Tfhio - JScholarship - Johns Hopkins University

APOLOGETICVS 48 139
thou shalt come into being. Give, if thou canst, a reason
why thou wast created, and then ask how thou wilt come to
be. And yet thou wilt of course more easily become what
thou at one time wast, because with equal ease thou becamest
what thou wast never at any time. There will be doubt felt,
I beheve, about the strength of God, who planted (in the void)
this so great body of the universe from that which had never
been, as well as from the death of emptiness and void, animated
by the spirit which gives life to all souls, itself also stamped "by
the example of human resurrection for e-vidence to you. Ligh-t,
though daily destroyed, shines again, and the shades of night
in hke manner departing come up in its place, stars die and
come to life again, the seasons when they are ending are beginning,
fruits are brought to perfection and again return; assuredly
seeds, unless they decay and fall to pieces, do not spring
up in rich fruitfuhiess, all things are preserved by perishing, all
things are formed again from death. Thou, 0 man, a name of
such might, if thou wouldst understand thyself, learning even
from the inscription of the Pythian priestess, thou who art lord
of aU that die and rise again, wilt thou die to this end, so as to
perish for ever ? Into whatever substance thou shalt have been
resolved, whatsoever material has destroyed thee, swallowed
thee up, effaced thee, wasted thee to nothing, it will give thee
back (to life). Nothingness itself belongs to him to whom the
whole also belongs. 'Therefore,' you say, 'one must always
be dying and always rising again.' If the Lord of the world
had so appointed, it would have been against your will that
you would experience that law of your creation. But as
matters are, he has appointed it exactly as he declared. That
same Reason which' constructed the universe out of diversity,
so that all things should consist of rival substances under the
bond of unity, as of empty and solid, of animate and inanimate,
of things tangible and intangible, of light and darkness, of life
itself, and death, the same Reason has also so disposed the
whole course of existence as to make time consist of two parts
so determined and distinct, that this first part in which we dwell
should flow down in an age of time from the beginning of things
to the end, but that the second part which we await should be
extended to an endless eternity. When therefore the end and
mid boundary, which yawns between, has come, so that even
the fashion of the universe itself has passed away, which is
equally a matter of time, spread like a curtain in front of that
system of eternity, then will the whole human race be restored
to settle what of good or e-vil it has earned in this hfe, and there-