Ante-Nicene Fathers/Volume IV/Commodianus/The Instructions of Commodianus/Chapter 27

XXVI.&#8212;To Those Who Resist the Law of Christ the Living God.

Thou rejectest, unhappy one, the advantage of heavenly discipline, and rushest into death while wishing to stray without a bridle.&#160; Luxury and the shortlived joys of the world are ruining thee, whence thou shalt be tormented in hell for all time.&#160; They are vain joys with which thou art foolishly delighted.&#160; Do not these make thee to be a man dead?&#160; Cannot thirty years at length make thee a wise man?&#160; Ignorant how thou hast first strayed, look upon ancient time, thou thinkest now to enjoy here a joyous life in the midst of wrongs.&#160; These are the ruins of thy friends, wars, or wicked frauds, thefts with bloodshed:&#160; the body is vexed with sores, and groaning and wailing is indulged; whether a slight disease invade thee, or thou art held down by long sickness, or thou art bereaved of thy children, or thou mournest over a lost wife.&#160; All is a wilderness:&#160; alas, dignities are hurried down from their height by vices and poverty; doubly so, assuredly, if thou languishest long.&#160; And callest thou it life when this life of glass is mortal?&#160; Consider now at length that this time is of no avail, but in the future you have hope without the craft of living.&#160; Certainly the little children which have been snatched away desired to live.&#160; Moreover, the young men who have been deprived of life, perchance were preparing to grow old, and they themselves were making ready to enjoy joyful days; and yet we unwillingly lay aside all things in the world.&#160; I have delayed with a perverse mind, and I have thought that the life of this world was a true one; and I judged that death would come in like manner as ye did&#8212;that when once life had departed, the soul also was dead and perished.&#160; These things, however, are not so; but the Founder and Author of the world has certainly required the brother slain by a brother.&#160; Impious man, say, said He, where is thy brother? and he denied.&#160; For the blood of thy brother has cried aloud to Me to heaven.&#160; Thou art tormented, I see, when thou thoughtest to feel nothing; but he lives and occupies the place on the right hand.&#160; He enjoys delights which thou, O wicked one, hast lost; and when thou hast called back the world, he also has gone before, and will be immortal:&#160; for thou shalt wail in hell.&#160; Certainly God lives, who makes the dead to live, that He may give worthy rewards to the innocent and to the good; but to the fierce and impious, cruel hell.&#160; Commence, O thou who art led away, to perceive the judgments of God.