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Lactantius

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Introductory Notice To Lactantius.

[477] Perillus invented the brazen bull, which the tyrant Phalaris used as an instrument of torture. It was so constructed that the groans of the victims appeared to resemble the bellowing of the bull.

[478] The baptismal font. [i.e., as signifying Zech. xiii. 1.]

[479] See John i. 9.

Chap. XXVII.—How Little the Precepts of Philosophers Contribute to True Wisdom, Which You Will Find in Religion Only.

[480] A shadow; outline, or resemblance.

[481] Lucretius, i. 65.

[482] Thus St. Paul, Col. iii. 2, exhorts us to set our affections on things above, not on things of the earth.

Chap. XXVIII.—Of True Religion and of Nature. Whether Fortune is a Goddess, and of Philosophy.

[483] [Quod si Deum naturam vocant quæ perversitas est naturam potius quam Deum nominare. Observe this terse maxim of our author. It rebukes the teachers and scientists of our day, who seem afraid to “look through nature up to nature’s God,” in their barren instruction. They go back to Lucretius, and call it progress!]

[484] To raise or stretch out the hand was an acknowledgment of defeat.

[485] [See p. 91, note 3, supra, and sparsim in this work.]

[486] Literally, “their accounts did not square.”

[487] Afficit, “presses and harasses.” Another reading is affligit, “casts to the ground.”

Chap. XXIX.—Of Fortune Again, and Virtue.

[488] Cicero, De Offic., ii. 6. The expressions are borrowed from the figure of a ship at sea.

[489] Æn., viii. 33.

[490] Sallust, Cat., viii.

[491] Chapter xvi.

[492] Satire x. 365: Nullum numen abest. Others read, Nullum numen habes. You have no divine power, O Fortune, if there is prudence, etc.

[493] Acad., i. 7. [Let our sophists feel this rebuke of Tully.]

Chap. XXX.—The Conclusion of the Things Before Spoken; And by What Means We Must Pass from the Vanity of the Philosophers to True Wisdom, and the Knowledge of the True God, in Which Alone are Virtue and Happiness.

[494] [A noble utterance from Christian philosophy, now first gaining the ear and heart of humanity.]

Chap. I.—Of the Former Religion of Men, and How Error Was Spread Over Every Age, and of the Seven Wise Men of Greece.

[495] Figmenta. [Rom. i. 21-23.]

[496] Thus St. Paul, 1 Cor. ii. 9: “Eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither have entered into the heart of man, the things which God hath prepared for them that love Him.”

[497] In its rewards.

 

 

 

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