Minucius Felix, Octavius, LCL 250: Tertullian, Minucius Felix
Minucius Felix
Number of quotes: 42
Book ID: 332 Page: 306
Section: 2B2
PJ Note: Octavius by Minicius Felix begins on page 303Polytheism, in its cosmopolitan developments, passed sentence on itself. In its attempted amalgamation of deities, syncretism [instead of] reconciling, renovating and preserving, ensured and accelerated the common extinction of all.
Quote ID: 8084
Time Periods: 123
Book ID: 332 Page: 327
Section: 2B2
Hence it is that throughout wide empires, provinces and towns, we see each people having its own individual rites and worshipping its local gods, the Eleusinians Ceres{g}, the Phrygians the Great Mother {h}, the Epidaurians Aesculapius {i}, the Chaldaeans Bel {a}, the Syrians Astarte {b}, the Taurians {e}, Diana, the Gauls Mercury, the Romans one and all.. . .
everywhere they entertain the gods and adopt them as their own {f}; while they raise altars even to the unknown deities, and to the spirits of the dead. Thus is it that they adopt the sacred rites of all nations, and withal have earned dominion. Hence the course of worship has continued without break, not impaired but strengthened by the lapse of time; for indeed antiquity is wont to attach to ceremonies and to temples a sanctity proportioned to the length of their continuance.
Quote ID: 8085
Time Periods: 0
Book ID: 332 Page: 335/411/423/425/429/431
Section: 2D3A,4B
Pastor John’s note: Minicius Felix incidentally reveals elements of the true faith which still existed among believers of his time (early third century A.D.)
Caecilius’s accusation: Believers are the illiterate dregs of society. OctaviusVIII.4
Octavius’ answer: We do not take our place among the dregs of the people, because we reject your official titles and purples; we are not sectarian in spirit, if in quiet gatherings … we are of one mind for good. OctaviusXXXI.6
Octavius’ answer: If we Christians are compared with you, although in some cases our training falls short of yours, yet we shall be found on a much higher level than you. OctaviusXXXV.5
Octavius’ answer: Who can he be poor who is free from wants, who does not covet what is another’s, who is rich toward God? The poor man is he who, having much, craves for more. OctaviusXXXVI.4
Octavius’ answer: You may be deceived by the fact that men who know not God abound in riches, are loaded with honours and set in seats of authority. Unhappy they, who are raised to high place, that they may fall the lower! … We are all born equal; virtue alone gives distinction. OctaviusXXXVII.7
Quote ID: 7806
Time Periods: 23
Book ID: 332 Page: 335
Section: 4B
Caecilius’s accusation: Believers conspire against authority. OctaviusVIII.4
Quote ID: 7807
Time Periods: 23
Book ID: 332 Page: 335
Section: 2D3A
Caecilius’s accusation: Believers meet in secret to avoid scrutiny and conceal their wickedness. OctaviusVIII.4
Quote ID: 7808
Time Periods: 23
Book ID: 332 Page: 335
Section: 2D3B,4B
Caecilius’s accusation: Believers despise temples, the gods, sacred rites, titles, robes of honor. OctaviusVIII.4
Quote ID: 7814
Time Periods: 23
Book ID: 332 Page: 335
Section: 1B
He may be a Theodorus of Cyrene,{a} or an earlier Diagoras of Melos, called Atheist by antiquity, who both alike, by asserting that there were no gods, cut at the root of all the fear and reverence by which mankind is governed….
Quote ID: 8086
Time Periods: 2
Book ID: 332 Page: 335/337
Section: 2D3B,4B
Is it not then deplorable that a gang—excuse my vehemence in using strong language for the cause I advocate—a gang, I say, of discredited and proscribed desperadoes band themselves against the gods? Fellows who gather together illiterates from the dregs of the populace and credulous women with the instability natural to their sex, and so organize a rabble of profane conspirators, leagued together by meetings at night and ritual fasts and unnatural repasts, not for any sacred service but for piacular rites, a secret tribe that shuns the light, silent in the open, but talkative in hid corners; they despise temples as if they were tombs; they spit upon the gods; they jeer at our sacred rites; pitiable themselves, they pity (save the mark) our priests; they despise titles and robes of honour, going themselves half-naked! What a pitch of folly! what wild impertinence! present tortures they despise, yet dread those of an uncertain future; death after death they fear, but death in the present they fear not: for them illusive hope charms away terror with assurances of a life to come.PJ Note: Original source is ?
Quote ID: 8087
Time Periods: 347
Book ID: 332 Page: 337/413
Section: 2D3A,4B
Caecilius’s accusation: Believers have secret signs and marks. OctaviusIX.2Octavius’ answer: We do in fact readily recognize one another, but not as you suppose by some token on the body, but by the sign manual of innocence and modesty; our bond, which you resent, consists in mutual love. OctaviusXXXI.8
Quote ID: 7809
Time Periods: 23
Book ID: 332 Page: 337
Section: 4B
Caecilius’s accusation: Believers worship the head of an ass. OctaviusIX.3
Quote ID: 7811
Time Periods: 23
Book ID: 332 Page: 337
Section: 4B
Caecilius’s accusation: Believers revere the private parts of their leader. OctaviusIX.4
Quote ID: 7812
Time Periods: 23
Book ID: 332 Page: 337/338/407
Section: 2D3A,4B
Caecilius’s accusation: Believers encase an infant in dough and then trick a new member into slicing it, thinking it is a food dish. Believers lap up the blood of infants slain in their secret meetings, and then dismember and eat the infant’s dead body. After that cannibalistic banquet, believers extinguish the lights and indulge in the most despicable lusts. Octavius, IX.5–6.Octavius’ answer: None can believe such slander except those who are capable of it. You polytheists expose newborns, abort fetuses, sacrifice babies and adults, eat and drink of the animals from the arena who just killed and ate people, and your gods have eaten their own children. Octavius, XXIX.2–6.
Quote ID: 7813
Time Periods: 23
Book ID: 332 Page: 337
Section: 4B
Caecilius’s accusation: Believers fall in love almost before they are acquainted. OctaviusIX.2
Quote ID: 7815
Time Periods: 23
Book ID: 332 Page: 337
Section: 2D3B,4B
Root and branch it must be exterminated and accursed. They recognize one another by secret signs and marks; they fall in love almost before they are acquainted; everywhere they introduce a kind of religion of lust, a promiscuous ‘brotherhood’ and ‘sisterhood’ by which ordinary fornication, under cover of a hallowed name, is converted to incest.
Quote ID: 8088
Time Periods: 347
Book ID: 332 Page: 337
Section: 2D3B
I am told that under some idiotic impulse they consecrate and worship the head of an ass, the meanest of all beasts {a}, a religion worthy of the morals which gave it birth. Others say that they actually reverence the private parts of their director and high-priest, and adore his organs as parent of their being. This may be false, but such suspicions naturally attach to their secret and nocturnal rites. To say that a malefactor put to death for his crimes, and wood of the death-dealing cross, are objects of their veneration is to assign fitting altars to abandoned wretches and the kind of worship they deserve. Details of the initiation of neophytes are as revolting as they are notorious. An infant, cased in dough{b} to deceive the unsuspecting, is placed beside the person to be initiated. The novice is thereupon induced to inflict what seem to be harmless blows upon the dough, and unintentionally the infant is killed {a} by his unsuspecting blows; the limbs they tear to pieces eagerly; and over the victim they make league and covenant, and by complicity in guilt pledge themselves to mutual silence{e}. Such sacred rites are more foul than any sacrilege. Their form of feasting is notorious; it is in everyone’s mouth, as testified by the speech of our friend of Cirta{c}. On the day appointed they gather at a banquet with all their children, sisters, and mothers, people of either sex and every age. There, after full feasting, when the blood is heated and drink has inflamed the passions of incestuous lust, a dog which has been tied to a lamp is tempted by a morsel thrown beyond the range of his tether to bound forward with a rush{d}. The tale-telling light is upset and extinguished, and in the shameless dark lustful embraces are indiscriminately exchanged; and all alike, if not in act, yet by complicity, are involved in incest, as anything that occurs by the act of individuals results from the common intention.
Quote ID: 8090
Time Periods: ?
Book ID: 332 Page: 339/409/411/413
Section: 2D3A,4B
Caecilius’s accusation: The religion of believers is a religion of lust, and in calling each other brother or sister, they make their immorality incestuous. Octavius IX.2, 6–7Octavius’ answer: That is false, but it is true about you polytheists. Persian law allows unions with mothers. Egyptian law and Athenian law allow marriage to sisters. The gods that you polytheists worship have committed incest with mothers, daughters, and sisters. Octavius XXXI.3
Octavius’ answer: We call ourselves ‘brethren’ to which you object, as members of one family in God, as partners in one faith, as joint heirs in hope. Octavius XXXI.8
Quote ID: 7810
Time Periods: 23
Book ID: 332 Page: 341
Section: 2D3B,4B
Caecilius’s accusation: Believers have no temples, no altars. OctaviusX.2
Quote ID: 7816
Time Periods: 23
Book ID: 332 Page: 341/421
Section: 2D3B,4B
Caecilius’s accusation: They threaten the whole world and the universe and its stars with destruction by fire Octavius, XI.1Octavius’ answer: Many, I am well aware, conscious of their deserts, hope rather than believe that annihilation follows death; they would rather be extinguished than restored for punishment. They are led astray by the impunity allowed them in life, and also by the infinite patience of God, whose judgments though slow are ever sure and just. Octavius, XXIV.12.
Quote ID: 7817
Time Periods: 23
Book ID: 332 Page: 341
Section: 2E3
Why have they no altars, no temples, no recognized images?. . .
The miserable Jewish nationality did indeed worship one God, but even so openly, in temples, with altars, victims, and ceremonies; yet one so strengthless and powerless that he and his dear tribe with him are in captivity to Rome.
Quote ID: 8091
Time Periods: 23
Book ID: 332 Page: 341
Section: 2D3B
“Further, they threaten the whole world and the universe and its stars with destruction by fire. . .. . .
Not content with this insane idea, they embellish and embroider it with old wives’ tales; say that they are born anew after death from the cinders and the ashes.
. . .
Against heaven and the stars, which we leave even as we found them, they denounce destruction; for themselves when dead and gone, creatures born to perish, the promise of eternity!
Quote ID: 8092
Time Periods: 23
Book ID: 332 Page: 343
Section: 2D3B
Caecilius’s accusation: They promise themselves, as virtuous, a life of never-ending bliss after death; to all others, as evil-doers, everlasting punishment. Octavius, XI.1
Quote ID: 7818
Time Periods: 23
Book ID: 332 Page: 343
Section: 2D3B
Caecilius’s accusation: All action which others ascribe to fate, you believers ascribe to God. OctaviusXI.6
Quote ID: 7819
Time Periods: 23
Book ID: 332 Page: 347/431
Section: 2D3B,4B
Caecilius’s accusation: You believers do not attend the shows; you take no part in the processions; avoid public banquets, abhor the sacred games, meats from then victims, drinks poured in libation on the altars. OctaviusXII.5Octavius’ answer: As regards our rejection of the sacrificial leavings and cups used for libations, it is not a confession of fear, but an assertion of true liberty.…. We abstain from participation, to show that we have no truck with the demons to whom libations are poured, and are not ashamed of our own religion. OctaviusXXXVIII.1
Quote ID: 7820
Time Periods: 23
Book ID: 332 Page: 347/431/433
Section: 2D3B,4B
Caecilius’s accusation: You believers twine no blossoms for the head, grace the body with no perfumes; you reserve your ointments for funerals ….OctaviusXII.56Octavius’ answer: We delight in the flowers of spring…. We strew or wear them loose, we twine soft garlands for our necks. You must excuse us for not crowning our heads; our custom is to sniff sweet flower perfumes with our nose, not to inhale them with the scalp or the back hair…. Our funeral rites we order with the same quietness as our lives; we twine no fasting crown, but expect from God the crown that blossoms with eternal flowers. OctaviusXXVIII.2.
Quote ID: 7821
Time Periods: 23
Book ID: 332 Page: 347/423
Section: 3A2A,2D3B
Caecilius’s accusation: Those who are not privileged to understand things civic are still less qualified to discuss things divine.” OctaviusXII.7Octavius’ answer: You forbid adultery, yet practice it; we are born husbands for our wives alone; you punish crimes committed, with us the thought of crime is sin … the prisons are crowded to overflowing with your following and not a Christian is there, except on charge of his religion, or as a renegade. OctaviusXXV.6.
Quote ID: 7822
Time Periods: 7
Book ID: 332 Page: 353
Section: 3B
For he wavered, from belief in the gods, at one moment, to keeping the question open at another, so that the ambiguity of statement might make my own line of reply more ambiguous.
Quote ID: 8093
Time Periods: 12
Book ID: 332 Page: 361
Section: 5D
Nor is it for the whole only that God takes thought, but likewise for the parts. Britain, for instance, lacks sunshine, but gets warmth from the surrounding sea.
Quote ID: 8094
Time Periods: ?
Book ID: 332 Page: 371
Section: 2B,4A
Octavius: Almost all philosophers of any marked distinction designate God as one, though under great variety of names, so that one might suppose, either that Christians of today are philosophers, or that philosophers of old were already Christians. Octavius XX.1
Quote ID: 7823
Time Periods: 23
Book ID: 332 Page: 371
Section: 4A
For Plato, in the Timaeus, God is by virtue of his name the author of the universe, the artificer of soul, the constructor of all things in heaven and earth; hard to discover, as he declares, by reason of his incredible and extraordinary power, and, when discovered, impossible to describe in popular terms.“The position is pretty much the same as our own; we too recognize God, and call him the parent of all; yet avoid popular expositions except when questioned.
“I have now cited the opinions of almost all philosophers of any marked distinction, all designating God as one, though under great variety of names, so that one might suppose, either that Christians of to-day are philosophers, or that philosophers of old were already Christians.
“But if the universe is ruled by Providence, and directed by the will of a single God, we must not allow an ignorant tradition, charmed or captivated by its pet fables, to hurry us into the mistake of agreement.
. . .
Our ancestors were so ready to believe in fictions, that they accepted on trust all kind of wild and monstrous marvels and miracles;
Quote ID: 8095
Time Periods: 023
Book ID: 332 Page: 379
Section: 5D
“How much truer the judgement which the dumb animals pass instintively upon those gods of yours! Mice, swallows, kites know that they have no feeling; they gnaw them, perch and settle on them, {b} and (unless you scare them) build in your god’s own mouth; spiders spin webs across his face, and hang their threads from his head.
Quote ID: 8096
Time Periods: ?
Book ID: 332 Page: 391
Section: 1B
The Romans then have grown great not by religion, but by unpunished sacrilege; . . .
Quote ID: 8097
Time Periods: 12
Book ID: 332 Page: 391
Section: 2B2
“The indigenous gods of the Romans we know{a}; Romulus, Picus, Tiberinus, and Consus and Pilumnus and Volumnus; Tatius invented and worshipped Cloacina; Hostilius Pavor (Panic) and Pallor; some one or another canonized Febris (Fever); such, in superstition, is the foster-child of your city of diseases and maladies. Presumably Acca Larentia too and Flora, prostitutes lost to shame, may be numbered among the diseases - and the gods - of Rome.“Such forsooth were the powers who carried forward the banners of Rome against the gods worshipped by other nations. For Thracian Mars, or Cretan Jupiter, or Juno Argive, Samian and Carthaginian {b} by turns, Tauric Diana, or the Idaean Mother, or the Egyptian monsters rather than dieties never took sides for you against their own people.
Quote ID: 8098
Time Periods: 023
Book ID: 332 Page: 395
Section: 5D
“There exist unclean and wandering spirits, whose heavenly vigour has been overlaid by earthly soils and lusts. These spirits, burdened and steeped in vices, have lost the simplicity of their original substance; as some consolation for their own calamity, these lost spirits cease not to conspire for others’ loss, to deprave them with their own depravity, and under the alienation of depraved and heathen superstitions to separate them from God. Such spirits are recognized as ‘demons’ by the poets, are discussed by philosophers, and were known to Socrates who, at the instigation and will of his attendant demon, declined or pursued certain courses of action.Pastor John notes: John’s note - Demons
Quote ID: 8099
Time Periods: ?
Book ID: 332 Page: 397
Section: 5D
“These unclean spirits, or demons, as revealed to Magi and philosophers, find a lurking place under statues and consecrated images, and by their breath exercise influence as of a present God: at one while they inspire prophets, at another haunt temples, at another animate the fibres of entrails, govern the flight of birds, determine lots, and are the authors of oracles mostly wrapped in falsehood. Deceived as well as deceivers, they know not essential truth, and what they know they confess not to their own undoing. Thus they drag men downwards from Heaven, call them away from the true God to material things, perturb their life, disquiet their slumbers, creep into their bodies covertly, as impalpable spirits, produce diseases, strike terror into minds, distort the limbs, thus driving men to do them worship, in order that, when glutted with the reek of altars or with victim beasts, they may loosen the tightened bonds and claim to have effected a cure. From them too come the maniacs whom you see running into the street, soothsayers without a temple, raving, possessed, and whirling round. There is the same demoniac possession, though the guise of frenzy is different.. . .
“All this, as most of your people know, the demons themselves admit to be true, when they are driven out of men’s bodies by words of exorcism and the fire of prayer.
. . .
...when adjured in the name of the one true God, reluctantly, in misery, they quail and quake, and either suddenly leap forth at once, or vanish gradually, according to the faith exercised by the sufferer or the grace imparted by the healer.
Quote ID: 8100
Time Periods: ?
Book ID: 332 Page: 399
Section: 2D3B
Octavius: Believers cast out demons. OctaviusXXVII.5–7
Quote ID: 7824
Time Periods: 23
Book ID: 332 Page: 401
Section: 4B
We too were once in the same case as you, blindly and stupidly sharing your ideas, and supposing that the Christians worshipped monsters, devoured infants, and joined in incestuous feasts; we did not understand that the demons were for ever setting fables afloat without either investigation or proof; and that all the while no one came forward with evidence, though he would have gained not only pardon for wrong done but also reward for his disclosure; and that, so far from any wrong-doing of any kind, accused Christians neither blushed nor feared, but regretted one thing only, that they had not been Christians before.
Quote ID: 8101
Time Periods: 23
Book ID: 332 Page: 406
Section: 2E1
{a} This unqualified repudiation of reverence for the Cross goes further than Tert. Apol. 16 which also dwells on these fanciful analogies.
Quote ID: 8102
Time Periods: ?
Book ID: 332 Page: 407
Section: 2D3B
Octavius: Crosses we neither worship nor set our hopes on. OctaviusXXIX.6
Quote ID: 7825
Time Periods: 23
Book ID: 332 Page: 407
Section: 2E1
“Crosses again we neither worship nor set our hopes on.{a}
Quote ID: 8103
Time Periods: ?
Book ID: 332 Page: 413
Section: 2E3
“Do you suppose we conceal our object of worship because we have no shrines and altars?. . .
What temple can I build for him, when the whole universe, fashioned by his handiwork, cannot contain him? Shall I, a man, housed[?] more spaciously, confine within a tiny shrine power and majesty so great? Is not the mind a better place of dedication? our inmost heart of consecration? Shall I offer to God victims and sacrifices which he has furnished for my use, and so reject his bounties? That were ingratitude, seeing that the acceptable sacrifice is a good spirit and a pure mind and a conscience without guile. He who follows after innocence makes a prayer to God; he who practises justice offers libations; he who abstains from fraud, propitiates; he who rescues another from peril, slays the best victim. These are our sacrifices, these our hallowed rites; with us justice is the true measure of religion.
Quote ID: 8104
Time Periods: 23
Book ID: 332 Page: 419
Section: 4A
“The philosophers, you observe, use the same arguments as we; not that we have followed their footsteps, but that they, from the divine predictions of the prophets, have borrowed the shadow of a garbled truth.
Quote ID: 8105
Time Periods: 023
Book ID: 332 Page: 433
Section: 4A
....we think scorn of high-brow philosophers
Quote ID: 8108
Time Periods: 23
End of quotes