Introductory Note to the Instructions of Commodianus. ———————————— [a.d. 240.] Our author seems to have been a North-African bishop, of whom little is known save what we learn from his own writings. He has been supposed to incline to some ideas of Praxeas, and also to the Millenarians, but perhaps on insufficient grounds. His Millenarianism reflects the views of a very primitive age, and that without the corrupt Chiliasm of a later period, which brought about a practical repudiation of the whole system. Of his writings, two poems only remain, and of these the second, a very recent discovery, has no place in the Edinburgh series. I greatly regret that it cannot be included in ours. As a poetical work the following prose version probably does it no injustice. His versification is pronounced very crabbed, and his diction is the wretched patois of North Africa. But the piety and earnestness of a practical Christian seem everywhere conspicuous in this fragment of antiquity.
The Instructions of Commodianus in favour of Christian Discipline, Against the Gods of the Heathens. (Expressed in Acrostics.) I.—Preface. My preface sets forth the way to the wanderer and a good visitation when the goal of life shall have come, that he may become eternal—a thing which ignorant hearts disbelieve. I in like manner have wandered for a long time, by giving attendance upon heathen fanes, my parents themselves being ignorant. Thence at length I withdrew myself by reading concerning the law. I bear witness to the Lord; I grieve alas, the crowd of citizens! ignorant of what it loses in going to seek vain gods. Thoroughly taught by these things, I instruct the ignorant in the truth.
II.—God’s Indignation. In the law, the Lord of heaven, and earth, and sea has commanded, saying, Worship not vain gods made by your own hands out of wood or gold, lest my wrath destroy you for such things. The people before Moses, unskilled, abiding without law, and ignorant of God, prayed to gods that perished, after the likenesses of which they fashioned vain idols. The Lord having brought the Jews out of the land of Egypt, subsequently imposed on them a law; and the Omnipotent enjoined these things, that they should serve Him alone, and not those idols. Moreover, in that law is taught concerning the resurrection, and the hope of living in happiness again in the world, if vain idols be forsaken and not worshipped.