among the best of the sages of antiquity after a divine teaching of some sort—all these facts are fatal to the notion. It is one thing to be able in some degree to appreciate the excellence of revealed truth, and quite another to be competent to discover it for ourselves. Lactantius was right when he exclaimed, as he surveyed the sad and wasteful follies of heathendom, O quam difficilis est ignorantibus veritas, et quam facilis scientibus! ”

“ The Christians had prophesied to Constantine that he would be victorious and he was more than likely to be influenced by their point of view, especially that of Lactantius, the noted rhetorician and teacher, to whom he had entrusted the education of his son, Crispus. Lactantius had just written his work on The Divine Institutes, designed to supersede the less complete treatises of Minucius Felix, Tertullian, and Cyprian. ”

“ For as He distributes to all alike His one light, sends forth His fountains to all, supplies food, and gives the most pleasant rest of sleep; so He bestows on all equity and virtue. In His sight no one is a slave, no one a master; for if all have the same Father, by an equal right we are all children. No one is poor in the sight of God, but he who is without justice; no one is rich, but he who is full of virtues; no one, in short, is excellent, but he who has been good and innocent; no one is most renowned, but he who has abundantly performed works of mercy ”

“ And since He is both faithful to the Most High Father, and beloved by Him, He is not separated from Him; just as the stream is not separated from the fountain, nor the ray from the sun: for the water of the fountain is in the stream, and the light of the sun is in the ray: just as the voice cannot be separated from the mouth, nor the strength or hand from the body. When, therefore, He is also spoken of by the prophets as the hand, and strength, and word of God, there is plainly no separation ”

“ Crosses of various colours were probably amongst the first signs put up by the newly-converted Christians, (as soon as they could effect this with impunity,) on account of the recommendation of the early fathers, and for their beneficial influence. Father Lactantius, who lived in the fourth century, writes—“As Christ, whilst He lived amongst men, put the devils to flight by His [276] words, and restored those to their senses whom these evil spirits had possessed; so now His followers in the name of their Master, and by the sign of His passion, even exercise the same dominion over them.” ”

“ Let us defraud the righteous, for he is unpleasant to us, and upbraideth us with our offences against the law. He maketh his boast that he has the knowledge of God, and he calleth himself the Son of God. He is made to reprove our thoughts: it grieveth us even to look upon him; for his life is not like the life of others, his ways are of another fashion. We are counted by him as triflers; he withdraweth himself from our ways, as from filthiness ”

“ All the allusion to Lactantius, who laughed at the notion of the earth being round, which was afterwards found true, is to be struck out.
(Cap. 5. lib. i. p. 3) "Copernicus. Si tamen attentius rem consideremus, videbitur hæc quæstio nondum absoluta, et ideireo minime contemnenda. Emend. Si tamen attentius rem consideremus, nihil refert an Terram in medio Mundi, an extra Medium existere, quoad solvendas cœlestium motuum apparentias existimemus." ”

“ For if justice was on the earth in the age which they call “golden,” it is plain that she was driven away by Jupiter, who changed the golden age. But the change of the age and the expulsion of justice is to be deemed nothing else, as I have said, than the laying aside of divine religion, which alone effects that man should esteem man dear, and should know that he is bound to him by the tie of brotherhood, since God is alike a Father to all, so as to share the bounties of the common God and Father with those who do not possess them ”

“ For when that deity had spared neither virgins nor married women, he abstained from Thetis only in consequence of an oracle which foretold that whatever son should be born from her would be greater than his father. And first of all there was in him a want of foreknowledge not befitting a god; for had not Themis related to him future events, he would not have known them of his own accord. But if he is not divine, he is not indeed a god; for the name of divinity is derived from god, as humanity is from man. ”

“ For he cannot in any other way reject the things which are false, or choose and approve of those which are true; but if even by chance he should effect this, he would most surely act the part of the philosopher; and though he could not defend those things by divine testimonies, yet the truth would explain itself by its own light. Wherefore the error of those is incredible, who, when they have approved of any sect, and have devoted themselves to it, condemn all others as false and vain, and arm themselves for battle, neither knowing what they ought to defend nor what to refute ”

“ At the beginning of the fourth century Lactantius struck the key-note of this mode of subordinating all other things in the study of creation to the literal text of Scripture, and he enforces his view of the creation of man by a bit of philology, saying the final being created "is called man because he is made from the ground—homo ex humo." ”

“ And he also, when he had married his sister Rhea, whom in Latin we call Ops, is said to have been warned by an oracle not to bring up his male children, because it would come to pass that he should be driven into banishment by a son. And being in fear of this, it is plain that he did not devour his sons, as the fables report, but put them to death; although it is written in sacred history that Saturn and Ops, and other men, were at that time accustomed to eat human flesh, but that Jupiter, who gave to men laws and civilization, was the first who by an edict prohibited the use of that food. ”

“ What can be spoken with greater truth by him who knew God, than has been said by a man who is ignorant of true religion? For he both expressed the majesty of God, by saying that it is too great for the reflecting powers of the human mind to receive; and he touched upon the very fountain of truth, by perceiving that the life of men is not superfluous, [8] as the Epicureans will have it, but that they make it their endeavour to live to God, if indeed they live with justice and piety. He might have been a true worshipper of God, if any one had pointed out to him God ”

“ In the fifth, sixth, and seventh centuries science made no progress whatever. It was still taught that there were limits to the ocean. Thus Lactantius asserted that there could not be inhabitants beyond the line of the tropics. This Father of the Church considered it a monstrous opinion that the earth is round, that the heavens turn about it, and that all parts of the earth are inhabited. "There are some people," he says, "so extravagant as to persuade themselves that there are men who have their heads downwards and their feet upwards ”