Anceps malum et gemina dementia, caelo et astris, quae sic relinquimus, ut invenimus, interitum denuntiare, sibi mortuis extinctis, qui sicut nascimur et interimus, aeternitatem repromittere! Inde videlicet et execrantur rogos et damnant ignium sepulturas, quasi non omne corpus, etsi flammis subtrahatur, annis tamen et aetatibus in terram resolvatur, nec intersit, utrum ferae diripiant an maria consumant an humus contegat an flamma subducat, cum cadaveribus omnis sepultura, si sentiunt, poena sit, si non sentiunt, ipsa conficiendi celeritate medicina.
One perversion and folly matches the other. Against heaven and the stars, which we leave even as we found them, they denounce destruction; for themselves when dead and gone, creatures born to perish, the promise of eternity! Hence no doubt their denunciation of funeral pyres and of cremation, just as though the body, even though spared the flame, would not in the course of years and ages be resolved into dust; and just as though it mattered whether it is torn to pieces by wild beasts or drowned in the sea, or buried in the ground, or consumed in the flame; for corpses, if they have sensation, must find all interment painful; while if they have not, speed of dispatch is the best treatment.
final_alignments\Minucius_Felix_Octavius.json