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These splendid paragraphs are the song of victory over the defeat of the Pharaohs of heathenism and the deliverance of the churches from the house of bondage. 'Sing ye to the Lord, for he hath triumphed gloriously. There is something in them higher than the fierce exultation of Lactantius over the sufferings of the dying persecutors, though that too is impressive.
That this is the correct interpretation of the patristic utterances regarding property and natural law appears from the following passage of The Divine Institution of Lactantius 'the most explicit statement bearing on the Christian idea of property in the first four centuries': "They preferred to live content with a simple mode of life," as Cicero relates in his poems; and this is peculiar to our religion.
It is you," she said more energetically, pointing to Lactantius, Barre, and Mignon, and changing her passionate accents for those of indignation "it is you who told me that he loved; you, who this morning have too cruelly avenged me by killing my rival with a word. Alas, I only sought to separate them! It was a crime; but, by my mother, I am an Italian!
"I might have been called Lactantius." "Lactantius! Impossible. Was there ever a man named Lactantius?" "Certainly." "'Tain't any worse than Ichabod," remarked Mrs. Starling. "Nothing can be worse than Ichabod," said Mr. Masters in the same dry way. "It means, 'The glory is departed." "The Ichabods I knew, never had any glory to begin with," said Mrs. Starling.
The bland Lactantius replied in these terms: "He who has just spoken is assuredly the best historian in Paradise, for Herodotus, Thucydides, Polybius, Livy, Velleius Paterculus, Cornelius Nepos, Suetonius, Manetho, Diodorus Siculus, Dion Cassius, and Lampridius are deprived of the sight of God, and Tacitus suffers in hell the torments that are reserved for blasphemers.
King David, St. Paul, St. Augustine, Lactantius, and a host of other theological authorities were all put in evidence against the Genoese mariner: he was confronted by the "conservatism of lawyers united to the bigotry of priests."
This church was full, every one knew, of demons, who were certainly none other than the gods of the heathen, as Tertullian, Lactantius, Athenagoras, Justin Martyr, and all those other holy doctors had written. It was deserted, its keys in the hands of Cardinal Capranica's confidential architect and decorator; and there were masses being said every holiday to scare the evil spirits.
So that it ought not to seem strange to the intelligent if any such should likewise now deride us. It is such as Lactantius who would now condemn Copernicus unread, and produce authorities of the Scripture, of divines, and of councils in support of their condemnation.
Besides, it should be remembered that the older testimony of Lactantius, or whoever was the author of the work on the Deaths of Persecutors, is quite independent of that of Eusebius, and derives additional force from the vague heathen rumors of the time.
Clemens of Alexandria had acquired much various reading in the Greek, and Tertullian in the Latin, language. Julius Africanus and Origen possessed a very considerable share of the learning of their times; and although the style of Cyprian is very different from that of Lactantius, we might almost discover that both those writers had been public teachers of rhetoric.
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