A Source Book for Ancient Church History - Mirrors

378 A Source Book for Ancient Church History[346]use religiously that which they claimed in right of religion. Whydid not they who allege our example practise what we did? TheChurch has no possessions of her own except the faith. Hence areher returns, her increase. The possessions of the Church are themaintenance of the poor. Let them count up how many captivesthe temples have ransomed, what food they have contributed forthe poor, to what exiles they have supplied the means of living.Their lands, then, have been taken away, but not their rights.23. He says the rites of our ancestors ought to be retained. Butwhy, seeing that all things have made a progress toward whatis better?… The day shines not at the beginning, but as timeproceeds it is bright with increase of light and grows warm withincrease of heat.27. We, too, inexperienced in age, have an infancy of oursenses, but, changing as years go by, lay aside the rudimentaryconditions of our faculties.28. Let them say, then, that all things ought to have remainedin their first dark beginnings; that the world covered with darknessis now displeasing because it has brightened with the risingof the sun. And how much more pleasant is it to have dispelledthe darkness of the mind than that of the body, and that the raysof faith should have shone than that of the sun. So, then, theprimeval state of the world, as of all things, has passed away thatthe venerable old age of hoary faith might follow.…30. If the old rites pleased, why did Rome also take up foreignones? I pass over the ground hidden with costly buildings, andshepherds' cottages glittering with degenerate gold. Why, that Imay reply to the very matter which they complain of, have theyeagerly received the images of captured cities, and conqueredgods, and the foreign rites of alien superstition? Whence, then, isthe pattern of Cybele washing her chariots in a stream counterfeitingthe Almo? Whence were the Phrygian prophets and thedeities of unjust Carthage, always hateful to the Romans? And hewhom the Africans worship as Celestis, the Persians as Mithra,