Note 78 — Chapter VII · ANCIENT CHRISTIANITY AND ITS OPPONENTS

Thus Tertullian and Lactantius tell of the many who believe in a non-active and passionless God,78 and disdain those who turn Christian out of fear of a hereafter; and again79 of Stoics who deride the belief in demons. A third-century author quoted by Eusebius80 speaks of ἄπιστοι who deny the divine authorship of the holy scriptures, in such a fashion as to imply that this was done by some who were not merely pagan non-Christians but deniers of inspiration. Jamblichos, too,81 speaks of opponents of the worship of the Gods in his day (early in the fourth century).82 In the fifth century, again, Augustine complains bitterly of those impious and reckless persons who dare to say that the evangelists differ among themselves.83 He argues no less bitterly against the increduli and infideles who would not believe in immortality and the possibility of eternal torment;84 and he meets them in a fashion which constantly recurs in Christian apologetics, pointing to natural anomalies, real or alleged, and concluding that since we cannot understand all we see we should believe all we hear—from the Church. Those who derided the story of Jonah and the whale he meets by accusing them of believing the story of Arion and the dolphin.85 In the same way he meets86 their protest against the iniquity of eternal punishment by a juggle over the ostensible anomaly of long punishments by human law for short misdeeds. Whatever may have been his indirect value of his habit of dialectic, he again and again declares for prone faith and against the resort to reason; and to this effect may be cited a long series of Fathers and ecclesiastics, all eager to show that only in a blind faith could there be any moral merit.87