Tertullian · a new plain-English translation from the original language
ON THE FORCE OF DEATH, AND ON MENANDER THE HERETIC. [1] Enough has been said about the mirror of death, that is, about sleep, along with the business of sleep, that is, dreams; now to the origin of this departure, that is, to the order of death — since not even death itself is free of questions, though it is the end of all questions. [2] It is the public verdict of the whole human race that we declare death the debt owed to nature. God's voice has affirmed this; everything that is born has pledged it — so that from here on, it is not Epicurus's stupor that should overtake us, denying that this debt pertains to us, but rather the frenzy of the heretic magician Menander the Samaritan that should be spat upon, who says that death not only does not pertain to his followers but does not even reach them: for, he claims, he was sent for this very purpose by a supreme and hidden power, that those who have put on his baptism might become immortal, incorruptible, and instantly in possession of the resurrection. [3] We read, indeed, of many wondrous kinds of waters: the wine-dark vein of the Lyncestae makes men drunk, or the demonic spring of Colophon drives them mad, or the poisoned water of Nonacris in Arcadia killed Alexander. Judea, too, had a healing lake even before Christ. Of course the poet tells of the Stygian marshes as dissolving death, yet Thetis also mourned her son. And even if Menander plunges people into the Styx, one must still die nonetheless in order to reach the Styx — for it is said to be among the dead. [4] Where, then, and what, is this happiness of waters, which neither John the Baptist provided in advance nor Christ himself ever showed to his disciples? What is this bath of Menander's? A comic invention, I believe. But why so rare, so hidden, that so very few wash in it? I will make this great scarcity itself suspect, in what is supposed to be the safest and most secure of sacraments — one for which it is not even the law to die for God himself, whereas, on the contrary, all the nations now are climbing toward the Lord's mountain and toward the dwelling belonging to Jacob's God, a God who exacts death even by way of martyrdom — a death he exacted of his own Christ as well. Nor will anyone credit magic with so much power as to remove death, or to replant life the way one replants a vine, its age renewed. For not even Medea was allowed this with a man, though she was allowed it with a ram. [5] Enoch and Elijah were translated, and their death has not been found — deferred, that is; for the rest, they are kept in reserve to die, so that they may extinguish the antichrist with their own blood. John too died, whom it had been vainly hoped would remain until the Lord's coming. For heresies, as a rule, leap forward using our own examples, drawing from them the very weapons with which they fight. In short, here is the summing-up: where are those whom Menander himself drenched, whom he plunged into his own Styx? Let the apostles, who abide forever, come and stand forth; let my Thomas see them, hear them, handle them — and then he will believe.