1. Whoever wishes to borrow from the most widespread writings of philosophers, poets, or any other teachers of pagan learning and wisdom, the testimonies of Christian truth, in order to convict its enemies and persecutors by their own writings, both of their own errors and of injustice to us, will need great curiosity and a still greater memory. Some, however, who have retained both a diligent curiosity and a firm memory in regard to former literature, have indeed furnished us with small writings on the subject. They make special mentions and testimonies concerning the meaning, origin, continuity, and proofs of those judgments, from which it may be understood that we have introduced nothing so new and unusual as to be appreciated in the most common and common writings, though they have rejected some errors, and introduced some correctness.

However, the unimaginable obstinacy of people refuses to trust even those of their teachers who are considered excellent and the best in other things, as soon as they find arguments in defense of Christians. Poets are empty when they attribute human passions and conversations to the gods. Philosophers are foolish when they knock at the door of truth. A man will be considered wise and prudent only until he proclaims something Christian: for if he acquires some wisdom and prudence by rejecting the ceremonies or condemning this world, he will be considered a Christian. Therefore, we will no longer have anything in common with the writings and doctrine of perverse happiness, where one trusts fiction rather than truth. Some, perhaps, could preach about the one and only God. But in any case, [we] have not been told anything that a Christian would consider impossible to blame; Not everyone knows what is reported, and those who know do not trust their knowledge — people are very far from recognizing our writings, and only those who have already become a Christian turn to them.

I have recourse to a new testimony, which, however, is more famous than all works, more effective than any teaching, more accessible than any publication; it is greater than the whole man, although it constitutes the whole man. Open up to us. soul! If you are divine and eternal, as most philosophers believe, you will not lie. If you are not divine by virtue of your mortality (as only Epicurus imagines), much less will you lie, whether you came down from heaven or came from the earth, whether you were composed of numbers or atoms. whether you begin with the body or enter it later, in whatever way you make man a rational being, more capable of feeling and knowing than anyone else.

I appeal to you, but not to the one who spews out wisdom, having been brought up in schools, refined in libraries, nourished in academies and Attic porticoes. I appeal to you, simple, uneducated, coarse and ill-bred, as you are among people who have only you, to the one you are in the streets, in the squares, and in the weavers' workshops. I need your inexperience, for no one believes in your insignificant knowledge. I ask of you what you bring into man, what you have learned to feel either from yourself or with the help of your creator, whatever he may be. You, as far as I know, are not a Christian: for the soul usually becomes a Christian, and is not born a Christian. But now the Christians demand testimony from you, a stranger, against your own, so that they may be ashamed of you, for they hate and ridicule us for the knowledge of which they now accuse you.

2. We are displeased because we publicly call by this one name the only God, from Whom all things are subject and to Whom all things are subject. Bear witness, soul, if you know it. For thou, as we hear, proclaim openly and with all the freedom that we have: "What God will give" and "If God wills." With these words you indicate that there is One Whose authority you acknowledge and to Whose will you turn your gaze. At the same time, you assert that there are no other gods, whom you list by name: Saturn, Jupiter, Mars, Minerva. For you assert that there is only one God, and only Him, you call God; therefore, when you sometimes call them also; gods, it is clear that you are using someone else's name and as if borrowed. Nor is the nature of the God whom we preach hidden from you. "God is good," "God does good" — this is your voice. And you, of course, add: "And man is evil," indicating by this contrast, indirectly and figuratively, that man is evil precisely because he has distanced himself from the Good God. And you, just as willingly as befits a Christian, proclaim that the God of goodness and goodness is the source of all blessing (this is considered by us the highest sacrament of teaching and communion): "God will bless you." But if you turn God's blessing into a curse, then, as you should, together with us, you recognize all His power over us.

There are also those who, without rejecting God, do not recognize Him as the Overseer, the Disposer, and the Judger, for which we are most blamed, for we accept this teaching for fear of the proclaimed judgment. By honoring God in this way, they free Him from the burdens of supervision and punishment, and do not even recognize His wrath. "For," they say, "if God is angry, he is subject to corruption and passion; and what suffers and deteriorates may even perish, but for God this is inadmissible." Agreeing that the soul is divine and came from God, they fall, according to the testimony of the soul itself, into a contradiction with the opinion given above. For if the soul is divine or given by God, then it has undoubtedly come to know its Giver, and if it has, then, of course, it fears Him, so great a Creator.

How can she not be afraid of Him Whom she would like to see merciful, and not wrathful? Where, then, does the soul's natural fear of God come from, if God does not know wrath? How does He who does not know offense cause fear? And what do they fear if not anger? And where does anger come from, if not out of a desire to punish? Where does the desire to punish come from, if not from a just court? Whence comes judgment itself, if not from omnipotence? And who is omnipotent except the one God?

That is why it behooves you, O soul, to proclaim with all sincerity, without any mockery or hesitation, both silently and aloud: "God sees all things," "I entrust to God," "God will repay," "God will judge among us." Where did you get it from—you're not a Christian, are you? For often, even when you are crowned with the headband of Ceres, with the scarlet cloak of Saturn or the linen robe of Isis, in their temples you tearfully cry out to God the Judge. You stand before Aesculapius, adorn the copper Juno, put on Minerva a helmet with figured images, and you do not invoke any of these gods. In your forum you cry out to another Judge, in your temples you tolerate another God. O testimony of the truth, it turns you into a witness of Christians in the face of the demons themselves!

3. In fact, a follower of Chrysippus mocks us, as if we, while acknowledging the existence of demons, do not prove it, although we alone expel them from their bodies! Why, your spells, soul, say that demons exist and are disgusting! You call a demon a person who is full of impurity, malice, arrogance, or any vice that we attribute to demons, and who is so intolerable that he inevitably arouses hatred. You understand Satan every time you suffer, feel disgusted, or curse. And we consider him to be the messenger of evil, the creator of all error, the perverter of the whole world. From the very beginning he so deceived man that he broke the commandment of God and was therefore put to death, and thereby subjected to this curse the whole race [human] that came from his seed. Then you feel your destroyer, although only Christians and some sect near the Lord know him, but you also recognized him because you hated him.

4. And now, as to the judgment which is most dear to you, because it relates to your own position, we affirm that you remain even after the end of your life in anticipation of the Day of Judgment, when, according to your merits, you will be destined for torment or rest for eternity. In order to experience this, you must, of course, get back your former substance (substantia), matter (materia) and the memory of the same person, for you can feel neither evil nor good without the power of the flesh to feel, and judgment has no meaning unless the one who deserves the sentence of judgment is presented. And although this Christian opinion is much preferable to Pythus-Horus, for it does not resettle you into beasts; although it is fuller than Plato's, for it returns to you the body, your property; although it is more serious than Epicurus, because it protects you from destruction, yet, for its very name, it is considered empty, stupid, and, as they say, a prejudice. But we will not be ashamed if you reinforce this prejudice of ours. For, in the first place, when you think of a departed person, you call him "unfortunate," not because he has been deprived of the blessings of life, of course, but because he has already been judged and punished. In addition, you call the dead "the dead," acknowledging that life is painful and death is beneficial. However, you speak of their peace even when you go out of the gate with food and drink to the graves to offer sacrifices to yourself as soon as possible, or when you come from the graves drunk. And I need your sober opinion. You call the dead miserable when you speak on your own behalf, being far from them. For at a feast where they seem to be present, reclining with you, you cannot lament their fate. You must flatter those who make you live more cheerfully. Do you call him unhappy, then, who feels nothing? But what really happens when you speak evil of him as if he were a feeler, remembering him with some sarcastic attacks? You ask for him heavy earth, and ashes for torment in hell. And to whom you owe your gratitude for your good lot, to the bones and ashes of him you ask for peace and want him to "rest in peace" in hell.

If there is no suffering for you after death, if no feeling remains, if, finally, you yourself are reduced to nothing by leaving the body, why do you deceive yourself when you say that you are able to feel even after death? Moreover, why do you fear death if you have nothing to fear after death, for there is no suffering after death? Of course, one can object: death is to be feared not because it threatens something in the other world, but because it takes away the good of life; but since at the same time you leave the many greater burdens of life, you remove the fear of a worse fate by gaining more. And in general, there is no need to fear the loss of goods, which is compensated for by another good—comfort from burdens. We should not be afraid of that which frees us from all fear. If you are afraid to depart from life, because you consider it to be the highest good, then you should not be afraid of death, because you do not know whether it is evil. And if you are afraid, then you know that she is evil. But you would not consider it evil, and you would not be afraid if you did not know that there is something after death that makes it the evil you fear. Let us not speak of the natural fear of death: no one should fear that which he cannot avoid.

I come to the other part—[namely], the hope of a better thing after death. In fact, almost everyone has an innate desire for posthumous glory. For a long time he will talk about the Curtius and Regulus, or about the Greek men, who are constantly praised for their contempt for death for the sake of posthumous glory. And even today who does not strive to strengthen the memory of himself, preserving his name by literary works, or simply by praising his morals, or by the splendor of his tombs? Why does the soul even today strive for what it desires after death, and so diligently prepare what it will use after leaving the body? Of course, she wouldn't care about the future if she didn't know anything about it. But perhaps you know more about the feeling after death than about the Resurrection that will come someday, because of which we are accused of prejudice. But the soul also preaches about this. For if a man who is long dead is asked as if he were alive, it is not uncommon to say, "He is gone, but he must return."

5. These testimonies of the soul are the truer, the simpler, the simpler, the more accessible, the more accessible, the more known, the more natural, and the more natural, the more divine. I do not think that they can seem absurd or ridiculous to anyone, if he reflects on the greatness of nature, for it is by this that the dignity (auctoritas) of the soul should be judged. As much as you give to your teacher, you will give to your apprentice. Nature is a teacher, the soul is a student. Everything that the first taught and the second learned is communicated by God, and He is the Guide of the teacher herself.

And that the soul can form an idea of the Supreme Teacher can be judged by the soul that is in you. Feel the one who made you able to feel. Know the diviner in prophecies, the interpreter in signs, the seer in events. Is it surprising that the soul given to man by God is capable of prophesying? Is it so surprising that she knows the One from Whom she is given? Even when oppressed by an enemy, it remembers its Creator, His goodness and commandments, its end, and even its enemy. Is it so surprising that it, given from God, proclaims what God has made known to His own?