Sacred Texts Christianity Early Church Fathers Index Previous Next
7. You observe how new and terrible a form of oath this is which he describes. The Lord Jesus Christ sits on the tribunal as judge, the angels are assessors, and plead for him; and there, in the intervals of scourgings and tortures, he swears that he will never again have by him the works of heathen authors nor read them. Now look back over the work we are dealing with, and tell me whether there is a single page of it in which he does not again declare himself a Ciceronian, or in which he does not speak of ‘our Tully,’ ‘our Flaccus,’ ‘our Maro.’ 2943 As to Chrysippus and Aristides, Empedocles and all the rest of the Greek writers, he scatters their names around him like a vapour or halo, so as to impress his readers with a sense of his learning and literary attainments. Amongst the rest, he boasts of having read the books of Pythagoras. Many learned men, indeed, declare these books to be non-extant: but he, in order that he may illustrate every part of his vow about heathen authors, declares that he has read even those which do not exist in writing. In almost all his works he sets out many more and longer quotations from these whom he calls ‘his own’ than from the Prophets and Apostles who are ours. Even in the works which he addresses to girls and weak women, who desire, as is right, only to be edified by teaching out of our Scriptures, he weaves in illustrations from ‘his own’ Flaccus and Tullius and Maro.