1. Hesiod, Works And Days, 156-157, 159-173, 158 (8th cent. BCE - 7th cent. BCE) Tagged with subjects: •nan Found in books: Wolfsdorf (2020) 605 | 158. Yes, black death took them off, although they’d been |
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| 2. Pindar, Olympian Odes, 2.58-2.80 (6th cent. BCE - 5th cent. BCE) Tagged with subjects: •nan Found in books: Wolfsdorf (2020) 605 |
| 3. Pindar, Fragments, 133, 131 (6th cent. BCE - 5th cent. BCE) Tagged with subjects: •nan Found in books: Wolfsdorf (2020) 605 |
| 4. Empedocles, Fragments, None (5th cent. BCE - 5th cent. BCE) Tagged with subjects: •nan Found in books: Wolfsdorf (2020) 61, 68, 69, 70 |
| 5. Sophocles, Fragments, 753 (5th cent. BCE - 5th cent. BCE) Tagged with subjects: •metempsychosis (transmigration of soul, reincarnation), orphic beliefs Found in books: Wolfsdorf (2020) 601 |
| 6. Sophocles Iunior, Fragments, 753 (5th cent. BCE - 4th cent. BCE) Tagged with subjects: •metempsychosis (transmigration of soul, reincarnation), orphic beliefs Found in books: Wolfsdorf (2020) 601 |
| 7. Plato, Laws, None (5th cent. BCE - 4th cent. BCE) Tagged with subjects: •metempsychosis (transmigration of soul, reincarnation), in empedocles Found in books: Wolfsdorf (2020) 61 |
8. Aristophanes, Peace, 375, 374 (5th cent. BCE - 4th cent. BCE) Tagged with subjects: •nan Found in books: Wolfsdorf (2020) 600| 374. ἐς χοιρίδιόν μοί νυν δάνεισον τρεῖς δραχμάς: | |
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| 9. Euripides, Antiope (Fragmenta Antiopes ), None (5th cent. BCE - 5th cent. BCE) Tagged with subjects: •metempsychosis (transmigration of soul, reincarnation), pythagoreanism •metempsychosis (transmigration of soul, reincarnation), in empedocles Found in books: Wolfsdorf (2020) 60 |
| 10. Plato, Meno, None (5th cent. BCE - 4th cent. BCE) Tagged with subjects: •nan Found in books: Wolfsdorf (2020) 605 |
| 11. Plato, Republic, None (5th cent. BCE - 4th cent. BCE) Tagged with subjects: •metempsychosis (transmigration of soul, reincarnation), orphic beliefs •metempsychosis (transmigration of soul, reincarnation), pythagoreanism Found in books: Wolfsdorf (2020) 600 |
| 12. Aristotle, Metaphysics, None (4th cent. BCE - 4th cent. BCE) Tagged with subjects: •nan Found in books: Wolfsdorf (2020) 68 |
| 13. Aristotle, Rhetoric, None (4th cent. BCE - 4th cent. BCE) Tagged with subjects: •nan Found in books: Wolfsdorf (2020) 63, 68 |
| 14. Aristotle, Physics, None (4th cent. BCE - 4th cent. BCE) Tagged with subjects: •nan Found in books: Wolfsdorf (2020) 63 |
| 15. Aristotle, Generation And Corruption, None (4th cent. BCE - 4th cent. BCE) Tagged with subjects: •nan Found in books: Wolfsdorf (2020) 64 |
| 16. Aristotle, Soul, None (4th cent. BCE - 4th cent. BCE) Tagged with subjects: •metempsychosis (transmigration of soul, reincarnation), pythagoreanism Found in books: Wolfsdorf (2020) 562 |
| 17. Aristoxenus, Fragments, 39, 41 (4th cent. BCE - 3rd cent. BCE) Tagged with subjects: •nan Found in books: Wolfsdorf (2020) 709 |
| 18. Plutarch, On The Face Which Appears In The Orb of The Moon, None (1st cent. CE - 2nd cent. CE) Tagged with subjects: •metempsychosis (transmigration of soul, reincarnation), in empedocles Found in books: Wolfsdorf (2020) 64 |
| 19. Plutarch, Table Talk, None (1st cent. CE - 2nd cent. CE) Tagged with subjects: •nan Found in books: Wolfsdorf (2020) 12 |
20. Dio Chrysostom, Orations, 30.17 (1st cent. CE - missingth cent. CE) Tagged with subjects: •metempsychosis (transmigration of soul, reincarnation), pythagoreanism Found in books: Wolfsdorf (2020) 562 | 30.17. "Such, then, are the tortures, and so numerous, by which men are afflicted while they remain in this prison and dungeon, each for his appointed time; and the majority do not get out until they produce another person from their own loins and leave him to succeed to the punishment in their stead, some leaving one and others even more. They do not stay voluntarily, but are all bound fast by one chain, body and soul, just as you may see many persons bound by us by one chain in a row, some of them small, some large, some ugly and some good looking; but none the less all of them are held on equal terms in the same constraint. |
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| 21. Plutarch, Fragments, 93 (1st cent. CE - 2nd cent. CE) Tagged with subjects: •metempsychosis (transmigration of soul, reincarnation), pythagoreanism Found in books: Wolfsdorf (2020) 12 |
22. Plutarch, Roman Questions, None (1st cent. CE - 2nd cent. CE) Tagged with subjects: •metempsychosis (transmigration of soul, reincarnation), pythagoreanism Found in books: Wolfsdorf (2020) 12 | 290e. For what reason was it forbidden the priest of Jupiter to touch ivy or to pass along a road overhung by a vine growing on a tree? Is this second question like the precepts: "Do not eat seated on a stool," "Do not sit on a peck measure," "Do not step over a broom"? For the followers of Pythagoras did not really fear these things nor guard against them, but forbade other things through these. Likewise the walking under a vine had reference to wine, signifying that it is not right for the priest to get drunk; for wine is over the heads of drunken men, and they are oppressed and humbled thereby, |
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| 23. Gellius, Attic Nights, 4.11.12 (2nd cent. CE - 2nd cent. CE) Tagged with subjects: •metempsychosis (transmigration of soul, reincarnation), pythagoreanism Found in books: Wolfsdorf (2020) 11 |
| 24. Clement of Alexandria, Miscellanies, 4.155 (2nd cent. CE - 3rd cent. CE) Tagged with subjects: •metempsychosis (transmigration of soul, reincarnation), pythagoreanism •metempsychosis (transmigration of soul, reincarnation), in empedocles Found in books: Wolfsdorf (2020) 12, 60 |
| 25. Athenaeus, The Learned Banquet, None (2nd cent. CE - 3rd cent. CE) Tagged with subjects: •metempsychosis (transmigration of soul, reincarnation), pythagoreanism Found in books: Wolfsdorf (2020) 12 |
| 26. Hippolytus, Refutation of All Heresies, 6.26.1, 6.27.5 (2nd cent. CE - 3rd cent. CE) Tagged with subjects: •metempsychosis (transmigration of soul, reincarnation), pythagoreanism Found in books: Wolfsdorf (2020) 11, 12, 562 |
| 27. Aelian, Varia Historia, 4.17 (2nd cent. CE - 3rd cent. CE) Tagged with subjects: •metempsychosis (transmigration of soul, reincarnation), pythagoreanism Found in books: Wolfsdorf (2020) 11 |
| 28. Sextus, Against The Mathematicians, 9.126-9.129 (2nd cent. CE - 3rd cent. CE) Tagged with subjects: •metempsychosis (transmigration of soul, reincarnation), in empedocles Found in books: Wolfsdorf (2020) 62 |
| 29. Porphyry, Life of Pythagoras, 105, 109, 179, 186, 19, 42-43, 45, 47-48, 82, 84-85, 98, 155 (3rd cent. CE - 4th cent. CE) Tagged with subjects: •nan Found in books: Wolfsdorf (2020) 12 |
30. Diogenes Laertius, Lives of The Philosophers, 8.5, 8.17-8.19, 8.24, 8.33-8.34, 8.36, 8.77 (3rd cent. CE - 3rd cent. CE) Tagged with subjects: •metempsychosis (transmigration of soul, reincarnation) •metempsychosis (transmigration of soul, reincarnation), pythagoreanism •metempsychosis (transmigration of soul, reincarnation), in empedocles Found in books: Wolfsdorf (2020) 11, 12, 60, 61, 70, 562 | 8.5. When Euphorbus died, his soul passed into Hermotimus, and he also, wishing to authenticate the story, went up to the temple of Apollo at Branchidae, where he identified the shield which Menelaus, on his voyage home from Troy, had dedicated to Apollo, so he said: the shield being now so rotten through and through that the ivory facing only was left. When Hermotimus died, he became Pyrrhus, a fisherman of Delos, and again he remembered everything, how he was first Aethalides, then Euphorbus, then Hermotimus, and then Pyrrhus. But when Pyrrhus died, he became Pythagoras, and still remembered all the facts mentioned. 8.17. The following were his watchwords or precepts: don't stir the fire with a knife, don't step over the beam of a balance, don't sit down on your bushel, don't eat your heart, don't help a man off with a load but help him on, always roll your bed-clothes up, don't put God's image on the circle of a ring, don't leave the pan's imprint on the ashes, don't wipe up a mess with a torch, don't commit a nuisance towards the sun, don't walk the highway, don't shake hands too eagerly, don't have swallows under your own roof, don't keep birds with hooked claws, don't make water on nor stand upon your nail-and hair-trimmings, turn the sharp blade away, when you go abroad don't turn round at the frontier. 8.18. This is what they meant. Don't stir the fire with a knife: don't stir the passions or the swelling pride of the great. Don't step over the beam of a balance: don't overstep the bounds of equity and justice. Don't sit down on your bushel: have the same care of to-day and the future, a bushel being the day's ration. By not eating your heart he meant not wasting your life in troubles and pains. By saying do not turn round when you go abroad, he meant to advise those who are departing this life not to set their hearts' desire on living nor to be too much attracted by the pleasures of this life. The explanations of the rest are similar and would take too long to set out. 8.19. Above all, he forbade as food red mullet and blacktail, and he enjoined abstinence from the hearts of animals and from beans, and sometimes, according to Aristotle, even from paunch and gurnard. Some say that he contented himself with just some honey or a honeycomb or bread, never touching wine in the daytime, and with greens boiled or raw for dainties, and fish but rarely. His robe was white and spotless, his quilts of white wool, for linen had not yet reached those parts. 8.24. to respect all divination, to sing to the lyre and by hymns to show due gratitude to gods and to good men. To abstain from beans because they are flatulent and partake most of the breath of life; and besides, it is better for the stomach if they are not taken, and this again will make our dreams in sleep smooth and untroubled.Alexander in his Successions of Philosophers says that he found in the Pythagorean memoirs the following tenets as well. 8.33. Right has the force of an oath, and that is why Zeus is called the God of Oaths. Virtue is harmony, and so are health and all good and God himself; this is why they say that all things are constructed according to the laws of harmony. The love of friends is just concord and equality. We should not pay equal worship to gods and heroes, but to the gods always, with reverent silence, in white robes, and after purification, to the heroes only from midday onwards. Purification is by cleansing, baptism and lustration, and by keeping clean from all deaths and births and all pollution, and abstaining from meat and flesh of animals that have died, mullets, gurnards, eggs and egg-sprung animals, beans, and the other abstinences prescribed by those who perform rites in the sanctuaries. 8.34. According to Aristotle in his work On the Pythagoreans, Pythagoras counselled abstinence from beans either because they are like the genitals, or because they are like the gates of Hades . . . as being alone unjointed, or because they are injurious, or because they are like the form of the universe, or because they belong to oligarchy, since they are used in election by lot. He bade his disciples not to pick up fallen crumbs, either in order to accustom them not to eat immoderately, or because connected with a person's death; nay, even, according to Aristophanes, crumbs belong to the heroes, for in his Heroes he says:Nor taste ye of what falls beneath the board !Another of his precepts was not to eat white cocks, as being sacred to the Month and wearing suppliant garb – now supplication ranked with things good – sacred to the Month because they announce the time of day; and again white represents the nature of the good, black the nature of evil. Not to touch such fish as were sacred; for it is not right that gods and men should be allotted the same things, any more than free men and slaves. 8.36. This is what Alexander says that he found in the Pythagorean memoirs. What follows is Aristotle's.But Pythagoras's great dignity not even Timon overlooked, who, although he digs at him in his Silli, speaks ofPythagoras, inclined to witching works and ways,Man-snarer, fond of noble periphrase.Xenophanes confirms the statement about his having been different people at different times in the elegiacs beginning:Now other thoughts, another path, I show.What he says of him is as follows:They say that, passing a belaboured whelp,He, full of pity, spake these words of dole:Stay, smite not ! 'Tis a friend, a human soul;I knew him straight whenas I heard him yelp ! 8.77. The sun he calls a vast collection of fire and larger than the moon; the moon, he says, is of the shape of a quoit, and the heaven itself crystalline. The soul, again, assumes all the various forms of animals and plants. At any rate he says:Before now I was born a boy and a maid, a bush and a bird, and a dumb fish leaping out of the sea.His poems On Nature and Purifications run to 5000 lines, his Discourse on Medicine to 600. of the tragedies we have spoken above. |
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| 31. Iamblichus, Protrepticus, 107.3, 107.14, 107.15, 107.26, 108.8, 108.13, 108.15, 114.12, 114.13, 114.14, 114.15, 114.16, 114.17, 114.18, 114.19, 114.20, 114.21, 114.22, 114.23, 114.24, 114.29-115.18 (3rd cent. CE - 4th cent. CE) Tagged with subjects: •nan Found in books: Wolfsdorf (2020) 11 |
32. Augustine, The City of God, 8.10, 18.41, 18.49-18.50, 22.5 (4th cent. CE - 5th cent. CE) Tagged with subjects: •transmigration of souls, metempsychosis Found in books: Rohmann (2016) 158, 177 | 8.10. For although a Christian man instructed only in ecclesiastical literature may perhaps be ignorant of the very name of Platonists, and may not even know that there have existed two schools of philosophers speaking the Greek tongue, to wit, the Ionic and Italic, he is nevertheless not so deaf with respect to human affairs, as not to know that philosophers profess the study, and even the possession, of wisdom. He is on his guard, however, with respect to those who philosophize according to the elements of this world, not according to God, by whom the world itself was made; for he is warned by the precept of the apostle, and faithfully hears what has been said, Beware that no one deceive you through philosophy and vain deceit, according to the elements of the world. Colossians 2:8 Then, that he may not suppose that all philosophers are such as do this, he hears the same apostle say concerning certain of them, Because that which is known of God is manifest among them, for God has manifested it to them. For His invisible things from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the things which are made, also His eternal power and Godhead. Romans 1:19-20 And, when speaking to the Athenians, after having spoken a mighty thing concerning God, which few are able to understand, In Him we live, and move, and have our being, Acts 17:28 he goes on to say, As certain also of your own have said. He knows well, too, to be on his guard against even these philosophers in their errors. For where it has been said by him, that God has manifested to them by those things which are made His invisible things, that they might be seen by the understanding, there it has also been said that they did not rightly worship God Himself, because they paid divine honors, which are due to Him alone, to other things also to which they ought not to have paid them -because, knowing God, they glorified Him not as God: neither were thankful, but became vain in their imaginations, and their foolish heart was darkened. Professing themselves to be wise, they became fools, and changed the glory of the incorruptible God into the likeness of the image of corruptible man, and of birds, and fourfooted beasts, and creeping things; Romans 1:21-23 - where the apostle would have us understand him as meaning the Romans, and Greeks, and Egyptians, who gloried in the name of wisdom; but concerning this we will dispute with them afterwards. With respect, however, to that wherein they agree with us we prefer them to all others namely, concerning the one God, the author of this universe, who is not only above every body, being incorporeal, but also above all souls, being incorruptible - our principle, our light, our good. And though the Christian man, being ignorant of their writings, does not use in disputation words which he has not learned - not calling that part of philosophy natural (which is the Latin term), or physical (which is the Greek one), which treats of the investigation of nature; or that part rational, or logical, which deals with the question how truth may be discovered; or that part moral, or ethical, which concerns morals, and shows how good is to be sought, and evil to be shunned - he is not, therefore, ignorant that it is from the one true and supremely good God that we have that nature in which we are made in the image of God, and that doctrine by which we know Him and ourselves, and that grace through which, by cleaving to Him, we are blessed. This, therefore, is the cause why we prefer these to all the others, because, while other philosophers have worn out their minds and powers in seeking the causes of things, and endeavoring to discover the right mode of learning and of living, these, by knowing God, have found where resides the cause by which the universe has been constituted, and the light by which truth is to be discovered, and the fountain at which felicity is to be drunk. All philosophers, then, who have had these thoughts concerning God, whether Platonists or others, agree with us. But we have thought it better to plead our cause with the Platonists, because their writings are better known. For the Greeks, whose tongue holds the highest place among the languages of the Gentiles, are loud in their praises of these writings; and the Latins, taken with their excellence, or their renown, have studied them more heartily than other writings, and, by translating them into our tongue, have given them greater celebrity and notoriety. 18.41. But let us omit further examination of history, and return to the philosophers from whom we digressed to these things. They seem to have labored in their studies for no other end than to find out how to live in a way proper for laying hold of blessedness. Why, then, have the disciples dissented from their masters, and the fellow disciples from one another, except because as men they have sought after these things by human sense and human reasonings? Now, although there might be among them a desire of glory, so that each wished to be thought wiser and more acute than another, and in no way addicted to the judgment of others, but the inventor of his own dogma and opinion, yet I may grant that there were some, or even very many of them, whose love of truth severed them from their teachers or fellow disciples, that they might strive for what they thought was the truth, whether it was so or not. But what can human misery do, or how or where can it reach forth, so as to attain blessedness, if divine authority does not lead it? Finally, let our authors, among whom the canon of the sacred books is fixed and bounded, be far from disagreeing in any respect. It is not without good reason, then, that not merely a few people prating in the schools and gymnasia in captious disputations, but so many and great people, both learned and unlearned, in countries and cities, have believed that God spoke to them or by them, i.e. the canonical writers, when they wrote these books. There ought, indeed, to be but few of them, lest on account of their multitude what ought to be religiously esteemed should grow cheap; and yet not so few that their agreement should not be wonderful. For among the multitude of philosophers, who in their works have left behind them the monuments of their dogmas, no one will easily find any who agree in all their opinions. But to show this is too long a task for this work. But what author of any sect is so approved in this demon-worshipping city, that the rest who have differed from or opposed him in opinion have been disapproved? The Epicureans asserted that human affairs were not under the providence of the gods; and the Stoics, holding the opposite opinion, agreed that they were ruled and defended by favorable and tutelary gods. Yet were not both sects famous among the Athenians? I wonder, then, why Anaxagoras was accused of a crime for saying that the sun was a burning stone, and denying that it was a god at all; while in the same city Epicurus flourished gloriously and lived securely, although he not only did not believe that the sun or any star was a god, but contended that neither Jupiter nor any of the gods dwelt in the world at all, so that the prayers and supplications of men might reach them! Were not both Aristippus and Antisthenes there, two noble philosophers and both Socratic? Yet they placed the chief end of life within bounds so diverse and contradictory, that the first made the delight of the body the chief good, while the other asserted that man was made happy mainly by the virtue of the mind. The one also said that the wise man should flee from the republic; the other, that he should administer its affairs. Yet did not each gather disciples to follow his own sect? Indeed, in the conspicuous and well-known porch, in gymnasia, in gardens, in places public and private, they openly strove in bands each for his own opinion, some asserting there was one world, others innumerable worlds; some that this world had a beginning, others that it had not; some that it would perish, others that it would exist always; some that it was governed by the divine mind, others by chance and accident; some that souls are immortal, others that they are mortal - and of those who asserted their immortality, some said they transmigrated through beasts, others that it was by no means so; while of those who asserted their mortality, some said they perished immediately after the body, others that they survived either a little while or a longer time, but not always; some fixing supreme good in the body, some in the mind, some in both; others adding to the mind and body external good things; some thinking that the bodily senses ought to be trusted always, some not always, others never. Now what people, senate, power, or public dignity of the impious city has ever taken care to judge between all these and other nearly innumerable dissensions of the philosophers, approving and accepting some, and disapproving and rejecting others? Has it not held in its bosom at random, without any judgment, and confusedly, so many controversies of men at variance, not about fields, houses, or anything of a pecuniary nature, but about those things which make life either miserable or happy? Even if some true things were said in it, yet falsehoods were uttered with the same licence; so that such a city has not amiss received the title of the mystic Babylon. For Babylon means confusion, as we remember we have already explained. Nor does it matter to the devil, its king, how they wrangle among themselves in contradictory errors, since all alike deservedly belong to him on account of their great and varied impiety. But that nation, that people, that city, that republic, these Israelites, to whom the oracles of God were entrusted, by no means confounded with similar licence false prophets with the true prophets; but, agreeing together, and differing in nothing, acknowledged and upheld the authentic authors of their sacred books. These were their philosophers, these were their sages, divines, prophets, and teachers of probity and piety. Whoever was wise and lived according to them was wise and lived not according to men, but according to God who has spoken by them. If sacrilege is forbidden there, God has forbidden it. If it is said, Honor your father and your mother, Exodus 20:12 God has commanded it. If it is said, You shall not commit adultery, You shall not kill, You shall not steal, and other similar commandments, not human lips but the divine oracles have enounced them. Whatever truth certain philosophers, amid their false opinions, were able to see, and strove by laborious discussions to persuade men of - such as that God had made this world, and Himself most providently governs it, or of the nobility of the virtues, of the love of country, of fidelity in friendship, of good works and everything pertaining to virtuous manners, although they knew not to what end and what rule all these things were to be referred - all these, by words prophetic, that is, divine, although spoken by men, were commended to the people in that city, and not inculcated by contention in arguments, so that he who should know them might be afraid of contemning, not the wit of men, but the oracle of God. 18.49. In this wicked world, in these evil days, when the Church measures her future loftiness by her present humility, and is exercised by goading fears, tormenting sorrows, disquieting labors, and dangerous temptations, when she soberly rejoices, rejoicing only in hope, there are many reprobate mingled with the good, and both are gathered together by the gospel as in a drag net; Matthew 13:47-50 and in this world, as in a sea, both swim enclosed without distinction in the net, until it is brought ashore, when the wicked must be separated from the good, that in the good, as in His temple, God may be all in all. We acknowledge, indeed, that His word is now fulfilled who spoke in the psalm, and said, I have announced and spoken; they are multiplied above number. This takes place now, since He has spoken, first by the mouth of his forerunner John, and afterward by His own mouth, saying, Repent: for the kingdom of heaven is at hand. He chose disciples, whom He also called apostles, Luke 6:13 of lowly birth, unhonored, and illiterate, so that whatever great thing they might be or do, He might be and do it in them. He had one among them whose wickedness He could use well in order to accomplish His appointed passion, and furnish His Church an example of bearing with the wicked. Having sown the holy gospel as much as that behooved to be done by His bodily presence, He suffered, died, and rose again, showing by His passion what we ought to suffer for the truth, and by His resurrection what we ought to hope for in adversity; saving always the mystery of the sacrament, by which His blood was shed for the remission of sins. He held converse on the earth forty days with His disciples, and in their sight ascended into heaven, and after ten days sent the promised Holy Spirit. It was given as the chief and most necessary sign of His coming on those who had believed, that every one of them spoke in the tongues of all nations; thus signifying that the unity of the Catholic Church would embrace all nations, and would in like manner speak in all tongues. 18.50. Then was fulfilled that prophecy, Out of Sion shall go forth the law, and the word of the Lord out of Jerusalem; Isaiah 2:3 and the prediction of the Lord Christ Himself, when, after the resurrection, He opened the understanding of His amazed disciples that they might understand the Scriptures, and said to them, that thus it is written, and thus it behooved Christ to suffer, and to rise from the dead the third day, and that repentance and remission of sins should be preached in His name among all nations, beginning at Jerusalem. Luke 24:45-47 And again, when, in reply to their questioning about the day of His last coming, He said, It is not for you to know the times or the seasons which the Father has put in His own power; but you shall receive the power of the Holy Ghost coming upon you, and you shall be witnesses unto me both in Jerusalem, and in all Judea, and Samaria, and even unto the ends of the earth. Acts 1:7-8 First of all, the Church spread herself abroad from Jerusalem; and when very many in Judea and Samaria had believed, she also went into other nations by those who announced the gospel, whom, as lights, He Himself had both prepared by His word and kindled by His Holy Spirit. For He had said to them, Fear not them which kill the body, but are not able to kill the soul. Matthew 10:28 And that they might not be frozen with fear, they burned with the fire of charity. Finally, the gospel of Christ was preached in the whole world, not only by those who had seen and heard Him both before His passion and after His resurrection, but also after their death by their successors, amid the horrible persecutions, diverse torments and deaths of the martyrs, God also bearing them witness, both with signs and wonders, and various miracles and gifts of the Holy Ghost, Hebrews 2:4 that the people of the nations, believing in Him who was crucified for their redemption, might venerate with Christian love the blood of the martyrs which they had poured forth with devilish fury, and the very kings by whose laws the Church had been laid waste might become profitably subject to that name they had cruelly striven to take away from the earth, and might begin to persecute the false gods for whose sake the worshippers of the true God had formerly been persecuted. 22.5. But granting that this was once incredible, behold, now, the world has come to the belief that the earthly body of Christ was received up into heaven. Already both the learned and unlearned have believed in the resurrection of the flesh and its ascension to the heavenly places, while only a very few either of the educated or uneducated are still staggered by it. If this is a credible thing which is believed, then let those who do not believe see how stolid they are; and if it is incredible, then this also is an incredible thing, that what is incredible should have received such credit. Here then we have two incredibles - to wit, the resurrection of our body to eternity, and that the world should believe so incredible a thing; and both these incredibles the same God predicted should come to pass before either had as yet occurred. We see that already one of the two has come to pass, for the world has believed what was incredible; why should we despair that the remaining one shall also come to pass, and that this which the world believed, though it was incredible, shall itself occur? For already that which was equally incredible has come to pass, in the world's believing an incredible thing. Both were incredible: the one we see accomplished, the other we believe shall be; for both were predicted in those same Scriptures by means of which the world believed. And the very manner in which the world's faith was won is found to be even more incredible if we consider it. Men uninstructed in any branch of a liberal education, without any of the refinement of heathen learning, unskilled in grammar, not armed with dialectic, not adorned with rhetoric, but plain fishermen, and very few in number - these were the men whom Christ sent with the nets of faith to the sea of this world, and thus took out of every race so many fishes, and even the philosophers themselves, wonderful as they are rare. Let us add, if you please, or because you ought to be pleased, this third incredible thing to the two former. And now we have three incredibles, all of which have yet come to pass. It is incredible that Jesus Christ should have risen in the flesh and ascended with flesh into heaven; it is incredible that the world should have believed so incredible a thing; it is incredible that a very few men, of mean birth and the lowest rank, and no education, should have been able so effectually to persuade the world, and even its learned men, of so incredible a thing. of these three incredibles, the parties with whom we are debating refuse to believe the first; they cannot refuse to see the second, which they are unable to account for if they do not believe the third. It is indubitable that the resurrection of Christ, and His ascension into heaven with the flesh in which He rose, is already preached and believed in the whole world. If it is not credible, how is it that it has already received credence in the whole world? If a number of noble, exalted, and learned men had said that they had witnessed it, and had been at pains to publish what they had witnessed, it were not wonderful that the world should have believed it, but it were very stubborn to refuse credence; but if, as is true, the world has believed a few obscure, inconsiderable, uneducated persons, who state and write that they witnessed it, is it not unreasonable that a handful of wrong-headed men should oppose themselves to the creed of the whole world, and refuse their belief? And if the world has put faith in a small number of men, of mean birth and the lowest rank, and no education, it is because the divinity of the thing itself appeared all the more manifestly in such contemptible witnesses. The eloquence, indeed, which lent persuasion to their message, consisted of wonderful works, not words. For they who had not seen Christ risen in the flesh, nor ascending into heaven with His risen body, believed those who related how they had seen these things, and who testified not only with words but wonderful signs. For men whom they knew to be acquainted with only one, or at most two languages, they marvelled to hear speaking in the tongues of all nations. They saw a man, lame from his mother's womb, after forty years stand up sound at their word in the name of Christ; that handkerchiefs taken from their bodies had virtue to heal the sick; that countless persons, sick of various diseases, were laid in a row in the road where they were to pass, that their shadow might fall on them as they walked, and that they immediately received health; that many other stupendous miracles were wrought by them in the name of Christ; and, finally, that they even raised the dead. If it be admitted that these things occurred as they are related, then we have a multitude of incredible things to add to those three incredibles. That the one incredibility of the resurrection and ascension of Jesus Christ may be believed, we accumulate the testimonies of countless incredible miracles, but even so we do not bend the frightful obstinacy of these sceptics. But if they do not believe that these miracles were wrought by Christ's apostles to gain credence to their preaching of His resurrection and ascension, this one grand miracle suffices for us, that the whole world has believed without any miracles. |
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| 33. Hegomonius, Acta Archelai, 26-31, 25 (4th cent. CE - 4th cent. CE) Tagged with subjects: •nan Found in books: Rohmann (2016) 190 |
| 34. Stobaeus, Anthology, 3.1.199, 3.9.23 (5th cent. CE - 5th cent. CE) Tagged with subjects: •metempsychosis (transmigration of soul, reincarnation), pythagoreanism Found in books: Wolfsdorf (2020) 7, 562 |
| 36. Mani, Kephalaia, 166.31-169.22 Tagged with subjects: •transmigration of souls, metempsychosis Found in books: Rohmann (2016) 190 |
| 37. Androcydes, Apud Tryphon Trop. P., 194.3 Tagged with subjects: •metempsychosis (transmigration of soul, reincarnation), pythagoreanism Found in books: Wolfsdorf (2020) 12 |
| 38. Demetrius of Byzantium, Apud Ath., None Tagged with subjects: •metempsychosis (transmigration of soul, reincarnation), pythagoreanism Found in books: Wolfsdorf (2020) 12 |
| 41. Anon., Vita Symeonis Stylitae Iunioris, 164, 157 Tagged with subjects: •nan Found in books: Rohmann (2016) 106 |
| 49. Dichaearchus, Fr., None Tagged with subjects: •metempsychosis (transmigration of soul, reincarnation), in empedocles Found in books: Wolfsdorf (2020) 61 |
| 50. Empedocles, Inv., None Tagged with subjects: •nan Found in books: Wolfsdorf (2020) 70 |
| 51. Empedocles, Papyrus Strasbourg Graecus, None Tagged with subjects: •nan Found in books: Wolfsdorf (2020) 62, 68 |
| 54. Empedocles, Peri Physeos, 1.240-1.244, 1.252-1.257, 1.267, 1.269-1.272, 1.287, 1.303 Tagged with subjects: •metempsychosis (transmigration of soul, reincarnation) Found in books: Wolfsdorf (2020) 68, 70, 71 |
| 56. Solon, Ep., 3 Tagged with subjects: •metempsychosis (transmigration of soul, reincarnation), pythagoreanism Found in books: Wolfsdorf (2020) 562 |
| 58. Aristotle, [Oeconomica], None Tagged with subjects: •nan Found in books: Wolfsdorf (2020) 12 |
