Ante-Nicene Fathers, Vol II:
ATHENAGORAS: Chapter XXXI.—Confutation of the Other Charges Brought Against the Christians.

Chapter XXXI.—Confutation of the Other Charges Brought Against the Christians.

But they have further also made up stories against us of impious feasts 818 and forbidden intercourse between the sexes, both that they may appear to themselves to have rational grounds of hatred, and because they think either by fear to lead us away from our way of life, or to render the rulers harsh and inexorable by the magnitude of the charges they bring. But they lose their labour with those who know that from of old it has been the custom, and not in our time only, for vice to make war on virtue. Thus Pythagoras, with three hundred others, was burnt to death; Heraclitus and Democritus were banished, the one from the city of the Ephesians, the other from Abdera, because he was charged with being mad; and the Athenians condemned Socrates to death. But as they were none the worse in respect of virtue because of the opinion of the multitude, so neither does the undiscriminating calumny of some persons cast any shade upon us as regards rectitude of life, for with God we stand in good repute. Nevertheless, I will meet these charges also, although I am well assured that by what has been already said I have cleared myself to you. For as you excel all men in intelligence, you know that those whose life is directed towards God as its rule, so that each one among p. 146 us may be blameless and irreproachable before Him, will not entertain even the thought of the slightest sin. For if we believed that we should live only the present life, then we might be suspected of sinning, through being enslaved to flesh and blood, or overmastered by gain or carnal desire; but since we know that God is witness to what we think and what we say both by night and by day, and that He, being Himself light, sees all things in our heart, we are persuaded that when we are removed from the present life we shall live another life, better than the present one, and heavenly, not earthly (since we shall abide near God, and with God, free from all change or suffering in the soul, not as flesh, even though we shall have flesh, 819 but as heavenly spirit), or, falling with the rest, a worse one and in fire; for God has not made us as sheep or beasts of burden, a mere by-work, and that we should perish and be annihilated. On these grounds it is not likely that we should wish to do evil, or deliver ourselves over to the great Judge to be punished.

Footnotes

[“Thyestian feasts” (p. 130, supra); a charge which the Christian Fathers perpetually repel. Of course the sacrament of the Lord’s Supper lent colour to this charge; but it could not have been repelled, had they believed the material body and blood of the “man Christ Jesus,” present in this sacrament. See cap. iii., note.]

[1 Cor. xv. 44. A very clear representation of the apostle’s doctrine. See Kaye, 199; and compare On the Resurrection, cap. xiii.]