To the Nations 1.19

So far, I think, the dreadful charges of Christian obstinacy. If we share these with you, it remains for us to compare the matters in which we are ridiculed. And yet all our obstinacy is built on convictions; for we look forward to the resurrection of the dead. The hope of resurrection is contempt of death. Laugh, then, as much as you like at these most stupid minds that die in order to live; but that you may laugh more easily and guffaw more freely, take a sponge, or meanwhile your tongue, and wipe out for the moment your own writings, which likewise assert that souls will return into bodies. And yet how much more acceptable is our belief, which maintains that they will return into the same bodies! And how much vainer is your tradition that a man's spirit will return in a dog or a mule or a peacock! Likewise we announce a judgment appointed by God after death according to each one's deserts. You ascribe this to Minos and Rhadamanthus, while meanwhile rejecting the more just Aristides. By that judgment, we say, the wicked will pass eternity in eternal fire, and the pious and innocent in a delightful place. With you too the state of Pyriphlegethon and of Elysium is arranged in no other way. Nor do the mythmakers and poets alone sing such things; the philosophers too affirm the return of souls and the allotment of judgment.