Eusebius of Caesarea · a new plain-English translation from the Greek
1| Set our religion beside yours and compare them. Do we not find here genuine concord and unfailing kindness to others; the correction of a fault that brings admonition, not ruin; treatment aimed not at cruelty but at saving; good faith that is sincere, first toward God and then toward the fellowship that by nature binds human beings together; pity for those whom fortune has made its enemies; a simple life that does not hide its wickedness under some intricate cunning; and the knowledge of the true God and of his sole rule?
2| This is truly the worship of God; this is sincere religion, wholly undefiled; this is the life of good sense, and those who pursue it travel, as along some noble highway, toward the life that never ends. For no one who has set out on such a life, and who keeps his soul clean of the body, ever really dies; rather than dying, he completes the service that God appointed him. Indeed, the one who has confessed God does not become a mere plaything of insolence or rage; having borne his ordeal nobly, he carries the trial of his endurance with him as provision for the journey to God's favor.
3| For there is no doubt that the divine welcomes human virtue. It would be most absurd if human beings, whenever they receive kindness, whether from those who hold the same authority as themselves or from those beneath them, gratefully acknowledge and repay the services their benefactors happen to have done them, while he who is above all, the Author of all things and the Good itself, should neglect to make a return. That Good attends us through our whole life and is present with us whenever we do something good; it welcomes our courage and our justice at once and rewards them on the spot, but it postpones the full payment of the reward until our life itself is complete. For the whole account of a life is settled at the moment when the body is left behind by the soul, and the soul itself, pure and undefiled, draws near to the divine, which is pure and undefiled. This, then, is the justice of the divine, and this the scrutiny of the righteous: faith and self-control are tested in the course of life, and when these are found sound, the reward of eternal life follows; but the fitting punishment also overtakes the wicked.
Cite a passage by its number: every paragraph here has its own anchor (for example https://openscriptorium.com/read/eusebius/052-constantine-s-oration-to-the-assembly-of-the-saints-chapter#p1), and the bracketed reference numbers link the same way.
← All of Eusebius of Caesarea: The Works of Eusebius of Caesarea